| Tuesday 22nd Still Thaw. I washed my head. Wm [William] & I went to Rydale for letters, the road woas covered with dirty snow, rough & rather slippery. We had a melancholy letter from C [Coleridge], for he had been very ill, tho' he was better when he wrote. We walked home almost without speaking--Wm composed a few lines of the Pedlar. [. . . .] We stopped along time in going to watch a little bird with a salmon coloured breast--a white cross or T upon its wings, & a brownish back with faint stripes. It was pecking the scattered Dung upon the road--it becan to peck at the distance of 4 yeards rom us & advanced nearrer & nearer till it came within the length of Wm's stick without any apparent fear of us. As we came up the White Moss we met an old man, who I saw was a beggar by his two bags hanging over his shoulder, but from a half laziness, half indifference & a wanting to try him if he wold speak I let him pass. He said nothing, & my heart smote me. I turned back & said You are begging? 'Ay' says he--I gave him a halfpenny. William, judging from his appearance joined in I suppose you were a Sailor? 'Ay' he replied, 'I have been 57 years at sea, 12 of them on board a man-of-war under Sir Hugh Palmer.' Why hav you not a pension? 'I have no pension, but I could have got into Greenwich hospital but all my officers are dead.' He was 75 year of age, had a freshish colour in his cheeks, grey hair, a decenty hat with a binding round the edge, the hat worn brown & glossy, his shoes were small thin shoes low in the quarters, pretty good--they hab belonged to a gentleman. His coat was blue, frock shaped coming over his thighs, it had been joined up at the seams behind with paler blue to let it out [. . . .] We stopped to look at the Stone seat at the top of the Hill. There was a white cushion & the Rock behind looked soft as velvet, of a vivid green & so tempting! The snow too looked as soft as a down cushion. A young Foxglove, like a Stare in the Centre. There were a few green lichens about it & a few withered Brackens of Fern here & there & upon the ground near. All else was a thick snow--no foot mark to it, not the foot of a sheep.--When we wre at Thomas Ashburner's on Sunday Peggy talked about the Queen of Pttardale. She ahd been brought to drinking by her husband's unkindness & Avarice. She was formerly a very nice tidy woman. [. . . .] We sate snugly round the fire. i read to them the Tale of Custance & the Syrian Monarch, also some of the Prologues. It is the Man of Lawes Tale [from Canterbury Tales]. We went to bed early. It snowed & thawed. |