William Wordsworth

by Hunter Davies

  Then there were Dorothy and William’s sister-in-law Sarah Hutchinson, which makes eight so far. Coleridge was another permanent guest, plus Derwent and Hartley at weekends (which makes eleven); then Mrs Coleridge and her daughter Sara came for a week or so at a time (bringing the number to thirteen), and the two servants bring the total to fifteen. That’s not taking into account the outside visitors, especially in the summer, who often stayed several weeks.

  When Lady Holland, the fashionable London hostess, made her tour of the Lakes with her husband, calling on William en route, as part of what was becoming a statutory itinerary for rich tourists, she didn’t ask to stay with the Wordsworths, but invited William out to dinner at their hotel. He went, and regaled them with his views on the latest developments in Lakeland—how he hated white houses and buildings which ruined the scenery. Lady Holland was much taken with him, but her diary contained a rather back-handed compliment: ‘Much superior to his writings, and his conversation is even beyond his abilities. I should almost fear that he is disposed to apply his talents more towards making himself a vigorous conversationalist.’

  Since it wasn’t often that people said William was good in conversation—unlike Coleridge—and usually noted that his forte was the monologue, this doesn’t say a great deal for Lady Holland’s opinion of his writings.

  Coleridge had his own room at Allan Bank and it was here that he worked out plans for the Friend, a ‘Literary, Moral and Political Weekly Paper, excluding personal and party politics and the events of the Day, conducted by S.T. Coleridge of Grasmere’. William rallied in support and wrote to his new smart friends, including Walter Scott and Lord Lonsdale, asking them to take out subscriptions, which became a little embarrassing when after six months the magazine still hadn’t made its first bow, despite the subscriptions having been paid. Coleridge, as ever, needed time to settle, going off to Penrith and Kendal for weeks at a time, negotiating the printing and the buying of the stamped paper which was needed to post copies to subscribers, before finally getting down with Sarah to producing the first issue, which appeared in June 1809. To everyone’s surprise, particularly the Wordsworths’, new issues kept on appearing—if only just—and Allan Bank became a hive of happy industry, with most of the womenfolk busy provisioning and cleaning and bringing up the assorted children, and the men working hard and soberly at their creative writing.

  William turned increasingly to prose in the next few years, perhaps partly on the rebound from his reviews, but partly to help Coleridge with his magazine. He almost filled several issues with a long tract on his ‘Advice to the Young’, telling them how to conduct themselves, morally and spiritually, in these unsettled times, and he also wrote a long essay on epitaphs. Perhaps his most important prose work, which he threw himself into with enormous passion, was his pamphlet on the Convention of Cintra. It was based on an international political row, now long forgotten and too complicated even to begin to unravel, which concerned the British Government having allegedly let down Spain and Portugal in their fight against the French oppressors, withdrawing their troops when they could have helped them more. Even at the time, the details had almost been forgotten when William finally published his pamphlet, as he’d taken so long correcting and recorrecting the proofs. Coleridge, like Southey, was in agreement with his views, and was all ready to march and sign petitions and organize meetings of protest; but he realized that, because of the delays, Wordsworth had missed his chance with his political appeal and was probably also going to fail with his moralizing in general.

  ‘Had I not known the author I would willingly have travelled from St Michael’s Mount to Johnny Groat’s house on a pilgrimage to see and reverence him,’ Coleridge wrote to Stuart, editor of the Courier, who had published William’s introductory essays on the same subject.

  But from the public I am apprehensive, first, that it will be impossible to rekindle an exhausted interest respecting the Cintra Convention and therefore that the long porch may prevent readers from entering the Temple. Lastly, I fear that readers even of judgments may complain of a want of shade and background; that it is all foreground, all in hot tints, that the first note is pitched at the height of the instrument and never suffered to sink.…

  It was a good reflection on much of William’s work, not just his prose. Coleridge was slightly wrong about the pamphlet in that it was quite well received by the handful of critics who bothered to notice it; three of them praised William’s humanity, while regretting some of his verbal faults. Canning was reported to have considered it the ‘most eloquent production since the days of Burke’. But Coleridge was right about the public’s reaction. Most of the five hundred copies printed remained unsold. ‘Many copies were disposed of by the publishers as waste paper and went to the trunk makers,’ Christopher Wordsworth reported in the Memoirs.

