CHAPTER V

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. SPIRITUAL CONVALESCENCE

Wordsworth did not emerge at once from the depths of moral despair into which he had been plunged by the course of political events and by his loss of faith in moral reason. The human soul does not behave in that way. It requires time to recover from such a moral disease. However, the strength and nobility of his character are manifest in the manner in which he bore himself in this crisis of his life. He gave a remarkable exhibition of sanity and self-control under the circumstances. In "The Prelude " he hints at the temptations of such a mental state. On the one hand, without faith in men and in the essential integrity of Man's rational and moral constitution, there is danger of growing spiritually callous and cynical- of scoffing at truth and virtue. On the other hand, there is also a temptation to idleness and waste of powers, especially those having to do with the pursuit of truth and the acquisition of knowledge. If Man's intellectual endeavor ends in defeat and moral despair, because of his constitutional impotency of mind, why make any further effort? If the tempter approached Wordsworth in either of these ways, or in both, he found him invulnerable. Depressed and bewildered though he was, he did not permit himself to yield to hardness and cynicism. Perplexed almost to distraction, and skeptical in regard to men and Man, he did not choose to "walk with scoffers," "seeking light and gay revenge from indiscriminate laughter." He still loved too much the life of serious thought, and the truth which is its own reward, to be reconciled to a life of mental idleness and waste. In this time of disappointment and despair he turned to an abstract world the world of mathematics and physics. Here reason could

find employment in a sphere free from disturbances of space and time occasioned by material objects or by human action. But this resort to abstract reasoning proved to be only a partial and temporary relief to his mind. He was suffering from a severe mental and spiritual malady-a "strong disease." He needed a physician to effect a complete and permanent cure, or some one to nurse him back to health. He could not do this for himself. Fortunately for him, and also for the world, such a one was at hand. It was chiefly to his sister, Dorothy Wordsworth, that he owed his gradual but complete recovery, and was saved from himself and to the poet's art.

Dorothy Wordsworth was in some respects an unusual personality, endowed with exceptional powers of mind and heart. Hers was a mind gifted with keen powers of observation, delicate and tender sensibility, and a refined and lively imagination. Her nature was essentially poetic. To these qualities of mind were added rare qualities of heart. She was generous and affectionate, absolutely unselfish in her devotion to others, and especially to her brother William, which made her an invaluable aid to him both as a man and as a poet. She was not merely his sister by virtue of being the child of his parents, but in a higher and truer sense-in spiritual endowment and affinity. She was, as he called her, the sister of his soul.

There seems to be an essential agreement of opinion and sentiment, among those who knew her best, in regard to the admirable qualities possessed by this simple, unique woman. Coleridge, in a letter to Cottle, says: "W. and his exquisite sister are with me. She is a woman indeed! in mind I mean, and heart; for her person is such that if you expected to see a pretty woman, you would think her rather ordinary; if you expected to see an ordinary woman, you would think her pretty! but her manners are simple, ardent, impressive. In every motion her most innocent soul outbeams so brightly, that who saw would say

'Guilt was a thing impossible with her.'

Her information various. Her eye watchful in minutest observation of Nature; and her taste a perfect electrometer. It bends, protrudes, and draws in at subtlest beauties and most recondite faults."1 De Quincey was long an intimate friend of the Wordsworths, and had excellent opportunities to study the personality and character of Dorothy. Later the friendly relations existing between them were broken, and the Poet and his sister did not escape the criticism of his caustic and gossipy pen. But long after he had been alienated from them, he wrote of Miss Wordsworth: She was a person of very remarkable endowments intellectually; and, in addition to other great services which she rendered to her brother, this I may mention, as greater than all the rest, and it was one which equally operated to the benefit of every casual companion in a walk - viz. the exceeding sympathy, always ready and always profound, by which she made all that one could tell her, all that one could describe, all that one could quote from a foreign author, reverberate as it were à plusieurs reprises, to one's own feelings, by the manifest impression it made upon her. The pulses of light are not more quick or more inevitable in their flow and undulation, than were the answering and echoing movements of her sympathizing attention. Her knowledge of literature was irregular, and not systematically built up. She was content to be ignorant of many things; but what she knew and had really mastered, lay where it could not be disturbed, in the temper of her own most fervid heart." 2

