We turn aside up to Rydal Mount, the last of the four homes of Wordsworth in these dales, and the most beloved one.  Hither he came, driven forth by domestic sorrow from the old Grasmere Rectory, in the year 1813.  Here he lived till, as his favourite cuckoo-clock struck the hour of noon, upon an April day in 1850—day famous as both the birth-day and death-day of Shakespeare, April 23—with the words upon his lips, “Going to Dora,” he died.  Yes, “Going to Dora,” after three years’ separation; “to Dora” the six years’ bride, who had entered rest in the year 1847; “Dora” whose death deems to have frozen up the very fountain of his song. (p. 125)

Here, too, a hopeless invalid for the last twenty years of her life, Dorothy Wordsworth in her garden chair murmured snatches of her brother’s song, till death gave her back, as we trust, full companionship with the beloved, on 25th January, 1855, she being then in her eighty-third year.  And here,

            “With an old age serene and bright,
            And lovely as a Lapland night,”

did Mary Wordsworth, the poet’s wife, linger on in peaceful resignation and content, even though blind for the last three years of her life, until the 17th January, 1859, when her life of calm devotion and unselfish love quietly came to an end. (pp. 125-126)

The house has undergone great alterations, in outside building as in internal decoration.  But it is still inhabited by one whose pious thought and kindness keep up the traditions of the place.  Sir George Beaumont’s pictures of the “White Doe of Rylstone” and the “Thorn” are gone, and the cuckoo-clock is no more, but the ancestral “aumry” brought from Yorkshire, with the initials of early Wordsworths carved upon it, is found within.  Out of doors the tall ash tree for the thrush to sing in, the laburnums for the osier cage of the doves, may still be found, and the dark pines still keep sentinel at the gate, though, alas! the “Three Sisters” at Under Mount fell in the November gale of 1893; the lawn is still “a carpet all alive with shadows flung from trees”; the terrace walk Miss Fenwick knew, leads to the little moss-lined shed that may still harbour “a well-contented wren,” and just beyond it one passes through the garden gate to the well, beloved by “the water-drinking bard.” (p. 126)

We may in fancy easily meet the tan-faced Dorothy coming home swinging her lantern, from over Pelter Bridge, with her brother after dark.  We may hear the poet after breakfast booming out his lines in what the old gardener used to call “Master’s study,” which was the garden, “For ya kna he studied a deal out o’ doors and the laadies put it down for ’im, when he coomed iside.”  We may see him stoop to gather a yellow poppy or a bit of his favourite Herb-Robert from the garden wall.  We may hear the crash of a plate, which Mrs. Wordsworth has ordered to be broken outside his study door, to bring him to his dinner, “for ya kna, Wadsworth was a careful man, varra, and he could nat abide the brekking o’ his chiney, and nowt else would sarra to stir ’im, when he was deep i study.” (pp. 126-127)

But if I wanted to see Wordsworth at his best, I should go with him and Dora to a cottage, to visit some sufferer, it might be even to pray, and take the last communion with poor Hartley Coleridge, dying at the Nab.  Then I should see the same soft light come into his “mild and magnificent eyes,” that used to come after long walking in the dales, and over hills breathed on by the west wind full of the salt of the sea, and that mouth so like to Milton’s would relax its sternness, and the look of abstraction, that sometimes lent a heaviness to his face, would pass away.  It is impossible to say where one had better go if one would meet the poet hard at work upon his poems.  Hardly a knoll, or crag, a “feature-some” tree or flower, a rill or waterfall in all the circle of the two vales of Rydal and Grasmere, but during his fifty years was noted by this man, who, as the peasants say, “kenned aw that was stirrin’”; but if I had to choose I would go along by the shepherd’s path under Nab Scar to the “Old Corruption Road” [Dr. Arnold, in joke, gave the names of “Old Corruption Road,” “Bit by Bit Reform,” and “Radical Reform,” to the three roads from Rydal to Grasmere] to Town End; thence perhaps to the Swan, and Easdale, or else round the lake by Red Bank and Loughrigg Terrace, and so home along the southern side of Rydal Water and the Foot Bridge.  Hardly a step in that walk but rings with Wordsworth’s music; and there Wordsworth is never alone.  Through wind and rain, through sunshine and under stars, Dorothy the devoted, Dorothy the accurate observer of all the subtleties of nature, Dorothy whose wild-flashing eyes saw everything that could touch the heart, Dorothy the poetess, dumb by choice rather than want of power, walks with him. (pp. 127-128) 

(Literary Associations of the English Lakes, Vol. II)

Hits: 5335

Sir,—“Few men have so earnestly felt, and none have so earnestly declared, that the beauty of nature is the blessedest and most necessary of lessons for men, and that all other efforts in education are futile till you taught your people to love fields, birds, and flowers.”  So wrote that old man eloquent whose birth his friends and disciples will be celebrating to-morrow.  Could they do anything better for his memory than, in this hundredth year since their teacher was born, set on foot an association of lovers of their native land, who will combine to do what they can to protect from “rash assault” the beauty their master taught and wrought for? As one who sees with regret much of this beauty passing away—partly from carelessness, partly from sheer ignorance—and as one who believes that in these years of reconstruction, so-called, much more of that same fairness of landscape and interest of buildings will vanish—I passionately appeal to them to consider the possibility of some great such society, in order that we may hand on that great inheritance, for which so many of our bravest and best have fallen, to far-off generations.

