But for Charles Lloyd: he, by his literary works, is so far known to the public, that, on his own account, he merits some separate notice. His poems do not place him in the class of powerful poets; they are loosely conceived — faultily even at times — and not finished in the execution. But they have a real and a mournful merit under one aspect, which might be so presented to the general reader as to win a peculiar interest for many of them, and for some a permanent place in any judicious thesaurus — such as we may some day hope to see drawn off, and carefully filtered, from the enormous mass of poetry produced since the awakening era of the French Revolution. This aspect is founded on the relation which they bear to the real events and the unexaggerated afflictions of his own life. The feelings which he attempts to express were not assumed for effect, nor drawn by suggestion from others, and then transplanted into some ideal experience of his own. They do not belong to the mimetic poetry so extensively cultivated; but they were true solitary sighs, wrung from his own meditative heart by excess of suffering, and by the yearning after old scenes and household faces of an impassioned memory, brooding over vanished happiness, and cleaving to those early times when life wore even for his eyes the golden light of Paradise. But he had other and higher accomplishments of intellect than he showed in his verses, as I shall presently explain; and of a nature which make it difficult to bring them adequately within the reader’s apprehension.
Meantime, I will sketch an outline of poor Lloyd’s history, so far as I can pretend to know it. He was the son, and probably his calamitous life originally dated from his being the son, of Quaker parents. It was said, indeed, by himself as well as others, that the mysterious malady which haunted him had been derived from an ancestress in the maternal line; and this may have been true; and, for all that, it may also be true that Quaker habits were originally answerable for this legacy of woe. It is sufficiently well known that, in the training of their young people, the Society of Friends make it a point of conscience to apply severe checks to all open manifestations of natural feeling, or of exuberant spirits. Not the passions — they are beyond their control — but the expression of those passions by any natural language; this they lay under the heaviest restraint; and, in many cases, it is possible that such a system of thwarting nature may do no great mischief; just as we see the American Indians, in moulding the plastic skulls of their infants into capricious shapes, do not, after all, much disturb the ordinary course of nature, nor produce the idiots we might have expected. But, then, the reason why such tampering may often terminate in slight results is, because often there is not much to tamper with; the machinery is so slight, and the total range within which it plays is perhaps so narrow, that the difference between its normal action and its widest deviation may, after all, be practically unimportant. For there are many men and women of whom I have already said, borrowing the model of the word from Hartley, that they have not so much passions as passiuncles. These, however, are in one extreme; and others there are and will be, in every class, and under every disadvantage, who are destined to illustrate the very opposite extreme. Great passions — passions pointing to the paths of love, of ambition, of glory, martial or literary — these in men — and in women, again, these, either in some direct shape, or taking the form of intense sympathy with the same passions as moving amongst contemporary men — will gleam out fitfully amongst the placid children of Fox and Penn, not less than amongst us who profess no war with the nobler impulses of our nature. And, perhaps, according to the Grecian doctrine of antiperistasis, strong untameable passions are more likely to arise even in consequence of the counteraction. Deep passions undoubtedly lie in the blood and constitution of Englishmen; and Quakers, after all, do not, by being such, cease, therefore, to be Englishmen.
It is, I have said, sufficiently well known that the Quakers make it a point of their moral economy to lay the severest restraints upon all ebullitions of feeling. Whatever may be the nature of the feeling, whatever its strength, utter itself by word or by gesture it must not; smoulder it may, but it must not break into a flame. This is known; but it is not equally known that this unnatural restraint, falling into collision with two forces at once, the force of passion and of youth, not uncommonly records its own injurious tendencies, and publishes the rebellious movements of nature, by distinct and anomalous diseases. And further, I have been assured, upon most excellent authority, that these diseases, strange and elaborate affections of the nervous system, are found exclusively amongst the young men and women of the Quaker society; that they are known and understood exclusively amongst physicians who have practised in great towns having a large Quaker population, such as Birmingham; that they assume a new type, and a more inveterate character, in the second or third generation, to whom this fatal inheritance is often transmitted; and finally, that, if this class of nervous derangements does not increase so much as to attract public attention, it is simply because the community itself — the Quaker body — does not increase, but, on the contrary, is rather on the wane.