Such were the qualities, mental and spiritual, possessed by Wordsworth's sister. From childhood William and Dorothy had been very close in sympathy and interests. Together they roamed the fields, hills, and mountains of their native region. Endowed with unusual perceptive powers, imagination, and poetic feeling, they were keenly alive to the natural beauty of their surroundings. And when the force of circumstances-Wordsworth's school and university

1 Knight, The Life of William Wordsworth, I, 112-113.

2 De Quincey, Literary Reminiscences, 277-278, New York, 1878. Cf. also 344–372

life, his travels and wanderings-interrupted this pleasant companionship, their correspondence breathed tender and sweet affection. In her letters to others, also, Dorothy seldom failed to put on record her great happiness when more fortunate circumstances brought them together again. Her poetic temperament enabled her to understand her brother's moods, and sympathize with his aims and interests. From boyhood on through mature manhood he found in her a great source of comfort, strength, and inspiration. That he fully appreciated her worth and real helpfulness is manifest in his verse. In "The Sparrow's Nest" she is not only the blessing of his later years but also a gracious influence in his early life: The Blessing of my later years

Was with me when a boy :

She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
And humble cares, and delicate fears;
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
And love, and thought, and joy.1

In "The Prelude " he tells us how, by her tenderness and love, she led him to a less austere view of Nature than he was wont to take; how she called him away from a too exclusive regard for the sterner, more severe, and even terrible aspects of the physical world to an appreciation of those of a softer and more peaceful character; and this was no small service to a mind such as Wordsworth's. How much he was indebted to her for the refined and spiritual conception of Nature which characterizes his maturest views, and which lies at the basis of his conception of the world, it is impossible to say. That he was thus under obligation to her is manifest in his own generous acknowledgment:

Child of my parents! Sister of my soul!
Thanks in sincerest verse have been elsewhere
Poured out for all the early tenderness

Which I from thee imbibed: and 't is most true
That later seasons owed to thee no less;

1 The Sparrow's Nest, 15-20.

For, spite of thy sweet influence and the touch
Of kindred hands that opened out the springs
Of genial thought in childhood, and in spite
Of all that unassisted I had marked

In life or nature of those charms minute
That win their way into the heart by stealth,
(Still to the very going-out of youth)

I too exclusively esteemed that love,

And sought that beauty, which, as Milton sings,
Hath terror in it. Thou didst soften down
This over-sternness; but for thee, dear Friend!
My soul, too reckless of mild grace, had stood
In her original self too confident,

Retained too long a countenance severe;
A rock with torrents roaring, with the clouds
Familiar, and a favourite of the stars:
But thou didst plant its crevices with flowers,
Hang it with shrubs that twinkle in the breeze,
And teach the little birds to build their nests
And warble in its chambers.1

Again, in that mental transition, when Nature, so long foremost in his affections and regard, finally yielded the supremacy to Man, Wordsworth acknowledges that it was his sister who, in a sense, led the way. Her breath was a "kind of gentler spring" that went before his steps, so that in his conception of and regard for Man we also find him indebted to her for a certain measure of help. He says:

At a time

When Nature, destined to remain so long
Foremost in my affections, had fallen back
Into a second place, pleased to become
A handmaid to a nobler than herself,

When every day brought with it some new sense
Of exquisite regard for common things,
And all the earth was budding with these gifts
Of more refined humanity, thy breath,

Dear Sister! was a kind of gentler spring

That went before my steps.2

1 The Prelude, XIV, 232-256.

2 Ibid., XIV, 256–266.