Part 12
The reason for Wordsworth’s removal, was the increasing number of his family. And here I may as well give a list of this family, adding to it the only one who was born after the period to which I now allude. They are as follow:--
John, born 18th June, 1803.
Dorothy, called, and generally known as, Dora, born 16th August, 1804.
Thomas, born 16th June, 1806.
Catharine, born 6th September, 1808.
William, born 12th May, 1810.
Thomas and Catharine, died in their childhood; John and William are still living; and Dora, “My own Dora,” as the poet loved to call her, after a wedded life, more or less happy (she married Edward Quillinan, Esq.), she died in 1847, just three years before her venerable father.
Wordsworth was singularly fortunate in his family. There was no jars nor discords in the sacred temple of his home; but beauty, love, and all the virtues and the graces dwelt with him, and ministered to his happiness and repose. He loved his children with an intense affection; and sweet Dora, his best beloved, exercised an influence over him, more beautiful and harmonising perhaps, even than that which his sister exercised in his early life, and still continued to exercise, because it was deeper, and struck deeper into the very being of the poet. This child threw a sacred halo round his soul, and inspired one of the sweetest of his lyrics. Only a month after her birth he wrote:--
“Hast thou then survived Mild offspring of infirm humanity? .... Hail to thee! Frail, feeble monthling.... On thy face Smiles are beginning, like the beams of dawn, To shoot, and circulate. Smiles have there been seen; Tranquil assurances that heaven supports The feeble motions of thy life, and cheers Thy loveliness; or shall those smiles be called Feelers of love, put forth as if to explore This untried world, and to prepare thy way Through a strait passage intricate and dim?”
In the autumn of the same year we find him writing the lines “The Kitten and the Falling Leaves,” suggested by the delight of his dear Dora at the pretty frolics of a kitten on the wall, playing with the leaves of autumn.
“Such a light of gladness breaks Pretty kitten! from thy freaks; Spreads with such a living grace, O’er my little Dora’s face.”
then the poet resolves that he will have his glee out of life:--
“I will have my careless season, Spite of melancholy reason; Will walk thro’ life in such a way, That, when time brings on decay, Now and then, I may possess Hours of perfect gladsomeness; Keep the sprightly soul awake, And have faculties to take, Even from things by sorrow wrought, Matter for a jocund thought; Spite of care and spite of grief, To gambol with life’s falling leaf.”
He likewise addresses “The Longest Day” to her; and what a contrast to the last poem! Instead of gambolling with the falling leaves, and making life a grand holiday, he exhorts his child, now grown older, to think of higher matters:--
“Summer ebbs; each day that follows Is a reflex from on high, Tending to the darksome hollows, Where the frosts of winter lie. Now, even now, e’er wrapped in slumber, Fix thine eyes upon the sea, That absorbs time, space, and number,-- Look thou to eternity!”
And a little later, when the possibility of blindness came like a gloomy shadow to darken his more thoughtful moments; he anticipates the time when his own Dora shall guide his lonely steps. Poor Dora! she died of consumption, after trying, in vain, the warm south of Portugal. And yet she is not dead, and cannot die. In Dr. Wordsworth’s Memoirs, second volume, there is a fine portrait of her, and a sweet, mild, gentle, and spiritual girl she is; the eye singularly beautiful, and full of deep mystic fire. The poet has also drawn a portrait of her:--
“Open, ye thickets! let her fly, Swift as a Thracian nymph, o’er field or height! For she, to all but those who love her, shy, Would gladly vanish from a stranger’s sight; Tho’ where she is beloved, and loves Light as the wheeling butterfly she moves; Her happy spirit as a bird is free, That rifles blossoms on a tree, Turning them inside out, with rich audacity.”
And all this sweet surfeit of painting is true to the spirit of the beautiful girl; the spirit which stirs her thoughts, and makes all her movements an impulsive comminglement of music and poetry. A more airy, celestial form could not be imagined than hers. It seems to float on the atmosphere. And then she is so happy, and loving to those who love her.
“Alas! how little can a moment show Of an eye where feeling plays In ten thousand dewy rays; A face o’er which a thousand shadows go!-- She stops--is fastened to that rivulet’s side; And these (while, with sedater mien O’er timid waters that have scarcely left Their birthplace in the rocky cleft, She bends) at leisure may be seen Features to old ideal grace allied, Amid their smiles and dimples dignified-- Fit countenance for the soul of primal truth; The bland composure of eternal youth!
