THE CIRCUIT OF THE LAKE.
THE VILLAGE AND CHURCH AGAIN—THE DEER PARK—HIGH GROUND, LITTLE ARROW,
AND HAWTHWAITE—TORVER—HEM HALL—TORVER MILL—SUNNY BANK—OXNESS—BROWN
HOW—WATER-YEAT—ARKLID—NIBTHWAITE—WATERPARK—THE LAKE FOOT—“THE
GRIDIRON,” AND FIR ISLAND—BRANTWOOD—CONISTONE BANK—BANK GROUND—T’
HO'PENNY YALL 'US—TENT LODGE.
I intend now to treat you to a fourteen miles’ ride, namely, down the
western side of the Lake and up the eastern, to accomplish which it
is necessary again to pass through the village by Yewdale Bridge, the
Crown Inn and the Church. When I last mentioned the Church to you, I
think I alluded to “an old oak chest,” with a very oddly constructed
padlock, in which chest is deposited a mass of ancient documents
connected with the ecclesiastical business of the chapelry. Since
then, through the polite attention of my urbane and erudite friend,
the parish clerk, I have had an opportunity of rummaging at will
through these parochial archives, but the only papers possessing the
least interest were a number of slips, each recording the oaths of two
people—always females by the bye—as to the costume in which defunct
persons were carried to their long home. As these afford a striking
and instructive instance of the wisdom of our ancestors, and refer
to an act of Parliament, of the existence of which, at any period of
our national annals, perhaps you were not cognizant, any more than I
was myself, I have taken the liberty of transcribing one of the most
legible; and here it is:—
[Sidenote: AN OLD MONOPOLY.]
Parociall Chappell de Coniston.
We Elizabeth Grigg widdow and Agnes Fleming widow—doe severally make
oath that ye corps of Elizabeth wife of George Towers was buryed April
ye 3d day Anno Dmi 1688 And was not put in wrapt or wound up in any
shirt shift sheet or shroud made or mingled with Flax Hemp Hair Gold
or Silver &c; nor in any coffin lined or faced with Cloath &c; nor now
other material but sheeps wooll only According to Act of Parliamt. In
Testemony whereof we ye sd. Eliz Grigg and Agnes Fleming have hereunto
set our hands and seals
Capt. et. Jurat Septimo die Elizabeth Grigg
Aprilis Anno Dmie 1688 Her X mark
Coram me Agnes Fleming
Rogero Atkinsonne Her X mark
You cross the Church Bridge, and, riding down the village in the same
direction as before, leave it at Parkgate, where the road enters the
old deer park, still pretty well covered with coppice wood, oaks and
other trees from the Lake side, about half a mile to your left to the
top of Bleathwaite, the same distance to your right. Looking back
from the little height beyond Parkgate, you have a delicious view of
the scenery around the upper part of the Lake, and it is, perhaps, as
well that the wooded park soon screens this view from your admiring
retrospection, or it is possible that your progress southward might be
seriously retarded by your “longing, lingering looks behind.”
After emerging from the forest-fringed road through the park, you soon
pass the pleasant residence called High Ground, and the picturesque
homestead of Little Arrow, and leaving the beautiful farm of Hawthwaite
considerably to the left, you shortly enter the ancient and primitive
chapelry of Torver, where—
“Provided you've got a strong taste for rusticity,
And Wordsworth has not made you sick of simplicity”—
you may have your taste gratified, for there are few places now in
England, where old-fashioned and unsophisticated habits and manners
prevail more decidedly than in Torver. There is no account of any
family of rank ever being resident in Torver, and nearly all the land
is still possessed by the descendants of the men whom Sir Walter Scott
apostrophizes as
[Sidenote: PEOPLE AND STEEPLE-(HOUSE.)]
“——Those gallant yeomen,
England’s peculiar and appropriate sons,
Known in no other land. Each boasts his hearth
And field as free as the best lord his barony,
Owing subjection to no human vassalage,
Save to their King and law. Hence are they resolute,
Leading the van on every day of battle,
As men who know the blessings they defend.
