Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals, 1824-1835

By Carl H. Ketcham
University of Arizona
SÙ
Wednesday December 1 , 1824
Ground thinly covered with snow—snow showers—rain—hail—walk before
dinner with M & W After
r ts
to M Carr's—still hail-showers—frosty moon
light returning with M & M Carr—Fine clouds day & night _1

With this characteristic entry, Dorothy Wordsworth (after an abortive

attempt in July, 1821) began keeping a daily record of her life at Rydal Mount
and on her extended visits away from home—a record which lasted, with occa
sional interruptions, until her mental collapse in 1835. These journals,
mostly unpublished, _2 have attracted little attention: they cover a period
when Wordsworth's craftsmanship was uneventfully self-assured; they are scraw
ly and rather difficult to read; and they have been given a bad press by de
Selincourt, who disparaged them as terse and uninformative. It is true that
they are often, in effect, notes toward a journal—reminders of daily events
which were often enough routine, and whose details Dorothy felt no need to set
down in full. But they provide a faithful account of Dorothy's later life in
the poet's household, with glimpses of William, his family and friends; they
show that Dorothy, well into her middle years, was still a tireless, active,
sensitive observer, constantly in excited quest of new experiences; and finally,
like the Liebestod which rounds Keats's letters with a tragic period, they
close the history of Dorothy's long years of devotion with a decrescendo of
sickness and pain, ending with the sudden darkening of her mind.

In our enthusiasm for a number of the most striking passages in the Gras
mere journals, we may sometimes forget how much of the texture of those mar
vellous observations is made up of the commonest circumstances. In the later
journals as well, we have the abundant daily routine of life in a North
Country village, a Hereford farm, or a Leicestershire rectory cottage. Dorothy
records a constantly varying succession of household tasks: she brews beer,
makes and bottles wine, boils preserves and jelly; starches, knits, irons,
dusts; sews everything from nightcaps and shirts to bed-curtains. Sometimes
she spares William's eyes by writing letters for him, or helps with his
accounts. She notes the recurrent local celebrations around Rydal: the "pace
eggers" who came at Easter to recite rhymes and collect eggs and pennies; "oak
boughs at every door" on May 29, the date when Charles II entered Whitehall in
1660; the annual procession carrying new rushes for the church floor; the Guy
Fawkes bonfire; the fiddlers who went their night rounds at Christmas time.
Friends would drop in to play chess, backgammon, or whist ("Lost at cards"
appears beside small sums in Dorothy's lists of expenses), and in the summer
the whole family (William included? the sight would have been worth seeing)
joined in a game with hoops and wands rather pretentiously named "Les Graces."
Sales of household goods were worth travelling miles to attend, to visit with
distant neighbors and try for a bargain—"a wonderful purchase—[a] dinner Set
of China" or a painted tea-tray which could be had for "a sheep's skin and a
shilling." _3

Mingled with these domestic items are the glimpses of scenery which
Dorothy restlessly accumulated on her long, rapid walks (at her best she could
cover more than twenty miles a day, and make three to four miles an hour over
rough, uneven ground). Dorothy's customary brevity is often an asset in these
descriptive passages; she combines a vivid, staccato impressionism with the
awareness of underlying unity described so well in Professor Rachel Brownstein's
study of the earlier journals. 4_ This sense of unity may be expressed, with
deceptive plainness, as a simple matter of lights and shadows, as in Dorothy's
sketch of the grounds of Conishead Priory: "Deep deep gloom—Cattle shrouded—
silver crescent horns revealing form and motion of the dark bodies of the
Cattle"; or as metaphor, explicit or implied: "Yew-trees by roadside caverns
for sheep"; "Venerable pear-trees—crested and tufted with mis[t]letoe—
braided with grey moss"; "Commons like lakes on fertile plain." _5 Sometimes,
though rarely, she expands her imagery in quest of a single dominant effect.
Thus, in describing a mood of Sunday-afternoon tranquility which moves toward
the borders of transcendence:

I alone to afternoon Church and on Western Terrace—Lake as steady as a

mirror—cattle motionless in field—as the few sheaves of corn still
remaining—Birds and streamlets silent—no moving thing but the breath of
smoke from Nab Chimney reflected in Lake—at intervals the Bull bellows
in field beyond and above Boat-house—the echo from the bowels of Nab
Scar exquisitely musical—all else silent to eye and ear—perfect still
ness—perfect steadiness. [October 10, 1830]

Even the diarist's convention of recording the changeable Lake District

weather takes on unexpected life in Dorothy's vivid syntheses: "Blustering
wind with flaring flashes of Sun"; "Snow falling in Flakes—Star light and
frost"; "Dark wet and a piping wind"; "A warm misty mizzling bird-chaunting
morning." "The frosty air has taken up all characters—and hues—Dazzling
sunshine—dark haze—and a blankness over all that was not white." 6^

As in the Grasmere days, too, Dorothy took careful notice of the men and
women she met in her travels—people whose earlier counterparts had engaged
William's sympathies and challenged him to new kinds of creative experimenta
tion in the Lyrical Ballads. His poetic interests, though not his humane con
cerns, had of course long since turned elsewhere; but Dorothy still listened
with interest to casual tales of sickness or loss, or the life stories of the
poor, especially if they formed a link with the past as recorded in her brother's
poems. Thus, near a farm at Stowe, she discovered a latter-day Simon Lee and
his wife:

