Coniston Lake
And the mountain Old Man, on the breast of which is situated the village of Coniston. The view is taken from near Brantwood, Ruskin’s home.
beautiful peeps of Coniston are seen through the woods. Above us on the moor is the romantic sheet of water, Tarn Hows, the favourite stroll of all Coniston habitués. The main road continues over the hill, however, and in another mile reaches the quaintest and most old-world village imaginable. This is Hawkshead. Its old market square, pillared houses with outside stairs, quaint nooks entered by roadways passing under the houses, to say nothing of the centuries-old church, and the grammar school, with the actual desk at which Wordsworth learnt his lessons, are at once interesting and amusing. An old epitaph in the Church-yard, visited from far and near, ran as follows:—
“This stone can boast as good a wife
As ever lived a married life,
And from her marriage to her grave
She was never known to misbehave.
The tongue which others seldom guide
Was never heard to blame or chide,
From every folly always free,
She was what others ought to be.”
It is sad to reflect that the above was erased by the lady’s sons-in-law, for the prosaic reason that “it wasn’t true”! To Hawkshead belongs Esthwaite Water, a reposeful sylvan lakelet, quite different from the more northerly meres, but nevertheless very alluring in its own way, with distant Langdale Pikes and Bowfell a shimmering, almost unreal, background.
In actual distance it is not far from Hawkshead to Wastwater, but there is an entire contrast in the character of their scenery. Wastwater is the grandest of the lakes and is possessed of a wild, sombre beauty. Grouped around its head are Scawfell, Great Gable, Kirk Fell, Yewbarrow and the wild mass of the Pillar, the highest and most rugged of Lakeland’s mountains while—rising directly from the very edge of the water—the boulder-strewn slopes of the Screes, crowned at a height of 1,000 feet by magnificent bastions of rock, confine the southern side of the lake in almost its entire length. It is a very weird sensation to row along the lake under these Screes and see them plunge straight down into the water, until they merge into the blackness of its depths. This is the deepest of the lakes, and the steep angle of the mountain is continued under water for two hundred and fifty-eight feet. Wastwater is open to the west, whence an excellent road leads from Seascale, on the Furness Railway, up to Wastdale Head, the small village about a mile beyond the head of the lake.
Wastdale Head is almost entirely enclosed; indeed Will Ritson, the erstwhile landlord of the hotel and a great character, used to say that “t’ view frae Wastdale Heed was ’tpoorest he knew, for yan could see nowt for t’ mountains”! Many famous men have foregathered here in times past; it has appealed to natures as different as those of Darwin and Ruskin, Sir Walter Scott and Turner, Wordsworth and Professor Sedgwick, all of whom visited it many times. Will Ritson was the contemporary of these visitors and many are the tales told of the jovial times they had. Christopher North and Auld Will, as he was called, wrestled together and the Professor got the worst of three falls, but Auld Will owned that he was “a verra bad ’un to lick.” Christopher North got even with his conqueror next day, however, when, with some other dalesmen, they went on the lake together. When they were well away from the shore, the Professor fell overboard and sank like a stone. Auld Will was terribly upset and, with his companions, did all he could to rescue him when he came to the surface. But the Professor plunged about to such an extent that for long they could not get hold of him. At last one of them seized him round the neck and held him up, whereupon