EXTRACTS FROM A DIARY ON THE QUANTOCKS

Spring 18–.

Walked from Holford to my lodgings on the hill. Never remember to have lived in such quietude. The cottage stands half a mile away from any house. Woke very early the next morning and went down to Alfoxden House, where Wordsworth and Dorothy lived a century ago. Here also came Coleridge. It was almost too much to remember that they had trodden those paths. I could hardly believe they were not there, and yet they were dead—such a strange overcoming sense of presence and yet of vanishedness.

A certain degree of ignorance is necessary for a summary essay on creatures of this order. The expression of Dorothy’s soul is spread over large surfaces. Some people require much space and time, and the striking events of a life are often not those which are most significant. It is in small, spontaneous actions and their reiteration that character plainly appears. After prolonged acquaintance with Dorothy we see that she was great and we love her reverentially and passionately. She could look at a beautiful thing for an hour without reflection, but absorbed in its pure beauty—a most rare gift. For how long can we watch a birch tree against the sky? Here are two extracts from her journal in the very place where I now am. They are dated 26th January and 24th February 1798, in the winter it will be noticed. ‘Sat in the sunshine. The distant sheep-bells; the sound of the stream; the woodman winding along the half-marked road with his laden pony; locks of wool still spangled with the dewdrops; the blue-grey sea, shaded with immense masses of cloud, not streaked; the sheep glittering in the sunshine.’ . . . ‘Went to the hill-top. Sat a considerable time overlooking the country towards the sea. The air blew pleasantly around us. . . . Scattered farmhouses, half-concealed by green, mossy orchards; fresh straw lying at the doors; haystacks in the fields. Brown fallows; the springing wheat, like a shade of green over the brown earth; and the choice meadow plots, full of sheep and lambs, of a soft and vivid green; a few wreaths of blue smoke, spreading along the ground; the oaks and beeches in the hedges retaining their yellow leaves; the distant prospect on the land side, islanded with sunshine; the sea, like a basin full to the margin; the dark, fresh-ploughed fields; the turnips, of a lively, rough green.’ That bit about the farmhouses reminds me of two very early lines of Wordsworth which are a prophecy of his peculiar quality:—

‘Calm is all nature as a resting wheel’;

and

‘By secret villages and lonely farms.’

(first version.)

The image in the first line looks rude and unpoetical, but will be felt by anybody who has strolled observantly through a farmyard—say on a Sunday summer afternoon—and has noticed a disused wheel leaning against a wall. Wordsworth shows himself not afraid of the commonplace. A great object may gain by comparison with one which is superficially lower or even mean—nature with a cart-wheel.

Went over the hills to Bicknoller—a sunny, hazy day—and the Bristol Channel was in a mist. The note of the cuckoo was unceasing. Down in the valley at Bicknoller the hedges and banks of the lanes are in the most ardent stage of spring. Everything is pressing forward with joyous impetuosity, and yet is satisfied with what it is at the present moment and is completely at rest in it. Along this path to Bicknoller the Ancient Mariner was begun. The most wonderful piece of criticism on record is perhaps that of Mrs. Barbauld on the poem. She objected to it because it had no moral. Coleridge replied: ‘In my judgment the poem had too much; and the only, or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought to have no more moral than the Arabian Nights’ tale of the merchant’s sitting down to eat dates by the side of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie starts up, and says he must kill the aforesaid merchant, because one of the date-shells had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie’s son.’

To the first draft of Youth and Age, written in 1823, there is a little prose introduction, a reminiscence of the Quantocks, which is a lovely example of the way in which one sensation gains by description in terms of another. ‘ . . . At earliest dawn . . . the first skylark . . . was a Song-Fountain, dashing up and sparkling to the Ear’s eye, in full column or ornamented shaft of sound in the order of Gothic Extravaganza, out of sight, over the Cornfields on the descent of the Mountain on the other side—out of sight, tho’ twice I beheld its mute shoot downward in the sunshine like a falling star of silver.’

