beyond to the rugged heights of Honister and the Haystacks.
Crummock itself is nobly guarded by commanding heights,
156 CRUMMOCK TROUT chap.
by Whiteless Pike and Rannerdale Knottson Ihe ea-st, and Grass-
moor, with its precipitous sides, washed red and bare a hundred
and fifty years ago by a long-remembered waterspout. On the
western side the descending ridges of High Stile and Red Pike
leap up again to the two crests of Mellbreak, and in wild weather
when the fountains of the hills are loosed, the thunder of Scale-
force with its hundred and sixty feet of sheer fall can be readily
heard upon the shore.
Though holding pike, these two lakes have always been noted
for their trout and char. The " laudator temporis acti," however,
is much in evidence just now, and that either the trout are not
there in such numbers or they do not rise so freely as of yore is
the prevalent opinion of old habitues with whom I have cursorily
talked or fished. That very poor form of amusement, night
trolling, seems more successful than the fly, and I have seen
more than one trout over a pound taken this way after dark by
sportsmen who have flogged the lake all day with fly under pro-
pitious circumstances with much less result. On Buttermere only
one boat is allowed ; on Crummock the inns have several : but
there is really nothing to choose between the lakes. Three to
the pound is the average weight, and I am afraid three fish to the
day is not far off the average catch, though there of course will
be notable exceptions. These lakes are quite famous for char,
but the char lurks and feeds in very deep water and is caught
only by deep trolling. As to the trout, it seems a pity that the
riparian rights of netting are still exercised in this country by
lords of manors and innkeepers. They cannot be of great
value, and if the practice does not cause serious depletion, it
is a shocking bad example to poachers and potential poachers,
who cannot be expected to regard the netting of trout so
seriously as in a district where the act itself is tabooed among
owners.
The natural proceeding for the visitor coming to Buttermere
as we did is to return to Keswick by Buttermere Hause and
the Vale of Newlands ; another wild mountain pass and another
VI LOWESWATER 157
beauteous valley at its foot. The native, however, when the
calls of business or pleasure take him into the outer world,
finds his natural outlet by the longer course of the Cocker
which drops down from his own lakes through the delightful
Vale of Lorton to Cockermouth, there to mingle its waters with
the broader streams of the Derwent.
But for us there is no call to scramble back to Keswick ; we
have to break out of the mountains to the sea-coast so let us
take the easier of these two routes and slip along the level
road which skirts the shores of Crummock. After rounding a
few obstructive craggy headlands and then trending inland
through meadows and growing crops, we turn sharp to the
westward at the lake foot where the fresh loosened Cocker goes
roaring through the hanging woods of Scalehill. Birch and
larch, oak and ash, sycamore and beech, mingle here in fine
confusion the fresh glories of their June dress. On the breast
of a leafy ridge we leave behind us with some compunction
the snug hotel, more attractive in itself, perhaps, than those
at Buttermere. A mile or two of undulating road and we
are skirting Loweswater, as we skirted Crummock. A warm
west wind is ruffling its sunny surface, and whitening the rich
woodlands which mantle upon its further shore and climb
the green foot of Carling Knott. A charming little lake is
this, lying so snugly in the lap of hills and woods ; famous for
big pike and holding trout too, as a couple of boats drifting
rapidly along the further shore bear witness to. At the lake
head a long and weary climb brings us to the top of the ridge,
whence we may pause for a moment and regard with lingering
admiration the vista of hill and wood and water so lately
traversed. With interest of another sort we may look down
on the low country as to the eastward it rolls away towards the
sea past Cockermouth and Workington, where tall chimneys
and hovering wreaths of smoke stand out against the distant
glitter of the Solway.
Here we must leave our highway to descend into prosaic
158 A LONELY ROAD chap.
lowlands, and ourselves turning southwards strike out along a
lonely looking byway that keeps the ridge and leads, so says
both the map and quite a spruce finger-post, to Lamplugh. It
is going of the best, though a lonely looking road as well as
a lofty one. In a moment, as it were, we are off the track
of the tourist and as much outside Lakeland, though we are
treading on its very heels, as if we were in Durham or York-
shire. The grey, untravelled, limestone road shoots forward
in long straight undulations between straggling hedges, thickly
dashed with the white blossom of the May and waving, wild,
uncared-for locks of bush and brier in the riotous sea wind.
