WEATHERLAM—TILBERTHWAITE—THE BRATHAY—WORDSWORTH'S
BRIDGES—HALLGARTH—LITTLE LANGDALE, ITS TARN, &C.—WHITEWASH, PRO AND
CON—THE BUSK AND FELL-FOOT—“JOAN’S ALE WAS NEW”—ANCIENT TUMULUS—ASCENT
OF WRYNOSE—THE SHIRE STONES—SOURCE OF THE DUDDON—WORDSWORTH'S SONNETS
THEREON—AUTHOR’S DITTO DITTO—TRADITIONAL SAYINGS ABOUT OLD WOODS—THEIR
EXTENT DISPUTED.
As you wind round the heel of Raven Crag, you obtain a fine view of
the Old Man’s stupendous brother, Weatherlam, rearing his massive
summit over the circumjacent hills, like a giant amid ordinary
mortals. You follow a narrow winding road through the verdant fields
and copse-clad hillocks of Holme ground, and soon find yourself in
the vale of Tilberthwaite; and “O,” you suspirate, as you roll your
eyes around, “what a spot for a honeymoon—'the world forgetting, by
the world forgot'—so lovely in its seclusion and so lonely in its
loveliness.” The only unpleasant characteristic of Tilberthwaite is
an odd, uncomfortable feeling of which, though absurd enough, you
cannot entirely divest yourself—an idea of difficulty in getting out
of it. It is so encompassed by steep hills and hanging woods, that
you involuntarily compare yourself to a cockroach in the bottom of a
porridge basin. The name of Tilberthwaite is said to be compounded of
Tillbear and thwaite, and to signify an enclosure for the cultivation
of bear (pronounced beer), an old name for barley. This word, like
many more that are obsolete in England, is still used in Scotland; for
instance, it occurs in Tam O'Shanter, where it is said that Cutty Sark—
“Shook baith muckle corn and _bear_,
And held the kintra side in fear.”
[Sidenote: RIVER AND BRIDGE.]
And again, an old song commences—
“There'll be nae shearing here the year,
For the craws hae eaten the _bear_ the year.”
But the day advances, and you’d better advance along with it, for
“you've many a mile to go” before you get back to your comfortable
quarters at Conistone. Push on then, along the bye road through the
fields, and you again reach the high road. You follow it through the
farm-yard—take the gate to the right, and pursue a rough way meandering
pleasantly for about a mile through an irregularly-wooded vale. The
enormous heaps of loose blue stone on every side of you are from the
slate quarries, of which I shall perhaps tell you more when I have more
time.
The stream you now approach is a branch of the Brathay, which rises
on Wrynose and other hills round the head of Little Langdale, down
which valley it flows, forming a fine fall at Colwith and at Skelwith,
after joining the Great Langdale branch in Elterwater, and become a
principal feeder of the “Regal Windermere;” you stand upon the verge of
Lancashire, for this brook here divides it from Westmorland. Don’t cross
it as yet, but follow its course upwards on the Lancashire side, and
you will soon fall in with a primitive stone bridge—one of the very few
remaining of those whose rapid disappearance Mr Wordsworth deplores,
whilst he expresses admiration of “the daring and graceful contempt of
danger and accommodation with which so many of them are constructed,
the rudeness of form of some, and their endless variety.” If neglect of
danger and accommodation, and rudeness of form, be the distinguishing
and essential attributes of the class, this, connecting Tilberthwaite
with Little Langdale, and called Slater’s Bridge, ought certainly to
be preserved as an exquisite and unique specimen of a style of bridge
all but extinct; for the sturdy Dalesmen perversely prefer bridges that
are safe and commodious, though they may sacrifice the picturesque and
rudeness of form to obtain these vulgar requisites.
[Sidenote: DOCTRINES OF MR. WORDSWORTH.]
