William Wordsworth

by Hunter Davies

  It is hard to imagine William having written such a letter just ten years previously—William, the young rebel who went his own way, who hated the wealthy and powerful (especially aristocrats and politicians), who had actively refused all help, all contacts with people who might do him some good. He was older now, approaching thirty-one, either wiser or perhaps more worldly, knowing that, though your heart might be in the right place and that ideally you want your work to be taken only on its own merits, every little helps, every string is worth pulling. A professional poet has to be willing to be professional in every sense and push his product. It was the first time that William deliberately made an attempt to keep in with the rich and famous—a significant, but perhaps inevitable, reversal of previous attitudes.

  Every little did help. Even the Queen bought a copy of Lyrical Ballads and gave it as a present to a friend—so William was told when he was taken out to dinner one evening, at the ‘Royal Oak’ in Keswick, by a visiting lordling. It also resulted in what appears to have been his first fan letter, in May 1802, from a seventeen-year-old Glasgow University undergraduate, John Wilson, who said that he and the rest of mankind were indebted for such poetry as Lyrical Ballads, though he did gently suggest that the subject of ‘The Idiot Boy’ wasn’t quite to his own personal taste. William wrote back, starting off by saying that he didn’t write letters: ‘Partly from a weakness in my stomach and digestion and partly from certain habits of mind I do not write any letters unless upon business, not even to my dearest Friends. Except during absence from my own family, I have not written five letters during the last five years.’ Having cleared his chest, and his conscience, of all that, William then went on to write a 2,500-word letter, putting the unknown young man right about ‘The Idiot Boy’ and about poetry in general.

  William was pleased by the many praising comments he received, especially from young people, but even with adverse comments, he could always comfort himself by saying he was writing for posterity, which was true. He never wrote for immediate fame, though he might have written for immediate money. He agreed with Coleridge, who saw him as a figure striding so far ahead of his contemporaries that they could hardly see him in the distance. The Prelude, which he returned to at Dove Cottage, was from the very beginning planned to be published after his death. You can look upon that as the height of conceit, or as the ultimate in modesty.

  Lyrical Ballads did at last make his name in many important circles, though he was still not known nationally. By the standards of the day, the book had a good reception, was well loved by many young people, and the new edition quickly sold out, with Longmans eager for not just another reprint but for more new poems—poems which William was already busily writing.

  These early Dove Cottage years, from 1800 until about 1805, were Wordsworth’s greatest creative years. He was working at high speed and in a state of great excitement, producing scores of poems of unarguable genius, such as the ‘Immortality’ ode, or nature poems of a simpler, less philosophical nature, such as ‘Daffodils’.

  Although the Edinburgh Review did not review Lyrical Ballads directly, they took the opportunity to have a side-swipe at Wordsworth, and especially his Preface, when ostensibly reviewing Southey’s Thalaba in October 1802. They lumped Southey with his brother-in-law Coleridge, and with Wordsworth, and together christened them dismissively as the Lake Poets. It was something of a literary liberty, as Southey at the time had no connection with Wordsworth—least of all in his poetry—nor could Coleridge’s poetry be said to be similar to Wordsworth’s. However, this was the first time the phrase was used—and it stuck for ever.

  Southey didn’t mind. ‘I am well pleased to be abused with Coleridge and Wordsworth. It is the best omen that I shall be remembered with them.’ Two years later, he went further. ‘Wordsworth will do better than Coleridge and leave behind him a name, unique in his way; he will rank among the very first poets and probably possess a mass of merit superior to all except only Shakespeare.’

  LUCY

  Some verses from the Lucy poems, written in Germany in 1798-9 and published in the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads.

  STRANGE fits of passion have I known:

  And I will dare to tell,

  But in the Lover’s ear alone,

  What once to me befell.

  When she I loved looked every day

  Fresh as a rose in June,

  I to her cottage bent my way,

  Beneath an evening-moon.

  What fond and wayward thoughts will slide

  Into a Lover’s head!

  ‘O mercy!’ to myself I cried,

  ‘If Lucy should be dead!’

  SHE dwelt among the untrodden ways

  Beside the springs of Dove,

  A Maid whom there were none to praise

  And very few to love:

  A violet by a mossy stone

  Half hidden from the eye!

  – Fair as a star, when only one

  Is shining in the sky.

  She lived unknown, and few could know

  When Lucy ceased to be;

  But she is in her grave, and, oh,

  The difference to me!

  A SLUMBER did my spirit seal;

  I had no human fears:

  She seemed a thing that could not feel

  The touch of earthly years

  No motion has she now, no force;

  She neither hears nor sees;

  Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course

  With rocks, and stones, and trees.

  9

  Dorothy and Wedded Bliss

  1802

  DOROTHY WORDSWORTH was a remarkable woman. Most remarkable women, even the wealthy, lived unfulfilled lives in the nineteenth century. There was no formal education for girls; and no careers were open to them. Their duty was to be subservient—to their husband, or, if they didn’t marry, to their own families. There are countless examples, as Miss Austen has shown us, of exceedingly talented and intelligent women who, purely because they were women, were forced to live in the shadows of stupider, untalented brothers, depending on them for money and support. Some ladies did manage to become people in their own right, writing elegant novels or acting on the stage but they were the exceptions. Most women withered away, doomed to a life in the background, forever discussing trivialities.