Cold snipy-looking commons proHfic of rushes and the wild
cotton flower alternate with pastures not long reclaimed,
where the bird life, so silent on the mountains breaks out
once more in the clamour of the pewit and the lone cry of the
curlew. Rusty wires hum on black peaty banks and strips of
pine wood roaring loudly as we pass give out their tribute of
startled cushats. The green fells stretch away inland on our
left, to terminate in the familiar mountains we have just
been climbing, while on the right there is nothing but the soft
sea wind, beating on the ragged foreground, for no glimpse of
the low country is permitted to us here. More luxuriant con-
ditions, however, greet us as we run down into Lamplugh, a
place that, having been already mentioned, might therefore be
supposed to enjoy some measure of outside fame. On the
contrary, I do not suppose that any guide book does more
than note its name, if that. But in purely local annals and in
a homely racy fashion Lamplugh is a place not without repute.
I had certainly myself read its praises, not, I fear, in the
polished metres of Wordsworth, Southey or Coleridge, but in
the rollicking vernacular of one of those local bards who painted
the Cumbrian rustic as he was in everyday dress, not as he
ouglit to have been and in his Sunday best.
" Lampla' an' I^oweswater, lantj men an' lean
Hos roags an' thieves fra Branthat' an' Dean."
VI LAMPLUGII CLUB 159
This is enigmatical and not ovtr complimentary. But it is a
fragment of a poem which was written at any rate with know-
ledge and humour, ingredients for which we may be thankful
when the Cumbrian peasant is the subject of a theme. There
is a fine stone gateway opposite the church, which banishes the
libellous jingle for the moment, for on the arch, together with a
coat of arms, is inscribed the name of John Lamplugh and the
date, 1591, commemorating another relic of Tudor building
activity. Through the iron gates may be seen an ancient
manor house now evidently fallen in the social scale. I know
not when the race of Lamplugh of Lamplugh became extinct,
but its doings, matrimonial and otherwise, are thick upon the
Cumbrian chronicle for long after this old gateway was
built. While trying vaguely to recall some of their doings
which are not perhaps important enough to inflict upon the
reader, we come suddenly upon the Lamplugh inn standing
alone at a cross road a mile or so beyond. Here the
traveller of simple tastes, who like ourselves is bound for
St. Bees, would do well to refresh himself, and here, too,
a large hand-bill crackling in the wind proclaims the fact
that the morrow is the annual festivity of the Lamplugh
Club. Now Lamplugh Club day is an almost classic event
in the local calendar, being much more than a century old,
and has been celebrated in prose and verse of a highly
entertaining and realistic kind. Lideed if you happen to be
fimiliar with that notable prose idyll of Dickinson's, " Lamplugh
Club," you will find yourself regarding the modest interior of
the inn while discussing its homely fare with some interest
though with doubtless small inclination to order Lamplugh
pudding, a delicacy composed of biscuit soaked in hot ale,
with seasoning and sjjirits according to taste. Though the time-
honoured revelry, with which various cases piled high by the
door, threaten for the morrow, may be but child's play to
what it was in the time of the third George and of Oald Jobby
o'Smeathat, and Banker Billy and Johnny Braythat there is still
i6o A LIBERAL PROGRAMME chap.
no lack of innocent diversion out of doors, as is evident from
the programme.
It has been given to me while on my travels at this season of
the year to peruse the play bills of a score or two of such
Cumbrian gatherings displayed upon the walls of post office or
public house. There is nothing like them in the South for
comprehensiveness. Imagine a rural meeting that begins with
a welter handicap and ends up with a waltzing competition ! I
was once rash enough to indulge in some gentle banter
regarding so singular a combination while being ministered
to at a country inn upon the Solway. But the young person,
who on that occasion was the ministering angel, bridled greatly,
intimating that this particular event, the waltzing match, I mean,
was her special perquisite. Every taste and every form of
activity is here catered for, and with, I think, much good sense.
Horse racing on the flat and over hurdles, pony races and
trotting matches are on the card of events ; sprinting for young
men and old men, races for girls under ten and women over
fifty, with wrestling, of course, and tugs-of-war. A hound
trail is usually a feature, and as I have said, a w^altzing com-
petition with various entertainments of a similar kind that
have slipped my memory. It would be interesting to know
if any country side in the world can show so liberal a spirit
in the matter of its outdoor entertainments.
