Some Eminent Women of Our Times

The French army was withdrawn from Berlin in December 1808. The King and Queen of Prussia did not re-enter their capital till December 1809. In the following July, Louisa died. Spasms of the heart had come on, a short time previously, during the illness of one of her children. They returned with a violence which she had not strength to resist. Her husband and her people felt that she had died of a broken heart. The short-lived rejoicings that had greeted her return to Berlin were now changed into devotion to her memory, and to the cause of German patriotism with which her name will always be associated. The King, his children, and his subjects mourned her loss with unceasing fidelity and reverence. Four years after her death, Frederick William and his Russian allies crushed Napoleon’s army at the battle of Leipzig. On his return to Berlin, the King’s first thought was to lay the laurel wreath of victory on his wife’s tomb. Queen Louisa’s eldest son directed that his heart should be buried at the foot of his mother’s grave, and the same spot was also selected as the last resting-place of her second son, the Emperor William. It will long be remembered that it was here that the late Emperor, then King William of Prussia, knelt alone, in silent meditation and stern resolve, on the sixtieth anniversary of his mother’s death, just at the time of the outbreak of the war of 1870 between France and Germany.

She was only thirty-five years old when she died; but she was able to leave to her children and to her people a name that will be remembered and honoured as long as the German Empire lasts. Her tomb at Charlottenburg is one of the most beautiful monuments to the memory of the dead, which the world contains. The pure white marble statue of the Queen is by the sculptor Rauch, who knew her well, and honoured her as she deserved. Everything about the building is designed with loving care. The words chosen by the King, and placed over the entrance of the temple where the monument lies, are: “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen: and have the keys of hell and of death.”

XVIII

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH

“And were another childhood world my share,I would be born a little sister there.” – George Eliot.

A hundred years ago England was particularly rich in great brothers and sisters. There were William and Caroline Herschel, Charles and Mary Lamb, and, perhaps, chief of all, William and Dorothy Wordsworth. These last were certainly the greatest as tested by the position of the brother in the world of literature. He won and maintained a place among the greatest of English poets; but the very greatness of the brother was the cause why the sister is known only as a tributary to his genius. It is not that his achievements dwarf hers by comparison; she made no conscious contribution to literature; she felt from the outset of their life together that he was capable of giving to his countrymen thoughts which the world would not willingly let die, and she deliberately suppressed in herself all cultivation of her own powers, save such as should contribute to support, sustain, and promote his. As Charles Lamb said of his own sister, “If the balance has been against her, it was a noble trade.” There is, however, much evidence that the balance was not against Dorothy Wordsworth. She did not sacrifice herself in vain. She chose to give up all independent cultivation of her own considerable poetic gifts, and also to renounce all hopes of love and marriage, for the sake of devoting her whole life to her brother, and of helping to a freer and nobler utterance the poet who has given us “The Ode on the Intimations of Immortality,” “The Ode to Duty,” “The Happy Warrior,” and a host of songs and sonnets among the most beautiful in our language. The sister freely and generously gave, the brother freely and generously received, and freely and generously acknowledged the value of the gift. Over and over again, in prose and verse, Wordsworth acknowledges all that he owes to his sister; never more warmly than when, on the approach of old age, disease had laid its hand upon her, and the long accustomed support seemed likely to be withdrawn. When Coleridge and Dorothy lay prostrate under the stroke of sickness, Wordsworth wrote at the age of sixty-two: “He and my beloved sister are the two beings to whom my intellect is most indebted, and they are now proceeding, as it were, with equal steps, along the path of sickness, I will not say towards the grave; but I trust towards a blessed immortality.” If Wordsworth, reviewing the past, could speak thus of his sister, it must be of interest to us to endeavour to discern what her influence over him was, and how their life together was passed.

