{"id":59160,"date":"2013-09-10T11:00:54","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=59160"},"modified":"2018-12-04T13:27:41","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T18:27:41","slug":"william-wordsworths-she-dwelt-among-the-untrodden-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2013\/09\/10\/william-wordsworths-she-dwelt-among-the-untrodden-ways\/","title":{"rendered":"William Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cShe Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"roxbury\"<\/a>

Photo: Marc N. Belanger<\/p><\/div>\n

One recent evening, my father and I were sharing a bottle of wine when our conversation turned, as if often does, to his father. We like to call my paternal grandfather \u201cthe Judge,\u201d and we use this moniker in a spirit of camaraderie. My grandfather, who died eighteen years ago, was a forceful sort of person. The discipline that he exercised on my father, his eldest son, bordered on tyranny, but in my life, this seasoned toughness was inspiring, fun, and a recognizable expression of love. My grandfather, Frank J. Murray, was a self-made man. Born in 1904, he grew up in the rough Dorchester neighborhood of Boston and played football at Commerce High, a school for clever, working-class kids. A field goal in the final game of his high-school career caught the attention of a Dartmouth College scout, but he was saved from the Protestants\u2014at his mother\u2019s insistence\u2014by a priest, who secured a place for him at the Catholic Georgetown University. At Georgetown, he was quarterback, although he had no depth perception, due to a childhood accident that had left him blind in one eye. He went on to Georgetown Law, during which period he himself scouted for the Georgetown football team, and\u2014in a series of successes\u2014became a well-respected Boston lawyer, married my grandmother (who came from better circumstances), had three sons, bought a house in the solidly middle-class West Roxbury, sent his kids to the prestigious Roxbury Latin for high school, ascended to the Bench\u2014Massachusetts Superior Court\u2014and, some time in there, was appointed a federal district judge. When my father and I talk about this man, there certainly is a lot to cover, but on this particular evening, we were thinking of the Judge\u2019s love of poetry.<\/p>\n

My grandfather did not have an innate sense of good taste, but he could recognize it, and, as one might assume from his career successes, he was a quick study. As an adult, he wore nothing but Brooks Brothers suits, playing it safe; his one fashion adventure, a salmon-colored sports coat, also came from Brooks Brothers. He had a learned poise, and even his accent, which was an acceptable Back Bay Boston, was an acquired thing\u2014the Dorchester snarl packaged away, placed securely in the past. This need to acquire the accoutrements of privilege gave my grandfather the passion of a convert. He wanted you to appreciate the fine wine, the prime rib, the Royal Brougham\u2014but more than all of that, he wanted you to appreciate the great gift of his education, which was not law, but poetry.<\/p>\n

As a law student at Georgetown, he had taught both poetry and math to the freshman. For the math, as is part of the legend, he cowrote his own textbook, but for the poetry, he used the standard reference of the time, The Golden English Treasury<\/i>, edited by Francis T. Palgrave, commonly referred to as Palgrave\u2019s<\/i>. I remember the Judge\u2014at this point reluctantly retired\u2014bringing this book out on evenings, when I stayed at his house in Cohasset, on Boston\u2019s south shore. Mostly, when I visited him, it was just two of us. We would go out for lobster, then return for tea, and if the Celtics, Red Sox, or Patriots weren\u2019t playing, we\u2019d continue to sit at the dining room table, each with a glass of Gew\u00fcrztraminer, and he\u2019d read me poems. I remember the Judge admiring Emily Dickinson, although she wasn\u2019t in Palgrave\u2019s<\/i>; he had the Belle of Amherst in a separate volume. As for his contemporaries, the Judge knew his Robert Frost, although the chilly New England aesthetic seemed to inspire more amusement (good fences do<\/i> make good neighbors) than awe. Poetry brought out the teacher in my grandfather, and he would pounce upon me, demanding that I supply the inspiration for Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cour tainted nature\u2019s solitary boast\u201d and \u201cthe still, sad music of humanity,\u201d although\u2014as with all riddles\u2014these challenged only once. The Judge knew many poems by heart. He could recite, for example, Keats\u2019s \u201cOde to a Nightingale\u201d and Shelley\u2019s \u201cOzymandias,\u201d but there was only one poem that he asked me to memorize, and that was Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cShe Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways.\u201d I have a very clear memory of my grandfather coming upon me in the kitchen, where I was putting ice cream into bowls, and coaxing my recitation by providing the opening line, which is the title of the poem. My job was to respond, \u201cBeside the springs of Dove,\u201d and we would trade lines like this until the ballad was spent.<\/p>\n

Here it is in its entirety:<\/p>\n

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
\nBeside the springs of Dove;
\nA Maid whom there were none to praise,
\nAnd very few to love:<\/p>\n

A violet by a mossy stone
\nHalf-hidden from the eye!
\n\u2014Fair as a star, when only one
\nIs shining in the sky.<\/p>\n

