o' goin' out wi' his family, and saying nowt to noan of 'em. When a
man goes in a family way he keeps together wi' 'em and chats a bit
wi' 'em, but many's a time I've seed him a takkin' his family out in
a string, and niver geein' the {42} deariest bit of notice to 'em;
standin' by hissel' and stoppin' behint agapin', wi' his jaws warkin'
the whoal time; but niver no cracking wi' 'em, nor no pleasure in
'em,--a desolate-minded man, ye kna. Queer thing that, mun, but it
was his hobby, ye kna. It was potry as did it. We all hev our
hobbies--somes for huntin', some cardin', some fishin', some
wrustlin'. He never followed nowt nobbut a bit o' skating, happen.
Eh, he was fond of going on in danger times;--he was always furst on
t' Rydal howiver; but his hobby, ye mun kna, was potry. It was a
queer thing, but it would like eneuf cause him to be desolate; and
I'se often thowt that his brain was that fu' of sic stuff, that he
was forced to be always at it whether or no, wet or fair, mumbling to
hissel' along t' roads.'
'Do you think,' I asked, 'that he had any friends among the
shepherds?'
'Naay, naay, he cared nowt about fwoak, nor sheep, nor dogs (he hed a
girt fine yan, weighed nine stone, to guard t' hoose) not nea mair
than he did aboot t' claes he hed on--his hobby was potry.'
'How did he generally dress?'
'Well, in my time them swallow-lappeted yans was in vogue, but he
kep' to all-round {43} plain stuff, and I mind hed a cap wi' a neb
tull it. He wore that maist days.'
'Did you ever read his poetry, or see any books about it in the
farm-houses?' I asked.
'Ay, ay, time or two. But ya're weel aware there's potry and potry.
There's potry wi' a li'le bit pleasant in it, and potry sec as a man
can laugh at or t' childer understand, and some as taks a deal o'
mastery to mak' oot what's said, and a deal of Wudsworth's was this
sort, ye kna. You cud tell fra t' man's faace his potry wad nivver
hev nea laugh in it.
'His potry was quite different wark frae li'le Hartley. Hartley wad
gang runnin' beside o' t' becks and mak his, and gang in t' furst
open deur and write what he hed gittin' on t' paper. But Wudsworth's
potry was real hard stuff, and bided a deal of makkin', and he'd keep
it in his head for lang eneuf. Eh, but it's queer, mon, different
ways fwoaks hes of makkin' potry now. Fowks gaes a deal to see whar
he's interred; but for my part I'd walk twice distance ower t' Fells
to see whar Hartley lies. Not bit what Mr. Wudsworth didn't stand
verra high, and was a weel-spoken man eneuf, but quite yan to hissel.
Well, well, good-day.' And so we {44} rose to go; he to his farm, I
to my note-book.
I pass over sundry interviews of minor import, and will detail as
accurately as I can the result of several conversations with one who
as a boy lived as page, or butler's assistant, at Rydal Mount, and
now himself in total eclipse (for he is blind) delights to handle and
show with pride the massy, old-fashioned square glazed hand-lantern,
that lighted his master the poet on his favourite evening walks.
We go through Ambleside to reach his house, and call for a moment at
the shop of a man for whom on his wedding-day Hartley Coleridge wrote
the touching sonnet in which he describes himself as
Untimely old, irreverendly grey,
and he will tell us that Mr. Wordsworth was not a man of very
outgoing ways with folk, a plain man, a very austere man, and one who
was ponderous in his speech. That he called very often at his shop,
and would talk, 'but not about much,' just passing the day. He will
tell us that Mrs. Wordsworth was a very plain-faced lady, but will
add that, 'for {45} aw that, Mr. Wordsworth and she were very fond of
one another.'
