Rydal Mount

“ The fresh and lovely Rydal Mount seems merely the retirement of a gentleman, rather than the haunt of a poet. He showed his benignity of disposition in several little things, especially in his attentions to a young boy we had with us. This boy had left the circus, exhibiting its feats of horsemanship, in Ambleside, "for that day only," at his own desire to see Wordsworth; and I feared he would be dissatisfied, as I know I should have been at his age, if, when called to see a poet, I had found no Apollo flaming with youthful glory, laurel-crowned, and lyre in hand ”

“ The poet had an aversion to the larch-tree, an exotic then being planted extensively in the dales, and did not care much for steam and the work of the engineer. The trees in stiff lines and squares make hideous the mountain slopes to-day; but see them growing in romantic irregularity, as by Thirlmere, and you will believe that Wordsworth might have conceded a beauty to the larch. And there are things more hideous than steam—for instance, the petrol motor. Rydal Mount is not a museum: its grounds are kept private. ”

“ One is not surprised therefore to find him constantly referring to Wordsworth's writings, and yet to feel him so eminent as a man that years after, though communing in spirit with {127} him day by day, he could not summon courage to go up the path to Rydal Mount, and abashed at his own boldness for venturing to call, came away from the door of the Rydal poet, without seeing his hero, like a thing ashamed. ”

“ Between Grasmere or its neighborhood, and the better-known home of Rydal Mount, the poet passed the remainder of his life. There were, indeed, frequent interludes of travel—to Scotland, to Leicestershire, to Southern England, to Ireland, and the Continent—from all which places he came back with an unabated love for the lakes and mountains which bounded his home. Never did there live a more exalted lover of {341} Nature ”

“ Skimmed over with ice, except where busy rills keep open a few yards’ space, its levels steely hard, with a few skaters gliding among its islets, with brown coppice and white fields rising around, with the towering front of Nab Scar frowning at the softer slacks of Loughrigg, Rydal was a sight to remember. But its glory was all forgotten as I noticed the frost flowers in the roadside—are Nature’s largest or her smallest forms the loveliest? Is the spreading landscape as full of beauty as the flowers formed by frost rime round a casual sod in the wayside? ”

“ The path which cuts along the breast of Nab Scar turns to the left just above the poet’s home, between it and Hart Head, name reminiscent of days when its holder was forester on Rydal fells to Le Flemings of old. Looking ahead, we see a rough road climbing up to as wild a piece of fell land as we have. It is another haunt of the shepherd, a land bleak and wild—the ravines of Rydal Head and the great crags of Fairfield, fit home for wild red deer. Fit home too for the half-wild, little Herdwick, that atom of sturdiness fit to live in a land of storm. ”

“ The village of Rydal is situated on the north side of the Lake, and Rydal Hall, the magnificent seat of the Le Flemings, seems embosomed in a beautiful park that occupies the declining front of the mountain. Near to the principal gate of entrance, the cottage residence of the poet Wordsworth peeps forth from the woods, as if endeavouring to recall to memory a name that can never be forgotten. The distance, and the whole background of the landscape, is composed of that mountain-chain in which Langdale Pikes and Silver How are the most elevated and conspicuous. ”

“ What is there in Nature more glorious than a group of well-grown trees?
DUNGEON GHYLL FORCE, LANGDALE
35
Wordsworth’s connection with the hamlet of Rydal is well known. In his pretty cottage on the hill he lived a life apart from the dalesfolk, watching the seasons come and go over the beautiful glen. Through the little knot of houses, we shortly approach the mere. Right up to Silver Howe the basin is brimmed with light; mountain and wood and lake are at “the pride of day.” Evening, sweet and slow, is dropping nearer, its first sign the grey-blue mist hovering beyond the bordering hills. ”

“ Now, the best thing these small ponds can do is to keep perfectly calm and smooth, and not attempt to show off any airs of their own, but content themselves with serving as a mirror for whatever of beautiful or picturesque there may be in the scenery around them. The hills about Rydal Water are not very lofty, but are sufficiently so as objects of every-day view,— objects to live with; and they are craggier than those we have hitherto seen, and bare of wood, which indeed would hardly grow on some of their precipitous sides. ”

