JAMES GRASBY: Welcome to the National Trust podcast.

I'm James Grasby and I'm a curator with the National Trust

with a portfolio of houses in Herefordshire and

Worcestershire.

And the Daily life of a curator is looking after things as

diverse as library ladders and portraits.

These places are knowledgeable witnesses if you like to things

that have been seen and heard by them and in this group of

podcasts, we'll be delving into the stories, plays books and

characters that make each of these places so special.

So join me on this journey and immerse yourself in the wonders

of the National Trust. "

PETER COLQUITT: I wandered lonely as a cloud that floats on

high or vales and hills. When all at once, I saw a crowd, a

host of golden Daffodils beside the lake beneath the trees,

fluttering and dancing in the breeze."

JAMES GRASBY: That was the opening verse of one of the

nation's favorite poems. I wandered lonely as a cloud,

written by William Wordsworth and read by Peter Colquitt, a

volunteer tour guide with the National Trust. The poem

describes a gorgeous scene in the Lake District where I am

now.

I've just come through the streets of Grasmere, a small

Cumbrian Town where Wordsworth lived and wrote.

Wordsworth described the place as the loveliest spot that man

hath ever found. Wordsworth lived in a number of houses in

the Cumbria area.

But in this episode, we'll be exploring the two now managed by

the National Trust Wordsworth House where he grew up and Allan

Bank where he lived with family and friends.

But before we start exploring, I'm meeting Jeff Cowton. I'm

hoping to learn a bit more about Wordsworth's life and writing.

JEFF COWTON: Wordsworth living to be 80, about 70 of those 80

years, he would think of the Lake District as his home.

And from the very early days of being a child in Cockermouth

where he tells us later that the sound of the River Derwent was

one of his earliest natural influences.

He tells us later, these were the great influences on his

life. Nature was his teacher and it was in the Lake District that

these early formative experiences took place. "

PETER COLQUITT: Fair seed time had my soul and I grew up

fostered alike by beauty and by fear much favoured in my

birthplace."

JEFF COWTON: He thought that the world of nature was the great

natural order of things "

PETER COLQUITT: From nature doth emotion come and moods of

calmness equally are nature's gift. This is her glory."

JEFF COWTON: He was incredibly popular, unimaginably popular to

us now.

People would come to the house, they would call to meet him,

they would ask for a tour of the garden. He appeared in the guide

books, you know, suggesting, well, you might like to knock

and meet Mr Wordsworth and he might show you around. So he was

very, very much a pop star.

JAMES GRASBY: At the peak of Wordsworth's creative career. He

was living in the small and picturesque cottage known as

Dove Cottage.

But his family was growing and the Wordsworth's were running

out of room to host their literary guests.

And looking out from the small window of Dove Cottage,

Wordsworth spied a large white house being built across the

valley. He actually described the house as a temple of

abomination, but soon enough, he would be living there.

I'm very pleased to be getting closer to the abomination that

Wordsworth described it's really a very handsome house. I don't

know what Wordsworth was complaining about!

It's a crisp Georgian Stucco house on a beautiful mound

looking down over the lake and we're just coming up to the back

door and thank goodness, I'll get out of the rain. Let's see

who's here.

Hello, Elaine, how do you do? I'm James Grasby.

ELAINE TAYLOR: I'm Elaine Taylor. I'm membership a and

visitor welcome manager for Allan Bank in Grasmere.

JAMES GRASBY: So who did Wordsworth move here with?

ELAINE TAYLOR: One of the reasons to choose Allan Bank,

Their friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge had insisted on living

with the Wordsworths. Let's put it that way, and it would have

been impossible at Dove Cottage.

So they moved here. They would have been William, his wife

Mary. They'd already had three children by then, John Dora

Thomas by 1806 so Dove Cottage was full.

They had three servants. They went on to have Catherine by

September 1808. And Willie Junior by 1810, they would have

had Coleridge's sons. They came here at weekends.

Sarah Coleridge came here as well with her mum, various house

guests from time to time. So in a house with six bedrooms, there

could be up to 13 to 15 people. Certainly at weekends.

JAMES GRASBY: My goodness imagine breakfast time! [

Cross-talk] They lived here for three years and they were

turbulent times?

ELAINE TAYLOR: Certainly, Yes. Wordsworth's reputation wasn't

in the ascendant. He'd moved here to look after and

accommodate his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Coleridge was meant to be working on a weekly magazine

called The Friend. But for the most part, Coleridge's

increasing addiction to alcohol and opiates was causing great

problems for the Wordsworths.

He would stay in bed all day. He wouldn't go out walking in the

sunshine. He would either be a chatterbox at meal times or say

nothing at all. He was becoming, you know, really strongly

addicted to opiates on a heroic scale.

Well, the friendship broke up in 1810, it was never fully sort of

rectified.

