That must indeed have been a thrilling life—a life of startling dramatic interest—which covered the period occupied by the career of Madame de Staël, even had the person living the life been but an obscure observer of passing events. For the time was big with the most astounding things the world has known in these later centuries. But to a person like the daughter of Necker, with intellect to comprehend the prodigious events, and with the power oftentimes to influence them to a greater or less extent, the wonderful drama which was then enacted upon the stage of France must have appeared as of even overwhelming importance. It must have dwarfed individual life, until one's own personal affairs, if they would press upon the attention, seemed impertinence, to be disposed of as quickly as possible, that one might give every thought and every emotion to one's country. She saw the commencement and the close of that great social earthquake which overthrew the oldest dynasty in Europe; she saw the rise, the culmination, and the setting of Napoleon's meteor-star; she witnessed the return of the Bourbons after their long absence, and the final death in defeat and exile of her dreaded enemy—the great soldier-Emperor—on the rocky ocean isle. This series of events is not to be paralleled for magnitude and meaning in any period of modern time, and Madame de Staël was something more than a spectator during much of the great miracle-play.
Her father, Necker, was the Controller-General of Finances under Louis XVI., and a man worthy of honor and long remembrance, although he was called during those perilous times to a work he was unable to do, and which perhaps no man could have done. The corrupt and meretricious court had brought France, financially as well as morally, to a point where no one man, had he been ever so great and so noble, could save her—could even retard the period of her ruin. Necker made a noble struggle, but was overborne by fate; and had his genius been even more commanding than it was, he would doubtless have been thus overborne. History tells us of many greater statesmen than he, but of few better men. Disinterested almost to a fault, stainless in his private character as well as unquestioned in his public integrity, truly religious in a time given over to atheism and impiety, conscientious even to the smallest matters in public as well as private life, and moderate when everything about him was in extremes,—well might Madame de Staël be proud of her father, and fond to effusion of his memory.
Her mother was a woman to be held in reverent remembrance. She was both beautiful and accomplished, possessed of fine talents, as well as spotless character. She had been engaged to Gibbon in her youth, and the attachment between them was a strong one. But the marriage was prevented by his father; and, after a long period of mournful constancy, she married M. Necker, and took her place among the great ones of the earth. The friendship between herself and Gibbon was afterwards very tender and sacred, although she was a faithful and devoted wife to Necker, and really warmly attached to him. Necker, on his part, was her worshipping lover to the end of his life.
The daughter of such parents could scarcely fail to be remarkable in some way. It is not from such sources that the mediocrities are recruited. But the child was utterly unlike her parents, and never showed much likeness to either in after life. Her genius was unquestioned even from her precocious babyhood, and she was the wonder and admiration of all the brilliant circle of her father's friends. Her temperament was most vehement and impulsive, and her vivacity a wonder even to the Parisians. She seemed to know everything by intuition, and made light of the hardest tasks which could be given her. The streams of her childish eloquence seemed to flow from some exhaustless fountain. The celebrated men who were her father's guests were never weary of expressing their astonishment at her powers of conversation.
Gibbon, the Abbé Raynal, Baron Grimm and Marmontel were among these friends, and they undoubtedly did much to stimulate the childish intellect, although Madame Necker, troubled at the precocity of her darling, frowned upon all attempts to unduly excite her mind. But great themes were constantly discussed in her presence; the frivolity of the old régime was being rapidly displaced by the intense earnestness of the men of the new era, and the most momentous questions of life and death, of time and eternity, were the subjects of the conversations to which the young genius listened with such rapt attention. Doubtless it was in listening to these profound discussions in her earliest years that she acquired that confidence which in after years never deserted her, but which always led her to believe that she could save both her country and the world, if people would only let her manage things in her own way. Charles X. used to tell the story of her calling upon him, after the return of the Bourbons to France, and offering him a constitution ready-made, and insisting upon his accepting it. He says:—
"It seemed like a thing resolved—an event decided upon,—this proposal of inventing a constitution for us. I kept as long as I could upon the defensive; but Madame de Staël, carried away by her zeal and enthusiasm, instead of speaking of what presumably concerned herself, knocked me about with arguments and crushed me with threats and menaces; so, tired to death of entertaining, instead of a clever, humble woman, a roaring politician in petticoats, I finished the audience, leaving her as little satisfied as myself with the interview."
Perhaps something of this kind may have influenced Napoleon in banishing her from the Empire.
Necker himself idolized his daughter, and was naturally very proud of her youthful triumphs, while she in turn made him her one hero among men. Throughout life her devotion to him continued, and she wrote of him as one might write of a god. She frequently lamented that he had been her father and not one of her own generation, that there might have been a man of her time worthy of the love which she could have lavished upon him. The fervor of this devotion, although it seems unnatural, belonged to her intensely impulsive temperament, and in her case we must make some allowance for the excesses of her passionate expressions of affection. Although she talked much and in the grandest manner of love, even when young and unmarried,—which is a very indelicate thing to do in the eyes of the French,—she did not appear to have any youthful romance of a serious sort. She had a great reputation as a wit and a genius, but few admirers who could be classed as lovers. Many men were her friends, and she was much sought after; but she was far from beautiful, which goes a great way in matters of the heart, and many disliked the manner in which she trampled upon the conventionalities, while doubtless many others objected to her strong-mindedness and the aggressiveness of her opinions.
