The Prose Works of William Wordsworth Part 131

'The Oaks, Ambleside, Monday, Jan. 22. 1844.

While Mrs. Quillinan was sitting with us to-day, Henry Fletcher ran in to say that he had reserved his summons for Oxford (he had been in suspense about rooms as an exhibitioner at Balliol), and must be off within an hour. His young cousins and I went down with him to wait for the mail in the marketplace. We found Mr. Wordsworth walking about before the post-office door in very charming mood. His spirits were excited by the bright morning suns.h.i.+ne, and he entered at once on a full flow of discourse. He looked very benevolently on Henry as he mounted on the top of the coach, and seemed quite disposed to give an old man's blessing to the young man entering on an untried field, and then (nowise interrupted by the hurrying to and fro of ostlers with their smoking horses, or pa.s.sengers with their carpet bags) he launched into a dissertation, in which there was, I thought, a remarkable union of his powerful diction, and his practical, thoughtful good sense, on the subject of college habits, and of his utter distrust of all attempts to nurse virtue by an avoidance of temptation. He expressed also his entire want of confidence (from experience he said) of highly-wrought religious expression in youth. The safest training for the mind in religion he considered to be a contemplating of the character and personal history of Christ. 'Work it,' he said, 'into your thoughts, into your imagination, make it a real presence in the mind.' I was rejoiced to hear this plain, loving confession of a Christian faith from Wordsworth.

I never heard one more earnest, more as if it came out of a devoutly believing heart.

[247] The close of Lady Richardson's 'Reminiscences' here in the _Memoirs_ is not given, as being more fully introduced under December 1841, p. 438. The repet.i.tion of the same sentiments in 1843, however, is noticeable. For a vivid and sweetly toned paper on Wordsworth by Lady Richardson--based on the _Memoirs_--see _Sharpe's London Magazine_ for March 1853, pp. 148-55. G.

The Oaks, March 5. 1844.

On our way to Lancrigg to-day, we called at Foxhow. We met Mr.

Wordsworth there, and asked him to go with us. It was a beautiful day, one of his very own 'mild days' of this month. He kindly consented, and walked with us to meet the carriage at Pelter Bridge. On our drive, he mentioned, with marked pleasure, a dedication written by Mr. Keble, and sent to him for his approval, and for his permission to have it prefixed to Mr. Keble's new volumes of Latin Lectures on Poetry delivered at Oxford. Mr. Wordsworth said that he had never seen any estimate of his poetical powers, or more especially of his aims in poetry, that appeared to him so discriminating and so satisfactory. He considers praise a perilous and a difficult thing. On this subject he often quotes his lamented friend, Sir George Beaumont, whom, in his intercourse with men of genius, literary aspirants, he describes as admirable in the modesty which he inculcated and practised on this head.

The Oaks, Ambleside, July 11. 1844.

Mr. and Mrs. Wordsworth at dinner, along with our family party. Mr. and Mrs. Price (from Rugby), two aunts of Mrs. P.'s, and her brother, Mr.

Rose, a young clergyman (a devout admirer of Wordsworth), joined us at tea. A circle was made as large as our little parlour could hold. Mr.

Price sat next to Mr. Wordsworth, and by design or fortunate accident, introduced some remark on the powers and the discourse of Coleridge. Mr.

Wordsworth entered heartily and largely on the subject. He said that the liveliest and truest image he could give of Coleridge's talk was 'that of a majestic river, the sound or sight of whose course you caught at intervals, which was sometimes concealed by forests, sometimes lost in sand, then came flas.h.i.+ng out broad and distinct, then again took a turn which your eye could not follow, yet you knew and felt that it was the same river: so,' he said, 'there was always a train, a stream, in Coleridge's discourse, always a connection between its parts in his own mind, though one not always perceptible to the minds of others.' Mr.

Wordsworth went on to say, that in his opinion Coleridge had been spoilt as a poet by going to Germany. The bent of his mind, which was at all times very much to metaphysical theology, had there been fixed in that direction. 'If it had not been so,' said Wordsworth, 'he would have been the greatest, the most abiding poet of his age. His very faults would have made him popular (meaning his sententiousness and laboured strain), while he had enough of the essentials of a poet to make him deservedly popular in a higher sense.'

