SOCIETY OF THE LAKES: CHARLES LLOYD[159]
[159] From _Tait's Magazine_ for March 1840.--M.
Immediately below the little village of Clappersgate, in which the
Scottish ladies resided--Mrs. Millar and Mrs. Cullen--runs the wild
mountain river called the _Brathay_, which, descending from Langdale
Head, and soon after becoming confluent with the Rothay (a brook-like
stream that comes originally from Easedale, and takes its course
through the two lakes of Grasmere and Rydal), finally composes
a considerable body of water, that flows along, deep, calm, and
steady--no longer brawling, bubbling, tumultuous--into the splendid
lake of Windermere, the largest of our English waters, or, if not, at
least the longest, and of the most extensive circuit. Close to this
little river, Brathay, on the farther side as regards Clappersgate
(and what, though actually part and parcel of a district that is
severed by the sea, or by Westmoreland, from Lancashire proper, is
yet, from some old legal usage, denominated the Lancashire side of the
Brathay), stands a modest family mansion, called Low Brathay, by way
of distinction from another and a larger mansion, about a quarter of a
mile beyond it, which, standing upon a little eminence, is called High
Brathay.
In this house of Low Brathay lived, and continued to live, for
many years (in fact, until misery, in its sharpest form, drove him
from his hearth and his household happiness), Charles L---- the
younger[160];--on his own account, and for his personal qualities,
worthy of a separate notice in any biography, howsoever sparing in its
digressions; but, viewed in reference to his fortunes, amongst the most
interesting men I have known. Never do I reflect upon his hard fate,
and the bitter though mysterious persecution of body which pursued
him, dogged him, and thickened as life advanced, but I feel gratitude
to Heaven for my own exemption from suffering in that particular
form; and, in the midst of afflictions, of which two or three have
been most hard to bear,--because not unmingled with pangs of remorse
for the share which I myself may have had in causing them,--still, by
comparison with the lot of Charles Lloyd, I acknowledge my own to have
been happy and serene. Already, on my first hasty visit to Grasmere in
1807, I found Charles Lloyd settled with his family at Brathay, and a
resident there, I believe, of some standing. It was on a wet gloomy
evening; and Miss Wordsworth and I were returning from an excursion to
Esthwaite Water, when, suddenly, in the midst of blinding rain, without
previous notice, she said--Pray, let us call for a few minutes at this
house. A garden gate led us into a little shrubbery, chiefly composed
of lawns, beautifully kept, through which ran a gravel road, just wide
enough to admit a single carriage. A minute or so saw us housed in a
small comfortable drawing-room, but with no signs of living creatures
near it; and, from the accident of double doors, all covered with
baize, being scattered about the house, the whole mansion seemed the
palace of silence, though populous, I understood, with children. In no
long time appeared Mr. Lloyd, soon followed by his youthful wife, both
radiant with kindness; and it may be supposed that we were not suffered
to depart for some hours. I call Mrs. Lloyd youthful; and so I might
call her husband; for both were youthful, considered as the parents of
a numerous family, six or seven children then living--Charles Lloyd
himself not being certainly more than twenty-seven, and his "Sophia"
perhaps not twenty-five.
[160] The name was Charles Lloyd, and we shall fill up De
Quincey's blanks in the sequel.--M.
On that short visit I saw enough to interest me in both; and, two
years after, when I became myself a permanent resident in Grasmere,
the connexion between us became close and intimate. My cottage stood
just five miles from Brathay; and there were two mountain roads which
shortened the space between us, though not the time nor the toil.
But, notwithstanding this distance, often and often, upon the darkest
nights, for many years, I used to go over about nine o'clock, or an
hour later, and sit with him till one. Mrs. Lloyd was simply an amiable
young woman, of pleasing person, perfectly well principled, and, as a
wife and mother, not surpassed by anybody I have known in either of
those characters. In figure she somewhat resembled the ever memorable
and most excellent Mrs. Jordan; she was exactly of the middle height
and having that slight degree of _embonpoint_, even in youth, which
never through life diminishes or increases. Her complexion may be
imagined from the circumstance of her hair being tinged with a slight
and not unpleasing shade of red. Finally, in manners she was remarkably
self-possessed, free from all awkward embarrassment, and (to an extent
which some people would wonder at in one who had been brought up, I
believe, wholly in a great commercial town) perfectly lady-like. So
much description is due to one who, though no authoress, and never
making the slightest pretension to talents, was too much connected
subsequently with the lakers to be passed over in a review of their
community. Ah! gentle lady! your head, after struggling through many
a year with strange calamities, has found rest at length; but not in
English ground, or amongst the mountains which you loved: at Versailles
it is, and perhaps within a stone's throw of that Mrs. Jordan whom
in so many things you resembled, and most of all in the misery which
settled upon your latter years. There you lie, and for ever, whose
blooming matronly figure rises up to me at this moment from a depth of
thirty years! and your children scattered into all lands!