She made a marriage de convenance at the age of twenty, apparently without much thought of love upon either side, and entered upon her new career with all the confidence which characterized her. Baron de Staël was a man of good character and noble birth, an attaché of the Swedish Embassy, and, as she had money enough for both, the match was regarded favorably by her friends. Although the Baron was a handsome man and of pleasing address, one, it seems, who might have touched a maiden's heart, Mademoiselle Necker, it is said, never made even a pretence of love, but took the whole affair as a matter of business. It was necessary that she should be married,—it is only thus that French women achieve their independence,—and this man would do as well as another; that seemed to be all there was of this remarkable occurrence. Remarkable in our eyes, but of the usual sort in the eyes of the French. For domestic happiness she seemed to care little. The excitement of Parisian society was her heaven, and into this she entered with all the ardor of her nature. Her marriage had given her every freedom, although it does not appear that she was much restrained before,—for a French girl; and she dashed into the whirlpool of the gayest society in the world with a sort of intoxication. Her vivacity and enthusiasm knew no bounds, and she held her own little court in every assembly, at which the envious and unnoticed looked askance. She was regarded as a dangerously fascinating woman, although personally she was so entirely unattractive.
For three years she enjoyed her triumphs to the utmost. Then came the earthquake which dissolved the fair fabric of her dreams. The Reign of Terror began, and Paris was in the wildest ferment. Of course, she was in the very midst of those exciting events, and her influence was of moment in the terrific crisis. Her position gave her influence, and she worked with all the strength and enthusiasm of her nature to aid the escape of her friends and to succor the endangered. All the powers of her remarkable mind were put into active service, and she seems never to have thought of herself. To be sure, she was as inviolable as any one could be considered in that fearful time, but she had a rare courage and unbounded fortitude, and would have worked as she did even at personal hazard. She prevailed upon the ferocious Revolutionists to show mercy in some cases where they were bound to have blood. She concealed her friends and even strangers in her house, and she used all the powers of her marvellous eloquence to turn the tide of revolution backward. But it was in vain. Her father was deposed, her friends were murdered, her king was slain, all of her society were under surveillance, she herself everybody thought in danger, but she would not leave her beloved Paris. Her husband was in Holland, and thought she was subjecting her children to needless peril; but she still had hope that somehow she might be useful to her country. The sublime confidence which she had in her own powers did not desert her. She saw the streets flow with blood, one might say,—for the murders of the Revolutionists were of daily occurrence,—but it was not until all hope of being of use was gone that she took her children to England.
Here a little colony of French exiles were already established, and she became at once the centre of the group. She pined in the exile and mourned with ever-increasing sorrow for her country. Her interest in the events of the time was cruelly intense, and burned out her life. M. de Narbonne, whose life she had saved, was one of her consolations in the dreadful exile, as was the friendship of Talleyrand and of Benjamin Constant.
She returned to France after quiet was restored, and lived in Paris something after the old way. Then came Napoleon, whom she hated with all the ardor of her nature, and who returned her hate with interest. He banished her from France, and would not permit her return during his entire reign. "She carries a quiver full of arrows," he said, "which would hit a man were he seated upon a rainbow." It was a purely personal dislike on his part, and a piece of his most odious despotism to allow his personal feelings to influence him in such a matter. There are few things recorded of him more utterly inexcusable than this. She passed fourteen years in exile,—the best years of her life,—and exile to her had all the bitterness of death; she could never really live except in Paris. We hear little of her husband during all this time, but it is not likely that she derived much consolation from domestic life. She had no taste for it, and found it the supreme bore. She consoled herself as much as she could with literature, and wrote those books which, wonderful and brilliant as they are, all who knew her personally unite in saying, never did justice to her genius. The gloom of exile was over them all. She suffered a great variety of petty persecutions at the hands of Napoleon during all those years, and these added to the inevitable miseries of her lot.
After the fall of the Napoleonic empire she returned to Paris, and there passed the remainder of her life. It was at this time that she presented the constitution to Charles X. She was never remarkable for her taste in dress, and that Prince thus describes her on that occasion:—
"She wore a red satin gown embroidered with flowers of gold and silk, a profusion of diamonds, rings enough to stock a pawnbroker's shop; and I must add that I never before saw so low cut a corsage display less inviting charms. Upon her head was a large turban, constructed on the pattern of that worn by the Cumean sybil, which put the finishing touch to a costume so little in harmony with the style of her face. I scarcely can understand how a woman of genius can have such a false, vulgar taste."
It can be easily comprehended how she might have bored the Prince by pressing upon him at such length her ideas of the reconstruction of the empire, for she often bored even those who really admired and appreciated her by the torrents of her talk. She was not witty, but full of rhetorical surprises, and had boundless stores of information upon every subject. People do not like to be instructed, nor do they like to be preached to, even by eloquent lips, and her great conversational powers often made her dreaded rather than admired in general society. While she was in Germany Goethe, who must be allowed the capability of appreciating her, was wont to run away from her whenever he could, and bore up under her eloquence with rather an ill grace when he could not escape it. Schiller also, in whom she much delighted, was ungallant enough to dislike her extremely. On the contrary, Talleyrand and many other famous Frenchmen seemed never to weary of her, and have handed down the tradition of her wonderful eloquence to a later generation. It is probable that her excessive vivacity was more pleasing to the French mind than to that of the English and Germans, and her lack of repose did not weary them to the same extent. She retained her friends to the end of her life, and they were the source of her greatest satisfaction. She was loyal and devoted in the extreme to all whom she favored with her friendship, and all such loved her with deep affection. Indeed, it may be said that human nature was the only thing which much interested her. She had no love for Nature, and would scarcely take the trouble to see the Alps when in Switzerland, and said that if she were left to her own feelings she would not open her window to see the bay of Naples for the first time, but that she would travel five hundred leagues at any time to see a great man she had not met before. She cared little for art, and not much for literature as such, though she had a passion for ideas. Her ideal life was a life of intellectual excitement,—constant intercourse with minds of her own order. The improvisations of Corinne give one a little idea what her conversation was like. Still she has been quoted as saying that she would have exchanged all her talent for the one gift of beauty which was denied her.
