The first person interviewed by Mr. Rawnsley was an old lady who had been once in service at Rydal Mount, and was, in 1870, a lodging-house keeper at Grasmere.  She was not a very imaginative person, as may be gathered from the following anecdote:—­Mr. Rawnsley’s sister came in from a late evening walk, and said, ’O Mrs. D—–­, have you seen the wonderful sunset?’ The good lady turned sharply round and, drawing herself to her full height, as if mortally offended, answered:  ’No, miss; I’m a tidy cook, I know, and “they say” a decentish body for a landlady, but I don’t knaw nothing about sunsets or them sort of things, they’ve never been in my line.’  Her reminiscence of Wordsworth was as worthy of tradition as it was explanatory, from her point of view, of the method in which Wordsworth composed, and was helped in his labours by his enthusiastic sister.  ‘Well, you know,’ she said, ’Mr. Wordsworth went humming and booing about, and she, Miss Dorothy, kept close behint him, and she picked up the bits as he let ’em fall, and tak’ ’em down, and put ’em together on paper for him.  And you may be very well sure as how she didn’t understand nor make sense out of ’em, and I doubt that he didn’t know much about them either himself, but, howivver, there’s a great many folk as do, I dare say.’  Of Wordsworth’s habit of talking to himself, and composing aloud, we hear a great deal.  ’Was Mr. Wordsworth a sociable man?’ asked Mr. Rawnsley of a Rydal farmer.  ‘Wudsworth, for a’ he had noa pride nor nowt,’ was the answer, ’was a man who was quite one to hissel, ye kna.  He was not a man as folks could crack wi’, nor not a man as could crack wi’ folks.  But there was another thing as kep’ folk off, he had a ter’ble girt deep voice, and ye might see his faace agaan for long enuff.  I’ve knoan folks, village lads and lasses, coming over by old road above, which runs from Grasmere to Rydal, flayt a’most to death there by Wishing Gaate to hear the girt voice a groanin’ and mutterin’ and thunderin’ of a still evening.  And he had a way of standin’ quite still by the rock there in t’ path under Rydal, and folks could hear sounds like a wild beast coming from the rocks, and childer were scared fit to be dead a’most.’

Wordsworth’s description of himself constantly recurs to one: 

   And who is he with modest looks,
      And clad in sober russet gown? 
   He murmurs by the running brooks,
      A music sweeter than their own;
   He is retired as noontide dew,
   Or fountain in a noonday grove.

But the corroboration comes in strange guise.  Mr. Rawnsley asked one of the Dalesmen about Wordsworth’s dress and habits.  This was the reply:  ’Wudsworth wore a Jem Crow, never seed him in a boxer in my life,—­a Jem Crow and an old blue cloak was his rig, and as for his habits, he had noan; niver knew him with a pot i’ his hand, or a pipe i’ his mouth.  But he was a great skater, for a’ that—­noan better in these parts—­why, he could cut his own naame upo’ the ice, could Mr. Wudsworth.’  Skating seems to have been Wordsworth’s one form of amusement.  He was ’over feckless i’ his hands’—­could not drive or ride—­’not a bit of fish in him,’ and ‘nowt of a mountaineer.’  But he could skate.  The rapture of the time when, as a boy, on Esthwaite’s frozen lake, he had