This ebook was transcribed by Les Bowler.
RECOLLECTIONS
OF A
TOUR MADE IN SCOTLAND
A.D. 1803
* * * * *
BY DOROTHY WORDSWORTH
* * * * *
Edited by J. C. Shairp
CONTENTS.
DAY PAGE
PREFACE ix
First Week.
1. Left Keswick--Grisdale--Mosedale--Hesket 1
Newmarket--Caldbeck Falls
2. Ross Castle--Carlisle--Hatfield--Longtown 2
3. Solway Moss--Enter Scotland--Springfield--Gretna 3
Green--Annan--Dumfries
4. Burns's Grave 5
Ellisland--Vale of Nith 7
Brownhill 8
Poem to Burns's Sons 10
5. Thornhill--Drumlanrig--River Nith 11
Turnpike House 12
Sportsman 13
Vale of Menock 14
Wanlockhead 15
Leadhills 18
Miners 19
Hopetoun mansion 20
Hostess 20
6. Road to Crawfordjohn 22
Douglas Mill 28
Clyde--Lanerk 31
Boniton Linn 33
Second Week.
7. Falls of the Clyde 35
Cartland Crags 40
Fall of Stonebyres--Trough of the Clyde 43
Hamilton 44
8. Hamilton House 45
Baroncleuch--Bothwell Castle 48
Glasgow 52
9. Bleaching ground (Glasgow Green) 53
Road to Dumbarton 55
10. Rocks and Castle of Dumbarton 58
Vale of Leven 62
Smollett's Monument 63
Loch Achray 64
Luss 67
11. Islands of Loch Lomond 71
Road to Tarbet 75
The Cobbler 78
Tarbet 79
12. Left Tarbet for the Trossachs 81
Rob Roy's Caves 82
Inversneyde Ferryhouse and Waterfall 83
Singular building 84
Loch Ketterine 86
Glengyle 88
Mr. Macfarlane's 89
13. Breakfast at Glengyle 91
Lairds of Glengyle--Rob Roy 92
Burying ground 94
Ferryman's Hut 95
Trossachs 96
Loch Achray 101
Return to Ferryman's Hut 102
Third Week.
14. Left Loch Ketterine 106
Garrison House--Highland Girls 107
Ferryhouse at Inversneyde 108
Poem to the Highland Girl 113
Return to Tarbet 115
15. Coleridge resolves to go home 117
Arrochar--Loch Long 118
Parted with Coleridge 119
Glen Croe--The Cobbler 121
Glen Kinglas--Cairndow 123
16. Road to Inverary 124
Inverary 126
17. Vale of Arey 129
Loch Awe 134
Kilchurn Castle 138
Dalmally 139
18. Loch Awe 141
Taynuilt 143
Bunawe--Loch Etive 144
Tinkers 149
19. Road by Loch Etive downwards 152
Dunstaffnage Castle 153
Loch Crerar 156
Strath of Appin--Portnacroish 158
Islands of Loch Linnhe 159
Morven 160
Lord Tweeddale 161
Strath of Duror 163
Ballachulish 164
20. Road to Glen Coe up Loch Leven 165
Blacksmith's house 166
Glen Coe 172
Whisky hovel 174
King's House 175
Fourth Week.
21. Road to Inveroran 180
Inveroran--Public-house 182
Road to Tyndrum 183
Tyndrum 184
Loch Dochart 185
22. Killin 186
Loch Tay 188
Kenmore 189
23. Lord Breadalbane's grounds 193
Vale of Tay--Aberfeldy--Falls of Moness 194
River Tummel--Vale of Tummel 196
Fascally--Blair 197
24. Duke of Athol's gardens 198
Falls of Bruar--Mountain-road to Loch Tummel 201
Loch Tummel 203
Rivers Tummel and Garry 204
Fascally 205
25. Pass of Killicrankie--Sonnet 207
Fall of Tummel 208
Dunkeld 209
Fall of the Bran 210
26. Duke of Athol's gardens 211
Glen of the Bran--Rumbling Brig 212
Narrow Glen--Poem 213
Crieff 215
27. Strath Erne 215
Lord Melville's house--Loch Erne 216
Strath Eyer--Loch Lubnaig 217
Bruce the Traveller--Pass of Leny--Callander 218
Fifth Week.
28. Road to the Trossachs--Loch Vennachar 219
Loch Achray--Trossachs--Road up Loch Ketterine 220
Poem: 'Stepping Westward' 221
Boatman's hut 222
29. Road to Loch Lomond 223
Ferryhouse at Inversneyde 223
Walk up Loch Lomond 224
Glenfalloch 226
Glengyle 228
Rob Roy's Grave--Poem 229
Boatman's Hut 233
30. Mountain-Road to Loch Voil 235
Poem, 'The Solitary Reaper' 237
Strath Eyer 239
31. Loch Lubnaig 240
Callander--Stirling--Falkirk 241
32. Linlithgow--Road to Edinburgh 242
33. Edinburgh 243
Roslin 245
34. Roslin--Hawthornden 246
Road to Peebles 247
Sixth Week.
