Chapter 136
I asked to see the cast from Chantrey's bust of him, which he at once showed me; also a crayon sketch by Haydon, which, I understood him to say, West had p.r.o.nounced the finest crayon he had ever seen. He referred also to another sketch, by Margaret Gillies, I think, which was there.
We then went out together on the lawn, and stood for a while to enjoy the views, and he pulled open the shrubbery or hedge in places, that I might see to better advantage. He accompanied me to the gate, and then said if I had a few minutes longer to spare he would like to show me the waterfall which was close by--the lower fall of Rydal. I gladly a.s.sented, and he led the way across the grounds of Lady Fleming, which were opposite to his own, to a small summer-house. The moment we opened the door, the waterfall was before us; the summer-house being so placed as to occupy the exact spot from which it was to be seen; the rocks and shrubbery around closing it in on every side. The effect was magical.
The view from the rustic house, the rocky basin into which the water fell, and the deep shade in which the whole was enveloped, made it a lovely scene. Wordsworth seemed to have much pleasure in exhibiting this beautiful retreat; it is described in one of his earlier poems, 'The Evening Walk.'
As we returned together he walked very slowly, occasionally stopping when he said anything of importance; and again I noticed that looking into remote s.p.a.ce of which I have already spoken. His eyes, though not glistening, had yet in them the fire which betokened the greatness of his genius. This no painter could represent, and this it was which gave to his countenance its high intellectual expression.
Hartley Coleridge he spoke of with affection.... 'There is a single line,' he added, 'in one of his father's poems which I consider explains the after-life of the son. He is speaking of his own confinement in London, and then says,
"But thou, my child, shalt wander like a breeze."
Of Southey he said that he had had the misfortune to outlive his faculties. His mind, he thought, had been weakened by long watching by the sick-bed of his wife, who had lingered for years in a very distressing state.
The last subject he touched on was the international copyright question--the absence of protection in our country to the works of foreign authors. He said, mildly, that he thought it would be better _for us_ if some acknowledgment, however small, was made. The fame of his own writings, as far as it was of pecuniary advantage to him, he had long regarded with indifference; happily, he had an income more than sufficient for all his wants.... He remarked, he had once seen a volume of his poems published in an American newspaper.
I happened to have in my pocket the small volume of selections, which you made some years ago. I produced it, and asked at the same time if he had ever seen it. He replied he had not. He took it with evident interest, turned to the t.i.tle-page, which he read, with its motto. He began the preface then, in the same way. But here I must record a trifling incident, which may yet be worth noting. We were standing together in the road, Wordsworth reading aloud, as I have said, when a man accosted us asking charity--a beggar of the better cla.s.s.
Wordsworth, scarcely looking off the book, thrust his hands into his pockets, as if instinctively acknowledging the man's right to beg by this prompt action. He seemed to find nothing, however; and he said, in a sort of soliloquy, 'I have given to four or five, already, to-day,' as if to account for his being then unprovided.
Wordsworth, as he turned over one leaf after another, said, 'But I shall weary you, sir.' 'By no means,' said I; for I could have been content to stand there for hours to hear, as I did, the Poet read from time to time, with fitting emphasis, the choice pa.s.sages which your preface and biographical sketch contain. Imagine with what delight I listened to the venerable man, and to hear, too, from his own lips, such words as these, your own most true reflection: '_His has been a life devoted to the cultivation of the poet's art for its best and most lasting uses--a self-dedication as complete as the world has ever witnessed_.' Your remark with regard to his having outlived many of his contemporaries among the poets, he read with affecting simplicity; his manner being that of one who looked backward to the past with entire tranquillity, and forward with sure hope. I felt that his honoured life was drawing rapidly to a close, and with him there was evidently the same consciousness.