Hence are they frank and generous in peace,
As men who have their portion in its plenty;
No other kingdom shows such worth and happiness
Veiled in such low estate.”
A very neat and appropriate chapel has just been erected in Torver,
after a design furnished gratuitously by Mr M. Thompson, an architect
resident, I believe, in Kendal. The old chapel, removed in 1848, was
an object of interest from the fact of its having been consecrated by
Archbishop Cranmer, and said to have been the first church erected in
England for the exercise of the Protestant form of worship.
Close to the chapel stands the snug and tidy public-house, known pretty
widely by the title of Torver Kirk-house, and if you happen to be
a-thirst, I can honestly recommend Thomas Massicks’ home-brewed ale. In
fulfilment of a trite rhyming proverb, these houses of entertainment,
adjoining houses of prayer, are very abundant in our rural parishes,
and are so extensively patronized both by wayfarers and neighbours,
that Mr Wordsworth, when he says
“The Kirk of Ulpha to the pilgrim’s eye
Is welcome as a star, that doth present
Its shining forehead through the peaceful rent
Of a black cloud diffused o'er half the sky:”
&c. &c., would have given us a truth of much more general application,
had he said—
Old Ulpha Kirk-house to the pilgrim’s eye
Is welcome as the sun that doth present
His blowzy visage through some hopeful rent
In clouds, whose rain has left not one stitch dry.
[Sidenote: HILL, MILL AND PILL-(BOXES.)]
After noticing the many old, but comfortable and substantial dwellings
with which the remarkably verdant fields of Torver (which flow with
milk and honey) are “bedropt,” you must take the road which the
guide-post tells you leads to Ulverston—if you can’t read, ask at the
blacksmith’s shop—and when you reach the eminence on which stands the
old farm-house called Hem, or Hen Hall, turn round and take a good look
at the Old Man, who is certainly seen to the greatest advantage from
this point of view. In looking at him on any other side, his connection
with the chain of hills behind him detracts much from the dignity of
his aspect; but from this side, and especially from this precise spot,
he appears to stand forth, independent and self-reliant, the advanced
guard of an army of Titans.
At Hem Hall, you may leave the high road for about a hundred yards,
taking a narrow steep lane straight before you, to look at Torver
Mill,—and a splendid fall the “Blackbeck of Torver” makes a little
above the mill,—returning to the highway at Beckstones, and descending
rapidly till you cross the beck near to the exceedingly well-named farm
of Sunny-bank, and the Bobbin Mill. By the bye, if you would like to
see how very rapidly they can make bobbins or reels for holding cotton
thread, and boxes for holding Professor Holloway’s pills and ointment,
by the use of which you may escape the penalty entailed upon us all by
old father Adam, you should ask leave to inspect the operations in this
bobbin mill, and I have no doubt that my good friend, Mr Kendal, will
be happy to do the honours to any pretty-behaved young gentleman like
yourself.
[Sidenote: THE LAKE-FOOT.]
You pass Sunny-bank, its pretty farm, its bridge and bobbin mill, and
return to the lake-side below the mouth of Torver beck, and opposite
to “the Gridiron,” and ride on through the farm-yard of Oxness, past
Brown How, near to which a very handsome mansion has just been built
upon a singularly beautiful site by the lake side. The scenery here is
very picturesque, consisting, as it does, of successive but irregular
precipitous ranges of grey rock—in some parts bare, and in others clad
with a heavy drapery of glittering ivy—separated by intervals of purple
heather, or green brackens and greener pasturage.
