Yes, I freely admit it, the choice of Lakeland for the half term break this year was ‘brave’ in the parlance of the civil service – in other words foolhardy in the extreme and probably destined for disaster. The coat tails of Storm Babet were still trailing across Northern England and the Eastern Cairngorms as we launched towards the M6, and gloomy skies greeted us as we meandered our way through to our hotel on the Eastern shore of Haweswater. Having said that I didn’t really care. There is something deeply impressive about travelling through hills whose tops are brooding in cloud, and High Street to the West of our local lake did not lose its shroud for the entirety of our stay. We stayed in the low stuff this time; walking on the tops could wait for a better, clearer window of opportunity to open.
That view (or rather lack of a view) must have been one that William Wordsworth must have been used to in the very early years of the nineteenth century when he was resident at Dove Cottage in Grasmere, and it was to there that we were inevitably drawn during our stay. Having a wife who is an English specialist makes such visits practically compulsory, and I wasn’t complaining as I too enjoy poetry though I am no Wordsworth expert. Obviously the name is a draw too, and on our last visit to the cottage we had a lovely conversation with a Wordsworth descendant of the poet. Not this time sadly, but the loss was more than made up for by the very good museum that has been created on the site, showing lots of examples of Wordsworth’s original manuscripts and memorabilia from his life. Of course he didn’t just live at Dove Cottage; his family home is at Rydal Mount just down the valley, but it was during his younger cottage life that he wrote most of what is acknowledged to be his finest verse.
I had forgotten the nature of the man. The idyllic symbolism of ‘Daffodils’ is what I had stuck in my mind, but in reality the picture that emerges is one of a radical and a man who is re-thinking the way that poets might engage with the environment around them. Wordsworth’s fascination with the beauty and splendor of the Lakeland landscape pours out in the form of blank verse that shows a vivid emotional response to nature, and his deep empathy with the natural environment radiates. When he was writing this was dramatic and new – and now it makes him seem very modern indeed as we grapple with the environmental challenges posed by the twenty first century. Out of date he most certainly is not.
The irony is that William Wordsworth was not really seen for the radical thinker that he was during his lifetime. Maybe that is the lot of a poet I guess. The money that he made from his writing mostly came from his ‘Guide to the Lakes’ rather than poems, though this too showed a deep understanding of the landscapes, nature and people of Lakeland rather than just being an itinerary for occasional tourism. I thought about him as we drove across the Kirkstone Pass and on towards Ullswater for the final time, once again glimpsing the valleys fitfully through the clouds yet again. The tops may have largely eluded me this time around, but I felt that I understood Wordsworth’s lakes and hills just a little better despite the lack of a view.
SDS
