a little lowly vale,
A lowly vale, and yet uplifted high
Among the mountains: even as if the spot
Had been from eldest time.…
So placed, to be shut out from all the world!
Urnlike it was in shape, deep as an Urn
A quiet treeless nook, with two green fields,
A liquid pool that glittered in the sun,
And one bare dwelling; one abode, no more!
… The little fields, made green
By husbandry of many thrifty years,
Paid cheerful tribute to the moorland house.
Not one line of that picture need have been altered to describe Blea Tarn as we knew it in the’nineties. Uncle Alfred had completely preserved the farm and valley as Wordsworth knew them.
An excursion to Blea began with a walk over Huntingstile, to the village of Elterwater in the next valley. Lake Country walks must be taken Indian fashion, in single file; for the narrow footpaths are fringed by overhanging ferns and plants, and these are perpetually dripping from the never-ceasing rain. Stepping off the path is like stepping into a little mountain stream. So, one behind the other, we crossed the pass, and as we were slithering down among the stones into the valley, we saw, as surely in Westmorland as in Wiltshire, Papa’s wagonette waiting for us on the road below. A slumbering driver sat on the box behind two slumbering horses, and the trio looked as if they had been waiting there ‘ from eldest time’. We then drove towards the Langdale Pikes, but after walking behind the carriage up the last steep hill, we always turned off the road to climb the pathless mountainside. In this way, we could descend upon Blea as Wordsworth did, on foot from out of the ‘tumultuous waste of huge hill tops’.
The tenants of the farm were Mr. and Mrs. Weir. Uncle Alfred had been proud of finding them, for he thought that the farmer was indeed Wordsworth’s Solitary in the flesh. The old man might almost have been a piece broken off from one of those rough stone walls which always meander across mountains. This was not surprising, as his farming largely consisted in mending the holes made in them by his sheep. His voice was the savage roar of some prehistoric sheepdog, and his language was more canine than human. He never spoke a complete sentence, but as he came up from the farm to meet us, he barked out a few unconnected syllables before he turned into the stable to hang up his coat. My father generally followed him there, as he enjoyed the conversation of this primitive man; though the rest of the family found that Mrs. Weir’s superior social gifts made her more accessible than her husband.
She was a cheerful little woman with a shiny wrinkled face and a very jolly smile, and she liked an opportunity for talking. Indeed she chattered away as if she was a practised conversationalist; and was far from giving the impression that she spent her life in a remote mountain valley, acquired by its owner with the sole purpose of securing it for ever as an inviolable fortress of solitude.
Blea Farm at this time belonged to my cousin, Harry Olivier, who was then a soldier in India; and Mrs. Weir’s first remark was always ‘How’s the Maj?’ as if he were some curious exotic magpie. She then gave us a most delicious tea, everything made by herself; but as she always called bread ‘cake’ and cake ‘bread’, it was difficult to know which she was offering and we generally found on our plates the one we least expected.
Wordsworth was of course our Grasmere hero, and my copy of his Poems is still filled with flowers which I picked in the garden of Dove Cottage in the firm belief that every tree and plant in it had been planted by him or by Dorothy. Papa often thrilled us with the story of his first visit to the Lakes, when he saw the poet himself at the gate of his house at Ambleside and found him not at all forthcoming. Then one day, when we were looking at Wordsworth’s grave in Grasmere churchyard and saw written upon it the date ‘1850’, Papa suddenly exclaimed: ‘ Why, he died years before I ever came here.’ So ended a legend; and I wonder how many of the memories in this book are as imaginary as my father’s recollection of the poet Wordsworth.
One of my father’s later sightseeing excursions came to a dramatic end. He often drove to Pepperbox Hill, a ridge about five miles south of Salisbury, upon which stands Eyre’s Folly, an eighteenth-century tower or gazebo. From here the view is superb. Looking towards the south, there lies beneath the eye a wide expanse of undulating New Forest country, smiling and wooded, its rich luxuriant green flooded with a warm and amber light. Southampton Water glitters in the distance, the ships passing to and fro upon it like little nebulæ in the Milky Way. And then, looking to the north, there is a world of quite another colour. A thin grey mist often hangs over it; but as the eye rests upon this, there comes a sudden revelation—a point where the haze freezes miraculously into something sharp, clear and exquisitely soaring. It is the spire of Salisbury Cathedral rising up from the broad shallow valley where the five rivers meet. We often drove to the Pepper
