BOOKS OF THE WEEK
My Sister's Sister
By KATHLEEN TILLOTSON Y Sister's Sister,' Dorothy Wordsworth called her, introducing Sara in a letter to Lady Beaumont in 1804; a loving term for a loving and long relation- ship. This, and all that it implies, is how Sara Hutchinson chiefly appears in these letters now published for the first time*: as inseparably one of the Grasmere family circle as Dorothy herself. There are glimpses only of that more famous but more fleeting relation, defined by Dorothy in the same letter—" one of Coleridge's most dear and intimate friends." `Asra,' the inspiration of several of his poems, remains elusive; no letters to him, and only seven from 1805-1810, have survived. Nor would Sara have been ever likely to confide such a relation to cousins and family friends. Yet the very warmheartedness, the shrewd practical sense and occasionally tart advice, with which she enters into these correspondents' concerns—their farming troubles, health, engagements, marriages, children— suggest some of her qualifications for the role. " Many persons, influential for their genius and talents," wrote Wordsworth in the sad formality of a letter announcing her death, " were strongly and firmly attached to her. 1 may mention Charles Lamb and Coleridge above all." She was not only the indispensable unmarried sister and aunt, at hand or summoned in all family emergencies, nursing, mending for boys who had " come home as ragged as sheep "; but also the regular ' amanuensis ' and stimulating critic of Wordsworth, and lent, in the former capacity, to Southey for his History of the Peninsular War. I write Manuscripts for our Gentlemen most admirably."
Of her ' despondency ' and ill-health we hear from others, very rarely from herself. The letters give the impression of a vivid contentment with her lot : " living as I do with those who think and feel exactly as I do on most subjects "; Grasmere is still, " go wherever we will . the most beautiful place in the World." Sara had little formal education; she envied young Willy Wordsworth his advantages (if ." his elders" had had them, " the result would have been more satisfactory ") and noted, " What stupes do go to the University 1 " But in literary matters she had a shrewd and individual taste, and it is not surprising that Wordsworth sometimes revised his poems in response to her objections. She made manuscript anthologies, Keepsakes,' of seventeenth- and nineteenth-century poetry (the editor hints at a future study of these); she was repelled by the title of ' little Keats's ' new poem (Endymion)--"I wonder that anybody should take such subjects nowadays ' — and was disappointed by her first sight of King's College Chapel—" the ornaments destroy the simplicity of the form ": among Wordsworth's poetry, her favourites were the fourth book of the Excursion and the Ecclesiastical Sketches.
In one sense hers are not literary letters at all—far less so than the letters of Dorothy, who, with much of the same material, instinctively shapes it as she writes, while Sara empties out a heap of loose patchwork scraps. But matter of literary interest, when it comes, is somehow enhanced by its miscellaneous, domestic context : " Send the Shakespeare along with the Hats." Quotations from Wordsworth's poetry, family jokes (" poor Mrs. Coleridge's Sybellines, as we used to call her flying letters written on scraps, of paper "), the names of the great—Lamb, De Quincey, the Arnolds—make informal, unprepared entrances. To her cousin Torn Monkhouse she writes : Ask M. if she recd a pr of Shoes in a frank for my name sake ? Let us hear from you—& when in Town . . mind go to see the Lambs—you will find Chas every day in the Library of the Bh M useum.
And a long letter of 1834 contains a uniquely domestic record of the great new scholastic experiment at Rugby, which Sara sees as an enterprise in large-scale housekeeping: I saw their dinner sent up yesterday—it was salt fish which they ought to have had on Ash Wednesday—& which they did not chuse to be cheated of-2 huge pewter dishes full—three of mashed potatoes-120 Eggs for Egg sauce-2 legs of mutton in case any did not like fish—& 3 immense plumb Puddings baked in tins like dripping tins . . . Yet by regularity you would be astonished to see how all is. accomplished—& how much time they [the Arnolds] both seem to have to attend upon their own Children (not to teach them for they have both Tutor & Governess) & the poor also . happy man Dr. A. must be.
It will be obvious that there is ample material here for the amateur of social history. Grasmere is a gayer place than one had thought (and " William is the soul of the parties "); there is much travelling on horseback, and on asses (which makes Peter Bell at once less biblical), much effort connected with obtaining of franks, and ordering clothes from a distance. The eye pauses over a reference to the scandals of Yorkshire schools, in 1826; and, recurrently, on the horrors of unanaesthetised tooth-extraction (" I began my eighth bottle of old Sherry today—yet it did not screw up my courage sufficiently to have my Teeth drawn ") and of false teeth You will be glad to hear that I am in great hopes that the Teeth will answer and I am charmed with my Dentist tho' I am sorry- to find he is so foolish as to be an Irvingite. His works are really pretty to look at—& they cannot change—so that there Is nothing of disgust can attach to them as there does to the human teeth when set in bone—the very sight makes your flesh creep—which was one of the reasons of my reluctance to have anything to do with them until I heard of Heath's discovery—but the price is awful-50 Gs ! But they will last longer than I shall.
That was the year before she died. In the summer of 1835 she was nursing Dora and. Dorothy, both so seriously ill that she recalled William and Mary from their holiday. Her last letter speaks of them as sadly anxious,' and makes only a. passing humorous reference to her own plaguey pain.' But it was Sara who died.
, Miss Coburn has wisely presented the letters almost exactly as they were written, and has supplied an engaging and helpful introduc- tion. Annotation is mainly concentrated in a concluding list of names, which provides a compendious key to the figures in the text.
I hope Johns will stay a day or two with Johns." The sense of Walking through barbed wire quickly wears off, and after a little practice the seven Johns, eight Marys, and five Thomases are as easily distinguished as if Sara were writing to us. For other than biographical matter, the annotation is a little light. Readers who need to be told the source of the first mild day of March ' would pet find superfluous a note on parading and masquerading ' and the weight of too much liberty ' ; and the editor might have iden- tified the pretty lines ' which Sara quotes at secondhand, unaware of the author ; they are from the Duchess of Malfi, and the point is an interesting sidelight both on her taste and on the current neglect of Webster. Sara's racy dialectisms are unglosscd, and words like Milky, honey-fall, strackling, and livy will not be self-translating even to north-country readers. But such details are trivial indeed 1.11 comparison with one's gratitude to everyone concerned in this
herself, collection of letters, and above all to Sara Hutchinson nerself, for enrolling us among her honorary cousins.
Previous page