“ So the bellows began to sigh and pant once more, and kept the red light flaring athwart the darkness. The people down in the valley looked up at it, glowing like a star that had slipped out of the sky and lodged somehow on the mountain, and wondered what Stephen Ryder could be about so late at night. ”

“ The glacial slope on which the cavern opened faced toward the mountain. It rose black and forbidding in the dawn as it had by sunset. To right and left of it, the grand cliffs, ocher and red, were lit splendidly by the morning sun, but the mountain of the Ryzgas drank in the light and gave nothing back.
Below their feet the slope fell away into an opaque sea of fog, filling a mile-wide gorge. There was a sound of turbulent water, of a river dashed from rock to rock in its struggle toward the plain, but the curling fog hid everything.
"You have an alternative," said the Watcher crisply. ”

“ There are few magnificent ones to be found near any of the lakes; and unless greater care be taken, there will, in a short time, scarcely be left an ancient oak that would repay the cost of felling. The neighbourhood of Rydal, notwithstanding the havoc which has been made, is yet nobly distinguished. In the woods of Lowther, also, is found an almost matchless store of ancient trees, and the majesty and wildness of the native forest. ”

“ It is a cottage set back a little from the road, looking over Rydal Lake, with Nab Scar and Helm Crag overshadowing it, with the sweet greenery of that lovely country swelling away from it on all sides, with the 155summer flowers giving forth their sweetest perfume around it, with climbers and creepers trailing over it—a delightful spot in which to live, a sad place in which to die.
There are nooks on the earth that seem too beautiful to leave ”

“ Its decay and resulting ruin were due to ages of neglect.
Beginning at Ryde, four miles north of Newport, we followed the coast, passing a succession of resort towns. Ryde is situated on a hillside sloping toward the sea, and its water front with drives and gardens, is one of the most charming we know of. The road from Ryde to Ventnor is crooked, narrow, and highly dangerous in places. At times it runs through closely bordering forests; again along the edge of an almost precipitous incline; then it climbs a long, terribly steep hill, but is never more than a few hundred yards from the coast. ”

“ No less delightful, though in a different way, is the winding walk by the river. The Ain here rushes past with a torrent like thunder, and rolls and tosses over a stony bed, having on either side green slopes and shady ways. Those travellers, like myself, contented with a bit of modest mountaineering, will delight in the three hours' climb of Mount Rivol, a broad pyramidal mountain, eight hundred yards in height, dominating the town. A very beautiful walk is this for fairly good walkers, and though the sun is intense, the air is sharp and penetrating. ”

“ My Gawd, if a woman could ever tempt me, she could! And Rydal is going to have her. Unless I miss my guess, there's going to be money in it for us—a lot of it. The funny part of it is, Rydal's got to get rid of her husband. And how's he going to do it, Uppy? Eh? Answer me that. How's he going to do it?"
In a hole he had dug for himself in the drifted snow under a huge scarp of ice a hundred yards from the igloo cabin lay Wapi. His bed was red with the stain of blood, and a trail of blood led from the cabin to the place where he had hidden himself. ”

“ Thence he drifted back to Ambleside, where he tried school-keeping, but in vain. He had no disciplinary power, and one by one his pupils were removed, till the school collapsed. From there he went to the Grasmere Cottage, already spoken of, facing the lovely little lake of Rydal, a blue island-dotted gem framed in with lofty green mountains. Everybody loved the lonely, affectionate man—a keen observer of Nature, an inspired writer of poetry—and everybody grieved when the end came one winter's day of 1849, and his remains were buried in Grasmere Churchyard. ”

“ He was a young man of the type described usually as "zealous" and "earnest," and a light that was almost the light of fanaticism shone in his eyes. A dying parishioner was no more of a novelty to Mr. Heath, than one of Mrs. Wilder's dinner-parties was to her guests, and yet the woman on the bed appealed to his pity as few others had done in his experience.
When the doctor came he nodded to the clergyman and just touched the hand on the quilt. He was in evening dress, and he explained that he had been detained owing to his hostess having been taken suddenly ill.
"Where is Rydal himself?" ”

