‘It was with great reluctance that I huddled up those two little works,’ William wrote to a friend. ‘But as I had done nothing to distinguish myself at the University, I thought these little things might show that I could do something.’ They were exceedingly thin. An Evening Walk ran to twenty-seven pages, and was priced two shillings. Descriptive Sketches was fifty-five pages long, price three shillings.
An Evening Walk was addressed to Dorothy, but William doesn’t appear to have let her see the book before publication, completing it in London while she was still in Norfolk. (It was his practice later to listen to criticisms from Dorothy, and from other close friends, and he was for ever rewriting his verses.) When she did read these first published poems, Dorothy was very honest and forthright in her opinions, considering she was missing her beloved William so desperately and was longing to be with him: ‘The poems contain many passages exquisitely beautiful, but they also contain many Faults, the chief of which are Obscurity …’ She picked upon the word ‘moveless’ as an example of a fairly meaningless word which William had used three times, describing the motion of a swan gliding. Many years later, in a reprint, William removed the offending word.
The poems didn’t get much public attention. Only two magazines reviewed them in 1793, over six months after publication, and in each case the anonymous reviewer was pretty savage. ‘More descriptive poetry!’ complained the Monthly Review. ‘Have we not had enough? Must eternal changes be rung on uplands and woodlands, and nodding forests, and brooding clouds, and cells, and dells and dingles? Yes: more; and yet more; so it is decreed.’ The reviewer did end by saying there were passages which showed imagination and hope for the future, if the poet managed critically to question every line.
A third review appeared the following year, by a former Cambridge contemporary of William’s who happened to be visiting the Lakes, and this was much more complimentary; but the poems were indeed rather derivative in style, showing the influence of Pope and Goldsmith and with heavy eighteenth-century overtones, though in Descriptive Sketches William had broken some new ground. But that hint of ridicule by that first critic followed Wordsworth for the rest of his life, whenever his poems were reviewed. At the same time, unknown to him, there were several young people who heard in the poems a new voice and a new attitude. Unfortunately, their interest didn’t show in the sales or in public appreciation. The two slim volumes made hardly a ripple and brought William little money, certainly not enough for him to contemplate a career as a poet.
For the next two years, as with the previous six, he had no idea what he was going to do with his life. He would probably have taken holy orders, now that he was twenty-three, despite having put it off for so long, and having complained about and generally disapproved of the Church; but his relatives now stopped trying to persuade him and finally withdrew their offer of a curacy. It is not clear if William himself told them about his affair with Annette, or whether he got Dorothy to do it, but it looks as if it was this news that caused them finally to wash their hands of him and William was henceforth banned from visiting his reverend uncle in Norfolk. He’d had to tell them, because his uncles controlled the purse-strings and he needed money, some for himself and some to send to Annette, which he planned to do as soon as he had any and as soon as he could get it through. They were horrified at the very idea of him marrying Annette, a Catholic, and then moving, along with the bastard child, into some little parsonage which they themselves would have to provide. This was Dorothy’s latest little romantic notion, which she outlined in letters to Annette. Her dream cottage now contained herself, William, Annette and the baby Caroline, though the wish was no nearer fulfilment than it had ever been.
William thought for a while of becoming a soldier, as he had delusions that he was meant to command people, but that didn’t last long. He thought, over the next couple of years, of beginning a literary magazine, with a London friend putting up the money. He saw himself writing nice little articles about moral philosophy, politics, the arts and gardening. Apart from commanding people, he also fancied he had a talent for telling people how to lay out their gardens. On one occasion he made enquiries about being a political reporter, though he had few delusions about this, being well aware that he was without knowledge or experience of newspaper work. ‘There is still a further circumstance which disqualifies me for the office of parliamentary reporter, viz, my being subject to nervous headaches which invariably attack me when exposed to a heated atmosphere or to loud noises and that with such an excess of pain as to deprive me of all recollections.’ Very true. All reporters know that feeling.
He had hopes of becoming a tutor to some young gentleman, for which he was reasonably well qualified, with his Cambridge degree, such as it was, and his first-hand knowledge of Europe and of the French and Italian languages. He considered going to Ireland to be tutor to Lord Belfore’s son in the summer of 1793, but the post had gone before his letter of application arrived.
It is impossible to know exactly how he lived over these two years, as he wandered around, with no fixed abode. He was based in London for about half of the time, but he made long tours elsewhere. There’s a theory that he went on a secret visit to Paris at the end of 1793, perhaps trying to see Annette. It’s based on the fact that he told Thomas Carlyle, many years later, that he’d seen with his own eyes the guillotining of Gorsas, which took place on 7 October 1793, but Wordsworth was never completely reliable on dates and no firm evidence has come to light.
During the first six months of 1793, on his return from France, he was seriously involved in radical politics, a cause which obsessed him for the next three years, but at the same time confused and confounded him and added to his general feeling of unhappiness and depression.