Walk . . . after dinner to Old John's Cottage on the hill—He is 87—"His

Wife works out of doors with him." 1_ We found them in one of their
several orchards planting potatoes and working with rake and hoe to break
the lumps in the clayey soil—Again and again they struck at the same
Lump—Yet that little square was almost finished—very neat—their plot
of Wheat half-eaten by the Squire's Game—[The Squire] owes him a Day's
Team; but when wanted the Squire's Men and horses are always busy—and
his ploughing done by other means. [May 5, 1826]

Though it seems clear from the context that she was moved by this kind of
injustice, Dorothy's dispassionate tone sometimes makes it difficult to
assess her real attitude. Certainly she was not indiscriminate in her sym
pathies. She seems to have stopped well short, for instance, of fellow
feeling for convicts: a visit to Carlisle Prison left her, as she noted
introspectively, with "no remorse," and at another prison she appears merely
curious about the treadmill and the dark cell. 8^ Her response often seems to
be that of a casual reader of newspaper horrors, as when she describes local
accidents—a man, run over by a cart, whose dying concern was for his "tobacco
box with money in," or a woman killed by lightning ("she was suckling her
Child who was not hurt"). 9_ But on occasion Dorothy's apparent detachment can
be quietly damning. Thus an episode near her home at Rydal: "A poor Woman
refused a lodging by Thomas Troughton [an Ambleside bookseller] on Tuesday
night—slept with her Husband in Smithy hovel—without straw or covering—next
day proceeded, and was delivered, by herself, of a dead child on road near
Quarry." 10^

In less serious matters, Dorothy's lack of comment is often gently satir

ical: with sympathetic amusement or quiet irony, she selects from her subject
victim a characterizing or self-revealing phrase. Thus she gives us a specimen
of the brightly sentimental flow of talk with which her shabby-genteel friend,
Miss Thomas of Worcester, masked her loneliness and poverty: "Supremely happy
in her isolation—Literary society—access to all new publications—Magnet—
Literary Gazette etc. for the improvement of her mind. Love story—the Lover
devoted to Literary pursuits—unsuccessful—mutual passion and fervent resolu
tions." She digs more sharply when she mentions a young woman at a sale who
recommended Paradise Regained because it was "very entertaining—very pretty" ;
or her cousin Dolly Wordsworth's delightfully reductive view of William and
his poetry: "[She says] she is like Cousin William—loves romantic scenery." 11
Elsewhere, Dorothy notes down the rantings of a drunk on her stagecoach, or a
bit of Yorkshire dialect from a revival meeting. (One worshipper assures his
companion that it must have taken an act of God to get him to the meeting:
"It is the Lord else You haad not been here.'" "Nor Thou nouther!" rejoins the
other stoutly.) 12_ A comparatively extended passage sums up Dorothy the
sightseer's long years of frustration at trying to extract information about
local landmarks from local people:

A little way from Liddle [Lindale] discover well on side of road.

Entrance arched—rather lintelled over with old ash stem—roof arched
with stone—green with moss—hung with Adder's Tongue, fern, and Gera
niums. Descend by steps—8—broken with age—3 niches. What Saint has
this been dedicated [to]? Inquire of woman—"Never noticed it." Of
Boys—"Oh yes.'" "What do they call it—what name has it?" "Oh! it's
Dicky Grayson Well." "Why so?" "Perhaps he made it." "Does he live
there now?" "Nay, he's seilt up." "It must be very auld." "Ay," says
Boy, "I remember it a long time" (he not more than 16). Companion
rolling in Dust like an ass of the desart. [July 7, 1825]

Clearly, the passing of the years had by no means diminished Dorothy's

vividness of eye, nor the satiric spirit which, from her girlhood on, surfaces
from time to time in her letters. Indeed, so much has been made of Dorothy's
devotion to her brother and his family that there is some danger of our for
getting this other Dorothy—keen-minded, rather easily affronted, and thor
oughly capable of self-defense. The wry glimpses we have seen suggest that
Dorothy had by no means surrendered her critical judgment as she grew older.
So do her observations on books and especially on church services: through
long experience she had become quite a connoisseur of the latter, commenting
on the church architecture and the music, and criticizing the clergyman, some
times sharply enough, for his logic, his delivery, or his choice of theme. In
view of this active critical response to outsiders, Dorothy's uniform mellow
ness toward her family can seem ambiguous. It has indeed been read in two
ways: as a genuine, positive merging of her energies into the enterprise of
maintaining a poet's household; or as self-suppression based pn a fear of los
ing love and security. 14_ The role of unmarried sister in a large family was,
obviously, an accepted norm. Nevertheless, it is not surprising that those
who know the depth of the love between Dorothy and William should look for
signs of tension between Dorothy and Mary (the curious double ceremony per
formed by William with Mary's wedding ring will impress some readers as rather
more than a rite of shared affection). And there are understandable grounds
for wondering whether Dorothy's talents as an observer and prose poet may not
have caused her some unexpressed but deep-seated resentment at being always ob
scured by her brother's career (though she could take credit for a significant
share in it) and by his growing family. Several aspects of the generally noncom
mittal later journals suggest themselves as likely places to probe for possible
tokens of such discontents. Among them are the crisp neutrality of tone; the
intensity, amounting almost to addiction, of Dorothy's quest for new scenery
and new experiences—an intensity which, indeed, gives her journals much of
their character; a tendency, as we shall see later, to distance the family
intellectually by a kind of type-casting, and particularly by emphasizing
Dora's invalidism; the uniformity itself of her expressions of affection; and
a continuing special devotion to William, typified, perhaps, by one wistful
reminiscence of their old days together: "W and I quite alone this Evening as
27 years ago." 16^ Without attempting to analyze each of these in detail (each
one seems to be capable of a separate, essentially healthy explanation), I can
only report that, if Dorothy was in fact repressing any bitterness, or lying
to herself about the depth of her love for Mary and the others around her, I
can find no clear sign of such repression, no hint of anything suspect in the
affection which underlies her dealings with the family at Rydal—and for that
matter with her in-laws at Brinsop and elsewhere, who could hardly have been
essential to her security. Though she offers few explicit critiques, she does
not always suspend judgment, even of William; but she seems to have taken her
love of others for granted as the natural first condition of any family
relationship.

