How much the beauty of a simple cottage if it is covered with rough-cast, as most of our houses are in the Lake District for warmth and against the rain, is enhanced by the warm colour, whether it be pink or whether it be yellow-buff, which is often used.  On the other hand there is no doubt that the plain whitewash which is used upon many of our farms and mountain dwellings, has a note of cleanliness about it which commends itself, and there is cheerfulness in our northern fells which this whitewash ministers to, with a certain practical use about it, for it warns the fell shepherd of his whereabouts on dark evenings, and he can descry his house afar off. (p. 495)

Now let us consider for a moment the extraordinary beauty of the dry-wall building of our district.  These dry walls give interstices for the growth of seeds, ferns, and mosses, sometimes, as is the case on the road opposite Barrow house, a little ledge or dropstone projects below the topmost layers of stone, and this makes for the free growth of wild fern or other plants, whose seeds are dropped by the bird.  Contrast the roadside beauty of the wall beside St. John’s-in-the-Vale vicarage with the suburban wall put up by the Manchester Corporation at Thirlmere.  The one ministers to the pleasure of the passer-by, the other suggests only the dullness of suburban life and town associations, the very thing, mark you, which holiday-makers in the Lake District want to escape from.  But speaking of these roads reminds us how very much motor traffic has destroyed their amenity.  The craze to cut off corners which the roadside authorities seem obsessed with, has often deprived the country road of its chief charm. (p. 495)….

My quarrel with the roadside authorities is that they have no reverence for natural beauty.  They will hack away all the loveliness of tree life without remorse….  But it is not only disfigurement of scenery by highway authorities that I protest against.  It is their want of reverence for the beauty of roadside wastes.  Many an approach towards a town is made beautiful in early summer by the dandelion flowers, geraniums and patches of fern that spring up at the base of the walls.  Nothing is more beautiful than the little border of green growth which nature seems to supply us with at the base of these walls.  But as soon as a dandelion appears or a fern uncurls its frond, by comes the man with the wheel-barrow and hoe; it is all ruthlessly torn away, and the road in naked barrenness loses one of its delights for passers-by. (pp. 496-7)….

The same may be said of our bridges.  In the old days most of our roads were packhorse roads, most of our bridges were humped partly for strength to the arch and partly to escape flood water….  It so happens that we have inherited from the past a great number of examples of beautiful bridges, and it also happens that a bridge, if it is beautiful in shape in combination with the river below it, has a peculiar attraction for us all. (p. 497)….

But there is no cure for the destruction of scenery by our authorities except education.  In the early days of the Cumberland County Council, no rebuilding of a bridge was possible until a qualified architect had been called in to advise.  So far as I know no such qualified architect is employed now, and I shudder to think what in these days of enforced concrete and motorist demands would have been the fate of the picturesque bridges of Cumberland, had not this terrible war mercifully intervened, and for a season stopped the mischief. (p. 498)….

But what about the Cities of the Dead, have we taken them into our thought?  Have we determined that as we visit the graves of our beloved ones our minds shall be lifted up to the Giver of all beauty and the Sender of all rest by the appeal either of tree or flower or monument?  We shall find the exact contrary is the fact.  Instead of the flowers that change with the season, we find our cemeteries crowded with bead ornaments under glittering bell glasses.  Instead of Christian monuments that show thought and care in their design, we find Pagan monuments, turned out to pattern at the granite or monument maker’s works, and these of every conceivable type of unfitness in design or essential ugliness.  In a countryside like our own, which provides for us the most enduring monumental stone that exists, more enduring than granite, a stone whose colour is in entire harmony with the surroundings, and that shines after a rain storm like moss agate, you will notice people importing into the district glorified chalk from foreign parts, or white marble which slowly decays as soon as the polish leaves it, and often becomes horribly stained, disfigures the whole churchyard by its glaring and restless patchiness and incongruity with the landscape, and when we come to look at the shapes of these stones we find that we have departed from the instinctive love of beauty of the monument makers of a hundred years ago, and are willing because the monument maker’s pattern books give us a leading, to adopt shapes for the tops of our headstones which cannot possibly give pleasure to the eye that knows the worth of the double curve, which our fore-elders delighted in. (p. 500)

