[Illustration:
ALL THE WORLD GOING TO SEE THE GREAT EXHIBITION OF 1851.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1851
[Illustration:
LONDON: GEORGE NEWBOLD, 303 & 304, STRAND, W.C.
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS,
DESIGNED AND ETCHED BY GEORGE CRUIKSHANK.
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ALL THE WORLD GOING TO THE GREAT EXHIBITION Frontispiece
LOOKING FOR LODGINGS 54
LONDON CRAMMED AND MANCHESTER DESERTED—2 59
PLATES
THE OPERA BOXES DURING THE TIME OF THE GREAT 117
EXHIBITION
THE OPENING OF THE GREAT BEE-HIVE 136
THE FIRST SHILLING-DAY 153
SOME OF THE DROLLERIES OF THE GREAT 160
EXHIBITION
ODDS AND ENDS, IN, OUT, AND ABOUT THE GREAT 162
EXHIBITION
DISPERSION OF THE WORKS OF ALL NATIONS 238
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India Proof impressions of the above _Ten Plates_ may be had, all
printed on paper of uniform size (23½ by 17½ inches), quite perfect, and
free from folds, price 15s. per set.
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ENGRAVINGS.
────
THE CHEAPEST HOUSE
FOR
=ENGRAVINGS OF EVERY DESCRIPTION=
IS
GEORGE NEWBOLD’S,
303 & 304, STRAND, LONDON, W.C.
(BACK OF ST. MARY’S CHURCH.)
────
_A Clearance Sale Catalogue, 54 8vo pp., Post Free on receipt of Four
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
1851:
OR,
THE ADVENTURES
OF
MR. AND MRS. CURSTY SANDBOYS.
═════
CHAPTER I.
“Come, Nichol, and gi’e us thy cracks,
I seed te gang down to the smiddy,
I’ve fodder’d the naigs and the nowt,
And wanted to see thee—’at did e.
Ay, Andrew, lad! draw in a stuil,
And gie us a shek o’ thy daddle;
I got aw the news far and nar,
Sae set off as fast’s e could waddle.”
_Nichol the Newsmonger._—ROBERT ANDERSON.
THE GREAT EXHIBITION was about to attract sight-seers of all the
world—the sight-seers, who make up nine-tenths of the human family. The
African had mounted his ostrich. The CRISP of the Desert had announced
an excursion caravan from Zoolu to Fez. The Yakutskian SHILLIBEER had
already started the first reindeer omnibus to Novogorod. Penny cargoes
were steaming down Old Nile, in Egyptian “DAYLIGHTS;” and “MOONLIGHTS,”
while floating from the Punjaub, and congregating down the Indus,
Scindian “BRIDESMAIDS” and “BACHELORS” came racing up the Red Sea, with
Burmese “WATERMEN, Nos. 9 and 12,” calling at the piers of Muscat and
Aden, to pick up passengers for the Isthmus—at two-pence a-head.
The Esquimaux had just purchased his new “registered paletot” of
seal-skin from the great “sweater” of the Arctic Regions. The Hottentot
Venus had already added to the graceful ebullitions of nature, the
charms of a Parisian _crinoline_. The Yemassee was busy blueing his
cheeks with the _rouge_ of the backwoods. The Truefit of New Zealand had
dressed the full buzz wig, and cut and curled the horn of the chief of
the Papuas. The Botocudo had ordered a new pair of wooden ear-rings. The
Maripoosan had japanned his teeth with the best Brunswick Black Odonto.
The Cingalese was hard at work with a Kalydor of Cocoa-Nut-Oil,
polishing himself up like a boot; and the King of Dahomey—an ebony
Adam—in nankeen gaiters and epaulets, was wending his way towards London
to tender his congratulations to the Prince Consort.
Nor was the commotion confined alone to the extremes of the world—the
metropolis of Great Britain was also in a prodigious excitement. ALEXIS
SOYER was preparing to open a restaurant of all nations, where the
universe might dine, from sixpence to a hundred guineas, off _cartes_
ranging from pickled whelks to nightingale’s tongues—from the rats _à la
Tartare_ of the Chinese, to the “turkey and truffles” of the Parisian
gourmand—from the “long sixes, _au naturel_,” of the Russian, to the
“stewed Missionary of the Marquesas,” or the “cold roast Bishop” of New
Zealand. Here, too, was to be a Park with Swiss cottages, wherein the
sober Turk might quaff his Dublin stout; and Chinese Pagodas, from whose
golden galleries the poor German student, dreaming of the undiscoverable
_noumena_ of Kant, might smoke his penny Pickwick, sip his Arabian
chicory, and in a fit of absence, think of his father-land and pocket
the sugar.
