Keswick

“ And Emma and I fancied that, after searching the greater part of England, we had at length found a spot in which we should be willing to take up our abode for life. The mighty Helvellyn tempted us mountain-climbers to ascend its rough sides, but with Skiddaw before us we were satisfied to pass it, in the hope of accomplishing the ascent of that. At Keswick we staid one night, riding to Bassenthwaite in the afternoon, and sailing upon the lake in the evening. Nothing could exceed the beauty and sublimity of the latter excursion. ”

“ In a letter of Sir H. Davy, addressed to his friend Mr. Poole, 1803, he thus writes of S. T. C.
"Coleridge has left London for Keswick. During his stay in town, I saw him seldomer than usual; when I did see him, it was generally in the midst of large companies, where he is the image of power and activity. His eloquence is unimpaired; perhaps it is softer and stronger. His will is less than ever commensurate with his ability. Brilliant images of greatness float upon his mind, like images of the morning clouds on the waters. ”

“ The direct road from Grasmere to Keswick does not (as has been observed of Rydal Mere) shew to advantage Thirlmere, or Wythburn Lake, with its surrounding mountains. By a Traveller proceeding at leisure, a deviation ought to be made from the main road, when he has advanced a little beyond the sixth mile-stone short of Keswick, from which point there is a noble view of the Vale of Legberthwaite, with Blencathra (commonly called Saddle-back) in front. ”

“ I bade him show me to his office and give me some account of the estate, which he did, laying considerable stress upon the wad-mines, from which some part of the revenue was derived.
"Sir John's attorney," said I, when he had finished, "lives at Keswick. It will be well that I should see him to-morrow."
"It is but nine miles from here to Keswick," he assented, "and the road is good."
"Then send a servant early in the morning to fetch him here." Ashlock shot a quick glance at me. "We will go over these matters again," I continued, "with his help—the three of us together." ”

“ Now, sir, I am not going to attempt myself, nor shall I ask you to attempt, to draw the line between the 'affluent' and the unaffluent classes; but the least affluent excursionists have legs; and such being the case, and supposing they are inclined to use them,—if they really love the fine scenery between Ambleside and Keswick, they have time in the nine or ten hours at their disposal to get into the heart of it. ”

“ The morning was showery, but we were obliged to continue our walk, so we left Keswick with the intention of visiting the Falls of Lodore, the large Bowder Stone, and the Yew Trees in Borrowdale, and afterwards crossing over the fells to visit the graves of the poets at Grasmere. We had been recommended to ascend the Castle Rigg, quite near the town, in order to see the fine views from there, which included Bassenthwaite Lake and Derwent Water. ”

“ The Duke at this time kindly did his best, but without success, to bring about a reconciliation between his old friend, the member for Horsham, and his rebellious son.
Another important incident of the Keswick residence was Shelley's letter to William Godwin, whose work on Political Justice he had studied with unbounded admiration. He never spoke of this book without respect in after-life, affirming that the perusal of it had turned his attention from romances to questions of public utility. ”

“ In the smoking-room there was a tall dark man with a moustache, in an ulster coat, who had got the best place and was monopolising most of the talk; and, as I came in, a whisper came round to me from both sides, that this was the manager of a London theatre. The presence of such a man was a great event for Keswick, and I must own that the manager showed himself equal to his position. He had a large fat pocket-book, from which he produced poem after poem, written on the backs of letters or hotel-bills ”

“ So little were Southey and Wordsworth connected by any personal intercourse in those days, and so little disposed to be connected, that, whilst the latter had a cottage in Grasmere, Southey pitched his tent at Greta Hall, on a little eminence rising immediately from the river Greta and the town of Keswick. Grasmere is in Westmoreland; Keswick in Cumberland; and they are thirteen good miles apart. Coleridge and his family were domiciliated in Greta Hall; sharing that house, a tolerably large one, on some principle of amicable division, with Mr. Southey. ”

