William Wordsworth

by Hunter Davies

  STERN Daughter of the Voice of God!

  O Duty! If that name thou love

  Who art a light to guide, a rod

  To check the erring, and reprove;

  Thou, who are victory and law

  When empty terrors overawe;

  From vain temptations dost set free;

  And calm’st the weary strife of frail humanity!

  Serene will be our days and bright,

  And happy will our nature be,

  When love is an unerring light,

  And joy its own security.

  And they a blissful course may hold

  Even now, who, not unwisely bold,

  Live in the spirit of this creed;

  Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need.

  To humbler functions, awful Power!

  I call thee: I myself commend

  Unto thy guidance from this hour;

  Oh, let my weakness have an end!

  Give unto me, made lowly wise,

  The spirit of self-sacrifice;

  The confidence of reason give;

  And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live!

  15

  Politics and Poems

  1815–1818

  THE finest folks of all were of course the Lowthers, lords of all they surveyed. William developed an almost lemming-like longing to serve them, going out of his way to cultivate their friendship, as if a recessive gene from his father and grandfather, long dormant and despised, was eating into his soul. Without being asked, and without any formal agreement, he started to do what his father had done before him. In effect, he became their spy. This might seem rather a melodramatic description, but, as he was never their employee, and he should not officially have been doing what he did for them, it is fair to call him one of their under-cover agents. Strangely enough, the present Earl of Lonsdale maintains that both Wordsworth and his father were employed by the Lowthers. It is presumably a family belief, handed down through the generations, though in Wordsworth’s case it certainly was not true. If he had been employed as some sort of official agent, then his behaviour would have been easier to explain.

  Over a period of twenty years, Wordsworth came round to honestly and genuinely believing that his patriotic duty was to support the Tories, the Established Church and the Landed Gentry. The Lowthers personified the values he approved of. At the same time, he considered himself a lover of liberty and national independence, and when friends and strangers wrote to him, accusing him of being a turncoat, for example in his attitude to France, then he replied by saying that he had always been consistent in his hatred of tyranny. He had stayed the same—it was the tyrants who had changed their coats. He had approved of the early days of the French Revolution, when the tyranny of the ancien régime had been overthrown, but when he saw at first hand the Reign of Terror, when the mob themselves became tyrants, followed by a third form of tyranny, Napoleon’s, then naturally he opposed them all. He had been against English intervention in the early days, but he stoutly supported England in her war against Napoleon. He’d always loved liberty and would oppose tyranny, whatever its form.

  On some minor matters, he did have the grace to admit that he’d changed his mind slightly. He had believed that the press must be free, as a vital element in democracy, but his early romantic notions, believing it should be completely free, had gone. By the 1820s he favoured restraints: the press should be independent, but subversive elements had to be checked. One couldn’t allow the fabric of society to be endangered by these new radical elements. He knew only too well where it could all lead. At the root of Wordsworth’s new political belief was fear. He did not like many things that were happening in the world at large and he feared the consequences if they were allowed to get worse. The only hope, as he saw it, was a return to the status quo. For the good of everyone, for the individual and for the community, society should not be torn apart.

  It has to be remembered that Wordsworth, as he approached fifty, had lived through some stirring times—perhaps the most dramatic period in British history since the Civil War. Previous upheavals had often been localized, limited to one class or one region, but the changes in the first half of the nineteenth century affected every single person. It is one of the many fascinations of Wordsworth’s life, to see how, in his thoughts and in his writings, he responds to all the changes taking place. From the French Revolution to railways, Wordsworth was a front-line observer, an eye-witness with some very strong opinions.

  Three revolutions were happening at once, all of them related—industrial, political and social. Wordsworth, in his letters to the Earl of Lonsdale and to his other friends, diagnosed the changes with great accuracy. He could see quite clearly the ravages created in family life by the Industrial Revolution and the new factories: the all-night shifts, the abuses of child and female labour, the dangers to health and morals, and the breakdown in rural life as people fled from the country to the towns.

  He saw the new political agitators, pressing for reforms and freedoms, encouraging insurrection in the towns and amongst the agricultural labourers. In his letters he constantly drew comparisons with the agitators he had seen at work in France. Even reading expressions of relatively harmless liberal opinions in the local paper, the Kendal Chronicle, led him to the gloomiest of thoughts. ‘Never was the press more atrociously abused than in that journal at present,’ he wrote to Lord Lowther in 1818. ‘Every sentence almost in it reminds me of what I used to read in France in the year 1792 when the Revolution was advancing towards its zenith.’