You are now near the water-foot, and just before you reach the hamlet
of Water-yeat, stop on a little eminence and enjoy a view, one glimpse
of which, I have been told, would be ample compensation for a journey
from Timbuctoo. The whole length of the lake lies spread out before
you, from the Copper sheds at Nibthwaite to the Inn at Waterhead,
which last, though at six miles’ distance, is very distinctly
seen—beautifully backed up by the slopes and woods of Mr Marshall’s
noble park; these again over-topped by the distant, finely-outlined
range of mountains beyond Rydal and Grasmere.
At Water-yeat, you take a road leading across the valley and over the
river Crake, to a large old farm-house called Arklid, when you again
turn your nose towards Conistone, passing through the venerable village
of Nibthwaite, and by the richly-wooded grounds of Waterpark, the road
sometimes approaching the lake side, and sometimes diverging from it.
[Sidenote: WILSON AND WORDSWORTH.]
The lower part of Conistone Water is said to be tame, and many of its
most faithful admirers do not attempt to contradict what has almost
assumed the aspect of an admitted fact. But you now see that it is
anything but tame, and if you cannot accept the evidence of your own
optics, or if you doubt the infallibility of your own taste, you will,
perhaps, feel more confidence in your perception of the beautiful,
when I tell you what Professor Wilson says anent the foot of this
lake. You will please to observe, too, that, as I have already said,
the Professor’s taste is somewhat warped by his devotion to his own
magnificent Windermere, and that he has, on other occasions, written
somewhat slightingly of Conistone Water. Hear what he says now:—“Pull
away to the foot of the lake, if you choose, and you will be well
repaid for your labour by the pretty promontories and bashful bays they
conceal, and merry meadows lying in ambush, and “corn riggs sae bonny”
trespassing upon the coppice woods that, year after year, yield up
their lingering roots to the ploughshare, and grey, white, blue, green,
and brown cottages of every shape and size, and pastoral eminences of
old lea crowned with a few pine trees, or with an oak, itself a grove.”
There, after that, I hope you will never allow Conistone Water-foot to
be twitted with tameness again, without running at least one tilt in
its defence.
Mr Wordsworth says that the lakes in general should be approached by
this road, and as he says it well, and, like the true worshipper of
Nature that he undoubtedly is, I feel constrained to quote him:—“The
stranger, from the moment he sets his foot upon these (Lancaster)
sands, seems to leave the turmoil and traffic of the world behind him;
and, crossing the majestic plain when the sea has retired, he beholds,
rising apparently from its base, the cluster of mountains among which
he is going to wander; and towards whose recesses, by the vale of
Conistone, he is gradually and peacefully led.”
As you pursue your pleasant road along the lake, now rising and
descending over a gentle hillock, and again running along the level
lake shore, the Conistone fells become grander and grander, as you
bring them nearer, the Old Man still towering over his compeers, the
Patriarch of his tribe, and seeming what the Professor happily says “he
certainly is, with his firm foot and sunny brow,
‘The king o’ guid fellows and wale o’ auld men.'”
[Sidenote: “WORDSWORTH’S SEAT.”]
Again, passing “the Gridiron” and then Fir Island close to this side
of the lake, the road runs between the lake and the most attractively
placed villa of Brantwood, in the charming grounds of which is a seat
called “Wordsworth's seat,” because that great poet is in the habit
of recommending it to his friends as the point whence _he_ thinks the
beauties of Conistone are beheld to the most advantage: and certainly
the landscape from the said seat is truly exquisite, if such a
young-lady-like term can with propriety be applied to a view, where
none may say whether the grand or the beautiful predominates. The
sparkling waters of the lake in the foreground,—beyond it the fertile
plain and green acclivity, sheltered and shaded by an abundance of
scattered and congregated trees and by giant hedge-rows, and dotted and
diversified by innumerable white, grey, and _black_ houses, peeping
here and there from their embowering foliage, or smiling over the
brilliant verdure of the fields,—the picture being filled up in the
background by that most magnificent of all mountain ranges, comprising
Walna Scar, the Old Man, Brim Fell, High Carr, Oukrigg, Weatherlam,
Henn Crag, Yewdale Crag and Raven Crag, with their countless waterfalls
shining, here like patches, and there like zig-zag lines of snow,
forming altogether a _coup d'œil_ rarely to be equalled—never surpassed.
