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.

And now 'tis mine

When Wordsworth was a boy, he came over a ridge and saw Grasmere for the first time, spread out below him:

…And, with a sudden influx overpowered

At sight of this seclusion, he forgot

His haste, for hasty had his footsteps been

As boyish his pursuits; and sighing said,

“What happy fortune were it here to live!...”

No Prophet was he, had not even a hope,

Scarcely a wish, but one bright pleasing thought,

A fancy in the heart of what might be

The lot of others, never could be his. (Home at Grasmere, 7-11, 15-18)

Who that has visited Grasmere has not felt as Wordsworth did?  I’ve been to Grasmere several times—twice to attend the Wordsworth Trust Summer Conference and twice to visit while doing research at the area County Records Offices and the Jerwood Centre Library at Dove Cottage.  There’s something in particular about standing on one of the surrounding hills and looking down at the little village quietly nestled along the edge of the lake that makes one think, “I’d love to live there.”  But as did Wordsworth, one only sighs and thinks, yes, that is the “lot of others.” 

“And now ‘tis mine,” Wordsworth exults later in the poem Home at Grasmere (56).  My husband, Chris, and I now find ourselves in the same situation, though not “perchance for life” (56).  Instead we will be in Grasmere for six months while I am on sabbatical researching at the Jerwood Centre.  And like Wordsworth, we can say, “Beloved Grasmere…/One of thy lowly Dwellings is my Home” (57, 59).  We will be living just a five minute walk from Dove Cottage so that I can take full advantage of the library. The library houses 90% of Wordsworth’s known poetic manuscripts!  I can’t wait.

We are arriving in the dead of winter, when it is likely to be cold, dark, and wet, and not at the height of summer when we have most often seen it.  Frankly, we couldn’t be happier.  Whenever we’ve talked about wanting to spend some extended time in England, naysayers have always pulled out the dark winter card to prove that we wouldn’t like it as much as we think we would.  Well, perhaps we won’t, but we are ready to find out.  But it’s our guess that we will like it—very much.  We hope to be like Dorothy and William who also came in winter and found that even “Two months unwearied of severest storm,/…put the temper of our minds to proof,/ And found us faithful through the gloom” (181-3).  And since we are here six months, we will experience England’s glorious spring season.

This blog will be a place for me to record the joys of researching at the library and to introduce others to the wealth of researching materials there and throughout England.  Once a month, I plan on going down to London to visit the Quaker Library and the British Library, and I will include those adventures here as well.  For an American scholar of British literature, there’s nothing like being in Britain. Every time I’ve spent even a little time doing research here, I’ve come home with a wealth of material that has sustained me for some time.  I can’t quite imagine what it will be like to have a luxurious six months to read and explore, but I will be sure to let you know. 

Thank you for reading!