The English Lakes :: CHAPTER VI CONISTON WATER

CHAPTER VI CONISTON WATER

On a sultry afternoon, the wanderer over High Cross from Hawkshead suddenly sees a gulf beneath, a delectable vision of waters, the ancient Thurston mere; a lake of shining silver, chased with darker lines and patches as faint catspaws play here and there, with calm pools irradiating the sunlight like clusters of diamonds, the glow fining down to a distant wisp of blue threading between hills and woods. The setting is lovely as the gem: fertile, swelling farmlands, with here and there a white-walled home peering through its curtain of sycamore, the venerable grey church behind its yews, and the village straggling around its God’s acre. Often so ethereal seems the beauty and repose that one fears that tree-shaded bays, white beaches, and spreading reaches dotted with a shimmering sail or two, will yet dissolve in the disappointment of a mirage. For the road one walks is a dusty ribbon over a parched moor, the grouse cluck drowsily in the heather, the rabbits lop lazily into the furze—the larks alone sing briskly, for they have climbed to fuller life in the highest heavens, far from the slumbrous world around us; the mountains afar off swim in haze, their scarry sides uncertain seem, but down there is the fruitful valley of the lake, with dancing rills, fields of green corn, and its flowery meadows ready for the mower. Such is the delightful picture unrolled as a hundred yards are passed, then a corner of the hills shuts it from view.

DAWN, CONISTON

Coniston, the third longest of our Lakes, is perhaps the one most intimately associated with our earliest civilisations. On its placid bosom the Britons plied their coracles; they were keen anglers, and built their settlements near the lake-shore. Next came the Roman legions, to whose credit is placed by some the presence in Lakeland of that toothsome fish, the char. And after them, Norsemen raiding from the seaboard for harvests denied to their semi-frozen home-land, yet after awhile remaining permanent settlers on the soil. They built their boats of timbers from the forests around, and on Peel Island one erected a house, the foundations of which have recently been determined by an antiquarian. After the Norseman, the Saxon. And the char were taken up the fells to dark Gateswater, over which the golden eagle screamed and round which roved bear and wolf. The Normans after a couple of centuries of strife found the land comfortable to dwell in, but no baron ousted the native from his hearth. And the char had been carried further, over the pass beyond the haunt of the wild eagles to where the seafowl scream—lonely Seathwaite tarn. With the Norman came the forest laws and rights to fish the lake. Nets were reserved to the lord of Coningstone, and the Le Flemings became a mighty power in the dale. The monks of Furness Abbey, not many miles distant, afterwards obtained great privileges here—a relic of their times is to be found in the shore woods. Down among the roots of the trees, deep beneath accumulations of leaf-soil, are red metal stains and nodules of iron. Trees were converted into charcoal by the industrious monks, and iron ore brought here to be smelted. A thriving trade was this long after it had reverted to the great families, whom it enabled to prosper during dark times. The ore was conveyed by the lake to the neighbourhood of the “bloomery,” and again was so carried to the waiting panniered ponies. Great rafts of forest trees also floated down with the slow current. All this while Coniston Water had been in unsullied purity. But a century ago copper was found among the fells and mines opened. Refuse ran down in muddy streams, tainting the lake from head to foot. Many fish died, for the shingles on which they had previously spawned were fouled, and, though ripe with ova, they could not perpetuate their kind. The damage was not completed in a season, but in thirty years, just as English law began to protect the finny denizens, the lake had been robbed of a great proportion of its fish. Twenty years more the mines continued to send down poisonous offal. Then the copper veins gave out, pollution ceased, and the fishery gradually improved. A few years ago it was gravely propounded as a fact that the lack of size in the angler’s spoils here was due entirely to the overcrowding of the water by the trout and perch! It is not many places where such an accusation can be brought forward. A large number of visitors annually come for the angling alone; and as they are seen year after year, no doubt they find it worth while from the sporting as well as the scenic point of view.

CHARCOAL-BURNERS, CONISTON LAKE

The lake-head is bounded by a mass of mountains of which the Old Man is the chief. On the east of the water too the hills are lofty, their lowest slopes a mass of coppice and larches, their upper braes wild and desolate. It seems odd to look down from these upland farms, where everything is sterile, on the soft, rich-looking lands of the lake-side.

