SOCIETY OF THE LAKES: MISS ELIZABETH SMITH, THE SYMPSONS, AND THE
K---- FAMILY[165]
[165] From _Tait's Magazine_ for June 1840.
Passing onwards from Brathay, a ride of about forty minutes carries you
to the summit of a wild heathy tract, along which, even at noonday,
few sounds are heard that indicate the presence of man, except now
and then a woodman's axe in some of the many coppice-woods scattered
about that neighbourhood. In Northern England there are no sheep-bells;
which is an unfortunate defect, as regards the full impression of wild
solitudes, whether amongst undulating heaths or towering rocks: at
any rate, it is so felt by those who, like myself, have been trained
to its soothing effects upon the hills of Somersetshire--the Cheddar,
the Mendip, or the Quantock--or any other of those breezy downs which
once constituted such delightful local distinctions for four or five
counties in that south-west angle of England. At all hours of day
or night, this silvery tinkle was delightful; but, after sunset,
in the solemn hour of gathering twilight, heard (as it always was)
intermittingly, and at great varieties of distance, it formed the most
impressive incident for the ear, and the most in harmony with the other
circumstances of the scenery, that, perhaps, anywhere exists--not
excepting even the natural sounds, the swelling and dying intonations
of insects wheeling in their vesper flights. Silence and desolation are
never felt so profoundly as when they are interrupted by solemn sounds,
recurring by uncertain intervals, and from distant places. But in
these Westmoreland heaths, and uninhabited ranges of hilly ground, too
often nothing is heard except occasionally the wild cry of a bird--the
plover, the snipe, or perhaps the raven's croak. The general impression
is, therefore, cheerless; and the more are you rejoiced when, looking
down from some one of the eminences which you have been gradually
ascending, you descry, at a great depth below,[166] the lovely lake
of Coniston. The head of this lake is the part chiefly interesting,
both from the sublime character of the mountain barriers, and from the
intricacy of the little valleys at their base.
[166] The approach from Ambleside or Hawkshead, though fine, is
far less so than from Grasmere, through the vale of Tilberthwaite,
to which, for a _coup de théâtre_, I recollect nothing equal.
Taking the left-hand road, so as to make for Monk Coniston, and
not for Church Coniston, you ascend a pretty steep hill, from
which, at a certain point of the little gorge or _hawse_ (_i.e._
_hals_, neck or throat, viz. the dip in any hill through which the
road is led), the whole lake of six miles in length, and the
beautiful foregrounds, all rush upon the eye with the effect of a
pantomimic surprise--not by a graduated revelation, but by an
instantaneous flash.
On a little verdant knoll, near the north-eastern margin of the lake,
stands a small villa, called Tent Lodge, built by Colonel Smith,
and for many years occupied by his family. That daughter of Colonel
Smith who drew the public attention so powerfully upon herself by
the splendour of her attainments had died some months before I came
into the country.[167] But yet, as I was subsequently acquainted with
her family through the Lloyds (who were within an easy drive of Tent
Lodge), and as, moreover, with regard to Miss Elizabeth Smith herself,
I came to know more than the world knew--drawing my knowledge from many
of her friends, but especially from Mrs. Hannah More, who had been
intimately connected with her: for these reasons, I shall rehearse the
leading points of her story; and the rather because her family, who
were equally interested in that story, long continued to form part of
the Lake society.
[167] Miss Elizabeth Smith (1776-1806), authoress of a translation
of a Life of Klopstock from the German, and also of a translation
of the Book of Job from the Hebrew, and a Hebrew, Arabic, and
Persic vocabulary, all published after her death. Two volumes of
her _Fragments in Prose and Verse_ were published at Bath in 1809,
with a memoir of her by H. M. Bowdler.--M.
On my first becoming acquainted with Miss Smith's pretensions, it is
very true that I regarded them with but little concern; for nothing
ever interests me less than great philological attainments, or at
least that mode of philological learning which consists in mastery
over languages. But one reason for this indifference is, that the
apparent splendour is too often a false one. They who know a vast
number of languages rarely know any one with accuracy; and, the more
they gain in one way, the more they lose in another. With Miss Smith,
however, I gradually came to know that this was not the case; or,
at any rate, but partially the case; for, of some languages which
she possessed, and those the least accessible, it appeared, finally,
that she had even a critical knowledge. It created also a secondary
interest in these difficult accomplishments of hers, to find that
they were so very extensive. Secondly, That they were pretty nearly
all of self-acquisition. Thirdly, That they were borne so meekly, and
with unaffected absence of all ostentation. As to the first point,
it appears (from Mrs. H. Bowdler's Letter to Dr. Mummsen, the friend
of Klopstock)[168] that she made herself mistress of the French, the
Italian, the Spanish, the Latin, the German, the Greek, and the Hebrew
languages. She had no inconsiderable knowledge of the Syriac, the
Arabic, and the Persic. She was a good geometrician and algebraist. She
was a very expert musician. She drew from nature, and had an accurate
knowledge of perspective. Finally, she manifested an early talent for
poetry; but, from pure modesty, destroyed most of what she had written,
as soon as her acquaintance with the Hebrew models had elevated the
standard of true poetry in her mind, so as to disgust her with what she
now viewed as the tameness and inefficiency of her own performances.
As to the second point--that for these attainments she was indebted,
almost exclusively, to her own energy,--this is placed beyond all doubt
by the fact that the only governess she ever had (a young lady not
much beyond her own age) did not herself possess, and therefore could
not have communicated, any knowledge of languages, beyond a little
French and Italian. Finally, as to the modesty with which she wore her
distinctions, _that_ is sufficiently established by every page of
her printed works, and her letters. Greater diffidence, as respected
herself, or less willingness to obtrude her knowledge upon strangers,
or even upon those correspondents who would have wished her to make
a little more display, cannot be imagined. And yet I repeat that her
knowledge was as sound and as profound as it was extensive. For, taking
only one instance of this, her Translation of Job has been pronounced,
by Biblical critics of the first rank, a work of real and intrinsic
value, without any reference to the disadvantages of the translator,
or without needing any allowances whatever. In particular, Dr. Magee,
the celebrated writer on the Atonement, and subsequently a dignitary of
the Irish Church--certainly one of the best qualified judges at that
time--describes it as "conveying more of the character and meaning
of the Hebrew, with fewer departures from the idiom of the English,
than any other translation whatever that we possess." So much for the
scholarship; whilst he rightly notices, in proof of the translator's
taste and discretion, that "from the received version she very seldom
unnecessarily deviates": thus refusing to disturb what was, generally
speaking, so excellent and time-hallowed for any dazzling effects
of novelty; and practising this forbearance as much as possible,
notwithstanding novelty was, after all, the main attraction upon which
the new translation must rest.
[168] See previous footnote (166), p. 404.--M.
