Lake country sketches

by H. D. Rawnsley

Now are the mountains winter-white,
Helvellyn shines in the clear moonlight;
The carollers sing, and the Christmas bells
Send sweet messages up the fells;
The old folk meet for their Christmas cheer,
The young folk skate on the frozen mere;
But Spring is coming, the shy buds peep,
The snow-drop moves in her long, long sleep,
The lemon-light shines on the leafless larch,
And the wood grows purple to welcome March.

Fair, how fair, are the changing days
That keep us happy beneath the Raise,
We who, in honour of Oswald the King,
Our 'bearings' still to the Old Church bring,
We who here in the silent time
Act our part and carol our rhyme.
Seasons change, and our hair grows grey,
But merrily goes the Grasmere play,
And two things stay with us all the year—
Love of our valley, and heart of cheer.

It had been prettily set to music by a Grasmere lady, and the two bass voices chimed in with the two last lines in each verse, and Mattha the tailor and Jonty the farm servant gave great effect to the song by the sudden addition of their manly notes. Before the curtain falls on this scene, we learn that the tourist (to whom we were introduced in the first scene), Mr. Augustus Mallister, who has heard that she is an heiress, is determined, if possible, to win the heart of Betty Braithwaite. He knows that Aaron's absence has made her heart grow fonder. He determines to write a letter, which shall be posted in London, purporting to come from Aaron, in which the absent lover declares that he has become engaged to an American girl; and so the curtain falls.

In the last act, and the first scene, there is a pretty passage, although it is a pathetic one, between Mrs. Hartley and the girl Betty Braithwaite, to whom Mrs. Hartley has given Aaron's letters to read—one of them the fatal letter. In the last scene Norman Braithwaite and his wife, an excellent make-up, come in to talk matters over, and the letter from London amongst other things. Jonty remembers how that, on a certain day in August, the tourist chap, 'the fine gentleman' as he called him, had been spouting out a letter about an Aaron getting wed to an American, and they at once seemed to see light and to feel that the letter Mrs. Hartley had received was a forgery. Just at that time Aaron and Betty enter, and one can tell by a glance at them that it doesn't matter how many forged letters have been written in London; they have quite made up their minds to make a match of it. As for Mallister, 'the fine gentleman,' Jonty breaks in:

'Is it Mallister you're talkin' on? We weant see any more o' yon ne'er-do-weel here. I met t' p'liceman going off wid him to Kendal.'

Norman: 'T' p'liceman! What for?'

Jonty: 'It seems he's been wanted for some time. He's been up to some forgery or summat o' that mak.'

Poor Mrs. Rawlinson, 'the fine gentleman's' landlady, enters greatly distressed that the good name of her house has been compromised by letting lodgings to a forger. 'Why,' says she, 'I thought he was a gentleman, wi' his wawmlets to his breakfast, and his late dinners and siclike.' And so with the assertion that there is nothing to wait for and the wedding shall take place at Martinmas, the curtain goes down, and all's well that ends well.

During the acting it was quite plain that the actors themselves were as much interested as those who witnessed the play. 'I was fairly shamed of myself,' I heard one saying, 'to meet with ye when I came off the last time, for the tears on my face, but if you had given me a five pound note I could not have helped it.' Ah, thought I, that was the secret of your acting so well. Now and again an actor in undress would pass down the room to have a look at the others as they performed their parts, and to report. They would come back with much encouragement to their fellow-players with such words as these: 'Eh, but it's a grand company now, and walls is beginning to stream now'; and in truth the heat of the room and the consequent vapour bath was a thing not to be easily forgotten. But if it had been twice as hot, and the hall had been twice as crammed, and the play had been twice as long, one could still have sat with real pleasure to see such perfect acting done with such simplicity and reality to the life. One wished that Will Shakspere could have come along; how he would have blessed these village folk for their truth and their simplicity. And how good a thing, thought I, it is, that there should be a dull time at the English Lakes, so that, without any temptations to extravagance in scenery or setting of the plays—that would inevitably come with a wider public,—these natural dale-folk can delight their fellow-villagers, by dramatic talent as real as it is remarkable.