It was a difference that arose on the American question, between Sir James Lowther and his law agent and steward, a certain John Robinson, in the year 1766, that was the prime cause of the fact that Wordsworth, the poet, was born here. For John Robinson resigned his stewardship, and young John Wordsworth, then only 24 years of age, 'a man of great force of character and real human capacity,' was appointed in his place to be 'law agent and steward of the manor of Ennerdale.' To that post, which he occupied for the next 18 years, the young man came from the Penrith neighbourhood, bringing with him as his girl wife a certain Ann Cookson, a mercer's daughter, who could boast, through her descent on her mother's side from the Crackanthorpes, of NewbigginHall, an ancestry that flowed from as far back as the time of Edward III. She was thus well suited to marry the son of the land agent of Sockbridge, near Penistone, who traced his descent through a long unbroken line of sturdy Yorkshire yeomen away in the Penistone neighbourhood, as far as to the time of the Norman Conqueror. They took up their abode in the substantial house now occupied by Mr. Robinson Mitchell, then lately builded by one Sheriff Luckock. It bears date 1745-46, and is to-day unmarred and unmodernised, remaining much as it was when John Wordsworth became its tenant. We know little of this young John Wordsworth, but he must have been a man 'tender and deep in his excess of love,' for when, after twelve years of happy married life here in the old manor house beside the Derwent, his wife died from consumption, caught, as we are told, by being put into a damp bed in the 'best room' when on a visit to friends in London, he never seemed to recover his spirits, and he himself died six years after her, in the year 1783, on the 30th December, and lies buried at the east end of the All Saints' Church. He lost his way on the fells whenreturning from some business engagement at Broughton-in-Furness, and was obliged to stay out all night; the chill from exposure brought on inflammation of the lungs, and his strength, sapped by deep domestic sorrow, could not bear up against it. The orphans whom he left, Richard, William, Dorothy, John, and Christopher, four of whom were remarkable in after life, were then removed to the care of their uncle Cookson at Penrith, and Cockermouth knew them no more. We have been allowed, from William Wordsworth's autobiographical notes and his poems, to glean something of those early days. The poet tells us:
Early diedMy honoured mother, she who was the heartAnd hinge of all our learnings and our loves,Nor would I praise her, but in perfect love!
We can in fancy see her in earnest converse with Mr. Ellbanks, the teacher of the school by the churchyard, talking about William's 'moody and stiff temper'; we can hear her say 'that the only one of the children about whom she has fears is William; and he will be remarkable for good or evil.' We may note her pinning on the child's breast the Easter nosegay, for the young lad is to goup to the church, to say his catechism. Daffodils I expect the flowers were: years after, in the ecclesiastical sonnets Words worth, speaking of this act of his mother's, writes:
Sweet flowers at whose inaudible commandHer countenance phantom-like doth reappear.
Or we can see the father, book in hand, hearing the lad recite the long passages of Shakespeare, and Milton, and Spenser which were insensibly to mould his ear to music, fire his imagination, and make a poet of him.
But when I think of Wordsworth in those childish days I do not go off to the ancient school by the church to hear him stumble through Latin verbs. He was not as happy there as he was at Mrs. Birkett's, the dame's school at Penrith; there was no Mary Hutchinson to keep him company; and he learned, he tells us, when he went to Hawkshead at the age of ten, more Latin in a fortnight than he had learned the two previous years at Cockermouth. No, rather when I want to see the little William Wordsworth at his happiest, I go with him into the old Manor House Terrace gardenby the Derwent's side, and see him with his sister, that sister 'Emmeline,' as he called her, chasing the butterfly, or hand in hand peering through the rose and privet hedge at the sparrow's nest, 'wishing yet fearing to be near it.'
Or, follow him with his nurse, he a child of only five years of age, bathing and basking alternate, all the hot August day in the shallows of the mill pool, and leaping naked as an Indian through the tall garden ragwort on the sands, and clapping his hands to see the rainbow spring from middle air. Or I go with him by the river, 'winding among its grassy holmes,' whose voice flowed along his earliest dreams—that Derwent he could never forget—away to the Castle-hold of the barons of old time, Waldeof, Umfraville, Multon, Lucies, and Nevilles, and watch him peering with look of awe into the dark cellar and dungeons, watch him chase the butterfly through the grim courts or climb after the tufts of golden wallflower upon its broken battlements.
But happiest of all was he when with his story book he lay full stretched, as he describes in thePrelude, upon the sun-warmed stones and sandy banks 'beside thebright blue river,' and there feasted his little heart on fairy tale and filled his soul with scenes from wonderland.