[Sidenote: A HOME OF GENIUS.]
Leaving this highly favoured spot, you proceed past the gate of
Conistone Bank and Black-beck Cottage, nestling prettily in the
overhanging wood, with which the road is thickly fringed, sometimes
on one side, but more frequently on both, and wherever the western
side is left open, you have the view respecting which Miss Martineau
says,—“And there he (the traveller) will assuredly pause, and hope
that he may never forget what he now sees. He has probably never
beheld a scene which conveyed a stronger impression of joyful charm;
of fertility, prosperity, comfort, nestling in the bosom of the rarest
beauty.
* * * * *
The traveller feasts his eye with the scattered dwellings under their
sheltering woods,—the cheerful town, the rich slopes, and the dark
gorge and summits of Yewdale behind; while the broad water lies as
still as heaven between shore and shore.”
After pausing, as Miss Martineau says you assuredly will, for a
reasonable space, pray move on, passing, down to your left, the
two pretty farms of Bank-ground, one of which is in the course of
conversion into an ornamental cottage residence, by a lady whose
ancestors have possessed it for centuries. Then passing the large new
house built upon the site of the old cottage which used to rejoice
in a name suggestive of the low-priced jollifications of ancient
times, namely the Halfpenny Ale-house, or, more correctly, t'Ho'penny
Yall'us, you descend by Howhead, and soon run to cover under the
umbrageous groves of Tent Lodge, decidedly the most interesting of
all the seats around Conistone Lake, having, for many years, been the
residence of a family, widely celebrated on account of the wonderful
talents and acquirements of one of its female members—the learned,
elegant, estimable, and accomplished Elizabeth Smith. I might myself
from my own knowledge of that lady’s history and character, picked up
in this locality, which she, for years, honoured and adorned with her
residence, and which was the scene of her early death, give a sketch of
her story. But this has been done already by much abler hands, amongst
others by Mr De Quincey in _Tait’s Magazine_, and of his excellent
paper on Miss Smith, I propose to offer such an epitome as, with due
regard for time and space, will enable you to form some notion of her
extraordinary character and attainments.
[Sidenote: DE QUINCEY LOQUITUR.]
The narcotic-loving philosopher commences thus:—“On a little verdant
knoll, near the north-eastern margin of the lake, stands a small
villa, called Tent Lodge, built by Colonel Smith, and for many years
occupied by his family. That daughter of Colonel Smith who drew the
public attention so powerfully upon herself by the splendour of her
attainments, had died some months before I came into the country. But
yet, as I was subsequently acquainted with her family through the
Lloyds (who were within on easy drive of Tent Lodge), and as, moreover,
with regard to Miss Elizabeth Smith herself, I came to know more than
the world knew—drawing my knowledge from many of her friends, but
especially from Mrs Hannah More, who had been intimately connected with
her, for these reasons, I shall rehearse the leading points of her
story; and the rather because her family, who were equally interested
in that story, long continued to form part of the lake society. On
my first becoming acquainted with Miss Smith’s pretensions, it is
true that I regarded them with but little concern, for nothing ever
interests me less than great philological attainments, or, at least,
that mode of philological learning which consists in mastery over
languages. But one reason for this indifference is, that the apparent
splendour is too often a false one. They who know a vast number of
languages, rarely know any one with accuracy; and the more they gain
in one way, the more they lose in another. With Miss Smith, however,
I gradually came to know that this was not the case, or, at any rate,
but partially the case; for of some languages which she possessed,
and those the least accessible, it appeared finally that she had even
[Sidenote: A FEMALE’S LORE.] a critical knowledge. It created also a
secondary interest in these difficult accomplishments of hers to find
that they were so very extensive. Secondly, that they were nearly all
of self-acquisition. Thirdly, that they were borne so meekly, and
with unaffected absence of all ostentation. As to the first point, it
appears that she made herself mistress of the French, the Italian, the
Spanish, the Latin, the German, the Greek, and the Hebrew languages.