Pass by, not over, the bridge—a horse passing over it might remind
one of the famous asinine performer on the tight-rope—and you come
to the hamlet of Hallgarth, which has little to distinguish it from
a thousand others, save the rather uncomfortable peculiarity of not
being touched upon by the “blessed sun” for about three months in the
year. As you leave it by a steep acclivity, you had better take a
survey of Little Langdale which lies spread out at your feet. Rather
farther than midway between you and the abruptly rising range of hill
called Lingmoor, which divides this vale from its larger namesake,
lies Langdale Tarn, which bears out the Poet Laureate's assertion,
that “Tarns are often surrounded by an unsightly tract of boggy
ground.” The chief beauty of Little Langdale consists in the irregular
hillocky nature of its ground and the sites of its dwellings, many
of which nestle so cozily in little dells, behind rocky knolls, and
beneath umbrageous trees, as to convey a notion of the most attractive
snugness; but here I am heretic enough to dispute the infallibility
of the Poet Laureate’s taste. He has declared war against whitewash
in something like the following terms:—“The objections to white, as
a colour, in large spots or masses in landscapes, especially in a
mountainous country, are insurmountable”—and, quoting somebody who
[Sidenote: A WORD FOR WHITE HOUSES.] says “that white destroys the
gradations of distance,” he holds on thus—“Five or six white houses,
scattered over a valley, by their obtrusiveness, dot the surface, and
divide it into triangles, or other mathematical figures, haunting the
eye, and disturbing that repose which might otherwise be perfect.” By
the bye, a fair lady, whose opinion, in most matters of taste, I hold
in the deepest reverence, recently became a convert to this doctrine
of Mr Wordsworth, because she noticed the effect just instanced,
not when gazing upon a landscape, but when compiling patch work in
which fragments of white intruded amongst the blues, yellows, greens,
reds, and neutrals, woefully disturbed the harmony and repose of the
cushion cover or quilt. Mr Wordsworth says also, in support of his
anti-whitewashing theory, that “in nature, pure white is scarcely ever
found but in small objects, such as flowers; or in those which are
transitory, as the clouds, foam on rivers, and snow.” But I must remind
those who take for gospel every word that Mr Wordsworth preaches, that
the “White Cliffs of England,” the snows upon a thousand hills, and the
foam of a thousand cataracts are neither minute nor transitory; and
that large masses of white in nature, such as these, as well as white
clouds, and the terrible white of a stormy sea upon a rocky coast are
all calculated to excite sensations of the sublime and beautiful in
any bosom, whether the possessor be very much of a man of feeling and
imagination or the reverse. But coming back to cottages, with all due
deference to the Poet Laureate’s argument, and with more to that of his
fair and talented supporter, I do maintain that no objects can give
such a gratifying air of life and cheerfulness to a valley surrounded,
or not, by high mountains, or so strikingly enhance the bright green of
herbage and foliage, or the more sombre, but warmer, tints of near or
distant hills, as a liberal sprinkling over the landscape of pure white
[Sidenote: OUT-DOORS AND IN-DOORS CONTRASTED.]cottages, embosomed, as
these are, each in its own nest of sheltering trees; and I do wish that
the farmers of Langdale, and all our other fell-dales, would expend a
shilling or two annually on lime, and bestow upon their romantically
situated homesteads, “the cleanly, pleasant appearance derivable from
a plentiful periodical application of white-wash.” Their present grim,
dingy, almost squalid exteriors, are strongly suggestive to the mind
of a stranger of internal poverty, desolation and dirt, than which
nothing can be more distant from their real in-door condition; for, in
all these scattered houses, miserable as they look externally, there
is abundance for the wants of the inmates and for the requirements of
hospitality, and their cleanliness is such that, as I have partaken of
many meals spread upon their unclothed tables, so, in the absence of a
table, would I not scruple to eat my dinner if laid upon any of their
blue flagged floors,[A] for those are cleaner than many table-cloths I
have seen in the course of my peregrinations through other countries.
