Notebook 15 of the Rydal Journals (DCMS 118.5, 4 October 1834–19 April 1835; 4 November 1835)

 

[Inscription in DW’s hand on front cover]

Rydal Mount                                        
D Wordsworth – Octobr 6th 1824

(1)

Clearly a mistake, as DW received this notebook in 1834, not 1824.

This book stitched by Miss                                       
Diana Dixon.

(2)

This final RJ notebook was a gift from a child whose birth DW had noticed nearly a decade earlier in Notebook 1, where she records visiting Betty Dixon (née Slee, 1800–65) on 18 January 1825 to deliver a “handsome present” for her newborn daughter, Dinah (or Diana, 1825–93). Betty and her stonemason husband, Edward Dixon (1789–1830), lived on the edge of Grasmere in Easedale, and she may have known DW from having once worked at RM. Parish and census records show Diana growing up to work as a housemaid in Loughrigg before marrying Frank Garnett of Grasmere in 1852.
Pages of Notebook 15 covering 25 November–1 December 1834.
Figure 1. Pages of Notebook 15 covering 25 November–1 December 1834.

[October 1824]

Saturday October 4th1834                                       
a charming day – Wm & M[ary] arrive at night;

(3)

WW and MW had just returned from a two-week trip to Workington to visit their son John (who had recently become interim rector there), daughter-in-law Isabella, and new grandson, Henry Curwen Wordsworth (1834–65), who had been born on 30 July (Letters, 5:743).

but before them comes Prof. Sedgewick

(4)

Dr. Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873, DNB), a renowned Cambridge geologist and friend of the Wordsworths since the early 1820s. In 1842 his research on Lake District geology would appear alongside WW’s Guide to the Lakes in The Complete Guide to the Lakes (Kendal: Hudson and Nicolson).

– The wedding day & if D[ora] recollected it she did not tell me, & we let it pass unnoticed

(5)

WW and MW’s 32nd wedding anniversary, an event the entire household apparently commemorated. DW also mentions celebrating it in her RJ entry for 2 October 1829.

– – I have again had the resolution not to go out, beautiful as the weather was; yet so beautiful at home I could not but be pleased with walking from room to room & feeling & seeing the lovely sunshine – all well at Workington – The Grandson a noble Boy –

Sunday 5th                                       
a very bright morning & a pleasant day – till afternoon when rain came on, I had not ventured out – Read in Bible & a Sermon of Horsleys on prophesy, & the foundation of the Xtian faith

(6)

Samuel Horsley (1733–1806, DNB), the late Bishop of St. Asaph best remembered for arguing, contra Joseph Priestley, that doctrines concerning the Trinity and the divinity of Christ were understood by the earliest Christians. With “Xt” being a conventional abbreviation for Christ, “Xtian” is shorthand for Christian.

– also Herauts (to my) unintelligible Oration on the death of poor Coleridge

(7)

John A. Heraud’s (1799–1887, DNB) highly philosophical Oration on the Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Esq. Delivered at the Russell Institution on Friday August 8, 1834 (London: Fraser, 1834).

– Saw P[rof.] Sedgewick a chearful creature whom it does one good to look upon – went to bed tired & slept deeply till near nine – & had very little pain –

Monday 6th Octr.                                       
A very fine morning, & Wm & M gone to dine with Mrs Fletcher.

(8)

Eliza Fletcher (1770–1858, DNB), a Scottish philanthropist and admirer of WW who had rented Keen Ground near Hawkshead for the fall and winter of 1834–35 (Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher, 78, 89, 221).

They took D[ora] to Ambleside & left her with Mrs Hoare.

(9)

Hannah Hoare (née Sterry, 1769–1856), a Quaker friend of the Wordsworths from London, was spending six weeks at Fox Ghyll (in the absence of its present owner, Letitia Luff) with her step-daughter Sarah Hoare (1777–1856) (Letters, 5:726; WLL / Wordsworth, Dora / 1 / 59). Mrs. Hoare’s late husband, Samuel (1751–1825), had been a prominent banker, abolitionist, and poetry enthusiast, and during the 1820s and 1830s the Wordsworths regularly stayed at their Hampstead home.

Diana Dixon

(10)

During this visit, the nine-year-old Grasmere girl presented DW with the notebook in which she was now writing.

has been with me nearly 2 hours – a good-natured obliging Girl whom I always like to see – She took home 2 Ruggs to fringe for me.

(11)

Rug-making was apparently a new hobby for DW, as she only first mentioned it in her entry for 22 March 1834.

Showers in afternoon – Wm M & D. arrive when I was asleep – prayers up stairs

(12)

Possibly another new practice, as after first being mentioned in DW’s entry for 23 February 1834, family prayer is regularly noted thereafter.

Tuesday 7th                                       
Very rainy – a bad prospect for Penrith Races

(13)

A two-day horse race held in Penrith (23 miles northeast of Rydal) every October since 1824. The Wordsworths had a remote connection to this event, as WW and DW’s eldest brother, Richard, had owned the race-course until 1816 (co-owning it with MW’s cousin Tom Monkhouse until 1811). See Gordon Graham Wordsworth’s notes in WT MS WLMS 7 / 66.

– Willy goes today to Hallsteads†

(14)

En route to the races, Willy stayed at Hallsteads, the Marshalls’ Ullswater home seven miles from Penrith.

– Mr Godwin calls to take leave – I have been writing two letters for Wm – (to Mr Twining

(15)

Robert Twining, the famous London tea merchant, whom WW would visit in 1836 (Letters, 6:270).

& Mr Moxon

(16)

Edward Moxon (1801–58, DNB), WW’s London publisher. Writing on her brother’s behalf, DW asked Moxon to consider publishing a new verse collection by Catherine Godwin (Letters, 5:743).

) – Last night received Adam Clarke’s Life from S. H. – the beginning very interesting – I read above 70 pages before closing the Book

(17)

A year after the popular Methodist preacher and theologian Adam Clarke (1762–1832, DNB) died from cholera amid the nationwide epidemic of 1832, his son Joseph published An Account of the Infancy, Religious and Literary Life of Adam Clarke (London: T. S. Clarke, 1833). The opening 70 pages recount his Irish Protestant heritage, early love of books, and recurring brushes with death. SH presumably sent this copy from Robert Southey’s large library at Greta Hall, where she was staying.

– no further accounts from York[.]

(18)

Concerning Edith Southey, who had been admitted to a mental asylum in York.

Could not have the family to prayers.

Wednesday 8th Octr.                                       
Again very rainy – after a painful & disturbed night pretty well this morning. Poor Willy, & the Penrith races! This rain must make & keep all persons & things dull – Still much interested with A[dam] C[larke] but could hardly read last night – a great mortification for all the morning busy – Wm called at Sir T Paisley’s water closet

(19)

WW appears to have reported that the Pasleys were planning to have a water closet—a novel enough amenity to warrant mentioning—at The Craig, the home they were building near Bowness.

—

Thursday 9th                                       
Rain & wind as before yet worse. Mrs Hoare

(20)

Hannah Hoare, who was staying at Fox Ghyll (see note for 6 October).

has not been able to come all this week – but W. has called 2 or 3 times, & Mary twice.

Friday 10th October                                       
Very fine morning [–] all the party from Inn & Miss Bland

(21)

Likely the Miss Bland of Hastings who visited RM in August 1834 (RMVB).

call except L Ll.

(22)

Louisa Lloyd (1814–69), Owen’s 20-year-old sister.

A shower about one but clears away & not much more rain, but bright gleams – & very clear moonlight in Evening – First view I have had of moon and alas! it is half-size

(23)

The new moon of 2 October became full on 17 October.

– I was weak & poorly on rising – appeared below in new yellow shawl & D. exclaimed “how dreadfully it makes you look![”] – much better in Evening after sleep – indeed unusually well and lightsome

(24)

Cheerful.

Saturday 11th                                       
Very fine morning, & though in pain at 9 was soon well again, & rose at 10. Read of Sir Joseph Gilpin’s death at the age of 90. Much admired & respected & beloved at Carlisle.

(25)

Sir Joseph Dacre Appleby Gilpin (17451–834), youngest brother of the renowned aesthetic theorist William Gilpin. After a quarter century as a military doctor, he had retired to his native Carlisle, where he served several terms as the city’s mayor (Jefferson, History and Antiquities, 429–30).

The Party preparing for Car to Ambleside – I dare not face the frosty, though clear air, with warm sunshine. The Twiss’s farewell visit in Evening

(26)

The family of Horace Twiss (1787–1849, DNB), a London lawyer, conservative politician, and nephew of the legendary actress Sarah Siddons, had been vacationing nearby. An earlier RJ entry records Lord Lowther introducing them to the Wordsworths on 31 August 1834.

– Lovely moonlight.

Sunday 12th Octr.                                       
Damp & cold – small rain – The Hoares at Church but did not come up – comfortable afternoon, tho’ much fatigued at bed-time (5 o’clock[)] – Prayers – & a beautiful Lecture from St Luke – on the duties & offices of the Apostles & Disciples of Xt.

(27)

Chapter 10 of the Gospel of St. Luke.

Read a sermon of Horsley – again on prophesy (St Peter)

(28)

See note for 5 October.

– No company all day –

Monday 12th [13th]                                       
 

(29)

After identifying consecutive days as the 12th, DW’s dates would be off by one until 25 October.

Cold clear air – – It has suited me, with great Cure – could not have prayers

Tuesday 13th [14th]                                       
After heavy rain in night an uncertain day – yet Mrs Hoare came on foot, with a bad cold – & Wm & M are gone to Calgarth

(30)

Windermere estate of the widow and daughters of the late Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff (1737–1816, DNB).

– Saw Dr & Mrs Jackson

(31)

William (1792–1878) and Julia Jackson (née Crump, 1793–1873), long-time sweethearts from Grasmere who had married in 1829. His father had been Grasmere’s long-time minister, and, following the same career path, William had earned a doctorate in divinity and become Rector of Lowther. Julia was the eldest daughter of John Gregory Crump (1768–1844), the Liverpool attorney who had built Allan Bank and leased the house to the Wordsworths from 1808–11.

on the road – a sad account of our dear good Friend Elizth Wardell.

(32)

Elizabeth Wardell (née Crump, 1806–35), a younger sister of Julia Jackson and close childhood friend of Dora. Earlier in the RJ, DW records staying with her and her new husband, William Wardell, in Liverpool in 1826 (31 October 1826). The illness to which DW alludes would prove fatal in March 1835 (Letters, 4:172, 5:75–76; WT MS WLMS A / Coleridge, Sara / 36).

– I had very Easy evening – both worked & read after sleep – still much interested with Dr A. Clarke

(33)

The religious biography DW had been attentively reading since 7 October.

yet there is much matter of a kind uninteresting to the General Reader – i e “Records Bible Societies[”] &c &c . . .

Wednesday 14 [15th]                                       
Uncertain weather — sunny gleams & heavy showers — I think Mrs Hoare will not venture to Keswick, as fixed. Many letters from S H — not very cheering (last night)

(34)

Likely discouraging reports from Keswick about Edith Southey’s condition in York.

[–] This morning brings a very amiable & pleasant letter from William

(35)

Presumably from her nephew Willy in Carlisle.

– quite well today (for me) [–] Fine moonlight

Thursday 15th [16th]                                       
Charming Morning – Mr Crumpe’s Sale

(36)

Having just sold Allan Bank to Thomas Dawson, John Crump was now selling its furnishings (Letters, 5:731).

& the Jacksons dine here; but I was too unwell to see them till too late (when Mrs J. was going) – no prayers with the family –

Friday 16th [17th] Mr Carr calls & every one is out – Wm at Hawkshead with J. C.

(37)

Likely either John Crump (in town for the sale) or WW’s secretary John Carter (1796–1863).

D[ora] at Ambleside – Mary at Sale – & dines with Miss Dixon

(38)

Possibly the Miss Dixon of Storrs Hall near Bowness with whom the Wordsworths occasionally socialized (Letters, 4:576, 5:271).

– Rainy evening comes on with high wind & hail-showers – dimming Moon now & then – well this evening after fits of pain &c &c [–] spasms [–] Great storm in night.

Saturday 17th [18th]                                       
Fine morning – frosty air [–] Hannah Cookson putting leeches on Dora’s Back

(39)

A common method for blood-letting.

– God grant a perfect cure! So little we know what is for the best, I now see cause to rejoice that she did not leave home, as we entreated her to do.

(40)

A month earlier, the family had considered sending Dora to the warmer and drier south of England for the winter (Letters, 5:737; LSH, 435).

This morning, I read of 3 persons in one house having died of Cholera in Furness in the course of not many hours – all the furniture burnt except a clock.

(41)

Details found in the WG’s 18 October article on “The Cholera in Low Furness.”

Sunday 18th [19th] Octobr – Damp & comfortless Gloom – Poor D very sickly – Great packets of letters – news a little better from York

Monday 19th [20th]                                       
I had not an easy day & poor D. very languid. Mrs & Miss Hoare came up to see me – On Sunday (i e yesterday[)] news of the burning of Houses of Parliament reached us,

(42)

On 16 October, the ancient Palace of Westminster, where Parliament had met since the mid-sixteenth century, was largely destroyed by an accidental fire. The new neo-gothic house of parliament erected in its place would not open until 1847.

thro’ Mr Hamilton whom Mary saw at Church – Could not have the Reading up stairs [–] Dreadful storm in the night [–] Ash tree torn & mangled

Tuesday 20th [21st]                                       
A sad painful morning & not up all day – Mr Carr in the Evening – Dora a little better

Wednesday 21st [22nd] a fair morning – Did not see Mr Carr when he visited Dora – after sitting up 2 hours forced to Bed again – Busy with Collingwood

(43)

Likely A Selection from the Public and Private Correspondence of Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood, which had gone into several editions since its 1828 release. Baron Cuthbert Collingwood (1748–1810, DNB) was a hero of Trafalgar who served thereafter as commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet before dying of cancer in 1810.

& the Book of Genesis – B[ottle] at supper

(44)

The first of several discrete notes in this notebook logging DW’s having opened a new bottle of laudanum, the tincture of brandy and opium widely prescribed during this period for chronic pain. She had apparently been taking it for at least two years, as evidenced by WW’s 29 January 1833 report that Mr. Carr had “ordered her allowance of brandy and opium to be considerably increased” (Letters, 5:583).

Thursday 22nd [23rd]                                       
Not up all day – weak & weary – wind & storm but little Rain

Friday 23rd [24th]                                       
very blustery [–] fine Ash sadly mangled – Dora rather better – I improve; but still in bed – Calls from Mrs & Miss H[oare] & Mrs Harrison – 5 o clock tired with Book & work – much sleep – Marys letter from Mrs Marshall

(45)

Possibly indicates that Jane Pollard Marshall had sent her a message through MW, who had taken over much of DW’s correspondence with old friends (LMW, 135–37).

Saturday 25th                                       
very bright with brisk wind & frosty air, which suits not me. S[ara] H[utchinson] & Cuthbert Southey

(46)

SH wrote on 3 November that she and the Southeys’ 15-year-old son had taken a “poney chair” from Keswick to Workington, where they “spent 2 very pleasant days at the Rectory” with John and Isabella Wordsworth (LSH, 435).

have a fine day to go to Workington. Better news of Mrs S[outhey] – prayers up stairs again.

Sunday 26th Very fine & bright, but too cold for me – Plan from Miss Rickman of Palace Yard &c, & the fire

(47)

Anne Rickman (1809–98), whose home in Palace Yard had been destroyed in the conflagration of 16 October. This residence was part of the compensation her father, John Rickman (1771–1840, DNB), had received as secretary to the speaker of the house, a position he had held since 1801. The Wordsworths presumably knew the family through Robert Southey, who was among John Rickman’s closest friends.