William Wordsworth was born in 1770, at Cockermouth, in Cumberland, the second son of John Wordsworth, a lawyer and land-agent to the Earls of Lonsdale. Dorothy, her parents’ only girl, was twenty months younger than William, and the two children very early showed that close sympathy and tender affection for one another which is often the precious possession of happy family life. Only a few years were spent together by the brother and sister in this joyous playtime of life; but the happiness of this early time is recorded in several of Wordsworth’s poems, especially in the one where he speaks of his sister and their visit together to see the sparrow’s nest —

She looked at it and seemed to fear it;Dreading, tho’ wishing, to be near it:Such heart was in her, being thenA little Prattler among men.The Blessing of my later yearsWas with me when a boy:She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;And humble cares, and delicate fears;A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;And love, and thought, and joy.

William and Dorothy were less than nine and seven respectively when these happy days of childish companionship were closed by the death of their mother in 1778. William was then sent to school, and Dorothy went to live with her maternal grandparents at Penrith. The children were doubly orphaned five years later by the death of their father, in 1783. William and his brothers then passed to the guardianship of their uncles, Richard and Christopher Wordsworth, while Dorothy was made over to the care of other relatives, and spent her time partly at Halifax and partly with her mother’s cousin, Dr. Cookson, Canon of Windsor. She and William, however, by no means forgot their childish affection or let it grow cold. They rarely met at this time, but their meetings were looked forward to by both with ardent and intense pleasure. Each continued to be to the other the dearest and most beloved of friends.

Wordsworth, like most generous young people of his day, was deeply stirred by sympathy with the French Revolution. At its outset he believed it would bring immeasurable blessings to mankind; tyranny, cruelty, and vice were, he believed, to be dismissed from the high places of the earth, and in their stead would reign justice, mercy, peace, and love. It is therefore not difficult to imagine with what agony of disappointment he saw, as he thought, all these high hopes falsified, and the light that had been lit by the Revolution quenched in blood and in a series of massacres more cruel and remorseless than any that had disgraced previous forms of government. For a time the belief in goodness and righteousness seemed shaken in him. To disbelieve in the power of goodness is infidelity; and from this gulf of infidelity Wordsworth was saved by his sister’s influence. This was the first memorable service she rendered to his moral nature. He was saved from becoming permanently soured and narrowed by the sunny radiance of his sister’s sympathy and by her unshaken faith that good is stronger than evil. The brother and sister now resolved to live together; and from that hour Dorothy’s whole life was given to enrich and solace that of her brother, and to help him to give utterance to those great thoughts and words which at last made the whole of England aware that the nation was possessed of another poet.

Wordsworth was now twenty-five years of age; he had passed through his college career at Cambridge and had travelled abroad, and the time had come when it was not unnaturally expected of him that he should settle down to some business or profession that would provide him with an income. Very little had come to the family from inheritance, and parents and guardians are not generally disposed to look with lenient indulgence on a penniless young man of twenty-five who shows a disinclination to any steady work, and is suspected of an ambition to become a poet. Wordsworth’s uncles had been kind and generous guardians, but they could not have been pleased at what must have seemed to them at this time the dilatory, desultory life of their nephew. His sister, however, all the while gave him her warmest sympathy and support. Before any one else had dreamed of it, she recognised her brother’s genius; she not only believed that he would be a poet, but knew that he was a poet. She did not urge him, as a well-intentioned but less perceptive friend might have done, to become a lawyer, or a doctor, or what not; she made it possible, by joining her life to his, and nourishing his genius by the tribute she poured into it from her own, that he should have the quiet sympathetic surroundings without which his poetic imagination could not work.

