The Wordsworths, the Greens, and the Limits of Sympathy

Abstract

ON MARCH 19, 1808, GEORGE AND SARAH GREEN, HUSBAND AND WIFE, perished in Langdale Fell during storm, leaving behind eight orphaned children, all under age of sixteen and six under age eleven, an event which threw the whole vale, in Dorothy Wordsworth's words, into the greatest consternation. (1) Immediately Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth (William was in London) were employed in laying schemes to prevent children from falling into hands of persons who may use them unkindly, which they regarded as likely if children suffered usual fate of orphans, being boarded out by parish for meager two shillings per week. (2) They began to solicit donations, and when William returned to Grasmere following month Wordsworths wrote brief account of events that they circulated to those who might be willing to contribute. (3) It seems that they were tireless in their efforts, as William was soon apologizing to Francis Wrangham for dim transcript by multiplying writer, we having had occasion to make so many copies. (4) One month after tragedy, William sent S. T. Coleridge Elegiac Stanzas composed in Churchyard of Grasmere, Westmorland, few days after Internment there of Man and his Wife, Inhabitants of Vale, who were lost upon neighbouring Mountains, on night of nineteenth of March last. The first lines read: Who weeps for Strangers?--Many wept / For George and Sarah Green. He urged Coleridge to turn these verses to any profit for poor Orphans in any way, either by reciting, circulating in manuscript or publishing them. (5) Dorothy began her own record of events, Narrative Concerning George and Sarah Green of Parish of Grasmere addressed to Friend, in April. Her Narrative was read by family members and close friends but remained unpublished during her lifetime. (6) By middle of May than 300 [pounds sterling] had been raised, and by September subscription for Green children approached 500 [pounds sterling]. For next twenty-one years, distribution of funds to families who had taken in orphans was overseen by group of local women (including Mary Wordsworth), deservedly earning Ernest de Selincourt's praise as a model of simple act of charity wisely conceived and scrupulously administered (11). For William, their involvement with Greens represented enormous potential of human sympathy to relieve poverty. But one could read story of Wordsworths' involvement in Greens' suffering quite differently. The brief account that William and Dorothy wrote immediately after tragedy to raise money might be examined for way it establishes rigid requirements for truly deserving poor. Compassion for children is more deeply felt, and there is a general desire that than ordinary exertions should be made because of parents' frugality and industry and even endurance of extreme poverty, as well as their independence, for they went without any assistance from parish. (7) That children were deemed worthy of private assistance because their parents had been cheerful in their suffering suggests far qualified sympathy for poor. We might also look at decision to cap subscription at 500 [pounds sterling], subject of some controversy between Coleridge and Wordsworth. While Coleridge's letter on subject is not extant, from Wordsworth's defensive reply--he felt compelled to offer no less than six reasons, which he enumerates one by one, for his decision to accept no donations--we may surmise strong objection on Coleridge's part. Michael Friedman, one of few scholars to consider William's involvement with Greens, reads this explanation to Coleridge as exemplifying a Tory humanist conception of community structured by traditional social rank and degree and belief that such hierarchic community must be preserved. …