The example of her modesty, however, is not more instructive than that
of her continued struggle with difficulties in pursuing knowledge,
and with misfortunes in supporting a Christian fortitude. I shall
briefly sketch her story:--She was born at Burnhall, in the county of
Durham, at the latter end of the year 1776. Early in 1782, when she
had just entered her sixth year, her parents removed into Suffolk,
in order to be near a blind relation, who looked with anxiety to the
conscientious attentions of Mrs. Smith in superintending his comforts
and interests. This occupation absorbed so much of her time that she
found it necessary to obtain the aid of a stranger in directing the
studies of her daughter. An opportunity just then offered of attaining
this object, concurrently with another not less interesting to herself,
viz. that of offering an asylum to a young lady who had recently been
thrown adrift upon the world by the misfortunes of her parents. They
had very suddenly fallen from a station of distinguished prosperity;
and the young lady herself, then barely sixteen, was treading that
path of severe adversity upon which, by a most singular parallelism
of ill fortune, her young pupil was destined to follow her steps at
exactly the same age. Being so prematurely called to the office of
governess, this young lady was expected rather to act as an elder
companion, and as a lightener of the fatigues attached to their common
studies, than exactly as their directress. And, at all events, from
her, who was the only even nominal governess that Miss Smith ever had,
it is certain that she could have learned little or nothing. This
arrangement subsisted between two and three years, when the death of
their blind kinsman allowed Mr. Smith's family to leave Suffolk, and
resume their old domicile of Burnhall. But from this, by a sudden gleam
of treacherous prosperity, they were summoned, in the following year
(June, 1785) to the splendid inheritance of Piercefield--a show-place
upon the river Wye, and, next after Tintern Abbey and the river itself,
an object of attraction to all who then visited the Wye.
A residence on the Wye, besides its own natural attraction, has this
collateral advantage, that it brings Bath (not to mention Clifton and
the Hot Wells) within a visiting distance for people who happen to
have carriages; and Bath, it is hardly necessary to say, besides its
stationary body of polished and intellectual residents, has also a
floating casual population of eminent or interesting persons, gathered
into this focus from every quarter of the empire. Amongst the literary
connexions which the Piercefield family had formed in Bath was one with
Mrs. Bowdler and her daughter--two ladies not distinguished by any very
powerful talents, but sufficiently tinctured with literature and the
love of literature to be liberal in their opinions. And, fortunately
(as it turned out for Miss Smith), they were eminently religious: but
not in a bigoted way; for they were conciliating and winning in the
outward expression of their religious character; capable of explaining
their own creed with intelligent consistency; and, finally, were the
women to recommend any creed by the sanctity and the benignity of
their own lives. This strong religious bias of the two Bath ladies
operated in Miss Smith's favour by a triple service. First of all, it
was this depth of religious feeling, and, consequently, of interest in
the Scriptures, which had originally moved the elder Mrs. Bowdler to
study the Hebrew and the Greek, as the two languages in which they had
been originally delivered. And this example it was of _female_ triumph
over their difficulties, together with the proof thus given that such
attainments were entirely reconcilable with feminine gentleness,
which first suggested to Miss Smith the project of her philological
studies; and, doubtless, these studies, by the constant and agreeable
occupation which they afforded, overspread the whole field of her life
with pleasurable activity. "From the above-mentioned visit," says her
mother, writing to Dr. Randolph,[169] and referring to the visit which
these Bath ladies had made to Piercefield--"from the above-mentioned
visit I date the turn of study which Elizabeth ever after pursued, and
which I firmly believe the amiable conduct of our guests first led her
to delight in." Secondly, to the religious sympathies which connected
these two ladies with Miss Smith was owing the fervour of that
friendship which afterwards, in their adversity, the Piercefield family
found more strenuously exerted in their behalf by the Bowdlers than
by all the rest of their connexions. And, finally, it was this piety
and religious resignation, with which she had been herself inoculated
by her Bath friends, that, throughout the calamitous era of her life,
enabled Miss Elizabeth Smith to maintain her own cheerfulness unbroken,
and greatly to support the failing fortitude of her mother.
[169] The Rev. T. Randolph, D.D., editor of Miss Smith's
Translation of Job, 1810.--M.
This visit of her Bath friends to Piercefield--so memorable an event
for the whole subsequent life of Miss Smith--occurred in the summer of
1789; consequently, when she was just twelve and a half years old. And
the impressions then made upon her childish, but unusually thoughtful,
mind, were kept up by continual communications, personal or written,
through the years immediately succeeding. Just two and a half years
after, in the very month when Miss Smith accomplished her fifteenth
year, upon occasion of going through the rite of Confirmation,
according to the discipline of the English Church, she received a
letter of religious counsel--grave, affectionate, but yet humble--from
the elder Mrs. Bowdler, which might almost have been thought to have
proceeded from a writer who had looked behind the curtain of fate, and
had seen the forge at whose fires the shafts of Heaven were even now
being forged.
Just twelve months from the date of this letter, in the very month when
Miss Elizabeth Smith completed her sixteenth year, the storm descended
upon the house of Piercefield. The whole estate, a splendid one, was
swept away by the failure (as I have heard) of one banking-house; nor
were there recovered, until some years after, any slender fragments of
that estate. Piercefield was, of course, sold; but that was not the
heaviest of her grievances to Miss Smith. She was now far advanced
upon her studious career; for it should be mentioned, as a lesson to
other young ladies of what may be accomplished by unassisted labour,
that, between the ages of thirteen and twenty-one, all her principal
acquisitions were made. No treasure, therefore, could, in her eyes,
be of such priceless value as the Piercefield library; but this also
followed the general wreck: not a volume, not a pamphlet, was reserved;
for the family were proud in their integrity, and would receive no
favours from the creditors. Under this scorching test, applied to the
fidelity of friends, many, whom Mrs. Smith mentions in one of her
letters under the name of "summer friends," fled from them by crowds:
dinners, balls, soirées--credit, influence, support--these things were
no longer to be had from Piercefield. But more annoying even than
the fickle levity of such open deserters, was the timid and doubtful
countenance, as I have heard Mrs. Smith say, which was still offered to
them by some who did not relish, _for their own sakes_, being classed
with those who had paid their homage only to the fine house and fine
equipages of Piercefield. These persons continued, therefore, to send
invitations to the family; but so frigidly that every expression
manifested but too forcibly how disagreeable was the duty with which
they were complying, and how much more they submitted to it for their
own reputation's sake than for any kindness they felt to their old
friends. Mrs. Smith was herself a very haughty woman, and it maddened
her to be the object of condescensions so insolent and so reluctant.
