Review of The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals by Dorothy Wordsworth
By: Michael A. Arnold
You walked in through the kitchen. That lovely smell of burning wood perfumed all the rooms of the old house. Wondering around the house there was a warm draft from the fireplace in the main hall, slyly fighting against the cold autumnal morning. A hard wind blowing outside, but other than the occasional moaning of the windowpanes you could not hear it. A grandfather clock's soft tick-ticking could be heard instead.
Most of the old rooms were stuffed with proud, dusty books. On one bookshelf was a bulky, codex-looking copy of Ovid's metamorphosis in Latin, multi-volume anthologies of classic English poetry, and several collections on philosophy and natural science in ancient, worm-eaten bindings. Almost hidden among all these old books was a small and obviously well-used, but still very neat family bible. On various tables, scattered randomly throughout the home, were pieces of manuscript. Picking up one of the old pages, not attempting to hide my feelings from the museum guide, I looked at the handwriting of William Wordsworth.
There is something about being in the place a writer lived, especially one you like, that makes you feel closer to their work. That happened when I visited Dove Cottage in Grasmere, in the Lake District, in the autumn of 2021. Grasmere itself is probably one of the prettiest places I've ever seen: a small village in the center of a crater-like valley, surrounded by mountains and endless trees. I went at a good time, apparently. The early morning was shining long cascades of gold-like light onto the lake there. Leaves from the innumerable trees had scattered across the roads and getting out of my car and walking the quarter of a mile to Dove Cottage - the modern world seemed to dissipate, then it totally disappeared. Then it became so easy to imagine William Wordsworth's world, living there with his sister during those formative and fertile years.
William's writing is wildly well-known, but his sister Dorothy's needs to be better known too.
Dorothy Wordsworth's journals of life in Dove Cottage were republished by Oxford World Classics in 2008, and I picked up a copy from the museum bookshop. Oxford World Classics is one of the leading publishers for English classics at reasonable prices but with excellent annotations and editing; they are always worth picking up when you can. This book comes with a map of the area around Grasmere, which is very helpful – especially if you have never been there yourself and has a wealth of notes edited by Pamela Woof, someone who has written quite widely on the era and Romantic literature. But all of this editorial effort would have only been helpful to academics and students if the diaries themselves did not have any actual literary merit.
Fans of William Wordsworth will mostly be looking for details about him, and Dorothy details the writing and the private life of her poet brother in an intimate, and at times really touching way. But it is herself that is the subject, since it is a diary, and because it is a diary there is no attempt at literary finesse, the writing here is natural and honest. There is also no attempt at keeping any kind of pacing like something more structured would be. Entire days are raced through with a dismissive ‘Boring day, rained, stayed inside and read a book', yet turn over the page, soon she is minutely detailing something with such a great skill with language and images that it makes this book very much worth reading.
A lot of what she writes about is very ordinary: she spends a lot of time gardening and calling on neighbors, but when her ability to describe things is used it so amazingly good that you cannot help but be mentally taken to that point in time with your mind's eye. Here's an example to show when she was walking around the lake at Grasmere:
There is something in the way she writes this that makes it so easy to imagine the sound of the lake as she sat on its shore, resting, and appreciating the beauty of nature. Passages like this litter the book like little treasures in an antique shop.
There are also a lot of details about the ordinary people William Wordsworth focused so much of his poetry on. Beggars, tramps, or common laborer's wandering the roads and looking for work, they all get treated with humanity and dignity both by William's poetry and by Dorothy's journals. Anyone interested in the way people actually lived during previous ages, especially considering that we now like to have such a romanticized view of some kind of idyllic past, should read these passages describing how tough life was for the working class. Books like this are a window into the past.
It is sad these journals are probably so rarely read or talked about, seen as something more for scholars to have as a compendium to other sources on William Wordsworth's poetry than as something to read for pleasure. Yes, some days, maybe even a good many of them, go by so quickly (and isn't that true of real life too?) but when this book shines, it shines with the glow of Grasmere lake on a perfect autumnal day. It can be wonderful.
I went to Ambleside after tea, crossed the stepping-stones at the foot of Grasmere & pursued my way on the other side […]. I sate a long time to watch the hurrying waves & to hear the regularly irregular sound of the dashing waters. The waves round about the little Island seemed like a dance of spirits that rose out the water, round its small circumference of shore.