Prospecting: Toward a New Peripatetic

Abstract

When Thelwall arrived in the Quantocks at the beginning of the year that produced Lyrical Ballads, he was carrying notebooks that he had been keeping during his journey there, that he eagerly shared with his hosts, and that he later revised and published in the Monthly Magazine between 1799 and 1801 under the title “A Pedestrian Excursion through Several Parts of England and Wales during the Summer of 1797.” On this excursion both literal and literary, he consciously returns to the mode of his Peripatetic, recording day by day and in a loosely linked series of picturesque and political sketches, his route from London to the West Country. The published narrative breaks off on the verge of his arrival at Nether Stowey, with an unfulfilled promise “to be continued,” as his unnamed companion (Wimpory, a shoemaker, symbolic of the radical identity left behind in London) departs and a Miltonic Thelwall “pursue[s] his way, with solitary step” (JTPW 3. 55) toward the longed- for cottage and companion that await him there; as a headnote explains, one of the motives that “conspired” to prompt his “eccentric ramble” was “the opportunity of more immediate and intimate communication” with “an invaluable friend” on “the Somersetshire coast … whom as yet he had never seen, but for whom … he had conceived all the affection of a brother” (JTPW 3. 17).

On the Somersetshire coast, and not many miles from Bridgewater, the author has an invaluable friend, well known in the literary world, whom as yet he had never seen, but for whom, during the imperfect intercourse ofa familiar and confidential correspondence, he had conceived all the affection of a brother.

(Thelwall, “A Pedestrian Excursion”)

What more I have to say is short,

I hope youll kindly take it;

It is no tale; but should you think

Perhaps a tale you’ll make it.

(Wordsworth, “Simon Lee”)