[–] The Bell tol[le]d for poor Mrs Irving this morning – a happy release from long painful sickness

(48)

Jane (née Mavity, 1789–1834), wife of Thomas Irving (1782–1847), a sheep farmer who leased Cote How at the foot of Rydal Hill from the 1810s through his death in 1847. The WG for 1 November noted that Mrs. Irving had passed away on 25 October “after a tedious illness, borne with patience and resignation.”

– Dora better, but far, very far from well – I hope the last week’s storm is over, but the air too cold for me – With a large fire, Thermomr at 60

Monday 27 a Fine cold day – I sate up 3 hours; but am very weak in [Limbs?] & body – Wm & M at Storrs

(49)

The expansive estate south of Bowness that John Bolton (1756–1837, DNB) bought in 1806 with the immense fortune he made through the transatlantic slave trade.

– home with beautiful flowers

Tuesday 28 – Wind high – & always so – frequent shipwrecks

(50)

The Kendal Mercury reported on 8 November that, “in consequence of the severe gales during the last week, no less than 56 vessels have been totally wrecked or run ashore on the coasts of England and Holland” and that “the loss of life also has been considerable” (4). DW had been especially sensitive to such tragedies since her brother John’s death at sea in 1805.

– I do not regain my strength & Inside painful – Anne comes home

(51)

Ann Dawson (b. 1800?), the live-in cook and maid at RM from 1823–42.

–

Wednesday 29th – Still blustery – Wm at Funeral with Mr Carr

(52)

For Jane Irving (see 26 October).

– I do not get as well as before last Tuesday week.

Thursday [30 Oct.] – Just the same – blustery weather & Self weakly – Volumes of letters to read! (15 in number) [–] Better news of Mrs Southey – I hope Dora is doing well under the painful & weakening process of blisters &c

(53)

WW reported on 21 November that Mr. Carr, “having no doubt that an inflammation on the spine exists, has put [Dora] under a course of treatment – bleeding, blistering, and an almost perpetual recumbent posture” (Letters, 5:747). Blistering was considered an effective method for drawing internal inflammation out of the body.

–

Friday [31 Oct.] – very windy – Diana Dixon,

(54)

The Grasmere girl who had presented DW with this notebook earlier in the month.

who came to see us blown on by the north wind – I rose at one – now (at 4) have dined & grow tired

[November 1834]

Saturday [1 Nov.] – a Fine day, till evening – but cold – I feel the cold sadly –

Sunday [2 Nov.] – Dull & wet – still poorly but not much.

Monday, 3rd November – Dull morning, but little wind & W W sets off to Lowther in Sir T[homas] P[asley]’'s carriage

(55)

A week-long visit to Lowther (22 miles northeast of Rydal) to meet with his friend, patron, and political ally William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale (1757–1844).

– Heavy rain comes on, & alas! strong wind; but from the South – Mr Carr calls – pronounces Dora better & promises himself to treat her with Leeches & another blister in a few days –

Tuesday Novr 4th – very blustery & wet (South wind) – Busy & worn out finishing Mrs Hook’s

(56)

Ann Hook (née Farquhar, 1774–1844), widowed sister of Lady Farquhar’s first husband, Sir Robert Townsend Farquhar. In the autumn of 1832, Mrs. Hook had spent ten weeks at Fox Ghyll with Lady Farquhar and Letitia Luff (Letters, 5:566, 712–13).

Rug – to be sent off tomorrow – Jane

(57)

Jane Winder (1801–43), the Wordsworths’ maid from the late 1820s through her death in 1843 (Letters, 7:481, 485).

forced to finish my work at night – – The Dixons

(58)

Presumably Betty Dixon of Grasmere and her daughter Diana, who would instead come two days later.

prevented by rain, from dining with us – Owen Lloyd came – Mr Robinson in afternoon

Wednesday 5th                                       
very stormy night – & this morning a flood – – I hear Mr Carr below – Good news from Lowther of W’s journey &c [–] Lord L[onsdale] much pleased with the verses to his Lady

(59)

“Lines Written in the Album of the Countess of -------. November 5, 1834,” WW’s 82-line poetic tribute to Lord Lonsdale’s wife, Lady Augusta Lowther (née Fane, 1761–1838), Countess of Lonsdale (Last Poems, 276–79).

– very windy – very wet.

Thursday 6                                       
a fine bright day & bright moon – The Dixons, Mrs Cookson & Misses Parry

(60)

Penelope (1818–96) and Ellen (1820–97), the teenaged daughters of William and Penelope Parry (née Woollam, 1781–1855), who had inherited Gell’s Cottage in Grasmere upon the 1832 death of Mrs. Parry’s half-brother, Samuel Barber.

to dinner – Sadly tired [–] to bed soon after 4

Friday 7th                                       
After a dreadful stormy rainy night – morning as bad[.] Letters from Wm & S[ara] H[utchinson] – no bad news – yet his eyes delicate – Joanna arrives from Penrith

(61)

MW’s youngest sister, Joanna Hutchinson.

Saturday 8th A fine day but blustery –

Sunday 9 The same new clergyman as last Sunday. He is they say to marry Miss Briggs & now stays at A[mbleside] – Mr F[leming] not able to serve last Sunday, yet better & one of the Hearers today

(62)

While in Ambleside courting Margaret Elizabeth Briggs (1813–45), whom he would wed on 1 July 1835, the young Staffordshire curate Bryan Sneyd Broughton (1807–48) apparently officiated at Rydal Chapel in place of the ailing Rev. Fletcher Fleming (1795–1876). Rev. Broughton’s future father-in-law, William Briggs (1770–1851), was a Kendal native who, after a career as a Liverpool physician, had purchased Cumpstone Lodge in Ambleside from his fellow medical man Thomas Carr.

Monday 10th                                       
Clear day – I feel the cold & am not well. Joanna & M[ary] at Ambleside &c

Tuesday 11th Very fine – Wm arrives from Hallsteads

(63)

Returning from Lowther, WW apparently stopped at the Marshalls’ home on the shore of Ullswater.

– All well & Ellen safe & happy at Brighton

(64)

The Marshalls’ chronically ill fifth daughter, Ellen (1807–54), was presumably spending the winter at this fashionable town on England’s southern coast (Letters, 5:700).

– Joanna & M walked but I know not where – a long visit from Mrs Godwin – Lady Pasley called & sate some time – brought 3 flowers

Wednesday 12th                                       
Began a Rugg for Mrs Elliott – Jane Pasley dines here [–] Mr Carr expected for D’s back. Between 12 and one – The Death-bell tells me that poor Mrs Fleming’s sufferings (of Spring Cottage) are finished

(65)

Dorothy Fleming (née Moser, 1774–1834), who with her husband, Thomas (1763–1840), had owned Spring Cottage in Loughrigg since ca. 1820.

– Mrs Godwin did not expect her to live till Tuesday morning – Her sufferings from Cough & weakness very great – The cold air touches me – a painful evening – & no meeting at Prayers

Thursday 13th                                       
Very cold & clear – I am quite fearful of the air – Mr Carr is putting Leeches on D. – Just risen at 12 o’clock – Wm comes to put up C. Marshall’s lithographs – alas! in vain – he mistimes his visits every day

(66)

DW was apparently asleep or indisposed when WW came to hang the art prints which the Marshalls’ third daughter, Cordelia (1803–56), had sent with him from Hallsteads. On 27 December, MW would tell Jane Marshall that the pictures nearly covered the walls of DW’s room (LMW, 136; Letters, 6:262–63, 360).

– I read very slowly – Have not finished Collingwood

(67)

The military memoir she mentions reading on 22 October.

– Going to write to Mrs Ellwood with the worsteds,

(68)

Jane Ellwood (née Whelpdale, 1779–1855), a Penrith widow and childhood friend of the Hutchinson sisters who was a regular visitor to RM (see LSH, 140; LMW, 52, 302; Letters, 3:406). Worsted is thick wool yarn used in rug-making.

to be sent per next Carrier – James

(69)

James Dixon (1799–1878), the Wordsworths’ beloved gardener and handyman from the mid-1820s through MW’s death in 1859.

gone with Sir Edwd

(70)

The Wordsworths’ horse. On 24 July 1833, Dora described how, after an axle snapped on their carriage, the family remarkably escaped injury “thanks to Sir Edward[,] who stood still instantly & behaved as well as horse could do” (WT MS WLL / Wordsworth, Dora / 1 / 50).

to winter quarters

Friday [14 Nov.] I believe cold & clear but now (Tuesday) have forgotten

Saturday [15 Nov.] Rain & stormy. Inside not well

Sunday 16th Novr – Charming day – Mr Fleming dined here and afterwards went with our Folks to poor Mrs Flemings funeral

(71)

Likely Fletcher Fleming, the Rydal curate who may have been a distant relation of deceased.

–

Monday 17th– Rain in the morning – I was very poorly – This cold! this cold alas! alas! Mr Carr charmed with Dora’s improvement

Tuesday 18th                                       
a superlative day [–] Wm & M gone with the Paisleys to Bowness – Joanna has been at Ambleside [–] I am better

Wednesday Novr 19 Cold & clear. Rain in the Evening – Mrs Harrison & Mrs Ireland

(72)

Nancy Ireland (née Wordsworth, 1771–1840), the twice-widowed older sister of “Cousin Dorothy” Harrison (Letters, 3:161).

call – – Tired myself with writing to Mr Ferguson.

(73)

Edward Ferguson (1764–1843), a second cousin of DW with whom she had grown up in Halifax under the care of their common relative Elizabeth Threlkeld (later Rawson). In the final years before their “Aunt” Elizabeth’s passing in 1837, Mr. Ferguson was DW’s principal source of reports from Halifax (Letters, 5:565, 701).

Thursday 20th                                       
Very cold – It affects my inside – Sky dull & dark – Letters from Mr Grave,

(74)

Robert Perceval Graves (1810–93), a young Trinity College, Dublin graduate who, with an introduction from the poet Felicia Hemans, had called at RM earlier in 1834. With WW’s assistance, he would become Curate of Bowness in early 1835 (Letters, 5:637n., 5:707, 6:12–13).

Mr Robinson

(75)

Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867, DNB), the London lawyer who had become a close family friend and one of DW’s most cherished correspondents.

& Mr Courtenay

(76)

Philip Courtenay (1785–1842), a London barrister, Tory operative, and long-time friend and financial advisor of WW (Letters, 4:748).

– From [Jn W of Lth?] yesterday –

Friday 21st – I do not recollect

Saturday 22nd Novr                                       
Sarah H arrives

(77)

Returning from Keswick, where she had been assisting the Southeys. This is a rare instance in the RJ where DW spells her name Sarah rather than Sara.

– The day very fine – all pretty well at Keswick, & news from York rather better; but alas! I cannot help fearing that the poor sufferer

(78)

Edith Southey, who remained at the asylum in York.

will never be restored to much permanent comfort – nor her family to chearful confidence that all is well – Poorly in the Evening, but afterwards enjoyed S[ara]’s company – Dora more at ease – came up to prayers

Sunday 23rd a lovely day – dear William even proposed bearing me in his arms to the Terrace to view his last improvement

(79)

Possibly a continuation of the landscaping projects Dora informed Rotha Quillinan of in March 1833, when she wrote, “My Father has planted a beautiful Cedar near to Miss Wordsworths rock & another at the end of the Terrace - & he has made quite a gay little garden (or rather what in time will be gay) among the rocks near to your pretty seat in the cherry tree – & we call it ‘Rotha’s garden’” (WLL / Wordsworth, Dora / 1 / 47).

– Rather well & prayers up stairs –

Monday 24th                                       
[Hazy?] but bright & cold hoar frost – I am reading Adam Clarke the third volume with [undecaying?] interest.

(80)

The newly released biography mentioned above in her entries for 8 and 13 October.

Diana up to prayers – pretty well this evening though I had a woful night –

Tuesday 25th Novr. B[ottle] Dinner                                       
 

(81)

A belatedly inserted record of having begun a new bottle of laudanum (see note for 22 October).

Dull & cloudy – Poor D in bed with a blister put on this morning. Miss Watsons

(82)

Some combination of the four adult daughters of the late Bishop Richard Watson—Harriet (1779–1835), Elizabeth (1780–1859), Charlotte (1783–1859), and Mary (1785?–1847)—still living at Calgarth Hall, their family estate on Windermere (see note for 14 October).

have called

Wednesday 26th – Showery – I am disordered within

Thursday 27th                                       
This day very short – chiefly employed in sewing – Adam Clarke

Friday 28th                                       
Murray sends Qly Review

(83)

The influential London publisher John Murray (1778–1843, DNB) had sent the November 1834 number of his Quarterly Review, which included an effusive 41-page review of two new editions of WW’s poems that honored him for driving stodgy “poetic diction” out of fashion (319) and having conveyed “a deeper sense of the dignity of his calling” than any previous poet ([Taylor], “Wordsworth’s Poetical Works,” 319, 338). WW had already been informed of this review by its anonymous author, his friend and admirer Henry Taylor.

[–] Joanna helps me all the morning mending Chair covers &c – I was uneasy & weakly – Letters & presents from Hampstead – John returned from Italy – Charles’s Love is desperate

(84)

DW’s brother Christopher and at least two of his three sons, John (1805–39) and Charles (1806–92, DNB), were apparently visiting the Hoares’ home near Hampstead Heath (see note for 6 October; for their earlier stays with the Hoares, see WLMS 1 / 9 / 3 and 1 / 11 / 7). The eldest son, John, had just returned from a long trip in Florence, where he pursued his classical interests while trying to restore his fragile health. The middle son, Charles, had also spent much of 1833–34 on the Continent, and, while touring the Louvre, he had fallen in “Love at First Sight” with Charlotte Day, a clergyman’…

– Poorly all the Evening, but much worse in the night. Heavy Rain & Boisterous wind – alas! the poor Sailors & their Ships

(85)

See note on 28 October.

[–] Present to D & letter from [Sarah Courtenay?]

(86)

While this appears to read “Sarah,” the letter was more likely from Louisa Courtenay (1814–1904), the only daughter of the Wordsworths’ friend Philip Courtenay (see note for 20 November). Writing home from London in 1836, WW would ask the family, “Pray send me for Miss Courtenay’s Album the 2nd Stanza of my little Poem to the Moon” (Letters, 6:241).

Saturday 29th Nor                                       
Dark – dark & wet & windy [–] Smoke below stairs – Clear in my Room – Feeble with exertion but pain relieved, though still it troubles me – Newspapers filled with discussions on the dismissed Ministry & conjectures about the new

(87)

In mid-November, William IV stunned the nation by sacking the Whig government of Lord Melbourne and offering the premiership to the Tory leader Sir Robert Peel. This sparked the chain of political developments that DW chronicles through the rest of this notebook.

Sunday 30th Novr

(88)

This and the following entry are the only ones in this notebook written in pencil.