What more changeful than the sea? But over his great tides Fidelity presides; And this light-hearted maiden constant is as he. High is her aim, as heaven above, And wide as ether her good will; And like the lowly reed, her love Can drink its nurture from the scantiest rill; Insight as keen as frosty star Is to her charity no bar, Nor interrupts her frolic graces When she is far from those wild places, Encircled by familiar faces.
O the charms that manners draw, Nature, from thy genuine law! If from what her hand would do Her voice would utter, aught ensue Untoward or unfit; She in benign affections pure In self-forgetfulness, secure, Sheds round the transient harm, or vague mischance A light unknown to tutored elegance: Hers is not a cheek shame-stricken, But her blushes, are joy-flushes; And the fault, if fault it be, Only ministers to quicken Laughter-loving gaiety, And kindly sportive wit, Leaving this daughter of the mountains free As if she knew that Oberon, king of faery Had crossed her purpose with some quaint vagary, And heard his viewless bands Over their mirthful triumph clapping hands.”
A fairer drawn portrait--a more beautiful poem, as a whole--does not, I think, exist. Alas! sweet Dora.
To return, however, to the narrative. When Wordsworth was living at Allan Bank, and during the time that Coleridge sojourned with him, two prose works appeared, by these two poets, which are memorable to all scholars. The former wrote his famous “Essay on the Convention of Cintra,” and the latter dictated (for he did not write it) his still more famous work entitled “The Friend.” Notwithstanding Wordsworth’s devotion, therefore, to poetry, it will be seen that he was not indifferent to the passing events which were writing their history in the blood of nations. Speaking of his “Convention of Cintra,” in a letter to Southey, he says, “My detestation, I may say abhorrence, of that event, is not at all diminished by your account of it. Bonaparte had committed a capital blunder in supposing that when he had _intimidated_ the _Sovereigns_ of Europe, he had _conquered_ the several nations. Yet it was natural for a wiser than he was to have fallen into this mistake; for the old despotisms had deprived the body of the people of all practical knowledge in the management, and of necessity of all interest in the course of affairs. The French themselves were astonished at the apathy and ignorance of the people whom they had supposed they had utterly subdued, when they had taken their fortresses, scattered their armies, entered their capital cities, and struck their cabinets with dismay. There was no hope for the deliverance of Europe till the nations had suffered enough to be driven to a passionate recollection of all that was honourable in their past history, and to make appeal to the principles of universal and everlasting justice. These sentiments the authors of that Convention most unfeelingly violated; and as to the principals, they seemed to be as little aware even of the existence of such powers, for powers emphatically may they be called, as the tyrant himself. As far, therefore, as these men could, they put an extinguisher upon the star that was then rising! It is in vain to say that after the first burst of indignation was over, the Portuguese themselves were reconciled to the event, and rejoiced in their deliverance. We may infer from that, the horror which they must have felt in the presence of their oppressors; and we may see in it to what a state of helplessness their bad government had reduced them. Our duty was to have treated them with respect, as the representatives of suffering humanity, beyond what they were likely to look for themselves, and as deserving greatly, in common with their Spanish brethren, for having been the first to rise against that tremendous oppression, and to show how, and how only, it could be put an end to.” The poet apologises for the seeming inconsistency of his conduct in opposing the war against France at its commencement, and in urging the necessity of it in the later affairs of Spain and Portugal, by showing that he, and those who thought with him, “proved that they kept their eyes steadily fixed upon principles; for though there was a shifting or transfer of hostility in their minds, as far as regarded persons, they only combated the same enemy opposed to them under a different shape; and that enemy was the spirit of selfish tyranny and lawless ambition.”
So far, then, the “Essay on the Convention of Cintra.” Coleridge’s prose work, “The Friend,” was a serial, composed of papers upon various subjects, written mostly by Coleridge himself, with occasional assistance from Wordsworth, Professor Wilson, and others. In the seventeenth number of “The Friend,” the latter writer, in a letter to the Editor, speaks of Wordsworth as a “great teacher,” and a “mighty voice not poured out in vain.” “There are hearts,” he says, “that have received into their inmost depths all its varying tones; and even now there are many to whom the name of Wordsworth calls up the recollection of their weakness and the consciousness of their strength.” The letter was signed “Mathetes,” and might be called a warning voice to the young upon the illusions and popular fallacies of the age. It insisted likewise upon the dues belonging to antiquity; combated the notion that human nature is gradually advancing to perfection, and that the present time is wiser than the past. “Mathetes” maintained that reliance on contemporary judgment had grown into contempt for antiquity, and argued that the youth of his time could only be rescued from this perilous condition by the warning voice of some contemporary teacher; and that this teacher he imagined Wordsworth to be.
