On Friday, the 6th September 1844, I set off to breakfast at Rydal Mount, it being the day fixed by Mr. Wordsworth for our long-projected excursion to the Valley of the Duddon.
The rain fell in torrents, and it became doubtful whether we should set off or not; but as it was a thunder-shower, we waited till it was over, and then Wordsworth, Mr. Quillinan, Miss Hutchinson, and I, set forth in our carriage to Coniston, where we were to find the Rydal Mount carriage awaiting us with Mr. Hutchinson. Wordsworth talked very agreeably on the way to Coniston, and repeated several verses of his own, which he seemed pleased that Serjeant Talfourd had repeated to him the day before. He mentioned a singular instance of T. Campbell's inaccuracy of memory in having actually printed as his own a poem of Wordsworth's, 'The Complaint:' he repeated it beautifully as we were going up the hill to Coniston. On reaching the inn in the village of Coniston, the rain again fell in torrents. At length, the carriages were ordered to the door with the intention of our returning home; but just as they were ready the sun broke out, and we turned the horse's head towards Ulpha Kirk. The right bank of Coniston was all new to me after we passed the village, and Old Man of Coniston. The scenery ceases to be bold and rugged, but is very pleasing, the road passing through hazel copses, the openings showing nice little cornfields and comfortable detached farms, with old uncropped trees standing near them; some very fine specimens of old ash trees, which I longed to transport to Easedale, where they have been so cruelly lopped. The opening towards the sea, as we went on, was very pleasing; but the first striking view of the Duddon was looking down upon it soon after we passed Broughton, where you turn to the right, and very soon after perceive the peculiar beauty of the valley, although it does not take its wild and dreamlike beauty till you pass Ulpha Kirk. We reversed the order of the sonnets, and saw the river first, 'in radiant progress tow'rd the deep,' instead of tracing this 'child of the clouds' from its cradle in the lofty waste. We reached the Kirk of Ulpha between five and six. The appearance of the little farm-house inn at once made anything approaching to a dinner an impossibility had we wished it ever so much; but in due time we had tea and boiled ham, with two eggs apiece, and were much invigorated by this our first Duddonian meal. The hostess was evidently surprised that we thought of remaining all night, so humbly did she think of the accommodation she had to offer. She remembered Mr. Wordsworth sleeping there fifteen years ago, because it was just after the birth of her daughter, a nice comely girl who attended us at tea. Mr. Quillinan showed great good nature and unselfishness in the arrangements he made, and the care he took of the admirable horse, which I saw him feeding out of a tub, a manger being too great a refinement for Ulpha.
After tea, although it was getting dark, we went to the churchyard, which commands a beautiful view towards Seathwaite, and we then walked in that direction, through a lane where the walls were more richly covered by moss and fern than any I ever saw before. A beautiful dark-coloured tributary to the Duddon comes down from the moors on the left hand, about a mile from Ulpha; and soon after we had passed the small bridge over this stream, Mr. Wordsworth recollected a well which he had discovered some thirty or forty years before. We went off the road in search of it, through a shadowy, embowered path; and as it was almost dark we should probably have failed in finding it, had we not met a very tiny boy, with a can of water in his hand, who looked at us in speechless amazement, when the Poet said, 'Is there a well here, my little lad?' We found the well, and then joined the road again by another path, leaving the child to ponder whether we were creatures of earth or air.
Saturday morning was cloudy but soft, and lovely in its hazy effects. When I went out about seven, I saw Wordsworth going a few steps, and then moving on, and stopping again, in a very abstracted manner; so I kept back. But when he saw me, he advanced, and took me again to the churchyard to see the morning effects, which were very lovely. He said he had not slept well, that the recollection of former days and people had crowded upon him, and, 'most of all, my dear sister; and when I thought of her state, and of those who had passed away, Coleridge, and Southey, and many others, while I am left with all my many infirmities, if not sins, in full consciousness, how could I sleep? and then I took to the alteration of sonnets, and that made the matter worse still.' Then suddenly stopping before a little bunch of harebell, which, along with some parsley fern, grew out of the wall near us, he exclaimed, 'How perfectly beautiful that is!
"Would that the little flowers that grow could live,
Conscious of half the pleasure that they give."'
He then expatiated on the inexhaustible beauty of the arrangements of Nature, its power of combining in the most secret recesses, and that it must be for some purpose of beneficence that such operations existed. After breakfast, we got into the cart of the inn, which had a seat swung into it, upon which a bolster was put, in honour, I presume, of the Poet Laureate. In this we jogged on to Seathwaite, getting out to ascend a craggy eminence on the right, which Mrs. Wordsworth admired: the view from it is very striking. You see from it all the peculiarities of the vale, the ravine where the Duddon 'deserts the haunts of men,' 'the spots of stationary sunshine,' and the homesteads which are scattered here and there, both on the heights and in the lower ground near protecting rocks and craggy steeps. Seathwaite I had a perfect recollection of; and the way we approached it twenty years ago, from Coniston over Walna Scar, is the way Mr. Wordsworth still recommends as the most beautiful. We went on some distance beyond the chapel, and every new turning and opening among the hills allured us on, till at last the Poet was obliged to exercise the word of command, that we should proceed no further. The return is always a flat thing, so I shall not detail it, except that we reached our respective homes in good time; and I hope I shall never cease to think with gratitude and pleasure of the kindness of my honoured guide through the lovely scenes he has rescued from obscurity, although it happily still remains an unvitiated region, 'which stands in no need of the veil of twilight to soften or disguise its features: as it glistens in the morning's sun it fills the spectator's heart with gladsomeness.'
November 21.—My mother and I called at Rydal last Saturday, to see the Wordsworths after their autumnal excursion. We found him only at home, looking in great vigour and much the better for this little change of scene and circumstance. He spoke with much interest of a communication he had had from a benevolent surgeon at Manchester, an admirer of his, who thinks that a great proportion of the blindness in this country might be prevented by attention to the diseases of the eye in childhood. He spoke of two very interesting blind ladies he had seen at Leamington, one of whom had been at Rydal Mount a short time before her 'total eclipse,' and now derived the greatest comfort from the recollection of these beautiful scenes, almost the last she looked on. He spoke of his own pleasure in returning to them, and of the effect of the first view from 'Orrest Head,' the point mentioned in his 'unfortunate[250] sonnet, which has,' he said, 'you are aware, exposed me to the most unlooked for accusations. They actually accuse me of desiring to interfere with the innocent enjoyments of the poor, by preventing this district becoming accessible to them by a railway. Now I deny that it is to that class that this kind of scenery is either the most improving or the most attractive. For the very poor the great God of Nature has mercifully spread out His Bible everywhere; the common sunshine, green fields, the blue sky, the shining river, are everywhere to be met with in this country; and it is only an individual here and there among the uneducated classes who feels very deeply the poetry of lakes and mountains; and such persons would rather wander about where they like, than rush through the country in a railway. It is not, therefore, the poor, as a class, that would benefit morally or mentally by a railway conveyance; while to the educated classes, to whom such scenes as these give enjoyment of the purest kind, the effect would be almost entirely destroyed.'