Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 by Various

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It was sweet, as well as sorrowful, to see how he was mourned.
Everybody, from his old landlady, who cared for him like a mother, to
the infant-school children, missed Hartley Coleridge. I went to his
funeral at Grasmere. The rapid Rotha rippled and dashed over the stones
beside the churchyard; the yews rose dark from the faded grass of the
graves; and in mighty contrast to both, Helvellyn stood, in wintry
silence, and sheeted with spotless snow. Among the mourners Wordsworth
was conspicuous, with his white hair and patriarchal aspect. He had
no cause for painful emotions on his own account; for he had been a
faithful friend to the doomed victim who was now beyond the reach of his
tempters. While there was any hope that stern remonstrance might rouse
the feeble will and strengthen the suffering conscience to relieve
itself, such remonstrance was pressed; and when the case was past hope,
Wordsworth's door was ever open to his old friend's son. Wordsworth
could stand by that open grave without a misgiving about his own share
in the scene which was here closing; and calm and simply grave he
looked. He might mourn over the life; but he could scarcely grieve at
the death. The grave was close behind the family group of the Wordsworth
tombs. It shows, above the name and dates, a sculptured crown of thorns
and Greek cross, with the legend, "By thy Cross and Passion, Good Lord,
deliver me!"

One had come and gone meantime who was as express a contrast to Hartley
Coleridge as could be imagined,--a man of energy, activity, stern
self-discipline, and singular strength of will. Such a cast of character
was an inexplicable puzzle to poor Hartley. He showed this by giving his
impression of another person of the same general mode of life,--that
A.B. was "a monomaniac about everything." It was to rest a hard-worked
mind and body, and to satisfy a genuine need of his nature, that Dr.
Arnold came here from Rugby with his family,--first, to lodgings for an
occasional holiday, and afterwards to a house of his own, at Christmas
and Midsummer, and with the intention of living permanently at Fox How,
when he should give up his work at Rugby.

He was first at a house at the foot of Rydal Mount, at Christmas, 1831,
"with the road on one side of the garden, and the Rotha on the other,
which goes brawling away under our windows with its perpetual music. The
higher mountains that bound our view are all snow-capped; but it is all
snug, and warm, and green in the valley. Nowhere on earth have I ever
seen a spot of more perfect and enjoyable beauty, with not a single
object out of tune with it, look which way I will." He built Fox How,
two or three years later, and at once began his course of hospitality by
having lads of the sixth form as his guests,--not for purposes of study,
but of recreation, and, yet more, to give them that element of education
which consists in familiarity with the noblest natural scenery. The hue
and cry which arose when he showed himself a reformer, in Church matters
as in politics, followed him here, as we see by his letters; and it was
not till his "Life and Correspondence" appeared that his neighbors here
understood him. It has always been difficult, perhaps, for them to
understand anything modern, or at all vivacious. Everybody respected Dr.
Arnold for his energy and industry, his services to education, and his
devotedness to human welfare; but they were afraid of his supposed
opinions. Not the less heartily did he honor everything that was
admirable in them; and when he was gone, they remembered his ways, and
cherished every trace of him, in a manner which showed how they would
have made much of him, if their own timid prejudices had not stood in
the way. They point out to this day the spot where they saw him stand,
without his hat, on Rotha bridge, watching the gush of the river
under the wooded bank, or gazing into the basin of vapors within the
_cul-de-sac_ of Fairfield,--the same view which he looked on from his
study, as he sat on his sofa, surrounded by books. The neighbors show
the little pier at Waterhead whence he watched the morning or the
evening light on the lake, the place where he bathed, and the tracks in
the mountains which led to his favorite ridges. Everybody has read his
"Life and Correspondence," and therefore knows what his mode of life was
here, and how great was his enjoyment of it. We have all read of the
mountain-trips in summer, and the skating on Rydal Lake in winter,--and
how his train of children enjoyed everything with him, as far as they
could. It was but for a few years; and the time never came for him to
retire hither from Rugby. In June, 1842, he had completed his fourteenth
year at Rugby, and was particularly in need, under some harassing cares,
of the solace and repose which a few hours more would have brought him,
when he was cut off by an illness of two hours. On the day when he was
to have been returning to Fox How, some of his children were travelling
thence to his funeral. His biographer tells us how strong was the
consternation at Rugby, when the tidings spread on that Sunday morning,
"Dr. Arnold is dead." Not slight was the emotion throughout this valley,
when the news passed from house to house, the next day. As I write, I
see the windows which were closed that day, and the trees round the
house,--so grown up since he walked among them!--and the course of the
Rotha, which winds and ripples at the foot of his garden. I never saw
him, for I did not come here till two years after; but I have seen his
widow pass on into her honored old age, and his children part off into
their various homes, and their several callings in life,--to meet in
the beloved house at Fox How, at Christmas, and at many another time.

