De Quincy says that the habits of the poet Southey were exceedingly regular, and that all his literary business was conducted upon a systematic plan. He had his task before breakfast, which, however, must have been an inconsiderable nothing, for it occupied him only an hour, and rarely that, for he never rose until eight, and always breakfasted at nine o’clock. He went to bed precisely at half-past ten, and no sleep short of nine hours, refreshed him, and enabled him to do his work. He usually dined between five and six, and his chief labour was done between breakfast and dinner. If he had visitors, he would sit over his wine, and talk; if not, he retired to his library, until eight, when he was summoned to tea. At ten he read the London papers; “and it was perfectly astonishing,” says De Quincy, “to men of less methodical habits, to find how much he got through of elaborate business, by his unvarying system of arrangement in the distribution of his time.” All his letters were answered on the same day that they arrived. Even his poetry was written by forced efforts, or rather, perhaps, by what De Quincy calls, “a predetermined rule.” It was by writing prose, however, that Southey got his living—made “his pot boil,” as he says; and his chief source of regular income was derived from “The Quarterly Review.” At one time, however, he received £400 a year for writing the historical part of “The Edinburgh Annual Register.” This, however, he gave up, because the publisher proposed to dock £100 from the salary which he had previously paid him.—Southey, however, could afford to lose this large income, because he had an annuity which had been settled upon him by his friend, Charles Wynne, “the brother of Sir Watkin, the great autocrat of Wales.” This annuity, however, when his friend married, Southey voluntarily gave up; and the Granvilles, to whom Wynne was related by his marriage, placed Southey on the civil list, for the sacrifice which he thus made.
Such, then, were the circumstances of Southey at the time of De Quincy’s visit, and it must be owned that they were very comfortable, for a poet. Wordsworth came on the day after De Quincy’s arrival, and it was evident that the two poets were not on the most friendly terms; not that there was any outward sign of this,—on the contrary, there were all the exteriors of hospitality and good feeling on both sides; but De Quincy saw that the spiritual link between them was not complete, but broken; that, indeed, they did not understand, or fully sympathise with each other. Their minds and habits were different—I had almost said totally different. Wordsworth lived on the mountain top, composed there, and drew his inspiration direct from Nature; Southey lived in his magnificent library, and was inspired more by books than by natural objects.—Wordsworth’s library consisted of two or three hundred volumes, mostly torn and dilapidated; many were odd volumes; they were ill bound—not bound—or put in boards. Leaves were often wanting, and their place supplied occasionally by manuscript. These books “occupied a little homely book-case, fixed into one of two hollow recesses, formed on each side of the fireplace by the projection of the chimney into the little solitary room up stairs, which he had already described as his ‘half kitchen, half parlour.’.... Southey’s collection occupied a separate room—the largest, and every way the most agreeable in the house.”
Wordsworth’s poetry was subjective—referred chiefly to the inner life of man; and his dealings with Nature had a special reference to this inner life, his imagery being the mere vehicle of his thought. Southey’s poetry, on the contrary, was essentially objective,—a reflex of the outward nature, heightened by the fiery colouring of his imagination. Wordsworth had a contempt for books, or, at all events, for most books,—whilst Southey’s library, as De Quincy says, was his estate. Wordsworth would toss books about like tennis balls; and to let him into your library, quoth Southey, “is like letting a bear into a tulip-garden.” De Quincy relates, that Wordsworth being one morning at breakfast with him at Grasmere, took a handsome volume of Burke’s from his book-case, and began very leisurely to cut the leaves with a knife smeared all over with butter. Now tastes and habits such as those which marked the two poets could not unite them very closely together; at all events, not at this time; although they were subsequently, and in later years, upon terms of close intimacy and friendship. Upon the present occasion, however,—that is to say, during De Quincy’s visit to Southey—the two poets managed very well together, and the evening was passed agreeably enough. Next morning they discussed politics, and to the horror of De Quincy, who was then a young man, and took no interest in the passing movements of nations, and had always heard the French Revolution, and its barbaric excesses, stigmatised as infernal,—who was, moreover a loyal person according to the tradition of his fathers, and a lover of Mr. Pitt—to his horror, the two poets uttered the most disloyal sentiments, denouncing all monarchial forms of government, and proposed to send the royal family to Botany Bay! This proposal, which Southey immediately threw into extempore verse, was so comical, that the whole party laughed outright, and outrageously; they then set off towards Grasmere.
De Quincy speaks in the highest terms of Southey, and in the comparison which he institutes between Southey and Wordsworth, the latter certainly sustains loss. I refer the reader to the “Lake Reminiscences” for this, and other most interesting particulars relating to these poets. Still I cannot bid adieu to these “Reminiscences,” without using them once more, as materials for an account of Greta Hall and its occupants.
Southey and his family did not occupy the whole of the Hall, but shared it with Coleridge and his family, and with Mrs. Lovell and her son. There was no absolute partition, but an amicable distribution of the rooms. Coleridge had a study to himself, in which was a grand organ, about the only piece of furniture it could boast of. To atone for this, the windows looked out upon a magnificent sweep of country, and objects of sublimity and beauty met the eye wherever it wandered. Southey’s library—already described as the best room of the house—was open to all the ladies alike. The books in it were chiefly English, Spanish, and Portuguese, well selected, being the best cardinal classics of the three literatures; fine copies, and decorated externally with a reasonable elegance, so as to make them in harmony with the other embellishments of the room. This was aided by the horizontal arrangement, upon brackets, of many rare manuscripts, Spanish or Portuguese. The two families always met at dinner, in a common drawing-room.
The scenery around Greta Hall was grand beyond all power of description. “The lake of Derwent Water, in one direction, with its lovely islands—a lake about ten miles in circuit, and shaped pretty much like a boy’s kite; the lake of Bassinthwaite in another; the mountains of Newlands, arranging themselves like pavilions; the gorgeous confusion of Borrowdale, just revealing its sublime chaos through the narrow vista of its gorge; whilst the sullen rear, not fully visible on this side of the house, was closed for many a league by the vast and towering masses of Skiddaw and Blencathara—mountains which are rather to be considered as frontier barriers, and chains of hilly ground, cutting the county of Cumberland into great chambers, and different climates, than as insulated eminences; so vast is the area which they occupy; though there are, also, rich, separate, and insulated heights, and nearly amongst the highest in the county.”
Such, then, is the description of Southey’s house and neighbourhood, as given by De Quincy. The first visit of the Opium Eater to Wordsworth—including these visits to Greta Hall, and wanderings through the lake districts—extended over a week; and at the conclusion of that time, when it was necessary for him to return to Oxford, to save his Michaelmas term, he witnessed, and has described one of the most extraordinary scenes, at the table of the woman with the “Saracen’s Head,” in company with Wordsworth and his sister, that has, perhaps, ever been enacted at any supper table in the kingdoms of this world. I can give no account of it here, and refer the reader once more to the “Reminiscences:” all I will say, in conclusion is, that in the following November (1808), De Quincy returned to Grasmere, and took possession of the late cottage of the poet; who, with his family, had removed to a house, called Allan Bank, about three-quarters of a mile off, which had recently been built by a Liverpool merchant, at a cost of £1,500; a damp, cold, and incurably smoky house, which defects the poet set forth so eloquently to the proprietor, that he allowed him to live in it for a merely nominal rent.
The reason for Wordsworth’s removal, was the increasing number of his family. And here I may as well give a list of this family, adding to it the only one who was born after the period to which I now allude. They are as follow:—
John, born 18th June, 1803.
Dorothy, called, and generally known as, Dora, born 16th August, 1804.