1802] THE JOURNEY TO CALAIS 31 went, by way of Hull, Lincoln, and Peterborough, to London, where they arrived on the 29th. Two days later, "after various troubles and disasters," they left London on the Dover coach at half-past five or six "It was a beautiful morning," she writes. "The city, St. Paul's, with the river, and a multitude of little boats, made a most beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge. The houses were not overhung by their cloud of smoke, and they were spread out endlessly, yet the sun shone so brightly, with such a fierce light, that there was even something like the purity of one of nature's own grand spectacles." It was in this hour that Wordsworth began to compose the famous sonnet, one of his earliest, beginning "Earth has not anything to show more fair." In his own editions he mistakenly states that it was composed September 3, but in the Fenwick note he says it was "written on the roof of a coach, on my way to France." Sailing from Dover that night, they reached Calais at four o'clock on Sunday morning, August 1. Dorothy's brief account of this visit, which appears to have been confined to Calais, was not written until her return to Grasmere. Nothing is said as to its purpose. "We found Annette and C.," she writes, " chez Madame Avril dans la Rue de la Tête d'or. . . . We walked by the seashore almost every evening with Annette and Caroline, or William and I alone... One night I shall never forget the day had been very hot, and William and I walked alone together upon the pier." She describes the scene, and adds, as if she and William had not really been alone: " Caroline was delighted." This was probably the occasion of his writing the sonnet, "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free," and the "dear Child! dear girl!" that walked with them there, untouched by solemn thought," is, of course, not his sister, who was only too easily affected by such sights. The seven other sonnets composed at or near Calais during this sojourn are all of a political character, and a close examination of them discloses the trend of Words *The date" 31st of July" in the Journal is incorrect, worth's feelings on the great subject which had run like a deep undertone through all his adult life. The Consulship for life was granted to Napoleon on August 2. By the 7th the news had reached Calais, and on that day Wordsworth wrote his remonstrance to the "men of prostrate minds" who had thus demonstrated their proneness to slavery, the sonnet beginning "Is it a reed that's shaken by the wind." On the same day, "on the road leading to Ardres," he composed the sonnet beginning "Jones! as from Calais southward you and I," in which he contrasts the high hopes, the songs, garlands, mirth, banners, and happy faces, of the time "when faith was pledged to new-born Liberty with the disheartened state of the French now. He distinctly avers, however, that he himself has not given up. "Despair," he sings, Touches me not, though pensive as a bird France had been, indeed, his vernal covert. These two lines, however, were substituted in 1827 for the original, which indicate even more clearly the undaunted attitude of his mind, and are as follows: Yet despair I feel not: happy am I as a bird: Fair seasons yet will come, and hopes as fair. On Napoleon's birthday, the 15th, he composed the sonnet beginning" Festivals have I seen that were not names." He compares the present apathy with the sublime though senseless joy he had witnessed "in a prouder time," and concludes: Happy is he, who, caring not for Pope, Consul, or King, can sound himself to know His revolt against the Napoleonic tyranny shows itself 1802] FAREWELL TO FRANCE 33 whose white cliffs by day and lighthouses at night reminded him that she was unconquered, he felt a newborn pride in her, which he expressed in the sonnet beginning" Fair Star of evening, Splendour of the west." The sway which France had so long held in his heart was now broken. The abasement of her people before a man who represented in a fresh form the bondage they had thrown off, only a few years before, lowered them in his eyes. France no longer seemed to him the champion of liberty. England, in comparison, was a land of freedom. Henceforth he founded his affections upon his own country. Whatever its result, the visit to Calais was undoubtedly undertaken for the sole purpose of making a settlement with Annette, and bidding farewell to her and the child, who must now have been about ten years old. On Sunday, August 29, exactly four weeks after their arrival at Calais, the Wordsworths sailed back to Dover, where they sat upon the cliffs and " looked upon France with many a melancholy and tender thought," as Dorothy records. They reached London next day. We catch a glimpse of them in a letter from Charles Lamb to Coleridge dated September 8, in which he says: "The Wordsworths are at Montagu's rooms, near neighbours to us. They dined with us yesterday, and I was their guide to Bartlemy Fair." The Lambs had been in the Lake country during the Wordsworths absence, visiting Coleridge. They had stayed a day or two at Dove Cottage, together with the Clarksons, although the inmates were away, and had only just returned to London, as we learn from a letter of Lamb to his friend Manning, dated September 24.