  He also saw the breakdown in class divisions—which, again, he bitterly regretted. He looked back to his boyhood days, that wonderful halcyon period in Hawkshead at the end of the eighteenth century, when men served their masters happily, when each had his own job and his own respect, when landowners and tenants pulled together, when enlightened property-owners helped the poor and the poor were grateful and not resentful. One recurring theme in his letters is how, in the good old days, the gentry mixed freely with tradesmen, personally using their shops, treating them, if not as equals, then as people with their proper place in society. Here he was obviously thinking of his Penrith days, which had not been at all happy for him at the time. Now, in middle age, he saw all the good points. His own shopkeeping relations had indeed been socially mobile—marrying into the gentry, securing social and educational advancement for their children, all without having to storm the battlements or overthrow the established order. Wordsworth saw what was happening, as he went round, carrying out his duties as Distributor of Stamps—his province soon grew to include parts of north Lancashire and the west Cumbrian industrial coast—and he heard the radicals fomenting disruption. His diagnoses were correct, and well in advance of events, even if they were slightly exaggerated (he had the grace to admit in one letter that he was possibly an alarmist), but his remedy was the wrong one. He tended to favour political repression, even though he also wanted more education and better conditions for the working classes. In his view, all these reforms could be brought about under the auspices of the old order. He had seen the extremes at first hand and didn’t want them to happen in England. It was a very English viewpoint, and still is to this day: moderation in all things. Let the Tory Party, the Church of England and the landed squires continue to run the country in their decent, moderate way, and in the long run everyone will be better off. At all costs, the ‘mob’ must not be allowed to dictate events.

  Together with the ‘mob’, a vague term at the best of times, though he often used it, he feared the new grasping manufacturers. He despised their methods and their values, their lack of culture and their vulgarity. Though there was no lack of contemporary reports, Wordsworth’s own prejudice was mostly based on ignorance, since, to judge from his letters, it would appear that he personally never met such people. He compared what he had picked up about them to the Lakeland statesmen, whom he did know, and naturally preferred.

  He seemed unaware of
the growing, if still small, number of enlightened manufacturers, especially Quakers, who were doing more for their work-force, in the way of social benefits and improved conditions, than the Tories, such as himself, who were trying to turn the clock back. Robert Owen, the great Scottish social reformer, tried to interest both Southey and Wordsworth in his schemes, and Southey went to look at his model factory in New Lanark. The Wordsworth household thought him a good man, but a ‘little cranky’.

  It was the rise to power of the manufacturers generally which Wordsworth dreaded, especially if the Reform Bill should ever be passed, giving them political importance and making them a direct threat to the traditional landowners. Manufacturers, he believed, were motivated by self-interest. Owning property, on the other hand, made you care.

  Wordsworth admitted that in his early days he hadn’t quite appreciated the worth of the property classes. It was something the London radicals and wits and new poets still didn’t understand; he himself now knew from his own experience that the landowners, on the whole, were a power for good. They kept the country together. Cynics might say, and did say, that Wordsworth was motivated by self-interest, since he was now one of the property-owners himself, on the fringes of the landed classes, living in his smart house and with smart neighbours. He had a public post, which had been obtained for him by the local lord; so naturally he was in favour of the status quo. When someone has climbed to the top of the ladder—or at least, to the lower rungs—he doesn’t want the rules changed, the ladder taken down, and everyone having to start again—not when it has taken him so long to get there. This would be one nasty interpretation of Wordsworth’s new political beliefs. His own life style would belie it: he wasn’t trying to amass luxuries and wealth for himself or his family, though he was thankful for his new financial security.

  Wordsworth apologists—most of whom are lovers of his poetry who suspect any criticism of his life and politics as being an attack on his art—always point to the worthy sentiments expressed in his poetry, and to his concern for the working man, and they dismiss as unimportant his agitation for the reactionary Tories and his underground political letters. Another defence is to say that he was never really a violent radical. His French Revolution phase was basically romance, and in any case, he supported the Girondists (the moderate radicals), not the more extreme Jacobins. In his mind, he probably hoped that the Revolution would make France into a nice, fairly liberal place like England. When it all went wrong, he retreated to his love for good old England, which had always been there. It is an attractive argument.

  My view is that he was a definite radical but that, over a twenty-year span, a turnabout took place, a volte-face, in his political and social beliefs, and his letters prove it. This is not necessarily reprehensible. It is a change which is there to be studied, not denied.

  The big event which brought it all out into the open, revealing William’s new loyalties, was the general election of 1818. Westmorland had two MPs, Lord Lowther and Colonel Henry Lowther, both the sons of the Earl of Lonsdale. For forty-four years, the Lowthers had held their two seats unopposed; they’d controlled the two constituencies, just as they’d controlled another seven or so seats in the north-west, filling them with their own placemen (either members of their own family or trusted supporters).

  William, while in London in December 1817, heard rumours that Westmorland was going to be opposed and wrote a letter to Lord Lonsdale, thanking him for a present (‘Your Lordship’s boots were of infinite service to me, as owing to the Mail being full I was obliged to venture on the outside’), tipping him off about the rumours and promising to investigate and report further. The opponent turned out to be Henry Brougham, a member of a distinguished landed family who had an estate near Penrith. He had been born and educated in Edinburgh and was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review. That should have been a warning to William, though they had met some eight years or so earlier and had been quite friendly. Brougham was later to become one of the leading Whig politicians of his day, a cabinet minister, Lord Chancellor and eventually a baron. (His name went into Victorian household usage with his invention of the Brougham coach.) However, in 1818, aged forty, Brougham was still something of a wild radical—not trusted by the mainstream Whig politicians, but admired for his oratory and his skill in handling mobs.

