Fish-Women--On Landing At Calais

'Tis said, fantastic ocean doth enfold The likeness of whate'er on land is seen; But, if the Nereid Sisters and their Queen,[HB] Above whose heads the tide so long hath rolled, The Dames resemble whom we here behold, How fearful were it down through opening waves To sink, and meet them in their fretted caves, Withered, grotesque, immeasurably old, And shrill and fierce in accent!--Fear it not: For they Earth's fairest daughters do excel; Pure undecaying beauty is their lot; Their voices into liquid music swell, Thrilling each pearly cleft and sparry grot, The undisturbed abodes where Sea-nymphs dwell!

"If in this Sonnet I should seem to have borne a little too hard upon the personal appearance of the worthy Poissardes of Calais, let me take shelter under the authority of my lamented friend, the late Sir George Beaumont. He, a most accurate observer, used to say of them, that their features and countenances seemed to have conformed to those of the creatures they dealt in; at all events the resemblance was striking."--W. W. 1822.

In Mrs. Wordsworth's Journal of this Tour on the Continent,--which, in a letter to her daughter Dorothy (dated 20th February 1821), she calls "hasty notes made by snatches during our journey,"--the following occurs:--"Passing through the gates of the city, we had before us a line of white-capped Fish-women, with thin brown faces. The fish very foul, yet at dinner the same sort proved excellent."

In Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal of the same Tour, the following occurs:--"Tuesday, 11th July. Calais.--With one consent we stopped to gaze at a group--rather a line of women and girls, seated beside dirty fish baskets under the old gate-way and ramparts--their white night caps, brown and puckered faces, bright eyes, etc. etc., very striking. The arrangements--how unlike those of a fish-market in the South of England!...

"Every one is struck with the excessive ugliness (if I may apply the word to any human creatures) of the fish-women of Calais, and that no one can forget."--ED.

Henry Crabb Robinson wrote of this sonnet:--"Of the sonnets there is one remarkable and unique; the humour and naïveté, and the exquisitely refined sentiment of the Calais fish-women, are a combination of excellencies quite novel." (Diary, etc., vol. ii. p. 224.)--ED.

VARIANTS: