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Wildly Romantic

The English Romantic Poets: The Mad, the Bad, and the Dangerous

Henry Holt and Company

WORDSWORTH

"The Child Is Father to the Man"

If his mother had lived, William Wordsworth's life would have been much different. It was a story that would be repeated for almost all the major poets of the eighteenth century, though more often it was the father who died. If Wordsworth's mother had lived, William would have grown up in a huge, comfortable home, courtesy of the landowner Sir James Lowther. John Wordsworth, William's father, worked for Lowther as a sort of legal adviser (in addition to being the area's coroner). William probably would not have spent his boyhood in the English Lake District he would come to love; would not have glided, alone and silent except for the hiss of his skates, along the frozen lakes; would not have called at dusk to the owls in the trees and heard them answer. The fateful meetings in his life — with Annette Vallon, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge — might never have happened. He might have had the heart and soul of a poet; he might have grown up to love words. But, as Wordsworth himself would one day write, "the child is father to the man." If his mother had lived, the images and events that shaped the poetry of the man would not have been part of the experiences of the child.

The heart and soul of the poet emerged when William was a teenager. As a child, though, he had the heart and soul of a brat. Every child throws tantrums. William's were a bit extreme. He once ripped up a family portrait with an old fencing sword — then threatened to kill himself with the same blade. His mother, Ann, said that of all her children, it was William's fate that worried her the most.

But while her children were quite young, Ann Wordsworth took a trip from her home in Cockermouth in the north of England to visit a friend in London. Her friend put her up in the best bedroom the family had to offer. You can only imagine what the worst bedroom must have been like, because the one Ann settled into was cold and damp, with a stiff draft blowing into the windows. Ann died of pneumonia soon afterward. Her husband was not prepared to raise small children by himself, so they were separated, sent to live with various relatives. It would be nine years before William saw one of his brothers again, after the death of their father (also, coincidentally, from pneumonia following a cold, wet journey).

Young William was lucky. He was sent to a school in England's Lake District, whose wild atmosphere spoke to his restless, outdoorsy, sensitive soul. In summer he could walk about the fells, the rocky, rolling hills between the region's beautiful glacial lakes. In winter he learned to skate on those same lakes, frozen as clear and solid as glass. The curriculum at the school was traditional, but its headmaster wasn't; he was fond of modern poetry and kept a rich and up-to-date library.

William himself tried his hand at writing poetry when he was about fourteen, and even managed to get a piece printed in a magazine in 1787. He liked to compose poems as he walked, memorizing the words he'd put together until he reached a place where he could get pen and paper and write them down. Since he was always trudging around the lanes and hills anyway, he made a convenient dog-walker for friends and neighbors. One of the dogs learned to alert William to those potentially awkward moments when a passerby might find a young man muttering to himself threatening. When another person came into view, the dog would stop and stare at William until he got the message and shut up.

Mumbling poetry to himself — it was a habit William Wordsworth never outgrew. At an inn where Wordsworth, now an adult, had been a guest, the innkeeper remembered that odd man whose "hobby was poetry ... mumbling to hissel' along t'roads."

When it came time to think about continuing his education, William was accepted as a sizar, a scholarship student, into St. John's College, Cambridge University. And the following summer, he was reunited at last with his sister Dorothy. She and Mary Hutchinson, a girl the Wordsworth children had known since childhood, came to visit William. They spent the summer tramping across the countryside on foot. Walking was a major mode of transportation in the 1800s. But in William's case, it was more of an extreme sport. Anyone connected with William Wordsworth had to be an untiring walker. A few summers later, William and a school friend walked through France, Switzerland, and Italy — including the Alps — on foot, packs on their heads, covering fifteen miles before breakfast. By the end of their trip they had totaled over two thousand miles.

William started college with excellent grades. Four years later, he graduated without honors or recognition of any kind. The young men around him were more interested in their social life than academics. Sometimes they would start dressing for a midafternoon dinner an hour early, go from dinner to a string of parties, and only then, in the wee hours of the morning, return to their rooms to read or study. They woke up late, missing classes. And William Wordsworth was one of the boys.

When the French first started pressing for greater liberty and equality for the lower classes, it sounded like a wonderful idea to the English, especially the younger people. What teenager doesn't like the idea of being free and equal to authority? Twice William would cross the English Channel to France during revolutionary years, in search of the common people. His life so far had convinced him that the truest answers to what life was all about lay not with the rich and famous, the sort of people he'd gone to university with, but with people who worked hard and lived simply, farmers and craftsmen. The whole idea of the French Revolution really hit home for him when he was walking along a road one day with an old soldier. They saw a peasant, emaciated and dressed in rags, and William's companion turned to him and said, "'Tis against that which we are fighting."

In England, William wrote essays in the form of letters that would have gotten him thrown into prison if he'd actually published them. They spoke against the nobility and criticized a government that spent lavishly but disregarded the poverty so many people endured in the countryside or in the overcrowded slums of the growing cities. When King Louis XVI went to the guillotine in France, William approved; it was a necessary death in the cause of liberty. When England passed laws forbidding liberal-thinking groups to meet, William wrote against the laws.

And then he met Annette Vallon. She didn't speak English. His French was shaky at best, and his English was so deeply gutteral, with the strong accent of the northern part of the country, that she probably couldn't have understood much of what he said even if she had spoken the language. Life in Revolutionary France was all about "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." William and Annette certainly shared liberty and fraternity in their short time together. But as for equality, nine months later, with William back in England and the unrest of the Terror shaking France to its roots, Annette was alone in the town of Blois registering the birth of a daughter, Caroline. The baby's father's name was recorded as William Wordswodth. The child's existence was kept secret from all but the immediate family of "Wordswodth" for over a hundred years.

William may have wanted to return to France when he learned that he was a father — there is some evidence he even went, dangerous as it was once the Terror struck and anyone remotely aristocratic could be sentenced to death. Annette apparently believed that her lover would marry her. But as the years passed, the three grew older and moved on with lives that took other directions.

University had been enjoyable. Tramping about Europe and the north of England (and meeting at least one willing young woman) had been entertaining. Spinning out poetry during long walks was fun. But now it was time for William to settle down and find a way to make a living. There was really only one way for a young unmarried man who wanted to be a writer and was not independently wealthy to survive. That was to find himself a patron, a rich gentleman who thought highly enough of his writing to give him an annual allowance. It was like getting a grant from a foundation today. The money was usually just enough to pay for rented lodgings and basic needs, so the writer would have time to concentrate on his craft instead of survival. For William, salvation came in the person of Raisley Calvert. Calvert was only about William's age, but their circumstances were very different. For one, Calvert was rich. For another, he was suffering from tuberculosis and didn't have long to live. He thought William showed promise as a writer. William was Calvert's dutiful companion in his last days. When he died, he left the poet the grand sum of nine hundred pounds. Today, that amount would barely rent a studio apartment in London for a month. In the late 1700s, it was enough to live on quite comfortably for a very long time.

William was getting help from other friends as well. He was living in London and offering his services as a tutor. Like Raisley Calvert, Wordsworth's students had great hopes for their teacher. Being from families with much more money than Wordsworth's, they were able to pay the rent for him on a house called Racedown, in England's West Country. William had a special affinity for the West Country. Not long before, he'd been walking near the ancient monument of Stonehenge. When a sudden hailstorm struck, he took shelter among the fallen and leaning monoliths and had a mystical experience of going back in time to the weird circle's origins. He wrote,

While through those vestiges of ancient times
I ranged, and by the solitude o'ercome,
I had a reverie and saw the past,
Saw multitudes of men, and here and there,
A single Briton in his wolf-skin vest
With shield and stone-axe, stride across the Wold;
The voice of spears was heard, the rattling spear
Shaken by arms of mighty bone, in strength
Long mouldered of barbaric majesty.
I called upon the darkness; and it took,
A midnight darkness seemed to come and take
All objects from my sight; and lo! again
The desart visible by dismal flames!
It is the sacrificial Altar, fed
With living men; how deep the groans; the voice
Of those in the gigantic wicker thrills
Throughout the region far and near, pervades
The monumental hillocks; and the pomp
Is for both worlds, the living and the dead.

Like any homeowner just starting out, as soon as he moved into Racedown, William began ordering the necessities for his new life. Shoes, for instance. And not just any shoes: six pairs, two for dress and four with thick double soles and sturdy leather uppers. William was planning on doing a lot of walking.

Moving into Racedown was important to William for another reason. He had never gotten over how his brothers and sisters had been separated when they were so young. His sister Dorothy had never married. She called herself "dimunitive Dolly" because of her height — or lack thereof, since she was just five feet tall. One of her eyes didn't look quite right. She was bright and capable and a wonderful companion, but not a good looking girl. By the time she'd turned thirty, she realized "it would be absurd at my age to talk of marriage." There weren't many alternatives for unmarried women at the time. She had been working as a housekeeper for a relative. She even met the king and queen while at that job. But she was unhappy. Once William had Racedown to call home, Dorothy was able to move in with him, which suited both of them perfectly.

