The best-known satirical poem about Wordsworth, by J. K. Stephen, appeared in Granta in 1891 and includes the lines
There are two Voices; one is of the deep,
And one is an old half witted sheep
And Wordsworth, both are thine.…
The Two Voices of Wordsworth have been an endless source of study to this day, although it was Hartley Coleridge who first put his finger on the two-sided Wordsworth: ‘What a mighty genius is the Poet Wordsworth! What a dull proser is W.W. Esqre of Rydal Mount, Distributor of Stamps.’ Tennyson referred rather neatly to Wordsworth’s sheep-like verse as his ‘thick-ankled’ element.
Between the World Wars, with the emergence of T.S. Eliot and a starker, urban, intellectual poetry, most of the Romantic poets suffered a slight eclipse, but today the Romantic movement generally is in favour, as we perhaps try to escape back to nature and the senses, to basic truths and simple pleasures. Wordsworth is probably more studied today in universities round the world than he has ever been, but he has never really been away. In his poetry and in his life, the giant Wordsworth has left more than enough for each of us.
‘Wordsworth was nearly the price of me once,’ so Philip Larkin, the poet, said in an interview in the Observer in December 1979. ‘I was driving down the M1 on a Saturday morning; they had this poetry slot on the radio, “Time for Verse”. It was a lovely summer morning and someone suddenly started reading the Immortality ode, and I couldn’t see for tears. And when you’re driving down the middle lane at seventy miles an hour … I don’t suppose I’d read that poem for twenty years. It’s amazing how effective it was when I was totally unprepared for it …’
APPENDIX
A list of places, associated with William Wordsworth, which readers might wish to visit
COCKERMOUTH
The house where Wordsworth was born in 1770 is in the main street. It is owned by the National Trust and is open to the public from March to the end of October (telephone: 01900 824805). The house has been recently refurbished and contains some good furniture of the period. Dressing up clothes available for children. Real food gets cooked in a real kitchen. Excellent garden.
PENRITH, 1775—8
The draper’s shop in the market square, where Wordsworth lived with his grandparents, is still a shop (Arnison’s), but has been substantially rebuilt.
Penrith Beacon, which Wordsworth climbed as a young boy, and wrote about in The Prelude, is a hill just outside the town, to the north, and still offers a popular local walk, with excellent views over the Lake District. St Michael’s Church, Baron, Pooley Bridge, contains his grandfather’s grave.
HAWKSHEAD, 1779—89
Hawkshead Grammar School is closed as a school but open as a museum from Easter to October (telephone: 015394 36675). The desks and books are all laid out, as if the boys had just gone out to play. A good new booklet was published in 2008.
St Michael’s Church, described in The Prelude as snow-white, has now been unwhitewashed, but still stands graciously on a little hill.
Ann Tyson’s cottage, where Wordsworth lodged for some time, is a private dwelling but can be admired from outside. Mrs Tyson’s other home, half a mile away at Colthouse, has still not been satisfactorily identified, but is one of two cottages, both owned by the National Trust and privately occupied.
CAMBRIDGE, 1789—91
St John’s College contains the Pickersgill portrait of Wordsworth in the Hall.
WEST COUNTRY, 1795—8
Wordsworth rented two homes in this region: Racedown Lodge, near Birdsmoorgate, Crewkerne, Dorset, is now a private home and not open to the public; Alfoxden House, Nether Stowey, Somerset, is now a hotel. Coleridge Cottage, at Nether Stowey, is owned by the National Trust and is open to the public in the summer months, 2 pm-5 pm, closed Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays (telephone: 01278 732662).
DOVE COTTAGE, GRASMERE, 1799—1808
The main pilgrimage centre for tourists and scholars.
The Cottage, closed early January to early February, is preserved as it was in Wordsworth’s day, with furniture and relics (telephone: 015394 35544). It is best to go early, in order to avoid the crowds.
The Museum contains the major paintings and personal belongings. It is open to the public and has special exhibitions.
The Jerwood Centre, open by appointment, contains the library and manuscripts, and can be used for research on application to the Curator. Dove Cottage also has a bookshop, tea rooms and a small guest house nearby, How Foot Lodge.
ALLAN BANK, GRASMERE, 1808—11
Once a Wordsworth home, this house is now owned by the National Trust and rented privately.
THE PARSONAGE, GRASMERE, 1811—13
Another Wordsworth home, the Parsonage is now once more inhabited by the Vicar of Grasmere. It is opposite St Oswald’s Paris Church, whose wooden rafters, as described in The Excursion, are still exposed.
