The progress of my work warns me to be brief where I would fain be
most voluminous. To John Wilson, of the Isle of Palms, the City of the
Plague, and of volumes of other beautiful poetry, it would be a
delightful task to devote a volume. The biography of Professor Wilson,
whenever given to the world, if written as it should be, would be one
of the most curious and intensely interesting books in the world. The
poet and the periodical writer, Christopher North at the Noctes and in
his shooting-jacket, and John Wilson, the free, open-hearted, yet
eccentric man, could, combined, furnish forth, with glimpses of his
cotemporaries and social doings, a most fascinating work. As it is we
must take but a glimpse, and a hasty glimpse, at his residences.
John Wilson was born at Paisley. His father was a wealthy
manufacturer, and the house which he inhabited, and where the
professor first saw the light, is perhaps the best and largest house
in the town, standing in High-street. It is a large, white house,
standing somewhat back, with a little shrubbery before it. Wilson was
educated at Oxford, and in the London Magazine of 1820 we find an
account of his indulging himself in a pedestrian journey from the
university to Edinburgh, in all manner of country life. Now joining a
strolling company of players; now camping with a gang of Gipsys; then
acting the beggar; and ever and anon falling in with a village wake,
and entering into all the contests of flinging at will-pegs, jumping
in sacks, leaping and racing. On these occasions he would astonish the
natives with his wonderful talk over their beer, or equally amaze the
village damsels by his grace and activity in the dance. Any one who
has seen John Wilson may imagine with what gusto and success he would
go through all these parts, while hoarding up knowledge of the
people's life, that would tell in future.
It is also said, that, quite as a youth, he made an excursion of this
kind, nobody knowing whither he had vanished, till a Paisley man,
happening to enter an inn at Conway, to his amazement saw him acting
as a waiter there. Information was immediately sent to his father, it
is said, who hastened into Wales, and surprised John by his presence,
requesting him to return forthwith home. But here the boniface
interfered, declaring that he could not part on any terms with his
waiter, for such a waiter he had never had in his house in his life.
So active, so expert, so full of wit and good-humor, that every one of
his guests was charmed with him. In short, he was the making of the
house, and go he should not. It was only when mine host was convinced
who and what the youth was, and that it was only a lark, that he gave
way and consented to his loss.
His life in Edinburgh, his contest for the chair of Moral Philosophy
there, which he has so long and honorably occupied, his splendid
writings in Blackwood, and his association with all the distinguished
men of that literary corps and of the Scottish metropolis, are too
familiar matters to dwell upon. The haunts of Wilson in town are the
gathering places of genius and conviviality. In the country they are
the mountains, the moors, and the streams. His tall and athletic form,
and active and ardent character, mark him out for a deep enjoyment of
all the loveliness of nature, and the sports of the wild. He has been
a great wrestler, a great angler, a great shooter, and a great walker.
In life, or in the pages of Blackwood, the angle and the gun have been
his companions, amid the most splendid and solitary scenery of the
kingdom. At one time he has been traversing the piny mountains and the
lonely lochs of the Highlands, at another strolling through the
defiles of Patterdale, or scaling the heights of Skiddaw. Once taking
refuge in a farmhouse in the Highlands of Scotland, I was told that
Professor Wilson and his wife had done the same thing just before, on
their way toward the western coast, on foot, with a view to visit
Staffa and Iona. With a happy family around him, John Wilson seemed
for years to breathe nothing but the spirit of happiness and the full
enjoyment of life. Laboring away at his lectures and his magazine
articles, and partaking the society of Edinburgh during the college
terms, he was ever ready to fly off, on their close, to his beloved
hills and streams. In Edinburgh, his house has long been in
Gloucester-place of the new town. In the country, his favorite abode
at Elleray, near Windermere, in Westmoreland.