Mr. Price soon after mentioned a statement of Coleridge's respecting himself, recorded in his 'Table Talk,' namely, that a visit to the battle-field of Marathon would raise in him no kindling emotion, and asked Mr. Wordsworth whether this was true as a token of his mind. At first Mr. Wordsworth said, 'Oh! that was a mere bravado, for the sake of astonis.h.i.+ng his hearers!' but then, correcting himself, he added, 'And yet it might in some sense be true, for Coleridge was not under the influence of external objects. He had extraordinary powers of summoning up an image or series of images in his own mind, and he might mean that his idea of Marathon was so vivid, that no visible observation could make it more so.' 'A remarkable instance of this,' added Mr. Wordsworth, 'is his poem, said to be "composed in the Vale of Chamouni." Now he never was at Chamouni, or near it, in his life.' Mr. Wordsworth next gave a somewhat humorous account of the rise and progress of the 'Ancient Mariner.' 'It arose,' he said, 'out of the want of five pounds which Coleridge and I needed to make a tour together in Devons.h.i.+re. We agreed to write jointly a poem, the subject of which Coleridge took from a dream which a friend of his had once dreamt concerning a person suffering under a dire curse from the commission of some crime.' 'I,'

said Wordsworth, 'supplied the crime, the shooting of the albatross, from an incident I had met with in one of Shelvocke's voyages. We tried the poem conjointly for a day or two, but we pulled different ways, and only a few lines of it are mine.' From Coleridge, the discourse then turned to Scotland. Mr. Wordsworth, in his best manner, with earnest thoughts given out in n.o.ble diction, gave his reasons for thinking that as a poet Scott would not live. 'I don't like,' he said, 'to say all this, or to take to pieces some of the best reputed pa.s.sages of Scott's verse, especially in presence of my wife, because she thinks me too fastidious; but as a poet Scott _cannot_ live, for he has never in verse written anything addressed to the immortal part of man. In making amusing stories in verse, he will be superseded by some newer versifier; what he writes in the way of natural description is merely rhyming nonsense.' As a prose writer, Mr. Wordsworth admitted that Scott had touched a higher vein, because there he had really dealt with feeling and pa.s.sion. As historical novels, professing to give the manners of a past time, he did not attach much value to those works of Scott's so called, because that he held to be an attempt in which success was impossible. This led to some remarks on historical writing, from which it appeared that Mr. Wordsworth has small value for anything but contemporary history. He laments that Dr. Arnold should have spent so much of his time and powers in gathering up and putting into imaginary shape the scattered fragments of the history of Rome.[248]

These sc.r.a.ps of Wordsworth's large, thoughtful, earnest discourse, seem very meagre as I note them down, and in themselves perhaps hardly worth preserving and yet this is an evening which those who spent it in his company will long remember. His venerable head; his simple, natural, and graceful att.i.tude in his arm-chair; his respectful attention to the slightest remarks or suggestions of others in relation to what was spoken of; his kindly benevolence of expression as he looked round now and then on the circle in our little parlour, all bent to 'devour up his discourse,' filled up and enlarged the meaning which I fear is but ill conveyed in the words as they are now set down.

(V.) LADY RICHARDSON: WORDSWORTH'S BIRTH-DAY.

On Tuesday, April the 7th, 1844, my mother[249] and I left Lancrigg to begin our Yorks.h.i.+re journey. We arrived at Rydal Mount about three o'clock, and found the tables all tastefully decorated on the esplanade in front of the house. The Poet was standing looking at them with a very pleased expression of face; he received us very kindly, and very soon the children began to arrive. The Grasmere boys and girls came first, and took their places on the benches placed round the gravelled part of the esplanade; their eyes fixed with wonder and admiration on the tables covered with oranges, gingerbread, and painted eggs, ornamented with daffodils, laurels, and moss, gracefully intermixed. The plot soon began to thicken, and the scene soon became very animated. Neighbours, old and young, of all degrees, ascended to the Mount to keep the Poet's seventy-fourth birthday, and every face looked friendly and happy. Each child brought its own mug, and held it out to be filled with tea, in which ceremony all a.s.sisted. Large baskets of currant cakes were handed round and liberally dispensed; and as each detachment of children had satisfied themselves with tea and cake, they were moved off, to play at hide and seek among the evergreens on the gra.s.sy part of the Mount. The day was not bright, but it was soft, and not cold, and the scene, viewed from the upper windows of the house, was quite beautiful, and one I should have been very sorry not to have witnessed. It was innocent and gay, and perfectly natural. Miss F----, the donor of the fete, looked very happy, and so did all the Poet's household. The children, who amounted altogether to above 300, gave three cheers to Mr. Wordsworth and Miss F----. After some singing and dancing, and after the division of eggs, gingerbread, and oranges had taken place, we all began to disperse. We spent the night at the Oaks, and set off on our journey the following morning. The gay scene at the Mount often comes before me, as a pleasant dream. It is perhaps the only part of the island where such a reunion of all cla.s.ses could have taken place without any connection of landlord and tenant, or any clerical relation, or school direction.

