The English Lakes

BUTTERMERE

Buttermere in May or early June! The May of the poet, that is to say, which smiles upon us twice or thrice in a decade, not the May of actuality which is spent in overcoats and blighted hopes, and bad tempers and east winds. But there are Mays even yet like those of the invincible tradition, and just enough of them to save the face of the poet. And Buttermere in the full flush of one of them stands always out for me conspicuous in that long gallery of bygone summer pageants, which are not the least of those pleasant fancies kindled by the cheery glow of the winter fireside. Ullswater and Wastwater can turn almost any atmosphere to account. They can grasp the glories of high June and diffuse their radiance over shore and mountain to as much purpose as any, or can turn savage in the storms and clouds of autumn with infinite grandeur.

Honister, too, though surmounted in many moods, I almost prefer to recall in some such one as this, when the replenished ghylls are spouting like silver threads down the dark mountain sides to the right and left as you draw up from Seatoller, and the sombre crag itself is thrusting up a rugged head against a background of whirling clouds. But down in the long secluded vale of Buttermere, its narrowed trough for most of the five miles it winds its beauteous length, filled with the waters of two pellucid lakes, I would have it always June, or rather that ideal, precocious May which has planted it irrevocably in the chambers of my soul.

Of all the better-known lakes or haunts in Lakeland, this one is perhaps the most secluded. A dozen miles by steep roads and some fearsome hills are made light of, it is true, by the coaches of the holiday season; but at other times the valley is cut off from the travelling world dependent on public transport, and its two or three small hostelries are then apt to become very empty havens of peace amid the hills. Lying amid bosky knolls upon the half-mile meadowy interval, through which the Cocker sparkles from the foot of Buttermere to the head of Crummock, with the steep green wall of mountain, cloven here and there by the white trail of falling streams, rising sharply for two thousand feet above it, the pose of this little group of cottages and homesteads scattered around their diminutive church is perfection itself. The sense of snug seclusion from a noisy and ever noisier world, and that, too, in a spot familiar by name at least wherever the English language obtains, is everywhere eloquent, and holds one's fancy above the common. And along the steep western shore of Buttermere itself, following a sheep track on the rough mountain side, amid the scent of thyme and freshly blooming gorse, the hum of bees, with the flowers of the upland showing their shy heads among the ragged moorland grasses, what a picture at such time as I have in mind is this mile and a half of limpid water, fringed upon its farther shore by mantling woods! For though only one residence of any kind trenches upon the margin of either lake, this one of Hasness upon Buttermere has been enfolded by time and taste in groves of larch and beech and sycamore that extend half along the lake shore, and flaunt their earliest foliage of summer upon the glassy water. While on the rugged oaks mingled among them, self-sown, perhaps, some of them by hardy stunted forbears, there still flares that golden tint in which its bursting leaf so curiously forestalls the radiant decay of Autumn.

And when the woods cease, what delightful natural lawns of crisp turf sweep in little curving bays to the mere edge, where gently shelving beaches of silvery gravel dip into the shallow waters, and show far out into the lake their clean white bottom beneath its crystal depths! At the head of the lake the Cocker comes prattling down through the meadows of Gatesgarth, a typical mountain sheep farm, whose Herdwicks, running to many thousands, count every mountain within sight as their own traditional domain, to the summit of Honister and the Haystacks – a noble pair of sentinels closing the gateway to the vale.

Most notable valleys in the Lake country have their genius loci, as is only natural in a region till quite recent times utterly removed from the world's life. And they are often simple folk whose sorrows or humours have acquired immortality from the very seclusion, the normally unruffled calm of their environment. Mary of Buttermere and her harrowing story, for instance, would long ago have been forgotten in Hampshire. But no one reasonably versed in Lakeland lore ever, I trust, crosses the threshold of the Old Fish Inn without taking off his hat, so to speak, to the memory of that ill-used maiden. Her trials, however, were after all comparative; well-looking barmaids suffer much worse things, and men lose their lives over them in various ways once or twice a year. But the sentiment attaching to the personality of this mountain beauty, whom, like Phyllis, all the shepherd swains adored, and yet further celebrated by such visitors as penetrated to this romantic spot, including the Lake poets, made a stir in the world when the villain was hung as high as Haman. The press rang with it, which meant more in those days than in these, and the "Beauty of Buttermere" appeared in various forms upon the stage of London theatres.

