Chapter VII: Westmoreland and the Dalesmen: Society of the Lakes148

[148] From _Tait's Magazine_ for January 1840.--M.

In February, as I have said, of 1809, I quitted Allan Bank; and, from that time until the depth of summer, Miss Wordsworth was employed in the task she had volunteered, of renewing and furnishing the little cottage in which I was to succeed the illustrious tenant who had, in my mind, hallowed the rooms by a seven years' occupation, during, perhaps, the happiest period of his life--the early years of his marriage, and of his first acquaintance with parental affections. Cottage, immortal in my remembrance! as well it might be; for this cottage I retained through just seven-and-twenty years: this was the scene of struggle the most tempestuous and bitter within my own mind: this the scene of my despondency and unhappiness: this the scene of my happiness--a happiness which justified the faith of man's _earthly_ lot, as, upon the whole, a dowry from heaven. It was, in its exterior, not so much a picturesque cottage--for its outline and proportions, its windows and its chimneys, were not sufficiently marked and effective for the picturesque[149]--as it was lovely: one gable end was, indeed, most gorgeously apparelled in ivy, and so far picturesque; but the principal side, or what might be called front, as it presented itself to the road, and was most illuminated by windows, was embossed--nay, it might be said, smothered--in roses of different species, amongst which the moss and the damask prevailed. These, together with as much jessamine and honeysuckle as could find room to flourish, were not only in themselves a most interesting garniture for a humble cottage wall, but they also performed the acceptable service of breaking the unpleasant glare that would else have wounded the eye from the whitewash; a glare which, having been renewed amongst the general preparations against my coming to inhabit the house, could not be sufficiently subdued in tone for the artist's eye until the storm of several winters had weather-stained and tamed down its brilliancy. The Westmoreland cottages, as a class, have long been celebrated for their picturesque forms, and very justly so: in no part of the world are cottages to be found more strikingly interesting to the eye by their general outlines, by the sheltered porches of their entrances, by their exquisite chimneys, by their rustic windows, and by the distribution of the parts. These parts are on a larger scale, both as to number and size, than a stranger would expect to find as dependencies and out-houses attached to dwelling-houses so modest; chiefly from the necessity of making provision both in fuel for themselves, and in hay, straw, and brackens for the cattle against the long winter. But, in praising the Westmoreland dwellings, it must be understood that only those of the native Dalesmen are contemplated; for, as to those raised by the alien intruders--"the lakers," or "foreigners" as they are sometimes called by the old indigenous possessors of the soil--these, being designed to exhibit "a taste" and an eye for the picturesque, are pretty often mere models of deformity, as vulgar and as silly as it is well possible for any object to be in a case where, after all, the workman, and obedience to custom, and the necessities of the ground, &c., will often step in to compel the architects into common sense and propriety. The main defect in Scottish scenery, the eyesore that disfigures so many charming combinations of landscape, is the offensive style of the rural architecture; but still, even where it is worst, the _mode_ of its offence is not by affectation and conceit, and preposterous attempts at realizing sublime, Gothic, or castellated effects in little gingerbread ornaments, and "tobacco pipes," and make-believe parapets, and towers like kitchen or hothouse flues; but in the hard undisguised pursuit of mere coarse uses and needs of life.

[149] The idea of the picturesque is one which did not exist at
all until the post-Christian ages; neither amongst the Grecians
nor amongst the Romans; and _therefore_, as respects one reason,
it was, that the art of landscape painting did not exist (except
in a Chinese infancy, and as a mere trick of inventive ingenuity)
amongst the finest artists of Greece. What _is_ picturesque, as
placed in relation to the beautiful and the sublime? It is (to
define it by the very shortest form of words) the characteristic
pushed into a sensible excess. The prevailing character of any
natural object, no matter how little attractive it may be for
beauty, is always interesting for itself, as the character and
hieroglyphic symbol of the purposes pursued by Nature in the
determination of its form, style of motion, texture of
superficies, relation of parts, &c. Thus, for example, an
expression of dulness and somnolent torpor does not ally itself
with grace or elegance; but, in combination with strength and
other qualities, it may compose a character of serviceable and
patient endurance, as in the cart-horse, having unity in itself,
and tending to one class of uses sufficient to mark it out by
circumscription for a distinct and separate contemplation. Now,
in combination with certain counteracting circumstances, as with
the momentary energy of some great effort, much of this peculiar
character might be lost, or defeated, or dissipated. On that
account, the skilful observer will seek out circumstances that are
in harmony with the principal tendencies and assist them; such,
suppose, as a state of lazy relaxation from labour, and the fall
of heavy drenching rain causing the head to droop, and the shaggy
mane, together with the fetlocks, to weep. These, and other
circumstances of attitude, &c., bring out the character of
prevailing tendency of the animal in some excess; and, in such a
case, we call the resulting effect to the eye--picturesque: or in
fact, _characteresque_. In extending this speculation to objects
of art and human purposes, there is something more required of
subtle investigation. Meantime, it is evident that neither the
sublime nor the beautiful depends upon any _secondary_ interest of
a purpose or of a character expressing that purpose. They
(confining the case to visual objects) court the _primary_
interest involved in that (form, colour, texture, attitude,
motion) which forces admiration, which fascinates the eye, for
itself, and without a question of any distinct purpose: and,
instead of character--that is, discriminating and separating
expression, tending to the special and the individual--they both
agree in pursuing the Catholic, the Normal, the Ideal.