35. Peebles--Neidpath Castle--Sonnet 248
Tweed 249
Clovenford 251
Poem on Yarrow 252
36. Melrose--Melrose Abbey 255
37. Dryburgh 257
Jedburgh--Old Woman 260
Poem 262
38. Vale of Jed--Ferniehurst 265
39. Jedburgh--The Assizes 267
Vale of Teviot 268
Hawick 270
40. Vale of Teviot--Branxholm 270
Moss Paul 271
Langholm 272
41. Road to Longtown 272
River Esk--Carlisle 273
42. Arrival at home 274
APPENDIX 277
NOTES 309
ITINERARY 317
POEMS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE JOURNAL
1803.
PAGE
To the Sons of Burns, after visiting the Grave of their 277
Father
At the Grave of Burns, 1803 278
Thoughts suggested the day following, on the Banks of 281
Nith, near the Poet's Residence
To a Highland Girl 113
Address to Kilchurn Castle, upon Loch Awe 285
Sonnet in the Pass of Killicrankie 207
Glen Almain; or the Narrow Glen 213
The Solitary Reaper 237
Stepping Westward 221
Rob Roy's Grave 229
Sonnet composed at Neidpath Castle 248
Yarrow Unvisited 252
The Matron of Jedborough and her Husband 262
Fly, some kind Spirit, fly to Grasmere Vale! 274
The Blind Highland Boy 286
1814.
The Brownie's Cell 298
Cora Linn, in sight of Wallace's Tower 283
Effusion, in the Pleasure-ground on the banks of the Bran, 294
near Dunkeld
Yarrow Visited 301
1831.
Yarrow Re-visited 304
On the Departure of Sir Walter Scott from Abbotsford, for 307
Naples
The Trossachs 308
PREFACE.
Those who have long known the poetry of Wordsworth will be no strangers
to the existence of this Journal of his sister, which is now for the
first time published entire. They will have by heart those few wonderful
sentences from it which here and there stand at the head of the Poet's
'Memorials of a Tour in Scotland in 1803.' Especially they will remember
that 'Extract from the Journal of my Companion' which preludes the
'Address to Kilchurn Castle upon Loch Awe,' and they may sometimes have
asked themselves whether the prose of the sister is not as truly poetic
and as memorable as her brother's verse. If they have read the Memoirs
of the Poet published by his nephew the Bishop of Lincoln, they will have
found there fuller extracts from the Journal, which quite maintain the
impression made by the first brief sentences. All true Wordsworthians
then will welcome, I believe, the present publication. They will find in
it not only new and illustrative light on those Scottish poems which they
have so long known, but a faithful commentary on the character of the
poet, his mode of life, and the manner of his poetry. Those who from
close study of Wordsworth's poetry know both the poet and his sister, and
what they were to each other, will need nothing more than the Journal
itself. If it were likely to fall only into their hands, it might be
left without one word of comment or illustration. But as it may reach
some who have never read Wordsworth, and others who having read do not
relish him, for the information of these something more must be said.
The Journal now published does not borrow all its worth from its bearing
on the great poet. It has merit and value of its own, which may commend
it to some who have no heart for Wordsworth's poetry. For the writer of
it was in herself no common woman, and might have secured for herself an
independent reputation, had she not chosen rather that other part, to
forget and merge herself entirely in the work and reputation of her
brother.
* * * * *
DOROTHY WORDSWORTH was the only sister of the poet, a year and a half
younger, having been born on Christmas Day 1771. The five children who
composed the family, four sons and one daughter, lost their mother in
1778, when William was eight, and Dorothy six years old. The father died
five years afterwards, at the close of 1783, and the family home at
Cockermouth was broken up and the children scattered. Before his
father's death, William, in his ninth year, had gone with his elder
brother to school at Hawkshead, by the lake of Esthwaite, and after the
father died Dorothy was brought up by a cousin on her mother's side, Miss
Threlkeld, afterwards Mrs. Rawson, who lived in Halifax. During the
eight years which Wordsworth spent at school, or, at any rate, from the
time of his father's death, he and his sister seem seldom, if ever, to
have met.
The first college vacation in the summer of 1788 brought him back to his
old school in the vale of Esthwaite, and either this or the next of his
undergraduate summers restored him to the society of his sister at
Penrith. This meeting is thus described in the 'Prelude:'--
'In summer, making quest for works of art,
Or scenes renowned for beauty, I explored
That streamlet whose blue current works its way
Between romantic Dovedale's spiry rocks;
Pried into Yorkshire dales, or hidden tracts
Of my own native region, and was blest
Between these sundry wanderings with a joy
Above all joys, that seemed another morn
Risen on mid-noon; blest with the presence, Friend!
Of that sole sister, her who hath been long
Dear to thee also, thy true friend and mine,
Now, after separation desolate
Restored to me--such absence that she seemed
A gift then first bestowed.'
They then together wandered by the banks of Emont, among the woods of
Lowther, and 'climbing the Border Beacon looked wistfully towards the dim
regions of Scotland.' Then and there too Wordsworth first met that young
kinswoman who was his wife to be.
During the following summers the Poet was busy with walking tours in
Switzerland and North Italy, his residence in France, his absorption in
the French Revolution, which kept him some years longer apart from his
sister. During those years Miss Wordsworth lived much with her uncle Dr.
Cookson, who was a canon of Windsor and a favourite with the Court, and
there met with people of more learning and refinement, but not of greater
worth, than those she had left in her northern home.
In the beginning of 1794 Wordsworth, returned from his wanderings, came
to visit his sister at Halifax, his head still in a whirl with
revolutionary fervours. He was wandering about among his friends with no
certain dwelling-place, no fixed plan of life, his practical purposes and
his opinions, political, philosophical, and religious, all alike at sea.