Their slender means were augmented about this time by a legacy which rendered it possible for the brother and sister to have a little cottage home together. Here, at Racedown, in Dorsetshire, Wordsworth first began seriously to devote himself to poetry. Their means were so small that the utmost economy was necessary; but Dorothy cheerfully undertook all the household work of cleaning, cooking, making, and mending. She was not one of those who think there is any degradation, either to man or woman, in manual labour. While she was busied with household cares, her brother often worked in their garden; when their digging and cooking were accomplished, they read Italian authors together, or took long walks through the beautiful country in which they had fixed their abode. It must not be thought that Miss Wordsworth was nothing more to her brother than an energetic, economical housekeeper; she was in feeling almost as much a poet as he was. She had the same intense sympathy with nature, the same observant eye and loving heart for all the various moods of the beautiful outside world. She had also much of her brother’s power of expression, and the same felicity in description. It has been said of her, “Her journals are Wordsworth in prose, just as his poems are Dorothy in verse.” Wordsworth said of his brother John that he was “a silent poet,” and “a poet in everything but words,” meaning that he was a poet in feeling and sympathy; but something more than this can be said of Dorothy; she was a prose poet, who might have become a true poet, if she had not felt that she had another vocation. She was her brother’s inspirer and critic, and what she wrote herself proves that she was worthy to be both. Some passages of her diary are almost identical in thought and observation with subjects that Wordsworth has crystallised in immortal verse. On 30th July 1802 we have, for example, in the prose of Dorothy’s journal, part of what Wordsworth has given to us in the sonnets on Westminster Bridge and Calais sands. “Left London between five and six o’clock of the morning, outside the Dover coach. A beautiful morning. The City, St. Paul’s, with the river, a multitude of little boats, made a beautiful sight as we crossed Westminster Bridge; the houses not overhung by their clouds of smoke, were spread out endlessly; yet the sun shone so brightly, with such a pure light, that there was something like the purity of one of Nature’s own grand spectacles. Arrived at Calais at four in the morning of 31st July. Delightful walks in the evenings, seeing far off in the west the coast of England like a cloud, crested with Dover Castle, the evening star, and the glory of the sky. The reflections in the water were more beautiful than the sky itself; purple waves brighter than precious stones for ever melting away on the sands.” Whoever will compare this with the two sonnets beginning “Earth has not anything to show more fair,” and “Fair star of evening, splendour of the West,” will see how far it is just to say that Dorothy has given us in prose what Wordsworth has given us in verse. There is a deeper human passion in Wordsworth’s verse than Dorothy ever reached in her prose. He would not stand to-day the third in the noble group where Shakespeare and Milton are first and second, if he had not possessed, over and above his subtle sympathy with Nature, sympathy also with the greatest of Nature’s works, “man, the heart of man, and human life.” In the “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey,” and again in the “Ode on the Intimations of Immortality,” Wordsworth speaks of the change which had gradually come in himself from the days when the worship of external nature, “meadow, grove, and stream, the earth and every common sight,” was all in all to him, to the time when —

I have learn’dTo look on nature, not as in the hourOf thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimesThe still, sad music of humanity,Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample powerTo chasten and subdue.

It was here, as it seems, that his sister could not follow him. Perhaps her self-suppression, the very concentration of her devotion to her brother, closed her powers of receptive sympathy for the wider issues of human destiny which inspires the most precious of Wordsworth’s verse. Whether this be so or not, he saw in her what he once had been and had ceased to be.

I cannot paintWhat then I was. The sounding cataractHaunted me like a passion: the tall rock,The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,Their colours and their forms, were then to meAn appetite; a feeling and a love,That had no need of a remoter charm.… That time is past,And all its aching joys are now no more,And all its dizzy raptures.· · · · · ·For thou art with me here upon the banksOf this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,My dear, dear Friend, and in thy voice I catchThe language of my former heart, and readMy former pleasures in the shooting lightsOf thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little whileMay I behold in thee what I was once,My dear, dear Sister!