We have done something at Crosthwaite to introduce the old British form of cross with the Viking knot or ornament upon it, and we have to thank Mr. Bromley, of High Hill, for the care with which he has worked out the designs that were given him in the first instance by Mrs. Rawnsley.  But with the monument makers pattern books all over the land there is little chance that these examples will be much cared for or followed, and those of us who visit the ordinary town cemetery must come away appalled by the fact of the ugliness as well as the costliness of the majority of monuments therein, and must wonder how it comes to pass that we who remain alive are willing so to dishonour the dead, by making it impossible for the lover of beauty to find rest to his soul as he stands upon such sacred ground. (p. 501)

I fear that I have wearied you, but there is one more sorrow of heart that I must unburden.  It is this—how little we have done to educate our children in elementary and secondary schools alike to the ghastly selfishness which will allow our holiday-makers to entirely disfigure the country with what I call the ‘litter nuisance.’  When I went to see the National Trust possession I spoke of before, Thurstaston, I was quite unable to sit down and enjoy the view from that beautiful Deeside moorland by reason of the fact that the whole hillside was covered with greasy paper that flitted by in the wind and of the sardine tins and empty chocolate boxes that turned it into a refuse heap.  From where I sat I counted one hundred of these greasy luncheon papers and several sardine tins.  I wrote to the press and complained of the cruel selfishness which spoiled the amenity of the neighbourhood.  We suffer from the same thing in the Fitz Park.  Notwithstanding notices are posted up and rubbish baskets are provided we have to employ a man (whose time could be better employed) to pick up litter which these unthinking people leave about.  Last year a friend of mine found the top of Great Gable entirely disfigured by the same unsightliness, and this leaving of litter about does not only pertain to picnic papers and the like, but the throwing of broken bottles and tins and rubbish of other kinds into running water, river or lake, and my wife and I determined to approach the education authority on this matter.  We drew up a leaflet which eventually by the kindness of the education authority found its way into our schools. Let me quote it to you. (p. 501)

 The Desecration of Nature

The beauty of Nature is a gift of God.  The purpose of this gift is to make us happy and to lift up our thoughts to higher things.  The greatest works of Art and the greatest writings in both prose and poetry have been inspired by this gift of beauty.

All God’s gifts to us carry responsibility; we are bound to use them as He intends us to do, or we go against His goodwill.  His goodwill is that all of us shall enjoy the beauty of Nature, not some of us; therefore we must not only enjoy the gift ourselves but we must protect it from being spoiled for other people.  For instance, if we break down branches of flowering trees or root up flowering plants we are spoiling for other people what we have enjoyed ourselves.  This is selfish.  Again, if we destroy birds’ nests, especially if they are rare kinds, we are preventing other people from enjoying the sight of those birds.  This is selfish.  If we throw rubbish of any kind, broken bottles, crockery, tins, papers, &c., into clear water—either stream, lake or pond—we are destroying the beauty of the water for other people.  This again is selfish.

One of the ways in which many beautiful places are spoiled is by the leaving about of waste paper, bottles, orange peel, banana skins, egg shells, cigarette boxes, &c., &c.  All these things are very ugly in themselves, and the ugliness and untidyness of leaving them about prevents the beauty of the place which is God’s gift for making us happy and lifting up our thoughts to higher things.  For how can we be happy if we are surrounded by signs of thoughtlessness and selfishness and how then can our thoughts be lifted up to higher things?  There are many places of great beauty in this country which people can only visit perhaps once in a year or perhaps even once in a lifetime.  Is it not the height of unkindness to them to spoil in any way their enjoyment of such places?

We are proud of our native land, and if we do anything to destroy its beauty or injure it in any way we are not true patriots, for the true patriot thinks first of his country and then of himself.