Also living with the Wordsworths at Racedown was a littleboy named Basil Montagu, the two-year-old son of a friend. Wordsworth had offered to be Basil's tutor in an unusual kind of schooling. Many intellectuals were fascinated by the ideas of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who wrote that Nature was a far better teacher than the formal education system. Like many of their contemporaries, Wordsworth and little Basil Montagu's father (who was also named Basil) were part of the circle of a philosopher named William Godwin while they were living in London. Godwin claimed that mankind was naturally good and needed only to allow that goodness free rein. Basil Montagu would be taught by these principles. Sometimes, though, such lofty ideals were hard to put into practice with a live, lively child. When he would throw tantrums, Basil would be locked alone in a room at Racedown — not because it was recommended by any of the philosophers whose advice the Wordsworths were following but, as Dorothy wrote, "because the noise was unpleasant to us." The Wordsworths had a maid, Peggy, who took care of the house, and sometimes found herself taking care of Basil as well. Rousseau hadn't mentioned nannies.

Then Racedown had another long-term visitor: the Wordsworths' childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson. Her sister had just died of tuberculosis, and Mary had been her companion to the end. The care of a relative dying of "consumption" was something many families went through in the late 1700s and early 1800s. It was a draining, exhausting experience, both physically and emotionally, especially since little was known about the disease, common though it was. Mary needed time to rest, recuperate, and regain her strength, and for six months she was a welcome guest in the Wordsworths' home.

Then, in June of 1797, just around the time Mary left, a visitor came to Racedown who would change the Wordsworths' lives forever. He and William were writers, and they had already met briefly, exchanged letters, and recognized each other as kindred spirits. Dorothy Wordsworth was outdoors when the visitor, still outside the fence that surrounded Racedown's fields, saw her in the distance. And, though he had already walked forty miles (they truly were kindred spirits), he leaped over a gate and came plowing through the corn like a force of nature. His name was Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The Poems

from THE PRELUDE, BOOK I

    And in the frosty season, when the sun
    Was set, and visible for many a mile
    The cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom,
    I heeded not their summons: happy time
    It was indeed for all of us — for me
    It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud
    The village clock tolled six — I wheeled about,
    Proud and exulting, like an untired horse
    That cares not for his home. All shod with steel,
    We hissed along the polished ice in games
    Confederate, imitative of the chase
    And woodland pleasures — the resounding horn,
    The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare.
    So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
    And not a voice was idle; with the din
    Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
    The leafless trees and every icy crag
    Tinkled like iron; while far distant hills
    Into the tumult sent an alien sound
    Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars
    Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west
    The orange sky of evening died away.
    Not seldom from the uproar I retired
    Into a silent bay, or sportively
    Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
    To cut across the reflex of a star
    That fled, and, flying still before me, gleamed
    Upon the glassy plain; and oftentimes,
    When we had given our bodies to the wind,
    And all the shadowy banks on either side
    Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
    The rapid line of motion, then at once
    Have I, reclining back upon my heels,
    Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs
    Wheeled by me — even as if the earth had rolled
    With visible motion her diurnal round!
    Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
    Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
    Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.

from THE PRELUDE, BOOK XI

(The French Revolution as it appeared to enthusiasts at its commencement)

    O pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
    For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
    Upon our side, us who were strong in love!
    Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
    But to be young was very Heaven! O times,
    In which the meager, stale, forbidding ways
    Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
    The attraction of a country in romance!
    When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights
    When most intent on making of herself
    A prime enchantress — to assist the work,
    Which then was going forward in her name!
    Not favoured spots alone, but the whole Earth,
    The beauty wore of promise — that which sets
    (As at some moments might not be unfelt
    Among the bowers of Paradise itself)
    The budding rose above the rose full blown.
    What temper at the prospect did not wake
    To happiness unthought of? The inert
    Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
    They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
    The playfellows of fancy, who had made
    All powers of swiftness, subtlety, and strength
    Their ministers — who in lordly wise had stirred
    Among the grandest objects of the sense,
    And dealt with whatsoever they found there
    As if they had within some lurking right
    To wield it — they, too, who of gentle mood
    Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
    Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild,
    And in the region of their peaceful selves —
    Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
    Did both find helpers to their hearts' desire,
    And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish —
    Were called upon to exercise their skill,
    Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,
    Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
    But in this very world, which is the world
    Of all of us — the place where, in the end,
    We find our happiness, or not at all!

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Excerpted from Wildly Romantic by Catherine M. Andronik. Copyright © 2007 Catherine M. Andronik. Excerpted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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