Part 2

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.