[A] It is said that “great wits jump together,” and it would appear
that, under certain circumstances, the same saltatory exploit may be
performed by a great and a small wit; for instance, Miss Martineau
in her capital essay on the Lake District, treating of the inside
cleanliness of the houses, makes nearly the same remark as I have made
above. I am sorry that I cannot conscientiously adopt the complaint
of the very modern literary gentleman who accused Shakspeare of
forestalling all his best ideas, because the above passage, or at
least the same idea, if it be one, occurred in the first edition of
these papers, and was printed above three years before the appearance
of Miss Martineau’s work.
[Sidenote: WORT AND WELCOME.]
_Mais revenons a nos moutons_,—return we to our ramble. As you move
forward, here take a good look at Langdale Pikes, perhaps the most
picturesque hills in England, and seen to advantage from this road,
over Wallend and Blea Tarn. Which last again brings Mr Wordsworth upon
the stage; indeed it is difficult to descant upon any part of the lake
country without running foul of him, and this Blea Tarn is the scene
of one of those purely poetical descriptions so truly and peculiarly
his own, which prove by the earnestness, fervour, and simplicity of
their style, that their author is a true poet, with all his whims;
and they may well be received as an ample atonement for even more of
the middling quality than he, during his long and peaceful life, has
inflicted upon the reading world.
The newly-made cart-road to your left leads to Greenbourne—a wild and
retired dell under the north-eastern shoulder of Weatherlam, where a
spirited and meritorious mining adventure, set on foot by some working
miners from Conistone, is in progress, and is likely to prosper. The
farm under the fell on the other side of the valley, is called the
Busk, and was formerly a public house, as was also Fell-foot, the
uppermost house in the dale. It is said of these old hostels, that
they would commence brewing when they saw their chief customers, the
caravans of travellers, carriers, and pack horses (then the only mode
of conveying goods, as this was the only road, between Kendal and
Whitehaven), appear on the top of Wrynose, and that they would have
good drink ready for them by the time they reached the bottom. This
reminds one of the old story of the thirsty London traveller drawing
up and calling for ale at an old public house, called the “Dog and
Doublet” on Carleton Thwaite, and being told by the landlady in her
brewing apron, that “they happened to be out of drink just then, but
if he would light his ways down and stop a leyle bit, he should have
_wort_ and welcome while the yell was getting ready.” As you approach
Fell-foot you cross the beck, and entering Westmorland, come upon the
ancient pack-horse road; and passing close in front of Fell-foot,
a favourable sample of the old-fashioned mountain farm-house, you
commence the ascent of Wrynose. In the field immediately behind the
farm buildings, is a large mound or tumulus which has never been
noticed in any published work, but which, it is much to be desired,
that some learned antiquary would examine, and report upon its nature
and probable or possible origin. It is an oblong square, with a tabular
summit from thirty to forty yards long, and from ten to fifteen
broad—attained by a broad terraced road of very gradual ascent, which,
after encompassing the mound twice or thrice, comes out upon its summit
at its northern extremity.
[Sidenote: WRYNOSE.]
As you creep up the mountain, you may perceive in the deep verdant glen
under your left, a number of small cone-shaped tumuli, whether formed
by the hand of man or by the operations of nature this deponent sayeth
not.
Having climbed for nearly a mile, please to halt and look back, and
you have a view well worth all your toil, embracing Little Langdale,
Colwith, Skelwith, Loughrigg, the bright waters of Windermere, and the
groves and mountains beyond, altogether making up a picture approaching
in beauty, though inferior in richness and variety, (as all other
prospects are) to that seen from the Castlerigg, near Keswick.
[Sidenote: CLASSIC GROUND.]