Coleridge! Coleridge! How empty do the sweeping judgments passed on him appear if we recollect that by Wordsworth, Dorothy, Charles and Mary Lamb, he was honoured and fervently loved. If a man is loved by any human being condemnation is rash, and we ought at least to be silent.

Wandered about Holford. The apple-trees are in full blossom. One of them was a particularly exquisite survival of youth in old age. Its head was a white-and-pink mass, but it leaned almost horizontally, battered and weather-worn.

Thunder off and on all day till the afternoon. A low grey mist covered the whole sky at five o’clock, and the landscape was uninteresting, but in ten minutes the mist thinned a little, so that the sun came through it and lighted up the torn vapour.

Went over to East Quantock’s Head and came back across the hill. It was a dark day; the sky was overcast, and the moors were very lonely. The thought of London and other big cities over the horizon somewhat marred the solitude. Nevertheless there are the deserts of Arabia and Africa, the regions of the North and South Poles, the Ocean, and, encompassing the globe itself, silent, infinite space.

To Nether Stowey and Tom Poole’s house. In the hideous church is a monument to him fairly appreciative, but disfigured by snobbism. ‘His originality and grasp of mind,’ says the inscription, ‘counterbalanced the deficiencies of early education and secured him the friendship,’ etc. His ‘originality and grasp of mind’—his soul, that is to say, managed, when put in the scale, to turn it against those deficiencies which are made good to youths providentially directed to Eton and Oxford. According to the slab in the church, Poole died 8th September 1837, seventy-two years old. The house in which he lived in his later years is a pleasant place, but has been tortured into modern gentility. His revolving grate, which he turned round when he went out, has been replaced by an approved cast-iron ‘register.’ He was called ‘Justice Poole’ in the country round. Afterwards to Coleridge’s cottage—small, somewhat squalid rooms. Pity, pity, almost to tears. The second edition of his poems was published while he was here in 1797. In a note added to Religious Musings in that edition he declares his belief in the Millennium; that ‘all who in past ages have endeavoured to ameliorate the state of man, will rise and enjoy the fruits and flowers, the imperceptible seeds of which they had sown in their former life; and that the wicked will, during the same period, be suffering the remedies adapted to their several bad habits.’ This period is to be ‘followed by the passing away of this earth, and by our entering the state of pure intellect; when all creation shall rest from its labours.’ The ‘coadjutors of God’ in Religious Musings are Milton, Newton, Hartley, and Priestley. In the beginning of 1798 Coleridge was preaching at the Unitarian Chapel at Shrewsbury. But on the 13th November 1797, at half-past four in the afternoon (let us be particular in dating such an event), he and Dorothy and her brother began their walk over these Quantock hills, and The Ancient Mariner was born. These are the facts, and rash indeed would anybody be who should attempt to deduce anything from them. Of all foolish criticism there is none more foolish than that which treats the mental movement of men like Coleridge or Wordsworth as if it were in an imaginary straight line. Excepting lines 123–270, composed in the latter part of 1796, Coleridge wrote his contribution to Joan of Arc between 1794 and 1795. The Rose and Kisses were written in 1793, and On a Discovery Made Too Late in 1794. Could anybody, not knowing the dates, have believed that these three poems last-named, if not written before the Joan of Arc, were contemporaneous with it? In the Joan of Arc Coleridge is immature and led astray by politics, religion, and philosophy, but in the three little poems where he has subjects akin to him he is perfect, and could have done nothing better ten years later. Still more remarkable, Lewti, in its earliest form, cannot have been written later than 1794, for it was originally addressed to Mary Evans, from whom Coleridge parted in December 1794. As an example of the survival of his poetic power take Love’s First Hope, written probably in 1824:

‘O fair is Love’s first hope to gentle mind! As Eve’s first star thro’ fleecy cloudlet peeping; And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind, O’er willowy meads, and shadow’d waters creeping, And Ceres’ golden field;—the sultry hind Meets it with brow uplift, and stays his reaping.’

