I must here borrow the only picture which I find in Dr. Wordsworth’s
“Memoirs,”--viz., that of the poet’s residence, which I transcribe from
vol. I., p. 19.
“The house stands on the sloping summit of a rocky hill, called Nab’s
Scar. It has a southern aspect. In front of it is a small semicircular
area of grey gravel, fringed with shrubs and flowers, the house forming
the diameter of the circle. From this area is a descent of a few stone
steps southward, and then a gentle ascent to a grassy mound. Here let us
rest a little.--At your back is the house; in front, a little to the
left of the horizon, is Wansfell, on which the light of the evening sun
rests, and to which the poet has paid a grateful tribute in two of his
sonnets:--
‘Wansfell! this household has a favoured lot,
Living with liberty on thee to gaze.’
Beneath it the blue smoke shews the place of the town of Ambleside. In
front is the lake Windermere, shining in the sun; also in front, but
more to the right, are the fells of Loughrigg, on which the poet’s
imagination pleased to plant a solitary castle:
‘Ærial rock, whose solitary brow
From this low threshold daily meets the sight.’
Looking to the right, in the garden, is a beautiful glade, overhung with
rhododendrons, in beautiful leaf and bloom. Near them is a tall
ash-tree, in which a thrush has sung for hours together, during many
years. Not far from it is a laburnum, in which the osier cage of the
doves was hung. Below, to the west, is the vegetable garden, not planted
off from the rest, but blended with it by parterres of flowers and
shrubs.
Returning to the platform of grey gravel before the house, we pass
under the shade of a fine sycamore, and ascend to the westward by
fourteen steps of stones, about nine feet long, in the interstices of
which grow the yellow flowering poppy, and the wild geranium, or Poor
Robin,
‘Gay
With his red stalks, upon a sunny day,’
a favourite with the poet, as his verses show.--The steps above,
northward, lead to an upward _sloping terrace_, about two hundred and
fifty feet long. On the right side it is shaded by laburnums, Portugal
laurels, mountain-ash, and fine walnut-trees and cherries; on the left
it is flanked by a low stone wall, coped with rude slates, and covered
with lichens, mosses, and wild-flowers. The fern waves on the walls, and
at its base grows the wild-strawberry and foxglove. Beneath this wall,
and parallel to it, on the left, is a _level terrace_, constructed by
the poet for a friend most dear to him and his,--who, for the last
twenty years of Mr. Wordsworth’s life, was often a visitor at Rydal
Mount. The terrace was a favourite resort of the poet, being more easy
for pacing to and fro, when old age began to make him feel the
acclivity of the other terrace to be toilsome. Both these terraces
command beautiful views of the vale of the Rothsay, and the banks of the
lake of Windermere.”
Then we have a description of Rydal Lake, and of the “long, wooded, and
rocky hill of Loughrigg beyond, and above it,” as seen from an orifice
on the ascending terrace; of the beautiful sycamore close to the arbour,
the fine firs in the foreground, and the dark woods of fir, ash, oak,
hazel, holly, and birch, on the right and left; of the “FAR FERRDEL on
the mountain’s side,” a little to the right of the “ascending
terrace”--which, after a serpentine course of one hundred and fifty
feet, terminates at a little gate, close to the “Nab Well,” where the
poet was wont to quaff his daily libations. Another walk from the arbour
leads to a field, sloping down to the valley, called “Dora’s field,” and
on the right is a rude stone, bearing this inscription--
“In these fair vales hath many a tree
At Wordsworth’s suit been spared;
And from the builder’s hand this stone,
For some rude beauty of its own,
Was rescued by the bard.
So let it rest, and time will come,
When here, the tender-hearted,
May heave a gentle sigh for him,
As one of the departed.”
A pond containing gold fish, underneath a large oak, close to the gate
which leads to this “Dora’s field,” completes the inventory of the
external features of Rydal Mount.
It was in the spring of 1811 that Wordsworth left Allan Bank, and took
up his temporary residence at the Parsonage, Grasmere. But the death of
his children, Catharine and Thomas, which occurred in 1812, threw so
melancholy a gloom over the neighbourhood, that he resolved to quit it
altogether. It was not, however, without many painful feelings of regret
that he bade adieu to the beautiful scenery in the vale of
Grasmere--scenery which he had so long loved--every feature of which was
as familiar to him as the faces of the dear children whom he had
committed for ever to its quiet keeping. The step, however, was
absolutely necessary, as he himself says in a letter to the Earl of
Lonsdale, for the recurrence of that tranquillity of mind which it was
his duty, and that of his surviving family, to strive for. Accordingly
he removed to Rydal Mount, in 1813, where he resided until his death, in
1850. It was in that year--1813--that he received the appointment of
Distributor of Stamps in the County of Westmoreland, which has already
been alluded to, in the extracts made from the “Reminiscences” of De
Quincy.
