A QUIET RESTING-PLACE.
A few words only are desirable to be added in reference to the surviving
inmate of the home of which Miss Wordsworth was so long a cherished
member. The poet's aged widow survived her husband and sister-in-law for
some years. She was not solitary in her widowhood, but tenderly loved by
devoted friends. Miss Joanna Baillie, writing to Mrs. Fletcher in the
June succeeding the death of Wordsworth, says: "Many thanks to you for
sending to us a copy of these lines" (the lines upon the companionship
of Wordsworth and his sister, before mentioned), "and for letting us
know how his excellent wife, Mrs. Wordsworth, bears up under her severe
affliction. She was a mate worthy of him or any man, and his sister too,
such a devoted noble being as scarcely any other man ever possessed."
Mrs. Fletcher's diary, under date, Sunday, the 7th May, 1854, contains
the following entry: "Yesterday, Mrs. Davy brought Mrs. Wordsworth to
dinner. It is always a pleasure to see the placid old age of dear Mrs.
Wordsworth. Hers has been a life of duty, and it is now an old age of
repose, while her affections are kept in constant exercise by the tender
interest she takes in her grand-children."
During the last three years of her life Mrs. Wordsworth was blind; and
it is deeply pathetic to read how, in her last days, when her sightless
eyes could no longer peruse the sacred page, she loved to feel with her
trembling fingers a cross which she kept in her room, and which seemed
to remind her of the Christian's hope. Her life of calm devotion and
disinterested love, succeeded by an old age of resignation and peace,
was brought to a serene close on the 17th of January, 1859.
Among the quiet resting-places of the dead, few, if any, are of deeper
interest than the peaceful churchyard of Grasmere. Under the shadow of
the everlasting hills "girded with joy," and by the banks of the
murmuring stream singing in its onward course of hopes beyond the grave,
it is a spot which affection would choose for its most tenderly loved.
As "the Churchyard among the mountains," many of the annals of which are
recorded in that grand philosophic poem, "The Excursion," it could not
fail to draw thither the footsteps of the thoughtful. But there is one
corner on approaching which we seem to feel more solemnised, to breathe
more gently--where the footstep falls lighter and lingers longer. To us
it is as sacred a nook as the shadowy corner of the famous Abbey where
are laid England's greatest sons. The group of graves gathered there are
not glorified by the "religious light" of storied windows, but they are
warmed by summer suns, and covered with a garment of purity by winter
snows, and over-shadowed by aged yews, which gently shower around them
their peaceful and slumberous undersong.
In the south-east corner of this quiet God's Acre is to be found this
cluster of graves, surrounded by an iron palisade, to each of which a
history of more than common interest is attached. Behind the principal
group are three short graves, two of which, being the first formed of
the group, attract attention. These are the graves of little Catherine
and Thomas Wordsworth, the children of the poet, whose early and sudden
deaths have been mentioned. The stone indicating the resting-place of
the "loving, and tractable, though wild," Catherine bears the
inscription, "Suffer little children to come unto Me." That of her
brother contains a few memorial lines recording at once his age and
loving disposition:--
"Six months to six years added he remained
Upon this sinful earth, by sin unstained:
O blessed Lord! Whose mercy then removed
A Child whom every eye that looked on loved;
Support us, teach us calmly to resign
What we possessed, and now is wholly Thine!"
The next green mound, in point of date, is that which covers the remains
of the first Mrs. Quillinan, who died on the 25th May, 1822, at the
early age of twenty-seven years, six months after the birth of her
second daughter. She was a daughter of the late Sir Egerton Brydges,
Bart., of Denton Court, near Dover. There is in Grasmere Church a
monument to her designed by Sir F. Chantrey.
Miss Sarah Hutchinson, the younger sister of Mrs. Wordsworth, who has
been before mentioned, comes next in this remarkable group. Spending,
as she did, much of her time with the Wordsworths at Grasmere and Rydal
Mount, she was devoted to all the members of the family. Being herself
of poetic mould, the poet's home was most congenial to her. It was she,
who, during a sickness, the year before her death, wrote the following
lines to the Redbreast:--
"Stay, cheerful little Robin! stay,
And at my casement sing,
Though it should prove a farewell lay
And this our parting spring.
"Though I, alas! may ne'er enjoy
The promise in thy song;
A charm, _that_ thought can not destroy,
Doth to thy strain belong.
"Methinks that in my dying hour
Thy song would still be dear,
And with a more than earthly power
My passing Spirit cheer.
"Then, little Bird, this boon confer,
Come, and my requiem sing,
Nor fail to be the harbinger
Of everlasting Spring."
