JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. Modern Language Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PMLA. W ORDSWORTHIANS have long been puzzled and perhaps a littledistressed by the poet's apparent shift in political opinion. It is curious that in all the discussion that has resulted no one has said much about Wordsworth's rather vigorous life as a man of business. The story begins with the popular picture of Wordsworth "virtuous, simple, and unaffectedly restricting every want and wish to the bounds of a very narrow income," with his "little cottage, and the sister and wife dressing the mutton leg in the same room where it was to be eat."' There is probably some truth behind this picture, though it belongs to an earlier period than that of Scott's letter. For some years after his father's death (1784) Wordsworth very likely had more expectations than cash. But since his uncles and guardians were prepared to contribute almost ?460 to his college expenses,2 Wordsworth's only real hardship must have been in not having his own money at hand. Moreover Wordsworth's father, who, in succession to his father and to his cousin, John Robinson, the favorite of George II, had been attorney and land-agent to the Earl of Lonsdale, left only part of his estate tied up in the famous debt owed by the Earl. It is difficult to determine the size of the remainder. Wordsworth's elder brother had about ?100 a year;3 and there seems to have been other real and personal property. Gordon Wordsworth, working from the account of his greatgrandfather, lists the following property as belonging at some time to John Wordsworth: the Sockbridge estate; "the various 'Cattle Gates' upon the moor"; Ingmire Close, which he had bought from his father-in-law, and which gave him a vote in Cumberland; two fields near Cockermouth, which had cost ?200; and "other small properties in various parts of Cumberland."4 And the other children must have had some share in an estate at Newbiggin, in Westmorland.5 1 H.In 1790, when their grandmother, Dorothy Crackenthorpe Cookson, inherited the Newbiggen estates of the Crackenthorpes, she gave them ?500 out of her first year's rents.6 In addition they could claim ?500 from their mother's estate, ?1000 which in some form were in the hands of their uncles and guardians, and ?200 which one of the guardians owed their father's estate.7But presumably this little fortune was not much more available than the money tied up in the Lonsdale debt, and what cash the family had went for the expenses of the suit against Lonsdale.8 In 1794, however, Wordsworth was saved from genteel indigency by the legacy from Raisley Calvert, which enabled him to devote himself "to literary pursuits, independent...
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