But for Charles Lloyd: he, by his literary works, is so far known
to the public, that, on his own account, he merits some separate
notice.[161] His poems do not place him in the class of powerful poets;
they are loosely conceived--faultily even at times--and not finished
in the execution. But they have a real and a mournful merit under
one aspect, which might be so presented to the general reader as to
win a peculiar interest for many of them, and for some a permanent
place in any judicious _thesaurus_--such as we may some day hope to
see drawn off, and carefully filtered, from the enormous mass of
poetry produced since the awakening era of the French Revolution.
This aspect is founded on the relation which they bear to the real
events and the unexaggerated afflictions of his own life. The feelings
which he attempts to express were not assumed for effect, nor drawn
by suggestion from others, and then transplanted into some ideal
experience of his own. They do not belong to the mimetic poetry so
extensively cultivated; but they were true solitary sighs, wrung from
his own meditative heart by excess of suffering, and by the yearning
after old scenes and household faces of an impassioned memory, brooding
over vanished happiness, and cleaving to those early times when life
wore even for _his_ eyes the golden light of Paradise. But he had other
and higher accomplishments of intellect than he showed in his verses,
as I shall presently explain; and of a nature which make it difficult
to bring them adequately within the reader's apprehension.
[161] _Blank Verse by C. L. and Charles Lamb, 1798. Poetical
Essays on Pope, and Desultory Thoughts on London, &c., 1821._--M.
Meantime, I will sketch an outline of poor Lloyd's history, so far as
I can pretend to know it. He was the son, and probably his calamitous
life originally dated from his being the son, of Quaker parents. It was
said, indeed, by himself as well as others, that the mysterious malady
which haunted him had been derived from an ancestress in the maternal
line; and this may have been true; and, for all that, it may also be
true that Quaker habits were originally answerable for this legacy of
woe. It is sufficiently well known that, in the training of their young
people, the Society of Friends make it a point of conscience to apply
severe checks to all open manifestations of natural feeling, or of
exuberant spirits. Not the passions--they are beyond their control--but
the expression of those passions by any natural language; this they
lay under the heaviest restraint; and, in many cases, it is possible
that such a system of thwarting nature may do no great mischief; just
as we see the American Indians, in moulding the plastic skulls of
their infants into capricious shapes, do not, after all, much disturb
the ordinary course of nature, nor produce the idiots we might have
expected. But, then, the reason why such tampering may often terminate
in slight results is, because often there is not much to tamper with;
the machinery is so slight, and the total range within which it plays
is perhaps so narrow, that the difference between its normal action and
its widest deviation may, after all, be practically unimportant. For
there are many men and women of whom I have already said, borrowing the
model of the word from Hartley, that they have not so much passions
as _passiuncles_. These, however, are in _one_ extreme; and others
there are and will be, in every class, and under every disadvantage,
who are destined to illustrate the very opposite extreme. Great
passions--passions pointing to the paths of love, of ambition, of
glory, martial or literary--these in men--and in women, again, these,
either in some direct shape, or taking the form of intense sympathy
with the same passions as moving amongst contemporary men--_will_ gleam
out fitfully amongst the placid children of Fox and Penn, not less than
amongst us who profess no war with the nobler impulses of our nature.
And, perhaps, according to the Grecian doctrine of _antiperistasis_,
strong untameable passions are more likely to arise even in consequence
of the counteraction. Deep passions undoubtedly lie in the blood and
constitution of Englishmen; and Quakers,[162] after all, do not, by
being such, cease, therefore, to be Englishmen.
[162] In using the term _Quakers_, I hoped it would have been
understood, even without any explanation from myself, that I did
not mean to use it scornfully or insultingly to that respectable
body. But it was the great oversight of their founders not to have
saved them from a nickname by assuming some formal designation
expressive of some capital characteristic. At present one is in
this dilemma: either one must use a tedious periphrasis (_e.g._
_the young women of the Society of Friends_), or the ambiguous one
of _young female Friends_.
of _young female Friends_.
It is, I have said, sufficiently well known that the Quakers make it a
point of their moral economy to lay the severest restraints upon all
ebullitions of feeling. Whatever may be the nature of the feeling,
whatever its strength, utter itself by word or by gesture it must not;
smoulder it may, but it must not break into a flame. This is known; but
it is not equally known that this unnatural restraint, falling into
collision with two forces at once, the force of passion and of youth,
not uncommonly records its own injurious tendencies, and publishes the
rebellious movements of nature, by distinct and anomalous diseases.
And further, I have been assured, upon most excellent authority,
that these diseases, strange and elaborate affections of the nervous
system, are found _exclusively_ amongst the young men and women of the
Quaker society; that they are known and understood exclusively amongst
physicians who have practised in great towns having a large Quaker
population, such as Birmingham; that they assume a new type, and a more
inveterate character, in the second or third generation, to whom this
fatal inheritance is often transmitted; and finally, that, if this
class of nervous derangements does not increase so much as to attract
public attention, it is simply because the community itself--the Quaker
body--does not increase, but, on the contrary, is rather on the wane.
