Compare De Quincey’s account of the disaster that befell the Greens, as reported in his Early Recollections of Grasmere. The Wordsworths had evidently taken part in the effort to raise subscriptions in behalf of the orphan children. They issued a printed appeal on the subject. The following is an extract from a letter of Dorothy Wordsworth’s to Lady Beaumont on the subject:—
“Grasmere, April 20th, 1808.
“We received your letter this morning, enclosing the half of a £5 note. I am happy to inform you that the orphans have been fixed under the care of very respectable people. The baby is with its sister—she who filled the Mother’s place in the house during their two days of fearless solitude. It has clung to her ever since, and she has been its sole nurse. I went with two ladies of the Committee (in my sister’s place, who was then confined to poor John’s bedside) to conduct the family to their separate homes. The two Girls are together, as I have said; two Boys at another Home; and the third Boy by himself at the house of an elderly man who had a particular friendship for their father. The kind reception that the children met with was very affecting.”
See the letters from Wordsworth to Richard Sharpe, Esq., Mark Lane, London, in a subsequent volume, referring to the catastrophe.—Ed.
Who weeps for strangers? Many wept
For George and Sarah Green;
Wept for that pair’s unhappy fate,
Whose grave may here be seen.[377]
By night, upon these stormy fells,[378] 5
Did wife and husband roam;