William Wordsworth: A Hypertextual Biography

William Wordsworth: A Hypertextual Biography

William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770, at Cockermouth on the River Derwent, in the heart of the Lake District that would come to be immortalized in his poetry. The son of a lawyer named John Wordsworth, he was the second of five children. His father was the personal attorney of Sir James Lowther, Earl of Lonsdale, the most powerful (and perhaps the most hated) man in the area. His first formal education was at Anne Birkett's school at Penrith, where one of his classmates was his future wife Mary Hutchinson. Idyllic though his first few years may have been, Wordsworth wrote very little poetry about his early childhood. (For example, the only important incident from The Prelude which relates to the Cockermouth years is the time when Wordsworth, so young he "could scarce hold a bridle," becomes separated from his guide and is frightened to discover the semi-legendary scene of a murderer's execution. This moment is immortalized as a "spot of time" in Book XII.)

Wordsworth's mother died in 1778. His immediate reaction to this blow is not known (he treats his mother's death rather coolly, and rather briefly, in Book V of The Prelude), but it should be noted that her death very quickly led to the disintegration of the Wordsworth household. Raising five children on his own was too much for John Wordsworth, and William (followed eventually by all three of his brothers) was sent to school at Hawkshead in 1779. He would not be reunited with his beloved sister Dorothy for eight years.

Wordsworth thrived at Hawkshead. When the adult Wordsworth is reflecting on the beneficent influence Nature had on him as a child (The Prelude I and II, for example), he is generally referring to the Hawkshead years. Not long after his arrival, he began to think of Hawkshead as his true home; indeed, after his father died in 1783, he came to dread the holiday times that would take him away from school. This no doubt had a great deal to do withthe influence of Ann Tyson, the woman with whom Wordsworth (later jooined by his brothers)boarded for the duration of his time in Hawkshead. The "frugal Dame" of "Nutting" was in essence a surrogate mother to Wordsworth, providing him with the structured family life he was missing at home. Also, and perhaps equally important, she allowed him the freedom to explore at will the natural beauty of the Lake District.

John Wordsworth died in 1783, leaving the thirteen-year-old William and his siblings orphans. (This event is described movingly in connection with a "spot of time" in Book XII of The Prelude.) Wordsworth might have expected to have been well provided for, but after his father's death it came out that the Earl of Lonsdale had owed his attorney a sum of 4500 pounds. Through a variety of means, the Earl avoided paying this debt until his death in 1802. (Converting this sum into its current monetary value would be an interesting project. I would remark that when Coleridge was given an annuity of 150 pounds a year in 1798, he evidently considered this sum sufficient for him to devote himself to literature without fear of starvation. Even divided five ways, 4500 pounds was a lot of money.) Finding a livelihood for the children was now more urgent than it might have been, and Wordsworth's uncles, now his guardians, considered many options for William, with (it would appear) little concern for his own interests. This brings us to another virtue of Hawkshead. The grammar school in this small market town was superb, and Wordsworth was given a solid foundation in Classics, mathematics, and science. The school had a strong connection with Cambridge, and Wordsworth had exactly the sort of talents to take advantage of this. His guardians had every reason to feel confident about his prospects. Of more interest with respect to Wordsworth's later life, the schoolmaster, a man named William Taylor, encouraged Wordsworth's first fledgling attempts to write poetry.

As expected, Wordsworth matriculated at Cambridge in 1787. What was unexpected was the way Wordsworth squandered the opportunity afforded by the university of Spenser, Milton, and Newton. (His lack of interest in academic honors is discussed in Book III of The Prelude.) Wordsworth's uncles envisioned Cambridge as a shortcut to a successful career as a clergyman or lawyer, but the student was unmtoivated to work hard toward a career in which he had little interest. His grades were consistently mediocre, and, when he received his degree in January of 1791, he was in fact no closer to permanent employment than he had been four years earlier. If study at Cambridge was not interesting to Wordsworth, he was nevertheless trying to educate himself in other ways. In the summer of 1790, before beginning his final term at college, Wordsworth went on a walking tour of Europe with a friend from school named Robert Jones. The two arrived in France just in time for the one-year celebration of the French Revolution. At this point, however, Wordsworth was more interested in aesthetics than politics, and the real highlight of the tour was the passage of the famed Simplon Pass, described so movingly in Book VI of The Prelude. One of Wordsworth's most important encounters with the natural sublime, this experience would remain vivid in his memory for many years. The tour in general represents a high point in Wordsworth's young life, and he and Jones remained friends. (Thirty years later, when Wordsworth reenacted the journey, Jones, a bachelor clergyman in Wales, regretted not being able to join his old friend.)

