A Month in Yorkshire

by Walter White

A short distance beyond the inn there rises sheer from the road a grand limestone cliff, before which you will be tempted to pause. A low grassy slope, bordered by a narrow brook, forms a natural plinth; small trees and ivy grow from the fissures high overhead, and large trees and bush on the ledges; the colony of swallows that inhabit the holes flit swiftly about the crest, and what with the contrast of verdure and rock, and the magnitude of the cliff, your eye is alike impressed and gratified. By taking a little trouble you may get to the top, and while looking on the scene beneath, let your thoughts run back to the time when Wharfedale was a loch, such as Loch Long or Loch Fyne, into which the tides of the sea flowed twice a day, beating against the base of the Kilnsey Crag, where now sheep graze, and men pass to and fro on business or pleasure.

To take my start the next morning from so lofty a headland: to feel new life thrill through every limb from the early sun; to drink of the spring which the cliff overshadows where it gushes forth among mossy stones at the root of an ash; to inhale the glorious breeze that tempered the heat, was a delightful beginning of a day’s walk. Soon we cross to the left bank of Wharfe, and follow the road between the river and a cliffy range of rocks to Kettlewell, enjoying pleasing views all the way. And the village itself seems a picture of an earlier age—a street of little stone cottages, backed by gardens and orchards; here and there a queer little shop; the shoemaker sitting with doors and windows open looking out on his flowers every time he lifts his eyes; the smith, who has opened all his shutters to admit the breeze, hammering leisurely, as if half inclined for a holiday with such a wealth of sunshine pouring down; and Nancy Hardaker, Grocer and Draper, and dealer in everything besides, busying herself behind her little panes with little preparations for customers. It is a simple picture: one that makes you believe the honest outward aspect is only the expression of honesty within.

For one who had time to explore the neighbourhood, Kettlewell would be good head-quarters. It has two inns, and a shabby tenement inscribed Temperance Hotel. Hence you may penetrate to the wild fells at the head of the dale; or climb to the top of Great Whernside; or ramble over the shoulder of the great mountain into Coverdale, discovering many a rocky nook, and many a little cascade and flashing rill. Great Whernside, 2263 feet high, commands views into many dales, and affords you a glimpse of far-off hills which we have already climbed. The Great one has a brother named Little Whernside, because he is not so high by nearly three hundred feet. The “limestone pass” between Great Whernside and Buckden Pike is described as a grand bit of mountain scenery.

From Kettlewell the road still ascends the dale, in sight of the river which now narrows to the dimensions of a brook. Crags and cliffs still break out of the hill-slopes, and more than any other that we have visited, you see that Wharfedale is characterized by scars and cliffs. The changing aspect of the scenery is manifest; the grass is less luxuriant than lower down, and but few of the fields are mown. Starbottom, a little place of rude stone houses, with porches that resemble an outer stair, reminds us once more of a mountain village; but it has trim flower-gardens, and fruit-trees, and a fringe of sycamores.

I came to Buckden, the next village, just in time to dine with the haymakers. Right good fare was provided—roast mutton, salad, and rice pudding. Who would not be a hay-maker! Beyond the village the road turns away from the river, and mounts a steep hill, where, from the top of the bend, we get our last look down Wharfedale, upwards along Langstrothdale, and across the elevated moorlands which enclose Penyghent. Everywhere the gray masses of stone encroach on the waving grass. Still the road mounts, and steeply; on the left, in a field, are a few small enclosures, all standing, which, perhaps, represent the British dwellings at the foot of Addleborough. Still up, through the hamlet of Cray, with rills, rocks, and waterfalls on the right and left, and then the crown of the pass, and a wide ridgy hollow, flanked by cliffs, the outliers of Buckden Pike, which rears itself aloft on the right. Then two or three miles of this breezy expanse, between Stake Fell on one side and Wasset Fell on the other, and we come to the top of Kidstone bank, and suddenly Bishopdale opens before us, a lovely sylvan landscape melting away into Wensleydale. It will tempt you to lie down for half an hour on the soft turf and enjoy the prospect at leisure.

