THE REV. ROBERT WALKER—HIS PARENTAGE, BIRTH, AND BREEDING—HABITS
OF LIFE—HIS INDUSTRY, ECONOMY, AND HOSPITALITY—HIS WAYS OF
MONEYMAKING—HIS DEATH—DESCRIPTION OF HIS OUTER MAN—COMMENTS—GENERAL
POVERTY OF THE OLD CLERGY—MARY HIRD—HER CHARACTER AND DEATH.
Having fed yourself and seen your pony fed, whilst the latter is
enjoying needful rest, you may return to the Chapel and make a more
deliberate examination thereof than you could do when you lately passed
it on horseback and hungry, and see that you approach that “low, small,
modest house of prayer” with befitting reverence for it, and the ground
of the humble cemetery around it, in the opinion of greater men than
you or I can ever hope to be, are each doubly hallowed, the former
as having been for sixty-six years the scene of the labours, and the
latter as holding “the mortal dust” of the “Wonderful Walker;” and
who, you inquire, was he? and how was he wonderful? I'll tell you all
about him in as few words as possible. The Rev. Robert Walker was the
youngest child in a family of twelve, who were all born to a small
yeoman, at Undercrag, in this dale. He was born in 1709, and being
sickly in boyhood, it was determined, in accordance with very general
custom in such cases, to “breed him a scholar.” His father died when
he was seventeen, and he soon obtained the appointment of parochial
[Sidenote: PREFERMENTS AND PROFITS.] teacher at Gosforth, in
Cumberland. After labouring there, and in the same capacity at
Loweswater for some few years, he was ordained to the living of
Buttermere—the smallest Chapel, and, by no means the largest living, in
England. His income as incumbent of Buttermere, even though eked out by
teaching, being insufficient for his wants, moderate as they were, he
worked hard, when his clerical and pedagogical duties permitted, as a
common country labourer, span, knitted, and acted as private secretary
and scrivener general, and sometimes as marketing agent in sheep,
wool, &c., to all his neighbours. Amongst other modes of raising the
needful whilst at Buttermere, I have been told by one of his Seathwaite
neighbours, that he taught the Buttermerians the art of drawing their
lake and the adjacent lake of Crummock with the draught net, and for
this service he was paid at the extravagant rate of _one halfpenny_ for
every draught they took, whilst he remained amongst them. After this
he obtained the living of Torver, a small Chapelry, under Ulverstone,
situate a mile or two from Conistone down the west side of the lake;
and shortly after that, he attained the great object of his very
natural ambition—the ministry of this his native valley; married a
wife with a fortune of forty pounds, and yet did not allow his strict
habits of economy and industry to slacken. There was no labour too mean
for him to engage in; indeed his daily routine of employment as given
by his trumpeter-in-chief, Mr Wordsworth, is such as few Bishops in
these degenerate days would permit a clergyman to indulge in. Listen to
it—“Eight hours in each day, during five days in the week, and half
of Saturday, except when the labours of husbandry were urgent, he was
occupied in teaching. His seat was within the rails of the altar: the
communion table was his desk; and, like Shenstone's schoolmistress,
the master employed himself at the spinning-wheel, while the children
[Sidenote: A POOR PARSON’S LABOURS.] were repeating their lessons by
his side. Every evening, after school hours, if not more profitably
engaged, he continued the same kind of labour, exchanging, for the
benefit of exercise, the small wheel at which he had sate, for the
large one on which wool is spun, the spinner stepping to and fro.
Thus was the wheel constantly in readiness to prevent the waste of a
moment’s time. Nor was his industry with the pen, when occasion called
for it, less eager. Intrusted with extensive management of public and
private affairs, he acted, in his rustic neighbourhood, as scrivener,
writing out petitions, deeds of conveyance, wills, covenants, &c., with
pecuniary gain to himself and to the great benefit of his employers.
These labours (at all times considerable) at one period of the year,
viz., between Christmas and Candlemas, when money transactions are
settled in this country, were often so intense, that he passed great
part of the night, and sometimes whole nights at his desk. His garden
also was tilled by his own hand; he had a right of pasturage on the
mountains for a few sheep and a couple of cows, which required his
attendance; with this pastoral occupation he joined the labours of
husbandry upon a small scale, renting two or three acres in addition to
his own less than one acre of glebe; and the humblest drudgery which
the cultivation of these fields required was performed by himself. He
also assisted his neighbours in haymaking and shearing their flocks,
and in the performance of this latter service, he was eminently
dexterous.”