Coniston Water is hardly less famous for the people who have lived on its shores than is Windermere or even Grasmere. To the challenge of Wordsworth and Coleridge and De Quincey, of Christopher North, Hemans and Arnold, it can reply with Tennyson, Linton, and, greatest and nearest of all, John Ruskin. If Grasmere reveres the ashes of Wordsworth, Coniston holds in no less esteem those of Ruskin—and the memory of the great is so much the more living. Every one almost in Coniston remembers Professor Ruskin, but few folks can recall Wordsworth. However, my concern is less with rival celebrities than with the lake and its natural surroundings.

To know Coniston Water well is to be convinced that one’s pen cannot describe it. The greatest master of English descriptive prose, John Ruskin, after years of residence, left the task undone. Duty, however, dictates that some attempt must be made, and I cannot conceive anything more likely to give a fair idea of the lake and its surroundings than notes on a long summer day spent on its waters.

We breakfasted by candlelight—one of our party was a keen angler and had persuaded us to rising before the midsummer sun. Outside the cottage the air came cool and fresh, laden with the fragrance of the morning—honeysuckles over our porch and new mown hay, wild roses of the hedgerows and sweet flowers of our garden, larch woods and white-wreathed fields. The faint light just shows a sea of mist overhanging the lake, shows patches of cloud wandering among delicate grey-blue crag and mountain. Now we near the lakeside: the deep blue sky becomes dimmed by trailers of vapour. The boat engaged by the angler overnight is here; but, as he speaks of remaining hours in his almost motionless craft, and that is not to our taste, we select another, opening, after much labour, a link in the mooring chain and setting it free. The view when first we are afloat is curious: a bank of mist overhangs the lake; we can see the lower meadows around, but the mountains are invisible. Soon, however, we find the mist sweeping away in the dawn-breeze.

BRANTWOOD, CONISTON LAKE: CHAR-FISHING

Day is at hand, the dark hour of the morning watch is ending. One by one the stars fade away: a dark shadow passes up the sky from eastward, and the horizon there is being fringed with kindlier light. A cloud floating high above flushes from pearly grey to pink at its edges, to purple in its densest plume, and, as it floats nearer the day, to crimson, to red, and to glistening gold. And now we rest on the oars to watch the coming of the sun to the mountain tops. The fuller light has revealed a glorious scene: the horizon is a rugged sea of summits, lands of rocky steeps with torrents gushing down—Helvellyn and Seat Sandal, the Pikes and Fairfield, with, nearer at hand, Wetherlam, the Carrs, and Old Man himself. Shortly the coming sunshine touches one after another of these giants: Fairfield’s huge gashes where the foxes dwell secure are picked out in gloom and light before day bends to awake the Old Man from his rest. It is interesting to watch the band of sunshine gradually descend his stony, riven flanks. At first only the cairn has the glow; then shortly, a hundred feet below, shadow divides from light. So day breaks among the mountains. Purple shadows still remain in the hollows, the dark green of woodlands is softly dusked: on Coniston Water it is light, though the sun’s rays still linger aloft. “Come on,” grunts the angler at this juncture—the scene to him is beauteous, no doubt, but for his art most valuable minutes are wasting away. We heed him not, and shortly his oars rattle as he pulls for the bay in which the trout should be on the feed. Awhile we feast our eyes on sunlit mountains and shadowy glens, then our oars are plied to take us further down the lake. Quite close to the shore is the Old Hall, once the home of the great Le Fleming family, but now merely a picturesque farmhouse. To Sir Daniel of that family was due the peaceful succession in the three north-western counties of Charles II. after the Interregnum. In Oliver’s day his house at Rydal was almost demolished by soldiers seeking a hidden treasure. To me Sir Daniel is more interesting as the first man to attempt to solve the life-history of the char of our lakes. In few particulars only are we able to improve his observations to-day. The char is the most mysterious as it is the most beautiful of British fishes. Though for three hundred years “silver” and “gilt” char have been noted, no close observer will say there are two varieties of the fish. Sir Daniel suggested that the two divisions spawn at different periods—November and February respectively—but the information then and now hardly justified the idea. During the midsummer months char are bottom feeders; in April and early May, and again towards the close of the fishing season, they occasionally come near the surface, and odd captures are made with the fly. Char average about nine inches in length and three-quarters of a pound in weight. A two-pound char is a great event among the lakemen. Potted char is quite a Lakeland delicacy, and commands high prices. In former times each inn had its stew into which the fish netted or plumbed were placed till a demand for them came along. West, touring over a century ago, mentions particularly the stews at Waterhead Inn, Coniston, and the Ferry, Windermere, as holding great numbers of char. Char pie was once a favourite dish too; in the Le Fleming house-keeping accounts, dating back nearly three hundred years, mentions are made of the large number of fish so used up. Char pie of those days is said to have been so full of spices that the flavour of the fish was neutralised out of existence. In the papers preserved at Holker Hall, a noble duke orders fish for a char pie to be sent to London without loss of time—in December, when the char would be spawning and far from toothsome!