Meantime, her daughter, young as she was, became the moral support of
her whole family, and the fountain from which they all drew consolation
and fortitude. She was confirmed in her religious tendencies by two
circumstances of her recent experience: one was that she, the sole
person of her family who courted religious consolations, was also the
sole person who had been able to maintain cheerfulness and uniform
spirits: the other was that, although it could not be truly said of
_all_ their worldly friends that they had forsaken them, yet of their
religious friends it could be said that not one had done so; and at
last, when for some time they had been so far reduced as not to have a
roof over their heads, by one of these religious friends it was that
they were furnished with every luxury as well as comfort of life,
and in a spirit of such sisterly kindness as made the obligation not
painful to the proudest amongst them.
It was in 1792 that the Piercefield family had been ruined; and in
1794, out of the wrecks which had been gathered together, Mr. Smith
(the father of the family) bought a commission in the army. For some
time the family continued to live in London, Bath, and other parts of
England; but, at length, Mr. Smith's regiment was ordered to the west
of Ireland; and the ladies of his family resolved to accompany him
to head-quarters. In passing through Wales (May, 1796) they paid a
visit to those sentimental anchorites of the last generation whom so
many of us must still remember--Miss Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor Butler
(a sister of Lord Ormond), whose hermitage stood near to Llangollen,
and, therefore, close to the usual Irish route, by way of Holyhead.
On landing in Ireland, they proceeded to a seat of Lord Kingston--a
kind-hearted, hospitable Irishman, who was on the old Piercefield list
of friends, and had never wavered in his attachment. Here they stayed
three weeks. Miss Smith renewed, on this occasion, her friendship
with Lady Isabella King, the daughter of Lord Kingston; and a little
incident connected with this visit gave her an opportunity afterwards
of showing her delicate sense of the sacred character which attaches
to gifts of friendship, and showing it by an ingenious device that
may be worth the notice of other young ladies in the same case. Lady
Isabella had given to Miss Smith a beautiful horse, called Brunette.
In process of time, when they had ceased to be in the neighbourhood of
any regimental stables, it became matter of necessity that Brunette
should be parted with. To have given the animal away, had that been
otherwise possible, might only have been delaying the sale for a short
time. After some demur, therefore, Miss Smith adopted this plan: she
sold Brunette, but applied the whole of the price, 120 guineas, to the
purchase of a splendid harp. The harp was christened Brunette, and was
religiously preserved to the end of her life. Now, Brunette, after all,
must have died in a few years; but, by translating her friend's gift
into another form, she not only connected the image of her distant
friend, and her sense of that friend's kindness, with a pleasure and a
useful purpose of her own, but she conferred on that gift a perpetuity
of existence.
At length came the day when the Smiths were to quit Kingston Lodge for
the quarters of the regiment. And now came the first rude trial of Mrs.
Smith's fortitude, as connected with points of mere decent comfort.
Hitherto, floating amongst the luxurious habitations of opulent
friends, she might have felt many privations as regarded splendour
and direct personal power, but never as regarded the primary elements
of comfort, warmth, cleanliness, convenient arrangements. But on this
journey, which was performed by all the party on horseback, it rained
incessantly. They reached their quarters drenched with wet, weary,
hungry, forlorn. The quartermaster had neglected to give any directions
for their suitable accommodation--no preparations whatever had been
made for receiving them; and, from the luxuries of Lord Kingston's
mansion, which habit had made so familiar to them all, the ladies found
themselves suddenly transferred to a miserable Irish cabin--dirty,
narrow, nearly quite unfurnished, and thoroughly disconsolate. Mrs.
Smith's proud spirit fairly gave way, and she burst out into a fit of
weeping. Upon this, her daughter Elizabeth (and Mrs. Smith herself it
was that told the anecdote, and often she told it, or told others of
the same character, at Lloyd's), in a gentle, soothing tone, began to
suggest the many blessings which lay before them in life, and some even
for this evening.
"Blessings, child!"--her mother impatiently interrupted her. "What
sort of blessings? Irish blessings!--county of Sligo blessings, I
fancy. Or, perhaps, you call this a blessing?" holding up a miserable
fragment of an iron rod, which had been left by way of poker, or rather
as a substitute for the whole assortment of fire-irons. The daughter
laughed; but she changed her wet dress expeditiously, assumed an apron;
and so various were her accomplishments that, in no long time, she
had gathered together a very comfortable dinner for her parents, and,
amongst other things, a currant tart, which she had herself made, in a
tenement absolutely unfurnished of every kitchen utensil.
In the autumn of this year (1796), they returned to England; and, after
various migrations through the next four years, amongst which was
another and longer visit to Ireland in 1800, they took up their abode
in the sequestered vale of Patterdale. Here they had a cottage upon
the banks of Ulleswater; the most gorgeous of the English lakes, from
the rich and ancient woods which possess a great part of its western
side; the sublimest, as respects its mountain accompaniments, except
only, perhaps, Wastdale; and, I believe, the largest; for, though only
nine miles in length, and, therefore, shorter by about two miles than
Windermere, it averages a greater breadth. Here, at this time, was
living Mr. Clarkson--that son of thunder, that Titan, who was in fact
the one great Atlas that bore up the Slave-Trade Abolition cause--now
resting from his mighty labours and nerve-shattering perils. So much
had _his_ nerves been shattered by all that he had gone through in
toil, in suffering, and in anxiety, that, for many years, I have heard
it said, he found himself unable to walk up stairs without tremulous
motions of his limbs. He was, perhaps, too iron a man, too much like
the _Talus_ of Spenser's "Faerie Queene,"[170] to appreciate so gentle
a creature as Miss Elizabeth Smith. A more suitable friend, and one
who thoroughly comprehended her, and expressed his admiration for her
in verse, was Thomas Wilkinson of Yanwath, a Quaker, a man of taste,
and of delicate sensibility. He wrote verses occasionally; and, though
feebly enough as respected poetic power, there were often such delicate
touches of feeling, such gleams of real tenderness, in some redeeming
part of each poem, that even Wordsworth admired and read them aloud
with pleasure. Indeed Wordsworth has addressed to him one copy of
verses, or rather to his spade, which was printed in the collection of
1807, and which Lord Jeffrey, after quoting one line, dismissed as too
dull for repetition.[171]
[170] The "mighty iron man" of that romance.--M.
[171] It is entitled "To the Spade of a Friend: composed while we
were labouring together in his pleasure ground"; and it begins--
"Spade! with which Wilkinson hath tilled his lands."
It was written in 1804.--M.
During this residence upon Ulleswater (winter of 1800) it was that
a very remarkable incident befell Miss Smith. I have heard it often
mentioned, and sometimes with a slight variety of circumstances; but I
here repeat it from an account drawn up by Miss Smith herself, who was
most literally exact and faithful to the truth in all reports of her
own personal experience. There is, on the western side of Ulleswater,
a fine cataract (or, in the language of the country, a _force_), known
by the name of Airey Force; and it is of importance enough, especially
in rainy seasons, to attract numerous visitors from among "the Lakers."