This appointment, for which he was mainly indebted to Lord Lonsdale,
placed the poet in easy if not affluent circumstances, and enabled him
to follow his art without anxiety respecting worldly matters,--a
condition which the poet improved to his own honour, and to the public
advantage. Some time after this good fortune had befallen him, he was
offered the collectorship of the town of Whitehaven, an office far more
lucrative than the other; but the poet declined it. He had now
sufficient for his necessities, and no pecuniary inducement could avail
with him to quit the sweet retirement of the lakes. He was fortunate,
also--and De Quincy was right in saying that he was _always_ fortunate,
for Good Luck “threw her old shoe after him” wherever he went--in
securing about this time the services of Mr. John Carter, as coadjutor
in the stamp-office. Dr. Wordsworth speaks in the highest terms of this
gentleman, who, for thirty-seven years, served the poet “faithfully and
zealously, and who added to his business qualifications, those of sound
scholarship and judicious criticism.”
Thus happily circumstanced, Wordsworth continued to write poetry, and to
make more tours, as his fancy dictated. In 1814, he again visited
Scotland, in company with his wife, his wife’s sister, and Miss Mary
Hutchinson. The poems produced on this tour were “The Brownie’s Cell,”
“Cora Linn,” “Effusions on the Banks of the Bran, near Dunkeld,” and
“Sonnet to Mr. Gillies.” The following note, upon the poem “Yarrow
Visited,” is of great interest. It is Wordsworth who writes.
“As mentioned in my verses on the death of the Ettrick Shepherd, my
first visit to Yarrow was in his company. We had lodged the night before
at Traquhar, where Hogg had joined us, and also Dr. Anderson, the editor
of ‘The British Poets,’ who was on a visit at the manse. Dr. Anderson
walked with us till we came in view of the Vale of Yarrow, and being
advanced in life he then turned back. The old man was passionately fond
of poetry, though with not much of a discriminating judgment, as the
volumes he edited sufficiently shows; but I was much pleased to meet
with him, and to acknowledge my obligation to his collection, which had
been my brother John’s companion in more than one voyage to India, and
which he gave me before his departure from Grasmere--never to return.
Through these volumes I became first familiar with Chaucer; and so
little money had I then to spare for books, that in all probability, but
for this same work, I should have known little of Drayton, Daniel, and
other distinguished poets of the Elizabethan age, and their immediate
successors, till a much later period of my life. I am glad to record
this, not for any importance of its own, but as a tribute of gratitude
to this simple-hearted old man, whom I never again had the pleasure of
meeting. I seldom read or think of this poem without regretting that my
dear sister was not of the party, as she would have been so much
delighted in recalling the time when, travelling together in Scotland,
we declined going in search of this celebrated stream, not altogether,
I will frankly confess, for the reasons assigned in the poem on the
occasion.”
At last, in 1814, the great poem was published upon which Wordsworth’s
fame is built, viz., “The Excursion.” It was met, as usual, with
tremendous and most indiscriminate abuse, especially by Jeffrey, in his
“This won’t do” article. But despite all this, the poem grew deeply into
the public mind, and is still growing there; and ranks, at last, with
our highest poetry. All the characters and scenes in it are drawn from
life, and there are few more interesting papers than the memoranda which
the poet has left respecting these characters and their localities. “The
Wanderer,” he acknowledges, is chiefly an embodied idea of what he
fancied _his own character might have become_ in the said _Wanderer_’s
circumstances. His sister, with her gentle love and sweet
remonstrances,--although ready to follow him to the ends of the
earth--did in reality save him from this wild nomadic life, by fixing
his thoughts upon a _home_, and the genial influences which domestic
life would produce and exercise upon his poetic genius. And then his
wife, children, and the rich harvests of fortune, which were reaped
without any sowing of his, and dropped into his lap, finished the work
his sister had begun, and finally settled him as a citizen and a family
man. Otherwise, being strong in body, I should, he says, very probably,
have “taken to the way of life such as that in which my ‘Wanderer’
passed the greater part of his days.” Much, however, of what the
“Wanderer” says and does, was the result, in verse, of the poet’s
experience; was what he had actually heard and seen, although refined,
of course, as it passed through his imagination. He was fond of talking
to all kinds of strange characters;--now treading on the outskirts of
social life, or wandering with a wild, vagabond independence amongst the
highways of towns and cities. Whatever of romance and adventure they had
known, he wormed out of them, or _charmed_ out of them; and he partially
instances, as an illustration of this prying curiosity--this insatiable
longing after experience, and the history of men--an old Scotchman, who
married finally a relation of his wife’s, and settled down at Kendal,
and a travelling packman, from whom he learned much, and whose
adventures and wisdom are embodied in the character of the “Wanderer.”