The good folks of Cumberland and A\'estmorland have been
ardent sportsmen since time began. In the days of the Merry
Monarch, the country squires were wild about racing. The
Sandford MS. tells in quaint language of a great match on the
" famous horse course " at Langwathby between the " Earle of
Morrayes wily horse ffox," and an English horse called Con-
queror. But "the Conqueror conquest him and won the
money though the night before ther was the terriblest blast
ever blowen ; churches towers, trees, steeples, houses all feling
the furie of the furies thereof. The devil a stir whether of
England or Scotland I cannot tell but the English horse got
VI CUMBRIAN SPORTSMEN OF THE OLDEN TIME i6i
the prise. The great stores of woods was so blowen done
across the way as we had much adoe to ride thorow them yet
not so bad a blast as usurping OHver had when the devil blew
him out of this world, God knowes whither."
A Cumbrian antiquary who has concerned himself with
this important phase of country life in bygone days gives a
long list of local racecourses in full use in the seventeenth cen-
tury, T.angwathby or " Langanby Moor" being always the
premier gathering. Among other things, the Sheriffs were
excused from entertaining his Majesty's Justices of the Peace
on the condition of presenting a fifteen pound plate to be run
for in the county. The programme for the coming racing
season seems, in fact, to have been officially arranged at
Quarter Sessions, where Penningtons, Musgraves, Lawsons,
Hassells, Briscoes, Huddlestones, Aglionbys and a host more,
whose names are still familiar in the land, represented the
justices, who formed, as it were, the Jockey Club of Jacobean
Cumberland. " Brave gentile gallants and justiciers, great
gamesters, never without two or three running horses, the best
in England."
Some, we learn, "galloped themselves out of their fortunes."
But Mr. Joseph Thwaites of Ewanrigg Hall, seems to have
combined business with pleasure, caution with frolicsomeness,
to quite a wonderful extent ; for he was '' one of the wittest
brave monsieurs for all gentile gallantry, hounds, hauks, horse
courses, boules, bowes and arrowes and all games whatsoever ;
play his ;^ioo at cards, dice or shovelboard, if you please, and
had not above ;;^2oo per ann., yet left his children pretty
porcions ; and dyed beloved of all parties."
Stag hunting too was much in vogue in bygone Cumberland,
and even before the Restoration there was a club known as
"The Cumberland Gallants," who conducted "a hunting
progress," or, in modern parlance, met at the chief deer
preserves in turn.
M
l62
A DISFIGURED COUNTRY
CHAP.
It is near a dozen miles from Lamplugh to St. Bees, and for
nine of them, as far that is to say as Egremont, the road
traverses a brick red country, greatly scarred by the working of
iron ore. There is no need to linger over the dreary rows of
sordid houses that chiefly compose the little towns of Arlecdon
and Frizzington, of Cleator Moor and Egremont. Every man,
we are assured upon all sides, is in full work at seven shillings
a day. The cottage interiors in this fine summer weather are
in fall evidence : so are all the population who do not actually
Si. Bees.
labour in mine or quarry or smelting works. And one may be
permitted perhaps to wonder why the standard of domestic
comfort, taste and cleanliness among these people is so much
lower than that of their neighbours in the hamlets of our
recent journeyings, who look so trim and tidy on half the income.
It is not poverty, that is very certain, or over-crowding, that has
made slatterns of them. For the breezy open country is all
around, though disfigured here and there by tall chimneys, or
huge dump heaps, or the uncouth outlines of machinery.
VI MINERS 163
The backs of the Lakeland mountains are rolling parallel
with us as we travel south, and the mouth of Ennerdale, where
the green fells part to let out the river Ehen, seems close at
hand, while upon the west we are trending nearer and nearer
to the sea. Here and there a pugnacious looking dog scowls
on the roadway, or a basket of carrier pigeons is being borne
to the station, while the public-houses have everywhere an
unmistakable air of prosperity, thick as they stand. Rabbit
coursing, too, is a leading pastime in these communities, and the
passing traveller would assuredly draw the inference that
neither church nor meeting-house was the factor here that
they are in Welsh or Cornish mining life. Irishmen, as is
natural, flcjck hither in considerable numbers, and another
im[)ortation is that of Spanish ore, which is largely taken for
smelting along this coast. There was a great exodus of miners
to the Transvaal between 1894 and 1897, their families for the
most part remaining in Cumberland. Such men as these,
unaccustomed even at home to look beyond the moment, and
who in South Africa were getting big wages paid out of Euro-
pean capital, were used, it will be remembered, very freely as
witnesses by those whose interest it was to minimise the
grievances of the Uitlander. If this strip of iron ore country,
running into coal as it nears Whitehaven, is a sad blot upon
the land from an artistic point of view, it has, at any rate, been
of iiumeasurable service to an otherwise backward region, for
many a fortune has been dug out of it, and thousands of human
beings have here made a good living for the better part of a
century.
