RESIDENCE AT ALFOXDEN.--REMOVAL TO GRASMERE.
The year succeeding the time when Miss Wordsworth and her brother became
resident at Alfoxden was one of glowing enjoyment and fruitful industry.
We are not without a few pleasing pictures of this charmed primitive
period of their lives--its profitable intercourse, its delightful
rambles.
"Upon smooth Quantock's airy ridge we roamed,
Unchecked, or loitered 'mid his sylvan combs;
Thou, in bewitching words with happy heart,
Didst chant the vision of that ancient man,
The bright-eyed mariner; and rueful woes
Didst utter of the Lady Christabel--
And I, associate with such labours, steeped
In soft forgetfulness the livelong hours,
Murmuring of him who, joyous hap, was found
After the perils of his moonlight ride,
Near the loud waterfall; or her who sate
In misery near the miserable thorn."
We can imagine the happy meetings and rapturous feelings of the two
young poets in the company of the bright young woman, who was gifted
with a no less poetic soul, wandering amid the delightful scenery of
Somersetshire, revelling in the beauties of woodland and ocean, and the
pleasant evenings, when each read to the other his growing poems; and
they together discussed their ambitious schemes for the golden future,
receiving the suggestions and approval of the ever-sympathetic sister
and friend. Wordsworth has described this as a "very pleasant and
productive time" of his life.
It was during one of the short tours of Wordsworth and Coleridge, with
the bright and faithful Dorothy by their side, inspiring and stimulating
(the expenses of which tour they desired to defray by writing a poem),
that the story of "The Ancient Mariner" was conceived. Wordsworth has
said of it in a passage oft-repeated:--
"In the autumn of 1797, Mr. Coleridge, my sister, and myself, started
from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon, with a view of visiting
Linton and the valley of stones near it; and as our united funds were
very small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a
poem, to be sent to the new Monthly Magazine. In the course of this walk
was planned the poem of 'The Ancient Mariner,' founded on a dream, as
Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend, Mr. Cruikshank. Much the greatest
part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention; but certain parts I
suggested. For example, some crime to be committed, which was to bring
upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterwards delighted to call him,
the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime and his own
wanderings. I had been reading in 'Shelvocke's Voyages,' a day or two
before, that, while doubling Cape Horn, they frequently saw albatrosses
in that latitude--the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their
wings 12 or 13 feet. Suppose, said I, you represent him as having killed
one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary
spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime. The
incident was thought fitting for the purpose, and adopted accordingly. I
also suggested the navigation of the ship by the dead man; but I do not
recollect that I had anything more to do with the scheme of the poem."
It was about this time that the Wordsworths made the acquaintance of
Hazlitt. He was then staying with Coleridge, who took him over to
Alfoxden. Of this visit Hazlitt says:--
"Wordsworth himself was from home; but his sister kept house, and set
before us a frugal repast; and we had free access to her brother's
poems, the lyrical ballads, which were still in manuscript, or in the
form of sybilline leaves. I dipped into a few of these with great
satisfaction, and with the faith of a novice. I slept that night in an
old room, with blue hangings, and covered with the round-faced family
portraits, of the age of George I. and II., and from the woody declivity
of the adjoining park that overlooked my window, at the dawn of day,
'Heard the loud stag speak.'
"Next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, we strolled out into the
park, and, seating ourselves on the trunk of an old ash tree, that
stretched along the ground, Coleridge read aloud, with a sonorous and
musical voice, the ballad of 'Betty Foy.' I was not critically or
sceptically inclined. I saw touches of truth and nature, and took the
rest for granted. But in 'The Thorn,' 'The Mad Mother,' and 'The
Complaint of the Poor Indian Woman,' I felt that deeper power and
pathos, which have been since acknowledged,
'In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,'
as the characteristics of this author, and the sense of a new style and
a new spirit in poetry, came over me. It had to me something of the
effect that arises from the turning up of the fresh soil, or of the
first welcome breath of spring,
'While yet the trembling year is unconfirmed.'
