Jane and Dorothy
Page 39
17. Grasmere Journal 30th January 1802
18. Grasmere Journal 10th June 1800
19. Grasmere Journal 15th November 1801
20. Grasmere Journal 12th December 1801
21. From Mary Moorman’s editing of the Grasmere Journal
22. Grasmere Journal, 6th March 1802
23. The Pedlar was not published immediately, but a version of it was eventually subsumed into Wordsworth’s long poem The Excursion
24. Grasmere Journal 31st July 1800
25. From Reminiscences of Wordsworth among the Peasantry of Westmorland, Compiled by Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley (London, 1968)
Chapter Twenty
1. Vivien Jones, Women in the Eighteenth Century p.102
2. Laetitia Matilda Hawkins Letters on the Female Mind. (Quoted in Vivien Jones (ed) Women in the 18th Century p. 118)
3. Uglow, In These Times p. 176
4. In Persuasion Jane would finally portray the ultimate in companionate marriage with the highly improbable Mrs Croft who has somehow – perhaps on account of being childless – contrived to spend almost as much time at sea as her husband, the admiral, and by so doing seems to have become a kind of honorary officer; while in Bath she is able to join with her husband and male friends in ‘a little knot of the navy,’ and look ‘as intelligent and keen as any of the officers around her’. But real Mrs Crofts, if they existed at all, would have been very rare indeed.
5. Grasmere Journal 7th March 1802
6. Grasmere Journal 23rd March 1802
7. Mansfield Park p.195
8. Persuasion p.160
9. Grasmere Journal 16th March 1802
10. Grasmere Journal 2nd June 1802
11. The Grasmere Journal, 17th March 1802
12. Gittings and Manton, Dorothy Wordsworth, p. 105-06
13. Kathleen Jones, Passionate Sisterhood, p. 98
14. Early Years 169
15. Grasmere Journal 30th April 1802. The gown in question was probably the ‘fur gown’ on which Dorothy lay in front of the fire on 14th March 1802. Most likely it was one they had bought to ward off the German cold.
16. Sense and Sensibility p.69
17. Grasmere Journal 16th February 1802
18. Grasmere Journal 25th June 180
19. Grasmere Journal 14th February 1802
20. Grasmere Journal 4th March 1802
21. De Quincey, Recollections p. 203
22. De Quincey, Recollections p.132
23. Daniel Defoe, Some Considerations upon Street-Walkers with A Proposal for lessening the present Number of them (1726) Extract in Vivien Jones, Women in the Eighteenth Century p. 69.
24. Essay Concerning Human Generation (1740) Extract in Vivien Jones, Women in the Eighteenth Century p. 81
25. The Ladies Dispensatory (1740) Extract in Vivien Jones, Women in the Eighteenth Century p. 83
26. ‘Philogamus’ from The Present State of Matrimony: or, the Real Causes of Conjugal Infidelity and Unhappy Marriages (1793) Extract in Vivien Jones, Women in the Eighteenth Century p. 77-78
27. Alexander Pope, Moral Essay II
28. Pride and Prejudice p. 275
29. Bernard Mandeville, A Modest Defence of Public Stews (1740) Extract in Vivien Jones, Women in the Eighteenth Century p. 65
30. The supposed illness of hysterica or hysteria was as old as Plato. He came up with the colourful idea that most of women’s ailments were caused by their wombs which had an unpleasant habit of wandering about the abdominal cavity – thus rendering the female sex sickly, unreliable and irrational.
31. R. James, A Medical Dictionary (1743) Extract in Vivien Jones, Women in the Eighteenth Century p.85-86
32. Hill, Women Alone p. 8
33. Hill, Women Alone p. 9
34. Alix Kirsta in The Guardian 16th May 2003. See also marriage-equality.blogspot.co.uk
35. Irene Bevc and Irwin Silverman, Early Proximity and Intimacy Between Siblings and Incestuous Behavior: A Test of the Westermarck Theory Evolution and Human Behavior Vol 14, Issue 3 (1993) p.171-81
36. Early Years 50
37. Frances Wilson, The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth (London, 2008) p. 150-53
38. Wilson, The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth p. 152
39. Wilson, The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth p.146
40. Grasmere Journal 27th January 1802
41. Grasmere Journal 5th March 1802
42. Grasmere Journal 9th March 1802.
43. William is now calling Dorothy down to him, whereas in March he had come down to her. This is because, in the meantime they had exchanged bedrooms.