St. Paul’s and Westminster Abbey (“in consequence of the increased
demand”) were about to double their prices of admission, when M.
JULLIEN, “ever ready to deserve the patronage of a discerning public,”
made the two great English cathedrals so tempting an offer that they
“did not think themselves justified in refusing it.” And there, on
alternate nights, were shortly to be exhibited, to admiring millions,
the crystal curtain, the stained glass windows illuminated with gas, and
the statues lighted up with rose-coloured lamps; the “Black Band of his
Majesty of Tsjaddi, with a hundred additional bones;” the monster Jew’s
harp; the Euhurdy-gurdychon; the Musicians of Tongoose; the Singers of
the Maldives; the Glee Minstrels of Paraguay; the Troubadours of far
Vancouver; the Snow Ball Family from the Gold Coast; the Canary of the
Samoiedes; the Theban Brothers; and, “expressly engaged for the
occasion,” the celebrated Band of Robbers from the Desert.
BARNUM, too, had “thrown up” Jenny Lind, and entered into an agreement
with the Poor Law Commissioners to pay the Poor Rates of all England
during one year for the sole possession of Somerset House, as a “Grand
Hotel for all Nations,” under the highly explanatory title of the
“XENODOKEION PANCOSMOPOLITANICON;” where each guest was to be provided
with a bed, boudoir, and banquet, together with one hour’s use _per
diem_ of a valet, and a private chaplain (according to the religious
opinions of the individual); the privilege of free admission to all the
theatres and green-rooms; the right of _entrée_ to the Privy Council and
the Palace; a knife and fork, and spittoon at pleasure, at the tables of
the nobility; a seat with nightcap and pillow in the House of Commons,
and a cigar on the Bench with the Judges; the free use of the columns of
“_The Times_” newspaper, and the right of abusing therein their friends
and hosts of the day before; the privilege of paying visits in the Lord
Mayor’s state-carriage (with the freedom of the City of London), and of
using the Goldsmiths’ state barge for aquatic excursions; and finally,
the full right of presentation at the Drawing-room to her most gracious
Majesty, and of investiture with the Order of the Garter at discretion,
as well as the prerogative of sitting down, once a week, in rotation, at
the dinner table of His Excellency General Tom-Thumb. These advantages
Mr. Barnum, to use his own language, had “determined upon offering to a
generous and enlightened American public at one shilling per head per
day—numbers alone enabling him to complete his engagements.”
While these gigantic preparations for the gratification of foreign
visitors were being made, the whole of the British Provinces likewise
were preparing extensively to enjoy themselves. Every city was arranging
some “monster train” to shoot the whole of its inhabitants, at a
halfpenny per ton, into the lodging-houses of London. All the houses of
York were on tiptoe, in the hope of shaking hands in Hyde Park with all
the houses of Lancaster. Beds, Bucks, Notts, Wilts, Hants, Hunts, and
Herts were respectively cramming their carpet-bags in anticipation of “a
week in London.” Not a village, a hamlet, a borough, a township, or a
wick, but had each its shilling club, for providing their inhabitants
with a three days’ journey to London, a mattrass under the dry arches of
the Adelphi, and tickets for soup _ad libitum_. John o’Groats was
anxiously looking forward to the time when he was to clutch the Land’s
End to his bosom,—the Isle of Man was panting to take the Isle of Dogs
by the hand, and welcome Thanet, Sheppy, and Skye to the gaieties of a
London life,—the North Foreland was preparing for a friendly stroll up
Regent-street with Holy-Head on his arm—and the man at Eddystone
Lighthouse could see the distant glimmer of a hope of shortly setting
eyes upon the long-looked-for Buoy at the Nore.
Bradshaw’s Railway Guide had swelled into an encyclopædia, and Masters
and Bachelors of Arts “who had taken distinguished degrees,” were daily
advertising, to perfect persons in the understanding of the Time Tables,
in six easy lessons, for one guinea. Omnibus conductors were undergoing
a Polyglott course on the Hamiltonian system, to enable them to abuse
all foreigners in their native tongues; the “ATLASES” were being made
extra strong, so that they might be able to bear the whole world on top
of them; and the proprietors of the Camberwell and Camden Town ’Busses
were eagerly watching for the time when English, French, Prussians, and
Belgians should join their Wellingtons and Bluchers on the heights of
“WATERLOO!”
