CHANGES AND EVENTS, 1803-1843.
In October, 1805, Southey started with his friend Elmsley for a short
tour in Scotland. On their way northward they stopped three days at
Ashestiel. There, in a small house, rising amid its old-fashioned garden,
with pastoral hills all around, and the Tweed winding at the meadow’s
end, lived Walter Scott. It was the year in which old Border song had
waked up, with ampler echoings, in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_, and
Scott was already famous. Earlier in the year he had visited Grasmere,
and had stood upon the summit of Helvellyn, with Wordsworth and Davy by
his side. The three October days, with their still, misty brightness,
went by in full enjoyment. Southey had brought with him a manuscript
containing sundry metrical romances of the fifteenth century, on which
his host pored, as far as courtesy and the hours allowed, with much
delight; and the guests saw Melrose, that old romance in stone so dear
to Scott, went salmon-spearing on the Tweed, dined on a hare snapped
up before their eyes by Percy and Douglas, and visited Yarrow. From
Ashestiel they proceeded to Edinburgh. Southey looked coldly on the grey
metropolis; its new city seemed a kind of Puritan Bath, which worshipped
propriety instead of pleasure; but the old town, seen amid the slant
light of a wild red sunset, impressed him much, its vast irregular
outline of roofs and chimneys rising against tumultuous clouds like the
dismantled fragments of a giant’s palace. Southey was prepared to find
himself and his friends of the Lakes persons of higher stature than
the Scotch _literatuli_. Before accepting an invitation to meet him at
supper, Jeffrey politely forwarded the proof of an unpublished review
of _Madoc_; if the poet preferred that his reviewer should not present
himself, Mr. Jeffrey would deny himself the pleasure of Mr. Southey’s
acquaintance. Southey was not to be daunted, and, as he tells it himself,
felt nothing but good-humour on beholding a bright-faced homunculus of
five-foot-one, the centre of an attentive circle, ëënunciating with
North-British ëëlocution his doctrines on taste. The lively little
gentleman, who thought to crush _The Excursion_—he could as easily crush
Skiddaw, said Southey—received from the author of _Madoc_ a courtesy _de
haut en bas_ intended to bring home to his consciousness the fact that he
was—but five-foot-one. The bland lips of the gods who looked down on Auld
Reekie that evening smiled at the magnanimity alike of poet and critic.
Two years later (1807), differences having arisen between the proprietors
and the editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, it was in contemplation to
alter the management, and Longman wrote requesting Southey to review
him two or three articles “in his best manner.” Southey did not keep
firkins of criticism of first and second brand, but he was not unwilling
to receive ten guineas a sheet instead of seven pounds. When, however,
six months later, Scott urged his friend to contribute, Judge Jeffrey
still sat on the bench of the _Edinburgh Review_, hanging, drawing, and
quartering luckless poets with undiminished vivacity. It was of no use
for Scott to assure Southey that the homunculus, notwithstanding his
flippant attacks on _Madoc_ and _Thalaba_, had the most sincere respect
for their author and his talents. Setting all personal feelings aside, an
irreconcilable difference, Southey declared, between Jeffrey and himself
upon every great principle of taste, morality, and policy, occasioned a
difficulty which could not be removed. Within less than twelve months
Scott, alienated by the deepening Whiggery of the _Review_, and by more
personal causes, had ceased to contribute, and opposite his name in
the list of subscribers Constable had written, with indignant notes of
exclamation, “_Stopt!!!_” John Murray, the young bookseller in Fleet
Street, had been to Ashestiel; in “dern privacie” a bold complot was
laid; why should the Edinburgh clique carry it before them? The spirit of
England was still sound, and would respond to loyalty, patriotism, the
good traditions of Church and State, the temper of gentlemen, courage,
scholarship; Gifford, of the Anti-Jacobin, had surely a sturdier arm than
Jeffrey; George Ellis would remember his swashing-blow; there were the
Roses, and Matthias, and Heber; a rival _Review_ should see the light,
and that speedily; “a good plot, good friends, and full of expectation—an
excellent plot, very good friends.”
Southey was invited to write on Spanish affairs for the first number of
the _Quarterly_ (February, 1809). His political opinions had undergone
a considerable alteration since the days of Pantisocracy and _Joan of
Arc_. The Reign of Terror had not caused a violent reaction against
the doctrine of a Republic, nor did he soon cease to sympathize with
France. But his hopes were dashed; it was plain that “the millennium
would not come this bout.” Man as he is appeared more greedy, ignorant,
and dangerous than he had appeared before, though man as he may be was
still a being composed of knowledge, virtue, and love. The ideal republic
receded into the dimness of unborn time; no doubt—so Southey maintained
to the end—a republic is the best form of government in itself, as a
sundial is simpler and surer than a time-piece; but the sun of reason
does not always shine, and therefore complicated systems of government,
containing checks and counter-checks, are needful in old countries for
the present; better systems are no doubt conceivable—for better men.
“Mr. Southey’s mind,” wrote Hazlitt, “is essentially sanguine, even to
overweeningness. It is prophetic of good; it cordially embraces it; it
casts a longing, lingering look after it, even when it is gone for ever.
He cannot bear to give up the thought of happiness, his confidence in his
fellow-men, when all else despair. It is the very element where he must
live or have no life at all.’” This is true; we sacrifice too much to
prudence—Southey said, when not far from sixty—and in fear of incurring
the danger or the reproach of enthusiasm, too often we stifle the holiest
impulses of the understanding and the heart. Still, at sixty he believed
in a state of society actually to be realized as superior to English
society in the nineteenth century, as that itself is superior to the
condition of the tattooed Britons, or of the Northern Pirates from whom
we have descended. But the error of supposing such a state of society
too near, of fancying that there is a short road to it, seemed to him a
pernicious error, seducing the young and generous into an alliance with
whatever is flagitious and detestable.
It was not until the Peace of Amiens (1802) that Southey was restored
in feeling to his own country. From that hour the new departure in his
politics may be said to date. The honour of England became as dear to
him as to her most patriotic son; and in the man who had subjugated
the Swiss Republic, and thrown into a dungeon the champion of Negro
independence, and slaughtered his prisoners at Jaffa, he indignantly
refused to recognize the representative of the generous principles of
1789. To him, as to Wordsworth, the very life of virtue in mankind seemed
to dwell in the struggle against the military despotism which threatened
to overwhelm the whole civilized world. Whatever went along with a
spirited war-policy Southey could accept. It appeared to himself that his
views and hopes had changed precisely because the heart and soul of his
wishes had continued the same. To remove the obstacles which retard the
improvement of mankind was the one object to which, first and last, he
gave his most earnest vows. “This has been the pole-star of my course;
the needle has shifted according to the movements of the state vessel
wherein I am embarked, but the direction to which it points has always
been the same. I did not fall into the error of those who, having been
the friends of France when they imagined that the cause of liberty was
implicated in her success, transferred their attachment from the Republic
to the Military Tyranny in which it ended, and regarded with complacency
the progress of oppression because France was the oppressor. ‘They had
turned their face toward the East in the morning to worship the rising
sun, and in the evening they were looking eastward, obstinately affirming
that still the sun was there.’ I, on the contrary altered my position as
the world went round.”[9]
Wordsworth has described in memorable words the sudden exaltation of
the spirit of resistance to Napoleon, its change from the temper of
fortitude to enthusiasm, animated by hope, when the Spanish people
rose against their oppressors. “From that moment,” he says, “this
corruptible put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality.”
Southey had learned to love the people of the Peninsula; he had almost
naturalized himself among them by his studies of Spanish and Portuguese
history and literature. Now there was in him a new birth of passion at
a period of life when ordinarily the crust of custom begins to encase
our free spirits. All his moral ardour flowed in the same current with
his political enthusiasm; in this war there was as direct a contest
between the principles of evil and good as the elder Persians or the
Manicheans imagined in their fables. “Since the stirring day of the
French Revolution,” he writes to John May, “I have never felt half so
much excitement in political events as the present state of Spain has
given me.” Little as he liked to leave home, if the Spaniards would
bury their crown and sceptre, he would gird up his loins and assist at
the ceremony, devout as ever pilgrim at Compostella. A federal republic
which should unite the Peninsula, and allow the internal governments to
remain distinct, was what Southey ardently desired. When news came of the
Convention of Cintra (1808), the poet, ordinarily so punctual a sleeper,
lay awake all night; since the execution of the Brissotines no public
event distressed him so deeply. “How gravely and earnestly used Samuel
Taylor Coleridge”—so writes Coleridge’s daughter—“and William Wordsworth
and my uncle Southey also, to discuss the affairs of the nation, as if it
all came home to their business and bosoms, as if it were their private
concern! Men do not canvass these matters now-a-days, I think, quite in
the same tone.”
