WESTMORELAND AND THE DALESMEN: SOCIETY OF THE LAKES[148]
[148] From _Tait's Magazine_ for January 1840.--M.
In February, as I have said, of 1809, I quitted Allan Bank; and, from
that time until the depth of summer, Miss Wordsworth was employed in
the task she had volunteered, of renewing and furnishing the little
cottage in which I was to succeed the illustrious tenant who had, in my
mind, hallowed the rooms by a seven years' occupation, during, perhaps,
the happiest period of his life--the early years of his marriage, and
of his first acquaintance with parental affections. Cottage, immortal
in my remembrance! as well it might be; for this cottage I retained
through just seven-and-twenty years: this was the scene of struggle
the most tempestuous and bitter within my own mind: this the scene
of my despondency and unhappiness: this the scene of my happiness--a
happiness which justified the faith of man's _earthly_ lot, as, upon
the whole, a dowry from heaven. It was, in its exterior, not so much
a picturesque cottage--for its outline and proportions, its windows
and its chimneys, were not sufficiently marked and effective for the
picturesque[149]--as it was lovely: one gable end was, indeed, most
gorgeously apparelled in ivy, and so far picturesque; but the principal
side, or what might be called front, as it presented itself to the
road, and was most illuminated by windows, was embossed--nay, it might
be said, smothered--in roses of different species, amongst which the
moss and the damask prevailed. These, together with as much jessamine
and honeysuckle as could find room to flourish, were not only in
themselves a most interesting garniture for a humble cottage wall, but
they also performed the acceptable service of breaking the unpleasant
glare that would else have wounded the eye from the whitewash; a glare
which, having been renewed amongst the general preparations against
my coming to inhabit the house, could not be sufficiently subdued
in tone for the artist's eye until the storm of several winters had
weather-stained and tamed down its brilliancy. The Westmoreland
cottages, as a class, have long been celebrated for their picturesque
forms, and very justly so: in no part of the world are cottages to be
found more strikingly interesting to the eye by their general outlines,
by the sheltered porches of their entrances, by their exquisite
chimneys, by their rustic windows, and by the distribution of the
parts. These parts are on a larger scale, both as to number and size,
than a stranger would expect to find as dependencies and out-houses
attached to dwelling-houses so modest; chiefly from the necessity of
making provision both in fuel for themselves, and in hay, straw, and
brackens for the cattle against the long winter. But, in praising the
Westmoreland dwellings, it must be understood that only those of the
native Dalesmen are contemplated; for, as to those raised by the alien
intruders--"the lakers," or "foreigners" as they are sometimes called
by the old indigenous possessors of the soil--these, being designed
to exhibit "a taste" and an eye for the picturesque, are pretty often
mere models of deformity, as vulgar and as silly as it is well possible
for any object to be in a case where, after all, the workman, and
obedience to custom, and the necessities of the ground, &c., will often
step in to compel the architects into common sense and propriety. The
main defect in Scottish scenery, the eyesore that disfigures so many
charming combinations of landscape, is the offensive style of the rural
architecture; but still, even where it is worst, the _mode_ of its
offence is not by affectation and conceit, and preposterous attempts at
realizing sublime, Gothic, or castellated effects in little gingerbread
ornaments, and "tobacco pipes," and make-believe parapets, and towers
like kitchen or hothouse flues; but in the hard undisguised pursuit of
mere coarse uses and needs of life.
[149] The idea of the picturesque is one which did not exist at
all until the post-Christian ages; neither amongst the Grecians
nor amongst the Romans; and _therefore_, as respects one reason,
it was, that the art of landscape painting did not exist (except
in a Chinese infancy, and as a mere trick of inventive ingenuity)
amongst the finest artists of Greece. What _is_ picturesque, as
placed in relation to the beautiful and the sublime? It is (to
define it by the very shortest form of words) the characteristic
pushed into a sensible excess. The prevailing character of any
natural object, no matter how little attractive it may be for
beauty, is always interesting for itself, as the character and
hieroglyphic symbol of the purposes pursued by Nature in the
determination of its form, style of motion, texture of
superficies, relation of parts, &c. Thus, for example, an
expression of dulness and somnolent torpor does not ally itself
with grace or elegance; but, in combination with strength and
other qualities, it may compose a character of serviceable and
patient endurance, as in the cart-horse, having unity in itself,
and tending to one class of uses sufficient to mark it out by
circumscription for a distinct and separate contemplation. Now,
in combination with certain counteracting circumstances, as with
the momentary energy of some great effort, much of this peculiar
character might be lost, or defeated, or dissipated. On that
account, the skilful observer will seek out circumstances that are
in harmony with the principal tendencies and assist them; such,
suppose, as a state of lazy relaxation from labour, and the fall
of heavy drenching rain causing the head to droop, and the shaggy
mane, together with the fetlocks, to weep. These, and other
circumstances of attitude, &c., bring out the character of
prevailing tendency of the animal in some excess; and, in such a
case, we call the resulting effect to the eye--picturesque: or in
fact, _characteresque_. In extending this speculation to objects
of art and human purposes, there is something more required of
subtle investigation. Meantime, it is evident that neither the
sublime nor the beautiful depends upon any _secondary_ interest of
a purpose or of a character expressing that purpose. They
(confining the case to visual objects) court the _primary_
interest involved in that (form, colour, texture, attitude,
motion) which forces admiration, which fascinates the eye, for
itself, and without a question of any distinct purpose: and,
instead of character--that is, discriminating and separating
expression, tending to the special and the individual--they both
agree in pursuing the Catholic, the Normal, the Ideal.