But whatever else might remain unsettled, the bread-and-butter question,
as Coleridge calls it, could not. The thought of orders, for which his
friends intended him, had been abandoned; law he abominated; writing for
the newspaper press seemed the only resource. In this seething state of
mind he sought once more his sister's calming society, and the two
travelled together on foot from Kendal to Grasmere, from Grasmere to
Keswick, 'through the most delightful country that was ever seen.'
Towards the close of this year (1794) Wordsworth would probably have gone
to London to take up the trade of a writer for the newspapers. From this
however he was held back for a time by the duty of nursing his friend
Raisley Calvert, who lay dying at Penrith. Early in 1795 the young man
died, leaving to his friend, the young Poet, a legacy of 900 pounds. The
world did not then hold Wordsworth for a poet, and had received with
coldness his first attempt, 'Descriptive Sketches and an Evening Walk,'
published two years before. But the dying youth had seen further than
the world, and felt convinced that his friend, if he had leisure given
him to put forth his powers, would do something which would make the
world his debtor. With this view he bequeathed him the small sum above
named. And seldom has such a bequest borne ampler fruit. 'Upon the
interest of the 900 pounds, 400 pounds being laid out in annuity, with
200 pounds deducted from the principal, and 100 pounds a legacy to my
sister, and 100 pounds more which "The Lyrical Ballads" have brought me,
my sister and I have contrived to live seven years, nearly eight.' So
wrote Wordsworth in 1805 to his friend Sir George Beaumont. Thus at this
juncture of the Poet's fate, when to onlookers he must have seemed both
outwardly and inwardly well-nigh bankrupt, Raisley Calvert's bequest came
to supply his material needs, and to his inward needs his sister became
the best earthly minister. For his mind was ill at ease. The high hopes
awakened in him by the French Revolution had been dashed, and his spirit,
darkened and depressed, was on the verge of despair. He might have
become such a man as he has pictured in the character of 'The Solitary.'
But a good Providence brought his sister to his side and saved him. She
discerned his real need and divined the remedy. By her cheerful society,
fine tact, and vivid love for nature she turned him, depressed and
bewildered, alike from the abstract speculations and the contemporary
politics in which he had got immersed, and directed his thoughts towards
truth of poetry, and the face of nature, and the healing that for him lay
in these.
'Then it was
That the beloved sister in whose sight
Those days were passed--
Maintained for me a saving intercourse
With my true self; for though bedimmed and changed
Much, as it seemed, I was no further changed
Than as a clouded or a waning moon:
She whispered still that brightness would return,
She, in the midst of all, preserved me still
A Poet, made me seek beneath that name,
And that alone, my office upon earth.
By intercourse with her and wanderings together in delightful places of
his native country, he was gradually led back
'To those sweet counsels between head and heart
Whence genuine knowledge grew.'
The brother and sister, having thus cast in their lots together, settled
at Racedown Lodge in Dorsetshire in the autumn of 1795. They had there a
pleasant house, with a good garden, and around them charming walks and a
delightful country looking out on the distant sea. The place was very
retired, with little or no society, and the post only once a week. But
of employment there was no lack. The brother now settled steadily to
poetic work; the sister engaged in household duties and reading, and then
when work was over, there were endless walks and wanderings. Long years
afterwards Miss Wordsworth spoke of Racedown as the place she looked back
to with most affection. 'It was,' she said, 'the first home I had.'
The poems which Wordsworth there composed were not among his best,--'The
Borderers,' 'Guilt or Sorrow,' and others. He was yet only groping to
find his true subjects and his own proper manner. But there was one
piece there composed which will stand comparison with any tale he ever
wrote. It was 'The Ruined Cottage,' which, under the title of the 'Story
of Margaret,' he afterwards incorporated in the first Book of 'The
Excursion.' It was when they had been nearly two years at Racedown that
they received a guest who was destined to exercise more influence on the
self-contained Wordsworth than any other man ever did. This was S. T.
Coleridge. One can imagine how he would talk, interrupted only by their
mutually reading aloud their respective Tragedies, both of which are now
well-nigh forgotten, and by Wordsworth reading his 'Ruined Cottage,'
which is not forgotten. Miss Wordsworth describes S. T. C., as he then
was, in words that are well known. And he describes her thus, in words
less known,--'She is a woman indeed, in mind I mean, and in heart; for
her person is such that if you expected to see a pretty woman, you would
think her ordinary; if you expected to see an ordinary woman, you would
think her pretty, but her manners are simple, ardent, impressive. In
every motion her innocent soul out-beams so brightly, that who saw her
would say, "Guilt was a thing impossible with her." Her information
various, her eye watchful in minutest observation of nature, and her
taste a perfect electrometer.'
The result of this meeting of the two poets was that the Wordsworths
shifted their abode from Racedown to Alfoxden, near Nether Stowey, in
Somersetshire, to be near Coleridge. Alfoxden was a large furnished
mansion, which the brother and sister had to themselves. 'We are three
miles from Stowey, the then abode of Coleridge,' writes the sister, 'and
two miles from the sea. Wherever we turn we have woods, smooth downs,
and valleys, with small brooks running down them, through green meadows,
hardly ever intersected with hedgerows, but scattered over with trees.
