Wordsworth, despite his dislike to great cities, was attracted occasionally in his later years
'To the proud margin of the Thames,
And Lambeth's venerable towers,'
where his society was courted by persons of the most different character. But he complained bitterly of the great city. It was next to impossible, he remarked, to tell the truth in it. 'Yesterday I was at S. House: the Duchess of S., showing me the pictures, observed, "This is the portrait of my brother" (naming him), "and it is considered very like." To this I assented, partly perhaps in absence of mind, but partly, I think, with an impression that her Grace's brother was probably a person whose face every one knew, or was expected to know; so that, as I had never met him, my answer was in fact a lie! It is too bad that, when more than seventy years old, I should be brought from the mountains to London in order to tell a lie!' He made his complaint wherever he went, laying the blame, however, not so much on himself, or on the Duchess, as on the corrupt city; and some of those who learned how the most truthful man in England had thus quickly been subverted by metropolitan snares came to the conclusion that within a few years more no virtue would be left extant in the land. He was likewise maltreated in lesser ways. 'This morning I was compelled by my engagements to eat three breakfasts—one with an aged and excellent gentleman, who may justly be esteemed an accomplished man of letters, although I cannot honestly concede to him the title of a poet; one at a fashionable party; and one with an old friend whom no pressure would induce me to neglect—although for this, my first breakfast to-day, I was obliged to name the early hour of seven o'clock, as he lives in a remote part of London.'
But it was only among his own mountains that Wordsworth could be understood. He walked among them not so much to admire them as to converse with them. They exchanged thoughts with him, in sunshine or flying shadow, giving him their own and accepting his. Day and night, at all hours, and in all weather, he would face them. If it rained, he might fling his plaid over him, but would take no admonition. He must have his way. On such occasions, dutiful as he was in higher matters, he remained incurably wayward. In vain one reminded him that a letter needed an answer, or that the storm would soon be over. It was very necessary for him to do what he liked; and one of his dearest friends said to me, with a smile of the most affectionate humour, 'He wrote his "Ode to Duty," and then he had done with that matter.' This very innocent form of lawlessness, corresponding with the classic expression, 'Indulge genio,' seemed to belong to his genius, not less than the sympathetic reverence with which he looked up to the higher and universal laws. Sometimes there was a battle between his reverence for Nature and his reverence for other things. The friend already alluded to was once remarking on his varying expressions of countenance. 'That rough old face is capable of high and real beauty; I have seen in it an expression quite of heavenly peace and contemplative delight, as the May breeze came over him from the woods while he was slowly walking out of church on a Sunday morning, and when he had half emerged from the shadow.' A flippant person present inquired, 'Did you ever chance, Miss F., to observe that heavenly expression on his countenance, as he was walking into church, on a fine May morning?' A laugh was the reply. The ways of Nature harmonised with his feelings in age as well as in youth. He could understand no estrangement. Gathering a wreath of white thorn on one occasion, he murmured, as he slipped it into the ribbon which bound the golden tresses of his youthful companion,
'And what if I enwreathed my own?
'Twere no offence to reason;
The sober hills thus deck their brows
To meet the wintry season.'
(k) FROM 'RECOLLECTIONS OF THE LAST DAYS OF SHELLEY AND BYRON.'
BY E.J. TRELAWNY. 1858 (MOXON).
Some days after this conversation I walked to Lausanne, to breakfast at the hotel with an old friend, Captain Daniel Roberts, of the navy. He was out sketching, but presently came in accompanied by two English ladies, with whom he had made acquaintance whilst drawing, and whom he brought to our hotel. The husband of one of them soon followed. I saw by their utilitarian garb, as well as by the blisters and blotches on their cheeks, lips, and noses, that they were pedestrian tourists, fresh from the snow-covered mountains, the blazing sun and frosty air having acted on their unseasoned skins as boiling water does on the lobster by dyeing his dark coat scarlet. The man was evidently a denizen of the north, his accent harsh, skin white, of an angular and bony build, and self-confident and dogmatic in his opinions. The precision and quaintness of his language, as well as his eccentric remarks on common things, stimulated my mind. Our icy islanders thaw rapidly when they have drifted into warmer latitudes: broken loose from its anti-social system, mystic castes, coteries, sets, and sects, they lay aside their purse-proud, tuft-hunting, and toadying ways, and are very apt to run risk in the enjoyment of all their senses. Besides, we were compelled to talk in strange company, if not from good breeding, to prove our breed, as the gift of speech is often our principal, if not sole, distinction from the rest of the brute animals.