This leaves only Southey and the Wordsworths; and their ending was not
far off. The old poet had seen almost too much of these endings. One
day, when I found a stoppage in the road at the foot of Rydal Mount,
from a sale of furniture, such as is common in this neighborhood every
spring and autumn, I met Mr. Wordsworth,--not looking observant and
amused, but in his blackest mood of melancholy, and evidently wanting to
get out of the way. He said he did not like the sight: he had seen so
many of these sales; he had seen Southey's, not long before; and these
things reminded him how soon there must be a sale at Rydal Mount. It was
remarked by a third person that this was rather a wilful way of being
miserable; but I never saw a stronger love of life than there was in
them all, even so late in their day as this. Mrs. Wordsworth, then past
her three-score years and ten, observed to me that the worst of living
here was that it made one so unwilling to go. It seems but lately that
she said so; yet she nursed to their graves her daughter and her husband
and his sister, and she herself became blind; so that it was not hard
"to go," when the time came.

Southey's decline was painful to witness,--even as his beloved wife's
had been to himself. He never got over her loss; and his mind was
decidedly shaken before he made the second marriage which has been so
much talked over. One most touching scene there was when he had become
unconscious of all that was said and done around him. Mrs. Southey had
been careless of her own interests about money when she married him, and
had sought no protection for her own property. When there was manifestly
no hope of her husband's mind ever recovering, his brother assembled the
family and other witnesses, and showed them a kind of will which he had
drawn up, by which Mrs. Southey's property was returned to herself,
intact. He said they were all aware that their relative could not, in
his condition, make a will, and that he was even unaware of what they
were doing; but that it was right that they should, pledge themselves by
some overt act to fulfil what would certainly have been his wish. The
bowed head could not be raised, but the nerveless hand was guided to
sign the instrument; and all present agreed to respect it as if it
were a veritable will,--as of course they did. The decline was full of
painful circumstances; and it must have been with a heart full of sorrow
that Wordsworth walked over the hills to attend the funeral.

The next funeral was that of his own daughter Dora,--Mrs. Quillinan. A
story has got about, as untrue as it is disagreeable, that Dora lost
her health from her father's opposition to her marriage, and that
Wordsworth's excessive grief after her death was owing to remorse. I can
myself testify to her health having been very good for a considerable
interval between that difficulty and her last illness; and this is
enough, of itself, to dispose of the story. Her parents considered
the marriage an imprudent one; but after securing sufficient time for
consideration, they said that she must judge for herself; and there were
fine qualities in Mr. Quillinan which could not but win their affection
and substantial regard. His first wife, a friend of Dora Wordsworth's,
was carried out of the house in which she had just been confined, from
fire in the middle of the night; she died from the shock; and she died
recommending her husband and her friend to marry. Such is the understood
history of the case. After much delay they did marry, and lived near
Rydal Mount, where Dora was, as always, the light of the house, as long
as she could go to it. But, after a long and painful decline, she died
in 1847. Her husband followed soon after Wordsworth's death. He lies in
the family corner of Grasmere churchyard, between his two wives. This
appeared to be the place reserved for Mrs. Wordsworth, so that Dora
would lie between her parents. There seemed now to be no room left for
the solitary survivor, and many wondered what would be done; but all had
been thought of. Wordsworth's grave had been made deep enough for two;
and there his widow now rests.

