Robert Somervell

“ The attempt to call attention to the threatened destruction of the Lake District, before it is too late, is already meeting with the approval and support of persons in all parts of the country. But the Public has been long accustomed, either to look upon every railway as an unmistakeable boon, or at best, to content itself, when any unusual sacrilege has been done, with a half-ejaculated 'Shame!' so that the work of arousing it to its duty is an arduous one. There are numbers of persons who are with us in principle and in sympathy, who are as yet only lukewarm. ”

“ The sentiment of beauty in Nature, and the love of mountain scenery, have been much developed of late years, and are likely to increase in power and importance. Much that is hurtful and destructive has been done, both to Nature and Art, in the hurry and excitement of this age of mechanical enterprise; and the cheering revival of some consideration for the beautiful—though too often misdirected—makes it certain that such scenes of natural grandeur or loveliness as are still unspoiled, will be doubly dear to the next generation. ”

“ I protest I can find nothing, unless that engineers and contractors must live. Let them live; but in a more useful and honourable way than by keeping Old Bartholomew Fair under Helvellyn, and making a steam merry-go-round of the lake country.
There are roads to be mended, where the parish will not mend them, harbours of refuge needed, where our deck-loaded ships are in helpless danger: get your commissions and dividends where you know that work is needed; not where the best you can do is to persuade pleasure-seekers into giddier idleness. ”

“ Were the Poet now living, how would he have lamented the probable intrusion of a railway with its scarifications, its intersections, its noisy machinery, its smoke, and swarms of pleasure-hunters, most of them thinking that they do not fly fast enough through the country which they have come to see. ”

“ On the contrary, there appear to be not a few people who can contemplate the proposed changes without a shadow of regret; who can see no charm in the shore—fashioned and fitted by the mighty but gentle changes of ages to be the setting of its gem-like mere—the loss of which would not be abundantly compensated by the creation of a bigger sheet of water ”

“ And as the threatened further encroachment of a railway upon one of the loveliest districts in England menaces it with the beginning of such destruction, it is needful that all who know the value of fine natural scenery, and feel the importance of preserving it, should make some resistive effort.
It is not merely the substitution of one kind of road and one kind of tractive power for another that is to be dreaded,— but the change which such substitution always brings with it, and the precedent it furnishes for further and more disastrous innovation. ”

“ If they can't enjoy the scenery that way,—they can't any way; and all that your railroad company can do for them is only to open taverns and skittle grounds round Grasmere, which will soon, then, be nothing but a pool of drainage, with a beach of broken gingerbeer bottles; and their minds will be no more improved by contemplating the scenery of such a lake than of Blackpool. ”

“ With persons of this temper it would obviously be hopeless to argue: to show them the transcending loveliness of Nature would be about as easy as to prove, off hand, the greatness of Shakespeare to a man who can 'see nothing in him.' The expressed opinions of such people so plainly manifest their incompetence to form a right judgment of the matter that they are not likely to have much weight with thoughtful persons. ”

“ The time of life at which I have arrived may, I trust, if nothing else will, guard me from the imputation of having written from any selfish interests, or from fear of disturbance which a railway might cause to myself. If gratitude for what repose and quiet in a district hitherto, for the most part, not disfigured but beautified by human hands, have done for me through the course of a long life, and hope that others might hereafter be benefited in the same manner and in the same country, be selfishness, then, indeed, but not otherwise, I plead guilty to the charge. ”

“ We have no price-current for the beauties with which God has clothed our world, but the immense sums which people, of all degrees and classes, spend every year, to procure for themselves, in one way or other, the enjoyment which these beauties (or often the most feeble imitation of them) can afford, would be sufficient, one would think, in itself, to prove to the most unsentimental mind, that the best and rarest materials for such enjoyments are very far from worthless. ”

“ Even granting that a Keswick man will be able to go to Ambleside in a very short time, does that argument make the railway desirable? Wordsworth observed, in his letters to a daily paper in 1844, that 'the staple of this country is, in fact, its beauty and its character of seclusion and retirement.' Cannot England afford herself the luxury of one district where she can enjoy this peaceful beauty? Are her men and women become so weak that they cannot walk in England the distances which would seem so short in Switzerland? Every one knows that this is not the case. ”

“ What will the valley look like in a dry summer, when the level has been lowered by the fair weather of May and June, and acres of slimy bank are laid bare? Even those who have no eye for the loveliness that is to be destroyed, may be disgusted with the unloveliness that is to be created ”

“ The political economists often tell us that the 'laws' of their science are not commands or injunctions, but merely scientific statements of facts. It may, for example, be a law of so-called political economy that, if a mountain contain deposits of ore which, when reached by a railway, might be profitably worked, the construction of such railway would increase 'the material prosperity of individuals, and the material prosperity of the country.' And hence it might be hastily assumed that, if there be iron in the vale of Grasmere, the sooner we make a line to the place the better. ”

