Dorothy Wordsworth
Dorothy Wordsworth
Dorothy Wordsworth was born on Christmas Day 1771, making her just over a year younger than Wordsworth. She was the only girl in a family of 5: there were two older brothers, Richard and William, and two younger, John and Christopher, making Dorothy the middle child.
During her earliest years the family lived in Cockermouth. The Wordsworths' father, John, worked as land agent for Lord Lowther (known as 'wicked Jimmy') and, with the job, went a large house on the main street in the town. The house and garden were large, with the river Derwent running at the bottom of the garden.
She seems to have developed her enthusiasm for and sensitivity to the natural world during these first years. In his poem The Sparrows Nest, Wordsworth pays tribute to these qualities, and to their influence on himself:
She looked at it as if she feared it;
Still wishing, dreading to be near it:
Such heart was in her, being then
A little Prattler among men.
The Blessing of my later years
Was with me when a Boy;
She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
And humble cares, and delicate fears;
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
And love, and thought, and joy.
Dorothy's mother, Anne, died, after what seems to have been a long illness, when Dorothy was just seven, and her father when she was 12. After the death of her parents Dorothy lived with relatives in Halifax, but felt the separation from her brothers keenly. After one visit from several of her brothers in July 1787 (Dorothy was 16) she wrote to her friend Jane Pollard:
I might perhaps have employed an hour or two in writing to you but I could not leave them. You know not how happy I am in their company, I do not now want a friend who will share with me my distresses. I do not now pass half my time alone. I can bear the ill nature of all my relations, for the affection of my brothers consoles me in all my Griefs, but how soon alas! shall I be deprived of this consolation! And how soon shall I again become melancholy, even more melancholy than before. They are just the boys I could wish them, they are so affectionate and so kind to me as makes me love them more and more every day. ... Many a time have Wm, J, C, and myself shed tears together of bitterest sorrow, we all of us, each day, feel more sensibly the loss we sustained when we were deprived of our parents...
It is no wonder, then, that moving into Dove Cottage represented such a milestone for Dorothy. As a single woman without surviving parents her options were limited and her position vulnerable. Dove Cottage offered the first opportunity for her to have her own home, rather than being somebody's guest.
Read more about Dorothy's Grasmere Journal.
Read an extract from Dorothy's journal for:
Read the poem A Winter's Ramble in Grasmere Vale written by Dorothy Wordsworth
Read more about Dorothy's relationship with her brother William.
Read the extract from Dorothy's journal about her walk by Ullswater on a stormy day with William that inspired his famous poem, I wandered lonely as a Cloud.
Read William and Dorothy Wordsworth's response to the George and Sarah Green tragedy of 1808.