Too often, the rustic mansion, that should speak of decent poverty
and seclusion, peaceful and comfortable, wears the most repulsive
air of town confinement and squalid indigence; the house being built
of substantial stone, three storeys high, or even four, the roof of
massy slate; and everything strong which respects the future outlay
of the proprietor--everything frail which respects the comfort of the
inhabitants: windows broken and stuffed up with rags or old hats;
steps and door encrusted with dirt; and the whole tarnished with
smoke. Poverty--how different the face it wears looking with meagre
staring eyes from such a city dwelling as this, and when it peeps
out, with rosy cheeks, from amongst clustering roses and woodbines,
at a little lattice, from a little one-storey cottage! Are, then, the
main characteristics of the Westmoreland dwelling-houses imputable
to superior taste? By no means. Spite of all that I have heard Mr.
Wordsworth and others say in maintaining that opinion, I, for my
part, do and must hold, that the Dalesmen produce none of the happy
effects which frequently arise in their domestic architecture under
any search after beautiful forms, a search which they despise with a
sort of Vandal dignity; no, nor with any sense or consciousness of
their success. How then? Is it accident--mere casual good luck--that
has brought forth, for instance, so many exquisite forms of chimneys?
Not so; but it is this: it is good sense, on the one hand, bending and
conforming to the dictates or even the suggestions of the climate,
and the local circumstances of rocks, water, currents of air, &c.;
and, on the other hand, wealth sufficient to arm the builder with
all suitable means for giving effect to his purpose, and to evade
the necessity of make-shifts. But the radical ground of the interest
attached to Westmoreland cottage architecture lies in its submission
to the determining agencies of the surrounding circumstances; such
of them, I mean, as are permanent, and have been gathered from long
experience. The porch, for instance, which does so much to take away
from a house the character of a rude box, pierced with holes for air,
light, and ingress, has evidently been dictated by the sudden rushes of
wind through the mountain "ghylls," which make some kind of protection
necessary to the ordinary door; and this reason has been strengthened,
in cases of houses near to a road, by the hospitable wish to provide a
sheltered seat for the wayfarer; most of these porches being furnished
with one in each of the two recesses, to the right and to the left.
The long winter, again, as I have already said, and the artificial
prolongation of the winter by the necessity of keeping the sheep
long upon the low grounds, creates a call for large out-houses; and
these, for the sake of warmth, are usually placed at right angles to
the house; which has the effect of making a much larger system of
parts than would else arise. But perhaps the main feature which gives
character to the pile of building, is the roof, and, above all, the
chimneys. It is the remark of an accomplished Edinburgh artist, H.
W. Williams, in the course of his strictures[150] upon the domestic
architecture of the Italians, and especially of the Florentines,
that the character of buildings, in certain circumstances, "depends
wholly or chiefly on the form of the roof and the chimney. This," he
goes on, "is particularly the case in Italy, where more variety and
taste is displayed in the chimneys than in the buildings to which
they belong. These chimneys are as peculiar and characteristic as
palm trees in a tropical climate." Again, in speaking of Calabria
and the Ionian Islands, he says--"We were forcibly struck with the
consequence which the beauty of the chimneys imparted to the character
of the whole building." Now, in Great Britain, he complains, with
reason, of the very opposite result: not the plain building ennobled
by the chimney, but the chimney degrading the noble building, and in
Edinburgh especially, where the homely and inelegant appearance of the
chimneys contrasts most disadvantageously and offensively with the
beauty of the buildings which they surmount. Even here, however, he
makes an exception for some of the _old_ buildings, whose chimneys,
he admits, "are very tastefully decorated, and contribute essentially
to the beauty of the general effect." It is probable, therefore, and
many houses of the Elizabethan era confirm it, that a better taste
prevailed, in this point, amongst our ancestors, both Scottish and
English; that this elder fashion travelled, together with many other
usages, from the richer parts of Scotland to the Borders, and thence
to the vales of Westmoreland; where they have continued to prevail,
from their affectionate adhesion to all patriarchal customs. Some,
undoubtedly, of these Westmoreland forms have been dictated by the
necessities of the weather, and the systematic energies of human
skill, from age to age, applied to the very difficult task of training
smoke into obedience, under the peculiar difficulties presented by the
sites of Westmoreland houses. These are chosen, generally speaking,
with the same good sense and regard to domestic comfort, as the primary
consideration (without, however, disdainfully slighting the sentiment,
whatever it were, of peace, of seclusion, of gaiety, of solemnity, the
special "religio loci"), which seems to have guided the choice of those
who founded religious houses.
