THE WORTHIES OF CUMBERLAND.*
DR. LONSDALE, in undertaking to write the biographies of Cumberland Worthies, is doing a good service to his county. Some of the men and women whom be includes in his series are known to fame, and of them he has little to tell which may not be read elsewhere ; but the memoirs of local celebrities unknown -beyond their own district contain a good deal of curious informa- tion, and a variety of facts which show the kind of life led in the years gone by among the mountains of Cumberland. The present volume opens with what we are compelled to call a very in- adequate and ill-considered paper on Wordsworth, a paper pre- tentious in style and feeble in criticism. The want of any real sympathy with—in some respects, at all events—the very greatest of modern poets is evident throughout, and the way in which Dr. Lonsdale tempers his praise with depreciatory remarks would be laughable, if it were not irritating. Everybody knows that Wordsworth had his weaknesses, both as a man and as a poet. He loved his own work too well, and he lacked the catholic taste which would have enabled him to appreciate at its full value the work of other men. He was, in one word, a recluse and a man of genius, and genius shut up to brood over itself is sure to fail into errors. But Wordsworth, whatever might have been his faults, lived for a noble purpose, and achieved it. He did not work for popularity, and it may be true, as Dr. Lonsdale says, that his writings have not been highly welcomed by the middle- classes, and are scarcely recognised, if at all, by the industrial • The Worthies of Cumberland: William Wordsworth, Susanna 13Iamire Thomas Tiekell, Jane Christian Blamire, The Loshes of Woodside, Dr. Thomas Addison, Hugh Lee J'owUesan. By Henry Lonsdale, M.D. London: Boutledge and Sons. 1573. population. But he found the "fit audience," which must be ever most valued by the poet, and there is no imaginative writer of this century whose genius, where it is felt at all, exercises so profound an influence. As time goes on, this power is likely to increase, rather than to lessen. We shall simply put aside whatever in Wordsworth passes from simplicity to puerility, and hold with greater tenacity and deeper reverence the legacy of imperishable verse which he has bequeathed to his country. Wordsworth is not our greatest poet, but he is, next to Shakespeare, the poet who, as it were, comes the closest to us in our daily life, who feeds us with his thoughts, and gives to nature a beauty and a meaning un- recognised before. Dr. Lonsdale, in his odd way of putting it, allows that Wordsworth " loved Nature in all her largeness of view ad infinitum, and portrayed her in all her littleness ad infinitesi- mal n ;" but he finds fault with him in not doing what be never wished or attempted to do, and declares grandiloquently and absurdly that his genius "did not fire the hearts of men like the genius of Burns and the patriotic fervour of Byron, whilst it fell short of the lofty aesthetic of Goethe or the philosophical ideal of Shelley, and did not prove that deeper insight into the soul of humanity that gave such fame and undying immortality to those masters of a grander age, Shakespeare and Milton." Then Dr. Lonsdale fiuds fault with the poet for his ignorance of science, and thinks he missed a golden opportunity in not tracing the growth of the inductive philosophy in England, or in describing the Cuvierian explorations of the prehistoric world, or the discoveries of modern geographers, or the rise of chemistry and the industrial arts, and " other paths betokening the progress of the times, and the rapid march of ideas tending to a higher grade of human knowledge and human excel- lence." After rubbish like this—and there is a good deal more of a similar kind—it will be pleasant to pass to a biography which Dr. Lonsdale is more competent to write.
