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William Wilberforce - A Summer Diary 1779 Find!

My detective work has now led me to the discovery of a diary written by the great anti-slavery politician, William Wilberforce. In 1779, in his final year as an undergraduate at Cambridge, he set out to meet Thomas Cookson, Wordsworth's uncle, in the Lake District. The diary reveals a friendly, thoughtful, hardy and very observant young man who, when Wordsworth himself was only nine, was one of the early visitors to appreciate the majesty and beauty of the English Lake District.

At this stage of his life William Wilberforce was a young man, travelling alone, who loved nature and was inspired by the spectacular scenery of the Lake District. The waterfalls, rocks, valleys, lakes and mountains made the rest of the English countryside seem 'insipid, peaceful and rural' in contrast to the 'majestic, beautiful and sublime' Lakes. The bleaker parts of the landscape were forbidding and yet impressive; 'awful' and 'horrid' were adjectives he used to describe them.

In 1785 Wilberforce experienced a deep religious conversion which was to lead to his campaigns against the Slave Trade. His religious convictions also influenced his later writing when his love of the Lake District mountains, views and waterfalls would be described as not only sublime and majestic, but also as evidence of God's goodness, as reminders 'of the dispensations of Divine Providence first breaking on the glorified eye, when they shall fully unfold to the view, and appear as beautiful as they are complete'. The difference in approach is a vivid illustration of the change in Wilberforce and it is fascinating to compare the journal written by a young man and the later work written by a man with the deepest religious convictions.

The summer of 1779 was, according to several entires in the dairy, a fairly wet one and the young man often ends the day 'wet to the skin'. He must also have been cold, famished and exhausted but he still settled down under the miserable light of a candle to record the events of his day at some length. The reader is given detailed instructions as to his route and is even told where to stand for the best view. The dimensions of mountains and waterfalls are given or guessed at in the absence of reliable information and even old country tales are retold.

One of my favourite entries in the diary is that dated Thursday 2nd September 1779.

Went over the Sands to Ulverston by Cartmel & Holker, 22 miles. It is very pleasant Riding, since you are more at liberty to look about you and less at the Road than you generally are in the North Country, & nowhere is there where it answers better to gaze with all your Eyes about you........ You see at a great distance some most majestic Hills & close to you is on the Right a great Bay dry at Low Water which gives you a View of the country replete with the Sublime & beautiful'.                     

That is the very view that I am lucky enough to look out on every day and, in fact, Wilberforce would have left the sands and ridden up the hill past my house on his way to Ulverston.

This is a fascinating account of one of the first 'tourists' to the Lake District. Although these days we do not often use words like sublime and majestic to describe the landscape, reading this diary has made me think we should.

14 October 2009 from Mary Rossall

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