Had we been standing, in October of that year, 1850, at Miss Robson the milliner’s humble little door in Keswick, just where Greenhow’s shop stands out so conspicuously beside the Queen’s Hotel, I think we should have seen a very remarkable looking pair of lovers issuing from the house.  What did they look like?  Thomas Carlyle, a friend and for the past eight years a keen critic, who, in 1842, wrote, “Alfred Tennyson alone of this time has proved singing in our curt English language to be possible in some measure,” was climbing our Cumbrian hills in that same autumn.  “Mrs. Tennyson,” says Carlyle, “lights up bright glittering blue eyes when you speak to her, has wit; has sense:” (those blue-grey eyes she got from the Franklin stock down in Lincolnshire); she seems frail and delicate, but her carriage is that of a queen. (pp. 176-177)

The fine gipsy-looking man at her side, half-hidden by his great sombrero hat and the clouds of tobacco rolling from his pipe, has, so Carlyle tells us, “a great shock of rough dusty hair, bright laughing hazel eyes, massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate, of sallow brown complexion almost Indian-looking, clothes cynically loose, free and easy.  His voice musically metallic, fit for loud laughter and piercing wail and all that may lie between.” (p. 177)

Up comes an open carriage, and while the lady is having a talk in the little gossip-shop of that day, the handsome gipsy-looking man hears that this is the Mirehouse carriage.  The lady, who is Miss Spedding, returns, and at once the shaggy stranger bows, and makes tender inquiry after his bosom friend, James Spedding, and evidently knows and loves Mirehouse so well, that in a trice it is arranged for him and his wife to take seats in the carriage, and go out to Mirehouse to pay a call.  This, too, not without relief to Miss Robson, who, as I have been told, “thought the poet rather a formidable person for her little lodgings, but was charmed with Mrs. Tennyson, she was so sweet and gentle.” (pp. 177-178)

Much talk have they on the way, but never once does the stranger lend a clue as to his connections with the Mirehouse friends he seems to know so intimately, and for nigh upon four miles the lady of the carriage is kept in wonder as to who this “fine featured, dim-eyed, bronze-coloured, shaggy-headed man is; dusty, smoking, free and easy.” (p. 178)

It is not till the gates are reached, that he says with a grim humour, “I am Alfred Tennyson, James’ friend, and this, Madam, is my wife.”  There was no little flutter at Mirehouse that day, for, as I have heard from one who was then a little girl, Mr. Tom Spedding, the elder, was in delicate health, and it was a rare event for sudden visitors to come to the house. (p. 178)

But the visit of that afternoon meant a stay.  Nothing would serve but that the chance callers should be guests.  I have been told how those mild days of softest autumn sunshine went happily and memorably by; how in the morning Tennyson swam, as Carlyle would say, outwardly and inwardly with great composure, in an inarticulate element of tranquil chaos and tobacco smoke; how John Spedding, then in his eightieth year, would take the happy lovers on the lake in the “all-golden afternoons”; and how the young children would go off to bed not willingly, knowing that when they had retired the poet would read aloud in his sonorous chant, some of his latest published poem, In Memoriam. (p. 178)

This was the last visit that Tennyson paid to Keswick, for though he came again to Westmoreland four or five years later, and saw the long lights shake across the Coniston Lake from Trent Lodge, and heard far up the Tilberthwaite Gorge “the quarry thunders flap from left to right,” he never more saw our Cumbrian cataracts at “the Dash,” or “at Lodore,” “leap in glory,” never so far as can be ascertained, crossed Dunmail Raise again. (p. 179)

(Literary Associations of the English Lakes, Vol. I, pp. 176-9)

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Twixt Cursmastide and glad New Year,
    Yah daay oor Kessick sticks tea;
Eh barn! that daay fra far and near
    We’re parlish glad we’re sixty!

For than aw drest in Sunday best
    We coom to t’ oald fwoks’ dinner;
And while we crack we tak a snack,
    And nin on us grows thinner.

For fawin’ ill theer’s nea excuse,
    The cock is terble clivver;
Theer’s beef and pies and roasted geuse,
    And tarts and things for ivver.

And than oor tables! loavin’s daay
    Sec flooers, sec decorations!
The King and Queen might sup awaay
    And think it Coronation.

We meet as friends aw maks of fwok,
    High, low, nea airs nor graces;
It’s good to crack and hear a jwoke,
    And see each udder’s faeces.

