in a small degree for north-west England what Scott did for his
native country. It would be unreasonable to expect so peculiar
a genius as his to have travelled out of its groove except for
the fact that his personal connection with his own region was
so long and so unbroken, his opportunities so very great. One
may be permitted, I think, some disappointment that Words-
worth seems to have been almost indifferent to the moving
pageants of history, the passions, the humours and the pathos
of olden days. It is nothing that he wrote a few unremarkable
poems on such subjects, or published a guide-book which
deals chiefly with landscape- detail and breaks ultimately into




Rydul Church.



226 WORDSWORTH'S ROETRY ( iiak

verse. Nor will the few notes he has left on manners and
customs seem of much moment when compared with the ampler
evidence of local antiquaries and historians. How much is
Wordsworth read nowadays? if such a question in such a spot
is permissible. How many of the younger generation have
worked conscientiously through the Excursioti ? It might
be said that this would be something of a test for the middle
aged and elderly who were nurtured when the popularity of
Wordsworth was in its zenith. It is not in the least strange
that wherever in the Lake Country you find a native man
or woman of literary tastes you find an enthusiastic disciple
of the Rydal bard, but their pious belief that such devotion
is common to all Anglo-Saxondom is more noteworthy. It
is almost pathetic, and arises perhaps from being in such
constant view of the streams of curious tourists who gape at
Rydal mount and pay their sixpence to look inside Dove
Cottage. The Americans, moreover, are held in Lakeland
to be staunch disciples. It may be so ! I have never myself
gathered that impression in America, but that is nothing. I
should fear, however, that it is only the greater industry
exhibited by our cousins in " seeing the whole show " when on
their travels. The majority of these enthusiasts, I venture to
think, like most of their English fellow-travellers, know just so
much of Wordsworth as is quoted in the guide-books, have
never read a page of the Excursion or even heard of The Li-
timatlons. The precise measure of Wordsworth's present popu-
larity would, in truth, be no easy estimate. Happily, it is no
business of ours to form one.

From Wordsworth's house we are carried along the margin
of Rydal Lake with its feathery islands and its quiet surface,
for no boats may ply on it. We pass Nab Cottage, where poor
Hartley Coleridge lived for so long, and at the head of the
little lake rise up above the wooded dell through which the
Rothay comes hurrying on its short journey from Grasmere
Lake. Looking back from here, there is a charming view over



VIII A HELM WIND 227

Rydal, but it is not for the purpose of descanting upon this
that I would linger for a moment, but because the spot
recalls a wonderful spectacle I once witnessed from it, no less
indeed than that of a very well-developed specimen of a
" Helm wind."

All regions have their special peculiarities, but I know of no
other in England that creates hurricanes purely for local
consumption. The phenomenon gets its name of Helm from
the cloud that is supposed to hang as a cap or covering
above the scene of its wrath. It had its hat off when
I saw it and that perhaps accelerated its mad rage. These
Helm winds usually occur in late spring, and it was the middle
of May when I dropped in for mine. They come from the
eastward and the first stage of their manufacture takes place
upon the Durham and Northumbrian moors. For the warm
winds blowing from the German Ocean across the eastern
lowlands of these counties grow warmer, till mounting sud-
denly on to the moorlands they whistle over some thirty
miles of an almost unbroken waste of spongy, boggy upland
cooling rapidly, so the scientists tell us, in the process. That
passed, they have arrived at the western ramparts of the
Pennine ridge and from the summit of Crossfell, which the
rustic will tell you is the parent of the Helm wind, are looking
down over the valley of the Eden. Here the warm breezes of
the west are suddenly encountered and the conflicting tem-
peratures create a rare confusion. Out of the hurly-burly as
its product a ready made Helm wind rushes down upon the
western slopes of the Eden Valley, bounds up skywards from
the impact, and then with a shriek of rage and redoubled force
plunges into the valleys of Lakeland. And during all this
time the rest of the kingdom may be wrapped in a profound
calm !

