A Slice of life
By Bill Lites
After the castle experience, and as we were driving through Sumerset, on our way to Manchester, we stopped in the small town of Ilchester to checkout some horses in a field, and to look at the roadmap. We happened to look across the road, at a small church, where a wedding was about to take place. DiVoran and I are always amazed, at how we seem to be casual witnesses to weddings in progress in many places around the world, during our travels.
As we headed north through the beautiful part of England known as the Lake District, we were awed by the many hews of delicate color that surrounded us. There is something about the light in the Cotswold’s that gives everything a wonderful muted color, and makes everything look pristine. We had made arrangements to meet some friends of our son Billy in Manchester, but they only had time to link up with us for a short visit at a restaurant close to the A60.
They had met Billy and Lisa at the Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament Show during their visit to Orlando the year before, and had asked us to stop and see them when we were in the UK. We had a great visit, but it was just too short. Then it was on north again to visit Dove Cottage, the home for a time, of the poet William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy. Dove Cottage is located on the edge of Grasmere in the Lake District of England. As a writer and poet herself, DiVoran wanted to visit the homes of as many English writers and poets as she could during this trip. She told me Wordsworth’s poem “I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud” was one of her favorites, and she had read it at least 100 times over the years. It was interesting to me what a small start many of the English writers had when they were young, and didn’t publish much of anything until they were much older. Many of them came from common backgrounds and struggled to get their work published, much like many writers all over the world today.
William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, along with Samuel Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature, with the publication of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798. William, Samuel and Dorothy were very close their entire lives, and influenced each other’s writings. Dorothy Wordsworth did not set out to be an author, and her writings consisted mostly of a series of letters, diary entries, poems and short stories. Dove Cottage seemed to be a very popular tourist stop the day we were there, and we shared afternoon “tea and crumpets” with a lovely English couple from Canterbury, who invited us to stop and see them on our way back down the eastern side of the country.
In 1791 Wordsworth met and wanted to marry a French woman, Annette Vallon, during a trip to France, but did not have the finances to support her. However, he did have a daughter by Annette in 1792, but was forced to leave France because of the French Revolution, and he did not see Annette or his daughter Caroline again for 10 years. In 1802, he returned to France with his fiancé, Mary Hutchinson, visiting Annette and Caroline in order to set up an allowance for them. William and Mary were married later that year, and his sister Dorothy continued to live with them for many years. England honored Wordsworth in 1843 by naming him Poet Laureate of England. Wordsworth and his wife Mary were buried at the St. Oswald’s church in Grasmere with a very unobtrusive common headstone.
—–To Be Continued—–
Old Things R New 