'Ay, ay, time or two. But ya're weel aware there's potry and potry. There's potry wi' a li'le bit pleasant in it, and potry sec as a man can laugh at or t' childer understand, and some as taks a deal o' mastery to mak' oot what's said, and a deal of Wudsworth's was this sort, ye kna. You cud tell fra t' man's faace his potry wad nivver hev nea laugh in it.
'His potry was quite different wark frae li'le Hartley. Hartley wad gang runnin' beside o' t' becks and mak his, and gang in t' furst open deur and write what he hed gittin' on t' paper. But Wudsworth's potry was real hard stuff, and bided a deal of makkin', and he'd keep it in his head for lang eneuf. Eh, but it's queer, mon, different ways fwoaks hes of makkin' potry now. Fowks gaes a deal to see whar he's interred; but for my part I'd walk twice distance ower t' Fells to see whar Hartley lies. Not bit what Mr. Wudsworth didn't stand verra high, and was a weel-spoken man eneuf, but quite yan to hissel. Well, well, good-day.' And so we rose to go; he to his farm, I to my note-book.
I pass over sundry interviews of minor import, and will detail as accurately as I can the result of several conversations with one who as a boy lived as page, or butler's assistant, at Rydal Mount, and now himself in total eclipse (for he is blind) delights to handle and show with pride the massy, old-fashioned square glazed hand-lantern, that lighted his master the poet on his favourite evening walks.
We go through Ambleside to reach his house, and call for a moment at the shop of a man for whom on his wedding-day Hartley Coleridge wrote the touching sonnet in which he describes himself as
Untimely old, irreverendly grey,
and he will tell us that Mr. Wordsworth was not a man of very outgoing ways with folk, a plain man, a very austere man, and one who was ponderous in his speech. That he called very often at his shop, and would talk, 'but not about much,' just passing the day. He will tell us that Mrs. Wordsworth was a very plain-faced lady, but will add that, 'for aw that, Mr. Wordsworth and she were very fond of one another.'
There is, as one would expect, a sort of general feeling among the dalesmen that it was rather a strange thing that two people so austere and uncomely in mere line of feature or figure should be so much in love, and so gentle and considerate in their lives. I say as we should expect, for the men of Lakeland and the women of Lakeland are notably comely, their features notably regular. I do not myself know of a single instance of a really ugly married woman among the peasants that I have met with in Westmoreland. But at the same time we must remember that the word 'plain,' whether applied to dress or feature, in Westmoreland, means for the most part simple, homely, unpretending, unassuming, and is often a term of honour rather than dispraise.
We shall, perhaps, as we near the village where our blind friend lives, meet with an old man who will tell us that he helped to bear both the poet and his wife to the grave, but he will add that he was not 'over weel acquent wi' 'em, though he knas the room they both died in,' and that the time he saw most of the poet was the occasion when he conducted Queen Adelaide 'to see the Rydal Falls, and all about.'
We have got to the end of our walk, and here, picking his way by means of his trusty sounding-staff backwards and forwards in the sunshine he feels, but cannot see, is the old man, or rather old gentleman who in former times 'took sarvice along of Mr. Wudsworth,' and was 'so well pleased with his master that he could verra weel hev ended his days at t' Mount,' but found it was over quiet, and, wanting to see the world beyond the charmed circle of the hills, left a good place, but not before he had formed his opinion of both master and mistress, and obtained indelible impressions of their several personalities, and had conceived along with these an affection for them which glows in his words as he talks to us of them. 'Mr. Wudsworth was a plaain-feaced man, and a mean liver.' The description, as I hinted in the preface, would have staggered a philo-Wordsworthian unaccustomed to the native dialect. 'But he was a good master and kind man; and as for Mrs. Wudsworth, she was a downright cliver woman, as kep' accounts, and was a reg'lar manasher. He never know'd, bless ye, what he hed, nor what he was wuth, nor whether there was owt to eat in t' house, nivver.'
'But you say,' I interposed, 'that he didn't care much whether there was or was not food in the house.'