Research in full swing

Red squirrels are endangered; we've yet to see the actual squirrels.

One of the coffin stones along the trail where pall bearers would rest the coffin on the long walk from Rydal to St. Oswald's church in Grasmere.

A nice view of Grasmere from the trail.

Rydal Water in the distance.

A glorious sunset.

Same view; more landscape.

The library was a bustling place the beginning of this week. Assistant Curator Beccy Turner has been busy mapping out the upcoming exhibit on Dorothy Wordsworth.  She had books and display text laid out on the table to make sure that each text had something significant to display.  Later in the week, Pamela Woof came in to look things over.  And Jeff popped in and out to check on the progress.  I’m always fascinated by the level of activity at the Trust.  It’s never distracting—the staff always makes sure they are not disturbing those in the Reading Room—but it gives one a sense of just how much work goes into maintaining and operating a museum and library.  No one is sitting around twiddling their thumbs, I can tell you that much.  The interns, too, look as if they are beginning to understand the work of the place.  I’ve seen them do a range of jobs from learning to guide tours in the Cottage to transcribing texts to help Jeff prepare for a talk.  They will leave at the end of the year with a good sense of what it takes to run and maintain an active archive.

            I’ve hit my stride with my own research.  I’ve been looking at letters written to Wordsworth around the time of the publishing of the Excursion.  Here is where the access to Library sources is invaluable as much of the material I’m now viewing has never been printed.  It’s fascinating to see how readers—and not just reviewers—were responding to the Excursion.

            One of the nice things about being here is the ability to walk to the reference shelf and take down pretty much any book I need, including the printed editions of the letters of the Wordsworths and of Coleridge.  One letter this week made me laugh out loud.  I don’t think of Wordsworth as a particular humorous gentleman, and I don’t know if he meant to be in this letter.  He was writing to Robert Anderson, the editor of a multi-volume, massive collection of British authors and their work.  I had just finished looking at some of the volumes earlier in the week, so I knew just how comprehensive a collection it is.  Well, apparently, according to this letter, Wordsworth and Southey were talking one day and started to list what was not in the collection!  And they sent the list to Anderson with a suggestion that he include these authors (and a promise to subscribe to the additional volumes if he did so).  The image of the two of them sitting around making such a list made me laugh.  Isn’t this the kind of thing we all sometimes do with friends? Critiquing some film or book?  But the fact that Wordsworth wrote and sent the letter—well, that says something about the man, doesn’t it?

            I’m also enjoying learning to read the handwriting of the age.  The most enjoyable has to be John Edwards, who obviously took great care with his penmanship.  There’s a tie for the most challenging—either Dorothy Wordsworth or Coleridge.  Fortunately, most of the material I’m reading from these two authors can be checked against printed editions.

            The photos are from Friday afternoon.  I was at home working with some of the material I’d gathered that morning, and the day was just too nice to stay inside.  Even though it was just an hour to sunset, we decided to head up the Coffin Route towards Rydal Mount.  We almost reached Rydal, but it was getting dark enough that we thought we better head back.  The Coffin Route is the trail that was used to carry coffins from Rydal and other surrounding communities to St. Oswald’s church in Grasmere.  It’s a sweet little walk, and we look forward to completing it soon.

The Book is in the Mail!

A warm welcome to the garden at Dove's Cottage

A cozy corner for young visitors to the Museum

Modern artistic responses to Wordsworth’s writing and the surrounding area—a fascinating interaction between the old and the new.

Phoebe's Scrapbooks

Chris and I in front of Dove Cottage.

Most of this week was taken up with getting the typescript of my book printed out and sent to Ashgate Publishing.  But it is in the mail, and that will free me up for other research work—at least until the proof sheets come back.  I couldn’t be more grateful for the resources of the Library and for the support of both Jeff Cowton and Beccy Turner in helping me find what I needed for the final draft of the book.

I did read some fascinating letters this week—one written by Thomas DeQuincey introducing himself to William Wordsworth.  It’s three pages of praise for the poet leading up to a request that they might become friends.  Equally interesting is Wordsworth’s response, one that manages to encourage DeQuincey to visit sometime but that cautions that friendship is not something that one can promise but that will either grow from time—or won’t. This exchange was relatively early in Wordsworth’s career when one imagines he would have welcomed the accolades, but one can also see the measured reply that might have become even more necessary when his fame brought hundreds of visitors to the front door.

Friday when I went into the Library, I noticed a very large and old looking map lying at the end of the table.  I later learned that it was the first ordinance map of Grasmere—hand drawn on canvas in 1860.  The story goes that a local handyman had been working on a local house about 30 years ago and was instructed to burn things the owners didn’t want in the house.  This roll looked like a large window blind, and onto the fire it went.  But the next day, the worker went back and found the map partially unrolled and not burnt, fortunately.  He kept it in his barn and just this week brought it by to the Library for safe keeping.  It’s a remarkable document.  Such detail! The map runs from Dunmail Raise to Ambleside and is the size of a schoolroom wall map. Those who know the area better than I can note the changes in the area. 