She had no inconsiderable knowledge of the Syriac, the Arabic, and the
Persic. She was a good geometrician and algebraist. She was a very
expert musician. She drew from nature, and had an accurate knowledge
of perspective. Finally, she manifested an early talent for poetry;
but, from pure modesty, destroyed most of what she had written, as
her acquaintance with the Hebrew models had elevated the standard
of true poetry in her mind, so as to disgust her with what she now
viewed as the tameness and inefficiency of her own performances. As to
the second point—that for these attainments she was indebted almost
exclusively to her own energy, this is placed beyond all doubt, by
the fact, that the only governess she ever had (a young lady not much
beyond her own age) did not herself possess, and therefore could
not have communicated any knowledge of languages, beyond a little
French and Italian. Finally, as to the modesty with which she wore
her distinctions, _that_ is sufficiently established by every page of
her printed works, and her letters. Greater diffidence as respected
herself, or less willingness to obtrude her knowledge upon strangers,
or even upon those correspondents who would have wished her to make
a little more display, cannot be imagined. And yet I repeat that her
knowledge was as sound and as profound as it was extensive. For, taking
only one instance of this, her translation of Job has been pronounced
by Biblical critics of the first rank, a work of real and intrinsic
value, without any reference to the disadvantages of the translation,
or without needing any allowance whatever. In particular, Dr Magee,
the celebrated writer on the Atonement, and subsequently a dignitary
of the Irish Church—certainly one of the best qualified judges at that
time—describes it as 'conveying more of the character and meaning of
the Hebrew, with fewer departures from the idiom of the English, than
any other translation whatever that we possess.'”
[Sidenote: MISS SMITH’S STORY.]
Mr De Quincey next proceeds to “briefly sketch her story”—mentioning
her birth at Burnhall, in the county of Durham, in 1776—the engagement
of her governess—the acquisition of, and removal of the family to “the
splendid inheritance of Piercefield, a show place on the banks of the
Wye”—their numerous visitors there, and the influence of two of them
(Mrs Bowdler and her daughter) in exciting in Miss Smith her ardent and
enduring love of learning and piety—the ruin that, in her 16th year,
fell upon “the house of Piercefield. The whole estate, a splendid one,
was swept away by the failure of one banking house;” the greatest loss
to Miss Smith being the library, which followed the general wreck—“not
a volume, not a pamphlet was reserved; for the family were proud in
their integrity, and would receive no favours from the creditors.”
Then the residence of the family in many different parts of the
kingdom under their sadly altered circumstances, and the comfort they
derived from their daughter, who, “young as she was, became the moral
support of the whole family, and the fountain from which they all
drew consolation and fortitude;”—their settlement in Patterdale, and
then finally at Conistone, in the cottage close behind Tent Lodge—for
the villa was built, after Miss Smith’s death, on the spot where the
_tent_ stood in which, during her long illness, she was wont to enjoy
[Sidenote: PRAISE WORTH HAVING.] the breezes from the lake, and the
glorious scenery around it—the manner in which her fatal illness was
contracted—its progress—her death in 1806, at the lamentably early
age of 29—and several anecdotes illustrating the extraordinary and
various perfections of Miss Smith’s character, are all detailed by Mr
De Quincey at great length, with great elegance of diction and great
force of expression, as this last extract will serve to exemplify:—“She
was buried in Hawkshead Church-yard, where a small tablet of white
marble is raised to her memory, on which there is the scantiest record
that, for a person so eminently accomplished, I ever met with. After
mentioning her birth and age (twenty-nine), it closes thus:—‘She
possessed great talents, exalted virtues, and humble piety.’ Anything
so unsatisfactory or so common-place, I have rarely known. As much or
more is often said of the most insipid people; whereas Miss Smith was
really a most extraordinary person. I have conversed with Mrs Hannah
More often about her; and I never failed to draw forth some fresh
anecdote illustrating the vast extent of her knowledge, the simplicity
of her character, the gentleness of her manners, and her unaffected
humility. She passed, it is true, almost inaudibly through life; and
the stir which was made after her death, soon subsided. But the reason
was, that she wrote but little! Had it been possible for the world to
measure her by her powers, rather than by her performances, she would
have been placed, perhaps, in the estimate of posterity, at the head
of learned women; whilst her sweet and feminine character would have
rescued her from all shadow and suspicion of that reproach which too
often settles upon the learned character, when supported by female
aspirants.”
