Part 8

After her brother's death Miss Herschel, then in her 72nd year, seems to have felt unsettled in England and unable to face the scenes and life she had for so many years shared with her brother. Notwithstanding her attachment to her sister-in-law and her favourite nephew (who in some measure took the place in her affections of her beloved brother), she decided to return to Hanover. An absence of half a century from any place makes a wonderful difference in its associations, and Miss Herschel lived to regret her return to her native city, where, however, she resided for the remainder of her life. If her work by her brother's side was done, her long evening of life was, nevertheless, one of grateful recollection and laborious industry. Among other tasks, she undertook and completed a "Reduction and Arrangement, in the form of a catalogue in zones, of all the Star Clusters and Nebulæ observed by Sir W. Herschel in his Sweeps." For this she was, at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1828, awarded the gold medal of the Society. The remarks made by Mr. South, the Vice-President, on that occasion, perhaps best summarise her great achievements. He said: "The labours of Miss Herschel are so intimately connected with, and are generally so dependent upon, those of her illustrious brother, that an investigation of the latter is absolutely necessary ere we can form the most remote idea of the extent of the former. But when it is considered that Sir W. Herschel's contributions to astronomical science occupy sixty-seven memoirs, communicated from time to time to the Royal Society, and embrace a period of forty years, it will not be expected that I should enter into their discussion. To the Philosophical Transactions I must refer you, and shall content myself with the hasty mention of some of her more immediate claims to the distinction now conferred. To deliver an eulogy, however deserved, upon _his_ memory is not the purpose for which I am placed here.... But when we have thus enumerated the results obtained in the course of _sweeps_ with this instrument, and taken into consideration the extent and variety of the other observations which were at the same time in progress, a most important part yet remains untold. Who participated in his toils? Who braved with him the inclemency of the weather? Who shared his privations? A female. Who was she? His sister. Miss Herschel it was who by _night_ acted as his amanuensis; she it was whose pen conveyed to paper his observations as they issued from his lips; she it was who noted the night ascensions and polar distances of the objects observed; she it was who, having passed the night near the instrument, took the rough manuscripts to her cottage at the dawn of day, and produced a fair copy of the night's work on the following morning; she it was who planned the labour of each succeeding night; she it was who reduced every observation, made every calculation; she it was who arranged everything in systematic order; and she it was who helped him to obtain his imperishable name.

"But her claims to our gratitude do not end here. As an original observer she demands, and I am sure she has, our unfeigned thanks. Occasionally, her immediate attendance during the observations could be dispensed with. Did she pass the night in repose? No such thing. Wherever her brother was, there you were sure to find her. A sweeper planted on the lawn became her object of amusement; but her amusements were of the higher order, and to them we stand indebted for the discovery of the comet of 1786, of the comet of 1788, of the comet of 1791, of the comet of 1793, of the comet of 1795, since rendered familiar to us by the remarkable discovery of Encke. Many also of the nebulæ contained in Sir W. Herschel's catalogues were detected by her during these hours of enjoyment. Indeed, in looking at the joint labours of these extraordinary personages, we scarcely know whether most to admire the intellectual power of the brother, or the unconquerable industry of the sister."

A few years after this, in 1835, Miss Herschel was, along with Mrs. Somerville, made an Honorary Member of the Astronomical Society. The report of the council to the annual meeting contains the following well deserved words of praise:--

"Your Council has no small pleasure in recommending that the names of two ladies, distinguished in different walks of astronomy, be placed on the list of honorary members. On the propriety of such a step, in an astronomical point of view, there can be but one voice; and your Council is of opinion that the time has gone by when either feeling or prejudice, by whichever name it may be proper to call it, should be allowed to interfere with the payment of a well-earned tribute of respect. Your Council has hitherto felt that, whatever might be its own sentiment on the subject, it had no right to place the name of a lady in a position the propriety of which might be contested, though upon what it might consider narrow grounds and false principles. But your Council has no fear that such a difference could now take place between any men whose opinion could avail to guide that of society at large; and, abandoning compliment on the one hand, and false delicacy on the other, submits, that while the tests of astronomical merit should in no case be applied to the works of a woman less severely than to those of a man, the sex of the former should no longer be an obstacle to her receiving any acknowledgment which may be held due to the latter. And your Council therefore recommends this meeting to add to the list of honorary members the names of Miss Caroline Herschel and Mrs. Somerville, of whose astronomical knowledge, and of the utility of the ends to which it has been applied, it is not necessary to recount the proofs."