JAMES GRASBY: So why did Wordsworth leave Allan Bank?

ELAINE TAYLOR: By 1811, It was becoming absolutely impossible

for them to live here. The fires, the chimneys smoked so

badly. They had chimney doctors in to try and rectify the

problem. Nothing would work. Their living conditions were so

poor.

It's very cold, it was very damp. The circumstances were so

straightened that they had to move out.

By 1812, unfortunately, Catherine who'd been born here

and Thomas who is her brother, three years older, both died.

So Allan Bank is the only house where all five children were

together.

By 1813, Wordsworth was looking to move again. I think they

would have had a clear view of the children's graves at Saint

Oswald's church. And so it was very difficult for them. So they

moved to Rydal Mount in 1813 and he lives at Rydal until his

death.

JAMES GRASBY: It's said that some of Wordsworth's best work

was in fact published after his death. The Prelude only hit the

printing press in 1853 months after Wordsworth's death. "

PETER COLQUITT: Was it for this that won the fairest of all

rivers. Loved to blend his murmurs with my nurse's song and

from his elder shades and rocky falls and from his fjords and

shallows, sent a voice that flowed along my dreams for this

didst thou o Derwent winding among grassy homes." "

Where I was looking on, a babe in arms, make ceaseless music

that composed my thoughts to more than infant softness giving

me amid the fretful dwellings of mankind. A foretaste, a dim

earnest of the calm that nature breathes among the hills and

groves."

JAMES GRASBY: Having heard those beautiful words from The

Prelude, I'm making a short journey north to the pretty town

of Cockermouth where Wordsworth spent his childhood to hear

those river murmurs for myself.

That was the noise of going through a torrential puddle. The

rain is pouring down on our journey to Cockermouth to

William Wordsworth's birthplace.

We're traveling through the heart of the Lake District,

Cockermouth is about 18 miles northwest of Grassmere.

And the landscape here is quite sensational. I mean, one can

hardly see the tops of the mountains that rise very steeply

to either side, lone rather desolate and bleak looking pine

trees and leafless ash.

We've just come off the main street in Cockermouth down a

side street into the side entrance of Wordsworth's

birthplace. A very warm coloured stone building. Coming to a

green door. I'm gonna see who's here.

We're just, were just gonna go in!

Let's wander through. This looks very much like the outworks of

rather a grand house. I mean, it's a substantial building.

I'm meeting Alex Morgan. She's the interpretation manager in

the house and hopefully she can shed some more light on the

Wordsworth's childhood.

ALEX MORGAN: How do you do? It's lovely to meet you.

JAMES GRASBY: I'm bowled over by this beautiful house. A building

of, of some grandeur really, isn't it?

ALEX MORGAN: But the reason the Wordsworth family were here is

not because they were tremendously wealthy. And I

think if people come in thinking that it can give a very

misleading impression of William's background, but in

fact, the Wordsworths lived here because this house is- it was, a

perk of William's father, John's job.

He worked as agent for Sir James Louther. James Louther was the

biggest bigwig around.

He was the wealthiest, most important man in the area. He

owned all the coal mines out on the coast.

He controlled all the parliamentary seats.

He was everyone's landlord basically.

And John Wordsworth as a young go getting lawyer got the job

and he got use of this house as part of that. So that's why the

Wordsworths fetched up here. They couldn't have ever afforded

the likes of this in any other way.

JAMES GRASBY: How did the Wordsworth live here?

ALEX MORGAN: It was effectively a sort of a corporate

entertainment venue as much as a family home. The words of us

were expected to entertain here. So I certainly think that

William and Dorothy and their brothers as small children would

not have been having free reign within the house.

They would have been in the more day to day rooms, the family

parlour, the kitchen with the maid and sort of staying out of

the way and basically roaming the countryside probably to keep

out from under people's feet as well.

So let's have a walk around, shall we? We'll start with the

formal dining room, which is just here.

There we go. That's a little bit better. A bit of light such as

it is.

JAMES GRASBY: An elegant cornice, a very handsome chimney

piece. I mean, this is the height of luxury, isn't it?

ALEX MORGAN: It really is. But this would have been a room for

special occasions only, dinner parties, Christmas, that sort of

thing. The children would certainly not have been welcome

in here.

JAMES GRASBY: The furniture and pictures, none of the material

is Wordsworth.

ALEX MORGAN: There is really next to nothing because it was a

tide cottage because the parents died young and the children were

sent away. Other people moved in here, but the Wordsworth

possessions had to be sold off to help support the children. "

PETER COLQUITT: Early died my honoured mother, she who was the

heart and hinge of all our learnings and our loves."

ALEX MORGAN: After William's mother died, their father really

couldn't cope with such a large young family.

So poor little Dorothy just aged about six years old, was packed

off to relatives that she'd never met in Halifax.

It must have felt like going to the moon. It was so far away.