In the life of William Cullen Bryant we find the following passage relating to Madame de Staël, occurring in one of his letters; it gives the last glimpse that we get of the close of her career, and is interesting also as showing his estimate of a great but faulty woman. He says:—
"What a life! Passionate, for she was brought up not to control her passions; almost always unhappy; marrying an old man whom she did not care for, after being twice refused by young men whom she did love, and to whom she offered herself, if not formally yet in a manner not to be misunderstood; forming, after her marriage, intimate relations with Benjamin Constant, to her father's great grief; and when he deserted her, marrying, after her husband's death, a half-dead Italian named Rocca; and finally wearing out her life by opium-eating."
This marriage with Albert Jean-Michel de Rocca took place at Geneva, and was for a time concealed from the world, causing some scandal. But her children and intimate friends knew of it, although much opposed to it. Rocca was a young Italian officer, just returned from the war in Spain, with a dangerous wound. He was of a poetic temperament and exceedingly romantic, and fell violently in love with Madame de Staël, although she was forty-five years old and he but twenty-three. During the years of her first marriage she used to say that she would force her own daughter to marry for love if that were necessary, and it is supposed that at last she herself made a marriage of real affection. Despite the disparity of their years, they seemed to be really happy in this marriage, and her friends were at last reconciled to it. But her new-found happiness was of short duration,—she being but fifty years old at the time of her death.
Mr. Swinburne quotes the following passage from a description given by one of the daily papers of a certain murderer who at the time was attracting great attention in London:—
"He has great taste for poetry, can recite long passages from popular poets,—Byron's denunciations of the pleasures of the world having for him great attraction as a description of his own experiences. Wordsworth is his favorite poet. He confesses himself a villain."
At this day the two latter facts will not necessarily be supposed to have any logical connection; but there was a time when the violence of the opponents of Wordsworth's claim to be a poet might have suggested the most intimate relation between these two statements. For many years he was looked upon as an "inspired idiot" by a large part of the reading world; and his place in literature has not been definitely settled to this day. Such extravagant claims have always been made for him by his friends that they have called forth just as extravagant denunciations from those who do not admire his works; and violent controversies arise concerning his merits among first-class scholars and critics. It is always noticeable, however, in these discussions that his panegyrists always quote his best efforts, those sublime passages to which no one denies transcendent merit, and that his opponents never get much beyond "Peter Bell," and other trivialities and absurdities, which his best friends must admit that he wrote in great numbers. That his best work ranks next to Shakespeare, Milton, and Shelley, can scarcely be doubted by any true lover of poetry; and he certainly has the right to be judged by his best, rather than by his inferior work.
Wordsworth was born in 1770, in Cumberland, and received his early education there, being noted for his excellence in classical studies and for his thoughtful disposition. He graduated from St. John's College, Cambridge, and immediately after began his literary labors, which were continued through a long and most industrious life.
In 1803 he married Miss Mary Hutchinson of Penrith, and settled at Grasmere, in Westmoreland, where he passed the remainder of his life, and where he lies buried in the little churchyard where so many of his family had preceded him. He helped to make the Lake district famous the world over, and himself never wearied of its charms. He was pre-eminently the poet of Nature, and it was from the unrivalled scenery of this part of England that he caught much of his inspiration. Mrs. Wordsworth, who was as fond of it as her husband, used to say in extreme old age, that the worst of living in the Lake region was that it made one unwilling to die when the time came. The poet's marriage was an eminently happy one, although Miss Martineau hints that it was not first love on his part, but that the lines, "She was a phantom of delight," so often quoted as relating to Mrs. Wordsworth, were really meant to indicate another person who had occupied his thoughts at an early day. At any rate, he did address the following lines to his wife after thirty-six years of married life, which is certainly a far higher compliment to her:—
"Morn into noon did pass, noon into eve,
And the old day was welcome as the young,
As welcome, and as beautiful,—in sooth, more beautiful,
As being a thing more holy."
The other poems, "Let other bards of angels sing," and "Oh, dearer far than life and light are dear," were also addressed to her.
