Pictures of the Mind: Iron and Charcoal, "Ouzy" Tides and "Vagrant Dwellers" at Tintern, 1798

Abstract

IT IS COMMON KNOWLEDGE AMONG THOSE INTERESTED IN THE COMPOSITION history of Wordsworth's written few above Tintern Abbey on Revisiting Banks of Wye during Tour that village of Tintern, site of Abbey featured in poet's title missing from his text, supported an ironworks. This industry consumed great deal of was produced from oak growing in surrounding hills and burned in furnaces on banks of Wye river. My purpose here is to add to our knowledge of this subject and to correct errors that have accrued in its transmission. By doing so, I hope to allay suspicions still entertained by many that Wordsworth deliberately excluded from his poem unmistakable signs of environmental and social degradation caused by iron industry at Tintern in 1798. According to Marjorie Levinson's influential account, Insight and Oversight: Reading 'Tintern Abbey,' (1) Wordsworth's Lines do not describe site upstream from Abbey, industrialized Tintern itself, transformed into reassuringly pastoral scene by acts of imaginative distortion and omission. Among ugly details transfigured to point of misrecognition by Wordsworth's text is presence of beggars in and around village. Levinson argues that charcoal used by ironworks was produced at time of Wordsworth's visit in July 1798 by homeless vagrants seeking shelter in Abbey ruins, and reduced to marginal livelihood of charcoal-burning by England's tottering economy and ... wartime displacement (29). These vagrants, she says, are otherwise unidentified vagrant in houseless woods mentioned in poet's opening verse paragraph (line 21). (2) Also according to Levinson's account, ironworks all deforested banks of Wye with its demand for charcoal (30) and filled river with noisy boat traffic (29) and an ouzy tide of pollution (32). So shocked was Wordsworth at 'urban' contamination (industry, poverty, crowds, noise, pollution) (36) at Tintern, argues Levinson, that he tried to suppress every trace of it from his Lines--with only partial success--while announcing in his title that he was describing scene a few miles away. Levinson's depiction of industrial and social despoliation (31) of Tintern in 1798 is probably best-known of several contributions on subject, beginning with John Bard McNulty's in 1945. (3) McNulty was first to suggest that Wordsworth's lofty cliffs, that ... connect / The landscape with quiet of sky (5-8) and wreathes of smoke / Sent up, in silence, from among trees (18-19) were partly inspired by William Gilpin's description of charcoal-burning in Observations on River Wye, records boat tour undertaken in 1770. Many of furnaces, on banks of river, consume charcoal, writes Gilpin, which is manufactured on spot; and smoke, issuing from sides of hills; and spreading its thin veil over part of them, beautifully breaks their fines, and unites them with sky (12). (4) Ever since appearance of McNulty's essay, Gilpin's Observations has been most often cited source of information on subject of natural and human environment at Tintern in year of Wordsworth's revisit. Mary Moorman, in 1957, cited Gilpin's description of charcoal smoke and added several other features he remarked upon: the grass in ruins was kept mown, she writes, but it was dwelling-place of beggars and wretchedly poor. The river was then full of shipping, carrying coal and timber from Forest of Dean. (5) Twenty-five years later, Kenneth Johnston also mentioned Gilpin's charcoal smoke, as well as the heavily commercial aspect of river at that point due to shipping traffic. To Gilpin's beggars in Abbey he added gipsies, and vagabonds. Publishing his essay in 1983, Johnston anticipated Levinson's identification of Wordsworth's vagrant dwellers with indigent charcoal burners and likewise suggested that these unattractive associations--industrial smoke and social outcasts--might very well account for Wordsworth's insistently placing his poem 'a few above Tintern Abbey' rather than at site of Abbey itself. …