The Old Fish Inn still stands a little way down the meadow from the village, as it stood over a century ago, when the yeoman father of Mary Robinson, the heroine, presided over it, and she herself ministered to the hunger and thirst of his varied guests. The gentlemen visitors no doubt turned her head a little, though Wordsworth, who had evidently taken a social glass there with Coleridge, reminds him how they had both been stricken with the modest mien of this artless daughter of the hills. But one may safely hazard the belief that Wordsworth was more artless in this kind of divination than the most rustic young woman who ever poured out a glass of beer. De Quincey, who also knew her, bears witness to the admiration the two poets had for her, and has a sly hit at their romantic assumption of her ingenuousness.

But if Mary broke rustic hearts and held her head a little high, she was at least a young woman of irreproachable character, and it was in 1805 that the distinguished stranger who gave her such fortuitous immortality arrived in Keswick in a handsome turnout and took up his abode at its chief hotel, entering his name as the Honourable Augustus Hope, M.P., a brother by assumption, modestly admitted by the stranger himself, of Lord Hopetown. One must endeavour, if it costs a mental effort, to imagine the aloofness of this country and all such regions in the year of Trafalgar, when one finds a very poor imitation of a fine gentleman posing as the brother of a well-known peer, taking local society with a big S by storm, and the "county" within reach of Keswick tumbling over one another to do him honour. There was a sceptic here and there, to be sure. He overdid his affability, and Coleridge even hints that his grammar was shaky, which nowadays would possibly be a point in his favour. But as he franked his letters, and forgery then meant death, the unbelieving minority were temporarily silenced, and the Honourable Augustus continued to enjoy himself very much indeed. Perhaps so experienced a gentleman knew precisely when to stop, for in due course he betook himself to Buttermere and to the Fish Inn, ostensibly to catch char or trout, but the only record of his sport we have is the capture of the heart, or at any rate the hand – for he wooed her openly and honourably – of his landlord's daughter. What society in the vale of Keswick, a member of whom had even christened a recently arrived son and heir Augustus Hope, particularly matrons with marriageable daughters, thought of the escapade of the Honourable Augustus, history does not say. It has no occasion; we may be quite certain without being told. The happy day was fixed. It arrived, and the smallest church in England tinkled out the marriage peals with its single bell. The Hopetown family were not represented at the wedding for one excellent reason, and the aristocracy of the vale of Keswick for quite another one. The absence of the former was easily explained away to so artless a gathering as was here collected. That of the latter was only natural, and must have provided even a spice of triumph for the victorious Beauty of Buttermere. The honeymoon, of which London with the brotherly welcome of a noble family and the smiles of a Court was to be the culmination, extended very little farther than Keswick, when the minions of the law swooped down upon Augustus and tore him from Mary's arms on a charge of forgery, which proved the least of his many heinous crimes. In brief, the man's name was Hatfield, son of a Devonshire tradesman, and Mary was only the last of many victims, most of them her superiors in station, whom with marvellous skill and cunning this accomplished ruffian had deceived, abandoning them one after another in conditions of distress, and some of them with children. He was hung at Carlisle, and Mary returned to her father's inn and resumed her former position. She had no child and bore no reproach, among her simple neighbours the most fortunate, probably, but the most celebrated of the villain's many victims. She eventually married a farmer from Caldbeck, and her grave may be seen to-day, near by that one distinguished by the curiously sporting tombstone beneath which lies the dust of John Peel of immortal memory.

Crummock is just twice the length of Buttermere, with about the same average width of half a mile. Like the other, it is pressed between the feet of steep mountains, and has the same charm at the open and upper end of silvery strand shelving from meadowy banks, with the same clusters of fir, alder, or gnarled oak grouped gracefully about the grassy shore. Here, too, on still summer days the same crystal water shows far out into the lake the clean, white, gravelly bottom on which it lies. There are two or three boats, moreover, available on Crummock, and it is out on the bosom of the lake that this whole beautiful vale, above and below it, is displayed perhaps to the best advantage. The now remoter heights of Honister and its companions fill the head. The steeps of High Stile and Red Pike dip to the gorge near by, whence issues the hoarse murmur of Scale Force making its sheer leap of a hundred and twenty feet, and spraying with perennial moisture the ferns, mosses, and feathery saplings that cling to its shaggy cliffs. Above the lower heights upon the eastern shores rise the higher fells of Whiteside and Grassmoor, the latter bearing the strange unhealed red scars where its whole front was shaved away a century and a half ago by a tremendous waterspout.

