There is a good inn at Lodore, – a small, primitive country inn, which has latterly been enlarged and otherwise adapted to meet the convenience of the guests brought thither by the fame of the cascade; but it is still a country inn, though it takes upon itself the title of hotel.
We found pleasant rooms here, and established ourselves for the night. From this point we have a view of the beautiful lake, and of Skiddaw at the head of it. The cascade is within three or four minutes' walk, through the garden gate, towards the cliff, at the base of which the inn stands. The visitor would need no other guide than its own voice, which is said to be audible sometimes at the distance of four miles. As we were coming from Keswick, we caught glimpses of its white foam high up the precipice; and it is only glimpses that can be caught anywhere, because there is no regular sheet of falling water. Once, I think, it must have fallen abruptly over the edge of the long line of precipice that here extends along parallel with the shore of the lake; but, in the course of time, it has gnawed and sawed its way into the heart of the cliff, – this persistent little stream, – so that now it has formed a rude gorge, adown which it hurries and tumbles in the wildest way, over the roughest imaginable staircase. Standing at the bottom of the fall, you have a far vista sloping upward to the sky, with the water everywhere as white as snow, pouring and pouring down, now on one side of the gorge, now on the other, among immense bowlders, which try to choke its passage. It does not attempt to leap over these huge rocks, but finds its way in and out among then, and finally gets to the bottom after a hundred tumbles. It cannot be better described than in Southey's verses, though it is worthy of better poetry than that. After all, I do not know that the cascade is anything more than a beautiful fringe to the grandeur of the scene; for it is very grand, – this fissure through the cliff, – with a steep, lofty precipice on the right hand, sheer up and down, and on the other hand, too, another lofty precipice, with a slope of its own ruin on which trees and shrubbery have grown. The right-hand precipice, however, has shelves affording sufficient hold for small trees, but nowhere does it slant. If it were not for the white little stream falling gently downward, and for the soft verdure upon either precipice, and even along the very pathway of the cascade, it would be a very stern vista up that gorge.
I shall not try to describe it any more. It has not been praised too much, though it may have been praised amiss. I went thither again in the morning, and climbed a good way up, through the midst of its rocky descent, and I think I could have reached the top in this way. It is remarkable that the bounds of the water, from one step of its broken staircase to another, give an impression of softness and gentleness; but there are black, turbulent pools among the great bowlders, where the stream seems angry at the difficulties which it meets with. Looking upward in the sunshine, I could see a rising mist, and I should not wonder if a speck of rainbow were sometimes visible. I noticed a small oak in the bed of the cascade, and there is a lighter vegetation scattered about.
At noon we took a car for Portinscale, and drove back along the road to Keswick, through which we passed, stopping to get a perhaps of letters at the post-office, and reached Portinscale, which is a mile from Keswick. After dinner we walked over a bridge, and through a green lane, to the church where Southey is buried. It is a white church, of Norman architecture, with a low, square tower. As we approached, we saw two persons entering the portal, and, following them in, we found the sexton, who was a tall, thin old man, with white hair, and an intelligent, reverent face, showing the edifice to a stout, red-faced, self-important, good-natured John Bull of a gentleman. Without any question on our part, the old sexton immediately led us to Southey's monument, which is placed in a side aisle, where there is not breadth for it to stand free of the wall; neither is it in a very good light. But, it seemed to me a good work of art, – a recumbent figure of white marble, on a couch, the drapery of which he has drawn about him, – being quite enveloped in what may be a shroud. The sculptor has not intended to represent death, for the figure lies on its side, and has a book in its hand, and the face is lifelike, and looks full of expression, – a thin, high-featured, poetic face, with a finely proportioned head and abundant hair. It represents Southey rightly, at whatever age he died, in the full maturity of manhood, when he was strongest and richest. I liked the statue, and wished that it lay in a broader aisle, or in the chancel, where there is an old tomb of a knight and lady of the Ratcliffe family, who have held the place of honor long enough to yield it now to a poet. Southey's sculptor was Lough. I must not forget to mention that John Bull, climbing on a bench, to get a better view of the statue, tumbled off with a racket that resounded irreverently through the church.
