Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete

N >> Nathaniel Hawthorne >> Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete

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I question whether any part of the world looks so beautiful as England--
this part of England, at least--on a fine summer morning. It makes one
think the more cheerfully of human life to see such a bright universal
verdure; such sweet, rural, peaceful, flower-bordered cottages,--not
cottages of gentility, but dwellings of the laboring poor; such nice
villas along the roadside, so tastefully contrived for comfort and
beauty, and adorned more and more, year after year, with the care and
after-thought of people who mean to live in them a great while, and feel
as if their children might live in them also, and so they plant trees to
overshadow their walks, and train ivy and all beautiful vines up against
their walls, and thus live for the future in another sense than we
Americans do. And the climate helps them out, and makes everything
moist, and green, and full of tender life, instead of dry and arid, as
human life and vegetable life is so apt to be with us. Certainly,
England can present a more attractive face than we can; even in its
humbler modes of life, to say nothing of the beautiful lives that might
be led, one would think, by the higher classes, whose gateways, with
broad, smooth gravelled drives leading through them, one sees every mile
or two along the road, winding into some proud seclusion. All this is
passing away, and society most assume new relations; but there is no harm
in believing that there has been something very good in English life,--
good for all classes while the world was in a state out of which these
forms naturally grew.

Passing through Ambleside, our phaeton and pair turned towards Ullswater,
which we were to reach through the Pass of Kirkstone. This is some three
or four miles from Ambleside, and as we approached it the road kept
ascending higher and higher, the hills grew more bare, and the country
lost its soft and delightful verdure. At last the road became so steep
that J----- and I alighted to walk. This is the aspiring road that
Wordsworth speaks of in his ode; it passes through the gorge of
precipitous hills,--or almost precipitous,--too much so for even the
grass to grow on many portions, which are covered with gray smugly
stones; and I think this pass, in its middle part, must have looked just
the same when the Romans marched through it as it looks now. No trees
could ever have grown on the steep hillsides, whereon even the English
climate can generate no available soil. I do not know that I have seen
anything more impressive than the stern gray sweep of these naked
mountains, with nothing whatever to soften or adorn them. The notch of
the White Mountains, as I remember it in my youthful days, is more
wonderful and richly picturesque, but of quite a different character.

About the centre and at the highest point of the pass stands an old stone
building of mean appearance, with the usual sign of an alehouse,
"Licensed to retail foreign spirits, ale, and tobacco," over the door,
and another small sign, designating it as the highest inhabitable house
in England. It is a chill and desolate place for a residence. They keep
a visitor's book here, and we recorded our names in it, and were not
too sorry to leave the mean little hovel, smelling as it did of
tobacco-smoke, and possessing all other characteristics of the humblest
alehouse on the level earth.

The Kirkstone, which gives the pass its name, is not seen in approaching
from Ambleside, until some time after you begin to descend towards
Brothers' Water. When the driver first pointed it out, a little way up
the hill on our left, it looked no more than a bowlder of a ton or two in
weight, among a hundred others nearly as big; and I saw hardly any
resemblance to a church or church-spire, to which the fancies of past
generations have likened it. As we descended the pass, however, and left
the stone farther and farther behind, it continued to show itself, and
assumed a more striking and prominent aspect, standing out clearly
relieved against the sky, so that no traveller would fail to observe it,
where there are so few defined objects to attract notice, amid the naked
monotony of the stern hills; though, indeed, if I had taken it for any
sort of an edifice, it would rather have been for a wayside inn or a
shepherd's hut than for a church. We lost sight of it, and again beheld
it more and more brought out against the sky, by the turns of the road,
several times in the course of our descent. There is a very fine view of
Brothers' Water, shut in by steep hills, as we go down Kirkstone Pass.