Too often, the rustic mansion, that should speak of decent poverty and seclusion, peaceful and comfortable, wears the most repulsive air of town confinement and squalid indigence; the house being built of substantial stone, three storeys high, or even four, the roof of massy slate; and everything strong which respects the future outlay of the proprietor--everything frail which respects the comfort of the inhabitants: windows broken and stuffed up with rags or old hats; steps and door encrusted with dirt; and the whole tarnished with smoke. Poverty--how different the face it wears looking with meagre staring eyes from such a city dwelling as this, and when it peeps out, with rosy cheeks, from amongst clustering roses and woodbines, at a little lattice, from a little one-storey cottage! Are, then, the main characteristics of the Westmoreland dwelling-houses imputable to superior taste? By no means. Spite of all that I have heard Mr. Wordsworth and others say in maintaining that opinion, I, for my part, do and must hold, that the Dalesmen produce none of the happy effects which frequently arise in their domestic architecture under any search after beautiful forms, a search which they despise with a sort of Vandal dignity; no, nor with any sense or consciousness of their success. How then? Is it accident--mere casual good luck--that has brought forth, for instance, so many exquisite forms of chimneys? Not so; but it is this: it is good sense, on the one hand, bending and conforming to the dictates or even the suggestions of the climate, and the local circumstances of rocks, water, currents of air, &c.; and, on the other hand, wealth sufficient to arm the builder with all suitable means for giving effect to his purpose, and to evade the necessity of make-shifts. But the radical ground of the interest attached to Westmoreland cottage architecture lies in its submission to the determining agencies of the surrounding circumstances; such of them, I mean, as are permanent, and have been gathered from long experience. The porch, for instance, which does so much to take away from a house the character of a rude box, pierced with holes for air, light, and ingress, has evidently been dictated by the sudden rushes of wind through the mountain "ghylls," which make some kind of protection necessary to the ordinary door; and this reason has been strengthened, in cases of houses near to a road, by the hospitable wish to provide a sheltered seat for the wayfarer; most of these porches being furnished with one in each of the two recesses, to the right and to the left.

The long winter, again, as I have already said, and the artificial prolongation of the winter by the necessity of keeping the sheep long upon the low grounds, creates a call for large out-houses; and these, for the sake of warmth, are usually placed at right angles to the house; which has the effect of making a much larger system of parts than would else arise. But perhaps the main feature which gives character to the pile of building, is the roof, and, above all, the chimneys. It is the remark of an accomplished Edinburgh artist, H. W. Williams, in the course of his strictures[150] upon the domestic architecture of the Italians, and especially of the Florentines, that the character of buildings, in certain circumstances, "depends wholly or chiefly on the form of the roof and the chimney. This," he goes on, "is particularly the case in Italy, where more variety and taste is displayed in the chimneys than in the buildings to which they belong. These chimneys are as peculiar and characteristic as palm trees in a tropical climate." Again, in speaking of Calabria and the Ionian Islands, he says--"We were forcibly struck with the consequence which the beauty of the chimneys imparted to the character of the whole building." Now, in Great Britain, he complains, with reason, of the very opposite result: not the plain building ennobled by the chimney, but the chimney degrading the noble building, and in Edinburgh especially, where the homely and inelegant appearance of the chimneys contrasts most disadvantageously and offensively with the beauty of the buildings which they surmount. Even here, however, he makes an exception for some of the _old_ buildings, whose chimneys, he admits, "are very tastefully decorated, and contribute essentially to the beauty of the general effect." It is probable, therefore, and many houses of the Elizabethan era confirm it, that a better taste prevailed, in this point, amongst our ancestors, both Scottish and English; that this elder fashion travelled, together with many other usages, from the richer parts of Scotland to the Borders, and thence to the vales of Westmoreland; where they have continued to prevail, from their affectionate adhesion to all patriarchal customs. Some, undoubtedly, of these Westmoreland forms have been dictated by the necessities of the weather, and the systematic energies of human skill, from age to age, applied to the very difficult task of training smoke into obedience, under the peculiar difficulties presented by the sites of Westmoreland houses. These are chosen, generally speaking, with the same good sense and regard to domestic comfort, as the primary consideration (without, however, disdainfully slighting the sentiment, whatever it were, of peace, of seclusion, of gaiety, of solemnity, the special "religio loci"), which seems to have guided the choice of those who founded religious houses.