More than one member of the Blamire family has been deemed worthy by the author of recognition in his volumes, and we owe to Dr. Lousdale's research and painstaking almost all that we know of Susanna Blamire, the song-writer, several of whose pieces,—" And ye shall walk in silk attire," for example,--will be familiar to readers who are ignorant of the author's name. Some incidents from the story of her life are worth relating. She was brought up with her sister Sarah by her aunt Simpson, a worthy, generous woman, and so unsuspicious that she kept her gold and silver in basins on the table of her sitting- room, open to the household. Susanna, or " Sukey," as she was called, must have been one of the liveliest and merriest of maidens. She danced, she sang, she wrote verses, she played the guitar, she followed the bounds, and " showed the gaiety of a French demoiselle more than an English girl nurtured in the clayey soils of Cumberland." At her aunt's table Archdeacon Paley and Dr. Edmund Law, Bishop of Carlisle, were wont to meet at three o'clock, the fashionable dinner-hour of the day :—
"They were divines," writes the biographer, "who had the good sense to doff off the trammels of lawn sleeves and canonicals, and par- ticipate in the pleasant intercourse and pastimes of rural life. Mingling with young and bright faces in innocent mirth and entoyment, or even admiring the personal loveliness of the sisters Blamire, was assuredly as good in spirit and as consistent with the healthy feelings of humanity as lecturing the pharisaical or dressing up rigid theological formulas on Sundays."
Susanna's portrait is given in this volume, and from it we should judge that she was strikingly handsome ; but her face bore some traces, we are told, of the small-pox, that foe to female beauty. The bust as well as the face is visible in the portrait, for, as the author observes, it was th3 custom of the day " to show the feminine attributes pretty fully." The young lady's charms seem to have attracted Lord Ossulston, the son of Earl Taukerville ; but the fates were adverse, and the poetess lived and died in single blessedness. Susanna Blamire enjoyed life heartily, notwithstand- ing this disappointment. She entered into all the merriment - going on in the county, and showed a liveliness and abandon unusual in an English girl.
"Affable, and ready to join in any circle of her neighbours, where hearty greetings and mirth were tempered to the privileges and deli- cacy of her sex ; she was at home in leading the dance with a bashful villager, or smilingly pairing the lads and lasses for a Scotch reel or country dance, not without regard to their proper consorting. She gave the cue to the fiddlers, and elicited their liveliest airs; and moved about the ball-room or barn-loft as the appointed mistress of the ceremonies.
' Is Miss Snkey coming?' was the first inquiry at a social rural gathering, so linked was her presence with the diversions and light-heartedness of pastoral swains and damsels. The story told of her meeting a piper on the road, and dismounting from her pony to dance a jig, was probably made the most of, as with all her frolicsomeness, she would scarcely have gone so far, except encouraged by a kindred spirit of her own sex and companionship. Her heart was gay and light-
some, her voice tuned to harmony, her manner gentle and persuasive, and her talk as bright as her exterior. She liked frankness and jocu- larity, and found in her country neighbours the most thorough response."
Her whole life, adds the biographer, was a protest against the dry and formal attitudes and other besetting sins of what is com- monly called proper society. Susanna Blamire wrote her songs whenever the feeling prompted, and without a thought of publica- tion ; she does not appear to have had a touch of the vanity and self-consciousness which are so often allied to the poetical tem- perament. Some of her songs are admirable. " What ails this heart o' mine" is exquisitely simple and pathetic, and " Barley Broth," "The Cumberland Scold," and other pieces quoted by Dr. Lonsdale, show that the writer had a genuine sense of humour.
