“Papa Bear, Mama Bear, and the Tiny Bear.”
“So this is where the jolly bears live!” said Golden Hair as he knocked upon the door. “I want to meet them.”
No answer came to her knocking, so she pushed the door wide open and walked in.
It was a most disorderly house, but a bright fire burned on the hearth, over which hung a big, black kettle of bubbling soup, while on the table, near by, were three yellow bowls of different sizes.
“A big bowl for Papa Bear, a medium sized bowl for Mamma Bear, and a little bowl for the Tiny Bear,” said Golden Hair.
“That soup smells good,” she went on to say, “but my! what an untidy house! I’ll put the place to rights while I am waiting for the bears to come home.”
So she went to work to sweep and dust and soon had the room in order. The she went into the bed room and made up the three beds: the big one for Papa bear, the medium sized one for Mamma Bear, and the little one for Tiny Bear she hustled and had everything as neat as a pin when in bounced the three jolly bears. For a moment the bears stood speechless, with wide open eyes, staring at Golden Hair, who stood, like a ray of sunshine in the dusky room; then they burst into loud laughter and her welcome to their home. When they saw how nice and clean it was, they thanked her heartily and invited her to share their dinner, for the soup was now ready and they were all hungry. Golden Hair spent the rest of the day with the three jolly bears “hi spy” and many new games which the bears taught her.
When the afternoon sun was sinking in the west the little girl said she must be getting home, for her grandma would be anxious about her. The three bears would not let her go alone, so they all set off together through the twilight woods, — a merry company.
Golden Hair rode upon the broad back of Papa Bear, while Mamma Bear and Tiny walked gaily on either side. In this way, before night had fallen, they came clear of the wood and up to the home of Golden Hair.
To be sure the grandmother was much surprised to see this shaggy company with her little Golden Hair, but when she saw how jolly they all were and how handy they were in helping Golden Hair get the supper, she was delighted to have them stay, and gave them welcome. Papa bear split the wood, brought it in, and built the fire; Mamma bear got the tea kettle and filled it with water that was carried from the well by the Tiny Bear, and soon they were able to sit down to a good supper of hot biscuit, wild honey, and pumpkin pie, with tea for the elders and nice sweet milk for Golden Hair and the Tiny Bear.
The grandmother liked the three bears so well and the bears were so delighted with the comforts of home that they all decided to live together for the general good.
Papa Bear would do the chores and stand guard over the house at night; Mamma Bear would do the housework under the direction of Golden Hair; while the Tiny Bear would wait upon grandmother and run errands for the household.
And so it came about that the three moved their three bowls and their three beds to the home of Golden Hair and her grandmother, the very next day; and from all accounts they were happy ever after. At any rate the fame of Golden Hair and the three bears spread far and wide through all the countryside, so that on holidays troops of children came to play with the four jolly friends.
The good natured bears were always anxious to please the children; they would get up games under the greenwood trees in the summer, and merry sports upon the icy lake or snowy hills in winter. They did their best to make life for all, one glad round of joy. Just how long they lived thus, no one seems to know; for it was a long, long time ago and nothing is left but a joyous memory of a happy golden time.
The Biographies
Southey, 1795
RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LAKE POETS by Thomas De Quincey
This is a collection of biographical essays, which were published by the essayist Thomas De Quincey in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine between 1834 and 1840. De Quincey provided some of the earliest, best informed and most candid accounts of the Lake Poets, Southey, Wordsworth and Coleridge, as well as others in their circle. Together, the essays form a wealth of information about the Lake Poets and the Romantic Movement of poetry.
De Quincey wrote from direct personal familiarity, having known all three men during the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Writing about them twenty years later, De Quincey ignored the constraints and repressions typical of biography in his era, to produce realistic portraits. The essays are celebrated for having a ‘lively’, even ‘racy’ and gossipy tone, making them an engaging read. The amount of openness that De Quincey brought to his portraits of people that were either still living or recently dead was extremely rare, if not unprecedented, in present day literature and journalism, and so inevitably the essays provoked strong negative reactions. In the mid-1830s, when the essays were being published, Southey called De Quincey “a calumniator, cowardly spy, traitor, base betrayer of the hospitable social hearth” and “one of the greatest scoundrels living!” Some interested parties, however, responded more calmly. Coleridge’s daughter Sarah found De Quincey’s treatment of her father to be insightful and generally fair.
