William Wordsworth

W ILLIAM W O RD SW ORT H AND A N NETTE VALLON P S D RE UME MINIATURE P O RTR AIT O F ANNETTE VALLO N E M I L E L E G O U I S W IL L IA M W O R D S W O R T H A N D ANNET T E VA LLON " o M i . ” 2) 2 7 9 . 1 9 2 2 L O N D O N <5 T O R O N T O . M D E N T S L T D I . ea SO N . NEW Y RK : E P DU T (53 C O . T ON O. C O NT ENT S PAGE PREFACE WILLIAM W ORDSWORTH VALLON APPENDICES Genealogy of the Vallons Le tte rs of Annette Vallon to William and D oroth y Wo rdsw orth Marriage Certificate of Caroline Wordsw orth Petition to the King on behalf of Annette Vallon . A on ord o V Literary Note W sw rth , written ' for Madame A . Marquet, Wordsw orth s grand-daughter LIST O F ILLU STRATION S FACSIMILE or A LETTER FROM ANNETTE ILLIAM 0th VALLON To W WORDSWORTH, 2 ‘ Ma rch, 1 7 92 0 0 From a dra wmg by Ha ncock in 1 7 98 PAUL VALLON F o r m the pa inting by B . R. Ha ydon a b out 1 830 W SW T 'S D GHT IN ORD OR H AU ER, CAROL E P REFA C E SOME time after I had pub lish e d The Ea rly Life of Willia m Wordsworth, in the last years of the last century, I met in London my friend Thomas Hutch n w ho oo n inso , now deceased, was s after to make himself known as the erudite editor of Wordsw orth , a nd Shelle y Lamb . He had many times encouraged and helped me with his advice while I was pre k paring my b oo . In the course of our talk he asked me whether I was aware of a well-established tradi i n in m W rd w orth t o the Coleridge fa ily that William o s , during his stay in France, had of a youn g French n h lady a so ,) w o afterwards visited him at Rydal n Mount . This stateme t which mixed truth with — some error ah error which ca n now be easily — accounted for made me regret that I had not s known the fact beforehand, o as to alter some pages of my work which were flatly contradicted by it . I But as had then turned to other subjects , I let n a the thing pass without more comme t, nd allowed n n the story to sleep for many years , ot hidi g it from ' those who were concerned with the poet s life but never committing it to print . Then came the time when Professor George Harper of Princeton University began to write his masterly biography of the poet . I told him the little I knew, but no further progress was made till he discovered among the British Museum vii viii P R E FA C E ’ man uscripts a series of letters written by the poet s l sister, Dorothy Wordsworth , to Mrs . C arkson, the - wife of the anti slavery apostle, wherein clear men tion was made of a French lady named Madame Vallon (Annette)and of a daughter of hers named Caroline whom Dorothy called her niece . Their Paris address was also given in the same letters . Once furnished with this clue, Professor Harper could give us a first sketch of the love-story in his nd In ue nce Willia m Wordsworth, His Life , Works a fl , 1 which came out in 91 6 . Having soon after come to France again during the war to help in the American Hospital of Neuilly, he devoted his very scanty leisure to further research and was so fortunate as to find out some documents of great importanc e, such as the birth and marriage certificates of Caroline W ordsworth . He, moreover, identified Annette as the sister-in-law of a Madame Vallon whose memoirs n of the revolutio ary times had appeared in 1 91 3. All these discoveries he generously imparted to me while he was in Paris, but I must confess that though they strongly impressed me on the spot, the terrible — circums tances the war was then at its darkest hour - n soon drove the precise facts from my mind, leavi g n only the remembra ce of their general interest . When Professor Harper had to return to his university, lin unwil g to leave his research only half done, he n challe ged me to bring it to an end . But I had no such design at the time, and might never have turned to the task at all , had not the English publisher of my book on The Ea rly Life of Wordsworth told me la st year of his intention to issue a second edition of that work . I answ ered that I owed it to the reader not to publish again without making the corrections P R E F A C E ix and additions necessitated by later discoveries . I therefore set out to write an appendix on the relations between Wordsworth and Annette . For this I began to dip into our Records, national and local, those of Paris , Orleans and Blois . Besides the documents formerly revealed to me by Professor Harper a nd quite recently published by him at the Princeton ' University Press under the title of Wordsw orth s French Da ughte r, I lighted on many others which he had not the time to hunt for, and, by degrees , the French family of the Vallons assumed a definite shape before my eyes . It was my good fortune to get into touch at last with some living members of that family, the descendants of Wordsworth and ' Annette on one side, and of Annette s brother Paul on the other . The result of my researches appeared in the Re vue des De ux Monde s of the rst April and 1 st May 1 92 2 , but the exigencies of the Review precluded all recognition of my debt to those who had done most to help in the completion of my la bour . First of all, I beg respectfully to thank Madame René Blanchet, the eldest grandct of Madame ' a V uch e le t, who was herself the poet s eldest grand daughter . To her I owe , among other valuable ' information, the curious copies of Caroline s mar ria ge contract and of the petition to the king made on behalf of Ann ette by her aristocratic friends in ' 1 8 1 6; also the fine portrait of the poet s daughte r Caroline in her old age , and the essay on Words worth 's poetry written for the special benefit of ' a Caroline s third d ughter, Madame Marquet . I am also exceedingly grateful to Madame Le coq ' ' Vallon, the descendant of Annette s brother Paul l P R E F A C E l Vallon, who had a ready made extensive private inquiries into the family’s early history and treasured up recollections of th e revolutionary times . By her or through her I was informed of ma ny circumstances n u relating to Paul Vallo . She also comm nicated to Galle rand me the interesting researches of Abbé , the ' Director of Blois Seminary, on Paul and Annette s uncles, the priests Charles Olivier and Claude Vallon . But she did more than all by letting me know that a double letter of Annette to William and Dorothy n Wordsworth, written in 1 7 92 , had quite rece tly been discovered in the Records of Blois by the learn ed Archivist of that town , M . Guy Trouillard . I owe her much besides for the establishment of the Vallon n ge ealogy . To her father, M . Omer Vallon , I am indebted for the right of reproducing the presumed miniature of Annette which is among his possessions ; n a u h o to her cousi , M . de la Flotte, for the same t ' risa tion n as regards Paul Vallo s portrait, and also for having been allowed to read the memoirs of his ' n gra dfather Amedee Vallon, Paul s second son . I am deeply grateful to Mr . Gordon Wordsworth, n n the li eal desce dant of the poet, for his courteous communica tions an d especially for his positive assur ance that no traces of Annette and Caroline subsist in the family papers that have been preserved, for it would have b een unjustifiable to give to the world a fragmenta ry and often conjectural story of the episode so long as there remained a possibility of ' having a more thorough account of the po et s doings and feelings . It is a pleasant duty to express my thanks to . M Guy Trouillard, already me ntioned , and M . Jacques Soyer, the Archivist of Loiret ; to M . Pinault, P R E FA C E ’ t chef de l E a t civil de Blois, whose inexhaustible kindness has allowed me to ascertain many facts and dates in the lives of the Vallons before 1 8 1 5; and to Mademoiselle Cecile Duca ffy of the Archives Dé a rte m e nta le s e t n Prefe cture p " Commu ales , de la Seine, to whose untiring and intelligent exertions I owe the discovery of the living descendants of a nd Wordsworth Annette .

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