William Wordsworth

by Hunter Davies

  Dorothy, who was now established as the family’s travelling housekeeper and nurse, when she wasn’t looking after the home while they were all away, went down to Leicestershire for the winter of 1828, to join John in his lonely and draughty parsonage and help him set up a home, though William, having done so much for him, realized that he was now on his own. ‘He will be thrown for advancement and maintenance upon his own exertions.’

  Dora, as we have seen, had by now become William’s regular travelling friend and companion, another lady in his household. In a way, she took over from Dorothy: a fresh source of female comfort and pleasure at William’s side, an eager sightseer, a keen observer of the world and an excellent letter-writer, though slightly sharper than Dorothy in her gentle teasing of her father. ‘This letter with the usual Wordsworthian coolness is to give note that the two Poets and their amiable Daughter hope to steam it from Ostend Tuesday,’ she wrote to Quillinan from her Low Countries tour with William and Coleridge. ‘Yesterday a pouring rain at Rotterdam gave Father time to half persuade himself into an Ague—but the symptoms have disappeared—I am a saucy Child as you know full well. He had a little cold from damp feet, was a little doleful and I was wicked enough to say it was ague.’

  In one of her Rydal letters, to a girl friend, she passed on a tit-bit of local conversation, having overheard what a neighbour had said about her father’s impending return from a long absence: ‘Why then we shal hae ’im booing again in that wood; he boos like a bull enough to freighten a body.’

  Dora’s health was a constant worry for her father and mother. ‘She is a complete air gage,’ wrote her mother in August 1827. ‘As soon as damp is felt the trouble in her throat returns—something connected with the trachea, that causes a cough and other inconveniences.’ To protect her from the Lakeland winter, they sent her south, from September to May, to stay with a friend, with William soon joining her, and she was away for a year in all. It seemed to help her quite considerably.

  She was devoted to her father, and he to her, though some family friends thought that it was a little unhealthy for such a lively girl, now approaching her late twenties, to be devoting her life to her father. ‘I have my suspicions,’ wrote Hartley Coleridge in 1830, ‘that she would be a healthier matron than a virgin, but strong indeed must be the love that could induce her to leave her father, whom she almost adores, and who quite doats upon her.’

  Willy turned out to be the biggest problem of all. After leaving Charterhouse in 1822 when he was twelve, he spent the next six years at home, supposedly being educated locally at Ambleside, but, in practice, doing and learning very little. William tried to put a brave face on it, telling Walter Scott in a letter in 1825 that Willy had left Charterhouse as his health had failed, ‘and is now with me preparing for Oxford’. In the winter of 1827, when his parents were in the south with Dora, hoping for an improvement in her health, Willy began thinking of the army. Dorothy, who was left at home looking after him, wrote to Quillinan, hoping he might put Willy off, having been in the army himself. ‘His thoughts turn (I fear constantly) on the Army. What have you to say for and against the profession? Not I expect much for it. And he seems little inclined to listen to the contra-side.’ Without telling his parents, Willy did apply for a commission—but was turned down.

  William tried to get him a position in business, looking for openings in a counting house when he was in London, contacting manufacturing concerns and, as always, applying to Lord Lonsdale for help, hoping he might procure some minor government position. Lonsdale replied that he’d been trying for two years to get a similar position for another friend’s son, and offered little hope. ‘He must go somewhere,’ moaned William, yet knowing he was so slow at learning of any sort, with a mind not disposed to the notion of books, that there were few openings. Willy had grown out of his early years of ill health, when the whole family had fussed over him, so that was one blessing. ‘He is in excellent health,’ wrote William, ‘nearly six feet high and for the exercise of walking equal perhaps to any man in Westmorland. Notwithstanding, I am afraid, that severe confinement, with hard head-labour, would revive his old complaint.’

  Even with his outdoor activities, which he appeared to love best of all, Willy wasn’t all that successful. ‘We are yet in a painful sort of uncertainty what is best to be done for Willy,’ wrote his mother to Quillinan in November 1828. ‘You shall hear when a decision is made, which ought to be shortly. Meanwhile, he does not make much havoc among the Snipes and Woodcocks—but he has caught a bad cold in search after them, wading up to the knees does not suit him.’

  William, in the same letter—it was often their custom to share letters to family friends—regretted the fact that Canning had recently died (in 1827). ‘Had Mr Canning now been living, I would have stated his situation, and given briefly Wm’s history to him, and I am simple enough to believe, for Canning had a respect for literature, and was a good natured man, that such a step would not have been without effect. As things are, his Mother and I are very anxious about him.’

  William wrote round to several places about possible tutors or crammers, at home and in Europe, where Willy might be sent to learn a language, or learn something. At length, in 1829, they packed him off to Bremen, hoping a knowledge of German might help him find some sort of an occupation.

  Domestically, life was very settled at Rydal, though there was one slight shock in 1826 when Lady Fleming, their landlady, said she wanted the house for her heir and the Wordsworths would have to leave. William bought the field adjoining the garden for £300 and threatened to build his own house in it, getting plans and designs ready, but Lady Fleming and the heir eventually let them remain. William later gave the field to Dora, and it’s still known as Dora’s field, a mass of daffodils every spring and much admired by visitors to Rydal.