"Coleridge and myself walked back to Stowey that evening, and his voice
sounded high,
'Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate;
Fixt fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,'
as we passed through the echoing groves, by fairy stream or waterfall,
gleaming in the solemn moonlight.... We went over to Alfoxden again the
day following, and Wordsworth read us the story of 'Peter Bell' in the
open air. There is a _chant_ in the recitation, both of Coleridge and
Wordsworth, which acts as a spell upon the hearer, and disarms the
judgment. Perhaps they have deceived themselves by making habitual use
of this ambiguous accompaniment. Coleridge's manner is more full,
animated, and varied; Wordsworth's more equable, sustained, and
internal. Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to compose in
walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling branches
of a copsewood, whereas Wordsworth always composed walking up and down
a straight gravel walk, or in some spot where the continuity of his
verse met with no collateral interruptions.... Returning the same
evening, I got into a metaphysical argument with Wordsworth, while
Coleridge was explaining the different notes of the nightingale to his
sister, in which we neither of us succeeded in making ourselves
perfectly clear and intelligible."
This year was also celebrated by an introduction to Charles Lamb (the
quaint and gentle-hearted "Elia") and his excellent sister Mary. Lamb
was an old schoolfellow, and a close friend of Coleridge. They had been
boys together at the Christ's Hospital, where the sympathy between them
had been formed which became a life-long bond. A short emancipation from
the toils of the East India House found Lamb and his sister spending a
little time with Coleridge at Nether Stowey. From the time of the
commencement of the acquaintance of Mary Lamb and Dorothy Wordsworth in
this manner, their friendship was constant and their correspondence
frequent. While, in temperament, they were totally unlike each other,
there was that in the tenor of their lives, in the tender and helpful
devotion of each of them to her brother--a devotion in both cases so
warmly reciprocated--together with much in common in their tastes and
pursuits, which served to cement a friendship begun under such
pleasurable circumstances.
The poem "To my Sister," written in front of Alfoxden, is suggestive of
the happy rural life at this time enjoyed by the poet and his sister.
What lover of Wordsworth does not remember how on "the first mild day
of March," when, to the receptive spirit of the poet, each minute of the
advancing, balmy day appeared to be lovelier than the preceding one,
while, sauntering on the lawn, he wrote, desiring her to hasten with her
household morning duties, and share his enjoyment of the genial
sunshine?
"It is the first mild day of March:
Each minute sweeter than before
The red-breast sings from the tall larch
That stands beside our door.
"There is a blessing in the air,
Which seems a sense of joy to yield
To the bare trees, and mountains bare,
And grass in the green field.
"'My sister! ('tis a wish of mine),
Now that our morning meal is done,
Make haste, your morning task resign;
Come forth and feel the sun.
"'Edward will come with you--and, pray,
Put on with speed your woodland dress;
And bring no book; for this one day
We'll give to idleness.
"'No joyless forms shall regulate
Our living calendar:
We from to-day, my Friend, will date
The opening of the year.
"'Love, now a universal birth,
From heart to heart is stealing,
From earth to man, from man to earth;
--It is the hour of feeling.
"'One moment now may give us more
Than years of toiling reason:
Our minds shall drink at every pore
The spirit of the season.
"'Some silent laws our hearts will make,
Which they shall long obey;
We for the year to come may take
Our temper from to-day.
"'And from the blessed power that rolls
About, below, above,
We'll frame the measure of our souls:
They shall be tuned to love.
"'Then come, my Sister! come, I pray,
With speed put on your woodland dress;
And bring no book: for this one day
We'll give to idleness.'"
It was also during their residence at Alfoxden that Miss Wordsworth and
her brother made their tour on the banks of the Wye, so signally
memorialised in his famous lines on Tintern Abbey, of which he says, no
poem of his was composed under circumstances more pleasant for him to
remember. Its elevating reflections and rhythmic strains take captive
the affections of the lover of Nature, and linger in his memory like the
music of youth. In this place our interest in it arises from the
allusions it contains to his beloved companion. He refers to the sweet
sensations which, in hours of weariness in towns and cities, he has owed
to the beauteous forms of Nature to which his mind has turned. He calls
to memory the time when he had, indeed, loved Nature more passionately,
and compares it with his present more mature and thoughtful affection,
concluding with a fervid address to her who was by his side, and whose
presence imparted an added charm--that of double vision--to every object
and feeling; a sense of blessing shared:--
"For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river: thou, my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege
Thro' all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee; and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these, my exhortations! Nor, perchance,
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence--wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together....