A May morning out on Crummock, the fly rod laid aside in despair for the moment with its capricious little trout, though the compensations forbid so untoward a word; the boat drifting idly with gently gurgling keel upon the faint ripples stirred by the very softest of zephyrs; the distant murmur of the Cocker splashing toward the lake head; the faint dull roar of Scale Force, and, above all, the silent throng of overhanging mountains fairly pealing with the cuckoo's note, is a memory always to be treasured. Another such morning, too, comes back to me, when splashes of brilliant blue lay here and there upon the eastern shore of the lake, disclosing to a nearer view great beds of bluebells at the height of their glory. A moonlight night again, the sequel of the same or another such effulgent day, is before me as, idly trolling for the bigger trout, those prowlers of the night, one felt the awesome black shapes of the mountains piled up on every hand, while the slow, measured stroke of the oar struck molten silver as we crossed and recrossed the moon's shining path.

Stern and wild enough under the shadow of night or beneath stormy skies, Crummock thrusts its gradually narrowing point deep into richer scenes of woody foot-hill, and radiant meadow, overlooked by the picturesquely perched old hostelry of Scale Hill, familiar to generations of Lakeland tourists. And here the Cocker leaps rejoicing and in fuller volume to sparkle down the long, lovely vale of Lorton towards its junction with the Derwent at Wordsworth's birthplace. A mile or so to the westward Loweswater lies bewitchingly in the lap of fells, but overhung upon one bank for its entire length by the opulent foliage of Holm Wood, and lacking the more rugged features which dominate the others, seems to lie somewhat aloof from them in quality as it does in fact.

But one privilege of a sojourn in the valley is its easy access, over the single ridge that divides them, to the famous but secluded trough of Ennerdale, lying parallel to that of Buttermere. The prospect from Scarth Cap before descending into one of the wildest valleys in all Lakeland has a peculiar grimness, for the long array of precipitous steeps and crags that confront one above the twisting thread of the beck hurrying down to Ennerdale Lake turn their savage fronts so uncompromisingly to the north. The more radiant the summer morn, the brighter the summer day, the darker by contrast with the interludes of spring verdure that no north aspect can quench are the impenetrable shadows which mask all detail, and make fearsome precipices out of rugged but accessible steeps. For above them the Pillar Mountain almost touches 3000 feet, and the far-famed Pillar Rock springing from its outskirts, whose naked walls need no black shadows for their enhancement. But this is wandering from our immediate subject, and involving us in the group of big mountains that cluster round Scafell. Far down the valley the lake of Ennerdale, in size and shape resembling Crummock, glistens at the fringe of civilization. If local genii count for aught, that of this valley, though not nearly so familiar, should surely be "t'girt dog of Ennerdale".

The first notice of his appearance was in May, 1816, when carcasses of three or four sheep killed and as many mangled were found in Lower Ennerdale. Such mishaps were common enough, but the usual sequel, the destruction of the dog within a few days, utterly failed here. Every device known was futile before this formidable vampire. For a long time no trace could be found of him, but in the increasing toll of victims that greeted the shepherd's eye in ever-changing and unexpected quarters. He never visited the same place twice within an ordinary space of time, and the scene of some of his raids were twenty miles apart. He worked entirely at night, laying low through the day in woods and ditches. His bi-weekly or tri-weekly toll increased with his rage for blood, and the hue and cry raised everywhere brought him into view occasionally in the early mornings. But while men with guns were lying for him in one place, he would be enjoying himself on some unsuspected hillside ten miles away. The toll of victims mounted into the hundreds; June and July passed away, and "t'girt dog" was still master of the situation, the growing grain crops giving him ampler refuge.

Half the men in the country spent the night afield with guns, and were worn out with watching. Many idlers, tempted by the large reward offered, seized the chance to join the chase, and the statesmen's wives waxed weary of cooking meals for all and sundry by day and night. The children were afraid to tread their often lonely paths to school, and screamed in their sleep that "t'girt dog" was after them. The mountain foxhounds were brought up and laid on. But the girt dog with his greyhound blood ran away from them all, carrying the line on one occasion from Ennerdale to St. Bees on the coast, and on another to Cockermouth. The following, on this occasion, consisted of two hundred souls. It was a Sunday, and passing Ennerdale Church during service in full cry had added to the field the males of the congregation as one man, including the parson. The humours of some of these exhilarating hunts as told by a contemporary pen are delightful. Once, when surrounded by guns in a cornfield, the ingenious quarry singled out the least efficient sportsman, Will Rothbury, who, as the sanguinary beast broke cover and ran past him within easy shot, leaped up in the air instead of firing and cried out, "Skerse, what a dog!" The latter, shaken for a moment out of his presence of mind, bolted between the notoriously bandy legs of a deaf old man who was gathering faggots, unconscious of the excitement. Not till the middle of September did the girt dog succumb after a long chase. He was set up in Keswick Museum with a collar round his neck describing his exploits. Such, in brief, for much more might be told, is the story of "t'girt dog of Ennerdale".