"Things of which I need not speak": Between the Domestic and the Public in Wordsworth's Poetry

Abstract

When Sara Hutchinson dared to express reservations about poem then known as the she received response: am exceedingly sorry latter of Leechgatherer has displeased you, more so because I cannot take to myself (that being case) much pleasure or satisfaction in having pleased you in former part (Early Years 366). This painful chastisement strongly illustrates importance of connection between construing of Wordsworth's texts and acceptance of poet as leader or teacher. Sara's offending letter has been lost, but text in which both poet and Dorothy gave her a hurt and anxious dressing down is a shared letter of June 14, 1802, written by double Wordsworth siblings to double Hutchinson siblings who were all about to become in-laws, and so join same extended family. William's grievance produced a well-known formulation to defend his treatment of old man in poem: You speak of his speech as tedious: everything is tedious when one does not read with feelings of Author (367). His leading case (I cannot conceive a figure more impressive than of an old Man like this [366]) turns out to be it is not is said, so much as is being expressed, should unify interest of everyone concerned in act of communication he is describing in poem. What poet has in fact been intent on recording is way speech is almost irrelevant to something else which is barely recoverable in surface language, but much more engaging: old Man still stood talking by my side; / But his voice to me was like a stream / Scarce heard; nor word from word could I divide (106-8). Dorothy reiterates importance of such an ulterior motive, though her version is less intriguing: yourself whether you have hit upon real tendency and true moral ... and when you feel any poem of his to be tedious, ask yourself in spirit it was written--whether merely to tell tale and be through with it, or to illustrate a particular character or truth etc (Early Years 367). The less particularising purpose of Dorothy's own intervention here is chiefly reconciliation, brisk deflection of teasing differences, so all women are going to be happily of one mind, encouraged by down-to-earth readmission of Sara to shared secrets of family economy. am glad, Dorothy continues, that you have found out to bake bread in my way--we never want yeast now (367). The embarrassment felt by many subsequent readers of letter has to do with its being both intimate and dictatorial--its assumption of, even demand for, an extraordinary degree of submission and trust. The organisation of authority, both on page and in household, is patently patriarchal, stemming from one central male producer, and scandal attached to its shock-effect on those outside ring of familial correspondence has to do with suppression of dialogue entailed in degree of control. Because presumed compliance has been withheld (by Sara), and because jeopardises basis of poet's authority--to produce poetry--a feeling of indignation in excess of specific issue is vented which verges on brow-beating. Since she had herself transcribed first version of poem to which she had responded--she was to become one of Wordsworth's principal amanuenses--she was an insider who had suddenly declared herself an outsider. In respect, incident works for wider reader like a family quarrel overheard in public. Though circulation of power in patriarchal family is indeed being required as natural, is customary given of their continuing relations, a larger and related claim is also being lodged for general representativeness of William's poetry. It is a claim very frequently made by Wordsworth--disarmingly, for example, in William's promise to Coleridge in Prelude: what we have loved, / Others will love, and we may teach them how (13. …