The old, white-headed, thin sexton was a model man of his class, and appeared to take a loving and cheerful interest in the building, and in those who, from age to age, have worshipped and been buried there. It is a very ancient and interesting church. Within a few years it has been thoroughly repaired as to the interior, and now looks as if it might endure ten more centuries; and I suppose we see little that is really ancient, except the double row of Norman arches, of light freestone, that support the oaken beams and rafters of the roof. All the walls, however, are venerable, and quite preserve the identity of the edifice. There is a stained-glass window of modern manufacture, and in one of the side windows, set amidst plain glass, there is a single piece, five hundred years old, representing St. Anthony, very finely executed, though it looks a little faded. Along the walls, on each side, between the arched windows, there are marble slabs affixed, with inscriptions to the memories of those who used to occupy the seats beneath. I remember none of great antiquity, nor any old monument, except that in the chancel, over the knight and lady of the Ratcliffe family. This consists of a slab of stone, on four small stone pillars, about two feet high. The slab is inlaid with a brass plate, on which is sculptured the knight in armor, and the lady in the costume of Elizabeth's time, exceedingly well done and well preserved, and each figure about eighteen inches in length. The sexton showed us a rubbing of them on paper. Under the slab, which, supported by the low stone pillars, forms a canopy for them, lie two sculptured figures of stone, of life size, and at full length, representing the same persons; but I think the sculptor was hardly equal in his art to the engraver.
The most-curious antique relic in the church is the font. The bowl is very capacious, sufficiently so to admit of the complete immersion of a child of two or three months old. On the outside, in several compartments, there are bas-reliefs of Scriptural and symbolic subjects, – such as the tree of life, the word proceeding out of God's mouth, the crown of thorns, – all in the quaintest taste, sculptured by some hand of a thousand years ago, and preserving the fancies of monkish brains, in stone. The sexton was very proud of this font and its sculpture, and took a kindly personal interest, in showing it; and when we had spent as much time as we could inside, he led us to Southey's grave in the churchyard. He told us that he had known Southey long and well, from early manhood to old age; for he was only twenty-nine when he came to Keswick to reside. He had known Wordsworth too, and Coleridge, and Lovell; and he had seen Southey and Wordsworth walking arm in arm together in that churchyard. He seemed to revere Southey's memory, and said that he had been much lamented, and that as many as a hundred people came to the churchyard when he was buried. He spoke with great praise of Mrs. Southey, his first wife, telling of her charity to the poor, and how she was a blessing to the neighborhood; but he said nothing in favor of the second Mrs. Southey, and only mentioned her selling the library, and other things, after her husband's death, and going to London. Yet I think she was probably a good woman, and meets with less than justice because she took the place of another good woman, and had not time and opportunity to prove herself as good. As for Southey himself, my idea is, that few better or more blameless men have ever lived; but he seems to lack color, passion, warmth, or something that should enable me to bring him into close relation with myself. The graveyard where his body lies is not so rural and picturesque as that where Wordsworth is buried; although Skiddaw rises behind it, and the Greta is murmuring at no very great distance away. But the spot itself has a somewhat bare and bold aspect, with no shadow of trees, no shrubbery.
Over his grave there is a ponderous, oblong block of slate, a native mineral of this region, as hard as iron, and which will doubtless last quite as long as Southey's works retain any vitality in English literature. It is not a monument fit for a poet. There is nothing airy or graceful about it, – and, indeed, there cannot he many men so solid and matter-of-fact as to deserve a tomb like that. Wordsworth's grave is much better, with only a simple headstone, and the grass growing over his mortality, which, for a thousand years, at least, it never can over Southey's. Most of the monuments are of this same black slate, and some erect headstones are curiously sculptured, and seem to have been recently erected.
