WORDSWORTH DEATH PATCH

He worried constantly that he might lose her as well. She was named after Dorothy and she showed the same intellectual prowess as her aunt. He was not intellectual but Wordsworth demanded he follow in his father’s footsteps and so John suffered the torment of tutors.ĭora, born 1804, was the only surviving daughter. The eldest, John, was into hunting and fishing. Catherine died at three years old and Thomas died aged six only six months later. William and his unassuming wife Mary had five children, John, Dora, Thomas, Catherine (who may have suffered Down's Syndrome) and Willie. Family members paid a heavy price in stress, illness and, ultimately, mental breakdown as the poet demanded their constant devotion to his needs. Wordsworth quarried her vivid observations as material for his poems.īut the tiny former public house they lived in was cold, damp and uncomfortable. His sister Dorothy also kept her famous Grasmere Journals during those years - four small notebooks that detail her relationship with William and their adventures in the Lake District with friend and fellow poet Samuel Coleridge. It is true that William wrote most of his best-loved poetry there. Numberless biographies present the Wordsworth family’s residence at Dove Cottage between 17 as a peaceful, creative idyll. Perhaps by pushing the bulbs into the damp earth he unconsciously acknowledged a sense of guilt - that his narcissistic need to bind his favourite child to himself had kept her from the man she loved until it was tragically late. But the happy display that greets visitors heading to William Wordsworth’s former homes nearby at Dove Cottage and Rydal Mount hides an awful story.įor the man who planted the flowers, arguably the greatest English poet after Shakespeare, did so in an agony of tormented mourning over her early death.

WORDSWORTH DEATH PATCH

Deep in the Lake District lies a patch of woodland that is animated every spring with fluttering and dancing daffodils.

Wordsworth death