“ Its text generally seems to suggest ultimate dependence on F, but it is very unequal as regards accuracy, and in one part it regularly follows the early first recension readings and seems to belong for the time to the ERCLB2 group. In addition to this it has a Latin marginal note at the beginning of the Prologue, which is wanting in F. The problem is perhaps to be solved by means of the Keswick MS. This is written in several hands, varying greatly in accuracy, and exactly in that place where H3 seems to follow a first recension copy the Keswick MS. is defective, having lost several leaves. ”

“ It was a recess, approached by a long and winding valley, from the vale of Keswick, with the lake extending between its entrance and the town. The highest mountains of the district closed round its head. Its entrance was guarded by a woody hill, on which had formerly stood a Roman fortress, afterwards occupied by the Saxons, and which in later times was maintained in its military capacity by the monks of Furness. For here one of their principal magazines was established, and the holy fathers had great possessions to defend from the frequent irruptions of the Scots in those days. ”

“ That morning however I walked home, and before I reached Keswick, my eye was quite well, but "I felt unwell all over". Yesterday I continued unusually unwell all over me till eight o'clock in the evening. I took no "laudanum or opium", but at eight o'clock, unable to bear the stomach uneasiness and achings of my limbs, I took two large tea-spoons full of Ether in a wine glass of camphorated gum-water, and a third teaspoon full at ten o'clock, and I received complete relief; my body calmed; my sleep placid ”

“ The sky, too, was alive with soft lights of grey and white and blue. Where the road bends out of sight of the last houses, Paul took the hand that swung by the girl's side, and, remote and virginal, they walked together hand in hand.
"Well, Paul dear," she said, "tell me everything." And Paul tried to tell her....
"And Keswick," he said at last, "only sums it all up. You can't escape from it, Edith. People believe all sorts of different things even here. 'All one in Christ'—but they aren't. ”

“ To the north, the nearest neighbor of De Taillebois was the Threlkeld, of Threlkeld Castle, on the skirts of Keswick, at thirty miles or more of distance across the pathless mountains of Scafell, Helvellyn, Saddleback, and Skiddaw. ”

“ I left Wordsworth on the 4th of this month; if I cannot procure a suitable house at Stowey I return to Cumberland and settle at Keswick, in a house of such prospect that if, according to you and Hume, impressions constitute our being, I shall have a tendency to become a god, so sublime and beautiful will be the series of my visual existence. But, whether I continue here or migrate thither, I shall be in a beautiful country, and have house-room and heart-room for you, and you must come and write your next work at my house. My dear Godwin! ”

“ It was this that suggested the Cumberland tradition told by Wordsworth in the poem “The Horn of Egremont Castle.”
“Scarcely ever have I seen anything so fine as the Vale of St. John,” Southey exclaims; and the Valley of St. John which is named more than once in Scott’s “Bridal of Triermain” is always accepted as the same. It is in the country of Helvellyn, of Thirlmere, of the river GRETA, and Keswick is its capital. The Greta, however, is known by sectional names, even after it issues from the mere, which has the distinction of being, while one of the minor lakes, the highest in altitude. ”

“ Wordsworth has not quite decided, but is strongly inclined to adopt the scheme, because he and his sister have before lived with Calvert on the same footing, and are much attached to him; because my health is so precarious and so much injured by wet, and his health, too, is like little potatoes, no great things, and therefore Grasmere (thirteen miles from Keswick) is too great a distance for us to enjoy each other’s society without inconvenience, as much as it would be profitable for us both ”

“ I crossed the field and several others which adjoined it, and finally came out again upon the track beyond the village, where it climbs upwards to Buttermere Hause. From the farther side of the Hause I had a clear road of six miles down Newlands valley to Portinscale, and I spurred my horse to a gallop. Once or twice the clouds rifted and the moon shone out full, so that I rode in a tremor of alarm, twisting every shadow that fell across my path from rock or tree into the shadow of a sentinel. But the clouds closed up again and canopied me in a gracious obscurity as I drew near to Keswick. ”

