A. G. Bradley

“ Wordsworth has struck roots so deep into this glorious country, has so identified it with his own personality, that even if he were a much lesser poet, immortal fame would be as surely his as the endurance of Skiddaw or Helvellyn. But Wordsworth has a firmer grip than that of mere atmosphere on unborn generations, though this almost alone would endear him to all those with any sense of feeling who love the Lake country, and of such it is inconceivable that future generations will not each supply their ample store. ”

“ As the lake shoots southward, however, in a straight line, without any conspicuous curves or headlands, and no heights comparable to those it leaves behind, one feels upon thus looking down it that Coniston lacks something of the fascination which never flags at any part of the other lakes. If Windermere, too, trails away from the mountains, it does so in glorious bends and headlands, curves and islands, and has an opulence of detail and colouring all its own. ”

“ A hound trail usually completes the long day which begins betimes, for every man upon these mountains is an enthusiast on the chase in its literal sense, and knows as much of hounds and foxes as many an M.F.H. elsewhere.
The steep descent into the narrow, verdant, stone-walled, thinly peopled floor of the head of Patterdale, with its sprinkling of little white-washed, scyamore-shaded homesteads, is not a theme for words but for the brush; above all for the eye itself. ”

“ It is pedantry to hector every man or woman who feels the spirit of our British Highlands so perfectly expressed as they are in this Lake country into Wordsworthian enthusiasm. But let them alone, and as the Lakeland fever begins to develop more strongly with each visitation, and as spring and summer come round, if they have the sense of song at all within them they will put their Wordsworth at any rate within reach, and the process thenceforward to some measure of intimacy and delight is merely an affair of time. ”

“ Of the roadsters, the cyclist may get a great deal out of the Lake country, and is nowadays quite innocuous to others. As for the motor, it has proved for all true lovers of this region an unmitigated curse. It is truly pitiable to see these green vales half buried at times under dense volumes of driving dust, or the same noisome clouds falling in heavy masses on the fair surface and flowery banks of Rydal or Ullswater. The roads, too, are often tortuous and narrow. ”

“ Ullswater and Wastwater can turn almost any atmosphere to account. They can grasp the glories of high June and diffuse their radiance over shore and mountain to as much purpose as any, or can turn savage in the storms and clouds of autumn with infinite grandeur. ”

“ And here the Cocker leaps rejoicing and in fuller volume to sparkle down the long, lovely vale of Lorton towards its junction with the Derwent at Wordsworth's birthplace. A mile or so to the westward Loweswater lies bewitchingly in the lap of fells, but overhung upon one bank for its entire length by the opulent foliage of Holm Wood, and lacking the more rugged features which dominate the others, seems to lie somewhat aloof from them in quality as it does in fact. ”

“ Kirkstone Pass looms always large in one's Lakeland memories. For one thing, it is the ladder over which all traffic laboriously climbs from the comparatively populous shores of Windermere into the long sequestered trough of Ullswater, while for the walker it links the eastern block of mountains to the Helvellyn and central group. It is, I think, the highest road pass in England, touching the line of 1500 feet where a lonely inn claims, by a natural inference, the uncomfortable distinction of being the highest habitation in the kingdom. ”

“ Across the lake a fine solitude of moor and fell, rising to 2600 feet, spreads far away eastward to Shap, including Martindale, Boredale, Mardale, and the High Street range, which carries the old Roman road to Carlisle (whence comes its name, Ystrad) along its summit. The wild red deer still roam over this wilderness as far as the shores of Ullswater, while as regards foxes they are almost too plentiful everywhere. Nor is there any part of England, no not Leicestershire, though in far different fashion, where they fill a bigger place in the public eye. ”

“ The atmosphere of seclusion that wraps at normal times so many of the lakes seems here frankly absent. Nothing, indeed, is lost by this sense of human propinquity; for all is exquisite. But the sign of appreciative humanity, residential or transient, is more than commonly strong. Yet Grasmere is a favourite haunt, too, of the serious pedestrian, not merely because it is beautiful, but because it is central. The lake tourist might be reasonably classified under four heads: the crag climbers, the strenuous walkers, the saunterers, and the roadsters. ”

“ And crowding round the head of Ullswater, which now spreads wide its bright island-studded waters and ends the vale, are mountains piled up everywhere. Place Fell and Birk Fell, lifting their untamed steeps of crag and scree sheer up from the water along four miles of the eastern shore, give that exceptional touch of wildness to the great lake which, together with the fine grouping of Helvellyn and her satellites upon the other side, justifies in the opinion of many its claim to pre-eminence among its sisters. ”

“ The more radiant the summer morn, the brighter the summer day, the darker by contrast with the interludes of spring verdure that no north aspect can quench are the impenetrable shadows which mask all detail, and make fearsome precipices out of rugged but accessible steeps. ”

“ And under such conditions the three miles of verdant vale from Hartsop to Ullswater, by way of the hamlet and church of Patterdale (named from St. Patrick) to Glenridding on the lake shore, is as characteristic and charming a pastoral valley as there is in all the Lake country. Cottages and homesteads, with their sheltering tufts of foliage, have still even this much-visited country almost to themselves, as they had it a century ago. The Goldrill, now a lusty stream, curves and sparkles from farm to farm. ”

“ And when the woods cease, what delightful natural lawns of crisp turf sweep in little curving bays to the mere edge, where gently shelving beaches of silvery gravel dip into the shallow waters, and show far out into the lake their clean white bottom beneath its crystal depths! ”