For the general interest of the reader, all of the Lake Poets essays have been included in this edition, including several essays not directly relevant to Southey.
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) was an English essayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821).
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. A MANCHESTER SWEDENBORGIAN AND A LIVERPOOL LITERARY COTERIE
CHAPTER II. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
CHAPTER III. THE LAKE POETS: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
CHAPTER IV. THE LAKE POETS: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AND ROBERT SOUTHEY
SOUTHEY AND THE EDINBURGH ANNUAL REGISTER
CHAPTER V. THE LAKE POETS: SOUTHEY, WORDSWORTH, AND COLERIDGE
CHAPTER VI. THE SARACEN’S HEAD
CHAPTER VII. WESTMORELAND AND THE DALESMEN: SOCIETY OF THE LAKES
CHAPTER VIII. SOCIETY OF THE LAKES: CHARLES LLOYD
CHAPTER IX. SOCIETY OF THE LAKES: MISS ELIZABETH SMITH, THE SYMPSONS, AND THE K —— FAMILY
CHAPTER X. SOCIETY OF THE LAKES: PROFESSOR WILSON: DEATH OF LITTLE KATE WORDSWORTH
CHAPTER XI. RAMBLES FROM THE LAKES: MRS. SIDDONS AND HANNAH MORE
CHAPTER I. A MANCHESTER SWEDENBORGIAN AND A LIVERPOOL LITERARY COTERIE
It was in the year 1801, whilst yet at school, that I made my first literary acquaintance. This was with a gentleman now dead, and little, at any time, known in the literary world; indeed, not at all; for his authorship was confined to a department of religious literature as obscure and as narrow in its influence as any that can be named — viz. Swedenborgianism.
Already, on the bare mention of that word, a presumption arises against any man, that, writing much (or writing at all) for a body of doctrines so apparently crazy as those of Mr. Swedenborg, a man must have bid adieu to all good sense and manliness of mind. Indeed, this is so much of a settled case, that even to have written against Mr. Swedenborg would be generally viewed as a suspicious act, requiring explanation, and not very easily admitting of it. Mr. Swedenborg I call him, because I understand that his title to call himself “Baron” is imaginary; or rather he never did call himself by any title of honour — that mistake having originated amongst his followers in this country, who have chosen to designate him as the “Honourable” and as the “Baron” Swedenborg, by way of translating, to the ear of England, some one or other of those irrepresentable distinctions, Legations-Rath, Hofrath, &c., which are tossed about with so much profusion in the courts of continental Europe, on both sides the Baltic. For myself, I cannot think myself qualified to speak of any man’s writings without a regular examination of some one or two among those which his admirers regard as his best performances. Yet, as any happened to fall in my way, I have looked into them; and the impression left upon my mind was certainly not favourable to their author. They laboured, to my feeling, with two opposite qualities of annoyance, but which I believe not uncommonly found u
nited in lunatics — excessive dulness or matter-of-factness in the execution, with excessive extravagance in the conceptions. The result, at least, was most unhappy: for, of all writers, Swedenborg is the only one I ever heard of who has contrived to strip even the shadowy world beyond the grave of all its mystery and all its awe. From the very heaven of heavens, he has rent away the veil; no need for seraphs to “tremble while they gaze”; for the familiarity with which all objects are invested makes it impossible that even poor mortals should find any reason to tremble. Until I saw this book, I had not conceived it possible to carry an atmosphere so earthy, and steaming with the vapours of earth, into regions which, by early connexion in our infant thoughts with the sanctities of death, have a hold upon the reverential affections such as they rarely lose. In this view, I should conceive that Swedenborg, if it were at all possible for him to become a popular author, would, at the same time, become immensely mischievous. He would dereligionize men beyond all other authors whatsoever.