The hills that cradle these valleys are either covered with fern and
bilberries, or oak woods, which are cut for charcoal. Walks extend for
miles over the hill-tops, the great beauty of which is their wild
simplicity--they are perfectly smooth, without rocks.' It was in this
neighbourhood, as the two poets loitered in the silvan combs or walked
along the smooth Quantock hill-tops, looking seaward, with the 'sole
sister,' the companion of their walks, that they struck each from the
other his finest tones. It was with both of them the heyday of poetic
creation. In these walks it was that Coleridge, with slight hints from
Wordsworth, first chaunted the vision of the Ancient Mariner, and then
alone, 'The rueful woes of Lady Christabel.' This, too, was the birthday
of some of the finest of the Lyrical Ballads, of 'We are seven,' 'Simon
Lee,' 'Expostulation and Reply,' and 'The Tables Turned,' 'It is the
first mild day in March,' and 'I heard a thousand blended notes.'
Coleridge never knew again such a season of poetic creation, and
Wordsworth's tardier, if stronger, nature, received from contact with
Coleridge that quickening impulse which it needed, and which it retained
during all its most creative years.
But if Coleridge, with his occasional intercourse and wonderful talk, did
much for Wordsworth, his sister, by her continual companionship, did far
more. After the great revulsion from the excesses of the French
Revolution, she was with him a continually sanative influence. That
whole period, which ranged from 1795 till his settling at Grasmere at the
opening of the next century, and of which the residence at Racedown and
Alfoxden formed a large part, was the healing time of his spirit. And in
that healing time she was the chief human minister. Somewhere in the
'Prelude' he tells that in early youth there was a too great sternness of
spirit about him, a high but too severe moral ideal by which he judged
men and things, insensible to gentler and humbler influences. He
compares his soul to a high, bare craig, without any crannies in which
flowers may lurk, untouched by the mellowing influences of sun and
shower. His sister came with her softening influence, and sowed in it
the needed flowers, and touched it with mellowing colours:
'She gave me eyes, she gave me ears,
And humble cares and delicate fears,
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears
And love, and thought and joy.'
Elsewhere in the 'Prelude' he describes how at one time his soul had got
too much under the dominion of the eye, so that he kept comparing scene
with scene, instead of enjoying each for itself--craving new forms,
novelties of colour or proportion, and insensible to the spirit of each
place and the affections which each awakens. In contrast with this
temporary mood of his own he turns to one of another temper:--
'I knew a maid,
A young enthusiast who escaped these bonds,
Her eye was not the mistress of her heart,
She welcomed what was given, and craved no more;
Whate'er the scene presented to her view,
That was the best, to that she was attuned
By her benign simplicity of life.
Birds in the bower, and lambs in the green field,
Could they have known her, would have loved; methought
Her very presence such a sweetness breathed,
That flowers, and trees, and even the silent hills,
And everything she looked on, should have had
An intimation how she bore herself
Towards them and to all creatures. God delights
In such a being; for her common thoughts
Are piety, her life is gratitude.'
But it was not his sister the Poet speaks of here, but of his first
meeting with her who afterwards became his wife.
The results of the residence at Racedown, but especially at Alfoxden,
appeared in the shape of the first volume of the 'Lyrical Ballads,' which
were published in the autumn of 1798 by Mr. Cottle at Bristol. This
small volume opens with Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancyent Marinere,' and
is followed by Wordsworth's short but exquisite poems of the Alfoxden
time, and is closed by the well-known lines on Tintern Abbey. Wordsworth
reaches about the highest pitch of his inspiration in this latter poem,
which contains more rememberable lines than any other of his, of equal
length, save perhaps the Immortality Ode. It was the result of a ramble
of four or five days made by him and his sister from Alfoxden in July
1798, and was composed under circumstances 'most pleasant,' he says, 'for
me to remember.' He began it upon leaving Tintern, after crossing the
Wye, and concluded it as he was entering Bristol in the evening.
Every one will recollect how, after its high reflections he turns at the
close to her, 'his dearest Friend,' 'his dear, dear Friend,' and speaks
of his delight to have her by his side, and of the former pleasures which
he read in 'the shooting lights of her wild eyes,' and then the almost
prophetic words with which he forebodes, too surely, that time when
'solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief should be her portion.'
That September (1798) saw the break-up of the brief, bright companionship
near Nether Stowey. Coleridge went with Wordsworth and his sister to
Germany, but soon parted from them and passed on alone to Gottingen,
there to study German, and lose himself in the labyrinth of German
metaphysics. Wordsworth and Dorothy remained at Goslar, and, making no
acquaintances, spent the winter--said to have been the coldest of the
century--by the German stoves, Wordsworth writing more lyrical poems in
the same vein which had been opened so happily at Alfoxden. There is in
these poems no tincture of their German surroundings; they deal entirely
with those which they had left on English ground. Early in spring they
returned to England, to spend the summer with their friends the
Hutchinsons at Sockburn-upon-Tees. There Dorothy remained, while in
September Wordsworth made with Coleridge the walking tour through the
lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland, which issued in his choice of a
home at Grasmere for himself and his sister.
