Part 14

In the "Reminiscences" of Wordsworth--written by the Hon. Mr. Justice Coleridge for the late Bishop of Lincoln's _Memoirs_ of his uncle--the following occurs. (See vol. ii. p. 311.) "His conversation was on critical subjects, arising out of his attempts to alter his poems. He said he considered _The White Doe_ as, in conception, the highest work he had ever produced. The mere physical action was all unsuccessful: but the true action of the poem was spiritual--the subduing of the will, and all inferior fancies, to the perfect purifying and spiritualizing of the intellectual nature; while the Doe, by connection with Emily, is raised as it were from its mere animal nature into something mysterious and saint-like. He said he should devote much labour to perfecting the execution of it in the mere business parts, in which, from anxiety 'to get on' with the more important parts, he was sensible that imperfections had crept in which gave the style a feebleness of character."

From this conversation--which took place in 1836--it will be seen that Wordsworth knew very well that there were feeble passages in the earlier editions; and that, in the thorough revision which he gave to all his poems in 1836-37, this one was specially singled out for "much labour." The result is seen by a glance at the changes of the text.

The notes appended by Wordsworth to the edition of 1815 explain some of the historical and topographical allusions in the poem. To these the following editorial notes may be added--

I. (See pp. 106, 107.)

_... Bolton's mouldering Priory._ ... _... the tower Is standing with a voice of power,_ ... _And in the shattered fabric's heart Remaineth one protected part; A Chapel, like a wild-bird's nest, Closely embowered and trimly drest._

In 1153, the canons of the Augustinian Priory at Embsay, near Skipton, were removed to Bolton, by William Fitz Duncan, and his wife, Cecilia de Romillé, who granted it by charter in exchange for the Manors of Skibdem and Stretton. The establishment at Bolton consisted of a prior and about 15 canons, over 200 persons (including servants and lay brethren) being supported at Bolton. During the Scottish raids of the fourteenth century, the prior and canons had frequently to retreat to Skipton for safety. In 1542 the site of the priory and demesnes were sold to Harry Clifford, first Earl of Cumberland. From the last Earl of Cumberland it passed to the second Earl of Cork, and then to the Devonshire family, to which it still belongs. The following is part of the excellent account of the Priory, given in Murray's _Yorkshire_:--

"The chief relic of the Priory is the church, the nave of which after the Dissolution was retained as the chapel of this so-called 'Saxon-Cure.' This nave remains perfect, but the rest of the church is in complete ruin. The lower walls of the choir are Trans-Norman, and must have been built immediately after (if not before) the removal from Embsay. The upper walls and windows (the tracery of which is destroyed) are decorated. The nave is early English, and decorated; and the original west front remains with an elaborate Perpendicular front of excellent design, intended as the base of a western tower, which was never finished.... The nave (which has been restored under the direction of Crace)--the

"'One protected part In the shattered fabric's heart,'

is Early English on the south side, and Decorated on the north.... At the end of the nave aisle, enclosed by a Perpendicular screen, is a chantry, founded by the Mauleverers; and below it is the vault, in which, according to tradition, the Claphams of Beamsley and their ancestors the Mauleverers were interred upright--

"'Pass, pass who will, yon chantry door; And, through the chink in the fractured floor Look down, and see a griesly sight; A vault where the bodies are buried upright! There, face by face, and hand by hand, The Claphams and Mauleverers stand.'

"Whitaker, however, could never see this 'griesly sight' through the chink in the floor; and it is perhaps altogether traditional. The ruined portion of the church is entirely Decorated, with the exception of the lower walls of the choir. The transepts had eastern aisles. The north transept is nearly perfect: the south retains only its western wall, in which are two decorated windows. The piers of a central tower remain; but at what period it was destroyed, or if it was ever completed, is uncertain. The choir is long and aisleless. Some fragments of tracery remain in the south window, which was a very fine one. Below the window runs a Transitional Norman arcade. Some portions of tomb-slabs remain in the choir.... The church-yard lies on the north side of the ruins. This has been made classic ground by Wordsworth's poem."

