RACEDOWN AND ALFOXDEN.
To all lovers of Wordsworth it is well known how, while he was yet
undecided as to his future calling, he went to nurse a young friend
named Raisley Calvert, who was afflicted with a malady which threatened
to prove fatal, and by whose side he felt it his duty to remain. After a
protracted illness his friend died, and bequeathed him a legacy of £900.
It is probable that in this generous act, to which Wordsworth has more
than once recorded his indebtedness, Mr. Calvert was actuated by mixed
motives; that it was to be regarded not only as an expression of
gratitude, but that he also perceived in his friend talents which others
were slow to recognise, and desired thus to provide him with the means
of devoting himself, at any rate for a time, to the pursuit of poetry.
However this may be, the incident cannot but be regarded as a link in
the chain of providential circumstances which combined to prepare the
poet for his future high calling. It is not, however, intended in this
sketch to refer to Wordsworth himself more than is necessary for the
purpose of elucidating any events in the life and character of his
sister, or of tracing her influence upon him. Having thus obtained the
means of livelihood for a few years, one of their cherished hopes was
realised. His childhood's playmate became his constant and lifelong
companion, devoting herself to him and his interests and aims as only a
noble woman could have done.
At what a critical time Miss Wordsworth thus entered more closely into
the life of her brother we learn from his biography, as well as from his
works. Dejected and despondent by reason of the scenes of which he had
been an eyewitness in France, and the terrible days which followed,
Wordsworth was at this time greatly in danger of becoming misanthropic,
and of giving way to a melancholy which might have coloured all his
life, and deprived his works of the healthful and educating influence
which they breathe. All disappointment and sorrow may become the
precursor of blessing, the mother of a great hope. It is the bruised
herb that exudes its fragrance; the broken heart that, when bound,
pulsates most truly. It was a saying of Goethe that he never had an
affliction which did not turn into a poem. But disappointment may also
be the parent of gloom, and pave the way to a spirit of morose
indifference. At such junctures a life may, by the skilful leading of a
wise affection, be saved for beauty and happiness, for greater good and
more exalted attainment and enjoyment, by reason of the very sorrow
which, unhallowed, would have plunged it into bitterness.
However much Wordsworth's goodness of heart and ardent love of Nature
helped to protect him, it was at this critical period that he was
chiefly indebted to the soothing and cheering power of his sister for
uplifting him from the gloom which had gathered around him, and for
restoring and maintaining that equable frame of mind which from
thenceforth unvaryingly characterised him. Her clear insight and womanly
instinct at this time saw deeper into the sources of real satisfaction;
and her helpful and healing sympathy came to his aid. By her tact she
led him from the distracting cares of political agitation to those more
elevating and satisfying influences which an ardent and contemplative
love of Nature and poetry cultivate, and which sweet and kindred human
affections strengthen and develop. It remained for Miss Wordsworth, if
not to awaken, to draw out and stimulate her brother's better nature, to
deaden what was unworthy, and to encourage, by tender care and patient
endeavour, that higher life towards which his mind and soul were turned.
She became, and for many years continued to be, the loadstar of his
existence, and affords one of the most pleasing instances of sisterly
devotion and fidelity on record. In her brother was verified the poet's
prophecy:--
"True heart and shining star shall guide thee right."
Well was it for Wordsworth, and for us, that he had a sister, and that
it was to this brother--one after her own heart--she at this juncture
devoted herself. In this we may see another of the providential
circumstances that beset the career of Wordsworth. As Spenser says:--
"It chanced--
Eternal God that chance did guide."
Writing of Miss Wordsworth at this time, her nephew, the late Bishop of
Lincoln, says: "She was endowed with tender sensibility, with an
exquisite perception of beauty, with a retentive recollection of what
she saw, with a felicitous tact in discerning and admirable skill in
delineating natural objects with graphic accuracy and vivid
gracefulness. She weaned him from contemporary politics, and won him to
beauty and truth."
A writer in _The Quarterly Review_, many years ago (I believe the late
Mr. J. G. Lockhart), referring to this period, writes: "Depressed and
bewildered, he turned to abstract science, and was beginning to torment
his mind with fresh problems, when, after his long voyage through
unknown seas in search of Utopia, with sails full set and without
compass or rudder, his sister came to his aid, and conducted him back to
the quiet harbour from which he started. His visits to her had latterly
been short and far between, until his brightening fortunes enabled them
to indulge the wish of their hearts to live together, and then she
convinced him that he was born to be a poet, and had no call to lose
himself in the endless labyrinth of theoretical puzzles. The calm of a
home would alone have done much towards sobering his mind. While he
roamed restlessly about the world he was drawn in by every eddy, and
obeyed the influence of every wind; but when once he had escaped from
the turmoil, into the pure and peaceful pleasures of domestic existence,
he felt the vanity and vexation of his previous course."
