Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography | Page 5

his appearance I was somewhat startled. Instead of a grave recluse in
scholastic black, whom I expected to see, I found an affable and
lovable old man dressed in the roughest coat of blue with metal buttons,

and checked trousers, more like a New York farmer than an English
poet. His nose was very large, his forehead a lofty dome of thought,
and his long white locks hung over his stooping shoulders; his eyes
presented a singular, half closed appearance. We entered at once into a
delightful conversation. He made many inquiries about Irving, Mrs.
Sigourney and our other American authors, and spoke, with great
vehemence, in favor of an international copyright law. He said that at
one time he had hoped to visit America, but the duties of a small office
which he held (Distributer of Stamps), and upon which he was partly
dependent, prevented the undertaking. He occasionally made a trip to
London to see the few survivors of the friends of his early days, but he
told me that his last excursion had proved a wearisome effort. His
library was small but select. He took down an American edition of his
works, edited by Professor Reed, and told me that London had never
produced an edition equal to it. When I was about to leave, the good
old poet got his broad slouched hat and put on his double purple glasses
to protect his eyes, and we went out to enjoy the neighboring views.
We walked about from one point to another and kept up a lively
conversation. He displayed such a winning familiarity that, in the
language of his own poem, we seemed
"A pair of friends, though I was young, And he was seventy-four."
From the rear of his court-yard he showed me Rydal Water, a little lake
about a mile long, the beautiful church, and beyond it, Grassmere, and
still further beyond, Helvelyn, the mountain-king with a retinue of a
hundred hills. I might have spent the whole day in delightful
intercourse with the old man, but my fellow-travellers were going, and
I could make no longer inroads upon their time. When we returned to
the door of his cottage, he gave me a parting blessing; he picked a
small yellow flower and handed it to me, and I still preserve it in my
edition of his works, as a relic of the most profound and the most
sublime poet that England has produced during the nineteenth century I
know of but one other living American who has ever visited
Wordsworth at Rydal Mount.
After passing through Keswick, where the venerable poet Southey was

still lingering in sadly failing intelligence, we reached Carlisle the same
evening. From Carlisle we took the mail-coach for Edinburgh by the
same route over which Sir Walter Scott was accustomed to make his
journeys up to London. The driver, who might have answered to
Washington Irving's description, pointed out to me Netherby Hall, the
mansion of the Grahams, on "Cannobie lea," over which the young
Lochinvar bore away his stolen bride. We passed also Branksome
Tower, the scene of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and reached Selkirk
in the early evening. The next day I spent at Abbotsford. The Great
Magician had been dead only ten years, and his family still occupied
the house with some of his old employees who figure in Lockhart's
biography. I sat in the great arm-chair where Sir Walter Scott wrote
many of his novels, and looked out of the window of his bedchamber,
through which came the rippling murmurs of the Tweed, that consoled
his dying hours. I heartily subscribe to the opinion, expressed by
Tennyson, that Sir Walter Scott was the most extraordinary man in
British literature since the days of Shakespeare.
After reaching Glasgow I made a brief trip into the Land of Burns. At
the town of Ayr I found an omnibus waiting to take me down to the
birthplace of the poet. At that time the number of visitors to these
regions was comparatively few, and the birthplace of the poet had not
been transformed, as now, into a crowded museum. On reaching a
slight elevation, since consecrated by the muse of Burns, there broke
upon the view his monument, his native cottage, Alloway Kirk, the
scene of the inimitable Tam o' Shanter, and behind them all the "Banks
and Braes of Bonnie Doon." I went first to the monument, within which
on a centre table are the two volumes of the Bible given by Burns to
Highland Mary when they "lived one day of parting love" beneath the
hawthorn of Coilsfield. One of the volumes contains, in Burns'
handwriting, "Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto
the Lord thy vows," and a lock of Mary's hair, of