'We left Cottle, as you know, at Greta Bridge. We were obliged to take the mail over Stanemoor: the road interesting with sun and mist. At Temple Sowerby I learned that John was at Newbiggin. I sent a note; he came, looks very well, said he would accompany us a few days. Next day we set off and dined at Mr. Myers', thence to Bampton, where we slept. On Friday proceeded along the lake of Hawes-Water, a noble scene which pleased us much. The mists hung so low that we could not go directly over to Ambleside, so we went round by Long Sleddale to Kentmere, Troutbeck, Rayrigg, and Bowness;... a rainy and raw day.... Went to the ferry, much disgusted with the new erections about Windermere;... thence to Hawkshead: great change among the people since we were last there. Next day by Rydal to Grasmere, Robert Newton's. At Robert Newton's we have remained till to-day. John left us on Tuesday: we walked with him to the tarn. This day was a fine one, and we had some grand mountain scenery; the rest of the week has been bad weather. The evening before last we walked to the upper waterfall at Rydal, and saw it through the gloom, and it was very magnificent. Coleridge was much struck with Grasmere and its neighbourhood. I have much to say to you. You will think my plan a mad one, but I have thought of building a house there by the lake-side. John would give me 40l. to buy the ground. There is a small house at Grasmere empty, which, perhaps, we may take; but of this we will speak.'[46]
24. At the Lakes.
LETTER TO COLERIDGE (1799): JOURNEY FROM SOCKBURN TO GRASMERE.
'We arrived here on the evening of St. Thomas's day, last Friday [1799], and have now been four days in our new abode without writing to you—a long time! but we have been in such confusion as not to have had a moment's leisure. My dear friend, we talk of you perpetually, and for me I see you every where. But let me be a little more methodical. We left Sockburn last Tuesday morning. We crossed the Tees by moonlight in the Sockburn fields, and after ten good miles' riding came in sight of the Swale. It is there a beautiful river, with its green bank and flat holms scattered over with trees. Four miles further brought us to Richmond, with its huge ivied castle, its friarage steeple, its castle tower resembling a huge steeple, and two other steeple towers, for such they appeared to us. The situation of this place resembles that of Barnard Castle, but I should suppose is somewhat inferior to it. George accompanied us eight miles further, and there we parted with sorrowful hearts. We were now in Wensley Dale, and D[orothy] and I set off side by side to foot it as far as Kendal. I will not clog my letter with a description of this celebrated dale; but I must not neglect to mention that a little before sunset we reached one of the waterfalls, of which I read you a short description in Mr. Taylor's tour. It is a singular scene; I meant to have given you some account of it, but I feel myself too lazy to execute the task. 'Tis such a performance as you might have expected from some giant gardener employed by one of Queen Elizabeth's courtiers, if this same giant gardener had consulted with Spenser, and they two had finished the work together. By this you will understand that it is at once formal and wild. We reached Askrigg, twelve miles, before six in the evening, having been obliged to walk the last two miles over hard frozen roads, to the great annoyance of our ankles and feet. Next morning the earth was thinly covered with snow, enough to make the road soft, and prevent its being slippery. On leaving Askrigg, we turned aside to see another waterfall. It was a beautiful morning, with driving snow showers, which disappeared by fits, and unveiled the east, which was all one delicious pale orange colour. After walking through two small fields we came to a mill, which we passed; and in a moment a sweet little valley opened before us with an area of grassy ground, and a stream dashing over various laminae of black rocks close under a bank covered with firs; the bank and stream on our left, another woody bank on our right, and the flat meadow in front, from which, as at Buttermere the stream had retired, as it were, to hide itself under the shade. As we walked up this delightful valley we were tempted to look back perpetually on the stream, which reflected the orange lights of the morning among the gloomy rocks, with a brightness varying with the agitation of the current. The steeple of Askrigg was between us and the east, at the bottom of the valley; it was not a quarter of a mile distant, but oh! how far we were from it! The two banks seemed to join before us with a facing of rock common to them both. When we reached this bottom the valley opened out again; two rocky banks on each side, which, hung with ivy and moss, and fringed luxuriantly with brushwood, ran directly parallel to each other, and then approaching with a gentle curve at their point of union, presented a lofty waterfall, the termination of the valley. It was a keen frosty morning, showers of snow threatening us, but the sun bright and active. We had a task of twenty-one miles to perform in a short winter's day. All this put our minds into such a state of excitation, that we were no unworthy spectators of this delightful scene. On a nearer approach the waters seemed to fall down a tall arch, or niche, that had shaped itself by insensible moulderings in the wall of an old castle. We left this spot with reluctance, but highly exhilarated. When we had walked about a mile and a half, we overtook two men with a string of ponies and some empty carts. I recommended to Dorothy to avail herself of this opportunity of husbanding her strength: we rode with them more than two miles. 