(Times, 8 February 1919, p. 3)

Hits: 5102

One of the many memorable talks with the Professor in old Oxford and Hinksey digging days, turned on the question of how to add happiness to the country labourer’s lot.  His eyes flashed and his voice rose with its earnest sing-song as he urged that it was the simple duty of every squire and every clergyman to see that idle hands should have something found for them to do by other than the Devil; and that it was a scandal that the church had neither rest homes or recreation rooms nor public houses where the poor might find cheer and solace without the necessity of drink on the long winter evenings.  “I know,” he said, “that a certain number of wholly good and earnest evangelical lords and ladies do erect mission rooms on their estates, but though a good Bible Lesson is interesting enough, a bad one is very poor stuff, and the poor need to be taught how to enjoy themselves and not to be preached at.  The gospel that needs preaching is not how to get to heaven by swallowing wholesale certain church or chapel doctrines, but how to make earth heaven by doing certain fair deeds.  And it has always seemed to me,” he added, “that your most earnest preachers of to-day have deliberately refused to tell the people that God did not make their misery nor does He desire they should continue in it, that what He desires is their health and utmost happiness here and hereafter.  And that it is possible, if people will be content with the gifts an all-loving Father gives them, to find here and now in the humblest life an abundance of both.  Why don’t the bishops admonish their clergy to see to it that side by side with parish church and parish mission room there shall be a parish workshop, where the blacksmith and the village carpenter shall of a winter evening teach all the children who will be diligent and will learn, the nature of iron and wood, and the use of their eyes and hands. (pp. 115-116)

I would have the decoration of metal and wood brought in later, and these children as they grow shall feel the joy of adding ornament to simple surfaces of metal or wood; but always they shall be taught the use of the pencil, and the delight of close observation of flower in the field and bird in the hedgerow and animal in the wild wood.  We must bring joy, the joy of eye and hand-skill to our cottage homes.” (pp. 116-117)….

And what really is the worth of the School [KSIA] work?  It cannot be estimated in pounds.  Go to the homes of any of the workers.  Ask their wives or their brothers and you shall learn.  Go to any of the workers themselves and you shall learn that the good of the School to them has been that they now have always something to turn to on a dull evening and something that has opened their eyes to see what they used to pass by without notice in flower life and bird life, and beauty of light and shade, of cloud and sunshine, upon the fellside of their native vale. (pp. 127-128)

But if you were to ask the Art Director, I think he would say that he is astounded at the natural refinement that has come upon the men; a coarse word, a vulgar suggestion is not known in the School.  He would say further that he realises here in this little School at Keswick, something of the guild camaraderie of the olden time.  If a man finds out any secret in working metal he does not care to keep it to himself, it is at once at the service of all his fellow-workers.  It is this spirit that is better than rubies, whose price is above silver and gold. (p. 128)

And if you were to enquire of the townsmen what they thought of the institution, I believe the more thoughtful would answer, “We know nothing of the ideal before the mind of the promoters, this we know, that it is the grandest temperance agent in the place.”  Now to whom is this owed?  Whose is the spirit that inspired it?  There is only one answer possible, it is the mind and spirit of John Ruskin. (pp. 128-129)

(Ruskin and the English Lakes, pp. 115-148)

Hits: 4877

They had the same thoughts about the need of keeping inviolate the sanctuary for thought and health and national happiness which the English Lake District, still undestroyed and unvulgarised, truly is. (p. 168)

Read Wordsworth’s protest against the projected railway from Kendal to Windermere, and set side by side with it Ruskin’s preface to the pamphlet entitled A Protest against the Extension of Railways in the Lake District.  The feeling and the spirit of both writers are the same.  They had the same reverential regard for the life of the simple dalesmen amongst whom they dwelt.  There are few tenderer pictures of cottage life than Wordsworth’s description of Margaret and Michael.  You will find that Ruskin, who spoke of the men about his doors as knights at Agincourt whose words for a thousand pounds was their bond, did but echo the feeling for Westmoreland peasantry that Wordsworth gave utterance to. (pp. 168-169)

It may be true that Ruskin stood in nearer relation to the peasants than the poet.  Wordsworth, as the tradition in the dales still goes, “was not a vara conversable man at best o’ times,” and when he speaks of Michael he classes him with

