The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth: A Life by Frances Wilson

Author:Frances Wilson [Wilson, Frances]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Literary, Women
ISBN: 9780374108670
Google: 0i_bmAEACAAJ
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Published: 2008-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Oh! pleasant, pleasant were the days,

The time, when, in our childish plays,

My sister Emmeline and I

Together chased the butterfly!

A very hunter did I rush

Upon the prey:—with leaps and springs

I followed on from brake to bush;

But she, God love her, feared to brush

The dust from off its wings.

As in “Tintern Abbey,” Dorothy—here “Emmeline”—is bodiless and motionless while Wordsworth uses her to explore his own development. While she still represents her brother’s childhood, Dorothy’s position in William’s imagination has subtly changed: in “Tintern Abbey” she was an image of “what I was once,” now she is a “solemn image” of what can never be retrieved, “my father’s family.”

Throughout the spring, the intimacy between Dorothy and William increases along with his productivity. She refers to him now not as Wm but as her beloved and her darling. While they discuss their plans for the future, William cannot stop composing. They are living in a vortex of poetry; Coleridge claimed that between March and the end of July, Wordsworth produced thirty-two poems. On March 16, Wordsworth wrote “The Emigrant Mother,” after which Dorothy read Spenser to him while he leaned upon my shoulder. William’s butterfly has now joined her nightscape: The moon was a good height above the Mountains. She seemed far & distant in the sky there were two stars beside her, that twinkled in & out, & seemed like butterflies in motion and lightness. The next day after dinner we made a pillow of my shoulder, I read to him & my beloved slept, and that night while she was walking alone, Dorothy saw the shape of my Beloved in the Road at a little distance—we turned back to see the light but it was fading—almost gone. On Sunday, March 21, William was unwell…We had a sweet & tender conversation, after which Dorothy wrote to Mary and Sara Hutchinson. They then resolved to see Annette & that Wm should go to Mary.

Dorothy will accompany William to France in the summer to meet Annette and his nine-year-old daughter, Caroline, but he will go now to Mary alone. The purpose of the meeting with Poor Annette is to break the chain that links them both. Dorothy is holding on to her brother’s every last breath. On March 23 she writes, The fire flutters & the watch ticks I hear nothing save the Breathings of my Beloved & he now and then pushes his book forward & turns over a leaf. On March 24, another major decision is made, although Dorothy calls it a “vow,” using the solemn terms of a marriage ceremony. She announces that when William and Mary marry, the three of them will live together in Dove Cottage rather than with Mary and her family at the Hutchinson farm in Yorkshire: I made a vow that we would not leave this Country for G[allow] Hill. She writes to Mary to tell her so. Dorothy will no longer be mistress of her home, but her community is at least preserved. She is unwell for the rest of the month.

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