At the close of the year Wordsworth and his sister set off and walked,
driven forward by the cold, frosty winds blowing from behind, from
Wensleydale over Sedbergh's naked heights and the high range that divides
the Yorkshire dales from the lake country. On the shortest day of the
year (St. Thomas's Day) they reached the small two-story cottage at the
Townend of Grasmere, which, for the next eight years, was to be the
poet's home, immortalised by the work he did in it. That cottage has
behind it a small orchard-plot or garden ground shelving upwards toward
the woody mountains above, and in front it looks across the peaceful lake
with its one green island, to the steeps of Silver-how on the farther
side. Westward it looks on Helm Craig, and up the long folds of Easedale
towards the range that divides Easedale from Borrowdale. In this cottage
they two lived on their income of a hundred pounds a year, Dorothy doing
all the household work, for they had then, it has been said, no servant.
Besides this, she had time to write out all his poems--for Wordsworth
himself could never bear the strain of transcribing--to read aloud to him
of an afternoon or evening--at one such reading by her of Milton's
Sonnets it was that his soul took fire and rolled off his first
sonnets--and to accompany him on his endless walks. Nor these alone--her
eye and imagination fed him, not only with subjects for his poetry, but
even with images and thoughts. What we are told of the poem of the
'Beggars' might be said of I know not how many more. 'The sister's eye
was ever on the watch to provide for the poet's pen.' He had a most
observant eye, and she also for him; and his poems are sometimes little
more than poetic versions of her descriptions of the objects which she
had seen; and which he treated as seen by himself. Look at the poem on
the 'Daffodils' and compare with it these words taken from the sister's
Journal. 'When we were in the woods below Gowbarrow Park, we saw a few
daffodils close by the water-side. As we went along there were more and
yet more; and at last, under the boughs of the trees, we saw there were a
long belt of them along the shore. I never saw daffodils so beautiful.
They grew among the mossy stones about them. Some rested their heads on
the stones, as on a pillow; the rest tossed, and reeled, and danced, and
seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind, they looked so gay and
glancing.' It may also be noted that the Poet's future wife contributed
to this poem these two best lines--
'They flash upon that inward eye,
Which is the bliss of solitude.'
Or take another description from Miss Wordsworth's Journal of a
birch-tree, 'the lady of the woods,' which her brother has not
versified:--'As we were going along we were stopped at once, at the
distance, perhaps, of fifty yards from our favourite birch-tree: it was
yielding to the gust of the wind, with all its tender twigs; the sun
shone upon it, and it glanced in the wind like a flying sunshiny shower.
It was a tree in shape, with stem and branches, but it was like a spirit
of water.'
The life which the Poet and his sister lived during the eight years at
the Townend of Grasmere stands out with a marked individuality which it
is delightful ever so often to recur to. It was as unlike the lives of
most literary or other men, as the most original of his poems are unlike
the ordinary run of even good poetry. Their outward life was exactly
like that of the dalesmen or 'statesmen'--for so the native yeomen
proprietors are called--with whom they lived on the most friendly
footing, and among whom they found their chief society. Outwardly their
life was so, but inwardly it was cheered by imaginative visitings to
which these were strangers. Sheltered as they then were from the
agitations of the world, the severe frugality of the life they led
ministered in more than one way to feed that poetry which introduced a
new element into English thought. It kept the mind cool, and the eye
clear, to feel once more that kinship between the outward world and the
soul of man, to perceive that impassioned expression in the countenance
of all nature, which, if felt by primeval men, ages of cultivation have
long forgotten. It also made them wise to practise the same frugality in
emotional enjoyment which they exercised in household economy. It has
been well noted {0a} that this is one of Wordsworth's chief
characteristics. It is the temptation of the poetic temperament to be
prodigal of passion, to demand a life always strung to the highest pitch
of emotional excitement, to be never content unless when passing from
fervour to fervour. No life can long endure this strain. This is
specially seen in such poets as Byron and Shelley, who speedily fell from
the heights of passion to the depths of languor and despondency. The
same quick using up of the power of enjoyment produces the too common
product of the _blase_ man and the cynic. Wordsworth early perceived
that all, even the richest, natures have but a very limited capacity of
uninterrupted enjoyment, and that nothing is easier than to exhaust this
capacity. Hence he set himself to husband it, to draw upon it sparingly,
to employ it only on the purest, most natural, and most enduring objects,
and not to speedily dismiss or throw them by and demand more, but to
detain them till they had yielded him their utmost. From this in part it
came that the commonest sights of earth and sky--a fine spring day, a
sunset, even a chance traveller met on a moor, any ordinary sorrow of
man's life--yielded to him an amount of imaginative interest
inconceivable to more mundane spirits. The simple healthiness and strict
frugality of his household life suited well, and must have greatly
assisted, that wholesome frugality of emotion which he exercised.
During those seven or eight Grasmere years, the spring of poetry which
burst forth at Alfoxden, and produced the first volume of 'Lyrical
Ballads,' flowed steadily on and found expression in other poems of like
quality and spirit,--'Hartleap Well,' 'The Brothers,' 'Michael,' which,
with others of the same order, written in Germany, appeared in the second
volume of 'Lyrical Ballads.' And after these two volumes had gone forth,
Grasmere still gave more of the same high order,--'The Daffodils,' 'The
Leech-Gatherer,' and above all the 'Ode on Immortality.' It was too the
conclusion of the 'Prelude,' and the beginning of the 'Excursion.' So
that it may be said that those Grasmere years, from 1800 to 1807, mark
the period when Wordsworth's genius was in its zenith. During all this
time, sister Dorothy was by his side, ministering to him, equally in body
and in mind--doing the part of household servant, and not less that of
prompter and inspirer of his highest songs.