Wordsworth was never unmindful of the home of his birth. He left Cockermouth for schooldays at Hawkshead when he was a boy of nine, and though in the holidays, for the next five years, he paid an occasional visit to the place, his chief vacation associations were with Penrith. The Poet's connection with this town ceased at his father's death in 1784, when he was a lad of fourteen; but he never forgot it. From nature and her overflowing soul here in his childhood days he had received so much that all his thoughts were steeped in a feeling of grateful remembrance of it. He visited the home of his childhood occasionally to refresh his heart with a cup of remembrance, and we find a note of a certain visit in Dorothy's letter to Mrs. Marshall. Writing in September, 1807, she says:—'W. and M. have just returned. They were at Cockermouth, our native place you know, and the Terrace Walk—that you have heard me speak of many a time—with the privet hedge, is still full of roses as it was thirty years ago. Yes, I remember it for more than thirty years.'
In 1836 he interests himself in a scheme for building a new church. He writes to his friend Poole, of Nether Stowey, for assistance to this object. He tells him that Cockermouth is in a state of much spiritual destitution, nearly 6000 souls and only 300 sittings for the poor. Wordsworth cared for the poor. 'I have been the means,' he says, 'of setting on foot the project of erecting a new church there, and the inhabitants look to me for much more assistance than I can possibly afford them, through any influence that I possess.'
As a Keswick parson, I gather with pride further on in that letter, that it was the fact of the new church of St. John's having been built there that spurred him on; and that he hopes Cockermouth will do as Keswick has done, and thus excite other towns to follow so good an example.
It is interesting to note that the Cockermouthians of that day were not of one mind in the matter, or the Poet had been misled as to native church feeling; for the inhabitants having a windfall of £2000 given them by the Lord of Egremont that year, to spend as they pleased, preferred a new market place to a new church, and the old Poetwrites:—'This was wanted, so we cannot complain.'
But Wordsworth was disappointed and grieved too at the spirit of unkindness shown by some of the people of his native town to his good Lord Lonsdale. I have had access to a MS. letter of Wordsworth's, which shows that the Church-building project fell through, as far as he was concerned, by reason of what he considered the unfair treatment of an offer of help, made by the then Lord Lonsdale to the town, in connection with the church accommodation needed.
So far as I know this was the last public work he attempted to do for the place that gave him birth. But at least we cannot regret that his last effort was in a cause near to his heart, the cause of the religious interests and life of his fellow Cumbrians, the cause of reverence, worship, and godly fear, of 'pure religion breathing household laws,' the cause of the worship and praise of Almighty God, here in his native place.
The seed he sowed, though it lay dormant, did not fall on barren ground; and in a real sense the present All Saints' Parish Church may stand as a monument to the immortal Poet, who then, as ever,championed 'in perilous times the cause of the poor and simple,' and did what he might in his day for church life and piety in the place of his nativity, Cockermouth.
Once more the Heavenly power makes all things new.
This was the line from Tennyson's poem that kept ringing in my ears, as on the mid-most day of April I wandered out and away across the vale to the skirts of Skiddaw.
Opens a door in Heaven;From skies of glassA Jacob's ladder fallsOn greening grass,And o'er the mountain wallsYoung angels pass.
Before them fleets the showerAnd burst the buds,And shine the level lands,And flash the floods,The stars are from their handsFlung thro' the woods.
No, no! this last couplet was untrue; the anemones had not yet opened their delicateshells, and the blackthorn buds were only dimmest seed-pearls of yellowish lustre. But as I gazed from the fence halfway up Latrigg and watched the Greta flashing, and the great plain fresh-enamelled with the first faint green of spring, a Jacob's ladder was let down from above Scafell and Glaramara, and all the angels that ever came on earth to fill men's hearts with April jollity came trooping downwards. They took on various forms. Some of them became tortoise-shell butterflies that lay in sunny content upon the moist woodland path. Others sailed out of blue air and became glorious peacock butterflies upon whose underwings in blue and black one clearly saw the head and face of human kind sketched in with lustrous powdery pencillings. Other angels ministered to the pink coral glumes of the sycamore; others, again, daintily untwisted the leafage of the wild rose in the hedge; others delighted to unfold the tufts upon the elder. But the angels that seemed to be busiest were those that made the vivid emerald of the 'dog's mercury' contrast with the faded red of the bracken in the woods, and where the purple birches showed against the flowering larchesadded moment by moment a deeper, ruddier purple to the trees' beauty and a finer flash of green to the surrounding wood to set the purple off.
