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Updated: May 27, 2025
He settled with his sister at Racedown, Dorsetshire, and shortly afterwards removed to Alfoxden, in the Quantock Hills, to be near Coleridge, who was then living at Nether Stowey in the same neighbourhood. One result of the intimacy thus established was the planning of a joint work, Lyrical Ballads, to which Coleridge contributed The Ancient Mariner, and W., among other pieces, Tintern Abbey.
He was too much of a gentleman and too grateful for the real help Spalton had extended to him. Alfoxden was a slight, Mephistophelian man ... with bushy, red eyebrows. And he was totally bald, except for the upper part of his neck, which was fiery with red hair.
The cottage stands half a mile away from any house. Woke very early the next morning and went down to Alfoxden House, where Wordsworth and Dorothy lived a century ago. Here also came Coleridge. It was almost too much to remember that they had trodden those paths. I could hardly believe they were not there, and yet they were dead such a strange overcoming sense of presence and yet of vanishedness.
Years afterward, a friend gave him a regular allowance to be spent in traveling. The summer of 1797 saw him and Dorothy begin a golden year at Alfoxden in Somersetshire, in close association with Coleridge.
Coming out into the world again, no one would trust him because of that one mistake, Spalton, at this juncture, took him in and gave him a new chance but as I said unkindly, in my mind, and publicly, he made capital of his generous action. But Alfoxden was a soul of rare quality. He never seemed to resent "John's" action.
In the autumn of 1797, records Wordsworth in the MS. notes which he left behind him, "Mr. Coleridge, my sister, and myself started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon with a view to visit Linton and the Valley of Stones near to it; and as our united funds were very small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a poem to be sent to the New Monthly Magazine.
I walked with a holy awe along the leafy lanes to Alfoxden, where the beautiful house nestles in the green combe among its oaks, thinking how here, and here, Wordsworth and Coleridge had walked together in the glad days of youth, and planned, in obscurity and secluded joy, the fresh and lovely lyrics of their matin-prime.
The barrier of ancient beech-trees running up into the moor, Kilve twinkling below, the stretch of fields and woods descending northward to the expanse of the yellow Severn Channel, the plain white façade of Alfoxden itself, with its easy right of way across the fantastic garden, the tumultuous pathway down to the glen, the poet's favourite parlour at the end of the house all this presents an impression which is probably less transformed, remains more absolutely intact, than any other which can be identified with the early or even the middle life of the poet.
Of the decisive period of Wordsworth's life, when he was living with his sister Dorothy and with Coleridge at Alfoxden, we have already spoken. The importance of this decision to give himself to poetry is evident when we remember that, at thirty years of age, he was without money or any definite aim or occupation in life.
Wordsworth at a later period did not like the story of the spy, but it is certain that about the time of the visit he got notice to quit Alfoxden, obviously for political reasons, from the lady who owned the estate.
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