That portrait looking down so calmly from the wall is an original
picture of the poet Wordsworth, drawn in crayon a few years before he
died. He went up to London on purpose to sit for it, at the request of
Moxon, his publisher, and his friends in England always considered it a
perfect likeness of the poet. After the head was engraved, the artist's
family disposed of the drawing, and through the watchful kindness of my
dear old friend, Mary Russell Mitford, the portrait came across the
Atlantic to this house. Miss Mitford said America ought to have on view
such a perfect representation of the great poet, and she used all her
successful influence in my behalf. So there the picture hangs for
anybody's inspection at any hour of the day.
I once made a pilgrimage to the small market-town of Hawkshead, in the
valley of Esthwaite, where Wordsworth went to school in his ninth year.
The thoughtful boy was lodged in the house of Dame Anne Tyson in 1788;
and I had the good fortune to meet a lady in the village street who
conducted me at once to the room which the lad occupied while he was a
scholar under the Rev. William Taylor, whom he loved and venerated so
much. I went into the chamber which he afterwards described in The
Prelude, where he
"Had lain awake on summer nights to watch
The moon in splendor couched among the leaves
Of a tall ash, that near our cottage stood";
and I visited many of the beautiful spots which tradition points out as
the favorite haunts of his childhood.
It was true Lake-country weather when I knocked at Wordsworth's cottage
door, three years before he died, and found myself shaking hands with
the poet at the threshold. His daughter Dora had been dead only a few
months, and the sorrow that had so recently fallen upon the house was
still dominant there. I thought there was something prophet-like in the
tones of his voice, as well as in his whole appearance, and there was a
noble tranquillity about him that almost awed one, at first, into
silence. As the day was cold and wet, he proposed we should sit down
together in the only room in the house where there was a fire, and he
led the way to what seemed a common sitting or dining room. It was a
plain apartment, the rafters visible, and no attempt at decoration
noticeable. Mrs. Wordsworth sat knitting at the fireside, and she rose
with a sweet expression of courtesy and welcome as we entered the
apartment. As I had just left Paris, which was in a state of commotion,
Wordsworth was eager in his inquiries about the state of things on the
other side of the Channel. As our talk ran in the direction of French
revolutions, he soon became eloquent and vehement, as one can easily
imagine, on such a theme. There was a deep and solemn meaning in all he
had to say about France, which I recall now with added interest. The
subject deeply moved him, of course, and he sat looking into the fire,
discoursing in a low monotone, sometimes quite forgetful that he was not
alone and soliloquizing. I noticed that Mrs. Wordsworth listened as if
she were hearing him speak for the first time in her life, and the work
on which she was engaged lay idle in her lap, while she watched intently
every movement of her husband's face. I also was absorbed in the man and
in his speech. I thought of the long years he had lived in communion
with nature in that lonely but lovely region. The story of his life was
familiar to me, and I sat as if under the influence of a spell. Soon he
turned and plied me with questions about the prominent men in Paris whom
I had recently seen and heard in the Chamber of Deputies. "How did
Guizot bear himself? What part was De Tocqueville taking in the fray?
Had I noticed George Lafayette especially?" America did not seem to
concern him much, and I waited for him to introduce the subject, if he
chose to do so. He seemed pleased that a youth from a far-away country
should find his way to Rydal cottage to worship at the shrine of an old
poet.
By and by we fell into talk about those who had been his friends and
neighbors among the hills in former years. "And so," he said, "you read
Charles Lamb in America?" "Yes," I replied, "and _love_ him too." "Do
you hear that, Mary?" he eagerly inquired, turning round to Mrs.
Wordsworth. "Yes, William, and no wonder, for he was one to be loved
everywhere," she quickly answered. Then we spoke of Hazlitt, whom he
ranked very high as a prose-writer; and when I quoted a fine passage
from Hazlitt's essay on Jeremy Taylor, he seemed pleased at my
remembrance of it.
He asked about Inman, the American artist, who had painted his portrait,
having been sent on a special mission to Rydal by Professor Henry Reed
of Philadelphia, to procure the likeness. The painter's daughter, who
accompanied her father, made a marked impression on Wordsworth, and both
he and his wife joined in the question, "Are all the girls in America as
pretty as she?" I thought it an honor Mary Inman might well be proud of
to be so complimented by the old bard. In speaking of Henry Reed, his
manner was affectionate and tender.
Now and then I stole a glance at the gentle lady, the poet's wife, as
she sat knitting silently by the fireside. This, then, was the Mary whom
in 1802 he had brought home to be his loving companion through so many
years. I could not help remembering too, as we all sat there together,
that when children they had "practised reading and spelling under the
same old dame at Penrith," and that they had always been lovers. There
sat the woman, now gray-haired and bent, to whom the poet had addressed
those undying poems, "She was a phantom of delight," "Let other bards of
angels sing," "Yes, thou art fair," and "O, dearer far than life and
light are dear." I recalled, too, the "Lines written after Thirty-six
Years of Wedded Life," commemorating her whose
"Morn into noon did pass, noon into eve,
And the old day was welcome as the young,
As welcome, and as beautiful,--in sooth
More beautiful, as being a thing more holy."
