LETTER TO LADY FREDERICK BENTINCK.

Rydal Mount, Monday Evening.

The accident after which you inquire, dear Lady Frederick, with so much feeling, might have been fatal, but through God’s mercy we escaped without bodily injury, as far as I know, worth naming.  These were the particulars:  About three miles beyond Keswick, on the Ambleside road, is a small bridge, from the top of which we got sight of the mail coach coming towards us, at about forty yards’ distance, just before the road begins to descend a narrow, steep, and winding slope.  Nothing was left for J——­, who drove the gig in which we were, but to cross the bridge, and, as the road narrowed up the slope that was in our front, to draw up as close to the wall on our left (our side of the road) as possible.  This he did, both of us hoping that the coachman would slacken his pace down the hill, and pass us as far from our wheel as the road would allow.  But he did neither.  On the contrary, he drove furiously down the hill; and though, as we afterwards ascertained, by the track of his wheels, he had a yard width of road to spare, he made no use of it.  In consequence of this recklessness and his want of skill, the wheel of his coach struck our wheel most violently, drove back our horse and gig some yards, and then sent us all together through a small gap in the wall, with the stones of the wall tumbling about us, into a plantation that lay a yard perpendicular below the level of the road from which the horse and gig, with us in it, had been driven.  The shafts were broken off close to the carriage, and we were partly thrown and partly leaped out.  After breaking the traces, the horse leaped back into the road and galloped off, the shafts and traces sticking to him; nor did the poor creature stop till he reached the turnpike at Grasmere, seven miles from the spot where the mischief was done.  We sent by the coach for a chaise to take us to Rydal, and hired a cart to take the broken gig to be mended at Keswick.

The mercy was, that the violent shock from the coach did not tear off our wheel; for if this had been done, J——­, and probably I also, must have fallen under the hind wheels of the coach, and in all likelihood been killed.  We have since learned that the coachman had only just come upon the road, which is in a great many places very dangerous, and that he was wholly unpractised in driving four-in-hand.  Pray excuse this long and minute account.  I should have written to you next day, but I waited, hoping to be able to add that my indisposition was gone, as I now trust it is.

With respectful remembrances to Lord Lonsdale, and kindest regards to yourself and Miss Thompson, I remain,

Dear Lady Frederick,
Affectionately yours,
Wm. Wordsworth.[176]

[176] Memoirs, ii. 371-3.

118. Of Alston and Haydon, &c.

LETTER TO HENRY REED, ESQ., PHILADELPHIA.