  Sarah Hutchinson, Mary’s sister, was still part of the family, living most of the time with them, and a very jolly household it was. Dorothy often talked in her letters about Sarah and William having jokes together, on one occasion making up a skit on a well-known poem. ‘The first stanza of Ben Jonson’s poem slipped from W’s lips in a parody—and together they finished it with much loving fun. Oh! they laughed. I heard them in my room upstairs and wondered what they were about.’

  Mary had blossomed as the years went on, judging by her increasing part in the Rydal Mount correspondence. As she accompanied William on most of his travels, she wrote many of the letters afterwards, keeping up with their new friends. ‘From Idle Mount, which just now well supports that title,’ she wrote in 1827, ‘I have nothing but good to communicate.…’ That Idle Mount joke appears to have been hers, and she repeats it in other letters. The joke was true, as well, when one considers the Southey industry at Greta Hall. Old William had produced no new volumes for years and young Willy was still hanging around the house.

  Dorothy and William were still a devoted sister and brother, despite Dorothy’s now secondary role. She continued to go off on her lone little travels, most of them mercy visits, though she did have one good holiday in 1822, when she went to Scotland with Joanna Hutchinson, Mary’s sister. They did a lot of walking, proving she was still as strong as ever, but, like William, she was visually ageing quickly. As early as 1819, when just forty-eight, she was telling her old girlhood friend Catherine Clarkson that the years had caught up with her. ‘You will be surprised when you see me, in face a perfect old woman. I have only eight teeth remaining-two in the upper jaw, the rest below and those two or three are on the point of coming out. William preserves his teeth and does not look older for his years than formerly.’

  Just a few months later—in 1820, when she was in London with William and Mary—Dorothy realized her teeth had had their day. William wrote round to the leading dentists, comparing prices and references, as if he was dealing with innkeepers, and was somewhat alarmed that the best dentist was going to charge fifty guineas to make Dorothy some dentures. However, it was decided that she had to have them
made, regardless of expense. She was delighted to get rid of her old teeth, and felt much more comfortable, but knew it didn’t improve her looks: ‘For now my mouth is drawn up to nothing and my chin projects as far as my nose; but I look healthy enough, though I have lost 8 lbs since I was last weighed, being now only 6 stones 12 lbs.’

  Nonetheless, she was always ready and willing to go off on any long walk with William when required, and in 1828, aged fifty-six, she was boasting in a letter that she could still walk fifteen miles as briskly as ever.

  William’s own health was remarkable. In 1830, when sixty, Dorothy, with sisterly pride, wrote that he was still the crack skater on Rydal Water. ‘And as to climbing of mountains, the hardiest and the youngest are yet hardly a match for him.’ There’s no record of him ever having a day in bed because of any illness, even having colds and coughs, though he did have one nasty accident when he fell off his horse. It bolted as he was trying to mount it, and he was thrown against a stone wall and badly cut his head. He was never much of a rider, and usually preferred to walk, though he did one marathon ride, on his own, from Lancaster to Cambridge on Dora’s pony, encountering tremendous thunderstorms and other adventures. He contented himself, and forgot his discomfort, by composing verses for Sir George Beaumont as he sat in the saddle, soaked to the skin.

  His eyes were his only physical problem, and even his temperate habits, to which his family ascribed his normally perfect health, did nothing to alleviate them. He often found that he was unable to read for more than fifteen minutes without a hot and prickling sensation at the back of his eyes. In a letter to Charles Lamb in 1830, he told him he had the books he’d sent but was waiting for better light—he was writing in January—as he could no longer read at all in candlelight. ‘But alas, when the days lengthened my eyesight departed, and for many months, I could not read three minutes at a time.’ He did have good spells and he was always surrounded by enough helping eyes and hands, who could read to him and write his letters for him.

  Although he was still very careful with his money, he was in a much better financial state by the 1820s than he’d ever been, despite the cost of his children’s education. The new editions of his poems sold well and he expanded his stamp duties to embrace further areas. In 1821, he reported to Lord Lowther that he was collecting £18,000 a year in stamp revenues—you can see why the ladies were so worried when he was absent—but that only £200 in cash ended up in his pocket. In the same letter he bemoaned the fact that he was unable to take much advantage of a perquisite which usually came the way of a Distributor: ‘I might gain something by leaving it in my Banker’s hands till the end of the quarter were it not that the Currency in my district consists mainly of provincial notes, principally Scotch, on which the Bankers allow no interest till they have had them six weeks.’

  In 1825, he decided he wasn’t making enough money from the sale of his books and told Longmans, his publishers, that he was going to look elsewhere. William had been particularly upset when he’d discovered that so much of his profits were taken up by paying for their advertising costs, which appears to have been a custom of the time. He was also worried that some of his books were out of print. In reply, Longmans said they were sorry, but Wordsworth was a slow seller and they couldn’t improve their terms.

  Wordsworth got his friends to do the pushing for him, as he so often did, asking Samuel Rogers to contact the eminent publisher John Murray. William had decided in his head that he wanted a new edition of all his works, in some six volumes, for which he wouldn’t take less than £300, and without any advertising expenses being charged.