It was through her early friendship for Wordsworth's sister that she first came to know the poet, and she was not at that time a person whom a poet would be supposed to fancy. She was the incarnation of good-sense as applied to the concerns of the every-day world, and in no sense a dreamer, or a seeker after the ideal. Her intellect, however, developed by contact with higher minds, and her tastes after a time became more in accordance with those of her husband. She learned to passionately admire the outward world, in which he took such great delight, and to admire his poetry and that of his friends. She was of a kindly, cheery, generous nature, very unselfish in her dealings with her family, and highly beloved by her friends. She was the finest example of thrift and frugality to be found in her neighborhood, and is said to have exerted a decidedly beneficial influence upon all her poorer neighbors. She did not give them as much in charity as many others did, but she taught them how to take care of what they had, and to save something for their days of need. Miss Martineau, who was a neighbor, says: "The oldest residents have long borne witness that the homes of the neighbors have assumed a new character of order and comfort and wholesome economy, since the poet's family lived at Rydal Mount." She took the kindest and tenderest care of Wordsworth's sister Dorothy, who was for many years a helpless charge upon her hands. This sister had ruined her health, and finally dethroned her reason, by trying to accompany her brother on his long and tiresome rambles among the lakes and up the mountains. She has been known to walk with him forty miles in a single day. Many English women are famous walkers, but her record is beyond them all. Such excessive exercise is bad for a man, as was proved in the case of Dickens, who doubtless injured himself much by such long pedestrian trips after brain labor; but no woman can endure such a strain as this, and the adoring sister not only failed to be a companion to her idolized brother, but became a care and burden for many years. She lies now by her brother's side in the crowded little churchyard, and doubtless the "sweet bells jangled" are in tune again. A lovely group of children filled the Wordsworth home, some of whom died in childhood; but one daughter and two sons lived, as loving companions for their parents, until near the end of the poet's life, when the daughter Dora preceded him a little into the silent land. Wordsworth was utterly inconsolable for her loss; and used to spend the long winter evenings in tears, week after week, and month after month. Mrs. Wordsworth was much braver than he, and bore her own burdens calmly, while trying to cheer his exaggerated gloom. He was old and broken at this time, and never recovered from the shock of his daughter's death. Mrs. Wordsworth survived him for several years, being over ninety at the time of her death, and having long been deaf and blind. But she was very cheerful and active to the last, and not unwilling to live on, even with her darkened vision. The devotion of the old poet to his wife was very touching, and she who had idolized him in life was never weary of recounting his virtues when he was gone.
The character of Wordsworth is getting to be understood as we recede from the prejudices of the time in which he lived, and begins to assume something like a consistent whole, compared to the contradictions which at one time seemed to be inherent in it. He says of his own childhood:—
"I was of a stiff, moody, and violent temper; so much so that I remember going once into the attic of my grandfather's house at Penrith, upon some indignity having been put upon me, with an intention of destroying myself with one of the foils which I knew were kept there. I took the foil in my hand, but my heart failed."
De Quincey says of his boyhood:—
"I do not conceive that Wordsworth could have been an amiable boy; he was austere and unsocial, I have reason to think, in his habits; not generous; and above all, not self-denying. Throughout his later life, with all the benefits of a French discipline, in the lesser charities of social intercourse he has always exhibited a marked impatience of those particular courtesies of life. . . . Freedom,—unlimited, careless, insolent freedom,—unoccupied possession of his own arms,—absolute control over his own legs and motions,—these have always been so essential to his comfort that in any case where they were likely to become questionable, he would have declined to make one of the party."
Wordsworth has been accused of excessive penuriousness, of overwhelming conceit, and of being slovenly and regardless of dress. For the first accusation there seems little warrant, other than that he was prudent and thrifty, and knew the value of money. His most intimate friends exonerate him from meanness of any sort, and often praise his kindness to the poor and dependent. As regards conceit there can probably be no denial, though doubtless the stories told of it are much exaggerated. He is said never to have read any poetry but his own, and to have been exceedingly ill-natured and contemptuous in his estimate of his contemporaries. His estimate of Dickens is well known:—
"I will candidly avow that I thought him a very talkative, vulgar young person,—but I dare say he may be very clever. Mind, I don't want to say a word against him, for I have never read a word he has written."
He greeted Charles Mackay thus, when the latter called upon him:—
"I am told you write poetry. I never read a line of your poems and don't intend to. You must not be offended with me; the truth is, I never read anybody's poetry but my own."
Even James T. Fields, whose opinion of the poet was high, remarks:—
Carlyle testifies on the same point:—
"One evening, probably about this time, I got him upon the subject of great poets, who I thought might be admirable equally to us both; but was rather mistaken, as I gradually found. Pope's partial failure I was prepared for; less for the narrowish limits visible in Milton and others. I tried him with Burns, of whom he had sung tender recognition; but Burns also turned out to be a limited, inferior creature, any genius he had a theme for one's pathos rather; even Shakespeare himself had his blind sides, his limitations. Gradually it became apparent to me that of transcendent unlimited, there was to this critic probably but one specimen known,—Wordsworth."
As regards eccentricities of dress, we will give but a single testimony. William Jordan says:—
"On his visits to town the recluse of Rydal Mount was quite a different creature. To me it was demonstrated, by his conduct under every circumstance, that De Quincey had done him gross injustice in the character he loosely threw upon him in public, namely, 'that he was not generous or self-denying, . . . and that he was slovenly and regardless in dress.' I must protest that there was no warrant for this caricature; but on the contrary, that it bore no feature of resemblance to the slight degree of eccentricity discoverable in Cumberland, and was utterly contradicted by the life in London. In the mixed society of the great Babylon, Mr. Wordsworth was facile and courteous; dressed like a gentleman, and with his tall commanding figure no mean type of the superior order, well-trained by education, and accustomed to good manners. Shall I reveal that he was often sportive, and could even go the length of strong expressions, in the off-hand mirth of his observations and criticisms?"
Wordsworth had the fondness of many poets for reading his poetry to his friends, and even of reciting it like a schoolboy. When Emerson visited him he was already an old man, and it struck the philosopher so oddly, as he tells us in his "English Traits," to see "the old Wordsworth, standing apart, and reciting to me in a garden walk, like a schoolboy declaiming, that I at first was near to laugh; but recollecting myself, that I had come thus far to see a poet, and he was chanting poems to me, I saw that he was right and I was wrong, and gladly gave myself up to hear."
Another story is told of his being in a large company, and seeing for the first time a new novel by Scott, with a motto taken from his poems; and of his going immediately and getting the poem, and reading it entire to the assembled company, who were waiting for the reading of the new novel.