* * * * *
Such was the state of the world, the continent, the provinces, and the
metropolis. Nor was the pulse that beat so throbbingly at Bermondsey,
Bow, Bayswater, Brixton, Brompton, Brentford, and Blackheath, without a
response on the banks of Crummock Water and the tranquil meadows of
Buttermere.
He who has passed all his life amid the chaffering of Cheapside, or the
ceaseless toil of Bethnal Green, or the luxurious ease of Belgravia,—who
has seen no mountain higher than Saffron Hill,—has stood beside no
waters purer than the Thames—whose eye has rested upon no spot more
green than the enclosure of Leicester Square,—who knows no people more
primitive than the quaker corn-factors of Mark Lane, and nothing more
truthful than the “impartial inquiries” of the _Morning Chronicle_, or
more kind-hearted than the writings of the _Economist_,—who has drunk of
no philosophy deeper than that of the _Penny Cyclopædia_,—who has felt
no quietude other than that of the City on a Sunday,—sighed for no home
but that which he can reach for “threepence all the way,” and wished for
no last resting-place but a dry vault and a stucco cenotaph in the
theatrical Golgothas of Kensal and of Highgate;—such a man can form no
image of the peace, the simplicity, the truth, and the beauty which
aggregate into the perpetual Sabbath that hallows the seclusion about
and around the Lake of Buttermere.
Here the knock of the dun never startles the hermit or the student—for
(thrice blessed spot!) there are no knockers. Here are no bills, to make
one dread the coming of the spring, or the summer, or the Christmas, or
whatever other “festive” season they may fall due upon, for (oh earthly
paradise!) there are no tradesmen, and—better still—no discounters,
and—greater boon than all—no! not one attorney within nine statute miles
of mountain, fell, and morass, to ruffle the serenity of the village
inn. Here that sure-revolving tax-gatherer—as inevitable and cruel as
the Fate in a Grecian tragedy—never comes, with long book and short
inkhorn, to convince us it is Lady-day—nor “Paving,” nor “Lighting,” nor
“Water,” “Sewers,” nor “Poors,” nor “Parochials,” nor “Church,” nor
“County,” nor “Queen’s,” nor any other accursed accompaniment of our
boasted civilization. Here are no dinner-parties for the publication of
plate; no _soirées_ for the exhibition of great acquaintances; no
_conversaziones_ for the display of your wisdom, with the full right of
boring your friends with your pet theories; nor polkas, nor
schottisches, nor Cellarii, for inflaming young heirs into matrimony.
Here there are no newspapers at breakfast to stir up your early bile
with a grievance, or to render the merchant’s morning meal indigestible
with the list of bankrupts, or startle the fundholder with a sense that
all security for property is at an end. Here there are no easy-chair
philosophers,—not particularly illustrious themselves for a delight in
hard labour,—to teach us to “sweep all who will not work into the
dust-bin.” Here, too, there are no Harmonic Coalholes, or Cyder Cellars,
nor Choreographic Casinos, or Cremornes, or other such night colleges
for youth, where ethics are taught from professional chairs occupied by
“rapid” publicans, or by superannuated melodists, with songs as old as
themselves, and as dirty as their linen.
No! According to a statistical investigation recently instituted, to the
great alarm of the inhabitants, there were, at the beginning of the
ever-to-be-remembered year 1851, in the little village situate between
the Lakes of Crummock and Buttermere, fifteen inhabited houses, one
uninhabited, and one church about the size of a cottage; and within
three miles of these, in any direction, there was no other habitation
whatsoever. This little cluster of houses constituted the village called
Buttermere, and consisted of four farm-houses, seven cottages, two
Squires’ residences, and two inns.
