When this essay was written, a good many years ago, there was no
available biography of Wordsworth except the two-volume _Memoir_ by
Bishop Christopher Wordsworth, the poet’s nephew. It is a solid work of
family piety, admiring and admirable; but it must be admitted that it is
dull. It is full of matters of no particular consequence, and it leaves
out events in the poet’s life and traits in his character which are not
only interesting in themselves but also of real importance to a vital
understanding of his work.
Even while reading the _Memoir_, I felt sure that he was not always the
tranquil, patient, wise, serenely happy sage that he appeared in his
later years,—sure that a joy in peace as deep and strong as his was,
could only have been won through sharp conflict,—sure that the smooth
portrait drawn by the reverent hand of the bishop did not fully and
frankly depict the real man who wrote the deep and moving poetry of
Wordsworth.
It was about this time that the valuable studies of Wordsworth’s early
life which had been made by Professor Emile Legouis, (then of the
University of Lyons, now of the Sorbonne,) were published in English.
This volume threw a new light upon the poet’s nature, revealing its
intense, romantic strain, and making clear at least some of the causes
which led to the shipwreck of his first hopes and to the period of
profound gloom which followed his return from residence in France in
December 1792.
Shortly after reading Professor Legouis’ book, I met by chance a
gentleman in Baltimore and was convinced by what he told me, (in a
conversation which I do not feel at liberty to repeat in detail,) that
Wordsworth had a grand “affair of the heart” while he lived in France,
with a young French lady of excellent family and character. But they were
parted. A daughter was born, (whom he legitimated according to French
law,) and descendants of that daughter were living.
There was therefore solid ground for my feeling that the poet was not
a man who had been always and easily decorous. He had passed through a
time of storm and stress. He had lost not only his political dreams and
his hopes of a career, but also his first love and his joy. The knowledge
of this gave his poetry a new meaning for me, brought it nearer, made it
seem more deeply human. It was under the influence of this feeling that
this essay was written in a farmhouse in Tyringham Valley, where I was
staying in the winter of 1897, with Richard Watson Gilder and his wife.
Since then Professor George McLean Harper has completed and published,
(1916,) his classic book on _William Wordsworth, His Life, Works, and
Influence_. This is undoubtedly the very best biography of the poet,
and it contains much new material, particularly with reference to his
life and connections in France. But there is nothing in it to shake,
and on the contrary there is much to confirm, the opinion which was
first put forth in this essay: namely, that the central theme, the great
significance, of Wordsworth’s poetry is _the recovery of joy_.
I
William Wordsworth was born in 1770 in the town of Cockermouth in
Cumberland; educated in the village school of Hawkshead among the
mountains, and at St. John’s College, Cambridge. A dreamy, moody youth;
always ambitious, but not always industrious; passionate in disposition,
with high spirits, simple tastes, and independent virtues; he did not
win, and seems not to have desired, university honours. His principal
property when he came of age consisted of two manuscript poems,—_An
Evening Walk_ and _Descriptive Sketches_,—composed in the manner of
Cowper’s _Task_. With these in his pocket he wandered over to France;
partly to study the language; partly to indulge his inborn love of travel
by a second journey on the Continent; and partly to look on at the vivid
scenes of the French Revolution. But the vast dæmonic movement of which
he proposed to be a spectator caught his mind in its current and swept
him out of his former self.
Wordsworth was not originally a revolutionist, like Coleridge and
Southey. He was not even a native radical, except as all simplicity
and austerity of character tend towards radicalism. When he passed
through Paris, in November of 1791, and picked up a bit of stone from
the ruins of the Bastile as a souvenir, it was only a sign of youthful
sentimentality. But when he came back to Paris in October of 1792, after
a winter at Orleans and a summer at Blois, in close intercourse with that
ardent and noble republican, Michael Beaupuy, he had been converted into
an eager partisan of the Republic. He even dreamed of throwing himself
into the conflict, reflecting on “the power of one pure and energetic
will to accomplish great things.”
