View From Howthwaite Inspires Pure Poetry : Near Wordsworth’s country cottage in England rises a cozy rental house.

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils. --William Wordsworth, 1804

From the living room, you’re treated to the ravishing view that inspired William Wordsworth to write his greatest poetry.

In the middle of a tranquil green valley surrounded by steep rolling hills lies a serene lake, its smooth surface only occasionally disturbed by ripples from a light breeze. It is a calming sight that makes one pull up a cushion from the window seat, sit and simply gaze.

Strictly speaking, the view from here is even better than the one enjoyed by Wordsworth, who, along with his compatriot Samuel Taylor Coleridge, started to write what came to be known as Romantic poetry in England in the late 18th Century. “Here” is Howthwaite, a large solid house built in 1926 directly above Dove Cottage, Wordsworth’s home from 1799 to 1808, the years when he did his most productive work.

Howthwaite was constructed on what Wordsworth’s sister, Dorothy, who lived with him in Dove Cottage, called “our little domestic slip of mountain.” Dove Cottage stands just off a road that runs along one side of Grasmere Lake. But because of our vantage point over the cottage, we could see the lake and hills in all their splendor.

Wordsworth used to compose his poems in an upstairs front room in Dove Cottage. He sat in a plain wooden chair with a back support at right angles, and a glance across the lake as he wrote. But in order to secure a view comparable to the living room at Howthwaite, he would have had to leave Dove Cottage and climb halfway up a nearby fell (or high plateau). The view from Howthwaite can make guests feel gloriously privileged.

We have come to Howthwaite--my wife Sally and I and our friends Graham and Elaine--because it is a property run by the Landmark Trust, an architectural restoration charity that rescues British buildings in distress. They may be of historical or architectural significance, or be in an outstanding location. Howthwaite comes into the latter category, and when it was offered for sale in 1986, the Landmark Trust and the Trustees of Dove Cottage got together to ensure it stayed in friendly hands.

When the Landmark Trust acquires a property, it is restored and then rented for vacations, either for weekends or seven-day periods. The thinking is that most of these properties are unsuitable for permanent homes or public use, and if they were sold to an individual owner as a weekend retreat or occasional vacation home, they would remain empty most of the year. By renting them, the trust allows more people to enjoy these buildings, and their stay generates an income toward continual maintenance.

Howthwaite is a four-bedroom house that can sleep up to seven people. The Landmark Trust house rules are liberal: Dogs are welcome, for instance, and our enthusiastic 2-year-old retriever roamed around happily. One of the few strictures concerned wearing stiletto heels, which indeed would have ruined the parquet floor.

We left our car in the garage above Howthwaite and toted our luggage down the hill, which rises steeply all the way up from Dove Cottage. There are 39 steps to help the descent, though it’s fair to say that the way back up can be grueling; an alternative winding path is longer but gentler.

Once inside we were immediately struck by the house’s solid charm. It is decorated simply--plain walls, sensible, comfortable furniture and original period accent pieces. No fussy Laura Ashley influence here. Nor is there the sense that the contents of the rooms have been nailed down. Everything is set out in its place, and it is presupposed that guests will not walk off with anything.

The kitchen was reasonably well-equipped and had an oven, refrigerator and dishwasher. There was no washing machine, which, since we were staying only for a long weekend, was unimportant. But as Elaine pointed out, it might have proved inconvenient over a whole week. The house is kept clean and tidy--but not oppressively so--by an unseen housekeeper who lives a few miles away.

There is a faintly austere atmosphere about Howthwaite, which reminds one of its 1920s origins. It was built by Jessie McDougall, one of a wealthy family of millers, and is the sort of house that would appeal to a cultivated, affluent person with tastes ascetic enough to appreciate the surrounding Lake District.

Sally, the lone American in our quartet, would have preferred showers in the two bathrooms rather than the long baths that were provided. We all approved of the absence of a television, though in countryside this remote, a radio at least would have provided some contact with the outside world.

Despite this austerity, it is the grace that makes Howthwaite memorable. Along with all other Landmark Trust properties, it has a first-class library of books relevant to the area. In this case, the shelves were stocked with 19th-Century bound volumes, pictorial guides to the Lake District, biographies and journals of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Thomas de Quincey, the best-known Lakeland writers. This gives guests at Howthwaite a sense of being members of a loosely knit but discerning club.

The feeling is consolidated by the presence in the living room of the Howthwaite logbook. It is like a large visitors’ book, but it gives guests pages of space to write whatever takes their fancy about the house. They seize on the opportunity gleefully, offering cartoons, poems, a painting of a sunrise and essay-length observations upon staying in the house. One family even submitted drawings of stick figures contorted into several different positions for washing one’s hair in the bath most effectively.