There was much vivid life in them, however clearly the end was
approaching, when I first knew them in 1845. The day after my arrival at
a friend's house, they called on me, excited by two kinds of interest.
Wordsworth had been extremely gratified by hearing, through a book of
mine, how his works were estimated by certain classes of readers in the
United States; and he and Mrs. Wordsworth were eager to learn facts and
opinions about mesmerism, by which I had just recovered from a
long illness, and which they hoped might avail in the case of a
daughter-in-law, then in a dying state abroad. After that day, I met
them frequently, and was at their house, when I could go. On occasion of
my first visit, I was struck by an incident which explained the ridicule
we have all heard thrown on the old poet for a self-esteem which he was
merely too simple to hide. Nothing could be easier than to make a quiz
of what he said to me; but to me it seemed delightful. As he at once
talked of his poems, I thought I might; and I observed that he might
be interested in knowing which of his poems had been Dr. Channing's
favorite. Seeing him really interested, I told him that I had not been
many hours under Dr. Channing's roof before he brought me "The Happy
Warrior," which, he said, moved him more than any other in the
whole series. Wordsworth remarked,--and repeated the remark very
earnestly,--that this was evidently applicable to the piece, "not as
a poem, not as fulfilling the conditions of poetry, but as a chain of
extremely valuable _thoughts_." Then he repeated emphatically,--"a chain
of extremely _valuable_ thoughts!" This was so true that it seemed as
natural for him to say it as Dr. Channing, or any one else.

It is indisputable that his mind and manners were hurt by the prominence
which his life at the Lakes--a life very public, under the name of
seclusion--gave, in his own eyes; to his own works and conversation; but
he was less absorbed in his own objects, less solemn, less severed from
ordinary men than is supposed, and has been given out by strangers, who,
to the number of eight hundred in a year, have been received by him with
a bow, asked to see the garden-terraces where he had meditated this and
that work, and dismissed with another bow, and good wishes for their
health and pleasure,--the host having, for the most part, not heard, or
not attended to, the name of his visitor. I have seen him receive in
that way a friend, a Commissioner of Education, whom I ventured to take
with me, (a thing I very rarely did,) and in the evening have had a
message asking if I knew how Mr. Wordsworth could obtain an interview
with this very gentleman, who was said to be in the neighborhood. All
this must be very bad for anybody; and so was the distinction of having
early chosen this District for a home. When I first came, I told my
friends here that I was alarmed for myself, when I saw the spirit of
insolence which seemed to possess the cultivated residents, who really
did virtually assume that the mountains and vales were somehow their
property, or at least a privilege appropriate to superior people
like themselves. Wordsworth's sonnets about the railway were a mild
expression of his feelings in this direction; and Mrs. Wordsworth,
in spite of her excellent sense, took up his song, and declared with
unusual warmth that green fields, with daisies and buttercups, were as
good for Lancashire operatives as our lakes and valleys. I proposed that
the people should judge of this for themselves; but there was no end to
ridicule of "the people from Birthwaite" (the end of the railway, five
miles off). Some had been seen getting their dinner in the churchyard,
and others inquiring how best to get up Loughrigg,--"evidently, quite
puzzled, and not knowing where to go." My reply, "that they would know
next time," was not at all sympathized in. The effect of this exclusive
temper was pernicious in the neighborhood. A petition to Parliament
against the railway was not brought to me, as it was well known that
I would not sign it; but some little girls undertook my case; and the
effect of their parroting of Mr. Wordsworth, about "ourselves" and "the
common people" who intrude upon us, was as sad as it was absurd. The
whole matter ended rather remarkably. When all were gone but Mrs.
Wordsworth, and she was blind, a friend who was as a daughter to her
remarked, one summer day, that there were some boys on the Mount in
the garden. "Ah!" said Mrs. Wordsworth, "there is no end to those
people;--boys from Birthwaite!--boys from Birthwaite!" It was the Prince
of Wales, with a companion or two.