There is, as one would expect, a sort of general feeling among the
dalesmen that it was rather a strange thing that two people so
austere and uncomely in mere line of feature or figure should be so
much in love, and so gentle and considerate in their lives. I say as
we should expect, for the men of Lakeland and the women of Lakeland
are notably comely, their features notably regular. I do not myself
know of a single instance of a really ugly married woman among the
peasants that I have met with in Westmoreland. But at the same time
we must remember that the word 'plain,' whether applied to dress or
feature, in Westmoreland, means for the most part simple, homely,
unpretending, unassuming, and is often a term of honour rather than
dispraise.
We shall, perhaps, as we near the village where our blind friend
lives, meet with an old man who will tell us that he helped to bear
both the poet and his wife to the grave, but he will add that he was
not 'over weel acquent wi' 'em, though he knas the room they both
died in,' and that the time he saw most of the poet was the occasion
{46} when he conducted Queen Adelaide 'to see the Rydal Falls, and
all about.'
We have got to the end of our walk, and here, picking his way by
means of his trusty sounding-staff backwards and forwards in the
sunshine he feels, but cannot see, is the old man, or rather old
gentleman who in former times 'took sarvice along of Mr. Wudsworth,'
and was 'so well pleased with his master that he could verra weel hev
ended his days at t' Mount,' but found it was over quiet, and,
wanting to see the world beyond the charmed circle of the hills, left
a good place, but not before he had formed his opinion of both master
and mistress, and obtained indelible impressions of their several
personalities, and had conceived along with these an affection for
them which glows in his words as he talks to us of them. 'Mr.
Wudsworth was a plaain-feaced man, and a mean liver.' The
description, as I hinted in the preface, would have staggered a
philo-Wordsworthian unaccustomed to the native dialect. 'But he was
a good master and kind man; and as for Mrs. Wudsworth, she was a
downright cliver woman, as kep' accounts, and was a reg'lar manasher.
He {47} never know'd, bless ye, what he hed, nor what he was wuth,
nor whether there was owt to eat in t' house, nivver.'
'But you say,' I interposed, 'that he didn't care much whether there
was or was not food in the house.'
'Nay, nay, Wudsworth was a man as was fond of a good dinner at times,
if you could get him to it, that was t' job; not but what he was a
very temperate man i' all things, vara, but they was all on 'em mean
livers, and in a plain way. It was poddish for t' breakfast, and a
bit o' mutton to t' dinner, and poddish at night, with a bit of
cheese happen to end up wi'.'
'You said it was hard to get him to his meals: what did you mean?' I
asked.
'Weel, weel, it was study as was his delight: he was aw for study;
and Mrs. Wudsworth would say, "Ring the bell," but he wouldn't stir,
bless ye. "Goa and see what he's doing," she'd say, and we wad goa
up to study door and hear him a mumbling and bumming through it.
"Dinner's ready, sir," I'd ca' out, but he'd goa mumbling on like a
deaf man, ya see. And sometimes Mrs. Wudsworth 'ud say, "Goa and
brek a bottle, or let a dish fall just outside door {48} in passage."
Eh dear, that maistly wad bring him out, wad that. It was nobbut
that as wad, howivver. For ye kna he was a verra careful man, and he
couldn't do with brekking t' china.'
'And was he continually at study in-doors, or did he rise early, go
out for a walk before breakfast, and study, as I have heard, mostly
in the open air?' I asked.
My friend answered at once. 'He was always at it, ye kna, but it was
nowt but what he liked, and not much desk-wark except when he had a
mind tul it. Noa, noa, he was quite a open-air man was Wudsworth:
studied a deal aboot t' roads. He wasn't particlar fond of gitten up
early, but did a deal of study efter breakfast, and a deal efter tea.
Walked t' roads efter dark, he wad, a deal, between his tea and
supper, and efter. Not a verra conversable man, a mumblin' and
stoppin', and seein' nowt nor neabody.'
[Illustration: DOROTHY WORDSWORTH.]
'And what were his favourite roads?' I asked, in an innocent way.