Fine clear but cold day [–] Joanna visits Mrs Godwin who is ill – Mr G[odwin] ill in London – Dora better – All the Cooksons called – Poor William very ill & sick – In bed most of day – Better before night – I was very much pained in the evening

[December 1834]

Monday Decr 1st – I am weak & in pain – Rose not till past 2 o’clock – Mrs Cookson here – Wm well, but weak [–] Dora tells me her Shoulder hurts less today than ever since she began

Tuesday 2nd Decr                                       
a lovely morning – Joanna gone to Ambleside. The warm fire, though air is frosty raised thermomr to 66 – Mr Carr has been here, anxious about Dora’s bowels – will send me powder for mine are sadly uneasy though I had a tolerable night [–] Rose but once

Wednesday [3 Dec.] – a tolerable day. Mr Pearson sends a beautiful white cat – My tears fall for Robin who had just treated me with his best song – & perched on my Sill while I scattered for it its food

(89)

This well-intentioned gift from William Pearson (1780–1856), a retired banker who kept a farm in Crosthwaite, left DW terrified that the cat would attack the robin who had taken to visiting her each day (Letters, 5:187, 6:480; LMW, 136). In the Fenwick notes to his poem “The Redbreast,” WW would later describe how, after the family “banished” cats from RM, robins occasionally entered the home through open windows. One particular bird, he recalled, “took up its abode” in DW’s sickroom near the end of 1834 “and at night used to perch upon a nail from which a picture had hung” and “sing and fan h…

[–] Still disordered with constant uneasy pain – Mr Carr trying new medicine – Dora continues better –

Thursday [4 Dec.] – Dull & wet – & I weakly – Lady Paisley to tea [–] I could not see her –

Friday [5 Dec.] – – Lady P[asley] & Jane

(90)

The Pasleys’ 7-year-old daughter.

called – very weakly all day – Owen

(91)

Owen Lloyd.

to dinner – Saw him a short while – Prayers up stairs

Saturday 6th Decr                                       
Dull cloudy & dark as most of the week – Poor Mrs Godwin continues ill. Mr G[odwin] returned & resolves to leave this country

Wednesday [24 Dec.] – Christmas Eve                                       
I take the pen for the first time, having been confined to my Bed entirely since Monday 7th Decr

(92)

The 8th rather than the 7th. On 27 December, MW reported that DW was “suffering from rather a severe bilious attack, which has kept her almost a prisoner to her bed for the last three weeks until yesterday, when she, for an hour, resumed her favourite chair – and though she is again thank God recovering, she has lost much strength – and it may be some time before it would be quite right for her to resume her correspondence” (LMW, 135).

– at the end of a week a Diarrhea was stopped, & my appetite began slowly to return but for many days my pain was as great as ever, & constant. Saturday [20 Dec.] I began to suffer less & have gone on improving – pains less violent & less frequent & strength returning, though Body weakness will not let me stand on my legs, & I yet fear I must lie some time – Inside aches constantly but it is bearable. Now & then comes what I call a “piping agony.”

I hope dearest Dora is doing well but she has no appetite, & often, very often, severe sufferings from the stomach – The weather has been generally mild & delightful – Often dazzling in brightness – Shortest day

(93)

The 21st of December, or the winter solstice.

light & long & a lovely Sunrise. D[itt]o yesterday – and now the like (Xmas Eve), bright as summer, & lovely peeping of the Sun first at the edge of the Hill.

A letter from Bertha with better news of her poor Mother

(94)

Bertha Southey. On 27 December, MW would mention “encouraging reports” of “poor Mrs. Southey’s state of mind” (LMW, 136).

[–] D[itt]o from L[or]d Lowther wishing Wm to meet him at Lowther. He seems heartless at the prospects of the Conservatives – “overpersuaded to take office”

(95)

Stung by a series of political defeats in the Age of Reform, Lord Lowther and his fellow conservatives had grown cynical about the new Peel government’s chances of staying in power (see note for 30 November; Letters, 5:748).

–

On Saturday (20th) the Arnolds arrived & called in evening –

Monday [Tuesday, 23 Dec.?] (i e yesterday)

(96)

Since DW wrote this entry on Wednesday, 24 December, “yesterday” was actually a Tuesday.

I saw Mrs Elliott & Mrs Arnold – & on Friday or Saturday Mrs Cookson who is now gone with H[annah]

(97)

Mrs. Cookson’s 22-year-old daughter, Hannah.

to Liverpool. – We expect our dear Willy today –

Sunday Decr 27th [28th]                                       
Dear William arrived on New years eve

(98)

Willy Wordsworth, arriving from Carlisle on Christmas (not New Year’s) Eve.

– quite well, but as usual had a cold next day [–] The pleasure of seeing him & talking with him produced a bad night with threatenings of a return; & on Xmas day

(99)

Also DW’s 63rd birthday.

I was languid though pains less violent & less frequent – and now this day i.e. Sunday Decr 27th [28th] I am much better, & now write on my chair after ¾ of an hour’s sitting up – Dora has paid me a cheerful visit – She looks & is considerably better, though eating very little – Her flesh seems to be returning – Back still very painful when standing for a short time – Jane Pasley dines with her, a sign of stronger feelings – This morning brought the best account we have yet had of poor Mrs Southey – – a summons from L[or]d Lowther – Wm will be at L[owther] on Wednesday

(100)

WW had been “summoned” to help Lord Lonsdale strategize for the upcoming general election.

– William has long been threatened by a Bowel complaint & last week was really very much disordered – Four Doses of my medicine on Friday seem to have cured him – for the present at least – yet I cannot help anxiety when he goes to Lowther

On Tuesday Evening Decr 30th Wm came to me rejoiced to hear thickly pattering rain after so long a pause – I could not but feel a touch of sympathy with him in remembrance of many a moist tramp; but sh[oul]d have been better pleased with bright moon & stars, & our late splendid evenings & mornings – Wind very high at night – D could not rest for it against her window –

[January 1835]

– New-years-day – as delight as ever – Twice as long as yesterday – Lovely sun-rise & Set. – I much better – no sharp pains, or languid misery, till after dinner – never surely in the 63 years that I have lived can there have been such brilliant New-years & Christmas days – Such Xmas days (two or 3) I recollect – One especially when we sate on the side of Nab Hill

(101)

An elevation between Grasmere and Rydal that looks out upon Rydal Water.

to sun & rest ourselves, coming from Grasmere Church – – I packed J[ane] Arnold’s rug & sent it – Col. Lowther

(102)

Col. Henry Cecil Lowther (1790–1867), second son of Lord Lonsdale, who, after a distinguished army career, became MP for Westmorland at 22 and held the seat for the next 55 years.

between 7 & 8 to Tea –

Friday Jany 2nd 1835 –                                       
Another year begun! and what a brilliant sun-rise – Oh! that men’s hearts could be softened! – then elevated by the goodness & beauty of all that is done for & spread before us! – Willy is gone out with Sir M[into] F[arquhar]. Dora’s last blister most efficacious

(103)

See note for 30 October.

– Looks infinitely improved & Mr Carr tells me his dear Wife is much better

Friday Jany 9th                                       
Still in bed but thankful was I this morning to hear the rain pattering – fresh snow on Hills but air much warmer – a visit from Mr Carr & a Cap from Lady R Paisley

(104)

Presumably Lady Maria Paisley.

& a 4th Snipe from Sir Minto

(105)

Minto’s having bagged four of these notoriously elusive birds in since his arrival a few days earlier attests to both his skill and avidity as a hunter.

– Willy left us for Lowther yesterday

(106)

Presumably stopping to visit his father and Lord Lonsdale while returning to Carlisle.

– Wm (the Father) writes in good spirits but it is 3 days since – no contest! This is excellent news

(107)

Allies of the powerful “Lowther interest” were celebrating Col. George Wilson’s decision not to challenge John Foster Barham, the Tory MP for Kendal, in the coming election (Letters, 6:8n.).

– – Mr Fleming of R[ayrigg] takes ill at Bootle & all his Children sent for.

(108)

WW’s schoolfriend Rev. John Fleming (1768–1835) lived at Rayrigg, his ancestral estate south of Ambleside, and was Curate of Bowness and Rector of Bootle, the village near the Cumberland coast where he would pass away on 11 January. His son oldest son, Fletcher, had been minister at Rydal Chapel since its opening in 1824.

How recent the deaths of poor Coleridge & Chas Lamb!

(109)

The Wordsworths’ long-time friends Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb had died, respectively, on 25 July and 27 December 1834.

& should Mr F[leming] go Wm will have to mourn over one who was his dearest Friend in Youth!! – Dora [ ] [strong?] – Mary Fisher here yesterday. I was sick & very poorly after Tea – Better today

Thursday Jany 22nd, 1835                                       
On Thursday the 22nd I write after a pause from the 9th – I cannot recal particulars but many events have happened – The Elections

(110)

Polling had begun for the general election sparked by Peel’s dissolution of Parliament in December. While the Tories would gain 98 seats in this contest, a progressive coalition led by Lord Melbourne would retain its majority.

& the Death of poor Mr Fleming among the most prominent– – Wm is recovered – I wish I could say so of Dora; but she is better certainly – The weather has been very trying – Frost, snow[,] Hail – wind – Monday night was dreadful, & Miss E Dowling expected to be crossing the Sea from Dublin

(111)

Eliza Dowling, who, with her sister Jane, still ran the girls’ school in Ambleside that they had overseen since their sister Ann’s marriage to Thomas Carr. She presumably had been visiting relatives in Ireland from her father’s side of the family.

– My weak body has yielded to all changes, & some times suffered severely, but though Frost Continues I am today pretty well – but had two bad afternoons – yesterday & Tuesday. Jane Arnold & Tom here today [–] I have seen many of my Friends – Mrs Cookson yesterday after a bad Cold – Hannah C[ookson] much benefitted by her journey to Liverpool

(112)

DW records their departure in her entry for 23 December.

[–] M. W. has had one of her worst colds, yet, as usual, recovered speedily – James

(113)

James Dixon, the Wordsworths’ handyman and servant (see note for 13 November).

has the rheumatism. The frosty air has taken up all characters & hues – Dazzling sunshine, dark haze, & a blackness over all that was not white.

Friday Jany 23 rd                                       
A mild thaw & the Sick may be thankful – (10 o’clock) I have been suffering much tho’ with little pain after a better night than usual. Only once out of Bed – My daily recurring fits of uneasiness very oppressive; but shorter-lived & much less severe than latterly –

Willy arrived yester evening from the Election – very gay for the good Cause triumphs – Stanley & Irton

(114)

After traveling to Keswick for the election, Willy detoured through Rydal on his way back to Carlisle to share news of the Conservatives’ victories in local contests (Letters, 6:14). Both Lowther-backed candidates for western Cumberland, Edward Stanley (1790–1863) and Samuel Irton (1796–1866), had survived significant challenges (Letters, 5:477–78n, 5:529, 6:14).

[–] Wm walked from Keswick without fatigue though to Wytheburne

(115)

Hamlet 5.5 miles northwest of Rydal at the foot of Thirlmere. Like Willy, WW presumably had been in Keswick for the election.

roads very slippery – & afterwards rough & uneasy with snow – a pleasing proof of present strength – God grant it may last! – Last evening I overheard him very lively telling over election feats & stories – Could not see him for 2 hours; & then not strong.

[February 1835]

Tuesday 3rd Feby – So long have I been idle – & now I seem to have little or nothing to record[.] The weather in general unusually mild – Sometimes oppressive with chillness & dark; but very often as bright as in May. The Birds sing in concert –& here I will record that not a day of last year, or of the beginning of this, has passed without the song of Birds – one or more – except perhaps in the few days of keen frost at the beginning of last month & in the time of Elections – & even then my own companion Robin cheared my bed-room with its slender subdued piping.

(116)

See note for 3 December.

Nothing remarkable has occurred – I do not gather strength – Of late have been well & ill

4th Feby                                       
Again an April or May day – Joanna & Eliz

(117)

Ebba Hutchinson.

walked to Ambleside, & she has been reading to me this Evening instead of morning – Began Lady P[asley]’s rug on Monday – I get slowly on both with work & Books – can do little at night – The Arnolds gone today

(118)

As a local landowner, Thomas Arnold had made the long trip from Rugby to support the local Whig candidate in the election (a fact DW disapprovingly notes below on 30 March).

– Miss Penroses

(119)

Likely either sisters or cousins of Mary Penrose Arnold.

called yesterday – I could not see them – Lent me an interesting letter from good old Mrs Empson.

(120)

Presumably Ann Empson (née Kelk, 1761–1835) of Yokefleet Hall in eastern Yorkshire. A distant relative of DW’s “Aunt” Elizabeth Rawson (see note for 19 November) through marriage, Mrs. Empson had raised five boys on her own after being widowed young. As detailed in Notebook 10, DW socialized regularly with Mrs. Empson while staying near Yokefleet in August 1829.

Fletcher Fleming gone to Mrs Taylor’s funeral & our John expected here to do Sunday’s duty while he attends his Sisters to Church

(121)

John Wordsworth (1803–75), WW and MW’s oldest son, officiated at Rydal Chapel in the stead of Rev. Fletcher Fleming (1795–1876), who was accompanying his sisters—Agnes Dorothy (1804–66), Barbara (1807–97), and Jane Isabella (1809–1902)—to the funeral of their aunt Margaret Taylor (née Lewthwaite, 1783–1835) (obit. in WG, 31 January 1835).

– Wm & M[ary] wishing to go to Keswick, but a letter from Mr Courtenay keeps him at home, anxious respecting Money with Bankers

(122)

Philip Courtenay, WW’s London-based financial advisor (see note for 20 November).

– Have seen various people during last week, but Mrs Godwyn remains almost a prisoner [–] News from Keswick & York not good

(123)

Regarding Edith Southey’s recovery in York.

– Dora certainly gains ground – 3 of the inflamed parts now well – two are yet untouched by remedies applied above – – My pains much diminished; but I do not gain strength

5th Febry Friday – a very wet night & a day the opposite of yesterday – wind & Rain with two or three startling flashes of sunshine – then again the black cloud. Mrs Cookson expected but cannot come – Interesting letters from Sr R Peel, Ld Lonsdale, & Mr Thornton, calculated to set Wm’s anxieties at rest.

(124)

Following the advice of Lord Lonsdale, WW had informed the new prime minister, Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850, DNB), and the nation’s stamps commissioner, John Thornton (1783–1861), of his “wish to give up my office of Distributor of Stamps which I have held nearly 22 years, in case his Lordship through the present prime minister could procure a transfer of it to my son [Willy]” (Letters, 6:11, 20–21). The hope was to push through such an arrangement before the Tories lost their tenuous grip on power.

Friday at Supper time began fresh Bottle

(125)

A new bottle of laudanum (see note for 22 October).

Saturday 6th Febry                                       
a tolerable day, but coldish – & I have had a bad night which, with cold, brought on hoarseness &c

Sunday 7th Fine morning – but wind & cold came on – Weak & kept close in bed.

Monday 8th a bright lovely morning; but very sharp – so that Wm is afraid to go to Keswick – This is very unlucky for S[outhey] is going to York this week – I have turned to the 1st page of this Book & find these words “The Grandson a noble Boy!”

(126)

See entry for 4 October.

– and now he is reduced to a skeleton, though supposed to be recovering – I have many fears – Dora mends very slowly – Letter from Mr Jones,

(127)

Robert Jones (1769–1835), WW’s close friend from Cambridge who had accompanied him on two journeys—their tour of Revolutionary France and ascent of Mount Snowdon—immortalized in The Prelude. Consumed by political business and his pending trip to London, WW would not respond to this letter until 30 March, just four days before Jones’s passing (Letters, 6:34–37; obit. in Liverpool Mercury, 10 April 1835).

& from Willy in great spirits – My hoarseness &c passing away. The air improves – & much I wish that Wm had felt himself able to go to Keswick. Cayenne Beef

(128)

Cayenne pepper from the West Indies had been introduced to British cooking in the mid-18th century.

made me so sick [–] bilious, heart burn

Tuesday [9 Feb.] Still cold & changeable. Wm afraid to go to K[eswick]. The Sun often shines [–] Dora’s leeches on – Sick & weak & cannot eat – I weakly but seldom in much pain, tho’ once very bad [–] Mrs Cookson poorly[.] All at Ambleside – Elizth

(129)

Ebba Hutchinson.

at Mrs Godwin’s – Tableaux sports [–] I had a visit from Mr F[letcher]’s bust of Mr Hamilton – here past 12

(130)

DW’s obscure description is elucidated by the letter SH sent her nephew Tom Hutchinson Jr. on 16 February, which relates how Tom’s sister Ebba recently attended “three Parties – one at the Ivy Cot – one at Sr Thos’ [the Pasleys’] & another at Mrs Godwins – at all which they amused themselves with Tableaux i.e. a representation of the paintings of celebrated Masters, by living subjects dressed up in character & placed within a frame – Mr Fletcher the Statuary (who has been making a Bust of Mr Hamilton) & Sir Minto Farquhar (Lady F’s Son) introduced this amusement into the Vale to the great deli…

Wednesday [10 Feb.]                                       
Very dull[,] dark & cold – a visit from poor Dora at past 4 o’clock to light a candle – Sir Minto bade me Farewell – The latter part of the day pleasant & chearful – My limbs unusually weak – With difficulty I went to window & back.

