Wordsworth’s Exquisite Sister

By Marjorie Wynn

This is a biography of Dorothy, sister to William Wordsworth and shows how Dorothy may have contributed her own ideas to William’s poetry. Her detailed observations of their natural surroundings can be seen in her journals. Having lost their parents at an early age the two bonded together and stayed together for most of their lives, even after William’s marriage to Mary. I wanted to point out their closeness. The story is told from Miss Wordsworth’s old age when her health was deteriorating both mentally and physically. The title I have chosen ‘Wordsworth’s Exquisite Sister’ is a quote made by their close friend, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press UK
• Release date: Nov 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781982286651

Marjorie Wynn

Marjorie Wynn was born and educated in south Manchester. In 1959 she married and subsequently moved to live in North Wales. She had her first success as a writer with the publication of several book for children in conjunction with her artist/illustrator husband. After a career in Adult Education she took up writing again and her successes include articles for local and nations magazines including Period House, Country Quest, Active Life, Eva and Together with Children. Since her retirement from full-time teaching Marjorie has run Creative Writing classes for several local groups and produces articles on local history, travel, country life, humorous pieces and biography. She has a keen interest in music and the theatre and occasionally sings with a traditional jazz band. She has also taken part in many amateur dramatic productions.

Book preview

Prologue

1777

They had walked through the frosty snow, being careful not to fall on the ice. Pavements like sheets of glass glittered everywhere; in the late afternoon the wind blew icy blasts down alleyways, biting into faces and hands. Icicles hung from roofs and windowsills, and Dorothy and her brothers skipped ahead knocking them off and attempting to hold them in their fingers and suck at the pieces of sparkling ice.

Be careful, and look where you are going, called their uncle. The light was fading and the afternoon growing so cold that it began to penetrate the bones as they hurried on towards home.

The children scurried along playfully, throwing pieces of ice and snow at each other, oblivious of the treacherous footpaths, managing to keep upright with only a few slips and slides, which made them laugh out loud. The little ones held on to Uncle Christopher’s hand now as the darkness came down but they all entered the Penrith home of their grandparents in high spirits with bright rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes after their cold winter walk.

They were met with a silent household; the nursemaid was wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron; grandfather sat slumped in his chair, eyes averted; and the children’s father paced up and down the room looking distraught; grandmamma, her usual poker face collapsed and shrunken with crying.

She’s gone, she spoke to her son. Tek childer into t’other room. We must think what to do.

Dorothy and William had been aware that their mother was very ill when she returned from London just after Christmas. The younger ones were not able to grasp the enormity of the situation, but now William took Dorothy’s hand and led her into the parlour where they both broke down in a plethora of weeping. What are we going to do? Oh, what are we going to do? cried Dorothy, and she and William held each other in mutual distress. Please don’t cry, Dolly, William pleaded. I will look after you.

Come and sit down. I think you both know what has happened. John Wordsworth spoke gravely to his five children. They had been summoned back into the drawing room to face their grandparents and the various aunts and uncles who had arrived at the house meanwhile. William nodded his head as they all looked down at their feet. Dorothy began to cry.

I want to go home, she whimpered. Please take us home to Cockermouth. She felt the gaze of the whole room full of relatives and felt panic rising in her stomach. Take me home, take me home, she screamed and began to punch at her father with her little fists, and kick at her uncle as he tried to calm her down. I don’t want to live here. This is not my home. She longed for the safety of the house in Cockermouth, the only home she knew. I want to go home – to my home. The adults looked on in shocked silence at the child’s outburst, shaking their heads at the plight of the distressed little girl. That’s enough! John Wordsworth shouted. But nothing would ever be enough; not until she was back in her home. She cried louder and louder, the kind of hysterical crying that made her more and more angry and upset until she fell exhausted into sleep.

This event was to be the first, and probably the greatest, tragedy of her life.

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1843

I am going to paint a picture in my mind of the life I shared with my dear brother, William, famous for his poetry, before my mind fails me and remains nothing but a blank sheet. It seems my life now is closing down. I rarely go outside the house, I take little or no part in the household goings on. I can no longer write or even read as I used to; everything is colourless.