The notion of Wordsworth's solemnity and sublimity, as something
unremitting, was a total mistake. It probably arose from the want of
proportion in his mind, as in his sister's, before referred to. But he
relished the common business of life, and not only could take in, but
originate a joke. I remember his quizzing a common friend of ours,--one
much esteemed by us all,--who had a wonderful ability of falling asleep
in an instant, when not talking. Mr. Wordsworth told me of the extreme
eagerness of this gentleman, Mrs. Wordsworth, and himself, to see the
view over Switzerland from the ridge of the Jura. Mrs. Wordsworth could
not walk so fast as the gentlemen, and her husband let the friend go on
by himself. When they arrived, a minute or two after him, they found him
sitting on a stone in face of all Switzerland, fast asleep. When Mr.
Wordsworth mimicked the sleep, with his head on one side, anybody
could have told whom he was quizzing.--He and Mrs. Wordsworth, but too
naturally impressed with the mischief of overwalking in the case of
women, took up a wholly mistaken notion that I walked too much. One day
I was returning from a circuit of ten miles with a guest, when we
met the Wordsworths. They asked where we had been. "By Red Bank to
Grasmere." Whereupon Mr. Wordsworth laid his hand on my guest's arm,
saying, "There, there! take care what you are about! don't let her lead
you about! I can tell you, she has killed off half the gentlemen in the
county!"--Mrs. Hemans tells us, that, before she had known him many
hours, she was saying to him, "Dear me, Mr. Wordsworth! how can you be
so giddy?"

His interest in common things never failed. It has been observed that
he and Mrs. Wordsworth did incalculable good by the example they
unconsciously set the neighborhood of respectable thrift. There are no
really poor people at Rydal, because the great lady at the Hall, Lady Le
Fleming, takes care that there shall be none,--at the expense of great
moral mischief. But there is a prevalent recklessness, grossness, and
mingled extravagance and discomfort in the family management, which, I
am told, was far worse when the Wordsworths came than it is now. Going
freely among the neighbors, and welcoming and helping them familiarly,
the Wordsworths laid their own lives open to observation; and the
mingled carefulness and comfort--the good thrift, in short--wrought as
a powerful lesson all around. As for what I myself saw,--they took a
practical interest in my small purchase of land for my abode; and Mr.
Wordsworth often came to consult upon the plan and progress of the
house. He used to lie on the grass, beside the young oaks, before the
foundations were dug; and he referred me to Mrs. Wordsworth as the best
possible authority about the placing of windows and beds. He climbed to
the upper rooms before there was a staircase; and we had to set Mrs.
Wordsworth as a watch over him, when there was a staircase, but no
balustrade. When the garden was laid out, he planted a stone-pine
(which is flourishing) under the terrace-wall, washed his hands in the
watering-pot, and gave the place and me at once his blessing and some
thrifty counsel. When I began farming, he told me an immense deal about
his cow; and both of them came to see my first calf, and ascertain
whether she had the proper marks of the handsome short-horn of the
region. The distinctive impression which the family made on the minds
of the people about them was that of practical ability; and it was
thoroughly well conveyed by the remark of a man at Rydal, on hearing
some talk of Mrs. Wordsworth, a few days after the poet's death:
--"She's a gay [rare] clever body, who will carry on the business as
well as any of 'em."

Nothing could be more affecting than to watch the silent changes in Mrs.
Wordsworth's spirits during the ten years which followed the death of
her daughter. For many months her husband's gloom was terrible, in the
evenings, or in dull weather. Neither of them could see to read much;
and the poet was not one who ever pretended to restrain his emotions,
or assume a cheerfulness which he did not feel. We all knew that the
mother's heart was the bereaved one, however impressed the father's
imagination might be by the picture of his own desolation; and we saw
her mute about her own trial, and growing whiter in the face and smaller
from month to month, while he put no restraint upon his tears and
lamentations. The winter evenings were dreary; and in hot summer days
the aged wife had to follow him, when he was missed for any time, lest
he should be sitting in the sun without his hat. Often she found him
asleep on the heated rock. His final illness was wearing and dreary to
her; but there her part was clear, and she was adequate to it. "You
are going to Dora," she whispered to him, when the issue was no longer
doubtful. She thought he did not hear or heed; but some hours after,
when some one opened the curtain, he said, "Are you Dora?" Composed and
cheerful in the prospect of his approaching rest, and absolutely without
solicitude for herself, the wife was everything to him till the last
moment; and when he was gone, the anxieties of the self-forgetting woman
were over. She attended his funeral, and afterwards chose to fill her
accustomed place among the guests who filled the house. She made tea
that evening as usual; and the lightening of her spirits from that time
forward was evident. It was a lovely April day, the 23d, (Shakspeare's
birth--and death-day,) when her task of nursing closed. The news spread
fast that the old poet was gone; and we all naturally turned our eyes up
to the roof under which he lay. There, above and amidst the young green
of the woods, the modest dwelling shone in the sunlight. The smoke went
up thin and straight into the air; but the closed windows gave the place
a look of death. There he was lying whom we should see no more.

