The popular idea of
a place being visited and explored because it has an identity of its
own was precipitated by the poet Thomas Gray. In October 1769 Gray travelled at
leisure between Keswick and Lancaster looking at the scenery of the Lake District.
He was equipped with several 'Claude glasses' - small convex pocket-mirrors, plain
or tinted, in which a landscape could be viewed (over one's shoulder) and composed
into a living picture, supposedly like a composition of Claude Lorraine. The Claude
glass had been invented to help painters find subjects, but Gray viewed the
landscape itself as a work of art. He described his tour in a series of letters to his
friend Thomas Wharton, and after his death the letters were published by William
Mason in his 1775 Life of Gray. They became enormously popular and encouraged
literate people to visit the Lakes and seek out the scenes Gray had described.
Guide books to the
lakes quickly followed that formalised Gray's perceptions by
identifying a series of specific 'stations' or standpoints from which the best views
might be obtained. Each station had a commentary that pointed the visitor towards
the correct attitude to take regarding the human responds to the natural phenomenon
in view.
Wordsworth's contact
with the Lake District added another dimension to the areas
attractions. For the Victorian reader, Wordsworth's poetic authority centred
especially upon his long poem The Excursion. A philosophical reflection on man,
nature and society, The Excursion promoted humane values, including education,
social concern and a respect for the relationship between human beings and the
rural landscape. Its values had a deep impact upon John Ruskin, who visited the
Lakes many times before settling at Brantwood in 1872. Ruskin was what we should
now call a passionate conservationist, whose love of the countryside was linked to
an interest in manual skills and traditional crafts.
Like Wordsworth, Ruskin
attracted friends and disciples to the Lakes, and his
influence was extraordinary. One young admirer, H D Rawnsley, went on (with
several others, including Beatrix Potter) to found the National Trust; Ruskin's
secretary, W G Collingwood, almost single-handedly transformed the historial and
archaeological understanding of the Lake District, and for good measure befriended
a young journalist called Arthur Ransome. Ransome, imbued with attitudes which
are easily traced to Ruskin, invented (with Swallows and Amazons, 1930) the modern
children's novel, incidentally promoting the idea that children can benefit from outdoor
adventure and the acquisition of real skills, from sailing and semaphore to metallurgy
and the building of blastfurnaces.
From these beginnings
came the concept of icons of nature and society, which not
only consist of spectacular views but also the man-made items that encapsulate
paricular values attached to our place in the natural world. These items may be as
vast as the Great Pyramid of Giza, as small as a cathedral chantry chapel and as
ephemoral as a religous tapestry, an old map or a photograph.
As to the inevitable
human reaction to these icons of nature and society we again
turn to Wordsworth. His friend Thomas De Quincey records a memorable
night:when:
"...as often enough happened, during the Peninsular War, [Wordsworth] and I had
walked up
Dunmail Raise from Grasmere, about midnight, in order to meet the carrier who brought the
London newspapers, by a circuitous course from Keswick . . . Upon one of these occasions,
when some great crisis in Spain was daily apprehended, we had waited for an hour or more ...
At intervals, Wordsworth . . . stretched himself at length on the high road, applying his ear to
the ground, so as to catch any sound of wheels that might be groaning along at a distance.
Once, when he was slowly rising from this effort, his eye caught a bright star that was glittering
between the brow of Seat Sandal and of the mighty Helvellyn.
Wordsworth stood gazing at the star, and then explained,
I have remarked, from my earliest days, that, if ... the attention is braced up to
an act of steady
observation, or of steady expectation, then, if this intense condition of vigilance should
suddenly relax, at that moment any beautiful, any impressive visual object . . . falling upon the
eye, is carried to the heart with a power not known under other circumstances".