Thither, with some purpose of sketching, not the whole scene, but some
picturesque features of it, Miss Smith had gone, quite unaccompanied.
The road to it lies through Gobarrow Park; and it was usual, at that
time, to take a guide from the family of the Duke of Norfolk's keeper,
who lived in Lyulph's Tower--a solitary hunting lodge, built by his
Grace for the purposes of an annual visit which he used to pay to
his estates in that part of England. She, however, thinking herself
sufficiently familiar with the localities, had declined to encumber
her motions with such an attendant; consequently she was alone. For
half an hour or more, she continued to ascend: and, being a good
"cragswoman," from the experience she had won in Wales as well as in
northern England, she had reached an altitude much beyond what would
generally be thought corresponding to the time. The path had vanished
altogether; but she continued to pick out one for herself amongst the
stones, sometimes receding from the _force_, sometimes approaching it,
according to the openings allowed by the scattered masses of rock.
Pressing forward in this hurried way, and never looking back, all at
once she found herself in a little stony chamber, from which there
was no egress possible in advance. She stopped and looked up. There
was a frightful silence in the air. She felt a sudden palpitation
at her heart, and a panic from she knew not what. Turning, however,
hastily, she soon wound herself out of this aerial dungeon; but by
steps so rapid and agitated, that, at length, on looking round, she
found herself standing at the brink of a chasm, frightful to look
down. That way, it was clear enough, all retreat was impossible; but,
on turning round, retreat seemed in every direction alike even more
impossible. Down the chasm, at least, she might have leaped, though
with little or no chance of escaping with life; but on all other
quarters it seemed to her eye that at no price could she effect an
exit, since the rocks stood round her in a semi-circus, all lofty, all
perpendicular, all glazed with trickling water, or smooth as polished
porphyry. Yet how, then, had she reached the point? The same track,
if she could hit that track, would surely secure her escape. Round
and round she walked; gazed with almost despairing eyes; her breath
became thicker and thicker; for path she could not trace by which it
was possible for her to have entered. Finding herself grow more and
more confused, and every instant nearer to sinking into some fainting
fit or convulsion, she resolved to sit down and turn her thoughts
quietly into some less exciting channel. This she did; gradually
recovered some self-possession; and then suddenly a thought rose up to
her, that she was in the hands of God, and that He would not forsake
her. But immediately came a second and reproving thought--that this
confidence in God's protection might have been justified had she been
ascending the rocks upon any mission of duty; but what right could
_she_ have to any providential deliverance, who had been led thither
in a spirit of levity and carelessness? I am here giving _her_ view of
the case; for, as to myself, I fear greatly that, if _her_ steps were
erring ones, it is but seldom indeed that _nous autres_ can pretend
to be treading upon right paths. Once again she rose; and, supporting
herself upon a little sketching-stool that folded up into a stick, she
looked upwards, in the hope that some shepherd might, by chance, be
wandering in those aerial regions; but nothing could she see except
the tall birches growing at the brink of the highest summits, and the
clouds slowly sailing overhead. Suddenly, however, as she swept the
whole circuit of her station with her alarmed eye, she saw clearly,
about two hundred yards beyond her own position, a lady, in a white
muslin morning robe, such as were then universally worn by young ladies
until dinner-time. The lady beckoned with a gesture and in a manner
that, in a moment, gave her confidence to advance--_how_ she could
not guess; but, in some way that baffled all power to retrace it, she
found instantaneously the outlet which previously had escaped her. She
continued to advance towards the lady, whom now, in the same moment,
she found to be standing upon the other side of the _force_, and also
to be her own sister. How or why that young lady, whom she had left at
home earnestly occupied with her own studies, should have followed and
overtaken her filled her with perplexity. But this was no situation for
putting questions; for the guiding sister began to descend, and, by a
few simple gestures, just serving to indicate when Miss Elizabeth was
to approach and when to leave the brink of the torrent, she gradually
led her down to a platform of rock, from which the further descent was
safe and conspicuous. There Miss Smith paused, in order to take breath
from her panic, as well as to exchange greetings and questions with her
sister. But sister there was none. All trace of her had vanished; and,
when, in two hours after, she reached her home, Miss Smith found her
sister in the same situation and employment in which she had left her;
and the whole family assured her that she had never stirred from the
house.
In 1801, I believe it was that the family removed from Patterdale to
Coniston. Certainly they were settled there in the spring of 1802; for,
in the May of that spring, Miss Elizabeth Hamilton--a writer now very
much forgotten, or remembered only by her "Cottagers of Glenburnie,"
but then a person of mark and authority in the literary circles of
Edinburgh[172]--paid a visit to the Lakes, and stayed there for many
months, together with her married sister, Mrs. Blake; and both ladies
cultivated the friendship of the Smiths. Miss Hamilton was captivated
with the family; and, of the sisters in particular, she speaks as of
persons that, "in the days of paganism would have been worshipped as
beings of a superior order, so elegantly graceful do they appear, when,
with easy motion, they guide their light boat over the waves." And of
Miss Elizabeth, separately, she says, on another occasion,--"I never
before saw so much of Miss Smith; and, in the three days she spent
with us, the admiration which I had always felt for her extraordinary
talents, and as extraordinary virtues, was hourly augmented. She is,
indeed, a most charming creature; and, if one could inoculate her with
a little of the Scotch frankness, I think she would be one of the most
perfect of human beings."
[172] Elizabeth Hamilton (1758-1816), though now remembered
chiefly by her Scottish story, _The Cottagers of Glenburnie_,
which appeared in 1808, was the author of many other writings.--M.
