Over the winding, twisting, rocky, muddy path the Babes traveled. At the end of the long tread, past hill and vale, lake and pond, a sacred literary site awaited them (and the rest of the England Semester participants). Dove Cottage, the home of William Wordsworth, outside the town of Grasmere was today’s final destination. When three quarters of an hour had passed, the students finally arrived in the little village, many of them mumbling something about why they weren’t earning a PE credit on this trip. They scattered for lunch, and then reconvened promptly at 2:30. When the group was finally whole, they were divided yet again. Half entered the hallowed home. It was tiny. Their leader Chris’ head skimmed the ceilings. Among the sights within were old newspaper-lined walls (to keep in the heat, we discovered), original furniture from the early 1800s, and the very ice skates of the Wordsmith himself!
Upon the completion of the tour, the whole group entered into a special building that housed thousands of old volumes of Wordsworth’s work, even manuscripts.
We commenced a lecture with Jeff the Curator, a wee British man who you could tell was passionate about his job. Not knowing much about Wordsworth’s biography and writings beforehand, I was personally eager to attend said lecture and see some of the actual manuscripts of his much-acclaimed Prelude, written in his own hand.
I must tell you, I am now sorely disillusioned with this poet, this sniffer of daffodils and watcher of clouds. Wordsworth was a weakling. As Jeff the Curator told us (this is a direct quote) “When Wordsworth held a pen, he experienced pain in his arm.” So what did he do? He wandered around doing whatever he felt like all day in the forests, all the while jotting down spastic notes or dictating lines of poetry which his loyal wife Mary and sister Dorothy then wrote down for him in perfect print. You read that correctly. He was such a weenie that he didn’t even write down his own poems. In case you don’t know the Prelude, I can tell you that it is an 8,000 line epic (Autobiographical. How fitting. 8,000 lines about HIMSELF) that Billy revised over his entire lifetime. On three specific occasions he had Mary and Dorothy (they EACH had to write an entire copy of this in case one got lost) write out the WHOLE THING. And then he went in and made edits over their copies and they wrote it down AGAIN. Add to this injustice that he had 5 children and did not have a job until age 43, or let them publish his poems during his lifetime. So they were poor. And they had to spend all their money on paper and ink to support his writing.
Of course, Wordsworth’s writing is great. But maybe we should pay homage to the unsung heroes, Mary and Dorothy, who rose to the occasion because this genius couldn’t handle a bit of writer’s cramp.