When she raised her eyes to his, which I noticed she did frequently,
they seemed overflowing with tenderness.
When I rose to go, for I felt that I must not intrude longer on one for
whom I had such reverence, Wordsworth said, "I must show you my library,
and some tributes that have been sent to me from the friends of my
verse." His son John now came in, and we all proceeded to a large room
in front of the house, containing his books. Seeing that I had an
interest in such things, he seemed to take a real pleasure in showing me
the presentation copies of works by distinguished authors. We read
together, from many a well-worn old volume, notes in the handwriting of
Coleridge and Charles Lamb. I thought he did not praise easily those
whose names are indissolubly connected with his own in the history of
literature. It was languid praise, at least, and I observed he hesitated
for mild terms which he could apply to names almost as great as his own.
I believe a duplicate of the portrait which Inman had painted for Reed
hung in the room; at any rate a picture of himself was there, and he
seemed to regard it with veneration as we stood before it. As we moved
about the apartment, Mrs. Wordsworth quietly followed us, and listened
as eagerly as I did to everything her husband had to say. Her spare
little figure flitted about noiselessly, pausing as we paused, and
always walking slowly behind us as we went from object to object in the
room. John Wordsworth, too, seemed deeply interested to watch and listen
to his father. "And now," said Wordsworth, "I must show you one of my
latest presents." Leading us up to a corner of the room, we all stood
before a beautiful statuette which a young sculptor had just sent to
him, illustrating a passage in "The Excursion." Turning to me,
Wordsworth asked, "Do you know the meaning of this figure?" I saw at a
glance that it was
"A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract
Of inland ground, applying to his ear
The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell,"
and I quoted the lines. My recollection of the words pleased the old
man; and as we stood there in front of the figure he began to recite the
whole passage from "The Excursion," and it sounded very grand from the
poet's own lips. He repeated some fifty lines, and I could not help
thinking afterwards, when I came to hear Tennyson read his own poetry,
that the younger Laureate had caught something of the strange,
mysterious tone of the elder bard. It was a sort of chant, deep and
earnest, which conveyed the impression that the reciter had the highest
opinion of the poetry.
Although it was raining still, Wordsworth proposed to show me Lady
Fleming's grounds, and some other spots of interest near his cottage.
Our walk was a wet one; but as he did not seem incommoded by it, I was
only too glad to hold the umbrella over his venerable head. As we went
on, he added now and then a sonnet to the scenery, telling me precisely
the circumstances under which it had been composed. It is many years
since my memorable walk with the author of "The Excursion," but I can
call up his figure and the very tones of his voice so vividly that I
enjoy my interview over again any time I choose. He was then nearly
eighty, but he seemed hale and quite as able to walk up and down the
hills as ever. He always led back the conversation that day to his own
writings, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to
do so. All his most celebrated poems seemed to live in his memory, and
it was easy to start him off by quoting the first line of any of his
pieces. Speaking of the vastness of London, he quoted the whole of his
sonnet describing the great city, as seen in the morning from
Westminster Bridge. When I parted with him at the foot of Rydal Hill, he
gave me messages to Rogers and other friends of his whom I was to see in
London. As we were shaking hands I said, "How glad your many readers in
America would be to see you on our side of the water!" "Ah," he replied,
"I shall never see your country,--that is impossible now; but" (laying
his hand on his son's shoulder) "John shall go, please God, some day." I
watched the aged man as he went slowly up the hill, and saw him
disappear through the little gate that led to his cottage door. The ode
on "Intimations of Immortality" kept sounding in my brain as I came down
the road, long after he had left me.
Since I sat, a little child, in "a woman's school," Wordsworth's poems
had been familiar to me. Here is my first school-book, with a name
written on the cover by dear old "Marm Sloper," setting forth that the
owner thereof is "aged 5." As I went musing along in Westmoreland that
rainy morning, so many years ago, little figures seemed to accompany
me, and childish voices filled the air as I trudged through the wet
grass. My small ghostly companions seemed to carry in their little hands
quaint-looking dog's-eared books, some of them covered with cloth of
various colors. None of these phantom children looked to be over six
years old, and all were bareheaded, and some of the girls wore
old-fashioned pinafores. They were the schoolmates of my childhood, and
many of them must have come out of their graves to run by my side that
morning in Rydal. I had not thought of them for years. Little Emily
R---- read from her book with a chirping lisp:--
"O, what's the matter? what's the matter?
What is't that ails young Harry Gill?"