He made but little comment on your notice of him. Occasionally he would say, as he came to a particular fact, 'That's quite correct;' or, after reading a quotation from his own works, he would add, 'That's from my writings.' These quotations he read in a way that much impressed me; it seemed almost as if he was awed by the greatness of his own power, the gifts with which he had been endowed. It was a solemn time to me, this part of my interview; and to you, my friend, it would have been a crowning happiness to stand, as I did, by his side on that bright summer day, and thus listen to his voice. I thought of his long life; that he was one who had felt himself from early youth 'a renovated spirit singled out for holy services'--one who had listened to the teachings of Nature, and communed with his own heart in the seclusion of those beautiful vales, until his thoughts were ready to be uttered for the good of his fellow-men. And there had come back to him offerings of love, and grat.i.tude, and reverent admiration, from a greater mult.i.tude than had ever before paid their homage to a living writer; and these acknowledgments have been for benefits so deep and lasting, that words seem but a poor return. But I will not attempt to describe further the feelings which were strongly present to me at that moment, when I seemed most to realise in whose presence I stood.
He walked with me as far as the main road to Ambleside. As we pa.s.sed the little chapel built by Lady Fleming, which has been the occasion, as you remember, of one of his poems, there were persons, tourists evidently, talking with the s.e.xton at the door. Their inquiries, I fancied, were about Wordsworth, perhaps as to the hour of service the next day (Sunday), with the hope of seeing him there. One of them caught sight of the venerable man at the moment, and at once seemed to perceive who it was, for she motioned to the others to look, and they watched him with earnest gaze. I was struck with their looks of delighted admiration. He stopped when we reached the main road, saying that his strength would not allow him to walk further. Giving me his hand, he desired again to be remembered to you and others in America, and wished me a safe return to my friends, and so we parted. I went on my way, happy in the recollection of this, to me, memorable interview. My mind was in a tumult of excitement, for I felt that I had been in the familiar presence of one of the n.o.blest of our race; and this sense of Wordsworth's intellectual greatness had been with me during the whole interview. I may speak, too, of the strong perception of his moral elevation which I had at the same time. No word of unkindness had fallen from him. He seemed to be living as if in the presence of G.o.d, by habitual recollection. A strange feeling, almost of awe, had impressed me while I was thus with him. Believing that his memory will be had in honour in all coming time, I could not but be thankful that I had been admitted to intimate intercourse with him then, when he was so near the end of life. To you, my dear friend, I must again say I owe this happiness, and to you it has been denied. You also, of all others of our countrymen, would have most valued such an interview, for to you the great Poet's heart has been in an especial manner opened in private correspondence. No other American has he honoured in the same degree; and by no one else in this country has the knowledge and appreciation of his poetry been so much extended. The love which has so long animated you has been such, that mult.i.tudes have been influenced to seek for joy and refreshment from the same pure source.
I have been led, as I said at the beginning of my letter, to make this record, partly from your suggestion, and partly from a remark of Southey which I have lately seen, to the effect that Wordsworth was one of whom posterity would desire to know all that can be remembered. You will not, I trust, deem the incidents I have set down trivial; or consider any detail too minute, the object of which was only to bring the living man before you. Now that he has gone for ever from our sight in this world, I am led to look back to the interview with a deeper satisfaction; and it may be that this full account of it will have value hereafter. To you it was due that I should make the record; by myself these remembrances will ever be cherished among my choicest possessions.
Believe me, my dear friend, yours faithfully,
Ellis Yarnall.[268]
[268] _Memoirs_, ii. 483-500.
(j) RECOLLECTIONS OF WORDSWORTH.
By Aubrey de Vere, Esq.
_(Sent to the present Editor, and now first published)_
PART I.
It was about eight years before his death that I had the happiness of making acquaintance with Wordsworth. During the next four years I saw a good deal of him, chiefly among his own mountains, and,
The veracity and the ideality which are so signally combined in Wordsworth's poetic descriptions of Nature, made themselves at least as much felt whenever Nature was the theme of his discourse. In his intense reverence for Nature he regarded all poetical delineations of her with an exacting severity; and if the descriptions were not true, and true in a twofold sense, the more skilfully executed they were, the more was his indignation roused by what he deemed a pretence and a deceit. An untrue description of Nature was to him a profaneness, a heavenly message sophisticated and falsely delivered. He expatiated much to me one day, as we walked among the hills above Grasmere, on the mode in which Nature had been described by one of the most justly popular of England's modern poets--one for whom he preserved a high and affectionate respect. 'He took pains,' Wordsworth said; 'he went out with his pencil and note-book, and jotted down whatever struck him most--a river rippling over the sands, a ruined tower on a rock above it, a promontory, and a mountain ash waving its red berries. He went home, and wove the whole together into a poetical description.' After a pause, Wordsworth resumed with a flas.h.i.+ng eye and impa.s.sioned voice, 'But Nature does not permit an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil and note-book at home; fixed his eye, as he walked, with a reverent attention on all that surrounded him, and taken all into a heart that could understand and enjoy. Then, after several days had pa.s.sed by, he should have interrogated his memory as to the scene. He would have discovered that while much of what he had admired was preserved to him, much was also most wisely obliterated. That which remained--the picture surviving in his mind--would have presented the ideal and essential truth of the scene, and done so, in a large part, by discarding much which, though in itself striking, was not characteristic. In every scene many of the most brilliant details are but accidental. A true eye for Nature does not note them, or at least does not dwell on them.' On the same occasion he remarked, 'Scott misquoted in one of his novels my lines on _Yarrow_. He makes me write,
"The swans on sweet St. Mary's lake Float double, swans and shadow;"
but I wrote
"The _swan_ on _still_ St. Mary's lake."
