EARLY LIFE
William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770 in what is now named Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland. It is part of the scenic region in north western England known as the Lake District.
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| Portrait of William Wordsworth by Benjamin Robert Haydon |
His father was John Wordsworth, an Attorney and agent for James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale. Lowther was one of the most important (and despised) men in the area. Through his connections, John Wordsworth and his family lived in a large mansion in the small town.
His mother Ann Cookson Mum died in 1778 (when William was 8) and his father in 1783 (when William was 13).
William was the second of five children. He was close to his sister Dorothy especially after his favourite brother died when William was 13.
A volatile child, on one occasion on suffering an indignity, William went up to the attic intending to kill himself with a fencing sword.
Wordsworth was taught to read by his mother and attended, first, a tiny school of low quality, Cockermouth Free School. The Mutiny of the Bounty leader, Fletcher Christian, was there at the same time as William.
William went on to a school in Penrith for the children of upper-class families. It was at the school in Penrith that he met the Hutchinsons, including Mary, who later became his wife.
With the death of his mother in 1778, William's father sent him as a boarder to Hawkshead Grammar School in Cumbria.
At Hawkshead Grammar School, William fell in love with countryside and nature and began to write poetry. But in 1783, his father, died leaving little to his offspring.
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| Hawkshead Grammar School. By FFNick |
Although many aspects of his boyhood were positive, William recalled bouts of loneliness and anxiety. He would hug trees knowing they wouldn't wiggle out of his embrace. It took him many years, and much writing, to recover from the death of his parents and his separation from his siblings.
Wordsworth began attending St John's College, Cambridge in 1787, where he was an average student. The following year, he graduated from Cambridge without distinction.
CAREER RECORD
Wordsworth made his debut as a writer in 1787 when he published a sonnet in The European Magazine.
In 1790 Wordsworth went on a walking tour of Europe, during which he toured the Alps extensively, and visited nearby areas of France, Switzerland, and Italy. The following year he returned to France and joined the Fighters for Freedom in the French Revolution. However, the Reign of Terror later made Wordsworth change his mind.
Between 1792-95 Wordsworth lived aimlessly without any plans for a profession.
In 1795, after receiving a legacy from a friend, Raisley Calvert, Wordsworth was able to devote his life to poetry.
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| Wordsworth in 1798 |
When his father died, the Earl of Lonsdale owed him £4500; however, despite a judgement against him, did not pay his debt. His son, however, paid a substantial portion of it in 1802, which freed Wordsworth up financially.
In 1813 Wordsworth was appointed Stamp Distributor for Westmoreland at a salary of £400pa. This was his first and only job.
The government awarded Wordsworth a civil list pension amounting to £300 a year in 1842.
Wordsworth became Poet Laureate in 1843. He at first declined because at 73 he was too old but changed his mind when Prime Minister Robert Peel told him "you shall have nothing required of you". As Poet Laureate he wrote no official poetry.
WORKS
Wordsworth was famed for his descriptive powers. He did much to change contemporary views of landscape moved from story based poetry to appreciation of nature. He said: "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings...recollected in tranquillity".
The year 1793 saw the first publication of poems by Wordsworth with the collections An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches.
Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems by William Wordsworth and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was first published in 1798. The Preface to Lyrical Ballads is considered a central work of Romantic literary theory. In it, Wordsworth discusses what he sees as the elements of a new type of poetry, one based on the "real language of men" and which avoids the poetic diction of much eighteenth-century poetry.
Wordsworth's first attempt to unionise man and nature in his writing, the collection was the start of a new era in English poetry.
Wordsworth gave Humphry Davy the task of assisting his friend Cottle, the poet's publisher, in correcting the second edition of Lyrical Ballads.
Poems, in Two Volumes, a collection of Wordsworth's poetry, was published in 1807. The collection includes:
(a) "Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802". A Petrarchan sonnet by Wordsworth describing London and the River Thames, viewed from Westminster Bridge in the early morning.
Actually when the collection was first published in 1807, Wordsworth gave the year as 1803, but this was later corrected to 1802. Research has shown that he didn't compose it on September 3 anyway but on July 31.
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| Westminster Bridge as it appeared in 1808 |
When the verse was inscribed on a plaque at the London Eye in 2000, one line was omitted in error. A spokesman said at the time: “We are not quite sure how it happened, but it is being replaced.”
(b) "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud". William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came upon a "long belt" of daffodils besides Ullswater one spring day in 1802. They inspired him to pen "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." The poem is known for its vivid imagery and use of natural elements to convey a sense of wonder and joy. It remains one of Wordsworth's most famous and beloved works. In a 1995 BBC poll it was voted the UK's fifth most popular poem.
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| Hand-written manuscript of 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' |
(c) Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood". This was Wordsworth's own favourite amongst his poems.
The Prelude, Wordsworth's autobiographical epic which he was forever revising was published posthumously in 1850. Although it failed to arouse much interest at that time, it has since come to be widely recognised as his masterpiece.
According to John Julius Norwich in Observer Magazine, Wordsworth's two worst opening lines were:
"Spade! with which Wilkinson hath tilled his lands".
"Clarkson! It was an obstinate hill to climb".
BELIEFS
Wordsworth originally thought the French Revolution was "bliss". “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive” he wrote in Prelude. Once he got his revolutionary ideals out of his system in France, he became fiercely patriotic and a monarchist. In fact, Wordsworth turned so far to the Right that by 1818 he was canvassing for the Tory party.