The portrait of William which emerges from some three hundred and sixty
four mentions of him in the later journals shows a sturdy, vigorous man, much
besieged by celebrity-seekers, but constantly stirring about his own activities—
walking, skating, and attending the distant household sales, the local book
club, or, once, a "preaching." 17_ Though his eyes were often inflamed and
troublesome, his physical strength remained unimpaired. In December, 1832,
Dorothy, meeting William and their brother Christopher on the road, is pleased
to see them "walk with so much activity," and in 1834, when William is sixty
four, he returns from Ullswater by way of Grisedale Hause, at least a dozen
miles including a steep mountain track. There was a restlessness like Dorothy's
about his wandering, and his departures were sometimes abrupt: "Sudden pro
posal to go with Wm. to Ulverston," Dorothy writes on an April day in 1827;
"set off at one." (In their haste they must have gone off looking as if they
earned their living on the roads, for some inquisitive fishermen at a cottage
where Dorothy rested asked her if she had anything to sell.) As late as 1835
William "walked from Keswick without fatigue through to Wytheburne; roads very
slippery—and afterwards rough and uneasy with snow—a pleasing proof of
present strength—God grant it may last.'" 18^

Several touching scenes remind us of the lifelong devotion of brother and

sister. The long days of Dorothy's illness, in particular, are full of testi
mony to William's care. To restore her damaged circulation, he rubs her feet
and ankles at noon and after supper, and is acutely unhappy if he cannot do
her this service; he quilts her with great care, and on one occasion he pro
poses carrying her in his arms to view his latest improvement on one of the
terraces of Rydal Mount. Though her sickness often prevents her from seeing
him ("He mistimes his visits every day," she writes sadly), 19^ he hurries with
a kind of boyish spontaneity to share his enthusiasms with her. "On Tuesday
Evening Deer. 30," she notes at the end of 1834, "Wm. came to me rejoiced to
hear thickly falling rain after so long a pause—I could not but feel a touch
of sympathy with him in memory of many a moist tramp." Dorothy listens with
delight to William's reading of his poetry, rejoices when he begins (abortively)
to work on The Recluse again in 1831. 20^ She shudders with him at the inroads
of liberal politics ("Alas.' poor devoted, deluded England!") 2^1 and parliamen
tary reform—a menace which she ranks with the advancing cholera epidemic; and
she scolds Dr. Arnold of Rugby for his destructively liberal voting, though at
one point she believes that he has "awakened ... to the follies of our
Rulers." 22^ (Young Matthew, unfortunately, is mentioned only as one
"rejoicing" or "gladsome" young Arnolds 23^who sometimes invaded Ry
In summary, Dorothy's estimate of William reflects a degree of reverence
which, as Coleridge once suggested, could hardly have been altogether good for
him. 24_ She records his every move, and even one of his approaches to verbal
wit. Z5 When a problem arises about who is to paint his portrait for the hall
at St. John's, Dorothy evidently sees nothing unusual about either the content
or the capitalization of her remark: "... We can fix on no one to do
justice to the Individual and the college." 26_ Her only criticism of him is
predictably mild: both William and Mary, she comments after receiving a
London letter from them in 1835, are "too full of bustle, too careless of
strength, and too careful of money." 27_

The other members of the family tend, as we have noted, to be strangely

type-cast—to play roles which Dorothy has evidently established for them some
time before the journals begin. Mary is the mother-nurse figure, who looks
after all the sick in various households, who "serves us all and never com
plains." 28^ Dora is the invalid, suffering constantly from coughs, weakness,
back trouble. These symptoms, to be sure, were only too real, but Dorothy's
account tends to mention very little else; Dora's own letters of this period—
gay, warm, and saucy—come as something of a surprise after the general cheer
lessness of Dorothy's account. Dora's brothers, John and Willy, share in
Dorothy's warmth of family affection; but one senses that she had ceased to
have great expectations for either of them. When she first goes to keep house
for John at Whitwick, Dorothy reads through some of his original sermons—and
soon begins reworking other people's sermons for him to read instead; and she
is delighted when he manages to deliver them well. (Wordsworth later took
over this sermon-editing job for a while, preferring Donne's sermons because
so few people had read them.) 29^ As for Willy, he wanders off to Germany and
back, and shoots and skates and complains of a series of petty illnesses. He
seems only a shade less feckless than Hartley Coleridge, whose happily intoxi
cated rambles and minor financial embarrassments are mentioned repeatedly.
Dorothy's account of Hartley closes with a striking picture of his premature
aging, 30^ and of his bitter regret, at Coleridge's death, that he had "seen so
little of his Father except in Childhood." 33^