From a progenitrix, then, no matter in what generation, C. Lloyd
inherited that awful malady which withered his own happiness, root
and branch, gathering strength from year to year. His father was a
banker, and, I presume, wealthy, from the ample allowance which he
always made to his son Charles. Charles, it is true, had the rights
of primogeniture--which, however, in a commercial family, are not
considerable--but, at the same time, though eldest, he was eldest of
seventeen or eighteen brothers and sisters, and of these I believe
that some round dozen or so were living at the time when I first came
to know him. He had been educated in the bosom of Quaker society; his
own parents, with most of their friends, were Quakers; and, even of
his own generation, all the young women continued Quakers. Naturally,
therefore, as a boy, he also was obliged to conform to the Quaker
ritual. But this ritual presses with great inequality upon the two
sexes; in so far, at least, as regards dress. The distinctions of
dress which announce the female Quaker are all in her favour. In a
nation eminent for personal purity, and where it should seem beforehand
impossible for any woman to create a pre-eminence for herself in that
respect, so it is, however, that the female Quaker, by her dress,
seems even purer than other women, and consecrated to a service of
purity; earthly soil or taint, even the sullying breath of mortality,
seems as if kept aloof from her person--forcibly held in repulsion by
some protecting sanctity. This transcendent purity, and a nun-like
gentleness, self-respect, and sequestration from the world--these are
all that _her_ peculiarity of dress expresses; and surely this "all" is
quite enough to win every man's favourable feelings towards her, and
something even like homage. But, with the male Quaker, how different
is the case! _His_ dress--originally not remarkable by its shape, but
solely by its colour and want of ornament, so peculiar has it become
in a lapse of nearly two centuries--seems expressly devised to point
him out to ridicule. In some towns, it is true, such as Birmingham and
Kendal, the public eye is so familiar with this costume, that in _them_
it excites no feeling whatever more than the professional costume of
butchers, bakers, grooms, &c. But in towns not commercial--towns of
luxury and parade--a Quaker is exposed to most mortifying trials of his
self-esteem. It has happened that I have followed a young man of this
order for a quarter of a mile, in Bath, or in one of the fashionable
streets of London, on a summer evening, when numerous servants were
lounging on the steps of the front door, or at the area gates; and I
have seen him run the gauntlet of grim smiles from the men, and _heard_
him run the gauntlet of that sound--the worst which heaven has in its
artillery of scorn against the peace of poor man--the half-suppressed
titter of the women. Laughing outright is bad, but still _that_ may be
construed into a determinate insult that studiously avows more contempt
than is really felt; but tittering is hell itself; for it seems mere
nature, and absolute truth, that extort this expression of contempt in
spite of every effort to suppress it.
Some such expression it was that drove Charles Lloyd into an early
apostasy from his sect: early it must have been, for he went at the
usual age of eighteen to Cambridge, and there, as a Quaker, he could
not have been received. He, indeed, of all men, was the least fitted
to contend with the world's scorn, for he had no great fortitude of
mind; his vocation was not to martyrdom, and he was cursed with the
most exquisite sensibility. This sensibility, indeed, it was, and not
so properly any determinate passion, which had been the scourge of his
ancestors. There was something that appeared effeminate about it; and
which, accordingly, used to provoke the ridicule of Wordsworth, whose
character, in all its features, wore a masculine and Roman harshness.
But, in fact, when you came to know Charles Lloyd, there was, even
in this slight tinge of effeminacy, something which conciliated your
pity by the feeling that it impressed you with, of being part of his
disease. His sensibility was eminently _Rousseauish_--that is, it was
physico-moral; now pointing to appetites that would have mastered him
had he been less intellectual and governed by a less exalted standard
of moral perceptions; now pointing to fine aerial speculations,
subtle as a gossamer, and apparently calculated to lead him off into
abstractions even too remote from flesh and blood.
During the Cambridge vacation, or, it might be, even before he went
to Cambridge--and my reason for thinking so is because both, I
believe, belonged to the same town, if it could not be said of them
as of Pyramus and Thisbe, that "_contiguas habuere domos_"--he fell
desperately in love with Miss Sophia P----n. Who she was I never
heard--that is, what were her connexions; but I presume that she must
have been of an opulent family, because Mrs. P----n, the mother of
Mrs. Lloyd, occasionally paid a visit to her daughter at the lakes,
and then she brought with her a handsomely-appointed equipage, as to
horses and servants. This I have reason to remember from the fact of
herself and her daughter frequently coming over on summer evenings
to drink tea with me, and the affront (as I then thought it) which
Wordsworth fastened upon me in connexion with one of those visits. One
evening,[163] * * * * * A pang of wrath gathered at my heart. Yet why?
One moment, I felt, indeed, that it was not gentlemanly to interfere
with the privileges of any man standing in the situation which I then
occupied, of host; but still I should not have regarded it, except from
its connexion with a case I recollected in a previous year. One fine
summer day, we were walking together--Wordsworth, myself, and Southey.
Southey had been making earnest inquiries about poor Lloyd, just then
in the crisis of some severe illness, and Wordsworth's answer had been
partly lost to me. I put a question upon it, when, to my surprise (my
wrath internally, but also to my special amusement), he replied that,
in fact, what he had said was a matter of some delicacy, and not quite
proper to be communicated except to _near friends of the family_. This
to me!--O ye gods!--to me, who knew by many a hundred conversations
how disagreeable Wordsworth was both to Charles Lloyd and to his
wife; whilst, on the other hand--not by words only, but by deeds, and
by the most delicate acts of confidential favour--I knew that Mr.