She lived unknown, and few could know
\nWhen Lucy ceased to be;
\nBut she is in her grave, and, oh,
\nThe difference to me!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At first, I didn\u2019t find it particularly noteworthy that my grandfather wanted me to memorize this poem. The Judge would also spring algebra problems on me at breakfast, problems that started: \u201cIf a train departs Boston for New York at nine o\u2019clock in the morning traveling at forty miles per hour, and a train departs from New York to Boston at the same time, traveling twenty miles per hour \u2026\u201d He would also read out Latin selections from Bartlett\u2019s Familiar Quotations<\/i> and see if I could translate them. A lot of this was just my grandfather wanting me to do things. But as time passed, I could see that this Wordsworth poem meant something more to him\u2014although what that was, who could say? The poem was certainly not about my grandmother, who was a gorgeous flapper-era socialite, only \u201chalf-hidden from the eye\u201d if she happened to be entering or exiting a room. And although my grandmother would die before my grandfather, it was after a long and eventful life; this poem was something that the Judge had carried with him since his college days.<\/p>\n

During this recent evening, as my father and I chatted in a quiet house, a couple of glasses in to a rather good bottle of sauvingnon blanc, I thought back to Wordsworth\u2019s poem, and was surprised to find that I still had most of it committed to memory.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have his Palgrave\u2019s<\/i>,\u201d said my dad. \u201cIt\u2019s in my study.\u201d And he went for the book.<\/p>\n

The Judge\u2019s Palgrave\u2019s<\/i> was not in good shape. Its worn, green-cloth covers were flaking on the spine, and there was some Scotch-tape enforcement, something I felt that my grandfather\u2014due to the yellow brittleness of the tape\u2014had applied himself during the seventies or eighties. The corners were blunted, the edges worn, and some pencil scribbling on the cover\u2014even a faded column of figures\u2014marred the book\u2019s condition. But anyone could see that whoever had owned this book had loved it, and as I held it in my hands, I had the odd sensation of seeing through my grandfather\u2019s own perspective as I inhabited his view upon the much-studied pages. On flipping the book open, I was presented with a portrait of Tennyson, on to whom someone\u2014surely the Judge\u2014had drawn, in emphatic pencil, a pair of spectacles. Tennyson\u2019s poetry was not included, as the cut-off date was 1830, but he had, apparently, helped in its editing. As I turned the pages, the book guided me, opening to those poems remembered in the binding, the pages that my grandfather had spent his time with. The book soon brought me to Wordsworth\u2019s \u201cShe Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

My father did not know the poem well, so I read it to him, using my grandfather\u2019s scansion\u2014the iambs and dactyls penciled above the lines\u2014to reinforce the old music. I was wondering again, as I\u2019d thought before, why he had loved this poem so much, but as I drew to the final stanza, I realized\u2014with some surprise\u2014that I\u2019d figured it out.<\/p>\n

\u201cDad,\u201d I said, \u201cit\u2019s Alice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh yes,\u201d my father replied. \u201cIt is Alice. It must be.\u201d<\/p>\n

My grandfather never spoke of Alice. In fact, my father never mentioned her in my childhood, and I first learned of her existence as a thirteen-year-old visiting my grandparents in Cohasset during my school break. My family lived in Manila then, my summer holiday started in March, and my cousins were still in school; initially, my grandmother had been worried that I would be bored, but I was helpful and found plenty to entertain myself. My grandmother was surprised at how the Judge took to me, at how quickly we found our way as friends, even though I had always lived at great distance\u2014in Australia before the Philippines\u2014and hadn\u2019t seen him since I was eight. It was my grandmother who told me about Alice, my grandfather\u2019s sister, who had died of tuberculosis at the age of thirteen, while he was away, a freshman at Georgetown. My grandmother had some theories as to why he never mentioned her, and they all seemed valid. There was the guilt that he had at leaving home, and leaving Alice, to make his way in the world. There was the shame that Alice had received no treatment for her illness at a time when the less poor had several ways to the battle the disease. But most of all, there was his grief that he could not touch because it was deep and wide and painful, and tough men, like my grandfather, did not traffic in grief.<\/p>\n

My grandfather, the Judge, had taught me the poem, because to see me reciting it was a comfort to him. It eased his grief to have a young woman moving through his house, embarking on misadventures, and education, and career. My grandfather gave the poem to me and I gave it back to him. It was a way of remembering Alice and also offered a variety of solace.<\/p>\n

At my father\u2019s request, I read over the last stanza again.<\/p>\n

She lived unknown, and few could know
\nWhen Lucy ceased to be;
\nBut she is in her grave, and, oh,
\nThe difference to me!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wordsworth\u2019s antiquated lines\u2014lines that had felt so distant and mannered and quaint\u2014now felt somehow alive, and in that moment, my father and I felt my grandfather\u2019s grief as viscerally and as acutely as if the Judge had stood before us weeping.<\/p>\n

Sabina Murray is the author of three novels and two story collections\u2014the recent <\/em>Tales of the New World, and <\/em>The Caprices, which won the 2002 PEN<\/small>\/Faulkner Award.\u00a0She has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute. She teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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