From a progenitrix, then, no matter in what generation, C. Lloyd inherited that awful malady which withered his own happiness, root and branch, gathering strength from year to year. His father was a banker, and, I presume, wealthy, from the ample allowance which he always made to his son Charles. Charles, it is true, had the rights of primogeniture — which, however, in a commercial family, are not considerable — but, at the same time, though eldest, he was eldest of seventeen or eighteen brothers and sisters, and of these I believe that some round dozen or so were living at the time when I first came to know him. He had been educated in the bosom of Quaker society; his own parents, with most of their friends, were Quakers; and, even of his own generation, all the young women continued Quakers. Naturally, therefore, as a boy, he also was obliged to conform to the Quaker ritual. But this ritual presses with great inequality upon the two sexes; in so far, at least, as regards dress. The distinctions of dress which announce the female Quaker are all in her favour. In a nation eminent for personal purity, and where it should seem beforehand impossible for any woman to create a pre-eminence for herself in that respect, so it is, however, that the female Quaker, by her dress, seems even purer than other women, and consecrated to a service of purity; earthly soil or taint, even the sullying breath of mortality, seems as if kept aloof from her person — forcibly held in repulsion by some protecting sanctity. This transcendent purity, and a nun-like gentleness, self-respect, and sequestration from the world — these are all that her peculiarity of dress expresses; and surely this “all” is quite enough to win every man’s favourable feelings towards her, and something even like homage. But, with the male Quaker, how different is the case! His dress — originally not remarkable by its shape, but solely by its colour and want of ornament, so peculiar has it become in a lapse of nearly two centuries — seems expressly devised to point him out to ridicule. In some towns, it is true, such as Birmingham and Kendal, the public eye is so familiar with this costume, that in them it excites no feeling whatever more than the professional costume of butchers, bakers, grooms, &c. But in towns not commercial — towns of luxury and parade — a Quaker is exposed to most mortifying trials of his self-esteem. It has happened that I have followed a young man of this order for a quarter of a mile, in Bath, or in one of the fashionable streets of London, on a summer evening, when numerous servants were lounging on the steps of the front door, or at the area gates; and I have seen him run the gauntlet of grim smiles from the men, and heard him run the gauntlet of that sound — the worst which heaven has in its artillery of scorn against the peace of poor man — the half-suppressed titter of the women. Laughing outright is bad, but still that may be construed into a determinate insult that studiously avows more contempt than is really felt; but tittering is hell itself; for it seems mere nature, and absolute truth, that extort this expression of contempt in spite of every effort to suppress it.
Some such expression it was that drove Charles Lloyd into an early apostasy from h
is sect: early it must have been, for he went at the usual age of eighteen to Cambridge, and there, as a Quaker, he could not have been received. He, indeed, of all men, was the least fitted to contend with the world’s scorn, for he had no great fortitude of mind; his vocation was not to martyrdom, and he was cursed with the most exquisite sensibility. This sensibility, indeed, it was, and not so properly any determinate passion, which had been the scourge of his ancestors. There was something that appeared effeminate about it; and which, accordingly, used to provoke the ridicule of Wordsworth, whose character, in all its features, wore a masculine and Roman harshness. But, in fact, when you came to know Charles Lloyd, there was, even in this slight tinge of effeminacy, something which conciliated your pity by the feeling that it impressed you with, of being part of his disease. His sensibility was eminently Rousseauish — that is, it was physico-moral; now pointing to appetites that would have mastered him had he been less intellectual and governed by a less exalted standard of moral perceptions; now pointing to fine aerial speculations, subtle as a gossamer, and apparently calculated to lead him off into abstractions even too remote from flesh and blood.
During the Cambridge vacation, or, it might be, even before he went to Cambridge — and my reason for thinking so is because both, I believe, belonged to the same town, if it could not be said of them as of Pyramus and Thisbe, that “contiguas habuere domos” — he fell desperately in love with Miss Sophia P —— n. Who she was I never heard — that is, what were her connexions; but I presume that she must have been of an opulent family, because Mrs. P —— n, the mother of Mrs. Lloyd, occasionally paid a visit to her daughter at the lakes, and then she brought with her a handsomely-appointed equipage, as to horses and servants. This I have reason to remember from the fact of herself and her daughter frequently coming over on summer evenings to drink tea with me, and the affront (as I then thought it) which Wordsworth fastened upon me in connexion with one of those visits. One evening, * * * * * A pang of wrath gathered at my heart. Yet why? One moment, I felt, indeed, that it was not gentlemanly to interfere with the privileges of any man standing in the situation which I then occupied, of host; but still I should not have regarded it, except from its connexion with a case I recollected in a previous year. One fine summer day, we were walking together — Wordsworth, myself, and Southey. Southey had been making earnest inquiries about poor Lloyd, just then in the crisis of some severe illness, and Wordsworth’s answer had been partly lost to me. I put a question upon it, when, to my surprise (my wrath internally, but also to my special amusement), he replied that, in fact, what he had said was a matter of some delicacy, and not quite proper to be communicated except to near friends of the family. This to me! — O ye gods! — to me, who knew by many a hundred conversations how disagreeable Wordsworth was both to Charles Lloyd and to his wife; whilst, on the other hand — not by words only, but by deeds, and by the most delicate acts of confidential favour — I knew that Mr. Wilson (Professor Wilson) and myself had been selected as friends in cases which were not so much as named to Wordsworth. The arrogance of Wordsworth was well illustrated in this case of the Lloyds.
