They drank water, and ate the simplest fare.
Miss Wordsworth had long rendered existence possible for her brother
on the narrowest of means by her unselfish energy and skill in
household management; and "plain living and high thinking" were
equally congenial to the new inmate of the frugal home. Wordsworth
gardened; and all together, or oftenest the poet and his sister,
wandered almost daily over the neighbouring hills. If arrow means
did not prevent them from offering a generous welcome to their few
friends, especially Coleridge and his family, who repeatedly stayed
for months under Wordsworth's roof. Miss Wordsworth's unpublished
letters breathe the very spirit of hospitality in their naive
details of the little sacrifices gladly made for the sake of the
presence of these honoured guests. But for the most part their life
was solitary and uneventful. Books they had few; neighbours almost
none; and Miss Wordsworth's diary of these early years describes a
life seldom paralleled in its intimate dependence on external nature.
I take, almost at random, her account of a single day. "November 24,
1801. Read Chaucer. We walked by Gell's cottage. As we were going
along we were stopped at once, at the distance, perhaps, of fifty
yards from our favourite birch-tree; it was yielding to the gust of
wind, with all its tender twigs; the sun shone upon it, and it
glanced in the wind like a flying sunshiny shower.
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