Wordsworth Museum(4). 글라스미어(Grasmere)

Wordsworth Museum(4). 글라스미어(Grasmere). 영국(England)

wordsworth.org.uk

 

Grasmere Vale 1799-1800

The Road to Grasmere Vale

Wordsworth found Dove Cottage in November 1799 when he and his brother John and Coleridge were on a walking~tour of the Lakes. The cottage, which had been a public house ~ the Dove and Olive Bough ~ was to let, and in Book I of the 1805 Prelude the poet tells of the day on which he made his decision to go and live there :

 

                                       ... I made a choice

Of one sweet vale whither my steps should turn,

And saw, me thought, the very house and fields

Present before my eyes...

 

On the same walking-tour Wordsworth heard the story of James Bowman, which was to be the basis of his first major Grasmere poem The Brothers: Resting on a crag named The Pillar, in Ennerdale, Bowman had walked in his sleep over the edge, and fallen tragically to his death.

 

'The Pillar, Ennerdale' by Edward Lear (1836)

(A Gift from Dr Charles Warren)

 

'Unity Entire'

Wordsworth's personal happiness was so great when he and Dorothy first arrived at Dove Cottage that he wished their way of life might one day be shared by 'all the vales of earth and all mankind'.

 

The lines to the right show him sturggling to express his sense of Grasmere's uniqueness:

 

                              'Tis the sense

Of majesty and beauty and repose,

A blended holiness of earth and sky

Something that makes this individual spot,

This small abiding place of many men...

A whole without dependence or defect,

Made for itself and happy in itself,

Perfect contentment, unity entire.

                       Home and Grasmere (1800)

 

 

 

 

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Grasmere Vale 1800-1802

'Michael : A Pastoral Peom'

In October 1800 Dorothy records in her Journal the finding of a ruined sheepfold;

'built nearly in the form of a heart unequally divided'. It was on this fold that Wordsworth based his tragic story of Michael, the old Grasmere 'statesman'(yeoman-farmer) whose heart was indeed divided.

If from the public way you turn your steps

Up the tumultuous brook of Greenhead Gill,'

You will suppose that with an upright path

Your feet must struggle; in such bold ascent

The pastoral mountains front you, face to face.

But, courage, for beside that boisterous brook

The mountains here all opened out themselves

And made a hidden valley of their own.

It is in truth an utter solitude -

Nor should I have made mention of this dell

But for one object which you might pass by;

Might see and notice not, Beside the brook

There is a straggling heap of unhewn stones,

And to that place a story appertains.

Upon the Forest-side in Grasmere Vale

There dwelt a shepherd, Michael was his name,

An old man, stout of heart, and strong of limb.

His bodily frame had been from youth to age

Of an unusual strength...

                            he had been alone

Amid the heart of many thousand mists

That came to him and left him on his heights.

           Michael. A postoral poem lines I

 

George Cowperthwaite

 In Michael, Wordsworth records the destruction of a traditional way of life that was based upon the ownership of land :

 

Those fields, those hills - what could they less? had laid

Strong hold on his affections, were to him

A pleasurable feeling of blind love,

The pleasure which there is in life itself.

 

The yeoman farmer ('statesman') was especially vulnerable to changes in the economic and social life of the nation. But some, like the man in the photograph-George Cowperthwaite of The Wray, Grasmere-did manage to survive into the last years of the 19th century.

 

 

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H.W. Pickersgill

William Wordsworth c.1850

On loan from the national portrait gallery

 

Thursday 15th April 1802

The wind seized our breath

 

 

These art works are inspired by Dorothy Wordsworth's journal entry describing daffodils at Ullswater.

 

In the first work, I have 'replaced' the calligraphy of the Far Eastern poets with the individual, expressive, letters of Dorothy Wordsworth. I have maintained the vertical form of the Japanese or Chinese poem, and employed colour as an added emotional tool to highlight the feelings expressed in Dorothy's prose. The text consists of words found in the journal entry: 'Gowbarrow', 'misty morning' and 'daffodils'.

 

In the second print, I have worked directly and intuitively with pastel over and into the words on the page. Here I am also responding to the place the words describe - place I have walked many times and understand well.

 

Mike Collier. 'Dorothy Wordsworth, The Wind Seized Our Breath', and 'Dorothy Wordsworth, 15th April 1802 (1 & 2), 2012

 

 

Coleridge and the Mediterranean

 

In March 1804 Coleridge, whose health had been seriously affected by opium, sailed for the Mediterranean to be in a warmer climate. At Dove Cottage a special manuscript of Wordsworth's unpublished poetry (see right) had been prepared for him to take with him. Among much else it included the first five Books of the full-length Prelude, and the great Odes, To Duty and Intimations of Immortality. Coleridge was away for two and a half years, spending most of the time in Sicily and Malta.