That faith in the ultimate triumph of good which sustains Southey’s
heroine against the persecution of the Almighty Rajah, sustained
Southey himself during the long struggle with Napoleon. A military
despotism youthful and full of vigour, he said, must beat down corrupt
establishments and worn-out governments; but how can it beat down for
ever a true love of liberty and a true spirit of patriotism? When at last
tidings reached Keswick that the Allies were in Paris, Southey’s feelings
were such as he had never experienced before. “The curtain had fallen
after a tragedy of five-and-twenty years.” The hopes, and the ardours,
and the errors, and the struggles of his early life crowded upon his
mind; all things seemed to have worked together for good. He rejoiced
that the whirlwind of revolution had cleared away the pestilence of the
old governments; he rejoiced that right had conquered might. He did not
wish to see the bad Bourbon race restored, except to complete Bonaparte’s
overthrow. And he feared lest an evil peace should be made. Paris taken,
a commanding intellect might have cast Europe into whatever mould it
pleased. “The first business,” says Southey, with remarkable prevision,
“should have been to have reduced France to what she was before Louis
XIV.’s time; the second, to have created a great power in the North of
Germany, with Prussia at its head; the third, to have consolidated Italy
into one kingdom or commonwealth.”
The politicians of the _Edinburgh Review_ had predicted ruin for all who
dared to oppose the Corsican; they ridiculed the romantic hopes of the
English nation; the fate of Spain, they declared in 1810, was decided;
it would be cruel, they said, to foment petty insurrections; France had
conquered Europe. It was this policy of despair which roused Scott and
Southey. “We shall hoist the bloody flag,” writes the latter, “down
alongside that Scotch ship, and engage her yard-arm to yard-arm.” But
at first Southey, by his own request, was put upon other work than that
of firing off the heavy _Quarterly_ guns. Probably no man in England
had read so many books of travel; these he could review better, he
believed, than anything else; biography and history were also within
his reach; with English poetry, from Spenser onwards, his acquaintance
was wide and minute, but he took no pleasure in sitting in judgment on
his contemporaries; his knowledge of the literary history of Spain and
Portugal was a speciality, which, as often as the readers of the _Review_
could bear with it, might be brought into use. Two things he could
promise without fail—perfect sincerity in what he might write, without
the slightest pretension of knowledge which he did not possess, and a
punctuality not to be exceeded by Mr. Murray’s opposite neighbour, the
clock of St. Dunstan’s.
Southey’s essays—literary, biographical, historical, and
miscellaneous—would probably now exist in a collected form, and
constitute a store-house of information—information often obtained
with difficulty, and always conveyed in a lucid and happy style—were
it not that he chose, on the eve of the Reform Bill, to earn whatever
unpopularity he could by collecting his essays on political and social
subjects. Affairs had hurried forward with eager strides; these
_Quarterly_ articles seemed already far behind, and might safely be left
to take a quiet corner in Time’s wallet among the alms for oblivion.
Yet Southey’s political articles had been effective in their day, and
have still a value by no means wholly antiquarian. His home politics had
been, in the main, determined by his convictions on the great European
questions. There was a party of revolution in this country eager to
break with the past, ready to venture every experiment for a future
of mere surmise. Southey believed that the moral sense of the English
people, their regard for conduct, would do much to preserve them from
lawless excess; still, the lesson read by recent history was that order
once overthrown, anarchy follows, to be itself quelled by the lordship
of the sword. Rights, however, were pleaded—shall we refuse to any man
the rights of a man? “Therapeutics,” says Southey, “were in a miserable
state as long as practitioners proceeded upon the gratuitous theory of
elementary complexions; ... natural philosophy was no better, being a
mere farrago of romance, founded upon idle tales or fanciful conjectures,
not upon observation and experiment. The science of politics is just
now in the same stage; it has been erected by shallow sophists upon
abstract rights and imaginary compacts, without the slightest reference
to habits and history.” “Order and improvement” were the words inscribed
on Southey’s banner. Order, that England might not fall, as France had
fallen, into the hands of a military saviour of society; order, that she
might be in a condition to wage her great feud on behalf of freedom with
undivided energy. Order, therefore, first; not by repression alone—though
there were a time and a place for repression also—but order with
improvement as a portion of its very life and being. Southey was a poet
and a moralist, and judged of the well-being of a people by other than
material standards; the wealth of nations seemed to him something other
and higher than can be ascertained by wages and prices, rent and revenue,
exports and imports. “True it is,” he writes, “the ground is more highly
cultivated, the crooked hedge-rows have been thrown down, the fields are
in better shape and of handsomer dimensions, the plough makes longer
furrows, there is more corn and fewer weeds; but look at the noblest
produce of the earth—look at the children of the soil, look at the seeds
which are sown here for immortality!” “The system which produces the
happiest moral effects will be found the most beneficial to the interest
of the individual and the general weal; upon this basis the science of
political economy will rest at last, when the ponderous volumes with
which it has been overlaid shall have sunk by their own weight into the
dead sea of oblivion.” Looking about him, he asked, What do the English
people chiefly need? More wealth? It may be so; but rather wisdom to use
the wealth they have. More votes? Yes, hereafter; but first the light of
knowledge, that men may see how to use a vote. Even the visible beauty
and grace of life seemed to Southey a precious thing, the loss of which
might be set over against some gain in pounds, shillings, and pence. The
bleak walls and barrack-like windows of a manufactory, the long, unlovely
row of operatives’ dwellings, struck a chill into his heart. He contrasts
the old cottages substantially built of native stone, mellowed by time,
taken by nature to herself with a mother’s fondness, the rose-bushes
beside the door, the little patch of flower-garden—he contrasts these
with the bald deformities in which the hands of a great mill are stalled.
Before all else, national education appeared to Southey to be the need
of England. He saw a great population growing up with eager appetites,
and consciousness of augmented power. Whence were moral thoughtfulness
and self-restraint to come? Not, surely, from the triumph of liberal
opinions; not from the power to read every incentive to vice and
sedition; nor from Religious Tract societies; nor from the portentous
bibliolatry of the Evangelical party. But there is an education which
at once enlightens the understanding and trains the conscience and
the will. And there is that great association for making men good—the
Church of England. Connect the two—education and the Church; the progress
of enlightenment, virtue, and piety, however gradual, will be sure.
Subordinate to this primary measure of reform, national education, many
other measures were advocated by Southey. He looked forward to a time
when, the great struggle respecting property over—for this struggle he
saw looming not far off—public opinion will no more tolerate the extreme
of poverty in a large class of the people than it now tolerates slavery
in Europe; when the aggregation of land in the hands of great owners must
cease, when that community of lands, which Owen of Lanark would too soon
anticipate, might actually be realized. But these things were, perhaps,
far off. Meanwhile how to bring nearer the golden age? Southey’s son
has made out a long list of the measures urged upon the English people
in the _Quarterly Review_, or elsewhere, by his father. Bearing in mind
that the proposer of these measures resisted the Reform Bill, Free Trade,
and Catholic Emancipation, any one curious in such things may determine
with what political label he should be designated:—National education;
the diffusion of cheap and good literature; a well-organized system
of colonization, and especially of female emigration;[10] a wholesome
training for the children of misery and vice in great cities; the
establishment of Protestant sisters of charity, and a better order of
hospital nurses; the establishment of savings-banks in all small towns;
the abolition of flogging in the army and navy, except in extreme cases;
improvements in the poor-laws; alterations in the game-laws; alterations
in the criminal laws, as inflicting the punishment of death in far too
many cases; execution of criminals within prison walls; alterations in
the factory system for the benefit of the operative, and especially as to
the employment of children; national works—reproductive if possible—to
be undertaken in times of peculiar distress; the necessity of doing
away with interments in crowded cities; the system of giving allotments
of ground to labourers; the employment of paupers in cultivating waste
lands; the commutation of tithes; and last, the need for more clergymen,
more colleges, more courts of law.