Wilson (Professor Wilson) and myself had been selected as friends in
cases which were not so much as named to Wordsworth. The arrogance of
Wordsworth was well illustrated in this case of the Lloyds.
[163] This break of asterisks occurs in the original magazine
article.--M.
But to resume Lloyd's history. Being so desperately in love with Miss
P----n, and his parents being rich, why should he not have married
her? _Why_, I know not. But some great obstacles arose; and, I presume,
on the side of Miss P----n's friends; for, actually, it became
necessary to steal her away; and the person in whom Lloyd confided
for this delicate service was no other than Southey. A better choice
he could not have made. Had the lady been Helen of Greece, Southey
would not have had a thought but for the honour and interests of his
confiding friend.
Having thus, by proxy, run away with his young wife, and married her,
Lloyd brought her to Cambridge. It is a novel thing in Cambridge,
though not altogether unprecedented, for a student to live there with
a wife. This novelty Lloyd exhibited to the University for some time;
but then, finding the situation not perfectly agreeable to the delicate
sensibilities of his young wife, Lloyd removed, first, I think, to
Penrith; and, after some changes, he settled down at Brathay, from
which, so long as he stayed on English ground--that is, for about
fifteen or sixteen years--he never moved. When I first crossed his
path at the Lakes, he was in the zenith of the brief happiness that
was granted to him on earth. He stood in the very centre of earthly
pleasures; and, that his advantages may be easily estimated, I will
describe both himself and his situation.
First, then, as to his person: he was tall and somewhat clumsy--not
intellectual so much as benign and conciliatory in his expression
of face. His features were not striking, but they expressed great
goodness of heart; and latterly wore a deprecatory expression that
was peculiarly touching to those who knew its cause. His manners were
free from all modes of vulgarity; and where he acquired his knowledge
I know not (for I never heard him claim any connexion with people of
rank), but a knowledge he certainly had of all the conventional usages
amongst the higher circles, and of those purely arbitrary customs
which mere good sense and native elegance of manner are not, of
themselves, sufficient to teach. Some of these he might have learned
from the family of the Bishop of Llandaff; for with the ladies of that
family he was intimate, especially with the eldest daughter, who was
an accomplished student in that very department of literature which
Lloyd himself most cultivated, viz. all that class of works which
deal in the analysis of human passions, or attempt to exhibit the
development of human character, in relation to sexual attachments,
when placed in trying circumstances. Lloyd corresponded with Miss
Watson in French; the letters, on both sides, being full of spirit and
originality; the subjects generally drawn from Rousseau's "Heloise"
or his "Confessions," from "Corinne," from "Delphine," or some other
work of Madame de Stael. For such disquisitions Lloyd had a real and a
powerful genius. It was really a delightful luxury to hear him giving
free scope to his powers for investigating subtle combinations of
character; for distinguishing all the shades and affinities of some
presiding qualities, disentangling their intricacies, and balancing,
antithetically, one combination of qualities against another. Take, for
instance, any well-known character from the drama, and pique Lloyd's
delicate perception of differences by affecting to think it identical
with some other character of the same class--instantly, in his anxiety
to mark out the features of dissimilitude, he would hurry into an
impromptu analysis of each character separately, with an eloquence,
with a keenness of distinction, and a felicity of phrase, which
were perfectly admirable. This display of familiarity with life and
human nature, in all its masqueradings, was sometimes truly splendid.
But two things were remarkable in these displays. One was, that the
splendour was quite hidden from himself, and unperceived amidst the
effort of mind, and oftentimes severe struggles, in attempting to do
himself justice, both as respected the thoughts and the difficult
task of clothing them in adequate words; he was as free from vanity,
or even from complacency in reviewing what he had effected, as it is
possible for a human creature to be. He thought, indeed, slightly of
his own power; and, which was even a stronger barrier against vanity,
his displays of this kind were always effective in proportion to his
unhappiness; for unhappiness it was, and the restlessness of internal
irritation, that chiefly drove him to exertions of his intellect;
else, and when free from this sort of excitement, he tended to the
quiescent state of a listener; for he thought everybody better than
himself. The other point remarkable in these displays was (and most
unfavourable, of course, it proved to his obtaining the reputation
they merited), that he could succeed in them only before confidential
friends, those on whom he could rely for harbouring no shade of
ridicule towards himself or his theme. Let but one person enter the
room of whose sympathy he did not feel secure, and his powers forsook
him as suddenly as the buoyancy of a bird that has received a mortal
shot in its wing. Accordingly, it is a fact that neither Wordsworth
nor Coleridge ever suspected the amount of power which was latent in
Lloyd; for he firmly believed that both of them despised him. Mrs.
