William Wordsworth

by Hunter Davies

  It often surprises people to learn how sociable William was, with their London friends flowing through their drawing-room from May till September—the ‘Season’, as the Wordsworth ladies called it, rather wearily—and they in turn made constant visits to other friends, new and old. New friends discovered he wasn’t the recluse some still believed him to be, retired to the wilds to escape the world. The world came to him.

  His brother Christopher, Master of Trinity, a position which, in theory, put him at the centre of the academic and theological world, was much more of a recluse. William’s personality was outgoing: he loved travel and tours and meeting people, and was a success at most social engagements, charming people by his rustic manners and dress—he looked more like a shepherd than a poet—and by his lack of affectation. On his home ground, he was often less interesting, going in too much for monologues. Away from home, he could be the life and soul of the party.

  Wordsworth in town was very different from Wordsworth in the country [wrote William Jerdan, an editor who tried to get him to contribute to his journal]. In the former case he was often very lively and entertaining. I recollected meeting him at breakfast after his being at the Italian Opera the preceding night and his remarks on the singing and his limning of the limbs of the dancers were as replete with shrewdness and pleasantry as anything I ever heard from the most witty and graphic lips. I was so charmed both with the matter and manner, that I wrote immediately to offer carte blanche for his correspondence from the Continent.… Had he complied with my wish, and written letters in the tone and spirit of the criticisms of the opera, I am sure the public would have had a variation in the style of Wordsworth which would have surprised it.

  During the 1820s, William made regular trips to London and the Continent. Almost every second year, he was off on one long journey of some sort, and so it is no wonder that his output of poetry suffered. He was often away from home for up to six months at a time.

  The 1820 foreign tour—the one that ended in Paris, with the visit to Annette–started off in June in London, and the Wordsworths didn’t finally get back to Rydal until just before Christmas, having been through Belgium and up the Rhine by boat to Switzerland, then into Italy, retracing much of William’s old pedestrian route, that he took with his friend Jones almost thirty years previously. This time, they took carriages, having more money, though this didn’t stop William fretting endlessly when he felt he was being overcharged. ‘William at the inn door looked as fierce as Bonaparte,’ wrote Dorothy. ‘When he came bustling up to us after his conflict, M. and I said to each other “they will think that B. himself is come back again to threaten this poor town.” ’ On another occasion, William refused to take rooms at an inn because of the prices, and the whole party spent the night sitting in their coach. A thunderstorm roared and fleas crawled, and they had the most dreadfully uncomfortable night.

  While they were in Switzerland, an English traveller came across them in a hotel in Lausanne, and has left a description of their little encounter which shows William at his most typically North-country-mannish:

  The husband of one of them soon followed. I saw by their utilitarian garb, as well as by the blisters and blotches on their cheeks, lips and noses, that they were pedestrian tourists. The man was evidently a denizen of the North, his accent harsh, skin white, of an angular and bony build, self confident and dogmatic in his opinions. The precision and quaintness of his language as well as his eccentric remarks on common things, stimulated my mind.…

  On their leaving the room to get ready for their journey, my friend told me the strangers were the poet Wordsworth, his wife and sister. Who could have divined this? I could see no trace in the hard features and weather-stained brow of the outer man, of the divinity within him. In a few minutes, the travellers reappeared. Now that I knew that I was talking to one of the veterans of the gentle craft, as there was no time to waste, I asked him abruptly what he thought of Shelley as a poet. ‘Nothing,’ he replied as abruptly.

  In 1823, William was off again, this time just with Mary, on a much more modest Continental tour, visiting only Belgium and Holland. It lasted a month and was slightly marred by problems with William’s eyes. As usual, though, having left Rydal, he saw several other places and friends en route, and was away for five months in all. The next year, 1824, William didn’t go abroad, but he visited London, with Mary and Dora, and made a long tour of Wales, revisiting yet more old haunts. They watched the Menai Bridge being erected and visited Robert Jones. William composed several poems, trying them out aloud, while Dora sat beside him, sketching.