Make it a rule never to leave waste paper about—either bring it away or bury it, and all remains of food, such as orange peel, egg shells, &c., &c.  In New York if anyone is seen to throw away a scrap of waste paper in the street he is at once spoken to by the police and made to pick it up.

Never cut your name or initials on anything—turf, wood or stone—or deface anything by writing on it.

Many beautiful places and grounds hitherto left open have been closed because of the bad behaviour in these ways of a few persons.  Take care you are never among these few.

There are many places open to the public such as properties of the National Trust, Mountains, Lakes, Parks and Commons; you as one of the public should help to protect them. Boys and girls can do this, as well as grown-up people.

                Keswick, July, 1916.                                                                                                          H.D.R.
                                                                                                                                                      E.R.

It is to the schools we must really look for help in this matter.  It is in the impressionable time of school age that the child’s mind can be turned not only to the wicked selfishness of litter making, but to the constantly increasing delight that comes from eyes trained to perceive bird-glory upon earth, the beauty of the continual changing of leaf, woodland, and fern, the unutterable grandeur of sky-scape and star-scape, and all that goes to make each day, each night to differ in its power of appeal to the human heart.  The kindest thing that can be done for a child that has to develop into a working man or woman, is to give him the continual pleasure of observation of natural beauty, wherever his lot in life is cast. (pp. 501-03)

How little this has been affected in the past we may judge from the fact that, so far as I know, not more than probably a dozen of the working inhabitants of this town of Keswick take such delight in the loveliness of their surroundings, that they will go off in any spare hours that may come to them for a mountain walk or for a stroll in the fields.  At this present moment I only know two men of whom I can confidently affirm that their greatest pleasure in life is a walk in the countryside. (p. 503)

I end as I began; if we desire to rear a generation of men and women proud of their native land, willing to work for it or to die for it if need be, it is our bounden duty, each and all, to do what we can to add to its beauty, and as far as possible to refuse to discredit or diminish the great entail of natural beauty which has been bequeathed to us.

I conclude by reading the words of a great teacher and lover of natural beauty, who received his first impression of the loveliness of the natural world in this valley, and who has put it on record that the first thing that he remembered in life was being taken by his nurse to the brow of Friars Crag on Derwentwater, and who in later years founded the Guild of St. George and provided a creed for the members of that Guild.  The fifth clause of that creed runs as follows:—

“I will not kill nor hurt any living creature needlessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing, but will strive to save and comfort all gentle life, and guard and perfect all natural beauty upon the earth.”

Now there must be in every community a certain number of people who would accept that fifth article of the creed of St. George’s Guild, why should not these people join together and determine, as far as in them lay, that the spirit of reverence for natural beauty should be a real and living thing in their midst?

Alas, I am leaving the parish, and am glad of this opportunity accorded me of making this last appeal for the beauty of our lake country hereabouts undegraded and undestroyed. (p. 503)

(Parents’ Review, XXIX (July 1918), 492-503)

Hits: 5465

Having grown up in the neighbourhood of Alfred Tennyson’s old home at Lincolnshire, I had been struck with the swiftness with which,

            As year by year the labourer tills
            His wonted glebe, or lops the glades,

the memories of the poet of the Somersby Wold had faded ‘from off the circle of the hills.’ I had been astonished to note how little interest was taken in him or his fame, and how seldom his works were met with in the houses of the rich or poor in the very neighbourhood. (p. 10)

It was natural that, coming to reside in the Lake country, I should endeavour to find out what of Wordsworth’s memory among the men of the Dales still lingered on,—how far he was still a moving presence among them,—how far his works had made their way into the cottages and farm-houses of the valleys. (p. 10)….

