CHAPTER XI. ALFOXDEN. "Alfoxden near Nether-Stowey, Somersetshire, August 14. 1797. "HERE we are," says Miss Wordsworth, in a letter to a friend, bearing the above date, "in a large mansion, in a large park, with seventy head of deer around us. But I must begin with the day of leaving Racedown to pay Coleridge a visit. You know how much we were delighted with the neighbourhood of Stowey." "There is every thing there," she says in a previous letter, 4th July, 1797, "sea, woods wild as fancy ever painted, brooks clear and pebbly as in Cumberland, villages so romantic; and William and I, in a wander by ourselves, found out a sequestered waterfall in a dell formed by steep hills covered with full-grown timber trees. The woods are as fine as those at Lowther, and the country more romantic; it has the character of the less grand parts of the neighbourhood of the lakes." In her next letter (of August 14.), Miss Wordsworth continues: "The evening that I wrote to you, William and I had rambled as far as this house, and pryed into the recesses of our little brook, but without any more fixed thoughts upon it than some dreams of happiness in a little cottage, and passing wishes that such a place might be found out. We spent a fortnight at Coleridge's: in the course of that time we heard that this house was to let, applied for it, and took it. Our principal inducement was Coleridge's society. It was a month yesterday since we came to Alfoxden. "The house is a large mansion, with furniture enough for a dozen families like ours. There is a very excellent garden, well stocked with vegetables and fruit. The garden is at the end of the house, and our favourite parlour, as at Racedown, looks that way. In front is a little court, with grass plot, gravel walk, and shrubs; the moss roses were in full beauty a month ago. The front of the house is to the south, but it is screened from the sun by a high hill which rises immediately from it. This hill is beautiful, scattered irregularly and abundantly with trees, and topped with fern, which spreads a considerable way down it. The deer dwell here, and sheep, so that we have a living prospect. From the end of the house we have a view of the sea, over a woody meadowcountry; and exactly opposite the window where I now sit is an immense wood, whose round top from this point has exactly the appearance of a mighty dome. In some parts of this wood there is an under grove of hollies which are now very beautiful. In a glen at the bottom of the wood is the waterfall of which I spoke, a quarter of a mile from the house. We are three miles from Stowey, and not two miles from the sea. Wherever we turn we have woods, smooth downs, and valleys with small brooks running down them, through green meadows, hardly ever intersected with hedgerows, but scattered over with trees. The hills that cradle these valleys are either covered with fern and bilberries, or oak woods, which are cut for charcoal . . . Walks extend for miles over the hill-tops; the great beauty of which is their wild simplicity: they are perfectly smooth, without rocks. "The Tor of Glastonbury is before our eyes during more than half of our walk to Stowey; and in the park wherever we go, keeping about fifteen yards above the house, it makes a part of our prospect." Such was the place in which Wordsworth now commenced his residence, and where he remained for about a year; a period which he describes " as a very pleasant and productive time of his life." Many of his smaller pieces were composed at Alfoxden, and are descriptive of it and its neighbourhood. The Night Piece, beginning "The sky is overcast," 1 was "composed on the road between Nether-Stowey and Alfoxden extempore. I distinctly recollect," he says, in 18342, "the very moment I was struck as described, he looks up at the clouds.'" The "Anecdote for Fathers,"3 showing how children may be betrayed by parents into a habit of telling falsehoods, was suggested in front of the house at Alfoxden. The boy was Basil (a child of Mr. Basil Montagu), who lived under Mr. Wordsworth's care. The name of Kilve in the poem, "is from a village on the Bristol Channel, about a mile from Alfoxden; and the name of Liswyn Farm was taken from a beautiful spot on the Wye." In specifying these details, Mr. Wordsworth added the following particulars: "Mr. Coleridge, my sister, and I had been visiting the famous John Thelwall, who had taken refuge from politics, after a trial for high treason, 3 Vol. i. p. 164. 1 Vol. ii. p. 95. 2 MSS. Notes. with a view to bring up his family by the profits of agriculture, which proved as unfortunate a speculation as that he had fled from. Coleridge and he had been public lecturers, Coleridge mingling with his politics theology, from which the other elocutionist abstained, unless it were for the sake of a sneer. This quondam community of public employment induced Thelwall to visit Coleridge, at NetherStowey, where he fell in my way. He really was a man of extraordinary talent, an affectionate husband, and a good father. Though brought up in the City, on a tailor's board, he was truly sensible of the beauty of natural objects. I remember once, when Coleridge, he, and I, were seated upon the turf on the brink of the stream, in the most beautiful part of the most beautiful glen of Alfoxden, Coleridge exclaimed, 'This is a place to reconcile one to all the jarrings and conflicts of the wide world.' 'Nay,' said Thelwall, 'to make one forget them altogether.' The visit of this man to Coleridge was, as I believe Coleridge has related, the occasion of a spy being sent by government to watch our proceedings, which were, I can say with truth, such as the world at large would have thought ludicrously harmless." In November, 1797, Wordsworth and his sister accompanied Coleridge in a pedestrian tour along the sea-coast to Minehead, thence to Porlock. From Porlock, says Miss Wordsworth, "we kept close to the shore about four miles. Our road lay through wood, rising almost perpendicularly from the sea, with views of the opposite mountains of Wales: thence we came by twilight to Lymmouth, in Devonshire. The next morning we were guided to a valley at the top of one of those immense hills which open at each end to the sea, and is from its rocky appearance called the Valley of Stones. We mounted a cliff at the end of the valley, and looked from it immediately on to the sea." They were struck by the wild grandeur of this scenery, and returned much gratified by the tour. On the 20th November, Miss Wordsworth writes, "We have been on another tour: we set out last Monday evening at half-past four. The evening was dark and cloudy; we went eight miles, William and Coleridge employing themselves in laying the plan of a ballad, to be published with some pieces of William's." Wordsworth refers to these and other rambles in the company of Coleridge, as follows: "Beloved Friend! When looking back, thou seest, in clearer view That summer, under whose indulgent skies, Near the loud waterfall; or her who sate Speaking of the poem We are Seven2, he says: "This was written at Alfoxden in the spring of 1798, under circumstances somewhat remarkable. 2 MSS. I.F. 1 Prelude, p. 369. |