Here and Back Again

The Friends House in London

The Reading Room at the Quaker Library.

Friendly librarians at the Quaker Library waiting to help researchers.

The British Library with Kings Cross in the background.

Ever wonder what sheep look like in the snow?  This fellow said hello on our afternoon walk to the Arts & Book Festival.

Poet Judy Brown takes a look at some of her fellow authors’ offerings at the Festival.

For an American scholar used to driving long distances, London is just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Grasmere—a mere 4 hour trip by public transportation—and that means that its scholarly resources are well within reach.  So this week, Chris and I undertook the journey so that I could visit the Quaker Library.  They own a letter by the Quaker poet Thomas Wilkinson which contains a reference to Wordsworth, and I wanted to see it again.  We loaded up a backpack, locked up the house, and walked to the bus stop down the road.  In Windermere, we caught a train to Oxenholme, where we changed trains.  That train went straight on to London Euston with only three or four stops in between.  A quick change to Kings Cross and a short walk brought us to our hotel.  The journey was unbelievably easy and fast.  This efficient service means that you can wake up in the Lake District and be in downtown London by lunch. 

It’s always a pleasure visiting the Friends House in London.  It’s a peaceful place with a small bookstore covering a wide range of spiritual topics, a nice café, and the Library.  One cannot spend time there without walking away with a deep respect for the Quaker’s centuries-old commitment to social justice.  In Wordsworth’s day, that commitment contributed significantly to the anti-slavery movement, prison reform, and reform for the care of the mentally ill.  Thomas Wilkinson, a poet and gardener, was friends with both Wordsworth and anti-slavery campaigner, Thomas Clarkson.  His letters reveal a man who was well connected socially and who enjoyed much of that social life but who also thought deeply about religious and political issues.  As I looked through a batch of letters between Wilkinson and his friend Dorothy Parker, I came across several manuscripts of his poems that he included in letters to her.  This trading of manuscripts interested me since Wordsworth did the same, sending Wilkinson a copy of his poem “To a Spade” written in Wilkinson’s honor.  What other poetry was flying between writers in the mail of the period, I wondered.  The Friends House is just down the street from the British Library, so I took advantage of their collection as well to explore the works of several other poets Wilkinson mentioned.  Right now the Library has an exhibit up on Detective stories, which Chris and I enjoyed very much. 

One does not have to go to London for activity, however.  Grasmere has plenty to offer.  This weekend, the Wordsworth Trust hosts the Arts & Book Festival.  Last night we walked through the newly fallen snow to meet other intrepid travelers at the Wordsworth Hotel to listen to Nicholas Roe talk about his new biography on John Keats and Matthew Sturgis discuss his book on the history of tourism in Rome.  This morning, MP Rory Stewart discussed the challenges of writing travel literature in a modern world where one’s audience is already well traveled and well educated about the region one hopes to discuss.  This afternoon we will braved the now melting snow in the rain to hear the Trust’s Poet in Residence, JudyBrown.  I’ve shared the Library Reading Room with Judy, and it was well worth the walk.  I especially appreciated the moments of bright visual imagery that sparkled through the poems.

With all this activity, perhaps the thing that surprised us the most this week was the feeling we had when we stepped back into our house here in Grasmere after our London trip.  We felt we were back home—really truly home.  We haven’t been here that long, so the feeling took us by surprise.  But I think it says something both about the way the encircling hills seem to embrace us and the warm welcome we’ve received from all the local people.  We really do feel at home in Grasmere.

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.

Research Day One

Dublin Airport at sunrise.

Manchester Railway Station, Manchester Airport.

Some of Manchester's Christmas lights.

The researcher off to the Library!

Jerwood Centre, Wordsworth Trust.  The road leads to Dove Cottage.

