• A LAKELAND LAMENT By G. F. McCLEARY I T is
to be hoped that the protests aroused by the threat to Ennerdale Lake may do something effective to check the relentless march of "industrial development" that has for years been slowly eating away the unique beauty of the English Lake District. It is a small district ; the hand of the destroyer has not far to go to inflict irreparable damage. But though small in extent it presents a succes- sion of prospects much grander than you might imagine from actual measurements. In certain conditions I have seen Great Gable look as if it were at least to,000 feet high. In immediate impressiveness and magnificence of outline it cannot of course aompare with the Alps, but it has a much greater variety of coloui" and of subtle and exceedingly beautiful atmospheric effects. You get to know it more intimately than you can know the Alps, and. the better you know it the more you love it.
It is curiously distinct from the surrounding country ; you can see this from the summits of the higher fells. The word " separate " used by William Watson in the first edition of his poem, Lakeland Once More, is singularly appropriate :
"Region separate, sacred, of mere, and of ghyll, and of mountain, Garrulous, petulant beck ; sinister, laughterless tarn ; Haunt of the vagabond feet of my fancy forever reverting, Haunt and home of_my heart, Cumbrian valleys and fells."
In a later edition the first line became :
" Mere under mountains lone, like a moat under lowering ramparts." I once asked Watson why he had made the change. At first he would not admit that he had made any change, and when I showed him the poem in its altered form he seemed surprised. He agreed that the original version was better, and said he would restore it in the next edition. Instead, he wrote another version of the line, which ultimately became :
"Region of meres that round theni behold their mothers, the , mountains."
Destruction has come upon Lakeland from unexpected quarters. A famous architect, renowned for the beauty of his domestic architecture, once bemoaned to me the lack of adequate transport to bring down building materials from Honister Crag—a wonderful natural object that is gradually becoming a thing of the past. He liked to roof his houses with Honister ,slates. I remember walking some forty years ago from Wastdak over the Sty Head Pass and down Borrowdale to catch the night train from kiswick to London.
My companion was an ardent young Socialist, a Cambridge graduate, intent on making the world better than he had found it. It was a winter evening brilliant with moonlight. We said little. I didn't want to talk. and my companion seemed occupied with his own thoughts. When, as we neared Keswick, the glory of Derwentwater burst upon us he broke a long silence with this remark : "Wouldn't the Lake District make a splendid ground for experiments in scientific afforestation?" Well, the same idea has since occurred to other people, who, unfortunately, were able to put it into operation. Afforestation has attacked Lakeland. It has even broken out to disfigure, like an exotic disease, the lonely and mysterious loveliness of Ennerdale. Nor is it the only means used to mark Lakeland with ruin. There is the destruction of Mardale, following the destruction of Thirlmere as it was in its beautiful past. Recently, much that we prized in London, and in many other of our cities, has been destroyed by enemy hands. But the beauty of the Lake District is being destroyed with the connivance of the elected representatives of the British people. It is far from being the only part of our country that has suffered. I know Derbyshire dales that were exquisitely beautiful before they were delivered up to the "development of mineral resources." I think regretfully of Salisbury Plain as I knew it when an undergraduate. The present generation can form no idea of the beauty of the English countryside sixty years ago. I dare not think of what it may be like sixty years hence. An American friend to whom I was thus lamenting remarked encouragingly : "Well, it is all a sign of progress." Progress towards what?
Something may perhaps be done to preserve what is left of Britain's unique natural beauty by including measures to that end among our aims for postwar planning, but I am not very hopeful about it. Suppose the Lake District were made a national park. Can we be confident that it woiald not be " developed " to provide the greatest pleasure for the greatest number by erecting switchback railways in Borrowdale, and converting. Wastdale into an imitation of Coney Island, with motor boats on Wastwater and a funicular railway ascending Brown Tongue and Hollow Stones to Mickledore and Scawfell Pike? I can imagine the kind of speech that might be concocted to justify such a provision of public entertainment. The construction of a motor road over the Sty Head Pass would be the first step in this march of progress. It has long been advocated by influential local residents, and the project was, only with difficulty scotched when it was revived shortly after the war of 1914-18. After all, Coney Island gives enjoyment to vast multitudes of pleasure- seekers ; and what proportion of the population do You suppose would not prefer switchbacks and similar excitements to
"The silence that is in the starry sky; The sleep that is among the lonely hills."
Well, the beauty thai nature has bestowed upon our land may depart before the march of progress, but there are sources of beauty that do not depart. Imperial Rome has gone, but Horace remains. The beauty, of Lakeland may go, but Wordsworth will remain. And the "powerful rhyme" of Shakespeare will long outlive the ruins of that strange and affrighting structure which the march of progress has deposited—of all places in the world—close by the church where Shakespeare is buried.
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