Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth
By
Cheryl Bolen
Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth
Helen Darbishire, editor
Oxford University Press, 1958
264 pages
The spinster sister of the immortal poet William
Wordsworth was present at the creation of his and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge's 1799 Lyrical Ballads, which gave birth to the
Romantic movement in English literature. She was also present throughout
her famous brother's adult life. The two, among the five Wordsworth
siblings orphaned and separated at an early age, would rejoin when
Dorothy Wordsworth was 24 and William 25, and they would live under the
same roof until William's death 55 years later.
Theirs was an extraordinarily loving
relationship, and Dorothy's prose is credited with influencing her
brother's poetry by the keen observations on nature she recorded in the
journals William encouraged her to keep. An example from Dorothy's
journal:
One leaf on the top of a tree—the sole
remaining leaf—danced round and round like a rag blowing in the wind.
From her brother's poem Cristabel:
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.
The first of her journals, The Alfoxden
Journal 1798, takes up less than ten percent of the present volume.
Of more importance are The Grasmere Journals 1800-1803 because
they record Dorothy Wordsworth's observations of the Lake District which
her brother and Coleridge made famous. Dorothy and William moved to
Dove Cottage in Grasmere the last month of the eighteenth century. Two
years later William married Mary Huthcinsons who, along with her
orphaned siblings, had been close to the Wordsworth orphans for many
years. There is no jealousy on Dorothy's part toward the woman with whom
she would share the brother she had lived alone with for the previous
seven years.
Perhaps that is because as Mary busied herself
with mothering the five children she bore William, Dorothy remained
William's companion on their legendary walks throughout the Lake
District.
These journals, which are copyrighted by the
Dove Cottage Trust, give those of us reading them two centuries later a
feel for the minutia of their everyday life: the ringing of distant
sheep bells, haystacks in the fields, baking day. Surprisingly, to
Dorothy, plodding through the frost of a cold January day was pleasant,
but summer heat could send her bed for days.
For the author of English-set historicals,
these journals are an invaluable source for descriptions of the English
countryside—its plants, birds, and other creatures—in every season of
the year. This little volume is a keeper.
This article was first published in The
Quizzing Glass in April 2011.
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