Cumberland, Keswick and Southey's Country (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ...at her door, and yew-tree shade above her roof, to remind her of the old farm house of Fieldside which it supplanted, saw gathered within its hospitable walls the fading circle of friends that made the Lakeland famous. Thither came the Southey children, thither the Coleridges, and the Wordsworths. On its walls were the tokens of that fair friendship, in pictures of the poets and their belongings. In its book-shelves the writings of the honoured Lakeland School. And hidden away in secret drawers, the cherished albums filled with scraps, and letters, and verse of the famous guests and friends. There, with a perpetual fund of anecdote and merriment from a heart that softened, but never saddened with years, dwelt Mrs. Stanger, the merry little Mary Calvert, who, in the old days, remembered how Shelley had been sorely troubled when he opened out a packet one day at Windy Brow to find that the work-box he had designed for Mr. Calvert s little girl was not there; and remembered too the trouble upon her mother's and father s faces, when the young firebrand began to let off his fireworks before Miss Mary and Master John had been removed from the dining-room, and had been sent up to bed. The friend of the poor, In humblest homes a helpful visitor, as Derwent Coleridge wrote of her; in her own home, to all visitors who cared about the olden time, she too was helpful ever. In her dear hands were gathered The various strings of grateful memory To pluck them at our bidding one by one. And last remaining of the charmed circle of the Lake school of literati hereabout, she well deserves to be classed among those whose associations with the Lakeland-poet households bestowed not least worth, and added not least...