But all the gifts of the angels of that April morning seemed as nothing when compared with the joy of the sight of one single angel of the spring—he a lustrous-backed swallow who flashed from steel-purple into black and from black to steel-purple, and disappeared from sight behind the larches. I had known of his coming, for a swift-eyed shepherd had seen one of his kind in the valley as early as April 1, but April 13 to the 15th was marked in my calendar as swallowtide, and I had not expected sight of him till this week. Here he was, glossy with African sun, and full of silent message that summer was sure. The chiffchaff would be a-trill and the cuckoo would be calling for a mate within the week. Ah, swallow! swallow! flying north! How much of hope and happiness you bring. Then as I moved through the larchen grove, I heard the titmice whispering that they too were glad, they too felt reassured by sight of the swallow, and one walked on in a kind of consciousness that man andswallow and budding larches were more akin than one had believed, until the joyousness of spring found the selfsame echo in such divers hearts, and that indeed the over-soul was one, the music and the melody one voice. Yes, Wordsworth sang truly when he wrote:
One impulse from a vernal woodMay teach us more of man,Of moral evil and of good,Than all the sages can.
I met a child halfway up Latrigg braiding her hat with larch flower. Truly no rubies ever seemed so rich and rare as these which the simple village child had twisted in her hat; her sister had a handful of primroses she was taking to her father in the neighbouring cottage, for he was but slowly recovering from pneumonia, and the child knew by instinct that a breath from a primrose posy would do more for him than all the 'doctors' bottles' in the world.
'You have been up Skiddaw betimes,' I said.
'Ay, ay, sir; you see they've gone to "laate" Herdwicks to-day for lambing-time, and I went up to the Gale with the dogs.'
Herdwicks! Lambing! What did it allmean? Only that those great brown slopes of Skiddaw which till this day have been vocal with flocks and alive with sheep, will by this eventide be as silent as the grave. For between April 10 and April 20 the shepherds know that the Herdwicks will become mothers of their springtide young, and so they will go forth to the fells and upland pastures, to bring their woolly charges down from the mountain heights to the safety and the food and care of the dale-farm enclosures. I overtook the shepherds at the 'Gale,' and went with them. Soon the dogs were seen scouring the fell-side, now disappearing from sight, now coming back to get a signal from their master. A wave of the hand to left or right was all that was needed, and away they went, and slowly and surely they seemed to be able to search out and bring into a close company the Herdwicks from all the heathery waste and grey-bleached mountain hollows.
Then began the home-bringing. Very tenderly and gently did the dogs urge the sheep, heavy with young, down the fell-side slopes. Now and again the shepherd cried, 'Hey, Jack!' and away the collies flew back towards him. 'Ga away by!'and away again the collies flew in a great circle out beyond and behind the sheep. The sheep were a little hustled and came on too fast. Then the shepherd whistled and held up his hand, and the dogs sat like stones till he whistled and waved his hand again. So down from Lonscale and across the gulfy Whitbeck the sheep came. The dogs dashed off to where, through a great carpet of ever-lucent moss, the main fountains break from the hill. They slaked their thirst, then came back slowly to urge the flocks homeward and downward toward the Shepherd's Cross, and so over the Gale to the Lonscale Farm. We stopped at the Cross, and a tall, 'leish,' handsome man, with fair hair and the grey Viking eye, said in solemn undertone, 'Fadder and brudder cud hev been weal content to be wid us on sic a day as this, I'se thinking.' And the mist gathered in his eyes, and he said no more, but just went homeward with the sheep. Ah, yes, that Shepherd's Cross tells of men—father and son—who spent their whole lives in following the Herdwicks on the sides of Skiddaw and Lonscale Fell; wrought for their sheep, thought of them by dayand dreamed of them by night, and were as proud, as ever David was, of what they looked upon as the finest life a man need care to live, the mountain shepherd's round of love and toil.
I waved adieu, and up beyond the huts to 'Jenkin' I went. The red fern had been washed into faintest ochre, the heather had grown grey with winter storm, but everywhere beneath the blanched grass one felt new life and tenderest first flush of April green was astir; and as one looked down from 'Jenkin' into the circle of the deep blue hills and the Derwent's perfect mirror, one saw that though the larches were still brown there was an undertone of something, neither brown nor green, that flooded not only the larch woods but the great Latrigg pastures also, and betokened that the spring was even at their doors, and that the fells would soon rejoice with the emerald valley below. Gazing at the vale of Crosthwaite, where still all the trees seem winter white, one was astonished at the darkness of the hedgerows that divided the meadows, and one saw the new fallows shine and swim like purple enamel upon the green flood of the springtide grass. 'Jenkin' was reached,but not until many swathes of lingering snow, black with the smoke of the blast furnaces of the coast and of Lancashire and Yorkshire mills, had been passed. Here at 'Jenkin top' we found two men hard at work 'graaving' peats for the Coronation bonfires on June 26.