“ From one or other of the banks of them for nearly half a century the great nature poet—the prophet, sage, and interpreter of Lakeland—of whose fruits the world will pluck as long as these hills endure, set forth on [Pg 14] his almost daily ramble. Whether this or that generation decide that Wordsworth is among the elect of their fleeting day is an altogether trumpery question. Didactic and complaisant youth have tilted against many a classic and passed into oblivion while the subject of their convincing satire remains immovable as a granite rock. ”

“ Every soul in Lakeland as far east as Crossfell, and every frequenter of Ullswater, knows "Joe Bowman", who has just now completed thirty years of such severe service as hunting a pack of fell hounds on foot means. The mantle of John Peel (who hunted a lower country, however, and rode to his hounds) has almost fallen upon him. His stalwart form may even be seen, like that of John Peel's, outside the cover of hunting songs in the windows of Carlisle music shops. ”

“ A mile or so up the glen, the higher part a steep climb, down which a beck comes leaping in successive cataracts over black rocks feathered with fern and rowan trees, lies entrenched between mountain walls which rise some fifteen hundred feet above its three sides, the lonely lake of Hayswater. ”

“ When hounds throw off soon after daylight on a mountain side, and hunt a slow drag for an hour or two till they move their fox, and the field have to follow on foot as best they may, there is not much scope for the dashing and the decorative side of the chase. The fell farmers are all devoted followers, are on familiar terms with all the foxes, their domestic arrangements, and their families, and their probable line of action when pursued. They mostly know the hounds, and can recall their fathers and their mothers and their grandparents, and are steeped in hound lore. ”

“ The May of the poet, that is to say, which smiles upon us twice or thrice in a decade, not the May of actuality which is spent in overcoats and blighted hopes, and bad tempers and east winds. But there are Mays even yet like those of the invincible tradition, and just enough of them to save the face of the poet. ”

“ Keswick town almost adjoins, though nowhere trenching, on its lower end, and behind Keswick the great cone of Skiddaw fills the north. Though of no distinction in itself, not a country town in all England is so felicitously placed. Within five minutes' [Pg 36] walk of its extremity its fortunate burghers can pace the shores of Derwentwater, or, better still, the fir-clad promontory of Friars Crag, and look straight up the mountain-bordered lake to the yet sterner heights looming at its farther end, known as the Jaws of Borrowdale. ”

“ One feels it to be a region rather of delightful residence, which indeed it is, than of temporary sojourn for the tourist, with the mountains beckoning him into the deeper heart of Lakeland and to more primitive forms of nature. ”

“ The mountain ridges all round are grey, stern, and rugged, while their green, rock-strewn lower slopes fall for the most part sharply to the water's edge. There is nowhere even a suggestion of humanity, but a rude boat half full of water chained to a rock. ”

“ One must endeavour, if it costs a mental effort, to imagine the aloofness of this country and all such regions in the year of Trafalgar, when one finds a very poor imitation of a fine gentleman posing as the brother of a well-known peer, taking local society with a big S by storm, and the "county" within reach of Keswick tumbling over one another to do him honour. ”

“ For above them the Pillar Mountain almost touches 3000 feet, and the far-famed Pillar Rock springing from its outskirts, whose naked walls need no black shadows for their enhancement. But this is wandering from our immediate subject, and involving us in the group of big mountains that cluster round Scafell. Far down the valley the lake of Ennerdale, in size and shape resembling Crummock, glistens at the fringe of civilization. If local genii count for aught, that of this valley, though not nearly so familiar, should surely be "t'girt dog of Ennerdale". ”

“ But these fortuitous encounters with nature in her most savage mood, and in her grimmest haunts, are among the memories that for myself I would ill spare, and none the less so because they so often belong to the unexpected and the unsought. ”

“ He married a local yeoman's daughter, and the domestic side of his life, including a devoted and successful family, infinitely alleviates the tragedy of his own long and indifferently successful struggle with the fatal drug. The weak-willed but lovable and brilliant Hartley Coleridge, too, who would dash off a sonnet in ten minutes, lived at Nab Cottage, on Rydal Water, till he was laid in Grasmere Churchyard, to be followed there by Wordsworth in the succeeding year of 1850. Wordsworth himself was never really in touch with his humbler neighbours. ”

“ It lies on no main highway. And for touring use within the district the motor has no single point of sanity. One might almost as well thrash up and down Grasmere in a steam yacht. Their exclusion, with a few exceptions for local purposes or for genuine residents, would be an enormous gain, and any counter plea ridiculously inadequate. I have here pictured Rydal Water as a winsome summer lake, for this I am sure, before most of us who know it, its image rises. ”

“ The sense of snug seclusion from a noisy and ever noisier world, and that, too, in a spot familiar by name at least wherever the English language obtains, is everywhere eloquent, and holds one's fancy above the common. ”

“ There are still some few left in possession, but otherwise the man himself, though now a tenant, has by no means parted with his qualities because his father or his grandfather parted with his freehold. ”

“ He worked entirely at night, laying low through the day in woods and ditches. His bi-weekly or tri-weekly toll increased with his rage for blood, and the hue and cry raised everywhere brought him into view occasionally in the early mornings. But while men with guns were lying for him in one place, he would be enjoying himself on some unsuspected hillside ten miles away. The toll of victims mounted into the hundreds ”

“ The third include a substantial number, whose limitations are dictated either by lack of physical strength or an indifference to the strenuous life; by a preference for the tennis court, or croquet lawn, or a pair of sculls, with a further company, always numerous among Britons, who have an unconquerable aversion to missing a single one of the four conventional meals. ”