Wordsworth himself, afterwards writing of this same period of his life,
says:--
"Depressed, bewildered thus, I did not walk
With scoffers, seeking light and gay revenge
From indiscriminate laughter, nor sit down
In reconcilement with an utter waste
Of intellect.
* * * * *
Then it was--
Thanks to the bounteous Giver of all good!--
That the beloved sister in whose sight
Those days were passed, now speaking in a voice
Of sudden admonition--like a brook
That did but _cross_ a lonely road, now
Is seen, heard, felt, and caught at every turn,
Companion never lost through many a league--
Maintain'd for me a saving intercourse
With my true self; for, though bedimmed and changed
Much, as it seemed, I was no further changed
Than as a clouded, and a waning moon;
She whispered still that brightness would return.
She in the midst of all preserved me still
A poet; made me seek beneath that name,
And that alone, my office upon earth."
We thus find Miss Wordsworth keeping house with her brother, who, having
at length determined upon his course of life, was, in 1795, living at
Racedown Lodge in Dorsetshire. From this time forth, amid all the
changes of fortune and condition, they were close and life-long
companions.
However great may have been her influence upon him previously, it now
became a moulding and educating power. They were both in the strength of
their youth--that time of radiant enjoyment--bound not only by that most
endearing of natural ties, but by tastes, aims, and hopes most
singularly mutual. The close association of daily intercourse and
community of thought, together with a thorough sympathy, seemed now, as
only an ardent enthusiasm and devoted love of kindred objects can do, to
cement their lives. In this their first home, the only one which they
had really known since childhood, and to which they had so longingly
looked forward, they were all in all to each other. Separation from the
busy world, and from society, was no hardship to them, so long as they
were uninterrupted in the society of each other, and in the pursuits
they loved. Though in a part of the country, then so remote that they
had only a post once a week, they went into raptures over their lot. The
house which they temporarily occupied was, we are informed, pretty well
stocked with books, and they were industrious in both indoor and outdoor
occupations. They read, and thought, and talked together, rambling
through the lovely combs and by the ever-changing sea. "My brother," she
says, "handles the spade with great dexterity," while she herself was
engaged in reading Italian authors.
A writer in _Blackwood_, a few years ago, referring to Miss Wordsworth
at this time, says: "She had been separated from her brother since their
childhood, and now at the first moment when their re-union was possible,
seems to have rushed to him with all the impetuosity of her nature.
Without taking his sister into consideration, no just estimate can be
formed of Wordsworth. He was, as it were, henceforward, the spokesman to
the world of two souls. It was not that she visibly or consciously aided
and stimulated him, but that she _was_ him--a second pair of eyes to
see, a second and more delicate intuition to discern, a second heart to
enter into all that came before their mutual observation. This union was
so close, that in many instances it becomes difficult to discern which
is the brother and which the sister. She was part not only of his life,
but of his imagination. He saw by her, felt through her, at her touch
the strings of the instrument began to thrill, the great melodies awoke.
Her journals are Wordsworth in prose, just as his poems are Dorothy in
verse. The one soul kindled at the other. The brother and sister met
with all the enthusiasm of youthful affection, strengthened and
concentrated by long separation, and the delightful sense that here at
last was the possibility of making for themselves a home." After
referring to their pecuniary means, the writer adds: "And with this, in
their innocent frugality and courage, they faced the world like a new
pair of babes in the wood. Their aspirations in one way were infinite,
but in another modest as any cottager's. Daily bread sufficed them, and
the pleasure to be derived from Nature, who is cheap, and gives herself
lavishly without thought or hope of reward."
Although at this remote place friends and visitors were few, it was here
the Wordsworths first made the acquaintance of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
who, in conjunction with Southey, had already begun to make a name. This
acquaintance ripened into a close and uninterrupted friendship, only to
be ended by death. It was here also that Wordsworth composed his tragedy
_The Borderers_ and "The Ruined Cottage," which latter poem afterwards
formed the first part of the "Excursion." The ardour with which the
young poets entered into each other's plans, and the enthusiasm of the
sister, who was in such perfect _rapport_ with them, is gathered from
her statement that the "first thing that was read when he (Coleridge)
came was William's new poem, 'The Ruined Cottage,' with which he was
much delighted; and after tea he repeated to us two acts and a half of
his tragedy _Osorio_. The next morning William read his tragedy _The
Borderers_."
The following description of Coleridge, from the pen of Miss Wordsworth,
cannot fail to be of interest. Writing to a friend, she says: "You had a
great loss in not seeing Coleridge. He is a wonderful man. His
conversation teems with soul, mind, and spirit. Then he is so
benevolent, so good-tempered and cheerful, and, like William, excites
himself so much about every little trifle. At first I thought him very
plain--that is, for about three minutes. He is pale, thin, has a wide
mouth, thick lips, and not very good teeth; longish, loose-growing,
half-curling, rough, black hair. But if you hear him speak for five
minutes, you think no more about them. His eye is large and full, and
not very dark, but grey--such an eye as would receive from a heavy soul
the dullest expression; but it speaks every emotion of his animated
mind. It has more of the 'poet's eye in fine frenzy rolling' than I ever
witnessed. He has fine dark eyebrows and an overhanging forehead."