II. (See p. 118.)

_... the shy recess Of Barden's lowly quietness._

Compare the poem _The Force of Prayer, or the Founding of Bolton Priory_, p. 204. Whitaker writes thus of the district of Upper Wharfedale at Barden. "Grey tower-like projections of rock, stained with the various hues of lichens, and hung with loose and streaming canopies of ling, start out at intervals." Before the restoration of Henry Clifford, the Shepherd-lord, to the estates of his ancestors--on the accession of Henry VII.--there was only a keeper's lodge or tower at Barden, "one of six which existed in different parts of Barden Forest. The Shepherd-lord, whose early life among the Cumberland Fells led him to seek quiet and retirement after his restoration, preferred Barden to his greater castles, and enlarged (or rather rebuilt) it so as to provide accommodation for a moderate train of attendants."

III. (See p. 121.)

_It was the time when England's Queen Twelve years had reigned, a Sovereign dread;_ ... _But now the inly-working North Was ripe to send its thousands forth, A potent vassalage, to fight In Percy's and in Neville's right_, etc.

The circumstances which led to the Rising in the North, and the chief incidents of that unfortunate episode in English history, are traced in detail by Mr. Froude, in the fifty-third chapter of his _History of England_. They are also summarized, in a lecture on _The White Doe of Rylstone_, by the late Principal Shairp, in his _Aspects of Poetry_, from which the following passage is an extract (pp. 346-48).

"The incidents on which the _White Doe_ is founded belong to the year 1569, the twelfth of Queen Elizabeth.

"It is well known that as soon as Queen Mary of Scotland was imprisoned in England, she became the centre around which gathered all the intrigues which were then on foot, not only in England but throughout Catholic Europe, to dethrone the Protestant Queen Elizabeth. Abroad, the Catholic world was collecting all its strength to crush the heretical island. The bigot Pope, Pius V., with the dark intriguer, Philip II. of Spain, and the savage Duke of Alva, were ready to pour their forces on the shores of England.

"At home, a secret negotiation for a marriage between Queen Mary and the Duke of Norfolk had received the approval of many of the chief English nobles. The Queen discovered the plot, threw Norfolk and some of his friends into the Tower, and summoned Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, immediately to appear at court. These two earls were known to be holding secret communications with Mary, and longing to see the old faith restored.

"On receiving the summons, Northumberland at once withdrew to Brancepeth Castle, a stronghold of the Earl of Westmoreland. Straightway all their vassals rose, and gathered round the two great earls. The whole of the North was in arms. A proclamation went forth that they intended to restore the ancient religion, to settle the succession to the crown, and to prevent the destruction of the old nobility. As they marched forward they were joined by all the strength of the Yorkshire dales, and, among others, by a gentleman of ancient name, Richard Norton, accompanied by eight brave sons. He came bearing the common banner, called the Banner of the Five Wounds, because on it was displayed the Cross with the five wounds of our Lord. The insurgents entered Durham, tore the Bible, caused mass to be said in the cathedral, and then set forward as for York. Changing their purpose on the way, they turned aside to lay siege to Barnard Castle, which was held by Sir George Bowes for the Queen. While they lingered there for eleven days, Sussex marched against them from York, and the earls, losing heart, retired towards the Border, and disbanded their forces, which were left to the vengeance of the enemy, while they themselves sought refuge in Scotland. Northumberland, after a confinement of several years in Loch Leven Castle, was betrayed by the Scots to the English, and put to death. Westmoreland died an exile in Flanders, the last of the ancient house of the Nevilles, earls of Westmoreland. Norton, with his eight sons, fell into the hands of Sussex, and all suffered death at York. It is the fate of this ancient family on which Wordsworth's poem is founded."