At about half past twelve we reached Patterdale, at the foot of
Ullswater, and here took luncheon. The hotels are mostly very good all
through this region, and this deserved that character. A black-coated
waiter, of more gentlemanly appearance than most Englishmen, yet taking a
sixpence with as little scruple as a lawyer would take his fee; the
mistress, in lady-like attire, receiving us at the door, and waiting upon
us to the carriage-steps; clean, comely housemaids everywhere at hand,--
all appliances, in short, for being comfortable, and comfortable, too,
within one's own circle. And, on taking leave, everybody who has done
anything for you, or who might by possibility have done anything, is to
be feed. You pay the landlord enough, in all conscience; and then you
pay all his servants, who have been your servants for the time. But, to
say the truth, there is a degree of the same kind of annoyance in an
American hotel, although it is not so much an acknowledged custom. Here,
in the houses where attendance is not charged in the bill, no wages are
paid by the host to those servants--chambermaid, waiter, and boots--who
come into immediate contact with travellers. The drivers of the cars,
phaetons, and flys are likewise unpaid, except by their passengers, and
claim threepence a mile with the same sense of right as their masters in
charging for the vehicles and horses. When you come to understand this
claim, not as an appeal to your generosity, but as an actual and
necessary part of the cost of the journey, it is yielded to with a more
comfortable feeling; and the traveller has really option enough, as to
the amount which he will give, to insure civility and good behavior on
the driver's part.

Ullswater is a beautiful lake, with steep hills walling it about, so
steep, on the eastern side, that there seems hardly room for a road to
run along the base. We passed up the western shore, and turned off from
it about midway, to take the road towards Keswick. We stopped, however,
at Lyulph's Tower, while our chariot went on up a hill, and took a guide
to show us the way to Airey Force,--a small cataract, which is claimed as
private property, and out of which, no doubt, a pretty little revenue is
raised. I do not think that there can be any rightful appropriation, as
private property, of objects of natural beauty. The fruits of the land,
and whatever human labor can produce from it, belong fairly enough to the
person who has a deed or a lease; but the beautiful is the property of
him who can hive it and enjoy it. It is very unsatisfactory to think of
a cataract under lock and key. However, we were shown to Airey Force by
a tall and graceful mountain-maid, with a healthy cheek, and a step that
had no possibility of weariness in it. The cascade is an irregular
streak of foamy water, pouring adown a rude shadowy glen. I liked well
enough to see it; but it is wearisome, on the whole, to go the rounds of
what everybody thinks it necessary to see. It makes me a little ashamed.
It is somewhat as if we were drinking out of the same glass, and eating
from the same dish, as a multitude of other people.

Within a few miles of Keswick, we passed along at the foot of Saddleback,
and by the entrance of the Vale of St. John, and down the valley, on one
of the slopes, we saw the Enchanted Castle. Thence we drove along by the
course of the Greta, and soon arrived at Keswick, which lies at the base
of Skiddaw, and among a brotherhood of picturesque eminences, and is
itself a compact little town, with a market-house, built of the old
stones of the Earl of Derwentwater's ruined castle, standing in the
centre,--the principal street forking into two as it passes it. We
alighted at the King's Arms, and went in search of Southey's residence,
which we found easily enough, as it lies just on the outskirts of the
town. We inquired of a group of people, two of whom, I thought, did not
seem to know much about the matter; but the third, an elderly man,
pointed it out at once,--a house surrounded by trees, so as to be seen
only partially, and standing on a little eminence, a hundred yards or so
from the road.

We went up a private lane that led to the rear of the place, and so
penetrated quite into the back-yard without meeting anybody,--passing a
small kennel, in which were two hounds, who gazed at us, but neither
growled nor wagged their tails. The house is three stories high, and
seems to have a great deal of room in it, so as not to discredit its
name, "Greta Hall,"--a very spacious dwelling for a poet. The windows
were nearly all closed; there were no signs of occupancy, but a general
air of neglect. S-----, who is bolder than I in these matters, ventured
through what seemed a back garden gate, and I soon heard her in
conversation with some man, who now presented himself, and proved to be a
gardener. He said he had formerly acted in that capacity for Southey,
although a gardener had not been kept by him as a regular part of his
establishment. This was an old man with an odd crookedness of legs, and
strange, disjointed limp. S----- had told him that we were Americans, and
he took the idea that we had come this long distance, over sea and land,
with the sole purpose of seeing Southey's residence, so that he was
inclined to do what he could towards exhibiting it. This was but little;
the present occupant (a Mr. Radday, I believe the gardener called him)
being away, and the house shut up.