After graduation, Wordsworth's plans for the future remained unsettled. In November of 1791, he returned to France, with the very vague plan of mastering the language preparatory to becoming a traveling tutor. This time, he stayed in France for a full year, and the impact of the visit was enormous. Firstly, he became a passionate supporter of the French Revolution, becoming close friends with Captain Michel Beaupuy (described in glowing terms in Book IX of The Prelude). Secondly, he fell in love with Annette Vallon, the daughter of a surgeon in Orleans. Little is known of how deep their bond was, and on the surface of it there were plenty of reasons for them not to get along (she was Catholic and the daughter of a prominent Royalist family). He may have intended to marry her, but money problems forced him to return to England in December of 1792. Almost immediately, war broke out between England and France, and another trip across the Channel would not be possible until 1802. We can never fully know what Wordsworth's feelings were about missing the childhood of his daughter Caroline, baptized on December 15, 1792.

The next couple of years were largely unhappy. Wordsworth's uncles more or less washed their hands of him upon his return from France, and finding a livelihood became all the more pressing. Personally, the separation from Annette and his infant daughter must have been a terrible strain. Politically, Wordsworth was horribly divided, balancing a desire to be loyal to England with the feeling that, in a sense, his nation was fighting Liberty itself. He spent much of his time in London, and many of his friends were radicals, such as Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and Paine. They were not wise choices for friends: after the beginning of the war, the government cracked down on dissent, and Paine would eventually be convicted in absentia of seditious libel for Part 2 of The Rights of Man, which supported the French Revolution as a "rational" act. In 1793, Wordsworth wrote A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff. This work was shockingly radical (in it the execution of Louis XVI is wholeheartedly supported), but perhaps the most notable thing about it was that it was not published until after Wordsworth's death. In the mid-1790s Wordsworth spent time with all the wrong people, and was for a time a committed radical himself, but, unlike Coleridge and Southey, he did not publish anything that would come back to haunt him. Really, he did not publish much of anything at all.

Two things happened in 1795 which helped to give Wordsworth direction. In January a young friend named Raisley Calvert, whom Wordsworth had been nursing, died of tuberculosis. In his will, he granted Wordsworth a legacy of 900 pounds, hoping to encourage his friend to deovte himself to poetry. In August he met Coleridge, and the two became fast friends. Explaining the significance of this event is well beyond the scope of this essay, but most would agree that the "revolution" of 1798 would have been impossible without it.

Over the next two years, the two young poets grew closer. In July of 1797, Wordsworth and his beloved sister Dorothy moved to Alfoxden House, which had the important virtue of being only a few miles from Coleridge's home at Nether Stowey. This marks the beginning of the so-called "annus mirabilis," the year of intense creative partnership that would result in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads. Speaking of themselves and Dorothy, Wordsworth would later say, "we were three persons with one soul." Day after day, Wordsworth and Coleridge would write poetry, discuss their theories on poetry, and comment on each other's poems. Attempts at "cowriting" were failures, but the thoughts of one would inevitably find their way into the verse of the other. (For example, it was Wordsworth's idea that the Ancient Mariner should shoot the Albatross.) Lyrical Ballads was published on October 4, 1798. Presumably in recognition of its status as a "collaboration," the work was released anonymously. The famous "Preface" had not yet been written, and the literary establishment was largely unaware that war had been declared. Much has been made of the impact Wordsworth and Coleridge hoped to have on English letters, but it should also be noted that they needed money. Coleridge was wanting to travel to Germany to study, and the book helped pay for the trip. In September of 1798, Coleridge, along with Wordsworth and Dorothy (who would not like Germany nearly as much as their friend), left for the Continent.

Coleridge felt that he was learning a great deal about German philosophy, but the Wordsworths had no such consolation. Lack of fluency in the language made it difficult to make friends, and the bitterly cold winter of 1798-99 prevented them from much communing with Nature. Leaving Coleridge to his studies, they returned to England, and settled in 1799 at Dove Cottage in Grasmere. Back in their beloved Lake District, the Wordsworths would happily call Dove Cottage their home for the next eight years.