Literary biography is full of such anecdotes as these, going to show his absorption in himself, and his comparative indifference to the works of others; but they prove at most only a trifling weakness in a great man's character; such weaknesses being so common as to cause no surprise to those familiar with the lives of men of genius. He was a strong man, massive in his individuality, full of profound feeling and deep spirituality, and dominated by a powerful will. He was no mere sentimentalist and versifier, but a student at first hand of Nature and all her mysteries,—a man whose profound meditations had pierced to the centre of things, and who held great thoughts in keeping for a waiting and expectant world. His outward life was full of proofs of the wide and deep benevolence of his nature; and it was only shallow minds who dwelt upon some petty defects of his character. The deep wisdom gained by contemplation comes forth whenever he talks of childhood. This subject always possesses inspiration for him, as when he says:—
"Our birth is but a sleep and forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home.
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,—
He sees it in his joy.
The youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day."
This conception of the nearness of the child to the unseen made all children sacred in his eyes, and he always felt that he learned more from them than he could teach them. He expresses this thought often, as thus:—
"Oh dearest, dearest boy; my heart
For better lore would seldom yearn,
Could I but teach the hundredth part
Of what from thee I learn."
And again:—
"Dear child; dear girl; thou walkest with me here;
If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine;
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
And worship'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not."
His own children he loved almost to idolatry, and after the lapse of forty years, would speak with the deepest emotion of the little ones who had died. Indeed, he was a man of profound feeling, passionate and intense in his loves, though outwardly calm and self-contained. He himself says:—
"Had I been a writer of love-poetry, it would have been natural for me to write it with a degree of warmth which could hardly have been approved by my principles, and which might have been undesirable for the reader."
His sister Dorothy frequently refers to the intensity of his passionate affection for the members of his family, and of the full and free expression he gave it. Greatly indeed have they erred who have imagined him as by nature cold or even tranquil. "What strange workings," writes one, "are there in his great mind! how fearfully strong are all his feelings and affections! If his intellect had been less powerful they would have destroyed him long ago." Indeed, no one who had ever known him well could doubt this intensity of nature, this smothered fire. It leaped out in bursts of anger at the report of evil doings; in long and violent tramps over the mountains, in exaggerated grief at the death of loved ones; and in almost unnatural intensity of devotion, to his sister first, and his daughter Dora afterwards. It took the form of passionate adoration of Nature in his poems, and of passionate patriotism as well, and it gave strength and fire to the best of all his literary work.
Let us dwell for a moment more upon the married life of the poet,—that calm and quiet and happy life which made it possible that he should be the poet he was, unvexed by worldly cares or vanities. His late biographer, Mr. Myers, tells us:—
"The life which the young couple led was one of primitive simplicity. In some respects it was even less luxurious than that of the peasants about them. They drank water, and ate the simplest fare. Miss Wordsworth had long rendered existence possible for her brother, on the narrowest of means, by her unselfish energy and skill in household management; and plain living and high thinking were equally congenial to the new inmate of the frugal home. Wordsworth gardened; and all together, or oftenest the poet and his sister, wandered almost daily over the neighboring hills. Narrow means did not prevent them from offering a generous welcome to their few friends, especially Coleridge and his family, who repeatedly stayed for months under Wordsworth's roof. Miss Wordsworth's letters breathe the very spirit of hospitality in their naïve details of the little sacrifices gladly made for the sake of the presence of these honored guests. But for the most part the life was solitary and uneventful. Books they had few, neighbors none, and their dependence was almost entirely upon external nature."
The cottage in which they lived was very small, but they covered it with roses and honeysuckles, and had a little garden around it. Inside, all was the perfection of simplicity, but the soul of neatness and thrift pervaded everything, and love glorified it all. They had a little boat upon the lake, and rowing and walking were their pleasures.
They lived in this simple fashion that the poet might pursue his high vocation, and not be put into the treadmill of any steady work. In after years, through bequests from friends and a pension from Government, they were made more prosperous, and their declining years were cheered by an assured abundance. Rydal Mount has been described so often that it is familiar to most readers. The house stands looking southward, on the rocky side of Nab Scar above Rydal Lake. The garden is terraced, and was full of flowering alleys in the poet's time. There was a tall ash-tree in which the thrushes always sung, and a laburnum in which the osier cage of the doves was hung. There were stone steps, in which poppies and wild geraniums filled the interstices; and rustic seats here and there, where they all sat all day during the pleasant weather. The poet spent very little time in-doors. He lived constantly in the open air, composing all his poems there, and committing them to paper afterwards. Their friends grew more numerous in later life, and Wordsworth much enjoyed their companionship, being himself very bright and delightful company when in the mood for talk. Here that strange being, Thomas De Quincey, came and lived, purposely to be near the poet. Coleridge was always at call, genial Kit North paid loyal court to the great man from the first, and loving and gentle Charles Lamb came at times, sadly missing the town, and almost afraid of the mountains. Here Dr. Arnold of Rugby came often from Fox How, his own house in the neighborhood; hither Harriet Martineau walked over from Ambleside, with some new theory of the universe to expound; and here poor Hartley Coleridge passed the happiest hours of his unfortunate life. Wordsworth's kindness and tenderness to this poor son of his great friend were well known to his little world, and show some of the most pleasing traits of his character. This amiable and gifted man, Hartley Coleridge, ruined himself through the weakness of his will, finding it utterly impossible to leave wine alone, even when he knew it was ruining his life, and so sorely afflicting his friends. Wordsworth dealt with him like a father, recognizing the weakness of his character, and perhaps being able to trace it to inherited tendencies,—the elder Coleridge's devotion to opium being well known. Poor Hartley lies with Wordsworth's own family in the little churchyard at Grasmere, and we trust in that quiet retreat sleeps well, at the foot of his friend and master.