Wordsworth replied, in numbers seventeen and twenty, acknowledging that we are too apt to value contemporary opinion, to the neglect of antiquity; but denying that the doctrine of progress is injurious; and exhorting the young to rely upon themselves, and their own independent efforts; cherishing along with this, an abiding sense of personal responsibility. I cannot, however, analyse the fine treatise which follows, and must refer the reader to the treatise itself; merely adding, that a sounder or more philosophical discourse--so practical withal--has rarely been written. An “Essay on Epitaphs,” was subsequently written by Wordsworth in “The Friend,” February 22nd, 1810, and was afterwards republished by him, as a note to “The Excursion.” Wordsworth regarded epitaphs as holy memorials, and censured the epigramatic efforts of Pope, and other writers of this species of composition. A bad man, he says, should have no epitaph; and that which the poet wrote over his own child, in the churchyard of Grasmere, may be instanced as illustrating his own idea of what epitaphs should be.
In the year 1810, Wordsworth wrote an introduction to, and edited the text of, a folio volume entitled, “Select Views in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire;” by the Rev. Joseph Wilkinson, which were afterwards printed in his volume of “Sonnets on the River Duddon,” and still later, as a separate publication. This introduction and text consisted of a description of the Lake Country, which is finer than anything of the kind existing, if we except the delicate and beautiful picture-writing of Gray, the poet, who visited this district in October 1767. And here end the chief incidents in the personal and literary life of Wordsworth, up to the time of his removal to Rydal Mount.
RYDAL MOUNT.
I must here borrow the only picture which I find in Dr. Wordsworth’s “Memoirs,”--viz., that of the poet’s residence, which I transcribe from vol. I., p. 19.
“The house stands on the sloping summit of a rocky hill, called Nab’s Scar. It has a southern aspect. In front of it is a small semicircular area of grey gravel, fringed with shrubs and flowers, the house forming the diameter of the circle. From this area is a descent of a few stone steps southward, and then a gentle ascent to a grassy mound. Here let us rest a little.--At your back is the house; in front, a little to the left of the horizon, is Wansfell, on which the light of the evening sun rests, and to which the poet has paid a grateful tribute in two of his sonnets:--
‘Wansfell! this household has a favoured lot, Living with liberty on thee to gaze.’
Beneath it the blue smoke shews the place of the town of Ambleside. In front is the lake Windermere, shining in the sun; also in front, but more to the right, are the fells of Loughrigg, on which the poet’s imagination pleased to plant a solitary castle:
‘Ærial rock, whose solitary brow From this low threshold daily meets the sight.’
Looking to the right, in the garden, is a beautiful glade, overhung with rhododendrons, in beautiful leaf and bloom. Near them is a tall ash-tree, in which a thrush has sung for hours together, during many years. Not far from it is a laburnum, in which the osier cage of the doves was hung. Below, to the west, is the vegetable garden, not planted off from the rest, but blended with it by parterres of flowers and shrubs.
Returning to the platform of grey gravel before the house, we pass under the shade of a fine sycamore, and ascend to the westward by fourteen steps of stones, about nine feet long, in the interstices of which grow the yellow flowering poppy, and the wild geranium, or Poor Robin,
‘Gay With his red stalks, upon a sunny day,’
a favourite with the poet, as his verses show.--The steps above, northward, lead to an upward _sloping terrace_, about two hundred and fifty feet long. On the right side it is shaded by laburnums, Portugal laurels, mountain-ash, and fine walnut-trees and cherries; on the left it is flanked by a low stone wall, coped with rude slates, and covered with lichens, mosses, and wild-flowers. The fern waves on the walls, and at its base grows the wild-strawberry and foxglove. Beneath this wall, and parallel to it, on the left, is a _level terrace_, constructed by the poet for a friend most dear to him and his,--who, for the last twenty years of Mr. Wordsworth’s life, was often a visitor at Rydal Mount. The terrace was a favourite resort of the poet, being more easy for pacing to and fro, when old age began to make him feel the acclivity of the other terrace to be toilsome. Both these terraces command beautiful views of the vale of the Rothsay, and the banks of the lake of Windermere.”