If I were back in Elsah, Illinois and wanted to do the work I did today with the Cornell editions of Wordsworth’s writings, I would have to drive 50 minutes into St. Louis to Washington University.  Because they don’t have all the editions, I would then have to note which editions I needed and order them via interlibrary loan through Principia College’s library, the Marshall Brooks Library.  Don’t get me wrong; this system can work, and I’m always grateful for the help I get from our librarians at home (thank you Deb, Lisa, and Edith!).  But it can sometimes be frustrating and time consuming as I piece together what I find at Wash U and what I need to order—especially if I forget to note something while at Wash U or lose track of which poem is in which volume.  Today I sat in the Wordsworth Library and surrounded myself with all the Cornell editions I needed—and I needed quite a few, seven to be precise.  There they all were, right in front of me.  I could easily flip from one to another to find just the right passage.  At one point, I realized that I needed Ernest de Selincourt and Helen Darbishire’s edition of The Excursion, and I walked over to the reference shelf and got it.  I know that for some scholars who work at major research libraries such a convenience may be commonplace, but for those of us at small institutions, it’s heavenly to have all these books at one’s fingertips.  Work that could have taken several days to accomplish at home took me one day.  I’m a little amazed.  This first week or so, I am polishing my manuscript for my book due to Ashgate by 1 March.  Thanks to the resources at the Library, this work is proceeding much more quickly than I had anticipated.  So even when using published works, a researcher finds that the Library is a tremendous help.

I have been in contact with Jeff Cowton for sometime about my stint at the Library, but the process to gain access doesn’t require much advanced notice.  You do have to let the staff know you are coming so that they can prepare items for you.  Once you arrive, you buzz to let them know that you are at the door, and they greet you warmly and usher you in.  Like most research libraries, a locker area is available for your personal items, and you have to read and agree to instructions that prohibit the use of pens near the books or unauthorized digital photography.  These are the same restrictions as those at most major research libraries such as the British Library or the Bodleian at Oxford, so no surprises there (and I’m so glad they take such precautions to preserve these manuscripts from harm).  Rebecca Turner (Beccy) met me at the door and introduced me around to the staff since I will be here so long, and then she settled me in the Reading Room and made sure I had whatever I needed. 

You might think that winter would be a time when not much is going on here, but you would be wrong.  The Museum and Dove Cottage are closed for the month for cleaning and revitalizing, and some of the staff seem busily engaged in that bustle. They all make sure not to disturb those reading, however.

 A local historian, Vivienne Rees, joined me in the Reading Room in the afternoon to take advantage of the Library’s collection of local history.  She seemed pleased with what she found—a very full scrapbook of local newspaper articles—and I very much enjoyed the chat we had about Grasmere.  Vivienne told me that the Grasmere Players, the local amateur theatre group, used to perform plays written in local dialects, but now, few are around who could understand those plays.  Some words have survived, however. She taught me two local phrases: “scrow” and “gae thrang.”  “My house is a scrow” means my house is a mess—a useful phrase—and it’s usually a mess when I’m “gae thrang” or up to my ears in work.  Both of these phrases seem related to Scots.  The Online Scots Dictionary says that “scrowe” means a multitude or crowd, “gae” means going, and “thrang” means crowded with people or busy with work.  The similarities are not surprising given how far north we are. I hope my students from my Scottish Literature course are paying attention!

The last time I worked at the library, I hadn’t noticed any windows in the Reading Room.  This time around, I saw that there is a nice window away from the books (to protect them from the direct sunlight).  It looks out across a field to the village, and for much of the morning, I could see the houses in town.  Before noon, the fog settled back down and left everything in a blanket of white.  We’ve had just one day of rain, but we have had several of fog.  The weather hasn’t kept us from getting out and walking around the village area.  Today my husband Chris walked down to the lake, around the graveyard where the Wordsworths are buried, and up to the road leading to Allan Bank.  What we do find a little difficult to get used to is that we have to plan these walks to get back by 4:30 if we don’t want to be out at dark.  I had made fun of Chris for buying headlamps for us; I’m eating my words now since the Library closes at 5:30, well past dark this time of year.

It’s wonderful to be here, to study Wordsworth’s poetry and then walk out the door and be part of the landscape that so inspired him.