Wordsworth's last years were of great solemnity and calm. He lived in retrospection, and dwelt much upon the unseen world. The deep spirituality of his nature was shown in all his later life. He was absorbed, as it were, in thoughts of God, and of the ultimate destiny of man. All worldly interests died out, and he was able to write even of his fame:—
"It is indeed a deep satisfaction to hope and believe that my poetry will be, while it lasts, a help to the cause of virtue and truth, especially among the young. As for myself, it seems now of little moment how long I may be remembered. When a man pushes off in his little boat into the great seas of Infinity and Eternity, it surely signifies little how long he is kept in sight by watchers from the shore."
The Florentines used to point Dante out to strangers in these words: "There goes the man who has been in hell." With much truth could these words have been spoken of Thomas De Quincey, at any time after he began to suffer from his excess in opium eating, which was while he was still a young man,—and especially would these words have been true of him, after he began his struggles to free himself from the thraldom of that most seductive vice. James Payn thus describes his appearance:—
"Picture to yourself a very diminutive man, carelessly—very carelessly—dressed; a face lined, care-worn, and so expressionless that it reminded one of 'that dull, changeless brow, where cold Obstruction's apathy appalls the gazing mourner's heart,'—a face like death in life. The instant he began to speak, however, it lit up as though by electric light; this came from his marvellous eyes, brighter and more intelligent (though by fits) than I have ever seen in any other mortal."
Another writes:—
"Conceive a little, pale-faced, woe-begone, and attenuated man, with short indescribables, no coat, check shirt, and a neck-cloth twisted like a wisp of straw, opening his door, and advancing toward you with hurried movement and half-recognizing glance, saluting you in low and hesitating tones, and without looking at you, beginning to pour into your willing ear a stream of learning and wisdom, as long as you are content to listen. . . . His head is small; how can it carry all he knows? His brow is singular in shape, but not particularly large or prominent; where has nature expressed his majestic intellect? His eyes—they sparkle not, they shine not, they are lustreless; there is not even the glare which lights up sometimes dull eyes into eloquence; and yet, even at first, the tout ensemble, strikes you as that of no common man, and you say, ere he has opened his lips, 'He is either mad or inspired.'"
In all literary history there is scarcely a man about whose life and character hang so peculiar an interest and fascination as about De Quincey. He has himself given a most vivid account of his childhood, in his "Autobiographic Sketches," and in the "Opium Eater." From these we learn that he was born in Manchester, August 15, 1785. His father was a very wealthy merchant of that city, who was inclined to pulmonary consumption, and lived mostly abroad, in the West Indies and other warm climates. Thomas had several brothers and sisters, all of whom seem to have been rather peculiar and remarkable children. He was a very precocious child himself, sensitive, excitable, and given to dreams and visions,—living largely in a world of imagination, and for many years ruled over with absolute despotism by an older brother. The loss of a favorite sister in very early childhood seems to have been a blow from which it took him years to recover. He writes of it thus:—
"Inevitable sometimes it is, in solitude, that this should happen to minds morbidly meditative,—that when we stretch out our arms in darkness, vainly striving to draw back the sweet faces that have vanished, slowly arises a new stratagem of grief, and we say, 'Be it that they no more come back to us, yet what hinders but we should go to them?' Perilous is that crisis for the young. In its effect perfectly the same as the ignoble witchcraft of the poor African Obeah, his sublimer witchcraft of grief will, if left to follow its own natural course, terminate in the same catastrophe of death. Poetry, which neglects no phenomena that are interesting to the heart of man, has sometimes touched a little
'On the sublime attractions of the grave.'
But you think that these attractions, existing at times for the adult, could not exist for the child. Understand that you are wrong. Understand that these attractions do exist for the child; and perhaps as much more strongly than they can exist for the adult by the whole difference between the concentration of a childish love and the inevitable distraction upon multiplied objects of any love that can affect any adult. . . . Could the Erl-king's Daughter have revealed herself to me, and promised to lead me where my sister was, she might have wiled me by the hand into the dimmest forests upon earth."
But a beatific vision rose before him, one day in church, and he saw the beautiful sister borne away in the clouds of heaven on a bed of filmy whiteness, surrounded by a celestial throng; and he was somewhat comforted. After twelve years, while he was a student at Oxford, the vision returned to him, and he writes of it:—
"Once again, the nursery of my childhood expanded before me; my sister was moaning in bed; I was beginning to be restless with fears not intelligible to myself. Once again the nurse, but now dilated to colossal proportions, stood as upon some Grecian stage with her uplifted hand, and, like the superb Medea towering amongst her children in the nursery at Corinth, smote me senseless to the ground. Again I am in the chamber with my sister's corpse, again the pomps of life rise up in silence, the glory of summer, the Syrian sunlights, the frost of death. Dream forms itself mysteriously within dream; within these Oxford dreams remoulds itself continually the trance in my sister's chamber,—the blue heavens, the everlasting vault, the soaring billows, the throne steeped in the thought (but not the sight) of 'Who might sit thereon;' the flight, the pursuit, the irrecoverable steps of my return to earth. Once more the funeral procession gathers; the priest, in his white surplice, stands waiting with a book by the side of an open grave; the sacristan is waiting with his shovel; the coffin has sunk; the dust to dust has descended. Again I was in the church on a heavenly Sunday morning. The golden sunlight of God slept amongst the heads of his apostles, his martyrs, his saints; the fragment from the litany, the fragment from the clouds, awoke again the lawny beds that went up to scale the heavens,—awoke again the shadowy arms that moved downward to meet them. Once again arose the swell of the anthem, the burst of the Hallelujah chorus, the storm, the trampling movement of the choral passion, the agitation of my own trembling sympathy, the tumult of the choir, the wrath of the organ. Once more I, that wallowed in the dust, became he that rose up to the clouds. And now all was bound up into unity; the first state and the last were melted into each other as in some sunny, glorifying haze. For high in heaven hovered a gleaming host of faces, veiled with wings, around the pillows of the dying children. And such beings sympathize equally with sorrow that grovels and with sorrow that soars. Such beings pity alike the children that are languishing in death, and the children that live only to languish in tears."
