So prayed he; as our chronicles report,
Though here the hermit number'd his last day,
Far from S. Cuthbert, his beloved friend:
Those holy men both died in the same hour.”
Derwentwater is the most picturesque of all the lakes in point of smiling landscape. It has several little wooded islands dotting its surface; its waters are clear and more blue than those of the other lakes, and the mountains round the shore are less abrupt and naked. Lodore Force tumbles almost perpendicularly into it from the steep, shelving rocks that jut out from the dense forest growth, like the backbone of a huge black snake wriggling through the underbrush. These are the same waters whose sound swept over the lake and smote the ears of the hermit-saint twelve centuries ago. It is, except one, the most romantic waterfall in the Lake Country. Below this wooded hill, and on the very margin of Derwentwater, stands a little old-time inn, as clean as a Dutch house, with a rustic porch and a little lawn before it, ringed in with chains hung in festoons from four or five low posts. In the middle is a miniature gun, which is fired off every now and then for the amusement of the tourists. The echoes thus awakened among the surrounding hills are almost endless.
This beautiful North Country has another interest not so romantic—that of its mines, which are mostly of lead. Just across Derwentwater there is a fine mine, which, from its convenient position, is often visited. We rowed across the lake to see it; but if you have seen one mine, you will scarcely care to see a second—at least if you have no better motive than curiosity. To us on that first expedition it was simply fun. Luckily, there was no proposition made to don male attire for the only woman of the party; a huge oilskin coat with an ample hood quite wrapped her up and protected her for the downward journey. We got into a rough box or “basket,” preferring this quicker and more adventurous mode of descent to the species of chair contrived for the visitors to the mine, and were shot down in an incredibly short space of time to the second “level” of what we saw there is really very little to tell. The lodes or veins of metal looked like irregular lines of shining moisture drawn on the rocky walls; there was a tramway occupying the whole of the narrow gallery that formed the level, and up and down this tramway, at a tremendous rate, and with a noise like thunder, came the trucks loaded [pg 803] with ore. We had to squeeze up against the wall as they passed. The path was more than half submerged; we splashed into pools and puddles at every third or fourth step, and the moisture dropped persistently from the glistening roof. We should have gone to the third and lowest “level” had it not been so thoroughly under water that the miners had to wear long waterproof boots mid-way up their thighs when they worked there. On going up again we stopped at the first level, which looked exactly like the other. We did not gain much information by our excursion, but it was a rare frolic, and we were greatly excited. Our clothes came out of the “basket” in a soaked and streaky condition; but nobody cared, the achievement was enough to make up for anything. Some years later we tried the same sort of experiment, and did not find it nearly so exciting. It was at an iron-mine in Monmouthshire, near the river Wye, famed in the legends of the Round Table; we were let down the shaft in a kind of iron cage (the miners' regular conveyance), which swung unpleasantly to and fro, grinding against the sides of the narrow opening, and bumping us roughly down at the bottom, where, as their time was nearly out, the men were gathering, ready to go up. Here there was literally nothing to see. The work was done a long way off, and there was no time to go there; besides, the place was several inches under water. The interest of this expedition consisted simply in going down and coming up again, and in the feeling that we could “say we had done it.” What was really interesting on this same occasion was the sight of the iron-works and furnaces at nightfall. The metal was put into the furnaces at one end, and came out at the other in a continuous stream of intensest light; blindingly white it poured out, running slowly and spreading itself into a network of grooves all parallel with each other, ready fitted for its reception, where it was left to cool. Few things so truly realize one's idea of light as molten metal. There seemed no color in this beautiful stream, and one could fancy just such an intense glow as that to be the very radiance round the throne of God. It was impossible to stand near it for more than a second, the heat was so fierce, and we had to watch the calm, uninterrupted lustre from a respectful distance. This work was going on in a kind of open shed, sheltered above to protect the furnaces and machinery, but open at the sides, where in the darkness all kinds of strange groups and forms succeeded one another. The commonest circumstances took on solemnity and mystery in this half-light, the red flashes from inside darting like tongues into the fading light, and making of it all a wonderful, living Rembrandt.