About four years had been delightfully passed in Coniston. In the
summer of 1805 Miss Smith laid the foundation of her fatal illness in
the following way, according to her own account of the case to an old
servant, a very short time before she died:--"One very hot evening,
in July, I took a book, and walked about two miles from home, when I
seated myself on a stone beside the lake. Being much engaged by a poem
I was reading, I did not perceive that the sun was gone down, and was
succeeded by a very heavy dew, till, in a moment, I felt struck on
the chest as if with a sharp knife. I returned home, but said nothing
of the pain. The next day being also very hot, and every one busy in
the hay-field, I thought I would take a rake, and work very hard to
produce perspiration, in the hope that it might remove the pain; but
it did not." From that time, a bad cough, with occasional loss of
voice, gave reason to suspect some organic injury of the lungs. Late
in the autumn of this year (1805) Miss Smith accompanied her mother
and her two younger sisters to Bristol, Bath, and other places in the
south, on visits to various friends. Her health went through various
fluctuations until May of the following year, when she was advised to
try Matlock. Here, after spending three weeks, she grew worse; and,
as there was no place which she liked so well as the Lakes, it was
resolved to turn homewards. About the beginning of June, she and her
mother returned alone to Coniston: one of her sisters was now married;
her three brothers were in the army or navy; and her father almost
constantly with his regiment. Through the next two months she faded
quietly away, sitting always in a tent,[173] that had been pitched upon
the lawn, and which remained open continually to receive the fanning
of the intermitting airs upon the lake, as well as to admit the bold
mountain scenery to the north. She lived nearly through the first week
of August, dying on the morning of August 7; and the circumstances of
her last night are thus recorded by her mother:--"At nine she went
to bed. I resolved to quit her no more, and went to prepare for the
night. Turpin [Miss Smith's maid] came to say that Elizabeth entreated
I would not stay in her room. I replied--'On that one subject I am
resolved; no power on earth shall keep me from her; so, go to bed
yourself.' Accordingly, I returned to her room; and, at ten, gave her
the usual dose of laudanum. After a little time, she fell into a doze,
and, I thought, slept till one. She was uneasy and restless, but never
complained; and, on my wiping the cold sweat off her face, and bathing
it with camphorated vinegar, which I did very often in the course of
the night, she thanked me, smiled, and said--'That is the greatest
comfort I have.' She slept again for a short time; and, at half past
four, asked for some chicken broth, which she took perfectly well.
On being told the hour, she said, '_How long this night is!_' She
continued very uneasy; and, in half an hour after, on my inquiring if
I could move the pillow, or do anything to relieve her, she replied,
'There is nothing for it but quiet.' At six, she said, 'I must get up
and have some mint tea.' I then called for Turpin, and felt my angel's
pulse: it was fluttering; and by that I knew I should soon lose her.
She took the tea well. Turpin began to put on her clothes, and was
proceeding to dress her, when she laid her head upon the faithful
creature's shoulder, became convulsed in the face, spoke not, looked
not, and in ten minutes expired."
[173] And, in allusion to this circumstance, the house afterwards
raised on a neighbouring spot, at this time suggested by Miss
Smith, received the name of Tent Lodge.
She was buried in Hawkshead churchyard, where a small tablet of white
marble is raised to her memory, on which there is the scantiest record
that, for a person so eminently accomplished, I have ever met with.
After mentioning her birth and age (twenty-nine), it closes thus:--"She
possessed great talents, exalted virtues, and humble piety." Anything
so unsatisfactory or so commonplace I have rarely known. As much, or
more, is often said of the most insipid people; whereas Miss Smith
was really a most extraordinary person. I have conversed with Mrs.
Hannah More often about her; and I never failed to draw forth some
fresh anecdote illustrating the vast extent of her knowledge, the
simplicity of her character, the gentleness of her manners, and her
unaffected humility. She passed, it is true, almost inaudibly through
life; and the stir which was made after her death soon subsided. But
the reason was that she wrote but little! Had it been possible for the
world to measure her by her powers, rather than her performances, she
would have been placed, perhaps, in the estimate of posterity, at the
head of learned women; whilst her sweet and feminine character would
have rescued her from all shadow and suspicion of that reproach which
too often settles upon the learned character when supported by female
aspirants.
* * * * *
The family of Tent Lodge continued to reside at Coniston for many
years; and they were connected with the Lake literary clan chiefly
through the Lloyds and those who visited the Lloyds; for it is another
and striking proof of the slight hold which Wordsworth, &c., had upon
the public esteem in those days, that even Miss Smith, with all her
excessive diffidence in judging of books and authors, never seems,
by any one of her letters, to have felt the least interest about
Wordsworth or Coleridge; nor did Miss Hamilton, with all her _esprit
de corps_ and acquired interest in everything at all bearing upon
literature, ever mention them in those of her letters which belong to
the period of her Lake visit in 1802; nor, for the six or seven months
which she passed in that country, and within a short morning ride of
Grasmere, did she ever think it worth her while to seek an introduction
to any one of the resident authors.
Yet this could not be altogether from ignorance that such people
existed; for Thomas Wilkinson, the intimate and admiring friend of Miss
Smith, was also the friend of Wordsworth; and, for some reason that I
never could fathom, he was a sort of pet with Wordsworth. Professor
Wilson and myself were never honoured with one line, one allusion from
his pen; but many a person of particular feebleness has received that
honour. Amongst these I may rank Thomas Wilkinson. Not that I wish
to speak contemptuously of him; he was a Quaker, of elegant habits,
rustic simplicity, and with tastes, as Wordsworth affirms, "too pure
to be refined."[174] His cottage was seated not far from the great
castle of the Lowthers; and, either from mere whim--as sometimes such
whims do possess great ladies--whims, I mean, for drawing about them
odd-looking, old-world people, as _piquant_ contrasts to the fine
gentlemen of their own society--or because they did really feel a
homely dignity in the plain-speaking "Friend," and liked, for a frolic,
to be _thou'd_ and _thee'd_--on some motive or other, at any rate, they
introduced themselves to Mr. Wilkinson's cottage; and I believe that
the connexion was afterwards improved by the use they found for his
services in forming walks through the woods of Lowther, and leading
them in such a circuit as to take advantage of all the most picturesque
stations. As a poet, I presume that Mr. Wilkinson could hardly have
recommended himself to the notice of ladies who would naturally have
modelled their tastes upon the favourites of the age. A poet, however,
in a gentle, unassuming way, he was; and he, therefore, is to be added
to the _corps litteraire_ of the Lakes, and Yanwath to be put down as
the advanced post of that _corps_ to the north.
[174] Addressing Wilkinson's spade in the poem mentioned at p. 413
_ante_, Wordsworth says--
"Rare master has it been thy lot to know;
Long hast thou served a man to reason true;
Whose life combines the best of high and low,
The labouring many and the resting few."--M.
* * * * *
Two families there still remain which I am tempted to gather into my
group of Lake society--notwithstanding it is true that the two most
interesting members of the first had died a little before the period at
which my sketch commences; and the second, though highly intellectual
in the person of that particular member whom I have chiefly to
commemorate, was not, properly speaking, literary, and, moreover,
belongs to a later period of my own Westmoreland experience--being, at
the time of my settlement in Grasmere, a girl at a boarding-school. The
first was the family of the Sympsons, whom Mr. Wordsworth has spoken
of, with deep interest, more than once. The eldest son, a clergyman,
and, like Wordsworth, an _alumnus_ of Hawkshead school, wrote, amongst
other poems, "The Vision of Alfred." Of these poems Wordsworth says
that they "are little known; but they contain passages of splendid
description; and the versification of his '_Vision_' is harmonious
and animated." This is much for Wordsworth to say; and he does him
even the honour of quoting the following illustrative simile from
his description of the sylphs in motion (which sylphs constitute the
machinery of his poem); and, probably, the reader will be of opinion
that this passage justifies the praise of Wordsworth. It is founded, as
he will see, on the splendid scenery of the heavens in Polar latitudes,
as seen by reflection in polished ice at midnight.
