_Spring_ 18–.
WALKED from Holford to my lodgings on the hill. Never remember to have
lived in such quietude. The cottage stands half a mile away from any
house. Woke very early the next morning and went down to Alfoxden House,
where Wordsworth and Dorothy lived a century ago. Here also came
Coleridge. It was almost too much to remember that they had trodden
those paths. I could hardly believe they were not there, and yet they
were dead—such a strange overcoming sense of presence and yet of
vanishedness.
A certain degree of ignorance is necessary for a summary essay on
creatures of this order. The expression of Dorothy’s soul is spread over
large surfaces. Some people require much space and time, and the
striking events of a life are often not those which are most significant.
It is in small, spontaneous actions and their reiteration that character
plainly appears. After prolonged acquaintance with Dorothy we see that
she was great and we love her reverentially and passionately. She could
look at a beautiful thing for an hour without reflection, but absorbed in
its pure beauty—a most rare gift. For how long can we watch a birch tree
against the sky? Here are two extracts from her journal in the very
place where I now am. They are dated 26th January and 24th February
1798, in the winter it will be noticed. ‘Sat in the sunshine. The
distant sheep-bells; the sound of the stream; the woodman winding along
the half-marked road with his laden pony; locks of wool still spangled
with the dewdrops; the blue-grey sea, shaded with immense masses of
cloud, not streaked; the sheep glittering in the sunshine.’ . . . ‘Went
to the hill-top. Sat a considerable time overlooking the country towards
the sea. The air blew pleasantly around us. . . . Scattered farmhouses,
half-concealed by green, mossy orchards; fresh straw lying at the doors;
haystacks in the fields. Brown fallows; the springing wheat, like a
shade of green over the brown earth; and the choice meadow plots, full of
sheep and lambs, of a soft and vivid green; a few wreaths of blue smoke,
spreading along the ground; the oaks and beeches in the hedges retaining
their yellow leaves; the distant prospect on the land side, islanded with
sunshine; the sea, like a basin full to the margin; the dark,
fresh-ploughed fields; the turnips, of a lively, rough green.’ That bit
about the farmhouses reminds me of two very early lines of Wordsworth
which are a prophecy of his peculiar quality:—
‘Calm is all nature as a resting wheel’;
and
‘By secret villages and lonely farms.’
(_first version_.)
The image in the first line looks rude and unpoetical, but will be felt
by anybody who has strolled observantly through a farmyard—say on a
Sunday summer afternoon—and has noticed a disused wheel leaning against a
wall. Wordsworth shows himself not afraid of the commonplace. A great
object may gain by comparison with one which is superficially lower or
even mean—nature with a cart-wheel.
* * * * *
Went over the hills to Bicknoller—a sunny, hazy day—and the Bristol
Channel was in a mist. The note of the cuckoo was unceasing. Down in
the valley at Bicknoller the hedges and banks of the lanes are in the
most ardent stage of spring. Everything is pressing forward with joyous
impetuosity, and yet is satisfied with what it is at the present moment
and is completely at rest in it. Along this path to Bicknoller the
_Ancient Mariner_ was begun. The most wonderful piece of criticism on
record is perhaps that of Mrs. Barbauld on the poem. She objected to it
because it had no moral. Coleridge replied: ‘In my judgment the poem had
too much; and the only, or chief fault, if I might say so, was the
obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle
or cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought to have
no more moral than the Arabian Nights’ tale of the merchant’s sitting
down to eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside,
and lo! a genie starts up, and says he _must_ kill the aforesaid
merchant, _because_ one of the date-shells had, it seems, put out the eye
of the genie’s son.’
* * * * *
To the first draft of _Youth and Age_, written in 1823, there is a little
prose introduction, a reminiscence of the Quantocks, which is a lovely
example of the way in which one sensation gains by description in terms
of another. ‘ . . . At earliest dawn . . . the first skylark . . . was
a Song-Fountain, dashing up and sparkling to the Ear’s eye, in full
column or ornamented shaft of sound in the order of Gothic Extravaganza,
out of sight, over the Cornfields on the descent of the Mountain on the
other side—out of sight, tho’ twice I beheld its mute shoot downward in
the sunshine like a falling star of silver.’