CONISTON VILLAGE: THE OLD BUTCHER’S SHOP

Now the light is falling in a wider riband; it has touched the top of Yewdale crags, the scarred Mines valley is brimming with radiance. How uneven that line where shadow meets sunshine! Still lower bends the light; it is now only minutes before the lake will be flooded in glory. The heights round Torver are in the realm of sunshine, but the larches of Brantwood side are green and unkindled. Not a breath of air disturbs the flat calm. Over the eastern hills the great round sun rolls into sight. Everything is transformed. The subdued grey light is expelled by shimmering gold, green hills and fields alike are suffused with a living blaze. A boat pulled out from the pier near the Old Hall is followed by a wake of pale gold, the oars drip diamonds, the curl of parting waters is like a crystal-crowned sapphire.

To see Coniston Water by broad daylight nothing is better than Felix Hammel’s handsome craft, though the commander will cheerfully admit that we, in our pulling boat, had the best of it at dawn. The Gondola’s landing-stage is in the shade of some mighty oaks, an old cottage astride a shallow waiting-room with a jetty running out a few yards into the lake. The craft is of strange shape; at the stern, where the engines are placed, the draught is a yard and a half, but at bow—“There are few places on Coniston Lake,” says Mr. Hammel, “where I could not put the prow into the green fields while the stern was in deep water,” which, incidentally, shows the paucity of shallows. Mr. Hammel is fond of the engines which drive his taper-keeled craft along. “Fourteen horse-power, yet they drive the boat through the wildest gales betwixt April and September. I have sailed here for twenty-five years, and we have lost time but once. That was the wildest gale that ever smote this water. It blew from sou’-west, and there was a pretty lively water going. Not big rollers, but nasty short things that broke and shook themselves out into a cross-sea that would have made a pulling boat a mighty risky thing to be in. But the Gondola ran within five minutes of normal—the five and a half miles from here to Lake Bank we reckon to do in thirty-five minutes. That wild day it took forty. Only two days in my experience has the steamer not run. During the wet summer of 1903 the lake was so full that for two days the landing-stage was under water, and never a passenger got within two hundred yards of us.”

“I suppose you did a bit of fishing out of your windows those two days,” I commented. Mr. Hammel is an angler—as keen as ever.

MOONLIGHT AND LAMPLIGHT, CONISTON

“Hardly out of the windows, though of course I did do a bit.”