  Murray appeared very keen, so Rogers reported, but nothing happened. Rogers then went to see Murray in person several times, and Murray said how much he admired Wordsworth and his poems, but still no contract was forthcoming, nor even a letter. Finally, after many months of silence, William, greatly upset, told Rogers not to bother with Murray any more. ‘I am persuaded that he is too great a Personage for anyone but a Court, an Aristocratic or most fashionable Author to deal with.’

  Negotiations then began with another publisher, but they fell through—the publisher turned out to be going bankrupt—and William was forced in the end to go back to Longmans, where he lowered his terms, though he got a slightly better deal than he’d had in the past. In 1827, a new edition of his poems at last appeared on the book-stalls.

  William was always careful in all his financial affairs, writing endless letters to ask for advice when he had money to invest—and he often had quite a lot. In 1820, he was thinking of investing £2,000 in French stocks. In 1825, he had £500 available for railway shares. He was as temperate and sensible, careful and calculating with his money as he was with most things in his life. It was typical of his luck and prudence to escape from joining the publisher who was going bankrupt, just before the catastrophe happened, when he might well have suffered with him.

  They were all terribly upset at Rydal when the news of Sir Walter Scott’s financial disaster came through in 1826. His complicated publishing investments had collapsed and Scott became responsible for huge debts—and was himself declared bankrupt.

  Poor Sir Walter Scott! [wrote Dorothy]. I was indeed sorry to hear of his name in the Gazette—I did not see it myself and was in hopes there might be a mistake on the part of my informer. But the Sale of furniture, Books etc etc too clearly confirms the truth. How could it happen that he should so enter into trade as to be involved in this way. He a Baronet! A literary man! A lawyer. I wish very much for particulars. How does he bear the Change? I hope well, but am fearful that Lady Scott may not be fortified to the needful point having heard that she was a person fond of distinction and expense.

  They were very fond of William’s own distinction at Rydal Mount, now that he was famous, and were proud of his poems and his newly acquired favour with the critics; but they, like William, didn’t go in for any expensive show. They were all too sensible.

  DUDDON

  The last of his Duddon sonnets, which were based on his memories of journeys down the Duddon valley in the Lake District, especially with his wife Mary. They were published in 1820 to general acclaim.

  I THOUGHT of Thee, my partner and my guide,

  As being past away.—Vain sympathies!

  For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,

  I see what was, and is, and will abide;

  Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide;

  The Form remains, the Function never dies;

  While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,

  We Men, who in our morn of youth defied

  The elements, must vanish;—be it so!

  Enough, if something from our hands have power

  To live, and act, and serve the future hour;

  And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,

  Through love, through hope, and faith’s transcendent dower,

  We feel that we are greater than we know.

  19

  Troubles and Triumphs

  1830–1843

  AS we have seen, Dorothy left Rydal in the autumn of 1828 to spend the winter with John, acting as his housekeeper and helping him out generally in his first position as curate at Whitwick Church in Leicestershire. It appeared to be just a routine trip. Dorothy had been a universal aunt for several years now. She’d just finished almost a year in charge of Rydal Mount, while William, Mary and Dora had been away. She saw it as a pleasure, comforting her nephew in a strange new area, but there was something a bit plaintive in her letters written on arrival, describing John in his loneliness, suffering the dullness of long, empty evenings, stuck in a strange village, full of ‘poverty and all the bad habits attendant upon petty manufacturies in a crowded village … barren of society’. She planned to stay six months. After all, what else had she to do. ‘I am more useful than I could be anywhere else.’

  She faithfully reported John’s progress and how he was drawing larger congregations than the church had had before: ‘
I cannot say that he yet preaches with boldness and full effect, but really he reads the prayers, to my ear, very pleasingly, having a fine voice and a serious manner of delivery.’

  She didn’t complain that she herself was lonely, though she was rather wistful in a letter to Crabb Robinson, who had mentioned a trip to Rome. William had already seen every sight and city in Europe which he’d wanted to see, except for Rome. It had been a topic in family letters for years.

  ‘Alas for Rome. I never expect to set foot upon that sacred ground,’ wrote Dorothy. ‘Nor do I ever visit it even in a day dream. Indeed, when my Brother talks of Rome it always rather damps my hopes of even crossing the Channel again. So many circumstances must occur to make so large a scheme practical, and years slip away. On Xmas Day, I, the youngest of the three elders of the house, shall have completed my 56th year.…’

  In April 1829, by which time John had heard that a living of his own had been secured for him in Cumberland by Lord Lonsdale, Dorothy suffered a serious illness. For forty hours, it looked as though she would die. She’d apparently been for a long walk on a cold day and had been struck down by ‘internal inflammation’, suffered ‘excruciating torture’ and, even when the pain began to abate, was unable to speak for some time. It is now thought the illness was an attack of cholicystitis, with gall-stones. Willy happened to be there at the time, staying with his brother on the way to Bremen in Germany, and both nephews devotedly nursed her, till their mother came rushing down from Rydal.