MARRIAGE--SOCIETY--HIGHLAND TOUR.
With Wordsworth's settlement at Townend, Grasmere, in the closing
days of the last century, the external events of his life may be
said to come to an end. Even his marriage to Miss Mary Hutchinson,
of Penrith, on October 4, 1802, was not so much an importation into
his existence of new emotion, as a development and intensification of
feelings which had long been there. This marriage was the crowning
stroke of Wordsworth's felicity--the poetic recompense for his
steady advocacy of all simple and noble things. When he wished to
illustrate the true dignity and delicacy of rustic lives he was
always accustomed to refer to the Cumbrian folk. And now it seemed
that Cumberland requited him for his praises with her choicest boon;
found for him in the country town of Penrith, and from the small and
obscure circle of his connexions and acquaintance,--nay, from the
same dame's school in which he was taught to read,--a wife such as
neither rank nor young beauty nor glowing genius enabled his brother
bards to win.
Mrs. Wordsworth's poetic appreciativeness, manifest to all who knew
her, is attested by the poet's assertion that two of the best lines
in the poem of _The Daffodils_--
They flash, upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude,--
were of her composition. And in all other matters, from the highest
to the lowest, she was to him a true helpmate, a companion "dearer
far than life and light are dear," and able "in his steep march to
uphold him to the end." Devoted to her husband, she nevertheless
welcomed not only without jealousy but with delight the household
companionship through life of the sister who formed so large an
element in his being. Admiring the poet's genius to the full, and
following the workings of his mind with a sympathy that never tired,
she nevertheless was able to discern, and with unobtrusive care to
hide or avert, those errors of manner into which retirement and
sell-absorption will betray even the gentlest spirit. It speaks,
perhaps, equally well for Wordsworth's character that this tendency
to a lengthy insistence, in general conversation, on his own
feelings and ideas is the worst charge that can he brought against
him; and for Mrs. Wordsworth's, that her simple and rustic
upbringing had gifted her with a manner so gracious and a tact so
ready that in her presence all things could not but go well.
The life which the young couple led was one of primitive simplicity.
In some respects it was even less luxurious than that of the
peasants around them. They drank water, and ate the simplest fare.
Miss Wordsworth had long rendered existence possible for her brother
on the narrowest of means by her unselfish energy and skill in
household management; and "plain living and high thinking" were
equally congenial to the new inmate of the frugal home. Wordsworth
gardened; and all together, or oftenest the poet and his sister,
wandered almost daily over the neighbouring hills. If arrow means
did not prevent them from offering a generous welcome to their few
friends, especially Coleridge and his family, who repeatedly stayed
for months under Wordsworth's roof. Miss Wordsworth's unpublished
letters breathe the very spirit of hospitality in their naive
details of the little sacrifices gladly made for the sake of the
presence of these honoured guests. But for the most part their life
was solitary and uneventful. Books they had few; neighbours almost
none; and Miss Wordsworth's diary of these early years describes a
life seldom paralleled in its intimate dependence on external nature.
I take, almost at random, her account of a single day. "November 24,
1801. Read Chaucer. We walked by Gell's cottage. As we were going
along we were stopped at once, at the distance, perhaps, of fifty
yards from our favourite birch-tree; it was yielding to the gust of
wind, with all its tender twigs; the sun shone upon it, and it
glanced in the wind like a flying sunshiny shower. It was a tree in
shape, with stem and branches; but it was like a spirit of water.
After our return William read Spenser to us, and then walked to
John's Grove. Went to meet W." And from an unpublished letter of
Miss Wordsworth's, of about the same period (September 10, 1800), I
extract her description of the new home. "We are daily more delighted
with Grasmere and its neighbourhood. Our walks are perpetually varied,
and we are more fond of the mountains as our acquaintance with them
increases. We have a boat upon the lake, and a small orchard and
smaller garden, which, as it is the work of our own hands, we regard
with pride and partiality. Our cottage is quite large enough for us,
though very small; and we have made it neat and comfortable within
doors; and it looks very nice on the outside; for though the roses
and honeysuckles which we have planted against it are only of this
year's growth, yet it is covered all over with green leaves and
scarlet flowers; for we have trained scarlet beans upon threads,
which are not only exceedingly beautiful but very useful, as their
produce is immense. We have made a lodging-room of the parlour below
stairs, which has a stone floor, therefore we have covered it all
over with matting. We sit in a room above stairs, and we have one
lodging-room with two single beds, a sort of lumber-room, and a
small low unceiled room, which I have papered with newspapers, and
in which we have put a small bed. Our servant is an old woman of
sixty years of age, whom we took partly out of charity. She was very
ignorant, very foolish, and very difficult to teach. But the
goodness of her disposition, and the great convenience we should
find if my perseverance was successful, induced me to go on."