In 1800, back from Germany, Coleridge moved to Greta Hall in Keswick, in order to be near his friends. It was a busy time. Wordsworth was hard at work on the second edition of Lyrical Ballads. Reviews of the first edition had been mixed, and Coleridge encouraged his friend to write a preface that would clarify the project. Work on the second edition would lead to a germ of discord between the two poets, asWordsworth enlarged his role and diminished that of Coleridge. Wordsworth refused to include "Christabel," and the 1800 edition, far from the anonymous partnership of the first, would bear Wordsworth's name and his alone. At this time Wordsworth was also working on what would become Books I and II of The Prelude.

A third edition of Lyrical Ballads, with an expanded "Preface," came out in 1802, but this year would also be significant to Wordsworth for reasons that had nothing to do with poetry. On May 24 the Earl of Lonsdale died, allowing Wordsworth and his siblings to finally come into their inheritance. More importantly, the Peace of Amiens was declared, ending more than nine years of war with France, and in August Wordsworth (along with Dorothy) finally met his daughter Caroline. This trip to France lasted only a month, but the meeting between Wordsworth and Annette appears to have been amicable. The sight of his daughter inspired one of Wordsworth's finest sonnets, "It is a beauteous evening." While in France, he made arrangements to provide Caroline with thirty pounds a year.

The trip to France provided Wordsworth closure to the relationship with Annette Vallon, and it is easy to see why this was needed. Early in the morning of October 4, 1802, Wordsworth married his childhood friend, Mary Hutchinson.

Interestingly, Dorothy did not attend the ceremony; she was crying on her bed. William and Dorothy Wordsworth were the closest of siblings, and some writers have suggested an incestuous subtext for their relationship. In particular, the "Lucy" poems have been described as an attempt by Wordsworth to "kill" his improper feelings for his sister. (No less an authority than Coleridge associates Lucy with Dorothy.) Eventually Mary and Dorothy would become quite close.

In 1803 the first of Wordsworth's five children was born. That same year, important friendships were formed with Walter Scott, Sir George Beaumont, and Robert Southey. (Wordsworth and Southey already knew each other, but had not been particularly friendly.) It was good that Wordsworth's circle was expanding, because in April 1804, Coleridge, in poor health and with a steadily worsening opium addiction, left for an extended Mediterranean tour. Wordsworth would not see him for two years. 1804 saw the conclusion of Ode: Intimations of Immortality, and a great deal of work on The Prelude. Coleridge would have been pleased with the Prelude work; he had long believed that Wordsworth would only achieve the ultimate expression of his greatness as a philosophical poet through the vehicle of a longer work. Important as The Prelude was, however, in the background were plans for an even larger work which the two poets had been discussing for years; but it would be still more years before Wordsworth did any substantial work on The Recluse.

Also in 1804, Napoleon declared himself Emperor of France. Wordsworth's disillusionment with the French Revolution has a long and complicated progress (going back even to the Reign of Terror), but this is certainly an important milestone in the poet's turn to conservatism. A decade earlier, Wordsworth had believed in a Godwinian notion of societal evolution, feeling that a revolution (even a bloody one) was a necessary precursor of something better. Now it seemed that France had exchanged one tyrant for another, a tyrant who seemingly wanted to conquer Europe. The French invasion of Switzerland justified Wordsworth's apprehension.

In February of 1805, Wordsworth's sailor brother John drowned. This was a terrible blow, but Wordsworth managed to complete The Prelude in May. In December of 1806, Coleridge returned, just in time to help Wordsworth prepare Poems, in Two Volumes for the printer. As the public only knew Wordsworth for the various versions of Lyrical Ballads, he rightly considered this edition of his poetry to be important for establishing his reputation. Included in this edition was Ode: Intimations of Immortality.

In 1807 the rapidly growing Wordsworth family left Dove Cottage. Their new house had more room, but Allan Bank never really felt like home. 1810 was the year of Wordsworth's great quarrel with Coleridge. When Coleridge moved to London to live with Basil Montagu (whose son was the inspiration for the poem "Anecdote for Fathers"), Wordsworth felt compelled to tell Montagu some unpleasant things about Coleridge's personal habits, in particular the opium addiction.