“ Then the trail launches its culminating surprise. Suddenly the heavy curtains of the hills are parted, and the wayfarer stands upon the very proscenium of the Big Country displayed in its entirety.
A world of crystal light stretching out and out to unmeasured distances; light that is flawless and sparkling as a quartz spear; light which seems to carry a taste like water from a mountain spring. As Noah looked upon a clean, washed world so the rider on the high bib of the Pass's exit sees a universe untarnished, virginal in its fleckless beauty. ”

“ But we wanted more than dust—we wanted the pure metal which none doubted we should find on the virgin breast of the mountain, and our fancy saw us winding back to the sea with our native tribe deep-laden with the wealth of buccaneers winding out through defiles of mountain and forest, heavy with the plunder of the dread Malang-o-mor.
"Odd, Doctor; gold and dreams and sweat and death how they all mixed together to strike the average which maintains the trim of the world——" Leyden's voice had sunk to muttering again, and he shivered, despite the humid warmth of the night. ”

“ Rogers and I had a pleasant journey to Rydal the day we left all our kind friends at Lowther. We alighted at Lyulph's Tower, and saw the waterfall in great power after the night's rain, the sun shining full into the chasm, and making a splendid rainbow of the spray. Afterwards, walking through Mr. Askew's grounds, we saw the lake to the greatest possible advantage. Mr. ”

“ We entered the left bay, and landed at Mael, which lies at the mouth of the river Rykaness. The distance from Haukaness is a little more than two miles. I had to mount a horse to reach the waterfall, which was yet eleven miles distant. The road runs through a narrow valley, which gradually narrows still more until it can only contain the river; and the traveller is obliged to ascend the heights and grope on along the sides of the mountains. Below in the vale he sees the foam of the waves surging against the rocks; they flow like a narrow band of silver in the deep chasm. ”

“ Urd's fountain, over which Ygdrasil stands for ever green (Völuspa) , and in whose silver-white waters swans swim; and the sacred thingstead of the Asas, to which they daily ride down over Bifrost. North of the mountain roars the weapon-hurling Slid, and doubtless is the same river as that in whose "heavy streams" the souls of nithings must wade. In the North solú fjarri stands, also at Nastrands, that hall, the walls of which are braided of serpents (Völuspa) . Thus Hel is described as an Elysium, Nifelhel with its subject regions as a realm of unhappiness. ”

“ The way to Death Valley from Beatty is across a shallower valley and through Daylight Pass at an elevation of 4,317 feet. First the road winds down around small, rough hills, at whose base the deserted town of Ryolite is situated. Ryolite is what remains of a mining boom. It is pushed into a cove of a rose-colored mountain—but desert mountains change their hues so often that it may not always be rose. Ryolite is a typical American ruin. ”

“ It was really an important find. Although much plundered, the walls were intact, and the delicate carvings in the white limestone walls were exceptional examples. And there were some very interesting things to decipher. A scholar and an explorer could well be enthusiastic.
But Ryder continued to look far from enthusiastic. Even when his groping fingers, searching a cranny, came in contact with a hard substance his face did not change to any lightning radiance. Unexpectantly he picked up the sand-encrusted lump and brushed it off. A gleam of gold shone in his hand. ”

“ Mount Riddell, the nearest point of the range, bore 21 1/2 degrees South of East, being distant 42 miles. The opposite bearing or 20 degrees North of West might therefore be considered to express the common direction of these waters. In a country so liable to inundation as the district between these rivers appeared to be, it was a primary object with us to travel along the highest or driest part, and we could only look for this advantage in the above direction, or parallel to and midway between the rivers. ”

“ Our guide had previously informed me that before reaching the cascade of the Rhone the ice was to be forsaken, and the Grimsel, our destination, reached by skirting the base of the peak called Nägelis Grätli. After descending the ice for some time I struck the bounding rocks, and, climbing the mountain obliquely, found myself among the crags which lie between the Grimsel pass and the Rhone glacier. It was an exceedingly desolate [171] place, and I soon had reason to doubt the wisdom of being there alone. Still difficulty rouses powers of which we should otherwise remain unconscious. ”