'Twas bitter cold, the wind driving the snow behind us in the best style of a mountain storm. We soon reached an inn at a place called Hardrane, and descending from our vehicles, after warming ourselves by the cottage fire, we walked up the brook-side to take a view of a third waterfall. We had not walked above a few hundred yards between two winding rocky banks, before we came full upon the waterfall, which seemed to throw itself in a narrow line from a lofty wall of rock, the water, which shot manifestly to some distance from the rock, seeming to be dispersed into a thin shower scarcely visible before it reached the bason. We were disappointed in the cascade itself, though the introductory and accompanying banks were an exquisite mixture of grandeur and beauty. We walked up to the fall; and what would I not give if I could convey to you the feelings and images which were then communicated to me? After cautiously sounding our way over stones of all colours and sizes, encased in the clearest water formed by the spray of the fall, we found the rock, which before had appeared like a wall, extending itself over our heads, like the ceiling of a huge cave, from the summit of which the waters shot directly over our heads into a bason, and among fragments wrinkled over with masses of ice as white as snow, or rather, as Dorothy says, like congealed froth. The water fell at least ten yards from us, and we stood directly behind it, the excavation not so deep in the rock as to impress any feeling of darkness, but lofty and magnificent; but in connection with the adjoining banks excluding as much of the sky as could well be spared from a scene so exquisitely beautiful. The spot where we stood was as dry as the chamber in which I am now sitting, and the incumbent rock, of which the groundwork was limestone, veined and dappled with colours which melted into each other with every possible variety of colour. On the summit of the cave were three festoons, or rather wrinkles, in the rock, run up parallel like the folds of a curtain when it is drawn up. Each of these was hung with icicles of various length, and nearly in the middle of the festoon in the deepest valley of the waves that ran parallel to each other, the stream shot from the rows of icicles in irregular fits of strength, and with a body of water that varied every moment. Sometimes the stream shot into the bason in one continued current; sometimes it was interrupted almost in the midst of its fall, and was blown towards part of the waterfall at no great distance from our feet like the heaviest thunder-shower. In such a situation you have at every moment a feeling of the presence of the sky. Large fleecy clouds drove over our heads above the rush of the water, and the sky appeared of a blue more than usually brilliant. The rocks on each side, which, joining with the side of this cave, formed the vista of the brook, were chequered with three diminutive waterfalls, or rather courses of water. Each of these was a miniature of all that summer and winter can produce of delicate beauty. The rock in the centre of the falls, where the water was most abundant, a deep black, the adjoining parts yellow, white, purple, and dove-colour, covered with water-plants of the most vivid green, and hung with streaming icicles, that in some places seem to conceal the verdure of the plants, and the violet and yellow variegation of the rocks; and in some places render the colours more brilliant. I cannot express to you the enchanting effect produced by this Arabian scene of colour as the wind blew aside the great waterfall behind which we stood, and alternately hid and revealed each of these fairy cataracts in irregular succession, or displayed them with various gradations of distinctness as the intervening spray was thickened or dispersed. What a scene, too, in summer! In the luxury of our imagination we could not help feeding upon the pleasure which this cave, in the heat of a July noon, would spread through a frame exquisitely sensible. That huge rock on the right, the bank winding round on the left, with all its living foliage, and the breeze stealing up the valley, and bedewing the cavern with the freshest imaginable spray. And then the murmur of the water, the quiet, the seclusion, and a long summer day.'[47]
25. Inconsistent Opinions on his Poems.
'HARMONIES OF CRITICISM.'
| 'Nutting.' | 'Nutting.' |
| Mr. C.W.: | Mr. S.: |
| 'Worth its weight in gold.' | 'Can make neither head nor tail of it.' |
| 'Joanna.' | 'Joanna.' |
| Mr. J.W.: | Mr. S.: |
| 'The finest poem of its length you have written.' | 'Can make nothing of it.' |
| 'Poet's Epitaph.' | 'Poet's Epitaph.' |
| Mr. Charles Lamb: | Mr. S.: |
| 'The latter part preëminently good, and your own.' | 'The latter part very ill written. |
| 'Cumberland Beggar.' | 'Cumberland Beggar.' |
| Mr. J.W.: | Mr. Charles Lamb: |
| 'Everybody seems delighted.' | 'You seem to presume your readers are stupid: the instructions too direct.' |
| 'Idiot Boy.' | 'Idiot Boy.' |
| Mr. J.W.: | Mr. S.: |
| 'A lady, a friend of mine, could talk of nothing else: this, of all the poems, her delight.' | 'Almost thrown by it into a fit with disgust; cannot read it!' |
| But here comes the waggon | |
| W.W.[48] |