Literary Pursuits

As I mentioned on Facebook Saturday, after the somewhat harrowing drive through Honister Pass, we decided to leave the car parked at our Ambleside B&B for a couple of days and make our way around some of the sites by public transportation.  With the Lake District crowded with hikers, walkers and cyclists, the decision was pretty much a 'no brainer'. 

Since the 1700s, the Lake District has been famous for poets and authors: among others the Lake Poets (Robert Southey, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge) as well as Beatrix Potter over a century later.  So, over the last couple of days, we have visited Dove Cottage where Wordsworth lived for a time and Hilltop in Near Sawrey, Beatrix Potter's holiday cottage. 

Saturday, from Ambleside, it was dead easy - but not inexpensive - to take the double decker open top bus to Grasmere and then walk the relatively short distance to Dove Cottage. Wordsworth lived here during his most productive years before he moved to Rydal just a bit south. Visiting the museum, we learned about Robert Southey, another of the "Lake Poets" who preceded Wordsworth as Britain's designated poet laureate.  As an aside, Wordsworth was the only laureate who wrote no official verses during his appointment.  Upon being given the distinction, he was assured he would receive the stipend without having to write anything.  Back to Southey, he apparently wrote something called "The History of Brazil", despite never having visited that country.  We also learned about the friendship between Wordsworth and Coleridge which soured after Coleridge's overextended visits to the Wordworth, his envy of William's fame, and William's disapproval of Samuel's overuse of opium. While we were in Grasmere, we also visited the St. Oswald Church cemetery where the Wordsworth family is buried under one of the 12 yew trees he had planted in the cemetery. 

Dove Cottage

 

The Wordsworth Family Plot at St, Oswald Church, Grasmere

Sunday, our interest in writers from this area took us in a different direction on two boats and a bus to Near Sawrey, the location of Beatrix Potter's cottage.  From Ambleside, we took a ferry to Bowness and, from there, a smaller ferry to Ferry House.  Then it was a small bus up the road through Low Saurey to Near Saurey where Hilltop is located.  The property is part of the National Trust, a society that Beatrix enthusiastically supported, as was clearly communicated in the movie, Miss Potter, starring Rene Zellewenger.  Although, unlike in Dove Cottage where photo taking was unrestricted providing you didn't use flash, here photography was forbidden.  I cannot show your the love copies of letter she had written with all sorts of drawings that were placed all around the cottage.  Also, many of her books were opened to pages where you could see locations of the drawings she had done where Peter Rabbit stood in front of a mirror or Mrs. (somebody) had dressed her children and then put one of her charges in some uncomfortable clothing.  It was like her characters all came alive.  In the early 80s, I bought a complete collection of her works.  I've promised myself to read it all when I get home.  While the tour of the cottage wasn't "directed" there were docents in each room to answer questions.  When I spotted a lovely collection of metallic painted miniatures of her characters, I had to ask where they had come from.  Apparently, a man in Vienna in the early 1900s had read the stories to his children and decided to make lead figures of the "star" of her stories.  He then asked Miss Potter if he could mass produce them.  She agreed provided she would receive royalties, all of which profits she used to buy more property to increase the area the National Trust would have.  Clever!

Hilltop - Beatrix's Cottage



A pastoral scene beside the cottage

Views from the ferry back to Ambleside

More of the scenery on Windermere

 So, back to our own literary pursuits; me writing my blog and writing in my journal and Kathleen writing in her journal as well.  I somehow sadly but realistically think there are no accolades in our future for our writings!