Many anecdotes of his manly humor, kindliness, and exploits of
physical vigor, are related of him in this neighborhood: among others,
that he was once balloted for the local militia there, and declined
finding a substitute, but chose to serve. Here, then, might be seen
the poet and philosopher passing his drill, and manoeuvering rank
and file. He would attend for his ration and his tommy, and, sticking
them on the point of his bayonet, march down the town where the
regiment lay, and present them to the first old woman he met. For
these vagaries he was called up before the officers, to be
reprimanded; but the affair was sure to change very speedily from a
grave to a merry one, and to end by the officers inviting him to
partake of their mess. How long he continued to indulge his whim does
not appear.
Hogg gives, somewhere, a very amusing account of a week that he spent
with him at Elleray, where, he says, they had curious doings among the
gentlemen and the poets of the lakes. According to his account, they
used to ramble far and wide among the lakes and mountains, fishing,
and climbing, and talking, and would give each other a challenge to
write a poem on some given subject, in the evening, after dinner.
Hogg's relation of these poetical contests is most laughable. They
seated themselves in separate rooms; but, according to a custom very
common, and perhaps universal among poets, of chanting their verses
aloud as they form them, Hogg could always hear how the matter was
progressing with his antagonist. If the verse did not flow well, there
was a dead silence; if it began to flow and expand, there was heard a
pleasant murmur, as of a mountain stream. As the inspiration grew, and
the work sped, the sound rose and swelled, like the breeze in the
sonorous forest of northern pines; and when there was a passage of
supposed preëminence of beauty and strength struck out, then it rose
into a grand and triumphal tide of song, like the wind pealing through
the mountain passes, or the ocean pouring in riotous joy on the shore.
When it reached so grand a climax, Hogg says he used to
exclaim,--"There, it's all over with me; I'm done for!" and with that
he gave up the contest for the day, knowing that the case was
hopeless.
This humming habit of poets is a singular characteristic. A certain
one of my acquaintance, riding one day on the highway, and seeing no
one near, broke out into a loud and continuous chant, when a fellow
put his head suddenly over the hedge, and shouted out--"What is all
that about!" At which the startled bard was first struck into a sudden
silence, and then into as sudden a burst of laughter at the oddity of
the circumstance. Wordsworth, among the woods, and rocks, and solitary
crags of Cumberland, may be heard murmuring to himself a music of his
own; so that a stranger, seeing the grave and ancient man strolling
along, often with a little bundle of sticks under his arm, that he has
unconsciously gathered, and humming out some dimly intelligible
stanzas in a breeze-like and Æolian harp-like wildness of cadence,
might take him for a very innocent old man, not overburdened with
business or other matters. Among the great luxuriant laurels that
flourish round his house, you may trace his retired perambulations by
his top-like humming, and say,--
"Over its own sweet voice the stock-dove broods."
Southey's garden, and that of his only neighbor, were merely divided
by a hedge. In the garden of the neighbor was sitting once with the
neighbor a visitor from a distance, when a deep and mysterious
booming, somewhat near, startled the stranger, and caused him to
listen. Recollecting that they were near the lakes, the sound, which
at first seemed most novel and unaccountable, appeared to receive a
solution; and the visitor exclaimed,--"What! have you bitterns here?"
"Bitterns!" replied the host; "oh no; it is only Southey, humming his
verses in the garden-walk on the other side of the hedge!"
The cottage of Wilson at Elleray is a simple, but elegant little
villa, standing on high ground overlooking Windermere, but at the
distance of some miles. As you approach Ambleside from Kendal, you
pass, as you begin to descend the hill toward Lowood, a gate leading
into a gentleman's grounds. The gateway is, on either side, hung with
masses of the Ayrshire rose. There is a poetical look about the place;
and that place is the country retreat of John Wilson. A carriage-road,
winding almost in a perfect circle, soon introduces you to a fine
lawn, surrounded by plantations, and before you, on a swelling knoll,
you discern the cottage. It is hung with ivy and Ayrshire roses; and
commands a splendid view over the lake, and all the mountains round.
