The Rev. Robert Walker—His Parentage, Birth, and Breeding—Habits of Life—His Industry, Economy, and Hospitality—His Ways of Moneymaking—His Death—Description of his Outer Man—Comments—General Poverty of the Old Clergy—Mary Hird—Her Character and Death. Having fed yourself and seen your pony fed, whilst the latter is enjoying needful rest, you may return to the Chapel and make a more deliberate examination thereof than you could do when you lately passed it on horseback and hungry, and see that you approach that “low, small, modest house of prayer” with befitting reverence for it, and the ground of the humble cemetery around it, in the opinion of greater men than you or I can ever hope to be, are each doubly hallowed, the former as having been for sixty-six years the scene of the labours, and the latter as holding “the mortal dust” of the “Wonderful Walker;” and who, you inquire, was he? and how was he wonderful? I'll tell you all about him in as few words as possible. The Rev. Robert Walker was the youngest child in a family of twelve, who were all born to a small yeoman, at Undercrag, in this dale. He was born in 1709, and being sickly in boyhood, it was determined, in accordance with very general custom in such cases, to “breed him a scholar.” His father died when he was seventeen, and he soon obtained the appointment of parochial teacher at Gosforth, in Cumberland. After For this assistance, he was in the annual habit of levying contributions upon his near neighbours of hay, and on those more distant of wool; and there are several yet remaining, who remember his trudging about the head of the dale with his old white galloway, collecting the tributary fleeces which were carried home pannier-wise upon the said galloway’s back. ILLUSTRATION OF CHARACTER His economy was still more wonderful than his industry, and I have been told by an eye-witness of a somewhat curious instance of it. He greatly enjoyed a game at whist on the winter evenings, and in old age when his sight was dim, he had, when playing, a mould candle lighted and placed upon a shelf behind him; but it sometimes happened, when more than four players were present, that the old Parson had to “sit out” in his turn, and when that was the case, he always carefully extinguished his mould candle and allowed the rest of the party to find out their trumps as they best could by the light of the rush dipped in fat, re-lighting his mould so soon as he cut in again. He was offered, and it would appear, was, at first, inclined to accept, the adjoining benefice of Ulpha to hold in conjunction with that of Seathwaite, for he writes to the Bishop, an unexpected difficulty having arisen—“If he,” the person who started the difficulty, “had suggested any such objection before, I should utterly have declined any attempt to the curacy of Ulpha: indeed I was always apprehensive it might be disagreeable to my auditory at Seathwaite, as they have always been accustomed to double duty, and the inhabitants of Ulpha despair of being able to support a schoolmaster who is not curate there also;” and again he says that the annexation would cause a general discontent in both places, and Mr Walker had more sense than to brave such discontent. His hospitality likewise has been extensively dilated upon, and, as I think, unnecessarily. Had he been inhospitable, he would have been unlike his neighbours, for hospitality is even yet a prominent characteristic of the district; and, moreover, I once took the liberty of inquiring into the extent and nature of his hospitality at an old lady who well remembers him, when I found that she was inclined to give the credit of liberal hospitality to his wife HOSPITALITY AND HOSTELRY. He supplied messes of broth on Sundays to such of his hearers as came from a distance, and Mr Wordsworth mentions this as involving an act of generous self-denial, because to make the requisite supply of Sunday broth, it would be necessary to boil the whole week’s meat on that day, reducing the family to the necessity of eating nothing but cold meat until the next supply of broth was required. This appearance of self-denial disappears, when we come to know that it is, even yet, a rule in the domestic economy of old Seathwaite families to boil sufficient meat to serve several days’ dinners in every Sunday's broth; and, as has been elsewhere said, though the dried mutton, oat-bread, fresh butter, and sweet milk so liberally offered to callers by my hospitable though homely friends in Seathwaite are all more than excellent, yet is their broth as little tempting a mess as it has been my fortune to encounter, the “singit sheep’s heid broth” of a Duddingston public, or the “a la mode soup” of a St. Giles's eating-house not excepted. Mr Walker’s biographers and panegyrists omit altogether to mention a very important means he adopted to help to “bring grist to the mill,” and that was keeping an ale-house, not a jerry-shop, mind, for in “Wonderful Walker's” time, his Parsonage was an ordinary country ale-house, in which the ordinary customs of country ale-houses were regularly observed. For instance, at certain periods, he held “auld wife hakes,” or “merry nights,” and such like jollifications, where, as Anderson sings— “The bettermer sort sat snug i’ the parlour; I’ t’ pantry the sweathearters cuttered sae soft; The dancers they kicked up a stour i’ the kitchen; At lanter the card-lakers sat i’ the loft.” HABITS AND HABILIMENTS. I don’t mean that this exact arrangement of guests was religiously followed at the Seathwaite Parsonage hakes, but such, beyond dispute, were the staple amusements on these jolly occasions. One custom of Mr Walker’s public, I should mention as differing from the practice of its successors; ale, if “drunk on the