We now returned to the hotel, and took a car for the valley of St. John. The sky seemed to portend rain in no long time, and Skiddaw had put on his cap; but the people of the hotel and the driver said that there would be no rain this afternoon, and their opinion proved correct. After driving a few miles, we again cane within sight of the Enchanted Castle. It stands rather more than midway adown the declivity of one of the ridges that form the valley to the left, as you go southward, and its site would have been a good one for a fortress, intended to defend the lower entrance of this mountain defile. At a proper distance, it looks not unlike the gray dilapidation of a Gothic castle, which has been crumbling and crumbling away for ages, until Time might be supposed to have imperceptibly stolen its massive pile from man, and given it back to Nature; its towers and battlements and arched entrances being so much defaced and decayed that all the marks of human labor had nearly been obliterated, and the angles of the hewn stone rounded away, while mosses and weeds and bushes grow over it as freely as over a natural ledge of rocks. It is conceivable that in some lights, and in some states of the atmosphere, a traveller, at the entrance of the valley, might really imagine that he beheld a castle here; but, for myself, I must acknowledge that it required a willing fancy to make me see it. As we drew nearer, the delusion did not immediately grow less strong; but, at length, we found ourselves passing at the foot of the declivity, and, behold! it was nothing but an enormous ledge of rock, coming squarely out of the hillside, with other parts of the ledge cropping out in its vicinity. Looking back, after passing, we saw a knoll or hillock, of which the castled rock is the bare face. There are two or three stone cottages along the roadside, beneath the magic castle, and within the enchanted ground. Scott, in the Bridal of Triermain, locates the castle in the middle of the valley, and makes King Arthur ride around it, which any mortal would have great difficulty in doing. This vale of St. John has very striking scenery. Blencathra shuts it in to the northward, lying right across the entrance; and on either side there are lofty crags and declivities, those to the west being more broken and better wooded than the ridge to the eastward, which stretches along for several miles, steep, high, and bare, producing only grass enough for sheep pasture, until it rises into the dark brow of Helvellyn. Adown this ridge, seen afar, like a white ribbon, comes here and there a cascade, sending its voice before it, which distance robs of all its fury, and makes it the quietest sound in the world; and while you see the foamy leap of its upper course a mile or two away, you may see and hear the selfsame little brook babbling through a field, and passing under the arch of a rustic bridge beneath your feet. It is a deep seclusion, with mountains and crags on all sides.
About a mile beyond the castle we stopped at a little wayside inn, the King's Head, and put up for the night. This, I believe, is the only inn which I have found in England – the only one where I have eaten and slept – that does not call itself a hotel. It is very primitive in its arrangements, – a long, low, whitewashed, unadorned, and ugly cottage of two stories. At one extremity is a barn and cow-house, and next to these the part devoted to the better class of guests, where we had our parlor and chambers, contiguous to which is the kitchen and common room, paved with flagstones, – and, lastly, another barn and stable; all which departments are not under separate roofs, but under the same long contiguity, and forming the same building. Our parlor opens immediately upon the roadside, without any vestibule. The house appears to be of some antiquity, with beams across the low ceilings; but the people made us pretty comfortable at bed and board, and fed us with ham and eggs, veal-steaks, honey, oatcakes, gooseberry-tarts, and such cates and dainties, – making a moderate charge for all. The parlor was adorned with rude engravings. I remember only a plate of the Duke of Wellington, at three stages of his life; and there were minerals, delved, doubtless, out of the hearts of the mountains, upon the mantel-piece. The chairs were of an antiquated fashion, and had very capacious seats. We were waited upon by two women, who looked and acted not unlike the countryfolk of New England, – say, of New Hampshire, – except that these may have been more deferential.
While we remained here, I took various walks to get a glimpse of Helvellyn, and a view of Thirlmere, – which is rather two lakes than one, being so narrow at one point as to be crossed by a foot-bridge. Its shores are very picturesque, coming down abruptly upon it, and broken into crags and prominences, which view their shaggy faces in its mirror; and Helvellyn slopes steeply upward, from its southern shore, into the clouds. On its eastern bank, near the foot-bridge, stands Armboth House, which Miss Martineau says is haunted; and I saw a painted board at the entrance of the road which leads to it advertising lodgings there. The ghosts, of course, pay nothing for their accommodations.