But he showed us about the grounds, and allowed us to peep into the
windows of what had been Southey's library, and into those of another of
the front apartments, and showed us the window of the chamber in the
rear, in which Southey died. The apartments into which we peeped looked
rather small and low,--not particularly so, but enough to indicate an old
building. They are now handsomely furnished, and we saw over one of the
fireplaces an inscription about Southey; and in the corner of the same
room stood a suit, of bright armor. It is taller than the country-houses
of English gentlemen usually are, and it is even stately. All about, in
front, beside it and behind, there is a great profusion of trees, most of
which were planted by Southey, who came to live here more than fifty
years ago, and they have, of course, grown much more shadowy now than he
ever beheld them; for he died about fourteen years since. The grounds
are well laid out, and neatly kept, with the usual lawn and gravelled
walks, and quaint little devices in the ornamental way. These may be of
later date than Southey's time. The gardener spoke respectfully of
Southey, and of his first wife, and observed that "it was a great loss to
the neighborhood when that family went down."

The house stands directly above the Greta, the murmur of which is audible
all about it; for the Greta is a swift little river, and goes on its way
with a continual sound, which has both depth and breadth. The gardener
led us to a walk along its banks, close by the Hall, where he said
Southey used to walk for hours and hours together. He might, indeed, get
there from his study in a moment. There are two paths, one above the
other, well laid out on the steep declivity of the high bank; and there
is such a very thick shade of oaks and elms, planted by Southey himself
over the bank, that all the ground and grass were moist, although it had
been a sunny day. It is a very sombre walk; not many glimpses of the sky
through those dense boughs. The Greta is here, perhaps, twenty yards
across, and very dark of hue, and its voice is melancholy and very
suggestive of musings and reveries; but I should question whether it were
favorable to any settled scheme of thought. The gardener told us that
there used to be a pebbly beach on the margin of the river, and that it
was Southey's habit to sit and write there, using a tree of peculiar
shape for a table. An alteration in the current of the river has swept
away the beach, and the tree, too, has fallen. All these things were
interesting to me, although Southey was not, I think, a picturesque man,
--not one whose personal character takes a strong hold on the
imagination. In these walks he used to wear a pair of shoes heavily
clamped with iron; very ponderous they must have been, from the
particularity with which the gardener mentioned them.

The gardener took leave of us at the front entrance of the grounds, and,
returning to the King's Arms, we ordered a one-horse fly for the fall of
Lodore. Our drive thither was along the banks of Derwentwater, and it is
as beautiful a road, I imagine, as can be found in England or anywhere
else. I like Derwentwater the best of all the lakes, so far as I have
yet seen them. Skiddaw lies at the head of a long even ridge of
mountains, rising into several peaks, and one higher than the rest. On
the eastern side there are many noble eminences, and on the west, along
which we drove, there is a part of the way a lovely wood, and nearly the
whole distance a precipitous range of lofty cliffs, descending sheer down
without any slope, except what has been formed in the lapse of ages by
the fall of fragments, and the washing down of smaller stones. The
declivity thus formed along the base of the cliffs is in some places
covered with trees or shrubs; elsewhere it is quite bare and barren. The
precipitous parts of the cliffs are very grand; the whole scene, indeed,
might be characterized as one of stern grandeur with an embroidery of
rich beauty, without lauding it too much. All the sternness of it is
softened by vegetative beauty wherever it can possibly be thrown in; and
there is not here, so strongly as along Windermere, evidence that human
art has been helping out Nature. I wish it were possible to give any
idea of the shapes of the hills; with these, at least, man has nothing to
do, nor ever will have anything to do. As we approached the bottom of
the lake, and of the beautiful valley in which it lies, we saw one hill
that seemed to crouch down like a Titanic watch-dog, with its rear
towards the spectator, guarding the entrance to the valley. The great
superiority of these mountains over those of New England is their variety
and definiteness of shape, besides the abundance everywhere of water
prospects, which are wanting among our own hills. They rise up
decidedly, and each is a hill by itself, while ours mingle into one
another, and, besides, have such large bases that you can tell neither
where they begin nor where they end. Many of these Cumberland mountains
have a marked vertebral shape, so that they often look like a group of
huge lions, lying down with their backs turned toward each other. They
slope down steeply from narrow ridges; hence their picturesque seclusions
of valleys and dales, which subdivide the lake region into so many
communities. Our hills, like apple-dumplings in a dish, have no such
valleys as these.