"Less varying hues beneath the Pole adorn
The streamy glories of the Boreal morn,
That, waving to and fro, their radiance shed
On Bothnia's gulf, with glassy ice o'erspread;
Where the lone native, as he homeward glides
On polished sandals o'er the imprisoned tides,
Sees, at a glance, above him and below,
Two rival heavens with equal splendour glow:
Stars, moons, and meteors ray oppose to ray;
And solemn midnight pours the blaze of day."
"He was a man," says Wordsworth, in conclusion, "of ardent feeling; and
his facilities of mind, particularly his memory, were extraordinary."
Brief notices of his life ought to find a place in the history of
Westmoreland.
But it was the father of this Joseph Sympson who gave its chief
interest to the family. Him Wordsworth has described, at the same time
sketching his history, with a fulness and a circumstantiality beyond
what he has conceded to any other of the real personages in "The
Excursion." "A priest he was by function"; but a priest of that class
which is now annually growing nearer to extinction among us, not being
supported by any sympathies in this age.
"His course,
From his youth up, and high as manhood's noon,
Had been irregular--I might say wild;
By books unsteadied, by his pastoral care
Too little checked. An active, ardent mind;
A fancy pregnant with resource and scheme
To cheat the sadness of a rainy day;
Hands apt for all ingenious arts and games;
A generous spirit, and a body strong
To cope with stoutest champions of the bowl;
Had earned for him sure welcome, and the rights
Of a priz'd visitant, in the jolly hall
Of country squire; or at the statelier board
Of duke or earl, from scenes of courtly pomp
Withdrawn, to while away the summer hours
In condescension amongst rural guests.
With these high comrades he had revelled long,
By hopes of coming patronage beguiled,
Till the heart sickened."
Slowly, however, and indignantly his eyes opened fully to the windy
treachery of all the promises held out to him; and, at length, for mere
bread, he accepted, from an "unthought-of patron," a most "secluded
chapelry" in Cumberland. This was "the little, lowly house of prayer"
of Wythburn, elsewhere celebrated by Wordsworth; and, for its own
sake, interesting to all travellers, both for its deep privacy, and
for the excessive humility of its external pretensions, whether as to
size or ornament. Were it not for its twin sister at Buttermere, it
would be the very smallest place of worship in all England; and it
looks even smaller than it is, from its position; for it stands at the
base of the mighty Helvellyn, close to the high-road between Ambleside
and Keswick, and within speaking distance of the upper lake--(for
Wythburn Water, though usually passed by the traveller under the
impression of absolute unity in its waters, owing to the interposition
of a rocky screen, is, in fact, composed of two separate lakes). To
this miniature and most secluded congregation of shepherds did the
once dazzling parson officiate as pastor; and it seems to amplify the
impression already given of his versatility, that he became a diligent
and most fatherly, though not peculiarly devout, teacher and friend.
The temper, however, of the northern Dalesmen, is not constitutionally
turned to religion; consequently that part of his defects did him
no special injury, when compensated (as, in the judgment of these
Dalesmen, it _was_ compensated) by ready and active kindness, charity
the most diffusive, and patriarchal hospitality. The living, as I have
said, was in Wythburn; but there was no parsonage, and no house in
this poor dale which was disposable for that purpose. So Mr. Sympson
crossed the marches of the sister counties, which to him were about
equidistant from his chapel and his house, into Grasmere, on the
Westmoreland side. There he occupied a cottage by the roadside,--a
situation which, doubtless, gratified at once his social and his
hospitable propensities,--and, at length, from age, as well as from
paternal character and station, came to be regarded as the patriarch of
the vale. Before I mention the afflictions which fell upon his latter
end, and by way of picturesque contrast to his closing scene, let me
have permission to cite Wordsworth's sketch (taken from his own boyish
remembrance of the case) describing the first gipsy-like entrance of
the brilliant parson and his household into Grasmere--so equally out of
harmony with the decorums of his sacred character and the splendours of
his past life:--
"Rough and forbidding were the choicest roads
By which our northern wilds could then be crossed;
And into most of these secluded vales
Was no access for wain, heavy or light.
So at his dwelling-place the priest arrived
With store of household goods, in panniers slung
On sturdy horses graced with jingling bells,
And on the back of more ignoble beast,
That, with like burthen of effects most prized
Or easiest carried, closed the motley train.
Young was I then, a schoolboy of eight years:
But still methinks I see them as they passed
In order, drawing toward their wished-for home.
Rocked by the motion of a trusty ass
Two ruddy children hung, a well-poised freight,
Each in his basket nodding drowsily,
Their bonnets, I remember, wreathed with flowers,
Which told it was the pleasant month of June;
And close behind the comely matron rode,
A woman of soft speech and gracious smile,
And with a lady's mien.--From far they came,
Even from Northumbrian hills: yet theirs had been
A merry journey, rich in pastime, cheered
By music, pranks, and laughter-stirring jest;
And freak put on, and arch word dropped--to swell
That cloud of fancy and uncouth surmise
Which gathered round the slowly moving train.
'Whence do they come? and with what errand charged?
Belong they to the fortune-telling tribe
Who pitch their tents under the greenwood tree?
Or Strollers are they, furnished to enact
Fair Rosamond and the Children of the Wood?
When the next village hears the show announced
By blast of trumpet?' Plenteous was the growth
Of such conjectures--overheard, or seen
On many a staring countenance portrayed
Of boor or burgher, as they marched along.
And more than once their steadiness of face
Was put to proof, and exercise supplied
To their inventive humour, by stern looks,
And questions in authoritative tone,
By some staid guardian of the public peace,
Checking the sober horse on which he rode,
In his suspicious wisdom; oftener still
By notice indirect or blunt demand
From traveller halting in his own despite,
A simple curiosity to ease:
Of which adventures, that beguiled and cheered
Their grave migration, the good pair would tell
With undiminished glee in hoary age."
Meantime the lady of the house embellished it with feminine skill; and
the homely pastor--for such he had now become--not having any great
weight of spiritual duties, busied himself in rural labours and rural
sports. But was his mind, though bending submissively to his lot,
changed in conformity to his task? No:
"For he still
Retained a flashing eye, a burning palm,
A stirring foot, a head which beat at nights
Upon its pillow with a thousand schemes.
Few likings had he dropped, few pleasures lost;
Generous and charitable, prompt to serve;
And still his harsher passions kept their hold--
Anger and indignation. Still he loved
The sound of titled names, and talked in glee
Of long past banquetings with high-born friends:
Then, from those lulling fits of vain delight
Uproused by recollected injury, railed
At their false ways disdainfully,--and oft
In bitterness, and with a threatening eye
Of fire, incensed beneath its hoary brow.