The poet's more radical admirers were shocked by Wordsworth's changing political views. Robert Browning wrote a poem "The Lost Leader" in 1845 to express his disappointment over the way Wordsworth had lost his revolutionary zeal. It included the famous lines of regret "never glad confident morning again."
APPEARANCE AND CHARACTER
Wordsworth was a sturdy, clumsy figure with a large, loud nose and burning eyes.
He had unattractive legs of which Thomas de Quincey said: "His legs were pointedly condemned by all female connoisseurs in legs".
Surprisingly the poet, who was famous for his appreciation of nature, has no sense of smell.
In the Lake District it was a common sight to see Wordsworth trampling over the fells in his rough clothes, straw hat and huge boots.
Arrogant and passionate, Wordsworth rehearsed his poetry in a Cumberland murmur. When living in Somerset some locals thought Wordsworth and his wife were French as they didn't understand their Cumbrian accents.
RELATIONSHIPS
In November 1791, Wordsworth visited Revolutionary France where he fell in love with a French woman, Annette Vallon, She gave birth the following year to their child, Caroline.
Because of lack of money and Britain's tensions with France, Wordsworth returned alone to England in 1792,
The Reign of Terror estranged Wordsworth from the Republican movement and the war between France and Britain prevented him from seeing Annette and Caroline again for several years. He supported the pair as best he could in later life.
In 1802, Lowther's heir, William Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale, paid the £4,000 owed to Wordsworth's father through Lowther's failure to pay his aide. This repayment afforded Wordsworth the financial means to marry.
After The Treaty of Amiens was signed on March 25, 1802, Wordsworth was able to return to France and he and his sister Dorothy visited Annette and Caroline in Calais. The purpose of the visit was to prepare Annette for the fact of his forthcoming marriage to his childhood friend Mary Hutchinson.
Wordsworth married Mary at All Saints' Church in the village of Brompton-by-Sawdon on October 4, 1802. Dorothy did not appreciate the marriage at first, but lived with the couple and later grew close to her sister-in-law.
Two of their children, Thomas and Catherine, died (aged 11 & 12) within months of each other in 1812.
William never got over the death of his adored daughter, Dora in 1847. The other two children John and Willy were still alive after their father's passing.
His nephew, Charles Wordsworth, was co-founder of the Boat Race in 1829.
His sister, Dorothy (December 25, 1771 – January 25, 1855) lived with William all of his adult life - she was virtually a sister servant. Dorothy declined into premature senility in the last 15 years they were together.
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| Dorothy in middle age. Wikipedia |
In 1795 Wordsworth met the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. They became close friends; Wordsworth would play the straight man to the jokey Coleridge.
Dorothy fell in love with Coleridge. Coleridge said of himself and the Wordsworths "We are three people, but one soul".
Both Coleridge's health and his relationship to Wordsworth began showing signs of decay in 1804. They fell out and the estrangement never really healed.
HOMES
Wordsworth was born and brought up in in an 18th century house in Wordsworth House, Main Street, Cockermouth. It had originally been built in 1745 for the Sheriff of Cumberland.
A small legacy allowed Wordsworth and Dorothy to set up house at Racedown Lodge near Bettiscombe, Dorset in 1795. They lived there for two years.
In 1797 Wordsworth settled with Mary and Dorothy in Alfoxden, Somerset to be near Coleridge so they could collaborate together. They had charge there of the son of friend Basil Montagu.
Wordsworth wrote Lyrical Ballads at Quantock Hills, the rented ancestral seat of the St Albyn family in Deer Park at the foot of Quantock Hills.
From 1798-99 Wordsworth and Dorothy lived in Gostar, Germany but he was homesick and complained of the cold.
Wordsworth first encountered Dove Cottage on the edge of Grasmere when on a walking tour of the Lake District with Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The house was available for rent, and they took up residence on December 20, 1799 paying £5 a year to John Benson of Grasmere.
The primitive Dove Cottage was Wordsworth's cramped home for nine years until 1808 with Dorothy. Both Coleridge and his fellow romantic poet Robert Southey were frequent visitors to Dove Cottage. In later years, the essayist Thomas de Quincey became a long-term guest.
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| Dove Cottage. By Christine Hasman, |
Wordsworth and his family, including Dorothy, moved to Rydal Mount, Ambleside (between Grasmere and Rydal Water) in 1813. He spent the rest of his life there.
HOBBIES AND INTERESTS
William Wordsworth was a keen walker; he tramped thousands of miles over the Lake District and walked 2,000 miles across Europe. It was said he frightened fell walkers in the Lake District by booming out lines from his poems.
The Terrace walk above the River Derwent was a favourite playing ground for Wordsworth and Dorothy.
The English poet celebrated his 60th birthday by climbing Scarfill, England's highest peak.
Wordsworth was an ardent skater who is said always to have been the first on the ice and to have been so expert in its art that he could cut his name with skates.
DEATH
William Wordsworth died at home at Rydal Mount from an aggravated case of pleurisy on April 23, 1850. He was buried at St Oswald's Church, Grasmere.
The actor Mike Myers is the first cousin, seven times removed of Wordsworth.
Sources Daily Express, British Book of Lists, Europress Encyclopedia
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