[150] "Travels in Italy, Greece, and the Ionian Islands," vol. i.
pp. 74, 75.

And here, again, by the way, appears a marked difference between the Dalesmen and the intrusive gentry--not creditable to the latter. The native Dalesman, well aware of the fury with which the wind often gathers and eddies about any eminence, however trifling its elevation, never thinks of planting his house _there_: whereas the stranger, singly solicitous about the prospect or the range of lake which his gilt saloons are to command, chooses his site too often upon points better fitted for a temple of Eolus than a human dwelling-place; and he belts his house with balconies and verandas that a mountain gale often tears away in mockery. The Dalesman, wherever his choice is not circumscribed, selects a sheltered spot (a _wray_,[151] for instance), which protects him from the wind altogether, upon one or two quarters, and on all quarters from its tornado violence: he takes good care, at the same time, to be within a few feet of a mountain beck: a caution so little heeded by some of the villa founders that absolutely, in a country surcharged with water, they have sometimes found themselves driven, by sheer necessity, to the after-thought of sinking a well. The very best situation, however, in other respects, may be bad in one, and sometimes find its very advantages, and the beetling crags which protect its rear, obstructions the most permanent to the ascent of smoke; and it is in the contest with these natural baffling repellents of the smoke, and in the variety of artifices for modifying its vertical, or for accomplishing its lateral escape, that have arisen the large and graceful variety of chimney models. My cottage, wanting this primary feature of elegance in the constituents of Westmoreland cottage architecture, and wanting also another very interesting feature of the elder architecture, annually becoming more and more rare,--viz. the outside gallery (which is sometimes merely of wood, but is much more striking when provided for in the original construction of the house, and completely _enfoncé_ in the masonry),--could not rank high amongst the picturesque houses of the country; those, at least, which are such by virtue of their architectural form. It was, however, very irregular in its outline to the rear, by the aid of one little projecting room, and also of a stable and little barn, in immediate contact with the dwelling-house. It had, besides, the great advantage of a varying height: two sides being about fifteen or sixteen feet high from the exposure of both storeys; whereas the other two, being swathed about by a little orchard that rose rapidly and unequally towards the vast mountain range in the rear, exposed only the upper storey; and, consequently, on those sides the elevation rarely rose beyond seven or eight feet. All these accidents of irregular form and outline gave to the house some little pretensions to a picturesque character; whilst its "separable accidents" (as the logicians say), its bowery roses and jessamine, clothed it in loveliness--its associations with Wordsworth crowned it, to my mind, with historical dignity,--and, finally, my own twenty-seven years' off-and-on connexion with it have, by ties personal and indestructible, endeared it to my heart so unspeakably beyond all other houses, that even now I rarely dream through four nights running that I do not find myself (and others besides) in some one of those rooms, and, most probably, the last cloudy delirium of approaching death will re-install me in some chamber of that same humble cottage. "What a tale," says Foster, the eloquent essayist--"what a tale could be told by many a room, were the walls endowed with memory and speech!" or, in the more impassioned expressions of Wordsworth--

"Ah! what a lesson to a thoughtless man
-------------- if any gladsome field of earth
Could render back the sighs to which it hath responded,
Or echo the sad steps by which it hath been trod!"

And equally affecting it would be, if such a field or such a house could render up the echoes of joy, of festal music, of jubilant laughter--the innocent mirth of infants, or the gaiety, not less innocent, of youthful mothers--equally affecting would be such a reverberation of forgotten household happiness with the re-echoing records of sighs and groans. And few indeed are the houses that, within a period no longer than from the beginning of the century to 1835 (so long was it either mine or Wordsworth's) have crowded such ample materials for those echoes, whether sorrowful or joyous.

[151] _Wraie_ is the old Danish or Icelandic word for _angle_.
Hence the many "wrays" in the Lake district.