'Well, he was verra partial to ganging up to Tarn Foot in Easedale,
and was fondest o' walking by Red Bank and round by Barber's (the
late Miss Agar's house), or else {49} t'other way about and home by
Clappersgate and Brankers, under Loughrigg. Never was nowt of a
mountaineer, and Miss Dorothy 'companied him. Eh dear, many time
I've watched him coming round wi' t' lantern and her efter a walk by
night. You've heard tell of Miss Dorothy, happen. Well, fwoaks said
she was cliverest mon of the two at his job, and he allays went to
her when he was puzzelt. Dorothy hed t' wits, tho' she went wrang,
ye kna.'
'Then,' said I, 'Mrs. Wordsworth did not help the poet in writing his
verses?'
'Naay, naay. Why, she was a manasher, niver a studier, but for a'
that there's nea doot he and she was truly companionable, and they
wer terr'ble fond o' yan anudder. But Dorothy hed t' wits on 'em
boath.'
'And he was very devoted to his children,' I put in.
'Ay, ay, he was fond of children like eneuf, but children was nivver
verra fond o' him. Ye see he was a man 'o moods, nivver nea
certainty aboot him; and I'se not sea sure he was fond of other
fowk's bairns, but he was verra fond o' his ain wi'out a doot.'
'And was he very popular among the folk hereabouts?'
{50}
'There's nea doot but what he was fond of quality, and quality was
very fond o' him, but he niver exed fowk aboot their wark, nor
noticed t' flocks nor nowt: not but what he was a kind man if fwoaks
was sick and taen badly. But farming, nor beast, nor sheep, nor
fields wasn't in his way, he exed nea questions about flocks or
herds, and was a distant man, not what you might call an outward man
by noa means. And he was verra close, verra close indeed, fra
curious men. He'd gang t' other side o' t' road rather than pass a
man as exed questions a deal.'
It was a mercy, I thought to myself, that no Wordsworth Society had
invited me to collect and write down the results of a cross-question
tour in those days.
'But surely,' I said, 'he had some particular cottage or farm where
he would go and have a crack.'
'Naay, naay. He would go times or two to farm Dungeon Ghyll way, but
he wasn't a man for friends. He had some, neah doubt, in his walk of
life; he was ter'ble friends with the Doctor (Arnold) and Muster
Southey, and Wilson of Elleray and Hartley Coleridge. I'se seen him
many a time takkin' him out arm i' arm for a talking. But he {51}
was specially friendly with Professor. I mind one time when we was
driving, me and Mrs. Wudsworth and Miss Wudsworth, to Kendal, and
Professor Wilson was superintending making o' a bye road up by
Elleray there, and he was in his slippers. Nowt wud do but Wudsworth
must git down and fall to talkin', and we went on; but he didn't
come, and Mrs. Wudsworth said, 'Ye mun drive on; he'll pick us up at
Kendal: no knowing what's got him now Professor is wi' 'im.' Well,
well, she was right. For after putting up at Kendal, who should walk
in but Wudsworth and Professor wi'out any shoes to his feet neather,
for Wilson was in his slippers, and 'ad walk'd hissel' to his
stockin' feet, and left his stockin' on t' road an aw' far eneuf
before they got to Kendal.'
'But it was strange,' I said again in a suggestive way, 'that Mr.
Wordsworth should be so well "acquaint" with Professor Wilson, for he
was a great cock-fighting and wrestling man, was he not, in his day?'
'Ay, ay, biggest hereaboot,' my old friend replied. 'It's queer, but
it was along o' his study, ye kna. Wudsworth was nivver nea
cock-fyhter nor wrestler, no gaming man at all, and not a hunter, and
as for fishing {52} he hedn't a bit o' fish in him, hedn't
Wudsworth--not a bit of fish in him.'
'I have read in his books,' said I, 'things that make me feel he was
kind to dumb animals.'
'Naay, naay,' my friend broke in, 'Wrudsworth was nea dog fancier;
and as for cats, he couldn't abide them; and he didn't care for
sheep, or horses, a deal, but if he was fond of owt, it was of t'
_li'le ponies_. He was a man of fancies, ye kna. It was a fancy of
his. He was fond of li'le ponies, nivver rode a horse in his life,
nivver.'