“ Coleridge and his family had occupied one of the houses since 1800. Southey now took the other, and in 1809 became owner of the whole. Coleridge had then practically left his family, and his wife and children continued to be inmates of Southey's house. Life at Keswick brought Southey into more intimate relations with Wordsworth, who was settled at Grasmere, and thus he acquired his undeserved reputation as a poet of the ‘Lake school.’ ‘Thalaba’ had been published in 1801 (London, 2 vols. 8vo) . ”

“ Lamb every now and then "irradiates", and the beam, though single and fine as a hair, yet is rich with colours, and I both see and feel it. In Bristol I was much with Davy, almost all day. He always talks of you with great affection, and defends you with a friendly zeal. If I settle at Keswick he will be with me in the fall of the year, and so must you: and let me tell you, Godwin, that four such men as you, I, Davy, and Wordsworth, do not meet together in one house every day in the year—I mean four men so distinct with so many sympathies. I received yesterday a letter from Southey. ”

“ With which effort at pleasantry he rose with some difficulty to his feet, and with the assistance of Parton and myself walked on and into Keswick, where we stopped for the night. The stranger registered directly ahead of Parton and myself, writing the words, "Carleton Barker, Calcutta," in the book, and immediately retired to his room, nor did we see him again that night. After supper we looked for him, but as he was nowhere to be seen, we concluded that he had gone to bed to seek the recuperation of rest. ”

“ The root of the word runs through all the Aryan languages—Sansc. veça, Grk. oikos, Pol. wies, Ir. fieh, Cym.-Cel. qwic, all meaning an abode; e.g. Alnwick (the town on the R. Alne) ; Ipswich, anc. Gippenswich, on the Gipping; York, A.S. Eorvic, Lat. Eboracum, Welsh Caer-Ebreuc (the town on the water, or R. Eure) ; Hawick (the town on the haugh or low meadow) ; Noordwyk (north town) ; Nederwyk (lower town) ; Zuidwyk and Zuick (south town) , in Holland and Belgium; Harwich (army town) , so called from having been a Saxon station or military depot; Keswick (the town of Cissa) ”

“ Thomas Thwaite, a tailor, who by degrees had taken a strong part in denouncing the wrongs to which Lady Lovel had been subjected. He was a powerful, sturdy man, with good means for his position, a well-known Radical in a county in which Radicals have never been popular, and in which fifty years ago they were much rarer than they are now. At this time Keswick and its vicinities were beginning to be known as the abodes of poets, and Thomas Thwaite was acquainted with Southey and Wordsworth. ”

“ The damps of Keswick give him {316} rheumatic pains, for which he uses protective stimulants; good Dorothy Wordsworth has fears thereanent, and regards hopefully his appointment to some civil station at Malta. But his impracticabilities lose him the place after a very short incumbency; he crosses to Italy; sees Naples, Amain, and Vesuvius; sees, and knows well at Rome, our American painter, Washington Allston. There are bonds of sympathy we might have looked for between the author of Monaldi and the author of Christabel.
In England again, the fogs bring back old rheumatic pains ”

“ My dear Love,—I understand that Mr. De Quincey is going to Keswick to-morrow; though between ourselves he is as great a to-morrower to the full as your poor husband, and without his excuses of anxiety from latent disease and external pressure.
Now as Lieutenant Southey is with you, I fear that you could not find a bed for me if I came in on Monday or Tuesday. I not only am desirous to be with you and Sara for a while, but it would be of great importance to me to be within a post of Penrith for the next fortnight or three weeks. How long Mr. ”

“ The hospital of St. Giles in Norwich had lands here. The synodals were 13d. Peter-pence 12d. carvage 2d. and it paid 2l. to each tenth. Being consolidated to Keswick, it is above value, and pays first fruits and yearly tenths, viz. for Intwood 10s. and 10s. for Kesewic. The Virgin formerly had her image in this church, with a light constantly burning before it.
Anthony Drury, Esq. second son of Sir Anthony Drury of Besthorp, Knt. by Bridget, daughter of John Spelman of Narburgh, and brother to Sir William Drury, who died in 1639, lived here; he married a sister of Sir Owen Smith, Knt. ”