Part 17

Their slender means were augmented about this time by a legacy which rendered it possible for the brother and sister to have a little cottage home together. Here, at Racedown, in Dorsetshire, Wordsworth first began seriously to devote himself to poetry. Their means were so small that the utmost economy was necessary; but Dorothy cheerfully undertook all the household work of cleaning, cooking, making, and mending. She was not one of those who think there is any degradation, either to man or woman, in manual labour. While she was busied with household cares, her brother often worked in their garden; when their digging and cooking were accomplished, they read Italian authors together, or took long walks through the beautiful country in which they had fixed their abode. It must not be thought that Miss Wordsworth was nothing more to her brother than an energetic, economical housekeeper; she was in feeling almost as much a poet as he was. She had the same intense sympathy with nature, the same observant eye and loving heart for all the various moods of the beautiful outside world. She had also much of her brother’s power of expression, and the same felicity in description. It has been said of her, “Her journals are Wordsworth in prose, just as his poems are Dorothy in verse.” Wordsworth said of his brother John that he was “a silent poet,” and “a poet in everything but words,” meaning that he was a poet in feeling and sympathy; but something more than this can be said of Dorothy; she was a prose poet, who might have become a true poet, if she had not felt that she had another vocation. She was her brother’s inspirer and critic, and what she wrote herself proves that she was worthy to be both. Some passages of her diary are almost identical in thought and observation with subjects that Wordsworth has crystallised in immortal verse. On 30th July 1802 we have, for example, in the prose of Dorothy’s journal, part of what Wordsworth has given to us in the sonnets on Westminster Bridge and Calais sands. “Left London between five and six o’clock of the morning, outside the Dover coach. A beautiful morning. The City, St. Paul’s, with the river, a multitude of little boats, made a beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge; the houses not overhung by their clouds of smoke, were spread out endlessly; yet the sun shone so brightly, with such a pure light, that there was something like the purity of one of Nature’s own grand spectacles. Arrived at Calais at four in the morning of 31st July. Delightful walks in the evenings, seeing far off in the west the coast of England like a cloud, crested with Dover Castle, the evening star, and the glory of the sky. The reflections in the water were more beautiful than the sky itself; purple waves brighter than precious stones for ever melting away on the sands.” Whoever will compare this with the two sonnets beginning “Earth has not anything to show more fair,” and “Fair star of evening, splendour of the West,” will see how far it is just to say that Dorothy has given us in prose what Wordsworth has given us in verse. There is a deeper human passion in Wordsworth’s verse than Dorothy ever reached in her prose. He would not stand to-day the third in the noble group where Shakespeare and Milton are first and second, if he had not possessed, over and above his subtle sympathy with Nature, sympathy also with the greatest of Nature’s works, “man, the heart of man, and human life.” In the “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey,” and again in the “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality,” Wordsworth speaks of the change which had gradually come in himself from the days when the worship of external nature, “meadow, grove, and stream, the earth and every common sight,” was all in all to him, to the time when—

I have learn’d To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue.

It was here, as it seems, that his sister could not follow him. Perhaps her self-suppression, the very concentration of her devotion to her brother, closed her powers of receptive sympathy for the wider issues of human destiny which inspires the most precious of Wordsworth’s verse. Whether this be so or not, he saw in her what he once had been and had ceased to be.

I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm. ... That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures.

· · · · · ·

For thou art with me here upon the banks Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend, My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear Sister!