This statement as to the fate of Norton's sons, however, is not borne out by the historians. Mr. Froude says (_History of England_, chap. 53), "Two sons of old Norton and two of his brothers, after long and close cross-questioning in the Tower, were tried and convicted at Westminster. Two of these Nortons were afterwards pardoned. Two, one of whom was Christopher, the poor youth who had been bewildered by the fair eyes of the Queen of Scots at Bolton, were put to death at Tyburn, with the usual cruelties."

IV. (See p. 127.)

_For we must fall, both we and ours-- This Mansion and these pleasant bowers, Walks, pools, and arbours, homestead, hall-- Our fate is theirs, will reach them all._

Little now remains of Rylstone Hall but the site. "Some garden flowers still, as when Whitaker wrote, mark the site of the pleasaunce. The house fell into decay immediately after the attainder of the Nortons; and, with the estates here, remained in the hands of the Crown until the second year of James I., when they were granted to the Earl of Cumberland. Although Wordsworth makes the Nortons raise their famous banner here, they assembled their followers in fact at Ripon (November 18, 1569), but their Rylstone tenants rose with them."

V. (See p. 137.)

_Until Lord Dacre with his power From Naworth come; and Howard's aid Be with them openly displayed._

Naworth Castle, at the head of the vale of Llanercort, in the Gilsland district of Cumberland, was the seat of the Dacres from the reign of Edward III. George, Lord Dacre, the last heir-male of that family, was killed in 1559; and Lord William Howard (the third son of Thomas, Duke of Norfolk), who was made Warden of the Borders by Queen Elizabeth, and did much to introduce order and good government into the district, married the heiress of the Dacre family, and succeeded to the castle and estate of Naworth. The arms over the entrance of the castle are the Howard's and Dacre's quartered.

VI. (See p. 137.)

_... mitred Thurston--what a Host He conquered!..._ _... while to battle moved The Standard, on the Sacred Wain That bore it...._

The Battle of the Standard was fought in 1137.

"One gleam of national glory broke the darkness of the time. King David of Scotland stood first among the partizans of his kinswoman Matilda, and on the accession of Stephen his army crossed the border to enforce her claim. The pillage and cruelties of the wild tribes of Galloway and the Highlands roused the spirit of the north; baron and freeman gathered at York round Archbishop Thurstan, and marched to the field of Northallerton to await the foe. The sacred banners of St. Cuthbert of Durham, St. Peter of York, St. John of Beverley, and St. Wilfrid of Ripon, hung from a pole fixed in a four-wheeled car, which stood in the centre of the host. 'I who wear no armour,' shouted the chief of the Galwegians, 'will go as far this day as any one with breastplate of mail;' his men charged with wild shouts of 'Albin, Albin,' and were followed by the Norman knighthood of the Lowlands. The rout, however, was complete; the fierce hordes dashed in vain against the close English ranks around the Standard, and the whole army fled in confusion to Carlisle." (J. R. Green's _Short History of the English People_, p. 99.)

VII. (See p. 153.)

_High on a point of rugged ground Among the wastes of Rylstone Fell Above the loftiest ridge or mound Where foresters or shepherds dwell, An edifice of warlike frame Stands single--Norton Tower its name-- It fronts all quarters, and looks round O'er path and road, and plain and dell, Dark moor, and gleam of pool and stream Upon a prospect without bound._

"Some mounds near the tower are thought to have been used as butts for archers; and there are traces of a strong wall, running from the tower to the edge of a deep glen, whence a ditch runs to another ravine. This was once a pond, used by the Nortons for detaining the red deer within the township of Rylstone, which they asserted was not within the forest of Skipton, and consequently that the Cliffords had no right to hunt therein. The Cliffords eventually became lords of all the Norton lands here."

* * * * *

In January 1816, Wordsworth wrote thus to his friend Archdeacon Wrangham.