And if a laal bit gloom is cast,
    To think that deeth is watchin’,
To think hoo manny he hes fast,
    And who he’ll next be catchin’.

At least we’ll hev a pleasant brek,
    As lang as we are yable,
And larn that human lives can mek
    Heaven roond t’ oald fwoks’ table. 

(Carlisle Journal, 1 January 1904, p. 3)

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Ah met an auld man t’ udder daay,
His limbs wer lish tho’ t’ hair was grey,
He sed, “Ah’s gaen upon my waay
    To t’ Kessick Auld Fwokes’ Do.
In fadder’s time we hed aw maks
O murry-neets and Cursmas cracks—
We played at lant, and gev oor packs
    A regular putten through.

“We mead less brass, tho’ t’ mair we wrowt,
Bit loavin daays, who wad ha thowt
O gitten murry-neets for nowt
    In that auld-fashioned daay?
Bit noo t’ clock strikes for t’ sixtieth year
And off we ga fra far and near
Till Kessick for oor Cursmas cheer,
    Wi’ nowt but thanks to paay.

“A whistle ga’s and t’ waiters fly
Wid turkey, geuse, and giblet pie,
Theer’s mutton boiled an beef for-by,
    And cheese an havver-bread,
Bit auld fwokes’ teeth are laal o’ use
For manishment o beef an geuse;
Ah’ve three in’t heed, and yan’s gone loose,
    Ah sup hare-soup instead.

“Than t’ band plaays oop as if ’twad brust,
Wid flowers the taables aw are drust,
An efther dinner we hev a rust
    And than they maes the tea.
Tea, barn—nut wesh; tea, broon, and strang;
Than speeches, readdins, carol-sang.
If oor King Edward com along,
    Ah think hoo pleas’t he’d bea.

“I wadn’t miss it for a pund;
Bit ya sad thowt keeps comen round,
Sea many a friend ligs undergrund
    We fain wad welcome still.
Bit what, it’s likely aw for t’ best
Whoa toil and suffer mud hev rest,
And Christ will welcome heam each guest
    That tries to dea His will.

(English Lakes Visitor and Keswick Guardian, 30 December 1905, p. 5)

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Ay, ay, ken we’re growing old
    But it’s Nature’s waay,
And when our mortal teal is told
    We shall hev oor daay.

When we were bairns each year we grew
    Beyont oor parents’ hands,
Noo ivvery mwcra we seem to view
    Main nigh oor Fadderland.

Than hev we fratched and fretted sair
    Ta get away fra yam,
Noo growin’ children, mair and mair,
    We leuk fort way we cam’.

We’ve oor share of joy and fear,
    Bit with hope hes bid in trust,
Lite youngsters when the stars appear,
    When hem its time to rust.

When we were bairns and darkness fell
    Hoo flayte we were, bit hark!
A voice that’s crien aw is well
    Noo calls us through the dark.

Then coom what will or good or ill,
    Whate’er a faate be given,
This old fwoks’ dea will find us still
    Bairn hearted fit for heaven.

(West Cumberland Times, 31 December 1904, p. 5)

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 A canny lock o’ years gone by,
    Theer cummed a man to Kessick Vale,
Whoa hed a heart for jollity
    And Kursmas joy that cannot fail.

Sed he, “We’re growin’ auld, me friends;
    Whoa knaws we’ll leeve anudder year?
For all oor care we’ll mak amends
    By meetin’ for oor Kursmas cheer.”

Sea what! he caw’d them aw togidder
    Of sixty summers and aboon,
Single and weddit, wife and widder,
    Fra Crosthet parish, Kessick toon.

Simple and gentle of aw classes,
    They aw were axed and nin sed “naay,”
For sixty years hed gien em passes
    And welcome on the Auld Fwoks’ Daay.

Ah! menny years have slippt since then
    And still we meet for Kursmas glee,
Oor Kessick lads are sarvin’ men,
    Brave Kessick lasses poor oot tea.

Elecahin’s cumm’d, elecahin’s past,
    Wi’ voates for yaller and for blue,
Bit aw voates i’ Keswick cast
    War voates for Kessick’s Auld Fwoks’ Do.

(Cumberland and Westmorland Herald, 31 December 1910, p. 1)

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  1. Sunrise on Helvellyn
  2. Sunrise at Whitby
  3. Sunlight or Smoke?
  4. The Suggested War Memorial Hall