Beevers, especially that of Miss Susie, the younger of the two. To her,
though so near a neighbour that a short boat-row to the water-head of
Coniston Lake would take him across, he wrote no fewer than 2,000
letters. The best of these, or at any rate those most suitable for the
public, form the book called 'Hortus Inclusus,' arranged by the
professor's 'Master of Industries at Loughrigg,' Mr. Albert Fleming, and
prefaced by Ruskin himself. The very title-page of the little collection
shows the love he bore his friends: 'Messages from the Wood to the
Garden, sent in happy days to the Sister Ladies of the Thwaite,
Coniston, by their thankful friend, John Ruskin, LL.D., D.C.L.' The
introductory words of this 'thankful friend' tell us much about the
ladies: 'Sources they have been of good, like one of the mountain
springs of the English shepherd land, ever to be found at need. They did
not travel; they did not go up to London in its season; they did not
receive idle visitors to jar or waste their leisure in the waning year.
The poor and the sick could find them always; or, rather, they watched
for and prevented all poverty and pain that care or tenderness could
relieve or heal. Loadstones they were, as steadily bringing the light of
gentle and wise souls about them as the crest of the mountain gives
pause to the moving clouds; in themselves they were types of perfect
womanhood in its constant happiness, queens alike of their own hearts
and of a Paradise in which they knew the names and sympathized with the
spirits of every living creature that God had made to play therein, or
to blossom in its sunshine or shade.' A beautiful description is this of
the cultured English gentlewoman, fortunately for our peasantry by no
means rare. But it is on their literary and intellectual sides, rather
than their philanthropic, that we have to speak of them here. It might
be sufficient guarantee of Miss Susie's high level, at any rate, that
Ruskin wrote to her letters as carefully composed in full mastery of
language, and on as great a variety of topics, as if he had been
consciously inditing another volume of his 'Modern Painters' for
publication. 'The Lost Church in the Campagna' is written to one whom he
knows will understand and appreciate his historical and artistic
allusions. She loved flowers, and studied them enthusiastically. She and
her sister are named in more than one botanical work as authorities on
our mountain plants, and discoverers of rare species and their
localities. Therefore he continually sets down little bits of
blossom-news for his friend--though it be no more than such as this from
Perugia--'the chief flowers here are only broom and bindweed, and I
begin to weary for my heather and for my Susie; but oh, dear! the ways
are long and the days few'; or those scraps from Ingleton, where he
playfully gives all his pretty flowers names of girls, changing the
harsh botanical names into sweet-sounding ones, and consulting his
correspondent as to how far he may venture to separate and rechristen
certain pinks and pearlworts and saxifrages from their ordained family
groups. From Brantwood he discourses to her on his blue and purple
agates and groups of crystals, dwelling on the perfection of some
stone--'its exquisite colour and superb weight, flawless clearness, and
delicate cutting, which makes the light flash from it like a wave of the
lake.' The last letter written by him was to his 'Dearest Susie.' And
her letters to him are treasures of poetic appreciation of Nature and of
book-lore rare in women. 'Did you think of your own quotation from
Homer,' she asks, 'when you told me that field of yours was full of
violets? But where are the four fountains of white water? How delicious
Calypso's fire of finely-chopped cedar!' 'When I was a girl (I was once)
I used to delight in Pope's Homer.... When a schoolgirl going with my
bag of books into Manchester, I used to like Don Quixote and Sir Charles
Grandison with my milk porridge.' 'Coniston would go into your heart if
you could see it now--so very lovely; the oak-trees so early, nearly in
leaf already (May 1). Your beloved blue hyacinths will soon be out, and
the cuckoo has come.... The breezes will bring fern seeds and plant
them, or rather sow them in such fashion as no human being can do. When
time and the showers brought by the west wind have mellowed it a little,
the tiny beginnings of mosses will be there. The sooner this can be done
the better.' She writes to him, too, about wrens and blackbirds, and her
pet squirrel, and other of her pensioners. There is one extract,
somewhat pathetic, yet sweetly patient, that must not be omitted: 'You
are so candid about your age that I shall tell you mine! I am
astonished to find myself sixty-eight--very near the Psalmist's
three-score-and-ten. Much illness and much sorrow, and then I woke to
find myself old, and as if I had lost a great part of my life. Let us
hope it was not all lost.' It was she who made the charming series of
extracts from 'Modern Painters,' published as 'Frondes Agrestes,'
respecting which he writes that they are 'chosen at her pleasure, by the
author's friend, the younger lady of the Thwaite, Coniston,' and adds
his absolute submission to her judgment, and his appreciation of the
grace she did him in writing out every word with her own hands. Over and
above her natural history pursuits and her association with John Ruskin,
she wrote, I am told, many short poems and leaflets on kindness to
animals. She died in 1893, and her grave adjoins her friend's.