  Dorothy devoted her life to her brother, putting herself, strictly speaking, in the subservient role; yet, without Dorothy, would William have been the same person? Coleridge had an exceptional intellect, and a store of learning which helped William to form his own philosophy ; his mind was like a stone on which William could sharpen his own, rather rough-hewn mental blades. Dorothy was a spirit, a child of nature, an unformed, inspirational, intuitive being. William discussed the abstractions of literature and life with Coleridge, benefiting from his ability to quote chapter and verse from almost every known writer from the Greeks to the moderns, from the East to the West. With Dorothy, he could share the pleasures of the humdrum—children playing, birds singing, a rainbow, a distant cuckoo, a glowworm on a leaf, the cock crowing, a butterfly, the sun rising, the sun setting—the ordinary things we all see and hear and feel every day. Dorothy was all feelings, almost extra-sensory in her perceptions, often leading William to notice things and joys which otherwise he would have missed. No brother could in turn have been more grateful to a sister:

  The Blessing of my later years Was with me when a boy:

  She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;

  And humble cares, and delicate fears;

  A heart, the fountain of sweet tears,

  And love, and thought, and joy.

  Although Dorothy had had no education, and didn’t pretend to be an intellectual, she was a great reader, assiduously improving her own mind by going through the plays of Shakespeare. When William was away, she always settled down to some edifying work, such as teaching herself French or German. She took over the correspondence with Annette, to whom she must have written i
n French, as Annette couldn’t speak English.

  Dorothy always felt deeply involved in her brother’s poetry. One of those first two published volumes, An Evening Walk, was dedicated to her, and though she could be critical with William himself, pointing out obscure words and passages, she stoutly defended him when others dared to criticize his work. Sarah Hutchinson, for example, once ventured her opinion that she found his poem ‘The Leech-gatherer’ tedious. ‘When you happen to be displeased with … any poem which William writes,’ wrote Dorothy in reply, ‘ask yourself whether you have hit upon the real tendency and true moral, and above all, never think that he writes for no reason but merely because a thing happened—and when you feel any poem of his to be tedious, ask yourself in what spirit it was written’ This was the sort of defence which Lamb had mocked; but, even today, it is a good guide-line when approaching all Wordsworth’s poetry.

  Was Dorothy a poet herself? Many experts consider her as one. Ernest de Selincourt, the great Wordsworth expert, said she was probably ‘the most remarkable and the most distinguished of English writers who never wrote a line for the general public’. He was thinking of her private Journals which she kept at Alfoxden and in the early Dove Cottage years, a work not published as a book until as recently as 1958. It is a book greatly loved by all Wordsworth enthusiasts, lay and professional, and until now it has usually been the best-selling book every year at the Dove Cottage bookshop. It is a pleasure to read, but, personally, I prefer Dorothy’s letters. You see her thoughts and her opinions in her letters, as she sits down to tell her friend Jane, for example, about some incident, a journey, or people she has met. She has great insight into character, a strong narrative drive, a sense of humour and of the ridiculous, always vivid and colourful in her descriptions. Jane must have loved receiving the letters, and it is not surprising that she kept them, years and years before anybody was interested in knowing about Dorothy or her brother.

  So much of Dorothy’s Journals, however, is unsatisfactory. She often lists events, but rarely stands back to comment on them. Nothing is explained. You have to know what was really happening in the Wordsworths’ lives to understand the sudden changes of location or of mood. The Journals were basically a diary, jottings written for Dorothy herself, and of course for William—not for the illumination or pleasure of outsiders. ‘Dullish, damp and cloudy—a day that promises not to dry our clothes. We spent a happy evening—went to bed late and had a restless night. Wm better than expected.’ That’s a typical entry, picked at random, describing their activities on Friday, 13 November 1801. What was so happy about that particular evening? What made the night restless? Why had she expected William not to be better? She doesn’t say. In a letter, she would have filled pages, describing such an evening’s activities, even if they had turned out to consist of only a game of whist by the fireside or of more worries about William’s bowels.

  In her staccato style, she can go from some event we now know was vitally important, straight on to something completely mundane: ‘Monday, July 28, 1800. Received a letter from Coleridge enclosing one from Mr Davy about Lyrical Ballads. Intensely hot. I made pies in the morning. Wm went into the wood and altered his poems.’

  Fortunately, in her Journals she records many days which merit more than two or three disjointed lines—days in which she sits writing for longer and goes into fuller descriptions, if still without any real explanations. It is these entries that make the Journals so special, such a joy to read, and are endlessly fascinating, for two important reasons.