  William was determined that Brougham, whom he called a dangerous demagogue, shouldn’t succeed in Westmorland, and he started organizing support for the Lowthers. He sent them detailed reports from every place he visited, listing the personal politics and beliefs of the leading citizens, marking down the religious Dissenters (who in the main were anti-Tory) or reformers, and naming those who could be trusted to do the right thing and those who could not. He named all the leading lawyers in Kendal, for example, telling Lord Lonsdale which ones should be retained (bribed, in other words) to support the Tories. He reported on people’s relations and friends, and on how much property they owned. Years before, William had himself been spied upon by a government agent, when it was thought he was a radical. Now, he was informing on people behind their backs, and basing much of his testimony on local hearsay.

  Just before the election started, William had been privately negotiating, with Lord Lonsdale’s help, to take over the stamp distribution for north Cumberland, a much more lucrative domain than the other areas for which he was responsible. He had arranged with the present incumbent to pay him off with an annuity of £350—which shows just how valuable a job it was—but he dropped negotiations during the election. It would have looked very bad if, at such a time, he had been procured another government job. Also, he was not supposed to engage in any electioneering or in any other political activity, being a government servant.

  Most people in local politics knew he was canvassing for the Tories, who had now been in power for over three decades, and were to remain in power for a further twelve years. Brougham, who seems to have been amused rather than terrified by William’s intriguing, often made veiled criticisms of his poetry in his public speeches, knowing William was skulking at the edge of the crowd. People warned William to keep out of all political activity, and at one stage, so William reported in a letter to Lord Lonsdale, he had been told he could be fined £100 ‘for having intermeddled’; but he still continued, sending back his confidential dossiers.

  One of the murkier areas of William’s electioneering concerned the buying of land with Lowther money, then dividing it up into lots and letting Tory supporters buy it on reasonable terms, on condition that they voted the right way, now that they’d been made freeholders. Several of William’s relations did well out of these sales of land. Another area in which political pressure could be brought to bear was the law of enfranchisement. Technically, you had to own property to have a vote, but there was a rule that a substantial tenant, having farmed someone else’s land for a long time, could be enfranchised, if the landlord agreed. Naturally, a Tory landowner was not going to enfrancise his radical tenants.

  William was also instrumental in writing anonymous letters and articles for the Kendal Chronicle, which, when the election began, proclaimed that it was politically independent, but soon moved to support the Broughamites. William then printed two pamphlets, presumably using Lowther money, in which he addressed the Freeholders of Westmorland. One pamphlet was written in high, flowing phrases for the gentry; the other, for the less educated merchant class. At the same time, William helped the Lowthers to try and buy up shares in the Kendal Chronicle, determined by any means to make the paper toe the right line; but this failed, and the Lowthers were then forced to start their own paper, the Westmorland Gazette. William wrote to his London newspaper friends, such as Stuart, asking if they knew any likely editors.

  There was great excitement when at length the two Lowther candicates made their official entry into Kendal; but it ended in violence, with riots in the street, stones being thrown and many people getting hurt. The Lowthers blamed it on the Broughamites, alleging that they h
ad hired hooligans to disrupt the proceedings. The Broughamites denied this accusation, saying the riot showed how strong the anti-Lowther feeling was.

  The Broughamites wore blue and the Lowthers yellow—the traditional Lowther family colour and one which Tories in Cumbria still sport at election time, even though, in the rest of the country, Tories are always true blue. Dorothy got caught up in all the election fever—unlike Mary and Sarah, who stayed at home, thinking William should direct his energies into more useful channels. She went out canvassing in Kendal with William, who was taking care to avoid being seen near Lord Lonsdale or his sons, and using different hotels to avoid public contact. ‘The misguided mob, including almost all the lower classes who have no votes, cry aloud for Brougham,’ Dorothy wrote. ‘No lady would venture to appear in a yellow ribband in Kendal streets, though you cannot walk thirty yards without meeting a dirty lad or lass with a blue one and the ladies of that party also have no fear of displaying their colour.’

  There were some real ladies, and gentlemen, on the Brougham side, including some other titled landowners and even some of the Wordsworths’ own relations, such as their cousin William Crackenthorpe. They met him on one occasion and discussed their political differences amicably. Even sadder for William, one of their dearest friends, one whom they greatly admired, Thomas Clarkson, the anti-slavery campaigner, was a supporter of Brougham.

  William took it all very seriously, but he could still on occasions see the lighter side. ‘My youngest Son is a complete Yellow,’ he wrote to Lord Lowther in March 1818, ‘having got the jaundice, poor lad, so that he has no occasion for Ribbons, though he wears them. The Daffodils are anxiously looked for that the young ladies in Rydal may adorn their bonnets with them.’