[150] "Travels in Italy, Greece, and the Ionian Islands," vol. i.
pp. 74, 75.
And here, again, by the way, appears a marked difference between the
Dalesmen and the intrusive gentry--not creditable to the latter. The
native Dalesman, well aware of the fury with which the wind often
gathers and eddies about any eminence, however trifling its elevation,
never thinks of planting his house _there_: whereas the stranger,
singly solicitous about the prospect or the range of lake which his
gilt saloons are to command, chooses his site too often upon points
better fitted for a temple of Eolus than a human dwelling-place; and
he belts his house with balconies and verandas that a mountain gale
often tears away in mockery. The Dalesman, wherever his choice is not
circumscribed, selects a sheltered spot (a _wray_,[151] for instance),
which protects him from the wind altogether, upon one or two quarters,
and on all quarters from its tornado violence: he takes good care, at
the same time, to be within a few feet of a mountain beck: a caution
so little heeded by some of the villa founders that absolutely, in a
country surcharged with water, they have sometimes found themselves
driven, by sheer necessity, to the after-thought of sinking a well. The
very best situation, however, in other respects, may be bad in one,
and sometimes find its very advantages, and the beetling crags which
protect its rear, obstructions the most permanent to the ascent of
smoke; and it is in the contest with these natural baffling repellents
of the smoke, and in the variety of artifices for modifying its
vertical, or for accomplishing its lateral escape, that have arisen
the large and graceful variety of chimney models. My cottage, wanting
this primary feature of elegance in the constituents of Westmoreland
cottage architecture, and wanting also another very interesting feature
of the elder architecture, annually becoming more and more rare,--viz.
the outside gallery (which is sometimes merely of wood, but is much
more striking when provided for in the original construction of the
house, and completely _enfoncé_ in the masonry),--could not rank high
amongst the picturesque houses of the country; those, at least, which
are such by virtue of their architectural form. It was, however,
very irregular in its outline to the rear, by the aid of one little
projecting room, and also of a stable and little barn, in immediate
contact with the dwelling-house. It had, besides, the great advantage
of a varying height: two sides being about fifteen or sixteen feet high
from the exposure of both storeys; whereas the other two, being swathed
about by a little orchard that rose rapidly and unequally towards the
vast mountain range in the rear, exposed only the upper storey; and,
consequently, on those sides the elevation rarely rose beyond seven or
eight feet. All these accidents of irregular form and outline gave to
the house some little pretensions to a picturesque character; whilst
its "separable accidents" (as the logicians say), its bowery roses and
jessamine, clothed it in loveliness--its associations with Wordsworth
crowned it, to my mind, with historical dignity,--and, finally, my own
twenty-seven years' off-and-on connexion with it have, by ties personal
and indestructible, endeared it to my heart so unspeakably beyond all
other houses, that even now I rarely dream through four nights running
that I do not find myself (and others besides) in some one of those
rooms, and, most probably, the last cloudy delirium of approaching
death will re-install me in some chamber of that same humble cottage.
"What a tale," says Foster, the eloquent essayist--"what a tale could
be told by many a room, were the walls endowed with memory and speech!"
or, in the more impassioned expressions of Wordsworth--
"Ah! what a lesson to a thoughtless man
-------------- if any gladsome field of earth
Could render back the sighs to which it hath responded,
Or echo the sad steps by which it hath been trod!"
And equally affecting it would be, if such a field or such a house
could render up the echoes of joy, of festal music, of jubilant
laughter--the innocent mirth of infants, or the gaiety, not less
innocent, of youthful mothers--equally affecting would be such a
reverberation of forgotten household happiness with the re-echoing
records of sighs and groans. And few indeed are the houses that, within
a period no longer than from the beginning of the century to 1835
(so long was it either mine or Wordsworth's) have crowded such ample
materials for those echoes, whether sorrowful or joyous.
[151] _Wraie_ is the old Danish or Icelandic word for _angle_.
Hence the many "wrays" in the Lake district.
SOCIETY OF THE LAKES
My cottage was ready in the summer; but I was playing truant amongst
the valleys of Somersetshire; and, meantime, different families,
throughout the summer, borrowed the cottage of the Wordsworths as my
friends. They consisted chiefly of ladies; and some, by the delicacy
of their attentions to the flowers, &c., gave me reason to consider
their visit during my absence as a real honour; others--such is the
difference of people in this world--left the rudest memorials of
their careless habits impressed upon house, furniture, garden, &c.
In November, at last, I, the long-expected, made my appearance. Some
little sensation did really and naturally attend my coming, for most
of the draperies belonging to beds, curtains, &c., had been sewed by
the young women of that or the adjoining vales. This had caused me
to be talked of. Many had seen me on my visit to the Wordsworths.