        Shepherds, dwellers in the valleys, men
Whom I already loved;—not verily
For their own sakes but for the fields and hills
Where was their occupation and abode.

whereas with Ruskin, what he seemed most to care about was to go to the cottage or to the workshop, and be made by his tender approachableness one of the family.  But both believed in the true-hearted, innate nobility of the dalesmen, and honoured them for their native worth. (pp. 169-170)

The poet who in so much that he wrote glorified the peasant’s lot by shewing the peasant could think high thoughts as he pursued his lowly calling, and prove himself a happy warrior as he wrestled with storm and heat and all the sorrow of a poor man’s lot, was after all but expressing the mind of Ruskin.  Nay was himself an embodiment of Ruskin’s ideal, as all who visit Dove Cottage to-day may testify. (p. 170)

“In order to teach men how to be satisfied it is necessary fully to understand the art and joy of humble life…. the life of domestic affection and domestic peace, and full of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind pleasure, therefore chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world,” so wrote Ruskin. (p. 170)

It was surely to teach this lesson of blessed content that Wordsworth lived and sang.  “It is not,” says Ruskin, “that men are ill-fed, but they have no pleasure in their work by which they make their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure.” (p. 170)

This Wordsworth knew, and whether he was sketching the picture of the priest of the Duddon Valley, or “Wonderful Walker” at Seathwaite, or the firm-minded Leech-gatherer, or the cheerful-hearted School-master, he seems to have felt and told us that the quiet mind that labours and is content, has found enough of the will of God for men on earth to make the journey to the end a way of peace.  Of no two writers in our Victorian age can it be more truly said that they agreed in their belief that a nation’s wealth was not mammon but men, and that labour in the country side had peculiar dignity and calm, and might have therewithal content. (p. 171)….

But it was not the common admiration of friends, or common need for the encouragement that friends could give, that made Wordsworth and Ruskin kin.  It was rather their common perception of vital truth.  If ever two minds could walk together because they were agreed, it was in the assertion that men could only truly live their highest and happiest spirit life here on earth in communion with Nature, if first they could perceive that Nature was a revelation of God’s spirit and then could wonder and love it with deepest reverence.  “The Spirit of God,” so wrote Ruskin, “is around you, in the air that you breathe.  His glory in the light that you see, and in the fruitfulness of the earth and the joy of its creature.  He has written for you day by day, His revelation as He has granted you day by day your daily bread.”  And again, “All this passing to and fro of fruitful shower and grateful shade, and all these visions of silver palaces built above the horizon, and of moaning winds and waters, and glories of coloured cloud and cloven ray, really are but to deepen in our hearts the acceptance and distinctness and clearness of the simple words, ‘Our father which art in Heaven’” (pp. 184-185)….

With this evangel of the vital needs of Admiration, Hope and Love, these two prophets of the Lord, helped their generation.  Fallen asleep—the one in 1850, the other in 1900, all that is mortal of them rest in lakeland earth.  Grasmere Churchyard and Coniston Churchyard are now individually consecrated; and pilgrims to either shrine will think of the double debt we owe, and hear not one but two clarion voices calling us, to lowlier reverence, loftier hopes, and love for men and Nature more devout. (p. 187)

They will hear within the voices of these seers a word of warning.  This little twenty mile square of hill and dale fed their souls with noblest passion, and lifted up their hearts to noblest heights.  Every year the quiet and the seclusion of it is threatened, every year its unspoiled beauty is in jeopardy.  No one who truly cares for the future of Great Britain, can think of this National Resting-ground robbed of its healing charm,—its power to inspire and invigorate the thought of the present, or illustrate and enforce the thought of the past.  All that is mortal of Wordsworth rest in Grasmere Churchyard; all that is mortal of Ruskin lies in Coniston.  But we are false to the trust that they gave the tender earth of the countryside they loved so truly if we will not listen to their spirit words, and strive as well as we may to keep the land of their inspiration a heritage for the helpful thought, the highest pleasure, and the fullest peace of the generations yet to be. (pp. 187-188)

(Ruskin and the English Lakes, pp. 163-188)

Hits: 5266

Did waves indignant here with storm invest
        Some castle huge, and straw it on the sand?
Or did Viking rangers of this land,
Who bade yon stone tree Yggdrasil attest
That Christ, not Balder, was the Captain blest,
Build here a ladder huge whereon to stand,
Whence all the waves to Mona might be scanned,
And every sail be questioned from the west?
No answer comes: the stones are hoar and strange,
Hairy with weeds, with limpets overgrown;
They keep their secret well; tide after tide
Their heads beneath the ocean’s brim they hide;
No storm their dumb confederacy can change,
Their call to fancy can no waters drown.

(Sonnets Round the Coast, p. 94)

Hits: 4981
  1. Rock of Names
  2. Robert Southey
  3. Robert Graves, the Village Weaver
  4. The Rhyme of the Keswick Old Folks’ Dinner, 1895