“The Solitary,” “The Pastor,” “Pedlar,” “Margaret,” “Miser,” and all the
dramatis personæ of the poem, are made up of veritable human materials,
and had their architypes in the great world of humanity. The reader,
however, must go to Dr. Wordsworth for a full relation respecting these
matters. All I can add here, respecting the “Excursion,” is that only
500 copies were disposed of in six years; and when, in 1827, another
edition, of the same number of copies, was printed, it took seven years
more to exhaust it. The poet, however, was not daunted by this culpable
neglect of his immortal lines; but conscious of his own greatness, he
wrote, in a letter to Southey,--“Let the age continue to love its own
darkness; I shall continue to write, with, I trust, the light of heaven
upon me.” Jeffrey, in the pride and arrogance of his position, as
Executioner General of the Courts of Critical Assize, boasted that
HE--poor devil!--had _crushed_ the “Excursion;” and the boast was
repeated to Southey:--“Tell him,” said he, Southey “that he could as
soon crush Skiddaw!” Bernard Barton,--a writer whose chief merit
consists in a letter written to Wordsworth, expressive of his homage
and reverence for the Bard of Rydal--alludes, in the said letter, to
Jeffrey: “He has taken,” says Wordsworth, in reply, “a perpetual
retainer, from his own incapacity, to plead against my claims to public
approbation.” So, we see, that the good poet could hit hard if he liked;
although he rarely descended to this literary pugilism, thinking it
beneath the dignity of his art and character.
It was Wordsworth’s custom to compose in the open air; and as his
servant once said to a visitor, “This, sir, is my master’s library--his
study is out of doors.” He had a great and sickening dread of writing;
and his sister, or some other member of his family was always at hand to
perform for him the office of amanuensis. In the year 1807, when on a
visit to his wife’s brother at Stockton-on-Tees, the weather being very
boisterous, and the winds rough, he used to pace up and down under the
lee of a row of corn-stacks in a field near that town--and it was here
that he composed the earlier part of “White Doe of Ryletone,” chaunting
his verses aloud to the astonished stacks. The poem was not published
until 1815, and has been much misinterpreted, and consequently abused.
The truth is, that Wordsworth wrote always upon principle, and a
carefully premeditated plan; there was always a high purpose in his
poems, both moral and intellectual. His poetical canons were likewise
his own, and his mode of treating a subject was always in conformity
with them, or illustrations of them. Superficial readers, who had been
accustomed to the _objective_ poetry of Scott, could not understand
Wordsworth, therefore; for he was studiously _subjective_, and the
interest of his poems hangs nearly always upon the development of mere
spiritual forces, and their progress, if I may so speak, _outwards_, in
the subjugation of the external world or in the strengthening of the
soul to bear the ills and mishaps of life with a sublime fortitude. “The
White Doe” is a memorable example of this spiritual aim. “Every thing,”
says Wordsworth, ‘attempted by the principal personages in this poem
_fails_, so far as its object is external and substantial; so far as it
is moral and spiritual it _succeeds_. The heroine of the poem knows that
her duty is not to interfere with the current of events, either to
forward or delay them; but
“To abide
The shock, and finally secure
O’er pain and grief a triumph pure.”
This she does in obedience to her brother’s injunction, as most suitable
to a mind and character that, under previous trials, had been proved to
accord with his. She achieves this, not without aid from the
communication with the inferior creature which often leads her thoughts
to revolve upon the past with a tender and humanising influence that
exalts rather than depresses her. Her anticipated beatification of the
mind, and the apotheosis of the companion of her solitude, are the
points at which the poem aims, and constitutes its legitimate
catastrophe.” All this is widely different from the usual mode of
conducting dramatic action, and yet the action of the poem in question
is complete and satisfactory, and is artistically developed from its own
spiritual germ, or starting point.
Whilst walking, and composing “The White Doe,” Wordsworth received a
wound in his foot; and it is curious to remark that, even when he ceased
walking, the _act of composition_ increased the irritation of the wound,
whilst a mental holiday produced a rapid cure. “Poetic excitement,” he
says, “when accompanied by protracted labour in composition, has
throughout my life brought on more or less of bodily derangement.
Nevertheless I am, at the close of my seventy-third year, in what may be
called excellent health. But I ought to add, that my intellectual labour
has generally been carried on out of doors.”