Miss Wordsworth had introduced the curious to a knowledge of my age,
name, prospects, and all the rest of what can be interesting to
know. Even the old people of the vale were a little excited by the
accounts (somewhat exaggerated, perhaps) of the never ending books
that continued to arrive in packing-cases for several months in
succession. Nothing in these vales so much fixes the attention and
respect of the people as the reputation of being a "far learn'd" man.
So far, therefore, I had already bespoke the favourable opinion of
the Dalesmen. And a separate kind of interest arose amongst mothers
and daughters, in the knowledge that I should necessarily want
what--in a sense somewhat different from the general one--is called a
"housekeeper"; that is, not an upper servant to superintend others,
but one who could undertake, in her own person, all the duties of the
house. It is not discreditable to these worthy people that several
of the richest and most respectable families were anxious to secure
the place for a daughter. Had I been a dissipated young man, I have
good reason to know that there would have been no canvassing at all
for the situation. But partly my books spoke for the character of my
pursuits with these simple-minded people--partly the introduction of
the Wordsworths guaranteed the safety of such a service. Even then,
had I persisted in my original intention of bringing a man-servant, no
respectable young woman would have accepted the place. As it was, and
it being understood that I had renounced this intention, many, in a
gentle, diffident way, applied for the place, or their parents on their
behalf. And I mention the fact, because it illustrates one feature in
the manners of this primitive and peculiar people, the Dalesmen of
Westmoreland. However wealthy, they do not think it degrading to permit
even the eldest daughter to go out a few years to service. The object
is not to gain a sum of money in wages, but that sort of household
experience which is supposed to be unattainable upon a suitable scale
out of a gentleman's family. So far was this carried, that, amongst
the offers made to myself, was one from a young woman whose family was
amongst the very oldest in the country, and who was at that time under
an engagement of marriage to the very richest young man in the vale.
She and her future husband had a reasonable prospect of possessing
ten thousand pounds in land; and yet neither her own family nor her
husband's objected to her seeking such a place as I could offer. Her
character and manners, I ought to add, were so truly excellent, and
won respect so inevitably from everybody, that nobody could wonder at
the honourable confidence reposed in her by her manly and spirited
young lover. The issue of the matter, as respected my service, was,
why I do not know, that Miss Wordsworth did not accept of her: and she
fulfilled her purpose in another family, a very grave and respectable
one, in Kendal. She stayed about a couple of years, returned, and
married the young man to whom she had engaged herself, and is now the
prosperous mother of a fine handsome family; and she together with her
mother-in-law are the two leading matrons of the vale.
It was on a November night, about ten o'clock, that I first found
myself installed in a house of my own--this cottage, so memorable from
its past tenant to all men, so memorable to myself from all which
has since passed in connexion with it. A writer in _The Quarterly
Review_, in noticing the autobiography of Dr. Watson, the Bishop of
Llandaff, has thought fit to say that the Lakes, of course, afforded
no society capable of appreciating this commonplace, coarse-minded man
of talents. The person who said this I understand to have been Dr.
Whitaker, the respectable antiquary. Now, that the reader may judge of
the propriety with which this was asserted, I shall slightly rehearse
the muster-roll of our Lake society, as it existed at the time when I
seated myself in my Grasmere cottage. I will undertake to say that the
meanest person in the whole scattered community was more extensively
accomplished than the good bishop, was more conscientiously true to
his duties, and had more varied powers of conversation. Wordsworth and
Coleridge, then living at Allan Bank, in Grasmere, I will not notice
in such a question. Southey, living thirteen miles off, at Keswick,
I have already noticed; and he needs no _proneur_. I will begin with
Windermere.
At Clappersgate, a little hamlet of perhaps six houses, on its
north-west angle, and about five miles from my cottage, resided two
Scottish ladies, daughters of Dr. Cullen, the famous physician and
nosologist.[152] They were universally beloved for their truly kind
dispositions and the firm independence of their conduct They had been
reduced from great affluence to a condition of rigorous poverty. Their
father had made what should have been a fortune by his practice.
The good doctor, however, was careless of his money in proportion
to the facility with which he made it. All was put into a box, open
to the whole family. Breach of confidence, in the most thoughtless
use of this money, there could be none; because no restraint in that
point, beyond what honour and good sense imposed, was laid upon any
of the elder children. Under such regulations, it may be imagined
that Dr. Cullen would not accumulate any very large capital; and,
at his death, the family, for the first time, found themselves in
embarrassed circumstances. Of the two daughters who belonged to our
Lake population, one had married a Mr. Millar, son to the celebrated
Professor Millar of Glasgow.[153] This gentleman had died in America;
and Mrs. Millar was now a childless widow. The other still remained
unmarried. Both were equally independent; and independent even with
regard to their nearest relatives; for, even from their brother--who
had risen to rank and affluence as a Scottish judge, under the title
of Lord Cullen[154]--they declined to receive assistance; and except
for some small addition made to their income by a novel called "Home"
(in as many as seven volumes, I really believe) by Miss Cullen,
their expenditure was rigorously shaped to meet that very slender
income which they drew from _their_ shares of the patrimonial wrecks.