At noon, on the day after our arrival, J – and I went to visit the Enchanted Castle; and we were so venturesome as to turn aside from the road, and ascend the declivity towards its walls, which indeed we hoped to surmount. It proved a very difficult undertaking, the site of the fortress being much higher and steeper than we had supposed; but we did clamber upon what we took for the most elevated portion, when lo! we found that we had only taken one of the outworks, and that there was a gorge of the hill betwixt us and the main walls; while the citadel rose high above, at more than twice the elevation which we had climbed. J – wished to go on, and I allowed him to climb, till he appeared to have reached so steep and lofty a height that he looked hardly bigger than a monkey, and I should not at all have wondered had he come rolling down to the base of the rock where I sat. But neither did he get actually within the castle, though he might have done so but for a high stone fence, too difficult for him to climb, which runs from the rock along the hillside. The sheep probably go thither much oftener than any other living thing, and to them we left the castle of St. John, with a shrub waving from its battlements, instead of a banner.
After dinner we ordered a car for Ambleside, and while it was getting ready, I went to look at the river of St. John, which, indeed, flows close beside our inn, only just across the road, though it might well be overlooked unless you specially sought for it. It is a brook brawling over the stones, very much as brooks do in New England, only we never think of calling them rivers there. I could easily have made a leap from shore to shore, and J – scrambled across on no better footing than a rail. I believe I have complained of the want of brooks in other parts of England, but there is no want of them here, and they are always interesting, being of what size they may.
We drove down the valley, and gazed at the vast slope of Helvellyn, and at Thirlmere beneath it, and at Eagle's Crag and Raven's Crag, which beheld themselves in it, and we cast many a look behind at Blencathra, and that noble brotherhood of mountains out of the midst of which we came. But, to say the truth, I was weary of fine scenery, and it seemed to me that I had eaten a score of mountains, and quaffed as many lakes, all in the space of two or three days, – and the natural consequence was a surfeit. There was scarcely a single place in all our tour where I should not have been glad to spend a month; but, by flitting so quickly from one point to another, I lost all the more recondite beauties, and had come away without retaining even the surface of much that I had seen. I am slow to feel, – slow, I suppose, to comprehend, and, like the anaconda, I need to lubricate any object a great deal before I can swallow it and actually make it my own. Yet I shall always enjoy having made this journey, and shall wonder the more at England, which comprehends so much, such a rich variety, within its narrow bounds. If England were all the world, it still would have been worth while for the Creator to have made it, and mankind would have had no cause to find fault with their abode; except that there is not room enough for so many as might be happy here.
We left the great inverted arch of the valley behind us, looking back as long as we could at Blencathra, and Skiddaw over its shoulder, and the clouds were gathering over them at our last glimpse. Passing by Dummail Raise (which is a mound of stones over an old British king), we entered Westmoreland, and soon had the vale of Grasmere before us, with the church where Wordsworth lies, and Nab Scaur and Rydal Water farther on. At Ambleside we took another car for Newby Bridge, whither we drove along the eastern shore of Windermere. The superb scenery through which we had been passing made what we now saw look tame, although a week ago we should have thought it more than commonly interesting. Hawkshead is the only village on our road, – a small, whitewashed old town, with a whitewashed old Norman church, low, and with a low tower, on the same pattern with others that we have seen hereabouts. It was between seven and eight o'clock when we reached Newby Bridge, and heard U – 's voice greeting us, and saw her head, crowned with a wreath of flowers, looking down at us, out of the window of our parlor.
And to-day, July 23d, I have written this most incomplete and unsatisfactory record of what we have done and seen since Wednesday last. I am pretty well convinced that all attempts at describing scenery, especially mountain scenery, are sheer nonsense. For one thing, the point of view being changed, the whole description, which you made up from the previous point of view, is immediately falsified. And when you have done your utmost, such items as those setting forth the scene in a play, – "a mountainous country, in the distance a cascade tumbling over a precipice, and in front a lake; on one side an ivy-covered cottage," – this dry detail brings the matter before one's mind's eyes more effectually than all the art of word-painting.