As I was saying, it was in this case a bright May day which
from the morning onward grew windier and colder but no darker.
In the afternoon a hurricane was blowing. I had to journey

Q 2



228



A BRILLIANT SPECTACLE



CHAP.



from Grasmere to Ambleside and took a cycle with a view to
usiiii^ it when before the wind. This last was lateral in the open
valley, but having been twice blown against a stone wall,
I took a hint from the other folks I met in like plight and
walked tamely beside my " Swift," hoping for better times and
marvelling at the fury of the storm at such a season a!id
beneath so blue a sky. At this entry here into Rydal, where
the Lake opens out to the road, the gale struck me in the face
and with such fury that all thought of further struggles with it







•J A. . »k. w-^










Rvda/.



was abandoned. I was glad enough, indeed, to crouch under
the lea of a wall and look over the top of it at the really
wonderful sight that there met my eyes. For it is not too
much to say that at times the whole surface of Rydal Lake
was entirely hidden beneath clouds of driving spray. The
agitation of the actual surface was of course great, but that was
quite a secondary matter ; for it seemed as if the gale in its
violent and spasmodic rushes scooped up tons of water into
the air and then dashed them with headlong force in glittering
and scintillating clouds across the lake from shore to shore.



VIII AN ENIGMATIC ANSWER 229

The brightness of the sky, tlie hriHiancy of the sunshine, the
blueness of the lake, immensely heightened the effect. Some-
times the whirling masses of water were flung in showers back
to their element, like the play of some vast fountain, flashing
rainbow colours in the sunshine as they fell ; at other times,
these great spray clouds were driven high over the banks and
scattered far and wide amid the woods behind.

An old man was breaking stones under lea of the same wall
that sheltered me, and to him I naturally made some comment
on the belated nature of so fierce a storm, for it was as cold as
March.

" I racken it's a Helm wind," said the veteran.

Not knowing at the time what kind of a breeze that might
be, I thought that the old gentleman was merely expressing
himself with undue emphasis upon the ferocity of this one. My
landlord, however, when I returned to Grasmere, put the matter
beyond all doubt, and introduced me formally to the Helm wind
as an institution. That it comes from Crossfell is a popular
truism. The theories regarding its manufacture there, which I
noted on the preceding page, are those advanced by meteor-
ologists. I may add, in connection with this particular Helm
wind, that when the papers came to hand the next day they
told of steady and heavy rain in every part of England except
this north-west corner.

On emerging from the short wooded gorge that connects the
two lakes, the vale of Grasmere opens out all its beauty. The
little lake with its single grassy isle fringes the road and its
waters lap against the stony strand beneath a screen of oaks and
alders. On the further shore, l)ut a few hundred yards away are
the wooded slopes of Red bank, from which vantage point may
be enjoyed one of the most exquisite and justly celebrated
views in Lakeland. You can breathe in Grasmere, there is plenty
of light and fresh air. Though surrounded by hills, they stand
well back, and boldly show themselves from their woody feet
to their craggy summits. Snugly set between lake and meadows



230 GR AS MERE chap.

is the village itself, and the old grey church tower, with the
upstanding mass of Helm crag that splits the head of the
valley, rising finely up a thousand feet behind it. The
southerly supporters of Helvellyn are all about us on the right :
on the left, are woods and steeps and crags, that lead away and
upward to the Langdale Pikes and the Scafell wilderness. As
a centre for walking, there is probably none better than Gras-
mere, as a mere glance at the map will show. The hotels are
good, the charming gardens of the Rothay and the outlook
from them w^ould give attraction to a much less comfortable
house, while those who like the sound of wavelets beating on
the shore beneath their windows, will find the " Prince of Wales' "
much suited to their taste upon a windy day. But though
there is plenty of accommodation at Grasmere, one cannot in
truth say the charm of the spot is seriously impaired. There
are, to be sure, more villas (to use a comprehensive term) of
recent date than there are memorials of the original inhabitants,
They are mostly fashioned, however, of the slate-coloured stone
of the country. And though I have myself no great fancy for
this at close quarters, or for the prevailing method of construc-
tion, much preferring the red free stone and more massive
mortared masonry across the mountains, it must be admitted
that the typical house of the country has the merit of un-
obtrusiveness to a very high degree. The Lake poets and their
friends were accustomed to say, sixty years ago and more, that
Grasmere was spoiled, but the term after all is relative. The
situation is not only beautiful, but has much character in its
air of snugness and aloofness from the outer world, though this, of
course, has small significance as applied to the present, since a
fine coach road runs right through it. But in the past this
isolation must have been very real indeed, and Grasmere as it
was in the eighteenth century is a picture I should extremely
like, by the aid of some magician's wand, to have a peep at.

