A Protest against the Extension of Railways in the Lake District/Preface
PREFACE.
The evidence collected in the following pages, in support of their pleading, is so complete; and the summary of his cause given with so temperate mastery by Mr. Somervell, that I find nothing to add in circumstance, and little to reinforce in argument. And I have less heart to the writing even of what brief preface so good work might by its author's courtesy be permitted to receive from me, occupied as I so long have been, in efforts tending in the same direction, because, on that very account, I am far less interested than my friend in this local and limited resistance to the elsewhere fatally victorious current of modern folly, cruelty, and ruin. When the frenzy of avarice is daily drowning our sailors, suffocating our miners, poisoning our children, and blasting the cultivable surface of England into a treeless waste of ashes,[1]—what does it really matter whether a flock of sheep, more or less, be driven from the slopes of Helvellyn, or the little pool of Thirlmere filled with shale, or a few wild blossoms of St. John's vale lost to the coronal of English Spring? Little, to any one; and—let me say this, at least, in the outset of all saying—nothing, to me. No one need charge me with selfishness in any word, or action, for defence of these mossy hills. I do not move, with such small activity as I have yet shown in the business, because I live at Coniston, (where no sound of the iron wheels by Dunmail Raise can reach me,)—nor because I can find no other place to remember Wordsworth by, than the daffodil margin of his little Rydal marsh. What thoughts and work are yet before me, such as he taught, must be independent of any narrow associations. All my own dear mountain grounds, and treasure-cities, Chamouni, Interlachen, Lucerne, Geneva, Venice, are long ago destroyed by the European populace; and now, for my own part, I don't care what more they do; they may drain Loch Katrine, drink Loch Lomond, and blow all Wales and Cumberland into a heap of slate shingle; the world is wide enough yet to find me some refuge during the days appointed for me to stay in it. But it is no less my duty, in the cause of those to whom the sweet landscapes of England are yet precious, and to whom they may yet teach what they taught me, in early boyhood, and would still, if I had it now to learn,—it is my duty to plead with what earnestness I may, that these sacred sibylline books may be redeemed from perishing.
But again, I am checked, because I don't know how to speak to the persons who need to be spoken to in this matter.
Suppose I were sitting, where still, in much changed Oxford, I am happy to find myself, in one of the little latticed cells of the Bodleian Library:—and my kind and much loved friend, Mr. Coxe, were to come to me, with news that it was proposed to send nine hundred excursionists through the library every day, in three parties of three hundred each;—that it was intended they should elevate their minds by reading all the books they could lay hold of while they stayed;—and that practically scientific persons accompanying them were to look out for, and burn, all the manuscripts that had any gold in their illuminations, that the said gold might be made of practical service:—but that he, Mr. Coxe, could not, for his part, sympathize with the movement, and hoped I would write something in deprecation of it! As I should then feel, I feel now, at Mr. Somervell's request that I would write him a preface in defence of Helvellyn. What could I say for Mr. Coxe? Of course, that nine hundred people should see the Library daily, instead of one, is only fair to the nine hundred, and if there is gold in the books, is it not public property? If there is copper or slate in Helvellyn, shall not the public burn or hammer it out—and they say they will, of course—in spite of us? What does it signifiy to them how we poor old quiet readers in this mountain library feel? True, we know well enough,—what the nine hundred excursionist scholars don't—that the library can't be read quite through in a quarter of an hour; also, that there is a pleasure in real reading, quite different from that of turning pages; and that gold in a missal, or slate in a crag, may be more precious than in a bank, or a chimney pot. But how are these practical people to credit us,—these, who cannot read, nor ever will; and who have been taught that nothing is virtuous but care for their bellies, and nothing useful but what goes into them?
Whether to be credited or not, the real facts of the matter, made clear as they are in the following pages, can be briefly stated for the consideration of any candid person.
The arguments in favour of the new railway are in the main four, and may be thus answered.
I. 'There are mineral treasures in the district capable of development.'
Answer. It is a wicked fiction, got up by whosoever has got it up, simply to cheat shareholders. Every lead and copper vein in Cumberland has been known for centuries; the copper of Coniston does not pay; and there is none so rich in Helvellyn. And the main central volcanic rocks, through which the track lies, produce neither slate nor hæmatite, while there is enough of them at Llanberis and Dalton to roof and iron grate all England into one vast Bedlam, if it honestly perceives itself in need of that accommodation.
II. 'The scenery must be made accessible to the public.'
Answer. It is more than accessible already;—the public are pitched into it head-foremost, and necessarily miss two-thirds of it. The Lake scenery really begins, on the south, at Lancaster, where the Cumberland hills are seen over Morecambe Bay; on the north, at Carlisle, where the moors of Skiddaw are seen over the rich plains between them and the Solway. No one who loves mountains would lose a step of the approach, from these distances, on either side. But the stupid herds of modern tourists let themselves be emptied, like coals from a sack, at Windermere and Keswick. Having got there, what the new railway has to do is to shovel those who have come to Keswick, to Windermere—and to shovel those who have come to Windermere, to Keswick. And what then?