The sonnets entitled _Personal Talk_ give a vivid picture of the
blessings of such seclusion. There are many minds which will echo
the exclamation with which the poet dismisses his visitors and their
gossip:
Better than such discourse doth silence long,
Long barren silence, square with my desire;
To sit without emotion, hope, or aim,
In the loved presence of my cottage fire,
And listen to the flapping of the flame,
Or kettle whispering its faint undersong.
Many will look with envy on a life which has thus decisively cut
itself loose from the world; which is secure from the influx of
those preoccupations, at once distracting and nugatory, which deaden
the mind to all other stimulus, and split the river of life into
channels so minute that it loses itself in the sand.
Hence have I genial seasons; hence have I
Smooth passions, smooth discourse, and joyous thought.
Left to herself, the mind can expatiate in those kingdoms of the
spirit bequeathed to us by past generations and distant men, which
to the idle are but a garden of idleness, but to those who choose it
become a true possession and an ever widening home. Among those
"nobler loves and nobler cares" there is excitement without reaction,
there is an unwearied and impersonal joy--a joy which can only be
held cheap because it is so abundant, and can only disappoint us
through our own incapacity to contain it. These delights of study
and of solitude Wordsworth enjoyed to the full. In no other poet,
perhaps, have the poet's heightened sensibilities been productive of
a pleasure so unmixed with pain. The wind of his emotions blew right
abaft; he "swam smoothly in the stream of his nature, and lived but
one man."
The blessing of meditative and lonely hours must of course be
purchased by corresponding limitations. Wordsworth's conception of
human character retained to the end an extreme simplicity. Many of
life's most impressive phenomena were hid from his eyes. He never
encountered any of those rare figures whose aspect seems to justify
all traditions of pomp and pre-eminence when they appear amid
stately scenes as with a natural sovereignty. He neither achieved
nor underwent any of those experiences which can make all high
romance seem a part of memory, and bestow as it were a password and
introduction into the very innermost of human fates. On the other
hand, he almost wholly escaped those sufferings which exceptional
natures must needs derive from too close a contact with this
commonplace world. It was not his lot--as it has been the lot of so
many poets--to move amongst mankind at once as an intimate and a
stranger; to travel from disillusionment to disillusionment and from
regret to regret; to construct around him a world of ideal beings,
who crumble into dust at his touch; to hope from them, what they can
neither understand nor accomplish, to lavish on them what they can
never repay. Such pain, indeed, may become a discipline; and the
close contact with many lives may teach to the poetic nature lessons
of courage, of self-suppression, of resolute goodwill, and may
transform into an added dignity the tumult of emotions which might
else have run riot in his heart. Yet it is less often from moods of
self-control than from moods of self-abandonment that the fount of
poetry springs; and herein it was that Wordsworth's especial
felicity lay--that there was no one feeling in him which the world
had either repressed or tainted; that he had no joy which might not
be the harmless joy of all; and that therefore it was when he was
most unreservedly himself that he was most profoundly human. All
that was needful for him was to strike down into the deep of his
heart. Or, using his own words, we may compare his tranquil
existence to
A crystal river,
Diaphanous because it travels slowly,
and in which poetic thoughts rose unimpeded to the surface, like
bubbles through the pellucid stream.
The first hint of many of his briefer poems is to be found in his
sister's diary:
"April 15. 1802. When we were in the woods below Gowbarrow
Park we saw a few _daffodils_ close to the water side.
As we went along there were more, and yet more; and at last,
under the boughs of the trees, we saw there was a long belt of
them along the shore. I never saw daffodils so beautiful. They
grew among the mossy stones about them; some rested their
heads on the stones as on a pillow; the rest tossed, and reeled,
and danced, and seemed as if they verily danced with the wind,
they looked so gay and glancing."
"July 30, 1802. Left London between five and six o'clock
of the morning, outside the Dover coach. A beautiful morning.