For this assistance, he was in the annual habit of levying
contributions upon his near neighbours of hay, and on those more
distant of wool; and there are several yet remaining, who remember
his trudging about the head of the dale with his old white galloway,
collecting the tributary fleeces which were carried home pannier-wise
upon the said galloway’s back.
[Sidenote: ILLUSTRATION OF CHARACTER]
His economy was still more wonderful than his industry, and I have been
told by an eye-witness of a somewhat curious instance of it. He greatly
enjoyed a game at whist on the winter evenings, and in old age when his
sight was dim, he had, when playing, a mould candle lighted and placed
upon a shelf behind him; but it sometimes happened, when more than four
players were present, that the old Parson had to “sit out” in his turn,
and when that was the case, he always carefully extinguished his mould
candle and allowed the rest of the party to find out their trumps as
they best could by the light of the rush dipped in fat, re-lighting his
mould so soon as he cut in again.
He was offered, and it would appear, was, at first, inclined to accept,
the adjoining benefice of Ulpha to hold in conjunction with that of
Seathwaite, for he writes to the Bishop, an unexpected difficulty
having arisen—“If he,” the person who started the difficulty, “had
suggested any such objection before, I should utterly have declined any
attempt to the curacy of Ulpha: indeed I was always apprehensive it
might be disagreeable to my auditory at Seathwaite, as they have always
been accustomed to double duty, and the inhabitants of Ulpha despair of
being able to support a schoolmaster who is not curate there also;” and
again he says that the annexation would cause a general discontent in
both places, and Mr Walker had more sense than to brave such discontent.
His hospitality likewise has been extensively dilated upon, and,
as I think, unnecessarily. Had he been inhospitable, he would have
been unlike his neighbours, for hospitality is even yet a prominent
characteristic of the district; and, moreover, I once took the liberty
of inquiring into the extent and nature of his hospitality at an old
lady who well remembers him, when I found that she was inclined to
give the credit of liberal hospitality to his wife rather than to Mr
Walker, stating that Mrs Walker would occasionally bestow some homely
dainty upon neighbour children, requesting them to conceal it from “t’
maister.”
[Sidenote: HOSPITALITY AND HOSTELRY.]
He supplied messes of broth on Sundays to such of his hearers as came
from a distance, and Mr Wordsworth mentions this as involving an act
of generous self-denial, because to make the requisite supply of
Sunday broth, it would be necessary to boil the whole week’s meat on
that day, reducing the family to the necessity of eating nothing but
cold meat until the next supply of broth was required. This appearance
of self-denial _dis_appears, when we come to know that it is, even
yet, a rule in the domestic economy of old Seathwaite families to
boil sufficient meat to serve several days’ dinners in every Sunday's
broth; and, as has been elsewhere said, though the dried mutton,
oat-bread, fresh butter, and sweet milk so liberally offered to
callers by my hospitable though homely friends in Seathwaite are all
more than excellent, yet is their broth as little tempting a mess as
it has been my fortune to encounter, the “singit sheep’s heid broth”
of a Duddingston public, or the “a la mode soup” of a St. Giles's
eating-house not excepted.
Mr Walker’s biographers and panegyrists omit altogether to mention
a very important means he adopted to help to “bring grist to the
mill,” and that was keeping an ale-house, not a jerry-shop, mind, for
in “Wonderful Walker's” time, his Parsonage was an ordinary country
ale-house, in which the ordinary customs of country ale-houses were
regularly observed. For instance, at certain periods, he held “auld
wife hakes,” or “merry nights,” and such like jollifications, where, as
Anderson sings—
“The bettermer sort sat snug i’ the parlour;
I’ t’ pantry the sweathearters cuttered sae soft;
The dancers they kicked up a stour i’ the kitchen;
At lanter the card-lakers sat i’ the loft.”
[Sidenote: HABITS AND HABILIMENTS.]
I don’t mean that this exact arrangement of guests was religiously
followed at the Seathwaite Parsonage hakes, but such, beyond dispute,
were the staple amusements on these jolly occasions. One custom of
Mr Walker’s public, I should mention as differing from the practice
of its successors; ale, if “drunk on the premises,” was charged
fourpence per quart, but if swallowed outside, on the road or in the
church-yard, only threepence. The ale licence was taken out in the name
of his brother. He refused to have any dealings with Quakers, because,
as I understand the matter, that stiff-necked generation have some
out-of-the-way and inconvenient notions about the propriety of paying
Church dues.
He discharged his clerical duties zealously and faithfully for
sixty-six years at Seathwaite alone, which was his third benefice. He
brought up, educated well and established well in life, a numerous
family, and, in 1802, died universally lamented, at the age of
ninety-three, leaving two thousand pounds and a large quantity of linen
and woollen cloth spun by himself, chiefly within the communion rails,
where he had his seat when engaged in teaching the young intelligences
of the dale to read and write.