More honourable and modest independence, or poverty more gracefully
supported, I have rarely known.
[152] William Cullen (1712-1790), Professor of the Institutes of
Medicine and the Practice of Physic in the University of Edinburgh
from 1766 to 1790.--M.
[153] John Millar (1735-1801), author of _The Origin Of the
Distinction of Ranks in Society and Historical View of the English
Government_.--M.
[154] Robert Cullen was a Scottish judge, with the courtesy title
of Lord Cullen, from 1796 to 1810.--M.
Meantime, these ladies, though literary and very agreeable in
conversation, could not be classed with what now began to be known
as the _lake_ community of literati; for they took no interest in
any one of the lake poets; did not affect to take any; and I am sure
they were not aware of so much value in any one thing these poets had
written as could make it worth while even to look into their books;
and accordingly, as well-bred women, they took the same course as was
pursued for several years by Mrs. Hannah More, viz. cautiously to avoid
mentioning their names in my presence. This was natural enough in
women who had probably built their early admiration upon French models
(for Mrs. Millar used to tell me that she regarded the "Mahomet" of
Voltaire as the most perfect of human compositions), and still more so
at a period when almost all the world had surrendered their opinions
and their literary consciences (so to speak) into the keeping of _The
Edinburgh Review_; in whose favour, besides, those ladies had the
pardonable prepossessions of national pride, as a collateral guarantee
of that implicit faith which, in those days, stronger-minded people
than they took a pride in professing. Still, in defiance of prejudices
mustering so strongly to support their blindness, and the still
stronger support which this blindness drew from their total ignorance
of everything either done or attempted by the lake poets, these amiable
women persisted in one uniform tone of courteous forbearance, as often
as any question arose to implicate the names either of Wordsworth or
Coleridge,--any question about them, their books, their families, or
anything that was theirs. They thought it strange, indeed (for so
much I heard by a circuitous course), that promising and intellectual
young men--men educated at great Universities, such as Mr. Wilson of
Elleray, or myself, or a few others who had paid us visits,--should
possess so deep a veneration for these writers; but evidently this was
an infatuation--a craze, originating, perhaps, in personal connexions,
and, as the craze of valued friends, to be treated with tenderness. For
us therefore--for our sakes--they took a religious care to suppress
all allusion to these disreputable names; and it is pretty plain
how sincere their indifference must have been with regard to these
neighbouring authors, from the evidence of one fact, viz. that when, in
1810, Mr. Coleridge began to issue, in weekly numbers, his _Friend_,
which, by the prospectus, held forth a promise of meeting all possible
tastes--literary, philosophic, political--even this comprehensive
field of interest, combined with the adventitious attraction (so very
unusual, and so little to have been looked for in that thinly-peopled
region) of a local origin, from the bosom of those very hills at the
foot of which (though on a different side) they were themselves living,
failed altogether to stimulate their torpid curiosity; so perfect was
their persuasion beforehand that no good thing could by possibility
come out of a community that had fallen under the ban of the Edinburgh
critics.
At the same time, it is melancholy to confess that, partly from the
dejection of Coleridge, his constant immersion in opium at that
period, his hatred of the duties he had assumed, or at least of their
too frequent and periodical recurrence, and partly also from the bad
selection of topics for a miscellaneous audience, from the heaviness
and obscurity with which they were treated, and from the total want
of variety, in consequence of defective arrangements on his part
for ensuring the co-operation of his friends, no conceivable act
of authorship that Coleridge _could_ have perpetrated, no possible
overt act of dulness and somnolent darkness that he _could_ have
authorized, was so well fitted to sustain the impression, with
regard to him and his friends, that had pre-occupied these ladies'
minds. _Habes confitentem reum!_ I am sure they would exclaim; not
perhaps confessing to that form of delinquency which they had been
taught to expect--trivial or extravagant sentimentalism, _Germanity_
alternating with tumid inanity; not this, but something quite as
bad or worse, viz. palpable dulness--dulness that could be felt and
handled--rayless obscurity as to the thoughts--and communicated in
language that, according to the Bishop of Llandaff's complaint, was not
always English. For, though the particular words cited for blame were
certainly known to the vocabulary of metaphysics, and had even been
employed by a writer of Queen Anne's reign (Leibnitz), who, if any,
had the gift of translating dark thoughts into plain ones--still it
was intolerable, in point of good sense, that one who had to win his
way into the public ear should begin by bringing before a popular and
miscellaneous audience themes that could require such startling and
revolting words. _The Delphic Oracle_ was the kindest of the nicknames
which the literary taste of Windermere conferred upon the new journal.
