Daffodils

William Wordsworth might be the English writer most immediately associated with daffodils, but his sister Dorothy is the one who captured the spirit of this year’s daffodils, striving to hold their heads up against wind, rain, and yesterday evening, sleet: I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about & about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness & the rest tossed & reeled & danced & seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the Lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing— Dorothy Wordsworth, Grasmere Journal 15 April 1802

Dorothy Wordsworth’s account of her 1818 ascent of Scafell Pike in the company of her friend Mary Barker, Miss Barker’s maid, and two local guides, is similarly evocative: I ought to have described the last part of our ascent to Scaw Fell pike. There, not a blade of grass was to be seen – hardly a cushion of moss, & that was parched & brown; and only growing rarely between the huge blocks & stones which cover the summit & lie in heaps all round to a great distance, like Skeletons or bones of the earth not wanted at the creation, & here left to be covered with never-dying lichens, which the Clouds and dews nourish; and adorn with colours of the most vivid and exquisite beauty, and endless in variety.

The Wordsworth siblings often walked together, some 175,000 and 180,000 miles during their lifetimes, according to Thomas De Quincey. When she was well into her fifties, Dorothy bragged about the speed with which she could walk, boasting to Sara Coleridge that she could ‘walk sixteen miles in four hours and three quarters, with short rests between, on a blustering cold day, without having felt any fatigue’.

The feminist in me bridles at the fact that Dorothy’s account of the ascent of Scafell Pike was used by William without credit in his 1822 guide book to the Lake District, which was widely popular during the 19th century. More sad is the fact that this vibrant mountaineer ended her days as an invalid in “a deepening haze of senility.” In fairness, Dorothy’s journals make it clear that she never envied her brother his fame as a published author — and eventually Poet Laureate of England. Nonetheless, scaling Scafell Pike in Dorothy’s honor is high on the agenda of my next “research trip” to England this fall.