Little could this character of Swedenborg’s writings — this, indeed, least of all — have been suspected from the temper, mind, or manners of my new friend. He was the most spiritual-looking, the most saintly in outward aspect, of all human beings whom I have known throughout life. He was rather tall, pale, and thin; the most unfleshly, the most of a sublimated spirit dwelling already more than half in some purer world, that a poet could have imagined. He was already aged when I first knew him, a clergyman of the Church of England; which may seem strange in connexion with his Swedenborgianism; but he was, however, so. He was rector of a large parish in a large town, the more active duties of which parish were discharged by his curate; but much of the duties within the church were still discharged by himself, and with such exemplary zeal that his parishioners, afterwards celebrating the fiftieth anniversary, or golden jubilee of his appointment to the living (the twenty-fifth anniversary is called in German the silver — the fiftieth, the golden jubilee), went farther than is usual in giving a public expression and a permanent shape to their sentiments of love and veneration. I am surprised, on reflection, that this venerable clergyman should have been unvexed by Episcopal censures. He might, and I dare say would, keep back the grosser parts of Swedenborg’s views from a public display; but, in one point, it would not be easy for a man so conscientious to make a compromise between his ecclesiastical duty and his private belief; for I have since found, though I did not then know it, that Swedenborg held a very peculiar creed on the article of atonement. From the slight pamphlet which let me into this secret I could not accurately collect the exact distinctions of his creed; but it was very different from that of the English Church.
However, my friend continued unvexed for a good deal more than fifty years, enjoying that peace, external as well as internal, which, by so eminent a title, belonged to a spirit so evangelically meek and dovelike. I mention him chiefly for the sake of describing his interesting house and household, so different from all which belong to this troubled age, and his impressive style of living. The house seemed almost monastic; and yet it stood in the centre of one of the largest, busiest, noisiest towns in England; and the whole household seemed to have stepped out of their places in some Vandyke, or even some Titian, picture, from a forgotten century and another climate. On knocking at the door, which of itself seemed an outrage to the spirit of quietness which brooded over the place, you were received by an ancient manservant in the sober livery which belonged traditionally to Mr. — —’s family; for he was of a gentleman’s descent, and had had the most finished education of a gentleman. This venerable old butler put me in mind always, by his noiseless steps, of the Castle of Indolence, where the porter or usher walked about in shoes that were shod with felt, lest any rude echoes might be roused. An ancient housekeeper was equally venerable, equally gentle in her deportment, quiet in her movements, and inaudible in her tread. One or other of these upper domestics, — for the others rarely crossed my path, — ushered me always into some room expressing by its furniture, its pictures, and its coloured windows, the solemn tranquillity which, for half a century, had reigned in that mansion. Among the pictures were more than one of St. John, the beloved apostle, by Italian masters. Neither the features nor the expression were very wide of Mr. Clowes’s own countenance; and, had it been possible to forget the gross character of Swedenborg’s reveries, or to substitute for these fleshly dreams the awful visions of the Apocalypse, one might have imagined easily that the pure, saintly, and childlike evangelist had been once again recalled to this earth, and that this most quiet of mansions was some cell in the island of Patmos. Whence came the stained glass of the windows I know not, and whether it were stained or painted. The revolutions of that art are known from Horace Walpole’s account; and, nine years after this period, I found that, in Birmingham, where the art of staining glass was chiefly practised, no trifling sum was charged even for a vulgar lacing of no great breadth round a few drawing-room windows, which one of my friends thought fit to introduce as an embellishment. These windows, however, of my clerical friend were really “storied windows,” having Scriptural histories represented upon them. A crowning ornament to the library or principal room was a sweet-toned organ, ancient, and elaborately carved in its wood-work, at which my venerable friend readily sate down, and performed the music of anthems as often as I asked him, sometimes accompanying it with his voice, which was tremulous from old age, but neither originally unmusical, nor (as might be perceived) untrained.