By this time the hands of the clock nearly point to starting-time; passengers are rapidly coming on board, and to hurry up laggards Mr. Hammel sends a flute-like note booming and swelling from the syren. Now there is a quiet rumble as the engines start, a purling of water beneath the stern, and the Gondola backs out into the lake. Tent Lodge, where Tennyson once dwelt, is almost opposite—a square sturdy house standing on a narrow green bank just above the water. The little landing-stage looks decidedly picturesque now; our craft pauses as though regretting to leave so happy a scene, then again the thrumming begins and we are swung round toward the foot of the lake. Far away two green banks contract till the water seems to end: Fir Island narrows the curving lake there. Brantwood is a pretty house beneath the fell, the views from its windows are splendid. Here Ruskin came to spend his latter days, in a house which had been occupied by Linton, the famous wood-engraver. The homelikeness of Brantwood is to me its chief charm: once a dweller in it, no mortal can, I should think, be so dead to natural beauties as not often to picture it, when far away, in memory’s freshest pigments. The eyes of all on board are turned to Brantwood—Mr. Hammel is speaking of it to a bevy of interested young ladies, the other lakemen are pointing it out to those near them; but, seated on the knife-like ridge of iron where his stokehole joins the deck, the engineer is looking intently at the greasy jacket of his boiler! Instantly his posture captures my attention. What meant that strange position? Were we in danger of an explosion? The engineer’s back was eloquent of intent inspection, even of alertness. Nothing happened, however, and as none of the lakemen seemed apprehensive I did not allow that rapt gaze to spoil my pleasure further.

“Brantwood?” says Mr. Hammel, “and Ruskin? Well, of course I knew the Professor well. He wasn’t a man to laugh and talk much, though. For five-and-twenty years I have done odd repairs to Mr. Severn’s yacht at Brantwood, and I often met the old gentleman thereabouts. Mr. Ruskin did not like scrow [upset], I remember, and every year the family used to go down to Lake Bank Hotel till spring cleaning was over. Mr. Ruskin went with them, of course. Mr. Severn used to hire the Gondola, and we ran in to the landing-stage to take servants and luggage on board. Now you know Mr. Ruskin didn’t like our boat at all—I believe he used to write a bit bitter about it; but I remember once (it was in the seventies) when we drew it to the stage, that Mr. Ruskin stood there with Mrs. Severn and the family. I was surprised and some pleased, I can tell you, when he came on board. He went all over the boat, into every corner while we were steaming down, looked at the engines a long while and asked a lot of sharp questions about them—he knew a fair bit about machinery in spite of his old-fashioned ways and ideas. Then when we were nearing Lake Bank he came out of the saloon there, and as he passed me, said with a nice smile, ‘I may like steam after all.’”

AN OLD INN KITCHEN, CONISTON

“Do you remember any others of the big men who lived about here,” I ask my friend.

“Oh yes: there was Mr. Tennyson lived across at Tent Lodge awhile, and in the seventies we had Carlyle here at the Waterhead Hotel two or three weeks. He used to have the steamer nearly every morning for a cruise around. He was a pleasant man to do with, but quiet. They used to say to me that Carlyle never laughed, and Mr. Ruskin but rarely, but I know different. One evening when Carlyle was here, I was across at Brantwood doing some repair to Mr. Severn’s yacht that was drawn up on the slip. While I was working away, down from the house came Mr. Ruskin and Carlyle and sat down on a pile of rough stones beside the slip. I didn’t take much heed of what they were talking about, for I was thrang [busy]; but I remember well that I was surprised to hear a big burst of laughing. I looked up—it was Mr. Ruskin, and before my eyes were fairly clapt on him Carlyle roared out quite as long and loud as he. Then they sat there full a quarter of an hour, talking quite merry, and every now and then there was a crack of laughing as made your heart feel glad.”

At this Mr. Hammel steps away and takes charge of the wheel of the steamer. There is little need of fine steering, for the water is deep and free from reefs.