Wordsworth, while looking at the gambols on the Mount, expressed his conviction that if such meetings could oftener take place between people of different condition, a much more friendly feeling would be created than now exists in this country between the rich and poor.

[248] But see _Memorials of Italy_, 'Sonnets on Roman Historians.'

[249] Mrs. Fletcher.

_July 12th,_ 1844.--Wordsworth spoke much during the evening of his early intercourse with Coleridge, on some one observing that it was difficult to carry away a distinct impression from Coleridge's conversation, delightful as every one felt his outpourings to be.

Wordsworth agreed, but said he was occasionally very happy in clothing an idea in words; and he mentioned one which was recorded in his sister's journal during a tour they all made together in Scotland. They pa.s.sed a steam engine, and Wordsworth made some observation to the effect that it was scarcely possible to divest oneself of the impression on seeing it that it had life and volition. 'Yes,' replied Coleridge, 'it is a giant with one idea.'

He discoursed at great length on Scott's works. His poetry he considered of that kind which will always he in demand, and that the supply will always meet it, suited to the age. He does not consider that it in any way goes below the surface of things; it does not reach to any intellectual or spiritual emotion; it is altogether superficial, and he felt it himself to be so. His descriptions are not true to Nature; they are addressed to the ear, not to the mind. He was a master of bodily movements in his battle-scenes; but very little productive power was exerted in popular creations.

DUDDON EXCURSION

On Friday, the 6th September 1844, I set off to breakfast at Rydal Mount, it being the day fixed by Mr. Wordsworth for our long-projected excursion to the Valley of the Duddon.

The rain fell in torrents, and it became doubtful whether we should set off or not; but as it was a thunder-shower, we waited till it was over, and then Wordsworth, Mr. Quillinan, Miss Hutchinson, and I, set forth in our carriage to Coniston, where we were to find the Rydal Mount carriage awaiting us with Mr. Hutchinson. Wordsworth talked very agreeably on the way to Coniston, and repeated several verses of his own, which he seemed pleased that Serjeant Talfourd had repeated to him the day before. He mentioned a singular instance of T. Campbell's inaccuracy of memory in having actually printed as his own a poem of Wordsworth's, 'The Complaint:' he repeated it beautifully as we were going up the hill to Coniston. On reaching the inn in the village of Coniston, the rain again fell in torrents. At length, the carriages were ordered to the door with the intention of our returning home; but just as they were ready the sun broke out, and we turned the horse's head towards Ulpha Kirk. The right bank of Coniston was all new to me after we pa.s.sed the village, and Old Man of Coniston. The scenery ceases to be bold and rugged, but is very pleasing, the road pa.s.sing through hazel copses, the openings showing nice little cornfields and comfortable detached farms, with old uncropped trees standing near them; some very fine specimens of old ash trees, which I longed to transport to Easedale, where they have been so cruelly lopped. The opening towards the sea, as we went on, was very pleasing; but the first striking view of the Duddon was looking down upon it soon after we pa.s.sed Broughton, where you turn to the right, and very soon after perceive the peculiar beauty of the valley, although it does not take its wild and dreamlike beauty till you pa.s.s Ulpha Kirk. We reversed the order of the sonnets, and saw the river first, 'in radiant progress tow'rd the deep,' instead of tracing this 'child of the clouds'

from its cradle in the lofty waste. We reached the Kirk of Ulpha between five and six. The appearance of the little farm-house inn at once made anything approaching to a dinner an impossibility had we wished it ever so much; but in due time we had tea and boiled ham, with two eggs apiece, and were much invigorated by this our first Duddonian meal. The hostess was evidently surprised that we thought of remaining all night, so humbly did she think of the accommodation she had to offer. She remembered Mr. Wordsworth sleeping there fifteen years ago, because it was just after the birth of her daughter, a nice comely girl who attended us at tea. Mr. Quillinan showed great good nature and unselfishness in the arrangements he made, and the care he took of the admirable horse, which I saw him feeding out of a tub, a manger being too great a refinement for Ulpha.