“Mr. Southey,” said Hazlitt, “missed his way in Utopia; he has found it
at old Sarum.” To one of Southey’s temper old Sarum seemed good, with
its ordered freedom, its serious aspiration, its habitual pieties, its
reasonable service, its reverent history, its beauty of holiness, its
close where priests who are husbands and fathers live out their calm,
benignant lives—its amiable home for those whose toil is ended, and who
now sleep well. But how Southey found his way from his early deism to
Anglican orthodoxy cannot be precisely determined. Certainly not for
many years could he have made that subscription to the Articles of the
Church of England, which at the first barred his way to taking orders.
The superstition, which seemed to be the chief spiritual food of Spain,
had left Southey, for the rest of his life, a resolute opponent of
Catholicism; and as he read lives of the Saints and histories of the
Orders, the exclamation, “I do well to be angry,” was often on his lips.
For the wisdom, learning, and devotion of the Jesuits he had, however,
a just respect. Geneva, with its grim logic and stark spirituality,
suited nerves of a different temper from his. For a time Southey thought
himself half a Quaker, but he desired more visible beauty and more
historical charm than he could find in Quakerism. Needing a comely home
for his spiritual affections, he found precisely what pleased him built
in the pleasant Anglican close. With growing loyalty to the State, his
loyalty to the Church could not but keep pace. He loved her tolerance,
her culture; he fed upon her judicious and learned writers—Taylor, with
his bright fancies like the little rings of the vine; South, hitting out
straight from the shoulder at anarchy, fanaticism, and licentiousness,
as Southey himself would have liked to hit; Jackson, whose weight of
character made his pages precious as with golden bullion. After all, old
Sarum had some advantages over Utopia.
The English Constitution consisting of Church and State, it seemed to
Southey an absurdity in politics to give those persons power in the
State whose duty it is to subvert the Church. Admit Catholics, he said,
to every office of trust, emolument, or honour; only never admit them
into Parliament. “The arguments about equal rights are fit only for
a schoolboy’s declamation; it may as well be said that the Jew has
a right to be a bishop, or the Quaker an admiral, as that the Roman
Catholic has a right to a seat in the British Legislature; his opinions
disqualify him.” To call this a question of toleration was impudence;
Catholics were free to practise the rites of their religion; they had
the full and free use of the press; perfect toleration was granted to
the members of that church which, wherever dominant, tolerates no other.
Catholic Emancipation would not conciliate Ireland; the great source of
Irish misery had been, not England’s power, but her weakness, and those
violences to which weakness resorts in self-defence; old sores were not
to be healed by the admission of Catholic demagogues into Parliament.
The measure styled Emancipation would assuredly be followed by the
downfall of the Protestant Establishment in Ireland, and by the spread of
Catholicism in English society. To Pyrrhonists one form of faith might
seem as good or as bad as the other; but the great mass of the English
people had not advanced so far in the march of intellect as to perceive
no important difference between Catholic and Protestant doctrine, or
between Catholic and Protestant morality. By every possible means, better
the condition of the Irish peasantry; give them employment in public
works; facilitate, for those who desire it, the means of emigration;
extend the poor-laws to Ireland, and lay that impost on absentees in such
a proportion as may compensate, in some degree, for their non-residence;
educate the people; execute justice and maintain peace, and the cry of
Catholic Emancipation may be safely disregarded.
So Southey pleaded in the _Quarterly Review_. With reference to
Emancipation and to the Reform Bill, he and Wordsworth—who, perhaps,
had not kept themselves sufficiently in relation with living men and
the public sentiment of the day—were in their solitude gifted with a
measure of the prophetic spirit, which in some degree explains their
alarms. For the prophet who knows little of expediency and nothing of
the manipulation of parties, nothing of the tangled skein of contending
interests, sees the future in its moral causes, and he sees it in a
vision. But he cannot date the appearances in his vision. Battle, and
garments rolled in blood, and trouble, and dimness of anguish pass
before him, and he proclaims what it is given him to see. It matters not
a little, however, in the actual event, whether the battle be on the
morrow or half a century hence; and the prophet furnishes us with no
chronology, or at best with some vague time and times and half a time.
New forces have arisen before the terrors of his prediction come to pass,
and therefore, when they come to pass, their effect is often altogether
different from that anticipated. Wordsworth and Southey were right in
declaring that a vast and formidable change was taking place in the
England of their day: many things which they, amid incredulous scoffs,
announced, have become actual; others remain to be fulfilled. But the
events have taken up their place in an order of things foreign to the
conceptions of the prophets; the fire from heaven descends, but meanwhile
we, ingenious sons of men, have set up a lightning-conductor.
Southey and the _Quarterly Review_ were often spoken of as a single
entity. But the _Review_, in truth, never precisely represented his
feelings and convictions. With Gifford he had no literary sympathies.
Gifford’s heart was full of kindness, says Southey, for all living
creatures except authors; _them_ he regarded as Isaac Walton did the
worm. Against the indulgence of that temper Southey always protested;
yet he was chosen to bear the reproach of having tortured Keats, and of
having anonymously glorified himself at the expense of Shelley. Gifford’s
omissions, additions, substitutions, often caused Southey’s article in
the _Review_ to be very unlike the article which he had despatched to
the editor in manuscript. Probably these changes were often made on
warrantable grounds. Southey’s confidence in his own opinions, which
always seemed to him to be based upon moral principles, was high; and he
was not in the habit of diluting his ink. Phrases which sounded well in
the library of Greta Hall had quite another sound in Mr. Murray’s office
in Fleet Street.
On arriving in London for a short visit in the autumn of 1813, Southey
learnt that the Prince Regent wished to confer on him the Laureateship,
vacant by the death of Pye. Without consulting the Regent, Lord Liverpool
had previously directed that the office should be offered to Walter
Scott. On the moment came a letter from Scott informing Southey that he
had declined the appointment, not from any foolish prejudice against
holding it, but because he was already provided for, and would not
engross emoluments which ought to be awarded to a man of letters who had
no other views in life. Southey hesitated, having ceased for several
years to produce occasional verses; but his friend Croker assured him
that he would not be compelled to write odes as boys write exercises
at stated times on stated subjects; that it would suffice if he wrote
on great public events, or did not write, as the spirit moved him; and
thus his scruples were overcome. In a little, low, dark room in the
purlieus of St. James’—a solitary clerk being witness—the oath was duly
administered by a fat old gentleman-usher in full buckle, Robert Southey
swearing to be a faithful servant to the King, to reveal all treasons
which might come to his knowledge, and to obey the Lord Chamberlain
in all matters of the King’s service. It was Scott’s belief that his
generosity had provided for his poorer brother bard an income of three
or four hundred pounds a year. In reality the emolument was smaller and
the task-work more irksome than had been supposed. The tierce of Canary,
swilled by Ben Jonson and his poetic sons, had been wickedly commuted for
a small sum; the whole net income amounted to 90_l._ But this, “the very
least of Providence’s mercies,” as a poor clergyman said when pronouncing
grace over a herring, secured an important happiness for Southey: he did
not employ it, as Byron puts it, to butter his bread on both sides; he
added twelve pounds to it, and vested it forthwith in an insurance upon
his own life. “I have never felt any painful anxiety about providing for
my family, ...” he writes to Scott; “but it is with the deepest feeling
of thanksgiving that I have secured this legacy for my wife and children,
and it is to you that I am primarily and chiefly indebted.”
Croker’s assurance was too hastily given. The birthday Ode, indeed,
fell into abeyance during the long malady of George III.; but the
New-Year’s Ode had still to be provided. Southey was fortunate in 1814;
events worthy of celebration had taken place; a dithyramb, or rather an
oration in lines of irregular length, was accordingly produced, and was
forwarded to his musical yoke-fellow, Sir William Parsons. But the sight
of Southey’s page, over which the longs and shorts meandered seemingly
at their own sweet will, shocked the orderly mind of the chief musician.
What kind of ear could Mr. Southey have? His predecessor, the lamented
Mr. Pye, had written his Odes always in regular stanzas. What kind of
action was this exhibited by the unbroken State Pegasus? Duly as each
New Year approached, Southey set himself to what he called his _ode_ous
job; it was the price he paid for the future comfort of his children.