“ The blame must rest, not so much upon them, as upon the circumstances of their daily life, in places where God's light is darkened, and His work destroyed, by the hands of men; in homes which they fly, not to, but from, upon their holidays. One wonders, indeed, upon what extent of actual observation is founded that singular creed of the Daily News, expressed, as it is, with almost Athanasian fervour:—'We are bound to believe that every one appreciates mountain glories, that he would not be found among them if he did not like them.' Alas! ”

“ In twelve years a plantation will not have grown as many feet; everything is either dead or dying. Long lines of rotten hedges, mended with disused wire ropes from the nearest colliery, separate the fields, while here and there dead trees fling their black arms to the sky. It is not worth while to fell them, so there they stand giving evidence of the past existence of life in the district. ”

“ Lunacy, as is well known, is spreading out of all proportion to the increase of population, and in the event of the establishment of electoral districts Wakefield might hope for a second member. What might not then be expected from a town whose political history for the last forty years has been so bright, and has justified so well the hopes of those who extended the franchise? We can conceive of a millennium of universal happiness, when no man's house shall be without a buzzer, beer shall be the only available drink, and twenty persons shall sleep in the same round bed. ”

“ As regards scenery, it seems almost beyond the power of Railway Companies or hotel-keepers to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs for them. No matter how completely the characteristic qualities of a beautiful district may be destroyed, greater facilities of approach bring crowds of undiscerning travellers whose custom more than repays the loss of those who no longer care to look at a landscape which has been vulgarized past endurance. ”

“ Of course, that nine hundred people should see the Library daily, instead of one, is only fair to the nine hundred, and if there is gold in the books, is it not public property? If there is copper or slate in Helvellyn, shall not the public burn or hammer it out—and they say they will, of course—in spite of us? What does it signifiy to them how we poor old quiet readers in this mountain library feel? True, we know well enough,—what the nine hundred excursionist scholars don't—that the library can't be read quite through in a quarter of an hour ”

“ That is what some people call 'progress.' But if purity of mountain air is good to be enjoyed—if it be yet worth while to cherish the patriotism that springs from affection for a noble country—if we have any purer love than the love of gain, any joy in the works of God, any care for rest, or any thoughts of peace—call these things 'sentiment' if you will, but they are noble sentiment, that is worth preserving ”

“ Upon the supposition that there are no minerals in the district worth working, it is urged that the construction of a railroad, while it would scarcely damage the landscape, would make easy the access to places which must now be reached by a walk or a drive.
It would be idle to attempt to convince a man who can see nothing disfiguring or incongruous in the intrusion, upon a sequestered valley, of a railway with its staring accompaniments, that his opinion results from any lack of fineness in his perceptive powers. ”

“ And year by year, as the Divine ordinance is set at defiance, and the people are farther and farther separated from these holy influences, the 'materially prosperous' individuals, for whose welfare we are so solicitous, find themselves surrounded by an increasing crowd of lunatics, drunkards, and criminals. Surely it is idle to urge the development of 'material prosperity,' as in itself a sufficient argument for turning, if it were possible, this Lake Country into a mining region. ”

“ It is a wicked fiction, got up by whosoever has got it up, simply to cheat shareholders. Every lead and copper vein in Cumberland has been known for centuries; the copper of Coniston does not pay; and there is none so rich in Helvellyn. And the main central volcanic rocks, through which the track lies, produce neither slate nor hæmatite, while there is enough of them at Llanberis and Dalton to roof and iron grate all England into one vast Bedlam, if it honestly perceives itself in need of that accommodation. ”

“ But if, recognizing the beneficent and helpful power of noble scenery, we desire to widen the sphere of its influence so that, of all who shall be found among mountains, it may be truly said that they love them, let us not think to accomplish our purpose by making railways through their solitudes, and turning their hamlets into towns. ”

“ I have said I take no selfish interest in this resistance to the railroad—But I do take an unselfish one:—It is precisely because I passionately wish to improve the minds of the populace, and because I am spending my own mind, strength, and fortune, wholly on that object, that I don't want to let them see Helvellyn while they are drunk. I suppose few men now living have so earnestly felt—none certainly have so earnestly declared, that the beauty of Nature is the blessedest and most necessary of lessons for men ”

“ But for those who are unable or unwilling to take a walk of 15 to 20 miles—is it really so,—that the cost of getting among the hills is 'far beyond their reach?' The return fare by steamer between Bowness and Ambleside is one shilling, and the 'bus from Waterhead to Grasmere a shilling or sixpence. I am within the truth in saying that hundreds of these excursionists might, for less money than they spend in paddling or being paddled about Bowness Bay, travel far into the heart of our hill country. ”

“ Any peculiar charm of the meres and hills they would necessarily miss, while they would carry along with them the noise, the turmoil, the unsightly cuttings which are necessary accompaniments and conditions of speedy travel elsewhere, but are surely uncalled for by the side of Grasmere. Of course, if the invalids get their railway the country people will be able to use it, and will journey from Ambleside to Keswick much quicker than they used to do. At the same time they will lose the healthy exercise or the beautiful drive. ”