“The laurel-honouring Laureate” says, respecting this portion of Duddon vale,—“The chaotic aspect of the scene is well marked by the expression of a stranger, who strolled out while dinner was preparing, and, at his return, being asked by his host, “What way he had been wandering?” replied, “As far as it is finished!”
A SINGLE WORD ON SCENERY.
The wild is the prevailing characteristic of Seathwaite scenery; and, at the same time, it is invested with an air of quietness and repose which prevents its wildness approaching the savage or terrible, though many distinct parts of it, as well as its general aspect, are fully entitled to the epithet of sublime.
SEATHWAITE CHAPEL.
CHAPTER V.
The Rev. Robert Walker—His Parentage, Birth, and Breeding—Habits of Life—His Industry, Economy, and Hospitality—His Ways of Moneymaking—His Death—Description of his Outer Man—Comments—General Poverty of the Old Clergy—Mary Hird—Her Character and Death.
Having fed yourself and seen your pony fed, whilst the latter is enjoying needful rest, you may return to the Chapel and make a more deliberate examination thereof than you could do when you lately passed it on horseback and hungry, and see that you approach that “low, small, modest house of prayer” with befitting reverence for it, and the ground of the humble cemetery around it, in the opinion of greater men than you or I can ever hope to be, are each doubly hallowed, the former as having been for sixty-six years the scene of the labours, and the latter as holding “the mortal dust” of the “Wonderful Walker;” and who, you inquire, was he? and how was he wonderful? I'll tell you all about him in as few words as possible. The Rev. Robert Walker was the youngest child in a family of twelve, who were all born to a small yeoman, at Undercrag, in this dale. He was born in 1709, and being sickly in boyhood, it was determined, in accordance with very general custom in such cases, to “breed him a scholar.” His father died when he was seventeen, and he soon obtained the appointment of parochial teacher at Gosforth, in Cumberland. After PREFERMENTS AND PROFITS.labouring there, and in the same capacity at Loweswater for some few years, he was ordained to the living of Buttermere—the smallest Chapel, and, by no means the largest living, in England. His income as incumbent of Buttermere, even though eked out by teaching, being insufficient for his wants, moderate as they were, he worked hard, when his clerical and pedagogical duties permitted, as a common country labourer, span, knitted, and acted as private secretary and scrivener general, and sometimes as marketing agent in sheep, wool, &c., to all his neighbours. Amongst other modes of raising the needful whilst at Buttermere, I have been told by one of his Seathwaite neighbours, that he taught the Buttermerians the art of drawing their lake and the adjacent lake of Crummock with the draught net, and for this service he was paid at the extravagant rate of one halfpenny for every draught they took, whilst he remained amongst them. After this he obtained the living of Torver, a small Chapelry, under Ulverstone, situate a mile or two from Conistone down the west side of the lake; and shortly after that, he attained the great object of his very natural ambition—the ministry of this his native valley; married a wife with a fortune of forty pounds, and yet did not allow his strict habits of economy and industry to slacken. There was no labour too mean for him to engage in; indeed his daily routine of employment as given by his trumpeter-in-chief, Mr Wordsworth, is such as few Bishops in these degenerate days would permit a clergyman to indulge in. Listen to it—“Eight hours in each day, during five days in the week, and half of Saturday, except when the labours of husbandry were urgent, he was occupied in teaching. His seat was within the rails of the altar: the communion table was his desk; and, like Shenstone's schoolmistress, the master employed himself at the spinning-wheel, while the children were repeating their A POOR PARSON’S LABOURS.lessons by his side. Every evening, after school hours, if not more profitably engaged, he continued the same kind of labour, exchanging, for the benefit of exercise, the small wheel at which he had sate, for the large one on which wool is spun, the spinner stepping to and fro. Thus was the wheel constantly in readiness to prevent the waste of a moment’s time. Nor was his industry with the pen, when occasion called for it, less eager. Intrusted with extensive management of public and private affairs, he acted, in his rustic neighbourhood, as scrivener, writing out petitions, deeds of conveyance, wills, covenants, &c., with pecuniary gain to himself and to the great benefit of his employers. These labours (at all times considerable) at one period of the year, viz., between Christmas and Candlemas, when money transactions are settled in this country, were often so intense, that he passed great part of the night, and sometimes whole nights at his desk. His garden also was tilled by his own hand; he had a right of pasturage on the mountains for a few sheep and a couple of cows, which required his attendance; with this pastoral occupation he joined the labours of husbandry upon a small scale, renting two or three acres in addition to his own less than one acre of glebe; and the humblest drudgery which the cultivation of these fields required was performed by himself. He also assisted his neighbours in haymaking and shearing their flocks, and in the performance of this latter service, he was eminently dexterous.”
For this assistance, he was in the annual habit of levying contributions upon his near neighbours of hay, and on those more distant of wool; and there are several yet remaining, who remember his trudging about the head of the dale with his old white galloway, collecting the tributary fleeces which were carried home pannier-wise upon the said galloway’s back.