RYDAL MOUNT, NEAR AMBLESIDE, 1813—50
Opened to the public since 1970, this house is still owned by a member of the family (telephone: 015394 33022). Closed in January. Paintings, mementoes, teas, gardens.
KESWICK
Old Windy Browe (telephone: 017687 72254), the house owned by the Calverts and lived in for several months by William and Dorothy Wordsworth in 1794, is under the slopes of Latrigg Fell, just outside Keswick. Now used by the Calvert Trust for the disabled and can only be seen by appointment.
Fitz Park Museum, Keswick (telephone: 017687 73263), contains a collection of Southey, Coleridge and Wordsworth material, plus many other odd delights. Open March-October.
Greta Hall was for forty-three years the home first of Coleridge (1800-3) and then of Southey (1803-43). It was part of Keswick School and is now a family home which offers self-catering accommodation (telephone: 017687 75980).
In the churchyard of Crosthwaite Church, Keswick, is Southey’s grave.
NAB COTTAGE, RYDAL WATER
This was the home of De Quincey’s wife and the final home of Hartley Coleridge, who died in an upstairs room in 1849. It is now a guest house (telephone: 015394 35311).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE following is a list of the main biographical sources which I used. Collections of Wordsworth’s poetry and purely critical works devoted to him, of which there are hundreds, are not included. Mention, however, must be made of John O. Hayden’s edition of the Poems (2 vols, Penguin, 1977), which I found most useful.
By far the most important biographical material on Wordsworth is to be found in the Wordsworth letters. They were first edited by Ernest de Selincourt (6 vols, Oxford University Press, 1935—9).
From 1969, the Clarendon Press have issued new revised editions, as below:
The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth
I The Early Years, 1787—1805, rev. Chester L. Shaver, 1967
II The Middle Years: Part 1, 1806—1811, rev. Mary Moorman, 1969
III The Middle Years: Part 2, 1812—1820, rev. Mary Moorman and Alan G. Hill, 1970
IV The Later Years: Part 1, 1821—1828, rev. Alan G. Hill, 1978
V The Later Years: Part 2, 1829—1834, rev. Alan G. Hill, 1980
VI The Later Years: Part 3, 1835—1840, rev. Alan G. Hill, 1981
VII The Later Years: Part 4, 1841—1850, rev. Alan G. Hill, 1983
VIII A Supplement of New Letters, ed. by Alan G. Hill, 1993
The official biography of Wordsworth (by the poet’s nephew) is Christopher Worthworth Memoirs of William Wordsworth, 2 vols, London, 1851. The standard modern biography is by Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth, A Life, Clarendon Press, 1989. Also of interest is Mary Moorman, William Wordsworth: A Biography: vol. 1, The Early Years, 1770—1803; vol. 2, The Later Years, 1803—1850; Oxford University Press, 1957, 1965.
Wordsworth’s own prose: Wordsworth’s Prose Works are available in the edition by W.J.B. Owen and J.W. Smyser (3 vols, Oxford University Press, 1974), and his Guide to the Lakes (1835) in the facsimile of the 1906 edition edited by E
rnest de Selincourt (Oxford University Press, 1977). Dorothy Wordsworth’s Journals have been edited by Mary Moorman (with a reprinted Introduction by Helen Darbishire, Oxford University Press, 1971).