Thursday [11 Feb.] –                                       
I am able to read but little, therefore Eliz[abe]th’s readings are a great comfort to me – The Harrisons called

Tuesday 17th Febry This day Wm & Mary W left us in car to go to London.

(131)

With DW’s and Dora’s conditions having stabilized, WW and MW went to London to lobby for the transfer of his stamps distributorship to Willy (see note for 5 February). The would arrive back in Rydal on 24 April.

The morning beautiful [–] warm as in May – Both in good spirits till W’s last parting came, when I was overcome

(132)

Although DW could not have known that this would be her brother’s final appearance in the RJ, her wording is eerily reminiscent of her opening GJ entry from 35 years earlier, where, in relating her anguished parting from WW on 14 May 1800, she writes that “My heart was so full that I could hardly speak to W when I gave him a farewell kiss” (1).

– My Spirits much depressed since Saturday by Kitchen disturbances – Wages &c. – More than I have done I cannot do; therefore shall only state my sorrow that our Friendship is so little prized & that they can so easily part from the helpless invalids – but that still, if disposed to repent, I would endeavour to make all right again.

(133)

The Wordsworths’ maids Anne Dawson and Jane Winder (see notes for 28 October and 4 November) apparently leveraged WW and MW’s pending departure, and their employers’ understandable concerns about leaving two “helpless invalids” behind, to petition for higher wages. When citing this entry in their biography of DW, Gittings and Manton seem to intentionally omit the phrase “Kitchen disturbances – Wages &c.” in order to misleadingly suggest that DW’s “uncharacteristic, almost childish” distress emanated not from a sense of betrayal by their long-time domestics but from WW and MW’s perceived “deser…

Good news from Sir Minto of Mrs Luff

(134)

Presumably concerning Letitia Luff’s pending return to Fox Ghyll after an extended absence.

– Joanna has had good news from the Isle of M[an] – Morrison’s pills have cured Henry for the present & Joanna consents to stay with us.

(135)

Joanna extended her visit after learning that her ailing brother, Henry Hutchinson (1769–1839)—who remained back home on the Isle of Man while she was in Rydal caring for DW and Dora—had begun feeling significantly better since he had started taking Morrison’s pills, a widely advertised cure-all consisting mainly of aloe and cream of tartar.

Southey & Cuthbert going southward tomorrow

(136)

With his family still in crisis, Robert Southey decided to take his youngest child, Cuthbert, to Tarring, Sussex, to live with his eldest daughter, Edith May Warter (née Southey, 1804–71), and her husband, John (1806–78). Southey then headed to York, where he discharged his wife from the mental hospital where she had been committed (Speck, Robert Southey, 224–25, 231).

Wednesday 18th                                       
Southey passed through Rydal this morning[.] Fine morning – but rain comes on in Evening – Mrs Cookson at Tea – & with me – Mary Fisher & flowers – my mind much relieved & the whole house pleased that I have again settled with A[nn] & J[ane] = No change! & this a comfort

(137)

A resolution of the previous day’s conflict with the maids at RM.

– We hope Wm & M are safe at their Inn close to London at 11 o’clock this night – dark & wet.

Thursday 19 Snow & Sunshine & cold [–] Eliz. gone to school for the first time

(138)

Too busy caring for DW and Dora to properly tutor Ebba at home, SH enrolled her as a day-student at the Dowlings’ school in Ambleside (LSH, 440).

[–] Hopeful letter from Willy [–] Now, at 4 very dark & cold – My nights are much better – the trouble of hunger gone – but cough still bad & phlegm choking –

Friday 20th                                       
Had a painful time last night – starved to marble – Eliz. kept all night by snow-storm

(139)

The snow having prevented her return home after the school day in Ambleside.

– – Better today than I expected – indeed the air is warmer – showery

Saturday 21st                                       
a better night – Jane Garside

(140)

Jane Garside (née Ashburner, 1786–1857), a daughter of the Wordsworths’ former Town End neighbor Thomas Ashburner, who had been a teenager when DW and WW arrived at Dove Cottage in late 1799. Since marrying the warehouseman John Garside in 1808, she had lived in Kendal, but she was apparently back in the area visiting family.

sate an hour [–] Much company below – Mr R[obinson] 3 hours – Children in kitchen

(141)

Presumably several of Charles Robinson’s children.

– No letter from Wm & M [–] To me a great disappointment

Sunday 22nd                                       
Rain & blackness [–] letter from Travellers with good News – all well. The change of Speaker a sad damper on the day of their arrival

(142)

In the 19 February election for speaker of the House of Commons, the Tory incumbent Charles Manners-Sutton, 1st Viscount Canterbury (1780–1845, DNB), had lost by ten votes to the Whig candidate, James Abercromby, 1st Baron Dunfermline (1776–1858, DNB). While attending Cambridge at the start of the century, Manners-Sutton had been tutored by DW’s brother Christopher Wordsworth, and thereafter his powerful father, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1805 until his death in 1828, had promoted Christopher’s rise in the Church and university.

Monday 23rd                                       
a Cold day – I felt it inwardly – again good news – but W & M. too full of bustle – careless of strength, & too careful of money – Mrs Cookson for some time

Tuesday 24th                                       
A dreadful storm in the night – very weak this morning – 12 o’clock strikes & I have neither read nor worked – hardly thought – a sad letter from Mrs Hook – Her Son ill

(143)

Despite this scare, both of Ann Hook’s sons, Walter (1798–1875, DNB) and Robert (1799–1873), survived into the 1870s.

[–] Letters from Willy – Newbiggin

(144)

Newbiggin Hall, the family home near Penrith of DW’s aunt Charlotte Crackanthorpe (née Cust, 1752–1843) and this relative’s three unmarried children, William (1790–1888), Charlotte (1791–1865), and Sarah (1794–1845).

[–] Hendingham

(145)

Likely from Catharine Doughty (née Wordsworth, 1795–1853), a second cousin of DW (and older sister of Dorothy Harrison) who lived near Whitehaven in the hamlet of Hensingham.

– Miss Honeyman

(146)

Mary Honeyman (1775–1851), a Penrith spinster whose extended stay at RM in the autumn of 1825 is chronicled in Notebook 1.

Wednesday 25th Snow fallen & air cold but Sun gets out [–] Eliz at school after dinner yesterday & this morning off again – brisk & eager – Mrs Hook’s letter came today – & today it is that my work begins at past 12. These winds will keep dear Joanna among us

(147)

The weather made sailing home to the Isle of Man too dangerous.

– On Monday began a new Rugg for Lady P[asley] or Mrs Cookson

[March 1835]

Monday March  9th                       
Have not looked at my Book since Wed[nes]day (25th) & hardly know how the time has gone – not profitably alas! for my reading has been small – & how to lie easiest and quietest has been my chief care. The cold has affected my bowels – Today I am much better after an unusually good night – Wm & M[ary] write chearfully – lodgings quitted – now at Mrs Gee’s

(148)

Fanny Gee (1772–1846), a close friend of the Wordsworths since the four years (1817–21) she and her late husband, Capt. George Gee, spent at Ivy Cottage in Rydal. WW and MW were visiting her in the northwestern London suburb of Hendon, where she had run a school since her husband’s 1827 passing left her in dire need (Letters, 5:699n.).

– will go to Miss Fenwick’s today.

(149)

Isabella Fenwick (1783–1856), an admirer of WW’s poetry who in May 1830 and again in June 1831 had visited RM with her quasi-relation, the aspiring critic and playwright Henry Taylor (1800–86, DNB) (see RMVB). Although Fenwick’s permanent home was in Bath, Taylor had persuaded her to spend winters in London, where they typically shared a rented home (Taylor, Autobiography, 104–05).

Continual changes.

(150)

Presumably commenting on WW and MW’s crowded itinerary (cf. DW’s entry for 23 February).

Miss Wilson dead [–] has soon followed her Sister in Ireland whom she was to see.

(151)

Jane Wilson (1783–1835) died in Cork on 7 February while visiting her sister Grace Cashel (née Wilson, 1782–1835), who would herself pass away thirteen days later (Cumberland Pacquet, 10 March 1835; Gordon, “Christopher North”, 1:3). Both women were older sisters of Professor John Wilson (1785–1854, DNB), the eminent Scottish man of letters who had once been a close friend of the Wordsworths.

Mr Papendick is dead.

(152)

George Ernest Papendick (1788–1835), the royal consul to Hanover with whom Willy Wordsworth had lived and studied in 1829–1831, died in Bremen on 5 February 1835 (London Packet and New Lloyd’s Evening Post, 27 February 1835).

Mr Sharpe very ill

(153)

Richard Sharp (1759–1835, DNB), a legendary wit, dissenting Whig, and friend to many of the age’s leading poets (including WW). His charisma and conviviality had earned him the nickname “Conversation Sharp.” He would die on 30 March (Letters, 6:41).

[–] Bertha & Kate here since last Thursday. Better news from York & from Tarring this morning very good.

 

(154)

See note for 17 February concerning Robert Southey’s trip to Tarring and York.

––––––––––––––––––

Mrs Harrison just gone – Alas, tho’ well when she came I am tired – Godwin comes to see me (Tuesday at dinner B[ottle]

(155)

A new bottle of laudanum (see note for 22 October).

)

Friday March 13th                                       
Since Monday idle & good-for-nothing – Sickness every day [–] yesterday eat no meat & stomach better, though unsettled & cannot bear solid food – Mr Carr [visit?] & new medicines – Good news today – all at ease – carriages at W[hiteh]all &c &c. Mr Rogers absent a week – Leaves use of Car[ria]ge & servants

(156)

An update from London, where WW had met with government ministers in Whitehall concerning the potential transfer of his distributorship and was now staying (with MW) in the St. James home of his friend and fellow poet Samuel Rogers (1763–1855, DNB).

– This day fine & very bright – Snow much melted – The whole of the week (till now) very bad – deep snow – wind – hail – cold – many trees blown down – Fir tree, & old elder above Mrs Jobson’s wall

(157)

Jane Jopson (née Watson) of Wythburn, the small village between Grasmere and Keswick. She and her husband, Matthew (1753–1837)—who appears in the GJ (3)—were the long-time proprietors of the Horse’s Head Inn in Wythburn.

– Better public news than expected

(158)

Possibly concerning Peel’s continued hold on the premiership.

Saturday March 14th                                       
Snow goes fast – Still poorly; but Mr Carr’s prescription very good – Yet today (the 4th time) my stomach has repelled my dinner – very rainy night.

Sunday 15th                                       
Fine day. Squeamish but no Rejection of food – Elizth

(159)

Ebba Hutchinson.

read B[isho]p Middleton at night[.]

(160)

Likely the Life of the Right Reverend Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, D. D., Late Bishop of Calcutta (London: Rivington, 1831) by Charles Webb Le Bas. A schoolmate of Coleridge and Lamb, Middleton (1769–1822, DNB) became the inaugural Bishop of Calcutta in 1814 and remained in that office until his death in 1822.

The greatest evil attending my present disordered state is that I can read or work little or none, but I have kind Friends to read when leisure allows. S H & B[ertha] & Kate binding Books most of the day all last week

(161)

The Southey girls were applying skills they had acquired in helping to care for their father’s vast library at Greta Hall to the considerably smaller book collection at RM. Their brother Cuthbert later chronicled how their father tasked “his daughters, aided by any female friends who might be staying with them,” with binding his more “ragged and dirty” books in colored cotton fabric. He then explains that “the ladies would often suit the pattern to the contents, clothing a Quaker work or a book of sermons in sober drab, poetry in some flowery design, and sometimes contriving a sly piece of sat…

–

Monday 16th March                                       
This has been a bright fine day – yet not showerless – Mr Carr & Mr Robinson – very pleasant news from London public & private – I now hope we shall conquer the Radicals[.]

(162)

As reported in a letter MW and WW sent from London.

SH & Girls at Lady Farquahars to tea

Tuesday, March 17th                                       
Grey dark & dull & I am weakly after a night with fits of sharp pain, & sound sleep. Three days ago I heard that good Mr & Mrs Elliott were stopped at Chester by Mr E’s illness – Their poor Sister dying & they on their way to attend her deathbed.

(163)

Thomasine Anne Elliott (1758–1835), an older sister of John Elliott and close friend of the writer Joanna Baillie, would die in Awliscombe, Devon, on 1 April (Slagle, Collected Letters, 1:445–46). John Elliott himself would pass away in Ambleside on 11 October.

This morning another heavy shock Mr Grave

(164)

Robert Perceval Graves, the young Irishman who had recently become Curate of Bowness (see note for 20 November).

called from Bowness by tidings of his Brother’s dangerous illness. Owen Lloyd brought this sad news on Sunday night

Friday March 20th                                       
Days and nights disturbed by sickness & pain – After two doses of medicine I hope the bile is overcome – yesterday my pains were very severe. Now I am in comparative ease but very weak Except in Legs – The left is much stronger – heat gone & circulation improved. Mr & Mrs Elliott returned – Mrs Annie E [better?].

(165)

The sister mentioned in the preceding entry.

Poor Mr E! he says his illness at Chester has taken 10 years from his life – Owen Lloyd below stairs. Joanna knitting in easy chair, & Elizth writing on window-seat [beside?] her. The weather is now mild & dry. Birds warble all day long – very busy when I awoke after my early sleep – to me a second day-light, the first I have had after 5 o’clock – I can neither read nor work, & two days has a letter to Mrs de Q.

(166)

Margaret De Quincey (née Simpson, 1796–1837) and her husband, Thomas, were then in Edinburgh coping with crippling debt, chronic illnesses, and the recent death of their eldest son, William (see WT MS WLMS A / Coleridge, Sara / 34).

lain halting at the 2nd sentence – I hope better things tomorrow[.] B[ottle] at dinner

(167)

Another new bottle of laudanum (see note for 22 October).

Saturday 21st                                       
Weather dry clear & chearing, but a sharp wind brushes away all greenness.

Monday, 30th March – Thus far & nothing very cheary to record only I hope poor Dora is essentially better tho’ at a slow pace – She gains some strength & is less averse from food, yet appetite very small. I have been better & worse. Often very sick. – Yesterday not much – sickness but no appetite & dislike to almost all food except Arrow Root Bread & Biscuit.

(168)

Arrowroot starch from the West Indies was often added to baked goods as a palliative for digestive complaints.

Today I have begun to knit, & can read a little. We lost Joanna & the Southeys on Wednesday

(169)

Joanna Hutchinson was returning to the Isle of Man and Bertha and Kate Southey to Keswick.

– a sad loss[.] Sara still busy with Book binding begun by them. Poor things! They send us better tidings of their dear Mother who is expected at K[eswick] on Wednesday night. Mrs Lovel going with J[oanna] to the Isle of Man.

(170)

Mary Lovell (née Fricker, 1771–1862), a widowed sister of Edith Southey and Sarah Coleridge who had been at Greta Hall helping with the family crisis, was preparing to return to the Isle of Man, where she shared a home with her sisters Martha and Eliza (LSH, 442; Speck, Robert Southey, 232).

Our Folks were to dine at Cambridge on Friday.