The Beevers were a Manchester family whose father, on his retirement
from business, settled, in 1831, at the Thwaite House. After his death
one of his sons, John, and three of his daughters, Mary, Margaret, and
Susanna, lived on there, unmarried, and contented, it is said of them,
with 'the harvest of a quiet eye.' Miss Margaret died before Ruskin knew
the circle. John Beever, like his sisters, was a naturalist. He was
especially fond of fly-fishing, and on the art of it he wrote a book, of
which a new edition has recently been issued, with a biographical sketch
by W. G. Collingwood, and notes and an extra chapter on char-fishing by
A. and A. R. Severn. Fishing has not directly added much of value to
English literature. The notable exception is, of course, Isaac Walton's
ever-living little book. Great statesmen and tired public men of all
kinds have found rest and change in handling rod and line, and many
pleasant little brochures exist of smaller men's experiences and
enjoyment of the gentle craft. To this order belongs Mr. Beever's book.
It is necessarily too technical for the general reader. There is nothing
in it so good as Walton's well-known remark about the nightingale--a
bird never heard, alas! in these northern regions, and therefore much
missed by a southerner like myself--but which 'airy creature breathes
such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it
might make mankind to think miracles had not ceased. He that at
midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have
often done, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and
falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted
above earth, and say, Lord, what music hast Thou provided for the saints
in heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music on earth!' Nor will
you find anything so racy as the 'Compleat Angler's' picture of an
otter-hunt, or as the other of the young milkmaid singing 'that smooth
song which was made by Kit Marlow, now at least fifty years ago.' He
has, however, some excellent passages of a literary savour, as, for
example, of the two gentlemen fishing the streams of the pastoral
Yarrow, and convincing the local piscator that 'grouse' was the proper
fly to catch with, and of Frank, the Matlock chaise-driver, who became
to him the revealer of Nature's demand for obedience to her laws--in
other words, he taught him the imitation and use of the actual living
flies on which the trout fed each consecutive day. The list of possible
flies to copy is a formidable one, but the way to make the copies is
fully explained--say, with a feather from the top of a woodcock's wing,
fur from a squirrel's cheek, and orange-silk, or perhaps a feather from
a sea-swallow or a seagull, pale-blue rabbit's fur, and
primrose-coloured silk, or some wool from beneath an old sheep. Then
there follows the method of making rods, the suitable wood, the
dimensions, and the art of securing temporary repairs. There are
appendices on the antiquity of fly-fishing, and on a day's angling in
France. To those of us for whom the mysteries of spring-backs,
spring-duns, March-browns, green-tails, ruddy-flies, and black-headed
reds, and iron-blues, have slight allurements, the more interesting
portions of his life are those spent in making himself acquainted with
the growth and habits of fish, and in constructing a pond behind his
house that he could stock with finny people from the tarns and becks--a
water colony wherein once each year he could handle and examine each
member to see how it progressed. The pond was also a reservoir for a
water-wheel that drove the machinery in his private workshop, where he
turned wooden articles for carving, and made elaborate inlaid mosaics.
There also he printed his sister's little books, and texts for the walls
of Sunday-schools. Children he was fond of, and for their sakes he made
himself--or was his talent innate--a wonderful story-teller, of 'quaint
imagination and humour.' He had seven years of illness, which laid him
aside from his active pursuits, and died no fewer than thirty-four years
before his youngest sister 'Susie.' He does not lie at Coniston, but in
the churchyard at Hawkshead, hard by the old sun-dial on the north side.
In the same graveyard lies another Lake celebrity, of whom something may
be said shortly.
If fishermen deign to read these articles, let me inform them they can
get Mr. Beever's 'Practical Fly-fishing' through any local bookseller,
from Methuen, of London; and that another book for their perusal is Mr.
John Watson's 'Lake District Fisheries.' I cannot praise or dispraise
either, but competent and knowing men tell me both are the practical
experiences of practical fishermen, and are therefore of real value.
