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".