Coleridge himself, of course, had not returned to the Lakes during the
period of the journals; Dorothy's only mention of him is an occasional second
hand account of his health, until, on July 27, 1834, she succinctly closes the
record of their old magical intimacy by setting down the news conveyed in a
letter from H. N. Coleridge: "This morning came the sad tidings of poor
Coleridge's departure from this world. He died in a pious and happy state of
mind, and had many hours of ease before his dissolution, after great suffering
in the Bowels." Coleridge's wife and daughter had remained in nearby Keswick,
in Southey's household, during much of the journal period, and Dorothy records
repeated visits by members of both families. There are brief but poignant
references toward the end of the journal to Mrs. Southey's mental troubles:
"A deplorable state the Southeys are [in] now—Mrs. S. eats little—sleeps
next to none." On their way back to Keswick after Mrs. Southey's confinement
in a madhouse at York, Southey stops for a moment's despairing greeting at
Rydal Mount: "Poor Southey ran up in streaming rain leaving his unhappy wife
and good Betty at the hill foot." 32_

Most of the other visitors to Rydal—including, among those notable at

least in their own times, John Stuart Mill, 33^ Felicia Hemans, William Rowan
Hamilton, Dr. Andrew Bell, and Thomas Noon Talfourd—are undifferentiated
presences in the journals; Dorothy evidently felt that she had done her duty
when, like the various members of the family who kept the Rydal Mount visitors'
book, she had listed the names of callers for possible future reference.
Occasionally a specially attentive acquaintance would be glimpsed in one of
her swift portraits. Old Samuel Rogers appears briefly as he was in 1834:
"Dear old Man! he is changed but not very much, it is but the same deadly
paleness as formerly; but he is lame and that makes the figure and frame look
helpless." It was on this same visit that Rogers, who for many years had
taken an interest in urging Dorothy to publish her writings, "sate a while
with me and determined me not to withhold my consent from Wm. to have some
vagrant lines of mine published in his new Volume—going to press." _34 The
Wordsworths' faithful friend Crabb Robinson was also devoted to Dorothy in her
illness: "His company always pleasant when I was strong enough to listen—no
need of effort on my part—Patiently would he sit by the hour trying to enter
tain me—then was my prop in walking—and even led me to my Bed when tired—
would have rubbed my feet and ankles; but this I could not consent to." 3_5

Dorothy's practice of setting down in the journals no more than she ex

pects to have a use for (as exemplified by the lists of visitors) results in a
number of mildly tantalizing puzzles. We would like to know more, not only
about such incidentals as the folk tales she enjoyed on a stagecoach journey
("the gold snipper, the Aunt and the clergyman's wig") 36^ but also about such
potentially serious matters as the trial at the Carlisle assizes in early 1834
in which William was somehow involved; 37_ or what possible Mill-and-Carlyl
episode may lie behind Dorothy's cryptic phrase "Lost papers—burnt hands.
And in view of the dearth of portraits of Dorothy, it would be interesting to
have information about the picture for which she apparently sat to a Mr.
Dawson during a visit to Manchester in February, 1826. But Dorothy, unfor
tunately for our purposes, wrote these particular notations only for herself.

Our view of Dorothy's intellectual activities during this period has long
been subject to the influence of Thomas De Quincey's early account—a curious
mixture of sincere analysis and spite, written during De Quincey's somewhat
fitful alienation from the Wordsworth family, and based on an acquaintance
which had been only sporadic after 1816. He called Dorothy deficient in her
knowledge of foreign languages and "of great classical works in her mother
tongue, and careless of literary history" 4J3—charges which are partly untrue
and in any case misleading. Dorothy probably made no systematic study of
literature; but some twenty percent of her reading, as recorded in the journals,
was devoted to English and European classics. She mentions the Spectator,
Collins, Cowper, Crabbe, Donne (probably the sermons), Herbert, Milton, Shake
speare, Spenser, Sterne, Coleridge, and Lamb, as well as more purely popular
writers—James Fenimore Cooper, Mary Howitt, and perhaps Mary Russell Mitford.
Of William's poems, The Excursion is her great favorite. She studies and
transcribes Virgil or William's translation of him, and reads Dante, Tasso,
Diderot, Bernardin de St.-Pierre, and Cervantes—all, except perhaps the last,
in the original; and she works at least occasionally on her German. She
widens her range of experience with books of exploration, history, and bio
graphy, ranging impartially over the lives of kings, bishops, country rectors,
admirals, architects, and botanists; and she keeps current in politics and
other matters by avid reading of the Reviews—Blackwood's (no longer banned at
Rydal Mount) and the Quarterly and Edinburgh, with occasional excursions into
the Naturalist's or Saturday magazines. The books she mentions had often been
in print less than a year, and in one or two instances (Phelan's life and
Montagu's Life of Bacon) she seems to have received either an advance copy or
proof sheets. Of course she read and reread the Bible regularly, and some
thirty percent of her other reading was religious—sermons, books of devotions,
discussions of catechizing or the liturgy. She is as unsparingly critical of
these as of the church services she attended. Pearson on Christ's Passion she
dismisses as "the dullest Book I ever read"; the style of Barrow's "Glad
Tidings" is "palling from the reiteration of instances—of sentiments in the
same strain—of words of similar meaning." 41^