'But he went over a deal of ground in his time. Was he always on his
feet?' I said.
'He went ower a deal mair ground nor ever he saw, for he went a deal
by night, but he was a man as took notice, ye kna, nivver forgat what
he saw, and he went slow.'
'But,' said I, 'how did he cover so much ground; was he never on
wheels?'
'Ay, ay, wheels, to be sure, he druv a' times, ye kna, in t' cart.
He, and Mrs. Wudsworth, and Dorothy and me, we went a deal by cart
Penrith way, and Borradale and Keswick way, and Langdale way at
times.'
'What sort of a cart?' I inquired.
{53}
'Dung cart, to be sure. Just a dung cart, wi' a seat-board in t'
front, and bit of bracken in t' bottom, comfortable as owt. We cud
ga that way for days, and far eneuf. Ye kna in them days tubs wasn't
known. Low-wood was nobbut a cottage, and there was never abuv six
or seven ponies for hiring at Ambleside. Tubs we ca' t' covered
carriages, tubs wasn't known in these parts. But happen there was a
tub or two at Kendal.'
'And you must have gone precious slowly,' I said.
'Ay, ay, slow eneuf, but that was Mr. Wudsworth's fancy, and he'd git
in and go along, and then he git down into t' road and walk a bit,
and mak a bit, and then he git oop and hum a bit to himsel, and then
he'd stop and hev a leuk here and there for a while. He was a man as
noticed a deal o' steans and trees, verra particler aboot t' trees,
or a rock wi' ony character in it. When they cut down coppy woods in
these parts they maistly left a bit of t' coppy just behint wall to
hide it for him, he was a girt judge in sic things, and noticed a
deal.'
'And would he,' I asked, 'tell you as you jogged along in the cart,
which mountain {54} he was fondest off, or bid you look at the
sunset?'
'Ay, ay, times he would say, "Now isn't that beautiful?" and times he
would hum on to himself. But he wasn't a man as would give a
judgment agean ony mountain. I've heard girt folks 'at com to t'
Mount say, "Now, Mr. Wudsworth, we want to see finest mountain in t'
country," and he would say, "Ivery mountain is finest." Ay, that's
what he would say.'
'But I have been told that his voice was very deep,' I put in, in a
happy-go-lucky way. 'Had he a loud laugh now?'
'I don't mind he iver laughed in his life, he'd smile times or two.
Ay, ay, his voice was deep one; bit I mind at t' family prayers in t'
morning he'd read a bit o' _the_ Scripture to us, and he was a verra
articulate, particlar good reader, was Mr. Wudsworth, always hed
family prayer in the morning, and went to church wi' prayer-book
under his arm, verra regular yance upon the Sunday, he did.' My
friend added, 'He was quite a serious-minded man, and a man of moods.'
Here ended my talk with the old retainer at the Mount. But I was not
allowed to go {55} off until I had seen and handled the old-fashioned
candle lattern by which, as my kind informant put it, the poet 'did a
deal of his study aboot t' roads efter dark.'
And so must end my plain unvarnished tale. I leave my indulgent
readers to form their own conclusions; merely suggesting that the
collected evidence points to a simple plainness and homeliness of
life such as remains indelibly impressed upon the men of
Westmoreland, whose own lives are less simple in these latter days,
when ostentation and vulgar pride of wealth in a class above them
have climbed the hills and possessed the valleys.
The testimony of the witnesses I have been fortunate enough to bring
before you seems to agree in depicting Wordsworth as he painted
himself, a plain man, continually murmuring his undersong as he
passed along by brook and woodland, pacing the ground with unuplifted
eye, but so retired, that even the North country peasant, who does
even yet recognise the social differences of class and caste that
separate and divide 'the unknown little from the unknowing great,'
was unable to feel at home with him. 'Not a very companionable man
at the best of times' was their verdict. But I think all the while
{56} these dalesmen seem to have felt that if the poet was not of
much count as a worldly-wise farm or shepherd authority, nor very
convivial and free and easy as li'le Hartley was, nor very athletic
and hearty as Professor Wilson, there was a something in the
severe-faced, simply habited man 'as said nowt to neabody' that made
him head and shoulders above the people, and bade them listen and
remember when he spoke, if it was only on the lopping of a tree or
the building of a chimney-stack. 'He was a man of a very practical
eye, and seemed to see everything,' was the feeling.
