Those three and a half years at Lincoln appear to have lasted for decades, so eventful was the unfolding of the world, and all the years which have passed since then, with their travels to many foreign lands, and climbings of perilous peaks, seem to have contained no exploration so thrilling as the revelation of Riseholme, where lived Bishop Wordsworth of Lincoln, who wrote the “Holy Year,” and his wife, and his family and Janet the housekeeper. (The latter, like Mrs. Wordsworth, had ringlets down the sides of her face, and dispensed Marie biscuits and cowslip wine in unstinted profusion.) The family, too, were interesting, for one daughter when she laughed said, “Sss-sss,” and another, “Kick-kick-kick,” and the Bishop himself had a face like a lion, and a hollow ecclesiastical voice. My sisters considered him very formidable, but I was not afraid of him, chiefly because at an early stage of our acquaintance he gave me an ink-bottle of pottery, with a gilded lion (like himself) on top of it, and a receptacle to hold sand for the blotting of your letter, if you had managed to write it. This argued an amiable disposition, and when I came in contact with him, I was conscious of no embarrassment.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree,
but Xanadu was nothing to Riseholme for domes and stateliness. There were two lakes peopled with dace and water-lilies and pike and swans, and an island where the swans nested, and a sluice, around which the water was of fabulous depth, where we fished for dace. There was a boat-house, on the roof of which in the autumn a great chestnut tree used to shed its fruit, bursting the husks, and disclosing the shiny brown kernels; and at Riseholme, as far as I remember, we were allowed to do precisely as we pleased. We used to go out alone in the boat, with paste for bait, and splash the water at each other, and come home with a couple of dace, dirty and wet and hopelessly happy. Swans used to scold and hiss at us, the boat did everything but capsize, and æons of bliss were our portion. There were water-snails to be collected, if the fish would not bite (they seldom did), and wreaths of stinking water-weed, and broken fragments of swan eggs lined inside with a tough kind of parchment, which we called “swan-paper.” Then dace (when there were any) were cooked for tea, and provided a bony mouthful for one; the swan-paper was taken home for the Museum, together, on one glorious occasion, with the addled swan’s egg; and the wreaths of stinking water-weed were laid out on sheets of cartridge-paper and pressed. This pressing resulted in an awful fricassee of weed and paper, and then something else occupied us. On the banks of the lake, at intervals, appeared a sympathetic Bishop with daughters, to whom we shouted the results of our explorations, and one of the daughters said, “Kick-kick-kick,” and another, “Sss-sss-sss.” For larger people, such as Arthur, there was more grown-up fishing, and once with a spoon-bait he caught a pike that weighed three pounds. But not even the sympathetic and combined appetites of the juniors could finish that toothsome dish.