The testimony of the witnesses I have been fortunate enough to bring before you seems to agree in depicting Wordsworth as he painted himself, a plain man, continually murmuring his undersong as he passed along by brook and woodland, pacing the ground with unuplifted eye, but so retired, that even the North country peasant, who does even yet recognise the social differences of class and caste that separate and divide ‘the unknown little from the unknowing great,’ was unable to feel at home with him.  ‘Not a very companionable man at the best of times’ was their verdict.  But I think all the while these dalesmen seem to have felt that if the poet was not of much count as a worldly-wise farm or shepherd authority, nor very convivial and free and easy as li’le Hartley was, nor very athletic and hearty as Professor Wilson, there was a something in the severe-faced, simply habited man ‘as said nowt to neabody’ that made him head and shoulders above the people, and bade them listen and remember when he spoke, if it was only on the lopping of a tree or the building of a chimney-stack.  ‘He was a man of a very practical eye, and seemed to see everything,’ was the feeling. (p. 40)

And turning from the poet to his wife, whilst one can see how the household need of economy in early Town End days have her to the last the practical power of household management that had almost passed into a proverb, one can see also how true was that picture of the

            Being breathing thoughtful breath,
            .           .           .           .           .          
            A perfect woman, nobly planned,
            To warn, to comfort, and command.

‘He never knawed, they say, what he was wuth, nor what he hed i’ t’ house.’  She did it all.  Then, too, it is touching to notice how deep and true the constant love between man and wife was seen to be, how truly companions for life they were, and that, too, in the eyes of a class of people who never saw that

            Beauty born of murmuring sound
            Had passed into her face,

and half marvelled that the spirit wed with spirit was so marvellously close than fleshly bond to flesh. (pp. 40-41)

Upright, the soul of honour, and for that reason standing high with all; just to their servants; well meaning and quiet in their public life; full of affection in their simple home life; so it seems the poet and his wife lived and died.  Thought a deal of for the fact that accounts were strictly met at the tradesmen’s shops, they were thought more of because they were ever ready to hear the cry of the suffering, and to enter the doors of those ready to perish. (p. 41)

I do not think I have been able to tell the world anything new about the poet or his surroundings.  But the man ‘who hedn’t a bit of fish in him, and was no mountaineer,’ seems to have been in the eyes of the people always at his studies; ‘and that because he couldn’t help it, because it was his hobby,’ for sheer love, and not for money.  This astonished the industrious money-loving folk, who could not understand the doing work for ‘nowt,’ and perhaps held the poet’s occupation in somewhat lighter esteem, just because it did not bring in ‘a deal o’ brass to the pocket.’  I think it is very interesting, however, to notice how the woman part of the Rydal Mount family seemed to the simple neighbourhood to have the talent and mental ability; and there must have been, both about Dorothy Wordsworth and the poet’s daughter Dora, a quite remarkable power of inspiring the minds of the poor with whom they came in contact, with a belief in their intellectual faculties and brightness and cleverness.  If Hartley Coleridge was held by some to be Wordsworth’s helper, it was to Dorothy he was supposed by all to turn if ‘ivver he was puzzelt.’ The women had ‘the wits, or best part of ’em.’—this was proverbial among the peasantry, and, as having been an article of rural faith, it has been established out of the mouths of all the witnesses it has been my lot to call. (pp. 41-2)

(Reminiscences of Wordsworth among the Peasantry of Westmoreland)

Hits: 5574

The subject of my paper [first read at Keswick] is “Reverence for Natural Beauty,” and believing as I do that God has made the world beautiful in order that men may be led by it themselves to beauty of life and reverence for that King in His beauty Whom we all desire to see in the land which is very far off, I cannot take a lower ground than this, that the knowledge of the beautiful and the pursuit of the beautiful is a religious duty….  It would have been possible for the Maker of the world to have given us black grass and black leaves.  He gave us green meadows and green leaves.  It would have been possible for Him to have allowed us only to see a black sky overhead—He mercifully interposed a veil of vapour which turns the blackness of space above our heads into the gold of morning, the azure of noon, and the rose-red sky of eventide.  And this surely with some definite purpose of the revelation of His will, that our eyes should be rejoiced, and that our hearts should bless the Lord. (p. 404)….