We move along the crowded promenade deck to get a better view of the grand mountains clustering around. Like a sheet of blue the water stretches far away to meet the multi-shaded greens beneath High Cross. Yewdale crags are prominent, but the soaring ridges culminating in Old Man’s pointed top fill the eye most. Now the eastern shore is crowded with regiments of larches, growing where once the old monks burnt charcoal for their bloomeries by the beckside. On the right is Torver Common where never a wall is to be seen, and the lake-shore is fringed with rocks. Fir Island, a mass of Scotch firs or stone pines, anchored to a narrow rib of rock, has been passed, and now seems like a promontory of green. The woods on the mainland look delightful in this pleasant air, but the stiff lines of their planting is rather an eyesore. The coppice woods next succeed, in wide acres climbing to the skyline. These are allowed to grow fifteen years, then, when the saplings are about six inches thick, all are felled. The best wood is sent down to the mines to use as props; the other portions, after being peeled (for even in these days of chemical tanning bark of ash and oak and sycamore is still put on the market), are placed in neat circular piles in the centre of which a fire is laid. Then by a covering of wet turf the air is excluded. The fire has been sufficiently kindled not to be put out by the short supply of air, and it smoulders away for weeks. Much charcoal burning is done in the winter, and a pleasant scene it is to find on a snow-clad day lines of smoke rising from the barrenness where once was woodland, men moving round the conical patches from which internal heat has melted the white covering, the rough huts, the incipient flicker which has to be immediately quenched else the whole oven of charcoal be spoiled, the thinning smoke which threatens a dead fire there, to which the woodmen hasten to encourage the hidden blaze.

THE SHEPHERD, YEWDALE, CONISTON

Peel Island, alluded to before, is the place when in the time of the Sagas a Norseman dwelt, and a daring man he was to live on so low a rib of rock. In a wild gale the water, lashing its rocky sides, will throw spray right over it. In relief the islet is mitred; two rock ledges face the lake, leaving between a grassy depression some feet in depth. Our old Norseman built walls across this gap, then with poles and twigs from the shore-woods made a roof, and thereby obtained a home sufficient in its humble way to provide shelter in the wildest weather. In spring the glen of the islet is a mass of blue—with wild hyacinths. The lake is now becoming riverine in character, its banks are nearing rapidly, a picnic party seated on the rock-set shore wave and call merrily to the passing craft. The water is still as a pond, the reflections only broken in the wake of the passing steamer. And thus we come to Lake Bank, the end of the lake for steamer purposes, and the point to which coaches drive from Greenodd and Ulverston. It is a change for a good walker to get ashore here, and by the Brantwood shore return—a walk of some eight miles.

At first the road leads down by the rushing Crake, then crosses. The traveller passes through tall-hedged lanes, past old-world farms nestling against sheering hillsides. Once there is a beautiful glimpse—a vista of lake, Fir Island in foreground, and far away the rising fells. Just as the walker feels that Brantwood must be at hand, the woods open a little; here is a point jutting out into the lake to which he can easily pass, a shelf of shingle, overgrown with wych elms and sallows, but from it is a marvellous view. Not too far for detail to be dimmed is Coniston Hall, the church and the village, Mines valley and Yewdale crags, Old Man, Wetherlam and a number of giant hills. In autumn particularly the play of light and shade among the woodlands is glorious. The road passes within a few yards of Brantwood. If the wanderer has time to spare let him leave the road by one of the paths he sees up the hillside. There is little danger of any one complaining of trespass if you should light upon a worn path that is not public. Rising some two hundred feet up you are above coppice woods, and come among the heather, enjoying an excellent view of the lake and its surroundings. How peaceful such a place at sunset! Once I watched the sun set in a haze of blood red: the lake turned like frozen gore beneath my eyes, the hillsides mantled in crimson, the outstanding spurs of rock were wreathed in fire, a purple shadow gradually gathered in the hollows. Then, through a ravishing succession of tints, the scene melted away till I was looking down on a lake with moonlight shimmering on it, edged by blue, rocky mountains.