The following descriptive sketch of his ordinary dress and occupations
occurs in a letter from Conistone in 1754:—“I found him sitting at the
head of a large square table, such as is commonly used in this country
by the lower class of people, dressed in a coarse blue frock, trimmed
with black-horn buttons; a checked shirt, a leathern strap about his
neck for a stock, a coarse apron, and a pair of great wooden-soled
shoes plated with iron to preserve them (what we call clogs in these
parts), with a child upon his knee, eating his breakfast; his wife, and
the remainder of his children, were some of them engaged in waiting
upon each other, the rest in teazing and spinning wool, at which trade
he is a great proficient; and, moreover, when it is made ready for
sale, he will lay it, by sixteen or thirty-two pounds weight, upon his
back, and on foot, seven or eight miles, will carry it to market, even
in the depth of winter. I was not much surprised at all this, as you
may possibly be, having heard a great deal of it related before. But I
must confess myself astonished with the alacrity and the good humour
that appeared both in the clergyman and his wife, and more so at the
sense and ingenuity of the clergyman himself.”
[Sidenote: COMMENTARY.]
After all, these are but every day wonders and amount to no more than
the bare fact of a resolute, conscientious, and very indigent man,
carrying with him into the Church the stern habits of frugality,
industry, temperance, and self-denial in which he was reared, and
which he doubtless had seen practised in his father’s family from his
earliest childhood. One really might suppose that the Poet Laureate
and the Principal of Saint Bees, his most prominently eulogistic
biographers, are struck with admiring astonishment on discovering such
an assemblage of homely working-day virtues in a clergyman (though very
sorry should I be to insinuate that the cloth deserve the imputation);
for they may see, and must have seen, the same virtues practised,
under circumstances less favourable to their development, amongst the
humble classes of the laity often enough without considering themselves
called upon to say or to think anything about the matter. But, however
that may be, the humble grave of “Wonderful Walker,” chiefly under
the influence of Mr Wordsworth’s writings, has become a shrine before
which many, from great distances, bow annually; and at one of my visits
to Seathwaite I fell in with a much esteemed elderly friend, who,
with a party of ladies, had made an excursion, half pilgrimage, half
pic-nic, to Robert Walker’s tomb and Church, and he declared with much
appearance, and, I doubt not, much reality of feeling, that it gave
him higher gratification to stand by “this low Pile,” and that simple
unadorned place of rest, than he could have derived from a visit to any
scene the most famous in ancient or modern history.
[Sidenote: CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE OLD CLERGY.]
I hope I shall be acquitted of any wish to depreciate the real
excellences of Robert Walker’s character; but I maintain that it
is scarcely just to the bulk of human kind to bestow the title of
“Wonderful” upon an individual who to the frugality, temperance,
integrity, and industry of the class he sprang from, superadded the
piety, purity, and some of the learning of the profession he adopted.
But, as sings the Roman poet—
Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi; sed omnes illachrymabiles
Urgentur ignotique longâ
Nocte, _carent quia vate sacro_.
That his poverty was by no means wonderful, the following sketch of
the English Country Clergy of the seventeenth century, from Macaulay’s
history, may suffice to prove, bearing in mind that the circumstances
of the clergy of that date in the more populous parts of the kingdom
were those of the clergy of these remote chapelries far into the
succeeding century. And Southey tells us that the curate of Newlands,
near Keswick, about that time was obliged to add to his income by
exercising the crafts of tailor, clogger, and butter-print maker.
[Sidenote: “A NOBLE PEASANT.”]
Here is Macaulay’s picture:—
“Not one living in fifty enabled the incumbent to bring up a family
comfortably. As children multiplied and grew, the household of the
priest became more and more beggarly. Holes appeared more and more
plainly in the thatch of his Parsonage, and in his single cassock.
Often it was only by toiling on his glebe, by feeding swine, and
by loading dung-carts, that he could obtain daily bread; nor did
his utmost exertions always prevent the bailiffs from taking his
concordance and his inkstand in execution. It was a white day on which
he was admitted into the kitchen of a great house, and regaled by the
servants with cold meat and ale. His children were brought up like the
children of the neighbouring peasantry. His boys followed the plough;
and his girls went out to service. Study he found impossible; for the
advowson of his living would hardly have sold for a sum sufficient to
purchase a good theological library; and he might be considered as
unusually lucky, if he had ten or twelve dog-eared volumes among the
pots and pans on his shelves. Even a keen and strong intellect might
be expected to rust in so unfavourable a situation.”