And now, having nearly attained the summit of Wrynose Pass, I
shall impart to you such instructions, as will enable you, without
difficulty, to find the three shire stones, which here mark the spot
where the three counties, Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire
meet; and this service I may mention is not rendered you by any of the
hackney itineraries or guide-books, for I never could make them out
until I received explicit directions in the matter from an old woman in
Seathwaite. At what appears the top of Wrynose, when ascending it from
Langdale, you come upon a short track of level ground, where the road
runs along between a low wall of rock on the right and a peat-moss on
the left. Near to the point where the rocky wall runs down to nothing,
and where the road makes a sweep to the left to rise an acclivity, look
to the right, and, at a few yards distance from the road, and stuck
in rather wet ground, you will descry three stones of the size of a
high-crowned hat—about five feet distant from each other—and forming a
triangle; each stone is in a different county, and if you are tolerably
_lish_ and lengthy of limb, you may place a foot upon one stone, the
other foot on another, and your hands on the third; or should the
circumstances under which you visit the spot require you to do the feat
more gracefully or more decorously, you may place both feet on one and
distribute your hands between the other two—either way you perform it,
you may brag thereafter that you, in your individual person, have been
in three counties at one and the same time.
You leave the spot where “three fair counties meet together,” and
topping the aforesaid short ascent, soon begin to descend, and as you
descend, do not attempt to shew your learning by quoting Virgil, and
calling this “_facilis descensus Averni_,” for it is a most _infacile_
and _innerman-jumbling_ “_descensus_” into a very different place—a
vale destined through future ages to hold a proud rank amongst the
thousand be-rhymed and be-sonneted localities of ancient and modern
poets, such as “The Plains of Troy, of which blind Homer sang,”
“Parnassus' hill where wells fair Castaly,” “The isles of Greece,
the isles of Greece, where burning Sappho loved and sung,” “The soft
flowing Avon,” “The wide and winding Rhine,” “The Banks o’ Doon,” “The
Groves of Blarney,” &c., &c., &c.—for it is the subject of a rosary of
sonnets by our great moral poet, of higher celebrity than any given
to the world since the days of Petrarch, and I hope that neither Mr
Wordsworth nor you will think that I exceed my commission by quoting
here the two first of the series of “Sonnets on the River Duddon.”—
[Sidenote: “SORDID INDUSTRY.”]
I.
Not envying Latian shades—if yet they throw
A grateful coolness round that crystal spring,
Blandusia prattling as when long ago
The Sabine Bard was moved her praise to sing;
Careless of flowers that in perennial blow
Round the moist marge of Persian fountains cling;
Heedless of Alpine torrents thundering
Through ice-built arches radiant as Heaven’s bow;
I seek the birth-place of a native stream.
All hail! ye mountains! hail thou morning light!
Better to breathe at large on this clear height
Than toil in needless sleep from dream to dream:
Pure flow the verse, pure, vigorous, free, and bright,
For Duddon, long-loved Duddon, is my theme!
II.
Child of the clouds! remote from every taint
Of sordid industry thy lot is cast;
Thine are the honours of the lofty waste;
Not seldom, when with heat the valleys faint,
Thy handmaid Frost with spangled tissue quaint
Thy cradle decks;—to chant thy birth, thou hast
No meaner Poet than the whistling blast,
And desolation is thy Patron-Saint!—
She guards thee, ruthless Power! who would not spare
Those mighty forests, once the bison’s screen,
Where stalked the huge deer to his shaggy lair
Through paths and alleys roofed with sombre green;
Thousands of years before the silent air
Was pierced by whizzing shaft of hunter keen!
The first two lines of the second of these sonnets furnish an instance
of the prime defect in Wordsworth’s philosophy and poetry, namely, his
affected (for it cannot be real), contempt for, and his perpetually
recurring sneer at, what he here calls sordid industry. I say this
contempt cannot be real, because Wordsworth, though a great Poet,
possesses quite an average share of ordinary unpoetical prudence and
discernment, and though in earnest, no doubt, in his worship of
“unprofaned nature” holds in due appreciation those commonplace
comforts of civilized life, which, without the aid of the sordid
industry, would scarcely be attainable. Moreover, to meet him on his
own ground, this wild locality is by no means very “remote from _every_
taint of sordid industry”—these hills are devoted to sheep farming, and
though I am far from stigmatizing stock farmers as being more sordid
than other classes, yet is their ordinary employment as essentially
sordid in its nature, and as coarse, unromantic and disagreeable in its
details, as any other common mode of money-making, notwithstanding all
that has been said, or sung, to the contrary.