Many contributors had stayed at several other Landmark Trust properties, and instinctively wrote for what they assumed was a like-minded audience--educated, green, conservationist and very discerning. One guest wrote breathlessly of having spied a nuthatch. Another woman tartly noted the preponderance of American accents in the area, and wondered if Britain was not turning into one large theme park; a tactful couple from Connecticut rebuked her gently in a later entry by pointing out that they had been treated with the utmost courtesy during their stay in Britain.

The logbook had a special fascination of its own, and Graham, a historian by training, would curl up with it evenings in front of a blazing coal fire. It certainly made one want to get in on the act. On our last afternoon, I was climbing up the steps to our car when, from out of nowhere, a young deer darted across my path. I felt a satisfaction verging on smugness as I mentioned it in our departing entry for succeeding guests to share.

Such is the glow of euphoria induced by Howthwaite that you spend your first day gaping at the scenery, your second evening reading Wordsworth’s poetry aloud to your friends and the third wondering whether you might not try writing some verse of your own.

There is justification for feeling that you don’t even need to step outside--and a rainy weekend at Howthwaite, believe me, would be no hardship. But there is the small fact that you are surrounded by the best scenery in all England.

The air is cool, crisp and clear as you make your way up the fells. Some of these green hills are quite steep, and walking boots and sensible outdoor clothes are imperative. One easy walk, which takes less than two hours, is around Grasmere Lake. You plough along well-marked tracks, staying for most of the way well above the lake and with spectacular changing views that incorporate the closer Lake District peaks. You descend gradually and end the walk in the attractive village of Grasmere; here, Wordsworth and his family are buried in modest graves in the village churchyard.

But with a car it is easy to travel farther afield. We drove 10 miles along exquisite winding roads to a small hamlet called Torver, then embarked on a circular walk that, after a long and rather muddy descent, took us alongside another attractive lake, Coniston Water, for two miles. Here the 19th-Century writer and critic John Ruskin lived in an imposing white house overlooking the lake.

Other lakes are readily accessible. There is the larger Ullswater, which can be crossed by steamer in season (from Easter to about October). One of its better-kept secrets is the Leeming House, a Lakeside hotel near the small village of Watermillock, where you sink into huge comfortable sofas in the high-walled early Victorian drawing room and take tea, sandwiches and cakes while gazing upon Ullswater.

Or there is Lake Windermere, the biggest of the lakes and the most crowded. The small town of Windermere, on its banks, is the unofficial capital of the Lake District, and can become rather congested in season. But you can once again escape it with a boat trip down the lake. Even a car ferry across its one mile width plunges you into deep Lakeland, as remote as can be. You can visit the home at Far Sawrey of Beatrix Potter, author of the Peter Rabbit children’s books.

Still, if it’s literature you want, there’s no more fascinating place in the Lake District than Dove Cottage. We strolled down the hill from Howthwaite on our last day, and took a guided tour around the house with only half a dozen other tourists.

Wordsworth liked to imagine that he lived in the manner of the common people. Dove Cottage is rather better than that, but still a remarkably small dwelling to accommodate the people who lived there: the poet, his wife, their children, his sister and writers such as Coleridge and Sir Walter Scott for long periods.

Some of the things you are shown in Dove Cottage are decidedly unusual. There is a door to the rear garden that Wordsworth had built so he could avoid his family in their living quarters; when he was composing, he liked to be as undisturbed as possible. There is the tiny bedroom where his children slept, the walls of which are covered in newspapers of the day to try to retain even a little warmth. In a glass case are the opium pipes of Coleridge and de Quincey, both of them addicts.

The Dove Cottage tour is necessarily brief but hugely informative. Next door is a Wordsworth Museum, which tells you much about the poet, his contemporaries and times. But it is haphazardly organized, and after Dove Cottage can seem an anticlimax.

American tourists to England have a tendency to head for the obvious centers--London, Stratford, Bath and Cambridge. These places all have their fascinations, of course, but the Lake District is as quintessentially English as any of them. It offers a different kind of Englishness. The country here is much more rugged in its beauty, but it evokes a certain timelessness for many of us. A lot of English people I know always feel they had ancestors who lived in the Lake District when they visit it. The region gets to you that way.

On our last night, we left the Leeming House at Watermillock to drive back to Howthwaite just after the sun set. We drove along high, straight roads as the moon came out and the stars began to twinkle. High and higher we drove as the night turned to black. One of us slipped a Billie Holliday cassette into the tape deck. She should have been all wrong, but somehow her mournful, mellow voice fit the mood. We came upon Lake Thirlmere on our right as we started our descent, and the moon’s reflection almost blazed on its black waters. On we drove, the four of us, knowing that at Howthwaite a coal fire and a view of equivalent splendor awaited us. Just at that moment, it didn’t seem life could get much better.