Mountain by Griff Rhys Jones

Author:Griff Rhys Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-14-191911-9
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2007-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

His beliefs, so commonplace today, once had the glory and freshness of a dream themselves. He thought that we, as human beings, were linked completely with nature. Rocks and stones and trees and human beings ‘rolled round in earth’s diurnal course’. By exulting in hills and woods, and those daffodils nodding in the breeze, we could come close to the great power that had created the universe.

In one way this is hugely egotistical. Our excited emotional response to woods and thunderstorms and the moon and the trees is the presence of God in us. On the other hand it is completely unselfish. Mankind should not try to separate himself from the universe in order to command or control it, but accept that he is bound to it through a great moral thread. So we are extremely special in the universe, and can experience the most special spiritual presence from it.

Well, this is sort of what we all believe now, in a new-agey way. We are all Wordsworthians. Life on Earth is a Wordsworthian television programme. Generations of children have been forced outside on a Sunday afternoon because of Wordsworth’s belief that going for that walk in the country is essentially ‘good for you’.

‘Unspoilt countryside’ is a very Wordsworthian notion. He craved solitude. Though the Wordsworths seem to have run an ongoing, unpaid bed-and-breakfast service for their friends, he opposed the railway coming to the Lakes and bringing more city people from Lancashire. This was odd, because he wrote a guidebook himself. One slightly gormless clergyman tourist is supposed to have enquired of Matthew Arnold whether Wordsworth had ever written anything else.

Others have cherished his memory, his vision and his countryside. Ruskin, the great art critic and mountain lover, moved to the area and bought a house sight unseen, so convinced was he it would be lovely. Ruskin’s assistant founded the National Trust to preserve the landscape. Beatrix Potter bought farms. Arthur Ransome came here on holiday and championed the glories of open-air holidays for children.

The appearance of the Lake District today owes a lot to the enclosure movements of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It was not really very old and traditional when Wordsworth wrote about it, or at least not as old and traditional as it is now. Like many writers he was seeking to preserve a golden vision which was fresh and new to him when he was a young man.

The legacy of this was brought home to me on Black Hall Farm, not far from Hardknott Pass. Could any place be more evocative of the world that inspired Wordsworth? Here was a little knot of trees by a gushing stream. Beyond that a gate and a long track (definitely not a drive) leading down to a group of simple buildings, glistening under the morning sun in a crook of the valley. It was just one of ninety-three farms owned by the National Trust.

This one was looked after by Tony Temple, the tenant. As I walked up I was mobbed by dogs.

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