And turning from the poet to his wife, whilst one can see how the
household need of economy in early Town End days gave her to the last
the practical power of household management that had almost passed
into a proverb, one can see also how true was that picture of the
Being breathing thoughtful breath,
* * * * *
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command.
'He never knawed, they say, what he was wuth, nor what he hed i' t'
house.' She did it all. Then, too, it is touching to {57} notice
how deep and true the constant love between man and wife was seen to
be, how truly companions for life they were, and that, too, in the
eyes of a class of people who never saw that
Beauty born of murmuring sound
Had passed into her face,
and half marvelled that the spirit wed with spirit was so
marvellously closer than fleshly bond to flesh.
Upright, the soul of honour, and for that reason standing high with
all; just to their servants; well meaning and quiet in their public
life; full of affection in their simple home life; so it seems the
poet and his wife lived and died. Thought a deal of for the fact
that accounts were strictly met at the tradesmen's shops, they were
thought more of because they were ever ready to hear the cry of the
suffering, and to enter the doors of those ready to perish.
I do not think I have been able to tell the world anything new about
the poet or his surroundings. But the man 'who hedn't a bit of fish
in him, and was no mountaineer,' seems to have been in the eyes of
the people always at his studies; 'and that because he couldn't help
it, because it was his hobby,' {58} for sheer love, and not for
money. This astonished the industrious money-loving folk, who could
not understand the doing work for 'nowt,' and perhaps held the poet's
occupation in somewhat lighter esteem, just because it did not bring
in 'a deal o' brass to the pocket.' I think it is very interesting,
however, to notice how the woman part of the Rydal Mount family
seemed to the simple neighbourhood to have the talent and mental
ability; and there must have been, both about Dorothy Wordsworth and
the poet's daughter Dora, a quite remarkable power of inspiring the
minds of the poor with whom they came in contact, with a belief in
their intellectual faculties and brightness and cleverness. If
Hartley Coleridge was held by some to be Wordsworth's helper, it was
to Dorothy he was supposed by all to turn if 'ivver he was puzzelt.'
The women had 'the wits, or best part of 'em,'--this was proverbial
among the peasantry, and, as having been an article of rural faith,
it has been established out of the mouths of all the witnesses it has
been my lot to call.
{59}
WITH THE BLACK-HEADED GULLS IN CUMBERLAND.
There is no part of the Cumberland coast so full of witchery and
romance as the point where Muncaster Fell comes down to the sea. The
rivers of Irt, Mite and Esk, with their memories of the
pearl-fisheries of olden time, swirl down toward the ancient harbour
of the mythic 'King Aveling's Town.' One cannot look across the pool
at full tide without thought of how the Vikings pushed their ships
ashore here, when they came from Mona's Isle to harry Cumberland.
But the sound of earlier civilisations is in our ears as one gazes
across the Ravenglass sand-dunes; for here beside us is the great
cavern of ancient oaken-logs and earth, wherein the Cymri buried
their dead in prehistoric time, and there within a stone's throw
still upstands the seaside residence of some great Roman {60}
general, who was determined apparently to enjoy a well-heated house,
and to do honour to the _genius loci_. No one who visits 'Walls'
Castle, as it is called, but must be struck with the remains of the
'tepidarium,' and the little niche that held the statue of the
tutelary god, or a bust of the presiding Cæsar, within the ample hall.