This was the laughing suggestion of a clever young lady, a daughter of
the Bishop of Llandaff, who stood in a neutral position with regard to
Coleridge. But others there were amongst his supposed friends who felt
even more keenly than this young lady the shocking want of adaptation
to his audience in the choice of matter, and, even to an audience
better qualified to meet such matter, the want of adaptation in the
mode of publication,--viz. periodically, and by weekly recurrence;
a mode of soliciting the public attention which even authorizes the
expectation of current topics--topics arising each with its own week or
day. One in particular I remember of these disapproving friends: a Mr.
Blair, an accomplished scholar, and a frequent visitor at Elleray,[155]
who started the playful scheme of a satirical rejoinder to Coleridge's
_Friend_, under the name of _The Enemy_, which was to follow always in
the wake of its leader, and to stimulate Coleridge (at the same time
that it amused the public) by attic banter, or by downright opposition
and showing fight in good earnest. It was a plan that might have done
good service to the world, and chiefly through a seasonable irritation
(never so much wanted as then) applied to Coleridge's too lethargic
state: in fact, throughout life, it is most deeply to be regretted
that Coleridge's powers and peculiar learning were never forced out
into a large display by intense and almost persecuting opposition.
However, this scheme, like thousands of other day-dreams and bubbles
that rose upon the breath of morning spirits and buoyant youth, fell
to the ground; and, in the meantime, no enemy to _The Friend_ appeared
that was capable of matching _The Friend_ when left to itself and
its own careless or vagrant guidance. _The Friend_ ploughed heavily
along for nine-and-twenty numbers[156]; and our fair recusants and
non-conformists in all that regarded the lake poetry or authorship,
the two Scottish ladies of Clappersgate, found no reasons for changing
their opinions; but continued, for the rest of my acquaintance with
them, to practise the same courteous and indulgent silence, whenever
the names of Coleridge or Wordsworth happened to be mentioned.
[155] See _ante_, p. 193, footnote (76).--M.
[156] See _ante_. p. 190, footnote (75).--M.
In taking leave of these Scottish ladies, it may be interesting to
mention that, previously to their final farewell to our Lake society,
upon taking up their permanent residence in York (which step they
adopted partly, I believe, to enjoy the more diversified society which
that great city yields, and, at any rate, the more _accessible_
society than amongst mountain districts--partly with a view to the
cheapness of that rich district in comparison with our sterile soil,
poor towns, and poor agriculture) somewhere about the May or June of
1810, I think--they were able, by a long preparatory course of economy,
to invite to the English lakes a family of foreigners--what shall I
call them?--a family of Anglo-Gallo-Americans, from the Carolinas. The
invitation had been of old standing, and offered, as an expression
of gratitude, from these ladies, for many hospitalities and friendly
services rendered by the two heads of that family to Mrs. Millar,
in former years, and under circumstances of peculiar trial. Mrs.
Millar had been hastily summoned from Scotland to attend her husband
at Charleston; him, on her arrival, she found dying; and, whilst
overwhelmed by this sudden blow, it may be imagined that the young
widow would find trials enough for her fortitude, without needing any
addition to the load from friendlessness amongst a nation of strangers
and from total solitude. These evils were spared to Mrs. Millar,
through the kind offices and disinterested exertions of an American
gentleman (French by birth, but American by adoption), M. Simond, who
took upon himself the cares of superintending Mr. Millar's funeral
through all its details, and, by this most seasonable service, secured
to the heart-stricken widow that most welcome of privileges in all
situations, the privilege of unmolested privacy; for assuredly the
heaviest aggravation of such bereavements lies in the necessity,--too
often imposed by circumstances upon him or upon her who may happen
to be the sole responsible representative, and, at the same time,
the dearest friend of the deceased,--of superintending the funeral
arrangements. In the very agonies of a new-born grief, whilst the
heart is yet raw and bleeding, the mind not yet able to comprehend its
loss, the very light of day hateful to the eyes, the necessity even at
such a moment arises, and without a day's delay, of facing strangers,
talking with strangers, discussing the most empty details with a view
to the most sordid of considerations--cheapness, convenience, custom,
and local prejudice--and, finally, talking about whom? why, the very
child, husband, wife, who has just been torn away; and this, too,
under a consciousness that the being so hallowed is, as to these
strangers, an object equally indifferent with any one person whatsoever
that died a thousand years ago. Fortunate, indeed, is that person who
has a natural friend, or, in default of such a friend, who finds a
volunteer stepping forward to relieve him from a conflict of feeling
so peculiarly unseasonable. Mrs. Millar never forgot the service which
had been rendered to her; and she was happy when M. Simond, who had
become a wealthy citizen of America, at length held out the prospect of
coming to profit by her hospitable attentions amongst that circle of
friends with whom she and her sister had surrounded themselves in so
interesting a part of England.