SOCIETY OF THE LAKES

My cottage was ready in the summer; but I was playing truant amongst the valleys of Somersetshire; and, meantime, different families, throughout the summer, borrowed the cottage of the Wordsworths as my friends. They consisted chiefly of ladies; and some, by the delicacy of their attentions to the flowers, &c., gave me reason to consider their visit during my absence as a real honour; others--such is the difference of people in this world--left the rudest memorials of their careless habits impressed upon house, furniture, garden, &c. In November, at last, I, the long-expected, made my appearance. Some little sensation did really and naturally attend my coming, for most of the draperies belonging to beds, curtains, &c., had been sewed by the young women of that or the adjoining vales. This had caused me to be talked of. Many had seen me on my visit to the Wordsworths. Miss Wordsworth had introduced the curious to a knowledge of my age, name, prospects, and all the rest of what can be interesting to know. Even the old people of the vale were a little excited by the accounts (somewhat exaggerated, perhaps) of the never ending books that continued to arrive in packing-cases for several months in succession. Nothing in these vales so much fixes the attention and respect of the people as the reputation of being a "far learn'd" man. So far, therefore, I had already bespoke the favourable opinion of the Dalesmen. And a separate kind of interest arose amongst mothers and daughters, in the knowledge that I should necessarily want what--in a sense somewhat different from the general one--is called a "housekeeper"; that is, not an upper servant to superintend others, but one who could undertake, in her own person, all the duties of the house. It is not discreditable to these worthy people that several of the richest and most respectable families were anxious to secure the place for a daughter. Had I been a dissipated young man, I have good reason to know that there would have been no canvassing at all for the situation. But partly my books spoke for the character of my pursuits with these simple-minded people--partly the introduction of the Wordsworths guaranteed the safety of such a service. Even then, had I persisted in my original intention of bringing a man-servant, no respectable young woman would have accepted the place. As it was, and it being understood that I had renounced this intention, many, in a gentle, diffident way, applied for the place, or their parents on their behalf. And I mention the fact, because it illustrates one feature in the manners of this primitive and peculiar people, the Dalesmen of Westmoreland. However wealthy, they do not think it degrading to permit even the eldest daughter to go out a few years to service. The object is not to gain a sum of money in wages, but that sort of household experience which is supposed to be unattainable upon a suitable scale out of a gentleman's family. So far was this carried, that, amongst the offers made to myself, was one from a young woman whose family was amongst the very oldest in the country, and who was at that time under an engagement of marriage to the very richest young man in the vale. She and her future husband had a reasonable prospect of possessing ten thousand pounds in land; and yet neither her own family nor her husband's objected to her seeking such a place as I could offer. Her character and manners, I ought to add, were so truly excellent, and won respect so inevitably from everybody, that nobody could wonder at the honourable confidence reposed in her by her manly and spirited young lover. The issue of the matter, as respected my service, was, why I do not know, that Miss Wordsworth did not accept of her: and she fulfilled her purpose in another family, a very grave and respectable one, in Kendal. She stayed about a couple of years, returned, and married the young man to whom she had engaged herself, and is now the prosperous mother of a fine handsome family; and she together with her mother-in-law are the two leading matrons of the vale.

It was on a November night, about ten o'clock, that I first found myself installed in a house of my own--this cottage, so memorable from its past tenant to all men, so memorable to myself from all which has since passed in connexion with it. A writer in _The Quarterly Review_, in noticing the autobiography of Dr. Watson, the Bishop of Llandaff, has thought fit to say that the Lakes, of course, afforded no society capable of appreciating this commonplace, coarse-minded man of talents. The person who said this I understand to have been Dr. Whitaker, the respectable antiquary. Now, that the reader may judge of the propriety with which this was asserted, I shall slightly rehearse the muster-roll of our Lake society, as it existed at the time when I seated myself in my Grasmere cottage. I will undertake to say that the meanest person in the whole scattered community was more extensively accomplished than the good bishop, was more conscientiously true to his duties, and had more varied powers of conversation. Wordsworth and Coleridge, then living at Allan Bank, in Grasmere, I will not notice in such a question. Southey, living thirteen miles off, at Keswick, I have already noticed; and he needs no _proneur_. I will begin with Windermere.

At Clappersgate, a little hamlet of perhaps six houses, on its north-west angle, and about five miles from my cottage, resided two Scottish ladies, daughters of Dr. Cullen, the famous physician and nosologist.[152] They were universally beloved for their truly kind dispositions and the firm independence of their conduct They had been reduced from great affluence to a condition of rigorous poverty. Their father had made what should have been a fortune by his practice. The good doctor, however, was careless of his money in proportion to the facility with which he made it. All was put into a box, open to the whole family. Breach of confidence, in the most thoughtless use of this money, there could be none; because no restraint in that point, beyond what honour and good sense imposed, was laid upon any of the elder children. Under such regulations, it may be imagined that Dr. Cullen would not accumulate any very large capital; and, at his death, the family, for the first time, found themselves in embarrassed circumstances. Of the two daughters who belonged to our Lake population, one had married a Mr. Millar, son to the celebrated Professor Millar of Glasgow.[153] This gentleman had died in America; and Mrs. Millar was now a childless widow. The other still remained unmarried. Both were equally independent; and independent even with regard to their nearest relatives; for, even from their brother--who had risen to rank and affluence as a Scottish judge, under the title of Lord Cullen[154]--they declined to receive assistance; and except for some small addition made to their income by a novel called "Home" (in as many as seven volumes, I really believe) by Miss Cullen, their expenditure was rigorously shaped to meet that very slender income which they drew from _their_ shares of the patrimonial wrecks. More honourable and modest independence, or poverty more gracefully supported, I have rarely known.