Some readers may think that Miss Mary Beever has been slighted in favour
of her brother and her younger sister. 'She was,' says Ruskin, 'chiefly
interested in the course of immediate English business, policy, and
progressive science; while Susie lived an aerial and enchanted life,
possessing all the highest joys of imagination.' They were the Martha
and the Mary of the Coniston Bethany, its 'House of Dates,'--its place
of rest and refreshment, not for the incarnate Son of God, the Saviour
of mankind, but for a wearied reformer of human life and lover of all
good things that God has made in the perfection of beauty. They each
contributed their share to his comfort and renovation, and if he was
more attached to the one who could enter into his life-thoughts the most
thoroughly, there is nothing to wonder at in its being so.
FROM JONAH'S PRAYER
'I will call on Jehovah from my prison,
And He will hear me;
From the womb of the grave I cry.
Thou hearest my voice.
Thou hast cast me into wide waters in the depths of the sea;
And the floods surround me;
All Thy dashing and Thy rolling waves
Pass over me.'
FROM HABAKKUK'S 'SONG IN PARTS'
'Though the fig-tree did not blossom,
And there be no fruit on the vine;
Though the produce of the olive fail,
Though the parched field yield no food,
Though the flock be cut off from the fold,
And there be no cattle in the stalls;
Yet will I rejoice in Jehovah,
I will exult in God my Saviour.
Jehovah my Lord is my strength.
He will set my feet as the deer's,
He will make me walk in high places.'
ELIZABETH SMITH: _Hebrew Translations_.
XVIII
A LEARNED YOUNG LADY
ELIZABETH SMITH
'What the vast multitudes of women are doing in the world's
activities, and what share their mothers and grandmothers, to the
remotest generations backward, have had in originating culture, is a
question which concerns the whole race.'--PROFESSOR MASON'S _Woman's
Share in Primitive Culture_.
Not a very distinctive name, you will say! Who was she? 'The blooming
Elizabeth Smith, whom to know was to revere,' writes the author of an
ancient book called 'Coelebs in Search of a Wife.' But this does not
carry us a long way further. Well, then, she was a young lady, born so
long ago as 1776, near the city of Durham, who lived for several years
at Coniston with her parents and died there when but twenty-nine years
of age. What made her remarkable was not so much her beauty or her
goodness--and she possessed both these physical and spiritual
qualities,--but also, and for our present purpose especially, her poetic
talent and her great linguistic powers and attainments. 'With scarcely
any assistance,' writes one who was intimate with her, 'she was well
acquainted with French, Italian, Spanish, German, Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew languages. She had no inconsiderable knowledge of Arabic and
Persian. She made also considerable philological collections of Welsh,
Chinese, African, and Icelandic words. She was well acquainted with
geometry, algebra, and other branches of the mathematics. She was a very
fine musician. She drew landscapes from nature extremely well, and was
mistress of perspective.' She was more retiring, and even timid, than
she was learned. Let it be remembered that she was born in the days
previous to any thought of the 'emancipation' of woman, or her
'equality' with man, and when the only sphere it was considered proper
for her to fill was that of wife and mother. She might--nay must--bake
and sew, and undertake all the domestic duties of the household, with
one or two 'accomplishments' allowed her, qualifying her to be agreeable
to her husband or father in his leisure moments, and to his guests. It
will be satisfactory to those, if any are left, who still hold the old
theories about the highest feminine virtues, that this talented young
lady, who could calculate the distances and periods of planets, write
verses in rhyme, or in imitation of Ossian, and translate the Book of
Job from the Hebrew, could also make a currant tart, or 'a gown, or a
cap, or any other article of dress, with as much skill' as she displayed
in the region of languages and mathematics.
Her father was a banker whose business was in the West of England. He
was a wealthy man, and removed, while his daughter was young, from
Durham to one of the loveliest estates in Monmouthshire--Piercefield--on
the cliffs of the river Wye, close to Chepstow's ruined castle, and
within sight of the British Channel.
'There, twice a day, the Severn fills,
The salt sea-water passes by,
And hushes half the babbling Wye,
And makes a silence in the hills.'
Through the length of the park a pathway traverses the winding summits
of the gray limestone rocks, which--clothed with wood, or rising in
naked spires from the water far into the sky--afforded resting-places
for occasional nightingales, and for all the commoner singing birds of
the land, as well as for ravens and innumerable daws. Here she could
find romantic spots at every turn that called forth all her poetical
aspirations and faculties, and filled her imagination with dreams of the
heroes of old Wales, and the stormy warfare of the Marches in the middle
ages. She had quietude enough, too, in the library of the mansion to
pursue her unusual studies successfully, and without interruption from
casual visitors. 'Miss Smith's power of memory,' says the 'National
Dictionary of Biography,' 'and of divination, must have been alike
remarkable, for she rarely consulted a dictionary.'