Miss Herschel always maintained a warm correspondence with her relatives in England, and when over eighty years of age wrote some recollections of her early years for her nephew. Notwithstanding her life of toil, she lived and retained her faculties to the wonderful age of ninety-seven years and ten months.

Her life affords an illustrious example of constant sisterly devotion from the days of lisping childhood, when her brother's love was her great joy, until when, after the lapse of almost a century--his memory her greatest happiness--she desired a lock of his hair to be placed in her coffin.

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH.

Only a sister's part--yes, that was all; And yet her life was bright, and full, and free. She did not feel, "I give up all for him"; She only knew, "'Tis mine his friend to be."

The author of "Mornings in Spring" refers to Sir Philip and Mary Sidney as affording the most pleasing example of devotion between a brother and sister on record. He was probably correct in his estimate, for at the time when he wrote, the story of Dorothy Wordsworth was unknown. The opinion cannot, however, any longer be held. For among the fair cluster who in life's firmament hallow the sphere of sisterhood is one who must long claim the honoured place--Dorothy Wordsworth; look where we will, in her life she is the same, always loving, helpful, stimulating, inspiring, and faithful. The childhood's playmate feeds the brother's love, and becomes, even then, his "blessing." The very thought of the absent sister is like a "flash of light" cheering the loneliness of college chambers. The young woman stimulates the youthful poet, and calls back faith to the soul and hope to the despairing life, praises where others blame, with the prophetic eye of love divines the dormant power, and foresees the honoured future. Then follows the life-long companionship, involving for many years devoted service, both intellectual and household. For Dorothy Wordsworth was often the provider of subjects for her brother's poems, with diligent labour copied those poems, at the same time, by her reading and study, making herself his intellectual companion, and presiding over the household. And through all not the least part of her service lay in her complete self-effacement. With her intellectual endowment and rare literary skill she possessed the ability to have made herself no mean place in literature. All were surrendered in thought for the brother. Faithful Dorothy! Well might her brother love her with an almost unexampled love, this brightest example of sisterly devotion!

William and Dorothy Wordsworth were children of John Wordsworth, a solicitor practising in the quiet town of Cockermouth and agent of the then Earl of Lonsdale. Dorothy, who was the only daughter, was about a year and nine months younger than William, and was born on Christmas Day, 1771.

Circumstances sad in themselves not unfrequently tend to the development of latent character in a child; and to the surroundings of their earliest years and the influences then beginning to work we must look for the first germs from which was to spring the future harvest.

The loss of their mother when Dorothy was about six years old was the first of a succession of troubles which struck the lives of this brother and sister. This mother had been the centre of their home, the pivot round which their young lives turned. As Wordsworth afterwards said:--

She was the heart And hinge of all our learning and our loves.

The little Dorothy was an impetuous, warm-hearted child, tender and loving, with the need of a home for the affections of her deep nature. With the loss of her mother she seems to have turned with an abandon of love to the brother next in age to herself. He was her playmate. The old garden with the terrace walk on the banks of the Derwent was the scene of many childish rambles and confidences. In later years, the poet in a few exquisite lines recalls the ministry of those early years. The flit of the butterfly brings to mind the time of many a childish gambol, the chief remembrance of which was the thought how she

Feared to brush The dust from off its wings.

There, also, was the Sparrow's Dwelling:

She looked at it, and seemed to fear it, Dreading, though wishing to be near it; Such heart was in her, being then A little Prattler among men. The Blessing of my later years Was with me when a boy: She gave me eyes, she gave me ears, And humble cares, and delicate fears, A heart, the fountain of sweet tears, And love, and thought, and joy.

Not long, however, after the death of their mother, William was sent to school at Hawkshead, and Dorothy for a time lived with the father of her late mother at Penrith.

The death of their father, when Dorothy was about twelve years old, caused the entire break up of their early home, and from thence for some years their personal intercourse was only renewed at intervals. The father had not died in circumstances by any means affluent; but, through the kindness of prudent guardians, Wordsworth was enabled to finish his education at Cambridge. Dorothy meanwhile was passing her teens amid circumstances and scenes not the most congenial. Their absence from each other only stimulated their growing love. A visit to her during a vacation was to the brother blest

With a joy Above all joys, that seemed another morn Risen at mid noon; blessed with the presence Of that sole sister Now, after separation desolate, Restored to me--such absence that she seemed A gift then first bestowed.

Even now Dorothy was cherishing the design that she might become her brother's life companion. She looked forward to a time when they might be restored to each other--living loving life in a cottage, her brother great, she his servant and helper. This was the great hope that sustained her amidst present heart-yearning.

