III
But we were talking about De Quincey. Yesterday was by no means a day wasted, for we got our amiable friend Franklin Abbott into our clutches, made him take a note of Reminiscences of the English Lake Poets (in the Everyman Series, we repeat) and insisted to him that for a man of genteel tastes this is one of the most entertaining works ever printed. And also by mere chance, which so often disposes the bright fragments of life into a ruddy and high-spirited pattern, we stopped in at a bookshop on Church Street just to say howdy to the eccentric Raymond Halsey. Happening to remark that it is now just a hundred years since the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater was published, Raymond disappeared with a rabbit-like scuttling motion; was heard digging among shelves at the rear, and returned with the smile of one who thinks he foresees a sale. It was a first edition of the Opium Eater with the magical imprint of Taylor & Hessey. Was there ever a more sacred name among publishers? We don’t need to remind you they were Keats’s publishers, too. “Only fifty dollars,” said Raymond, but it was lunch time and we had to leave.
In the dark rear chamber of a Cedar Street tavern, in that corner underneath the photographs of the “Cheshire Cheese,” something happened that seemed to us almost as pretty as anything published by the vanished Taylor & Hessey. Frank spied an old friend of his, a fellow Pittsburger, and the latter halted at our table on his way out. We complimented him upon the fine bronze patina of his countenance, to which he replied that he had been salmon fishing. “You know,” he said, “there are only three salmon-flies that I care a continental for,” and from his pocket he drew a small pink envelope. With a tender hand he slid its contents onto the board. “There they are,” he said. His voice seemed to change. “Dusty Miller, Durham Ranger, and Jock Scott.” The little feathery trinkets, glowing with dainty treacheries, lay there on the ale-bleached wood. Certainly it seemed to us there was poetry in that moment. “I go to Bingham, Maine,” he said, “and drive eighteen miles up the Kennebec.” (A small postern door opened gently upon another world.) “Old So-and-so is waiting at the station. He’s always there. I could leave to-night; he’d be sure to be there when the train got in.”
We had a perfectly vivid picture of old So-and-so waiting at the Bingham station. Yes, we could see him. Then the postern door closed, gently but definitely, with that strong pneumatic piston that is attached to all our doors.
We were saying, however, that De Quincey’s Reminiscences of the Lake Poets caused great indignation among the Grasmere coterie. This was due not to any malice in De Quincey’s manner of writing, which was affectionate and admiring throughout. It was due to something far more painful than malice—the calm, detailed, candid, and minute dissection of their lives. There was truly something astoundingly clinical in this microscopy. For instance, to take the case of Wordsworth’s household, these are some of the comments De Quincey makes:
(1) That Mrs. Wordsworth—whose charm and simplicity he adores—was cross-eyed.
(2) That Dorothy—Wordsworth’s sister—was a fervid and noble character, but stammered and was ungraceful.
(3) That Wordsworth’s appearance grew less attractive with advancing age.
(4) That his legs were very ill-shapen and “were pointedly condemned by all female connoisseurs in legs.” And that his shoulders were drooping and narrow.
(5) “The mouth, and the whole circumjacencies of the mouth, composed the strongest feature in Wordsworth’s face.” In fact, they reminded De Quincey of Milton.
(6) That he aged very rapidly—when thirty-nine he was taken to be over sixty.
(7) That his brother John, a sea captain, had lost his ship while drunk.
(8) That Wordsworth cannot have been amiable as a child.
(9) That the only time Wordsworth was drunk was as an undergraduate at Cambridge on visiting the rooms once occupied by Milton.
(10) That he had not the temperament ever to be an attractive wooer, and that it was “perplexing” that he had ever married.
(11) That he had had astonishing good luck in financial matters.
(12) That the Wordsworth menage was excessively plain and severe in simplicity.
(13) That Wordsworth and Southey did not really like each other.
(14) That Wordsworth treated books very barbarously, and used to cut the pages with a butter-smeared knife.
(15) That Wordsworth’s library was meagre and insignificant compared to Southey’s.
These are only a few of De Quincey’s remarks, digested to their naked gist; by which they lose all the amusing complexity of comment wherein they are folded. But the précis will suffice to show that, whether consciously or not, they were exactly calculated to wound, with very deep incision, the most delicate sensibilities of an austere, somewhat humourless and extremely self-regarding man.