The census of the nine families who resided in the fifteen houses of
Buttermere—for many of these same families were the sons and nephews of
the elders—was both curious and interesting. There were the Flemings,
the Nelsons, the Cowmans, the Clarks, the Riggs, the Lancasters, the
Branthwaites, the Lightfoots—and The Jopson, the warm-hearted Bachelor
Squire of the place. The remaining Squire—also, be it said, a
Bachelor—had left, when but a stripling, the cool shades of the peaceful
vales for the wars of India. His name was but as a shadow on the memory
of the inhabitants; once he had returned with—so the story ran—“an
Arabian Horse;” but “his wanderings not being over,” as his old
housekeeper worded it, with a grave shake of her deep-frilled cap, he
had gone back “t’ hot country with Sir Henry Hardinge to fight t’
Sikhs,” promising to return again and end his days beside his native
Lake of Buttermere.
Of the families above cited, two were related by marriage. The Clarks
had wedded with the Riggs, and the Cowmans with the Lightfoots, so that,
in reality, the nine were but seven; and, strange to say, only one of
these—the Clarks—-were native to the place. It was curious to trace the
causes that had brought the other settlers to so sequestered a spot. The
greatest distance, however, that any of the immigrants had come from was
thirty miles, and some had travelled but three; and yet, after
five-and-twenty years’ residence, were spoken of by the aboriginal
natives as “foreigners.”
Only one family—Buttermere born—had been known to emigrate, and they
had been led off, like the farmers who had immigrated, by the lure
of more fertile or more profitable tenancies. Three, however, had
become extinct; but two in name only, having been absorbed by
marriage of their heiresses, while the other one—the most celebrated
of all—was utterly lost, except in tradition, to the place. This was
the family of Mary Robinson, the innkeeper’s daughter, and the
renowned Beauty of Buttermere, known as the lovely, simple-hearted
peasant girl, trapped by the dashing forger into marriage, widowed
by the hangman, amidst a nation’s tears, and yet—must we write
it—not dying broken-hearted,—but—alas, for the romance and constancy
of the sex!—remarried ere long to a comfortable farmer, and ending
her days the stout well-to-do mother of seven bouncing boys and
girls.
Mr. Thornton, the eminent populationist, has convinced every thinking
mind, that, in order that the increase of the people may be duly
regulated, every husband and wife throughout the country should have
only one child _and a quarter_. In Buttermere, alas! (we almost weep as
we announce the much-to-be-regretted fact) there are seventeen parents
and twenty-nine children, which is at the frightful rate of one child
and _three-quarters and a fraction_, to each husband and wife!
Within the last ten years, too, Buttermere has seen, unappalled, three
marriages and nine births. The marriages were all with maids of the inn,
where the memory of Mary Robinson still sheds a traditionary grace over
each new chambermaid, and village swains, bewitched by the association,
come annually to provide themselves with “Beauties.”
The deaths of Buttermere tell each their peculiar story. Of the seven
who have passed away since the year 1840, one was an old man who had
seen the snow for eighty winters lie upon Red Pike; another was little
Mary Clarke, who for eight years only had frolicked in the sunshine of
the happy valley. Two were brothers, working at the slate-quarries high
up on Honister Craig: one had fallen from a ladder down the precipice
side—the other, a tall and stalwart man, had, in the presence of his two
boys, been carried up bodily into the air by a whirlwind, and dashed to
death on the craigs below. Of the rest, one died of typhus fever, and
another, stricken by the same disease, was brought, at his special
request, from a distance of twenty-one miles, to end his days in his
mountain home. The last, a young girl of twenty, perished by her own
hand—the romance of village life! Mary Lightfoot, wooed by her young
master, the farmer’s son, of Gatesgarth, sat till morning awaiting his
return from Keswick, whither he had gone to court another. Through the
long, lone night, the misgivings of her heart had grown by daylight into
certainty. The false youth came back with other kisses on his lip, and
angry words for her. Life lost its charms for Mary, and she could see no
peace but in the grave.[1]
Footnote 1:
The custom of night courtship is peculiar to the county of Cumberland
and some of the districts of South Wales. The following note,
explanatory of the circumstance, is taken from the last edition of
“The Cumberland Ballads of Robert Anderson,” a work to be found, well
thumbed, in the pocket of every Cumbrian peasant-girl and mountain
shepherd:—“A Cumbrian peasant pays his addresses to his sweetheart
during the silence and solemnity of midnight. Anticipating her
kindness, he will travel ten or twelve miles, over hills, bogs, moors,
and morasses, undiscouraged by the length of the road, the darkness of
the night, or the intemperance of the weather; on reaching her
habitation, he gives a gentle tap at the window of her chamber, at
which signal she immediately rises, dresses herself, and proceeds with
all possible silence to the door, which she gently opens, lest a
creaking hinge, or a barking dog should awaken the family. On his
entrance into the kitchen, the luxuries of a Cumbrian cottage—cream
and sugared curds—are placed before him; next the courtship commences,
previously to which, the fire is darkened and extinguished, lest its
light should guide to the window some idle or licentious eye; in this
dark and uncomfortable situation (at least uncomfortable to all but
lovers), they remain till the advance of day, depositing in each
other’s bosoms the secrets of love, and making vows of unalterable
affection.”