The history of Wordsworth about this time is now well known. College days over, an uncertainty of aim and purpose was the reason of his not fixing upon some occupation. His twelve months' residence in France during the period of the great Revolution did not assist in the solution of the problem of the young man's life, but only further entangled it. The outcome of the national struggle was bitterly disappointing to the enthusiastic English youth who had watched its progress with such keen interest. A change of rule was to be the dawn of hope to the nations. But when, instead of peace came strife and outrage, instead of prosperity misery, instead of freedom tyranny, instead of the fruition of hope the gloom of despair--then Wordsworth bowed his head in bitterness, ready almost to doubt the Almighty government of the world.

But the angel of his life came to his aid. Although their happiness was delayed, and Wordsworth's purposes remained unformed a year or two longer, the watchful love of his sister came as a soothing balm, and her dominant influence as a healing virtue. Friends blamed, but the sister confided, and encouraged her brother's desire to become a poet. Writing to a friend she says:

"William ... has a sort of violence of affection--if I may so term it--which demonstrates itself every moment of the day, when the objects of his affection are present with him, in a thousand almost imperceptible attentions to their wishes, in a sort of restless watchfulness which I know not how to describe, a tenderness that never sleeps, and, at the same time, such a delicacy of manner as I have observed in few men." And again, "I am willing to allow that half the virtues with which I fancy him endowed are the creation of my love; but surely I may be excused! He was never afraid of comforting his sister; he never left her in anger; he always met her with joy; he preferred her society to every other pleasure--or, rather, when we were so happy as to be within each other's reach, he had no other pleasure when we were compelled to be divided."

What prevented now the carrying out of their long-formed project of living together was, unfortunately, their want of means. Without a profession for the brother, they appear to have been almost without income. But Providence gave what fortune withheld. The legacy of £900 bequeathed to Wordsworth by a friend whom he had nursed, and who recognised his genius, at length removed the cause which had kept the brother and sister apart. With scanty means, but overflowing love, they faced the world and conquered fate. The late Bishop of Lincoln, alluding to this period, says of Dorothy: "She was endowed with tender sensibility, with an exquisite perception of beauty, with a retentive recollection of what she saw, with a felicitous tact in discerning, and admirable skill in delineating natural objects with graphic accuracy and vivid gracefulness. She weaned him from contemporary politics, and won him to beauty and truth."

Wordsworth himself, the most reliable informant as to what his sister did for him and was to him, says:

Depressed, bewildered thus, I did not walk With scoffers, seeking light and gay revenge From indiscriminate laughter, nor sit down In reconcilement with an utter waste Of intellect....

Then it was-- Thanks to the bounteous Giver of all good-- That the beloved sister in whose sight Those days were passed, now speaking in a voice Of sudden admonition--like a brook That did but cross a lonely road, now Is seen, heard, felt, and caught at every turn, Companion never lost through many a league-- Maintained for me a saving intercourse With my true self; for, though bedimmed and changed Much, as it seemed, I was no further changed Than as a clouded, and a waning moon; She whispered still that brightness would return. She, in the midst of all, preserved me still A poet; made me seek beneath that name, And that alone, my office upon earth.

The first home of William and Dorothy Wordsworth was at Racedown. Here their real life began for which their previous course had been a fitting preparation. Since the "home extinct" of their childhood they had both been more or less lonely; and now their dream was realised and their heart-yearning satisfied. It was not a life of idleness or self-indulgence. A singular similarity of taste and aim, added to the unusually strong natural affections, made existence for them a charm. Dorothy's strength of character is shown in the potent influence for good upon a nature like that of her brother. And she was as constant as faithful, as humble as powerful. Through a long life she never wavered; as year by year passed, her skill and judgment gaining maturity, her devotion appears in greater beauty.

It was while at Racedown that the friendship of Coleridge was made, a friendship close and lasting. For the sake of his companionship the Wordsworths soon went to reside at Alfoxden, in the neighbourhood of Nether Stowey. This proved to be a happy and fruitful period. The three poets (for Dorothy was essentially a poet) were almost inseparable, their rambles together by hill and combe and stream being followed by high discourse and mutual work in the dim lamp-light. Here the Lyrical ballads were written.

Alfoxden did not, however, prove to be the poet's permanent home. After a residence there of about a little over a year, and a short period abroad, Wordsworth and his sister fixed upon the centre of England's lakeland as the scene of their future life. In the loved vale of Grasmere, on December 21, 1799, they took up their abode in the now famous Dove Cottage, a home of memories without peer.[5]

[5] Dove Cottage is now National property. For some years it was among the most treasured possessions of the present writer, who, at the solicitation of the Rev. Stopford Brooke and others, recently conveyed it for the purpose of a Wordsworth Memorial. It is now vested in Trustees on behalf of the public in a similar way to Shakespeare's birthplace at Stratford-on-Avon.