'Well, how goes the peat-graving?' said I, and a ruddy-faced Norseman from a Threlkeld farm said, 'Aw, gaily weel, sir; but I'm thinking we mud hev nae mair kings upo' the throane, for this job will finish t' peat moss, and peats are hard to finnd within reach o' Skiddaw top. You see,' said he, 'it's lost its wire, and peat widout wire in it is nae use for makking a "low" wid.'
I saw that what he called 'wire' were the rootlets of the ancient undergrowth of years gone by, the matted texture of primeval springtides, and, stooping down, he broke a peat across and showed me the wire. 'You kna,' he continued, 'we shall just leave peats ligging here, and thoo mun send up scheul-lads to spreead them in a forthnet's time. Then they mud coom oop a week laater and shift 'em and turn them, and then a week laater they mud coom and foot 'em.That is if thoo want 'em in fettle by Coronation-daay, for they are ter'ble watter-sick noo.'
'Foot them?' I said. 'What do you mean?' And the shepherd took a couple and leaned them one against another, and showed me how thus a draught of air passed between the peats and ensured their drying. 'Well, good-daay, good-daay. But we mud hev nae mair kings to be crooned,' said he; 'for peat moss ull nobbut howd oot for this un, I'm thinking.'
I bade farewell, and down to the valley I went, noting how doubly near and blue the hills and vales all seemed to grow, as one passed down beneath the veils of haze which had lent both greyness and distance to the view. Again I saw the swallow skim; again I watched the gorgeous butterflies, and, with a wand of palm-flower that had just lost its gold, and the rosy plumelets of the larch in my hand, I made the best of my way homeward, through air that throbbed and thrilled with the voice of thrush and blackbird, and felt the deep contrast between these silent flockless slopes of Skiddaw, and the ringing singing valley at his feet.
A
Adelaide, Queen,46.
Ambleside,18,22,44,53.
Angler, Complete,120.
April song,81.
Arnold, Dr.,19,50.
Aveling's town, King,59.
B
Ballads, Lyrical, by Wordsworth,125.
Barf,169.
Bassenthwaite,97,102,105,107,169.
Beltane fire,147.
Birthright, The Christian,162.
Black Hill,197.
Blencathra,113,165,192,212,214,215.
Boon Beck,30.
Bootle,172.
Borderside,131,132,140,143,144.
Borrodale,52,180,183,197,213,214.
Borrow Bridge,143.
Bowness Church,138.
Brandelhow,197,208,210,214,215,216.
Brankers,49.
Brigham-cum-Mosser-cum-Lorton,173.
Brougham Castle, Feast of, byWordsworth,191.
Broughton-in-Furness,220.
Browne, William George,98.
Browning, Robert, note,5.
Brownrigg of Brownrigg,202.
Brundholme,157.
Butcher lad's reminiscences ofWordsworth,8.
Burns,141.
C
Caermote,104,106.
Calling, The Gentleman's,162.
Carlisle, City arms of,96.
Carlyle,96,141,164.
Carnigill,143.
Cartmell Fell,121,125,147.
Castle Hill,213,214.
Castrigg Fell,191.
Cat Bels,212,215.
Cat Ghyll,181.
Causey Pike,109.
Cavalier, Memoirs of a,120.
Chartres Cathedral,90.
Chestnut Hill,110.
Christmas season in Grasmere,71.
Clappersgate,49.
"Clock, The Village,"30.
Cockermouth,173,218,220,221,223,224,226.
Coleridge, Hartley,12,19,23,24,25,31,36,38,43,44,50,58,138.
Colthouse,141.
Coniston,2; Fells,125.
Contentment, The Art of,162.
Cookson, Ann,218.
Coronation peat-fires,234.
Cornwall,197.
Crackenthorpes,218.
Cropper, James, of Ellergreen,86.
Crosthwaite,116,131,139,147,148,233; valley,110,157;school,120; church,197.
Crozier, John,192,196,200,202,205.
Curling,112.
Cuthbert, St.,112.
D
Dalesmen, Characteristics of,3;Truthfulness of,5; Comelinessof,45; Mourningetiquette of,194; Love ofhunting of,195.
Davy, Dr.,136,141.