July 27th. – We are still at Newby Bridge, and nothing has occurred of remarkable interest, nor have we made any excursions, beyond moderate walks. Two days have been rainy, and to-day there is more rain. We find such weather as tolerable here as it would probably be anywhere; but it passes rather heavily with the children, – and for myself, I should prefer sunshine. Though Mr. White's books afford me some entertainment, especially an odd volume of Ben Jonson's plays, containing "Volpone," "The Alchemist," "Bartholomew Fair," and others. "The Alchemist" is certainly a great play. We watch all arrivals and other events from our parlor window, – a stage-coach driving up four times in the twenty-four hours, with its forlorn outsiders, all saturated with rain; the steamer, from the head of the lake, landing a crowd of passengers, who stroll up to the hotel, drink a glass of ale, lean over the parapet of the bridge, gaze at the flat stones which pave the bottom of the Liver, and then hurry back to the steamer again; cars, phaetons, horsemen, all damped and disconsolate. There are a number of young men staying at the hotel, some of whom go forth in all the rain, fishing, and come back at nightfall, trudging heavily, but with creels on their backs that do not seem very heavy. Yesterday was fair, and enlivened us a good deal. Returning from a walk in the forenoon, I found a troop of yeomanry cavalry in the stable-yard of the hotel. They were the North Lancashire Regiment, and were on their way to Liverpool for the purpose of drill. Not being old campaigners, their uniforms and accoutrements were in so much the finer order, all bright, and looking span-new, and they themselves were a body of handsome and stalwart young men; and it was pleasant to look at their helmets, and red jackets and carbines, and steel scabbarded swords, and gallant steeds, – all so martial in aspect, – and to know that they were only play-soldiers, after all, and were never likely to do nor suffer any warlike mischief. By and by their bugles sounded, and they trotted away, wheeling over the ivy-grown stone bridge, and disappearing behind the trees on the Milnethorpe road. Our host comes forth from the bar with a bill, which he presents to an orderly-sergeant. He, the host, then tells me that he himself once rode many years, a trooper, in this regiment, and that all his comrades were larger men than himself. Yet Mr. Thomas White is a good-sized man, and now, at all events, rather overweight for a dragoon.
Yesterday came one of those bands of music that seem to itinerate everywhere about the country. It consisted of a young woman who played the harp, a bass-viol player, a fiddler, a flutist, and a bugler, besides a little child, of whom, I suppose, the woman was the mother. They sat down on a bench by the roadside, opposite the house, and played several tunes, and by and by the waiter brought them a large pitcher of ale, which they quaffed with apparent satisfaction; though they seemed to be foreigners by their mustachios and sallow hue, and would perhaps have preferred a vinous potation. One would like to follow these people through their vagrant life, and see them in their social relations, and overhear their talk with each other. All vagrants are interesting; and there is a much greater variety of them here than in America, – people who cast themselves on Fortune, and take whatever she gives without a certainty of anything. I saw a travelling tinker yesterday, – a man with a leather apron, and a string of skewers hung at his girdle, and a pack over his shoulders, in which, no doubt, were his tools and materials of trade.
It is remarkable what a natural interest everybody feels in fishing. An angler from the bridge immediately attracts a group to watch his luck. It is the same with J – , fishing for minnows, on the platform near which the steamer lands its passengers. By the by, U – caught a minnow last evening, and, immediately after, a good-sized perch, – her first fish.
July 30th. – We left Newby Bridge, all of us, on Saturday, at twelve o'clock, and steamed up the lake to Ambleside; a pretty good day as to weather, but with a little tendency to shower. There was nothing new on the lake, and no new impressions, as far as I can remember. At Ambleside, S – and nurse went shopping, after which we took a carriage for Grasmere, and established ourselves at Brown's Hotel. I find that my impressions from our previous sight of all these scenes do not change on revision. They are very beautiful; but, if I must say it, I am a little weary of them. We soon tire of things which we visit merely by way of spectacle, and with which we have no real and permanent connection. In such cases we very quickly wish the spectacle to be taken away, and another substituted; at all events I do not care about seeing anything more of the English lakes for at least a year.