When Montagu reported Wordsworth's concerns to Coleridge (evidently in embellished fashion), Coleridge was deeply hurt, and shunned Wordsworth. London is a long way from the Lake District, but when Coleridge came home to visit his family in 1812, and went out of his way not to see his old friend, Wordsworth became very angry at the snub. Later that year, Wordsworth apologized for any misunderstanding, and there was at least a superficial healing of the rift. Also is 1812, the Wordsworth household was struck by two tragedies. In June the poet's daughter Catherine died, and in December his son Thomas. This was certainly one of the most devastating periods in the poet's life. In May of 1813 the family left Allan Bank for Rydal Mount at Ambleside, where Wordsworth would spend the rest of his life. A month earlier Wordsworth had been given the post of Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, providing his household with some much needed financial stability. (When later writers would come to mock Wordsworth's turncoat politics, the taking of a government job by the former radical would be seen as especially important, and would lead to Robert Browning's charge that the poet had abandoned the good fight "just for a handful of silver." 1813, incidentally, is also the year Robert Southey became the ultimate "establishment" poet by accepting the office of Poet Laureate.)

Wordsworth's new duties did not prevent him from writing poetry, and in 1814 part of The Recluse, planned some fifteen years earlier with Coleridge, was finally published. Entitled The Excursion, this long blank verse poem was intended to be the second of three parts of The Recluse. Wordsworth had finally published the sort of long philosophical poem Coleridge had been sure would guarantee his friend immortality (The Prelude being still unpublished), and Wordsworth had high hopes for the volume. The poem received some positive reviews in addition to the famous negative critique by Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review (which began "This will never do"), but on the whole the work was a financial failure.

The last half of this decade was dominated by politics. In 1817 a radical early work of Southey's, Wat Tyler, was published, much to the now-conservative poet's embarrassment. Southey and his fellow "Lake Poets" Wordsworth and Coleridge were attacked in print (by such people as William Hazlitt) for having abandoned their youthful ideals, and this skeleton from Southey's closet did not help matters. (In the subtitle of The Vision of Judgement, Byron would gleefully refer to Southey as "the author of Wat Tyler.")

Also in 1817, Coleridge would publish Biographia Literaria, and its detailed recalling of the old days would provide Wordsworth with some discomfort. In 1819 Wordsworth published a long poem called Peter Bell, written in 1798, which he dedicated to Southey. In short order Shelley responded with a parody enetitled Peter Bell the Third, which mocked Wordsworth for his change of allegiances. Wordsworth did nothing to endear himself to the younger generation of poets by campaigning for Tory politicians in the 1818 and 1820 elections.

From this time onward, Wordsworth would spend a good deal of time traveling. In 1820, along with Dorothy and Mary, he retraced the path of the Continental tour he had taken with Robert Jones thirty years earlier. (On this trip, Mary finally met Annette Vallon.) The 1820s brought Wordsworth fame, but produced little poetry. As he approached the age of sixty, he was confronted with the deaths of many of his oldest friends. Between 1825 and 1835, Beaumont, Scott, Coleridge, Charles Lamb, and Robert Jones all died. In November of 1835, when he read in a newspaper about the death of his old friend James Hogg, he produced the famous "Extempore Effusion on the Death of James Hogg," which recalled Wordsworth's many literary friendships, and which many consider his last great poem.

The 1830s brought friendships with a new generation of writers. In 1831 an awestruck John Stuart Mill would meet Wordsworth. In 1833 Wordsworth became acquainted with Emerson, and in 1835 Carlyle. In 1836 he met, separately, Robert Browning and his future wife Elizabeth Barrett. Though he wrote little that was new, he spent much time revising earlier works, including The Prelude. For years he had toyed with the idea of doing new work on The Recluse, but in a new edition of his poems in 1837 he publicly acknowledged that he had given up on this.

His fame grew. In 1839 he was named an honorary Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford, and handed the award for the Newdigate Prize Poem to a twenty-year-old John Ruskin. In 1840 Queen Adelaide paid a visit to Rydal Mount. In 1843, on the death of Southey, Wordsworth was named Poet Laureate. In 1845 he met Tennyson, whose poetry he admired, and the two exchanged kind and complimentary words. At the time of his death on April 13, 1850, Wordsworth was widely considered the greatest poet in the world, and a national institution; Matthew Arnold solemnly announced that "the last poetic voice is dumb." Later that year, The Prelude was published under a title suggested by Mary Wordsworth.

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