The Express.
London, England, 1859-01-20 00:00:00

DEATH OF HRS. WORDSWORTH.

Mrs. Wordsworth, widow of the Poet, died on
Monday night, at eleven o'clock.
The last thing that would have occurred to Mrs.
Wordsworth would have been that her departure,
or anything about her, would be publicly noticed,
amidst the events of a stirring time. Those who
knew her well regarded her with as Due a homage '
as they ever rendered to any member of the house-
hold, or to any personage of the remarkable group
which will be for ever traditionally associated with
the Lake District : but this reverence, genuine and
hearty es it was, would not, in all eyes, be a suffi-
cient reason for recording more than the fact of her
death. It is her survivorship of each a group
which constitutes an undisputed public interest in
her decease. With her claws a remarkable scene in
the history of the literature of our century. The
well-known cottage, mount and garden at Rydal will
be regarded with other eyes, when shut up, or trans.
ferred to new occupants. With Mrs. Wordsworth, an
old world has passed away before the eyes of the in-
habitants of the district, and • new one succeeds
which may have its own delights, solemnities,
honours, and graces, but which can never replace the
familiar one that is gone. There was something
mournful in the lingering of this aged lady—blind,
deaf, and bereaved in her latter years ; but shs was
not mournful, any more than ate was insensible.
Age did not blunt her feelings, nor deaden her
interest in the events of the day. It seems not so
very long ago that she said that the worst of living
in such a place (as the Lake District) was its making
one unwilling to go. It was too beautiful to let one
be ready to leave it. Within a few years, the be-
loved daughter was gone; and then the aged hus-
band, and then the son-in-law ; and then the devoted
friend, Mr. Wordsworth's publisher, Mr. Moxon,
who paid his (duty occasionally by the side of her
chair ; then she became blind and deaf. Still her
cheerfulness was indomitable. No doubt, she would
in reality have been " willing to go " whenever
called upon, throughout her long life ; but she liked
life to the end. By her diaintereetednees
of nature, by her fortitude of spirit, and her
constitutional elasticity and activity, she was quali-
fied for the honour of surviving her household—
nursing and burying them, and bearing the bereave-
ment which they were vicariously spared. She did
it wisely, tenderly, bravely, and cheerfully, and she
will be remembered accordingly by all who witnessed
the spectacle.
It was by the accident (so to speak) of her early
friendship with Wordsworth's sister that her life
became involved with the poetic element, which her
mind would hardly have sought for itself in another
position. She was the incarnation of good sense, as
applied to the concerns of the every-day, world. In
as far as her marriage and comae of life tended to
infuse a new elevation into her views of things, it
was a blessing; and, on the other hand, in u far as
it infected her with the spirit of exclusiveness which
was the grand defect of the group in its own place,
it was hurtful, but it was lets an evil than an amuse-
ment, after all. It was a rather serious matter to
hear the post's denunciations of the railway,
and to read his well-known sonnets on the desecra-
tion of the Lake region by the unhallowed presence
of commonplace strangers; and it was truly painful
to observe how the scornful sad grudging mood
spread among the young, who thought they were
agreeing with Wordsworth in claiming the vales
and lakes as a natural property for their enlightened
selves. But it was so unlike Mrs. Wordsworth,
with her kindly, cheery, generous turn, to say that
a green field with buttercups would answer all the
purposes of Lancashire operatives, and that they
did not know what to do with themselves when
they came among the mountains, that the innocent
insolence could do no harm. It became a fixed sen-
, timent when she alone survived to uphold it ;
and one demonstration of it amused the whole
neighbourhood in a good-natured way. "People
, from Birthwaite " were the bugbear Birth-
waite being the end of the railway. In the
summer of 18;57, Mrs. Wordsworth's companion told
her (she being then blind) that there were some
strangers in the garden—two or three boys on the
Mount, looking at the view. "Boys from Birth-
' waits," said the old lady, iu the well-known tone
which conveyed that nothing good could oome from
I Birthwaite. When the strangers were gone, it
appeared that they were the Prince of Wales and
his companions. Making allowance for prejudices,
neither few nor small, but easily dissolved when
reason and kindliness had opportunity to work, she
• was a truly wise woman, equal to all occasions of
action, and supplying other persons' needs and dell-
' ciencies. In the Memoirs of Wordsworth it is
stated that she was the original of