But this life of theirs, retired and uneventful as it seems, was not
without its own incidents. Such was the homecoming of their younger
sailor-brother John, who, in the first year of their residence at
Grasmere--
'Under their cottage roof, had gladly come
From the wild sea a cherished visitant.'
He was, what his brother calls him, 'a silent poet,' and had the heart
and sense to feel the sterling quality of his brother's poems, and to
foretell with perfect confidence their ultimate acceptance, at the time
when the critic wits who ruled the hour treated them with contempt. The
two brothers were congenial spirits, and William's poetry has many
affecting allusions to his brother John, whose intention it was, when his
last voyage was over, to settle in 'Grasmere's happy vale,' and to devote
the surplus of his fortune to his brother's use. On his last voyage he
sailed as captain of the 'Earl of Abergavenny' East-Indiaman, at the
opening of February 1805; and on the 5th of that month, the ill-fated
ship struck on the Shambles of the Bill of Portland, and the captain and
most of the crew went down with her. To the brother and sister this
became a permanent household sorrow. But in time they found comfort in
that thought with which the Poet closes a remarkable letter on his
brother's loss,--'So good must be better; so high must be destined to be
higher.'
Another lesser incident was a short tour to the Continent, in which, as
the brother and sister crossed Westminster Bridge, outside the Dover
coach, both witnessed that sunrise which remains fixed for ever in the
famous sonnet. Another incident, and more important, was Wordsworth's
marriage in October 1802, when he brought home his young wife, Mary
Hutchinson, his sister's long-time friend, to their cottage at Townend.
This is she whom he has sung in the lines--'She was a phantom of
delight;' of whom he said in plain prose, 'She has a sweetness all but
angelic, simplicity the most entire, womanly self-respect and purity of
heart speaking through all her looks, acts, and movements.' The advent
of Mrs. Wordsworth brought no change to Dorothy. She still continued to
fill to her brother and his wife the same place which she had filled when
her brother was alone, sharing in all the household duties and family
interests, and still accompanying him in his rambles when Mrs. Wordsworth
was detained at home. The year after the marriage, that is, in the
fourth year of the Grasmere residence, after the first son was born, the
brother and sister, accompanied by Coleridge, set out on that tour the
Journal of which is here published. Portions of it have already appeared
in the 'Memoirs' of Wordsworth, but it is now for the first time given in
full, just as it came from the pen of Miss Wordsworth seventy years ago.
As I shall have to speak of it again, I may now pass on and note the few
facts that still remain to be told in illustration of the writer's
character.
In the years which followed the tour in Scotland, other children were
added to Wordsworth's family, till the small cottage at the Townend could
no longer accommodate the household. The second child was the poet's
only daughter, whom after his sister he called Dorothy, generally known
as Dora, for, as he tells Lady Beaumont, he could not find it in his
heart to call her by another name. This second Dora occupies in
Wordsworth's later poetry the same place which the first Dorothy held in
his earlier. Aunt Dorothy's love, as it expanded to take in each
newcomer, did not lose any of its intensity towards her brother. While
the uneasiness which the act of writing had always occasioned him was not
diminished, weakness of eyesight increased. Then she had to write for
him, she read to him, she walked with him as of old, besides sharing in
all household cares. In November 1806, Wordsworth removed with his
family to Coleorton, in Leicestershire, to spend the winter there in a
house of Sir George Beaumont's; 'Our own cottage,' he writes, 'being far
too small for our family to winter in, though we manage well enough in it
during the summer.' In the spring of 1807, Wordsworth and his wife
visited London. Dorothy, who was left with the children, wrote the poem
called 'The Mother's Return,' as a welcome to Mrs. Wordsworth when she
came back. This with two other poems, written by her for the children,
one on 'The Wind,' the other called 'The Cottager to her Infant,'
afterwards appeared in an edition of her brother's poems.
This seems the proper place to give the account of Miss Wordsworth, as
she appeared to De Quincey, when in 1807 he first made the acquaintance
of Wordsworth, just before the Poet and his family quitted their old home
in the cottage at Grasmere Townend. After speaking of Mrs. Wordsworth,
he continues:--
'Immediately behind her moved a lady, shorter, slighter, and perhaps, in
all other respects, as different from her in personal characteristics as
could have been wished for the most effective contrast. "Her face was of
Egyptian brown;" rarely, in a woman of English birth, had I seen a more
determinate gipsy tan. Her eyes were not soft as Mrs. Wordsworth's, nor
were they fierce or bold; but they were wild and startling, and hurried
in their motion. Her manner was warm, and even ardent; her sensibility
seemed constitutionally deep; and some subtle fire of impassioned
intellect apparently burned within her, which--being alternately pushed
forward into a conspicuous expression by the irresistible instincts of
her temperament, and then immediately checked in obedience to the decorum
of her sex and age and her maidenly condition--gave to her whole
demeanour, and to her conversation, an air of embarrassment, and even of
self-conflict, that was almost distressing to witness. Even her very
utterance and enunciation often suffered in point of clearness and
steadiness, from the agitation of her excessive organic sensibility. At
times the self-counteraction and self-baffling of her feelings caused her
even to stammer. But the greatest deductions from Miss Wordsworth's
attractions, and from the exceeding interest which surrounded her, in
right of her character, of her history, and of the relation which she
fulfilled towards her brother, were the glancing quickness of her
motions, and other circumstances in her deportment (such as her stooping
attitude when walking), which gave an ungraceful character to her
appearance when out of doors . . . .