  It was a very impassioned appeal to humanity in general to defend the poor and unprotected, over and above its concern for a passing political event, and it was reprinted during the First World War, in 1915, by a publisher who thought it could be used to rally enthusiasm for the war against Germany. (He said it helped a lot.) It reveals a great deal about Wordsworth’s political views at the time—and also about the power of his passions. He was a most emotional man, often carried away by causes and grievances, campaigns and ideologies. The Cintra campaign went on for months and for a time took up all his energies, what with writing to Lord Lonsdale, trying to get his help, sending copies of his pamphlet to the Portuguese and Spanish ambassadors, and walking along the road to Keswick at two o’clock one morning, desperate to find the carrier with the newspapers and the latest intelligence from the Iberian struggles.

  From now on, William was involved in many other passionate causes, in widely differing fields—always sure that he was in the right. He took up the cause of education, for example, at about this time, convinced that an educationalist called Dr Bell, with his so-called Madras system, using pupil-monitors to teach the children, was going to be the saviour of humanity. He wrote many letters on his behalf and for a few months taught according to Dr Bell’s methods at the local school in Grasmere.

  Then there was the simple, straightforward humanitarian campaign he organized for a local poor family, the Greens, whose parents had perished in the snow on the fells, leaving six orphaned children. The Wordsworths took in one of them, Sally, as a sort of nanny for their own children, agreeing to house and feed her and be responsible for her well-being, and they launched an appeal for £500 to secure a future for the rest of the orphans. It was a most stirring and heartening campaign, which was a huge success. They wrote to all their well-off friends, such as Lady Holland, who organized a collection from the members of her own circle (which included the Duke of Devonshire), and she sent them £32 which she’d raised in two-guinea subscriptions. Walter Scott sent an unsolicited donation.

  Dorothy wrote a little pamphlet about the Greens—graphic, heartbreaking and going into the whole family saga—which was sent round to likely subscribers. Several people said she should publish it, but she declined, saying that would only bring the six orphans too much personal publicity, which might affect their future lives. They closed the appeal at £500, when more could possibly have been raised, not wanting to overdo it.

  William’s passions (and several of them ran concurrently) were either ideological or humanitarian. There were no signs any more of animal passions, no fleshly sins or vices, not even any luxuries or self-indulgence.

  When he was down in London that time, trying to rescue Coleridge from his sick bed, they all attended a little party at the Courier offices, given by the editor. Coleridge was there, and Southey, plus Charles Lamb and a few others. As they were leaving, Lamb, in his jocular way, remarked that everyone would now be going out into the streets to ‘make up to the first pretty girl he sees’. Only William questioned this light-hearted speculation. ‘Sad Josephs are some of us in this very room,’ replied Lamb.

  Some chinks slowly began to a
ppear in the image of the one big happy family, all working away together at Allan Bank. Firstly, their original criticism of the workmanship of the house itself was proving to be correct. Despite endless modifications, the fireplaces were found to be badly built and, once winter came, the whole house was constantly full of dirt and dust. ‘Smoky house, wet cellars, workmen by the half dozen make attempts, hitherto unsuccessful, to remedy these evils,’ Dorothy wrote.

  There was one stormy day in which we could have no fire but in my brother’s study and that chimney smoked so much that we were obliged to go to bed with the Baby in the middle of the day to keep it warm and I, with a candle in my hand, stumbled over a chair, unable to see. We cooked in the study, and even heated water there to wash dishes. The Servants, you may be sure, have been miserable, and we have had far too much labour, and too little quiet. At the height of the storm, Mrs Coleridge and her little Girl were here, and Mr Coleridge is with us constantly, so you will make out that we were a pretty large Family to provide for in such a manner. Dishes are washed, and no sooner set in the pantry than they are covered with smoke. Chairs, carpets, painted ledges of the room, all are ready for the reception of soot and smoke, and are never clean.