“Landscape,” so Ruskin taught us, “can only be enjoyed by cultivated persons, but the faculty for it is hereditary.  The child of an educated race has an innate instinct for beauty, derived from arts practised hundreds of years before his birth.  In the children of noble races, trained by surrounding art, and at the same time in the practice of great deeds, there is an intense delight in the landscape of their country as memorial.  To these people every rock is monumental with some ghostly inscription, and every path lovely with noble desolateness.”  “In us,” says Ruskin, “however checked by lightness of temperament, the instinctive love of landscape has this deep root.”  And he urges us to strive to feel with all our strength of our youth that “a nation is only worthy of the soil and the scenes that it has inherited, when, by all its acts and arts, it is making them more lovely for its children.” (p. 405)

How much of the heroism upon that awful battle-field in France and Flanders has actually been born of this innate feeling of love of country for the country’s sake, its beauty as well as its traditions. (p. 405)….

Believing as I do that this noble architecture of the hills was not only that winds might purify the air and streams run seaward with blessing for man and beast, but that as Ruskin taught us, they are here “to fill the thirst of the human heart for the beauty of God’s working, to startle its lethargy with the deep and pure agitation of astonishment.” (p. 406)….

How comes it about, then, that so many people live in the Lake Country and seem to see no beauty in it at all, and have actually to leave it for some busy town or some mountainless landscape before they feel their hearts throb with the memory of something they did not in the old days understand, but now deeply long for?  It comes about because from early days their minds were not turned to the Bible of God, and that continual revelation of His presence which may be found in the glory of the ‘goings on’ in heaven and earth among our lakeland hills.  It comes about because from early days their eyes have never been trained to discriminate between the thing beautiful and the thing ugly.  It comes about also because they were not taught as children that the drudgery of daily life needed all the spiritual help of beautiful scenery, by lake, by vale and fell, and of great sunsets and glowing dawns, to keep them whole of heart, instead of broken of heart, to the end of their earthly journey. (p. 406)….

We cannot revere that which we neither understand or feel is any help to our souls.  But believing it to be an entirely sacred work to teach people in humble life and in hard-working life to be happy, I am persuaded that the greatest gift that can be given to them is sense to perceive the delight of natural scenery, the loveliness of the natural world, which is scattered at their feet like flowers.  If we could really analyse this love of nature, we shall find that wherever it exists it carries with it a sense of faith in God, that it suddenly brings with it a feeling of the presence and nearness of the Most High, a sense of the spiritual companionship and benevolence of a Heavenly Creator, such as no reasoning can procure or prevent. (p. 407)….

You remember how Wordsworth said, “We live by admiration, hope, and love,” and by that word “admiration,” he meant not only the power of taking delight in the good, the beautiful and the true, but in reverence for them with our whole heart.  And this is what I had in mind when I called this address “Reverence for Natural Beauty.” (pp. 407-8)….

People who live in ugly surroundings cannot help producing ugly things, and this is why one so constantly insists that we who are trying to educate our generation must be careful about the surroundings of our school rooms and their fittings, must see that their colouring is right, and that the pictures on their walls are beautiful, must encourage the children to bring flowers into those school-rooms, must see that the colours that we give the little kindergarten children or the paints we give the older children are carefully selected so as to train their eyes not to harsh contrasts but to beautiful harmonies of colour.  This is why, also, we hate the coarse and vulgar postcard, “comics,” as they are called, and protest against degrading kinema pictures that bring before young minds the ugly and seamy side of life.  That is why, also, we do our best to protest against the abominable posters on our hoardings that graphically and in the grossest colours picture scenes of violence and horror….  I know, too, a kindred subject; all who have a love of scenery and the beauty of the countryside at heart must constantly feel called to protest against the disfiguring of landscape by advertisement boards. (pp. 409-10)….

We live in a countryside which is not our own, which is dear to the hearts of the civilised world.  The man who orders his painter to paint the roofs of his building with any colour which is out of harmony with the surroundings is guilty of an act of great unkindness.  At this time of day especially are we called upon to protest against the uglifying of the countryside. Our men are dying by thousands for beautiful Britain, “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” said the Roman writer, but if you turn that country into a cinder heap or fill its rivers and streams with broken crockery or black, slimy water, if wherever you are in the country you care so little to preserve its charm, if you thoughtlessly destroy the happiness of those who come after by leaving litter about, if you make the life of the dwellers on our towns miserable by the dullness of their surroundings and the hideous meanness of the slums, it ceases to be a country for which a patriot would fight and fall. (pp. 410-11)….