The next group of poems--and two of them certainly amongst
the grandest triumphs of poetic art, were composed respectively as
follows:--“Laodamia,” in 1814; “Dion,” in 1816; and the “Ode to
Lycoris,” in 1817. The first and second of these poems were entirely
Greek in their character and form, and Keates’ “Hyperion” is the only
modern poem (and this a fragment) which is worthy to be placed in
comparison with them. It is singular how the idea of these poems
originated in the mind of the poet. He had been preparing his son for
the University, and had to read up his old classics for this purpose.
Hence the Classic Spirit took up its abode with him, and urged him to
these beautiful and plastic productions. About this time, and with the
same object in view--viz., the education of his son--he translated one
of the earlier books of the “Æneid” into rhyme. Coleridge, in writing to
the author respecting this translation, says, he has attempted an
impossibility, and regrets he should have wasted his time on a work
(viz., of translation) so much below him. Wordsworth was always attached
to the classics; and before he read Virgil, he was so fond of Ovid, that
he invariably got into a passion when he found this author placed below
Virgil. He was never weary of travelling over the scenes through which
Homer led him. “Classical literature,” he says, “affected me by its own
beauty.”
“Peter Bell” appeared in 1819. It was composed twenty years before, as
already related; and sold better than any of Wordsworth’s previous
poems, notwithstanding the abuse of the critics. Five hundred copies
were exhausted before one month, between April and May of this one year
(1819). “The Waggoner” was published at the same time, but was not so
successful, perhaps on account of its mere local interest. The “Sonnets
on the River Duddon” appeared about the same time, and were dedicated to
the Rev. Dr. Wordsworth, the poet’s brother, who was at that time
Rector of Lambeth. “The river Duddon has its main source[J] in the
mountain range near the “Three Shire Stones,” as they were called, where
the three counties, Westmoreland, Cumberland, and Lancashire meet. It
flows to the south through Seathwaite, by Broughton, to the Duddon
Sands, and into the Irish Sea.”--Wordsworth’s first acquaintance with
this stream commenced in his boyhood, during the time that he was so
passionately fond of angling: upon one of his fishing excursions he
joined an old weather-beaten man, and went far away from home, seduced
by the dear delight of his art. On their return, the embryo poet was so
wearied, that the old man had to carry him on his back. He says that his
earliest recollections of this stream were full of distress and
disappointment; but in later times he visited it with so many beloved
persons, that its waters flowed through him in streams of music--in
anthems of affectionate song.
In 1820 Wordsworth made another tour to the Continent, in company with
his wife and sister, Mr. and Mrs. Monkhonse, then just married, and
Miss Herricks. They left these two ladies at Berne, while Mr. Monkhouse
went with the poet and his retinue, on an excursion amongst the Alps, as
far as Milan. They were joined at Lucerne by Mr. H. C. Robinson; and the
two ladies, whom they had left at Berne, rejoined them at Geneva, when
the whole party went to Paris, where they remained five weeks.
In 1822 Wordsworth published a volume of Sonnets, and other Poems, as
the result of this tour, entitled, “Memorials of a Tour on the
Continent.”
In two letters to Lord Lonsdale--one dated from Lucerne, August 19th,
1820, and the other from Paris, dated October 7, 1820,--the poet has
given a general outline of this tour and its incidents.[K] I ought to
add that Wordsworth visited Waterloo, amongst other places of interest,
at this time. The party returned by way of Boulogne, November 2nd, and
had a narrow escape of shipwreck,--the vessel striking upon a sand-bank,
and being then driven with violence on a rocky road in the harbour,
where she was battered about until the ebbing of the tide set her at
liberty--at least from the violence of the sea; “and, blessed be God,”
says Wordsworth, in his Journal, “for our preservation!”
They arrived at Dover on the 7th, and at London on the 9th, where they
met Rogers, Lamb, and Talfourd, amongst other noted persons and friends.
Wordsworth walked on to visit Coleridge, from Hampstead Heath, on the
18th, and then went down to Cambridge, to congratulate his brother, Dr.
Wordsworth, on his appointment to the Mastership of Trinity College.
They returned to Rydal Mount on Christmas Eve, visiting Sir George and
Lady Beaumont, at Coleorton, by the way. Sir George was then about to
build a church on his estate, and this fact led to conversation on
Church History, and eventually to the production of the “Ecclesiastical
Sonnets.” In the third part of the first of these Sonnets occurs the
following line:--
“I saw the figure of a lovely maid.”
And the note attached to it, by the poet, is so interesting, that I must
transcribe it:--
“When I came to this part of the series, I had the dream described in
this sonnet. The _figure was that of my daughter_, and the whole passed
exactly as here represented. The sonnet was composed on the middle road
leading from Grasmere to Ambleside; it was began as I left the last
house in the vale, and finished, word for word, as it now stands, before
I came in view of Rydal. I wish I could say the same of the five or six
hundred I have written; most of them were frequently retouched, in the
course of composition, and not a few laboriously.”