Mr. Wilson, whose painstaking excursions into the past-of his
native country have afforded me both instruction and entertain-



VIII



IN THE OLDEN TIME



2^1



ment, tells us that in the Stuart period there were thirty-nine
statesmen in Grasmere holding direct from the Crown, and
that by the beginning of the eighteenth century the number had
dropped to twenty-six. At the present day there is, I think,
only one, and with that cheery survivor I have had many
pleasant " cracks." I have already expressed an impious yearn-
ing for some good picture of this country before it had any
literary associations ; for even the local antiquary is apt to
break off at his most instructive moments, and quote Words-




Grasiiio'c looki



toivards Duniiuiil Kane.



worth in a fashion vexatiously irrelevant to his subject. Gray,
to be sure, passed through Grasmere in its virgin state, " not a
single red tile," he says, " no gentleman's flaring house or garden
breaks in upon the repose of this Uttle unsuspected paradise ;
but all is peace, rusticity, and happy poverty in its neatest and
most becoming attire." But Gray merely cast an academic
glance and passed on.

Wheels had never entered Grasmere at that time. A pack-
horse track over the top of White Moss was the only outlet to
Ambleside, and over this the bells that now hang in the tower



232 THE GREAT PLAGUE chap.

of the village church were dragged on a sledge ; one is reminded,
too, that the statesmen, who had mostly large families, could
hardly have supported them on their small holdings without the
surplus produce of the spinning-wheel and the hand-loom,
selling, in fact, a good deal of homespun cloth, and being, as it
were, manufacturers as well as farmers. In the same way, the
north Welsh farmers of former days sold vast quantities of
woollen stockings — the men, like the rest, knitting in their
spare moments, just as the northern statesmen spun or wove in
the intervals of out-door work. " When the great plague," says
Mr. Wilson, " raged in Keswick and all intercourse was sus-
pended, the Grasmere statesmen carried their cloth to
Armboth Fell on the further banks of Thirlemere and laid it
out on a large stone, where the traders met them and transacted
their business. The rock in question is to this day known as
the "Webb stone." The introduction of machinery and rise
•of the manufacturing towns seems indeed to have been one of
the many causes of the decay of the statesmen class, as it
left them without profitable employment for their leisure hours.
Everything too in the shape of food or clothing was
produced at home. As to the first, the statesman lived
abundantly. Oat-meal cakes, porridge, cheese and milk, were
the accessories rather than the main support, as in Scotland,
for meat was generously used, .sheep for home consumption
being freely killed in the autumn, and hung to cure in the
enormous chimneys that were then in vogue. We are shown
the women in their linsey woolsey petticoats, long-tailed bed-
gowns, blue linen aprons, great scuttle bonnets and wooden
clogs, and have it on good authority that the first statesman's
daughter who appeared in the dale in a printed calico dress
created an immense sensation. The men too, of course, wore
homespun, usually undyed, in which black and white fleeces
were mixed. They had big brass buttons on their coats and
on Sundays and high days were resplendent with bows of
ribbon at the knees of their breeches and silver buckled shoes



VIII OLD BUILDINGS AND IMPLEMENTS 233

instead of clogs upon their feet. Houses were then built leisurely
and in massive fashion, being intended to last. Only heart oak
was used, and in lieu of nails wooden pegs held beams and
sashes and doors together. Lime was dispensed with as hard to
procure, and an amusing story is told of the first consignment
of it that went into Borrowdale ; the bearer carrying it across
his saddle bow in a bag. A thunderstorm coming on, however,
the lime began to fizzle. Upon this the astonished rustic
dismounted and poured water over it, the effect of which so
alarmed him that he thought the devil was in the sack and
throwing it into the beck, rode for home as fast as his horse
could carry him. The stipends of the clergy too, who served
these dale churches, or chapels, as they were called in olden
days, look quite incredible on paper, averaging about five
pounds a year. It has to be remembered, however, that most
of these men were peasants bred, that they got their " Whitde-
gate " or board free from the statesmen of their parish, and
furthermore, as we have already seen, followed some trade,
such as that of cobbler, or waller, to say nothing of school
teaching when they were capable of it.