The ruins of the famous Castle of Egremont rise grimly up
amid the somewhat murky atmosphere of an unattractive
though ancient little town. It was a Norman fortress
originally, passing by death and marriage through many
illustrious stocks. The de Lucy's owned it when the incident
occurred which gave rise to Wordsworth's j)oem " The Horn of
Egremont Castle." This notable instrument, it will be remem-
M 2
164
THE HORN OF EGREMONT
CHAP.
bered, hung over the Castle gate, and was so deeply saturated
with the honour of the de Lucy family that it refused response
to any lips but those of a rightful Lord of Egremont. When
the owner and his younger brother, however, were away on a
crusade, the latter was overborne by a desire to own the family
property, and hired some rascals to drown his brother in the
river Jordan. Believing the nefarious job completed, he hurried
homeward, and took possession of the broad estates appertain-
ing to Egremont Castle, prudently refraining, however, from
Egremont Castle.
any attempt to play upon the family horn. But soon after
this, while celebrating his succession by a great banquet, he
suddenly and to his horror heard the loud blast of a horn at
the gate. The usurper did not wait for further developments,
but fled incontinently out of one door while the rightful
owner entered at the other. Years afterwards he returned to
Egremont to crave forgiveness of his injured brother, which
obtaining, he retired into a convent to repent him of his sins.
It is now but three miles to St. Bees ; and it is singular
how abruptly one leaves the smoky belt of Cumberland
VI ST. BEES 165
behind, for in ten minutes we are running smoothl)- down a
red lane, deep sunk in a rich hollow, fair and fresh, warm and
green as South Devon. Precocious crops of potatoes and
grain are Nourishing ui)on ruddy hill sides, and a merry brook is
tinkling by the roadside, amid a perfect carpet of bluebells, or
playing hide and seek among lush thickets of alder, willow, and
briar rose. Out again in the open, and the sea-breeze hits us in
the face as the road goes dragging up through bleak pastures to
a bleak skyline. The windy ridge surmounted, St. Bees shows
plain below us, a straggling, grey-roofed town, in a narrow valley
opening to the sea. A (jueer old-fashioned place it seems, too,
as we descend upon it, cut off to all appearance by high ridges
of treeless pasture from the outer world. As a matter of fact,
however, a small railway wriggles in here from the south by
the coast line, and wriggles out again through the hills to
Whitehaven.
St. Bees is very emphatically a village, though a large and
attenuated one. It might be a thousand miles from coal and
iron ; some travellers given to metaphor might say from any-
where. Its single long street comes climbing out to meet the
approaching visitor, and carries him gently down through half
a mile of plain, old-fashioned cottage houses to the level mea-
dows in the valley, where amid an oasis of stately timber may
be seen those venerable buildings which have endowed the
place with such measure of fame as it enjoys. Perhaps it was
the contrast with the mining villages so recently traversed, but
St. Bees struck me on a first acquaintance as the most delight-
fully drowsy place for one that claimed to be almost a town
I had ever seen. I was labouring at the moment, too, under
a trifling misconception, which may have somewhat unduly
emphasised this seeming repose.
For, like everybody else of ordinary acquaintance with such
matters, I had all my life been familiar with the name of St.
Bees as a prolific nursery of north country parsons, and as the
best known perhaps of all those gateways to the Anglican
i66 A FRUITLESS QUEST chap.
ministry which are somewhat invidiously known as " back-
doors " ; I had in fact come there on purpose to see the famous
College. On riding down the village street I marvelled greatly
not so much at the absence of all sign of student life, since
tliat might readily be accounted for, term time though it should
have been, but at the dejected air of so very small a place,
which for several generations had been in its way a University
town. I looked long for any signs of life, till after a while a
tired-looking individual, smoking a pipe near an open door,
broke the solitude, and of him I inquired the way to the
College.