After Racedown the next residence of Wordsworth and his sister was (1797) at Alfoxden, in Somersetshire. Here they were visited by Coleridge and Lamb, and here the “Ancient Mariner” was composed, chiefly by Coleridge, but with the help and by the stimulus of Wordsworth and Dorothy. It was during their residence here that the “Lines written above Tintern Abbey” were composed and published. Racedown and Alfoxden were temporary resting-places only; Wordsworth and his sister did not make a real home for themselves till they settled in the beautiful lake country of Westmoreland, in 1799. At first they lived in a small cottage, where Dorothy, with the help of one feeble old woman, whom they employed partly out of charity, did all the domestic work. A few years later they removed to the house at Rydal Mount, Grasmere, which will always be associated with their memory, and where the rest of their lives was passed. It has been pointed out by Mr. Matthew Arnold that almost all Wordsworth’s best work was produced in the ten years between 1798 and 1808. During this time he had achieved no fame; he had gained no audience, as it were, save the very select group of whom the chief members were his sister, Coleridge, and Charles and Mary Lamb. All through this time of the production of Wordsworth’s best work, Dorothy continued to devote herself to him by the cheerful performance of the double duties of domestic drudge and literary companion and critic. She was also his comrade in many long mountain excursions, in which they both delighted. Miss Wordsworth had extraordinary physical strength, which many persons believe she overtaxed by her long walks over moor and mountain. It is certain, however, that her brother delighted in her physical vigour no less than in her mental gifts. He speaks in lines addressed to her of her being “healthy as a shepherd boy,” and in other places he often shows that physical feebleness formed no part of his conception of feminine grace. His ideal woman

is ruddy, fleet and strong,And down the rocks can leap alongLike rivulets in May.

Or again —

She shall be sportive as the fawn,That wild with glee across the lawnOr up the mountain springs.

In 1802 the poet married his cousin, Mary Hutchinson, and nothing is more characteristic of Dorothy’s sweet and generous nature than the warm, loving welcome which she gave to her brother’s wife. She did not know jealousy in love; her love was so perfect that she rejoiced in every addition to her brother’s happiness, and did not, as a meaner woman might have done, wish his heart to be vacant of all affection save what he felt for herself. The poet’s wife was worthy of such a husband and sister-in-law, and the family life went on in perfect love and harmony, that were only strengthened by the new ties and interests that marriage brought. Wordsworth’s children became as dear to Dorothy as if they had been her own, and she devoted herself to them so that they learnt to feel that they had in her almost a second mother.

In 1832, Wordsworth then being sixty-two years old and his sister over sixty, Dorothy’s health seriously broke down. So much has been said in some of the books about the poet and his sister of the harm resulting to Miss Wordsworth’s health from her long walks, that it might have been imagined that she had been the victim of a very premature decline of physical powers. Considering, however, that she was descended from parents both of whom had died young, it is at least doubtful whether her failure of health at the age of sixty can be fairly attributed to her pedestrian feats. Her illness in 1832 culminated in a dangerous attack of brain fever, from which she recovered, but with mental and physical powers permanently enfeebled. Her memory was darkened, and her spirits, once so blithe and gay, became clouded and dull. Wordsworth and his wife tended her with unceasing devotion. One who knew them well wrote of Wordsworth at this time that “There is always something very touching in his way of speaking of his sister. The tones of his voice become very gentle and solemn, and he ceases to have that flow of expression which is so remarkable in him on all other subjects.” The same friend wrote, “Those who know what they (William and Dorothy Wordsworth) were to each other can well understand what it must have been to him to see that soul of life and light obscured.”

Notwithstanding the delicate health from which she suffered before the close of her life, she outlived her brother for five years. He died on 23d April 1850, the anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth and death. His sister at first could hardly comprehend her loss; but when at last she understood that her heart’s best treasure was no more, she exclaimed that there was nothing left worth living for. It was hardly life to live without him to whom her own life had been devoted. The friends surrounding her dreaded the shock which this great loss would be to her, but she bore it with unexpected calmness. A friend wrote, “She is drawn about as usual in her chair. She was heard to say as she passed the door where the body lay, ‘O Death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’” She died in January 1855, and was buried by her brother’s side in Grasmere Churchyard.