Now what are we doing or have done to safeguard this glorious heritage for those who come after us? for it is not one person’s duty but the duty of us all to keep a most careful watch on the beauty of our neighbourhood, and to protest in season and out of season against any needless destruction of its grace and power of appeal to the heart. (p. 412)….

But how thoughtlessness of the public enjoyment of woodland beauty can work havoc in such a neighbourhood as this was witnessed a few years ago at Shoulthwaite Moss, when, with no other ostensible reason than the one given me by the then Chairman of the Manchester Waterworks, viz., that they wanted to tidy up their property, that beautiful outgoing fringe of birch trees at the northern end of the Moss was utterly cleared away, and the loveliest foreground to one of the noblest views of Helvellyn granted man was obliterated.  A few years later the man with the axe under his arm came along, and without more excuse than that the fallen leaves might blow into the lake, though this could have been entirely forestalled by the building of a low stone wall at the eastern and sheltered side of the wood, the man with the axe proceeded to clear away the last remnant of the forest primeval on the Manchester property west of Thirlmere and to destroy for ever the beauty of Sandy Ghyll.  It was an unkindness to all who pass along that way, and it gained nothing for the ratepayers.  I am told that to cut and cart away that bit of forest primeval cost much more than the wood fetched. (pp. 413-14)….

Think again of the way in which the architect from a distance who knows nothing of the peculiar beauty of our Cumberland houses will sometimes invade the district where only grey stone and grey slate as being of the natural material should be used, will insist on importing into this northern neighbourhood the red brick or red tiled building, whose only home is Surrey and the south. (p. 414)….

Looking down the other day from Walla Crag over the Crosthwaite valley there was a light veil of smoke above the town which added harmonious colour to the grey buildings and made them seem almost as impalpable and visionary as vapour birth upon a dewy morn in May.  There was not a single jarring note in the landscape, and this was entirely as it should be.  But it was my fortune to visit a few months ago a new possession of the National Trust at Thurstaston on the Dee.  The rock in the neighbourhood is red sandstone and nobody could possibly have been annoyed by any building made of it, but some thoughtless architect had come in with red brick and red tile of the most flaring character, and built a new school close to the edge of the ground on which a huge outcrop of red stone still stands, one of the last remaining altars of the Pagan Viking, and it made it quite impossible for anyone to be able to enjoy the harmony of the landscape which stretches away in a level flat for ten miles, because of this abomination of inharmonious colour imported into the landscape. (pp. 414-15)

(Parents’ Review, XXIX (June 1918), 404-15)

Hits: 5307

Sir,—To avoid error and for the information of many kind friends who have subscribed to this undertaking, I write to say that through the kind offices of Colonel Fitzgerald we have been able to obtain from the Ministry of Munitions a suitable hut on loan from Gretna to be under his superintendence, on the condition that we pay for its removal and re-erection and return it when it is no longer needed.  The hut is 30ft. long and 40ft. wide, and is divided into three parts, giving accommodation for tea arrangements, for a recreation room, and a billiard room.  The cost of re-erection and re-decoration and repair, with the necessary laying on of water, electric light, etc., is costly owing to scarcity of labour, and we shall not have in hand more funds than are necessary for running the hut.  This obliges me to appeal to the kindness of my fellow-townsmen to help by gifts of furniture, strong chairs, tables, curtains, covering for the floor, door mats, games, books, etc.  I have been unable thus far to obtain either on loan or hire a second-hand piano, which is badly needed.  With regard to the billiard table I have approached Sir Edgar Sanders….  I am co-operating with the chaplain at Fusehill, the Rev. B. Hayland, who is warmly interested, and will organise a Committee to manage the hut.

(Carlisle Journal, 8 November 1918, p. 5)

Hits: 5372