Perhaps the world will never know how much Wordsworth really owed to the two women of his household. They lived together with no sign of jealousy or distrust. The husband and brother was the object of their untiring and sympathetic devotion. They walked with him, read with him, cared for him. Mrs. Wordsworth seems to have been a plain country-woman of simple manners, yet possessed of a graciousness and tact which made everything in the household go smoothly. De Quincey declared that, “without being handsome or even comely,” she exercised “all the practical fascination of beauty, through the mere compensating charms of sweetness all but angelic, of simplicity the most entire, womanly self-respect and purity of heart speaking through all her looks, acts, and movements.” Wordsworth was never more sincere than when he sang,—
“She was a phantom of delight,”
and closed the poem with that splendid tribute to a most excellent wife:—
| “A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light.” |
He recognized her unusual poetic instinct by giving her full credit for the best two lines in one of his most beautiful poems, “The Daffodils”:—
| “They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude.” |
To the other member of that household, his sister Dorothy, Wordsworth gave from early boyhood the full measure of his affection. She was his constant companion in his walks, at all hours and in all kinds of weather. She cheerfully performed the irksome task of writing out his verses from dictation. Her observations of nature were as keen as his, and the poet was indebted to Dorothy’s notebook for many a good suggestion. He has been most generous in his acknowledgments of his obligation to her:—
| “She gave me eyes, she gave me ears, And humble cares, and delicate fears, ******* And love, and thought, and joy.” |
In the early days when he was overwhelmed with adverse criticism and brought almost to the verge of despair, it was Dorothy’s helping hand that brought him back to his own.
| “She whispered still that brightness would return; She, in the midst of all, preserved me still A poet, made me seek beneath that name, And that alone, my office upon earth.” |