There is a good inn at Lodore,--a small, primitive country inn, which has
latterly been enlarged and otherwise adapted to meet the convenience of
the guests brought thither by the fame of the cascade; but it is still a
country inn, though it takes upon itself the title of hotel.

We found pleasant rooms here, and established ourselves for the night.
From this point we have a view of the beautiful lake, and of Skiddaw at
the head of it. The cascade is within three or four minutes' walk,
through the garden gate, towards the cliff, at the base of which the inn
stands. The visitor would need no other guide than its own voice, which
is said to be audible sometimes at the distance of four miles. As we
were coming from Keswick, we caught glimpses of its white foam high up
the precipice; and it is only glimpses that can be caught anywhere,
because there is no regular sheet of falling water. Once, I think, it
must have fallen abruptly over the edge of the long line of precipice
that here extends along parallel with the shore of the lake; but, in the
course of time, it has gnawed and sawed its way into the heart of the
cliff,--this persistent little stream,--so that now it has formed a rude
gorge, adown which it hurries and tumbles in the wildest way, over the
roughest imaginable staircase. Standing at the bottom of the fall, you
have a far vista sloping upward to the sky, with the water everywhere as
white as snow, pouring and pouring down, now on one side of the gorge,
now on the other, among immense bowlders, which try to choke its passage.
It does not attempt to leap over these huge rocks, but finds its way in
and out among then, and finally gets to the bottom after a hundred
tumbles. It cannot be better described than in Southey's verses, though
it is worthy of better poetry than that. After all, I do not know that
the cascade is anything more than a beautiful fringe to the grandeur of
the scene; for it is very grand,--this fissure through the cliff,--with a
steep, lofty precipice on the right hand, sheer up and down, and on the
other hand, too, another lofty precipice, with a slope of its own ruin on
which trees and shrubbery have grown. The right-hand precipice, however,
has shelves affording sufficient hold for small trees, but nowhere does
it slant. If it were not for the white little stream falling gently
downward, and for the soft verdure upon either precipice, and even along
the very pathway of the cascade, it would be a very stern vista up that
gorge.

I shall not try to describe it any more. It has not been praised too
much, though it may have been praised amiss. I went thither again in the
morning, and climbed a good way up, through the midst of its rocky
descent, and I think I could have reached the top in this way. It is
remarkable that the bounds of the water, from one step of its broken
staircase to another, give an impression of softness and gentleness; but
there are black, turbulent pools among the great bowlders, where the
stream seems angry at the difficulties which it meets with. Looking
upward in the sunshine, I could see a rising mist, and I should not
wonder if a speck of rainbow were sometimes visible. I noticed a small
oak in the bed of the cascade, and there is a lighter vegetation
scattered about.

At noon we took a car for Portinscale, and drove back along the road to
Keswick, through which we passed, stopping to get a perhaps of letters at
the post-office, and reached Portinscale, which is a mile from Keswick.
After dinner we walked over a bridge, and through a green lane, to the
church where Southey is buried. It is a white church, of Norman
architecture, with a low, square tower. As we approached, we saw two
persons entering the portal, and, following them in, we found the sexton,
who was a tall, thin old man, with white hair, and an intelligent,
reverent face, showing the edifice to a stout, red-faced, self-important,
good-natured John Bull of a gentleman. Without any question on our part,
the old sexton immediately led us to Southey's monument, which is placed
in a side aisle, where there is not breadth for it to stand free of the
wall; neither is it in a very good light. But, it seemed to me a good
work of art,--a recumbent figure of white marble, on a couch, the drapery
of which he has drawn about him,--being quite enveloped in what may be a
shroud. The sculptor has not intended to represent death, for the figure
lies on its side, and has a book in its hand, and the face is lifelike,
and looks full of expression,--a thin, high-featured, poetic face, with a
finely proportioned head and abundant hair. It represents Southey
rightly, at whatever age he died, in the full maturity of manhood, when
he was strongest and richest. I liked the statue, and wished that it lay
in a broader aisle, or in the chancel, where there is an old tomb of a
knight and lady of the Ratcliffe family, who have held the place of honor
long enough to yield it now to a poet. Southey's sculptor was Lough. I
must not forget to mention that John Bull, climbing on a bench, to get a
better view of the statue, tumbled off with a racket that resounded
irreverently through the church.