How the poet and his sister came to love their retreat among the mountains is well known. The few following years were among the most fruitful of his life. His best and most important work was there done. The humble cottage and "garden orchard" are not only immortalised in his verse, but were the scene of his loftiest labours. And Dorothy, meanwhile, not only inspired his ardour, fed both thought and pen, but laboured with her hands in the kitchen and at the desk. The following extract from the recently published _Recluse_ (written at this time) not only shows Wordsworth's satisfaction with his choice of residence, but his sustained feeling of his exceeding indebtedness to his sister:--

Can the choice mislead, That made the calmest, fairest spot of earth. With all its unappropriated good, My own; and not mine only, for with me Entrenched, say rather peacefully embowered, Under yon orchard, in yon humble cot, A younger orphan of a home extinct, The only daughter of my parents dwells. Aye, think on that, my heart, and cease to stir; Pause upon that, and let the breathing frame No longer breathe, but all be satisfied. Oh, if such a silence be not thanks to God For what hath been bestowed, then where, where then Shall gratitude find rest? Mine eyes did ne'er Fix on a lovely object, nor my mind Take pleasure in the midst of happy thoughts, But either she whom now I have, who now Divides with me this loved abode, was there, Or not far off. Where'er my footsteps turned, Her voice was like a hidden bird that sang; The thought of her was like a flash of light, Or an unseen companionship--a breath Of fragrance independent of the wind. In all my goings, in the new and old, Of all my meditations, and in this Favourite of all, in this the most of all.

Probably warmer and more loving praise was never bestowed or more happily expressed than is contained in these lines, unless, indeed, it be in the following, in which the poet, again alluding to his sister, speaks of the beneficent character of their intercourse:--

She who dwells with me, whom I have loved With such communion, that no place on earth Can ever be a solitude to me....

Once more, recounting in the "Prelude" the master influences which had entered into his life, prominent place is given to that exerted by his sister:--

Child of my parents! Sister of my soul! Thanks in sincerest verse have been elsewhere Poured out for all the early tenderness Which I from thee imbibed; and 'tis most true That later seasons owed to thee no less; For, spite of thy sweet influence, and the touch Of kindred hands that opened out the springs Of genial thought in childhood, and in spite Of all that, unassisted, I had marked In life, or nature, of those charms minute, That win their way into the heart by stealth, Still, to the very going out of youth, I, too, exclusively esteemed _that_ love, And sought _that_ beauty, which, as Milton sings, Hath terror in it; but thou didst soften down This over sternness; but for thee, dear friend! My soul, too reckless of mild grace, had stood In her original self too confident, Retained too long a countenance severe; A rock with torrents roaring, with the clouds Familiar, and a favourite of the stars: But thou didst plant its crevices with flowers, Hang it with shrubs that twinkle in the breeze, And teach the little birds to build their nests And warble in its chambers. At a time When Nature, destined to remain so long Foremost in my affections, had fallen back Into a second place, pleased to become A handmaid to a nobler than herself, When every day brought with it some new sense Of exquisite regard for common things, And all the earth was budding with these gifts Of more refined humanity, thy breath, Dear sister, was a kind of gentler spring That went before my steps.

The marriage of Wordsworth, in 1802, did not occasion any waning of sympathy or cessation of intercourse between him and his sister. The circle was then only widened, not broken. Dorothy continued to be an honoured inmate of her brother's home, the sharer of his labours, and companion of his walks and excursions; in speech as well as in silence together garnering scenes of beauty and flowers of thought both for their own future lives and the world's weal. Thus the years passed with them calmly; each in its varying experiences of intense life--life haloed by the inward eye which glorifies the daily task, and finds in all Nature a fitting shrine--worth a decade of common days. It was a time of rare friendships also. It was by no means true of the Wordsworths that they withdrew themselves from the world in a selfish seclusion. Necessarily they were sensitive, and shunned the world's loud ways. If this had not been so we should never have had some of the finest poems in the language. To the humble cottage at Grasmere came, however, for treasured intercourse with the great master, many of the most gifted and cultured men of the time. But not for these only did Wordsworth live and write. He loved, and moved in and out among the sturdy and independent dalesmen among whom he had chosen to pass his life. There he found food for thought and pen, and perhaps never became grander in song or higher as a teacher than in delineating human life and nature as found in lowly homes.