(171)

After their stay in London, MW and WW went to Cambridge to visit his brother Christopher and attend a dinner that WW’s former college, St. John’s, had organized in his honor (Barker, 666).

An affecting letter of advice from a young woman, cured of a spine complaint by a Woman at Milnthorp, who had received instruction from the blind Doctor who visited & tortured poor Miles Huddleston.

(172)

Before succumbing to long-term illness in 1829, the Wordsworths’ neighbor Miles Huddleston (1802–29) had apparently sought treatment from Thomas Huddart (1788?–1833), the “Blind Doctor” of Preston whose advertisements boasted of his remarkable ability to “cure Paralytic Affections, Spinal Complaints, Pains in the Limbs, Lumbago, Rheumatism, &c. by means of the Shampouing or Rubbing System, and the application of a fluid, which he practised successfully upwards of twenty years in the Indies” (Liverpool Mercury, 3 January 1834). After the “Blind Doctor’s” passing in late 1833, his wife took over…

Letter from Mrs Arnold – The active zealous Doctor talks of a visit to Fox How at Easter – a week’s visit! – Better excused however than his last to vote for a Destructive Member. Happily not successful.

(173)

In January, the politically liberal Dr. Arnold had made the long trip from Rugby to vote for the (ultimately unsuccessful) Whig candidate in the local election (see entry for 22 January).

S. H. & Elizath at Grasmere Church – the whole parish in trouble at the threatened Loss of Mr Kingsley, & the Bishop cannot exclude Sir Richard unless a fresh appeal is made by the Parish.

(174)

By 1832 the chronic alcoholism of Sir Richard le Fleming (1791–1857), Rector of Windemere and Grasmere since the early 1820s, became such an impediment that he was placed on indefinite leave and replaced by the young Irish curate James Kingsley (1809–39). Three years on, Fleming was using his family’s influence to have himself reinstated and his popular replacement evicted from the rectory attached to the living. This struck many, including the Wordsworths, as an unusually egregious case of church politics trumping the spiritual well-being of local parishioners (Letters, 4:370, 5:648, 6:19, 6:…

Old James Fleming is on his death-bed,

(175)

James Fleming (1769–1835) of Town End, Grasmere, who, at the urging of the Wordsworths, had rented a cottage to Hartley Coleridge since 1831 (Letters, 3:15, 5: 209, 5:369). He would pass away on 27 June at the age of 65 (obit. in WG, 4 July 1835).

& Tommy Black is dead. Two days before, I heard of his extreme feebleness from Mary Fisher. His Widow has now no encumbrance & doubtless will go on adding by hard labour to her little heap of Cash – her own purse – but perhaps a stop may soon be put to this, as she may find it easy enough to get a young Husband to spend for her

(176)

Thomas Black (1758–1835), an elderly working man of Grasmere, died on 29 March 1835 (obit. in WG, 11 April 1835). The uncharacteristic animus DW displays here toward his widow, Agnes (née Partridge, 1771–1841), is all the more surprising given the consistently positive mentions of the Blacks in family letters, including ones documenting how the Wordsworths repeatedly hired either Agnes or her namesake daughter (1793–1871) to help with gardening and laundry between 1810 and 1812 (Letters, 2:452, 3:5, 3:11, 3:226).

The weather has been dry all the week

Tuesday April 1st [31 Mar.]                                       
Cold & dark & calm – no green yet – no budding trees[.] Biscuits arrived from Liverpool on Friday – Breads ordered today

(177)

Likely Abernethy’s Food for Invalids and Infants, which the Liverpool medicine dealer Charles Mawhood marketed as “a delicate and invaluable preparation of arrow-root” that was “peculiarly suited . . .for the debilitated stomachs of invalids and infants” (Liverpool Mercury, 6 February 1835).

– Languid & sickness[.] Letters from Miss Honeyman,

(178)

Her friend Mary Honeyman of Penrith (see note for 24 February).

who cannot come till the end of April, & from S Crackanthorpe

(179)

DW’s cousin Sarah Crackanthorpe of Newbiggin Hall (see note for 24 February).

& Willy, very desponding for the Tories

(180)

With Lord John Russell having arranged a coalition of Whig, radical, and Irish MPs, Sir Robert Peel’s prospects for retaining the premiership were increasingly dim.

[–] Sickness all day –

[April 1835]

Wednesday 2nd April [1st] Dark[,] wet & a piping wind. Poor Southey ran up in streaming rain leaving his unhappy Wife & good Betty at the hill foot.

(181)

Having discharged his wife from the asylum in York, Robert Southey called at RM on the way home to Keswick, leaving Edith at the foot of the hill in the care of their long-time maid Betty Thompson (1777?–1862). Of this same visit, SH wrote that Southey “ran up the hill to see us at their coming home on Wed. last – [Edith] had been very rambling on their journey, & he looked wretchedly poor man” (LSH, 442).

– Constantly sick all day – Job &c

(182)

Possibly suggests either that DW was reading the Biblical account of this famously tormented Israelite or was beginning to feel like a Job figure herself.

[–] Very dark melancholy night – Whistling wind & black sky[.] The poor Isle of Manners

(183)

Joanna Hutchinson and Mary Lovell, whom DW feared were caught in the storm while returning to the Isle of Man (see 30 March entry).

Thursday April 2nd                                       
Damp, close & dark – sick all day. Begin B[ottle]

(184)

Of laudanum (see note for 22 October).

Friday 3rd – Still [awful?] & [ ] – Mr Carr calls – will give me more medicine

Thursday 9th April – Began B[ottle] at supper

(185)

Likely an indication of the increased severity of her pain, as this is the first time DW records opening a second bottle of laudanum in the space of a week.

– & Mr Newton.

(186)

Presumably either the Ambleside solicitor James Newton (1774–1838) or the venerable Grasmere farmer Robert Newton (1751–1836), both of whom appear earlier in the RJ.

Friday April 10th                                       
another Friday & till now no pen used!! In truth I have been so often sick, &, when not sick so helpless that I have had no pleasure in doing any thing – & too often only one hand to spare for work [–] I have seen no Company till yesterday when Mrs Cookson came, & after a little while, a violent Belching came on with heat & water[.] All public affairs cheerless! This morning we hear that “Peel is out of office![”] Alas alas!

(187)

Having failed to establish a coalition government, Peel resigned as prime minister on 8 April, opening the door for Lord Melbourne’s return to the office.

Poor old Anne Benson was buried last Saturday

(188)

Ann Benson (née Holme, 1746–1835), a native of Grasmere who died in Ambleside on 3 April at the age of 89 (obit. in WG, 11 April 1835). The Wordsworths had known her since at least 1814, when MW complained about how “Ann Benson cram[med]” her son Willy “with apples and plumbs daily” on his way home from school in Ambleside (LMW, 15). DW records offering monetary assistance to this old neighbor in the ledger below.

– Her sufferings from a Cancer in the Mouth were very great –

Dora’s Back is much better; but stomach sadly weak – I have had little pain today – but weakness oppresses me

Saturday 11th April                                       
Lovely morning, yet air frosty [–] This week however the weather has been very fine. I have not been sick today, except –––!

(189)

Possibly unwelcome political news, but more likely some delicate or embarrassing physical complaint.

Tho’ I am always sick

Sunday April 9th [19th]                                       
Another week & nothing set down. My Sickness has been better – almost gone – but very cold weather brought back burning pain & I was very poorly all day – Now better [–] Sara & Mrs Luff

(190)

The Wordsworths’ long-time neighbor and friend Letitia Luff, who had just returned to Fox Ghyll after an extended absence.

at Tea at Lady F[arquhar]’s [–] Bessy came to see me – J[oh]n still poorly

(191)

Both unidentified.

– Old Mr Hudson dead

(192)

Rev. Richard Hudson (1745–1835), Vicar of Cockerham, Lancashire, and headmaster of the Hipperholme School near Halifax when DW lived and studied there in her childhood (obit. in WG, 18 April 1835).

[–] The last but one of Mr [Rawson’s?] Coevals

(193)

Possibly William Rawson (1750–1828) of Halifax, late husband of DW’s “Aunt” Elizabeth Threlkeld Rawson.

[–] Weather warmer today – Frosty night over – Snow gone

[Blank page]

[November 1835]

Novr 4th 1815 [1835] –

(194)

During the seven months between entries, SH had unexpectedly passed away on 23 June, Dora’s condition had gradually improved, and DW had often struggled with acute physical pain and memory loss (Letters, 6:78, 83, 89). In a 26 September letter to his and DW’s brother Christopher, WW reported that “Our dear Sister is in bodily health undoubtedly much better” but “her mind received a shock upon the death of Miss Hutchinson from which is has never recovered.” More specifically, he noted that “her memory of passing events has greatly failed, and her judgements also in all that respects her disease…


I take up the pen once again. After a trying illness I have risen to dinner – without pain at present [–] Wm is at Workington

(195)

WW wrote on 7 November of his plan to “stay 3 or 4 days” with his son John in Workington (Letters, 6:112).

– John has been in Radnorshire

(196)

John Wordsworth had spent part of October at a Protestant assembly in Dublin (Letters, 6:103), but there is no record of his having recently visited Radnorshire, the Welsh county where Ebba Hutchinson’s parents had lived until 1825 and still owned a farm and holiday house at Gwerndyfnant.

– Dora not unwell

 

 

[Draft revisions to “Lines to Dora H.”]

 

No damp thick walls enwrap it round

(197)

Writing sideways and often in an unusually unsteady hand, DW used several pages in the back of Notebook 15 to revise portions of “Lines to Dora H.,” a new poem for Dorothy Harrison (1825–73), the eldest daughter of her “Cousin Dorothy” Harrison of Ambleside. Levin’s Longman edition includes a full version of this poem that is based on a fair copy that Elizabeth (“Ebba”) Hutchinson made in DW’s commonplace book (DCMS 120) in June 1835 (Levin, 215–17). Levin tentatively identifies the poem’s recipient as a daughter of George Hutchinson, MW’s youngest brother, but this is confuted…

No iron hinges groan grating sound

(198)

Cf. lines 29–30 in Levin (all subsequent line references are to this published version).


 

Torments this private room


 

And neither wind nor night is here

To tell me of dismal doom

(199)

No equivalent lines in Levin.


 

Free entrance finds the summer breeze

My eyes behold her leafy trees

(200)

Cf. lines 33–34.


 

No thick damp walls enclose it round
No damp cold walls enwrap it round

No iron hinges warning sound

(201)

Further reworkings of lines 29–30.


 

No fairy pen wherewith to write
No fairy prompter to indite
Is ready at my call
Dora, on thy Mother’s spotless Book
Yet on thy pure unspotted Book
With playful sportive Fancy I can look

And now with gleams of timid hope

(202)

Several largely illegible words in faint pencil appear above and beside this line.


 

Something of a Chearful childlike joy
My feeble tremulous fingers feeble hands
Refuse to labour with the mind

And that too oft is misty dark & blind

(203)

Cf. lines 1–9.


 

No iron Bars no

(204)

A further reworking of line 29.


 

Yet is it not a chearless place

a cell of sorrow

(205)

Cf. lines 27–28.


 

My failing strength my tottering limbs,
Into a prison change this room
Yet is it not a cheerless place

A Cell of sorrow or of gloom.

(206)

Cf. lines 25–28.


 

Our heavenly Father, sheds his precious gifts
Of The sunshine & the [ ] air

And when my eyes are cast above

(207)

No equivalent lines in Levin.


 

But And shall I dare to draw a line
How shall I dare [venture then] to imprint impress a line
[Over] Upon this delicate Book of thine
The gorgeous insects gauzy wing
The Butterflys resplendent ring
Would fitly deck these its spotless leaves
The violet [visible?] [nursed in] fresh with morning dew
Or half-blown rose of vermeil hue
Or humming that humming small Bird from India’s land

Mimicked by youthful lady’s hand

(208)

Cf. lines 10–18.
Manuscript page from Notebook 15

Figure 2. Manuscript page from Notebook 15 showing DW’s revisions of lines 1–9 of Lines to Dora H. The three sets of handwriting (two in different shades of ink and one in pencil) suggest these revisions were made in at least three separate sittings (courtesy Wordsworth Trust).

 

[List of Expenditures]

[Editor's Note: DW used the final page and the inside back cover of Notebook 15 to log expenses from late 1834 and early 1835. For clarity and readability, her ledger entries are regularized here. Prior to decimalization, 12 pence (d.) equaled a shilling (s.) and 20 shillings a pound (£).]

[Last page of notebook]

  • Rugg-making Mrs Hoare(209)
  • picture frames(210
  • Barley-sugar(211)
  • Children
  • Peggy’s Daughters last Xmas(212)
  • Brother’s Church(213)
  • Anne Benson(214)
  • Sacrament(215)
  • Anne’s & J[ane]’s Gowns(216)
  • Ribbands(217)
  • Doll &c
  • Making shifts(218)
  • Sara H for Gloves –
  • Worsteds -(219)
  • Books Mary R(220)
  • Poor Women
  • Children
  • Jane, Anne & J[ames](221)
  • Sacrament
  • Jane’s Father &c
  • James, Anne, & Jane
  •  
  • Mary Robinsons Books
  • Benson Harrison D[itt]o(222)

[Inside back cover]

  • Paid Miss C [ ]
  • Lent MW 2s.6d. for E[dith] S[outhey]
  • D[itt]o 7s.
  • D[itt]o for Mrs Coleridge £8
  •  
  • Mrs Sproat(223)
  • Ribbands (Mrs Ellwood)(224)
  • Bed quilt &c
  • Poor Man Keswick
  • Anne Benson(225)
  • James Dawson(226)
  • Children
  • Large Parcel
  • Children & Poor
  • The Robinsons
  • Irish Books &c(227)
  • Febry 19th  Snuff(228)
  • Peggy Benson
  • Mrs Hunt
  • Peggy Benson(229)
  • Fanny W.(230)
  • Bedgowns &c  Cloak
  • Picture frame(231)
  • Reading stand
  • J Benson(232)
  • Baskets (presents)
  • Poor Woman’s Cloak
  • Making Fringe(233)
  • 7s.
  • - -
  • - -
  • - -
  • £1
  • £5
  • 4s.6d.
  • 3s.
  • 15s.
  • - -
  • - -
  • 2s.6d.
  • 2s.4d.
  • £1.13s.
  • £1.15s.
  • 4s.
  • 1s.6d.
  • £1.10s.
  • 3s
  • 8s
  • £1.10s.
  •  
  •  

 

  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  • 4s.6d.
  • 6s.6d.
  • 13s.
  • 1s.
  • 3s.
  • 6d.
  • 1s.
  • 3s.
  • 2s.
  • 1s.
  • 8s.
  • 3s.
  • 1s.
  • 2s.
  • 2s.
  • 1s.6d.
  • - -
  • 6s.
  • 14s.
  • 2s.
  • 7s.3d.
  • 2s.

