No More Learning

'


"I was not quite content with Dr. Cradock's identification of this
brook, or of the garden; partly because, beyond the present garden
square I found, on going up the brook, other garden squares, which
were much more likely to have been the garden belonging to Anne
Tyson's cottage, and because in these garden plots the stream was not
'stripped of his voice,' by the covering of Coniston flags, as is the
case lower down towards the market place; and partly because--as you
notice--you can both hear and see the stream through the interstices
of the flags, and that it can hardly be described (by one who will
listen) as stripped of its voice.

At the same time I was bound to admit that in comparing the voice of
the stream here in the 'channel paved by man's officious care' with
the sound of it up in the fields beyond the vicarage, nearer its
birth-place, it certainly might be said to be softer voiced; and as
the poet speaks of it as 'that unruly child of mountain birth,' it
looks as if he too had realised the difference.

But whilst I thought that the identification of Dr. Cradock and
yourself was very happy (in absence of other possibilities), I had not
thought that Wordsworth would describe the stream as 'dimpling down,'
or address it as a 'pretty prisoner. ' A smaller stream seemed
necessary.

It was, therefore, not a little curious that, in poking about among
the garden plots on the west bank of the stream, fronting (as nearly
as I could judge) Anne Tyson's cottage, to seek for remains of the ash
tree, in which so often the poet--as he lay awake on summer
nights--had watched 'the moon in splendour couched among the leaves,'
rocking 'with every impulse of the breeze,' I not only stumbled upon
the remains of an ash tree--now a 'pollard'--which is evidently
sprung from a larger tree since decayed (and which for all I know may
be one of the actual parts of the ancient tree itself); but also had
the good luck to fall into conversation with a certain Isaac Hodgson,
who volunteered the following information.

First, that Wordsworth, it was commonly said, had lodged part of his
time with one Betty Braithwaite, in the very house called Church Hill
House.

She was a widow, and kept a confectionery shop, and 'did a deal of
baking,' he believed.

Secondly, that there was a little patch of garden at the back of the
house, with a famous spring well--still called Old Betty's Well--in
it, and that only a few paces from where I was then standing by the
pollard ash.

On jumping over the fence I found myself on the western side of the
quaint old Church Hill House, with magnificent views of the whole of
the western side of Hawkshead Vale; grassy swell and wooded rises
taking the eye up to the moorland ridge between us and Coniston.

'But,' said I, 'what about Betty's Well. ' 'Oh,' said my friend,
'that's a noted spring, that never freezes, and always runs; we all
drink of it, and neighbours send to it. Here it is,' he continued;
and, gazing down, I saw a little dripping well of water, lustrous,
clear, coming evidently in continuous force from the springs or secret
channels up hill, pausing for a moment at the trough, thence falling
into a box or 'channel paved by man's officious care,' and in a moment
out of sight and soundless, to pursue its way, 'stripped of its
voice,' towards the main Town beck, that ran at the north-east border
of the garden plot. 'Ha, pretty prisoner,' and the words 'dimple down'
came to my mind at once as appropriate.
'Old Betty's Well gave the
key-note of the 'famous brook'; and 'boxed within our garden' seemed
an appropriate and exact description.

Trace of
'the sunny seat
Round the stone table under the dark pine,'

was there none. Not so, however, the Ash tree, the remains of which I
have spoken of. From the bedroom of Betty Braithwaite's house the boy
could have watched the moon,

'while to and fro
In the dark summit of the waving tree
She rocked with every impulse of the breeze. '

'In old times,' said my friend, 'the wall fence ran across the garden,
just beyond this spring well, so you see it was but a small spot, was
this garden close. ' Yes; but the

'crowd of things
About its narrow precincts all beloved,'

were known the better, and loved the more on that account. Certainly,
thought I to myself, here is the famous spring; a brook that
Wordsworth must have known, and that may have been the centre of
memory to him in his description of those early Hawkshead days, with
its metaphor of fountain life.

May we not, as we gaze on this little fountain well, in a garden plot
at the back of one of the grey huts of this 'one dear vale,' point as
with a wand, and say,

'This portion of the river of his mind
Came from yon fountain. '

Is it not possible that the old dame whose

'Clear though shallow stream of piety,
Ran on the Sabbath days a fresher course,'

was Betty Braithwaite, the aged dame who owned the cottage hard by? "


The following additional extract from a letter of Mr. Rawnsley's
(Christmas, 1882) casts light, both on the Hawkshead beck and fountain,
and on the stone seat in the market square, referred to in the fourth
book of 'The Prelude'.

"Postlethwaite of the Sun Inn at Hawkshead, has a father aged 82, who
can remember that there was a _stone_ bench, not called old Betty's,
but Old Jane's Stone, on which she used to spread nuts and cakes for
the scholars of the Grammar School, but that it did not stand where
the Market Hall now is, and no one ever remembers a stone or
stone-bench standing there. This stone or stone-bench stood about
opposite the Red Lion inn, in front of the little row of houses that
run east and west, just as you pass out of the village in a northerly
direction by the Red Lion. This stone or stone-bench is not associated
with dark pine trees, but they may have passed away root and branch in
an earlier generation.

Next and most interesting, I think, as showing that I was right in the
matter of the _famous fountain,_ or spring in the garden, behind Betty
Braithwaite's house. There exists in Hawkshead near this house a
covered-in place or shed, to which all the village repair for their
drinking-water, and always have done so.