There is no finer highway in the north of England than the Carlisle road through Penrith. It pursues nearly if not quite the course of the old Roman road following the lowlands along the river—a broad white way which leads through a pleasant succession of fields and villages. We pass many ancient landmarks—on the left Brougham Castle, a red sandstone ruin splashed with ivy and creepers, and farther on to the right, Eden Hall, made famous by the ballad of Uhland.
Penrith is a busy town of ten thousand or more, seemingly improved since our visit of four years before, when it had no electric light plant. It is the starting-point for most Lake District excursions, whether by rail or coach. The railway follows the wagon road quite closely to Keswick and from thence one must have some other conveyance than rail to explore the region. And is it not well enough, for what impression worth while could one gain of Lakeland from a railway car?
From Keswick we turn southward over the hills, from whose summits the landscape—every hill and vale redolent with music and memories of the “Lakers”—stretches away beneath us, the lakes set in the valleys like great flashing gems. How familiar the odd names have been made by the poets of Lakeland! Skiddaw, Helvellyn, Borrowdale, Langdale Pikes and Fells, Rydal, Grasmere, and a hundred others—all call to mind the stanzas of Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth.
Our road sweeps up and down the hills along the sinuous shores of Thirlmere, certainly one of the most picturesque of the bright sisterhood of English lakes, but which now serves the very practical purpose of a source of water-supply for the city of Manchester, which acquired it by purchase. This transaction has aroused the indignation of a modern lake poet who falls little short of the best traditions of his illustrious predecessors and he makes vigorous protest against the cities whose “million-throated thirst” menaces the “sacred meres” of Lakeland. But the Manchester ownership—prosaic as it may be—has not detracted from the beauty of Thirlmere and many nuisances that once encumbered its shores have been abated.
But the human interest of the lakes centers around Grasmere and Rydal Water. Perchance Rydal and Grasmere and Dove Cottage are out of place in a chronicle of unfamiliar England, and yet who could write of the Lake District with no reference to the very attractions that have made it most famous? It is late as we pass the quaint old church “with bald bare tower” and pause at the cottage just off the highroad, where Wordsworth passed so many years in humble state that verged closely on poverty, as one would count it now. There is little of the picturesque in the gray-stone slate-roofed cottage, though the diamond-paned windows and the rose vines climbing to the eaves somewhat relieve the monotony of the square walls and the rude stone fence just in front. Like Shakespeare’s house, it is now the property of an association which insures its preservation in memory of the poet. It has been restored as nearly as possible to the same condition as during the occupancy of the Wordsworths, and the collection of books and other relics pertaining to them is being constantly increased.
It is easy for us to enter into the daily life of the poet as we pass through the small and rather rudely furnished rooms; and one must indeed be totally lacking in poetic instinct if he cannot feel at least a touch of sympathy with the pleasant surroundings so often the theme of the great laureate of the simple life. We sit in the rustic seat which Wordsworth was wont to occupy and can look over the gray roof of the cottage to the long succession of hills stretching away until their blue outlines are silhouetted against the sunset sky—verily an inspiration even to the most matter-of-fact intellect. We know that much of Wordsworth’s best work was composed in the little garden to the rear of the cottage—a bit of earth that he loved with an intensity that has found more than one expression in his written words. And it was of the very seat upon which we sit that he wrote:
“Beneath these fruit tree boughs that shed
Their snow-white blossoms on my head,
With brightest sunshine round me spread
Of spring’s unclouded weather,
In this sequestered nook how sweet
To sit upon my orchard seat!
And birds and flowers once more to greet
My last year’s friends together.”
But to know more of the simple, happy life at Dove Cottage, one may read from the letter written by Dorothy in 1800:
“We are daily more delighted with Grasmere and its neighborhood. Our walks are perpetually varied, and we are more fond of the mountains as our acquaintance with them increases. We have a boat upon the lake, and a small orchard and smaller garden, which, as it is the work of our own hands, we regard with pride and partiality. Our cottage is quite large enough for us, though very small; and we have made it neat and comfortable within doors; and it looks very nice on the outside; for though the roses and honeysuckles which we have planted against it are only of this year’s growth, yet it is covered all over with green leaves and scarlet flowers; for we have trained scarlet beans upon threads, which are not only exceedingly beautiful but very useful, as their produce is immense. We have made a lodging-room of the parlor below stairs, which has a stone floor, therefore we have covered it all over with matting. We sit in a room above stairs, and we have one lodging-room with two single beds, a sort of lumber-room, and a small low unceiled room, which I have papered with newspapers, and in which we have put a small bed.”