After Racedown the next residence of Wordsworth and his sister was (1797) at Alfoxden, in Somersetshire. Here they were visited by Coleridge and Lamb, and here the “Ancient Mariner” was composed, chiefly by Coleridge, but with the help and by the stimulus of Wordsworth and Dorothy. It was during their residence here that the “Lines written above Tintern Abbey” were composed and published. Racedown and Alfoxden were temporary resting-places only; Wordsworth and his sister did not make a real home for themselves till they settled in the beautiful lake country of Westmoreland, in 1799. At first they lived in a small cottage, where Dorothy, with the help of one feeble old woman, whom they employed partly out of charity, did all the domestic work. A few years later they removed to the house at Rydal Mount, Grasmere, which will always be associated with their memory, and where the rest of their lives was passed. It has been pointed out by Mr. Matthew Arnold that almost all Wordsworth’s best work was produced in the ten years between 1798 and 1808. During this time he had achieved no fame; he had gained no audience, as it were, save the very select group of whom the chief members were his sister, Coleridge, and Charles and Mary Lamb. All through this time of the production of Wordsworth’s best work, Dorothy continued to devote herself to him by the cheerful performance of the double duties of domestic drudge and literary companion and critic. She was also his comrade in many long mountain excursions, in which they both delighted. Miss Wordsworth had extraordinary physical strength, which many persons believe she overtaxed by her long walks over moor and mountain. It is certain, however, that her brother delighted in her physical vigour no less than in her mental gifts. He speaks in lines addressed to her of her being “healthy as a shepherd boy,” and in other places he often shows that physical feebleness formed no part of his conception of feminine grace. His ideal woman

is ruddy, fleet and strong, And down the rocks can leap along Like rivulets in May.

Or again—

She shall be sportive as the fawn, That wild with glee across the lawn Or up the mountain springs.

In 1802 the poet married his cousin, Mary Hutchinson, and nothing is more characteristic of Dorothy’s sweet and generous nature than the warm, loving welcome which she gave to her brother’s wife. She did not know jealousy in love; her love was so perfect that she rejoiced in every addition to her brother’s happiness, and did not, as a meaner woman might have done, wish his heart to be vacant of all affection save what he felt for herself. The poet’s wife was worthy of such a husband and sister-in-law, and the family life went on in perfect love and harmony, that were only strengthened by the new ties and interests that marriage brought. Wordsworth’s children became as dear to Dorothy as if they had been her own, and she devoted herself to them so that they learnt to feel that they had in her almost a second mother.

In 1832, Wordsworth then being sixty-two years old and his sister over sixty, Dorothy’s health seriously broke down. So much has been said in some of the books about the poet and his sister of the harm resulting to Miss Wordsworth’s health from her long walks, that it might have been imagined that she had been the victim of a very premature decline of physical powers. Considering, however, that she was descended from parents both of whom had died young, it is at least doubtful whether her failure of health at the age of sixty can be fairly attributed to her pedestrian feats. Her illness in 1832 culminated in a dangerous attack of brain fever, from which she recovered, but with mental and physical powers permanently enfeebled. Her memory was darkened, and her spirits, once so blithe and gay, became clouded and dull. Wordsworth and his wife tended her with unceasing devotion. One who knew them well wrote of Wordsworth at this time that “There is always something very touching in his way of speaking of his sister. The tones of his voice become very gentle and solemn, and he ceases to have that flow of expression which is so remarkable in him on all other subjects.” The same friend wrote, “Those who know what they (William and Dorothy Wordsworth) were to each other can well understand what it must have been to him to see that soul of life and light obscured.”

Notwithstanding the delicate health from which she suffered before the close of her life, she outlived her brother for five years. He died on 23d April 1850, the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth and death. His sister at first could hardly comprehend her loss; but when at last she understood that her heart’s best treasure was no more, she exclaimed that there was nothing left worth living for. It was hardly life to live without him to whom her own life had been devoted. The friends surrounding her dreaded the shock which this great loss would be to her, but she bore it with unexpected calmness. A friend wrote, “She is drawn about as usual in her chair. She was heard to say as she passed the door where the body lay, ‘O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’” She died in January 1855, and was buried by her brother’s side in Grasmere Churchyard.