The miscellaneous material scattered through the end pages of several of

the journal notebooks occasionally has an interest of its own. Dorothy
reserved these convenient blank sheets to jot down a remarkable variety of
items—medical remedies (e.g., garlic boiled in milk), Biblical quotations
arranged by theme, and—continuing, of course, a long-standing interest of
William's—epitaphs, both serious and doggerel. Her fragmentary journal for
July 14-20, 1821, appears in the end sheets of Journal 18, #10, as does a
variant of the Continental tour of 1820, September 24-October 19, with some
rough pencil notes, apparently written in a moving carriage, for September 28.
(De Selincourt was thus not quite correct in saying that all this material had
disappeared.) 42^ Elsewhere (Journal 18, #4) there are copies, differing
slightly from those published by Knight and de Selincourt, of Wordsworth's
"The Massy Ways" and "In the Woods of Rydal," and what appears to be the only
surviving MS of the early form of "When Philoctetes in the Lemnian Isle." 43^
Journal 19, #4, contains an unrecorded alternate form of "Stanzas Suggested in
a Steamboat off St. Bees' Heads," lines 100-08. A number of Dorothy's own
verses appear at intervals, from the graceful "Irregular Stanzas: Holiday at
Gwerndovennant" of 1826 (Journal 18, #2-4) through the "prisoner" lines of
her physical and mental illness—increasingly incoherent and, at the end,
mindlessly and repetitiously sprawled over page after page.

As she had done since the Grasmere days, Dorothy also used the notebooks
for lists of expenses. Besides giving some idea of current prices, these
lists show that Dorothy lived simply but not altogether austerely: she was
not at all unwilling, for instance, to spend reasonable amounts on personal
adornments—"Hair oil Is.," "Lavender water ls^. 6c[., " "Cold cream ls^.,"
"Galloon [that is, ribbon or braid] 4s^ 6d_. " Gloves cost 5j3. 8<i., shoes 2s^
8cl. ; "Black silk for D & Ws handerchief [s] " was lljs. 3ck "French Letters,"
perhaps correspondence with Annette Vallon or the Baudouins, cost 2s^ (The
notebooks, by the way, furnish only one brief and oblique reference to Annette:
visiting a lonely Frenchwoman at Coleorton in 1828, Dorothy finds herself
"reminded of poor A.") 44

Finally, the journals tell with unsparing detail the painful history of
the illness which marked the end of Dorothy's active life as a wanderer and
sightseer, and closed in turn with her mental collapse. She recovered to a
large extent from her first major attack of gallbladder inflammation in the
spring of 1829, and from a relapse in August; however, her range of walking
was severely restricted, and after September, 1830, she seems never to have
ventured more than ten miles from Rydal by any means of travel. In December,
1831, began a series of violent attacks, from which she was never free for
long during the rest of the journal period; the lameness which accompanied
these was evidently a sign of the circulatory difficulties which in the end
affected her brain. Her grand-nephew Gordon Graham Wordsworth cut the most
intimately distressing passages (mid-December, 1831, through April, 1833) out
of one notebook and destroyed them, "after making a copy of every record that
seemed to me of permanent interest"; but what remains is quite explicit
enough. Dorothy suffered all the fluctuating agonies of gallstones, an ail
ment which neither she nor her doctor seems to have understood at all. 45^
She developed a curious fixed idea that her sufferings were caused, in part at
least, by thundery weather. Her only effective remedy was opium, and we find
her noting each time she begins a new bottle, in an apparent attempt to avoid
sliding into addiction. "I was very ill after dinner," runs a typical entry,
"why or wherefore I know not—pain—sickness—head-ache—perspiration—heat
and Cold. ..." 4-6 She complains of dragging sensations and "twisting" pain,
and of distress that varied only in its intensity: "Inside aches constantly
but it is bearable—now and then comes what I call a 'piping agony'." 47 The
record ends in April, 1835, with the onset of a near-fatal attack; thus the
text of the diary spares us the beginnings of her mental confusion, except for
one fragmentary, misdated entry in November:

I take up the pen once again,—After a trying illness I have risen to

dinner,—without pain at present Wm. is at Workington—John has been in
Radnorshire—Dora not unwell [November 4; misdated 1815]

But in the back pages of this last notebook there is a grim insight into her
awareness of the oncoming darkness which was to haunt her last twenty years.
In some drafts of lines probably intended for her great-niece Dora Hutchinson's
album, Dorothy sets down a piteously candid confession of her state:

My tremulous fingers feeble hands

Refuse to labour with the mind
And that too oft is misty dark and blind.