And William and his brother Richard, his older brother went

down to Hawkshead where they became borders with a local

family down there.

And they went to the grammar school in Hawkshead.

And because of this William and Dorothy didn't see each other

for such a long time for years and years.

Basically, as a result of the loss of their mother, the whole

family was sort of flung in opposite directions.

And that happy life here came to an end. But the influence of the

time here never left any of them.

So here we are on the landing of the stairs, I've just opened the

blind and you can see through this massive great big window,

the vista of the garden in front of us and also the Derwent, the

river, flowing just behind there you can see. "

PETER COLQUITT: When having left his mountains to the towers of

Cockermouth. That beauteous river came. Behind my father's

house he passed close by along the margin of our terrace walk.

He was a playmate whom we dearly loved."

ALEX MORGAN: This was the fairest of all rivers as William

described it. And in his memory, it is this wonderful place to

swim and fish and play. "

PETER COLQUITT: Oh, pleasant, pleasant were the days the time

when in our childish plays my sister Emmeline and I together

chased the butterfly."

ALEX MORGAN: In reality though in those days, it was an open

sewer.

It wasn't actually that nice but that's the wonder of memory and

hindsight, it makes everything absolutely idyllic!

But this was the place that this great love of nature comes from.

And the first steps into that were this garden and this walled

garden is where he and Dorothy spent their very happiest young

years.

John and Anne Wordsworth do seem to been very unusual parents for

the time. We think it's highly possible that John and Anne had

read the works of Rousseau, the philosopher, who was very

fashionable among young adults at the time.

And he did say that children should be outside, they should

be free, they should be in nature.

This is how you get them to develop properly, give them

freedom to grow into the people they need to be.

But that was unusual and very radical. So maybe that was the

influence, that was the reason they were given so much freedom.

So we've had a look around the house. Now we're going to take a

walk down the garden because really from William's

perspective, this is the important place.

JAMES GRASBY: Being a Romantic poet wasn't for sissies. My

goodness, it is pouring with rain, but it is a soft romantic

rain.

ALEX MORGAN: We do think that in Wordsworth's time, it would have

been a working garden. It wouldn't have been laid out with

lawns for instance, it would have been, we're pretty certain

as we have it now, a very much a working garden that produces the

fruit, vegetables, edible flowers, herbs that they would

have used in the house.

JAMES GRASBY: So it's laid out symmetrically, we've got 1, 2,

3, 4 columns if you like of beds, these small, they look

like fruit trees to me. But- [ Cross Talk] apple trees?

ALEX MORGAN: Yes. And some really rare heritage varieties

of trees that we have here and we get absolutely glorious crop

of apples from them. They're largely cooking apples because

in William's time, if you were eating fruit, you would largely

be eating it cooked.

That was seen as a- as a sort of a safer way to eat it because

fruit was something that people were rather alarmed by and it

was seen as rather dangerous food that can make you ill.

So everything in the garden is a heritage variety. The particular

varieties that are here are things we think that William and

Dorothy would have recognized. We don't have anything modern.

JAMES GRASBY: And by the sound of it, the river just as the

other side of this wall is in full speed. That's the Derwent

is it?

ALEX MORGAN: It is! it is the Derwent, William's fairest of

all rivers.

JAMES GRASBY: Well, it's been an astonishing day.

What I've learned and discovered, which has been

revelatory for me really is to now think of Wordsworth in a

much more three dimensional way that up to now I felt his

contribution and my knowledge of Wordsworth was just a few pieces

of his poetry.

But I can now see the origins really of his genius have been

very drawn in and taken by this absolutely beautiful part of the

country.

And realise that he was not just a great national figure, but a

real man with real emotions and a family like the rest of us.

And what has- visiting these places has triggered in my mind,

what- what are those things that we all need in order to

flourish?

And I think what it comes down to particularly in Wordsworth's

story, those hardy perennial ideas of love of nurture of care

of parenting of the friends that you meet, the way that you

conduct yourself, all these things.

I've very much come through not only in the story of his life,

but in the literary works that he produced. I'm gonna go ahead

and start reading more Wordsworth.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the National Trust

podcast.

For more information about Wordsworth House and Alan Bank,

you can visit their website at nationaltrust.org.uk/wordsworth-

-house and nationaltrust.org.uk/allan-bank.

In the next episode, I'll be exploring the Devonshire retreat

of one of England's most celebrated detective writers,

Agatha Christie.

That episode will be available in a couple of weeks, but there

will be a mini episode available next week where we'll be hearing

more about how visitors can transport themselves back in

time at Wordsworth House.

To make sure you never miss another episode, subscribe on

itunes or your chosen podcast app and please do let us know

what you thought of this episode on Facebook, Twitter or

Instagram.

You can also email us at podcasts@nationaltrust.org.uk

until the next time from me, James Grasby. Goodbye.