XIX

SISTER DORA

ONE of the most remarkable women who, in recent times, have devoted themselves to nursing and to the service of the sick poor, was Dorothy Wyndlaw Pattison, more generally known by the name of Sister Dora. She was a lady born and bred, well-educated, high-spirited, sweet-tempered, and handsome; full of fun and sense of humour, fond of hunting and other athletic exercises, and remarkably fond of her own way. As her own way was generally a good way, she was probably right in preferring it to the ways of other people. Strong determination, when it does not degenerate into stupid obstinacy, is one of the most useful qualities any human being can have. In Sister Dora’s case her strong will was a great secret of her success, but it also, in a few instances, led her into errors, which will easily be seen as the story of her life is told.

She was born, in 1832, at Hauxwell, in Yorkshire, a small village on the slope of a hill, looking towards the moors and Wensleydale. Her father was the clergyman of the village, and one of her brothers was the Rev. Mark Pattison, the well-known scholar and the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. Dorothy Pattison was first roused to wish for something more than the ordinary occupations of a young lady’s life by the enthusiasm felt throughout England in 1856 for Miss Florence Nightingale’s work in the Crimea. Dorothy wished to join Miss Nightingale’s band of lady nurses at the seat of war, but her parents’ opposition and her own want of training prevented her from carrying out this wish. From this time, however, she fretted against the life of comparative inactivity to which she was restricted so long as she remained in her village home. Some years were passed (wasted, we well may think) in unnecessary friction between herself and her father, she desiring to leave home, and he opposing her wishes in this respect. At last she did leave, in 1861, more or less in face of her father’s opposition; he declined to make her any allowance beyond what he had been accustomed to give her for pocket-money and clothes, and she had therefore to live partly on what she was able to earn. She obtained work as a village schoolmistress at Little Woolston, near Bletchley, and lived for three years in a small cottage, quite alone, without even a servant; her life at this time must have been very much like that described in _Jane Eyre_, where the heroine gains her livelihood for a time by similar work. She showed, as a village schoolmistress, that keen sympathy with children and power over them which always distinguished her. She could enter, through her bright imagination, into the feelings and thoughts of children, and her playfulness and love of fun made her a real friend and companion to them. At Little Woolston, too, she did a good deal of amateur nursing for the parents and friends of her little pupils. Her biographer, Miss Lonsdale,[5] says that the people in the neighbourhood of the village were very quick to discover that the new schoolmistress was a real lady, but for some time they could not get over their astonishment if they found Miss Pattison blacking her own grate when they came to see her. She was, perhaps, the first instance they had come across of a cultivated woman who thought that “being a lady” was not inconsistent with working hard. Dirtiness, untidiness, and muddle vex the soul of the “real lady” far more than doing the work which produces cleanliness and order.

After three years at Little Woolston, Miss Pattison made what many must think was the great mistake of her life. Her strong will has already been spoken of; she had found by experience that she could not submit it even to the control of her own father, to whom she was naturally bound by strong feelings of affection. It was necessary to her to have freedom and scope for her energies, and to learn by self-government what she had failed to learn through the government of others. Notwithstanding the incompatibility of her nature with the absolute submission required in such institutions, Miss Pattison joined a High Church Sisterhood, at Coatham, called the Sisterhood of the Good Samaritan. It was part of the discipline of the sisterhood to require unquestioning obedience to all commands. The reason, the feelings, the natural piety of the novices were completely subordinated to obedience as their first and paramount duty. By way of training in unquestioning obedience, Sister Dora, as she was now called, was subjected to various tests of submissiveness; one day, for instance, after she had made all the beds, they were pulled to pieces again by the order of the Superior, and she was told to make them again. In some institutions of this kind, after the floor has been carefully and thoroughly scrubbed by a novice, some one enters, by order of the Superior, with mud or ashes, and purposely makes it dirty again; the novice is then ordered to return to her work and scrub the floor once more, and she is expected to do so without showing the least sign of disappointment or annoyance. It may be true that this system fosters the habit of unquestioning obedience, but if so it must be at the expense of other and more valuable qualities. This unnatural system is perverting to the moral sense and judgment, as Sister Dora, a few years later, found to her cost.