Never could I have written "swans" in the plural. The scene when I saw it, with its still and dim lake, under the dusky hills, was one of utter loneliness: there was _one_ swan, and one only, stemming the water, and the pathetic loneliness of the region gave importance to the one companion of that swan, its own white image in the water. It was for that reason that I recorded the Swan and the Shadow. Had there been many swans and many shadows, they would have implied nothing as regards the character of the scene; and I should have said nothing about them.' He proceeded to remark that many who could descant with eloquence on Nature cared little for her, and that many more who truly loved her had yet no eye to discern her--which he regarded as a sort of 'spiritual discernment.' He continued, 'Indeed I have hardly ever known any one but myself who had a true eye for Nature, one that thoroughly understood her meanings and her teachings--except' (here he interrupted himself) 'one person. There was a young clergyman, called Frederick Faber,[269] who resided at Ambleside. He had not only as good an eye for Nature as I have, but even a better one, and sometimes pointed out to me on the mountains effects which, with all my great experience, I had never detected.'
[269] Afterwards Father Faber of the Oratory. His 'Sir Launcelot'
abounds in admirable descriptions.
Truth, he used to say--that is, truth in its largest sense, as a thing at once real and ideal, a truth including exact and accurate detail, and yet everywhere subordinating mere detail to the spirit of the whole--this, he affirmed, was the soul and essence not only of descriptive poetry, but of all poetry. He had often, he told me, intended to write an essay on poetry, setting forth this principle, and ill.u.s.trating it by references to the chief representatives of poetry in its various departments. It was this twofold truth which made Shakspeare the greatest of all poets. 'It was well for Shakspeare,' he remarked, 'that he gave himself to the drama. It was that which forced him to be sufficiently human. His poems would otherwise, from the extraordinarily metaphysical character of his genius, have been too recondite to be understood. His youthful poems, in spite of their unfortunate and unworthy subjects, and his sonnets also, reveal this tendency. Nothing can surpa.s.s the greatness of Shakspeare where he is at his greatest; but it is wrong to speak of him as if even he were perfect. He had serious defects, and not those only proceeding from carelessness. For instance, in his delineations of character he does not a.s.sign as large a place to religious sentiment as enters into the const.i.tution of human nature under normal circ.u.mstances. If his dramas had more religion in them, they would be truer representations of man, as well as more elevated, and of a more searching interest.' Wordsworth used to warn young poets against writing poetry remote from human interest. Dante he admitted to be an exception; but he considered that Sh.e.l.ley, and almost all others who had endeavoured to out-soar the humanities, had suffered deplorably from the attempt. I once heard him say, 'I have often been asked for advice by young poets. All the advice I can give may be expressed in two counsels. First, let Nature be your habitual and pleasurable study, human nature and material nature; secondly, study carefully those first-cla.s.s poets whose fame is universal, not local, and learn from them: learn from them especially how to observe and how to interpret Nature.'