Notes

1. Clearly a mistake, as DW received this notebook in 1834, not 1824. [back]
2. This final RJ notebook was a gift from a child whose birth DW had noticed nearly a decade earlier in Notebook 1, where she records visiting Betty Dixon (née Slee, 1800–65) on 18 January 1825 to deliver a “handsome present” for her newborn daughter, Dinah (or Diana, 1825–93). Betty and her stonemason husband, Edward Dixon (1789–1830), lived on the edge of Grasmere in Easedale, and she may have known DW from having once worked at RM. Parish and census records show Diana growing up to work as a housemaid in Loughrigg before marrying Frank Garnett of Grasmere in 1852. [back]
3. WW and MW had just returned from a two-week trip to Workington to visit their son John (who had recently become interim rector there), daughter-in-law Isabella, and new grandson, Henry Curwen Wordsworth (1834–65), who had been born on 30 July (Letters, 5:743). [back]
4. Dr. Adam Sedgwick (1785–1873, DNB), a renowned Cambridge geologist and friend of the Wordsworths since the early 1820s. In 1842 his research on Lake District geology would appear alongside WW’s Guide to the Lakes in The Complete Guide to the Lakes (Kendal: Hudson and Nicolson). [back]
5. WW and MW’s 32nd wedding anniversary, an event the entire household apparently commemorated. DW also mentions celebrating it in her RJ entry for 2 October 1829. [back]
6. Samuel Horsley (1733–1806, DNB), the late Bishop of St. Asaph best remembered for arguing, contra Joseph Priestley, that doctrines concerning the Trinity and the divinity of Christ were understood by the earliest Christians. With “Xt” being a conventional abbreviation for Christ, “Xtian” is shorthand for Christian. [back]
7. John A. Heraud’s (1799–1887, DNB) highly philosophical Oration on the Death of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Esq. Delivered at the Russell Institution on Friday August 8, 1834 (London: Fraser, 1834). [back]
8. Eliza Fletcher (née Dawson) (1770–1858, DNB), a Scottish philanthropist and admirer of WW who had rented Keen Ground near Hawkshead for the fall and winter of 1834–35 (Autobiography of Mrs. Fletcher, 78, 89, 221). [back]
9. Hannah Hoare (née Sterry, 1769–1856), a Quaker friend of the Wordsworths from London, was spending six weeks at Fox Ghyll (in the absence of its present owner, Letitia Luff) with her step-daughter Sarah Hoare (1777–1856) (Letters, 5:726; WLL / Wordsworth, Dora / 1 / 59). Mrs. Hoare’s late husband, Samuel (1751–1825), had been a prominent banker, abolitionist, and poetry enthusiast, and during the 1820s and 1830s the Wordsworths regularly stayed at their Hampstead home. [back]
10. During this visit, the nine-year-old Grasmere girl presented DW with the notebook in which she was now writing. [back]
11. Rug-making was apparently a new hobby for DW, as she only first mentioned it in her entry for 22 March 1834. [back]
12. Possibly another new practice, as after first being mentioned in DW’s entry for 23 February 1834, family prayer is regularly noted thereafter. [back]
13. A two-day horse race held in Penrith (23 miles northeast of Rydal) every October since 1824. The Wordsworths had a remote connection to this event, as WW and DW’s eldest brother, Richard, had owned the race-course until 1816 (co-owning it with MW’s cousin Tom Monkhouse until 1811). See Gordon Graham Wordsworth’s notes in WLMS 7 / 66. [back]
14. En route to the races, Willy stayed at Hallsteads, the Marshalls’ Ullswater home seven miles from Penrith. [back]
15. Robert Twining, the famous London tea merchant, whom WW would visit in 1836 (Letters, 6:270). [back]
16. Edward Moxon (1801–58, DNB), WW’s London publisher. Writing on her brother’s behalf, DW asked Moxon to consider publishing a new verse collection by Catherine Godwin (Letters, 5:743). [back]
17. A year after the popular Methodist preacher and theologian Adam Clarke (1762–1832, DNB) died from cholera amid the nationwide epidemic of 1832, his son Joseph published An Account of the Infancy, Religious and Literary Life of Adam Clarke (London: T. S. Clarke, 1833). The opening 70 pages recount his Irish Protestant heritage, early love of books, and recurring brushes with death. SH presumably sent this copy from Robert Southey’s large library at Greta Hall, where she was staying. [back]
18. Concerning Edith Southey, who had been admitted to a mental asylum in York. [back]
19. WW appears to have reported that the Pasleys were planning to have a water closet—a novel enough amenity to warrant mentioning—at The Craig, the home they were building near Bowness. [back]
20. Hannah Hoare, who was staying at Fox Ghyll (see note for 6 October). [back]
21. Likely the Miss Bland of Hastings who visited RM in August 1834 (RMVB). [back]
22. Louisa Lloyd (1814–69), Owen’s 20-year-old sister. [back]
23. The new moon of 2 October became full on 17 October. [back]
24. Cheerful. [back]
25. Sir Joseph Dacre Appleby Gilpin (1745–1834), youngest brother of the renowned aesthetic theorist William Gilpin. After a quarter century as a military doctor, he had retired to his native Carlisle, where he served several terms as the city’s mayor (Jefferson, History and Antiquities, 429–30). [back]
26. The family of Horace Twiss (1787–1849, DNB), a London lawyer, conservative politician, and nephew of the legendary actress Sarah Siddons, had been vacationing nearby. An earlier RJ entry records Lord Lowther introducing them to the Wordsworths on 31 August 1834. [back]
27. Chapter 10 of the Gospel of St. Luke. [back]
28. See note for 5 October. [back]
29. After identifying consecutive days as the 12th, DW’s dates would be off by one until 25 October. [back]
30. Windermere estate of the widow and daughters of the late Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff (1737–1816, DNB). [back]
31. William (1792–1878) and Julia Jackson (née Crump, 1793–1873), long-time sweethearts from Grasmere who had married in 1829. His father had been Grasmere’s long-time minister, and, following the same career path, William had earned a doctorate in divinity and become Rector of Lowther. Julia was the eldest daughter of John Gregory Crump (1768–1844), the Liverpool attorney who had built Allan Bank and leased the house to the Wordsworths from 1808–11. [back]
32. Elizabeth Wardell (née Crump, 1806–35), a younger sister of Julia Jackson and close childhood friend of Dora. Earlier in the RJ, DW records staying with her and her new husband, William Wardell, in Liverpool in 1826 (31 October 1826). The illness to which DW alludes would prove fatal in March 1835 (Letters, 4:172, 5:75–76; WLMS A / Coleridge, Sara / 36). [back]
33. The religious biography DW had been attentively reading since 7 October. [back]
34. Likely discouraging reports from Keswick about Edith Southey’s condition in York. [back]
35. Presumably from her nephew Willy in Carlisle. [back]
36. Having just sold Allan Bank to Thomas Dawson, John Crump was now selling its furnishings (Letters, 5:731). [back]
37. Likely either John Crump (in town for the sale) or WW’s secretary John Carter (1796–1863). [back]
38. Possibly the Miss Dixon of Storrs Hall near Bowness with whom the Wordsworths occasionally socialized (Letters, 4:576, 5:271). [back]
39. A common method for blood-letting. [back]
40. A month earlier, the family had considered sending Dora to the warmer and drier south of England for the winter (Letters, 5:737; LSH, 435). [back]
41. Details found in the WG’s 18 October article on “The Cholera in Low Furness.” [back]
42. On 16 October, the ancient Palace of Westminster, where Parliament had met since the mid-sixteenth century, was largely destroyed by an accidental fire. The new neo-gothic house of parliament erected in its place would not open until 1847. [back]
43. Likely A Selection from the Public and Private Correspondence of Vice-Admiral Lord Collingwood, which had gone into several editions since its 1828 release. Baron Cuthbert Collingwood (1748–1810, DNB) was a hero of Trafalgar who served thereafter as commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet before dying of cancer in 1810. [back]
44. The first of several discrete notes in this notebook logging DW’s having opened a new bottle of laudanum, the tincture of brandy and opium widely prescribed during this period for chronic pain. She had apparently been taking it for at least two years, as evidenced by WW’s 29 January 1833 report that Mr. Carr had “ordered her allowance of brandy and opium to be considerably increased” (Letters, 5:583). [back]
45. Possibly indicates that Jane Pollard Marshall had sent her a message through MW, who had taken over much of DW’s correspondence with old friends (LMW, 135–37). [back]
46. SH wrote on 3 November that she and the Southeys’ 15-year-old son had taken a “poney chair” from Keswick to Workington, where they “spent 2 very pleasant days at the Rectory” with John and Isabella Wordsworth (LSH, 435). [back]
47. Anne Rickman (1809–98), whose home in Palace Yard had been destroyed in the conflagration of 16 October. This residence was part of the compensation her father, John Rickman (1771–1840, DNB), had received as secretary to the speaker of the house, a position he had held since 1801. The Wordsworths presumably knew the family through Robert Southey, who was among John Rickman’s closest friends. [back]
48. Jane (née Mavity, 1789–1834), wife of Thomas Irving (1782–1847), a sheep farmer who leased Cote How at the foot of Rydal Hill from the 1810s through his death in 1847. The WG for 1 November noted that Mrs. Irving had passed away on 25 October “after a tedious illness, borne with patience and resignation.” [back]
49. The expansive estate south of Bowness that John Bolton (1756–1837, DNB) bought in 1806 with the immense fortune he made through the transatlantic slave trade. [back]
50. The Kendal Mercury reported on 8 November that, “in consequence of the severe gales during the last week, no less than 56 vessels have been totally wrecked or run ashore on the coasts of England and Holland” and that “the loss of life also has been considerable” (4). DW had been especially sensitive to such tragedies since her brother John’s death at sea in 1805. [back]
51. Ann Dawson (b. 1800?), the live-in cook and maid at RM from 1823–42. [back]
52. For Jane Irving (see 26 October). [back]
53. WW reported on 21 November that Mr. Carr, “having no doubt that an inflammation on the spine exists, has put [Dora] under a course of treatment – bleeding, blistering, and an almost perpetual recumbent posture” (Letters, 5:747). Blistering was considered an effective method for drawing internal inflammation out of the body. [back]
54. The Grasmere girl who had presented DW with this notebook earlier in the month. [back]
55. A week-long visit to Lowther (22 miles northeast of Rydal) to meet with his friend, patron, and political ally William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale (1757–1844). [back]
56. Ann Hook (née Farquhar, 1774–1844), widowed sister of Lady Farquhar’s first husband, Sir Robert Townsend Farquhar. In the autumn of 1832, Mrs. Hook had spent ten weeks at Fox Ghyll with Lady Farquhar and Letitia Luff (Letters, 5:566, 712–13). [back]
57. Jane Winder (1801–43), the Wordsworths’ maid from the late 1820s through her death in 1843 (Letters, 7:481, 485). [back]
58. Presumably Betty Dixon of Grasmere and her daughter Diana, who would instead come two days later. [back]
59. “Lines Written in the Album of the Countess of -------. November 5, 1834,” WW’s 82-line poetic tribute to Lord Lonsdale’s wife, Lady Augusta Lowther (née Fane, 1761–1838), Countess of Lonsdale (Last Poems, 276–79). [back]
60. Penelope (1818–96) and Ellen (1820–97), the teenaged daughters of William and Penelope Parry (née Woollam, 1781–1855), who had inherited Gell’s Cottage in Grasmere upon the 1832 death of Mrs. Parry’s half-brother, Samuel Barber. [back]
61. MW’s youngest sister, Joanna Hutchinson. [back]
62. While in Ambleside courting Margaret Elizabeth Briggs (1813–45), whom he would wed on 1 July 1835, the young Staffordshire curate Bryan Sneyd Broughton (1807–48) apparently officiated at Rydal Chapel in place of the ailing Rev. Fletcher Fleming (1795–1876). Rev. Broughton’s future father-in-law, William Briggs (1770–1851), was a Kendal native who, after a career as a Liverpool physician, had purchased Cumpstone Lodge in Ambleside from his fellow medical man Thomas Carr. [back]
63. Returning from Lowther, WW apparently stopped at the Marshalls’ home on the shore of Ullswater. [back]
64. The Marshalls’ chronically ill fifth daughter, Ellen (1807–54), was presumably spending the winter at this fashionable town on England’s southern coast (Letters, 5:700). [back]
65. Dorothy Fleming (née Moser, 1774–1834), who with her husband, Thomas (1763–1840), had owned Spring Cottage in Loughrigg since ca. 1820. [back]
66. DW was apparently asleep or indisposed when WW came to hang the art prints which the Marshalls’ third daughter, Cordelia (1803–56), had sent with him from Hallsteads. On 27 December, MW would tell Jane Marshall that the pictures nearly covered the walls of DW’s room (LMW, 136; Letters, 6:262–63, 360). [back]
67. The military memoir she mentions reading on 22 October. [back]
68. Jane Ellwood (née Whelpdale, 1779–1855), a Penrith widow and childhood friend of the Hutchinson sisters who was a regular visitor to RM (see LSH, 140; LMW, 52, 302; Letters, 3:406). Worsted is thick wool yarn used in rug-making. [back]
69. James Dixon (1799–1878), the Wordsworths’ beloved gardener and handyman from the mid-1820s through MW’s death in 1859. [back]
70. The Wordsworths’ horse. On 24 July 1833, Dora described how, after an axle snapped on their carriage, the family remarkably escaped injury “thanks to Sir Edward[,] who stood still instantly & behaved as well as horse could do”  (WLL / Wordsworth, Dora / 1 / 50). [back]
71. Likely Fletcher Fleming, the Rydal curate who may have been a distant relation of deceased. [back]
72. Nancy Ireland (née Wordsworth, 1771–1840), the twice-widowed older sister of “Cousin Dorothy” Harrison (Letters, 3:161). [back]
73. Edward Ferguson (1764–1843), a second cousin of DW with whom she had grown up in Halifax under the care of their common relative Elizabeth Threlkeld (later Rawson). In the final years before their “Aunt” Elizabeth’s passing in 1837, Mr. Ferguson was DW’s principal source of reports from Halifax (Letters, 5:565, 701). [back]
74. Robert Perceval Graves (1810–93), a young Trinity College, Dublin, graduate who, with an introduction from the poet Felicia Hemans, had called at RM earlier in 1834. With WW’s assistance, he would become Curate of Bowness in early 1835 (Letters, 5:637n., 5:707, 6:12–13). [back]
75. Henry Crabb Robinson (1775–1867, DNB), the London lawyer who had become a close family friend and one of DW’s most cherished correspondents. [back]
76. Philip Courtenay (1785–1842), a London barrister, Tory operative, and long-time friend and financial advisor of WW (Letters, 4:748). [back]
77. Returning from Keswick, where she had been assisting the Southeys. This is a rare instance in the RJ where DW spells her name Sarah rather than Sara. [back]
78. Edith Southey, who remained at the asylum in York. [back]
79. Possibly a continuation of the landscaping projects Dora informed Rotha Quillinan of in March 1833, when she wrote, “My Father has planted a beautiful Cedar near to Miss Wordsworths rock & another at the end of the Terrace - & he has made quite a gay little garden (or rather what in time will be gay) among the rocks near to your pretty seat in the cherry tree – & we call it ‘Rotha’s garden’” (WLL / Wordsworth, Dora / 1 / 47). [back]
80. The newly released biography mentioned above in her entries for 8 and 13 October. [back]
81. A belatedly inserted record of having begun a new bottle of laudanum (see note for 22 October). [back]
82. Some combination of the four adult daughters of the late Bishop Richard Watson—Harriet (1779–1835), Elizabeth (1780–1859), Charlotte (1783–1859), and Mary (1785?–1847)—still living at Calgarth Hall, their family estate on Windermere (see note for 14 October). [back]
83. The influential London publisher John Murray (1778–1843, DNB) had sent the November 1834 number of his Quarterly Review, which included an effusive 41-page review of two new editions of WW’s poems that honored him for driving stodgy “poetic diction” out of fashion (319) and having conveyed “a deeper sense of the dignity of his calling” than any previous poet ([Taylor], “Wordsworth’s Poetical Works,” 319, 338). WW had already been informed of this review by its anonymous author, his friend and admirer Henry Taylor. [back]
84. DW’s brother Christopher and at least two of his three sons, John (1805–39) and Charles (1806–92, DNB), were apparently visiting the Hoares’ home near Hampstead Heath (see note for 6 October; for their earlier stays with the Hoares, see WLMS 1 / 9 / 3 and 1 / 11 / 7). The eldest son, John, had just returned from a long trip in Florence, where he pursued his classical interests while trying to restore his fragile health. The middle son, Charles, had also spent much of 1833–34 on the Continent, and, while touring the Louvre, he had fallen in “Love at First Sight” with Charlotte Day, a clergyman’s daughter from Suffolk whom he would marry in December 1835 (Charles Wordsworth, Annals, 158–60). [back]
85. See note on 28 October. [back]
86. While this appears to read “Sarah,” the letter was more likely from Louisa Courtenay (1814–1904), the only daughter of the Wordsworths’ friend Philip Courtenay (see note for 20 November). Writing home from London in 1836, WW would ask the family, “Pray send me for Miss Courtenay’s Album the 2nd Stanza of my little Poem to the Moon” (Letters, 6:241). [back]
87. In mid-November, William IV stunned the nation by sacking the Whig government of Lord Melbourne and offering the premiership to the Tory leader Sir Robert Peel. This sparked the chain of political developments that DW chronicles through the rest of this notebook. [back]
88. This and the following entry are the only ones in this notebook written in pencil. [back]
89. This well-intentioned gift from William Pearson (1780–1856), a retired banker who kept a farm in Crosthwaite, left DW terrified that the cat would attack the robin who had taken to visiting her each day (Letters, 5:187, 6:480; LMW, 136). In the Fenwick notes to his poem “The Redbreast,” WW would later describe how, after the family “banished” cats from RM, robins occasionally entered the home through open windows. One particular bird, he recalled, “took up its abode” in DW’s sickroom near the end of 1834 “and at night used to perch upon a nail from which a picture had hung” and “sing and fan her face with its wings in a manner that was very touching” (Poetical Works, 1:338). [back]
90. The Pasleys’ 7-year-old daughter. [back]
91. Owen Lloyd. [back]
92. The 8th rather than the 7th. On 27 December, MW reported that DW was “suffering from rather a severe bilious attack, which has kept her almost a prisoner to her bed for the last three weeks until yesterday, when she, for an hour, resumed her favourite chair – and though she is again thank God recovering, she has lost much strength – and it may be some time before it would be quite right for her to resume her correspondence” (LMW, 135). [back]
93. The 21st of December, or the winter solstice. [back]
94. Bertha Southey. On 27 December, MW would mention “encouraging reports” of “poor Mrs. Southey’s state of mind” (LMW, 136). [back]
95. Stung by a series of political defeats in the Age of Reform, Lord Lowther and his fellow conservatives had grown cynical about the new Peel government’s chances of staying in power (see note for 30 November; Letters, 5:748). [back]
96. Since DW wrote this entry on Wednesday, 24 December, “yesterday” was actually a Tuesday. [back]
97. Mrs. Cookson’s 22-year-old daughter, Hannah. [back]
98. Willy Wordsworth, arriving from Carlisle on Christmas (not New Year’s) Eve. [back]
99. Also DW’s 63rd birthday. [back]
100. WW had been “summoned” to help Lord Lonsdale strategize for the upcoming general election. [back]
101. An elevation between Grasmere and Rydal that looks out upon Rydal Water. [back]
102. Col. Henry Cecil Lowther (1790–1867), second son of Lord Lonsdale, who, after a distinguished army career, became MP for Westmorland at 22 and held the seat for the next 55 years. [back]
103. See note for 30 October. [back]
104. Presumably Lady Maria Paisley. [back]
105. Minto’s having bagged four of these notoriously elusive birds in since his arrival a few days earlier attests to both his skill and avidity as a hunter. [back]
106. Presumably stopping to visit his father and Lord Lonsdale while returning to Carlisle. [back]
107. Allies of the powerful “Lowther interest” were celebrating Col. George Wilson’s decision not to challenge John Foster Barham, the Tory MP for Kendal, in the coming election (Letters, 6:8n.). [back]
108. WW’s schoolfriend Rev. John Fleming (1768–1835) lived at Rayrigg, his ancestral estate south of Ambleside, and was Curate of Bowness and Rector of Bootle, the village near the Cumberland coast where he would pass away on 11 January. His son oldest son, Fletcher, had been minister at Rydal Chapel since its opening in 1824. [back]
109. The Wordsworths’ long-time friends Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb had died, respectively, on 25 July and 27 December 1834. [back]
110. Polling had begun for the general election sparked by Peel’s dissolution of Parliament in December. While the Tories would gain 98 seats in this contest, a progressive coalition led by Lord Melbourne would retain its majority. [back]
111. Eliza Dowling, who, with her sister Jane, still ran the girls’ school in Ambleside that they had overseen since their sister Ann’s marriage to Thomas Carr. She presumably had been visiting relatives in Ireland from her father’s side of the family. [back]
112. DW records their departure in her entry for 23 December. [back]
113. James Dixon, the Wordsworths’ handyman and servant (see note for 13 November). [back]
114. After traveling to Keswick for the election, Willy detoured through Rydal on his way back to Carlisle to share news of the Conservatives’ victories in local contests (Letters, 6:14). Both Lowther-backed candidates for western Cumberland, Edward Stanley (1790–1863) and Samuel Irton (1796–1866), had survived significant challenges (Letters, 5:477–78n, 5:529, 6:14). [back]
115. Hamlet 5.5 miles northwest of Rydal at the foot of Thirlmere. Like Willy, WW presumably had been in Keswick for the election. [back]
116. See note for 3 December. [back]
117. Ebba Hutchinson. [back]
118. As a local landowner, Thomas Arnold had made the long trip from Rugby to support the local Whig candidate in the election (a fact DW disapprovingly notes below on 30 March). [back]
119. Likely either sisters or cousins of Mary Penrose Arnold. [back]
120. Presumably Ann Empson (née Kelk, 1761–1835) of Yokefleet Hall in eastern Yorkshire. A distant relative of DW’s “Aunt” Elizabeth Rawson (see note for 19 November) through marriage, Mrs. Empson had raised five boys on her own after being widowed young. As detailed in Notebook 10, DW socialized regularly with Mrs. Empson while staying near Yokefleet in August 1829. [back]
121. John Wordsworth (1803–75), WW and MW’s oldest son, officiated at Rydal Chapel in the stead of Rev. Fletcher Fleming (1795–1876), who was accompanying his sisters—Agnes Dorothy (1804–66), Barbara (1807–97), and Jane Isabella (1809–1902)—to the funeral of their aunt Margaret Taylor (née Lewthwaite, 1783–1835) (obit. in WG, 31 January 1835). [back]