And again, to prove that his original class do, in some instances,
possess the virtues specified, I may adduce the case of a neighbour
of Mr Walker's, whose melancholy end caused a wide-spread feeling of
commiseration and regret throughout this and the neighbouring dales;
and I shall quote the account of her given by a gentleman who knew
her well—who frequently stayed in her house when hereabout on fishing
excursions—who, with a hand “open as day to melting charity,” possesses
a heart ready to acknowledge and to sympathize with goodness, whether
it appears in the disposition and the works of peasant, parson, peer,
or prince—
“She was by no means a common character. Left a widow many years
ago, with a young family, by great industry and exertion she brought
them up and settled them in the world in useful and respectable
callings. In the sweet and quiet vale of Duddon, about a quarter of
a mile below the bridge which unites Seathwaite and Ulpha, at an
angular bend of the river, is a deep hole called the ‘Smithy Dub.’
About a stone-throw from this, on the Cumberland side of the river,
behind one of those detached rocks, so characteristic of Duddon
dale, stands a neat and roomy cottage and a garden, well furnished
with bee-hives and flowers. Here she kept a small shop for the sale
of groceries and drapers’ ware, and in due time her eldest son was
fixed in the new smithy, by the river side. With a manner and outside
somewhat plain and countryfied, she had as kind a heart as ever beat
in the human bosom. She appeared almost to keep open house, and gave
away, I should think, more bread and cheese and home-brewed, than is
sold in some public-houses. If you called about hay-time, the well
white-washed house, the fire-place, and all was beautiful to behold:
and in the large grate was an immense thick sod of purple heather,
in full blossom, the prettiest chimney ornament I ever saw. I have
occasionally boarded in that cottage for a week at a time, and never
saw any one applying for relief go away empty-handed. Few indeed, in
a contracted sphere, have been so generally respected; and long will
it be, ere that pleasant valley loses an inhabitant so beloved and
regretted by rich and poor, as was Mary Hird.”
[Sidenote: A SAD STORY.]
I have said that the end of Mary Hird was melancholy, and it may not be
improper, trivial and slight though these lucubrations be, to relate
the circumstances attending it here.
[Sidenote: THE FELLS IN WINTER]
On the afternoon of February the 4th, 1848, she left home in accordance
with an arrangement made with a traveller from Ulverstone, who had
offered to take her over Birker Moor in his gig to Eskdale, where
she wished to visit some relations—the friendly traveller agreeing
to pick her up at a stated hour at the end of the Birker Moor road.
She unfortunately had been too late, and had walked onwards, as was
supposed, under the impression that he was behind and would overtake
her. However that might be, no alarm was felt on her account at home,
until Miss Tyson, the clergyman’s daughter, called at the cottage
on her way from Eskdale, and it then came out that she had not been
seen there, though that was the sixth day after her departure. The
neighbourhood was alarmed instantly, and a long line of willing and
anxious friends, taking the whole breadth of the wild moor before
them, soon discovered her body lying about forty yards from the road,
where, but for the continual misty state of the atmosphere during the
whole week, she must have been discovered days before by people passing
along the road. The lacerated condition of her hands and knees and her
torn dress shewed that the poor old woman, after losing the power of
walking, had struggled onwards, no one knows how far, upon her hands
and knees: she had taken out her spectacles, as it was thought, to
assist her in seeing her way through the bewildering mist; and she
had lost a handkerchief, containing oranges for her grandchildren,
at some distance from the spot where she died. I am well qualified
to speak as to what the poor old creature must have suffered from
the weather, for I had to cross over Walna Scar (which is near two
thousand feet high) twice upon the day she perished, and though I am
tolerably robust, and had the assistance of an active pony, I nearly
sunk under it myself. There had been a heavy snow which, for a day or
two, under the influence of soft weather and showers, had been melting;
the whole country was saturated with wet—“every road was a syke, every
syke a beck, and every beck a river.” The high lands were covered with
a thick, cold, driving, suffocating mist, which every now and then
thinned a little to make way for one of these thorough-bred mountain
showers, of which none can have any conception who have not faced them
on the fells in winter—wetting you to the skin and chilling you to the
marrow in three seconds, and piercing your exposed skin like legions
of needles and pins. The hollows in the road, which are neither few
nor far between, were filled with snow in a state of semifluidity,
cold as if it had been melted with salt, through which I splashed
and struggled, dragging my floundering, jaded pony after me with the
greatest difficulty. Though my road was over a much greater elevation
than Mary Hird's, hers would be nearly as much exposed to the weather
and as completely covered in by the smothering mist; it is therefore
not to be wondered at that, though an active hale old woman, she sank
upon the dreary moor.