This extract is important as showing that when a mere child, knowing nothing of the fatal drug, he had visions similar to those which filled his after years. At Oxford he had begun the use of opium—but his first vision was a repetition of one of his childish years, and it leads us to infer that his own vivid imagination bore an important part in the brilliant dreams which followed his taking of opium. No person of ordinary mind could induce those gorgeous and bewildering dreams by its use. In his case the drug acted upon a mind fitted to see visions and dream dreams even without its use; and the result was that gorgeous and bewildering phantasmagoria which he so eloquently describes.
The causes of his first indulging in opium may be briefly glanced at here. At seventeen, he ran away from the school at which he had been placed by his guardians, his father now being dead. He wished to enter college at once, and it appears was well prepared to do so, and had made earnest representations to his guardians upon the subject, as he was unhappy where he was, and under a very unsuitable master. But they would not consent, and, like one of his brothers who ran away from school and went to sea, he borrowed a little money and stole quietly away to Wales.
The brother had left school, it appears, with good reason, being brutally treated; but in the case of Thomas there seems to have been no complaint of real ill-usage. It was simply one of the wilful freaks of a precocious and fantastic boy. He wandered in Wales for a few weeks, until his money was nearly spent, and then contrived to get to London, where he suffered the cruellest pangs of poverty, although he was a young gentleman of independent fortune. It is difficult for a matter-of-fact and well-balanced mind to conceive of an experience just like that of De Quincey. Why he should have allowed himself to starve rather than communicate with his friends, we are not told,—it could scarcely have been pride, for he accepted help even from strangers when it was offered,—and why he did not seek some of the friends of his family in the city we are not informed, but such was the fact.
He tells the story thus:—
"And now began the later and fiercer stage of my long sufferings; without using a disproportionate expression, I might say of my agony. For I now suffered for upwards of sixteen weeks the physical anguish of hunger in various degrees of intensity, but as bitter, perhaps, as ever any human being can have suffered who has survived it. I would not needlessly harass my readers' feelings by a detail of all that I endured; for extremities such as these, under any circumstances of heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated, even in description, without a rueful pity that is painful to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it suffice to say that a few fragments of bread from the breakfast table of one individual, and these at uncertain intervals, constituted my whole support. . . . I was houseless, and seldom slept under a roof."
After a time, however, he slept in an unoccupied house, or unoccupied save by a child of ten years,—as forlorn as himself. She slept here, and was much tormented by the fear of ghosts. She hailed his advent with great pleasure as a protection from supernatural visitants; and when the weather became cold, he used to hold her in his arms that she might gain the additional comfort of a little warmth. He says they lay upon the floor "with a bundle of cursed law papers for a pillow, and no covering save an old cloak." He slept only from exhaustion, and could hear himself moaning in his sleep; but his little companion, relieved of fear, and perhaps a little better fed than he, slept soundly and well at all times. He learned to love the poor child as his partner in wretchedness. He made also one other friend, a girl of the streets, named Ann, who was kind to him, and whom he remembered with gratitude to the end of his life. He says of her:—
"This person was a young woman, and one of that unhappy class who subsist upon the wages of prostitution. . . . Yet, no! let me not class thee, O noble-minded Ann, with that order of women; let me find, if it be possible, some gentler name to designate the condition of her to whose bounty and compassion—ministering to my necessities when all the world had forsaken me—I owe it that I am at this time alive. . . . She was not as old as myself. . . . O youthful benefactress! how often in succeeding years, standing in solitary places and thinking of thee with grief of heart and perfect love,—how often have I wished that, as in ancient times the curse of a father was believed to have a supernatural power, and to pursue its object with a fatal necessity of self-fulfilment,—even so the benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude might have a like prerogative,—might have power given it from above to chase, to haunt, to waylay, to overtake, to pursue thee into the central darkness of a London brothel, or (if it were possible) into the darkness of the grave, there to awaken thee with an authentic message of peace and forgiveness and final reconciliation!"
The youthful wanderer was finally discovered by his friends, and placed by his wish at Oxford, where about a year after, in 1804, he began the occasional use of opium. He did this merely as a means of pleasure at first, like the drinking of wine, and took it only at stated intervals for a period of eight years. He seemed to experience no harm from its use in this way; but a very severe neuralgic affection of the stomach (caused, it is supposed, by his privations in London primarily) developed itself at the end of that time, and he resorted to the habitual use of opium as a relief from pain.