  Mr Coleridge was also beginning to prove troublesome. He was soon up to his old habits, taking to the bottle and other stimulants, falling ill, staying in bed all day, accusing everyone of being against him. Dorothy, for long his champion, was betraying signs of growing irritation in her letters to friends, though, having severely criticized Coleridge, she usually gave them instructions to keep it all private. Even William, writing to Coleridge’s old friend Thomas Poole, was becoming rather harsh in his attitude:

  You will consider me as speaking to you now in the most sacred confidence and as under a strong sense of duty. I give it to you as my deliberate opinion, formed upon proofs which have been strengthened for years, that he neither will nor can execute anything of important benefit to himself, his family or mankind. Neither his talents nor his genius, mighty as they are, nor his vast information will avail him anything; they are all frustrated by a derangement in his intellectual and moral constitution … nor is he capable of acting under any constraint of duty or moral obligation.… The Friend cannot go on for any length of time. I am sure it cannot.… The disease of his mind is that he perpetually looks out of himself for those obstacles to his utility which exist only in himself. I am sure that if any friend whom he values were in consequence of such a conviction as I have expressed, to advise him to drop his work, he would immediately ascribe the failure to the damp thrown upon his spirits by this interference. Therefore in this way nothing can be done.… Pray burn this letter when you have read it.

  In February 1810, Sarah decided to leave, having had enough. ‘We shall find a great loss in her as she has been with us more than four years,’ wrote Dorothy, ‘but Coleridge most of all will miss her as she has transcribed almost every Paper of the Friend for the press. The fact is that he either does a great deal or nothing at all. He has written a whole Friend more than once in two days … and he generally has dictated to Miss Hutchinson who takes the words down from his mouth.’

  Sarah went off to stay with her brother Tom, who was now farming in Wales, and Coleridge managed somehow to produce one more issue of the Friend, the 28th number, in March 1810. It was the last to appear.

  We have no hope of him—none that he will ever do more than he had already done [wrote Dorothy]. If he were not under our Roof, he would be just as much the slave of stimulants as ever; and his whole time and thoughts are employed in deceiving himself and seeking to deceive others. He will tell me that he has written half a Friend, when I know that he has not written a single line. I am loathe to say it, but it is the truth. He lies in bed till after 12 o’clock and never walks out … he goes [to his room] the moment his food is swallowed … sometimes he does not speak a word. The Boys come every week and he talks to them especially to Hartley but he never examines them in their books. He speaks of the Friend always as if it were going on … do not think it is his love for Sarah which has stopped him in his work—do not believe it; his love for her is no more than a fanciful dream, otherwise he would prove it by a desire to make her happy. No! he likes to have her about him as his own, as one devoted to him, but when she stood in the way of his gratifications it was all over. I speak this very unwillingly and again I beg, burn this letter.

  What a sad household. Ten years previously, romantically roughing it in the West Country, William might have put up with the responsibility of having a drug addict in the house, but now, with his many commitments and his new sense of propriety and moral duty, it became unbearable. Coleridge was poisoning the whole family. He wasn’t just letting William and Dorothy down, but all the friends and contacts whom they had persuaded to help him set up the Friend. You can so clearly see the poison seeping through all their letters from Allan Bank. They’d grown quite fond of Mrs Coleridge over the last year or so, feeling sorry for her, and they quite enjoyed her regular visits, when she came to see the boys; but they were beginning to feel slightly resentful, as they realized that they, not Coleridge’s wife and family, were having all the trouble looking after him. Dorothy wrote:

  Sara [Coleridge] is to stay with us till next Monday when her Mother will come and spend three or four days here.… Mrs C. is desirous to put off the evil day, for she dreads the contamination which her lady-like manners must receive from our rustic brood worse than she would dread illness. As to poor little Sara, she has behaved very sweetly ever since her Mother left her, but there is nothing about her of the natural wildness of a child.… Mrs C. does not look as if any of her cares have kept her awake, but she says she sleeps badly; however this may be, she is very fat and looks uncommonly healthy.