premises,” was charged fourpence per quart, but if swallowed outside, on the road or in the church-yard, only threepence. The ale licence was taken out in the name of his brother. He refused to have any dealings with Quakers, because, as I understand the matter, that stiff-necked generation have some out-of-the-way and inconvenient notions about the propriety of paying Church dues. He discharged his clerical duties zealously and faithfully for sixty-six years at Seathwaite alone, which was his third benefice. He brought up, educated well and established well in life, a numerous family, and, in 1802, died universally lamented, at the age of ninety-three, leaving two thousand pounds and a large quantity of linen and woollen cloth spun by himself, chiefly within the communion rails, where he had his seat when engaged in teaching the young intelligences of the dale to read and write. The following descriptive sketch of his ordinary dress and occupations occurs in a letter from Conistone in 1754: COMMENTARY. After all, these are but every day wonders and amount to no more than the bare fact of a resolute, conscientious, and very indigent man, carrying with him into the Church the stern habits of frugality, industry, temperance, and self-denial in which he was reared, and which he doubtless had seen practised in his father’s family from his earliest childhood. One really might suppose that the Poet Laureate and the Principal of Saint Bees, his most prominently eulogistic biographers, are struck with admiring astonishment on discovering such an assemblage of homely working-day virtues in a clergyman (though very sorry should I be to insinuate that the cloth deserve the imputation); for they may see, and must have seen, the same virtues practised, under circumstances less favourable to their development, amongst the humble classes of the laity often enough without considering themselves called upon to say or to think anything about the matter. But, however that may be, the humble grave of “Wonderful Walker,” chiefly under the influence of Mr Wordsworth’s writings, has become a shrine before which many, from great distances, bow annually; and at one of my visits to Seathwaite I fell in with a much esteemed elderly friend, who, with a party of ladies, had made an excursion, half pilgrimage, half CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE OLD CLERGY. I hope I shall be acquitted of any wish to depreciate the real excellences of Robert Walker’s character; but I maintain that it is scarcely just to the bulk of human kind to bestow the title of “Wonderful” upon an individual who to the frugality, temperance, integrity, and industry of the class he sprang from, superadded the piety, purity, and some of the learning of the profession he adopted. But, as sings the Roman poet— Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Multi; sed omnes illachrymabiles Urgentur ignotique long Nocte, carent quia vate sacro. That his poverty was by no means wonderful, the following sketch of the English Country Clergy of the seventeenth century, from Macaulay’s history, may suffice to prove, bearing in mind that the circumstances of the clergy of that date in the more populous parts of the kingdom were those of the clergy of these remote chapelries far into the succeeding century. And Southey tells us that the curate of Newlands, near Keswick, about that time was obliged to add to his income by exercising the crafts of tailor, clogger, and butter-print maker. Here is Macaulay’s picture:—
“A NOBLE PEASANT.” And again, to prove that his original class do, in some instances, possess the virtues specified, I may adduce the case of a neighbour of Mr Walker's, whose melancholy end caused a wide-spread feeling of commiseration and regret throughout this and the neighbouring dales; and I shall quote the account of her given by a gentleman who knew her well—who frequently stayed in her house when hereabout on fishing excursions—who, with a hand “open as day to melting charity,” possesses a heart ready to acknowledge and to sympathize with goodness, whether it appears in the disposition and the works of peasant, parson, peer, or prince—
A SAD STORY. I have said that the end of Mary Hird was melancholy, and it may not be improper, trivial and slight though these lucubrations be, to relate the circumstances attending it here. On the afternoon of February the 4th, 1848, she left home in accordance with an arrangement made with a traveller from Ulverstone, who had offered to take her over Birker Moor in his gig to Eskdale, where she wished to visit some relations—the friendly traveller agreeing to pick her up at a stated hour at the end of the Birker Moor road. She unfortunately had been too late, and had walked onwards, as was supposed, under the impression that he was behind and would overtake her. However that might be, no alarm was felt on her account at home, until Miss Tyson, the clergyman’s daughter, called at the cottage on her way from Eskdale, and it then came out that she had not been seen there, though that was the sixth day after her departure. The neighbourhood was alarmed instantly, and a long line of willing and anxious friends, taking the whole breadth of the wild moor before them, soon discovered her body lying about forty yards from the road, where, but for the continual misty state of the atmosphere during the whole week, she must have been discovered days before by people passing along the road. The lacerated condition of her hands and knees and her torn dress shewed that the poor old woman, after losing the power of walking, had struggled onwards, no one knows how far, upon her hands and knees: she had taken out her spectacles, as it was thought, to assist her in see Decoration |