While his political assailants pictured the author of _Joan of Arc_ as
a court-lacquey following in the train of the fat Adonis, he, with grim
cheerfulness, was earning a provision for his girls; and had it not been
a duty to kiss hands on the appointment, His Royal Highness the Prince
Regent would never have seen his poet. Gradually the New-Year’s Ode
ceased to be looked for, and Southey was emancipated. His verse-making as
laureate occasionally rose into something higher than journeyman work;
when public events stirred his heart to joy, or grief, or indignation,
he wrote many admirable periods of measured rhetoric. _The Funeral Song
for the Princess Charlotte_ is of a higher strain; a knell, heavy yet
clear-toned, is tolled by its finely wrought octosyllabics.
A few months after the battle of Waterloo, which had so deeply moved
Southey, he started with his wife, a rare voyager from Keswick, and his
little daughter Edith May, on a pilgrimage to the scene of victory.
The aunts remained to take care of Bertha, Kate, and Isabel, with the
nine-years-old darling of all, the only boy, Herbert. With Bruges,
“like a city of Elizabeth’s age—you expect to see a head with a ruff
looking from the window,” Southey was beyond measure delighted. At Ghent
he ransacked bookshops, and was pleased to see in the Beguinage the
realization of his own and Rickman’s ideas on Sisterhoods. On a clear
September day the travellers visited the battlefield; the autumnal
sunshine with soft airs, and now and again a falling leaf, while the bees
were busy with the year’s last flowers, suited well with the poet’s mood
of thankfulness, tempered by solemn thought. When, early in December,
they returned with a lading of toys to their beloved lake-country, little
Edith had hardly recovered from an illness which had attacked her at Aix.
It was seven o’clock in the evening by the time they reached Rydal, and
to press forward and arrive while the children were asleep would be to
defraud everyone of the first reward earned by so long absence. “A return
home under fortunate circumstances has something of the character of a
triumph, and requires daylight.” The glorious presence of Skiddaw, and
Derwent bright under the winter sky, asked also for a greeting at noon
rather than at night. A depth of grave and tender thankfulness lay below
Southey’s joy that morning; it was twelve years since he had pitched his
tent here beside the Greta; twelve years had made him feel the touch of
time; but what blessings they had brought! all his heart’s desire was
here—books, children, leisure, and a peace that passeth understanding.
The instant hour, however, was not for meditation but for triumph:—
“O joyful hour, when to our longing home
The long-expected wheels at length drew nigh!
When the first sound went forth, ‘they come! they come!’
And hope’s impatience quicken’d every eye!
‘Never had man whom Heaven would heap with bliss
More glad return, more happy hour than this.’
“Aloft on yonder bench, with arms dispread,
My boy stood, shouting there his father’s name,
Waving his hat around his happy head;
And there a younger group his sisters came:
Smiling they stood with looks of pleased surprise
While tears of joy were seen in elder eyes.
“Soon all and each came crowding round to share
The cordial greeting, the beloved sight;
What welcomings of hand and lip were there!
And when those overflowings of delight
Subsided to a sense of quiet bliss,
Life hath no purer, deeper happiness.
“The young companion of our weary way
Found here the end desired of all her ills;
She who in sickness pining many a day
Hunger’d and thirsted for her native hills.
Forgetful now of suffering past and pain,
Rejoiced to see her own dear home again.
“Recovered now the homesick mountaineer
Sate by the playmate of her infancy,
The twin-like comrade,[11]—render’d doubly dear
For that long absence; full of life was she
With voluble discourse and eager mien
Telling of all the wonders she had seen.
“Here silently between her parents stood
My dark-eyed Bertha, timid as a dove;
And gently oft from time to time she woo’d
Pressure of hand, or word, or look of love,
With impulse shy of bashful tenderness,
Soliciting again the wished caress.
“The younger twain in wonder lost were they,
My gentle Kate and my sweet Isabel:
Long of our promised coming, day by day,
It had been their delight to hear and tell;
And now when that long-promised hour was come,
Surprise and wakening memory held them dumb.
...
“Soon they grew blithe as they were wont to be;
Her old endearments each began to seek;
And Isabel drew near to climb my knee,
And pat with fondling hand her father’s cheek;
With voice and touch and look reviving thus
The feelings which had slept in long disuse.
“But there stood one whose heart could entertain
And comprehend the fulness of the joy;
The father, teacher, playmate, was again
Come to his only and his studious boy;
And he beheld again that mother’s eye
Which with such ceaseless care had watched his infancy.
“Bring forth the treasures now—a proud display—
For rich as Eastern merchants we return!
Behold the black Beguine, the Sister grey,
The Friars whose heads with sober motion turn,
The Ark well filled with all its numerous hives,
Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japhet, and their wives.
“The tumbler loose of limb; the wrestlers twain;
And many a toy beside of quaint device,
Which, when his fleecy flocks no more can gain
Their pasture on the mountains hoar with ice,
The German shepherd carves with curious knife,
Earning in easy toil the food of frugal life.
“It was a group which Richter, had he viewed,
Might have deemed worthy of his perfect skill;
The keen impatience of the younger brood,
Their eager eyes and fingers never still;
The hope, the wonder, and the restless joy
Of those glad girls and that vociferous boy.
“The aged friend[12] serene with quiet smile,
Who in their pleasure finds her own delight;
The mother’s heart-felt happiness the while;
The aunt’s rejoicing in the joyful sight;
And he who in his gaiety of heart,
With glib and noisy tongue performed the showman’s part.”
It was manifest to a thoughtful observer, says De Quincey, that Southey’s
golden equanimity was bound up in a trinity of chords, a threefold
chain—in a conscience clear of offence, in the recurring enjoyments
from his honourable industry, and in the gratification of his parental
affections. In the light of Herbert’s smiles his father almost lived;
the very pulses of his heart played in unison with the sound of his
son’s laughter. “There was,” De Quincey goes on, “in his manner towards
this child, and towards this only, something that marked an excess of
delirious doating, perfectly unlike the ordinary chastened movement of
Southey’s affections; and something also which indicated a vague fear
about him; a premature unhappiness, as if already the inaudible tread of
calamity could be divined, as if already he had lost him.” As a baby,
while Edith was only “like an old book, ugly and good,” Herbert, in spite
of his Tartar eyes, a characteristic of Southey babyhood, was already
beautiful. At six he was more gentle and more loving, says Southey, than
you can almost conceive. “He has just learnt his Greek alphabet, and
is so desirous of learning, so attentive and so quick of apprehension,
that, if it please God he should live, there is little doubt but that
something will come out of him.” In April, 1809, Southey writes to
Landor, twenty-four hours after an attack of croup which seized his boy
had been subdued: “Even now I am far, very far, from being at ease. There
is a love which passeth the love of women, and which is more lightly
alarmed than the lightest jealousy. Landor, I am not a Stoic at home; I
feel as you do about the fall of an old tree! but, O Christ! what a pang
it is to look upon the young shoot and think it will be cut down! And
this is the thought which almost at all times haunts me; it comes upon me
in moments when I know not whether the tears that start are of love or of
bitterness.”
The alarm of 1809 passed away, and Herbert grew to the age of nine,
active and bright of spirit, yet too pale, and, like his father, hanging
too constantly over his books; a finely organized being, delicate in his
sensibilities, and prematurely accomplished. Before the snow had melted
which shone on Skiddaw that day when the children welcomed home their
parents, Herbert Southey lay in his grave. His disease was an affection
of the heart, and for weeks his father, palsied by apprehension, and
unable to put hand to his regular work, stood by the bedside, with
composed countenance, with words of hope, and agonized heart. Each day
of trial made his boy more dear. With a trembling pride Southey saw the
sufferer’s behaviour, beautiful in this illness as in all his life;
nothing could be more calm, more patient, more collected, more dutiful,
more admirable. At last, worn with watching, Southey and his wife were
prevailed upon to lie down. The good Mary Barker watched, and it is she
who writes the following lines:—“Herbert!—that sweetest and most perfect
of all children on this earth, who died in my arms at nine years of age,
whose death I announced to his father and mother in their bed, where I
had prayed and persuaded them to go. When Southey could speak, his first
words were, ‘_The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed
be the name of the Lord!_’ Never can I forget that moment” (1816).
