Secrets that remain unyielded
Jane Gardam
THE WRECK OF THE ABERGAVENNY by Alethea Hayter Macmillan. £14.99, pp. 240.
ISBN 0333989171
Ever since 1965 Alethea Hayter has been placing a very sharp compass-point upon particular 1.9th-century writers or groups of writers, describing a circle and subjecting the space inside it to the mercies of her gimlet eye. In A Sulu); Month, her acclaimed second book about the June of 1864 in a sweltering London, packed with drama and genius, she is said to have invented 'a new form of biography': the scholarly, non-fiction narrative, 'a form so new,' said Anthony Burgess at the time, that it lacks a name'. Since then there have been all manner of new forms of biography, and experiments continue; but Alethea Hay-ter's approach still seems the most engaging and unselfconscious. She is blue-stocking meticulous, but writes with friendly fluid ease, as if she has known all the characters personally.
After A Sultry, Month came her classic, Opium and the Romantic Imagination, still the authoritative work on the use of 19th-century narcotics. There followed A Voyage in Vain (1973), Coleridge's agonising, opium-haunted journey to Malta in 1804. Now, nearly 30 years on, comes The Wreck of the Abergavenny, the great Indiaman that sank in sight of land off Weymouth Bay in 1805 as it set off in convoy for China. The captain was John Wordsworth, the rather mysterious younger brother of the poet. From the moment she went down, the loss of the Abergany'. as she was called, has been remembered as one of Britain's greatest maritime disasters. Reports of the massed 'English Army' of Napoleon gathered for
invasion just across the Channel moved off the front pages. The loss of life was huge — at first thought to be 400 — and the value of the lost cargo, which included /200,000-worth of silver which was to be handed over in Calcutta as payment for opium to be resold in China, was astronomical. Treasures, by now only small and touching a toothbrush, a lady's ring, a pair of cuff-links engraved J.W. — are still being brought up to the surface today from The Shambles where the great ship foundered and her remains have rested.
This time it is not opium that has led Hayter to her subject. Nor is it the connection to the luckier voyage of Coleridge — who was a great friend of John — the year before, But she is, as before, more taken up with the effect of random circumstance — fate, weather — on the poetic imagination. She sees the loss of John as the turning point in William Wordsworth's development as poet and man, and the spark of his great philosophical poem The Prelude. She broods, as Wordsworth did, on the purpose of catastrophe and grief and concludes, as Wordsworth did, that they are regenerated as Art. No catastrophe, no Art', she quotes (rather surprisingly) from Julian Barnes.
At the same time the book is a portrait of the captain, the enigmatic odd-man-out in the Wordsworth family, 'poor John', the school 'dunce', the miserably shy and silent orphaned child who was taken from the excellent Hawkshead School at 15 without demur, handed the sailor's leg of mutton and bottle of rum and entered into the service of the East India Company where there were already one or two Wordsworth relations. He returned home seldom and nervously, though always very happily. Once, between ships, he spent eight idyllic months at Dove Cottage with brother and sister and Coleridge, and with Mary Hutchinson who was to marry William and with whom, Hayter has quite decidedly established, he was passionately in love. After William's marriage he never went back or saw Mary again.
Instead he went steadily up the ladder, twice travelling to China on two-year voyages, once, by now captain, fighting off a French force off the Malay Peninsula and being well rewarded. The 'dunce' made money, and was generous with it. Hayter's researches have discovered his efficiency and sense of justice as captain of very sketchy crews — for all the best men then were in the navy, fighting Napoleon. He negotiated his last, fatal voyage with the intention of making a fortune out of his private opium dealing (which was usual in sea-captains and not considered particularly wrong: even Wilberforce the anti-slaver took opium) and stood to make up to /30,000, which would lift his brother and sister out of the poverty of Grasmere and allow him to live with them for the rest of his life.
But the ship went down. The fortune vanished. The terrible grief of the Wordsworths, tinged with some remorse for never putting John first, was made worse by the press. Almost at once it was suggested that as the ship sank the captain's behaviour had been odd. He had made no attempt to save himself. His alleged last words had been laconic, 'God's will be done. Let her go.' There was even the suggestion that impeccable John had been drunk. William had always called him a 'silent poet', and his unworldliness and love of solitude were remembered. Myths arose and a quiet, confident, distinguished, handsome and efficient man was surrounded by doubt. At school John had been thought 'the nicest' of the Wordsworth brothers. Hayter remarks on his similarity to Captain Wentworth in Persuasion. Yet it seems that before Grasmere even heard of the recovery of his body when it floated up from beneath the ship six weeks later, he was tipped into a common grave with 80 of his shipmates.
The public enquiry completely exonerated John from blame. It was the RN escort ship that had set the ridiculous route which John had disliked. It was a dud pilot who put the ship on The Shambles. Transcripts and records of witnesses show that the captain left the world calmly and honourably.
What Hayter does not show, because she can't, any more than Jane Austen could, is what must have happened to John from the age of 15 through all the brutal years at sea. A sailor is still another man ashore. There he wears silk stockings and thin shoes and drinks tea. He did not try to describe Calcutta to Dove Cottage. It is interesting that Hayter tells us that John had no time at all for 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner', Maybe the best biographies are about those who will never, like the sea, give up all their secrets?
'Wordsworth's Wedding', a bi-centenaty celebration of the wedding of William Wordsworth to Mary Hutchinson, takes place 4-6 October in Brompton-by-Sawdon, Scarborough. The programme includes a lecture by Juliet Barker and poetry, readings by U. A. Fanthotpe and Paul Farley. Details from L. Clark, 7 Church Lane, Brompton-bySawdon, Scarborough Y013 9DN. Tel: 01723 850155.
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