The city, St. Paul's, with the river, a multitude of little boats,
made a beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge;
the houses not overhung by their clouds of smoke, were spread
out endlessly; yet the sun shone so brightly, with such a
pure light, that there was something like the purity of one
of Nature's own grand spectacles. Arrived at Calais at four
in the morning of July 31st. Delightful walks in the evenings,
seeing far off in the west the coast of England like a
cloud, crested with Dover Castle, the evening star, and the
glory of the sky. The reflections in the water were more
beautiful than the sky itself; purple waves brighter than
precious stones for ever melting away upon the sands."
How simple are the elements of these delights! There is nothing here,
except fraternal affection, a sunrise, a sunset, a flock of bright
wild flowers; and yet the sonnets on _Westminster Bridge_ and
_Calais Sands_, and the stanzas on the _Daffodils_, have taken
their place among the permanent records of the profoundest human joy.
Another tour,--this time through Scotland,--undertaken in August 1803,
inspired Wordsworth with several of his best pieces. Miss
Wordsworth's diary of this tour has been lately published, and
should be familiar to all lovers of Nature. The sister's journal is
indeed the best introduction to the brother's poems. It has not--it
cannot have--their dignity and beauty; but it exemplifies the same
method of regarding Nature, the same self-identification with her
subtler aspects and entrance into her profounder charm. It is
interesting to notice how the same impression strikes both minds at
once. From the sister's it is quickly reflected in words of
exquisite delicacy and simplicity; in the brother's it germinates,
and reappears, it may be months or years afterwards, as the nucleus
of a mass of thought and feeling which has grown round it in his
musing soul. The travellers' encounter with two Highland girls on
the shore of Loch Lomond is a good instance of this, "One of the
girls," writes Miss Wordsworth, "was exceedingly beautiful; and the
figures of both of them, in grey plaids falling to their feet, their
faces only being uncovered, excited our attention before we spoke to
them; but they answered us so sweetly that we were quite delighted,
at the same time that they stared at us with an innocent look of
wonder. I think I never heard the English language sound more
sweetly than from the mouth of the elder of these girls, while she
stood at the gate answering our inquiries, her face flushed with the
rain; her pronunciation was clear and distinct, without difficulty,
yet slow, as if like a foreign speech."
A face with gladness overspread!
Soft smiles, by human kindness bred!
And seemliness complete, that sways
Thy courtesies, about thee plays;
With no restraint, but such as springs
From quick and eager visitings
Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach
Of thy few words of English speech:
A bondage sweetly brooked, a strife
That gives thy gestures grace and life!
So have I, not unmoved in mind,
Seen birds of tempest-loving kind
Thus beating up against the wind.
The travellers saw more of this girl, and Miss Wordsworth's opinion
was confirmed. But to Wordsworth his glimpse of her became a
veritable romance. He commemorated it in his poem of _The Highland
Girl_, soon after his return from Scotland; he narrated it once more
in his poem of _The Three Cottage Girls_, written nearly twenty
years afterwards; and "the sort of prophecy," he says in 1843,
"with which the verses conclude, has, through God's goodness, been
realized; and now, approaching the close of my seventy-third year, I
have a most vivid remembrance of her, and the beautiful objects with
which she was surrounded." Nay, more; he has elsewhere informed us,
with some naïveté, that the first few lines of his exquisite poem to
his wife, _She was a phantom of delight_, were originally composed
as a description of this Highland maid, who would seem almost to
have formed for him ever afterwards a kind of type and image of
loveliness.
That such a meeting as this should have formed so long-remembered an
incident in the poet's life will appear, perhaps, equally ridiculous
to the philosopher and to the man of the world. The one would have
given less, the other would have demanded more. And yet the quest of
beauty, like the quest of truth, reaps its surest reward when it is
disinterested as well as keen; and the true lover of human-kind will
often draw his most exquisite moments from what to most men seems
but the shadow of a joy. Especially, as in this case, his heart will
be prodigal of the impulses of that protecting tenderness which it
is the blessing of early girlhood to draw forth unwittingly, and to
enjoy unknown,--affections which lead to no declaration, and desire
no return; which are the spontaneous effluence of the very Spirit of
Love in man; and which play and hover around winning innocence like
the coruscations round the head of the unconscious Iulus, a soft and
unconsuming flame.
It was well, perhaps, that Wordsworth's romance should come to him
in this remote and fleeting fashion. For to the Priest of Nature it
was fitting that all things else should be harmonious, indeed, but
accessory; that joy should not be so keen, nor sorrow no desolating,
nor love itself so wildly strong, as to prevent him from going out
upon the mountains with a heart at peace, and receiving "in a wise
passiveness" the voices of earth and heaven.