Day, A Winter, on Derwentwater,207.
Day with Roman and Norse,94.
Defoe,120.
De Quincey,76.
Derwent,65,103,219,222,233.
Derwent Hill,67.
Derwentwater,97,109,181,217.
Devon,197.
Druid's Circle,191,199.
Dungeon Ghyll,39.
E
Egremont, Lord of,224.
Elizabeth, Spacious times ofGreat,155.
Elleray,51.
Esk,59.
Esthwaite Lake,29.
Excursion, The, by Wordsworth,127.
Exploits, Nelson's,155.
F
Falcon Crag,181,182.
Fell Side,147.
Fiddler's Farm,17,19.
Fire-worshippers,147.
Fox, George,172; his Journal,166,173.
Fox head, Price of,193.
Foxhow,17,19.
Fox hunting,193,197.
Friar's Crag,208.
Francis, St.,145,216.
Frozen Fell,152.
G
Gardener lad's reminiscences ofWordsworth,10.
Gaul, Amadis de,120.
George the Waller,17; hiswrestling match,22.
Gimmer Crag,102.
Glaramara,109,213,228.
Glenderaterra,157.
Goodwin, Harvey, Bishop of Carlisle,88.
Gough, Benjamin,121,141.
Gough, Thomas,145.
Gowder Crag,178,184.
Grasmere,6,35,38,70.
Grasmere actors,70; stagemanagers,72.
Grasmere Common,31,32f.
Grasmoor,109,169,172,178,207.
Graves, Perceval,141; quotations from,140,143.
Greenhead Ghyll,30.
Greta,157,179,228.
Grisedale,28,33,109,178,207,216; Pass,31.
Guide to the Lakes,20,21.
Gulls, With the black-headed,59.
Gummershow,125.
H
Hawell, Joseph, a Skiddaw Shepherd,150.
Hawkshead,223.
Helvellyn,109,113,134,207.
Herdhouse,172.
Heversham,133; GrammarSchool,88.
High Crag,140.
High Stile,172.
Hindscarth,109.
Hobcarton Crag,169.
Hodge Hill,147.
Honister,213.
Hope Ghyll,171.
Hounds, Training of,197; Breedof,201.
Hunt, Master of the,191.
Hunting song,199.
Hutchinson, Mary,221.
I
Ireby,99.
Irt,59.
K
Keats,187.
Kendal,51,53,87,118,121,122,132; Grammar School,88.
Ketel's Well,183.
Kettle, Roman,100.
Keswick,52,73,100,108,112,151,156,157,166,176,183,208;224; Sea-gulls in,64.
Kiln Hill,201.
Kirkstone Pass,119.
Krall of a Norse Chieftain,99.
L
Lamb, Charles,187.
Lamb, The Pet,30.
Lancaster, James,172.
Landnama, Bok of Iceland,86.
Langdale,52.
Latrigg,100,111,112,228.
Lewthwaite, Barbara,29.
Lingholme,209.
Lodore,182to188,213; afterstorm,176.
Lonscale,150,152,156,164,232.
Lonsdale, Lord,225.
Lorton,166; Yew,173.
Loughrigg,22,27,49,74.
Loweswater,170.
Lythe,137.
Lythe Marsh,145.
M
Macaulay, Zachary,86.
Man, The whole duty of,162.
Manchester,123to131.
Mellbreak,172.
Milton,128,141,221.
Mite,59.
Mona's Isle,59.
Mons Angelorum,215.
Mons Beata,212,214.
Mons Blencathrae,214.
Mons Borgadalis,214.
Morecambe Bay,119.
Muncaster Fell,59,60.
N
Nab Cottage,23f.,39.
Naddle,208.
Need fire,147.
Nether Stowey,224.
Nicholson, Cornelius,133.
Nimrod, A North-Country,189.
O
Orthwaite,97.
P
Page-boy's reminiscences ofWordsworth,44.
Patterdale,167.
Patrick, James, of Kendal,122.
Paris Exhibition,90.
Pearson, Mrs.,118.
Pearson, William, of Borderside,116; his admiration forWordsworth,125; hischaracter,128; letter toWordsworth,136; his tour on theContinent,138f.
Peat-fuel,234.
Peel's horn,101; his Norseancestor,107.
Peel, John,196,201.
Pelter Bridge,41.
Penistone,219.
Penrith,52,218,220,221,223.
Play, At the Grasmere,69;analysis of,74f.
Poems, by W. Wordsworth,125.
Poole,224.
Portinscale,197.
Prelude, The, by Wordsworth,121,122.
Protestant Alliance,136.