“Aye! twine thy brows with fresh spring flowers,
And call a train of laughing hours,
And bid them dance, and bid them sing,
And thou, too, mingle in the ring.”
Miss Wordsworth gives the following sweet picture of the home at Grasmere on their return:—
“September 25th.—A beautiful autumnal day. Breakfasted at a public-house by the road-side; dined at Threlkeld; and arrived there between eight and nine o’clock, where we found Mary in perfect health. Joanna Hutchinson with her, and little John asleep in the clothes-basket by the fire.”
At the ferry-house, and waterfall of Loch Lomond, Wordsworth had been struck with the beauty and kindness of two girls whom they met there, and on his return to Grasmere he wrote the following lines upon one of them:—
“Sweet Highland girl, a very shower
Of beauty is thy earthly dower!
Twice seven consenting years have shed
Their utmost bounty on thy head:
And these grey rocks; this household lawn;
These trees, a veil just half withdrawn;
This fall of water that doth make
A murmur near the silent lake;
This little bay, a quiet road,
That holds in shelter thy abode;
In truth together ye do seem
Like something fashioned in a dream;
Such forms as from their covert peep
When earthly cares are laid asleep.
Yet dream and vision as thou art,
I bless thee with a human heart:
God shield thee to thy latest years!
I neither know thee, nor thy peers;
And yet my eyes are filled with tears.”
This Scottish tour was a little episode in the quiet history of the poet’s residence at Grasmere. The truth is, that Wordsworth could not at this time rest long, even in his beautiful Grasmere, without the excitement of pedestrian travel and adventure. It was likewise a part of his education as a poet; the knowledge which he thus acquired of men, manners, and scenery. He had devoted himself to poetry; and every thing that tended to feed the divine faculty, he grasped at with an avidity equally as intense as that with which your mere canine man grasps at food for his perishing body. Nothing comes amiss to him; high and low, great and small; from the daffodil to Skiddaw—from Skiddaw to heaven and its hosts of glorious stars,—all are seized by this omnivorous poet, fused in his mind, and reproduced by him in song. His limited means are no barrier to his wanderings; he and his sister can live upon black bread and water, so far as rations are concerned; but setting aside the necessity of the case, this economy is for a sacred purpose,—viz.:—that they may enjoy the communion of Nature, and partake of her spiritual banquets. The gods, however, had determined to pet Wordsworth, and recompense him for his religious devotion to their doings through early life; and, to say nothing of the bequest of Raisley Calvert, the second Lord Lonsdale, just as the poet needed a wife, and larger means, paid the debt which his predecessor owed to Wordsworth’s father, amounting to £1,800, as the share of each member of the family. This was a most fortunate circumstance to Wordsworth and his sister; though it mattered little to the rest, because they were well appointed in life. De Quincy says that, a regular succession of similar, but superior, God-sends fell upon Wordsworth, to enable him to sustain his expenditure duly, as it grew with the growing claims upon his purse; and after enumerating the three items of “good luck,” mentioned above, he adds:—and “fourthly, some worthy uncle of Mrs. Wordsworth’s was pleased to betake himself to a better world; leaving to various nieces, and especially to Mrs. W., something or other, I forget what, but it was expressed by thousands of pounds. At this moment Wordsworth’s family had begun to increase; and the worthy old uncle, like every body else in Wordsworth’s case (I wish I could say the same in my own), finding his property clearly ‘wanted,’ and as people would tell him ‘bespoke,’ felt how very indelicate it would look for him to stay any longer, and so he moved off. But Wordsworth’s family, and the wants of that family, still continued to increase; and the next person, being the fifth, who stood in the way, and must, therefore, have considered himself rapidly growing into a nuisance, was the Stamp-Distributor for the county of Westmorland. About March, 1814, I think it was, that this very comfortable situation was vacated. Probably it took a month for the news to reach him; because in April, and not before, feeling that he had received a proper notice to quit, he, good man—this Stamp-Distributor—like all the rest, distributed himself and his offices into two different places,—the latter falling of course into the hands of Wordsworth.
“This office, which it was Wordsworth’s pleasure to speak of as a little one, yielded, I believe, somewhere about £500 a year. Gradually even that, with all former sources of income, became insufficient; which ought not to surprise anybody; for a son at Oxford, as a gentleman-commoner, could spend at least £300 per annum; and there were other children. Still it is wrong to say, that it had become insufficient; as usual it had not come to that; but, on the first symptoms arising that it would soon come to that, somebody, of course, had notice to consider himself a sort of nuisance elect,—and in this case it was the Distributor of Stamps for the county of Cumberland.” And in this strain of good-humoured banter—stimulated no doubt by his own precarious circumstances, in a measure, circumstances which ought not in his case to be precarious,—De Quincy relates how another £400 a year was added to the poet’s income from the increase of his district as Stamp-Distributor.
In 1842, since De Quincy wrote the above, Wordsworth resigned this office, and it was bestowed upon his son,—whilst he (the poet,) was put down upon the Civil-list for £300 a year, and finally made Poet Laureate.
To return, however, to the more even tenor of these Memoirs:—A circumstance occurred in the year 1803, shortly after the Scottish tour, which will further illustrate the “good luck” of Wordsworth, although in this instance he did not avail himself of it. Sir George Beaumont, the painter, out of pure sympathy with the poet,—and before he had seen or written to him,—purchased a beautiful little estate at Applethwaite, near Keswick, and presented it to him, in order that he (Wordsworth) and Coleridge, who was then residing at Greta Hall, might have the pleasure of a nearer and more permanent intercourse. A fragment of Sir George’s letter (good Sir George, who could recognise genius, and was noble and generous enough to prove his recognition in a most practical form) is printed in Dr. Wordsworth’s “Memoirs,” and it shews what a fine heart he had, God bless him! It is dated October 24, 1803, and runs thus:—
“I had a most ardent desire to bring you and Coleridge together. I thought with pleasure on the increase of enjoyment you would receive from the beauties of Nature, by being able to communicate more frequently your sensations to each other, and that this would be the means of contributing to the pleasure and improvement of the world, by stimulating you both to poetic exertions.” The benevolent project of this excellent baronet was defeated, partly because Coleridge soon after left Greta Hall for a warmer climate, being impelled to this course by ill health, and partly from private considerations respecting Wordsworth and his family, which, however, do not transpire in the “Memoirs.” A curious fact in connection with this gift of Sir George is, that Wordsworth neglected to thank the donor, or to take the slightest notice of it, for eight weeks after the writings were placed in his hands. In a letter addressed to the baronet, dated Grasmere, October 14th, 1803, Wordsworth apologises for this apparent neglect, and attributes it partly to the overpowering feelings with which the gift inspired him, and partly to a nervous dread of writing, and a fear lest he should acknowledge the honour that had been done him in an unworthy manner. “This feeling,” he says, “was indeed so very strong in me, as to make me look upon the act of writing to you, not as the work of a moment, but as a thing not to be done, but in my best, my purest, my happiest moments.” Thus strangely began one of the few friendships which Wordsworth cultivated with men, and one which lasted through the life of the noble-hearted baronet, who, in dying, in the year 1827 (on the 7th of February), left Wordsworth an annuity of £100 to defray the expenses of an annual tour. (Another instance of the poet’s “good luck!”) It is right to add, that Wordsworth was deeply affected by his friend’s death, and that he has left, in his “Elegiac Musings,” some noble lines to his memory.