At the beginning of William Pitt's great European wars, as well as some
quarter of a century later, after its close, the commercial world was
widely and deeply shaken--as it always is under circumstances that
enrich the few at the cost of the many--Smith's Bank was involved in
many losses, and failed to meet its own liabilities. The ruin of the
firm involved the sale of Piercefield, and the family's departure
therefrom, Mr. Smith purchasing a commission in the army. They went
first to London, and then followed the regiment to Ireland, where
everything was in ferment about the expected French invasion, and
insurrection of the Irish. It was at this period that another and more
famous literary lady was passing through her experiences, which are
recorded in some of the episodes in 'Castle Rackrent' and other famous
novels that delighted our parents. The Smiths were at first entertained
by Lord Kingston, but had shortly to take up their abode in barracks.
Elizabeth's calm cheerfulness and practical support to her mother were
edifying, and brought forth the reserve forces of her unassuming
character very satisfactorily. Her mother's description of their journey
on horseback in those wild regions, as they were in ante-locomotive
days, is worth transcribing from one of her letters to a lady friend.
After a twenty-mile ride they arrived dripping wet. 'Our baggage was not
come, and, owing to the negligence of the quarter-master, there was not
even a bed to rest on. The whole furniture of our apartments consisted
of a piece of a cart-wheel for a fender, a bit of iron, probably from
the same vehicle, for a poker, a dirty deal table, and three
wooden-bottomed chairs. It was the first time we had joined the
regiment, and I was standing by the fire, and perhaps dwelling too much
on the comforts I had lost, when I was roused from my reverie by
Elizabeth's exclaiming, "Oh, what a blessing!" "Blessing!" I replied,
"there seems none left!" "Indeed there is, my dear mother, for see here
is a little cupboard!" I dried my eyes, and endeavoured to learn
fortitude from my daughter.'
After long wanderings, varied by residences at Bath and in North Wales,
the Smiths stayed for some months at Patterdale. While here the Captain
purchased a little farm, and hired a house at Coniston. The house,
according to the report of a visitor, was not very comfortable. 'The
situation is indeed enchanting, and during the summer months
inconveniences within doors are little felt, but it grieves me to be
convinced of what they must amount to in December.' Here Elizabeth
continued her studies and translations, especially from the German and
Hebrew, and probably at this time read Locke's philosophy, discovering
and criticising some of his inaccuracies. After a five years' most
thorough enjoyment of Coniston--walking, boating, reading--she, staying
out too long one evening beneath a favourite tree with a favourite book,
felt a sharp pain strike suddenly through her chest. She had very
considerably overtaxed her physical powers, and drawn too seriously on
her reserve of nervous energy. It was the beginning of the end. Within a
little more than twelve months she passed to her everlasting rest. Bath,
Matlock, and other places had been tried without avail. At length she
said: 'If I cannot recover here I shall not anywhere,' and refused to be
removed again. In her last letter she says: 'I have learned to look on
life and death with an equal eye, knowing where my hope is fixed.' Her
friend's reply was 'as to a Christian on the verge of eternity.' 'Her
whole life,' her mother adds, 'had been a preparation for death.' The
house called Tent Lodge--where Tennyson afterwards stayed--now stands on
the site where she lived in a tent pitched for her in her father's
grounds. The name is given to the house because of an exclamation of
hers that this would be such a magnificent situation for one. Whenever
we see it we remember the delight of the 'Angel-Spirit' (her mother's
words for her) at the prospect it commands. In the graveyard at
Hawkshead, in which Mr. Beever lies, was buried Elizabeth Smith in
August, 1806, and within the church is a small white marble tablet to
her memory, telling how 'she possessed great talents, exalted virtues,
and humble piety.' The situation of Hawkshead Church and graveyard are
thus described by a contemporary writer: 'On the north is a most awful
scene of mountains heaped upon mountains, in every variety of horrid
shape. Among them sweeps to the north a deep winding chasm, darkened by
overhanging rocks, that the eye cannot pierce, nor the imagination
fathom.... The church is situated on the front of an eminence that
commands the vale, which is floated with Esthwaite Water.'
Miss Smith's poems were written on the models then in vogue, and would
hardly meet the taste of a generation that has since her days known a
Scott, a Byron, a Wordsworth, a Shelley, a Keats, a Tennyson, and her
stanzas are often long. This extract, descriptive of a calm at
Patterdale, after a mountain hurricane, may furnish some idea of her
style:
'The storm is past; the raging wind no more,
Between the mountains rushing, sweeps the vale,
Dashing the billows of the troubled lake
High into the air; the snowy fleece lies thick;
From every bough, from every jutting rock
The crystals hang; the torrents roar has ceased--
As if that Voice that called creation forth
Had said "Be still." All nature stands aghast,
Suspended by the viewless power of cold.'