A few years before the death of Susanna Blamire, towards the close of the last century, her niece, Jane Christian Blamire, was born, a lady remarkable for her active and untiring beneficence ; and Dr. Lonsdale relates, as one instance of this, that after she had passed the prime of life she walked nearly six miles early one Sunday morning to relieve a sick quarryman, carrying with her a basket full of eggs, butter, cake, and wine for the invalid. She then returned to church, having walked about twelve miles before half- past nine in the morning. The lady had been inured to activity from early life. Cumberland women of gentle birth in those days were accustomed to perform a number of domestic duties which are now given to servants. They learned to cook, net, spin, to make dresses, and were not too proud to spend a part of every day in the kitchen. Jane Christian Blamire was a hearty worker, had wide sympathies and untiring energies, and enjoyed life accordingly. She had great influence, and did not scruple to use it, for we read that at an election none could be found more alert than the lady of Thackwood, and that "long before paid agents could be mustered in a morning, she would canvas a township and secure the majority of the votes." It was rumoured that rather than lose a family of voters in the great canvas of 1831, she consented to be kissed by a yeoman, but Dr. Lonsdale gives the following explanation of the story :—
" A jovial farmer being solicited for his support said he was a yellow (Tory), and could not vote blue on any account. Miss Blamire plied him hard, and by her matchless powers of persuasion softened his opinions so that he would promise her his vote on condition of having a kiss of her bonny cheek. ' Well, indeed, Mr. —, you are in a merry humour this morning ; but first let me have the satisfaction of knowing that you will vote for my good brother at Cockermouth.'—Ho replied. ' That I will, and no mistake ; but then, Miss Blamire, you must be kind, and let me have the kiss.' The lady, wishing above all things to avoid the bucolic embrace, adroitly remarked. 'As a new, and I hope good blue you deserve the favour you ask ; but as it might be looked upon as a bribe, we had better put off the kissing till the election is won by my brother being returned for Cumberland.' "
Dr. Lonsdale writes of this energetic lady from personal knowledge, and his brief record will, no doubt, be welcome to all who knew her.
About a hundred pages of the volume are devoted to the Loshes, of Woodside, an old family, of whom the author has many a significant story to relate. The head of the family in the middle of the last century was John Losh, a man of great intrepidity and strength, and " probably the last of the Cumberland squirearchy who took part in the Border expeditions that were brought to a close after the '45, when Scotsmen's heads were spiked on ' Car- lisle yetts' to guard the wall ' against Northern invaders." The squire had several sons. The eldest, who became High Sheriff of Cumberland, was a noted agriculturist, and he was also fond of all vigorous exercise, could ride one hundred miles in the day, and took an active part in horse-races, fox-hunts, cock-fights, and wrestling-matches. He had a fancy for chemistry also, and in company with Lord Dundonald tried many an experiment at Woodside, and established alkali works near Newcastle. George Losh, one of the Sheriff's brothers, is said to have had a strong taste for science, and to have shown a marked superiority of char- acter. His physical strength also must have been great, for it is told of him that during a winter's visit to St. Petersburg he sur- prised the Russians by walking out on days of intense cold without a top-coat, whilst they were wrapped up in furs ; and Dr. Lonsdale affirms that his fair and sanguine bodily temperament explains this power of resistance to cold, " on the same ground that Nature has clothed the bear of the Arctic regions in white, and given dark skins to the inhabitants of the tropics." William, another brother, was a friend in early life of Alexander von Humboldt, and is said to have been the means on one occasion of saving his life. In the manufacture of soda and sulphur the Loshes appear to have been largely and successfully engaged. William Loch was, more- over, a practical engineer, and was closely associated with George Stephenson. A Miss Losh is also celebrated as a Cumberland worthy, and in church-building, school-building, and a score of beneficent ways, her good deeds have left their mark behind them. She had a taste for art, too, made her own designs, and directed the workmen she employed. Altogether, the Losh family pro- duced several members distinguished for large cu'ture and a variety of enviable gifts.
One of the best chapters in the volume describes the career of Dr. Thomas Addison, the well-known physician of Guy's. Dr. Lonsdale was the friend of this distinguished man, and being him- self a physician, he is able to recognise and appreciate his merits. In comparing this brief but admirable monograph with the account given of 'Wordsworth, the reader will be struck with the contrast of the two papers, the one showing that the author is the master of his subject, the other that be has attempted a perfunctory duty which he cannot adequately perform.
The Worthies of Cumberland is a book that deserves, and will doubtless receive, recognition. We have alluded to some of the faults which have struck us in the perusal, but the value of the volume is not greatly impaired by them. Its interest lies, not in Dr. Lonsdale's criticisms, but in the facts he has collected with reference to his native county, and in the interesting particulars he is able to narrate from personal knowledge.
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