[152] William Cullen (1712-1790), Professor of the Institutes of
Medicine and the Practice of Physic in the University of Edinburgh
from 1766 to 1790.--M.

[153] John Millar (1735-1801), author of _The Origin Of the
Distinction of Ranks in Society and Historical View of the English
Government_.--M.

[154] Robert Cullen was a Scottish judge, with the courtesy title
of Lord Cullen, from 1796 to 1810.--M.

Meantime, these ladies, though literary and very agreeable in conversation, could not be classed with what now began to be known as the _lake_ community of literati; for they took no interest in any one of the lake poets; did not affect to take any; and I am sure they were not aware of so much value in any one thing these poets had written as could make it worth while even to look into their books; and accordingly, as well-bred women, they took the same course as was pursued for several years by Mrs. Hannah More, viz. cautiously to avoid mentioning their names in my presence. This was natural enough in women who had probably built their early admiration upon French models (for Mrs. Millar used to tell me that she regarded the "Mahomet" of Voltaire as the most perfect of human compositions), and still more so at a period when almost all the world had surrendered their opinions and their literary consciences (so to speak) into the keeping of _The Edinburgh Review_; in whose favour, besides, those ladies had the pardonable prepossessions of national pride, as a collateral guarantee of that implicit faith which, in those days, stronger-minded people than they took a pride in professing. Still, in defiance of prejudices mustering so strongly to support their blindness, and the still stronger support which this blindness drew from their total ignorance of everything either done or attempted by the lake poets, these amiable women persisted in one uniform tone of courteous forbearance, as often as any question arose to implicate the names either of Wordsworth or Coleridge,--any question about them, their books, their families, or anything that was theirs. They thought it strange, indeed (for so much I heard by a circuitous course), that promising and intellectual young men--men educated at great Universities, such as Mr. Wilson of Elleray, or myself, or a few others who had paid us visits,--should possess so deep a veneration for these writers; but evidently this was an infatuation--a craze, originating, perhaps, in personal connexions, and, as the craze of valued friends, to be treated with tenderness. For us therefore--for our sakes--they took a religious care to suppress all allusion to these disreputable names; and it is pretty plain how sincere their indifference must have been with regard to these neighbouring authors, from the evidence of one fact, viz. that when, in 1810, Mr. Coleridge began to issue, in weekly numbers, his _Friend_, which, by the prospectus, held forth a promise of meeting all possible tastes--literary, philosophic, political--even this comprehensive field of interest, combined with the adventitious attraction (so very unusual, and so little to have been looked for in that thinly-peopled region) of a local origin, from the bosom of those very hills at the foot of which (though on a different side) they were themselves living, failed altogether to stimulate their torpid curiosity; so perfect was their persuasion beforehand that no good thing could by possibility come out of a community that had fallen under the ban of the Edinburgh critics.