After tea, although it was getting dark, we went to the churchyard, which commands a beautiful view towards Seathwaite, and we then walked in that direction, through a lane where the walls were more richly covered by moss and fern than any I ever saw before. A beautiful dark-coloured tributary to the Duddon comes down from the moors on the left hand, about a mile from Ulpha; and soon after we had pa.s.sed the small bridge over this stream, Mr. Wordsworth recollected a well which he had discovered some thirty or forty years before. We went off the road in search of it, through a shadowy, embowered path; and as it was almost dark we should probably have failed in finding it, had we not met a very tiny boy, with a can of water in his hand, who looked at us in speechless amazement, when the Poet said, 'Is there a well here, my little lad?' We found the well, and then joined the road again by another path, leaving the child to ponder whether we were creatures of earth or air.

Sat.u.r.day morning was cloudy but soft, and lovely in its hazy effects.

When I went out about seven, I saw Wordsworth going a few steps, and then moving on, and stopping again, in a very abstracted manner; so I kept back. But when he saw me, he advanced, and took me again to the churchyard to see the morning effects, which were very lovely. He said he had not slept well, that the recollection of former days and people had crowded upon him, and, 'most of all, my dear sister; and when I thought of her state, and of those who had pa.s.sed away, Coleridge, and Southey, and many others, while I am left with all my many infirmities, if not sins, in full consciousness, how could I sleep? and then I took to the alteration of sonnets, and that made the matter worse still.'

Then suddenly stopping before a little bunch of harebell, which, along with some parsley fern, grew out of the wall near us, he exclaimed, 'How perfectly beautiful that is!

"Would that the little flowers that grow could live, Conscious of half the pleasure that they give."'

He then expatiated on the inexhaustible beauty of the arrangements of Nature, its power of combining in the most secret recesses, and that it must be for some purpose of beneficence that such operations existed.

After breakfast, we got into the cart of the inn, which had a seat swung into it, upon which a bolster was put, in honour, I presume, of the Poet Laureate. In this we jogged on to Seathwaite, getting out to ascend a craggy eminence on the right, which Mrs. Wordsworth admired: the view from it is very striking. You see from it all the peculiarities of the vale, the ravine where the Duddon 'deserts the haunts of men,' 'the spots of stationary suns.h.i.+ne,' and the homesteads which are scattered here and there, both on the heights and in the lower ground near protecting rocks and craggy steeps. Seathwaite I had a perfect recollection of; and the way we approached it twenty years ago, from Coniston over Walna Scar, is the way Mr. Wordsworth still recommends as the most beautiful. We went on some distance beyond the chapel, and every new turning and opening among the hills allured us on, till at last the Poet was obliged to exercise the word of command, that we should proceed no further. The return is always a flat thing, so I shall not detail it, except that we reached our respective homes in good time; and I hope I shall never cease to think with grat.i.tude and pleasure of the kindness of my honoured guide through the lovely scenes he has rescued from obscurity, although it happily still remains an unvitiated region, 'which stands in no need of the veil of twilight to soften or disguise its features: as it glistens in the morning's sun it fills the spectator's heart with gladsomeness.'

_November 21_.--My mother and I called at Rydal last Sat.u.r.day, to see the Wordsworths after their autumnal excursion. We found him only at home, looking in great vigour and much the better for this little change of scene and circ.u.mstance. He spoke with much interest of a communication he had had from a benevolent surgeon at Manchester, an admirer of his, who thinks that a great proportion of the blindness in this country might be prevented by attention to the diseases of the eye in childhood. He spoke of two very interesting blind ladies he had seen at Leamington, one of whom had been at Rydal Mount a short time before her 'total eclipse,' and now derived the greatest comfort from the recollection of these beautiful scenes, almost the last she looked on.

He spoke of his own pleasure in returning to them, and of the effect of the first view from 'Orrest Head,' the point mentioned in his 'unfortunate[250] sonnet, which has,' he said, 'you are aware, exposed me to the most unlooked for accusations. They actually accuse me of desiring to interfere with the innocent enjoyments of the poor, by preventing this district becoming accessible to them by a railway. Now I deny that it is to that cla.s.s that this kind of scenery is either the most improving or the most attractive. For the very poor the great G.o.d of Nature has mercifully spread out His Bible everywhere; the common suns.h.i.+ne, green fields, the blue sky, the s.h.i.+ning river, are everywhere to be met with in this country; and it is only an individual here and there among the uneducated cla.s.ses who feels very deeply the poetry of lakes and mountains; and such persons would rather wander about where they like, than rush through the country in a railway. It is not, therefore, the poor, as a cla.s.s, that would benefit morally or mentally by a railway conveyance; while to the educated cla.s.ses, to whom such scenes as these give enjoyment of the purest kind, the effect would be almost entirely destroyed.'

