Chapter IV: The Lake Poets: William Wordsworth and Robert Southey127 (2)

I made a memorandum at the time, to ascertain the peculiar taste of this worthy Cumberland farmer, in order that I might, at some future opportunity, express my thanks to him for his courtesy; but, alas! for human resolutions, I have not done so to this moment; and is it likely that he, perhaps sixty years old at that time (1813), is alive at present, twenty-five years removed? Well, he _may_ be; though I think _that_ exceedingly doubtful, considering the next anecdote relating to the same house:--Two, or, it may be, three years after this time, I was walking to Keswick, from my own cottage in Grasmere. The distance was thirteen miles; the time just nine o'clock; the night a cloudy moonlight, and intensely cold. I took the very greatest delight in these nocturnal walks through the silent valleys of Cumberland and Westmoreland; and often at hours far later than the present. What I liked in this solitary rambling was, to trace the course of the evening through its household hieroglyphics from the windows which I passed or saw: to see the blazing fires shining through the windows of houses, lurking in nooks far apart from neighbours; sometimes, in solitudes that seemed abandoned to the owl, to catch the sounds of household mirth; then, some miles further, to perceive the time of going to bed; then the gradual sinking to silence of the house; then the drowsy reign of the cricket; at intervals, to hear church-clocks or a little solitary chapel-bell, under the brows of mighty hills, proclaiming the hours of the night, and flinging out their sullen knells over the graves where "the rude forefathers of the hamlet slept"--where the strength and the loveliness of Elizabeth's time, or Cromwell's, and through so many fleeting generations that have succeeded, had long ago sunk to rest. Such was the sort of pleasure which I reaped in my nightly walks--of which, however, considering the suspicions of lunacy which it has sometimes awoke, the less I say, perhaps, the better. Nine o'clock it was--and deadly cold as ever March night was made by the keenest of black frosts, and by the bitterest of north winds--when I drew towards the gate of our huge and hospitable friend. A little garden there was before the house; and in the centre of this garden was placed an arm-chair, upon which arm-chair was sitting composedly--but I rubbed my eyes, doubting the very evidence of my own eyesight--_a_ or _the_ huge man in his shirt-sleeves; yes, positively not sunning but _mooning_ himself--apricating himself in the occasional moonbeams; and, as if simple star-gazing from a sedentary station were not sufficient on such a night, absolutely pursuing his astrological studies, I repeat, in his shirt-sleeves! Could this be our hospitable friend, the man-mountain? Secondly, was it any man at all? Might it not be a scarecrow dressed up to frighten the birds? But from what--to frighten them from what at that season of the year? Yet, again, it might be an ancient scarecrow--a superannuated scarecrow, far advanced in years. But, still, why should a scarecrow, young or old, sit in an arm-chair? Suppose I were to ask. Yet, where was the use of asking a scarecrow? And, if not a scarecrow, where was the safety of speaking too inquisitively, on his own premises, to a man-mountain? The old dilemma of the duel or the treadmill, if I should intrude upon his grounds at night, occurred to me; and I watched the anomalous object in silence for some minutes. At length the monster (for such at any rate it was, scarecrow or not scarecrow) solemnly raised his hand to his face, perhaps taking a pinch of snuff, and thereby settled one question. But that settled only irritated my curiosity the more upon a second: what hallucination of the brain was it that could induce a living man to adopt so very absurd a line of conduct? Once I thought of addressing him thus:--Might I presume so far upon your known courtesy to wayfaring strangers as to ask--Is it the Devil who prompts you to sit in your shirt-sleeves, as if meditating a _camisade_, or to woo _al fresco_ pleasures on such a night as this? But, as Dr. Y., on complaining that, whenever he looked out of the window, he was sure to see Mr. X. lounging about the quadrangle, was effectually parried by Mr. X. retorting that, whenever he lounged in the quadrangle, he was sure to see the Doctor looking out of the window, so did I anticipate a puzzling rejoinder from the former, with regard to my own motives for haunting the roads as a nocturnal tramper, without a rational object that I could make intelligible. I thought, also, of the fate which attended the Calendars, and so many other notorious characters in the "Arabian Nights," for unseasonable questions, or curiosity too vivacious. And, upon the whole, I judged it advisable to pursue my journey in silence, considering the time of night, the solitary place, and the fancy of our enormous friend for "braining" those whom he regarded as ugly customers. And thus it came about that this one house has been loaded in my memory with a double mystery, that too probably never _can_ be explained: and another torment had been prepared for the curious of future ages.