44. Darlington, The Love Letters p.38
45. Christopher Wordsworth, Memoirs of William Wordsworth 2 vols (1851) Vol 2 p. 322
46. Rowan Boyson, Wordsworth’s Anosmia: pleasure, scent and the later poetry. in Grasmere, 2013. Selected Papers from the Wordsworth Summer Conference.(Grasmere, 2013)
47. G. E. Weisfeld, T. Czilli, K.A. Phillips, J. A. Gall and C. M. Lichtman Possible olfaction-based mechanisms in human kin recognition and inbreeding avoidance. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology Vol 85 (2003) p.279-95. See also M. A. Schneider and L. Hendrix, Olfactory sexual inhibition and the Westermarck effect Human Nature Vol. 11, Issue 1 p. 65-91
Chapter Twenty-One
1. Le Faye Family Record p. 140-141
2. Le Faye Family Record p. 165
3. Jennifer Kelsey, A Voice of Discontent (Leicester, 2009) p.56
4. Letters 36
5. Letters 36
6. Letters 37
7. Letters 35
8. The unfinished The Watsons which Jane began, probably, in 1803 had not been published at the time Jane’s nephew wrote his memoir.
9. Nor, incidentally, is the attempt to relieve the symptoms of this debilitating disease with drugs likely to be some kind of modern weakness. Judging from the amount of opiates consumed (largely ineffectively) by sufferers from depression in Georgian times, effective antidepressants would have been at least as popular then as they are now.
10. Fanny Caroline Lefroy. Family History. Hampshire Record Office 23M93/85/2
11. Letters 36
12. Letters 62
13. This date is not absolutely certain but Deirdre Le Faye calculates it to be the most likely.
14. There is no precise date for this romance, but if it took place it must have been between 1801 and 1804 – during a long break in the surviving sequence of Jane’s own letters.
15. If this was Cassandra’s intention it is easy to see why she might choose to recall this deceased lover, rather than Tom Lefroy who was still alive at the time – and married to another woman.
16. Memoir p.188
17. De Quincey, Recollections p. 131. There is no evidence – other than this comment – of Dorothy ever having received any offers of marriage.
Chapter Twenty-Two
1. Vickery, Behind Closed Doors p.208
2. Darlington, The Love Letters p.79. 15-19 August 1810.
3. Darlington, The Love Letters p.48 1-3 August 1810
4. De Quincey, Recollections p.131
5. De Quincey, Recollections p. 131
6. Early Years 171
7. By the time the poem was published the identity of the glow-worm’s recipient had changed again. She had now become that dearly loved, but ephemeral woman, Lucy.
8. Letters 82
9. Le Faye, A Family Record p. 138
10. Fanny Caroline Lefroy Family History. Hampshire Records Office 23M93/85/2
11. It was a family connection which was reinforced in the next generation when Catherine’s son (another Herbert) married Bertha Southey – Robert’s daughter.
Chapter Twenty-Three
1. Grasmere Journal 11th January 1803
2. Early Years 196
3. Early Years 196
&nbs
p; 4. Early Years 221
5. Early Years 232
6. Holmes, Early Visions p. 353
7. Fanny Caroline Lefroy. Family History. Hampshire Record Office 23M93/85/2
8. The contrast between the tone of this discussion and that in the earlier novels is perhaps less obvious to us now, for we have become accustomed to the recent screen adaptations of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility in which the script writers are obliged to make the viewers aware of the heroines’ pressing need to marry in as little screen time as possible.
9. Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon p. 143
10. Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon p. 139
11. Early Years 196
12. Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland AD 1803 (New Haven, 1997) 20th August 1803.
13. De Quincey, Recollections p.203
14. Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland 17th September 1803
15. Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour 31st August 1803
16. Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour d 25th August 1803
17. Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour 30th August 1803
18. Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour 23rd September 1803
19. Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour 6th September 1803
20. Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour 27th August 1803
21. Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour 20th September 1803
22. Middle Years 2 350
23. In matters of literature William was always right. This is the tirade which poor Sara Hutchinson received from an outraged Dorothy when she had the temerity to gently suggest that William’s poem, Resolution and Independence might be, perhaps, just a tiny bit . . . tedious:
‘Dear Sara When you happen to be displeased with what you suppose to be the tendency or moral of any poem which William writes, ask yourself whether you have hit upon the real tendency and true moral, and above all never think that he writes for no reason but merely because a thing happened – and when you feel any poem of his to be tedious, ask yourself in what spirit it was written – whether merely to tell the tale and be through with it, or to illustrate a particular character or truth etc.’ (Early Years 172)
24. Middle Years 1 14
25. Early Years 196
26. Early Years 172
27. Middle Years 1 57
28. Mansfield Park p.188
29. Middle Years 1 90
30. Griggs, Coleridge Letters 470
31. Early Years 200
32. Early Years 204
33. Early Years 211
34. Early Years 244
35. Newlyn, All in Each Other p. 244
36. Newlyn, All in Each Other p. 244
37. Later Years I 104
Chapter Twenty-Four
1. Tomalin Jane Austen A Life p.6
2. Persuasion p. 148
3. Letters 40
4. Letters 41
5. Letters 41
6. This is based on Henry Austen’s Letter (Austen Papers p.234-35. See below). He calculated that Mrs Austen and Cassandra’s ‘assured property’ would altogether bring them £210 per annum. If the interest was about 4% this would suggest capital of about £5000. Cassandra’s legacy from her fiancé Tom Fowle was £1000.
7. The Austen boys paid no fees at Oxford, because they were classed as ‘Founder’s Kin’ but the expense of supporting them there would have been considerable, as would that of equipping Francis and Charles for their careers in the Navy.
8. Austen Papers 234-5
9. Persuasion p. 14
10. Austen Papers p. 233.
11. Austen Papers p.235. Henry’s belief that this arrangement would be desirable contradicts his previous assertion that his mother and sisters would be more or less as prosperous as they had been before Mr Austen’s death.
12. Emma p. 351
13. Sense and Sensibility p.343
14. Sense and Sensibility p. 90
15. Early Years 218.
16. Pamela Woof’s notes to Grasmere Journal p. 240. This sum is rather less than the £10,000 odd claimed. Perhaps legal fees ate up a proportion.
17. Early Years 183.
18. Grasmere Journal, 2nd October 1800
19. This £50 supplied all her personal spending for a year.
20. Letters 53
21. Letters 54
22. Letters 43
23. Deirdre Le Faye, Fanny Knight’s Diaries (Winchester, 2000) p. 7.
24. Letters 45
25. Letters 46
26. In October 1808 Jane would write, in a letter to Cassandra: ‘I wish you may be able to accept Lady Bridges’s invitation, tho’ I could not her son Edward’s’. (Letters 57)
Chapter Twenty-Five
1. Le Faye, A Family Record p.153
2. Vickery, Behind Closed Doors p. 211
3. Pride and Prejudice p. 175
4. Middle Years 1 112
5. Letters 55
6. Letters 49
7. Le Faye, A Family Record p.168
8. Letters 56
9. Letters 58
10. Letters 50
11. Memoir p.158
12. Le Faye, Fanny Knight’s Diaries p. 38-39.
13. Letters 39
14. Letters 68 (D)
15. Middle Years 1 93
16. Middle Years 1 117
17. This Little Sally was Sally Green, a native of Grasmere, for whom the Wordsworths had agreed to take responsibility when she and her brothers and sisters were orphaned. Her parents perished in a snowstorm and the whole community had come together to help the children. For a full account of this sad story see the account which Dorothy herself wrote in order to raise money for the orphans.
