Part 42

Our next visit was to the valley of the Rivelin, so often named in Elliott's poetry. The Rivelin is one of the five rivers that run from the moorland hills and join near Sheffield; and the scenery is very peculiar, from the singular features which art and trade have added to those of nature. The river is one of those streams that show their mountain origin by their rapid flow over their rugged beds, scattered with masses of stone. It has a tinge of the peat-moss, and is overhung by woods and alternate steep banks of sandstone rock, clothed with the bilberry-plant. But what gives to a stranger the most striking character, are the forges and grinding-wheels, as they call them, scattered along them. Formerly these stood chiefly out among the neighboring hills, being turned by the streams that descend from them, and you still find them in all the neighboring valleys, the rivulets and rivers which run along them being dammed up into a chain of ponds, which give a peculiar character to the scene. These ponds look dark-brown, as from the rust of iron, which is ground off with the water, and are generally flanked by dark alders, or are overhung by the woods which clothe the side of the valleys: and you now come to a forge where the blast roars, and the flame glances out from the sooty chimney-tops, and the hammers resound and tinkle in various cadences from within; and now to low, mill-like buildings, with huge wheels revolving between two of them, or beside one of them; and these are the grinding-mills, or wheels, as they are termed. Formerly, they were all turned by those streams, which are conveyed in channels cut for them, and spouts, and let fall on those great wheels; but now, steam is applied, as to every thing else; and large grinding-wheels, as they are still called, that is, mills, meet you along all the lower parts of the town, as they still require a good supply of water for their engines and for their wet-grinding, that is, to keep their grindstones wet for some particular articles. Owing to this introduction of steam, as you advance farther up among the moorland hills and streamlets, you find the old and picturesque grinding-wheels falling to decay. Such is the scenery of Rivelin. Far up, solitude and falling wheels give a pleasing melancholy to the scene; but as you return nearer to Sheffield, you see the huge hammers of forges put in motion by stream or steam, thumping away at the heated bars of iron, while water is kept trickling upon their great handles to keep them cool.

The external appearance of the great steam grinding-wheels in the town is very singular. Amid the other swarthy buildings these look tawny with sand, which has flown out through the numerous windows, and coated the whole of the walls, and even roof; and the windows, which are often, I believe, of paper, are broken in, just as if the mills had been stormed by a mob.

No person who has read Elliott's description of the reckless race of grinders, or the account of them in the Report of the Commissioners to inquire, in 1841, into the condition of the people in mines and factories, can see these places without a lively interest. At this deadly trade, the workmen sit at work astride of rounded blocks of wood, which they call grinding-horses, in front of their grindstones, which are fixed on axles or spindles turned by the steam or water; and fixing the knife, or other steel article, in a sort of case which covers the upper side of it, and enables them to grind it more regularly, as it can not give way unequally,--they make the most brilliant posies of sparks stream from them at every pressure on the stone. Others polish the articles ground, by holding them to the edges of small wooden wheels covered with leather.

Grinders never live long; but the _dry_-grinders perish soonest, because the particles of sandstone are driven in whole clouds from the grindstones, and fill the whole air and the grinder's lungs. Five minutes in a dry-grinding room is quite sufficient to satisfy you of its nature and effects. We have seen Ebenezer Elliott's character of the grinder:--

"There draws the grinder his laborious breath, There coughing, at his deadly trade he bends; Born to die young, he fears nor man nor death; Scorning the future, what he earns he spends; Debauch and riot are his bosom friends."

The Commissioners state, on the authority of Dr. Knight of Sheffield, that a dozen years ago the number of grinders was two thousand five hundred; the life of a wet-grinder seldom reached forty-five years; that of a dry-grinder not more than thirty-five. The number is now larger, and the average of life, according to other evidence, is shorter. Table-knife grinders work on wet stones, and are the longer lived; the fork-grinders work on dry stones, and are the short-lived ones. Children are put to this fatal trade at fourteen years old usually, but to some lighter branches as early as eight or nine years of age. They who have good constitutions seldom experience much inconvenience till they are about twenty years old, when the symptoms of their peculiar complaint begin to show themselves. They are affected with a terrible species of asthma, followed by a train of physical sufferings, which drag them piecemeal to the grave. Flues to carry off the dust have been introduced into the wheels, but the men refuse to use them, and often kick them down and tread upon them. They get high wages, and think that if the trade were made innoxious, there would be more to enter it, and prices would fall. They are for a short life and a merry one. Those who drink most are often the longest lived, owing to their more frequent absence from their work. The doctors often say to those who come to consult them, "Now, if you go back to this trade you go back to die;" but this never had the effect of deterring them from going back, nor from apprenticing their children to the same fatal trade.