The old, white-headed, thin sexton was a model man of his class, and
appeared to take a loving and cheerful interest in the building, and in
those who, from age to age, have worshipped and been buried there. It is
a very ancient and interesting church. Within a few years it has been
thoroughly repaired as to the interior, and now looks as if it might
endure ten more centuries; and I suppose we see little that is really
ancient, except the double row of Norman arches, of light freestone, that
support the oaken beams and rafters of the roof. All the walls, however,
are venerable, and quite preserve the identity of the edifice. There is
a stained-glass window of modern manufacture, and in one of the side
windows, set amidst plain glass, there is a single piece, five hundred
years old, representing St. Anthony, very finely executed, though it
looks a little faded. Along the walls, on each side, between the arched
windows, there are marble slabs affixed, with inscriptions to the
memories of those who used to occupy the seats beneath. I remember none
of great antiquity, nor any old monument, except that in the chancel,
over the knight and lady of the Ratcliffe family. This consists of a
slab of stone, on four small stone pillars, about two feet high. The
slab is inlaid with a brass plate, on which is sculptured the knight in
armor, and the lady in the costume of Elizabeth's time, exceedingly well
done and well preserved, and each figure about eighteen inches in length.
The sexton showed us a rubbing of them on paper. Under the slab, which,
supported by the low stone pillars, forms a canopy for them, lie two
sculptured figures of stone, of life size, and at full length,
representing the same persons; but I think the sculptor was hardly equal
in his art to the engraver.

The most-curious antique relic in the church is the font. The bowl is
very capacious, sufficiently so to admit of the complete immersion of a
child of two or three months old. On the outside, in several
compartments, there are bas-reliefs of Scriptural and symbolic subjects,
--such as the tree of life, the word proceeding out of God's mouth, the
crown of thorns,--all in the quaintest taste, sculptured by some hand of
a thousand years ago, and preserving the fancies of monkish brains, in
stone. The sexton was very proud of this font and its sculpture, and
took a kindly personal interest, in showing it; and when we had spent as
much time as we could inside, he led us to Southey's grave in the
churchyard. He told us that he had known Southey long and well, from
early manhood to old age; for he was only twenty-nine when he came to
Keswick to reside. He had known Wordsworth too, and Coleridge, and
Lovell; and he had seen Southey and Wordsworth walking arm in arm
together in that churchyard. He seemed to revere Southey's memory, and
said that he had been much lamented, and that as many as a hundred people
came to the churchyard when he was buried. He spoke with great praise of
Mrs. Southey, his first wife, telling of her charity to the poor, and how
she was a blessing to the neighborhood; but he said nothing in favor of
the second Mrs. Southey, and only mentioned her selling the library, and
other things, after her husband's death, and going to London. Yet I
think she was probably a good woman, and meets with less than justice
because she took the place of another good woman, and had not time and
opportunity to prove herself as good. As for Southey himself, my idea
is, that few better or more blameless men have ever lived; but he seems
to lack color, passion, warmth, or something that should enable me to
bring him into close relation with myself. The graveyard where his body
lies is not so rural and picturesque as that where Wordsworth is buried;
although Skiddaw rises behind it, and the Greta is murmuring at no very
great distance away. But the spot itself has a somewhat bare and bold
aspect, with no shadow of trees, no shrubbery.

Over his grave there is a ponderous, oblong block of slate, a native
mineral of this region, as hard as iron, and which will doubtless last
quite as long as Southey's works retain any vitality in English
literature. It is not a monument fit for a poet. There is nothing airy
or graceful about it,--and, indeed, there cannot he many men so solid and
matter-of-fact as to deserve a tomb like that. Wordsworth's grave is
much better, with only a simple headstone, and the grass growing over his
mortality, which, for a thousand years, at least, it never can over
Southey's. Most of the monuments are of this same black slate, and some
erect headstones are curiously sculptured, and seem to have been recently
erected.