Lloyd thought the same thing. Often and often she has said to me,
smiling in a mournful way--"I know too well that both Wordsworth and
Coleridge entertain a profound contempt for my poor Charles." And,
when I combated this notion, declaring that, although they might (and
probably did) hold very cheap such writers as Rousseau and Madame de
Stael, and, consequently, could not approve of studies directed so
exclusively to their works, or to works of the same class, still that
was not sufficient to warrant them in undervaluing the powers which
Mr. Lloyd applied to such studies. To this, or similar arguments, she
would reply by simply shaking her head, and then sink into silence.
But the time was fast approaching when all pains of this kind, from
supercilious or well-founded disparagement, were to be swallowed up
in more awful considerations and fears. The transition was not a
long one from the state of prosperity in which I found Lloyd about
1807-10 to the utter overthrow of his happiness, and, for his friends,
the overthrow of all hopes on his behalf. In the three years I have
assigned, his situation seemed luxuriously happy, as regarded the
external elements of happiness. He had, without effort of his own, an
income, most punctually remitted from his father, of from £1500 to
£1800 per annum. This income was entirely resigned to the management
of his prudent and excellent wife; and, as his own personal expenses,
separate from those of his family, were absolutely none at all, except
for books, she applied the whole either to the education of her
children, or to the accumulation of all such elegances of life about
their easy unpretending mansion as might soothe her husband's nervous
irritations, or might cheer his drooping spirits with as much variety
of pleasure as a mountainous seclusion allowed. The establishment of
servants was usually limited to six--one only being a man-servant--but
these were well chosen: and one or two were confidential servants,
tried by long experience. Rents are always low in the country for
unfurnished houses; and, even for the country, Low Brathay was a
cheap house; but it contained everything for comfort, nothing at all
for splendour. Consequently, a very large part of their income was
disposable for purposes of hospitality; and, when I first knew them,
Low Brathay was distinguished above every other house at the head of
Windermere, or within ten miles of that neighbourhood, by the judicious
assortment of its dinner parties, and the gaiety of its _soirées
dansantes_. These parties were never crowded; poor Lloyd rarely danced
himself; but it gladdened his benevolent heart to see the young and
blooming floating through the mazes of the dances then fashionable,
whilst he sat by, looking on, at times, with pleasure from his sympathy
with the pleasure of others; at times pursuing some animated discussion
with a literary friend; at times lapsing into profound reverie.
At some of these dances it was that I first saw Wilson of Elleray
(Professor Wilson), in circumstances of animation, and buoyant with
youthful spirits, under the excitement of lights, wine, and, above
all, of female company. He, by the way, was the best male dancer (not
professional) I have ever seen; and this advantage he owed entirely
to the extraordinary strength of his foot in all its parts, to its
peculiarly happy conformation, and to the accuracy of his ear; for, as
to instruction, I have often understood from his family that he never
had any. Here also danced the future wife of Professor Wilson, Miss
Jane P----,[164] at that time the leading belle of the Lake country.
But, perhaps, the most interesting person in those parties, from the
peculiarity of her situation, was Mrs. Lloyd herself, still young,
and, indeed, not apparently exceeding in years most of her unmarried
visitors; still dancing and moving through cotillons, or country
dances, as elegantly and as lightly as the youngest of the company;
still framing her countenance to that expression of cheerfulness which
hospitality required; but stealing for ever troubled glances to the
sofa, or the recess, where her husband had reclined himself, dark
foreboding looks, that saw but too truly the coming darkness which was
soon to swallow up every vestige of this festal pleasure. She looked
upon herself and her children too clearly as a doomed household; and
such, in some sense, they were. And, doubtless, to poor Lloyd himself,
it must a thousandfold have aggravated his sufferings--that he could
trace, with a steady eye, the continual growth of that hideous malady
which was stealing over the else untroubled azure of his life, and with
inaudible foot was hastening onwards for ever to that night in which no
man can work, and in which no man can hope.
[164] Miss Jane Penny.--M.