“I am perfectly resigned,” Southey wrote to Bedford on the most mournful
of all days, “and do not give way to grief. Thank God I can control
myself for the sake of others.” But next morning found him weak as a
child, even weaker in body than in mind, for long anxiety had worn him
to the bone, and while he tried to calm and console the rest, his limbs
trembled under him. His first wild wish to fly from Keswick passed away;
it was good to be there near the boy’s grave. Weak as he was, he flung
himself upon his work. “I employ myself incessantly, taking, however,
every day as much exercise as I can bear without injurious fatigue, which
is not much.” “It would surprise you were you to see what I get through
in a day.” “For the first week I did as much every day as would at other
times have seemed the full and overflowing produce of three.” From his
early discipline in the stoical philosophy some help now was gained;
from his active and elastic mind the gain was more; but these would have
been insufficient to support him without a heart-felt and ever-present
faith that what he had lost was not lost for ever. A great change had
indeed come upon him. He set his house in order, and made arrangements
as if his own death were at hand. He resolved not to be unhappy, but the
joyousness of his disposition had received its death-wound; he felt as
if he had passed at once from boyhood to the decline of life. He tried
dutifully to make head against his depression, but at times with poor
success. “I employ myself, and have recovered strength, but in point
of spirits I rather lose ground.” Still, there are hidden springs of
comfort. “The head and flower of my earthly happiness is cut off. But I
am _not_ unhappy.” “When I give way to tears, which is only in darkness
or solitude, they are not tears of unmingled pain.” All beloved ones grew
more precious; the noble fortitude of his wife made her more than ever
a portion of his best self. His uncle’s boy, Edward, he could not love
more than he had loved him before; but, “as far as possible, he will
be to me hereafter,” writes Southey, “in the place of my son.” And in
truth the blessing of Herbert’s boyhood remained with him still; a most
happy, a most beautiful boyhood it had been; he was thankful for having
possessed the child so long; “for worlds I would not but have been his
father.” “I have abundant blessings left; for each and all of these I
am truly thankful; but of all the blessings which God has given me, this
child, who is removed, is the one I _still_ prize the most.” To relieve
feelings which he dared not utter with his lips, he thought of setting
about a monument in verse for Herbert and himself, which might make one
inseparable memory for father and son. A page or two of fragmentary
thoughts in verse and prose for this poetic monument exists, but Southey
could not keep his imagination enough above his heart to dare to go on
with it; to do so would have dissolved his heart anew. One or two of
these holy scriptures of woe, truly red drops of Southey’s life-blood,
will tell enough of this love passing the love of women.
“Thy life was a day; and sum it well, life is but a week of
such days—with how much storm and cold and darkness! Thine was
a sweet spring day—a vernal Sabbath, all sunshine, hope, and
promise.”
* * * * *
“And that name
In sacred silence buried, which was still
At morn and eve the never-wearying theme
Of dear discourse.”
* * * * *
“Playful thoughts
Turned now to gall and esil.”
* * * * *
“No more great attempts, only a few autumnal flowers like
second primroses, etc.”
* * * * *
“They who look for me in our Father’s kingdom
Will look for him also; inseparably
Shall we be remembered.”
* * * * *
“Come, then,
Pain and Infirmity—appointed guests,
My heart is ready.”
From the day of his son’s death Southey began to step down from the
heights of life, with a steadfast foot, and head still held erect. He
recovered cheerfulness, but it was as one who has undergone an amputation
seeks the sunshine. Herbert’s grave anchored him in Keswick. An offer of
2000_l._ a year for a daily article in the _Times_ did not tempt him to
London. His home, his books, his literary work, Skiddaw, Derwentwater,
and Crosthwaite churchyard were too dear. Three years later came the
unlooked-for birth of a second boy; and Cuthbert was loved by his
father; but the love was chastened and controlled of autumnal beauty and
seriousness.
When the war with France had ended, depression of trade was acutely felt
in England; party spirit ran high, and popular passions were dangerously
roused. In the spring of 1817, the Laureate saw to his astonishment
a poem entitled _Wat Tyler_, by Robert Southey, advertised as just
published. He had written this lively dramatic sketch in the full fervour
of Republicanism twenty-three years previously; the manuscript had passed
into other hands, and he had long ceased to think of it. The skulking
rogue and the knavish publisher who now gave it to the world had chosen
their time judiciously; this rebuke to the apostate of the _Quarterly_
would be a sweet morsel for gossip-mongers to roll under the tongue, an
infallible pill to purge melancholy with all true children of progress.
No fewer than sixty thousand copies, it is said, were sold. _Wat Tyler_
suited well with Southey’s nonage; it has a Bright rhetorical fierceness
of humanity. The speech-making radical blacksmith, “still toiling, yet
still poor,” his insulted daughter, her virtuous lover, the communist
priest John Ball, whose amiable theology might be that of Mr. Belsham in
his later days, stand over against the tyrant king, his Archiepiscopal
absolver from oaths, the haughty nobles, and the servile minions of the
law. There was nothing in the poem that could be remembered with shame,
unless it is shameful to be generous and inexperienced at the age of
twenty. But England in 1817 seemed charged with combustibles, and even
so small a spark as this was not to be blown about without a care. The
Prince Regent had been fired at; there were committals for treason;
there were riots in Somersetshire; the swarm of Manchester Blanketeers
announced a march to London; the Habeas Corpus was suspended; before
the year was out, Brandreth and his fellows had been executed at Derby.
Southey applied to the Court of Chancery for an injunction to restrain
the publication of his poem. It was refused by Lord Eldon, on the ground
that the publication being one calculated to do injury to society, the
author could not reclaim his property in it. There the matter might have
dropped; but it seemed good to Mr. William Smith, representing liberal
Norwich, where Southey had many friends, to take his seat in the House
of Commons one evening with the _Quarterly Review_ in one pocket and
_Wat Tyler_ in the other, and to read aloud contrasted extracts showing
how the malignant renegade could play the parts, as it suited him, of a
seditious firebrand and a servile courtier. Wynn on the spot administered
a well-deserved rebuke; Wilberforce wrote to Southey that, had he been
present, his voice would also have been heard. Coleridge vindicated him
in the _Courier_. Seldom, indeed, was Southey drawn into controversy.
When pelted with abuse, he walked on with uplifted head, and did not turn
round; it seemed to him that he was of a stature to invite bespattering.
His self-confidence was high and calm; that he possessed no common
abilities, was certain: and the amount of toil which went into his
books gave him a continual assurance of their worth which nothing could
gainsay; he had no time for moods of dejection and self-distrust. But
if Southey struck, he struck with force, and tried to leave his mark on
his antagonist. To repel this attack made in the House of Commons, was a
duty. _A Letter to William Smith, Esq., M.P._, was written, as Wordsworth
wished, with the strength of masculine indignation; blow after blow
is planted with sure effect; no word is wasted; there is skill in the
hard hitting; and the antagonist fairly overthrown, Southey, with one
glance of scorn, turns on his heel, and moves lightly away. “I wish you
joy,” wrote Walter Scott, “of your triumphant answer.... Enough of this
gentleman, who I think will not walk out of the round again to slander
the conduct of individuals.” The concluding sentences of the Letter give
in brief Southey’s fearless review of his unstained career.
“How far the writings of Mr. Southey may be found to deserve a
favourable acceptance from after-ages, time will decide; but a
name which, whether worthily or not, has been conspicuous in
the literary history of its age, will certainly not perish....
It will be related that he lived in the bosom of his family,
in absolute retirement; that in all his writings there
breathed the same abhorrence of oppression and immorality,
the same spirit of devotion, and the same ardent wishes for
the melioration of mankind; and that the only charge which
malice could bring against him was, that as he grew older, his
opinions altered concerning the means by which that melioration
was to be effected, and that as he learnt to understand the
institutions of his country, he learnt to appreciate them
rightly, to love, and to revere, and to defend them. It will
be said of him that in an age of personality he abstained
from satire; and that during the course of his literary life,
often as he was assailed, the only occasion on which he ever
condescended to reply was when a certain Mr. William Smith
insulted him in Parliament with the appellation of renegade.
On that occasion, it will be said, he vindicated himself, as
it became him to do, and treated his calumniator with just
and memorable severity. Whether it shall be added that Mr.