To return to our lakes. We had seen all the great ones, and driven across the country in all directions—through mountain passes where the bare crags and bowlders lay heaped together, as if the Titans had flung them there to bar the passage to their fastnesses; through smiling pastoral valleys where the summer stream bubbled peacefully enough, hiding its secrets of roads washed away and trees uprooted by its anger in early spring; by Esthwaite Lake with its solitary yew-tree celebrated by Wordsworth; out into a bleak region of gray stone walls and hungry-looking pastures to Westdale [pg 804] (valley) and Wastwater. Lonely and silent lies the black mere under its frowning cliffs; no house, no inn, near it; tourists seldom pass it, and tradition says that its depths have never been plumbed. We got a boat at a fisherman's hut; it was not often he used it for anything but the necessities of his craft. And yet, in spite—or rather because—of this desolation, Wastwater has made a more lasting impression on us than the show-lakes with their pretty activity and cheerful bustle of tourist-life. Westdale would be just the place to live in if the mind needed bracing and restoring; few places within the pale of civilization can so truly boast of being absolute solitudes. We trust it is not changed even yet. Quite close, but you would not suspect it from the grim, rocky aspect of the scenery, is a little waterfall. It is in a narrow gully, a mere cleft in the rock, but alive with a thousand varying shades of green—ferns in abundance and in every stage of development, broad, dark, glossy leaves of water-plants, and waxy spikes of rockwort. The incline of the waterfall is so gentle, and so many bowlders jut out from the stream, that you could almost climb up this natural staircase; the snow-white spray dashes all over the banks, turning to diamonds in the hearts of the tiny flowers, and to rainbows on the broad surface of leaves; and the noise of the waters—their plash, their gurgle, or their trickle, as they strike moss, pebble, or little hollows round the big bowlders—seems like a living voice.
Our week was nearly up, and we were to meet the noonday train at a station several miles beyond Wastwater. The road lay through rocky passes, and was reckoned a bad one. Our car-driver was doubtful as to whether we could make the distance in the time that remained; for we had been tempted, by the rugged beauty of the lovely vale, to overstay our appointed time for exploration and natural-history collections. The drive was sufficiently exciting, a last bit of “fun” to end our holiday, and we jolted over the rough road, crossing the worn channels of mountain streams, and noticing on the steep sides of the hills what looked like moving bowlders, but what were in reality small, sure-footed sheep, white, brown, and black. The country grew bleaker as we went on, till at last we reached the primitive railway station just in time. We were very sorry to part with our North-Country driver and his car, and return to the civilized mode of rapid locomotion; the more so as the scenery through which we flew for two or three hours was as barren and as desolate as the shores of the Dead Sea. Gray stone walls made a sort of magnified chess-board of the level country, enclosing small fields of forlorn-looking stubble or bits of dark-red ploughed land. It was inexpressibly dreary, and a marvellous contrast to the beautiful region, bold and rocky, or wooded and smiling, which we had left behind us.