Speaking of changes to the area, Chris and I went to see the current exhibition “Phoebe’s Scrapbooks: Stories of a Changing Grasmere.”  These scrapbooks were compiled by Phoebe Johnson from 1951 until 1976.  What struck me the most from reading some of the news clippings from the scrapbooks was the transition Grasmere went through from being a self-contained, self-sufficient village to a tourist destination.  One clipping told of some protesting housewives who complained that there were fewer and fewer shops that met the needs of local people as shops catering to tourists began to take over.  The difference between the list of shops in 1951 and today was really eye-opening.  One certainly can’t find a butcher or cobbler in the village now.  The other side effect of seeing this list was to make us grateful for the Co-operative grocery store in town!  If it weren’t for that little store, we realized, it would be extremely difficult for us to live here for six months without a car.  True, we do our large shopping in Windermere or Keswick and bring the bags back via bus.  But we do run out of things between trips, and it’s awfully handy to just walk across the field for a liter of milk or a box of cereal. The Co-Op, News Store, and Post Office do still meet the everyday needs of the locals, and it’s nice to stop into these stores and get a little taste of village life.

We also stopped by Dove Cottage.  It’s been about ten years since I went through the Cottage, and while I doubt much in the house has changed, my knowledge of Wordsworth has grown greatly since that first trip during my master’s program.  I was interested this time around to see the document from France for one of Wordsworth’s trips later in life and the marriage certificate between William and Mary Wordsworth.  It was a cold day, and the guides had good fires built in two of the fireplaces to help warm things up.  It’s easy to romanticize life in the late 18^th century until one stands in the children’s room above the cold storage space and realizes just how cold and dark life was on a regular basis.  It was good to see a few visitors taking advantage of the Museum and Cottage tour on such a drizzly day.

Studying in the Round

The Rotunda from the outside.

The Rotunda from the inside. Wordsworth looks contemplative perched on the shelf.

Wordsworth's table.

The Village Hall where Chris has played badminton a few times.

Sunset over Grasmere

This week I’ve been trying to focus on finishing up my book.  The things I find distracting me are the incredible views out my living room window that keep me sitting on the couch longer than I would normally and the wealth of material at the Library.  I’m finding it easy to get off track when looking at the manuscripts.  It’s not really off track since I think much of what I am looking at will form the basis for later work, but I really must focus!

Beccy introduced me to a highly useful tool this week.  It’s called Romanticism: Life, Literature, and Landscape.  It’s a database composed primarily of digital images of manuscripts from the Wordsworth Trust collection.  Those working at larger institutions may have subscriptions to this database, but it was my first introduction to it.  A few of the manuscripts I wanted to view are currently unavailable as they are in the museum, but this database allowed me to look at them anyway.  The advantage of the database is full access to Dorothy’s Journals and the family letters.  Another advantage is the ability to zoom in on a particular word or phrase to help decipher it.  Such a database also helps to preserve the original document from too much wear and tear.  One loses some element of immediacy looking at a digital image, but the impact is largely the same, and certainly the information is the same.  One can still see a level of emotion not available to one in printed form.  And of course, should I really need to see a document (that is not in the museum), I can still ask for it.

During my research, I had one of those aha moments that every researcher loves, one that makes one sit back and say, I have to think about this some more.  This week, it was a letter from Wordsworth written to Thomas Hutton asking that Thomas Wilkinson be appointed a trustee to his brother Richard’s estate.  The praise Wordsworth gave of Wilkinson suddenly put the relationship these two men had into perspective.  It’s a relationship I’m very interested in as I see Wilkinson as not perhaps your average reader of Wordsworth but a reader representative of a certain type of audience that received Wordsworth’s poetry well.  I also found a remarkable letter by Wilkinson to Wordsworth responding to a few poems Wordsworth apparently sent Wilkinson.  I am looking forward to more time with these letters.

On Thursday, Beccy apologized for having to move me to the Rotunda to study while the new interns received a lecture on the Romantic period.  It’s great fun to watch the interns begin to make this place their own.  Chris said a few of them even showed up at the weekly badminton gathering at the village hall on Thursday night.  At any rate, Beccy didn’t need to apologize.  I rather like the Rotunda.  It’s much smaller than the regular Reading Room, and there’s something cozy about this round room lined with books.  The room was a little cluttered right now with some paintings lying on the table and propped up around the room.  But imagine my delight when I saw a sketch by Benjamin Robert Haydon of Wordsworth leaning against one of the bookcases.  This is the original sketch for the chalk drawing that hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.  It’s a lovely, soft drawing—a very sympathetic rendering of the poet, I think, and one that makes one want to sit down and have tea with him.

As I was leaving the Rotunda, Beccy said, “Well at least you can say you’ve sat at Wordsworth’s table.”  “What!” I said astonished.  She lifted the green cloth covering the table I’d been sitting at to reveal a dark wood, round table. “This was Wordsworth’s,” she said.  Is there no end to the surprises here?  I suddenly felt very odd about the fact I’d been using my computer all morning.  Where was my rag paper and quill?