"Of _The White Doe_ I have little to say, but that I hope it will be acceptable to the intelligent, for whom alone it is written. It starts from a high point of imagination, and comes round, through various wanderings of that faculty, to a still higher--nothing less than the apotheosis of the animal who gives the first of the two titles to the poem. And as the poem thus begins and ends with pure and lofty imagination, every motive and impetus that actuates the persons introduced is from the same source; a kindred spirit pervades, and is intended to harmonise, the whole. Throughout objects (the banner, for instance) derive their influence, not from properties inherent in them, not from what they _are_ actually in themselves, but from such as are _bestowed_ upon them by the minds of those who are conversant with, or affected by, these objects. Thus the poetry, if there be any in the work, proceeds, as it ought to do, from the _soul of man_, communicating its creative energies to the images of the external world."

The following is from a letter to Southey in the same year:--"Do you know who reviewed _The White Doe_ in the 'Quarterly'? After having asserted that Mr. W. uses his words without any regard to their sense, the writer says that on no other principle can he explain that Emily is _always_ called 'the consecrated Emily.' Now, the name Emily occurs just fifteen times in the poem; and out of these fifteen, the epithet is attached to it _once_, and that for the express purpose of recalling the scene in which she had been consecrated by her brother's solemn adjuration, that she would fulfil her destiny, and become a soul,

"'By force of sorrows high Uplifted to the purest sky Of undisturbed mortality.'

The point upon which the whole moral interest of the piece hinges, when that speech is closed, occurs in this line,--

"'He kissed the consecrated Maid;'

And to bring back this to the reader, I repeated the epithet."

In a letter to Wordsworth about _The Waggoner_, Charles Lamb wrote, June 7, 1819, "I re-read _The White Doe of Rylstone_; the title should be always written at length, as Mary Sabilla Novello, a very nice woman of our acquaintance, always signs hers at the bottom of the shortest note.... Manning had just sent it home, and it came as fresh to me as the immortal creature it speaks of. M. sent it home with a note, having this passage in it: 'I cannot help writing to you while I am reading Wordsworth's poem.... 'Tis broad, noble, poetical, with a masterly scanning of human actions, absolutely above common readers.'" (See _The Letters of Charles Lamb_, edited by Alfred Ainger, vol. ii. pp. 25, 26.)

Henry Crabb Robinson's judgment, as given in his _Diary_, June 1815, is interesting. (See vol. i. p. 484.)

The following is from Principal Shairp's estimate of _The White Doe of Rylstone_ in his Oxford Lectures, _Aspects of Poetry_ (chapter xii. pp. 373-76). "What is it that gives to it" (the poem) "its chief power and charm? Is it not the imaginative use which the poet has made of the White Doe? With her appearance the poem opens, with her re-appearance it closes. And the passages in which she is introduced are radiant with the purest light of poetry. A mere floating tradition she was, which the historian of Craven had preserved. How much does the poet bring out of how little! It was a high stroke of genius to seize on this slight traditionary incident, and make it the organ of so much. What were the objects which he had to describe and blend into one harmonious whole. They were these:

"1. The last expiring gleam of feudal chivalry, ending in the ruin of an ancient race, and the desolation of an ancestral home.

"2. The sole survivor, purified and exalted by the sufferings she had to undergo.

"3. The pathos of the decaying sanctities of Bolton, after wrong and outrage, abandoned to the healing of nature and time.

"4. Lastly, the beautiful scenery of pastoral Wharfdale, and of the fells around Bolton, which blend so well with these affecting memories.