Of Southey, meantime, I had learned, upon this brief and hurried visit, so much in confirmation or in extension of my tolerably just preconceptions with regard to his character and manners, as left me not a very great deal to add, and nothing at all to alter, through the many years which followed of occasional intercourse with his family, and domestic knowledge of his habits. A man of more serene and even temper could not be imagined; nor more uniformly cheerful in his tone of spirits; nor more unaffectedly polite and courteous in his demeanour to strangers; nor more hospitable in his own wrong--I mean by the painful sacrifices which hospitality entailed upon him of time so exceedingly precious that, during his winter and spring months of solitude, or whenever he was left absolute master of its distribution, every half hour in the day had its peculiar duty. In the still "weightier matters of the law," in cases that involved appeals to conscience and high moral principle, I believe Southey to be as exemplary a man as can ever have lived. Were it to his own instant ruin, I am satisfied that he would do justice and fulfil his duty under any possible difficulties, and through the very strongest temptations to do otherwise. For honour the most delicate, for integrity the firmest, and for generosity within the limits of prudence, Southey cannot well have a superior; and, in the lesser moralities--those which govern the daily habits, and transpire through the manners--he is certainly a better man--that is (with reference to the minor principle concerned), a more _amiable_ man--than Wordsworth. He is less capable, for instance, of usurping an undue share of the conversation; he is more uniformly disposed to be charitable in his transient colloquial judgments upon doubtful actions of his neighbours; more gentle and winning in his condescensions to inferior knowledge or powers of mind; more willing to suppose it possible that he himself may have fallen into an error; more tolerant of avowed indifference towards his own writings (though, by the way, I shall have something to offer in justification of Wordsworth, upon this charge); and, finally, if the reader will pardon a violent instance of anti-climax, much more ready to volunteer his assistance in carrying a lady's reticule or parasol.

As a more _amiable_ man (taking that word partly in the French sense, partly also in the loftier English sense), it might be imagined that Southey would be a more eligible companion than Wordsworth. But this is not so; and chiefly for three reasons which more than counterbalance Southey's greater amiability: _first_, because the natural reserve of Southey, which I have mentioned before, makes it peculiarly difficult to place yourself on terms of intimacy with him; _secondly_, because the range of his conversation is more limited than that of Wordsworth--dealing less with life and the interests of life--more exclusively with books; _thirdly_, because the style of his conversation is less flowing and diffusive--less expansive--more apt to clothe itself in a keen, sparkling, aphoristic form--consequently much sooner and more frequently coming to an abrupt close. A sententious, epigrammatic form of delivering opinions has a certain effect of _clenching_ a subject, which makes it difficult to pursue it without a corresponding smartness of expression, and something of the same antithetic point and equilibration of clauses. Not that the reader is to suppose in Southey a showy master of rhetoric and colloquial sword-play, seeking to strike and to dazzle by his brilliant hits or adroit evasions. The very opposite is the truth. He seeks, indeed, to be effective, not for the sake of display, but as the readiest means of retreating from display, and the necessity for display: feeling that his station in literature and his laurelled honours make him a mark for the curiosity and interest of the company--that a standing appeal is constantly turning to him for his opinion--a latent call always going on for his voice on the question of the moment--he is anxious to comply with this requisition at as slight a cost as may be of thought and time. His heart is continually reverting to his wife, viz. his library; and, that he may waste as little effort as possible upon his conversational exercises--that the little he wishes to say may appear pregnant with much meaning--he finds it advantageous, and, moreover, the style of his mind naturally prompts him, to adopt a trenchant, pungent, aculeated form of terse, glittering, stenographic sentences--sayings which have the air of laying down the law without any _locus penitentiæ_ or privilege of appeal, but are not meant to do so; in short, aiming at brevity for the company as well as for himself, by cutting off all opening for discussion and desultory talk through the sudden winding up that belongs to a sententious aphorism. The hearer feels that "the record is closed"; and he has a sense of this result as having been accomplished by something like an oracular laying down of the law _ex cathedra_: but this is an indirect collateral impression from Southey's manner, and far from the one he meditates or wishes. An oracular manner he does certainly affect in certain dilemmas of a languishing or loitering conversation; not the peremptoriness, meantime, not the imperiousness of the oracle is what he seeks for, but its brevity, its dispatch, its conclusiveness.