122. Philip Courtenay, WW’s London-based financial advisor (see note for 20 November). [back]
123. Regarding Edith Southey’s recovery in York. [back]
124. Following the advice of Lord Lonsdale, WW had informed the new prime minister, Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850, DNB), and the nation’s stamps commissioner, John Thornton (1783–1861), of his “wish to give up my office of Distributor of Stamps which I have held nearly 22 years, in case his Lordship through the present prime minister could procure a transfer of it to my son [Willy]” (Letters, 6:11, 20–21). The hope was to push through such an arrangement before the Tories lost their tenuous grip on power. [back]
125. A new bottle of laudanum (see note for 22 October). [back]
126. See entry for 4 October. [back]
127. Robert Jones (1769–1835), WW’s close friend from Cambridge who had accompanied him on two journeys—their tour of Revolutionary France and ascent of Mount Snowdon—immortalized in The Prelude. Consumed by political business and his pending trip to London, WW would not respond to this letter until 30 March, just four days before Jones’s passing (Letters, 6:34–37; obit. in Liverpool Mercury, 10 April 1835). [back]
128. Cayenne pepper from the West Indies had been introduced to British cooking in the mid-18th century. [back]
129. Ebba Hutchinson. [back]
130. DW’s obscure description is elucidated by the letter SH sent her nephew Tom Hutchinson Jr. on 16 February, which relates how Tom’s sister Ebba recently attended “three Parties – one at the Ivy Cot – one at Sr Thos’ [the Pasleys’] & another at Mrs Godwins – at all which they amused themselves with Tableaux i.e. a representation of the paintings of celebrated Masters, by living subjects dressed up in character & placed within a frame – Mr Fletcher the Statuary (who has been making a Bust of Mr Hamilton) & Sir Minto Farquhar (Lady F’s Son) introduced this amusement into the Vale to the great delight of the party-going inhabitants” (LSH, 440). In ensuing years, the visiting sculptor, Angus Fletcher (1799–1862), would execute a bust of WW and carvings for Dora’s headstone. DW’s wording seems to suggest that one of the revelers – perhaps Minto Farquhar or Captain Hamilton himself – paid her a visit while still made up to resemble the captain’s bust. [back]
131. With DW’s and Dora’s conditions having stabilized, WW and MW went to London to lobby for the transfer of his stamps distributorship to Willy (see note for 5 February). They would arrive back in Rydal on 24 April. [back]
132. Although DW could not have known that this would be her brother’s final appearance in the RJ, her wording is eerily reminiscent of her opening GJ entry from 35 years earlier, where, in relating her anguished parting from WW on 14 May 1800, she writes that “My heart was so full that I could hardly speak to W when I gave him a farewell kiss” (1). [back]
133. The Wordsworths’ maids Anne Dawson and Jane Winder (see notes for 28 October and 4 November) apparently leveraged WW and MW’s pending departure, and their employers’ understandable concerns about leaving two “helpless invalids” behind, to petition for higher wages. When citing this entry in their biography of DW, Gittings and Manton seem to intentionally omit the phrase “Kitchen disturbances – Wages &c.” in order to misleadingly suggest that DW’s “uncharacteristic, almost childish” distress emanated not from a sense of betrayal by their long-time domestics but from WW and MW’s perceived “desertion of herself and Dora” (Gittings, 269). [back]
134. Presumably concerning Letitia Luff’s pending return to Fox Ghyll after an extended absence. [back]
135. Joanna extended her visit after learning that her ailing brother, Henry Hutchinson (1769–1839)—who remained back home on the Isle of Man while she was in Rydal caring for DW and Dora—had begun feeling significantly better since he had started taking Morrison’s pills, a widely advertised cure-all consisting mainly of aloe and cream of tartar. [back]
136. With his family still in crisis, Robert Southey decided to take his youngest child, Cuthbert, to Tarring, Sussex, to live with his eldest daughter, Edith May Warter (née Southey, 1804–71), and her husband, John (1806–78). Southey then headed to York, where he discharged his wife from the mental hospital where she had been committed (Speck, Robert Southey, 224–25, 231). [back]
137. A resolution of the previous day’s conflict with the maids at RM. [back]
138. Too busy caring for DW and Dora to properly tutor Ebba at home, SH enrolled her as a day-student at the Dowlings’ school in Ambleside (LSH, 440). [back]
139. The snow having prevented her return home after the school day in Ambleside. [back]
140. Jane Garside (née Ashburner, 1786–1857), a daughter of the Wordsworths’ former Town End neighbor Thomas Ashburner, who had been a teenager when DW and WW arrived at Dove Cottage in late 1799. Since marrying the warehouseman John Garside in 1808, she had lived in Kendal, but she was apparently back in the area visiting family. [back]
141. Presumably several of Charles Robinson’s children. [back]
142. In the 19 February election for speaker of the House of Commons, the Tory incumbent Charles Manners-Sutton, 1st Viscount Canterbury (1780–1845, DNB), had lost by ten votes to the Whig candidate, James Abercromby, 1st Baron Dunfermline (1776–1858, DNB). While attending Cambridge at the start of the century, Manners-Sutton had been tutored by DW’s brother Christopher Wordsworth, and thereafter his powerful father, who served as Archbishop of Canterbury from 1805 until his death in 1828, had promoted Christopher’s rise in the Church and university. [back]
143. Despite this scare, both of Ann Hook’s sons, Walter (1798–1875, DNB) and Robert (1799–1873), survived into the 1870s. [back]
144. Newbiggin Hall, the family home near Penrith of DW’s aunt Charlotte Crackanthorpe (née Cust, 1752–1843) and this relative’s three unmarried children, William (1790–1888), Charlotte (1791–1865), and Sarah (1794–1845). [back]
145. Likely from Catharine Doughty (née Wordsworth, 1795–1853), a second cousin of DW (and older sister of Dorothy Harrison) who lived near Whitehaven in the hamlet of Hensingham. [back]
146. Mary Honeyman (1775–1851), a Penrith spinster whose extended stay at RM in the autumn of 1825 is chronicled in Notebook 1. [back]
147. The weather made sailing home to the Isle of Man too dangerous. [back]
148. Fanny Gee (1772–1846), a close friend of the Wordsworths since the four years (1817–21) she and her late husband, Capt. George Gee, spent at Ivy Cottage in Rydal. WW and MW were visiting her in the northwestern London suburb of Hendon, where she had run a school since her husband’s 1827 passing left her in dire need (Letters, 5:699n.). [back]
149. Isabella Fenwick (1783–1856), an admirer of WW’s poetry who in May 1830 and again in June 1831 had visited RM with her quasi-relation, the aspiring critic and playwright Henry Taylor (1800–86, DNB) (see RMVB). Although Fenwick’s permanent home was in Bath, Taylor had persuaded her spend winters in London, where they typically shared a rented home (Taylor, Autobiography, 104–05). [back]
150. Presumably commenting on WW and MW’s crowded itinerary (cf. DW’s entry for 23 February). [back]
151. Jane Wilson (1783–1835) died in Cork on 7 February while visiting her sister Grace Cashel (née Wilson, 1782–1835), who would herself pass away thirteen days later (Cumberland Pacquet, 10 March 1835; Gordon, “Christopher North”, 1:3). Both women were older sisters of Professor John Wilson (1785–1854, DNB), the eminent Scottish man of letters who had once been a close friend of the Wordsworths. [back]
152. George Ernest Papendick (1788–1835), the royal consul to Hanover with whom Willy Wordsworth had lived and studied in 1829–1831, died in Bremen on 5 February 1835 (London Packet and New Lloyd’s Evening Post, 27 February 1835). [back]
153. Richard Sharp (1759–1835, DNB), a legendary wit, dissenting Whig, and friend to many of the age’s leading poets (including WW). His charisma and conviviality had earned him the nickname “Conversation Sharp.” He would die on 30 March (Letters, 6:41). [back]
154. See note for 17 February concerning Robert Southey’s trip to Tarring and York. [back]
155. A new bottle of laudanum (see note for 22 October). [back]
156. An update from London, where WW had met with government ministers in Whitehall concerning the potential transfer of his distributorship and was now staying (with MW) in the St. James home of his friend and fellow poet Samuel Rogers (1763–1855, DNB). [back]
157. Jane Jopson (née Watson) of Wythburn, the small village between Grasmere and Keswick. She and her husband, Matthew (1753–1837)—who appears in the GJ (3)—were the long-time proprietors of the Horse’s Head Inn in Wythburn. [back]
158. Possibly concerning Peel’s continued hold on the premiership. [back]
159. Ebba Hutchinson. [back]
160. Likely the Life of the Right Reverend Thomas Fanshaw Middleton, D. D., Late Bishop of Calcutta (London: Rivington, 1831) by Charles Webb Le Bas. A schoolmate of Coleridge and Lamb, Middleton (1769–1822, DNB) became the inaugural Bishop of Calcutta in 1814 and remained in that office until his death in 1822. [back]
161. The Southey girls were applying skills they had acquired in helping to care for their father’s vast library at Greta Hall to the considerably smaller book collection at RM. Their brother Cuthbert later chronicled how their father tasked “his daughters, aided by any female friends who might be staying with them,” with binding his more “ragged and dirty” books in colored cotton fabric. He then explains that “the ladies would often suit the pattern to the contents, clothing a Quaker work or a book of sermons in sober drab, poetry in some flowery design, and sometimes contriving a sly piece of satire at the contents of some well-known author by their choice of covering.” Over time, some “1200 to 1400 volumes were so bound, . . .filling completely one room” that they dubbed “the Cottonian library” (Life and Correspondence, 6:17). [back]
162. As reported in a letter MW and WW sent from London. [back]
163. Thomasine Anne Elliott (1758–1835), an older sister of John Elliott and close friend of the writer Joanna Baillie, would die in Awliscombe, Devon, on 1 April (Slagle, Collected Letters, 1:445–46). John Elliott himself would pass away in Ambleside on 11 October. [back]
164. Robert Perceval Graves, the young Irishman who had recently become Curate of Bowness (see note for 20 November). [back]
165. The sister mentioned in the preceding entry. [back]
166. Margaret De Quincey (née Simpson, 1796–1837) and her husband, Thomas, were then in Edinburgh coping with crippling debt, chronic illnesses, and the recent death of their eldest son, William (see WLMS A / Coleridge, Sara / 34). [back]
167. Another new bottle of laudanum (see note for 22 October). [back]
168. Arrowroot starch from the West Indies was often added to baked goods as a palliative for digestive complaints. [back]
169. Joanna Hutchinson was returning to the Isle of Man and Bertha and Kate Southey to Keswick. [back]
170. Mary Lovell (née Fricker, 1771–1862), a widowed sister of Edith Southey and Sarah Coleridge who had been at Greta Hall helping with the family crisis, was preparing to return to the Isle of Man, where she shared a home with her sisters Martha and Eliza (LSH, 442; Speck, Robert Southey, 232). [back]
171. After their stay in London, MW and WW went to Cambridge to visit his brother Christopher and attend a dinner that WW’s former college, St. John’s, had organized in his honor (Barker, 666). [back]
172. Before succumbing to long-term illness in 1829, the Wordsworths’ neighbor Miles Huddleston (1802–29) had apparently sought treatment from Thomas Huddart (1788?–1833), the “Blind Doctor” of Preston whose advertisements boasted of his remarkable ability to “cure Paralytic Affections, Spinal Complaints, Pains in the Limbs, Lumbago, Rheumatism, &c. by means of the Shampouing or Rubbing System, and the application of a fluid, which he practised successfully upwards of twenty years in the Indies” (Liverpool Mercury, 3 January 1834). After the “Blind Doctor’s” passing in late 1833, his wife took over the practice, continuing to publish testimonials like the one DW read from the woman of Milnthorpe (a village southeast of Kendal). See Huddert’s obit. in WG, 21 December 1833 and the couple’s advertisements in the Manchester Courier, 13 December 1828; Leeds Mercury, 11 August 1832; Preston Chronicle, 4 January and 29 March 1834; and Kendal Mercury, 30 January 1836. [back]
173. In January, the politically liberal Dr. Arnold had made the long trip from Rugby to vote for the (ultimately unsuccessful) Whig candidate in the local election (see entry for 22 January). [back]
174. By 1832 the chronic alcoholism of Sir Richard le Fleming (1791–1857), Rector of Windemere and Grasmere since the early 1820s, became such an impediment that he was placed on indefinite leave and replaced by the young Irish curate James Kingsley (1809–39). Three years on, Fleming was using his family’s influence to have himself reinstated and his popular replacement evicted from the rectory attached to the living. This struck many, including the Wordsworths, as an unusually egregious case of church politics trumping the spiritual well-being of local parishioners (Letters, 4:370, 5:648, 6:19, 6:60). [back]
175. James Fleming (1769–1835) of Town End, Grasmere, who, at the urging of the Wordsworths, had rented a cottage to Hartley Coleridge since 1831 (Letters, 3:15, 5: 209, 5:369). He would pass away on 27 June at the age of 65 (obit. in WG, 4 July 1835). [back]
176. Thomas Black (1758–1835), an elderly working man of Grasmere, died on 29 March 1835 (obit. in WG, 11 April 1835). The uncharacteristic animus DW displays here toward his widow, Agnes (née Partridge, 1771–1841), is all the more surprising given the consistently positive mentions of the Blacks in family letters, including ones documenting how the Wordsworths repeatedly hired either Agnes or her namesake daughter (1793–1871) to help with gardening and laundry between 1810 and 1812 (Letters, 2:452, 3:5, 3:11, 3:226). [back]
177. Likely Abernethy’s Food for Invalids and Infants, which the Liverpool medicine dealer Charles Mawhood marketed as “a delicate and invaluable preparation of arrow-root” that was “peculiarly suited . . .for the debilitated stomachs of invalids and infants” (Liverpool Mercury, 6 February 1835). [back]
178. Her friend Mary Honeyman of Penrith (see note for 24 February). [back]
179. DW’s cousin Sarah Crackanthorpe of Newbiggin Hall (see note for 24 February). [back]
180. With Lord John Russell having arranged a coalition of Whig, radical, and Irish MPs, Sir Robert Peel’s prospects for retaining the premiership were increasingly dim. [back]
181. Having discharged his wife from the asylum in York, Robert Southey called at RM on the way home to Keswick, leaving Edith at the foot of the hill in the care of their long-time maid Betty Thompson (1777?–1862). Of this same visit, SH wrote that Southey “ran up the hill to see us at their coming home on Wed. last – [Edith] had been very rambling on their journey, & he looked wretchedly poor man” (LSH, 442). [back]
182. Possibly suggests either that DW was reading the Biblical account of this famously tormented Israelite or was beginning to feel like a Job figure herself. [back]
183. Joanna Hutchinson and Mary Lovell, whom DW feared were caught in the storm while returning to the Isle of Man (see 30 March entry). [back]
184. Of laudanum (see note for 22 October). [back]
185. Likely an indication of the increased severity of her pain, as this is the first time DW records opening a second bottle of laudanum in the space of a week. [back]
186. Presumably either the Ambleside solicitor James Newton (1774–1838) or the venerable Grasmere farmer Robert Newton (1751–1836), both of whom appear earlier in the RJ. [back]
187. Having failed to establish a coalition government, Peel resigned as prime minister on 8 April, opening the door for Lord Melbourne’s return to the office. [back]
188. Ann Benson (née Holme, 1746–1835), a native of Grasmere who died in Ambleside on 3 April at the age of 89 (obit. in WG, 11 April 1835). The Wordsworths had known her since at least 1814, when MW complained about how “Ann Benson cram[med]” her son Willy “with apples and plumbs daily” on his way home from school in Ambleside (LMW, 15). DW records offering monetary assistance to this old neighbor in the ledger below. [back]
189. Possibly unwelcome political news, but more likely some delicate or embarrassing physical complaint. [back]
190. The Wordsworths’ long-time neighbor and friend Letitia Luff, who had just returned to Fox Ghyll after an extended absence. [back]
191. Both unidentified. [back]
192. Rev. Richard Hudson (1745–1835), Vicar of Cockerham, Lancashire, and headmaster of the Hipperholme School near Halifax when DW lived and studied there in her childhood (obit. in WG, 18 April 1835). [back]
193. Possibly William Rawson (1750–1828) of Halifax, late husband of DW’s “Aunt” Elizabeth Threlkeld Rawson. [back]
194. During the seven months between entries, SH had unexpectedly passed away on 23 June, Dora’s condition had gradually improved, and DW had often struggled with acute physical pain and memory loss (Letters, 6:78, 83, 89). In a 26 September letter to his and DW’s brother Christopher, WW reported that “Our dear Sister is in bodily health undoubtedly much better” but “her mind received a shock upon the death of Miss Hutchinson from which is has never recovered.” More specifically, he noted that “her memory of passing events has greatly failed, and her judgements also in all that respects her disease, though not at all in other things. Indeed I think upon points of morals, character, literature, etc., she expresses herself as well or better than ever she did” (Letters, 6:96). Writing to Robert Southey two days later, however, he was less upbeat, fearing that her faltering memory and “impaired judgement” were side-effects of “the great quantity of opium which it has been thought proper to give her” (Letters, 6:100). [back]
195. WW wrote on 7 November of his plan to “stay 3 or 4 days” with his son John in Workington (Letters, 6:112). [back]
196. John Wordsworth had spent part of October at a Protestant assembly in Dublin (Letters, 6:103), but there is no record of his having recently visited Radnorshire, the Welsh county where Ebba Hutchinson’s parents had lived until 1825 and still owned a farm and holiday house at Gwerndyfnant. [back]
197. Writing sideways and often in an unusually unsteady hand, DW used several pages in the back of Notebook 15 to revise portions of “Lines to Dora H.,” a new poem for Dorothy Harrison (1825–73), the eldest daughter of her “Cousin Dorothy” Harrison of Ambleside. Levin’s Longman edition includes a full version of this poem that is based on a fair copy that Elizabeth (“Ebba”) Hutchinson made in DW’s commonplace book (DCMS 120) in June 1835 (Levin, 215–17). Levin tentatively identifies the poem’s recipient as a daughter of George Hutchinson, MW’s youngest brother, but this is confuted by the fact that his Dora was not born until late 1835 (or several months after Ebba’s dated transcription of this poem) and survived for less than six months. Elsewhere in the Longman edition, Levin misidentifies DW’s initial pages of revisions to this poem in Notebook 15 as “a final [journal] entry of disconnected words scrawled irregularly on the page” (175). [back]
198. Cf. lines 29–30 in Levin (all subsequent line references are to this published version). [back]
199. No equivalent lines in Levin. [back]
200. Cf. lines 33–34. [back]
201. Further reworkings of lines 29–30. [back]
202. Several largely illegible words in faint pencil appear above and beside this line. [back]
203. Cf. lines 1–9. [back]
204. A further reworking of line 29. [back]
205. Cf. lines 27–28. [back]
206. Cf. lines 25–28. [back]
207. No equivalent lines in Levin. [back]
208. Cf. lines 10–18. [back]
209. See DW’s entry for 6 October 1834, which describes being “Busy & worn out finishing Mrs Hook’s Rug.” [back]
210. Presumably for the pictures DW received from Cordelia Marshall on 13 November 1834. The cost of this and the next two expenditures are presumably included in the £1 she records paying for “Peggy’s Daughters” below. [back]
211. A type of hard candy. [back]
212. Unidentified, as numerous Peggys appear in the RJ. [back]
213. Obscure, but most likely connected to some initiative of DW’s clergyman brother, Christopher. [back]
214. An elderly Ambleside resident whose death is recorded in DW’s entry for 10 April 1835. [back]
215. Alms for the poor collected during the administration of the sacrament. [back]
216. The Wordsworths’ servants Anne Dawson and Jane Winder (see notes for 28 October and 4 November 1834). [back]
217. Archaic form of ribbons, which DW would have used to trim gowns and rugs. [back]
218. Smocks. [back]
219. Thick yarn for making rugs (see entry for 13 November). [back]
220. Mary Robinson, 11-year-old daughter of Charles and Charlotte Robinson. [back]
221. The Wordsworths’ two maids and James Dixon, their gardener and handyman (see note for 13 November 1834). This and the identical expenditure three lines below were presumably gifts, possibly for Christmas 1834. [back]
222. The 6-year-old son of Benson and Dorothy Harrison of Ambleside. This and the entry above appear in faint pencil along the page’s right-hand margin. [back]
223. Likely Anne Sproat (née Benson, 1809–66), a Rydal-born milliner who in 1832 had married John Sproat (1807–65), another area native who taught school in Ambleside through the mid-1830s and worked as an accountant thereafter. Princeton University’s copy of WW’s The Waggoner (1819) includes an author’s inscription to John Sproat (Heyl, “Peter Bell,” 29). Above this ledger entry, DW wrote and later crossed out records of having lent MW 9s. 6d. for “E. S.” (Edith Southey) and £8 for “Mrs. Coleridge.” [back]
224. The Wordsworths’ longtime friend Jane Ellwood of Penrith (see entry for 13 November 1834). [back]
225. The elderly Ambleside resident (see above expenditure and journal entry for 10 April 1835). [back]
226. Likely a relative of the many Dawsons who at some point worked for the Wordsworths. [back]
227. Possibly brought back from Dublin by DW’s friend Eliza Dowling, whose return to Ambleside is recorded on 22 January 1835. [back]
228. Inhalable tobacco commonly taken for cough and phlegm (the symptoms DW describes having on 19 February 1835). This expense was belatedly recorded in the right margin. [back]
229. Margaret “Peggy” Benson (1770–1838), daughter of the lately deceased Ann (see above ledger entries). When this old acquaintance passed away in 1838, DW lamented, “Poor Peggy Benson lies in Grasmere Church-yard beside her once beautiful Mother” (Letters, 6:528). [back]
230. Likely Fanny Wilson, to whom DW paid several charitable visits over the course of Notebook 1. [back]
231. This and the three ensuing entries appear sideways in the bottom right corner of the rear cover. [back]
232. Presumably a relative of the Peggy and Ann Benson listed above. [back]
233. This final entry appears sideways at the edge of the final page containing DW’s revisions to "Lines to Dora H." [back]
TEI Link
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Volume Editor(s)
Michelle Levy
Nicholas Mason
Paul Westover

