The Grasmere Journal

Dorothy Wordsworth's The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals collects two private diaries kept by the sister of the Romantic poet William Wordsworth. Never intended for publication, the journals record daily life, natural observation, and the composition of poetry during two of the most creative periods in William's career. The earlier Alfoxden Journal covers January through May 1798, when Dorothy and William lived in Somerset near their friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The longer Grasmere Journal, spanning May 1800 to January 1803, documents their life at Dove Cottage in the Lake District of northwest England, a period that encompasses William's marriage to Mary Hutchinson, a close family friend.

The Alfoxden Journal began on 20 January 1798, when Dorothy and William were renting Alfoxden House, about three miles from Coleridge's cottage at Nether Stowey. The opening entry offered composed landscape description: green paths channeling streams, sheep gathered on slopes, snowdrops and hepatica in the garden. Dorothy recorded the sound of the sea, audible from hilltops in winter because of the "absence of the singing of birds, the hum of insects, that noiseless noise which lives in the summer air" (142). From early February, Coleridge appeared frequently as a walking companion. The journal gradually admitted domestic activity: Dorothy starched linen, fetched eggs, and gathered sticks for the fire. She tracked the advance of spring with botanical care. Several entries corresponded to poems being composed. On 23 March, Coleridge brought his ballad "The Ancient Mariner" finished. By late April, William was "engaged in wearisome composition" and had begun "Peter Bell" (152). The Wordsworths were preparing to leave Alfoxden, as the lease would not be renewed, partly because of local suspicion about their radical associations.

The Grasmere Journal opened on 14 May 1800, the day William and their brother John Wordsworth departed for Yorkshire to visit Mary at her family's farm. Dorothy resolved to keep the journal because she would "give Wm Pleasure by it when he comes home again" (41), establishing that it was written for William's eyes alone. During his three-week absence, Dorothy recorded her daily activities at Dove Cottage: gardening, walking to Ambleside for letters, reading Shakespeare, and observing the natural world. She described encounters with beggars and travelers who passed through the valley. William returned on 7 June, arriving after dark. They stayed up until four in the morning while he inspected their improvements to the cottage and garden.

The summer of 1800 was busy with gardening, baking, and copying poems. Coleridge and his family stayed for three weeks in late June and July. Dorothy records meeting a beggar woman and her children on the road, an encounter that later inspired William's poem "Beggars." In September, she attended a pauper's funeral that moved her deeply, noting that the priest "did not look as a man ought to do on such an occasion" (61), having been seen half-drunk the day before. In early October, she records meeting an old leech-gatherer, a man who collected leeches for medicinal use. He was "almost double," with 10 children all dead, his trade failing because leeches had grown scarce, and his body broken by an accident. This encounter became the foundation for William's poem "Resolution and Independence." From mid-October through December, William labored over "Michael," a blank verse pastoral about a shepherd. John departed at the end of September; Dorothy notes that her "heart was right sad" (23). She did not know this was the last time she would see him at Grasmere.

The second surviving notebook begins in October 1801 after a gap of nearly 10 months. In early November, Coleridge departed for London. Dorothy wept, and when William dismissed this as "nervous blubbering," she objected: "It is not so—O how many, many reasons have I to be anxious for him" (37). Dorothy records the quiet rhythms of winter: reading Chaucer and Spenser aloud, making William's waistcoat, walking in frosty evenings. Neighbor Peggy Ashburner told Dorothy about her family's painful decision to sell their land, recalling how she used to look over the fields: "it used to do me so much good you cannot think" (41). This conversation inspired William's poem "Repentance." Through January and February 1802, William worked intensely on revising "The Pedlar," a long poem about a traveling peddler, and Dorothy records his exhaustion: She read to him to help him sleep, copied the poem repeatedly, and nursed him through headaches.

The third notebook covers a period of extraordinary poetic creativity. On 14 March, over breakfast, William wrote "To a Butterfly" while eating nothing, sitting "with his shirt neck unbuttoned, & his waistcoat open" (78). On 22 March, Dorothy and William resolved to visit France, where William's former lover Annette Vallon lived with their daughter Caroline. They agreed that William "should go to Mary" (82) to discuss their marriage. On 26 March, William wrote "My heart leaps up" just before bed, and the next morning he began the first four stanzas of the "Ode: Intimations of Immortality."

On 15 April, walking along the shore of Ullswater, Dorothy and William encountered the daffodils that would inspire one of the most famous poems in English. Dorothy writes that they first saw "a few daffodils close to the water side," but "as we went along there were more & yet more & at last under the boughs of the trees, we saw that there was a long belt of them along the shore" (85). She describes some daffodils resting their heads on mossy stones "as on a pillow for weariness" while others danced and reeled with the wind (85). William later transformed this shared experience into "I wandered lonely as a cloud." On 21 April, Coleridge arrived and recited his "Verses to Sara," a poem addressed to Mary's sister Sara Hutchinson that becomes "Dejection: An Ode." Dorothy was deeply affected, finding herself in "miserable spirits" despite the fine weather (89).

The fourth notebook opens in May 1802. William began "The Leech Gatherer" and continued revising it obsessively for weeks. Dorothy records that she was "oppressed & sick at heart for he wearied himself to death" (138). On 18 June, news arrived that Lord Lowther's heir intended to pay a long-standing debt owed to the Wordsworth children's late father, a sum that transformed their financial prospects. Dorothy writes a passionate farewell as they prepare to leave Dove Cottage: "O beautiful place!—Dear Mary William . . . The Swallows I must leave them the well the garden the Roses all—Dear creatures!!" (119). They traveled to Yorkshire, then to London and Dover, crossing to Calais on 31 July to visit Annette and 10-year-old Caroline. They stayed through August, walking by the shore in the evenings.

On 4 October 1802, William married Mary at Brompton Church. Dorothy did not attend the ceremony. She gave William the wedding ring, which she had worn on her finger all night. While the wedding party was at the church, Dorothy lay on the bed "in stillness, neither hearing or seeing any thing" until Sara Hutchinson came to tell her they were returning (126). Dorothy rushed to meet William and fell upon his bosom. The newlyweds and Dorothy traveled back to Grasmere, arriving on 6 October. On 8 October, Dorothy and Mary walked together; Dorothy calls it "the first walk that I had taken with my Sister" (132).

The journal becomes increasingly sparse after the return. On Christmas Eve, Dorothy sat beside William mending a stocking and repeating sonnets, while Mary baked downstairs. Coleridge arrived that morning, and the Wordsworths had to tell him that his daughter had been born the day before. In the final entries of January 1803, Dorothy records walking on a bitterly cold day to buy gingerbread from Matthew Newton, a neighbor who was blind. The journal concludes with a quiet inventory of supper: "I am going to take Tapioca for my supper, & Mary an Egg, William some cold mutton, his poor Chest is tired" (137). Dorothy resolves to continue writing in a new notebook, but the journal does not resume.