In the same week as Descriptive Sketches was published, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed, and a few days later England was officially at war with France, a war which went on, apart from one brief period of peace, for the next twenty-two years. William’s guilt about Annette was now mixed up with guilt about England. The terror of the Revolution, and all the bloody excesses, had alarmed and disappointed the more romantic, peaceful radicals in Britain, though they still supported the theory of revolution and pressed for reforms in England. But the announcement of war was a great shock. Could they now betray their own country? The government of the day certainly considered the pro-French agitators as traitors. Young men down from the universities were suddenly inflamed by ideas of equality; they wanted the abolishment of the monarchy in England, the repeal of oppressive laws and an end to the power of the Church and of the aristocracy. The government was sufficiently worried about the possibility of revolution at home to suspend the Habeas Corpus Acts. Several agitators were arrested. Richard Wordsworth, William’s brother, advised William in a letter to be very careful about his associates.
William attended a lot of meetings, sat up all night arguing, and avidly read the radical pamphlets and books which were being produced in London, such as Tom Paine’s The Rights of Man, and in the early stages he did actively support the idea of an English revolution. He didn’t actually do much about it. He was there in spirit rather than deed, though he did produce one piece of political invective, a strange but powerful piece of writing which was addressed to the Bishop of Llandaff, the notorious Cambridge absentee professor and bishop. The bishop had printed one of his sermons with the unbelievable title of ‘The Wisdom and Goodness of God in having made both Rich and Poor’—at least, it was unbelievable to young radicals like Wordsworth. The bishop defended all English rules and traditions, saying that parliamentary reform was unnecessary, the peasants were quite happy, and what had happened in France was disgusting.
The basis of William’s long letter was an attack on the British monarchy and constitution, and it is interesting, in view of his personal problems, to see him attacking the legal system: ‘I congratulate your Lordship upon your enthusiasm for the judicial proceedings of this country. I am happy to find you have passed
through life without having your fleece torn from your back in the thorny labyrinth of litigation … or the consuming expense of our never ending process, the verbosity of unintelligible statutes and the perpetual contrariety in our judicial decisions.’ Down with the Lowthers, in other words.
William had evidently moved away from thoughts of war or of active revolution as a means of bringing about reform, which he appears to have supported earlier. He’d now decided that war was a disaster because it was the poor who always suffered most, as he’d seen in France. In his letter, there’s a strain of puritanism which was to grow stronger as the years went on. He attacked the system which allowed prostitution to deluge the streets, though he appears to be defending the poor, who are driven to ‘that promiscuous intercourse to which they are impelled by the instincts of nature, and the dreadful satisfaction of escaping the prospects of infants … whom they are unable to support’. Was he thinking of Annette and his own child?
The letter was never published. Perhaps Johnson, his radical publisher, saw the harm it could do Wordsworth and for his sake refused to print it. It would have been easy enough to have become a martyr in 1793.
William already had enough problems. He had no job, no training, no money, no home. The only person he could have turned to was living with relatives who had disowned him. His first attempt to realize his self-professed spirit of dedication had failed. Nobody appeared to want his poems. He was a staunch republican, a friend of France, in love with a French royalist girl by whom he’d had a child; but there he was, stuck in England, forced to watch helplessly while his own country went to war with France. Yet, while despising his own country, he was beginning to worry about what was happening in France, his newly adopted country. It certainly wouldn’t ease his confusions and depressions if his left-wing, republican pamphlet was published—and if he ended up in prison.
Meanwhile, Dorothy was cut off, in splendid rural isolation, ensconced in the comfortably old-fashioned eighteenth-century clerical life, safe in the sleepy Norfolk parsonage, away from such horrid modern topics as revolution, political agitation and war. But she wasn’t happy either. William was not just banned from the house—even talking about him was discouraged. They couldn’t have such a good-for-nothing, disgusting character mentioned in the house, not when such respectable friends as William Wilberforce, now a great Evangelical reformer, might arrive to see them.
Dorothy was busy enough. Her aunt and uncle now had four young children whom she helped to care for. She had her endless letters to write, to her old friend Jane in Halifax, or to dear William and her other brothers. The Reverend William Cookson’s clerical career was advancing steadily, and he was given a temporary position at Windsor, where he was soon appointed a canon. The whole family, together with Dorothy and two maids, moved to Windsor for three months. The Reverend William, of course, had had royal connections when, as a young Fellow of St John’s College, he’d been a tutor to some of the royal children.
Dorothy wrote some delightful letters about her impressions of Windsor. She used to hang around the terrace at Windsor Castle, watching George III (not long recovered from his first attack of apparent insanity) and the other members of the royal family coming in and out, when she was walking with the children. She was delighted by the friendliness and informality of the King and Queen. ‘I say it’s impossible to see them at Windsor without loving them, because at Windsor they are seen unattended by Pomp or State.’ On two occasions the King stopped to admire Dorothy’s little charges. ‘Mary he considers a great Beauty and desired the Duke of York to come from one side of the Terrace to the other to look at her. The first time she appeared before him she had an unbecoming and rather shabby hat on. We then got her a new one. “Ah,” he says, “Mary that’s a pretty hat!” ’ While Dorothy was basking in these royal contacts, William was of course dreaming of bringing the royal family down.