Nor wilt thou then forget
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!"
Although Coleridge was at this time married, his wife does not seem to
have entered very warmly into his pursuits--not, indeed, with the same
interest that Miss Wordsworth did. It cannot be out of place, since it
is a matter of almost common knowledge, to remark that we have in
Coleridge one more instance of the many men of genius who have not been
very suitably mated. Mrs. Coleridge did not feel the sympathy in her
husband's aims to enable her to take pleasure in their intellectual
conversations or perpetual rambles. In both of these Miss Wordsworth
delighted. De Quincey, in his uncontrollable propensity to chatter, has
taken occasion from this fact to suggest that Mrs. Coleridge resented
the familiar friendship of the poetic trio. Although not mentioning Miss
Wordsworth by name, he refers to a young lady who became a neighbour and
a daily companion of Coleridge's walks, and who was "intellectually much
superior to Mrs. Coleridge," in a way that shows that none other than
Miss Wordsworth could be alluded to. He adds: "Mrs. Coleridge, not
having the same relish for long walks or rural scenery, and their
residence being at this time in a very sequestered village, was
condemned to a daily renewal of this trial. Accidents of another kind
embittered it still further. Often it would happen that the walking
party returned drenched with rain; in which case the young lady, with a
laughing gaiety, and evidently unconscious of any liberty that she was
taking, or any wound that she was inflicting, would run up to Mrs.
Coleridge's wardrobe, array herself, without leave asked, in Mrs.
Coleridge's dresses, and make herself merry with her own
unceremoniousness and Mrs. Coleridge's gravity. In all this she took no
liberty that she would not most readily have granted in return; she
confided too unthinkingly in what she regarded as the natural privileges
of friendship, and as little thought that she had been receiving or
exacting a favour as, under an exchange of their relative positions,
she would have claimed to confer one." Although De Quincey states that
the feelings of Mrs. Coleridge were moderated by the consideration of
the kind-heartedness of the young lady, that she was always attended by
her brother, and that mere intellectual sympathies in reference to
literature and natural scenery associated them, it is to be regretted
that the perfectly innocent friendship should have been the cause of
this small gossip, a thing in which De Quincey rather delighted, and
which sometimes mars the pleasurableness of his otherwise felicitous
recollections. He was not at this time acquainted either with Coleridge
or the Wordsworths, and the information could only have been derived
from them during subsequent years of confidential friendship, and not
intended for repetition. However it may have appeared to her then, Mrs.
Coleridge had in the future much cause to be thankful for the
disinterested friendship of Miss Wordsworth.
How conducive to the best interests of her brother at this time was the
companionship of Miss Wordsworth, and how complete was his restoration
to a healthy and vigorous life after the political distractions of his
Continental experience we gather from an allusion in the _Biographia
Literaria_ of Coleridge. Referring to his life at Nether Stowey, he
says: "I was so fortunate as to acquire, shortly after my settlement
there, an invaluable blessing in the society of one to whom I could look
up with equal reverence, whether I regarded him as a poet, a
philosopher, or a man. His conversation extended to almost all subjects,
except physics and politics; with the latter he never troubled
himself."
The residence of Miss Wordsworth and her poet brother at Alfoxden, was
terminated by circumstances which serve to illustrate at once something
of the political attitude of the times, and also of the mental condition
of their rustic neighbours in Somersetshire. Coleridge tells an amusing
story how he and Wordsworth were followed and watched in their rambles
by a person who was suspected to be a spy on their proceedings employed
by the Government of the day. Whether this be well founded or not, the
mere fact of two men living in their midst, without any apparent object,
appears to have rather discomposed their neighbours. Why should they be
continually spending their time in taking long and apparently
purposeless rambles, engaged in earnest conversation? It was
inconceivable that any one should walk a few miles in the light of the
moon merely to look at the sea! They must be engaged in smuggling, or
have other nefarious designs. In connection with this subject, there is
one good story told. Some country gentlemen of the neighbourhood
happened to be in the company of a party who were discussing the
question whether Wordsworth and Coleridge might be traitors, and in
correspondence with the French Administration, when one of them
answered: "Oh! as to that Coleridge, he is a rattlebrain that will say
more in a week than he will stand to in a twelvemonth. But Wordsworth,
he is the traitor. Why, bless you! he is so close that you'll never hear
him open his lips on the subject from year's end to year's end." The
public belief in the absurd theory of Wordsworth's traitorous designs
was, however, sufficient to induce the owner of the mansion in which he
lived to put an end to the occupation.