Then we have a description of Rydal Lake, and of the “long, wooded, and rocky hill of Loughrigg beyond, and above it,” as seen from an orifice on the ascending terrace; of the beautiful sycamore close to the arbour, the fine firs in the foreground, and the dark woods of fir, ash, oak, hazel, holly, and birch, on the right and left; of the “FAR FERRDEL on the mountain’s side,” a little to the right of the “ascending terrace”--which, after a serpentine course of one hundred and fifty feet, terminates at a little gate, close to the “Nab Well,” where the poet was wont to quaff his daily libations. Another walk from the arbour leads to a field, sloping down to the valley, called “Dora’s field,” and on the right is a rude stone, bearing this inscription--
“In these fair vales hath many a tree At Wordsworth’s suit been spared; And from the builder’s hand this stone, For some rude beauty of its own, Was rescued by the bard. So let it rest, and time will come, When here, the tender-hearted, May heave a gentle sigh for him, As one of the departed.”
A pond containing gold fish, underneath a large oak, close to the gate which leads to this “Dora’s field,” completes the inventory of the external features of Rydal Mount.
It was in the spring of 1811 that Wordsworth left Allan Bank, and took up his temporary residence at the Parsonage, Grasmere. But the death of his children, Catharine and Thomas, which occurred in 1812, threw so melancholy a gloom over the neighbourhood, that he resolved to quit it altogether. It was not, however, without many painful feelings of regret that he bade adieu to the beautiful scenery in the vale of Grasmere--scenery which he had so long loved--every feature of which was as familiar to him as the faces of the dear children whom he had committed for ever to its quiet keeping. The step, however, was absolutely necessary, as he himself says in a letter to the Earl of Lonsdale, for the recurrence of that tranquillity of mind which it was his duty, and that of his surviving family, to strive for. Accordingly he removed to Rydal Mount, in 1813, where he resided until his death, in 1850. It was in that year--1813--that he received the appointment of Distributor of Stamps in the County of Westmoreland, which has already been alluded to, in the extracts made from the “Reminiscences” of De Quincy.
This appointment, for which he was mainly indebted to Lord Lonsdale, placed the poet in easy if not affluent circumstances, and enabled him to follow his art without anxiety respecting worldly matters,--a condition which the poet improved to his own honour, and to the public advantage. Some time after this good fortune had befallen him, he was offered the collectorship of the town of Whitehaven, an office far more lucrative than the other; but the poet declined it. He had now sufficient for his necessities, and no pecuniary inducement could avail with him to quit the sweet retirement of the lakes. He was fortunate, also--and De Quincy was right in saying that he was _always_ fortunate, for Good Luck “threw her old shoe after him” wherever he went--in securing about this time the services of Mr. John Carter, as coadjutor in the stamp-office. Dr. Wordsworth speaks in the highest terms of this gentleman, who, for thirty-seven years, served the poet “faithfully and zealously, and who added to his business qualifications, those of sound scholarship and judicious criticism.”
Thus happily circumstanced, Wordsworth continued to write poetry, and to make more tours, as his fancy dictated. In 1814, he again visited Scotland, in company with his wife, his wife’s sister, and Miss Mary Hutchinson. The poems produced on this tour were “The Brownie’s Cell,” “Cora Linn,” “Effusions on the Banks of the Bran, near Dunkeld,” and “Sonnet to Mr. Gillies.” The following note, upon the poem “Yarrow Visited,” is of great interest. It is Wordsworth who writes.
“As mentioned in my verses on the death of the Ettrick Shepherd, my first visit to Yarrow was in his company. We had lodged the night before at Traquhar, where Hogg had joined us, and also Dr. Anderson, the editor of ‘The British Poets,’ who was on a visit at the manse. Dr. Anderson walked with us till we came in view of the Vale of Yarrow, and being advanced in life he then turned back. The old man was passionately fond of poetry, though with not much of a discriminating judgment, as the volumes he edited sufficiently shows; but I was much pleased to meet with him, and to acknowledge my obligation to his collection, which had been my brother John’s companion in more than one voyage to India, and which he gave me before his departure from Grasmere--never to return. Through these volumes I became first familiar with Chaucer; and so little money had I then to spare for books, that in all probability, but for this same work, I should have known little of Drayton, Daniel, and other distinguished poets of the Elizabethan age, and their immediate successors, till a much later period of my life. I am glad to record this, not for any importance of its own, but as a tribute of gratitude to this simple-hearted old man, whom I never again had the pleasure of meeting. I seldom read or think of this poem without regretting that my dear sister was not of the party, as she would have been so much delighted in recalling the time when, travelling together in Scotland, we declined going in search of this celebrated stream, not altogether, I will frankly confess, for the reasons assigned in the poem on the occasion.”