The Illustrations in this volume have been engraved and printed in England
by the Hentschel Colourtype Ltd.
THE ENGLISH LAKES
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The present book, it must be understood, treats the English Lakes rather apart from various other elements comprised in what is known as the Lake District. There is so much to say of the waters and their immediate surroundings that no space has remained to describe mountain, pass, and tarn in the manner their beauties merit. Other limits to the book are due to the writer’s promiscuity of taste. I am interested in most things—antiquities, fauna, flora, sports, geology, entomology, and the like; but in not one of these subjects have I that erudite knowledge which might render my work of profit. This book is written to interest those who love out-of-doors without claiming any particular study there. Of the paintings—I can only commend them to notice. In my humblest manner I assert that only an artist who feels the beauty of his environment thoroughly could produce work so stamped with the innate character of our Lakeland.
Of the history of the English Lakes little need be said. We are in a backwater, so to speak, of events; only the outer edges of great affairs have touched us. The mountains have been the last home of the invaded after their defeat in the field and their banishment from the accessible level lands. Druidical, and perhaps more ancient, remains are plentiful, along with relics of Roman, Norseman, and Saxon; but these at best only evidence sparse occupation. So far as history shows, no really great campaign has been fought out in our wilds—the battlefield of Dunmail (and only legend fixes that) is almost the only extensive one within the heart of the fell country. Great religious changes—the Dissolution of Monasteries, the Reformation, the rise of Nonconformity—have been far more striking in their results than ever were the fortunes of war. The mountains of Lakeland and Scotland stand blue on a common horizon, and the alarms and reprisals of Border feud were not unknown. But the hardy warriors from nor’ward did not often risk operations here, where conditions were so unfavourable to their feverish but unsustained method of warfare. The Civil War brought strife between the squires, but no great action was fought, yet in outlying districts the name of Cromwell is not forgotten in weird tale. Though the land of the Lakes has been free from war in the sense of great happenings, it has been far from a peaceful country.
Our lakes are fifteen in number, ranging from the lordly Windermere and Ullswater, ten and a half and nine miles long respectively, to Loweswater and Rydalmere, which hardly exceed the larger tarns in area. Our mountain ranges contain the most elevated ground in England—Scawfell Pike, Scawfell, Helvellyn, and Skiddaw being over three thousand feet in height, and several others approaching that level. About thirty minor waters are scattered over the area known as the Lake District; but I must not make a guidebook of my volume.
My story of the Lakes will be told in the manner it has discovered itself to me. I do not claim originality of method, nor will my reader find much savouring of literary symmetry and style within these covers. My wanderings cover a long series of years, and my recollections are as disconnected as they well can be. I have kept no diary of things seen, and scarcely regret the omission. There is no pile of data to confuse me; trivial impressions have passed away, leaving a harvest of perfect pictures to describe. And if I fail in putting these to paper, my attempt has at least been sincere.
Much has been written of the dalesmen. Some writers deprecate everything we have, from our mountains, the faces of which they hardly know and the mysteries of which they have never dreamt of, down to our social customs, which often they have neither witnessed nor studied. To these nothing need be said, but to our over-laudatory friends I must say that “to gild the lily” is not kind. Dalesman though I am, our faults are quite visible to me, and “don’t pinch us” for them. I meet the dalesman on equal terms. With him at “dipping” eve I have slept, star-embowered, on the open fells. Many curious yarns of the uplands are believed only by the wandering tourist: inner lore of the mountain life is reserved for the home-sanctum. Where, in my wandering story, I feel myself competent to introduce the men of the land, the pictures are as faithful as I can make them. They have a store of stories, yet unprinted, in the wilder glens: stories of weird things, of splendid heroisms among the flocks and fells.
We have two classes of tourists: “The Strenuous Life” and “The Lotos Eaters,” I divide them by their tastes. Others call them “Visitors,” “Tourists” and “Trippers.” The first they adore—they take a “cottage furnished” perhaps, and anyway are profitable in a staid, comfortable manner; the second they tolerate—he is a man of hotels and boarding houses, here to-day, and to-morrow “away ower t’fell,” but, by reason of his plenty, worthy attention; the third they despise; many seem to think that the day-visitor ought to be put down—by violence preferably.
To revert to my own division of our visitors, I feel that my tastes join me in both types. I like the peaceful vales and lakes where the “lotos-eaters” idle the summer hours away, and perhaps the detailed descriptions of so many days of ease may incline the reader to believe that I care nothing for the fells. But I love the breezy uplands, the miles of free moor, the peaks and the crags.