LITMIR.BIZ

      AT THE FOOT OF WASTWATER, APRIL 1906.

      Next day, after visiting the foot of Wastwater, we crossed by Burnmoor Tarn to Eskdale, and after a substantial tea at the Woolpack Inn started up the dale at 4.45. After passing Esk Falls, where two streams join and above which is a steep ascent into the wilds of Upper Eskdale, we found ourselves driven more and more to the left, being unable to cross the beck, which was greatly swollen by rain. Foreseeing the approaching alternative of an ignominious return to the Woolpack or a night spent on the inhospitable flanks of Scafell, we finally leapt, not without risk, the steep and rocky watercourse and gained the higher levels of the valley, desolate and grand beneath the savage buttresses of Scafell and the Pikes. But the way was longer than we had reckoned; much time had been wasted in seeking a crossing-place; and we had to run a race with the daylight to ensure our finding the track on Esk Hause before dark. We sped like chamois (but scarcely with chamois’ speed or sureness of foot) along the huge and insecure boulders that cover the Eskdale slope of Esk Pike, halting at whiles to imbibe new energy from the brandy-flask, and reached Esk Hause as the deep crimson of the sunset was dying in the gap between Gable and the precipices of Great End, while Venus hung like a splendid jewel above it. The descent of Sty Head by starlight was slow. Once on the level we swung down the well-known road at five miles an hour. It was ten o’clock when we reached Mrs Honey’s. She had prepared roast duck, most succulent, for our supper. We ate it – I had almost said, the head with the legs and the appurtenances thereof. We slept a profound and dreamless sleep. Such feats can the digestion do in Borrowdale.

      One day at Seathwaite, the little cluster of houses that lies highest in the main arm of Borrowdale on the way to Sty Head, we were late coming down from Bowfell: too late, in Nairn’s opinion, for tea. He was for pressing on to Rosthwaite and beer; I, mindful of the excellence of the tea at Seathwaite, was for tea first and beer afterwards. The tea was ordered, but Nairn refused to share it, sitting over against me while I ate and drank, and heaping opprobrium upon me in picturesque and lurid terms, much to the consternation of the farmer’s daughter. For drinking tea out of the saucer I was likened, with imprecations, to an old woman in a third-class railway refreshment-room. After tea we walked some few hundred paces in a thunderous silence (he told me afterwards that it was with difficulty that he refrained from striking me); then, at the same moment, we both burst out laughing, and there was peace again. Such and of such importance was this our most serious quarrel.

      Other vacations he spent at home, or visiting friends, or travelling on the continent. In the Long Vacation of 1904, after staying up at Oxford for ‘Commem.’, the Alpine dinner, and Trinity ball, he spent six or seven weeks coaching a man for Smalls, and most of the rest of the time at Wimbledon, where he reported himself as ‘slaving away at History, but it is devilish hard working at home, with various attractions.’ He stayed with a friend at Seaview in the Isle of Wight for Cowes Week that summer. ‘As my friend has a small yacht,’ he wrote before going, ‘and is a bit of a mariner, as well as an old rowing blue (Oxon), I am rather fancying myself doing a slight Lipton touch.’ The following letter shows what he was doing in the Long of 1905:

      ‘LlNDISFARNE, ELM GROVE, WlMBLEDON.

      ‘August 3rd, 1905.

      ‘O Most Excellent One,

      ‘How much more excellent thou art than the unworthy writer of these lines, lo! thy two admirable but unanswered letters attest.

      ‘I really feel that I owe you some apology for not writing – especially after your excessive research in the matter of Swiss hotels. My Guvnor was thinking of going over there, but has changed his mind and is going to Brittany. However, I expect the information will be of use another year.

      ‘How went the viva? 1 am anxious to see the lists. I suppose you saw — staggered creation by taking a 3rd in law?

      ‘All my cubbing hopes and prospects have been cruelly dashed – it’s a way these things have. My French Marquis was already bagged, and a billet in Cumberland at — Hall, that seemed a snip, fizzled out at the last moment, as Lady — was too “broke” to afford such a luxury as myself. This was the real reason, the pretext being that her cubs were paying visits to friends.

      ‘Another billet in Somerset also “ran amok”, so I got bored and decided to go to Germany, and master (or at any rate acquaint myself superficially with) its uncouth Teutonic tongue.

      ‘By the bye, on the strength of my Gallic scion of the nobility it was reported in Wimbledon that I was going out to India as tutor with a young English Duke – “Sic fama volat et crescit eundo.”

      ‘I am starting for Germany – Frankfurt a/M. – on Monday via the Hook, and expect to stay there about seven weeks. I am going to friends – a very jolly old house – about three miles out, and as there will be a lot doing in Frankfurt (including myself) I ought to make things lively. My greatest pang is that, when last I went to Germany, I never set eyes on a girl whom I did not do my best to forget at once. Still, the gods may be kinder now.

      ‘By the bye, “She” is coming to stay in Oxford again in October – you will doubtless gather to whom I am referring, if you found me as unbearable about Eights Week as Ridley and other cold-blooded prosaics appear to have done.

      ‘However, enough of myself, e’er you are quite nauseated by my egotism. What are you going to do? How about the fair one in Paris?

      ‘By the bye, if you have not yet read Diana, do so at once – it is very fine. I am going to take several Meredith with me to read in Germany.

      ‘I have been working (more or less) for the past month, and playing tennis nearly every day, but am getting very bored with England and anxious to get away. I saw Jim Gilkison the other day. His people have taken a shooting up in Forfar, and he wants me to go up and shoot the wily grouse (or at any rate pose as your murderous sportsman), but I had to refuse as I shall not be back.

      ‘My address in Frankfurt will be: c/o Herr Bartmann-Lüdicke, Riederhöfe, Frankfurt a/M., in case you feel magnanimous enough to answer this letter.

      ‘Ever thine,

      ‘PHILIP NAIRN.’

      The lady of Eights Week was more than a transient attraction. It were unprofitable, besides impertinent, to speculate on what might have been. She inspired the most perfect of his poems.

      Three weeks later he writes from Frankfurt:

      ‘August 24th, 1905.

      ‘As you have, in a spirit of just retaliation, not deigned to answer the letter of your grovelling friend, I do myself the pain of writing to you yet again.

      ‘I am fairly well satisfied with Germany, there are many worse places. I got fairly well fed up by my journey here. I had eleven hours in the train feeling like a bottle of medicine, ‘ to be well shaken while being taken.’ This is a very jolly old house of twelfth century, with a ripping garden, about two miles out of Frankfurt. The Palmengarten

Скачать книгу