18. Middle Years 1 102
19. Letters 145
20. Recollections of Chawton. Hampshire Record Office 28A11/C2
21. Fanny Caroline Lefroy, Family History. Hampshire Record Office 23M93/85/2
22. Stewardship Accounts of Edward Austen Knight. Hampshire Record Office 79M78/B211
23. De Quincey, Recollections p.131
24. Darlington, Love Letters p.251
25. Letters 62
Chapter Twenty-Six
1. Memoir p. 140
2. Emma p. 83
3. Memoir p.169
4. Memoir p. 157
5. Letters 10.
6. Early Years 196
7. Letters 53
8. Letters 92
9. Letters 53
10. Middle Years 1 10
11. Middle Years 1 135
12. Middle Years 2 359
13. De Quincey, Recollections p. 205-06.
14. Letters 91
15. Fanny Caroline Lefroy Family History. Hampshire Record Office 23M93/85/2
16. Emma p.83
17. Letters 153
18. Middle Years 1 81
19. Middle Years 1 95
20. Middle Years 1 95
21. Middle Years 1 87
22. Northanger Abbey p. 106
23. Gittings and Manton Dorothy Wordsworth p.179
24. Sense and Sensibility p. 83
25. Mansfield Park p.83
26. Mansfield Park p. 105
27. William Deresiewic, Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets (New York, 2004) p. 2-4
28. Deresiewicz, Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets p. 9
29. Letters 132(D)
30. Mansfield Park p. 25
31. Mansfield Park p. 205
32. Since the death of little Berkley, Sarah Coleridge had borne a son and a daughter – proof perhaps that her marriage was not as uniformly bleak as Dorothy believed.
33. Middle Years 1 48
34. Middle Years 2 188
35. Gittings and Manton,
Dorothy Wordsworth p. 177
36. By now, he had realised he could not look after the children. They remained with their mother.
37. Darlington, The Love Letters p. 38
38. Darlington, The Love Letters p. 46
39. Darlington, The Love Letters p. 82
40. Mansfield Park p. 217
41. Darlington, The Love Letters p. 85
42. Darlington, The Love Letters p. 39
43. Darlington, The Love Letters p.53
44. Darlington, The Love Letters p. 157 Presumably the blot was passed off as accidental. William was habitually clumsy enough to make this a plausible story.
45. Later Years 2 575
46. Early Years 243
47. Letters 155
48. Later Years 2 462
49. Letters 109
50. Middle Years 2 350
51. Later Years 2 462
52. Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland 24th August 1803
53. Rydal Mount Journals, Ketcham’s transcript p. 8. Wordsworth Trust Collection
54. De Quincey, Recollections p. 204
55. Letters 135
56. The position was called Distributer of Stamps for Westmorland; but that is a little misleading. The job had nothing to do with letters or postage stamps.
57. De Quincey, Recollections p.204-05
58. From a talk given at The Wordsworth Trust 22nd March 2014. Barbara Crossley is a psychiatric social worker with many years’ experience of mental health issues.
Epilogue
1. Deresiewicz, Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets p.2
2. Newlyn, All in Each Other p. 298
3. Newlyn, All in Each Other p. 312
Select Bibliography
Dorothy Wordsworth
Bateson, F.W. Wordsworth, a Re-interpretation (London, 1963)
Darlington, Beth (ed.) The Love Letters of William and Mary Wordsworth (London, 1982)
Davis, Hunter, William Wordsworth (London, 1980)
De Quincey, Thomas Recollections of the Lakes and the Lake Poets (Harmondsworth, 1970)
De Quincey, Thomas, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (London, 1997)
De Selincourt, Ernest and Chester L. Shaver (eds), The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol 1: The Early Years: 1787-1805 (Second Revised Edition) (Oxford, 2000)