Turning again to the bay, with its view of Belle Isle, and the blue mountains peering over the bluffs of Furness, it strikes every visitor that the landing-place is exceedingly cramped. Thousands use the boats; were the rival proprietors less good-natured traffic would be impossible. Perennially there is a movement afoot to acquire additional frontage for the public use, but as perennially it fails. In the Diamond Jubilee year, many thought that an acquirement was coming at last. Negotiations were opened for land to the south of the bay, but the Vicar of Windermere could not meet the promoters.
Aboard the Swift again, we are borne into the upper basin. On Lady Holme was once a chapel, served by the monks of Segden Abbey, one of the Scotch monasteries. They were in possession so early as 1355, and till the Dissolution maintained two priests here. There is, in some old descriptions, a legend that one of these priests, to mortify his flesh, caused himself to be chained in the crag above Rawlinson’s Nab, and there he remained for thirty years or so, before death released him. Sweet in early May are the islets here with lily of the valley: at any time it is pleasant to land on them, for they are dry, their brakes are not tangled—an ideal place for a quiet afternoon. As the steamer goes on, the scene grows in grandeur. Over a vast plain of water the distant mountains seem to hang. There are misty indications of level meadows and woodlands next the water, but the charm lies in the craggy, shaggy braes and the uprising summits. The woods continue—larch! larch! planted in harsh geometrical lines on the Furness side; the opposite, though really covered with villas, presents a happy, confused forest of oak and ash, sycamore, elm, beech, interspersed with hollies and great patches of underwood. The white foam of hawthorn flecks these hills in early summer; later, patches of gorse, in wild, unconsidered corners, brighten up the heavy green. Then come the heather and the heather bell, empurpling the higher ground; till September’s chilly nights turn the leafage to glories of gold and crimson, the brackens to red and russet. We are now opposite Millerground; the lake near shore is shallow and tempting to the angler.
The hill jutting out above there is Orrest Head—the viewpoint of the Lake County. I have no wish to disparage other of our views: each has its merits. From Orrest you look up and down the river-lake, Winandermere, winding through a long valley. Round the head of its hollow are rugged masses of mountain, cut into by narrow glens and ghylls. The basins of Langdale, of Grasmere, with their tarns and lakes, are hidden in a maze of wildering rocks. Right opposite, the Furness fells, ridge beyond ridge, till, a grand barrier, Coniston Old Man heaves skyward, give no indication of two lakes and wide valleys embosomed beneath. There are two circumstances under which they who climb Orrest are especially well repaid: on a calm June morning, when the lake like a mirror reflects every detail of the hills, when the ruffle of a passing boat or steamer dies away on the dead calm; the other time is when light clouds are drifting across the sky and you can see dappled areas floating over water and wood and fell. There is little to choose between these and when the sun sinks in a bank of vapour behind the Langdale Pikes. Instantly a crimson light filters across the upper basin, picking out bay and islet in a halo of brilliance. For half an hour it becomes more glorious, then to purple and to grey the light declines. Yet, again, climb Orrest when thick snow covers the earth. The scene is awe-inspiring: if in moonlight, you see the terror and majesty of winter; in sunshine the air is filled with chill radiance, and the scene invites you not to despond but to work or play with a will. But this is not of the steam yacht and the lakeside.
Opposite us, with its big round chimneys, is Calgarth, the mansion of the Philipsons. There is nothing now to distinguish it from the Calvegarth it originally was. If the place was ever fortified, all traces of such, save its thick walls, have disappeared. The house has the reputation of being haunted, for the misdeeds of a Naboth. Desiring land in the possession of an old couple, he had them convicted for theft. The old woman, who had occult power, pronounced seven curses against the Philipsons. The couple were duly hung at Appleby, but their skulls came home to Calgarth ere morning light. And at Calgarth they have remained, though men have calcined them with lime, cast them into the lake, and buried them on the mountains. Horrible sounds were heard, groanings and shriekings and wild lament, after any tampering with the uncanny things; so, to prevent further trouble, they were built into the wall—and few now believe in their existence. There are other mysteries hereabout too. When grievous trouble is at hand, a spectral white horse passes over the lake from shore to shore. And occasionally the wanderer’s eye is caught by a faint iris on the water, rivalling in its clear tinges the very rainbow. Both phenomena are said to be well vouched for, which, I presume, has made it not essential for the present writer to witness them.
OLD LABURNUMS AT NEWBY BRIDGE, WINDERMERE
Above Calgarth is the great glen of Troutbeck, where many illustrious personages, from Hugh Bird, a giant of Henry III.’s time, downward, have lived. Hogarth, the weird painter of sordid life, was born here, and at one time the sign of the old Mortal Man inn was held to be his work: a very free drawing it was, of a burly man with vermilion nose, confronted by a thin, white-visaged stranger, with the couplets:
“Oh, Mortal Man, who lives on bread,
How came thy nose to be so red?”
“Thou silly ass, that art so pale,