Inquiring in Sheffield where Ebenezer Elliott now resided, I was told, by five different persons, five different places. One said it was near Rotherham, another near Barnsley, another near Tickhill, another near Wakefield, and another near Pontefract. It turned out to be near Darfield, on the railroad between Rotherham and Wakefield. Getting out at the Darfield station, I found that I had a pleasant walk of three miles to his house, at some distance beyond the village of Great Houghton. The country is very different to that about Sheffield, in which Elliott seems to have taken such great delight. It is a fine farming country. The lanes have all a foot causeway of one row of stones, like those of Derbyshire; and, like it, the fields are rich with grass, and corn, and hedge-row trees. The village of Houghton, the only one that I saw, is a regular old farming village, with one large, old stone hall standing, about a hundred yards from the road, and falling evidently to decay, while the great stone wall which separates its grounds from the road, massy as it is, is equally dilapidated. Elliott's house, which he has built, is a good stone house in the style of the country, with a flag roof, and is fit for gentleman or farmer. It occupies the top of a hill on the edge of a common. It has a good garden lying round it; the views from it are fine and very extensive, including distant towns and villages, and here and there a great mass of wood. There is a fine airiness about the situation; but the prospect of suitable society is not so easy to be perceived. One naturally connects the idea of Ebenezer Elliott and the brisk movements of a populous town; but he complains that the constant political excitements of a town had wearied him, and gave too much interruption to his literary enjoyments. Here certainly he has withdrawn to complete leisure for books and the country; and yet, if he need the intercourse with towns, the various railroads put half-a-dozen within the speediest access. He says that time, instead of hanging heavily, never went so fast with him.

I found Ebenezer Elliott standing at his porch, with his huge Newfoundland dog beside him. I merely introduced myself as an admirer of his poetry, who had a desire in passing to pay my respects to him. He gave me a very cordial welcome. We entered his room, and were soon deep in conversation. And we were soon, too, high in conversation; for our talk, among other things, turning on a certain class of society, I happened to say that, "spite of all their faults as a class, many of them, as individuals, were very amiable people." This was a little too much for him. The latent fire of the Corn-Law Rhymer blazed up; he started from his chair, and pacing to and fro with his hands at his back, exclaimed, "Amiable men! amiable robbers! thieves! and murderers! Sir! I do not like to hear thieves, robbers, and murderers, called amiable men! Amiable men indeed! Who are they that have ruined trade, made bread dear, made murder wholesale, put poverty into prison, and made crimes of ignorance and misery? Sir! I do not like to hear such terms used for such men!"

I laughed, and said, "Well, Mr. Elliott, you and I shall certainly not quarrel about any such people; and I ought not to sit talking thus as a perfect stranger--it creates a false position and false conclusions." I then mentioned my name. He sprung across the room, caught hold of my offered hand with both his, gave it a great shake, and then hastened out to call Mrs. Elliott. Very soon Mrs. Elliott and a daughter appeared, and we were speedily afloat on an ocean of talk. When people of the same tastes meet for the first time, and especially on a rainy day in the country, what a multitude of themes present themselves! Books, people, poetry, mesmerism, and heaven knows what, leave not room for silence to show his little finger in. Mrs. Elliott, a tall, good-looking woman, I soon found as lady-like, sensible, and well informed as any poet could desire for his companion. Miss Elliott, a fine-grown and comely, but very modest young lady, was the only one who did not act the part rather of talker than listener. For six hours, the time I stayed, it was one long, uninterrupted talk. The hearty host declared that I should not leave for a week; but England, Scotland, and Ireland lay before me, and only a limited time to traverse a good deal of them in. Yet what greater pleasure, could one command it, than a week with such a man--far from the tone and spirit of coteries, in the heart of fresh and pure nature, with books, and woods, and flowery fields fanned by the purest breezes, to wander through, and compare the impressions of men and things, of great thoughts, great deeds, and great projects for the good of society, as they come before you unbiased and uncolored by the world as it shows its protean shapes in cities--in the refined sneer, the jealous thought, the weary indifference of overstimulated tastes? Were I at liberty to pen down the dialogue of that one afternoon, in all its freedom of remark, it would make the brightest but most startling chapter of these volumes. But that can not be, and I must add nothing more to this article than simply to say, that in a strange place I should never have recognized Ebenezer Elliott by his portrait. There is no good one of him. He is somewhat above the middle height. He is sixty-five, but not old-looking for his years. His hair is white, and his manner and tone, except when excited by those topics that rouse his indignation against cruelty and oppression, mild, soft, and full of feeling. Perhaps no man's spirit and presence are so entirely the spirit and presence of his poetry. Unlike many who could be named, who, drilled from youth into the spirit and tone of the gay circles that they frequent, present that spirit and tone there, and reserve the spirit and tone of the poet for the closet--men of two worlds, in the world of the world, in the closet of the world of mind--Ebenezer Elliott has conversed too much with nature, and with men in their rough, unsophisticated nature, to have merged one jot of his earnestness into conventionalism of tone or manner. In society or out of it he is one and the same--the poet and the man.

