Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Sunday, 6th June.--A showery morning. We were writing the letter to John Wilson when Ellen came.... After dinner I walked into John Fisher's intake with Ellen. He brought us letters from Coleridge, Mrs. Clarkson, and Sara Hutchinson.... Monday, 7th June.--I wrote to Mary H. this morning; sent the C. "Indolence" poem. Copied the letter to John Wilson, and wrote to my brother Richard and Mrs. Coleridge. In the evening I walked with Ellen to Butterlip How.... It was a very sweet evening; there was the cuckoo and the little birds; the copses still injured, but the trees in general looked most soft and beautiful in tufts.... I went with Ellen in the morning to Rydale Falls.... Tuesday, 8th June.--Ellen and I rode to Windermere. We had a fine sunny day, neither hot nor cold. I mounted the horse at the quarry. We had no difficulties or delays but at the gates. I was enchanted with some of the views. From the High Ray the view is very delightful, rich, and festive, water and wood, houses, groves, hedgerows, green fields, and mountains; white houses, large and small. We passed two or three new-looking statesmen's houses. The Curwens' shrubberies looked pitiful enough under the native trees. We put up our horses, ate our dinner by the water-side, and walked up to the Station. We went to the Island, walked round it, and crossed the lake with our horse in the ferry. The shrubs have been cut away in some parts of the island. I observed to the boatman that I did not think it improved. He replied: "We think it is, for one could hardly see the house before." It seems to me to be, however, no better than it was. They have made no natural glades; it is merely a lawn with a few miserable young trees, standing as if they were half-starved. There are no sheep, no cattle upon these lawns. It is neither one thing nor another--neither natural, nor wholly cultivated and artificial, which it was before. And that great house!