A CHAPTER XVII. A QUIET RESTING-PLACE. FEW words only are desirable to be added in reference to the surviving inmate of the home of which Miss Wordsworth was so long a cherished member. The poet's aged widow survived her husband and sister-in-law for some years. She was not solitary in her widowhood, but tenderly loved by devoted friends. Miss Joanna Baillie, writing to Mrs. Fletcher in the June succeeding the death of Wordsworth, says: "Many thanks to you for sending to us a copy of these lines" (the lines upon the companionship of Wordsworth and his sister, before mentioned), "and for letting us know how his excellent wife, Mrs. Wordsworth, bears up under her severe affliction. She was a mate worthy of him or any man, and his sister too, such a devoted noble being as scarcely any other man ever possessed." Mrs. Fletcher's diary, under date, Sunday, the 7th May, 1854, contains the following entry: "Yesterday, Mrs. Davy brought Mrs. Wordsworth to dinner. It is always a pleasure to see the placid old age of dear Mrs. Wordsworth. Hers has been a life of duty, and it is now an old age of repose, while her affections are kept in constant exercise by the tender interest she takes in her grand-children." During the last three years of her life Mrs. Wordsworth was blind; and it is deeply pathetic to read how, in her last days, when her sightless eyes could no longer peruse the sacred page, she loved to feel with her trembling fingers a cross which she kept in her room, and which seemed to remind her of the Christian's hope. Her life of calm devotion and disinterested love, succeeded by an old age of resignation and peace, was brought to a serene close on the 17th of January, 1859. Among the quiet resting-places of the dead, few, if any, are of deeper interest than the peaceful churchyard of Grasmere. Under the shadow of the everlasting hills "girded with joy," and by the banks of the murmuring stream singing in its onward course of hopes beyond the grave, it is a spot which affection would choose for its most tenderly loved. As "the Churchyard among the mountains," many of the annals of which are recorded in that grand philosophic poem, "The Excursion," it could not fail to draw thither the footsteps of the thoughtful. But there is one corner on approaching which we seem to feel more solemnized, to breathe more gently—where the footstep falls lighter and lingers longer. To us it is as sacred a nook as the shadowy corner of the famous Abbey where are laid England's greatest sons. The group of graves gathered there are not glorified by the "religious light" of storied windows, but they are warmed by summer suns, and covered with a garment of purity by winter snows, and over-shadowed by aged yews, which gently shower around them their peaceful and slumberous undersong. In the south-east corner of this quiet God's Acre is to be found this cluster of graves, surrounded by an iron palisade, to each of which a history of more than common interest is attached. Behind the principal group are three short graves, two of which, being the first formed of the group, attract attention. These are the graves of little Catherine and Thomas Wordsworth, the children of the poet, whose early and sudden deaths have been mentioned. The stone indicating the resting-place of the "loving, and tractable, though wild," Catherine bears the inscription, "Suffer little children to come unto Me." That of her brother contains a few memorial lines recording at once his age and loving disposition : "Six months to six years added he remained What we possessed, and now is wholly Thine!" The next green mound, in point of date, is that which covers the remains of the first Mrs. Quillinan, who died on the 25th May, 1822, at the early age of twenty-seven years, six months after the birth of her second daughter. She was a daughter of the late Sir Egerton Brydges, Bart., of Denton Court, near Dover. There is in Grasmere Church a monument to her designed by Sir F. Chantrey. Miss Sarah Hutchinson, the younger sister of Mrs. Wordsworth, who has been before mentioned, comes next in this remarkable group. Spending, as she did, much of her time with the Wordsworths at Grasmere and Rydal Mount, she was devoted to all the members of the family. Being herself of poetic mould, the poet's home was most congenial to her. It was she, who, during a sickness, the year before her death, wrote the following lines to the Redbreast: — “Stay, cheerful little Robin! stay, And at my casement sing, Though it should prove a farewell lay “Though I, alas! may ne'er enjoy A charm, that thought cannot destroy, "Methinks that in my dying hour Thy song would still be dear, “Then, little Bird, this boon confer, Of everlasting Spring." She died as before-mentioned in 1835. Her memorial stone states that she was the beloved sister and faithful friend of mourners, who had caused the stone to be erected, with the earnest wish that their remains might be laid by her side, and a humble hope that through Christ they might together be made partakers Twelve years after of the same blessed resurrection. wards the sod was again cut, to receive, not yet the aged poet or his wife, but their idolized daughter Dora, the devoted wife of Mr. Quillinan, who, in her forty-third year, after a brief period of wedded happiness, died on the 9th July, 1847. Upon the stone at the head of her grave is chiselled a lamb bearing a cross, and the consolatory words: "Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out." The poet himself was the next to be added to the group, and the slab, with the simple inscription "WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, 1850," has been gazed upon by as many moistened eyes as the elaborate tombs of any of England's greatest heroes. Mr. Edward Quillinan, who died in July, 1851, rests near the two beloved companions of his life. The subject of this brief memoir - the most perfect sister the world hath known - after her sunny youth, her strong maturity, and her afflicted age, now sleeps in peace on the right side of the poet, to whom her self-denying life was devoted, her resting-place, to all who have heard her name being sufficiently indicated by the words "DOROTHY WORDSWORTH, 1855." In a few years more the poet's grave received to its shelter the tried and honored partner of his long life, and the words were added: "Mary Wordsworth, 1859." |