STEPPING-STONES, SEATHWAITE

One scene more and I have finished. It is of mid-winter—and night. Day was dying ere we left the village; with a parting glish at the snow-covered church tower, the sun left the lower glen. Now the hills were pointed with fire; from the lake a blue vapour rose as the air chilled, to join the helm of feathery smoke gradually spreading from the village. The glen was snowbound indeed; from hedges and plantations came the rustle of slipping snow; a partial thaw after the snowfall passed gave us the roads fairly clear. There were many slippery places, but to the careful and robust there was pleasure in the prospect of a walk. Large flocks of sheep are crowded into the fields lying near the farms we pass; there a weary shepherd is still at work. On the higher farms the shelter of the plantations will have been courted; down here a huge rib of rock lies athwart the wind, and the fields have been but little swept by the storm. Almost the most arduous of a shepherd’s trials is after a long snowstorm. His flock have to be mustered; if the snow has drifted at all a band of ewes are sure to be beneath it, and these have to be got out. Then comes the problem of hand-feeding perhaps a thousand. Hay and roots may be brought by sleigh, but the labour of distribution is great. The soft snow clings so tenaciously to the grass beneath that to walk a hundred yards in the fields is too hard work for any pleasure-seeker. The sheep are nosing down to the hidden grass: even in the hardest weather they forage well for themselves, though the gap between “feed” and “appetite” is often very wide. The lake looks blue and cold under its veil of soft vapour; a skin of ice is forming. There is a loud crack and a rattling echo passes along the frozen surface. Eerie it is so to hear the ice “stretching”: the frostier the night the louder and more frequent the reports. (In 1895 I was on Windermere after dark—it was a moonless night—and the loud and long continued roars which spread about the ice were almost alarming.) Soon we are in the byroad for Tarn Hows. The trees meet overhead, and if it were not for the white flashes of snow between them the way would be bad to find. The road is slippery, and time and again we have to leave the metalled part for the snow-banks to get on at all. The sounds heard in the woods on a frosty night are interesting. A faint rustle in the undergrowth as a small bird hops from one twig to another, a faint rumble and a sissing of snow as a rabbit bolts away, the thud of falling pieces of snow from the branches, the crackling of twigs as the frost nips harder, the blundering rush of a large bird through the curtain of branches, followed by a mimic snowstorm of dislodged particles; from darksome glades, the melancholy hoot of the wood owl and the shriekings of the barn owl, then from far away floats the chime proclaiming the hour, the cadence dying in sweet confusion over the tapering larches.

WINTER SUNSHINE, CONISTON

So far the way has been steep and the footing uncertain; now, however, we rise above the woods to the open hillside. The angle of ascent is less difficult and the snow firm to the tread. Our path forms a terrace above Yewdale. Beneath is a glen cumbered with snow; above, a sky liberally dusted with stars large and small, the gentle light from which is sufficient to kindle the jewels on the frosted snow. The air is chill, but our blood is too warm for us to be more than barely conscious of it. From a corner of the track we have an excellent view backward. The lake is still hidden in its curtain of mist, the dark woods of Brantwood side climb sharply into the white desolations. Coniston Old Man over the way—how truly near it looks!—is gilded by a new light; the moon is rising and the light spreads over summit and upper snowfield, over crag and bield and lower slack of white, finally touching with crystal the fields and houses in the deep dingles around. From one point we look over a wilderness of snow to other dales, but the expected mountain heads are hidden in pearly cloud. The tarn is covered with ice, and some time we spend sliding. Then to return, but first of all notice that grey moving blotch on the shoulder of Wetherlam. The glasses show a family of wild goats. Villagers of Coniston tell of a herd of over thirty observed not many seasons ago, while groups of over a dozen occasionally tempt the keen gunster out on to the chilly wastes.

The goats, I am told, were introduced about a century ago in order to prevent fell-sheep frequenting dangerous cliffs—for a goat is safe where a sheep will turn giddy, and, falling, be dashed to pieces. By nature the sheep is divided from the goat, and will not browse the same pasture. For long it was a custom of the quarrymen of Tilberthwaite to assemble on Good Friday morning, and attempt to hunt the goats haunting the fell near by. But though a kid or so, weaker than the rest, might be taken, I never heard that much success accompanied these chases. The goats from Coniston fells wander in search of toothsome grass to beyond the Duddon, and there is record of an exciting hunt among the rocks of Wallabarrow for a wandering goat. In winter only do these animals approach civilisation; their usual haunts are the crags above sequestered glens. The snow crunches under our feet, and we speedily come down to where we again catch view of Coniston Water. Now it is clear of mist, the whitened fields, blotched with woods, limned with hedges, are in sharp contrast to the grey ice, and to the glittering unfrozen water in mid-lake. A glory almost approaching that of day spreads over the scene: the queen of the heavens is indeed “walking in brightness” here.

DAFFODILS BY THE BANKS OF THE SILVERY DUDDON

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