Coleridge was indebted to Sir Philip Sidney for the third and fourth lines, excepting ‘o’er willowy meads,’ but these three words and the first and last two lines are his own. Not only does his genius survive, but emotion as pure and deep as that of the Nether Stowey days or those preceding. There is no trace of the interval between them and those of 1824.

In the post-office at Kilve hangs an old trombone, a memento of the time when the village orchestra assisted in the service at the church. How well I remember those artists and their jealousies! The clarionet or ‘clarnet,’ as he called himself, caused much ill-feeling because he drowned the others, and the double-bass strove ineffectually to avenge himself. The churchyard yew is one of the largest I ever beheld—twenty feet in girth by measurement, four feet from the ground. A gay morning: heavy, white masses of clouds sailing over the hills; light most brilliant when the sun came out. How singularly beautiful is a definitely outlined white cloud when it is cut by the ridge of a hill!

Across the hills in a south-westerly storm of wind and rain to Bicknoller. A walk not to be forgotten: overcast sky, dark moors; clouds sweeping over them and obscuring them. I should not have found my way if I had not lost it when I went to Bicknoller before. I then put three stones at the point where I afterwards discovered I had gone astray. These three stones saved me to-day.

Whitsunday morning: sat at the open window between five and six: the hills opposite lay in the light of the eastern sun. Bicknoller church and the little old village were beneath me. Perfect quietude, save for the bells of Stogumber church ringing a peal two miles away. Earth has nothing to give compared with this peace. The air was so still that delicious mingled scents floated up from the garden and fields below. It was one of those days on which every sense is satisfied, and no mortal imperfection appears. Took the Excursion out of doors after breakfast, and read The Ruined Cottage.

Much of the religion by which Wordsworth lives is very indefinite. Look at the close of this poem:—

‘I well remember that those very plumes, Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall By mist and silent rain-drops silver’d o’er, As once I pass’d, did to my heart convey So still an image of tranquillity, So calm and still, and look’d so beautiful Amid the uneasy thoughts which fill’d my mind, That what we feel of sorrow and despair From ruin and from change, and all the grief The passing shows of Being leave behind, Appear’d an idle dream, that could not live Where meditation was. I turn’d away, And walk’d along my road in happiness.’

Because this religion is indefinite it is not therefore the less supporting.

Why, by the way, did Wordsworth expunge from Michael these wonderful lines?

‘In his thoughts there were obscurities, Wonder, and admiration, things that wrought Not less than a religion in his heart.’

Something like them had been said before, but they ought to have been retained.

The changes in the sky in this Quantock country are as sudden and strange as in Cumberland. During a walk from Cleeve Abbey to Bicknoller it rained in torrents till within half a mile of the end of my journey. All at once it ceased, and the uniform sheet of rain-cloud broke into loose ragged masses swirling in different directions and variously lighted, the sun almost shining through some of the clefts between them. Cleeve Abbey, lying in the trough of a green valley through which runs a stream, the cloister garth and the Abbot’s seat at the end of it, are most impressive. Under the turf lie the dead monks. A place like this begets half-unconscious dreaming which issues in nothing and is not wholesome. It would be better employment to learn something about the history of the abbey and about its architecture.

Detached Quantock Notes.

Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds’ singing, Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined, Save where your own imperious branches swinging, Have made a solemn music of the wind.’

These lines from France were written by Coleridge when he was a little over twenty-five years old. In the combination of two gifts, music and meaning, he is hardly surpassable at his best by any poet. Not an atom of meaning is sacrificed to gain a melody: in fact the melody adds to the meaning.

Here is another example showing how the poetic form with Coleridge is not a hindrance to expression, but aids it.

Gentle woman, for thy voice remeasures Whatever tones and melancholy pleasures The things of Nature utter; birds or trees, Or moan of ocean-gale in weedy caves, Or where the stiff grass ’mid the heath-plant waves, Murmur and music thin of sudden breeze.’