XIX

SISTER DORA

One of the most remarkable women who, in recent times, have devoted themselves to nursing and to the service of the sick poor, was Dorothy Wyndlaw Pattison, more generally known by the name of Sister Dora. She was a lady born and bred, well-educated, high-spirited, sweet-tempered, and handsome; full of fun and sense of humour, fond of hunting and other athletic exercises, and remarkably fond of her own way. As her own way was generally a good way, she was probably right in preferring it to the ways of other people. Strong determination, when it does not degenerate into stupid obstinacy, is one of the most useful qualities any human being can have. In Sister Dora’s case her strong will was a great secret of her success, but it also, in a few instances, led her into errors, which will easily be seen as the story of her life is told.

She was born, in 1832, at Hauxwell, in Yorkshire, a small village on the slope of a hill, looking towards the moors and Wensleydale. Her father was the clergyman of the village, and one of her brothers was the Rev. Mark Pattison, the well-known scholar and the Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford. Dorothy Pattison was first roused to wish for something more than the ordinary occupations of a young lady’s life by the enthusiasm felt throughout England in 1856 for Miss Florence Nightingale’s work in the Crimea. Dorothy wished to join Miss Nightingale’s band of lady nurses at the seat of war, but her parents’ opposition and her own want of training prevented her from carrying out this wish. From this time, however, she fretted against the life of comparative inactivity to which she was restricted so long as she remained in her village home. Some years were passed (wasted, we well may think) in unnecessary friction between herself and her father, she desiring to leave home, and he opposing her wishes in this respect. At last she did leave, in 1861, more or less in face of her father’s opposition; he declined to make her any allowance beyond what he had been accustomed to give her for pocket-money and clothes, and she had therefore to live partly on what she was able to earn. She obtained work as a village schoolmistress at Little Woolston, near Bletchley, and lived for three years in a small cottage, quite alone, without even a servant; her life at this time must have been very much like that described in Jane Eyre, where the heroine gains her livelihood for a time by similar work. She showed, as a village schoolmistress, that keen sympathy with children and power over them which always distinguished her. She could enter, through her bright imagination, into the feelings and thoughts of children, and her playfulness and love of fun made her a real friend and companion to them. At Little Woolston, too, she did a good deal of amateur nursing for the parents and friends of her little pupils. Her biographer, Miss Lonsdale,5 says that the people in the neighbourhood of the village were very quick to discover that the new schoolmistress was a real lady, but for some time they could not get over their astonishment if they found Miss Pattison blacking her own grate when they came to see her. She was, perhaps, the first instance they had come across of a cultivated woman who thought that “being a lady” was not inconsistent with working hard. Dirtiness, untidiness, and muddle vex the soul of the “real lady” far more than doing the work which produces cleanliness and order.

After three years at Little Woolston, Miss Pattison made what many must think was the great mistake of her life. Her strong will has already been spoken of; she had found by experience that she could not submit it even to the control of her own father, to whom she was naturally bound by strong feelings of affection. It was necessary to her to have freedom and scope for her energies, and to learn by self-government what she had failed to learn through the government of others. Notwithstanding the incompatibility of her nature with the absolute submission required in such institutions, Miss Pattison joined a High Church Sisterhood, at Coatham, called the Sisterhood of the Good Samaritan. It was part of the discipline of the sisterhood to require unquestioning obedience to all commands. The reason, the feelings, the natural piety of the novices were completely subordinated to obedience as their first and paramount duty. By way of training in unquestioning obedience, Sister Dora, as she was now called, was subjected to various tests of submissiveness; one day, for instance, after she had made all the beds, they were pulled to pieces again by the order of the Superior, and she was told to make them again. In some institutions of this kind, after the floor has been carefully and thoroughly scrubbed by a novice, some one enters, by order of the Superior, with mud or ashes, and purposely makes it dirty again; the novice is then ordered to return to her work and scrub the floor once more, and she is expected to do so without showing the least sign of disappointment or annoyance. It may be true that this system fosters the habit of unquestioning obedience, but if so it must be at the expense of other and more valuable qualities. This unnatural system is perverting to the moral sense and judgment, as Sister Dora, a few years later, found to her cost.