Those who knew Wordsworth only from his poetry might have supposed that he dwelt ever in a region too serene to admit of human agitations. This was not the fact. There was in his being a region of tumult as well as a higher region of calm, though it was almost wholly in the latter that his poetry lived. It turned aside from mere _personal_ excitements; and for that reason, doubtless, it developed more deeply those special ardours which belong at once to the higher imagination and to the moral being. The pa.s.sion which was suppressed elsewhere burned in his 'Sonnets to Liberty,' and added a deeper sadness to the 'Yew-trees of Borrowdale.' But his heart, as well as his imagination, was ardent. When it spoke most powerfully in his poetry it spoke with a stern brevity unusual in that poetry, as in the poem 'There is a change and I am poor,' and the still more remarkable one, 'A slumber did my spirit seal,' a poem impa.s.sioned beyond the comprehension of those who fancy that Wordsworth lacks pa.s.sion, merely because in him pa.s.sion is neither declamatory nor, latently, sensual. He was a man of strong affections, strong enough on one sorrowful occasion to withdraw him for a time from poetry.[270]
[270] 'For us the stream of fiction ceased to flow' (Dedicatory Stanzas to 'The White Doe of Rylstone').
Referring once to two young children of his who had died about forty years previously, he described the details of their illnesses with an exactness and an impetuosity of troubled excitement, such as might have been expected if the bereavement had taken place but a few weeks before.
The lapse of time appeared to have left the sorrow submerged indeed, but still in all its first freshness. Yet I afterwards heard that at the time of the illness, at least in the case of one of the two children, it was impossible to rouse his attention to the danger. He chanced to be then under the immediate spell of one of those fits of poetic inspiration which descended on him like a cloud. Till the cloud had drifted he could see nothing beyond. Under the level of the calm there was, however, the precinct of the storm. It expressed itself rarely but vehemently, partaking sometimes of the character both of indignation and sorrow. All at once the trouble would pa.s.s away, and his countenance bask in its habitual calm, like a cloudless summer sky. His indignation flamed out vehemently when he heard of a base action. 'I could kick such a man across England with my naked foot,' I heard him exclaim on such an occasion. The more impa.s.sioned part of his nature connected itself especially with his political feelings. He regarded his own intellect as one which united some of the faculties which belong to the statesman with those which belong to the poet; and public affairs interested him not less deeply than poetry. It was as patriot, not poet, that he ventured to claim fellows.h.i.+p with Dante.[271] He did not accept the term 'Reformer,' because it implied an organic change in our inst.i.tutions, and this he deemed both needless and dangerous; but he used to say that while he was a decided Conservative, he remembered that to preserve our inst.i.tutions we must be ever improving them. He was, indeed, from first to last, preeminently a patriot, an impa.s.sioned as well as a thoughtful one. Yet his political sympathies were not with his own country only, but with the progress of Humanity. Till disenchanted by the excesses and follies of the first French revolution, his hopes and sympathies a.s.sociated themselves ardently with the new order of things created by it; and I have heard him say that he did not know how any generous-minded _young_ man, entering on life at the time of that great uprising, could have escaped the illusion. To the end his sympathies were ever with the cottage hearth far more than with the palace. If he became a strong supporter of what has been called 'the hierarchy of society,' it was chiefly because he believed the principle of 'equality'
to be fatal to the well-being and the true dignity of the poor.
Moreover, in siding politically with the Crown and the coronets, he considered himself to be siding with the weaker party in our democratic days.
[271] See his Sonnet on the seat of Dante, close to the Duomo at Florence (_Poems of Early and Late Years_).
The absence of love-poetry in Wordsworth's works has often been remarked upon, and indeed brought as a charge against them. He once told me that if he had avoided that form of composition, it was by no means because the theme did not interest him, but because, treated as it commonly has been, it tends rather to disturb and lower the reader's moral and imaginative being than to elevate it. He feared to handle it amiss. He seemed to think that the subject had been so long vulgarised, that few poets had a right to a.s.sume that they could treat it worthily, especially as the theme, when treated unworthily, was such an easy and cheap way of winning applause. It has been observed also that the Religion of Wordsworth's poetry, at least of his earlier poetry, is not as distinctly 'Revealed Religion' as might have been expected from this poet's well-known adherence to what he has called emphatically 'The lord, and mighty paramount of Truths.' He once remarked to me himself on this circ.u.mstance, and explained it by stating that when in youth his imagination was shaping for itself the channel in which it was to flow, his religious convictions were less definite and less strong than they had become on more mature thought, and that when his poetic mind and manner had once been formed, he feared that he might, in attempting to modify them, have become constrained. He added that on such matters he ever wrote with great diffidence, remembering that if there were many subjects too low for song, there were some too high. Wordsworth's general confidence in his own powers, which was strong, though far from exaggerated, rendered more striking and more touching his humility in all that concerned Religion. It used to remind me of what I once heard Mr. Rogers say, viz. 'There is a special character of _greatness_ about humility for it implies that a man can, in an unusual degree, estimate the _greatness_ of what is above us.' Fortunately his diffidence did not keep Wordsworth silent on sacred themes; his later poems include an unequivocal as well as beautiful confession of Christian faith; and one of them, 'The Primrose of the Rock,' is as distinctly Wordsworthian in its inspiration as it is Christian in its doctrine. Wordsworth was a 'high churchman,' and also, in his prose mind, strongly anti-Roman Catholic, partly on political grounds; but that it was otherwise as regards his mind poetic is obvious from many pa.s.sages in his Christian poetry, especially those which refer to the monastic system, and the Schoolmen, and his sonnet on the Blessed Virgin, whom he addresses as
'Our tainted nature's solitary boast.'