The descent is alike rough and steep, bringing you rapidly down to the first farm. A cliff on the right gradually merges into the rounded swell of a green hill; we come to a plantation where, in the open places by the beck, grow wild strawberries; then to trees on one side—ash, holly, beech, and larch, the stems embraced by ivy, and thorns and wild roses between; then trees on both sides, and the narrow track is beautiful as a Berkshire lane—and that is saying a great deal—and the brook which accompanies it makes a cheerful sound as if gladdened by the quivering sunbeams that fall upon it. Everywhere the haymakers are at work, and with merry hearts, for the wind blows lustily and makes the whole dale vocal.

By-and-by the lane sends off branches, all alike pretty, one of which brings us down into the lowest meadows, and on the descent we get glimpses of Bolton Castle, and on the right appears Penhill, shouldering forward like a great promontory. A relic of antiquity may yet be seen on its slopes—obscure remains of a Preceptory of the Knights Templars. The watcher on Penhill was one of those who helped to spread the alarm of invasion in the days of Napoleon the Great, for he mistook a fire on the eastern hills for the beacon on Rosebury Topping, and so set his own a-blaze. We come to Thoralby, a village of comfortable signs within, and pleasant prospects without; and now Wensleydale opens, and another half-hour brings us to Aysgarth, a large village four miles below Bainbridge.

A tall maypole stands on the green, the only one I remember to have seen in Yorkshire. It is a memorial of the sports and pastimes for which Wensleydale was famous. The annual feasts and fairs would attract visitors from twenty miles around. Here, at Aysgarth, not the least popular part of the amusements were the races, run by men stark naked, as people not more than forty years old can well remember. But times are changed; and throughout the dale drunkenness and revelry are giving way to teetotalism, lectures, tea-gatherings, and other moral recreations. And the change is noticeable in another particular: the Quakers, who were once numerous in the dale, have disappeared too.

Some two or three years ago a notion prevailed in a certain quarter that the time was ripe for making proselytes, and establishing a meeting once more at Aysgarth. The old meeting-house, the school-room, and dwelling-house, remained; why should they not be restored to their original uses? Was it not “about Wensleydale” that George Fox saw “a great people in white raiment by a river-side?” Did he not, while on his journey up the dale, go into the “steeple-house” and “largely and freely declare the word of life, and have not much persecution,” and afterwards was locked into a parlour as “a young man that was mad, and had run away from his relations?” From certain indications it seemed that a successful effort might be made; an earnest and active member of the society volunteered to remove with his family from London into Yorkshire to carry out the experiment; and soon the buildings were repaired, the garden was cultivated anew, the doors of the meeting-house were opened; the apostle went about and talked to the people, and gave away tracts freely. The people listened to him, and read his tracts, and were well content to have him among them; but the experiment failed—not one became a Quaker.

At the beginning of the present year (1858) an essay was advertised for, on the causes of the decline of Quakerism, simultaneously with a great increase in the population at large. It appears to me that the causes are not far to seek. One of them I have already mentioned: others consist in what Friends call a “guarded education,” which seeks rather to ignore vice than to implant abhorrence of it; in training children by a false standard: “Do this; don’t do that;” not because it is right or wrong, but because such is or is not the practice of Friends, so that when the children grow old enough to see what a very foolish Mrs. Grundy they have had set before them as a model, they naturally suspect imposition, become restive, and kick over the traces. Moreover, to set up fidgetty crotchets as principles of truth, whereby the sense of the ludicrous is excited in others, and not reverence, is not the way to increase and multiply. Many Quakers now living will remember the earnest controversy that once stirred them as to whether it might be proper to use umbrellas, and to wear hats with a binding round the edge of the brim; and the anxious breeches question, of which a ministress said in her sermon, that it was “matter of concern to see so many of the young men running down into longs, yet the Lord be thanked, there was a precious remnant left in shorts.” And again, silent worship tends to diminish numbers, as also the exceeding weakness—with rare exceptions—of the words that occasionally break the silence; and the absence of an external motive to fix the attention encourages roving thoughts. Hence Darlington railway-shares, and the shop-shelves, and plans for arbours and garden-plots, employ the minds of many who might have other thoughts did they hear—“Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”