"All these were before him--they had melted into his imagination, and waited to be woven into one harmonious creation. He takes the White Doe, and makes her the exponent, the symbol, the embodiment of them all. The one central aim--to represent the beatification of the heroine--how was this to be attained? Had it been a drama, the poet would have made the heroine give forth in speeches, her hidden mind and character. But this was a romantic narrative. Was the poet to make her soliloquise, analyse her own feelings, lay bare her heart in metaphysical monologue? This might have been done by some modern poets, but it was not Wordsworth's way of exhibiting character, reflective though he was. When he analyses feelings they are generally his own, not those of his characters. To shadow forth that which is invisible, the sanctity of Emily's chastened soul, he lays hold of this sensible image--a creature, the purest, most innocent, most beautiful in the whole realm of nature--and makes her the vehicle in which he embodies the saintliness which is a thing invisible. It is the hardest of all tasks to make spiritual things sensuous, without degrading them. I know not where this difficulty has been more happily met; for we are made to feel that, before the poem closes, the Doe has ceased to be a mere animal, or a physical creature at all, but in the light of the poet's imagination, has been transfigured into a heavenly apparition--a type of all that is pure, and affecting, and saintly. And not only the chastened soul of her mistress, but the beautiful Priory of Bolton, the whole Vale of Wharfe, and all the surrounding scenery, are illumined by the glory which she makes; her presence irradiates them all with a beauty and an interest more than the eye discovers. Seen through her as an imaginative transparency, they become spiritualized; in fact, she and they alike become the symbol and expression of the sentiment which pervades the poem--a sentiment broad and deep as the world. And yet, any one who visits these scenes, in a mellow autumnal day, will feel that she is no alien or adventitious image, imported by the caprice of the poet, but altogether native to the place, one which gathers up and concentrates all the undefined spirit and sentiment which lie spread around it. She both glorifies the scenery by her presence, and herself seems to be a natural growth of the scenery, so that it finds in her its most appropriate utterance. This power of imagination to divine and project the very corporeal image which suits and expresses the image of a scene, Wordsworth has many times shown....

"And so the poem has no definite end, but passes off, as it were, into the illimitable. It rises out of the perturbations of time and transitory things, and, passing upward itself, takes our thoughts with it to calm places and eternal sunshine."--ED.

VARIANTS:

[1] 1837.

... born of heavenly birth, 1815.

[2] 1837.

... which ... 1815.

[3] 1837.

... is ... 1815.

[4] 1820.

... of the crystal Wharf, 1815.

[5] 1837.

A rural Chapel, neatly drest, In covert like a little nest; 1815.

[6] 1837.

And faith and hope are in their prime, 1815.

[7]

And right across the verdant sod Towards the very house of God;

Inserted in the editions of 1815 to 1832.

[8] 1837.

A gift ... 1815.

[9] 1837.

Is through ... 1815.

[10] 1837.

... she no less To the open day gives blessedness. 1815.

[11] 1837.

... hand of healing,-- The altar, whence the cross was rent, Now rich with mossy ornament,-- The dormitory's length laid bare, Where the wild-rose blossoms fair; And sapling ash, whose place of birth Is that lordly chamber's hearth? 1815.

For altar, ... 1827.

Or dormitory's length ... 1827.

[12] 1837.

Methinks she passeth by the sight, 1815.

[13] 1827.

And in this way she fares, till at last 1815.

[14] 1845.

Gently ... 1815.

[15] 1837.

Like the river in its flowing; Can there be a softer sound? 1815.

[16] 1837.

--When now again the people rear A voice of praise, with awful chear! 1815.

[17] 1837.

Turn, with obeisance gladly paid, Towards the spot, where, full in view, The lovely Doe of whitest hue, 1815.

[18]

This whisper soft repeats what he Had known from early infancy.

In the editions of 1815 to 1832 the paragraph begins with these lines.

[19] 1837.

... is ... 1815.

[20] 1837.

Who in his youth had often fed 1815.

... hath ... 1827.

[21] 1837.

And lately hath brought home the scars Gathered in long and distant wars-- 1815.

[22] 1837.

... hath mounted ... 1815.

[23] 1837.

... when God's grace At length had in her heart found place, 1815.

[24] 1837.

Well may her thoughts be harsh; for she Numbers among her ancestry 1815.

[25] 1827.

... Cumbria's ... 1815.

[26] 1837.

... humble ... 1815.

[27] 1837.

... through strong desire Searching the earth with chemic fire: 1815.

[28] These two lines were added in the edition of 1837.

[29] 1837.

By busy dreams, and fancies wild; 1815.

[30] 1840.

Thou hast breeze-like visitings; For a Spirit with angel wings Hath touched thee, ... 1815.

A Spirit, with angelic wings, In soft and breeze-like visitings, Has touched thee-- ... 1837.