The next day they went with Sara Hutchinson on an expedition to their old haunts in the Lowther woods, calling on Thomas Wilkinson on the way. He was at work in one of his fields – for he cultivated his own estate – and ‘chearfully laid down his spade’ (that spade soon to be commemorated by William in verse) to accompany them. In the matter of the Patterdale estate he acted joyfully and, in the end, rather embarrassingly on Wordsworth’s behalf. The story well illustrates the characters of Wordsworth himself, of Wilkinson, and of another person – Lord Lowther.

 

The estate, which was called Broad How, was a small farm of nineteen acres. The utmost that Wordsworth would offer for it was £800. This offer he made in the spring or early summer of 1806. At the same time, however, another purchaser appeared, a clergyman, unnamed in all the letters, but evidently the rector of Patterdale. Wordsworth wrote to this person asking him to withdraw: ‘the property’, he said, ‘I knew could be of no real consequence to him.’ The rector, however, persisted in his application, and his intervention caused the owner of the estate – who was a woman – to put up the price to £1,000. This was more than Wordsworth would pay: the estate, he said, was not worth so much. And there the matter would have rested, had not Thomas Wilkinson determined to call in help from a high quarter, and spoken to Lord Lowther about it. During a walk by the River Lowther they discussed the affair, and Thomas, in a letter to Wordsworth dated ‘29th of 7th Mo.’ (i.e. July 29th) 1806, told him what the earl had done.

 

He said [wrote Thomas] he was personally unknown to Mr Wordsworth, but he wished to be acquainted with him and desired me to bring him to Lowther when he came again to see me. He further said …that it would be indelicate in him to seem to interfere, for he was fearful of hurting Mr Wordsworth’s feelings by an offer he might make, but that if he wished to have it he should have it, and desired I would go to the owners and give them £1,000 for it, but only tell Mr Wordsworth of 800, and to come to him (that is, to Lord Lowther) for the rest. All this was said with a gentleness, feeling and kindness, that I cannot describe. I told him I was obliged to him but my friend should know. He desired if I attempted to inform him it might be done in the most delicate manner, for he really felt great difficulty in that part of the subject. I have been considering, and I know not that I could do it more properly than in just telling thee the plain truth.

 

Thomas then went immediately to the owner, and after some further attempts on her part to raise the price from a thousand pounds to a thousand guineas had met with no success, he drew up a ‘Memorandum of the Bargain’, signed by all present, by which the purchase money was to be paid in the following March - £600 on mortgage, and £400 in ready money. ‘And now’, concluded Thomas, ‘that thou has conquered bear they victory mildly, the Rector and thee are to be neighbours, let not your Becoming so be a subject of contention.’

 

When Wordsworth read this letter, he was naturally a good deal embarrassed. It was not the fact of being under an obligation to Lord Lowther that distressed him. It was his doctrine of ‘frugality’. The place was worth £800; it was not worth £1,000. ‘Strange it is that Wilkinson could not perceive that, if I was unwilling to pay an exorbitant price out of my own money, I should be still more unwilling to pay it out of another’s, especially of a person who has shown to me so much kindness, treated me with such respectful delicacy, and given such striking proof of his desire to apply his property to beneficent purposes.’ A man of letters, he said, ought to be ‘severely frugal’ both with his own money and with that of others. Had the place been one where he had long lived and with which he had ‘connected many interesting feelings’, he might not have been unwilling to accept his Lordship’s kind assistance. But the Broad How estate ‘had little to recommend it but its own beauty’, and ‘Providence has dealt so kindly with this country that this is little distinction’. Besides, he was not determined to build on it.

 

However, there was nothing to be done; the estate had been bought, and it belonged to Wordsworth until 1834 when he sold it to the innkeeper at Patterdale. He never built on it.’