* * * * *
Coleridge! Coleridge! How empty do the sweeping judgments passed on him
appear if we recollect that by Wordsworth, Dorothy, Charles and Mary
Lamb, he was honoured and fervently loved. If a man is loved by any
human being condemnation is rash, and we ought at least to be silent.
* * * * *
Wandered about Holford. The apple-trees are in full blossom. One of
them was a particularly exquisite survival of youth in old age. Its head
was a white-and-pink mass, but it leaned almost horizontally, battered
and weather-worn.
* * * * *
Thunder off and on all day till the afternoon. A low grey mist covered
the whole sky at five o’clock, and the landscape was uninteresting, but
in ten minutes the mist thinned a little, so that the sun came through it
and lighted up the torn vapour.
* * * * *
Went over to East Quantock’s Head and came back across the hill. It was
a dark day; the sky was overcast, and the moors were very lonely. The
thought of London and other big cities over the horizon somewhat marred
the solitude. Nevertheless there are the deserts of Arabia and Africa,
the regions of the North and South Poles, the Ocean, and, encompassing
the globe itself, silent, infinite space.
* * * * *
To Nether Stowey and Tom Poole’s house. In the hideous church is a
monument to him fairly appreciative, but disfigured by snobbism. ‘His
originality and grasp of mind,’ says the inscription, ‘counterbalanced
the deficiencies of early education and secured him the friendship,’ etc.
His ‘originality and grasp of mind’—his soul, that is to say, managed,
when put in the scale, to turn it against those deficiencies which are
made good to youths providentially directed to Eton and Oxford.
According to the slab in the church, Poole died 8th September 1837,
seventy-two years old. The house in which he lived in his later years is
a pleasant place, but has been tortured into modern gentility. His
revolving grate, which he turned round when he went out, has been
replaced by an approved cast-iron ‘register.’ He was called ‘Justice
Poole’ in the country round. Afterwards to Coleridge’s cottage—small,
somewhat squalid rooms. Pity, pity, almost to tears. The second edition
of his poems was published while he was here in 1797. In a note added to
_Religious Musings_ in that edition he declares his belief in the
Millennium; that ‘all who in past ages have endeavoured to ameliorate the
state of man, will rise and enjoy the fruits and flowers, the
imperceptible seeds of which they had sown in their former life; and that
the wicked will, during the same period, be suffering the remedies
adapted to their several bad habits.’ This period is to be ‘followed by
the passing away of this earth, and by our entering the state of pure
intellect; when all creation shall rest from its labours.’ The
‘coadjutors of God’ in _Religious Musings_ are Milton, Newton, Hartley,
and Priestley. In the beginning of 1798 Coleridge was preaching at the
Unitarian Chapel at Shrewsbury. But on the 13th November 1797, at
half-past four in the afternoon (let us be particular in dating such an
event), he and Dorothy and her brother began their walk over these
Quantock hills, and _The Ancient Mariner_ was born. These are the facts,
and rash indeed would anybody be who should attempt to deduce anything
from them. Of all foolish criticism there is none more foolish than that
which treats the mental movement of men like Coleridge or Wordsworth as
if it were in an imaginary straight line. Excepting lines 123–270,
composed in the latter part of 1796, Coleridge wrote his contribution to
_Joan of Arc_ between 1794 and 1795. _The Rose_ and _Kisses_ were
written in 1793, and _On a Discovery Made Too Late_ in 1794. Could
anybody, not knowing the dates, have believed that these three poems
last-named, if not written before the _Joan of Arc_, were contemporaneous
with it? In the _Joan of Arc_ Coleridge is immature and led astray by
politics, religion, and philosophy, but in the three little poems where
he has subjects akin to him he is perfect, and could have done nothing
better ten years later. Still more remarkable, _Lewti_, in its earliest
form, cannot have been written later than 1794, for it was originally
addressed to Mary Evans, from whom Coleridge parted in December 1794. As
an example of the survival of his poetic power take _Love’s First Hope_,
written probably in 1824:
‘O fair is Love’s first hope to gentle mind!