Finally, as a fourth reason why Southey is less fitted for a genial companion than Wordsworth, his spirits have been, of late years, in a lower key than those of the latter. The tone of Southey's animal spirits was never at any time raised beyond the standard of an ordinary sympathy; there was in him no tumult, no agitation of passion; his organic and constitutional sensibilities were healthy, sound, perhaps strong--but not profound, not excessive. Cheerful he was, and animated at all times; but he levied no tributes on the spirits or the feelings beyond what all people could furnish. One reason why his bodily temperament never, like that of Wordsworth, threw him into a state of tumultuous excitement which required intense and elaborate conversation to work off the excessive fervour, was, that, over and above his far less fervid constitution of mind and body, Southey rarely took any exercise; he led a life as sedentary, except for the occasional excursions in summer (extorted from his sense of kindness and hospitality), as that of a city tailor. And it was surprising to many people, who did not know by experience the prodigious effect upon the mere bodily health of regular and congenial mental labour, that Southey should be able to maintain health so regular, and cheerfulness so uniformly serene. Cheerful, however, he was, in those early years of my acquaintance with him; but it was manifest to a thoughtful observer that his golden equanimity was bound up in a threefold chain,--in a conscience clear of all offence, in the recurring enjoyments from his honourable industry, and in the gratification of his parental affections. If any one cord should give way, there (it seemed) would be an end to Southey's tranquillity. He had a son at that time, Herbert[135] Southey, a child in petticoats when I first knew him, very interesting even then, but annually putting forth fresh blossoms of unusual promise, that made even indifferent people fear for the safety of one so finely organized, so delicate in his sensibilities, and so prematurely accomplished. As to his father, it became evident that he lived almost in the light of young Herbert's smiles, and that the very pulses of his heart played in unison to the sound of his son's laughter. There was in his manner towards this child, and towards this only, something that marked an excess of delirious doating, perfectly unlike the ordinary chastened movements of Southey's affections; and something also which indicated a vague fear about him; a premature unhappiness, as if already the inaudible tread of calamity could be perceived, as if already he had lost him; which, for the latter years of the boy's life, seemed to poison the blessing of his presence.

[135] Why he was called Herbert, if my young readers inquire, I
must reply, that I do not precisely know; because I know of
reasons too many by half why he might have been so called. Derwent
Coleridge, the second son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and first
cousin of Herbert Southey, was so called from the Lake of Keswick,
commonly styled Derwent Water, which gave the title of Earl to the
noble, and the noble-minded, though erring, family of the
Radcliffes, who gave up, like heroes and martyrs, their lives and
the finest estates in England for one who was incapable of
appreciating the service. One of the islands on this lake is
dedicated to St. Herbert, and this _might_ have given a name to
Southey's first-born child. But it is more probable that he
derived this name from Dr. Herbert, uncle to the laureate.

A stronger evidence I cannot give of Southey's trembling apprehensiveness about this child than that the only rude thing I ever knew him to do, the only discourteous thing, was done on his account. A party of us, chiefly composed of Southey's family and his visitors, were in a sailboat upon the lake. Herbert was one of this party; and at that time not above five or six years old. In landing upon one of the islands, most of the gentlemen were occupied in assisting the ladies over the thwarts of the boat; and one gentleman, merely a stranger, observing this, good-naturedly took up Herbert in his arms, and was stepping with him most carefully from thwart to thwart, when Southey, in a perfect frenzy of anxiety for his boy, his "moon" as he used to call him (I suppose from some pun of his own, or some mistake of the child's upon the equivocal word _sun_), rushed forward, and tore him out of the arms of the stranger without one word of apology; nor, in fact, under the engrossing panic of the moment, lest an unsteady movement along with the rocking and undulating of the boat should throw his little boy overboard into the somewhat stormy waters of the lake, did Southey become aware of his own exceedingly discourteous action: fear for his boy quelled his very power of perception. _That_ the stranger, on reflection, understood; a race of emotions travelled over his countenance. I saw the whole, a silent observer from the shore. First a hasty blush of resentment mingled with astonishment: then a good-natured smile of indulgence to the _naïveté_ of the paternal feeling as displaying itself in the act, and the accompanying gestures of frenzied impatience; finally, a considerate, grave expression of acquiescence in the whole act; but with a pitying look towards father and son, as too probably destined under such agony of affection to trials perhaps insupportable. If I interpreted aright the stranger's feelings, he did not read their destinies amiss. Herbert became, with his growing years, a child of more and more hope; but, therefore, the object of more and more fearful solicitude. He read, and read; and he became at last

"A very learned youth"--

to borrow a line from his uncle's beautiful poem on the wild boy who fell into a heresy whilst living under the patronage of a Spanish grandee, and finally escaped from a probable martyrdom by sailing up a great American river, wide as any sea, after which he was never heard of again. The learned youth of the river Greta had an earlier and more sorrowful close to his career. Possibly from want of exercise, combined with inordinate exercise of the cerebral organs, a disease gradually developed itself in the heart. It was not a mere disorder in the functions, it was a disease in the structure of the organ, and admitted of no permanent relief, consequently of no final hope. He died[136]; and with him died for ever the golden hopes, the radiant felicity, and the internal serenity, of the unhappy father. It was from Southey himself, speaking without external signs of agitation, calmly, dispassionately, almost coldly, but with the coldness of a settled despondency, that I heard, whilst accompanying him through Grasmere on his road homewards to Keswick from some visit he had been paying to Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, his settled feelings and convictions as connected with that loss. For _him_, in this world, he said, happiness there could be none; for his tenderest affections, the very deepest by many degrees which he had ever known, were now buried in the grave with his youthful and too brilliant Herbert!