At the same time, it is melancholy to confess that, partly from the dejection of Coleridge, his constant immersion in opium at that period, his hatred of the duties he had assumed, or at least of their too frequent and periodical recurrence, and partly also from the bad selection of topics for a miscellaneous audience, from the heaviness and obscurity with which they were treated, and from the total want of variety, in consequence of defective arrangements on his part for ensuring the co-operation of his friends, no conceivable act of authorship that Coleridge _could_ have perpetrated, no possible overt act of dulness and somnolent darkness that he _could_ have authorized, was so well fitted to sustain the impression, with regard to him and his friends, that had pre-occupied these ladies' minds. _Habes confitentem reum!_ I am sure they would exclaim; not perhaps confessing to that form of delinquency which they had been taught to expect--trivial or extravagant sentimentalism, _Germanity_ alternating with tumid inanity; not this, but something quite as bad or worse, viz. palpable dulness--dulness that could be felt and handled--rayless obscurity as to the thoughts--and communicated in language that, according to the Bishop of Llandaff's complaint, was not always English. For, though the particular words cited for blame were certainly known to the vocabulary of metaphysics, and had even been employed by a writer of Queen Anne's reign (Leibnitz), who, if any, had the gift of translating dark thoughts into plain ones--still it was intolerable, in point of good sense, that one who had to win his way into the public ear should begin by bringing before a popular and miscellaneous audience themes that could require such startling and revolting words. _The Delphic Oracle_ was the kindest of the nicknames which the literary taste of Windermere conferred upon the new journal. This was the laughing suggestion of a clever young lady, a daughter of the Bishop of Llandaff, who stood in a neutral position with regard to Coleridge. But others there were amongst his supposed friends who felt even more keenly than this young lady the shocking want of adaptation to his audience in the choice of matter, and, even to an audience better qualified to meet such matter, the want of adaptation in the mode of publication,--viz. periodically, and by weekly recurrence; a mode of soliciting the public attention which even authorizes the expectation of current topics--topics arising each with its own week or day. One in particular I remember of these disapproving friends: a Mr. Blair, an accomplished scholar, and a frequent visitor at Elleray,[155] who started the playful scheme of a satirical rejoinder to Coleridge's _Friend_, under the name of _The Enemy_, which was to follow always in the wake of its leader, and to stimulate Coleridge (at the same time that it amused the public) by attic banter, or by downright opposition and showing fight in good earnest. It was a plan that might have done good service to the world, and chiefly through a seasonable irritation (never so much wanted as then) applied to Coleridge's too lethargic state: in fact, throughout life, it is most deeply to be regretted that Coleridge's powers and peculiar learning were never forced out into a large display by intense and almost persecuting opposition. However, this scheme, like thousands of other day-dreams and bubbles that rose upon the breath of morning spirits and buoyant youth, fell to the ground; and, in the meantime, no enemy to _The Friend_ appeared that was capable of matching _The Friend_ when left to itself and its own careless or vagrant guidance. _The Friend_ ploughed heavily along for nine-and-twenty numbers[156]; and our fair recusants and non-conformists in all that regarded the lake poetry or authorship, the two Scottish ladies of Clappersgate, found no reasons for changing their opinions; but continued, for the rest of my acquaintance with them, to practise the same courteous and indulgent silence, whenever the names of Coleridge or Wordsworth happened to be mentioned.

[155] See _ante_, p. 193, footnote (76).--M.

[156] See _ante_. p. 190, footnote (75).--M.

In taking leave of these Scottish ladies, it may be interesting to mention that, previously to their final farewell to our Lake society, upon taking up their permanent residence in York (which step they adopted partly, I believe, to enjoy the more diversified society which that great city yields, and, at any rate, the more _accessible_ society than amongst mountain districts--partly with a view to the cheapness of that rich district in comparison with our sterile soil, poor towns, and poor agriculture) somewhere about the May or June of 1810, I think--they were able, by a long preparatory course of economy, to invite to the English lakes a family of foreigners--what shall I call them?--a family of Anglo-Gallo-Americans, from the Carolinas. The invitation had been of old standing, and offered, as an expression of gratitude, from these ladies, for many hospitalities and friendly services rendered by the two heads of that family to Mrs. Millar, in former years, and under circumstances of peculiar trial. Mrs. Millar had been hastily summoned from Scotland to attend her husband at Charleston; him, on her arrival, she found dying; and, whilst overwhelmed by this sudden blow, it may be imagined that the young widow would find trials enough for her fortitude, without needing any addition to the load from friendlessness amongst a nation of strangers and from total solitude. These evils were spared to Mrs. Millar, through the kind offices and disinterested exertions of an American gentleman (French by birth, but American by adoption), M. Simond, who took upon himself the cares of superintending Mr. Millar's funeral through all its details, and, by this most seasonable service, secured to the heart-stricken widow that most welcome of privileges in all situations, the privilege of unmolested privacy; for assuredly the heaviest aggravation of such bereavements lies in the necessity,--too often imposed by circumstances upon him or upon her who may happen to be the sole responsible representative, and, at the same time, the dearest friend of the deceased,--of superintending the funeral arrangements. In the very agonies of a new-born grief, whilst the heart is yet raw and bleeding, the mind not yet able to comprehend its loss, the very light of day hateful to the eyes, the necessity even at such a moment arises, and without a day's delay, of facing strangers, talking with strangers, discussing the most empty details with a view to the most sordid of considerations--cheapness, convenience, custom, and local prejudice--and, finally, talking about whom? why, the very child, husband, wife, who has just been torn away; and this, too, under a consciousness that the being so hallowed is, as to these strangers, an object equally indifferent with any one person whatsoever that died a thousand years ago. Fortunate, indeed, is that person who has a natural friend, or, in default of such a friend, who finds a volunteer stepping forward to relieve him from a conflict of feeling so peculiarly unseasonable. Mrs. Millar never forgot the service which had been rendered to her; and she was happy when M. Simond, who had become a wealthy citizen of America, at length held out the prospect of coming to profit by her hospitable attentions amongst that circle of friends with whom she and her sister had surrounded themselves in so interesting a part of England.

