Lakeland, made safe by framing
Last updated 05:29, Friday, 13 June 2008
In the 18th century a gentleman might be seen walking purposefully across the fields where Keswick’s Theatre by the Lake is today, and down to Derwentwater shore.
A Guide to the Lakes of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire by Thomas West. Edtited by Gerard M-F Hill; introduced by Mark Haywood and with photographs by Niki Thomas and John Darwell. £20
He would turn his back on the lake and the dramatic view of the ponderous jaws of Borrowdale. His servant would pass him a wooden box. He would raise the box to head height, position it very carefully, and, oblivious to his surroundings, he would stare into the box. His face would exhibit expressions of beauty and horror.
Today a similar person, intent on communing with nature, will walk down to the shore, take a far, far smaller box out of his pocket or rucksack – he may even have it slung about his neck on a strap – and, standing firmly in front of the scene before him, he will ceremoniously raise the black or silver box to his eyes and then move on.
He will have captured the landscape, photographed the same scene that he will be able to find in hundreds of books or thousands of photographs.
Our 18th century gent was a student of the picturesque. He was seeking to be moved by scenery as he might by a work of art. In fact, our word scenery was first used not to describe the natural world, but for the imitation of that world to be found on the backdrop of a theatre stage.
Mountains had been seen as wild, uncivilised places, the haunts of banditti, the sorts of terrifying dramatic places shown in the extravagantly romantic paintings of Salvator Rosa.
He was a brave man indeed that ventured into those dark and dizzying chasms.
One man responsible for developing this aesthetic cult of the Picturesque was born in Scaleby Castle, just north of Carlisle. He became the Rev William Gilpin. Gilpin was an intrepid traveller in search of sensation which he then described in a series of books, including one on the Lake District, which instructed people on how they might look at the landscape to best advantage.
Another man was John Smith of Irthington, a few miles away, who became a pupil of Gilpin’s artistic father and went on to make a name for himself as John ‘Warwick’ Smith, watercolourist and landscape artist.
Even before Gilpin wrote his books, however, yet another man, a Dr Thomas West, was guiding aristocratic tourists through the wild scenery of the Lakes. He was a Scotsman from Inverness, a Jesuit priest living and working in Furness, who had possibly fled to the continent after the Jacobite Rebellion. His book, A Guide to the Lakes of Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire was first published in 1778, a year before his death, and proved so popular that it went through numerous editions in the next half century. It was to shape the way Wordsworth and his contemporaries looked at the world about them and it underpins some of our modern aesthetic sensibilities.
It was West who, following poets like Thomas Gray and Dr John Brown from Wigton, told the determined tourist to stand on the shores of Derwentwater and take the view. His Guide advised numerous similar places throughout the Lakes – West called them ‘viewing stations’ – where the man in search of terror and beauty could place a frame about unruly nature and contain it.
Our John ‘Warwick’ Smith placed a frame around these views by painting pictures of them which were then turned into aquatints. The mountains and lakes had become 18th-century pictures.
The University of Cumbria, in a very welcome enterprise, have reprinted West’s Guide. They have chosen the 10th edition, from 1812, where a rather bumptious editor called William Cockin, chooses to patronise Father West. They’ve also modernised the spelling and punctuation, which is a pity when you’re tryingto show how a person from another a period thought and felt.
Most interestingly, they have asked two contemporary photographers to take their little boxes to the same stations as John ‘Warwick’ Smith took his sketch-book and brushes, and to record their very different impressions of the changed landscape.
Niki Thomas has stood at West’s viewing stations and responded to his descriptions and produced pictures that reflect her feelings and capture the landscape and skyscape before her with all the potential of the distorting camera’s dramatic moment.
John Darwell has stood where John Warwick Smith stood and used a camera with a fixed-length lens that renders the scene much as the eye sees it. He has sought to intervene as little as possible in the rendition of the landscape.
Mark Hayward has written a tightly-focused – you wouldn’t expect anything else – scholarly introduction.
All in all, this new publication is a splendid initiative. Let’s hope it is the first of many from our new university.
Thomas West’s Guide to the Lakes is available from Bookends, 56 Castle Street, Carlisle, and 66 Main Street. Keswick, and from www.bookscumbria.com.