Perhaps a part of my weariness is owing to the hotel-life which we lead. At an English hotel the traveller feels as if everybody, from the landlord downward, united in a joint and individual purpose to fleece him, because all the attendants who come in contact with him are to be separately considered. So, after paying, in the first instance, a very heavy bill, for what would seem to cover the whole indebtedness, there remain divers dues still to be paid, to no trifling amount, to the landlord's servants, – dues not to be ascertained, and which you never can know whether you have properly satisfied. You can know, perhaps, when you have less than satisfied them, by the aspect of the waiter, which I wish I could describe, not disrespectful in the slightest degree, but a look of profound surprise, a gaze at the offered coin (which he nevertheless pockets) as if he either did not see it, or did not know it, or could not believe his eyesight; – all this, however, with the most quiet forbearance, a Christian-like non-recognition of an unmerited wrong and insult; and finally, all in a moment's space indeed, he quits you and goes about his other business. If you have given him too much, you are made sensible of your folly by the extra amount of his gratitude, and the bows with which he salutes you from the doorstep. Generally, you cannot very decidedly say whether you have been right or wrong; but, in almost all cases, you decidedly feel that you have been fleeced. Then the living at the best of English hotels, so far as my travels have brought me acquainted with them, deserves but moderate praise, and is especially lacking in variety. Nothing but joints, joints, joints; sometimes, perhaps, a meat-pie, which, if you eat it, weighs upon your conscience, with the idea that you have eaten the scraps of other people's dinners. At the lake hotels, the fare is lamb and mutton and grout, – the latter not always fresh, and soon tired of. We pay like nabobs, and are expected to be content with plain mutton.
We spent the day yesterday at Grasmere, in quiet walks about the hotel; and at a little past six in the afternoon, I took my departure in the stage-coach for Windermere. The coach was greatly overburdened with outside passengers, – fifteen in all, besides the four insiders, and one of the fifteen formed the apex of an immense pile of luggage on the top. It seems to me miraculous that we did not topple over, the road being so hilly and uneven, and the driver, I suspect, none the steadier for his visits to all the tap-rooms along the route from Cockermouth. There was a tremendous vibration of the coach now and then; and I saw that, in case of our going over, I should be flung headlong against the high stone fence that bordered most of the road. In view of this I determined to muffle my head in the folds of my thick shawl at the moment of overturn, and as I could do no better for myself, I awaited my fate with equanimity. As far as apprehension goes, I had rather travel from Maine to Georgia by rail, than from Grasmere to Windermere by stage-coach.
At Lowwood, the landlady espied me from the window, and sent out a large packet that had arrived by mail; but as it was addressed to some person of the Christian name of William, I did not venture to open it. She said, also, that a gentleman had been there, who very earnestly desired to see me, and I have since had reason to suppose that this was Allingham, the poet. We arrived at Windermere at half past seven, and waited nearly an hour for the train to start. I took a ticket for Lancaster, and talked there about the war with a gentleman in the coffee-room, who took me for an Englishman, as most people do nowadays, and I heard from him – as you may from all his countrymen – an expression of weariness and dissatisfaction with the whole business. These fickle islanders! How differently they talked a year ago! John Bull sees now that he never was in a worse predicament in his life; and yet it would not take much to make him roar as bellicosely as ever. I went to bed at eleven, and slept unquietly on feathers.
I had purposed to rise betimes, and see the town of Lancaster before breakfast. But here I reckoned without my host; for, in the first place, I had no water for my ablutions, and my boots were not brushed; and so I could not get down stairs till the hour I named for my coffee and chops; and, secondly, the breakfast was delayed half an hour, though promised every minute. In fine, I had but just time to take a hasty walk round Lancaster Castle, and see what I could of the town on my way, – a not very remarkable town, built of stone, with taller houses than in the middle shires of England, narrow streets up and down an eminence on which the castle is situated, with the town immediately about it. The castle is a satisfactory edifice, but so renovated that the walls look almost entirely modern, with the exception of the fine old front, with the statue of an armed warrior, very likely John of Gaunt himself, in a niche over the Norman arch of the entrance. Close beside the castle stands an old church.