Nor are the other social facts of Buttermere less interesting.
According to a return obtained by two gentlemen, who represented
themselves as members of the London Statistical Society, and who, after
a week’s enthusiasm and hearty feeding at the Fish Inn, suddenly
disappeared, leaving behind them the Occupation Abstract of the
inhabitants and a geological hammer,—according to these gentlemen, we
repeat, the seventy-two Buttermerians may be distributed as follows: two
innkeepers, four farmers (including one statesman and one sinecure
constable), nine labourers (one of them a miner, one a quarrier, and one
the parish-clerk), twelve farm-servants, seventeen sons, nine daughters,
fourteen wives, three widows, one ’squire, and one pauper of eighty-six
years of age.
“But,” says the Pudding-lane reader, “if this be the entire community,
how do the people live? where are the shops? where that glorious
interchange of commodities, without which society cannot exist! Where do
they get their bread—their meat—their tea—their sugar—their
clothing—their shoes? If ill, what becomes of them? Their children,
where are they taught? Their money, where is it deposited? Their
letters?—for surely they cannot be cut off from all civilization by the
utter absence of post-office and postman! Are they beyond the realms of
justice, that no attorney is numbered amongst their population? They
have a constable—where, then, the magistrate? They have a
parish-clerk—then where the clergyman?”
Alas! reader, the picturesque is seldom associated with the conveniences
or luxuries of life. Wash the peasant-girl’s face and bandoline her
hair, she proves but a bad vignette for that most unpicturesque of
books—the Book of Beauty. Whitewash the ruins and make them comfortable;
what artist would waste his pencils upon them? So is it with Buttermere:
there the traveller will find no butcher, no baker, no grocer, no
draper, no bookseller, no pawnbroker, no street-musicians, no
confectioners, and no criminals. Burst your pantaloons—oh, mountain
tourist!—and it is five miles to the nearest tailor. Wear the sole of
your shoe to the bone on the sharp craigs of Robinson or of the
Goat-gills, and you must walk to Lowes Water for a shoemaker. Be mad
with the toothache, caught from continued exposure to the mountain
breeze, and, go which way you will—to Keswick or to Cockermouth—it is
ten miles to the nearest chemist. Be seized with the pangs of death, and
you must send twenty miles, there and back, for Dr. Johnson to ease your
last moments. To apprise your friends by letter of your danger, a
messenger must go six miles before the letter can be posted. If you
desire to do your duty to those you may leave behind, you must send
three leagues to Messrs. Brag and Steal to make your will, and they must
travel the same distance before either can perform the office for you.
You wish to avail yourself of the last consolations of the Church; the
clergyman, who oscillates in his duties between Withorp and Buttermere
(an interval of twelve miles), has, perhaps, just been sent for to visit
the opposite parish, and is now going, at a hard gallop, in the contrary
direction, to another parishioner. Die! and you must be taken five miles
in a cart to be buried; for though Buttermere boasts a church, it stands
upon a rock, from which no sexton has yet been found hardy enough to
quarry out a grave!
But these are the mere dull, dry matters of fact of Buttermere—the prose
of its poetry. The ciphers tell us nothing of the men or their
mountains. We might as well be walking in the Valley of Dry Bones, with
Maculloch, Porter, Macgregor, or the Editor of the _Economist_, for our
guides. Such teachers strip all life of its emotions, and dress the
earth in one quaker’s suit of drab. All they know of beauty is, that it
does not belong to the utilities of life—feeling with them is merely the
source of prejudice—and everything that refines or dignifies humanity,
is by such men regarded as sentimentalism or rodomontade.