In 1865 she was sent by the sisterhood to Walsall, to take part in the nursing in a small cottage hospital. Towards the end of the year she received orders from the sisterhood to leave this work and take work as a nurse in a private case in the South of England. Walsall had not been trained to habits of unquestioning obedience; its inhabitants and the managers of the little hospital had already discovered Sister Dora’s fine qualities as a nurse. They resisted the order that would have deprived them of her services. While negotiations on this subject were proceeding between the Walsall people and the sisterhood at Coatham, news reached Miss Pattison from Hauxwell, to say that her father was dangerously ill and much desired to see her. She telegraphed to the sisterhood, telling them of her father’s serious illness, and asking permission to visit him. The answer, which was returned almost immediately, was a blank refusal, and she was bidden to proceed at once to Devonshire to nurse a stranger. Incredible as this may seem, it is still more incredible that the order was obeyed. Miss Pattison had not escaped the paralysis of moral sense which this cast-iron system produces; she turned her back on her home and proceeded to Devonshire. Her father died almost immediately, without ever seeing his daughter again. The shock of this event roused Sister Dora from the lethargy from which she had suffered. She was almost broken-hearted, and deeply resented the dictation to which she had been subjected. She ought to have seen, and probably did see, that the will, like all other powers of the mind and body, with which each one of us is endowed, is given to us to be used; we are responsible for its right use, and when we use it wrongly, as she did in this case (for it must have needed a very strong effort of will to resist the appeal of love and duty), it is we ourselves who must bear the punishment and endure the anguish of our fault. She did not immediately sever her connection with the sisterhood, but she began from that time to be less completely in thraldom to it. She finally quitted it in 1875, under circumstances which have not been made public. When a friend questioned her as to the cause, Sister Dora’s only reply was, “I am a woman, and not a piece of furniture.”

After her father’s death, Sister Dora returned to Walsall, and in this place practically the whole of the rest of her life was devoted to the service of the sick and of all who were desolate and oppressed. She plunged into her work with all the greater eagerness from her desire to forget herself and the many inward troubles and anxieties which oppressed her at this time. Her great desire was to become a first-rate surgical nurse. Walsall has been described by those who lived there as “one of the smokiest dens of the Black Country,” and the workers in the various factories of the locality were often frightfully injured by accidents with the machinery, or by burns and scalds. Sister Dora became marvellously skilful in what is known as “conservative surgery,” that is, the art of saving a maimed and crushed limb instead of cutting it off. A good old doctor at the hospital taught her all he knew; but she outgrew his instructions, and Miss Lonsdale gives an instance of a case in which Sister Dora saved a man’s right arm from amputation, in spite of the doctor’s strongly expressed opinion that the man would die unless his arm were taken off immediately. The arm was frightfully torn and twisted; the doctor said it must be taken off, or mortification would set in. Sister Dora said she could save the arm, and the man’s life too. The patient was appealed to, and of the two risks he chose the one offered by the Sister. The doctor did not fail, proud as he was of his pupil, to remind her that the responsibility of what he considered the patient’s certain death would be on her head. She accepted the responsibility, and devoted herself to her patient almost night and day for three weeks, with the result that the arm was saved. The doctor was the first generously to acknowledge her triumph, and he brought the rest of his medical colleagues to see what Sister Dora had done. The patient’s gratitude was unbounded; he often revisited the hospital simply to inquire for Sister Dora. He was known in the neighbourhood as “Sister’s Arm.” During an illness she had, this man used to walk every Sunday morning eleven miles to the hospital to inquire for her. He would say, “How’s Sister?” and on receiving a reply would add, “Tell her it’s _her arm_ that rang the bell,” and walk back again. Sister Dora used to say when speaking of her period of suspense and anxiety in this case, “How I prayed over that arm!”