 

 

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Grasmere Vale 1803-1805

 

 

'The Soul, the Imagination of the Whole'

 

In February 1804 Wordsworth wrote the great lines on the Climbing of Snowdon that open the final Book of The Prelude. The experience they recall had taken place in the summer of 1791. In The Prelude it is used to celebrate the highest achievement of the human imagination, as the mist-covered landscape becomes

 

The perfect image of a mighty mind,

Of one that feeds upon infinity.

That is exalted by an under-presence.

The sense of God, or whatso'er is dim

Or vast in its own being

(1805 Prelude, XIII. 69-73)

 

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Grasmere Vale 1805-1813

'A Temple of Abomination' 

As early as 1806 Dove Cottage had come in seem too small for Wordsworth's growing family. They spent the winter of 1806-7 Coleo   in Lei    , and in May 1808 moved into Allan Bank, a large new house on the far side of Grasmere. Wordsworth's original response to the building shows just how an  they must have been to find accomodation:

 

'The Churchyard among the Mountains'

In May 1811, the Wordsworth family moved from Allan Bank to the Rectory. It was to be the saddest of their Grasmere homes. In June 1812 the poet's three-year-old daughter, Catherine, died. Then, six months later, Thomas, who was six, died of pneumonia, The miniatures (left) were discovered in 1978 in a collection of Mary Wordsworth's private papers. It cannot be proved but it seems likely that they are of Catherine and Thomas. From the Rectory the Wordsworths could see the children's graves - one important reason why they moved to Rydal in the spring of 1813.

 

Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859)

Thomas De Quincey was only seventeen when he wrote to Wordsworth in May 1803 to express his admiration of Lyrical Ballads (see below left).

 

It was nearly four years before De Quincey brought himself to visit Dove Cottage. When he did come, in 1807, he immediately made himself useful - for instance, seeing Wordsworth's political pamphlet on The Convention of Cintra through the press - but the two men never became close friends. When the Wordsworth's moved to Allan Bank. De Quincey took over the tenancy of Dove Cottage. It was here that he experienced the torments of opium addiction, and the vivid dreams that were the inspiration of his great creative works, Confessions of an Opium Eater (1821) and Suspiria De Profundis.

 

 

 

 

A pencil sketch of Thomas De Quincey by Sir Watson Gordon.

 

'Unity Sublime'

During his final years in Grasmere Vale, Wordsworth was at work on The Expansion, published as 'A portion of the Reduce'. In the concluding Book of his poem, Wordsworth describes an evening walk up Loughrigg Fell, and the view down into the valley. The verse is grander now and more remote, but Grasmere is still for the poet symbolic of unity, as it had been from the first. on this occasion it is the lake, catching and harmonizing the reflectionns of the sun-set, that achieves a 'unity sublime':

 

 

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 Portraits of Wordsworth

 

 

1. Aged 77 years, chalk and pencil drawing by Leonard Charles Wyon

 

2. Aged 70 years, old by William Pickersgill

 

3. Aged 73 years, chalk and pencil drawing by Benjamin Robert Haydon

 

4. Aged 73 years, unfinished oil by Benjamin Robert Haydon. Probably based on 3.

 

5. Aged 74 years, oil by Samuel Crosthwaite

 

This sideboard belonged to Cumbrian poet Susanna Blamire (1747-1794), from her house in Finkle Street, Carlisle.

Susanna Blamire, who also lived at Thackwood Nook, near Carisle, was known as the 'Muse of Cumberland' and the 'Poet of Friendship'. She wrote songs in Cumbrian and Scottish dialects, as well as in Standard English, and sang then to a guitar. She was not interested in publication, although some of her songs appeared in songbooks; rather, she wrote to entertain herself, her friends and her family. She would even pin her verses to oak trees near her house so that people passing by could enjoy them. Her writings also provided solace from her thwarted love for Lord Ossulston. Although the details of the relationship are not known it seems that his family objected to the match as she was a yeoman farmer's daughter. Lord Ossulston was sent away on the Grand Tour and Susanna never fell in love again. Later she would suffer from rheumatic fever, from which her writing also provided consolation.

 

Susanna's collected poetry was not published until 1842, nearly fifty years after her death, being published as "The poetical works of Miss Susanna Blamire... Now for the first time collected by Henry Lonsdale M.D. With a preface, emmoir, and notes by Patrick Maxwell'. Some of her poems remain in unpublished manuscript form. The Wordsworth Trust has an important holding of Susanna Blamire manuscripts thanks to a gift from Christopher Maycock, a descendent of Susanna. These include 'Lament for the Happy Swain', 'Be still my heart and let this moving sight', and 'once more to Hygia, smiling maid'.

 

Susanna was a very lively woman. If, when she was young,m she met a travelling musician on the road she would get down from her pony, ask for a jig, and dance until she was so tired she could dance no more. The local people too appreciated her joie de vivre and she was affectionately known in the neighbourhood as 'Miss Sukey'. When she diet, a farmer mourned her loss saying 'The merrie-neets won's be worth going to since she is no more'.

 

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Rydal 1813-1850

When Wordsworth departed from Grasmere Vale in 1813 he went to live in Rydal. This landscape was his home for the rest of his life:

 

 

 

Dora Wordsworth (1804-1847)

Of all his children Wordsworth was most attached to Dora.