His conversion was not, it seems to me, primarily a matter of
intellectual conviction. It was an affair of emotional sympathy. His
knowledge of the political and social theories of the Revolution was but
superficial. He was never a doctrinaire. The influence of Rousseau and
Condorcet did not penetrate far beneath the skin of his mind. It was
the primal joy of the Revolutionary movement that fascinated him,—the
confused glimmering of new hopes and aspirations for mankind. He was
like a man who has journeyed, half asleep, from the frost-bound dulness
of a wintry clime, and finds himself, fully awake, in a new country,
where the time for the singing of birds has come, and the multitudinous
blossoming of spring bursts forth. He is possessed by the spirit of
joy, and reason follows where feeling leads the way. Wordsworth himself
has confessed, half unconsciously, the secret of his conversion in his
lines on _The French Revolution as it appeared to Enthusiasts at its
Commencement_.
“Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!”
There was another “bliss,” keener even than the dreams of political
enthusiasm, that thrilled him in this momentous year,—the rapture of
romantic love. Into this he threw himself with ardour and tasted all its
joy. We do not know exactly what it was that broke the vision and dashed
the cup of gladness from his lips. Perhaps it was some difficulty with
the girl’s family, who were royalists. Perhaps it was simply the poet’s
poverty. Whatever the cause was, love’s young dream was shattered, and
there was nothing left but the painful memory of an error, to be atoned
for in later years as best he could.
His political hopes and ideals were darkened by the actual horrors
which filled Paris during the fall of 1792. His impulse to become a
revolutionist was shaken, if not altogether broken. Returning to England
at the end of the same year, he tried to sustain his sinking spirits by
setting in order the reasons and grounds of his new-born enthusiasm,
already waning. His letter to Bishop Watson, written in 1793, is the
fullest statement of republican sympathies that he ever made. In it he
even seems to justify the execution of Louis XVI, and makes light of “the
idle cry of modish lamentation which has resounded from the court to the
cottage” over the royal martyr’s fate. He defends the right of the people
to overthrow all who oppress them, to choose their own rulers, to direct
their own destiny by universal suffrage, and to sweep all obstacles out
of their way. The reasoning is so absolute, so relentless, the scorn
for all who oppose it is so lofty, that already we begin to suspect a
wavering conviction intrenching itself for safety.
The course of events in France was ill fitted to nourish the joy of a
pure-minded enthusiast. The tumultuous terrors of the Revolution trod its
ideals in the dust. Its light was obscured in its own sulphurous smoke.
Robespierre ran his bloody course to the end; and when his head fell
under the guillotine, Wordsworth could not but exult. War was declared
between France and England, and his heart was divided; but the deeper
and stronger ties were those that bound him to his own country. He was
English in his very flesh and bones. The framework of his mind was of
Cumberland. So he stood rooted in his native allegiance, while the leaves
and blossoms of joy fell from him, like a tree stripped bare by the first
great gale of autumn.
The years from 1793 to 1795 were the period of his deepest poverty,
spiritual and material. His youthful poems, published in 1793, met with
no more success than they deserved. His plans for entering into active
life were feeble and futile. His mind was darkened and confused, his
faith shaken to the foundation, and his feelings clouded with despair.
In this crisis of disaster two gifts of fortune came to him. His sister
Dorothy took her place at his side, to lead him back by her wise, tender,
cheerful love from the far country of despair. His friend Raisley Calvert
bequeathed to him a legacy of nine hundred pounds; a small inheritance,
but enough to protect him from the wolf of poverty, while he devoted his
life to the muse. From the autumn of 1795, when he and his sister set
up housekeeping together in a farmhouse at Racedown, until his death in
1850 in the cottage at Rydal Mount, where he had lived for thirty-seven
years with his wife and children, there was never any doubt about the
disposition of his life. It was wholly dedicated to poetry.