[136] On the 17th of April 1816, aged ten years.--M.

SOUTHEY AND THE _EDINBURGH ANNUAL REGISTER_

De Quincey's recollection of the _Edinburgh Annual Register_ in connexion with Southey is altogether erroneous. Though there had been a project of some periodical of the kind by the Constable publishing house as early as 1807, the enterprise was not started till 1809, and then not by Constable at all, but actually in opposition to Constable by the new Edinburgh publishing house of John Ballantyne,--or rather, one might say, of Scott and Ballantyne, for Scott (secretly Ballantyne's partner already for a long while in his printing business) was Ballantyne's real backer and principal in the whole of this new concern. In a letter of Scott's to his friend Merritt, of date 14th January 1809, after announcing the great fact that a _Quarterly Review_ was forthcoming to counteract the _Edinburgh_, he adds:--"Then, sir, to turn the flank of Messrs. Constable and Co., and to avenge myself of certain impertinences which, in the vehemence of their Whiggery, they have dared to indulge in towards me, I have prepared to start against them at Whitsunday first the celebrated printer Ballantyne, with a long purse ['the purse was, alas! Scott's own,' Lockhart notes at this point] and a sound political creed, not to mention an alliance offensive and defensive with young John Murray of Fleet Street, the most enlightened and active of the London trade. By this means I hope to counterbalance the predominating influence of Constable and Co., who at present have it in their power and inclination to forward or suppress any book as they approve or dislike its political tendency. Lastly, I have caused the said Ballantyne to venture upon an _Edinburgh Annual Register_, of which I send you a prospectus. I intend to help him myself as far as time will admit, and hope to procure him many respectable coadjutors." In another letter, written just a fortnight previously, Scott had broached the subject of the new _Annual Register_ to his friend Kirkpatrick Sharpe, intimating that, though Ballantyne would be the managing editor, with himself for the real editor in the background, all the more important contributions would be from selected hands, and that, as the historical department was the most important,--a luminous picture of the current events of the world from year to year being "a task for a man of genius,"--they proposed to give their "historian" £300 a year,--"no deaf nuts," adds Scott, in comment on the sum. A certain eminent person had already been offered the post, Scott proceeds; but, should "the great man" decline, would Kirkpatrick Sharpe himself accept it? The "great man" was Southey; he did accept; and for some years he had the accredited charge of the historical department of the _Register_. From the first, however, the venture did not pay; and, the loss upon it having gone on for some time at the rate of £1000 a year, Scott,--who had been tending to a reconciliation with Constable on other grounds,--was glad when, in 1813, Constable took a portion of the burden of the concern off his hands. It is possible that this accession of Constable to a share in the management, and some consequent retrenchment of expenses, may have had something to do with Southey's resignation of his connexion with the _Register_. Not, however, till 1815, if we may trust Lockhart's dating, did that resignation take place,--for, in Lockhart's narrative for the following year, 1816, where he notes that Scott had stepped in for the rescue of the _Register_ by himself undertaking to do its arrears in the historical department, he gives the reasons thus:--"Mr. Southey had, for reasons on which I do not enter, discontinued his services to that work; and it was now doubly necessary, after trying for one year a less eminent hand, that, if the work were not to be dropped altogether, some strenuous exertion should be made to sustain its character."--From all this it will be seen that De Quincey is wrong in his fancy that the proposal to reduce Southey's salary (from £400 to £300, he says, but was it not £300 from the first?) was a mere device for getting rid of him because he was an Englishman, and because a Scottish "snob" of the Parliament House could be got to do the work at a cheaper rate; or, at all events, that he is wrong in attributing the shabbiness to Constable and the Whigs in Edinburgh. Southey's own fellow-Tory Scott was still supreme in the conduct of the _Register_, though he might take Constable's advice in all matters of its financial administration; and, if Constable advised, among other things, a reduction of Southey's salary in the historical department, that was but natural in the circumstances, and Scott probably acquiesced.--In fact, by this time the contributorship to the _Edinburgh Annual Register_, always a drudgery, must have been of less consequence to Southey than it had been. In November 1813 he had been appointed to the office of Poet-Laureate, then vacant by the death of Henry James Pye; and the salary attached to that sinecure, though small, was something. On the 13th of that month Scott, who had declined the office for himself and had strongly recommended Southey, and who was then still virtually Southey's paymaster for his services in the _Edinburgh Annual Register_, had written his congratulations to Southey, with his regrets that the Laureateship was not better worth his while.--D. M.