And yet, the man who could visit Buttermere without a sense of the
sublimity and the beauty which encompass him on every side, must be
indeed dead to the higher enjoyments of life. Here, the mountains heave
like the billows of the land, telling of the storm that swept across the
earth before man was on it. Here, deep in their huge bowl of hills, lie
the grey-green waters of Crummock and of Buttermere, tinted with the
hues of the sloping fells around them, as if the mountain dyes had
trickled into their streams. Look which way you will, the view is
blocked up by giant cliffs. Far at the end stands a mighty mound of
rocks, umber with the shadows of the masses of cloud that seem to rest
upon its jagged tops, while the haze of the distance hangs about it like
a bloom. On the one side and in front of this rise the peaks of High
Craig, High Stile, and Red Pike, far up into the air, breaking the
clouds as they pass, and the white mists circling and wreathing round
their warted tops, save where the blue sky peeps brightly between them
and the sun behind streams between the peaks, gilding every craig. The
rays go slanting down towards the lake, leaving the steep mountain sides
bathed in a rich dark shadow—while the waters below, here dance in the
light, sparkling and shimmering, like scales of a fish, and there, swept
by the sudden gust, the spray of their tiny waves is borne along the
surface in a powdery shower. Here the steep sloping sides are
yellow-green with the stinted verdure, spotted red, like rust, with the
withered fern, or tufted over with the dark green furze. High up, the
bare, ash-grey rocks thrust themselves through the sides, like the bones
of the meagre Earth. The brown slopes of the more barren craigs are
scored and gashed across with black furrows, showing the course of dried
up torrents; while in another place, the mountain stream comes leaping
down from craig to craig, whitening the hill-side as with wreaths of
snow, and telling of the “tarn” which lies silent and dark above it,
deep buried in the bosom of the mountain. Beside this, climbs a Wood,
feathering the mountain sides, and yet so lost in the immensity that
every tree seems but a blade of fern. Then, as you turn round to gaze
upon the hills behind you, and bend your head far back to catch the
Moss’s highest craigs, you see blocks and blocks of stone tumbled one
over the other, in a disorder that fills and confounds the mind, with
trees jutting from their fissures, and twisting their bare roots under
the huge stones, like cords to lash them to their places; while the
mountain sheep, red with ruddle, stands perched on some overhanging
craig, nipping the scanty herbage. And here, as you look over the tops
of Hassness Wood, you see the blue smoke of the unseen cottage curling
lightly up into the air, and blending itself with the bloom of the
distant mountains. Then, as you journey on, you hear the mountain
streams, now trickling softly down the sides, now hoarsely rushing down
a rocky bed, and now, in gentle and harmonious hum, vying with the
breeze as it comes sighing down the valley.
Central between the Waters, and nestling in its mountains, lies the
little village of Buttermere, like a babe in its mother’s lap. Scarce
half-a-dozen houses, huddled together like sheep for mutual shelter from
the storm, make up the humble mountain home. On each side, in straggling
order, perched up in the hill-side nooks, the other dwellings group
themselves about it. In the centre stands the unpretending village inn.
Behind it stretched the rich, smooth, and velvety meadows, spotted with
red cattle, and looking doubly green and soft and level, from the
rugged, brown, and barren mountains, that rise abrupt upon them. To
stand in these fields, separating as they do the twin waters, is, as it
were, to plant the foot upon the solid lake, and seem to float upon some
verdant raft. High on the rock, fronting the humble inn, stands sideways
the little church, smaller than the smallest cottage, with its two bells
in tiny belfry crowning its gable end, and backed by the distant
mountain that shows through the opening pass made by the hill on whose
foot it rests. Round and about it circles the road, in its descent
towards the homesteads that are grey with the stone, and their roofs
green with the slate of their native hills, harmonious in every tint and
shade with all around them. Beside the bridge spanning the angry nook
which hurries brawling round the blocks of stone that intercept its
course, stands the other and still more humble inn, half clad in ivy,
and hiding the black arch through which the mountain “beck,” white with
foam, comes dashing round the turn.