At last we reached Furness, our last halting-place. Here there was a coquettish little station, gay with ornamental wood and wire-work, and with autumn flowers and late climbing roses, while beyond the trim lawn stood an inviting hotel—modern, it is true, but decked out in villa style, full of bay-windows and gables, with green Venetian blinds and long French windows opening into a garden. There was no trace of a village near, or of any human dwelling but these two [pg 805] buildings. The reason was that both of these were subservient to the ruins of S. Mary's Abbey, which stood, as it were, within the hotel-garden. S. Mary's, Furness, is one of the three most stately and most perfect ruined abbeys in England; the others are Fountain's Abbey in Yorkshire, and Tintern on the Wye, Monmouthshire. It is built of red sandstone, the warm hue contrasting beautifully with the luxurious growth of evergreens all round and inside its arches and cloisters. The tracery of the great pointed windows is almost intact, but here and there the tracery of delicate climbing plants is so interwoven with it that the marvel of carving is lost in the wealth of each summer's renewed growth. The church is built in the shape of a cross. The walls and windows of the nave are untouched, and down the centre are the two rows of columns that divided it from the aisles—round Saxon pillars, alternating with clustered Gothic shafts, a sheaf of colonnettes forming one support. The bases of all of them remain, though every one is broken more or less near the base, none being more than two or three feet high. Of course the roof is gone, and everywhere around shaft and pillar grow tall flowering grasses, shrubs with bright berries and spear-like leaves, while a carpet of grass as green as an emerald covers the stone floor. There were seven altars in the church, and the steps to the smaller ones are even now marked by the gradual ascent of the turf. Poking into the earth with a walking-stick, we soon came to the stone steps, not more than three inches under ground. The chancel and sedilia are very perfect, and everywhere the piscinæ are visible in the walls. The chapter-room preserved its stone groined roof up to twenty or thirty years ago, when it fell in. On the walls are the remains of lovely, intricate diaper-work. The refectory is a long hall with a row of columns (only the bases exist now) down the centre, and the principal dormitory is said to have been exactly above this. The whole is now open to the sky. The quiet cloister, with some of the old graves of dead and gone Cistercian monks, is still traceable, and beyond is a little enclosed and railed-in stone chamber, contrived out of the ruined walls, but carefully roofed in, and used to stow away such fragments of sculpture as have been found within the precincts of the abbey. They are thus preserved from the rapacity of tourists. There are bones and skulls among them, too. The North of England was once called the garden-land of the Cistercians; their abbeys abounded in that region, and their power, temporal and spiritual, was paramount. The abbots at the head of those religious corporations of early days had episcopal jurisdiction and claimed episcopal privileges, and were far more powerful than the wandering bishops who had no abbey to back their authority. They had tracts of land and many serfs. In many respects the “villeins” of the church were a happy and a privileged set of people. They were not obliged to serve in the king's armies, as were the serfs of secular lords, and they could not be sued for debt or trespass, or any other local offence. They were immediately and solely under the jurisdiction of the abbot, which superseded, in their case, that of the common law. In return for their service, agricultural and otherwise, [pg 806] the abbot gave them shelter, food, clothing, and protection—not an unequal bargain, even for our days; but when we transport ourselves into the conditions of life in the middle ages, it will be easily seen how desirable a fate it was to be “made over to the church.” In those days protection was a greater boon than even food, lodging, or clothing; it was then what “habeas corpus” and the right of inviolability of domicile are now; and so long as the substance existed, it is idle to quarrel with the garb in which it was clothed.
The ruins were thronged all day; that was the only drawback to our enjoyment, but we remedied that at night. Every train came laden with tourists to see Furness Abbey; they walked about with guide-books and luncheon-baskets, and popped champagne-corks in the cloisters, and strewed chicken-bones among the bases of the great Saxon pillars, chatting, laughing, and joking, and evidently enjoying themselves as they would at a country fair or a cattle-show. This went on all day long; but towards night, after a late dinner at the hotel, they subsided, and scarcely a soul was to be seen in the garden. The men were in the billiard-room, and the women probably packing their things for the morrow's journey; so we slipped out, two of us, and went over to the deserted ruins. The moon was up, not quite at her full, but bright enough to make the scene very beautiful, and there were many stars as well. It is not easy to describe the impression this night-view of the old Catholic abbey made on us; one might as well try to catch a moonbeam, and examine it and find out what it is made of. Every one can sketch the picture for himself; every one with a love of the beautiful, the spiritualized, will understand what was its solemn charm. We roamed about in silence from nave to cloisters, from refectory to chapel-room, and then, hand-in-hand, went with something of awe in our hearts into the old chancel, where in the days of the monks none ever went but the cowled, white-robed Cistercians themselves—an angel and virgin choir meet to sing the praises of the Lamb. By the sedilia, in the beautiful carved recesses of which scarcely a stone is out of place or an ornament broken off, we knelt down and said the rosary together for the conversion of England.