M. Simond had been a French emigrant; not, I believe, so far connected
with the privileged orders of his country, or with any political party,
as to be absolutely forced out of France by danger or by panic; but he
had shared in the feelings of those who were. Revolutionary France,
in the anarchy of the transition state, and still heaving to and fro
with the subsiding shocks of the great earthquake, did not suit him:
there was neither the polish which he sought in its manners, nor the
security which he sought in its institutions. England he did not love;
but yet, if not England, some country which had grown up from English
foundations was the country for him; and, as he augured no rest for
France through some generations to come, but an endless succession of
revolution to revolution, anarchy to anarchy, he judged it best that,
having expatriated himself and lost one country, he should solemnly
adopt another. Accordingly he became an American citizen. English he
already spoke with propriety and fluency. And, finally, he cemented
his English connexions by marrying an English lady, the niece of John
Wilkes. "What John Wilkes?" asked a lady, one of a dinner-party at
Calgarth (the house of Dr. Watson, the celebrated Bishop of Llandaff,
upon the banks of Windermere).--"_What_ John Wilkes?" re-echoed the
Bishop, with a vehement intonation of scorn; "_What_ John Wilkes,
indeed! as if there was ever more than one John Wilkes--_fama super
æthera notus_!"--"O, my Lord, I beg your pardon," said an old lady,
nearly connected with the Bishop, "there were two; I knew one of
them: he was a little, ill-looking man, and he kept the Blue Boar
at----."--"At Flamborough Head!" roared the Bishop, with a savage
expression of disgust. The old lady, suspecting that some screw was
loose in the matter, thought it prudent to drop the contest; but she
murmured, _sotto voce_, "No, not at Flamborough Head, but at Market
Drayton." Madame Simond, then, was the niece, not of the ill-looking
host of the Blue Boar, but of _the_ Wilkes so memorably connected with
the _parvanimities_ of the English government at one period; with the
casuistry of our English constitution, by the questions raised in his
person as to the effects of expulsion from the House of Commons, &c.
&c.; and, finally, with the history of English jurisprudence, by his
intrepidity on the matter of general warrants. M. Simond's party, when
at length it arrived, consisted of two persons besides himself, viz.
his wife, the niece of Wilkes, and a young lady of eighteen, standing
in the relation of grand-niece to the same memorable person. This young
lady, highly pleasing in her person, on quitting the lake district,
went northwards with her party, to Edinburgh, and there became
acquainted with Mr. Francis Jeffrey, the present Lord Jeffrey [1840],
who naturally enough fell in love with her, followed her across the
Atlantic, and in Charleston, I believe, received the honour of her hand
in marriage.[157]
[157] She was Jeffrey's second wife, married to him in 1813.--M.
I, as one of Mrs. Millar's friends, put in my claim to entertain her
American party in my turn. One long summer's day, they all came over
to my cottage in Grasmere; and, as it became my duty to do the honours
of our vale to the strangers, I thought that I could not discharge the
duty in a way more likely to interest them all than by conducting them
through Grasmere into the little inner chamber of Easedale, and there,
within sight of the solitary cottage, Blentarn Ghyll, telling them the
story of the Greens[158]; because, in this way, I had an opportunity,
at the same time, of showing the scenery from some of the best points,
and of opening to them a few glimpses of the character and customs
which distinguish this section of the English yeomanry from others.
The story did certainly interest them all; and thus far I succeeded
in my duties as Cicerone and Amphytrion of the day. But, throughout
the rest of our long morning's ramble, I remember that accident, or,
possibly the politeness of M. Simond, and his French sympathy with a
young man's natural desire to stand well in the eyes of a handsome
young woman, so ordered it that I had constantly the honour of being
Miss Wilkes's immediate companion, as the narrowness of the path pretty
generally threw us into ranks of two and two. Having, therefore,
through so many hours, the opportunity of an exclusive conversation
with this young lady, it would have been my own fault had I failed to
carry off an impression of her great good sense, as well as her amiable
and spirited character. Certainly I did _mon possible_ to entertain
her, both on her own account and as the visitor of my Scottish friends.
But, in the midst of all my efforts, I had the mortification to feel
that I was rowing against the stream; that there was a silent body
of prepossession against the whole camp of the lakers, which nothing
could unsettle. Miss Wilkes naturally looked up, with some feelings of
respect, to M. Simond, who, by his marriage with her aunt, had become
her own guardian and protector. Now, M. Simond, of all the men in the
world, was the last who could have appreciated an English poet. He
had, to begin with, a French inaptitude for apprehending poetry at
all: any poetry, that is, which transcends manners and the interests
of social life. Then, unfortunately, not merely through what he had
not, but equally through what he had, this cleverish Frenchman was, by
whole diameters of the earth, remote from the station at which he could
comprehend Wordsworth. He was a thorough, knowing man of the world,
keen, sharp as a razor, and valuing nothing but the tangible and the
ponderable. He had a smattering of mechanics, of physiology, geology,
mineralogy, and all other _ologies_ whatsoever; he had, besides, at his
fingers' ends, a huge body of statistical facts--how many people did
live, could live, ought to live, in each particular district of each
manufacturing county; how many old women of eighty-three there ought
to be to so many little children of one; how many murders ought to be
committed in a month by each town of five thousand souls; and so on
_ad infinitum_. And to such a thin shred had his old French politeness
been worn down by American attrition, that his thin lips could with
much ado contrive to disguise his contempt for those who failed to
meet him exactly upon his own field, with exactly his own quality of
knowledge. Yet, after all, it was but a little _case_ of knowledge,
that he had packed up neatly for a make-shift; just what corresponds
to the little assortment of razors, tooth-brushes, nail-brushes,
hair-brushes, cork-screw, gimlet, &c. &c., which one carries in one's
trunk, in a red Morocco case, to meet the casualties of a journey. The
more one was indignant at being the object of such a man's contempt,
the more heartily did one disdain his disdain, and recalcitrate his
kicks.