JOHN WILSON.

The progress of my work warns me to be brief where I would fain be most voluminous. To John Wilson, of the Isle of Palms, the City of the Plague, and of volumes of other beautiful poetry, it would be a delightful task to devote a volume. The biography of Professor Wilson, whenever given to the world, if written as it should be, would be one of the most curious and intensely interesting books in the world. The poet and the periodical writer, Christopher North at the Noctes and in his shooting-jacket, and John Wilson, the free, open-hearted, yet eccentric man, could, combined, furnish forth, with glimpses of his cotemporaries and social doings, a most fascinating work. As it is we must take but a glimpse, and a hasty glimpse, at his residences.

John Wilson was born at Paisley. His father was a wealthy manufacturer, and the house which he inhabited, and where the professor first saw the light, is perhaps the best and largest house in the town, standing in High-street. It is a large, white house, standing somewhat back, with a little shrubbery before it. Wilson was educated at Oxford, and in the London Magazine of 1820 we find an account of his indulging himself in a pedestrian journey from the university to Edinburgh, in all manner of country life. Now joining a strolling company of players; now camping with a gang of Gipsys; then acting the beggar; and ever and anon falling in with a village wake, and entering into all the contests of flinging at will-pegs, jumping in sacks, leaping and racing. On these occasions he would astonish the natives with his wonderful talk over their beer, or equally amaze the village damsels by his grace and activity in the dance. Any one who has seen John Wilson may imagine with what gusto and success he would go through all these parts, while hoarding up knowledge of the people's life, that would tell in future.

It is also said, that, quite as a youth, he made an excursion of this kind, nobody knowing whither he had vanished, till a Paisley man, happening to enter an inn at Conway, to his amazement saw him acting as a waiter there. Information was immediately sent to his father, it is said, who hastened into Wales, and surprised John by his presence, requesting him to return forthwith home. But here the boniface interfered, declaring that he could not part on any terms with his waiter, for such a waiter he had never had in his house in his life. So active, so expert, so full of wit and good-humor, that every one of his guests was charmed with him. In short, he was the making of the house, and go he should not. It was only when mine host was convinced who and what the youth was, and that it was only a lark, that he gave way and consented to his loss.

His life in Edinburgh, his contest for the chair of Moral Philosophy there, which he has so long and honorably occupied, his splendid writings in Blackwood, and his association with all the distinguished men of that literary corps and of the Scottish metropolis, are too familiar matters to dwell upon. The haunts of Wilson in town are the gathering places of genius and conviviality. In the country they are the mountains, the moors, and the streams. His tall and athletic form, and active and ardent character, mark him out for a deep enjoyment of all the loveliness of nature, and the sports of the wild. He has been a great wrestler, a great angler, a great shooter, and a great walker. In life, or in the pages of Blackwood, the angle and the gun have been his companions, amid the most splendid and solitary scenery of the kingdom. At one time he has been traversing the piny mountains and the lonely lochs of the Highlands, at another strolling through the defiles of Patterdale, or scaling the heights of Skiddaw. Once taking refuge in a farmhouse in the Highlands of Scotland, I was told that Professor Wilson and his wife had done the same thing just before, on their way toward the western coast, on foot, with a view to visit Staffa and Iona. With a happy family around him, John Wilson seemed for years to breathe nothing but the spirit of happiness and the full enjoyment of life. Laboring away at his lectures and his magazine articles, and partaking the society of Edinburgh during the college terms, he was ever ready to fly off, on their close, to his beloved hills and streams. In Edinburgh, his house has long been in Gloucester-place of the new town. In the country, his favorite abode at Elleray, near Windermere, in Westmoreland.

Many anecdotes of his manly humor, kindliness, and exploits of physical vigor, are related of him in this neighborhood: among others, that he was once balloted for the local militia there, and declined finding a substitute, but chose to serve. Here, then, might be seen the poet and philosopher passing his drill, and manoeuvering rank and file. He would attend for his ration and his tommy, and, sticking them on the point of his bayonet, march down the town where the regiment lay, and present them to the first old woman he met. For these vagaries he was called up before the officers, to be reprimanded; but the affair was sure to change very speedily from a grave to a merry one, and to end by the officers inviting him to partake of their mess. How long he continued to indulge his whim does not appear.