He was married in 1816 to Miss Margaret Simpson, and lived with her in a cottage at Grasmere. Of this wife, with whom he lived for twenty-one years, he thus writes:—
"But watching by my pillow, or defrauding herself of sleep to bear me company through the heavy watches of the night, sat my Electra; for thou, beloved M., dear companion of my later years, thou wast my Electra! and neither in nobility of mind nor in long-suffering affection would'st permit that a Grecian sister should excel an English wife. For thou thoughtest not much to stoop to humble offices of kindness, and to servile ministrations of tenderest affection; to wipe away for years the unwholesome dews upon the forehead, or to refresh the lips when parched and baked with fever; nor even when thy own peaceful slumbers had by long sympathy become infected with the spectacle of my dread contest with phantoms and shadowy enemies that oftentimes bade me 'sleep no more'—not even then did'st thou utter a complaint or any murmur, nor withdraw thy angelic smiles, nor shrink from thy service of love, more than did Electra of old. For she too, though she was a Grecian woman, and the daughter of the king of men, yet wept sometimes, and hid her face in her robe!"
Hard indeed, no doubt, was the wife's lot through all those years; but the world will never have more than this mere glimpse of her sorrow and her devotion. Yet to a person gifted with imagination, it is enough. He can reconstruct from it that long period of patient watchfulness and unwearied devotion; he can share her hopes when her loved one makes a battle with his enemy, her tears when he is defeated, her rapture when he makes a seeming conquest, the bitterness of her anguish when he again falls. For all this was gone through, not once, but three times, in the course of De Quincey's life. It was not until he felt that death was inevitable if he continued the use of opium (which he was then taking in enormous quantities) that he ever resolved to give up its use. He knew he must die if he kept on, he thought he should die if he gave it up, but he determined to make the effort. His studies had long been abandoned; he could not even read. For two years he had read but one book; he shrank from study with a sense of infantine powerlessness that gave him great anguish when he remembered what his mind had formerly been. From misery and suffering, he might almost be described as being in a dormant state. His wife managed all the affairs of the household, and attended to necessary business. He did not lose his moral sensibilities or aspirations, as so many opium eaters do, but his intellect seemed dead. His brain had become a theatre, which presented spectacles of more than earthly splendor, but as often painful as pleasurable. He had no control now of the dreams which haunted him. He learned now the awful tyranny of the human face.
"Upon the rocking waters of the ocean, the human face began to appear: the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces, upturned to the heavens,—faces imploring, wrathful, despairing, surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by centuries; my agitation was infinite, my mind tossed and surged with the ocean. . . . I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies and sphinxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses by crocodiles; and laid confounded with all unutterable slimy things, among reeds and Nilotic mud. . . . The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror than almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him for centuries."
The struggle was a long and hard one, and of it he says:—
"Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to be born as to die. I think it probable; and during the whole period of my diminishing opium I had the torments of a man passing out of one mode of existence into another. . . . One memorial of my former condition still remains; my dreams are not yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have not wholly subsided. My dreams are still tumultuous, and like the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from afar, it is still, in the tremendous line of Milton,
'With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery arms.'"
It is sad to learn that after all his struggles he never really succeeded in freeing himself from the spell of opium. We learn that "after having at one time abstained wholly for sixty-one days, he was compelled to return to its moderate use, as life was found to be insupportable; and there is no record of any further attempt at total abstinence." His indulgence was, however, very limited in his later years. Weakly as he was, and with a stomach which could digest but the smallest quantity of food, he lived in tolerable health until he was seventy-four years old. His wife died over twenty years before he passed away; and his daughters made a home for him during that time, and cared for him, as his wife had done. He could never be trusted with any practical matters whatever. He had a nervous horror of handling money, and would give away bank-notes to get them out of his way. He was very generous when young, and gave Coleridge three hundred pounds at one time, insisting upon making it five hundred, which was not allowed. He never had a friend who was not welcome to his purse. While he had no care whatever about his dress, and would frequently enter the drawing-room, even when company was there, with but one stocking on, or minus some other very necessary adjunct of dress, he was very dainty and neat about many things. The greasy, crumpled, Scotch one-pound notes annoyed him. He did his best to smooth and cleanse them, before parting with them, and he washed and polished shillings up to their pristine brightness before giving them away. He used to complain of Wordsworth, because of a lack of neatness, and describes somewhere his agony at seeing the old poet cut the leaves of a new book with a knife taken from the supper-table, where buttered toast had been eaten. Coleridge was also distressed over Wordsworth's treatment of books, and says that one would as soon trust a bear in a tulip-garden as Wordsworth in a library.
De Quincey was a very charming companion and a most brilliant talker. He says of himself and Lamb, that they both had a childish love of nonsense,—headlong nonsense. While much given to reverie, and somewhat shy, he had a great fund of humor, drollery, and effervescent wit, which made his society much liked by all fortunate enough to be acquainted with him. He was a very abstemious man, and his tastes were of the simplest. His whole manner and speech were imbued with a high-bred courtesy, though he sometimes loved to run counter to the ordinary conventionalities of life. He could never be depended upon for keeping any sort of engagement, and if a friend wanted him to dinner, he must go for him with his carriage, and take him away. His manner to his daughters was the perfection of chivalrous respect, as well as affection.
What he might have been had he never contracted his fatal habit of opium eating, it is perhaps useless to conjecture; but in his youth he was thought to be one who might do anything,—all things. What he really did do, of permanent value, is very little compared to the expectations of his friends.
Blameless as was his life in every other respect, the pity of this weakness seems infinitely great, and we mourn over his lot with the same unavailing sorrow with which we weep over the graves of other men of great gifts, but some fatal defect of will, which allows them to be bound and held captive all their lives in the chains of some darling vice. Mingled with the rosemary of our remembrance for such, must be the fennel and the rue.