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, 18th 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.
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