[158] The pathetic story told in De Quincey's paper entitled
_Early Memorials of Grasmere_.--M.
On the single day which Mrs. Millar could spare for Grasmere, I had
taken care to ask Wordsworth amongst those who were to meet the party.
Wordsworth came; but, by instinct, he and Monsieur Simond knew and
recoiled from each other. They met, they saw, they _inter-despised_.
Wordsworth, on his side, seemed so heartily to despise M. Simond
that he did not stir or make an effort to right himself under any
misapprehension of the Frenchman, but coolly acquiesced in any and
every inference which he might be pleased to draw; whilst M. Simond,
double-charged with contempt from _The Edinburgh Review_, and from the
report (I cannot doubt) of his present hostess, manifestly thought
Wordsworth too abject almost for the trouble of too openly disdaining
him. More than one of us could have done justice on this malefactor
by meeting M. Simond on his own ground, and taking the conceit out of
him most thoroughly. I was one of those; for I had the very knowledge,
or some of it, that he most paraded. But one of us was lazy; another
thought it not _tanti_; and I, for my part, in my own house, could not
move upon such a service. And in those days, moreover, when as yet I
loved Wordsworth not less than I venerated him, a success that would
have made him suffer in any man's opinion by comparison with myself
would have been painful to my feelings. Never did party meet more
exquisitely ill-assorted; never did party separate with more exquisite
and cordial disgust in its principal members towards each other. I
mention the case at all, in order to illustrate the abject condition of
worldly opinion in which Wordsworth then lived. Perhaps his ill fame
was just then in its meridian; for M. Simond, soon after, published
his English Tour in two octavo volumes; and, of course, he goes over
his residence at the Lakes; yet it is a strong fact that, according
to my remembrance, he does not vouchsafe to mention such a person as
Wordsworth.
One anecdote, before parting with these ladies, I will mention, as
received from Miss Cullen on her personal knowledge of the fact. There
are stories current which resemble this, but wanting that immediate
guarantee for their accuracy which, in this case, I at least was
obliged to admit, in the attestation of so perfectly veracious a
reporter as this excellent lady. A female friend of her own, a person
of family and consideration, being on the eve of undertaking a visit
to a remote part of the kingdom, dreamed that, on reaching the end of
her journey, and drawing up to the steps of the door, a footman, with
a very marked and forbidding expression of countenance, his complexion
pale and bloodless, and his manners sullen, presented himself to let
down the steps of her carriage. This same man, at a subsequent point
of her dream, appeared to be stealing up a private staircase, with
some murderous instruments in his hands, towards a bed-room door.
This dream was repeated, I think, twice. Some time after, the lady,
accompanied by a grown-up daughter, accomplished her journey. Great was
the shock which awaited her on reaching her friend's house: a servant
corresponding in all points to the shadowy outline of her dream,
equally bloodless in complexion, and equally gloomy in manner, appeared
at her carriage door. The issue of the story was that upon a particular
night, after a stay of some length, the lady grew unaccountably
nervous; resisted her feelings for some time; but at length, at the
entreaty of her daughter, who slept in the same room, suffered some
communication of the case to be made to a gentleman resident in
the house, who had not yet retired to rest. This gentleman, struck
by the dream, and still more on recalling to mind some suspicious
preparations, as if for a hasty departure, in which he had detected the
servant, waited in concealment until three o'clock in the morning--at
which time, hearing a stealthy step moving up the staircase, he issued
with firearms, and met the man at the lady's door, so equipped as to
leave no doubt of his intentions; which possibly contemplated only
robbing of the lady's jewels, but possibly also murder in a case of
extremity. There are other stories with some of the same circumstances;
and, in particular, I remember one very like it in Dr. Abercrombie's
"Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers" [1830], p. 283. But in
this version of Dr. Abercrombie's (supposing it another version of the
same story) the striking circumstance of anticipating the servant's
features is omitted; and in no version, except this of Miss Cullen's,
have I heard the names mentioned both of the parties to the affair, and
also of the place at which it occurred.