He used to say that the idea of one who was both Virgin and Mother had sunk so deep into the heart of Humanity, that there it must ever remain.
Wordsworth's estimate of his contemporaries was not generally high. I remember his once saying to me, 'I have known many that might he called very _clever_ men, and a good many of real and vigorous _abilities_, but few of genius; and only one whom I should call "wonderful." That one was Coleridge. At any hour of the day or night he would talk by the hour, if there chanced to be _any_ sympathetic listener, and talk better than the best page of his writings; for a pen half paralysed his genius. A child would sit quietly at his feet and wonder, till the torrent had pa.s.sed by. The only man like Coleridge whom I have known is Sir William Hamilton, Astronomer Royal of Dublin.' I remember, however, that when I recited by his fireside Alfred Tennyson's two political poems, 'You ask me why, though ill at ease,' and 'Of old sat Freedom on the heights,'
the old bard listened with a deepening attention, and when I had ended, said after a pause, 'I must acknowledge that those two poems are very solid and n.o.ble in thought. Their diction also seems singularly stately.' He was a great admirer of _Philip van Artevelde_. In the case of a certain poet since dead, and never popular, he said to me, 'I consider his sonnets to be the best of modern times;' adding, 'Of course I am not including my own in any comparison with those of others.' He was not sanguine as to the future of English poetry. He thought that there was much to be supplied in other departments of our literature, and especially he desired a really great History of England; but he was disposed to regard the roll of English poetry as made up, and as leaving place for little more except what was likely to be eccentric or imitational.
In his younger days Wordsworth had had to fight a great battle in poetry, for both his subjects and his mode of treating them were antagonistic to the maxims then current. It was fortunate for posterity, no doubt, that his long 'militant estate' was animated by some mingling of personal ambition with his love of poetry. Speaking in an early sonnet of
'The poets, who on earth have made us heirs Of truth, and pure delight, by heavenly lays,'
he concludes,
'Oh! might my name be numbered among theirs, Then gladly would I end my mortal days.'
He died at eighty, and general fame did not come to him till about fifteen years before his death. This perhaps might have been fifteen years too soon, if he had set any inordinate value on it. But it was not so. Sh.e.l.ley tells us that' Fame is love disguised;' and it was intellectual sympathy that Wordsworth had always valued far more than reputation. 'Give me thy love; I claim no other fee,' had been his demand on his reader. When Fame had laid her tardy garland at his feet he found on it no fresher green than his 'Rydalian laurels' had always worn. Once he said to me, 'It is indeed a deep satisfaction to hope and believe that my poetry will be, while it lasts, a help to the cause of virtue and truth--especially among the young. As for myself, it seems now of little moment how long I may be remembered. When a man pushes off in his little boat into the great seas of Infinity and Eternity, it surely signifies little how long he is kept in sight by watchers from the sh.o.r.e.'
Such are my chief recollections of the great poet, whom I knew but in his old age, but whose heart retained its youth till his daughter Dora's death. He seemed to me one who from boyhood had been faithful to a high vocation; one who had esteemed it his office to minister, in an age of conventional civilisation, at Nature's altar, and who had in his later life explained and vindicated such life-long ministration, even while he seemed to apologise for it, in the memorable confession,