† In the same letter he says:" The Wordsworths were gone to Calais. They have since been in London, and past much time with us: he is now gone to Yorkshire to be married to a girl of small fortune, but he is in expectation of augmenting his own in consequence of the death of Lord Lonsdale, who kept him out of his own in conformity with a plan E. V. Lucas, "The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb," VI. 242. ↑ Ibid., p. 244, and Vol. VII., p. 968. milord had taken up in early life, of making everybody unhappy." In her Journal, Dorothy Wordsworth records that she and her brother stayed in London till Wednesday, September 22, and arrived at Gallow Hill on Friday. In a letter from this place to Mrs. Marshall, dated September 29, only part of which has ever been printed, she says they were detained in London by a succession of unexpected events- the arrival of their brother Christopher, then of their brother John. The latter had recently returned from a long voyage, and was preparing to sail again in November. The former, now a Cambridge fellow, was deeply engaged in classical and theological studies. Business matters connected with the restitution of their property no doubt required their presence in London with their elder brother Richard. This seems to have been the first occasion on which the whole family were together since their childhood. Two days of this time Dorothy and William spent with their uncle and aunt Cookson at Windsor. The poetical mood which had come upon Wordsworth at Calais persisted during the three weeks of his sojourn in London. Without abating one jot of his political principles, he acknowledges, in a second group of sonnets, that France had ceased to follow true liberty: he asserts the soundness and strength of British character; he laments the luxury which rendered England's wealth a menace to herself; he warns his countrymen that nations can be great and free only by the soul. The first of these, composed two days after landing, is the one beginning "We had a female passenger who came " (†),* in which he deplores the expulsion of negroes from France by decree of the government. In the second, beginning "Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood," he rejoices in the severing seas that preserve England from the "almost frightful neighbourhood" of France, while not forgetting that virtue and wisdom are her real protection. The three sonnets marked with a dagger were, as Mr. T. Hutchinson has noted in his edition of the Poems, printed for the first time in The Morning Post, in 1803. They may have been considerably altered by that time, and it is not quite certain, therefore, that they accurately represent the state of the poet's mind in September, 1802. 1802] PATRIOTIC SONNETS 35 In a third, beginning" O Friend! I know not which way I must look," the word "Coleridge" standing in the original manuscript for "O Friend," according to Professor Knight,* he laments the rapine, avarice, expense," of his countrymen, declaring that plain living and high thinking are no more." The discouragement and distrust expressed in this sonnet were at once apologized for, in another, beginning "When I have borne in memory what has tamed " (†). His fears, he confesses, were unfilial. Great examples from out the storied Past are evoked in two others, that beginning "It is not to be thought of that the Flood" (†), and the one beginning "Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour." Finally, he even goes so far as to deny, most absurdly, that France has produced great books, great laws, or great ideas! Perpetual emptiness! unceasing change! To charge the French, of all people, with intellectual sterility, was to show an amusing narrowness of judgment. But it is a pitiful trait of human nature that, like the cloud, we move altogether if we move at all, and can scarcely admit that what we have ceased to love has any kind of merit. Like the hearty countryfolk they were, the Hutchinsons gathered to meet their friends at Gallow Hill. When the Wordsworths arrived, on September 24, "Tom was forking corn, standing upon the corn-cart." Mary and Sara and Joanna were at home, and the party was joined presently by Jack and George. None of Wordsworth's brothers appear to have come for his wedding. What his emotions upon this occasion were he has given us no means of knowing. Those of his sister are easy to divine from her letter to Mrs. Marshall of September 29 and the passage in her Journal covering the marriage day. Renunciation, a sober and reasoned * Eversley edition of the Poems, II. 345. |