  In 1828, William spent several weeks in London with Mary and Dora, staying at the Quillinans’. Sir Walter Scott was also in town, and the two parties jointly went round Hampton Court, along with several other literary people of the day, though, according to the poet Thomas Moore, who was in the party, the public had eyes for only one famous face: ‘Walked about in the gay walk where the band plays, to the infinite delight of the Hampton blues who were all eyes after Scott, the other scribblers not coming in for a glance.’ Well, when it came to best-sellers, not many people could compete with Sir Walter.

  During this London trip, William established cordial relations with Coleridge, now settled and leading a much healthier life since he’d been taken in by Dr Gillman, a Highgate doctor. On what seems to have been a spur-of-the-moment decision, William, Coleridge and Dora decided to leave London for a quick tour of Belgium and the Rhineland, without even telling Mary they were going. William left in such a hurry that he only took a carpet-bag, borrowed from Crabb Robinson.

  ‘They get on famously,’ wrote Dora in her journal, following the family tradition for Wordsworth females to record all journeys. ‘But Mr C sometimes detains us with his fiddle faddling and he likes prosing to the folks better than exerting himself to see the face of the country. Father with his few half dozen words of German makes himself much better understood than Mr C with all his weight of German literature.’

  In Brussels, they met another writer, the Irishman Thomas Grattan, who accompanied them on part of their journey. Grattan recorded:

  Wordsworth was, if possible, more unlike what he must appear in the fancy of those who have read his poetry and have never seen the author. He was a perfect antithesis to Coleridge—tall, wiry, harsh in features, coarse in figure, inelegant in looks. He was roughly dressed in a long brown surtout, striped duck trousers, fustian gaiters and thick shoes. He more resembled a mountain farmer than a ‘lake poet’. His whole air was unrefined and unprepossessing.… But, on observation and a little reflection, I could not help considering that much that seemed unfavourable in Wordsworth might be really placed to his advantage. There was a total absence of affectation or egotism; not the least effort at display or assumption of superiority over any of those who were quite prepared to concede it to him.… I remarked Wordsworth’s very imperfect knowledge of French and it was then that he accounted for it by telling me that five and twenty years previously he understood and spoke it well but that his abhorrence of the Revolutionary excesses made him resolve if possible to forget the language altogether and that for a long time he had not read or spoken a word of it.

  As William grew older and better known to the general public, the number of such first-hand descriptions of him, by people who met him on his travels or at London social engagements, or visited him at home in the Lakes, steadily increased. Almost everyone was struck by his lack of poetic manners and looks—which presumably means they expected a long-haired aesthete, a fragile and delicate flower like the young Keats, or someone who struck mannered poses like Byron. In the Lakes, William was often taken for a rather hard-up curate, in his unfashionable, worn-out clothes. Away from home, he appeared more the shepherd figure.

  As he got older, he grew into his face. He’d never been handsome, with his knobbly features, prominent nose and receding hair, and his was a face that aged quickly. Not that he minded. He once reported a conversation he had on a coach, goi
ng back to Rydal, when his fellow-travellers tried to guess his age—one of them putting him at sixty. He was only thirty-six at the time.

  ‘Wordsworth’s was a face which did not assign itself to any class,’ wrote a friend, Henry Taylor. ‘It was a hardy weather-beaten face which might have belonged to a nobleman, a yeoman, a mariner, or a philosopher. For my own part, I should not, judging by his face, have guessed him to be a poet. Perhaps what was wanting was only physical refinement. It was a rough grey face, full of rifts and clefts and fissures, out of which … you might expect lichens to grow.’

  There are fewer references, with his advancing years, to his alleged egotism, the trait which had once upset several people on first meeting him, such as Keats. Wordsworth had always denied that he was egotistical as a person. It was in his poetry that he was an egotist, as he was proud to admit. Perhaps, as time went on and he became better known, people encouraged his monologues, wanting to hear his wisdom, and never for one moment considered them a sign of egotism. He appears to have grown into his personality as well as into his physical appearance. Dogmatism does better suit the older man, especially one with so much hard-won experience of life and travel.

