Exceptional Travel Writing
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| Such a place was the English Lake District - remote, beautiful, unchanging - a "recoverable Eden" where unifying visions and Man and nature were immediately discernible to sensitive souls. In 1799, at the age of 29, William Wordsworth and his best friend and fellow poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, undertook a walking tour of his native Lake District. While on the tour Wordsworth first saw Dove Cottage in the village of Grasmere. By December of that year he and his sister, Dorothy, were in residence there. |
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Coleridge
had moved to Greta Hall, Keswick, 21 kilometers (13 miles) to the north.
So began eight years of "plain living and high thinking" and
the publication of two editions of Lyrical Ballads (1801 and 1802).
In the preface to the second edition he wrote, "Poetry is the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected
in tranquility."
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In
1802 Wordsworth married his childhood sweetheart, Mary Hutchison.
By 1808 three of their five children had been born. Along with Wordsworth's sister Dorothy, writer Thomas de Quincey was also a permanent guest at Dove Cottage, which was now too small. After a couple of temporary homes, the Wordsworth household took up permanent residence at nearby Rydal Mount in 1813. Here the poet lived until his death at the age of 80 in 1850. Dorothy and Mary lived on at Rydal Mount until their deaths in 1855 and 1859 respectively. |
Both
Rydal Mount and Dove Cottage are now open to the public and well worth
visiting. A servant at Rydal Mount once said to a visitor, "This
is my master's library where he keeps his books: his study is out of doors."
This fact is readily apparent in the stunningly beautiful 1.8-hectare
(4.5 acres) garden, which Wordsworth designed himself. He wrote: "
... Nature never did betray/The heart that loved her."
Immediately adjacent to Dove Cottage is the international award-winning
Grasmere and Wordsworth Museum. It was founded in 1934 and recreated in
1981 within the walls of an 1850s coachhouse. Inside, Wordsworth's epic
autobiographical poem, "The Prelude," is used visually and aurally
to follow the events of the poet's life and evolutionary times. Displays
consist of original manuscripts of Wordsworth and his contemporary writers,
along with a fine art collection that includes works by Constable and
Gainsborough. Each year the museum presents a special exhibition covering
subjects connected with the Romantic Era.
Dove Cottage and the Grasmere and Wordsworth Museum are on the northern
edge of the village of Grasmere on the A591, the main Ambleside-Keswick
highway. Rydal Mount is less than three kilometers (two miles) to the
south on the same highway.
Website: http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/.
WORDSWORTH'S
LAKE DISTRICT: CRADLE OF ROMANTICISM
was first published by The Kelowna Capital News