It was so painful to Charles Lloyd, naturally, to talk much about
his bodily sufferings, and it would evidently have been so unfeeling
in one who had no medical counsels to offer, if, for the mere
gratification of his curiosity, he had asked for any circumstantial
account of its nature or symptoms, that I am at this moment almost
as much at a loss to understand what was the mode of suffering which
it produced, how it operated, and through what organs, as any of my
readers can be. All that I know is this:--For several years--six or
seven, suppose--the disease expressed itself by intense anguish of
irritation; not an irritation that gnawed at any one local spot, but
diffused itself; sometimes causing a determination of blood to the
head, then shaping itself in a general sense of plethoric congestion
in the blood-vessels, then again remoulding itself into a restlessness
that became insupportable; preying upon the spirits and the fortitude,
and finding no permanent relief or periodic interval of rest, night or
day. Sometimes Lloyd used robust exercise, riding on horseback as fast
as he could urge the horse forward; sometimes, for many weeks together,
he walked for twenty miles, or even more, at a time; sometimes (this
was in the earlier stages of the case) he took large doses of ether;
sometimes he used opium, and, I believe, in very large quantities;
and I understood him to say that, for a time, it subdued the excess
of irritability, and the agonizing accumulation of spasmodic strength
which he felt for ever growing upon him, and, as it were, upon the
very surface of his whole body. But all remedies availed him nothing;
and once he said to me, when we were out upon the hills--"Ay, that
landscape below, with its quiet cottage, looks lovely, I dare say, to
you: as for me, I see it, but I feel it not at all; for, if I begin
to think of the happiness, and its various modes which, no doubt,
belong to the various occupants, according to their ages and hopes,
then I _could_ begin to feel it; but it would be a painful effort
to me; and the worst of all would be when I _had_ felt it; for that
would so sharpen the prospect before me, that just such happiness,
which naturally ought to be mine, is soon on the point of slipping
away from me for ever." Afterwards he told me that his situation
internally was always this: it seemed to him as if on some distant road
he heard a dull trampling sound, and that he knew it, by a misgiving,
to be the sound of some man, or party of men, continually advancing
slowly, continually threatening, or continually accusing him; that all
the various artifices which he practised for cheating himself into
comfort, or beguiling his sad forebodings, were, in fact, but like so
many furious attempts, by drum and trumpets, or even by artillery,
to drown the distant noise of his enemies; that, every now and then,
mere curiosity, or rather breathless anxiety, caused him to hush the
artificial din, and to put himself into the attitude of listening
again; when, again and again, and so he was sure it would still be, he
caught the sullen and accursed sound, trampling and voices of men, or
whatever it were, still steadily advancing, though still perhaps at a
great distance. It was too evident that derangement of the intellect,
in some shape, was coming on; because slight and transient fits of
aberration from his perfect mind had already, at intervals, overtaken
him; flying showers, from the skirts of the clouds, that precede and
announce the main storm. This was the anguish of his situation, that,
for years, he saw before him what was on the road to overwhelm his
faculties and his happiness. Still his fortitude did not wholly forsake
him, and, in fact, proved to be far greater than I or others had given
him credit for possessing. Once only he burst suddenly into tears, on
hearing the innocent voices of his own children laughing, and of one
especially who was a favourite; and he told me that sometimes, when
this little child took his hand and led him passively about the garden,
he had a feeling that prompted him (however weak and foolish it seemed)
to call upon this child for protection; and that it seemed to him as
if he might still escape, could he but surround himself only with
children. No doubt this feeling arose out of his sense that a confusion
was stealing over his thoughts, and that men would soon find this out
to be madness, and would deal with him accordingly; whereas children,
as long as he did them no harm, would see no reason for shutting him up
from his own fireside, and from the human face divine.
It would be too painful to pursue the unhappy case through all its
stages. For a long time, the derangement of poor Lloyd's mind was
but partial and fluctuating; and it was the opinion of Professor
Wilson, from what he had observed, that it was possible to recall
him to himself by firmly opposing his delusions. He certainly, on
his own part, did whatever he could to wean his thoughts from gloomy
contemplation, by pre-occupying them with cheerful studies, and such
as might call out his faculties. He translated the whole of Alfieri's
dramas, and published his translation. He wrote and printed (but did
not publish) a novel in two volumes; my copy of which he soon after
begged back again so beseechingly that I yielded; and so, I believe,
did all his other friends: in which case no copy may now exist. All,
however, availed him not; the crisis so long dreaded arrived. He was
taken away to a lunatic asylum; and, for some long time, he was lost
to me as to the rest of the world. The first memorial I had of him was
a gentleman, with his hair in disorder, rushing into my cottage at
Grasmere, throwing his arms about my neck, and bursting into stormy
weeping--it was poor Lloyd!
Yes, it was indeed poor Lloyd, a fugitive from a madhouse, and throwing
himself for security upon the honour and affection of one whom, with
good reason, he supposed confidentially attached to him. Could there be
a situation so full of interest or perplexity? Should any ill happen
to himself, or to another, through his present enlargement--should he
take any fit of vindictive malice against any person whom he might
view as an accomplice in the plans against his own freedom--and
probably many persons in the neighbourhood, medical and non-medical,
stood liable to such a suspicion--upon me, I felt, as the abettor of
his evasion, would all the blame settle. And unfortunately we had, in
the recent records of this very vale, a most awful lesson, and still
fresh in everybody's remembrance, of the danger connected with this
sort of criminal connivance, or passive participation in the purposes
of maniacal malignity. A man, named Watson, had often and for years
threatened to kill his aged and inoffensive mother. His threats, partly
from their own monstrosity, and from the habit of hearing him for years
repeating them without any serious attempt to give them effect--partly
also from an unwillingness to aggravate the suffering of the poor
lunatic, by translating him out of a mountaineer's liberty into the
gloomy confinement of an hospital--were treated with neglect; and at
length, after years of disregarded menace, and direct forewarning
to the parish authorities, he took an opportunity (which indeed was
rarely wanting to him) of killing the poor gray-headed woman by her own
fireside. This case I had before my mind; and it was the more entitled
to have weight with me when connected with the altered temper of Lloyd,
who now, for the first time in his life, had dropped his gentle and
remarkably quiet demeanour, for a tone, savage and ferocious, towards
more than one individual. This tone, however, lurked under a mask,
and did not come forward, except by fits and starts, for the present.