It was an appalling end of the more than thirty-five years of close

intellectual and imaginative companionship recorded in Dorothy's journals
since the Alfoxden days. But if the final impression left by these later
records is one of relentless loss, they leave us with other images as well:
the older Dorothy secure in the daily routine and daily tasks of her brother's
household, basking in the long-delayed general recognition of the talents she

10
had always believed in and fostered; young-hearted Dorothy still eagerly in
search of new beauty and new human awareness. Day by day, with commonplace
details, they build up a picture of a little-explored period in this best
known of all literary companionships—a period which moves toward the defining
and completion, however tragically, of the story of creativity and love begun
years before by a poet and his poet-sister.

APPENDIX

Table of Dates from Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals, 1824-35

(Most visits and tours within ten miles of Dorothy's temporary or permanent
place of residence are not included. W: William Wordsworth; D: Dorothy
Wordsworth; M: Mary Wordsworth.)

1824: First journal entry, December 1; W, Dora to Keswick, December 7-11;

W to Lowther, December 19-24; Rydal Chapel opened, December 25.

1825: D writes letters for W, January 4; W to Cockermouth, January 11-15;

D to Kendal (to visit the Cooksons), January 29-February 15; D to
Ambleside about Hartley Coleridge's bill, March 14; first walk on
new road (the present main road, Rydal-Grasmere), March 17; D, W,
and M on Coniston-Ulverston tour; leave Mary at the Lund, return by
Holker, Lindale, Newby Bridge, July 5-8; D joins Dora, Miss Jewsbury,
and others vacationing at Kents Bank, July 19-20; D to Hallsteads
(home of her childhood friend Jane Pollard Marshall), August; con
secration of Rydal Chapel, visit of Walter Scott and Canning,
August; W, M leave Manchester for Coleorton, October 4; D sees comet
[Pons], October 7; D to Coniston, Backbarrow iron works, Newby
Bridge, October 12-14; D to Kendal, October 26-29; W, M return,
November 17.

1826: First journal entry February 10, when D leaves Kendal for Manchester
to visit the Jewsburys; sits for portrait, February 14-15; Worcester,
February 16; Brinsop Court (the Herefordshire farm home of Mary
Wordsworth's brother Thomas Hutchinson and, at this time, their sis
ter Joanna), February 17; to Stowe (where Thomas Hutchinson's wife's
brother John Monkhouse had a farm), March 7-25; excursion down the
Wye as far as Monmouth, April 21-27; to Stowe, with accident in gig
en route, May 2-6; with Joanna Hutchinson to Gwerndovennant (or
Gwerndyffnant, a farm near Hindwell, Radnorshire, owned by Thomas
Hutchinson), May 10-27; pony trip to New Radnor and Water-Break-Its
Neck, May 18; D with Joanna to Worcester, to visit D's friend Miss
Willes, May 30-June 7; excursion on Malvern Hills, June 1; to
Gwerndovennant with Hutchinson children, July 11; Stowe, July 20;
Brinsop, July 25; news of Isabel Southey's death gives D a sleepless
night, August 1-2; the Ricardos visit Brinsop, August 22-23; to
Stowe, August 31-September 3; D records effects of drought on Thomas
Hutchinson's farming, September 6; to Worcester, September 9; excur
sion in Malvern Hills, September 12; visits prison, September 16;
via Birmingham to Leamington to stay with Miss Jewsbury, visits
Kenilworth, Warwick, Stratford, September 23-29; to Coleorton, to
stay with the Beaumonts, September 30; to Liverpool to visit Mrs.

11
 Wardell, the daughter of Wordsworth's former landlord Mr. Crump of
Allan Bank, October 30-31; returns to Rydal, November 4; Hartley
Coleridge's books seized, December 11; Christmas party in kitchen,
December 25; W works on, perhaps sends off poems for Longman's 5
volume edition, December 31.

1827: W to Sedbergh with John, January 2-7; first proofs of poems, January
12; news of Sir George Beaumont's death (on February 7), February 9;
D on excursion to Ulverston, April 3-6; D to Kendal, April 7; with
Mrs. Cookson to Lancaster, April 11; Kendal, April 14-24; W with
Dora to Halifax (where Dorothy had lived as a girl with her mother's
cousin, "Aunt" Elizabeth Rawson), May 30-June 16; D to Kendal, June
25; Halifax, June 27; Kendal, September 1; Rydal, September 3; D, W
with large group on Saddleback, September 5; W to Keswick, September
10-14; D, W, and their nephews Charles and Christopher endangered
when caught in mists on Helvellyn, October 13; W to Lowther and
Appleby with Sara Hutchinson, October 24-29; W departs [for Coleorton
and Herefordshire] November 12; D to Kendal, November 21-26.