'Her knowledge of literature was irregular and thoroughly unsystematic.
She was content to be ignorant of many things; but what she knew, and had
really mastered, lay where it could not be disturbed--in the temple of
her own most fervid heart.'
It may not be amiss here to add from the same gossipy but graphic pen, a
description of the Townend home, and of the way of life there, which has
often before been quoted:--
'A little semi-vestibule between two doors prefaced the entrance into
what might be considered the principal room of the cottage. It was an
oblong square, not above eight and a half feet high, sixteen feet long,
and twelve broad, very prettily wainscoted from the floor to the ceiling
with dark polished oak, slightly embellished with carving. One window
there was--a perfect and unpretending cottage window--with little diamond
panes, embowered at almost every season of the year with roses, and, in
the summer and autumn, with a profusion of jasmine and other fragrant
shrubs. From the exuberant luxuriance of the vegetation around it, this
window, though tolerably large, did not furnish a very powerful light to
one who entered from the open air . . . . I was ushered up a little
flight of stairs, fourteen in all, to a little drawing-room, or whatever
the reader chooses to call it. Wordsworth himself has described the
fireplace of this room as his
"Half kitchen, and half parlour fire."
It was not fully seven feet six inches high, and in other respects pretty
nearly of the same dimensions as the rustic hall below. There was,
however, in a small recess, a library of perhaps three hundred volumes,
which seemed to consecrate this room as the poet's study and
composing-room, and such occasionally it was.
'About four o'clock it might be when we arrived. At that hour in
November the daylight soon declined, and in an hour and a half we were
all collected about the tea-table.
'This with the Wordsworths, under the simple rustic system of habits
which they cherished then and for twenty years after, was the most
delightful meal of the day, just as dinner is in great cities, and for
the same reason, because it was prolonged into a meal of leisure and
conversation. That night I found myself, about eleven at night, in a
pretty bedroom, about fourteen feet by twelve. Much I feared that this
might turn out the best room in the house; and it illustrates the
hospitality of my new friends to mention that it was . . . .
'Next morning Miss Wordsworth I found making breakfast in the little
sitting-room. No one was there, no glittering breakfast service; a
kettle boiled upon the fire; and everything was in harmony with these
unpretending arrangements.
'I rarely had seen so humble a _menage_; and, contrasting the dignity of
the man with this honourable poverty, and this courageous avowal of it,
his utter absence of all effort to disguise the simple truth of the case,
I felt my admiration increased.
'Throughout the day, which was rainy, the same style of modest
hospitality prevailed. Wordsworth and his sister, myself being of the
party, walked out in spite of the rain, and made the circuit of the two
lakes, Grasmere and its dependency Rydal, a walk of about six miles.
'On the third morning after my arrival in Grasmere, I found the whole
family, except the two children, prepared for the expedition across the
mountains. I had heard of no horses, and took it for granted that we
were to walk; however, at the moment of starting, a cart, the common
farmer's cart of the country, made its appearance, and the driver was a
bonny young woman of the vale. Accordingly we were all carted along to
the little town or large village of Ambleside, three and a half miles
distant. Our style of travelling occasioned no astonishment; on the
contrary, we met a smiling salutation wherever we appeared; Miss
Wordsworth being, as I observed, the person most familiarly known of our
party, and the one who took upon herself the whole expenses of the flying
colloquies exchanged with stragglers on the road.'
When the family had to leave this cottage home at Townend, they migrated
to Allan Bank in 1808, and there remained for three years. In the spring
of 1811 they moved to the Parsonage of Grasmere, and thence, in the
spring of 1813, to Rydal Mount, their final abode. Their sojourn in the
Parsonage was saddened by the loss of two children, who died within six
months of each other, and were laid side by side in the churchyard of
Grasmere. The Parsonage looks right across the road on that
burial-place, and the continual sight of this was more than they could
bear. They were glad therefore to withdraw from it, and to exchange the
vale of Grasmere, now filled for them with too mournful recollections,
for the sweet retirement of Rydal.
Through all these changes sister Dorothy went of course with them, and
shared the affliction of the bereaved parents, as she had formerly shared
their happiness. In 1814, the year of the publication of the
'Excursion,' all of which Miss Wordsworth had transcribed, her brother
made another tour in Scotland, and this time Yarrow was not unvisited.
His wife and her sister went with him, but Dorothy, having stayed at home
probably to tend the children, did not form one of the party, a
circumstance which her brother always remembered with regret.
In the summer of 1820, however, she visited the Continent with her
brother and Mrs. Wordsworth, but of this tour no record remains. Another
visit, the last but one, Wordsworth made to Scotland in 1831, accompanied
by his daughter Dora. This time Yarrow was revisited in company with Sir
Walter Scott, just before his last going from Tweedside. Wordsworth has
chronicled his parting with Scott in two affecting poems, which if any
reader does not know by heart, I would recommend him to read them in the
Appendix to this Journal. {0b}
But by the time this expedition was made, Dorothy was an invalid confined
to a sick-room. In the year 1829 she was seized by a severe illness,
which so prostrated her, body and mind, that she never recovered from it.