[Sidenote: HEREDITARY LACK OF TASTE.]
This you will admit to be no ordinary measure of praise; and when
you reflect that it is meted out by one of the greatest and most
philosophic scholars of this or any other age—one whose acquaintance
with literature (and _literateurs_), ancient and modern, is inferior to
that of no other writer whatever, you will pardon me for lingering so
long at Tent Lodge, and for taking such extensive liberties with the
English Opium Eater’s charming papers on the “Society of the Lakes,”
and, at the risk of greatly overstepping my usual limits, I must make
_one_ further quotation:—“The family of Tent Lodge continued to reside
at Conistone for many years; and they were connected with the Lake
literary clan chiefly through the Lloyds, and those who visited the
Lloyds; for it is another and striking proof of the slight hold which
Wordsworth, &c., had upon the public esteem in those days, that even
Miss Smith, with all her excessive diffidence in judging of books and
authors, never seems, in any one of her letters, to have felt the
slightest interest about Wordsworth or Coleridge.” It is possible that
Miss Smith’s indifference about Wordsworth was, like the rash humour of
Cassius, something that her mother gave her, for it may be admitted to
be a defect in the otherwise powerful understanding of that venerable
lady—whose memory is cherished in Conistone with undiminishing
respect and affection—that, to the close of her long life, she always
appeared to regard our greatest of living bards with something more
like contempt than anything else. Indeed I have seen a copy of verses
written by her, parodizing one of his poems, perhaps the most beautiful
and pathetic he has produced. If my memory does not betray me, the
parody commenced somewhat in this way:—
“He dwelt by the untrodden ways,
Near Rydal’s grassy mead,
A Bard whom there were none to praise,
And very few to read.”
The imitation, you observe, is sufficiently close to the original.
[Sidenote: AN ILLUSTRIOUS NAME.]
I believe the only surviving member of Mrs Smith's once numerous
family, is one of her sons, now Sir Chas. Smith, who has pitched his
tent far from Tent Lodge. After Mrs Smith’s death, the villa was
purchased by Mr Jas. G. Marshall, and, it is understood, is about to
become the residence of a gentleman whose family name is not unknown in
modern literature, nor yet in old romance.
NOTE.—I ought, in this tenth division of my discourse, to have
remembered my promise relative to the floating island. I make the
best reparation I can by telling you now, that the last time I saw
the said island, it was stranded amongst the reeds between the Copper
Quay at Nibthwaite and the outlet of the lake, and when I looked for
it again, it had left that berth, and gone I knew not whither; but
on enquiring after it at the Commodore of the Copper fleet, I was
informed that the erratic object of my solicitude is now occupying a
berth in juxta-position to Mr Harrison’s quay, below Waterpark, where
it may be inspected. Ben’s memory is failing, or he would have told
me the number of trees upon it, having counted them one day whilst
on duty in its vicinity. However, it may suffice to inform you that
it is a piece of earth about twenty yards square, well covered with
herbage and young birches of decent growth. Altogether, were it not
for its unfortunate preference of short to long voyages, it would be a
highly important addition to the attractions of Conistone Water, and
decidedly the best specimen of its genus in the kingdom.