File:Past and present at the English lakes (1916) (14780264892).jpg

Identifier: cu31924104648583 (find matches)
Title: Past and present at the English lakes
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: Rawnsley, H. D. (Hardwicke Drummond), 1851-1920 Wordsworth Collection
Subjects:
Publisher: Glasgow, J. MacLehose and sons
Contributing Library: Cornell University Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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This tallied with a reminiscence of a resident
near Rydal, who can never forget the way in which,
at some private theatricals she went to as a child at
The Nook, Ambleside,eside, she heard Hartley in
" The Merchant of Venice " declaim the part of
Shylock. How did he talk ? I said, for I believe he
inherited something of his father's volubility and
power of impassioned discourse.
" Well, of course, " she replied, " I was too
young to enter into the conversation, but I can
well remember how at the dinner table he would
work himself up almost into a passion as he spoke,
and forgetting all about his dinner would suddenly
jump up, leave his seat, and seem to run round the
table swaying his arms and pouring out torrents of
talk till he sat down to find we had finished
the course, and must wait till he had finished
also.
" As I told you before, the piano was a great
attraction to him. He would sit by me time after
time when I was practising, simply for the pleasure
that the sound of music gave him. "
" I know he was fond of music, " I said, for
there is a poem called ' Hidden Music ' I remem-
ber his lines written impromptu in 1835 after
hearing a lady sing, and his poem ' The Solace of
Song, " which ends,
Text Appearing After Image:

HARTLEY COLERIDGE AETAT 52.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE 17

And should I live to be an old,
An old forgotten thing,
Yet never may my heart be cold
When holy maidens sing.
And the sonnet to Music, No. XXVII. in the
' Posthumous Poems, ' and ' To a Lady, on her
singing a sweet old air ' ; and again the XXXth
sonnet, which begins,
I would, my friend, indeed, thou hadst been here
Last night, beneath the shadowy sycamore.
To hear the lines, to me well known before,
Embalmd in music so translucent clear.
" Can you tell me anything about the origin of
the poem ' Hidden Music, ' which was written in
June, 1843, or those sonnets XXIX. and XXX.,
for I once picked up a volume of the Poems with
the words ' Abby Hutchinson sung the May
Queen in the garden at Greenbank ' written in
clear hand above that sonnet XXX. ? "
" Yes, " said my friend, " there was a famous
violinist, I think a foreigner, his name I have for-
gotten, who lived at Hawkshead, and I believe
Hartley Coleridge heard him practising in a wood,
and was inspired by it to write his poem Hidden
Music I can tell you a good deal about that
lady, Abby Hutchinson, and I was actually present
at the concert which occasioned that poem.

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