Those transports, with staid looks of pure good-will,
And with soft smile his consort would reprove.
She, far behind him in the race of years,
Yet keeping her first mildness, was advanced
Far nearer, in the habit of her soul,
To that still region whither all are bound."
Such was the tenor of their lives; such the separate character of
their manners and dispositions; and, with unusual quietness of course,
both were sailing placidly to their final haven. Death had not visited
their happy mansion through a space of forty years--"sparing both old
and young in that abode." But calms so deep are ominous--immunities
so profound are terrific. Suddenly the signal was given, and all lay
desolate.
"Not twice had fallen
On those high peaks the first autumnal snow,
Before the greedy visiting was closed,
And the long-privileged house left empty; swept
As by a plague. Yet no rapacious plague
Had been among them; all was gentle death,
One after one with intervals of peace."
The aged pastor's wife, his son, one of his daughters, and "a little
smiling grandson," all had gone within a brief series of days. These
composed the entire household in Grasmere (the others having dispersed
or married away); and all were gone but himself, by very many years the
oldest of the whole: he still survived. And the whole valley, nay, all
the valleys round about, speculated with a tender interest upon what
course the desolate old man would take for his support.
"All gone, all vanished! he, deprived and bare,
How will he face the remnant of his life?
What will become of him? we said, and mused
In sad conjectures.--Shall we meet him now,
Haunting with rod and line the craggy brooks?
Or shall we overhear him, as we pass,
Striving to entertain the lonely hours
With music? (for he had not ceased to touch
The harp or viol, which himself had framed
For their sweet purposes, with perfect skill).
What titles will he keep? Will he remain
Musician, gardener, builder, mechanist,
A planter, and a rearer from the seed?"
Yes; he persevered in all his pursuits; intermitted none of them;
weathered a winter in solitude; once more beheld the glories of a
spring, and the resurrection of the flowers upon the graves of his
beloved; held out even through the depths of summer into the cheerful
season of haymaking (a season much later in Westmoreland than in the
south); took his rank, as heretofore, amongst the haymakers; sat
down at noon for a little rest to his aged limbs, and found even a
deeper rest than he was expecting; for, in a moment of time, without a
warning, without a struggle, and without a groan, he did indeed rest
from his labours for ever. He,
"With his cheerful throng
Of open projects, and his inward hoard
Of unsunned griefs, too many and too keen,
Was overcome by unexpected sleep
In one blest moment. Like a shadow thrown,
Softly and lightly, from a passing cloud,
Death fell upon him, while reclined he lay
For noontide solace on the summer grass--
The warm lap of his mother earth; and so,
Their lenient term of separation passed,
That family,
By yet a higher privilege, once more
Were gathered to each other."
Two surviving members of the family, a son and a daughter, I knew
intimately. Both have been long dead; but the children of the
daughter--grandsons, therefore, to the patriarch here recorded--are
living prosperously, and do honour to the interesting family they
represent.
The other family were, if less _generally_ interesting by their
characters or accomplishments, much more so by the circumstances
of their position; and that member of the family with whom accident
and neighbourhood had brought me especially connected was, in her
intellectual capacity, probably superior to most of those whom I have
had occasion to record. Had no misfortunes settled upon her life
prematurely, and with the benefit of a little judicious guidance to her
studies, I am of opinion that she would have been a most distinguished
person. Her situation, when I came to know her, was one of touching
interest. I will state the circumstances:--She was the sole and
illegitimate daughter of a country gentleman, and was a favourite with
her father, as she well deserved to be, in a degree so excessive--so
nearly idolatrous--that I never heard illustrations of it mentioned
but that secretly I trembled for the endurance of so perilous a love
under the common accidents of life, and still more under the unusual
difficulties and snares of her peculiar situation. Her father was,
by birth, breeding, and property, a Leicestershire farmer; not,
perhaps, what you would strictly call a gentleman, for he affected no
refinements of manner, but rather courted the exterior of a bluff,
careless yeoman. Still he was of that class whom all people, even
then, on his letters, addressed as _esquire_: he had an ample income,
and was surrounded with all the luxuries of modern life. In early
life--and that was the sole palliation of his guilt--(and yet, again,
in another view, aggravated it)--he had allowed himself to violate his
own conscience in a way which, from the hour of his error, never ceased
to pursue him with remorse, and which was, in fact, its own avenger.
Mr. K---- was a favourite specimen of English yeomanly beauty: a fine
athletic figure; and with features handsome, well moulded, frank and
generous in their expression, and in a striking degree manly. In fact,
he might have sat for Robin Hood. It happened that a young lady of his
own neighbourhood, somewhere near Mount Soril I think, fell desperately
in love with him. Oh! blindness of the human heart! how deeply did
she come to rue the day when she first turned her thoughts to him! At
first, however, her case seemed a hopeless one; for she herself was
remarkably plain, and Mr. K---- was profoundly in love with the very
handsome daughter of a neighbouring farmer. One advantage, however,
there was on the side of this plain girl: she was rich; and part of
her wealth, or of her expectations, lay in landed property that would
effect a very tempting _arrondissement_ of an estate belonging to Mr.
K----. Through what course the affair travelled, I never heard more
particularly than that Mr. K---- was besieged and worried out of his
steady mind by the solicitations of aunts and other relations, who
had all adopted the cause of the heiress. But what finally availed
to extort a reluctant consent from him was the representation made
by the young lady's family, and backed by medical men, that she was
seriously in danger of dying unless Mr. K---- would make her his wife.
He was no coxcomb; but, when he heard all his own female relations
calling him a murderer, and taxing him with having, at times, given
some encouragement to the unhappy lovesick girl, in an evil hour he
agreed to give up his own sweetheart and marry her. He did so. But
no sooner was this fatal step taken than it was repented. His love
returned in bitter excess for the girl whom he had forsaken, and
with frantic remorse. This girl, at length, by the mere force of his
grief, he actually persuaded to live with him as his wife; and when,
in spite of all concealments, the fact began to transpire, and the
angry wife, in order to break off the connexion, obtained his consent
to their quitting Leicestershire altogether and transferring their
whole establishment to the Lakes, Mr. K---- evaded the whole object of
this manoeuvre by secretly contriving to bring her rival also into
Westmoreland. Her, however, he placed in another vale; and, for some
years, it is pretty certain that Mrs. K---- never suspected the fact.
Some said that it was her pride which would not allow her to seem
conscious of so great an affront to herself; others, better skilled in
deciphering the meaning of manners, steadfastly affirmed that she was
in happy ignorance of an arrangement known to all the country beside.