The unceasing strain of years had at last worn out that buoyant frame and
fervid spirit. She had given herself to one work, and that work was
done. To some it may seem a commonplace one,--to live in and for her
brother, to do by him a sister's duty. With original powers which, had
she chosen to set up on her own account, might have won for her high
literary fame, she was content to forget herself, to merge all her gifts
and all her interests in those of her brother. She thus made him other
and higher than he could have been had he stood alone, and enabled him to
render better service to the world than without her ministry he could
have done. With this she was well content. It is sad to think that when
the world at last knew him for what he was, the great original poet of
this century, she who had helped to make him so was almost past rejoicing
in it. It is said that during those latter years he never spoke of her
without his voice being sensibly softened and saddened. The return of
the day when they two first came to Grasmere was to him a solemn
anniversary. But though so enfeebled, she still lived on, and survived
her brother by nearly five years. Her death took place at Rydal Mount in
January 1855, at the age of eighty-three. And now, beside her brother
and his wife and others of that household, she rests in the green
Grasmere churchyard, with the clear waters of Rotha murmuring by.
To return to the Journal. As we read it, let us bear always in mind that
it was not meant for us, for the world, or 'the general reader,' but to
be listened to by a small family circle, gathered round the winter fire.
We should therefore remember that in reading it we are, as it were,
allowed, after seventy years, to overhear what was not primarily meant
for our ears at all. This will account for a fulness and minuteness of
detail which to unsympathetic persons may perhaps appear tedious. But
the writer was telling her story, not for unsympathetic persons, not for
'general readers,' much less for literary critics, but for 'the household
hearts that were her own,' on whose sympathy she could reckon, even down
to the minutest circumstances of this journey. And so there is no
attempt at fine or sensational writing, as we now call it, no attempt at
that modern artifice which they call word-painting. But there is the
most absolute sincerity, the most perfect fidelity to her own experience,
the most single-minded endeavour to set down precisely the things they
saw and heard and felt, just as they saw and felt and heard them, while
moving on their quiet way. And hence perhaps the observant reader who
submits himself to the spirit that pervades this Journal may find in its
effortless narrative a truthfulness, a tenderness of observation, a
'vivid exactness,' a far-reaching and suggestive insight, for which he
might look in vain in more studied productions.
Another thing to note is the historic value that now attaches to this
Journal. It marks the state of Scotland, and the feeling with which the
most finely gifted Englishmen came to it seventy years since, at a time
before the flood of English interest and 'tourism' had set in across the
Border. The Wordsworths were of course not average English people. They
came with an eye awake and trained for nature, and a heart in sympathy
with nature and with man in a degree not common either in that or in any
other age. They were north-country English too, and between these and
the Lowland Scots there was less difference of fibre and of feeling than
there generally is between Cumbrians and Londoners. All their lives they
had been wont to gaze across the Solway on the dimly-outlined mountains
of the Scottish Border. This alone and their love of scenery and of
wandering were enough, apart from other inducement, to have lured them
northward. But that tide of sentiment, which in our day has culminated
in our annual tourist inundation, was already setting in. It had been
growing ever since 'The Forty-five,' when the sudden descent of the
Highland host on England, arrested only by the disastrous pause at Derby,
had frightened the Londoners from their propriety, and all but scared the
Second George beyond seas. This terror in time subsided, but the
interest in the northern savages still survived, and was further
stimulated when, about fifteen years after, the portent of Macpherson's
Ossian burst on the astonished world of literature. Then about eleven
years later, in 1773, the burly and bigoted English Lexicographer
buttoned his great-coat up to the throat and set out on a Highland
sheltie from Inverness, on that wonderful 'Tour to the Hebrides,' by
which he determined to extinguish for ever Macpherson and his impudent
forgeries. Such a tour seemed at that day as adventurous as would now be
a journey to the heart of Africa, and the stories which Johnson told of
the Hebrideans and their lives let in on his Cockney readers the
impression of a world as strange as any which Livingstone could now
report of. Then, in 1786, came Burns, whose poetry, if it did not reach
the ordinary Englishman of the literary class, at least thrilled the
hearts of English poets. That Wordsworth had felt his power we know,
for, independent as he stood, and little wont to acknowledge his
indebtedness to any, he yet confesses in one place that it was Burns who
first set him on the right track. This series of surprises coming from
beyond the Tweed had drawn the eyes of Englishmen towards Scotland.
Especially two such voices--Ossian speaking from the heart of the
Highlands, Burns concentrating in his song the whole strength and the
weakness also of Lowland character--seemed to call across the Borders on
Wordsworth to come and look on their land. And during all the first days
of that journey the thought of Burns and his untimely end, then so
recent, lay heavy on his heart.
Again, it were well, as we read, to remember the time when this Diary was
written. It was before Scott was known as an original poet, before he
had given anything to the world save 'The Border Minstrelsy.' We are
accustomed to credit Scott with whatever enchantment invests Scotland in
the eyes of the English, and of foreigners. And doubtless a large
portion of it is due to him, but perhaps not quite so much as we are apt
to fancy. We commonly suppose that it was he who first discovered the
Trossachs and Loch Katrine, and revealed them to the world in 'The Lady
of the Lake.' Yet they must have had some earlier renown, enough to make
Wordsworth, travelling two years before the appearance even of Scott's
'Lay,' turn aside to go in search of them.
To Dorothy Wordsworth and Coleridge this was the first time they had set
foot on Scottish ground. Wordsworth himself seems to have crossed the
Border two years before this, though of that journey there is no record
remaining. As they set forth from Keswick on that August morning one can
well believe that
'Their exterior semblance did belie
Their soul's immensity.'