The reputation of his friends and visitors suffered with his. In
allusion to this, Mr. Howitt says: "The grave and moral Wordsworth, the
respectable Wedgewoods, the correct Robert Southey, and Coleridge,
dreaming of glorious intellectualities beyond the moon, were set down
for a very disreputable gang. Innocent Mrs. Coleridge and poor Dolly
Wordsworth were seen strolling about with them, and were pronounced no
better than they should be. Such was the character that they
unconsciously acquired that Wordsworth was at length actually driven out
of the country."
It may not be out of place to repeat here Mr. Cottle's version of the
affair. He says: "Mr. Wordsworth had taken the Alfoxden house, near
Stowey, for one year (during the minority of the heir), and the reason
why he was refused a continuance by the ignorant man who had the letting
of it arose, as Mr. Coleridge informed me, from a whimsical cause, or
rather a series of causes. The wiseacres of the village had, it seemed,
made Mr. Wordsworth the subject of their serious conversation. One said
that he had seen him wandering about by night and look rather strange at
the moon! And then he roamed over the hills like a partridge! Another
said he had heard him mutter, as he walked, in some outlandish brogue
that nobody could understand! Another said: 'It is useless to talk,
Thomas. I think he is what people call a wise man (a conjurer).' Another
said: 'You are every one of you wrong. I know what he is. We have all
met him tramping away toward the sea. Would any man in his senses take
all that trouble to look at a parcel of water? I think he carries on a
snug business in the smuggling line, and in these journeys is on the
look-out for some _wet_ cargo!' Another very significantly said: 'I know
that he has got a private still in his cellar; for I once passed his
house at a little better than a hundred yards' distance, and I could
smell the spirits as plain as an ashen faggot at Christmas!' Another
said, 'However that was, he was surely a desperd (desperate) French
Jacobin; for he is so silent and dark that nobody ever heard him say one
word about politics!' And thus these ignoramuses drove from their
village a greater ornament than will ever again be found amongst them."
After leaving Alfoxden, in the autumn of 1798, Miss Wordsworth
accompanied her brother during a residence of six months in Germany,
their chief object being the attainment of a knowledge of the language.
Although, from the absence of society at Goslar, where they were, they
do not seem to have been fortunately circumstanced in this respect,
Wordsworth was, according to his sister, very industrious, and here
composed several poems.
Their life in Germany was not altogether without adventure. Mr. Howitt
gives an account of an incident related to him by the poet of his
arriving late one evening, accompanied by Miss Wordsworth and Coleridge,
at a hamlet in Hesse Cassel, where they were unable to gain admittance
to the inn, and feared having to pass the night in the open street. A
continued knocking at the inhospitable doors only brought out the
landlord armed with a huge cudgel, with which he began to beat them.
Regardless of their personal danger, and thinking of their female
companion, to whom the prospect of an inclement night in the open air
was by no means cheering, Wordsworth and his friend managed, after
warding off the blows of the cudgel, to force their way into the house,
and by reasoning with the surly landlord, and appealing to his better
feelings, induced him to afford them a scanty lodging for the night. It
appears that strangers travelling in these remote parts at this time
received scant courtesy, even from those professing to provide them with
entertainment, and that personal violence and plunder were not
unfrequently resorted to.
On returning to England in the spring of 1799, Wordsworth, after
spending some months with friends at Sockburn-on-Tees, wisely determined
to have a fixed place of abode for himself, and, of course, his sister;
eventually selecting that spot which is more than all others associated
with his name and memory. A walking tour in company with his friend
Coleridge in Westmoreland and Cumberland, resulted in his fixing upon
Grasmere as the future home of himself and his faithful sister. To this
place they accordingly repaired, walking a considerable part of the
way--that from Wensleydale to Kendal--"accomplishing as much as twenty
miles in a day over uneven roads, frozen into rocks, in the teeth of a
keen wind and a driving snow," amid the crisp and biting blasts of a
winter day, arriving at Grasmere--so long the scene of their future
labours and rambles--on the shortest day of the last year in the last
century.