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Page 50
In Dorothy Wordsworth's journals, you may have the delight of daily
_intercourse--famigliarmente discorrendo_--with one of the purest
and noblest souls ever housed in flesh; to that you may add the
reassurance to be got from word and implication beyond doubt. She
tells us much, but implies more. We may see deeply into ourselves, but
she sees deeply into a deeper self than most of us can discern. It is
not only that, knowing her, we are grounded in the rudiments of honour
and lovely living; it is to learn that human life can be so lived, and
to conclude that of that at least is the Kingdom of Heaven.
These journals are for fragments only of the years which they cover,
and as such exist for Jan.-May, 1798 (Alfoxden); May-Dec, 1800,
Oct.-Dec, 1801, Jan.-July, 1802: all these at Grasmere. They have been
printed by Professor Knight, and I have the assurance of Mr. Gordon
Wordsworth that what little has been omitted is unimportant. Nothing
is unimportant to me, and I wish the whole had been given us; but
what we have is enough whereby to trace the development of her
extraordinary mind and of her power of self-expression. The latter,
undoubtedly, grew out of emotion, which gradually culminated until the
day of William Wordsworth's marriage. There it broke, and with it, as
if by a determination of the will, there the revelation ceased. A new
life began with the coming of Mary Wordsworth to Dove Cottage, a life
of which Dorothy records the surface only.
The Alfoxden fragment (20 Jan.-22 May, 1798), written when she
was twenty-seven, is chiefly notable for its power of interpreting
landscape. That was a power which Wordsworth himself possessed in
a high degree. There can be no doubt, I think, that they egged each
other on, but I myself should find it hard to say which was egger-on
and which the egged. This is the first sentence of it:
"20 Jan.--The green paths down the hillsides are channels for
streams. The young wheat is streaked by silver lines of water
running between the ridges, the sheep are gathered together
on the slopes. After the wet dark days, the country seems more
populous. It peoples itself in the sunbeams."
Here is one of a few days later:
"23rd.--Bright sunshine; went out at 3 o'cl. The sea perfectly
calm blue, streaked with deeper colour by the clouds, and
tongues or points of sand; on our return of a gloomy red. The
sun gone down. The crescent moon, Jupiter and Venus. The sound
of the sea distinctly heard on the tops of the hills, which
we could never hear in summer. We attribute this partly to
the bareness of the trees, but chiefly to the absence of the
singing birds, the hum of insects, that noiseless noise which
lives in the summer air. The villages marked out by beautiful
beds of smoke. The turf fading into the mountain road."
She handles words, phrases, like notes or chords of music, and never
gets her landscape by direct description. One more picture and I must
leave it:
"26.-- ... Walked to the top of a high hill to see a
fortification. Again sat down to feed upon the prospect; a
magnificent scene, _curiously_ spread out for even minute
inspection though so extensive that the mind is afraid to
calculate its bounds...."
Coleridge was with them most days, or they with him. Here is a curious
point to note. Dorothy records:
"March 7th.--William and I drank tea at Coleridge's. Observed
nothing particularly interesting.... One only leaf upon the
top of a tree--the sole remaining leaf--danced round and round
like a rag blown by the wind."
And Coleridge has in _Christabel_:
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
William, Dorothy, and Coleridge went to Hamburg at the end of that
year, but in 1800 the brother and sister were in Grasmere; and the
journal which opens with May 14, at once betrays the great passion of
Dorothy's life:
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