Road around The Lake

I have always wondered about what I think is a small inconsistency in the lakeside geography between S&A and WH.  The endpaper map in S&A doesn't show the road but in the Chapter Captain John visits Captain Flint  the road is described as "running close to the shore at the head of the little bay"  and a motor car was waiting there for Captain Flint. The car can just be made out in the illustration Captain John backwatered.  In WH the way down to the lake from the road is described in the chapter The Fram at Night as a Cart Track along which Peggy John and Susan could no longer walk abreast.  It doesn't sound like a road down which a car would have driven.   What do other members think?

Hello Gwyn.

I think you're right; there's a change in the geography described on the shore of Houseboat Bay between SA and WH.

I've noticed before that in SA, Chapter 3, AR describes the lakeshore between Holly Howe Bay and Houseboat Bay as mainly consisting of small promontaries, thick woods, the occasional field and a few houses amongst the trees - "but not many of them". The houses are quite interesting, because they effectively disappear after this one mention: in WH I've always had the impression that there were no homes between Holly Howe and Dixon's farm.

It may be AR simply didn't mention them again because they were irrelevant. Or he may have ignored them to increase the sense of remote "Eskimo Settlements" in the sub-Arctic. I suspect that might also be the reasons for "moving" the road further back from the shore at Houseboat Bay (if that is indeed what he did). Doing so increased the remoteness of the Fram, and helped to build the atmosphere, especially for the night visit by Peggy and the Swallows.

Thanks for your thoughts on the possible change of geography, Geraint.  I am sure you are right. Like anyone who has read the books many times over the years, in my mind's eye I have a very clear picture of The Lake, and surrounds - except for the slightly blurred part on the shore of Houseboat Bay! 

Yes, indeed: I also have a clear idea of the geography of the Lake in my mind. And I'm sure you are right in saying that many other readers have their own picture too.

It might be a fascinating piece of research to try and discover just how closely our personal "mental maps" coincide. Or, alternately, how much they differ? All of us have, presumably, started from exactly the same source, namely AR's five Lakes books, including the descriptions, maps and drawings therein. Some - but not all - of us will have also seen the real landscapes around Coniston and Windermere, whilst another "sub set" of AR's readers will have read some or all of the various books written about the factual places that helped to inspire him. Some of us, of course, will be used to reading editions with different illustrations, which could well affect a reader's mental picture of the fictional lake. All of us will, however, had to opportunity to develop our own personal "mental picture" using our own unique experiences of life.

As an ex-geographer, it sounds like an interesting challenge. I wonder if anybody has ever done any serious research on this particular area, ie how a group of readers build a mental picture of a landscape or story from a single author's work? Who knows, perhaps there's a dissertation or PhD out there waiting for someone to stumble across it?

Previously Gwyn Johnson wrote:

Like anyone who has read the books many times over the years, in my mind's eye I have a very clear picture of The Lake, and surrounds