This water-colour on ivory was made by Margaret Gillies when Dora was thirty five years old.

 

Dora's hair

This hari was cut off on the 5th March 1835.

 

                                 John Keats (1795-1821)

                                  Life Mask after Benjamin Robert Haydon 1884

                                  on loan form the National Portrati Gallery

 

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Rydal 1813-1850

 'Still glides the stream'

In December 1818, Mary Wordsworth reported:

'William is asleep from sheer exhaustion - he has worked so long - he had written 21 sonnets (including 2 old ones) on the river Duddon - they all together compose on poem'. The final sonnet in this sequence is a beatiful re-affirmation of Wordsworth's faith in the endurance of 'man's unconquerable mind'.

William Wordsworth watercolour on ivory Margaret Gillies

 

I thought of thee, my partner and my guide,

As being past away - vain sympathies !

For backward, Duddon, as I cast my eyes

I see what was, and is, and willabide.

Still glides the stream, and shall forever glide ;

The form remains, the function never dies;

While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise -

We men, who in our morn of youth, defied

The elements - must vanish. Be it so !

Enough if something from our hands have power

To live, and act, and serve the future hour;

And if, as toward the silent tomb we go,

Through love, through hope, and faith;s transcendent dower,

We feel that we are greater than we know.

 

James Hogg - d. Nov. 1835

 

Charles Lamb - d. Dec. 1834

 

S. T Coleridge - d. July 1834

 

Walter Scott - d. Sept. 1832

 

Felicia Hemans - d. May 1835

 

George Crabbe - d. Feb 1832

 

'Clouds that Gather Round the Setting Sun'

In November 1835, prompted by a newspaper report of the death of James Hogg - and perhaps recalling the work of an earlier Scottish poet. William Dunbar - Wordsworth wrote his Extempore Effusion Crabbe and Scott had died in 1832, Coleridge and Lamb in 1834, and in 1835 ther had been the death of the poetess Felicia Hemans as well as Hogg. Like Dunbar in his Lament For The Makers, Wordsworth felt old and alone. As one would expect, it is Coleridge and Lamb who bring out the saddest and greatest poetry:

 

When first, descending from the moorlands,

I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide

Along a bare and open valley,

The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.

 

When last along its banks I wandered.

Through groves that had begun to shed

Their golden leaves upon the pathways,

My steps the Border-minstrel led.

 

The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer,

'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;

And death upon the braes of Yarrow,

Has closed the Shepherd - poet's eyes;

 

Nor has the rolling year twice measured,

From sign to sign, its stedfast course,

Since every mortal power of Coleridge

Was frozen at its marvellous source -

 

The rapt one, of the godlike forehead,

The heaven-eyes creature, sleeps in earth.

And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,

Has vanished from his lonely hearth.

 

Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits,

Or waves that own no curbing hand,

How fast has brother followed brother,

From sunshine to the sunless land!

 

Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber

Were earlier raised, remain to hear

A timid voice, that asks in whispers,

"Who next will drop and disappear?"

 

Our haughty life is crowned with darkness,

Like London with its own black wreath,

On which with thee, O Crabbe, forth-looking

I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath.

 

As if but yesterday departed,

Thou too art gone before - but why

O'er ripe fruit, seasonably gathered,

Should frail survivors heave a sigh?

 

Mourn rather for that holy spirit,

Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep =

For her who, ere her summer faded,

Has sunk into a breathless sleep.

 

No more of old romantic sorrows,

For slaughtered youth or love-lorn maid

With sharper grief in Yarrow written,

And Ettrick mourns with her their Poet dead

 

 

'A Soft Eye-Music'

'I see by glimpses now', Wordsworth had written in 1805, 'when age comes on / May scarcely see at all'. Yet almost to the end of his life there were the moments of vision. 'Airey-Force Valley' was one of these. Here, this copy of the poem is in the handwritting of Dora, the poet's daughter.

 

The Close of Day

In 1847 Wordsworth's beloved daughter Dora died. For the remainder of his life he was haunted by her loss. Mary Wordsworth wrote in a letter:

 

   This turnpike road before us (the last one she travelled over - that ominous cold upon her) is an undercurrent that haunts him. Bur alas, where can we find a place that is not beset with like hauntings? Could but the thoughts be fixed upon that blessed haven where wer trust she now is, we should there find comfort.

 

On 23rd April 1850, aged eighty years, William Wordsworth died at Rydal Mount, and on the 16th he buried in Grasmere churchyard.

 

Dorothy (who after a severe illness in 1829 had become a more or less permanent invalid at Rydal Mount) outlived her brother by nearly five years. When she was reminded in 1853 that Wordsworth had said of her. The blessing of my later years/was with me when a boy'. she said: 'Ah, that was what my dear brother said of me. You must not believe it you know'.

 

Dorothy died in January 1855, and Mary Wordsworth in January 1859. Both were buried in the family plo in Grasmere Churchyard

 

 

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