William Smith redeemed his own character by coming forward with
honest manliness, and acknowledging but is not of the slightest
importance to me.”
One other personal strife is worthy of notice. When visiting London in
1813, he made the acquaintance of Byron. “Is Southey magnanimous?” Byron
asked Rogers, remembering how he had tried his wit in early days on
_Thalaba_ and _Madoc_. Rogers could answer for Southey’s magnanimity,
and the two poets met, Southey finding in Byron very much more to like
than he had expected, and Byron being greatly struck by Southey’s “epic
appearance.” “To have that poet’s head and shoulders,” he said, “I would
almost have written his Sapphics.” And in his diary he wrote:—“Southey’s
talents are of the first order. His prose is perfect.... He has probably
written too much of poetry for the present generation; posterity will
probably select; but he has passages equal to anything.” At a later
date Byron thought Southey’s _Roderick_ “the first poem of the time.”
But when about to publish _Don Juan_, a work “too free for these very
modest days,” what better mode of saucily meeting public opinion, and
getting a first laugh on his side, than to dedicate such a poem to a
virtuous Laureate, and show that he and his fellows, who had uttered
nothing base, were yet political turncoats, not entitled by any superfine
morality to assume airs of indignation against him and his reprobate
hero? The dedication was shown about and laughed over though not yet
printed. Southey heard of these things, and felt released from that
restraint of good feeling which made him deal tenderly in his writings
with every one to whom he had once given his hand. An attack upon
himself would not alone have roused Southey; no man received abuse with
more self-possession. Political antagonism would still have left him
able to meet a fellow-poet on the common ground of literature. When
distress fastened upon Leigh Hunt, whose _Examiner_ and _Liberal_ had
never spared the Laureate, Mr. Forster did not hesitate to apply to
Southey for assistance, which was declined solely because the circular
put forward Leigh Hunt’s political services as those chiefly entitling
him to relief. “Those who are acquainted with me,” Southey wrote, “know
that I am neither resentful nor intolerant;” and after expressing
admiration of Leigh Hunt’s powers, the letter goes on to suggest that
his friends should draw up a circular in which, without compromising
any of his opinions, the appeal might be made solely upon the score
of literary merit, “placing him thus, as it were, within the sacred
territory which ought always to be considered and respected as neutral
ground.” Wise and admirable words! But there was one offence which was
to Southey the unforgivable sin against the holy spirit of a nation’s
literature. To entice poetry from the altar, and to degrade her for the
pleasure of wanton imaginations, seemed to Southey, feeling as he did
the sanctity of the love of husband and wife, of father and child, to
be treason against humanity. Southey was, indeed, tolerant of a certain
Rabelaisian freedom in playing with some of the enclosed incidents of
our life. “All the greatest of poets,” he says, “have had a spice of
Pantagruelism in their composition, which I verily believe was essential
to their greatness.” But to take an extravagant fling in costume of a
_sans-culotte_, and to play the part of “pander-general to the youth of
Great Britain,” were different things. In his preface to _A Vision of
Judgment_, Southey deplored the recent fall in the ethical spirit of
English literature, “which for half a century had been distinguished
for its moral purity,” and much of the guilt he laid on the leaders of
“the Satanic School.” In the long-run the interests of art, as of all
high endeavour, are invariably proved to be one with the interest of a
nation’s morality. It had taken many lives of men to lift literature out
of the beast. From prudential virtue and the lighter ethics of Addison
it had risen to the grave moral dignity of Johnson, and from that to the
impassioned spirituality of Wordsworth. Should all this be abandoned,
and should literature now be permitted to reel back into the brute? We
know that the title “Satanic School” struck home, that Byron was moved,
and replied with brilliant play of wit in his _Vision of Judgment_. The
laughers went over to Byron’s side. One who would be witty has certain
advantages, if content to disregard honesty and good manners. To be witty
was not Southey’s concern. “I saw,” he said, many years after, “that
Byron was a man of quick impulses, strong passions, and great powers. I
saw him abuse these powers; and, looking at the effect of his writings on
the public mind, it was my duty to denounce such of them as aimed at the
injury of morals and religion. This was all.” If continental critics find
in what he set down a characteristic example of the bourgeois morality of
England, we note with interest their point of view.[13]
“Bertha, Kate, and Isabel,” wrote Southey on June 26, 1820, “you have
been very good girls, and have written me very nice letters, with which
I was much pleased. This is the last letter which I can write in return;
and as I happen to have a quiet hour to myself here at Streatham, on
Monday noon, I will employ that hour in relating to you the whole history
and manner of my being ell-ell-deed at Oxford by the Vice-Chancellor.”
Public distinctions of this kind he rated, perhaps, below their true
value. To stand well with Murray and Longman was more to him than any
handle to his name. A similar honour from Cambridge he declined. His
gold medal from the Royal Society of Literature he changed for a silver
coffee-pot for Mrs. Southey. To “be be-doctored and called everything
that ends in issimus,” was neither any harm nor much good; but to take
his seat between such doctors as the Duke of Wellington, and—perhaps—Sir
Walter Scott was a temptation. When his old schoolfellow Phillimore
presented Southey, the theatre rang with applause. Yet the day was,
indeed, one of the heaviest in his life. Never had he stopped for a night
in Oxford since he left it in 1794, intending to bid farewell to Europe
for an Utopia in some back settlement of America. Not one who really
loved him—for Scott could not appear—was present. When in the morning
he went to look at Balliol, no one remembered him except old Adams, who
had attempted to dress his hair as a freshman, and old Mrs. Adams, the
laundress, both now infirm. From the tumultuous theatre Southey strolled
into Christ Church walks alone. What changes time had made! Many of
the friends with whom he had sauntered there were in their graves. So
brooding, he chewed the bitter-sweet of remembrance, until at length
a serious gratitude prevailed. “Little girls,” the letter ends, “you
know it might be proper for me now to wear a large wig, and to be called
Doctor Southey, and to become very severe, and leave off being a comical
papa. And if you should find that ell-ell-deeing has made this difference
in me, you will not be surprised. However, I shall not come down in my
wig, neither shall I wear my robes at home.”
While in Holland, in the summer of 1826, a more conspicuous honour
was unexpectedly thrust upon Southey. The previous year he had gone
abroad with Henry Taylor, and at Douay was bitten on the foot by Satan,
according to his conjecture, sitting squat at his great toe; at Leyden he
was obliged to rest his inflamed foot, and there it was his good fortune
to be received into the house of the poet Bilderdijk, a delightful
old erudite and enthusiast, whose charming wife was the translator
of _Roderick_. In 1826 he visited his kind friends once more, and at
Brussels received the surprising intelligence that during his absence he
had been elected a member of Parliament. Lord Radnor, an entire stranger,
had read with admiration Southey’s confession of faith concerning Church
and State, in the last paragraph of his _Book of the Church_. By his
influence the poet had been elected for the borough of Downton: the
return, however, was null, for Southey held a pension during pleasure;
and even if this were resigned, where was the property qualification?
This latter objection was met by Sir Robert Inglis, who desired to know
whether Southey would sit in Parliament if an estate of 300_l._ a year
were purchased for him. An estate of 300_l._ a year would be a very
agreeable thing to Robert Lackland; but he had no mind to enter on a new
public sphere for which he was ill qualified by his previous life, to
risk the loss of health by midnight debates, to abandon the education of
his little boy, and to separate himself more or less from his wife and
daughters. He could not be wrong, he believed, in the quiet confidence
which assured him that he was in his proper place.
Now more than ever before, Edith Southey needed her husband’s sustaining
love. On the day of his return to Keswick, while amused to find himself
the object of mob popularity, he learnt that one of his daughters was
ailing; the illness, however, already seemed to have passed the worst.