Hogg gives, somewhere, a very amusing account of a week that he spent with him at Elleray, where, he says, they had curious doings among the gentlemen and the poets of the lakes. According to his account, they used to ramble far and wide among the lakes and mountains, fishing, and climbing, and talking, and would give each other a challenge to write a poem on some given subject, in the evening, after dinner. Hogg's relation of these poetical contests is most laughable. They seated themselves in separate rooms; but, according to a custom very common, and perhaps universal among poets, of chanting their verses aloud as they form them, Hogg could always hear how the matter was progressing with his antagonist. If the verse did not flow well, there was a dead silence; if it began to flow and expand, there was heard a pleasant murmur, as of a mountain stream. As the inspiration grew, and the work sped, the sound rose and swelled, like the breeze in the sonorous forest of northern pines; and when there was a passage of supposed preëminence of beauty and strength struck out, then it rose into a grand and triumphal tide of song, like the wind pealing through the mountain passes, or the ocean pouring in riotous joy on the shore. When it reached so grand a climax, Hogg says he used to exclaim,--"There, it's all over with me; I'm done for!" and with that he gave up the contest for the day, knowing that the case was hopeless.

This humming habit of poets is a singular characteristic. A certain one of my acquaintance, riding one day on the highway, and seeing no one near, broke out into a loud and continuous chant, when a fellow put his head suddenly over the hedge, and shouted out--"What is all that about!" At which the startled bard was first struck into a sudden silence, and then into as sudden a burst of laughter at the oddity of the circumstance. Wordsworth, among the woods, and rocks, and solitary crags of Cumberland, may be heard murmuring to himself a music of his own; so that a stranger, seeing the grave and ancient man strolling along, often with a little bundle of sticks under his arm, that he has unconsciously gathered, and humming out some dimly intelligible stanzas in a breeze-like and Æolian harp-like wildness of cadence, might take him for a very innocent old man, not overburdened with business or other matters. Among the great luxuriant laurels that flourish round his house, you may trace his retired perambulations by his top-like humming, and say,--

"Over its own sweet voice the stock-dove broods."

Southey's garden, and that of his only neighbor, were merely divided by a hedge. In the garden of the neighbor was sitting once with the neighbor a visitor from a distance, when a deep and mysterious booming, somewhat near, startled the stranger, and caused him to listen. Recollecting that they were near the lakes, the sound, which at first seemed most novel and unaccountable, appeared to receive a solution; and the visitor exclaimed,--"What! have you bitterns here?" "Bitterns!" replied the host; "oh no; it is only Southey, humming his verses in the garden-walk on the other side of the hedge!"

The cottage of Wilson at Elleray is a simple, but elegant little villa, standing on high ground overlooking Windermere, but at the distance of some miles. As you approach Ambleside from Kendal, you pass, as you begin to descend the hill toward Lowood, a gate leading into a gentleman's grounds. The gateway is, on either side, hung with masses of the Ayrshire rose. There is a poetical look about the place; and that place is the country retreat of John Wilson. A carriage-road, winding almost in a perfect circle, soon introduces you to a fine lawn, surrounded by plantations, and before you, on a swelling knoll, you discern the cottage. It is hung with ivy and Ayrshire roses; and commands a splendid view over the lake, and all the mountains round. At the back a plantation of larches ascends the hill, screening it from the north. At the foot of these plantations, and sheltered in their friendly bosom, lie the gardens, with bees, and pleasant nooks for reading or talk. Walks extend all through these woodlands, and one of them conducts you through the larch copse, up the hill, and from its summit beyond the house, gives you a most magnificent panoramic view of the whole country, with its mountains, and lakes, and plains, and the very ocean. In one direction, you have Morecomb Bay and Ulverstone sands, with the crags of Cartmell; in another, Coniston and other fells; then Eskdale fells, Dunmail raise; Bow fell, far beyond, and Langdale pikes. In another, you catch the summit of Skiddaw, and the lofty ridges in the neighborhood of Patterdale, with Shap fell. Below you is all the breadth and the scenery of Windermere.

Such a view is a perpetual enjoyment. The constant changes of cloud and sun cast over it a constant change of aspect. Now all is shining out airy, and clear, and brilliant; and now dark and solemn lie the shadows, black often as night, and wild from passing tempests, in the mysterious hollows of the hills. When you descend to the house, the scene around is made all the more soft and attractive to the senses by the change from such immense range of vision, and stern character of many of the objects presented. Here all is beauty and repose. The knoll on which the house stands is particularly round, and is well laid out in lawn and flower-beds. The house itself is simple, and consists principally of one long room, which, by folding doors, can be formed into two with a hall between them. Behind this lie the kitchen and offices. At the end next to the Windermere, is a large bay window, overlooking the upper part of the lake, toward Langdale and Coniston fell. The window is provided with seats, for the full enjoyment of this splendid view. A pleasantly swelling slope descends to the meadows which lie between its feet, and the house of the late Bishop Watson. The front door is in a bay window, lined with stands of plants, and having in direct view Ray Castle on the far side of the lake.