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Bateson, F.W., Wordsworth, A Reinterpretation, London, Longman, 1954
Beatty, Frederika, William Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, London, Dent, 1939
Blanchard, F.M., Portraits of Wordsworth, Cornell University Press, 1959
Clutterbuck, Nesta, ed., William Wordsworth, 1770—1970, Dove Cottage Trustees, Grasmere, 1970
Coburn, Kathleen, In Pursuit of Coleridge, London, Bodley Head, 1977
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Biographica Literaria (1817), ed. G. Watson, London, Dent, 1975
_______, Notebooks, ed. Kathleen Coburn, 6 vols, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957-62
Curtis, Jared, ed., The Fenwick Notes of William Wordsworth, Bristol 1993
Darbishire, Helen, Wordsworth, London, Longman, 1953
De Quincey, Thomas, Recollections of the Lake Poets, ed. David Wright, Penguin, 1970
Fink, Z.S., The Early Wordsworthian Milieu, Oxford University Press, 1958
Harper, G.M., William Wordsworth, his Life, Work and Influence, 2 vols, 1916
Hood, Edwin Paxton, William Wordsworth, London, Cash, 1856
Howe, H.W., rev. Robert Woof, Greta Hall, Keswick, 1977
Johnstone, Kenneth R. and Ruoff, Gene W., eds, The Age of William Wordsworth: Critical Essays on the Romantic Tradition, Rutgers University Press, 1987
Legouis, Emile, The Early Life of William Wordsworth, London, Dent, 1897 William Wordsworth and Annette Vallon, London, Dent, 1922
Maclean, C.M., Dorothy and William Wordsworth, Cambridge University Press, 1927
Margoliouth, H.M., Wordsworth and Coleridge, 1795—1934, Oxford University Press, 1953
Purkis, John, A Preface to Wordsworth, London, Longman, 1970
Raine, Kathleen, Coleridge, London, Longman, 1953
Rawnsley, Canon H.D., Recollections of Wordsworth among the Peasantry of Westmorland (1882), London, Dillons University Bookshop, 1968
_______, A Reminiscence of Wordsworth’s Day, Cockermouth, 1896
Read, Herbert, Wordsworth, London, Cape, 1930
Reed, Mark, Wordsworth, Chronology of the Early Years, 1770—1799, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1967
_______, Chronology of the Middle Years, 1800—1815, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1975
Robertson, Eric, Wordsworthshire, London, Chatto and Windus, 1911
Robinson, Henry Crabb, ed. Edith J. Morley, Correspondence with the Wordsworth Circle, 2 vols, Edinburgh, 1889
Roe, Nicholas, Wordsworth and Coleridge: The Radical Years, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1988
Schneider, Ben Ross, Wordsworth’s Cambridge Education, Cambridge University Press, 1957
Simmons, Jack, Southey, London, Collins, 1945
Smith, Elsie, An Estimate of Wordsworth by his Contemporaries, Oxford University Press, 1932
Thompson, T.W., ed. Robert Woof, Wordsworth’s Hawkshead, Oxford University Press, 1970
Wheatley, Vera, The Life and Work of Harriet Martineau, London, Secker and Warburg, 1957
Woof, Pamela, Dorothy Wordsworth, Writer, The Wordsworth Trust, 1994
Woof, Robert, The Wordsworth Circle, Dove Cottage Trustees, Grasmere, 1979
Wordsworth, Dorothy, The Grasmere Journals, ed. Pamela Woof, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991
Wordsworth, Jonathan, Abrams, M.H., Gill, Stephen, The Cornell Series, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1975
Wordsworth, Jonathan, Jaye, Michael C. and Woof, Robert, William Wordsworth and the Age of English Romanticism, Rutgers University Press and the Wordsworth Trust, 1987
Wordsworth, William, The Prelude (1799, 1805, 1850), eds Jonathan Wordsworth, M.H. Abrams and Stephen Gill, New York, W.W. Norton & Co., 1979
Wu, Duncan, Wordsworth’s Reading, 1770—1799, Cambridge University Press, 1996
_______, Wordsworth’s Reading, 1800—1815, Cambridge University Press, 1996
MORE RECENT BOOKS
Barker, Juliet, William Wordsworth: A Life, New York, Viking, 2000 Wordsworth: A Life in Letters, New York, Viking, 2002
Gill, Stephen, William Wordsworth: A Life, Oxford University Press, 1989
Johnston, Kenneth R., The Hidden Wordsworth: Poet, Lover, Rebel, Spy, London, W.W. Norton & Co., 1998
_______, The Hidden Wordsworth, London, Pimlico, 2000
Jones, Kathleen, A Passionate Sisterhood: The Sisters, Wives and Daughters of the Lake Poets, London, Constable, 1997
