Part 1 (1/2)
Dorothy Wordsworth.
by Edmund Lee.
PREFACE.
This little book owes its origin to the fact that, with the exception of Professor Shairp's Sketch contained in the preface to the ”Tour in Scotland,” no biography or memoir of the subject of it has. .h.i.therto been written. Seeing what an important part Miss Wordsworth occupied in influencing the revival of English poetry at the close of the last century, this has frequently been to me a matter of surprise. To the best of my knowledge, she does not even occupy any place in the numerous sketches of famous women which have from time to time appeared. At the same time the references to her in the biographies of her brother and in the reviews of his works are many.
My main object in the present work has been, so far as permissible, to gather together into the form of a Memoir of her life various allusions to Miss Wordsworth, together with such further particulars as might be procurable, and with some reflections to which such a life gives rise.
My task has, therefore, been one of a compiler rather than an author.
I acknowledge my great indebtedness to all sources from whence information has been obtained. In addition to the authorities after mentioned, I desire especially to mention the kindness of Dr. Sadler for his permission to reprint the letters of Miss Wordsworth to the late Mr. Henry Crabb Robinson, published in his ”Diary and Reminiscences”; and of Mr. F. W. H. Myers for the like permission to make use of some letters which for the first time appeared in his ”Wordsworth.”
However far I have failed in my original design, and however imperfectly I may have performed my self-appointed task of love, it cannot be doubted that no name can more fittingly have a place in female biography than that of Dorothy Wordsworth.
BRADFORD, 1886.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
The influences which help to shape human destiny are many and varied. At some period in the early history of two lives, beginning their course separately, one of them, by coming into contact with the other, is quickened into deeper vitality, and the germ of a great and unthought-of future is formed. Lives touch each other, and from thenceforth, like meeting waters, their onward course is destined, and flows through deeper and broader channels.
Among the most commanding of human influences is that of _woman_. As mother, or sister, or wife we find her, at every period of a man's existence, occupying a prominent part as his guide, comforter, and friend. Not unfrequently it happens that the influence of a sister is the greatest, and that to which a career is due. Especially is this so when the mother dies whilst the brother and sister are young. The influence of the wife, all-powerful though it may be, is of a later date, when character and conduct have to a great extent become formed, and the tendency of genius settled. When the sister's companions.h.i.+p gives place to that of the wife, a career may have become developed. In this way the most dominant power may remain unrevealed; and the blossoming and perfection of character may never be traced to their original source.
Many pleasant stories of affection between brothers and sisters, and of their inspiration of each other, have been told; and many more have existed among those who have lived unhistoric lives, and whose annals are recorded only among memories which linger round lonely hearths.
Lovely and pleasant in their saddened lives were Charles and Mary Lamb.
The way in which they were each devoted to the other, and in which they were bound up in each other's well-being to the complete forgetfulness of self, suggests a pleasing and pathetic picture of fraternal fidelity, while it reveals a domestic history the most touching and tragic the world has known.
We have a companion picture, but a more happy and pleasant one, in the lives of William and Dorothy Wordsworth.
The culture and well-being of a nation depend largely upon the character, purity, and progress of its literature. To no cla.s.s of writers has the world been more indebted than to its poets--those ”rare souls, whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world.” It was well said by one of these: ”Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward.
It has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude; and it has given me the habit of wis.h.i.+ng to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me.”
Among those who have permanently elevated and enriched our English literature during the present century, none is ent.i.tled to a more honoured place than is William Wordsworth, our greatest laureate; and none of the influences which entered into his life, and served to build up his great career, and to complete his great work, can fail to be of interest. And of all the world's benefactors--of all who in any of the primary departments, have achieved most signal distinction, has none been more indebted to the aid of another, than was Wordsworth to the devoted aid and the constraining and softening power of his sister.
In many respects there is a marked similarity between the lives of Charles and Mary Lamb and those of William and Dorothy Wordsworth. The burden of the story of each is that of a brother's and sister's love.
But there is also a great difference. While one is the tale of an elder sister's affection, and of the brother's self-sacrifice for the tender care of her during periods of nature's saddest affliction, the other tells how a younger sister consecrated her life to her brother's greatest good, relinquis.h.i.+ng for herself everything outside him in such a way that she became absorbed in his own existence. But as a self-sacrificing love always brings its own reward, the poet's sister attained hers. She is for all time identified and a.s.sociated with her brother, who, with a grateful love, has ”crowned her for immortality.”
As Mr. Paxton Hood remarks: ”Not Laura with Petrarch, nor Beatrice with Dante, nor the fair Geraldine with Surrey, are more really connected than is Wordsworth with his sister Dorothy.”
CHAPTER II.
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY LIFE.
Dorothy Wordsworth was the only daughter and third child of John and Anne Wordsworth. She was born on Christmas Day, 1771, at c.o.c.kermouth, in c.u.mberland, being a year and nine months younger than her famous brother, the poet. John Wordsworth, the father, was an attorney-at-law, who had attained considerable success in his profession, being the solicitor of the then Earl of Lonsdale, in an old manor-house belonging to whose family he resided. Miss Wordsworth's mother was, on the maternal side, descended from an old and distinguished family, being the only daughter of William Cookson, of Penrith, who had married Dorothy Crackenthorp, whose family, we are informed, had, since the early part of the fourteenth century, resided at Newbiggen Hall, Westmoreland. The Wordsworths themselves traced their descent from a Yorks.h.i.+re family of that name who had settled in the county about the time of the Norman Conquest.