M. Simond had been a French emigrant; not, I believe, so far connected with the privileged orders of his country, or with any political party, as to be absolutely forced out of France by danger or by panic; but he had shared in the feelings of those who were. Revolutionary France, in the anarchy of the transition state, and still heaving to and fro with the subsiding shocks of the great earthquake, did not suit him: there was neither the polish which he sought in its manners, nor the security which he sought in its institutions. England he did not love; but yet, if not England, some country which had grown up from English foundations was the country for him; and, as he augured no rest for France through some generations to come, but an endless succession of revolution to revolution, anarchy to anarchy, he judged it best that, having expatriated himself and lost one country, he should solemnly adopt another. Accordingly he became an American citizen. English he already spoke with propriety and fluency. And, finally, he cemented his English connexions by marrying an English lady, the niece of John Wilkes. "What John Wilkes?" asked a lady, one of a dinner-party at Calgarth (the house of Dr. Watson, the celebrated Bishop of Llandaff, upon the banks of Windermere).--"_What_ John Wilkes?" re-echoed the Bishop, with a vehement intonation of scorn; "_What_ John Wilkes, indeed! as if there was ever more than one John Wilkes--_fama super æthera notus_!"--"O, my Lord, I beg your pardon," said an old lady, nearly connected with the Bishop, "there were two; I knew one of them: he was a little, ill-looking man, and he kept the Blue Boar at----."--"At Flamborough Head!" roared the Bishop, with a savage expression of disgust. The old lady, suspecting that some screw was loose in the matter, thought it prudent to drop the contest; but she murmured, _sotto voce_, "No, not at Flamborough Head, but at Market Drayton." Madame Simond, then, was the niece, not of the ill-looking host of the Blue Boar, but of _the_ Wilkes so memorably connected with the _parvanimities_ of the English government at one period; with the casuistry of our English constitution, by the questions raised in his person as to the effects of expulsion from the House of Commons, &c. &c.; and, finally, with the history of English jurisprudence, by his intrepidity on the matter of general warrants. M. Simond's party, when at length it arrived, consisted of two persons besides himself, viz. his wife, the niece of Wilkes, and a young lady of eighteen, standing in the relation of grand-niece to the same memorable person. This young lady, highly pleasing in her person, on quitting the lake district, went northwards with her party, to Edinburgh, and there became acquainted with Mr. Francis Jeffrey, the present Lord Jeffrey [1840], who naturally enough fell in love with her, followed her across the Atlantic, and in Charleston, I believe, received the honour of her hand in marriage.[157]

[157] She was Jeffrey's second wife, married to him in 1813.--M.

I, as one of Mrs. Millar's friends, put in my claim to entertain her American party in my turn. One long summer's day, they all came over to my cottage in Grasmere; and, as it became my duty to do the honours of our vale to the strangers, I thought that I could not discharge the duty in a way more likely to interest them all than by conducting them through Grasmere into the little inner chamber of Easedale, and there, within sight of the solitary cottage, Blentarn Ghyll, telling them the story of the Greens[158]; because, in this way, I had an opportunity, at the same time, of showing the scenery from some of the best points, and of opening to them a few glimpses of the character and customs which distinguish this section of the English yeomanry from others. The story did certainly interest them all; and thus far I succeeded in my duties as Cicerone and Amphytrion of the day. But, throughout the rest of our long morning's ramble, I remember that accident, or, possibly the politeness of M. Simond, and his French sympathy with a young man's natural desire to stand well in the eyes of a handsome young woman, so ordered it that I had constantly the honour of being Miss Wilkes's immediate companion, as the narrowness of the path pretty generally threw us into ranks of two and two. Having, therefore, through so many hours, the opportunity of an exclusive conversation with this young lady, it would have been my own fault had I failed to carry off an impression of her great good sense, as well as her amiable and spirited character. Certainly I did _mon possible_ to entertain her, both on her own account and as the visitor of my Scottish friends. But, in the midst of all my efforts, I had the mortification to feel that I was rowing against the stream; that there was a silent body of prepossession against the whole camp of the lakers, which nothing could unsettle. Miss Wilkes naturally looked up, with some feelings of respect, to M. Simond, who, by his marriage with her aunt, had become her own guardian and protector. Now, M. Simond, of all the men in the world, was the last who could have appreciated an English poet. He had, to begin with, a French inaptitude for apprehending poetry at all: any poetry, that is, which transcends manners and the interests of social life. Then, unfortunately, not merely through what he had not, but equally through what he had, this cleverish Frenchman was, by whole diameters of the earth, remote from the station at which he could comprehend Wordsworth. He was a thorough, knowing man of the world, keen, sharp as a razor, and valuing nothing but the tangible and the ponderable. He had a smattering of mechanics, of physiology, geology, mineralogy, and all other _ologies_ whatsoever; he had, besides, at his fingers' ends, a huge body of statistical facts--how many people did live, could live, ought to live, in each particular district of each manufacturing county; how many old women of eighty-three there ought to be to so many little children of one; how many murders ought to be committed in a month by each town of five thousand souls; and so on _ad infinitum_. And to such a thin shred had his old French politeness been worn down by American attrition, that his thin lips could with much ado contrive to disguise his contempt for those who failed to meet him exactly upon his own field, with exactly his own quality of knowledge. Yet, after all, it was but a little _case_ of knowledge, that he had packed up neatly for a make-shift; just what corresponds to the little assortment of razors, tooth-brushes, nail-brushes, hair-brushes, cork-screw, gimlet, &c. &c., which one carries in one's trunk, in a red Morocco case, to meet the casualties of a journey. The more one was indignant at being the object of such a man's contempt, the more heartily did one disdain his disdain, and recalcitrate his kicks.