In the village road, for street there is none, not a creature is to be
seen, save where a few brown or mottled “short-horns” straggle up from
the meadows,—now stopping to stare vacantly about them, now capering
purposeless with uplifted tails, or butting frolicsome at each other;
then marching to the brook, and standing knee-deep in the scurrying
waters, with their brown heads bent down to drink, and the rapid current
curling white around their legs, while others go leaping through the
stream, splashing the waters in transparent sheets about them. Not a
fowl is to be seen scratching at the soil, nor duck waddling pompously
toward the stream. Not even a stray dog crosses the roadway, unless it
be on the Sunday, and then every peasant or farmer who ascends the road
has his sharp-nosed, shaggy sheep-dog following at his heels, and vying
with his master in the enjoyment of their mutual holiday. Here, too,
ofttimes may be seen some aged dame, with large white cap, and bright
red kerchief pinned across her bosom, stooping to dip her pail into the
brook; while over the bridge, just showing above the coping-stone,
appears the grey-coated farmer, with drab hat, and mounted on his shaggy
brown pony, on his way to the neighbouring market. Here, too, the
visitor may sometimes see the farmers’ wives grouped outside one of the
homestead gates—watching their little lasses set forth on their
five-mile pilgrimage to school, their baskets filled with their week’s
provisions hanging on their arms, and the hoods of their blue-grey
cloaks dancing as they skip playfully along, thoughtless of the six
days’ absence, or mountain road before them. At other times, some
good-wife or ruddy servant girl, sallies briskly from the neighbouring
farm, and dodges across the road the truant pig that has dashed boldly
from the midden. Anon, climbing the mountain side, saunters some
low-built empty cart, with white horse, and grey-coated carter, now, as
it winds up the road, hidden by the church, now disappearing in the
circling of the path behind the slope, then seen high above the little
belfry, and hanging, as it were, by the hill side, as the carter pauses
to talk with the pedlar, who, half buried in his pack, descends the
mountain on his way to the village. Then, again ascending, goes the
cart, higher and higher, till it reach the highest platform, to vanish
behind the mountain altogether from the sight.
Such, reader, is a faint pen-and-ink sketch of a few of the charms and
rural graces of Buttermere. That many come to see, and but few to
appreciate them, the visitors’ book of the principal inn may be cited as
unquestionable evidence. Such a book in such a scene one would expect to
find filled with sentiments approximating to refinement, at least, if
not to poetry; but the mountains here seem more strongly to affect the
appetite of Southerners than their imaginations, as witness the
under-written, which are cited in all their bare and gross literality.
“MESSRS. BOLTON, CAMPBELL, AND CO., of Prince’s Park, Liverpool,
visited this inn, and were pleased with the lamb-chops, but
found the boats dear. June 28, 1850.”
“THOMAS BUCKRAM, sen., Ludley Park;
GEORGE POINS, sen., Ludley Bridge;
Came to Buttermere on the 26th, 12 mo, 1850; that day had a
glorious walk over the mountains from Keswick; part of the way
by Lake Derwent by boat. Stayed at Buttermere all night.
Splendid eating!!!
“26, 12 mo, 1850.”
“REV. JOSHUA RUSSELL AND SON,
Blackheath.
The whisky is particularly fine at this house, and we made an
excellent dinner.”
“Oct. 7th, 50.
PHILIPPS KELHAM, Manchester;
JOHN F. PHILIPPS;
MISS MARGARETTA PHILIPPS.
The Fish a most comfortable inn. A capital dinner. Good whisky.
THE ONLY GOOD GLASS WE HAVE MET WITH IN THE WHOLE LAKE
DISTRICT.”
“MR. EDWARD KING, Dalston, London, and 7, Fenchurch-street,
London: walked from Whitehaven to Ennerdale Lake, calling at the
Boat House on the margin of the Lake, where, having invigorated
the inward man, I took the mountain path between Floutern Tarn
and Grosdale, passed Scale Force, and arrived in the high
mountain which overlooks Crummoch and Buttermere: here, indeed,
each mountain scene is magnificently rude. I entered the
beautiful vale of Buttermere; was fortunate enough to find the
Fish Inn, where all were extremely civil; and from the landlady
I received politeness and very excellent accommodation. Had a
glorious feed for 1_s._ 3_d._!! Chop, with sharp sauce, 6_d._;
potatoes. 1_d._; cheese. 1_d._; bread, 1_d._; beer, 5_d._;
waitress (a charming, modest, and obliging young creature, who
put me in mind of the story of the Maid of Buttermere, and
learnt me the names of all the mountains), 1_d._; total, 1_s._
3_d._ Thursday, April 18, 1850.”[2]
Footnote 2:
The reader is requested to remember that these are not given as
matters of invention, but as literal extracts, with real names and
dates, copied from the books kept by Mrs. Clark, the excellent hostess
of the Fish Inn, Buttermere.
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