The poor sister remained for five years longer. Travellers, American
and others, must remember having found the garden-gate locked at Rydal
Mount, and perceiving the reason why, in seeing a little garden-chair,
with an emaciated old lady in it, drawn by a nurse round and round the
gravelled space before the house. That was Miss Wordsworth, taking her
daily exercise. It was a great trouble, at times, that she could not be
placed in some safe privacy; and Wordsworth's feudal loyalty was put to
a severe test in the matter. It had been settled that a cottage should
be built for his sister, in a field of his, beyond the garden. The plan
was made, and the turf marked out, and the digging about to begin,
when the great lady at the Hall, Lady Le Fleming, interfered with a
prohibition. She assumed the feudal prerogative of determining what
should or should not be built on all the lands over which the Le
Flemings have borne sway; and her extraordinary determination was, that
no dwelling should be built, except on the site of a former one! We
could scarcely believe we had not been carried back into the Middle
Ages, when we heard it; but the old poet, whom any sovereign in Europe
would have been delighted to gratify, submitted with a good grace, and
thenceforth robbed his sister's feet, and coaxed and humored her at
home,--trusting his guests to put up with the inconveniences of her
state, as he could not remove them from sight and hearing. After she was
gone also, Mrs. Wordsworth, entirely blind, and above eighty years of
age, seemed to have no cares, except when the errors and troubles of
others touched her judgment or sympathy. She was well cared for by
nieces and friends. Her plain common sense and cheerfulness appeared
in one of the last things she said, a few hours before her death. She
remarked on the character of the old hymns, practical and familiar,
which people liked when she was young, and which answered some purposes
better than the sublimer modern sort. She repeated part of a child's
hymn,--very homely, about going straight to school, and taking care of
the books, and learning the lesson well,--and broke off, saying, "There!
if you want to hear the rest, ask the Bishop o' London. _He_ knows it."

Then, all were gone; and there remained only the melancholy breaking up
of the old home which had been interesting to the world for forty-six
years. Mrs. Wordsworth died in January, 1859. In the May following, the
sale took place which Wordsworth had gloomily foreseen so many years
before. Everything of value was reserved, and the few articles desired
by strangers were bought by commission; and thus the throng at the sale
was composed of the ordinary elements. The spectacle was sufficiently
painful to make it natural for old friends to stay away. Doors and
windows stood wide. The sofa and tea-table where the wisest and best
from all parts of the world had held converse were turned out to be
examined and bid for. Anybody who chose passed the sacred threshold; the
auctioneer's hammer was heard on the terrace; and the hospitable parlor
and kitchen were crowded with people swallowing tea in the intervals of
their business. One farmer rode six-and-thirty miles that morning to
carry home something that had belonged to Wordsworth; and, in default of
anything better, he took a patched old table-cover. There was a bed
of anemones under the windows, at one end of the house; and a bed of
anemones is a treasure in our climate. It was in full bloom in the
morning; and before sunset, every blossom was gone, and the bed was
trampled into ruin. It was dreary work! The two sons live at a distance;
and the house is let to tenants of another name.

I perceive that I have not noticed the poet's laureateship. The truth
is, the office never seemed to belong to him; and we forgot it, when
not specially reminded of it. We did not like to think of him in
court-dress, going through the ceremonies of levee or ball, in his
old age. His white hair and dim eyes were better at home among the
mountains.

There stand the mountains, from age to age; and there run the rivers,
with their full and never-pausing tide, while those who came to live and
grow wise beside them are all gone! One after another, they have lain
down to their everlasting rest in the valleys where their step and their
voices were as familiar as the points of the scenery. The region has
changed much since they came as to a retreat. It was they who caused the
change, for the most part; and it was not for them to complain of it;
but the consequence is, that with them has passed away a peculiar
phase of life in England. It is one which can neither be continued
nor repeated. The Lake District is no longer a retreat; and any other
retreat must have different characteristics, and be illumined by some
different order of lights. The case being so, I have felt no scruple in
asking the attention of my readers to a long story, and to full details
of some of the latest Lights of the Lake District.

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