Sisman, Adam, The Friendship: Wordsworth and Coleridge: London, Harper, 2006
Speck, W.A., Robert Southey: Entire Man of Letters, London, Yale University Press, 2006
Wilson, Frances, The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, London, Faber, 2008
Woof, Robert, Treasures of the Wordsworth Trust, The Wordsworth Trust, 2005
INDEX
Note: Wordsworth’s writings are indexed under the entry for Wordsworth himself
Abbotsford, 289, 304
Adelaide, Queen, 326
Alfoxden House (Somerset), 113, 348
move to, 89
Hazlitt’s first meeting with William at, 91, 106, 163
local suspicions of life at, 94–5, 110, 115
lease not renewed, 95, 110
Dorothy’s daily journal begun at, 100, 133
poems written at, 105
Allan Bank (Grasmere), 348
move to, 186, 192, 194–5
Coleridge at, 195, 199–200, 204
deficiencies of, 198, 209
visitors, 200, 204
De Quincey at, 204–5
Ambleside, 136, 324
Coleridge boys at school in, 187, 206, 252, 253
gentry of, 215, 222, 316, 317–18
Wordsworth children at school in, 252–3, 255, 256, 257, 293
‘Ancient Mariner, The Rime of the’ (Coleridge), 93, 102, 106–7, 123
Applethwaite (near Skiddaw), property at, presented to William by Beaumont, 152, 303
Arabian Nights, The, 9, 58
Arch, John, 102
Arnold, Matthew, 290
restores William to critical favour, 342
Arnold, Dr Thomas, 283–4, 335
Ball, Sir Alexander, 184
Bateson, F. W., and theory of incest between William and Dorothy, 138
Bath, Dora’s marriage in, 309, 316
Baudouin, Caroline—see Vallon, Caroline
Baudouin, Eustace, 269
Baudouin, Jean Baptiste: marriage to Caroline Vallon, 269–72
claim to share of William’s estate, 340–1
Baudouin, Louise Marie Caroline Dorothée, 272, 341
Beaumont, Sir George, 173, 180, 185, 217, 218, 290, 296
as amateur artist, 152, 179, 216, 276, 303
founder of National Gallery, 152, 303
patronage of William, 152, 165, 171, 179, 303, 304
William’s letters to, 171, 174–5, 186, 187
death, 303
Beaumont, Lady: Dorothy’s letters to, 166, 167, 168, 180
godmother to Dora, 166
William’s letters to, 191, 290
Beaupuy, Captain, and Revolutionary influence on William, 52–3
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 164
Belgium, 47, 285, 286, 287
Bell, Dr Andrew, 197
Biographia Literaria (Coleridge), 209, 277
Birkett, Ann, 12, 142
Blackwood’s Magazine, 278
Blois, Annette’s home in, 53–4, 140, 142
Boswell, James, 75
Bowles, Caroline, 266
as Southey’s second wife, 311
Bremen, Willy in, 294, 301
Brighton, 51
Bristol, 86
Pantisocratic group in, 77–8, 81, 82–4
British Critic: on Lyrical Ballads, 123, 124
on ‘Peter Bell’, 276
Brompton (York
s), William and Mary married at, 145–6
Brontë, Charlotte, Southey’s advice to, 266
Brougham, Henry, 125, 279
and 1818 election, 232–6
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 327, 328
Brussels, 287
Brydges, Sir Egerton, 284
Burke, Edmund, 225
Burns, Robert, 25, 156, 157
William’s defence of, 243, 277
Bute, John Stuart, third Earl of, 7
Buttermere, 182
Byron, Lord, 243, 262
on Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 126
attack on 1807 Poems, 189–90
William’s hatred of, 238
praises Southey’s prose, 263
literary row with Southey, 267
satire on ‘Peter Bell’, 275
influenced by William, 277
compared with William, 280
death, 325
Calais, meeting of William and Dorothy with Annette in, 140, 141–2
Calvert, Raisley, 68, 69, 91
William as companion to, 71–3
death, 73, 258
legacy to William, 73, 75, 95, 171
Calvert, William, West Country tour with, 68–9
Cambridge: William at St John’s, 26, 28–35, 38–40, 42–4, 48, 50–51, 316
his disillusion with, 31–5, 43, 45, 51
academic life, 31–3
social life, 33–5, 36
William’s portrait commissioned by St John’s, 312, 348
Canning, George, 197, 283, 292, 294
Carlisle, 289
Hatfield trial at, 155–6
Willy at, 302, 332
Carlyle, Thomas, 63
on William’s eyeshade, 319
poor account of Mary, 338
Carroll, Lewis, 343
Carter, John, 219, 256
Cartmel, 30
Castlerigg Stone Circles, 112
Charlotte, Queen, 66
buys copy of Lyrical Ballads, 127
Charterhouse, Willy at, 257, 293
Chester, John, 98, 159
Childe Harold (Byron), 277
‘Christabel’ (Coleridge), 93, 123, 161
Christian, Edward, 30, 49, 86
Christian, Fletcher, 10, 30
William’s letter in defence of, 86
Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem. (Haydon), 327
William Wordsworth Page 43
