March Snow

Chris and Eifel head out the gate and towards Helm Crag.

Helm Crag just two days later.

Grasmere in the snow

The daffodils have arrived but maybe not as imagined!

Jeff Cowton introduces some visiting tour guides to the library's resources.

Everyone seems very happy to be here.

Well, there had to be one blog about the weather, didn’t there?  As you can see from the pictures, the weather this week has been changeable, to say the least.  We have our friend Eifel with us this week.  He’s here on his Easter break from St. Andrews University, and he came eager to climb the peaks.  But the snow on the tops has limited his hiking to the lower fells for the most part.  Earlier this week, he and Chris took a hike from here over to Hawkshead—a scouting trip for me to see if it would be a good hike for the Principia Lifelong Learning group coming to join me in late June.  About an hour after they left, it began to rain.  It rained steadily for hours, and I began to imagine them soaked and unhappy.  About 45 minutes before they arrived back, it stopped raining.  I saw them coming and ran to the door to help remove wet clothing.  They were completely dry.  It hadn’t rained at all over the ridge where they were.  They got about ten minutes of light hail, and that was it.  Now that’s localized weather!  The next day, the snow had cleared enough for them to hike to the top of Helm Crag.  Right now, I’m snuggled under a blanket in our house watching as the snow continues to fall.  It’s been snowing since yesterday.  It’s not snowing hard enough for huge amounts of accumulation, but the temperature isn’t going to get above freezing today, so it will be staying around until at least tomorrow.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s absolutely beautiful here in any weather.

The research has been going very well.  I’ve reached the point where the ideas are starting to come together, and I’m beginning to see a shape to things.  The highlight for me this week was getting to see two first edition copies of the Excursion in the library.  One had belonged to Lord Lowther and was from his library.  It was bound in leather with gild edging and an elaborate gilded seal on the front with a crown on the top of a wreath that encircled his name in scrolled letters.  The second copy was one from the Harrow Book Club.  It was bound simply in boards—a sort of cardboard cover that books were generally sold in unless the buyer wanted to pay for a leather or cloth binding.  On the front of the book was affixed a large bookplate that had printed on it the rules of the club and the instruction to erase one’s name when one had read a book.  The plate included the names of the twenty-one members of the club, nine of whom had read the book.  This copy helped answer some questions I had had about how book clubs operated as well as providing an example of how the Excursion was received in one group.

Also this week, a group of tour guides came to the library to hear from Jeff about all that the museum, Dove Cottage, and the library have to offer.  From the looks of it, they were impressed with the resources and were enjoying their time.  Today, the exhibit on Dorothy Wordsworth curated by Pamela Woof opens.  We are looking forward to seeing it.  It’s the first exhibit to focus solely on Dorothy.  As Pamela said to me in the library one day, “She’s coming into her own.”  About time.  If you are in the area, do stop by and see it.

Settling In

Snow falls in Grasmere.

Sunset over Grasmere

Dorothy Wordsworth's 1827 Journal waits for me

The Reading Room

Some of  Dorothy Wordsworth's manuscripts set out in preparation for the upcoming Museum exhibit

The view from the Library window looking towards the village

Two things happened this week that changed the landscape for me: it snowed, and I started to work with the manuscripts. I’ve often told my students that one thing that makes the Lake District so interesting and most likely contributed to the feeling of the sublime for William Wordsworth is the ever-changing light.  That comment was based on my small experience during summer trips when the weather was largely clear with passing clouds.  But having been through just two weeks of winter weather, I can now confidently say that the light IS constantly changing.  This morning started with patches of blue sky showing for just brief moments.  The clouds were generally high.  This afternoon, we are expecting a snow storm, and the snow clouds have started to move in and are hanging low over the mountains.  I think I could stand at the window and take pictures every hour, and they would each show a different landscape.  We are never bored looking out our windows.  (We are, however, often distracted from work!)

Also changing is my view of Dorothy Wordsworth, thanks to working with the manuscripts. An email to the Trust staff in the morning ensures that items I want to see are ready for me when I arrive.  I began by looking at her 1827 journal. At first, much of the writing was indecipherable, but slowly words took shape.  Her entries largely follow a pattern of remarking on the weather, a record of where she walked, and a remark on who she visited or who visited the home.  Now and then a sentence would jump out at me, such as this one from Friday, 18^th May: “Walk with W. to Grasmere by favorite road. & back & forward in the forest track.”  Doesn’t that conjure up images?  What are they talking about on their “favorite road” and as they walk “back & forward”?  At another spot in the book, she has added the first two verses of Purgatoria VIII, which the Princeton Dante Project (www.princeton.edu/dante) translates thus:

It was now the hour that melts a sailor’s heart

and saddens him with longing on the day

he’s said farewell to his beloved friends,

and when a traveler, starting out,

is pierced with love if far away he hears

a bell that seems to mourn the dying light…(1-6)

It may be that Dorothy responded to the beauty of these verses and so simply wanted to record them.  It may be that they reminded her of her brother John, a sailor lost at sea in 1805.  It’s tempting to speculate. Pamela Woof, editor of The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals, is working in the Library preparing for an exhibit on Dorothy Wordsworth that will go up in March.  I asked her about these verses, and she kindly cautioned me that what we see in Dorothy’s writings may not at all be what she was thinking, that we bring our own view as readers to the work.  Those are wise words—interpretation must be tempered by thoughtful, honest, wide research.  Still, the manuscripts are exciting because they do raise questions that remind us that these are real people with their own lives, lives that only appear in glimpses through what they chose to record.

Dorothy’s humanity came through to me this week most strongly as I looked at some letters she wrote to her friend, Jane Pollard in 1790 and 91.  I had been using the printed versions in my book, but I wanted to go to the source for the final typescript.  I’m so glad I did.  The differences are minor in one sense—just a matter of capitalization and punctuation.  Yet those differences brought the passages alive for me.  A sudden shift to capitalizing a word that she had not previously capitalized made me think that a shift in mood or meaning was indicated here.  I will refrain from speculating, but I will say that I think it makes a great difference to see these subtle changes.

Through viewing these manuscripts, Dorothy has become more of a real person and in some ways more of a mystery.  Good literary criticism, I tell my students, opens up a text instead of closing it down.  Now I will add, so does looking at a manuscript.