  The problem was at last solved when Coleridge, after a spell back in Keswick at Greta Hall, as a guest in his own home, was offered a room by Basil Montagu, William’s old friend, in his London house. Montagu had been to stay at Allan Bank and had taken pity on Coleridge’s pathetic physical and mental condition. Montagu was now married to his third wife—the previous two having died—and was at last prospering as a lawyer. William and Dorothy had taken in his child, all those years before, when he himself had been having a hard time. Now he and his wife had a large London house and felt they could provide a room in it for Coleridge, and, with the aid of their family doctor, perhaps manage to rehabilitate him, though it seemed obvious to most people that he was almost beyond recovery. In October 1810, Coleridge climbed into Montagu’s carriage and headed for London …

  The Wordsworths breathed many sighs of relief and returned to their normal life, at last being able to give proper attention to some new friends who had come into their lives in the last couple of years, especially a young gentleman called Thomas De Quincey.

  Just as Coleridge moved off stage, at least for the moment, De Quincey had moved on—a young, very healthy, very eager young man, almost as well read as Coleridge, and, as far as they could see, with none of Coleridge’s unsavoury propensities for stimulants such as opium.

  It was through a fan letter that De Quincey became known to William. The first known fan letter to him had been from that Glasgow university student, John Wilson, who had recently followed up his correspondence by moving into the Lake District, taking a house on Lake Windermere with his mother. He was a very wealthy young man, literate and talented, yet at the same time a great athlete, a lover of all Lakeland sports, very fond of outings and expeditions, and the Wordsworths went on several of his picnics and boating trips. Wilson also interested himself in the Friend, and William’s rather pompous and long-winded articles, ‘Advice to the Young’, were written in reply to a letter in the Friend from Wilson, asking Wordsworth, the sage, to offer the fruits of his wisdom.

  De Quincey sent a similar fan letter. He was a mere stripling of seventeen at the time, about to go up to Oxford. This was in 1803, after he’d read the two-volume edition of Lyrical Ballads, and he wrot
e to William, via Longmans (William’s publishers), to say how he’d been enslaved by William’s poetry for two years. ‘The whole aggregate of pleasure I have received from some eight or nine other poets that I have been able to find since the world began falls infinitely short of what these two enchanting volumes have singly afforded me.’ The mere thought of meeting Wordsworth had rescued him from despair during the last two years, but what chance had he to meet him? ‘What claim can I urge to a fellowship with such society as yours, with genius so wild and magnificent?’ He added that he was just a boy, ‘but that my life had been passed chiefly in the contemplation and worship of nature’.

  De Quincey was indeed only a boy, but the use of the word ‘nature’ was a little misleading: he had been living for many months with the down-and-outs in London, consorting with drug addicts and prostitutes, until his money had run out. He was born in Manchester, the son of a wealthy merchant who had died when De Quincey was seven. He went to Manchester Grammar School, where he’d been brilliant at Latin, but had run away. William was so impressed by De Quincey’s sensitivity and language that he wrote a letter in reply, adding an invitation to visit him at Grasmere.

  Nearly three years later, during which time De Quincey had continued to idolize from afar Wordsworth and Coleridge, he made an attempt to take up the standing invitation. He got as far as Coniston, where he spent the night at an inn, but gave up out of shyness and returned to Oxford.

  In 1807, however, he managed to get himself introduced to Coleridge, who was staying with friends in Somerset, before his arrival at Allan Bank. De Quincey knew all Coleridge’s work by heart, and they had three hours of philosophical and intellectual dicussion. De Quincey arranged to make an anonymous gift of £300 to Coleridge, doing it through a third party and saying it was ‘from a young man of fortune who admired his talents’. Coleridge had to go to London, to do some lecturing, so De Quincey offered to squire Mrs Coleridge and the children by coach back up to the Lake District. And so, in November 1807, De Quincey at last met Wordsworth—almost five years after being first invited.