" T' College ! Thear's nae College here."
" Well then, the University."
The native looked vacuous, and shook his head.
Then the light of intelligence gleamed from his eyes, and
he waved his pipe northward.
"I racken ye means t' grammar schule."
" No, I don't ; I mean the College."
" Thear's nae College here."
This was too much ; and I rejoined, with some heat, that it
was the only thing there was there. But at this moment an
imperious demand from a red-armed lady in the adjacent
doorway broke up the interview prematurely, and my friend
vanished.
There was no one else in sight, so I pedalled slowly down-
wards.
A baker's cart then drove rapidly by, and a sudden thought
struck me.
"Is this St. Bees ? " 1 shouted to the whirlwind as it passed.
The man of loaves v/as probably taken aback by the absur-
dity of such a question, and if he answered at all it was when
out of range. This was certainly the quietest University town
by a very long way I had ever seen.
A trustworthy looking matron now came along carrying a
pie, and to her I applied for the whereabouts of the College.
VI A VANISHED COLLEGE 167
" There's no College here, sir."
" Well, then, the University."
"There's no — • — " At that moment llicre was a loud clangour
of bells and a small cloud of scorchers dashed down on us out
of the solitude. We ran for safety, and when the turmoil was
over the lady with the pie had vanished.
A small urchin was playing on the side walk
" Look here, my boy, is this St. Bees ?"
" Aye."
This was at once reassuring and perplexing, but the little
railway station now hove in sight, so I made straight for it,
discarding several possible sources of information on the way.
Here at least this exasperating conundrum would be finally
solved.
The daily train was evidently due, and the little station was
quivering in anticipation of it with a crowd of a dozen
passengers and all astir. The station master was of course much
in evidence, and now at any rate I should know the worst.
" Stationmaster," I said, " would you be kind enough to direct
me to the College ? "
"The grammar school, I suppose you mean, sir."
This was worse and worse ; it was impossible that one could
have been the victim all one's life of so monstrous a hallucina-
tion.
" Look here, stationmaster," I said, " I won't detain you a
moment, but you have got an establishment here that has been
turning out parsons with blue hoods by the hundred since
a long time before you and I were born. Now, where is it,
please ? "
The stationmaster looked at me, I fancied pityingly, for a
brief moment, when suddenly up went one arm above his head,
and the other with his whistle to his mouth, and he was across
the line in a moment. Fate was against me ! The train was
approaching.
There was still a porter on the near platform, but I was now
iG8
AN OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL
CHAP.
in no humour for long speeches. " Porler," said I, "have you
got a College here, and, if so, where ? "
The porter was a very sharp man, and did not seem pressed
for time, and from him I learnt at least the bare fact, familiar
doubtless to many of my readers, to wit that the College
had collapsed some three years previously. There was
nothing surprising in such an incident escaping the notice of
an uninterested layman in the far South. But that an institution
so comparatively venerable, and, to judge by the number of its
alumni that one meets not only in the North but all over the
IV/iitchaveK.
world, SO prolific, should have suddenly snuffed out was quite
outside ordinary calculations.
I had mucli cause, however, to be thankful for the mistake
that had brought me there, for St. Bees is well worth seeing.
The ecclesiastical settlement in which all its interest is
centred stands out by itself on the further side of the little
valley. The old buildings of the grammar school, which has
taken out a new lease of life and is doing good work, are quite
charming, and form three sides of a square. They suggest
at first sight certain Cambridge Colleges in miniature, though
their ruddy tint comes from stone in this case, and not from
VI AN ACADEMIC ATMOSPHERE 169
brick. Just across the road, amid a grove of ancient trees
murmurous with the congenial clamour of a rookery, other build-
ings of academic aspect cluster round the beautiful old abbey
church of red freestone, presumably occupying the site of the
original foundation of the Celtic saint, St. Bega. The aloof-
ness of the neighbourhood itself from the world, and the
further isolation of this group of venerable buildings from even
such life as throbs here, takes hold at once of the imagination.
Whether the movement w'hich gathered divinity students liere
for nearly a century was desirable or not for the Church of