The schedule of a farm sale in Grasmere, in the year 1706,
lies before me, and I think the phraseology of the catalogue
would sufficiently astonish a modern auctioneer, while some of
the prices are significant of the change in markets and in the
value of money. Bubblers, Daw tubs, Throwen chairs,
fflawing spades, Gimlocks, Tarr kitts, Gramaces, Gavelocks,
Sihreenges, Wimbles, Backshaves, and ffishing pitches are a
few of the articles from the list. And from the same source
one learns that the approximate value of a cow in Grasmere at
that time was about ^3, a heifer ^2, lambs about half-a-crown
apiece and fat wethers six shillings ! It is somewhat surprising
too to find the French participle still in local use, above all at
such functions. For among the purchasers of these mysterious
articles we find Braythwayte de Wrey, Newton de Gillfort, John
Jackson de Wythburn, a little comic, perhaps, this last ! — and



234



GRASMERE SPORTS



CHAP.



SO forth. There is one quite sonorous entry on the account,
" Christopher Cowpthvvayte one fiat cow," and it has some
further interest as a Cowpthwayte (Copperthwaite) is still very
much a power in Grasmere, being no less than the proprietor
of the two chief hotels.

Grasmere church, though of no architectural merit, every-
one, of course goes to see, if only for the Wordsworth graves,
which could not be exceeded for their charm of situation amid
leaves and running water and over-hanging mountains. Near the




(^^^Voyf^JiH^



Grasmere Church.



church, too, is the field where the chief athletic meeting of the
Lake Country is held every August. From what I have already
said of these characteristic gatherings, it will been seen that the
Grasmere meeting, though very fashionable, is quite a genuine
affair and a true expression of the Cumbrian sporting character,
not a survival of half-moribund pastimes for the benefit of
strangers or quasi-residents or gate money, as is sometimes
supposed.

Dove Cottage is an object of perennial interest to visitors



VIII



DOVE COTTAGE



235



at Grasmere, and no wonder ! For surely no modest cottage
ever sheltered two such occupants in succession, the greatest
poet and the greatest prose writer of their day. Wordsworth
was here for six years, De Quincey for twenty. Son of a well-
to-do Lancashire merchant whose widow had a comfortable
home at Chester, Ue Quincey opened his eccentric career by
running away from Manchester Grammar School, rather from
a feeling of boredom, it would seem, than for the usual conven-
tional reasons. On a guinea a week he wandered about North




Dove Cottage.

Wales indulging his imagination in that romantic country, and
fraternising with all manner of queer folk. Shunning his home
for no very serious reasons, he then threw himself more or less
penniless upon London, concealed his whereabouts from motives
of boyish pride from his mother and guardian uncle, and
experienced the lot of a homelesss and almost starving outcast
in its dreary wilderness. But who that has read The Experi-
ences of an Opium Eater,— -zwdi who indeed has not ? — can forget
his account of those extraordinary months and the strange



236 DK QUINCE Y chap.

companions of his self-imposed misery? Discovered and
rescued by his friends, he was sent up to Oxford in 1803.
Careless of the honours or emoluments to be gained there by
the orthodox course of study, he plunged deeply into philosophy
and English literature, and left Oxford after four years with a vast
store of learning, but no further forward in his equipment for
practical life, and no scheme for earning the necessary
livelihood. De Quincey then ran across Coleridge, by that
time sunk into a morbid, irresponsible wanderer, consuming a
tumblerful of laudanum a day, but still possessed of that
magic power of conversation which took every one captive.

The presence of Coleridge's family at Keswick with Southey
was the means of turning the young De Quincey lakewards,
and eventually cementing a friendship between himself and
the Wordsworths, and keeping him in the Lake Country as a
permanent resident. The increasing family and improving
circumstances of the Wordsworths had just caused them to vacate
Dove Cottage for Allan Bank prior to the later move to
Rydal. De Quincey now, in 1809, took their late humble
abode and there led for the next twenty years his extraordinary
life.

