Number in series 26; Year of publication 1932 - Fell and Rock ...

196 THE FELL AND ROCK CLIMBING CLUB JOURNALThe reason for his eminence as a Lakeland figure lay first inhis single-mindedness and reverence. To the District thathe loved, he brought, moreover, a scholarship both careful inmethod and far-reaching in grasp. He cared immensely forhistorical truth and did much to establish a sound tradition ofantiquarian and historical research, especially as he was for manyyears President of the Cumberland and Westmorland AntiquarianSociety and Editor of its Transactions. The time I saw himmost put out, more than some would think reasonable, was oncewhen the Carlisle Pageant authorities had sacrificed historicalaccuracy to dramatic effect.If there is a place where such men after death meet with thosewhom they have served, W. G. Collingwood has assuredly beenwelcomed by many good men of the past, some of them not atall like himself, whose names or doings he has saved fromundeserved oblivion. It is pleasant to think of him, short ofstature, dome-like in forehead, with the friendly yet penetratingblue eyes of the scholar, passing his time with local worthiesof whom he told the bare truth—or with the South Germanminers of Dutch Agnes, who brought prosperity in the Sixteenthand Seventeenth centuries—or with those magnificent Northmenof Thorstein who sailed up the creeks a thousand years ago toclear the lovable green fields in the bottoms of our valleys andto leave their thwaites and howes and saeters in many a welllovedname.Collingwood joined the Club in 1913.