The Lord knows I already have spasms, as Mary calls them, spasms of not knowing what is going on around me, where my thoughts are a whirlpool of incomprehension that turn me into a screaming nervous wreck. It is then that William and his wife, Mary calm me and I become normal again, or as near normal as such an irrational old lady can be. It is then that I rely on past memories.

There seems to be no chronology to my thinking. Events from the past pour out at me from nowhere and for no reason. Given free reign my thoughts are a jumble of ideas and events that happened only recently rubbing shoulders with recollections of times when I was a young girl, each memory vivid and bright as sun on the lake, or sometimes faded and dappled with the passing of time. I need to think in sequence, to help me work out my past in some sort of order. I must start as far back as I can – at the beginning of memory.

One of the first things I learned was the importance of belonging. I belonged in my very own happy family until I was six. When Mamma died the family was split up, my brothers stayed with our father until they were old enough to go to school, and I was sent to a relative in Halifax who welcomed me into her household. She had several children in her care, and after the first months of missing my family, I overcame my shyness and settled down into this happy household. Aunt Threlkeld’s was my new home and there I belonged.

It is a strange phenomenon how children adapt to a new and different situation, and I honestly believe at that young age I did not remember much about William or pine over the loss of any of my brothers, although for a time there was this feeling of temporary existence away from my home. The details of those childhood days in Halifax have faded and my thoughts move along to the time when, at the age of fifteen, my grandparents suddenly wanted me back with them in Penrith. Perhaps being uprooted yet again was more traumatising then my earlier upheaval. I was growing up now and the realisation that I would be thrust into the centre of my real family once more filled me with apprehension, pain and excitement. Would I recognise my brothers? Would they know me as their sister? Would I be looked on as someone apart who did not belong in that family of boys? Yet I felt anticipation at seeing them again and knowing that it was in that family that I really did belong.

I moved back to Penrith when the boys were home for the summer holidays and we had several weeks of becoming acquainted with each other again and during that time Penrith seemed to me to be a very happy place to be. But when the boys returned to their schooling I was suddenly made to feel very lonely and sad in my bones.

It soon became clear to me that my presence in Penrith was simply a necessity. Now that I had left school I could become useful to my grandparents, both with the housework and in the shop; but there was little or no feeling of love from them. It felt more that my grandparents thought it their duty to take me in. And of course it was not too unpleasant. I quite enjoyed learning how to cook and clean and serve in the shop, and I made my old acquaintance with the Hutchinson sisters once more who became my very dear friends, a friendship which has lasted all my life. Whilst my brothers were still at school, and later University, Joanna, Sarah and Mary became my closest companions.

But there were times when I began to recall the happy life with our parents in Cockermouth all those years ago. It seems strange how each section of my early life blurs in my memory. Whilst I lived in Halifax, my own dear home and family were stored in a secret part of my memory; and then returning to Penrith the years in Halifax began to fade (except for my dear friend Jane Pollard with whom I kept up a regular correspondence). Meeting my brothers again put me in mind of Cockermouth and I began to have vivid recollections of family life there. Perhaps we store in our memory only those things we wish to remember.

Already after only a few weeks being reunited with my family I felt closest to William and began to write to him in the minutest detail of all that was happening in my life. I would sit in the garden and pour out my indignation at constantly being chastised by grandmamma for bringing in muddy footprints, for behaving excitably and laughing too loudly with Mary, Sarah and Joanna – only little misdemeanours but bearing them alone was upsetting. I told him how the weather was behaving, describing the strong winds roaring in from the north, and my sadness as the last leaves faded and the long overgrown stems of roses snapped in the gales.

Even so the blustery weather has always suited me well. I used to enjoy buffeting along with my hair blowing free, scuffing through piles of red and yellowing leaves, reaping grandmamma’s disapproval once more – ‘So unbecoming at your age!’ Sometimes to get away from the house and enjoy the open air I would walk up the hill with the wind behind me blowing my skirts and pushing me along. I have always felt a wonderful sense of freedom that comes from walking in the wild wind. I remember a hare in the field. He stood on his haunches, ears up until he saw me, then he streaked away and disappeared under a hedge. Sarah and I would go nutting or bramble picking and get our fingers embedded with tiny thorns. I believe the remedy was to rub goose fat into the skin.