Often, from the storms and uproars of this world, I have looked back upon this most quiet and, I believe, most innocent abode (had I said saintly I should hardly have erred), conneacting it in thought with Little Gidding, the famous mansion (in Huntingdonshire, I believe) of the Farrers, an interesting family in the reigns of James I. and Charles I. Of the Farrers there is a long and circumstantial biographical account, and of the conventual discipline maintained at Little Gidding. For many years it was the rule at Gidding — and it was the wish of the Farrers to have transmitted that practice through succeeding centuries — that a musical or cathedral service should be going on at every hour of night and day in the chapel of the mansion. Let the traveller, at what hour he would, morning or evening, summer or winter, and in what generation or century soever, happen to knock at the gate of Little Gidding, it was the purpose of Nicholas Farrer — a sublime purpose — that always he should hear the blare of the organ, sending upwards its surging volumes of melody, God’s worship for ever proceeding, anthems of praise for ever ascending, and jubilates echoing without end or known beginning. One stream of music, in fact, never intermitting, one vestal fire of devotional praise and thanksgiving, was to connect the beginnings with the ends of generations, and to link one century into another. Allowing for the sterner asceticism of N. Farrer — partly arising out of the times, partly out of personal character, and partly, perhaps, out of his travels in Spain — my aged friend’s arrangement of the day, and the training of his household, might seem to have been modelled on the plans of Mr. Farrer; whom, however, he might never have heard of. There was also, in each house, the same union of religion with some cultivation of the ornamental arts, or some expression of respect for them. In each case, a monastic severity, that might, under other circumstances, have terminated in the gloom of a La Trappe, had been softened by English sociality, and by the habits of a gentleman’s education, into a devotional pomp, reconcilable with Protestant views. When, however, remembering this last fact in Mr. Clowes’s case (the fact I mean of his liberal education), I have endeavoured to explain the possibility of one so much adorned by all the accomplishments of a high-bred gentleman, and one so truly pious, falling into the grossness, almost the sensuality, which appears to besiege the visions of Swedenborg, I fancy that the whole may be explained out of the same cause which occasionally may be descried, through a distance of two complete centuries, as weighing heavily upon the Farrers — viz. the dire monotony of daily life, when visited by no irritations either of hope or fear — no
hopes from ambition, no fears from poverty.
Nearly (if not quite) sixty years did my venerable friend inhabit that same parsonage house, without any incident more personally interesting to himself than a cold or a sore throat. And I suppose that he resorted to Swedenborg — reluctantly, perhaps, at the first — as to a book of fairy tales connected with his professional studies. And one thing I am bound to add in candour, which may have had its weight with him, that more than once, on casually turning over a volume of Swedenborg, I have certainly found most curious and felicitous passages of comment — passages which extracted a brilliant meaning from numbers, circumstances, or trivial accidents, apparently without significance or object, and gave to things, without a place or a habitation in the critic’s regard, a value as hieroglyphics or cryptical ciphers, which struck me as elaborately ingenious. This acknowledgment I make not so much in praise of Swedenborg, whom I must still continue to think a madman, as in excuse for Mr. Clowes. It may easily be supposed that a person of Mr. Clowes’s consideration and authority was not regarded with indifference by the general body of the Swedenborgians. At his motion it was, I believe, that a society was formed for procuring and encouraging a translation into English of Swedenborg’s entire works, most of which are written in Latin. Several of these translations are understood to have been executed personally by Mr. Clowes; and in this obscure way, for anything I know, he may have been an extensive author. But it shows the upright character of the man that never, in one instance, did he seek to bias my opinions in this direction. Upon every other subject, he trusted me confidentially — and, notwithstanding my boyish years (15-16), as his equal. His regard for me, when thrown by accident in his way, had arisen upon his notice of my fervent simplicity, and my unusual thoughtfulness. Upon these merits, I had gained the honourable distinction of a general invitation to his house, without exception as to days and hours, when few others could boast of any admission at all. The common ground on which we met was literature — more especially the Greek and Roman literature; and much he exerted himself, in a spirit of the purest courtesy, to meet my animation upon these themes. But the interest on his part was too evidently a secondary interest in me, for whom he talked, and not in the subject: he spoke much from memory, as it were of things that he had once felt, and little from immediate sympathy with the author; and his animation was artificial, though his courtesy, which prompted the effort, was the truest and most unaffected possible.
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 277