Although William couldn’t visit Dorothy in Norfolk, their youngest brother Christopher, still at Cambridge, did come to see her there. ‘He is like William; he has the same Traits in his Character but less highly touched; he is not so ardent in any of his pursuits. William has a sort of violence of Affection if I may so term it which demonstrates itself every moment of the Day when the objects of his affection are present with him, in a sort of restless watchfulness which I know not how to describe.…’
Dorothy’s vision of herself and William being together one day was still very clear to her, and in this same letter she again describes the sort of winter evenings she will one day have with William—closing the shutters, setting the tea table, reading books by the fire:
Oh Jane, with such romantic dreams as these I amuse my fancy during many an hour which would otherwise pass heavily along. I cannot help heaving many a sigh of reflection that I have passed one and twenty years of my life and that the first six years only of this time was spent in the enjoyment of the same pleasures by my brothers. We have been endeared to each other by early misfortune. We in the same moment lost a father, a mother, a home; we have been equally deprived of our patrimony by the cruel Hand of lordly Tyranny. These afflictions have all contributed to unite us.
The image of life with William never goes from Dorothy’s letters, though it fades now and then: ‘I cannot foresee the Day of my Felicity, the Day which I am once more to find a Home under the same Roof with my brother. All is still obscure and dark and there is much ground to fear that my Scheme may prove a shadow, a mere Vision of Happiness.’
During these years, she never appeared for one moment to think of life with another man, of being married: ‘I am very sure that Love will never bind me closer to any Human being than Friendship binds me to you my dearest female Friend and to William my earliest and my dearest Male Friend.’
Dorothy’s love for William, whom she now hadn’t seen for over two years, since before he went to Orleans, is absolutely total, yet at the same time, as with his poetry, she is not blind to his faults:
Do not expect too much of this brother of whom I have delighted to talk so much. In the first place, you must be with him more than once before he will be perfectly easy in conversation; in the second place, his person is not in his favour, but I soon ceased to discover this, nay I almost thought that the first opinion that I formed was erroneous. He is, however, certainly plain than otherwise, has an extremely thoughtful countenance, but when he speaks it is often lighted up with a smile.
It makes one wonder what Annette thought of William when she first saw him, if he took such getting to know.
It looks as though Dorothy had plans to tell her confidante Jane about William’s scandalous affair: ‘I have not time or room to explain to you the foundation of the prejudices of my two Uncles against my dear William. The subject is an unpleasant one for a letter, though I must confess that he has been somewhat to blame … it will employ us more agreeably in conversation.’
Dorothy was hoping to see Jane soon, for she’d worked out a plot with William. She’d got permission from her uncle to be away from Norfolk for a while in the summer and had made secret plans to meet William at Halifax, though Jane had to say nothing about this in her letters and had to keep it all secret. It wasn’t to be known by anyone that she was also going to see William again.
William wanted to see Dorothy, the only person who had ever stood by him, through thick and thin, ever since he’d been born, who without question understood and sympathized with his moods and his views and his problems, yet who had a mind of her own, a critical yet constructive mind, who saw flaws and sensed feelings he often missed. He shared her romance of that little country cottage. He too wanted to be with her. Since Annette, no-one had come along, either male or female, to share his soul. But, things happened. He put off the secret meeting in Halifax for a month, then another month, and so it went on for six months.
The first thing that happened was a piece of luck. His hopes of talking some lord into letting him tutor his son had failed, but an old school friend from Hawkshea
d, William Calvert, suddenly asked him to accompany him on a tour of the West Country, all expenses paid. William Calvert, and his young brother Raisley, had inherited a sizeable fortune on the death of their father, who had been steward of the Duke of Norfolk’s properties at Greystoke, near Penrith. (The same Howard family is still there, but the duke lives elsewhere.) It is an indication of how well off the young Wordsworths might have been, as their father had had a similar job with the Earl of Lonsdale. William jumped at the chance. His political life in London was becoming very intense. No jobs, or opportunities for publication, had come his way. Inviting William on a tour of anywhere was like offering a drunkard a drink.
First, they dallied on the Isle of Wight for a month, where he watched the boats go by, and then they headed west. While near Salisbury, Calvert’s whisky, the coach in which they were travelling, was involved in an accident and broke into smithereens—or ‘shivers’, as Dorothy described it. Calvert decided to return north on the horse, while William, ever the adventurer, set off north on foot, a wander which he managed to spin out for weeks. He had a three-day visionary experience on Salisbury Plain, imagining all sorts of terrifying sights: human sacrifices, Druids and blood-stained altars. The vision probably owed a lot to the terror of the Revolution—the guillotining and massacres—allied with the personal horrors throbbing round his mind at the time.
William worked his way along the Welsh border, visiting Tintern Abbey (though he didn’t write about it on this visit), and then went to North Wales and the valley of the River Clwyd, to visit his old walking friend Robert Jones, now a cleric. Despite frittering his time away at Cambridge, along with Wordsworth, Jones had now settled down. He had taken a respectable teaching job till he was twenty-three and able to be ordained. William also had Jones’s delightful sisters to see once more. In such a hospitable atmosphere, he sat down and wrote his poem, ‘Salisbury Plain’.
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