This appearance of amendment quickly proved deceptive; and, on a Sunday
evening in mid July, Isabel, “the most radiant creature that I ever
beheld or shall behold,” passed away, while her father was on his knees
in the room below, praying that she might be released from suffering
either by recovery or by death. All that had been gone through ten years
before, renewed itself with dread exactness. Now, as then, the first day
was one of stunned insensibility; now, as then, the next morning found
him weak as a child, and striving in his weakness to comfort those who
needed his support; now, as then, he turned to Grosvenor Bedford for
a heart on which he might lay his own heart prone, letting his sorrow
have its way. “Nothing that has assailed my character, or affected my
worldly fortune, ever gave me an hour’s vexation, or deprived me of an
hour’s rest. My happiness has been in my family, and there only was I
vulnerable; that family is now divided between earth and heaven, and I
must pray to remain with those who are left, so long as I can contribute
to their welfare and comfort, rather than be gathered (as otherwise I
would fain be) to those who are gone.” On that day of which the word
Τετέλεσται is the record, the day on which the body of his bright Isabel
was committed to earth, Southey wrote a letter to his three living
daughters, copied with his own hand for each. It said what he could
not bear to say of consolation and admonishment by word of mouth; it
prepared them for the inevitable partings to come; it urged on them with
measureless tenderness the duty of self-watchfulness, of guarding against
little faults, of bearing and forbearing; it told them of his own grief
to think that he should ever by a harsh or hasty word have given their
dead sister even a momentary sorrow which might have been spared; it
ended with the blessing of their afflicted father.
Sorrows of this kind, as Southey has truly said, come the heavier when
they are repeated; under such strokes a courageous heart may turn coward.
On Mrs. Southey a weight as of years had been laid; her spirits sank, her
firmness gave way, a breath of danger shook her. Southey’s way of bearing
himself towards the dead is that saddest way—their names were never
uttered; each one of the household had, as it were, a separate chamber
in which the images of their dead ones lay, and each went in alone and
veiled. The truth is, Southey had little native hardihood of temperament;
self-control with him was painfully acquired. In solitude and darkness
his tears flowed; when in his slumbers the images of the dead came to
him, he could not choose but weep. Therefore, all the more among those
whom he wished to lead into the cheerful ways of life, he had need to
keep a guard upon his tenderness. He feared to preserve relics, and did
not like to bear in mind birthdays, lest they should afterwards become
too dangerously charged with remembrance and grief. “Look,” he writes,
“at some verses in the _Literary Souvenir_, p. 113; they are written by
a dear friend of mine on the death of—you will know who”—for his pen
would have trembled in tracing the name Isabel. And yet his habitual
feelings with respect to those who had departed were not bitter; the dead
were absent—that was all; he thought of them and of living friends at a
distance with the same complacency, the same affection, only with more
tenderness of the dead.
Greta Hall, once resounding with cheerful voices, had been growing
silent. Herbert was gone; Isabel was gone. In 1829 Sara Coleridge went, a
bride, tearful yet glad, her mother accompanying her, to distant London.
Five years later, Edith May Southey became the wife of the Rev. John
Warter. Her father fell back, even more than in former years, upon the
never-failing friends of his library. It was in these darkening years
that he sought relief in carrying out the idea, conceived long before, of
a story which should be no story, but a spacious receptacle for mingled
wit and wisdom, experience and book-lore, wholesome nonsense and solemn
meditation. _The Doctor_, begun in jest after merry talks with Grosvenor
Bedford, grew more and more earnest as Southey proceeded. “He dreamt
over it and brooded over it, laid it aside for months and years, resumed
it after long intervals, and more often, latterly, in thoughtfulness
than in mirth, and fancied at last that he could put into it more of his
mind than could conveniently be produced in any other form.” The secret
of its authorship was carefully kept. Southey amused himself somewhat
laboriously with ascribing it now to this hand and now to that. When
the first two volumes arrived, as if from the anonymous author, Southey
thrust them away with well-assumed impatience, and the disdainful words,
“Some novel, I suppose.” Yet several of his friends had shrewd suspicions
that the manuscript lay somewhere hidden in Greta Hall, and on receiving
their copies wrote to thank the veritable donor; these thanks were
forwarded by Southey, not without a smile in which something of irony
mingled, to Theodore Hook, who was not pleased to enter into the jest. “I
see in _The Doctor_,” says its author, playing the part of an impartial
critic, “a little of Rabelais, but not much; more of Tristram Shandy,
somewhat of Burton, and perhaps more of Montaigne; but methinks the
_quintum quid_ predominates?” The _quintum quid_ is that wisdom of the
heart, that temper of loyal and cheerful acquiescence in the rule of life
as appointed by a Divine Master, which characterizes Southey.
For the third volume of _The Doctor_, in that chapter which tells of
Leonard Bacon’s sorrow for his Margaret, Southey wrote as follows:
“Leonard had looked for consolation, where, when sincerely
sought, it is always to be found; and he had experienced
that religion effects in a true believer all that philosophy
professes, and more than all that mere philosophy can perform.
The wounds which stoicism would cauterize, religion heals.
“There is a resignation with which, it may be feared, most of
us deceive ourselves. To bear what must be borne, and submit to
what cannot be resisted, is no more than what the unregenerate
heart is taught by the instinct of animal nature. But to
acquiesce in the afflictive dispensations of Providence—to make
one’s own will conform in all things to that of our Heavenly
Father—to say to him in the sincerity of faith, when we drink
of the bitter cup, ‘Thy will be done!’—to bless the name of
the Lord as much from the heart when he takes away as when he
gives, and with a depth of feeling of which, perhaps, none but
the afflicted heart is capable—this is the resignation which
religion teaches, this is the sacrifice which it requires.”
These words, written with no forefeeling, were the last put on paper
before the great calamity burst upon Southey. “I have been parted from
my wife,” he tells Grosvenor Bedford on October 2, 1834, “by something
worse than death. Forty years she has been the life of my life; and I
have left her this day in a lunatic asylum.”
Southey’s union with his wife had been at the first one of love, and
use and wont had made her a portion of his very being. Their provinces
in the household had soon defined themselves. He in the library earned
their means of support; all else might be left to her with absolute
confidence in her wise contrivance and quiet energy. Beneath the divided
work in their respective provinces their lives ran on in deep and still
accord. Now he felt for the first time shrunk into the limits of a
solitary will. All that had grown out of the past was deranged by a
central disturbance; no branch had been lopped away, but the main trunk
was struck, and seared, and shaken to the roots. “Mine is a strong
heart,” Southey writes; “I will not say that the last week has been the
most trying of my life; but I will say that the heart which could bear
it can bear anything.” Yet, when he once more set himself to work, a
common observer, says his son, would have noticed little change in him,
though to his family the change was great indeed. His most wretched hour
was when he woke at dawn from broken slumbers; but a word of hope was
enough to counteract the mischief of a night’s unrest. No means were
neglected which might serve to keep him in mental and bodily health; he
walked in all weathers; he pursued his task-work diligently, yet not
over-diligently; he collected materials for work of his choice. When, in
the spring of 1835, it was found that the sufferer might return to wear
out the body of this death in her own home, it was marvellous, declares
Cuthbert Southey, how much of his old elasticity remained, and how,
though no longer happy, he could be contented and cheerful, and take
pleasure in the pleasures of others. He still could contribute something
to his wife’s comfort. Through the weary dream which was now her life she
knew him, and took pleasure in his coming and going.
When Herbert died, Southey had to ask a friend to lend him money to
tide over the short period of want which followed his weeks of enforced
inaction. Happily now, for the first time in his life, his income was
beforehand with his expenses. A bequest of some hundreds of pounds had
come in; his _Naval Biographies_ were paying him well; and during part
of Mrs. Southey’s illness he was earning a respectable sum, intended for
his son’s education, by his _Life of Cowper_—a work to which a painful
interest was added by the study of mental alienation forced upon him
in his own household. So the days passed, not altogether cheerlessly,
in work if possible more arduous than ever. “One morning,” writes his
son, “shortly after the letters had arrived, he called me into his
study. ‘You will be surprised,’ he said, ‘to hear that Sir Robert Peel
has recommended me to the King for the distinction of a baronetcy, and
will probably feel some disappointment when I tell you that I shall not
accept it.’” Accompanying Sir Robert Peel’s official communication came
a private letter asking in the kindest manner how he could be of use
to Southey. “Will you tell me,” he said, “without reserve, whether the
possession of power puts within my reach the means of doing anything
which can be serviceable or acceptable to you; and whether you will
allow me to find some compensation for the many sacrifices which office
imposes upon me, in the opportunity of marking my gratitude, as a public
man, for the eminent services you have rendered, not only to literature,
but to the higher interests of virtue and religion?” Southey’s answer
stated simply what his circumstances were, showing how unbecoming and
unwise it would be to accept the proffered honour: it told the friendly
statesman of the provision made for his family—no inconsiderable one—in
the event of his death; it went on to speak of his recent affliction; how
this had sapped his former confidence in himself; how it had made him an
old man, and forced upon him the reflection that a sudden stroke might
deprive him of those faculties by which his family had hitherto been
supported. “I could afford to die, but not to be disabled,” he wrote in
his first draft; but fearing that these words would look as if he wanted
to trick out pathetically a plain statement, he removed them. Finally,
if such an increase of his pension as would relieve him from anxiety on
behalf of his family could form part of a plan for the encouragement of
literature, it would satisfy all his desires. “Young as I then was,”
Cuthbert Southey writes, “I could not, without tears, hear him read with
his deep and faltering voice, his wise refusal and touching expression
of those feelings and fears he had never before given utterance to, to
any of his own family.” Two months later Sir Robert Peel signed a warrant
adding 300_l._ annually to Southey’s existing pension. He had resolved to
recognize literary and scientific eminence as a national claim; the act
was done upon public grounds, and Southey had the happiness of knowing
that others beside himself would partake of the benefit.