[158] The pathetic story told in De Quincey's paper entitled
_Early Memorials of Grasmere_.--M.

On the single day which Mrs. Millar could spare for Grasmere, I had taken care to ask Wordsworth amongst those who were to meet the party. Wordsworth came; but, by instinct, he and Monsieur Simond knew and recoiled from each other. They met, they saw, they _inter-despised_. Wordsworth, on his side, seemed so heartily to despise M. Simond that he did not stir or make an effort to right himself under any misapprehension of the Frenchman, but coolly acquiesced in any and every inference which he might be pleased to draw; whilst M. Simond, double-charged with contempt from _The Edinburgh Review_, and from the report (I cannot doubt) of his present hostess, manifestly thought Wordsworth too abject almost for the trouble of too openly disdaining him. More than one of us could have done justice on this malefactor by meeting M. Simond on his own ground, and taking the conceit out of him most thoroughly. I was one of those; for I had the very knowledge, or some of it, that he most paraded. But one of us was lazy; another thought it not _tanti_; and I, for my part, in my own house, could not move upon such a service. And in those days, moreover, when as yet I loved Wordsworth not less than I venerated him, a success that would have made him suffer in any man's opinion by comparison with myself would have been painful to my feelings. Never did party meet more exquisitely ill-assorted; never did party separate with more exquisite and cordial disgust in its principal members towards each other. I mention the case at all, in order to illustrate the abject condition of worldly opinion in which Wordsworth then lived. Perhaps his ill fame was just then in its meridian; for M. Simond, soon after, published his English Tour in two octavo volumes; and, of course, he goes over his residence at the Lakes; yet it is a strong fact that, according to my remembrance, he does not vouchsafe to mention such a person as Wordsworth.

One anecdote, before parting with these ladies, I will mention, as received from Miss Cullen on her personal knowledge of the fact. There are stories current which resemble this, but wanting that immediate guarantee for their accuracy which, in this case, I at least was obliged to admit, in the attestation of so perfectly veracious a reporter as this excellent lady. A female friend of her own, a person of family and consideration, being on the eve of undertaking a visit to a remote part of the kingdom, dreamed that, on reaching the end of her journey, and drawing up to the steps of the door, a footman, with a very marked and forbidding expression of countenance, his complexion pale and bloodless, and his manners sullen, presented himself to let down the steps of her carriage. This same man, at a subsequent point of her dream, appeared to be stealing up a private staircase, with some murderous instruments in his hands, towards a bed-room door. This dream was repeated, I think, twice. Some time after, the lady, accompanied by a grown-up daughter, accomplished her journey. Great was the shock which awaited her on reaching her friend's house: a servant corresponding in all points to the shadowy outline of her dream, equally bloodless in complexion, and equally gloomy in manner, appeared at her carriage door. The issue of the story was that upon a particular night, after a stay of some length, the lady grew unaccountably nervous; resisted her feelings for some time; but at length, at the entreaty of her daughter, who slept in the same room, suffered some communication of the case to be made to a gentleman resident in the house, who had not yet retired to rest. This gentleman, struck by the dream, and still more on recalling to mind some suspicious preparations, as if for a hasty departure, in which he had detected the servant, waited in concealment until three o'clock in the morning--at which time, hearing a stealthy step moving up the staircase, he issued with firearms, and met the man at the lady's door, so equipped as to leave no doubt of his intentions; which possibly contemplated only robbing of the lady's jewels, but possibly also murder in a case of extremity. There are other stories with some of the same circumstances; and, in particular, I remember one very like it in Dr. Abercrombie's "Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers" [1830], p. 283. But in this version of Dr. Abercrombie's (supposing it another version of the same story) the striking circumstance of anticipating the servant's features is omitted; and in no version, except this of Miss Cullen's, have I heard the names mentioned both of the parties to the affair, and also of the place at which it occurred.