III. 'But cheap, and swift transit is necessary for the working population, who otherwise could not see the scenery at all.'
Answer. After all your shrieking about what the operatives spend in drink, can't you teach them to save enough out of their year's wages to pay for a chaise and pony for a day, to drive Missis and the Baby that pleasant 20 miles, stopping when they like, to unpack the basket on a mossy bank? If they can't enjoy the scenery that way,—they can't any way; and all that your railroad company can do for them is only to open taverns and skittle grounds round Grasmere, which will soon, then, be nothing but a pool of drainage, with a beach of broken gingerbeer bottles; and their minds will be no more improved by contemplating the scenery of such a lake than of Blackpool.
IV. What else is to be said? I protest I can find nothing, unless that engineers and contractors must live. Let them live; but in a more useful and honourable way than by keeping Old Bartholomew Fair under Helvellyn, and making a steam merry-go-round of the lake country.
There are roads to be mended, where the parish will not mend them, harbours of refuge needed, where our deck-loaded ships are in helpless danger: get your commissions and dividends where you know that work is needed; not where the best you can do is to persuade pleasure-seekers into giddier idleness.
The arguments brought forward by the promoters of the railway may thus be summarily answered: of those urged in the following pamphlet in defence of the country as it is, I care only, myself, to direct the reader's attention to one (see pp. 27, 28.), the certainty, namely, of the deterioration of moral character in the inhabitants of every district penetrated by a railway. Where there is little moral character to be lost, this argument has small weight. But the Border peasantry of Scotland and England, painted with absolute fidelity by Scott and Wordsworth, (for leading types out of this exhaustless portraiture, I may name Dandie Dinmont, and Michael,) are hitherto a scarcely injured race; whose strength and virtue yet survive to represent the body and soul of England, before her days of mechanical decrepitude and commercial dishonour. There are men working in my own fields who might have fought with Henry the Fifth at Agincourt, without being discerned from among his knights; I can take my tradesmen's word for a thousand pounds; my garden gate opens on the latch to the public road, by day and night, without fear of any foot entering but my own, and my girl-guests may wander by road, or moorland, or through every bosky dell of this wild wood, free as the heather bees or squirrels.
What effect, on the character of such a population, will be produced by the influx of that of the suburbs of our manufacturing towns, there is evidence enough if the reader cares to ascertain the facts, in every newspaper on his morning table.
And now, one final word, concerning the proposed beneficial effect on the minds of those whom you send to corrupt us.
I have said I take no selfish interest in this resistance to the railroad—But I do take an unselfish one:—It is precisely because I passionately wish to improve the minds of the populace, and because I am spending my own mind, strength, and fortune, wholly on that object, that I don't want to let them see Helvellyn while they are drunk. I suppose few men now living have so earnestly felt—none certainly have so earnestly declared, that the beauty of Nature is the blessedest and most necessary of lessons for men; and that all other efforts in education are futile, till you have taught your people to love fields, birds, and flowers. Come then, my benevolent friends, join with me in that teaching. I have been at it all my life, and without pride, do solemnly assure you that I know how it is to be managed. I cannot indeed tell you, in this short preface, how, completely, to fulfil so glorious a task. But I can tell you clearly, instantly, and emphatically, in what temper you must set about it. Here are you, a Christian, a gentleman, and a trained scholar;—there is your subject of education—a Godless clown, in helpless ignorance. You can present no more blessed offering to God than that human creature, raised into faith, gentleness, and the knowledge of the works of his Lord. But, observe this—you must not hope to make so noble an offering to God of that which doth cost you nothing! You must be resolved to labour, and to lose, yourself,—before you can rescue this over-laboured lost sheep—and offer it alive to its Master. If then —my benevolent friend, you are prepared to take out your twopence, and to give them to the hosts here in Cumberland, saying—'Take care of him, and whatsoever thou spendest more, I will repay thee when I come to Cumberland myself:' on these terms—oh my benevolent friends I am with you, hand and glove, in every effort you wish to make for the enlightenment of poor men's eyes. But if your motive is, on the contrary, to put twopence into your own purse, stolen between the Jerusalem and Jericho of Keswick and Ambleside—out of the poor drunken traveller's pocket;—if your real object, in your charitable offering, is—not even to lend unto the Lord by giving to the poor, but to lend unto the Lord by making a dividend out of the poor;—then, my pious friends, enthusiastic Ananias, pitiful Judas, and sanctified Korah,—I will do my best, in God's name, to stay your hands, and stop your tongues.
Brantwood, 22nd June, 1876.
- ↑ See,—the illustration being coincidently given as I correct this page for press—the description of the horrible service, and history of the fatal explosion of Dynamite, on the once lovely estates of the Duke of Hamilton, in the 'Hamilton Advertiser' of 10th and 17th June.