Notebook 15 of the Rydal Journals (DCMS 118.5, 4 October 1834–19 April 1835; 4 November 1835) © 2023 by Romantic Circles, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Nicholas Mason is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 

Introduction to Dorothy Wordsworth's Lake District
Michelle Levy, Nicholas Mason, Paul Westover
Editorial Philosophies and Guidelines
Michelle Levy, Nicholas Mason, Paul Westover
Abbreviations for Commonly Used Names and Sources
Michelle Levy, Nicholas Mason, Paul Westover
Introduction to First Notebook of the Grasmere Journal
Michelle Levy
Diplomatic Transcription of the First Grasmere Journal Notebook (DCMS 20)
Dorothy Wordsworth
Introduction to "Excursion on the Banks of Ullswater" (1805)
Paul Westover
Reading Text of "Excursion on the Banks of Ullswater"
Dorothy Wordsworth
Version A of "Ullswater Excursion": DCMS 51 (1805)
Dorothy Wordsworth
Version B of "Ullswater Excursion": Coleorton Manuscript
Dorothy Wordsworth
Version C of “Ullswater Excursion”: Guide to the Lakes (1823)
Dorothy Wordsworth
Two Letters Related to "Ullswater Excursion"
Dorothy Wordsworth
Introduction to “A Narrative concerning George & Sarah Green of the Parish of Grasmere, addressed to a Friend” (DCMS 64)
Michelle Levy
Diplomatic Transcription of the Greens Narrative (DCMS 64)
Dorothy Wordsworth
William Wordsworth on the Greens
William Wordsworth
Introduction to "Excursion up Scawfell Pike"
Paul Westover
Reading Text of "Excursion up Scawfell Pike"
Dorothy Wordsworth
Version A of "Scawfell Excursion" (DCMS 51)
Dorothy Wordsworth
Version B of "Scawfell Excursion": The Kenyon Transcript (1819)
Dorothy Wordsworth
Version C of "Scawfell Excursion": Wordsworth's Guide to the Lakes (1822)
William Wordsworth
Overview of the Rydal Journals
Nicholas Mason
Introduction to Notebook 1 of the Rydal Journals (DCMS 104.1, 11 December 1824—9 December 1825)
Nicholas Mason
Index of Key People and Places in Rydal Journals Notebook 1 (DCMS 104.1, 1824–1825)
Nicholas Mason
Notebook 1 of the Rydal Journals (DCMS 104.1, 11 December 1824–9 December 1825)
Dorothy Wordsworth
Introduction to Notebook 15 of the Rydal Journals (DCMS 118.5, 4 October 1834—19 April 1835, 4 November 1835)
Nicholas Mason
Index of Key People in Notebook 15 of the Rydal Journals DCMS 118.5 (1834–1835)
Nicholas Mason
Notebook 15 of the Rydal Journals (DCMS 118.5, 4 October 1834–19 April 1835; 4 November 1835)
Dorothy Wordsworth
General Bibliography
Michelle Levy, Nicholas Mason, Paul Westover
Biographical Index
Michelle Levy, Nicholas Mason, Paul Westover
About This Edition
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