[250] See the Sonnet and Letters on the Furness Railway (vol. ii. p.

321). G.

_Wednesday, 20th Nov_.--A most remarkable halo was seen round the moon soon after five o'clock to-day; the colours of the rainbow were most brilliant, and the circle was entire for about five minutes.

Thursday, Mr. Wordsworth dined here with the b.a.l.l.s, Davys, and Mr.

Jefferies. Mr. W. spoke with much delight of the moon the day before, and said his servant, whom he called 'dear James,' called his attention to it.

_Wednesday, Dec. 18th_.--The Wordsworths and Quillinans sat two hours with us. He said he thought [Dr. Arnold] was mistaken in the philosophy of his view of the danger of Milton's Satan being represented without horns and hoofs; that Milton's conception was as true as it was grand; that making sin ugly was a common-place notion compared with making it beautiful outwardly, and inwardly a h.e.l.l. It a.s.sumed every form of ambition and worldliness, the form in which sin attacks the highest natures.

This day, Sunday, the 9th of February, the snow is again falling fast, but very gently. Yesterday, the 8th, was a beautiful day. We had a very pleasant visit of above an hour from Wordsworth and his wife. He was in excellent spirits, and repeated with a solemn beauty, quite peculiar to himself, a sonnet he had lately composed on 'Young England;' and his indignant burst 'Where then is _old_, our dear old England?' was one of the finest bursts of Nature and Art combined I have ever heard. My dear mother's face, too, while he was repeating it, was a fine addition to the picture; and I could not help feeling they were both n.o.ble specimens of 'dear old England.' Mrs. Wordsworth, too, is a goodly type of another cla.s.s of old England, more thoroughly English perhaps than either of the others, but they made an admirable trio; and Mrs. Wordsworth's face expressed more admiration of her husband in his bardic mood than I ever saw before. He discussed mesmerism very agreeably, stating strongly his detestation of clairvoyance; not only on the presumption of its being altogether false, but supposing it, for argument sake, to be true, then he thinks it would be an engine of enormous evil, putting it in the power of any malicious person to blast the character of another, and shaking to the very foundations the belief in individual responsibility.

He is not disposed to reject without examination the a.s.sertions with regard to the curative powers of mesmerism. He spoke to-day with pleasure of having heard that Mr. Lockhart had been struck by his lines from a MSS. poem, printed in his Railway-Sonnet pamphlet.

_February 24th_.--Snow still on the ground. It has never been quite clear of snow since the 27th January. Partial thaws have allowed us to peep out into the world of Ambleside and Rydal; and last Sat.u.r.day we drank tea at Foxhow, and met the Wordsworths and Miss F----. He is very happy to have his friend home again, and was in a very agreeable mood.

He repeated his sonnet on the 'Pennsylvanians,' and again that on 'Young England,' which I admire so much.

_March 6th_.--Wordsworth, whom we met yesterday at dinner at the Oaks, expressed his dislike to monuments in churches; partly from the absurdity and falsehood of the epitaphs which sometimes belonged to them, and partly from their injuring the architectural beauties of the edifice, as they grievously did in Westminster Abbey and many other cathedrals. He made an exception in favour of those old knightly monuments, which he admitted added to the solemnity of the scene, and were in keeping with the buildings; and he added, 'I must also except another monument which once made a deep impression on my mind. It was in a small church near St. Alban's; and I once left London in the afternoon, so as to sleep at St. Alban's the first night, and have a few hours of evening light to visit this church. It was before the invention of railways, and I determined that I would always do the same; but, the year after, railways existed, and I have never been able to carry out my project again: all wandering is now over. Well, I went to this small country church; and just opposite the door at which you enter, the figure of the great Lord Bacon, in pure white, was the first thing that presented itself. I went there to see his tomb, but I did not expect to see himself; and it impressed me deeply. There he was, a man whose fame extends over the whole civilised world, sitting calmly, age after age, in white robes of pure alabaster, in this small country church, seldom visited except by some stray traveller, he having desired to be interred in this spot, to lie near his mother.'