Years passed on; and the situation of the poor wife became more and
more gloomy. During those years, she brought her husband no children;
on the other hand, her hated rival _had_: Mr. K---- saw growing up
about his table two children, a son, and then a daughter, who, in
their childhood, must have been beautiful creatures; for the son, when
I knew him in after life, though bloated and disfigured a good deal
by intemperance, was still a very fine young man; more athletic even
than his father; and presenting his father's handsome English yeoman's
face, exalted by a Roman dignity in some of the features. The daughter
was of the same cast of person; tall, and Roman also in the style of
her face. In fact, the brother and the sister would have offered a
fine impersonation of Coriolanus and Valeria. This Roman bias of the
features a little affected the feminine loveliness of the daughter's
appearance. But still, as the impression was not very decided, she
would have been pronounced anywhere a very captivating young woman.
These were the two crowns of Mr. K----'s felicity, that for seventeen
or eighteen years made the very glory of his life. But Nemesis was on
his steps; and one of these very children she framed the scourge which
made the day of his death a happy deliverance, for which he had long
hungered and thirsted. But I anticipate.
About the time when I came to reside in Grasmere, some little affair of
local business one night drew Wordsworth up to Mr. K----'s house. It
was called, and with great propriety, from the multitude of holly trees
that still survived from ancient days, _The Hollens_; which pretty
local name Mrs. K----, in her general spirit of vulgar sentimentality,
had changed to _Holly Grove_. The place, spite of its slipshod novelish
name, which might have led one to expect a corresponding style of
tinsel finery, and a display of childish purposes, about its furniture
or its arrangements, was really simple and unpretending; whilst its
situation was, in itself, a sufficient ground of interest; for it stood
on a little terrace running like an artificial gallery or corridor
along the final, and all but perpendicular, descent of the mighty
Fairfield.[175] It seemed as if it must require iron bolts to pin
it to the rock which rose so high, and, apparently, so close behind.
Not until you reached the little esplanade upon which the modest
mansion stood, were you aware of a little area interposed between
the rear of the house and the rock, just sufficient for ordinary
domestic offices. The house was otherwise interesting to myself, from
recalling one in which I had passed part of my infancy. As in that, you
entered by a rustic hall, fitted up so as to make a beautiful little
breakfasting-room: the distribution of the passages was pretty nearly
the same; and there were other resemblances.
[175] "_Mighty Fairfield_":
"And Mighty Fairfield, with her chime
Of echoes, still was keeping time."--WORDSWORTH'S "WAGGONER."
I have retained the English name of Fairfield; but, when I was studying
Danish, I stumbled upon the true meaning of the name, unlocked by that
language, and reciprocally (as one amongst other instances which I met
at the very threshold of my studies) unlocking the fact that Danish
(or Icelandic rather) is the master-key to the local names and dialect
of Westmoreland. _Faar_ is a sheep: _fald_ a hill. But are not all the
hills sheep hills? No; Fairfield only, amongst all its neighbours, has
large, smooth, pastoral savannas, to which the sheep resort when all
the rocky or barren neighbours are left desolate.
Mr. K---- received us with civility and hospitality--checked, however,
and embarrassed, by a very evident reserve. The reason of this was,
partly, that he distrusted the feelings towards himself of two
scholars; but more, perhaps, that he had something beyond this general
jealousy for distrusting Wordsworth. He had been a very extensive
planter of larches, which were then recently introduced into the Lake
country, and were, in every direction, displacing the native forest
scenery, and dismally disfiguring this most lovely region; and this
effect was necessarily in its worst excess during the infancy of the
larch plantations; both because they took the formal arrangement of
nursery grounds, until extensive thinnings, as well as storms, had
begun to break this hideous stiffness in the lines and angles, and
also because the larch is a mean tree, both in form and colouring
(having a bright gosling glare in spring, a wet blanket hue in
autumn) as long as it continues a young tree. Not until it has seen
forty or fifty winters does it begin to toss its boughs about with
a wild Alpine grace. Wordsworth, for many years, had systematically
abused the larches and the larch planters; and there went about
the country a pleasant anecdote, in connexion with this well-known
habit of his, which I have often heard repeated by the woodmen--viz.
that, one day, when he believed himself to be quite alone--but was,
in fact, surveyed coolly, during the whole process of his passions,
by a reposing band of labourers in the shade, and at their noontide
meal--Wordsworth, on finding a whole cluster of birch-trees grubbed
up, and preparations making for the installation of larches in their
place, was seen advancing to the spot with gathering wrath in his eyes;
next he was heard pouring out an interrupted litany of comminations and
maledictions; and, finally, as his eye rested upon the four or five
larches which were already beginning to "dress the line" of the new
battalion, he seized his own hat in a transport of fury, and launched
it against the odious intruders. Mr. K---- had, doubtless, heard of
Wordsworth's frankness upon this theme, and knew himself to be, as
respected Grasmere, the sole offender. In another way, also, he had
earned a few random shots from Wordsworth's wrath--viz. as the erector
of a huge unsightly barn, built solely for convenience, and so far
violating all the modesty of rustic proportions that it was really an
eyesore in the valley. These considerations, and others besides, made
him reserved; but he felt the silent appeal to his _lares_ from the
strangers' presence, and was even kind in his courtesies. Suddenly,
Mrs. K---- entered the room: instantly his smile died away: he did not
even mention her name. Wordsworth, however, she knew slightly; and to
me she introduced herself. Mr. K---- seemed almost impatient when I
rose and presented her with my chair. Anything that detained her in the
room for a needless moment seemed to him a nuisance. She, on the other
hand--what was _her_ behaviour? I had been told that she worshipped
the very ground on which he trod; and so, indeed, it appeared. This
adoring love might, under other circumstances, have been beautiful to
contemplate; but here it impressed unmixed disgust. Imagine a woman of
very homely features, and farther disfigured by a scorbutic eruption,
fixing a tender gaze upon a burly man of forty, who showed, by every
word, look, gesture, movement, that he disdained her. In fact, nothing
could be more injudicious than her deportment towards him. Everybody
must feel that a man who hates any person hates that person the more
for troubling him with expressions of love; or, at least, it adds to
hatred the sting of disgust. That was the fixed language of Mr. K----'s
manner, in relation to his wife. He was not a man to be pleased with
foolish fondling endearments from any woman before strangers; but from
her! Faugh! he said internally, at every instant. His very eyes he
averted from her: not once did he look at her, though forced into the
odious necessity of speaking to her several times; and, at length,
when she seemed disposed to construe our presence as a sort of brief
privilege to her own, he adopted that same artifice for ridding himself
of her detested company which has sometimes done seasonable service to
a fine gentleman when called upon by ladies for the explanation of a
Greek word. He hinted to her, pretty broadly, that the subject of our
conversation was not altogether proper for female ears,--very much to
the astonishment of Wordsworth and myself.