[Illustration: SOURCE OF THE DUDDON.]
[Sidenote: A HUMBLE IMITATION VERY!]
And now, in humble imitation of my betters, I cannot refrain from
trying my poor hand at a sonnet, and, when you have well considered
the same, I hope and believe that, however infinite you may reckon its
poetical inferiority, you will admit that its sentiment is more in
accordance with the subject—that it is conceived in a more Catholic
spirit than those of my great prototype—
“And that _my_ raptures are not conjured up
To serve occasions of poetic pomp,” attend;—
Here springs the Duddon, trickling from the end
Of Wrynose, thus suggesting the belief
That Wrynose lacks a pocket-handkerchief.
It argues much untidiness to send
A nose-bred rill meandering o'er the breast
Of Seathwaite vale; but, as you downward wend,
Where verdure, rocks, and water aptly blend
To form a scene whose presence few had guess'd,
Amid these wild brown fells, you'll bless the source
Of this clear stream whose gushing waters lend
A music cheering you as you descend,
With easy lounge along its fitful course,
And pray that, whilst these wild brown fells endure,
Wrynose’s catarrh ne'er may find a cure!
[Sidenote: “MIGHTY FORESTS.”]
The head of this vale does not hold out much promise of beauty, and
you feel surprised that any one, were he fifty times a poet, could
contrive to make anything readable on such a subject as the dreary
uninteresting valley before you. It is indeed a desolate spot,
stretching its unrelieved length for two miles from the foot of this
hill, with nothing for the eye to exercise itself, or the heart to
console itself with, but bare fells, grey crags, screes and boulders,
and a stone-vexed rivulet winding its lonely way along the bottom of
the dale, but not a sign of life except what may be contained in moss
and lichens, with here and there a little fern and grass.
There are many who would persuade you that all these bleak hills and
dales were formerly and for centuries covered with dense forests. Mr
Wordsworth, in sonnet number two, speaks of “mighty forests” having
existed hereabout for thousands of years before archery or hunting
became fashionable, and Dan Birkett, of whom more anon, declares that
formerly a con (vulgarly called a squirrel), could hop from branch to
branch all the way from the top of Wrynose to Millom Castle; the same
tradition, I may remark, exists in the same form in other localities;
for instance, it is averred that the aforesaid little animal, could, in
the olden time, accomplish a similar aerial journey from Wythburn to
Keswick, and also from Loweswater to the sea at Moresby. But perhaps
the best of the sort is the tradition cherished by the descendants of
one of the old Border clans, which asserts that some time before “the
good old days of Adam and Eve” a moss trooper might ride in the shade
of trees from the head of Annandale to the Solway, about thirty-five
miles, and all upon land belonging to the Hallidays.
[Sidenote: WHAT THE SOIL SAYS.]
Take my word for it, the extent, duration, and number of these old
forests are very much exaggerated. Let us take these hill sides as an
instance. Where are the vestiges of a thick wood existing here for
ages? Burnt, you may say!—Yes, but where is the rich loam inevitably
produced by copious deposit of decayed vegetable matter on dry
situations, or the deep peat-moss that always betokens the former
existence of timber in wet localities? Here, to your left, you perceive
there has been a small land-slip—examine the soil exposed, and what do
you find? Why, about a single inch of the soil created by vegetable
growth and decay, just as much as the poor little mosses can make and
no more, and a substratum of the tenacious reddish gravel locally
called sammel; but no where do we see anything approaching to the thick
superstratum of rich vegetable mould always discovered on the sites
of primeval forests. No! no! where you cannot find either loam or
peat-moss, be assured there has been at no period, however remote, any
considerable covering of wood.