Away at our back rises the Muncaster Fell with its grey beacon-tower,
its herd of deer, its wind-blown oaks, its primrose and bluebell
haunted woods, that slope towards the Vale of Esk. Further inland,
sheltered by its magnificent wall of forestry, stands rose-red one of
the most interesting of our northern castles, with its long
terrace-lawn of quite unequalled grace and loveliness. There in
sheltered combe the rhododendrons bloom from earliest spring, and the
air will to-day be honeysweet from laurel-flower far and wide.
But I was bent on seeing an older people than Cymri, Roman, Viking,
or Castle-Lord, albeit the line of Pennington reached far into the
past, and suited well his ancient castle hold. I had come in the
last week of April, by courteous invitation, to renew acquaintance
with that fast-growing colony of black-headed gulls that make the
dunes of Ravenglass famous.
{61}
A boat was called, and leaving the pebbly beach that 'Stott of
Oldham' so delights to paint, we rowed across the flooding tide of
the Ravenglass harbour to the sand-dunes of happy quietude, where the
oyster-catchers were sunning themselves, and where the sheldrake in
her nesting season loves to hide. As one went forward over the dunes
one felt back in the great desert of the Badiet-Tih, and expected to
see Bedouins start from the ground, and camels come in single file
with solemn sway round the sedge-tufted, wind-blown hillocks and
hummocks of glaring sand.
Then suddenly the silence of the waste was broken by a marvellous
sound, and a huge cloud of palpitating wings, that changed from black
to white and hovered and trembled against the grey sea or the blue
inland hills, swept by over-head. The black-headed gulls had heard
of our approach, and mightily disapproved of our trespass upon their
sand-blown solitude.
We sat down and the clamour died: the gulls had settled. Creeping
warily to the crest of a great billow of sand, we peeped beyond.
Below us lay a natural amphitheatre of grey-green grass that looked
as if it were starred with white flowers innumerable. We showed our
heads and the flowers all took wing, and the air was {62} filled
again with sound and intricate maze of innumerable wings.
We approached, and walking with care found the ground cup-marked with
little baskets or basket-bottoms roughly woven of tussock grass or
sea-bent. Each casket contained from two to three magnificent
jewels. These were the eggs we had come so far to see. There they
lay--deep brown blotched with purple, light bronze marked with brown,
pale green dashed with umber, white shading into blue. All colours
and all sizes; some as small as a pigeon's, others as large as a
bantam's. Three seemed to be the general complement. In one nest I
found four. The nests were so close to one another that I counted
twenty-six within a radius of ten yards; and what struck one most was
the way in which, instead of seeking shelter, the birds had evidently
planned to nest on every bit of rising ground from which swift
outlook over the gull-nursery could be obtained.
Who shall describe the uproar and anger with which one was greeted as
one stood in the midst of the nests? The black-headed gull swept at
one with open beak, and one found oneself involuntarily shading one's
face and protecting one's eyes as the savage little sooty-brown heads
swooped round one's head. But {63} we were not the only foes they
had had to battle with. The carrion crow had evidently been an
intruder and a thief; and many an egg which was beginning to be hard
set on, had been prey to the black robber's beak. One was being
robbed as I stood there in the midst of the hubbub.
Away, for what seemed the best part of a mile, the 'gullery'
stretched to the north in the direction of Seascale; and one felt
that, thanks to the public-spirited owner of the seaboard, and the
County Council of Cumberland, the black-headed gull was not likely to
diminish in this generation.
Back to the boat we went with a feeling that we owed large apologies
to the whole sea-gull race for giving this colony such alarm, and
causing such apparent disquietude of heart, and large thanks to the
lord of Muncaster for his ceaseless care of the wild sea-people whom
each year he entertains upon his golden dunes.
That evening I went back in memory to the marvellous sight in the
Gullery at Ravenglass. My thoughts took sonnet form as follows:
THE HOPE OF LIFE.
Sudden the lilies of each lonely mound
Sprang into voice and palpitating wing;
I seemed a guilty and unwelcome thing;
{64}
Ten thousand shadows round me and around
Perplexed the air and danced along the ground;
Each sooty head, in passion, dared to fling
A world's defiance--and I felt the sting
And arrows of that deprecating sound.