She died as before-mentioned in 1835. Her memorial stone states that she
was the beloved sister and faithful friend of mourners, who had caused
the stone to be erected, with the earnest wish that their remains might
be laid by her side, and a humble hope that through Christ they might
together be made partakers of the same blessed resurrection. Twelve
years afterwards the sod was again cut, to receive, not yet the aged
poet or his wife, but their idolised daughter Dora, the devoted wife of
Mr. Quillinan, who, in her forty-third year, after a brief period of
wedded happiness, died on the 9th July, 1847. Upon the stone at the head
of her grave is chiselled a lamb bearing a cross, and the consolatory
words: "Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out."
The poet himself was the next to be added to the group, and the slab,
with the simple inscription "WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1850," has been gazed
upon by as many moistened eyes as the elaborate tombs of any of
England's greatest heroes.
Mr. Edward Quillinan, who died in July, 1851, rests near the two beloved
companions of his life.
The subject of this brief memoir--the most perfect sister the world hath
known--after her sunny youth, her strong maturity, and her afflicted
age, now sleeps in peace on the right side of the poet, to whom her
self-denying life was devoted, her resting-place, to all who have heard
her name being sufficiently indicated by the words
"DOROTHY WORDSWORTH,
1855."
In a few years more the poet's grave received to its shelter the tried
and honoured partner of his long life, and the words were added: "Mary
Wordsworth, 1859."
From this time there is a break of many years, when the enclosure
received another member of the younger generation. Miss Rotha
Quillinan, named after the murmuring river, by the banks of which her
life was spent, died on the 1st February, 1876. She was the younger
daughter of Mr. Quillinan, and, apart from the subsequent relationship,
had been an object of especial interest to the poet as his god-daughter.
He wrote the following lines in her album:--
"Rotha, my Spiritual Child! this head was grey
When at the sacred font for thee I stood:
Pledged till thou reach the verge of womanhood,
And shalt become thy own sufficient stay;
Too late, I feel, sweet Orphan! was the day
For stedfast hope the contract to fulfil;
Yet shall my blessing hover o'er thee still,
Embodied in the music of this Lay,
Breathed forth beside the peaceful mountain Stream,
Whose murmur soothed thy languid Mother's ear
After her throes, this Stream of name more dear
Since thou dost bear it--a memorial theme
For others; for thy future self, a spell
To summon fancies out of Time's dark cell."
Her surviving sister still resides in the charming retreat at the foot
of Loughrigg Fell, overlooking the vale of Ambleside, which had so long
been the home of both.
The latest addition to the group was made so lately as the year 1883,
when Mr. William Wordsworth, the last surviving son of the poet, was
added to the number.
There is, however, one more grave, which, though not within the
enclosure, lies close behind it, and claims our notice. Hartley
Coleridge, the eldest son of his more distinguished father, was for many
years a familiar figure in the neighbourhood where he now rests. As a
child, quiet, intelligent, and promising; as a youth, encouraging the
hope that he was gifted with a genius which would lead to a career of no
ordinary character; as a collegian, fulfilling the bright hopes of his
friends, and attaining signal distinction;--his subsequent history
affords one more instance of the fact that the greatest genius may by
one failing be crippled, and the brightest promise be never followed by
its full fruition. But this is not the place to recount his story. His
published poems show that he inherited no small portion of his father's
poetic ability. In his subsequently rather aimless life, he endeared
himself not a little to the sympathetic inhabitants of the vale by his
gentle, warm-hearted, and loving disposition. He was passionately fond
of children, and would hardly pass through the village without taking a
little one into his arms. For his father's sake, as well as his own, he
was a favourite with the Wordsworths. It was by Mrs. Wordsworth, the
friend of his infancy, that in his fifty-third year his relatives were
summoned to his dying bed; and by Wordsworth himself (a year before his
own death) his last resting-place was chosen. "Let him lie by us," said
the aged poet, "he would have wished it;" adding to the sexton, "keep
the ground for us--we are old people, and it cannot be for long."
The following sonnet may be given as a specimen of Hartley Coleridge's
poetry, the closing line not inaptly expressing the prayerful attitude
with which he approached the eternal future.
"SHE LOVED MUCH.
"She sat and wept beside His feet. The weight
Of sin oppressed her heart; for all the blame,
And the poor malice of the worldly shame,
To her was past, extinct, and out of date;
Only the _sin_ remained--the leprous state.
She would be melted by the heat of love,
By fires far fiercer than are blown to prove
And purge the silver ore adulterate.
She sat and wept, and with her untressed hair
Still wiped the feet she was so blest to touch;
And He wiped off the soiling of despair
From her sweet soul, because she loved so much.
I am a sinner, full of doubts and fears,
Make me a humble thing of love and tears."