His similitudes are not mere external comparisons; the objects compared become modes of unity. ‘A brisk gale and the foam that peopled the alive [italics C.’s] sea, most interestingly combined with the number of white seagulls, that, repeatedly, it seemed as if the foam-spit had taken life and wing, and had flown up.’

The intimations which are but whispered, the Presences which are but half-disclosed, are those which we should intently obey. The coarsely obvious has its own strength.

‘She went forth alone Urged by the indwelling angel-guide, that oft, With dim inexplicable sympathies Disquieting the heart, shapes out Man’s course To the predoomed adventure.’

Destiny of Nations.

Wordworth’s habit of spending so much time in the open air and with the humble people around him gives to what he says the value of experience, distinguishable totally from the ideas of the literary man, which may be brilliant, but do not agree with the sun, moon and stars, and turn out to be nothing when we ask is the thing really so.

Wordsworth’s verses have been in the sun and wind. It is a test of good sane writing that we can read it out of doors.

If Wordsworth’s love of clouds and mountains ended there it would be no better than the luxury of a refined taste. But it does not end there. It affects the whole of his relationships with men and women, and is therefore most practical.

In Wordsworth what we expect does not come, but in its place the unexpected. In the twelfth book of the Prelude he tells us:

There are in our existence spots of time, That with distinct pre-eminence retain A renovating virtue, whence, depressed By false opinion and contentious thought, Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight In trivial occupations, and the round Of ordinary intercourse, our minds Are nourished and invisibly repaired; A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced, That penetrates, enables us to mount, When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen. This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks Among those passages of life that give Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how, The mind is lord and master—outward sense The obedient servant of her will.’

He then gives us one of these ‘passages,’ and what is it? A day when as a child he saw

‘A naked pool that lay beneath the hills, The beacon on the summit, and, more near, A girl, who bore a pitcher on her head, And seemed with difficult steps to force her way Against the blowing wind.’

It was, as he says, an ‘ordinary sight,’ but

‘Colours and words that are unknown to man’

would have failed him

‘To paint the visionary dreariness’

which invested what he saw.

Years afterwards, when he revisited the spot, the ‘loved one at his side,’ there fell on it

‘A spirit of pleasure and youth’s golden gleam; And think ye not with radiance more sublime For these remembrances, and for the power They had left behind? So feeling comes in aid Of feeling, and diversity of strength Attends us, if but once we have been strong.’

This was the experience, then, of ‘distinct pre-eminence’ in whose recollection his mind was ‘nourished and invisibly repaired.’ It is in such a moment that the soul’s strength is shown; when common objects evoke what he calls the imagination, the reality, of which they are a suggestion. Although he expands here and elsewhere he does not elaborate. He stops where the fact ends and shuns abstractions.

‘So taught, so trained, we boldly face All accidents of time and place; Whatever props may fail, Trust in that sovereign law can spread New glory o’er the mountain’s head, Fresh beauty through the vale.’

This is from The Wishing-Gate Destroyed, a late poem, not published till 1842, when Wordsworth was seventy-two years old. It is his Nicene and Apostles’ Creed and Thirty-Nine Articles. Trust, with no credentials but its own existence, and yet they are indisputable.

‘Is it that Man is soon deprest? A thoughtless Thing! who, once unblest, Does little on his memory rest, Or on his reason.’

To the Daisy.

An example of Wordsworth’s wisdom disclosing itself in his simplest pieces. For one sad conclusion to which the reason leads us, the uncontrolled, baseless procedure in the brain which we call thinking, but is really day-dreaming, leads us to a score. Reason on the whole is sanative.

‘Blest Statesman He, whose Mind’s unselfish will Leaves him at ease among grand thoughts: whose eye Sees that, apart from magnanimity, Wisdom exists not, nor the humbler skill Of Prudence, disentangling good and ill With patient care.’

Exist not. We are befooled by words. We conceive wisdom, prudence, and magnanimity as distinct entities, without intercommunication. If we could but see things as they are without the tyranny of definition!

Wordsworth has a singular power of expressing articulately that which would be mere mist without him, but is of vital importance.