  He went for five weeks to Ireland in 1829, his first visit, but moved round at such a rate—rising at five in the morning, in order to gallop to the next place or engagement—that he had hardly time to pause to think or even give his muse a chance. Almost every journey throughout his life spawned verses—even if they were written long afterward—including all his Continental tours, and his journeys in Wales and, especially, in Scotland; but nothing at all came out of his Irish visit. He didn’t have any members of his family with him this time—just some friends. Dora might have slowed him down, if she’d been there.

  But he was well observed on his whirlwind Irish tour, with people remarking, as usual, on his rustic appearance and naturalness.

  Everything he said and did had an unaffected simplicity and dignity and peacefulness of thought that were very striking [wrote one lady]. There was such an indescribable superiority, both intellectual and moral, stamped upon him in his very silence, that everything of his I had thought silly took the beautiful colouring of a wondrous benevolence, that could descend through love to the least and most insignificant things.… I think it would be quite impossible for anyone who had once been in Wordsworth’s company ever again to think anything he has written silly.

  In the autumn of 1831, he made a long Scottish tour with Dora (now his favourite travelling companion), starting at Abbotsford, where they visited Sir Walter, then going to Edinburgh, the Trossachs and the Highlands, once again going over old haunts, the ones he had originally seen with Dorothy and Coleridge. He was now over sixty, but usually managed to walk twenty miles a day, often walking behind the carriage. His eyes were once again bothering him and he set off wearing a special shade which intrigued the children in Carlisle as they drove through. ‘There’s a man wi’ a veil and lass drivin’.’

  They managed to reach Mull in the Western Isles, taking the new steamboat from Glasgow. ‘Father is hammering at a horrid sonnet and he cannot give me his ear for the moment,’ wrote Dora to her mother. ‘His eyes are wonderfully well considering he will work.’ There’s a nice parenthesis in this letter, giving an insight into their domestic relationships. ‘Mother you did not name his eyes in your last letter which he did not like!’

  Wordsworth published no prose about his foreign tours, but a travel book he wrote about the Lakes, which originated very much by chance, sold better than any of his poems and made him famous amongst those who had never heard of his poetry.

  Wordsworth’s Guide to the Lakes, as it eventually became known, first appeared under his own name as a separate volume in 1822, but it began life in 1810, when William was asked to contribute, anonymously, some descriptions of Lakeland scenery to a collection of drawings made by a Norfolk vicar, the Rev. Joseph Wilkinson. He wasn’t particularly proud of the book and criticized Wilkinson’s etchings in a letter to Lady Beaumont, saying that Sir George would no doubt view them with disgust. One can only presume that in 1810 he had needed the money, though no record of the payment exists. He was always genuinely interested in guiding people to the Lakes and many of his letters give detailed descriptions of the best approaches and best routes.

  As far back as 1807, after they’d been touring west Cumberland, Mary had suggested that he should write some sort of guide-book, and Dorothy was always well aware of the possibilities of a proper book, if he could expand his introduction to the vicar’s sketch-book. ‘It would sell better and bring him more money than any of his higher labours.’

  It is surprising, in a way, that William took so long to write his own guide-book, considering that works of this kind were amongst his favourite reading. The book he eventually produced is a little didactic for modern tastes, though writers of contemporary guide-books were obsessed by the picturesque and by the desire to lay down the law on what was or was not a beautiful view; but the book is of great interest to anyone interested in the Lakes, or in Wordsworth. It finally sealed them together in the public’s mind. Indeed, it will be a central theme in the new Wordsworth Museum now being built at Grasmere.

  As in his poetry, the moral teachings were not far away. In fact, only the first twenty pages are devoted to straightforward tourist information, after which he moves on to discussing such topics as ‘Causes of False Taste in Grounds and Buildings’ and ‘Effects of Light and Shadow upon the Vales’. He used the book as a vehicle for his personal hates, such as the current fashion for larch plantations or for whitewashing cottages. He said both ruined the natural beauty of the scenery. He considered himself an expert on such things and maintained that he had a calling for three professions: poet, art critic and landscape gardener. A lot of the new settlers did come to him for advice, on everything from their gardens to their chimneys, and he did much to create an awareness of the natural landscape. His great love for the Lakes shines through the book and he was amongst the earliest of the preservationists, forming guide-lines which were later followed by the National Trust, National Park and other bodies.