But to resume Lloyd’s history. Being so desperately in love with Miss P —— n, and his parents being rich, why should he not have married her? Why, I know not. But some great obstacles arose; and, I presume, on the side of Miss P —— n’s friends; for, actually, it became necessary to steal her away; and the person in whom Lloyd confided for this delicate service was no other than Southey. A better choice he could not have made. Had the lady been Helen of Greece, Southey would not have had a thought but for the honour and interests of his confiding friend.
Having thus, by proxy, run away with his young wife, and married her, Lloyd brought her to Cambridge. It is a novel thing in Cambridge, though not altogether unprecedented, for a student to live there with a wife. This novelty Lloyd exhibited to the University for some time; but then, finding the situation not perfectly agreeable to the delicate sensibilities of his young wife, Lloyd removed, first, I think, to Penrith; and, after some changes, he settled down at Brathay, from which, so long as he stayed on English ground — that is, for about fifteen or sixteen years — he never moved. When I first crossed his path at the Lakes, he was in the zenith of the brief happiness that was granted to him on earth. He stood in the very centre of earthly pleasures; and, that his advantages may be easily estimated, I will describe both himself and his situation.
First, then, as to his person: he was tall and somewhat clumsy — not intellectual so much as benign and conciliatory in his expression of face. His features were not striking, but they expressed great goodness of heart; and latterly wore a deprecatory expression that was peculiarly touching to those who knew its cause. His manners were free from all modes of vulgarity; and where he acquired his knowledge I know not (for I never heard him claim any connexion with people of rank), but a knowledge he certainly had of all the conventional usages amongst the higher circles, and of those purely arbitrary customs which mere good sense and native elegance of manner are not, of themselves, sufficient to teach. Some of these he might have learned from the family of the Bishop of Llandaff; for with the ladies of that family he was intimate, especially with the eldest daughter, who was an accomplished student in that very department of literature which Lloyd himself most cultivated, viz. all that class of works which deal in the analysis of human passions, or attempt to exhibit the development of human character, in relation to sexual attachments, when placed in trying circumstances. Lloyd corresponded with Miss Watson in French; the letters, on both sides, being full of spirit and originality; the subjects generally drawn from Rousseau’s “Heloise” or his “Confessions,” from “Corinne,” from “Delphine,” or some other work of Madame de Stael. For such disquisitions Lloyd had a real and a powerful genius. It was really a delightful luxury to hear him giving free scope to his powers for investigating subtle combinations of character; for distinguishing all the shades and affinities of some presiding qualities, disentangling their intricacies, and balancing, antithetically, one combination of qualities against another. Take, for instance, any well-known character from the drama, and pique Lloyd’s delicate perception of differences by affecting to think it identical with some other character of the same class — instantly, in his anxiety to mark out the features of dissimilitude, he would hurry into an impromptu analysis of each character separately, with an eloquence, with a keenness of distinction, and a felicity of phrase, which were perfectly admirable. This display of familiarity with life and human nature, in all its masqueradings, was sometimes truly splendid. But two things were remarkable in these displays. One was, that the splendour was quite hidden from himself, and unperceived amidst the effort of mind, and oftentimes severe struggles, in attempting to do himself justice, both as respected the thoughts and the difficult task of clothing them in adequate words; he was as free from vanity, or even from complacency in reviewing what he had effected, as it is possible for a human creature to be. He thought, indeed, slightly of his own power; and, which was even a stronger barrier against vanity, his displays of this kind were always effective in proportion to his unhappiness; for unhappiness it was, and the restlessness of internal irritation, that chiefly drove him to exertions of his intellect; else, and when free from this sort of excitement, he tended to the quiescent state of a listener; for he thought everybody better than himself. The other point remarkable in these displays was (and most unfavourable, of course, it proved to his obtaining the reputation they merited), that he could succeed in them only before confidential friends, those on whom he could rely for harbouring no shade of ridicule towards himself or his theme. Let but one person enter the room of whose sympathy he did not feel secure, and his powers forsook him as suddenly as the buoyancy of a bird that has received a mortal shot in its wing. Accordingly, it is a fact that neither Wordsworth nor Coleridge ever suspected the amount of power which was latent in Lloyd; for he firmly believed that both of them despised him. Mrs. L
loyd thought the same thing. Often and often she has said to me, smiling in a mournful way—”I know too well that both Wordsworth and Coleridge entertain a profound contempt for my poor Charles.” And, when I combated this notion, declaring that, although they might (and probably did) hold very cheap such writers as Rousseau and Madame de Stael, and, consequently, could not approve of studies directed so exclusively to their works, or to works of the same class, still that was not sufficient to warrant them in undervaluing the powers which Mr. Lloyd applied to such studies. To this, or similar arguments, she would reply by simply shaking her head, and then sink into silence.
