A seasonal lament

Monday, 14th December 2009

In the Lakes, dramatic weather is inseparable from beauty

This Christmas my thoughts go out to the people of Cockermouth, perhaps my favourite little town in all England, as it was Wordsworth’s. Especially I think of its small shopkeepers, for what makes the town so delightful is its many tiny businesses, selling unusual and curious goods. So well-mannered and friendly are the people who serve in these shops that making a purchase, however modest, is a pleasure in itself. Most of them have been flooded, the stock ruined.

Wordsworth was born there, and ‘fair seed-time had my soul’. He recalls, in ‘The Prelude’, walking, aged five, along the banks of the Derwent, ‘behind my Father’s House... along the margin of our Terrace Walk’. It is all still there, exactly as he knew it, for the floods happily have not damaged the house. He called the Derwent ‘fairest of all rivers’ and ‘beauteous stream’, and recalls its ‘quiet murmurs’ blending ‘with my nurse’s song’. Wordsworth was thoughtful, but could also be a ferocious little boy, killing all the white butterflies, believing them to be Frenchmen, the national enemy. He was always what we would call Politically Incorrect, writing dozens of passionate letters defending the doomed Anglican establishments of Ireland and Wales, and composing at least 14 sonnets in favour of capital punishment.

He also wrote about the ancient castle which overlooks Cockermouth. I stay there on my visits. It is half a melancholy ruin, where the present chatelaine, Lady Egremont, has created an enchanting garden, and half a Georgian house, full of treasures. Turner was a visitor, and busy with his paints: I have followed in his footsteps and tried my hand at all his viewpoints. The castle looks down on the little town, and from it you can see the junction of the two rivers, where the Cocker joins the Derwent. These normally placid streams, where salmon abound — Bing Crosby used to fish here, crooning as he cast his flies — can become raging torrents, without warning, when the rains pour into the mountain becks which feed them.

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