Her translations from Hebrew were her favourite Sunday pursuits, and
those of Jonah's Prayer, and Habakkuk's 'Song in Parts' are, to my mind,
more poetical and more coherent than even our fine authorized version.
In this judgment I find myself confirmed by reading that Archbishop
Magee considered her rendering of 'Job' the best he knew.
There is no space for lengthy quotations from her prose writings and her
letters, but some short sentences will have to serve as samples of her
manner and her thoughts:
'To be good and disagreeable is high treason against virtue.'
'A great genius can render clear and intelligible any subject within the
compass of human knowledge; therefore, what is called a deep book (too
deep to be understood) we may generally conclude is the produce of a
shallow understanding.'
'Happiness is a very common plant, a native of every soil, yet is some
skill required in gathering it; for many noxious weeds look like it, and
deceive the unwary to their ruin.'
'Wouldst thou know the true worth of time, employ one hour.'
'Pleasure is a rose near which there ever grows the thorn of evil. It is
wisdom's work so carefully to cull the rose, as to avoid the thorn.'
'Why do so many men return coxcombs from their travels? Because they set
out fools!'
'As the sun breaking forth in winter, so is joy in the season of
affliction. As a shower in the midst of summer, so are the salutary
drops of sorrow mingled in our cup of pleasure.'
'A happy day is worth enjoying; it exercises the soul for heaven. The
heart that never tastes of pleasure, shuts up, grows stiff, and
incapable of enjoyment. How, then, shall it enter the realms of bliss? A
cold heart can receive no pleasure even there.'
ON A SHOULDER OF THE 'OLD MAN'
'The ascent becomes dismally laborious here, so much so, that you
are fain to lie down upon the soft, dry mountain grass, to recover
breath, and while doing so, what objection can you have to a little
conversation with the Old Man himself? Listen, then!
'Old Man! Old Man! your sides are brant,
And fearfully hard to climb;
My limbs are weak, and my breath is scant,
So I'll rest me here and rhyme.'
'Yes, my sides are steep, and my dells are deep,
And my broad bald brow is high,
And you'll ne'er, should you rhyme till the limit of time,
Find worthier theme than I.
'My summit I shroud in the weltering cloud,
And I laugh at the tempest's din;
I am girdled about with stout rock without,
And I've countless wealth within.
'My silence is broke by the raven's croak,
And the bark of the mountain fox;
And mine echoes awake to the brown glead's shriek,
As he floats by my hoary rocks.'
DR. A. C. GIBSON: _Ravings and Ramblings Round
Coniston_.
[Illustration:
_Photo by Herbert Bell, Ambleside._
HAWKESHEAD, FROM ESTHWAITE WATER.
The Residence of Dr. Gibson,
and Burial-place of Miss Elizabeth Smith.
XIX
A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS STORIES
(FOLK-SPEECH)
DR. ALEXANDER CRAIG GIBSON
'If you are _ill_ at this season, there is no occasion to send for
the doctor--only _stop eating_. Indeed, upon general principles, it
seems to me to be a mistake for people, every time there is a little
thing the matter with them, to be running in such haste for the
"doctor," because, if you are going to die, a doctor can't help you,
and if you are not, there is no occasion for him.'--HONE'S _Table
Book_.
There are three paragraphs about him--appreciative ones--in Mr.
Bradley's 'Highways and Byways in the Lake District,' and the first of
the three shall furnish me with my own introductory one. 'And who may
Craig Gibson be? Ninety-nine out of a hundred readers will most
assuredly demand to be told. His portrait figures in no shop windows,
nor can his biography in concentrated form be purchased for a penny at
the local stationer's, nor is the house he occupied an item in the round
of the enterprising char-a-banc. Poor Gibson, in short, is not reckoned
among the immortals of the Lake Country, by outsiders at any rate; but,
unlike any of these except Wordsworth, he was a native of it and a
product of the soil. Gibson was, in fact, a country doctor, whose
practice carried him far and wide through hill and dale, among all
classes of people. He had a wonderful knowledge of the country folk,
among whom he laboured until he was forty, and a vast fund of sympathy
and humour, which endeared him to all. With this he combined a passion
for dialect studies, and some genius for writing poems, both of a
humorous and pathetic nature. No man who ever lived had such a mastery
of the varying dialects of Cumberland and Westmorland, or better knew
the inner character and the humour of their rugged people.'