Indeed his whole manner wore the appearance of studied dissimulation,
from the moment when he perceived that I was not alone. In the interval
of years since I had last seen him (which might have been in 1816) my
own marriage had taken place; accordingly, on turning round and seeing
a young woman seated at the tea-table, where heretofore he had been so
sure of finding me alone, he seemed shocked at the depth of emotion
which he had betrayed before a stranger, and anxious to reinstate
himself in his own self-respect, by assuming a tone of carelessness
and indifference. No person in the world could feel more profoundly on
his account than the young stranger before him, who in fact was not a
stranger to his situation and the excess of his misery. But this he
could not know; and it was not, therefore, until we found ourselves
alone, that he could be prevailed upon to speak of himself, or of the
awful circumstances surrounding him, unless in terms of most unsuitable
levity.
One thing I resolved, at any rate, to make the rule of my conduct
towards this unhappy friend, viz. to deal frankly with him, and in no
case to make myself a party to any plot upon his personal freedom.
Retaken I knew he would be, but not through me; even a murderer in such
a case (_i.e._ the case of having thrown himself upon my good faith) I
would not betray. I drew from him an account of the immediate facts in
his late escape, and his own acknowledgment that even now the pursuit
must be close at hand; probably, that his recaptors were within a few
hours' distance of Grasmere; that he would be easily traced. That my
cottage furnished no means of concealment, he knew too well; still in
these respects he was not worse off in Grasmere than elsewhere; and, at
any rate, it might save him from immediate renewal of his agitation,
and might procure for him one night of luxurious rest and relaxation,
by means of conversation with a friend, if he would make up his mind
to stay with us until his pursuers should appear; and them I could
easily contrive to delay, for at least one day and night, by throwing
false information in their way, such as would send them on to Keswick
at least, if not to Whitehaven, through the collusion of the very few
persons who could have seen him enter my door. My plan was simple and
feasible: but, somehow or other, and, I believe, chiefly because he did
not find me alone, nothing I could say had any weight with him; nor
would he be persuaded to stay longer than for a little tea. Staying so
short a time, he found it difficult to account for having ever come.
But it was too evidently useless to argue the point with him; for he
was altered, and had become obstinate and intractable. I prepared,
therefore, to gratify him according to his own plan, by bearing him
company on the road to Ambleside, and (as he said) to Brathay. We set
off on foot: the distance to Ambleside is about three and a half miles;
and one-third of this distance brought us to an open plain on the
margin of Rydalmere, where the road lies entirely open to the water.
This lake is unusually shallow, by comparison with all its neighbours;
but, at the point I speak of, it takes (especially when seen under any
mode of imperfect light) the appearance of being gloomily deep: two
islands of exquisite beauty, but strongly discriminated in character,
and a sort of recess or bay in the opposite shore, across which the
shadows of the hilly margin stretch with great breadth and solemnity
of effect to the very centre of the lake,--together with the very
solitary character of the entire valley, on which (excluding the little
hamlet in its very gorge or entrance) there is not more than one
single house,--combine to make the scene as impressive by night as any
in the Lake country. At this point it was that my poor friend paused
to converse, and, as it seemed, to take his leave, with an air of
peculiar sadness, as if he had foreseen (what in fact proved to be the
truth) that we now saw each other for the final time. The spot seemed
favourable to confidential talk; and here, therefore, he proceeded
to make his heart-rending communication: here he told me rapidly the
tale of his sufferings, and, what oppressed his mind far more than
those at this present moment, of the cruel indignities to which he
had been under the necessity of submitting. In particular, he said,
that a man of great muscular power had instructions to knock him down
whenever he made any allusion to certain speculative subjects which
the presiding authorities of the asylum chose to think connected with
his unhappy disease. Many other brutalities, damnable and dishonouring
to human nature, were practised in this asylum, not always by abuse of
the powers lodged in the servants, but by direct authority from the
governors; and yet it had been selected as the one most favourable to
a liberal treatment of the patients; and, in reality, it continued to
hold a very high reputation.
Great and monstrous are the abuses which have been detected in such
institutions, and exposed by parliamentary interference, as well as by
the energy of individual philanthropists; but it occurs to one most
forcibly, that, after all, the light of this parliamentary torch must
have been but feeble and partial, when it was possible for cases such
as these to escape all general notice, and for the establishment which
fostered them to retain a character as high as any in the land for
enlightened humanity. Perhaps the paramount care in the treatment of
lunatics should be directed towards those appliances, and that mode
of discipline, which is best fitted for restoring the patient finally
to a sane condition; but the _second_ place in the machinery of his
proper management should be reserved for that system of attentions,
medical or non-medical, which has the best chance of making him happy
for the present; and especially because his present happiness must
always be one of the directest avenues to his restoration. In the
present case, could it be imagined that the shame, agitation, and
fury, which convulsed poor Lloyd, as he went over the circumstances
of his degradation, were calculated for any other than the worst
effects upon the state and prospects of his malady? By sustaining the
tumult of his brain, they must, almost of themselves, have precluded
his restoration. At the side of that quiet lake he stood for nearly
an hour repeating his wrongs, his eyes glaring continually, as the
light thrown off from those parts of the lake which reflected bright
tracts of sky amongst the clouds fitfully illuminated them, and again
and again threatening, with gestures the wildest, vengeance the most
savage upon those vile keepers who had so abused any just purposes of
authority. He would talk of little else; apparently he could not. A
hollow effort he would make now and then, when his story had apparently
reached its close, to sustain the topics of ordinary conversation; but
in a minute he had relapsed into the one subject which possessed him.