Preparations for that first Christmas with my brothers all together again was most exciting. It was also to be my sixteenth birthday (I was born on Christmas Day). I helped to decorate the Christmas cake and boil the puddings as grandmamma was confined to her bed with a bad cough. I took her up a pot of herb tea to ease the coughing but all I received as thanks was a scowling demand as to what all the shouting and screaming had been about. I can recall her very words –

Are you not aware it is unbecoming for a young lady to disport herself in this way? Dear me, I can’t imagine what they taught you at that school. Me lying here ill abed and all you can think of are high days and holidays. Now leave me here in peace and don’t go banging and clattering all around the place. I need to rest.

She nodded her head and waved her hand in dismissal as if at a servant girl. I never understood why, as so often happened, my grandmother did not look on me with any sort of loving kindness.

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1843

T he old lady jerked herself back to reality as if from a dream, although she knew that she had not been dreaming. The scene she had recalled had actually happened years and years ago when she had been a young woman in her teens, living with her grandparents in Penrith. The reality to which she now returned was her attic bedroom at Rydal House overlooking the beautiful Rydal Water in the Lake District, her home with William’s family where she had lived for goodness knows how long. She heard Lizzie’s feet plodding slowly up the stairs and closed her eyes pretending to be asleep. Lizzie came up close to her bedside and stared down at the immobile face.

You’re ne’er asleep, your eyelids are twitchin’. I’ve just come up to check you’re alreet.

Dorothy opened her eyes to the wizened old face of her nurse.

Where’s the woman that comes in with tea at this time? she demanded.

Ay, that’s me, Lizzie replied with a sigh. Your tea is here on the tray. Mind you don’t spill it all over’t sheets. Why you can’t get up and sit in a chair beats me. You could manage your food and drink much better than in bed, she grumbled.

Mind your business and pass it to me. Is there any cake?

The nurse helped Dorothy to sit up and arrange the pillows before passing her the tea. I’ll help you, she offered. See, you’re already slopping it into the saucer. Come here, let me. The mistress says you must come downstairs to eat. It’s good for you to get up a bit - and less tidying up for me, she added quietly.

The tea ceremony, as usual, was a messy affair. Dorothy’s trembling hands refused to grasp the cup and she shied away from being helped by the old nurse. The result was tea dribbling down her chin and on to the sheets. Lizzie wiped up the spillage as best she could, patting the drips on her chin and neck.

Oowwwh, yelled her patient. Don’t touch me. And she let out a screech and then a maniacal laugh which could be heard all over the house. See, just give over, cried Lizzie. The master has visitors today. They don’t want to hear that racket.

She screamed again and dug her nails into the back of Lizzie’s hands.

I’ll laugh if I want to. Go away, you old hag. I’ll come down when I’m ready. I’ve a lot to think about.

Ignoring the insult and never knowing what was going on in the mistress’s mind, Lizzy cleared up the tea things and returned to the kitchen, shaking her head and muttering. Daft in the’ead, poor thing. She doesn’t know how lucky she is - her own room in this big house, lovely views and a devoted family to look after her. T’maister, Mr Wordsworth, has looked after her and protected her all his life and she ends up like this. It’s a crying shame, that it is. Lizzie staggered down the stairs and crossed the hall towards the kitchen just as the master was saying farewell to his guests.

Everything all right up there? he enquired casting his eyes upwards. There’s blood on the back of your hand. Tell me, what is it, how did that come about?

Oh, maister, we ‘ad a bit of a skirmish. It’s nothing. Miss Wordsworth’s a bit out o’ sorts today. I’ve left her to ‘ave a rest. She’ll be down later.

William sighed and nodded. Lizzie knew just how to handle his poor sister. William, bent and feeble in his old age, opened the door to the Drawing Room.

Come and sit down for a minute and tell me about it.

The servant laid down the tray, smoothed her pinafore and followed the Master into the Drawing Room.

Tell me, Lizzie, how do you think the Mistress is getting on?

Well, Sir, she seems to have - like - sudden flashes of mem’ry that light up her eyes, and she mutters to ‘erself. I can’t catch everything but she seems to be remembering earlier times, talking what you might call animated like, then just as sudden she lapses back into - well - I don’t like to say gibberish exactly but acting like a child again, Sir, with her whoops and rude noises, laughing at nothing, sometimes tears, Sir. All I can say is when she does remember, it all seems pretty clear to her.

Thank you Lizzie. I’ll go up and see her shortly.

William shook his head