Adam Sisman - The Friendship - Wordsworth and Coleridge

‘I never thought of the cold when he was with me,’ wrote Dorothy to Jane Pollard, to whom she confessed that though she was fond of all her brothers, William was her favourite. In comparison to their youngest brother Christopher (now also at Cambridge), while each was ‘steady and sincere in his attachments’, William was more ardent, with ‘a sort of violence of affection’ towards those whom he loved, like Dorothy, manifest in ‘a thousand almost imperceptible attentions’ to her wishes daily, ‘a sort of restless watchfulness which I know not how to describe, a tenderness that never sleeps, and at the same time such a delicacy of manners as I have observed in few men’. Looking back at the time William was with her at Forncett, Dorothy recalled how ‘he was never tired of comforting his sister, he never left her in anger, he always met her with joy, he preferred her society to every other pleasure, or rather when we were so happy as to be within each other’s reach he had no pleasure when we were compelled to be divided’. 32

‘I am sure you would be pleased with him,’ she told Jane Pollard; ‘he is certainly very agreeable in his manners and he is so amiable, so good, so fond of his Sister! Oh Jane the last time we were together he won my affection to a degree which I cannot describe; his Attentions to me were such as the most insensible of mortals must have been touched with, there was no Pleasure that he would not have given up with joy for half an hour’s conversation with me.’ 33 Dorothy wanted her best female friend to think well of her ‘dearest male friend’, but she warned Jane not to expect too much, at least not at the beginning:

In the first place you must be with him more than once before he will be perfectly easy in conversation; in the second place his person is not in his favour, at least I should think not; but I soon ceased to discover this, nay I almost thought that the opinion which I first formed was erroneous. He is however, certainly rather plain than otherwise, has an extremely thoughtful countenance, but when he speaks it is often lighted up with a smile which I think very pleasing … 34

The young Wordsworth was not handsome, but not ugly either: slightly taller than the average, and gaunt, with a solemn manner that occasionally collapsed in quiet mirth. His face was dominated by a prominent straight nose, and deep furrows that ran vertically up both cheeks; his eyes were serious, lit by the odd twinkle; his mouth was broad, with full lips; his short fine hair was already beginning to recede.

Dorothy seems to have regarded herself as plain too; she describes herself to Jane Pollard as being without accomplishments, ‘your old friend Dolly Wordsworth’, with ‘nothing to recommend me to your regard but a warm honest and affectionate heart’. 35 At twenty she confessed that ‘no man I have seen has appeared to regard me with any degree of partiality; nor has any one gained my affections’. 36 Nor was it likely that a dependent young woman with no parents and no inheritance would have found a suitor, unless she was remarkably pretty. For such women, the prospects were bleak: genteel poverty at best *– unless, as often happened, she found a home with a male relative.

Another long period of separation followed Wordsworth’s departure from Forncett early in 1791. Dorothy consoled herself by anticipating ‘the day of my felicity, the day in which I am once more to find a home under the same roof with my brother’. There seemed no doubt in her mind that the day would come. While she still believed that William would take holy orders, she imagined their ‘little parsonage’: closing the shutters in the evening, setting out the tea table, brightening the fire. She pictured the scene when Jane Pollard would come to stay: ‘When our refreshment is ended I produce our work, and William brings his book to our table and contributes at once to our instruction and amusement, and at intervals we lay aside the book and each hazard our observations upon what has been read without the fear of ridicule or censure … Oh Jane! With such romantic dreams as these I amuse my fancy during many an hour which would otherwise pass heavily along.’ 37

This idyll survived the revelation that Wordsworth had fathered a child in France – though the ‘little parsonage’ became ‘our little cottage’. One immediate effect, however, was that Wordsworth was no longer welcome at Forncett. His uncle Cookson was already disappointed by his clever nephew’s failure to follow the path he had laid, via a Cambridge Fellowship into the Church. From his point of view, Wordsworth had thrown away an excellent opportunity. No doubt he had heard something of Wordsworth’s radical opinions. Early in 1792 Cookson had been appointed Canon of Windsor, a post that brought him into regular contact with the royal family. It must have been embarrassing for him to be connected to a young man who professed republicanism. This latest news decided him. 38 *A man who had fathered an illegitimate child – a French, Catholic child – could not be considered respectable company for his wife, and must be an unsuitable influence on Dorothy.

So matters stood after Wordsworth’s return from France. He was excluded from Forncett; while Dorothy could not leave Forncett without her uncle’s permission. In the middle of the year 1793, however, a new possibility opened. Since Dorothy’s departure from Halifax, Elizabeth Threlkeld had become Mrs William Rawson; now she and her husband invited Dorothy to come and stay whenever she was free to do so. Dorothy was fond of Mrs Rawson, who in caring for her from the age of six until sixteen had treated her like a daughter, and she very much wanted to pay another visit to the place where she had spent much of her childhood – but she also had a secret reason for accepting the invitation. The Rawsons had seen Wordsworth in London, and had pressed him too to visit them next time he was in the north. Dorothy knew that her uncle Cookson might withhold his permission for her visit to Halifax if he suspected that she might meet her brother there. She and William therefore made a clandestine arrangement to visit the Rawsons at the same time, as if by accident. It was difficult to co-ordinate, because Dorothy could not travel until she could find an escort to chaperone her. Wordsworth had arrived in north Wales, poised to make the short onward journey to Halifax, towards the end of August – but then he had to wait for Dorothy. It would be midwinter before they met. And what he did for the remainder of the year is a mystery.

The next glimpse we have of Wordsworth is at Christmas time, when he is staying with one of his uncles in Whitehaven, on the Cumbrian coast. Again, there is a tantalising clue to suggest what he might have been doing in the interim. In a memoir written in 1867 and published posthumously in his Reminiscences (1881), Thomas Carlyle reported a conversation with Wordsworth held around 1840, a few years after the publication of Carlyle’s history of the French Revolution. Wordsworth apparently told Carlyle that he had witnessed the execution of the journalist Gorsas – who was guillotined on 7 October 1793. Might he really have been in Paris then? Could he have tried to reach the Loire, to see Annette and his infant daughter? Did he plan to marry Annette, as she hoped he might?

It seems unlikely. For one thing, it clashed with his secret plan to meet Dorothy in Halifax. At last an opportunity for them to meet had presented itself: an opportunity that might be lost if he were not there to take it. Then there were numerous practical difficulties Wordsworth would have needed to overcome, including the expense. Also, it was becoming much more dangerous; between 11 and 15 October 1793 all Englishmen remaining in Paris – even Tom Paine – were arrested and imprisoned. After this there would be no further possibility of going to France while the war persisted. Heads were rolling. Gorsas was the first deputy sent to the scaffold; Brissot and many of the remaining Girondin deputies would follow at the end of the month. Marie Antoinette, too, was guillotined on 16 October, a deed that provoked horror throughout Europe. An order went out from the Convention to repress counter-revolution ferociously: ‘Terror will be the order of the day!’ In Lyons, for example, men and women were forced to dig ditches and then stand beside them under cannon fire until they tumbled into their own mass graves. Meanwhile the Atlantic coast was in upheaval. Wordsworth believed – mistakenly, as it turned out – that his friend Beaupuy had been killed while fighting the Vendée rebels.