“Our domestic prospects are darkening upon us daily,” Southey wrote in
July, 1835. “I know not whether the past or the present seems most like
a dream to me, so great and strange is the difference. But yet a little
while, and all will again be at the best.” While Mrs. Southey lived, a
daily demand was made upon his sympathies and solicitude which it was
his happiness to fulfil. But from all except his wife he seemed already
to be dropping away into a state of passive abstraction. Kate and Bertha
silently ministered to his wants, laid the books he wanted in his way,
replenished his ink-bottle, mended his pens, stirred the fire, and
said nothing. A visit to the south-west of England in company with his
son broke the long monotony of endurance. It was a happiness to meet
Landor at Bristol, and Mrs. Bray at Tavistock, and Mrs. Bray’s friend,
the humble poet, Mary Colling, whose verses he had reviewed in the
_Quarterly_. Yet to return to his sorrowful home was best of all; there
is a leap up of the old spirits in a letter to his daughters announcing
his approach. It is almost the last gleam of brightness. In the autumn of
that year (1835) Edith Southey wasted away, growing weaker and weaker.
The strong arm on which she had leaned for two-and-forty years, supported
her down stairs each day and bore her up again at evening. When the
morning of November 16th broke, she passed quietly “from death unto life.”
From that day Southey was an altered man. His spirits fell to a still
lower range. For the first time he was conscious of the distance which
years had set between him and his children. Yet his physical strength
was unbroken; nothing but snow deterred him from his walk; he could
still circle the lake, or penetrate into Borrowdale on foot. But Echo,
whom he had summoned to rejoice, was not roused by any call of his.
Within-doors it was only by a certain violence to himself that he could
speak. In the library he read aloud his proof-sheets alone; but for this
he might almost have forgotten the sound of his own voice. Still, he was
not wholly abandoned to grief; he looked back and saw that life had been
good; its hardest moral discipline had served to train the heart: much
still remained that was of worth—Cuthbert was quietly pursuing his Oxford
studies; Bertha was about to be united in marriage to her cousin, Herbert
Hill, son of that good uncle who had done so much to shape Southey’s
career. “If not hopeful,” he writes, “I am more than contented, and
disposed to welcome and entertain any good that may yet be in store for
me, without any danger of being disappointed if there should be none.”
Hope of a sober kind indeed had come to him. For twenty years he had
known Caroline Bowles; they had long been in constant correspondence;
their acquaintance had matured into friendship. She was now in her
fifty-second year; he in his sixty-fifth. It seemed to Southey natural
that, without making any breach with his past life, he should accept her
companionship in the nearest way possible, should give to her all he
could of what remained, and save himself from that forlorn feeling which
he feared might render old age miserable and useless.
But already the past had subdued Southey, and if any future lay before
him it was a cloud lifeless and grey. In the autumn of 1838 he started
for a short tour on the Continent with his old friend Senhouse, his son
Cuthbert, John Kenyon, their master of the horse, Captain Jones, the
chamberlain, and Crabb Robinson, who was intendant and paid the bills.
On the way from Boulogne they turned aside to visit Chinon, for Southey
wished to stand on the spot where his first heroine, Joan of Arc, had
recognized the French king. At Paris he roamed along the quays and hunted
book-stalls. The change and excitement seemed to have served him; he
talked freely and was cheerful. “Still,” writes his son, “I could not
fail to perceive a considerable change in him from the time we had last
travelled together—all his movements were slower, he was subject to
frequent fits of absence, and there was an indecision in his manner and
an unsteadiness in his step which was wholly unusual with him.” He often
lost his way, even in the hotels; then laughed at his own mistakes,
and yet was painfully conscious of his failing memory. His journal
breaks off abruptly when not more than two-thirds of the tour had been
accomplished. In February, 1839, his brother, Dr. Southey—ever a true
comrade—describes him as working slowly and with an abstraction not usual
to him; sometimes to write even a letter seemed an effort. In midsummer
his marriage to Caroline Bowles took place, and with her he returned to
Keswick in August. On the way home his friends in London saw that he was
much altered. “The animation and peculiar clearness of his mind,” wrote
Henry Taylor, “was quite gone, except a gleam or two now and then....
The appearance was that of a placid languor, sometimes approaching
to torpor, but not otherwise than cheerful. He is thin and shrunk in
person, and that extraordinary face of his has no longer the fire and
strength it used to have, though the singular cast of the features and
the habitual expressions make it still a most remarkable phenomenon.”
Still, his friends had not ceased to hope that tranquillity would restore
mental tone, and he himself was planning the completion of great designs.
“As soon as we are settled at Keswick, I shall resolutely begin upon
the _History of Portugal_, as a duty which I owe to my uncle’s memory.
Half of the labour I consider as done. But I have long since found the
advantage of doing more than one thing at a time, and the _History of the
Monastic Orders_ is the other thing to which I shall set to with hearty
good-will. Both these are works of great pith and moment.”
Alas! the current of these enterprises was already turned awry. In
August it was not without an occasional uncertainty that he sustained
conversation. “He lost himself for a moment; he was conscious of it, and
an expression passed over his countenance which was very touching—an
expression of pain and also of resignation.... The charm of his manner
is perhaps even enhanced at present (at least when one knows the
circumstances) by the gentleness and patience which pervade it.” Before
long the character of his handwriting, which had been so exquisite, was
changed to something like the laboured scrawl of a child; then he ceased
to write. Still he could read, and, even when he could no longer take
in the meaning of what was before him, his eye followed the lines of
the printed page. At last even this was beyond his power. He would walk
slowly round his library, pleased with the presence of his cherished
possessions, taking some volume down mechanically from the shelf. In 1840
Wordsworth went over to Greta Hall. “Southey did not recognize me,” he
writes, “till he was told. Then his eyes flashed for a moment with their
former brightness, but he sank into the state in which I had found him,
patting with both hands his books affectionately like a child.” In the
_Life of Cowper_ he had spoken of the distress of one who suffers from
mental disease as being that of a dream—“a dream, indeed, from which the
sufferer can neither wake nor be awakened; but it pierces no deeper,
and there seems to be the same dim consciousness of its unreality.” So
was it now with himself. Until near the end he retained considerable
bodily strength; his snow-white hair grew darker; it was the spirit which
had endured shattering strokes of fate, and which had spent itself in
studying to be quiet.
After a short attack of fever, the end came on the 21st of March, 1843.
Never was that “Well done!” the guerdon of the good and faithful servant,
pronounced amid a deeper consent of those who attended and had ears
to hear. On a dark and stormy morning Southey’s body was borne to the
beautiful churchyard of Crosthwaite, towards which he had long looked
affectionately as his place of rest. There lay his three children and
she who was the life of his life. Skiddaw gloomed solemnly overhead. A
grey-haired, venerable man who had crossed the hills stood there leaning
on the arm of his son-in-law; these two, Wordsworth and Quillinan, were
the only strangers present. As the words, “ashes to ashes,” were uttered,
a sudden gleam of sunshine touched the grave; the wind dropped, the rain
was over, and the birds had begun their songs of spring. The mourners
turned away thinking of a good man’s life and death with peace—
“And calm of mind, all passion spent.”