At the back a plantation of larches ascends the hill, screening it
from the north. At the foot of these plantations, and sheltered in
their friendly bosom, lie the gardens, with bees, and pleasant nooks
for reading or talk. Walks extend all through these woodlands, and one
of them conducts you through the larch copse, up the hill, and from
its summit beyond the house, gives you a most magnificent panoramic
view of the whole country, with its mountains, and lakes, and plains,
and the very ocean. In one direction, you have Morecomb Bay and
Ulverstone sands, with the crags of Cartmell; in another, Coniston and
other fells; then Eskdale fells, Dunmail raise; Bow fell, far beyond,
and Langdale pikes. In another, you catch the summit of Skiddaw, and
the lofty ridges in the neighborhood of Patterdale, with Shap fell.
Below you is all the breadth and the scenery of Windermere.
Such a view is a perpetual enjoyment. The constant changes of cloud
and sun cast over it a constant change of aspect. Now all is shining
out airy, and clear, and brilliant; and now dark and solemn lie the
shadows, black often as night, and wild from passing tempests, in the
mysterious hollows of the hills. When you descend to the house, the
scene around is made all the more soft and attractive to the senses by
the change from such immense range of vision, and stern character of
many of the objects presented. Here all is beauty and repose. The
knoll on which the house stands is particularly round, and is well
laid out in lawn and flower-beds. The house itself is simple, and
consists principally of one long room, which, by folding doors, can be
formed into two with a hall between them. Behind this lie the kitchen
and offices. At the end next to the Windermere, is a large bay window,
overlooking the upper part of the lake, toward Langdale and Coniston
fell. The window is provided with seats, for the full enjoyment of
this splendid view. A pleasantly swelling slope descends to the
meadows which lie between its feet, and the house of the late Bishop
Watson. The front door is in a bay window, lined with stands of
plants, and having in direct view Ray Castle on the far side of the
lake.
Such is the poet's cottage at Elleray, in itself unostentatious, but
surrounded by the magnificence of nature in the distance, and by its
quiet sweetness at hand. Years ago, when Mrs. Wilson was living, and
the children were young and about them, we can conceive no happier
spot of earth. No man was more formed to enjoy all that life had to
offer, both at home and abroad, in such scenery; his wife was a most
charming woman, and his children full of spirit and promise. The
affectionate tenderness which diffused itself through the whole of
Wilson's being, and the depth of that happiness which he enjoyed here,
are manifested in such poems as the Children's Dance, and the Angler's
Tent. When his tent was pitched in a Sabbath valley far off, he thus
referred to the homes of both himself and his companion, the poet of
Rydal:--
"Yet think not in this wild and fairy spot,
This mingled happiness of earth and heaven,
Which to our hearts this Sabbath-day was given,
Think not that far-off friends were quite forgot.
Helm-crag arose before our half-closed eyes,
With colors brighter than the brightening dove;
Beneath that guardian mount a cottage lies;
Encircled by a halo breathed from love!
And sweet that dwelling rests upon the brow,
Beneath that sycamore, of Orest hill,
As if it smiled on Windermere below,
Her green recesses and her islands still!
Thus gently blended many a human thought
With those that peace and solitude supplied,
Till in our hearts the musing kindness wrought
With gradual influence like a flowing tide,
And for the lovely sound of human voice we sighed."
But the great charm and ornament of that house has vanished; the young
steps have wandered forth, and found other homes; and it must now be a
somewhat solitary spot to him who formerly found collected into it all
that made life beautiful. Nay, steam, as little as time, has respected
the sanctity of the poet's home, but has drawn up its roaring iron
steeds opposite to its gate, and has menaced to rush through it, and
lay waste its charmed solitude. In plain words, I saw the stakes of a
projected railway running in an ominous line across the very lawn, and
before the very windows of Elleray.