By this time the hands of the clock nearly point to starting-time; passengers are rapidly coming on board, and to hurry up laggards Mr. Hammel sends a flute-like note booming and swelling from the syren. Now there is a quiet rumble as the engines start, a purling of water beneath the stern, and the Gondola backs out into the lake. Tent Lodge, where Tennyson once dwelt, is almost opposite—a square sturdy house standing on a narrow green bank just above the water. The little landing-stage looks decidedly picturesque now; our craft pauses as though regretting to leave so happy a scene, then again the thrumming begins and we are swung round toward the foot of the lake. Far away two green banks contract till the water seems to end: Fir Island narrows the curving lake there. Brantwood is a pretty house beneath the fell, the views from its windows are splendid. Here Ruskin came to spend his latter days, in a house which had been occupied by Linton, the famous wood-engraver. The homelikeness of Brantwood is to me its chief charm: once a dweller in it, no mortal can, I should think, be so dead to natural beauties as not often to picture it, when far away, in memory’s freshest pigments. The eyes of all on board are turned to Brantwood—Mr. Hammel is speaking of it to a bevy of interested young ladies, the other lakemen are pointing it out to those near them; but, seated on the knife-like ridge of iron where his stokehole joins the deck, the engineer is looking intently at the greasy jacket of his boiler! Instantly his posture captures my attention. What meant that strange position? Were we in danger of an explosion? The engineer’s back was eloquent of intent inspection, even of alertness. Nothing happened, however, and as none of the lakemen seemed apprehensive I did not allow that rapt gaze to spoil my pleasure further.
“Brantwood?” says Mr. Hammel, “and Ruskin? Well, of course I knew the Professor well. He wasn’t a man to laugh and talk much, though. For five-and-twenty years I have done odd repairs to Mr. Severn’s yacht at Brantwood, and I often met the old gentleman thereabouts. Mr. Ruskin did not like scrow [upset], I remember, and every year the family used to go down to Lake Bank Hotel till spring cleaning was over. Mr. Ruskin went with them, of course. Mr. Severn used to hire the Gondola, and we ran in to the landing-stage to take servants and luggage on board. Now you know Mr. Ruskin didn’t like our boat at all—I believe he used to write a bit bitter about it; but I remember once (it was in the seventies) when we drew it to the stage, that Mr. Ruskin stood there with Mrs. Severn and the family. I was surprised and some pleased, I can tell you, when he came on board. He went all over the boat, into every corner while we were steaming down, looked at the engines a long while and asked a lot of sharp questions about them—he knew a fair bit about machinery in spite of his old-fashioned ways and ideas. Then when we were nearing Lake Bank he came out of the saloon there, and as he passed me, said with a nice smile, ‘I may like steam after all.’”
AN OLD INN KITCHEN, CONISTON
“Do you remember any others of the big men who lived about here,” I ask my friend.
“Oh yes: there was Mr. Tennyson lived across at Tent Lodge awhile, and in the seventies we had Carlyle here at the Waterhead Hotel two or three weeks. He used to have the steamer nearly every morning for a cruise around. He was a pleasant man to do with, but quiet. They used to say to me that Carlyle never laughed, and Mr. Ruskin but rarely, but I know different. One evening when Carlyle was here, I was across at Brantwood doing some repair to Mr. Severn’s yacht that was drawn up on the slip. While I was working away, down from the house came Mr. Ruskin and Carlyle and sat down on a pile of rough stones beside the slip. I didn’t take much heed of what they were talking about, for I was thrang [busy]; but I remember well that I was surprised to hear a big burst of laughing. I looked up—it was Mr. Ruskin, and before my eyes were fairly clapt on him Carlyle roared out quite as long and loud as he. Then they sat there full a quarter of an hour, talking quite merry, and every now and then there was a crack of laughing as made your heart feel glad.”
At this Mr. Hammel steps away and takes charge of the wheel of the steamer. There is little need of fine steering, for the water is deep and free from reefs.
We move along the crowded promenade deck to get a better view of the grand mountains clustering around. Like a sheet of blue the water stretches far away to meet the multi-shaded greens beneath High Cross. Yewdale crags are prominent, but the soaring ridges culminating in Old Man’s pointed top fill the eye most. Now the eastern shore is crowded with regiments of larches, growing where once the old monks burnt charcoal for their bloomeries by the beckside. On the right is Torver Common where never a wall is to be seen, and the lake-shore is fringed with rocks. Fir Island, a mass of Scotch firs or stone pines, anchored to a narrow rib of rock, has been passed, and now seems like a promontory of green. The woods on the mainland look delightful in this pleasant air, but the stiff lines of their planting is rather an eyesore. The coppice woods next succeed, in wide acres climbing to the skyline. These are allowed to grow fifteen years, then, when the saplings are about six inches thick, all are felled. The best wood is sent down to the mines to use as props; the other portions, after being peeled (for even in these days of chemical tanning bark of ash and oak and sycamore is still put on the market), are placed in neat circular piles in the centre of which a fire is laid. Then by a covering of wet turf the air is excluded. The fire has been sufficiently kindled not to be put out by the short supply of air, and it smoulders away for weeks. Much charcoal burning is done in the winter, and a pleasant scene it is to find on a snow-clad day lines of smoke rising from the barrenness where once was woodland, men moving round the conical patches from which internal heat has melted the white covering, the rough huts, the incipient flicker which has to be immediately quenched else the whole oven of charcoal be spoiled, the thinning smoke which threatens a dead fire there, to which the woodmen hasten to encourage the hidden blaze.
THE SHEPHERD, YEWDALE, CONISTON