  Firstly, the Journals provide factual evidence of how important Dorothy was to William, the poet. When William came to write a poem (having gone through his tranquil stage of reflection, which could last for anything from a few hours to a few years), he very often used the same words that Dorothy had used originally in her Journals to describe an incident they had both witnessed. She wasn’t just a separate tool, but part of him, his amanuensis, sharing his creative force. Writers get a lot of help these days, from dictating machines to electric typewriters and computers, but it is going to be a while before someone invents a machine as efficient as Dorothy. As everyone who ever men Wordsworth always observed, lucky William. There are countless; examples, but the best known is probably also the easiest to give. Here is Dorothy describing their walk along the shores of Ullswater on Thursday, 15 April 1802: ‘I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.’

  Now compare it with the first two verses of the poem William eventually wrote, two years later:

  I wandered lonely as a cloud

  That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

  When all at once I saw a crowd,

  A host, of golden daffodils;

  Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

  Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

  Continuous as the stars that shine

  And twinkle on the milky way,

  They stretched in never-ending line

  Along the margin of a bay:

  Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

  Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

  The second element in the Journals which has provided equal fascination is the light they throw on the relationship between William and Dorothy. She wasn’t simply his secretary, his note-taker, his copyist; she wasn’t just his pie-maker, his bed-maker, his health-watcher, his walking companion. Dorothy was more even than his critic and creative inspiration: she was his best friend. Their love for each other is what makes the relationship so extraordinary.

  In those early years at Dove Cottage, they did have all those visitors, but, even so, the basic unit was William and Dorothy, sharing all the ordinary domestic pleasures. There’s a nice letter from William to Coleridge—an unusually light-hearted letter, describing the more ordinary aspects of their domestic life:

  It is now past ten and we are both tired so that it is an absolute contest of politeness, with a little brotherly kindness interspersed, which of us walk up to Fletchers [the carrier] with this Letter and the accompanying parcel. We cannot both go as we have suffered Molly to retire and little Hartley [Coleridge’s son] cannot be left. These several displays of presence of mind in this antithetical way are highly entertaining. Dorothy is packing up a few small loaves of our American flour which I promised. It died of a very common malady, bad advice. The oven must be hot, perfectly hot said Molly the experienced, so into a piping red-hot oven it went, and came out black as a genuine child of the coal hole. In plain English, it is not a sendable article.…

  Their life together in domestic bliss was obviously very happy. I nearly wrote ‘wedded bliss’. If you didn’t know they were brother and sister, the Journals would make you think they were married, judging by so many of Dorothy’s descriptions.

  After dinner I read him to sleep. I read Spenser while he leaned upon my shoulder.…

  I went and sate with W and walked backwards and forwards in the orchard till dinner time. He read me his poem. I broiled Beefsteaks. After dinner, we made a pillow of my shoulder. I read to him and my Beloved slept. I afterwards got him the pillows and he was lying with his head on the table when Miss Simpson came in.…

  Read Wm to sleep after dinner and read to him in bed till 1/2 past one.…

  After we came in and we sate in deep silence at the window. I on a chair and William with his hand on my shoulder. We were deep in Silence and Love, a blessed hour.…

  When William was away, Dorothy was greatly distressed, missing him dreadfully, as if her whole world had collapsed. It was on such a day, at Grasmere in May 1800, when William and their brother John had gone off on a three-week trip, that she first began her Journal. She decided to take refuge in it, as a means of continuing their joint life; William could read it all
when he came back: to catch up on their visitors and on her impressions:

  Wm and John set off into Yorkshire after dinner, cold pork in their pockets. I left them at the turning of Low wood bay under the trees. My heart was so full that I could hardly speak to W when I give him a farewell kiss. I sate a long time upon a stone at the margin of the lake, and after a flood of tears my heart was easier.… I resolved to write a Journal of the time till W and J return and I set about keeping my resolve because I will not quarrel with myself and because I shall give Wm Pleasure by it when he comes home.

  Dorothy often went twice a day to Ambleside, over six miles there and back, and sometimes even further down the road, looking for the postman with letters from William. ‘The post was not come in. I walked as far as Windermere [the lake, not the town] and met him there. No letters! No papers. Came home by Clappersgate [on the northern shore of the lake]. I was sadly tired, ate a hasty dinner and had a bad headache. Went to bed and slept at least two hours.’ There was the utmost joy when William did return, and they sat up till four in the morning, just the two of them, and then slept till ten o’clock the next day.

  On another occasion, when William was away, her desire for him was so strong that she went to his bedroom. ‘Went to bed at about 12 o’clock. I slept in Wm’s bed and I slept badly, for my thoughts were full of William.’ He came home rather unexpectedly and when someone told her he’d been seen on the road, ‘I believe I screamed.’

  She was obsessed by William and he was devoted to her, loving her dearly, though his letters, such as they are, don’t furnish much evidence of passion. It is in his poems that his love for Dorothy shines through, even when William is using another girl’s name, such as Emmeline or Lucy, as was his normal habit. ‘Strange fits of passion,’ as we have seen, was written while he and Dorothy were alone together in Germany. ‘Among all lovely things my Love had been …’ was inspired by Dorothy and was about an incident, the finding of a glowworm, which they experienced together.