1828: W returns from Brinsop, January 29; John Wordsworth's "Si Quis"
(a notice asking if anyone knows of an impediment to ordination)
read at Rydal Chapel, February 3; W to Keswick, March 2-5; D to
Penrith, March 14; to Carlisle (to have a [third] set of false teeth
fitted), March 17-27; Penrith, March 27-April 1; W with John to
John's rectory at Whitwick; W en route to London and the Continent,
April 17; D to Kendal twice and to Keswick, between April 29 and May
21; Moss Hut at Rydal Mount completed, about May 14; D's visit with
William Wordsworth Jr. to Joanna and Henry Hutchinson on the Isle of
Man, June 26-July 23; tour of Isle on foot, July 8-11; D to Coniston,
Ulverston, August 13-14; W, M., Dora return, August 27; D, W to
Hallsteads, Paterdale Hall, Penrith, returning September 18; D to
Keswick with Dr. Bell, September 20-23; D to Staveley, en route to
Whitwick to keep house for John in his rectory, November 7; Manchester
(visiting infant school, Deaf and Dumb institution, cotton and bead
factories), November 9-17; Nottingham, November 17; Whitwick,
November 18; John returns from Cambridge after ordination to priest
hood, December 24.

1829: John collecting signatures for petition against removal of Catholic

disabilities, January 17; D to Leicester en route to Cambridge,
February 5; Cambridge, February 6-March 5; Whitwick, March 6; severe
illness begins, April 3; M arrives, April 10; D's first walk in
town, May 3; William Wordsworth Jr. leaves, May 10; M leaves, May
11; John's farewell sermon, June 21; D to Halifax, June 23-24; news
of Lady Beaumont's death (on July 14), July 18; D's relapse, August
1-7; excursion with her friends the Saltmarshes to Saltmarshe and
Hull, August 11-25; return to Rydal via Kendal, September 7-8; W
with party of youths on Brund Fell, October 16; D can walk no farther
than garden or foot of hill, November 23; W busy composing, eyes
threatening, December 12; W, M to Hallsteads, December 16.

1830: D to Carleton near Penrith, to dine with Miss M. Wilkinson of

Yanwath, before January 21; W, John Carter to Keswick on stamp
business, February 18; W to Moresby, May 13; returns, with Dora, May

12
 27; W to Paterdale, June 15-17, August 4-about August 10, September
10-13; D to Hallsteads, September 18; W to Hallsteads, September 22;
D, W to Lowther; D returns to Hallsteads, September 23; D, W return
home, September 27; W to Workington (the home of John's wife's
parents, the Curwens) for John's wedding, October 8-23; W, M, and
Dora to Cambridge, November 1; heavy storm causes fears for W among
the Rydal Mount servants, November 6.

W returns with Rötha Quillinan, April 28; W to Keswick and Carlisle

with John Carter for election, May 1-7; W, Dora, William Jr. to
Keswick, about May 28-29; request arrives from St. John's College
for W's portrait, June 11; W, William Jr. to Workington, July 8-18;
W to Lowther, August 19-early September; W, D to Abbotsford and
Scotch tour, September 13-0ctober 17; last date in journal before
Gordon Graham Wordsworth's excision, December 7; W, Dora in carriage
accident, December 8; last journal entry before 1832, December 18.

First journal entry, October 3; W to Levens, October 18-22; W, M,

Dora to Hallsteads, November 5-13; W to Lowther, December 7-12;
surprise visit from Christopher Wordsworth, December 16-26.

Gap in journal, January 22-April 23; Gordon Wordsworth's excision

ends, April 23; gap in journal, April 23-July 16; W, John, W's
granddaughter [Jane] in carriage accident, July 10; W, John, Crabb
Robinson to Isle of Man, July 12; W, John return, July 25; D vio
lently ill, July 26; W, M to Carlisle assizes, Hallsteads, Lowther,
August 5-15; D's, W's pictures painted, about September 2; last
journal entry before 1834, September 9.

First journal entry, February 6; "search for lost Cumb"^ packet"

occupies whole household, February 26; W to Carlisle assizes with
Dora, March 1-7; W, M to Keswick and Moresby (where John was rector),
March 13-April 1; Master in Chancery visits W, July 22; W to Keswick,
July 22-23; news arrives of Coleridge's death, July 27; news of
birth of John's son [Henry] the previous day, July 31; W to Lowther
with Samuel Rogers, then to Hallsteads, August 14-24; W and Dora go
to Dr. Fell [of Ambleside] about W's eyes, September 17; W, M to
Workington, September 22-October 4; W to Lowther and Hallsteads,
November 3-11; W to Lowther for election, December 31.

W returns, January 23; kitchen help at Rydal Mount threaten to

leave, February 17; W and M to London, February 17; servant problem
settled, February 18; last entry before D's acute illness, April 19;
last entry, November 4 ; W at Workington, November 4.

NOTES

I am grateful to the Trustees of Dove Cottage for their permission to

prepare for publication the manuscripts of Dorothy Wordsworth's later
journals in the Dove Cottage Libary. Except for adjustments at the
beginning and end of items and a few minor changes made for clarity, I
have followed the punctuation and capitalization of the originals. Dates
in citations are corrected from Dorothy's original dating when necessary.

13
2. Knight published selections from the Isle of Man section of the journals
in 1889 and 1897; the complete text of this section appears in Ernest de
Selincourt, Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth (1941, and later rpts.), II >
401-19—hereafter cited as DWJ. De Selincourt's introduction misstates
both the inclusive dates of the journal notebooks and their number
(actually fifteen), but his text is good, despite a few minor silent
omissions. (It might be noted, though, that Dorothy did not find her
father's old house in Cockermouth deserted in 1828, as de Selincourt,
following Knight, indicates [p. 401]: Dorothy wrote, "Lime trees [not
"Life has"] gone from my Father's Court.") There are short quotations
from the journals in de Selincourt's Dorothy Wordsworth: A Biography
(1933) and Mary Moorman's William Wordsworth: A Biography, The Later
Years, 1803-1850 (1965).