As Eve’s first star thro’ fleecy cloudlet peeping;
And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind,
O’er willowy meads, and shadow’d waters creeping,
And Ceres’ golden field;—the sultry hind
Meets it with brow uplift, and stays his reaping.’
Coleridge was indebted to Sir Philip Sidney for the third and fourth
lines, excepting ‘o’er willowy meads,’ but these three words and the
first and last two lines are his own. Not only does his genius survive,
but emotion as pure and deep as that of the Nether Stowey days or those
preceding. There is no trace of the interval between them and those of
1824.
* * * * *
In the post-office at Kilve hangs an old trombone, a memento of the time
when the village orchestra assisted in the service at the church. How
well I remember those artists and their jealousies! The clarionet or
‘clarnet,’ as he called himself, caused much ill-feeling because he
drowned the others, and the double-bass strove ineffectually to avenge
himself. The churchyard yew is one of the largest I ever beheld—twenty
feet in girth by measurement, four feet from the ground. A gay morning:
heavy, white masses of clouds sailing over the hills; light most
brilliant when the sun came out. How singularly beautiful is a
definitely outlined white cloud when it is cut by the ridge of a hill!
* * * * *
Across the hills in a south-westerly storm of wind and rain to
Bicknoller. A walk not to be forgotten: overcast sky, dark moors; clouds
sweeping over them and obscuring them. I should not have found my way if
I had not lost it when I went to Bicknoller before. I then put three
stones at the point where I afterwards discovered I had gone astray.
These three stones saved me to-day.
* * * * *
Whitsunday morning: sat at the open window between five and six: the
hills opposite lay in the light of the eastern sun. Bicknoller church
and the little old village were beneath me. Perfect quietude, save for
the bells of Stogumber church ringing a peal two miles away. Earth has
nothing to give compared with this peace. The air was so still that
delicious mingled scents floated up from the garden and fields below. It
was one of those days on which every sense is satisfied, and no mortal
imperfection appears. Took the _Excursion_ out of doors after breakfast,
and read _The Ruined Cottage_.
Much of the religion by which Wordsworth lives is very indefinite. Look
at the close of this poem:—
‘I well remember that those very plumes,
Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall
By mist and silent rain-drops silver’d o’er,
As once I pass’d, did to my heart convey
So still an image of tranquillity,
So calm and still, and look’d so beautiful
Amid the uneasy thoughts which fill’d my mind,
That what we feel of sorrow and despair
From ruin and from change, and all the grief
The passing shows of Being leave behind,
Appear’d an idle dream, that could not live
Where meditation was. I turn’d away,
And walk’d along my road in happiness.’
Because this religion is indefinite it is not therefore the less
supporting.
Why, by the way, did Wordsworth expunge from _Michael_ these wonderful
lines?
‘In his thoughts there were obscurities,
Wonder, and admiration, things that wrought
Not less than a religion in his heart.’
Something like them had been said before, but they ought to have been
retained.
* * * * *
The changes in the sky in this Quantock country are as sudden and strange
as in Cumberland. During a walk from Cleeve Abbey to Bicknoller it
rained in torrents till within half a mile of the end of my journey. All
at once it ceased, and the uniform sheet of rain-cloud broke into loose
ragged masses swirling in different directions and variously lighted, the
sun almost shining through some of the clefts between them. Cleeve
Abbey, lying in the trough of a green valley through which runs a stream,
the cloister garth and the Abbot’s seat at the end of it, are most
impressive. Under the turf lie the dead monks. A place like this begets
half-unconscious dreaming which issues in nothing and is not wholesome.
It would be better employment to learn something about the history of the
abbey and about its architecture.
* * * * *