In vain I pressed him to return with me to Grasmere. He was now, for a
few hours to come, to be befriended by the darkness; and he resolved
to improve the opportunity for some purpose of his own, which, as he
showed no disposition to communicate any part of his future plans, I
did not directly inquire into. In fact, part of his purpose in stopping
where he did had been to let me know that he did not wish for company
any further. We parted; and I saw him no more. He was soon recaptured;
then transferred to some more eligible asylum; then liberated from all
restraint; after which, with his family, he went to France; where again
it became necessary to deprive him of liberty. And, finally, in France
it was that his feverish existence found at length a natural rest and
an everlasting liberty; for there it was, in a _maison de santé_, at
or near Versailles, that he died (and I believe tranquilly), a few
years after he had left England. Death was indeed to him, in the words
of that fine mystic, Blake the artist, a "golden gate"--the gate of
liberation from the captivity of half a life; or, as I once found the
case beautifully expressed in a volume of poems a century old, and
otherwise poor enough, for they offered nothing worth recollecting
beyond this single line, in speaking of the particular morning in which
some young man had died--
"That morning brought him peace and liberty."
Charles Lloyd never returned to Brathay after he had once been removed
from it; and the removal of his family soon followed. Mrs. Lloyd,
indeed, returned at intervals from France to England, upon business
connected with the interests of her family; and, during one of those
fugitive visits, she came to the Lakes, where she selected Grasmere
for her residence, so that I had opportunities of seeing her every
day, for a space of several weeks. Otherwise, I never again saw any of
the family, except one son, an interesting young man, who sought most
meritoriously, by bursting asunder the heavy yoke of constitutional
inactivity, to extract a balm for his own besetting melancholy from a
constant series of exertions in which he had forced himself to engage
for promoting education or religious knowledge amongst his poorer
neighbours. But often and often, in years after all was gone, I have
passed old Brathay, or have gone over purposely after dark, about the
time when, for many a year, I used to go over to spend the evening;
and, seating myself on a stone, by the side of the mountain river
Brathay, have staid for hours listening to the same sound to which
so often Charles Lloyd and I used to hearken together with profound
emotion and awe--the sound of pealing anthems, as if streaming from
the open portals of some illimitable cathedral; for such a sound does
actually arise, in many states of the weather, from the peculiar action
of the river Brathay upon its rocky bed; and many times I have heard
it, of a quiet night, when no stranger could have been persuaded to
believe it other than the sound of choral chanting--distant, solemn,
saintly. Its meaning and expression were, in those earlier years,
uncertain and general; not more pointed or determined in the direction
which it impressed upon one's feelings than the light of setting suns:
and sweeping, in fact, the whole harp of pensive sensibilities, rather
than striking the chord of any one specific sentiment. But since the
ruin or dispersion of that household, after the smoke had ceased to
ascend from their hearth, or the garden walks to re-echo their voices,
oftentimes, when lying by the river side, I have listened to the same
aerial saintly sound, whilst looking back to that night, long hidden in
the frost of receding years, when Charles and Sophia Lloyd, now lying
in foreign graves, first dawned upon me, coming suddenly out of rain
and darkness; then--young, rich, happy, full of hope, belted with young
children (of whom also most are long dead), and standing apparently
on the verge of a labyrinth of golden hours. Musing on that night in
November, 1807, and then upon the wreck that had been wrought by a
space of fifteen years, I would say to myself sometimes, and seem to
hear it in the songs of this watery cathedral--Put not your trust in
any fabric of happiness that has its root in man or the children of
men. Sometimes even I was tempted to discover in the same music a sound
such as this--Love nothing, love nobody, for thereby comes a killing
curse in the rear. But sometimes also, very early on a summer morning,
when the dawn was barely beginning to break, all things locked in
sleep, and only some uneasy murmur or cock-crow, at a faint distance,
giving a hint of resurrection for earth and her generations, I have
heard in that same chanting of the little mountain river a more solemn
if a less agitated admonition--a requiem over departed happiness, and
a protestation against the thought that so many excellent creatures,
but a little lower than the angels, whom I have seen only to love in
this life--so many of the good, the brave, the beautiful, the wise--can
have appeared for no higher purpose or prospect than simply to point
a moral, to cause a little joy and many tears, a few perishing moons
of happiness and years of vain regret! No! that the destiny of man is
more in correspondence with the grandeur of his endowments, and that
our own mysterious tendencies are written hieroglyphically in the
vicissitudes of day and night, of winter and summer, and throughout the
great alphabet of Nature! But on that theme--beware, reader! Listen to
no _intellectual_ argument. One argument there is, one only there is,
of philosophic value: an argument drawn from the _moral_ nature of man:
an argument of Immanuel Kant's. The rest are dust and ashes.