By the side of this striking picture of Coleridge may be fittingly
placed his first impressions of Miss Wordsworth. Writing to Mr. Cottle
from Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire, where he was then residing, he
says: "Wordsworth and his exquisite sister are with me. She is a woman,
indeed!--in mind, I mean, and heart; for her person is such that, if you
expected to see a pretty woman, you would think her ordinary; if you
expected to see an ordinary woman, you would think her pretty; but her
manners are simple, ardent, impressive. In every motion her most
innocent soul outbeams so brightly that who saw her would say:
'Guilt was a thing impossible in her.'
Her information various; her eye watchful in minutest observation of
Nature; and her taste a perfect electrometer. It bends, protrudes, and
draws in at subtlest beauties and most recondite faults."
From this description of Coleridge it might appear that Miss Wordsworth
was one of those happy possessors of a face and features which though in
repose might appear homely, became illumined by the sweet smiles of
love--flashed into beauty by the gleam of the soul-lit eye.
The pleasure which the friendship of Coleridge afforded them induced
Wordsworth and his sister to change their residence in order to be near
him. Accordingly, in the summer of 1797, they settled at Alfoxden, near
Nether Stowey. Alfoxden is described by Hazlitt as a "romantic old
family mansion of the St. Aubins," and he gives the additional
information that it was then in the possession of a friend of the poet,
who gave him the free use of it. De Quincey states that he understood
that the Wordsworths had the use of the house on condition of keeping it
in repair.
Although Miss Wordsworth afterwards spoke of Racedown as the dearest
place of her recollections upon the whole surface of the island, as the
first home she had, she was soon enamoured of her new abode, and the
scenery of Somersetshire. Of the neighbourhood of Nether Stowey she
says, in a letter to a friend, dated 4th July: "There is everything
there--sea, woods wild as fancy ever painted; brooks clear and pebbly as
in Cumberland; villages as romantic; and William and I, in a wander by
ourselves, found out a sequestered waterfall in a dell formed by steep
hills, covered by full-grown timber-trees. The woods are as fine as
those at Lowther, and the country more romantic; it has the character of
the less grand parts of the neighbourhood of the lakes."
Being settled at Alfoxden, she writes again, on 14th August: "Here we
are, in a large mansion, in a large park, with seventy head of deer
around us. But I must begin with the day of leaving Racedown to pay
Coleridge a visit. You know how much we were delighted with the
neighbourhood of Stowey. The evening that I wrote to you, William and I
had rambled as far as this house, and pryed into the recesses of our
little brook, but without any more fixed thoughts upon it than some
dreams of happiness in a little cottage, and passing wishes that such a
place might be found out. We spent a fortnight at Coleridge's: in the
course of that time we heard that this house was to let, applied for it,
and took it. Our principal inducement was Coleridge's society. It was a
month yesterday since we came to Alfoxden.
"The house is a large mansion, with furniture enough for a dozen
families like ours. There is a very excellent garden, well stocked with
vegetables and fruit. The garden is at the end of the house, and our
favourite parlour, as at Racedown, looks that way. In front is a little
court, with grass-plot, gravel-walk, and shrubs; the moss roses were in
full beauty a month ago. The front of the house is to the south; but is
screened from the sun by a high hill which rises immediately from it.
This hill is beautiful, scattered irregularly and abundantly with trees,
and topped with fern, which spreads a considerable way down it. The deer
dwell here, and sheep, so that we have a living prospect. From the end
of the house we have a view of the sea, over a woody, meadow country;
and exactly opposite the window, where I now sit, is an immense wood,
whose round top from this point has exactly the appearance of a mighty
dome. In some parts of this wood there is an under-grove of hollies,
which are now very beautiful. In a glen at the bottom of the wood is the
waterfall of which I spoke, a quarter of a mile from the house. We are
three miles from Stowey, and not two miles from the sea. Wherever we
turn we have woods, smooth downs, and valleys with small brooks running
down them, through green meadows, hardly ever intersected with
hedgerows, but scattered over with trees. The hills that cradle these
valleys are either covered with fern and bilberries, or oak woods, which
are cut for charcoal.... Walks extend for miles over the hill-tops; the
great beauty of which is their wild simplicity: they are perfectly
smooth, without rocks.
"The Tor of Glastonbury is before our eyes during more than half of our
walk to Stowey; and in the park, wherever we go, keeping about fifteen
yards above the house, it makes a part of our prospect."