3. May 6, 1834; May 19, 1834.

4. "The Private Life: Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals," MLQ, 34 (1973), 48

63.

5. July 6, 1825; February 25, 1826; February 17, 1826.

6. May 19, 1834; February 27, 1825; April 1, 1835; March 13, 1834; January
22, 1835.

7. Until 1837, "Simon Lee" included the line, "Old Ruth works out of doors
with him."

8. March 27, 1828; September 16, 1826.

Both items August 25, 1826.

April 2, 1834.

September 11, 1826; September 5, 1826; July 21, 1828.

June 29, 1827. As the "haad" and "nouther" indicate, Dorothy, though she
never attempts an entire passage of dialect, occasionally goes a little
further than William in catching the flavor of local speech. Her own
descriptions make apt use of localisms: she is quite fascinated with
"pashing," describing a heavy rain, and uses it repeatedly for a while;
she speaks of a "clarty" (stickily dirty) thaw; "siding" (arranging) a
room; a "burr" around the moon; "clashing" (rain-swept) roads.

This was probably the set of steps at the southwest corner of Lindale
Church, leading down to an underground stream. In their present form
they do not match Dorothy's description exactly, but they may have been
altered when the rebuilding of the chapel in 1828 brought its wall close
to the north side of the opening.

"Her dependency was so greatly loved and so desperately clung to that she
could not risk anything except the description of the scenery in which it
was lived." Elizabeth Hardwick, "Amateurs: Dorothy Wordsworth & Jane
Carlyle," New York Review of Books (November 30, 1972), p. 4.

14
15. Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Mary Moorman (1971), p. 154 (passage
erased in MS). The emotional temperature of the relationship, and the
extent of its physical expression (which seems generally to have caused
Dorothy no misgivings) appear pretty much the same both in the Grasmere
journals (written when Dorothy was in her thirties) and the Rydal journals
(written in her fifties and sixties).

16. November 10, 1827.

17. May 11, 1831.

18. December 20, 1832; August 24, 1834; April 3, 1827; January 23, 1835.

19. November 13, 1834.

20. December 9. The attempt seems to have been only a short-lived effort on
William's part to correct and improve some MSS while he was helping Mary
to sort them out. See The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth:
The Later Years, 1821-1850, ed. Ernest de Selincourt (1939), II, 590—
hereafter cited as LY; and compare Letters of Dora Wordsworth, ed.
Howard P. Vincent (1934), pp. 94-95.

21. October 7, 1832.

22. October 7, 1832.

23. December 30, 1832; July 11, 1834.

24. Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Earl Leslie Griggs,
II (1956), 525 (to Thomas Poole, October 14, 1803).

25. Dorothy had remarked to their boatman on Windermere (July 8, 1825) "that
all the land was divided among the Gentry, and that it was more chearful,
when scattered over with houses. He replied, 'Aye, it is more christian
like [that way; here] it's like a wilderness.' 'A genteel wilderness,'
says Wm."

26. June 11, 1831.

27. February 23, 1835. Dorothy does mention William's familiar working-day
personality: during a day-long visit from Miss Harden (February 4, 1828)
he remained "very busy and silent."

28. April 12, 1834.

29. LY, I, 469.

30. "Saw Hartley as old a head and face [at 37] as his father's in 1820 [at
48]" (July 29, 1834).

31. July 28, 1834.

32. September 22, 1834; April 1, 1835.

15
33. See my "Dorothy Wordsworth's Unpublished Journals and the Dates of Mill's
Visits with Wordsworth, 1831," Mill News Letter, 11 (Winter, 1976), 7-10.

34. August 10, 1834; August 13, 1834. "Loving and Liking: Irregular Verses,
Addressed to a Child" was published in Yarrow Revisited and Other Poems
(1835) with a note indicating that, "a few lines excepted," it was written
by Dorothy.

35. July 18, 1833.

36. September 30, 1826.

37. February 26, 1834; March 7, 1834.

38. December 17, 1826.

39. "Call at Hardwick Mr. Dawson's picture" (February 14, 1826); "Finished
sitting" (February 15, 1826).

40. "The Lake Poets: William Wordsworth," Collected Writings of Thomas De

Quincey, ed. David Masson (1889), II, 297-98.

41. December 10, 1828; November 24, 1828.

42. DWJ, I, xvii.

43. See Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 2nd
ed., III (1954), 44. De Selincourt evidently did not have access to
the MS used by Knight.

44. January 17, 1829.

45. The disease was well understood in Dorothy's time and is fully discussed
in contemporary medical books. The only remedies, however, were indirect:
bleeding, gentle vomiting, and cathartics to expel the stones; opium for
the pain. See John Mason Good, Study of Medicine (1825), I, 270-73.
Successful surgery was more than half a century in the future. Since
Dorothy never mentions "gall-bladder" or "gallstones," it seems unlikely
that her physician, Mr. Carr, ever made a proper diagnosis, though he
naturally prescribed opium for the pain.

46. February 19, 1834.

47. May 10, 1834; June 28, 1834; December 24, 1834.

16