  The book was in constant demand after it first appeared in 1822 and William regularly revised and expanded it. The fifth edition, which appeared in 1835, is looked upon as the definitive one, and a facsimile of it still sells well today.

  It was Matthew Arnold who first told the story of the clergyman who asked Wordsworth if he’d written anything else—apart from his guide to the Lakes.…

  During the 1820s, family affairs also took up a great deal of William’s time and thoughts. He would probably have gone on further Continental tours, if he hadn’t been worried so much about the education of his three children. He needed money for their schooling and he needed to be there in person to push them along. His two sons, particularly, needed all the help they could get. William, in his own teenage years, had been offered endless help and advice and contacts, as friends and relations rallied round to launch him into life, but he had spurned them all. Now he was the heavy father, refusing to even consider John’s wish, for example, to go into the army, an ambition William once had. He said the cost of a commission was impossible. ‘The Army is out of the question,’ wrote his mother. ‘He knows that; and strong as his bias towards the profession seems to be, at his age and in times of peace he would not give way to it.’

  John was accepted at St John’s College, Cambridge, William’s old college, but his mathematics had been so bad at Sedbergh that he talked his father into letting him try to get into Oxford instead. So William then wrote to one of his influential Oxford contacts, John Keble, the great Oxford theologian, later Professor of Poetry.

  ‘I shall be greatly disappointed if we cannot get your son into Oxford,’ Keble replied. ‘It will be a real kindness to point out any little service that I can render to him, or anyone connected with you, there or anywhere else. For I feel deeply your debtor for the real advantage as well as for the great pleasure wh
ich I find in reading your publications.’

  In 1823, John went up to New College, Oxford, aged twenty, where his tutor was another devoted admirer of Wordsworth’s works. John studied away quietly at Oxford, but without any distinction, failing to get an honours degree; William said it was because of ill health at the time of the examinations.

  ‘It would be most satisfactory to us if John’s thoughts should rest upon the Church,’ wrote Mary, ‘but this is a delicate subject, and unless his own mind—in conjunction with our own wishes, which are not unknown to him—led him thither, we should think it wrong to press him into the sacred profession merely to gain a worldly maintenance.’ It was history repeating itself; but this time, unlike William, John acted the dutiful son and agreed. The next stage, which was what his uncles had hoped for, for William, was to get John a fellowship somewhere, till it was time to take holy orders.

  One has to admit William’s pushing was masterly. He left no contact untapped. Not only did he write off about an imminent fellowship to his well-connected friends, such as Lord Lonsdale and Canning; he sent off duplicated lists of the Electors—‘to spare you the trouble of consulting the Oxford Callendar’—so that his powerful friends could cast their eyes at once over the list of people who would choose the Merton College fellows, and identify any they could influence. Lord Lonsdale turned up trumps, and named one such person. ‘I see two names on the list of voters which you have enclosed,’ replied Canning, ‘with whom it is possible that, if not pre-engaged, the expression of my wishes on your Son’s behalf may have some weight.’

  Alas, after all that valiant string-pulling, John was disqualified for the Merton Fellowship on a technicality. It turned out that his birthplace in the Lakes put him in the diocese of Chester (today, it’s the see of Carlisle), and they already had a fellow. Poor William had to write and apologize to Lord Lonsdale, and his other friends, for all their work. He now had to support John himself till it was time for him to take orders, which John did in 1828, when he took up a curacy in Leicestershire, in an area full of impoverished stocking-weavers, which wasn’t quite the sort of clerical position William had in mind for his elder son. However, it was near Coleorton, the Beaumonts’ family home, and the vicar in charge was, again, a personal friend of William’s.