But the time was fast approaching when all pains of this kind, from supercilious or well-founded disparagement, were to be swallowed up in more awful considerations and fears. The transition was not a long one from the state of prosperity in which I found Lloyd about 1807-10 to the utter overthrow of his happiness, and, for his friends, the overthrow of all hopes on his behalf. In the three years I have assigned, his situation seemed luxuriously happy, as regarded the external elements of happiness. He had, without effort of his own, an income, most punctually remitted from his father, of from £1500 to £1800 per annum. This income was entirely resigned to the management of his prudent and excellent wife; and, as his own personal expenses, separate from those of his family, were absolutely none at all, except for books, she applied the whole either to the education of her children, or to the accumulation of all such elegances of life about their easy unpretending mansion as might soothe her husband’s nervous irritations, or might cheer his drooping spirits with as much variety of pleasure as a mountainous seclusion allowed. The establishment of servants was usually limited to six — one only being a man-servant — but these were well chosen: and one or two were confidential servants, tried by long experience. Rents are always low in the country for unfurnished houses; and, even for the country, Low Brathay was a cheap house; but it contained everything for comfort, nothing at all for splendour. Consequently, a very large part of their income was disposable for purposes of hospitality; and, when I first knew them, Low Brathay was distinguished above every other house at the head of Windermere, or within ten miles of that neighbourhood, by the judicious assortment of its dinner parties, and the gaiety of its soirées dansantes. These parties were never crowded; poor Lloyd rarely danced himself; but it gladdened his benevolent heart to see the young and blooming floating through the mazes of the dances then fashionable, whilst he sat by, looking on, at times, with pleasure from his sympathy with the pleasure of others; at times pursuing some animated discussion with a literary friend; at times lapsing into profound reverie. At some of these dances it was that I first saw Wilson of Elleray (Professor Wilson), in circumstances of animation, and buoyant with youthful spirits, under the excitement of lights, wine, and, above all, of female company. He, by the way, was the best male dancer (not professional) I have ever seen; and this advantage he owed entirely to the extraordinary strength of his foot in all its parts, to its peculiarly happy conformation, and to the accuracy of his ear; for, as to instruction, I have often understood from his family that he never had any. Here also danced the future wife of Professor Wilson, Miss Jane P —— , at that time the leading belle of the Lake country. But, perhaps, the most interesting person in those parties, from the peculiarity of her situation, was Mrs. Lloyd herself, still young, and, indeed, not apparently exceeding in years most of her unmarried visitors; still dancing and moving through cotillons, or country dances, as elegantly and as lightly as the youngest of the company; still framing her countenance to that expression of cheerfulness which hospitality required; but stealing for ever troubled glances to the sofa, or the recess, where her husband had reclined himself, dark foreboding looks, that saw but too truly the coming darkness which was soon to swallow up every vestige of this festal pleasure. She looked upon herself and her children too clearly as a doomed household; and such, in some sense, they were. And, doubtless, to poor Lloyd himself, it must a thousandfold have aggravated his sufferings — that he could trace, with a steady eye, the continual growth of that hideous malady which was stealing over the else untroubled azure of his life, and with inaudible foot was hastening onwards for ever to that night in which no man can work, and in which no man can hope.
Complete Poetical Works of Robert Southey Page 306