Small, thin, and nervous, a martyr to chronic pains, induced
possibly by the superfluous hardships he had undergone, and
possessed of phenomenal brain-power, the young philosopher
had a poor start in life from a physical standpoint. He was
now twenty-four, and already on the high road to that opium
slavery he has so lucidly described. He had begun the habit
as an undergraduate as a remedy for internal pains, and before
he had been three years at Grasmere was drinking the insidious
liquor to the measure of five or six wine-glasses a night — a
deadly dose in itself to the unseasoned. The decanter of
laudanum behind De Quincey's tea-pot is a sufficiently familiar
picture wherever English is read, and he drank it, in his own
words, " as other men drink Madeira." When it was not
laudanum it was tea, and yet this frail little creature with the



VIII A HARASSED LIFE 237

big head and bigger intellect lived to be seventy-four.
Harassed always by money cares and more often tlian not in
the clutches of the fiend that gave him such gorgeous hours at
the expense of such fearful awakenings, l)e Quincey's life at
Dove ('ottage, outwardly so humdrum, must have been a
tempestuous one enough mentally.

Admirable in every other relation of life, and second only to
Coleridge in conversation, De Quincey had no lack of friends,
and the quality of those who were then his neighbours needs
no further telling. At thirty he found a most excellent woman
to marry him, the daughter of a yeoman, Simpson of Nab
Cottage. Even with her aid, however, his struggles with the
laudanum decanter were only intermittently successful, and an
increasing family brought increasing cares ; for under such
conditions of health and isolated residence his earnings were
in no way commensurate with his commanding talent. In
1830, necessity compelled him to leave Grasmere for some
more central sphere of work, and the whole family removed to
Edinburgh, where, incredible as it seems, this tortured,
worried weakling lived for nearly thirty years more, fighting
his old enemy on and off till nearly the end and just contriv-
ing to keep the wolf at a reasonable distance from the door.
De Quincey, however, was fortunate in his family, and th6
last period of his otherwise melancholy life was passed in
tranquillity at Lasswade.

For the traveller on wheels there is but one outlet from
Grasmere, namely, by the well-known coach road which leads
over Dunmail Raise to Keswick. The second of the two
horns into which the Helm crag ridge splits the valley is
Easedale, and this, though much dwelt in and much walked
in, is a cul de sac for all but the pedestrian.

Of the six mountain passes in Lakeland available for wheels,
Hardknott, Honister, Kirkstone, Newlands, Whinlatter, and
Dunmail, the last is by very far the least, being just 800 feet,
above the sea. It is more of a thoroughfare too than the others,



238 OVER DUNMAIL RAISE chap.

forming the main artery of travel between the northern and the
southern, the Keswick and the Windermere, sections of the Lake
Country. It is three miles to the summit of the pass and one of
these at any rate it would be prudent to walk. Nor indeed is there
much hardship in this ; but only the better chance for looking
back down the narrow valley to where Grasmere, all aglow with
the bright colouring of its meadows and foliage and its glittering
lake, lies in the bosom of the hills. And in the meantime the
Rothay plunges down the hollow on our left, dwindling in im-
portance as woods and meadows are left behind, till it plashes,
a mere moorland beck, by the side of our highway, now for a
brief space on open moorland road.

It is wonderfully quiet and impressive up here in the
intervals of passing traffic. We have brushed the feet of
Fairfield, and Seat Sandal in our zigzag upward course, and
taken note of the track which clambers up between them and
finally descends upon the further side to Ullswater. Upon our
left is the battlemented summit of Helm Crag, the rugged sheep
pastures of Gibson's Knott, and the loftier crown of Steel Fell,
which with Seat Sandal opposite forms, in fact, the gateway of
the pass. The county line too is traced here by a wall, and
near the road side is a great flat cairn, which is supposed to com-
memorate a fierce and decisive battle fought in the tenth century.

Tradition says it was here that Dunmail, the last king of
Cumberland, was defeated and slain, and those who care for such
things may like to be reminded that in 924 the Kings of the Scots,
the Northumbrian and Strathclyde Britons, had submitted to
the Overlordship of Edward; the West Saxon. Twenty years
later, however, they became insubordinate, and the Saxon King
Edmund took an army into the country and on this spot
defeated the men of lower Strathclyde (roughly Cumberland),
killing, as I have said, their prince. Edmund then handed the
country over to Malcolm King of the Scots, on condition that
he should be his " fellow worker by land and sea," or in other
words his ally in resisting those invading Norsemen who had



VIII THE NORSEMEN 239

been so long the curse, as it seemed then, of both. 'I'his figlit
on Dunmail Raise, made Cumberland for over a century, till
the time, in fact, of William Rufus, a dependency of the Scottish
Crown. There is a strong impression too that it was a leading