No More Learning

'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. It is known by the name of
the Spout House, and the water--which flows all the year from a
longish spout, with an overflow one by its side--comes direct from the
little drop well in Betty B. 's garden, after having its voice stripped
and boxed therein; and, falling out of the spout into a deep stone
basin and culvert, runs through the town to join the Town Beck.

So wedded are the Hawkshead folk to this, their familiar fountainhead,
that though water is supplied in stand-pipes now from a Reservoir, the
folks won't have it, and come here to this spout-house, bucket and jug
in hand, morn, noon and night. I have never seen anything so like a
continental scene at the gathering at Hawkshead spout-house.

Lastly, there is a very aged thorn-tree in the churchyard--blown over
but propped up--in which the forefathers of the hamlet used to sit as
boys (in the thorn, that is, not the churchyard), and which has been
worn smooth by many Hawkshead generations. The tradition is, that
_Wordsworth used to sit a deal in it when at school. _"

Ed.





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NOTE III. --THE HAWKSHEAD MORNING WALK: SUMMER VACATION


(See p. 197, 'The Prelude', book iv. ll.