On Wednesday I played a solo recital in Ambleside Church as part of the Lake District Summer Music festival. My programme contained six pieces by the female pianist-composers whose work I have been performing in the past couple of years.
In the context, I was touched to discover the chapel in Ambleside Church dedicated to the Wordsworths – the famous poet William, his sister Dorothy and his wife Mary.
William Wordsworth’s poem about the daffodils is an old favourite of mine and one of the few poems memorised at school that I can still easily remember. Here’s part of it:
‘I wandered lonely as a cloud/That floats on high o’er 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.
‘Continuous as the stars that shine/And twinkle on the milky way/They stretched in never-ending line/Along the margin of a bay:/Ten thousand saw I at a glance,/ Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
‘The waves beside them danced; but they/Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:/A poet could not but be gay,/ In such a jocund company’ ….
A few years ago, when reading about Dorothy Wordsworth, I was astounded to come across her description of the daffodils she encountered on a walk with her brother William in April 1802:
‘I never saw daffodils so beautiful they grew among the mossy stones about and about them, some rested their heads upon these stones as on a pillow for weariness and the rest tossed and reeled and danced and seemed as if they verily laughed with the wind that blew upon them over the lake, they looked so gay ever glancing ever changing.’
This was written in Dorothy’s private journal (now known as The Grasmere Journal) but it seems likely that her observations, probably shared with William at the time, were transmuted by him into a poem which implies that he was alone on that walk among the dancing daffodils.
This memory came back to me when I was in the chapel looking at the larger window dedicated to William Wordsworth and the smaller one (pictured) dedicated to Dorothy. She was an excellent writer too, but took it for granted that only her beloved brother could be a published author – and he probably took it for granted too. The same fate awaited most of the women I wrote about in Women and the Piano. They had to overcome many prejudices in their quest to be known in their own right.
On Wednesday I played a solo recital in Ambleside Church as part of the Lake District Summer Music festival. My programme contained six pieces by the female pianist-composers whose work I have been performing in the past couple of years.
I too was somewhat shocked to read Dorothy Wordsworth’s diary years ago, and see the entry about the daffodils. Not surprised though…
It’s tragic to reflect on talents that never came to fruition, not just on grounds of gender but a lack of educational opportunities. One way in which things have undeniably improved for so many in the modern age.
James, you are quite right – a lack of educational opportunities had an even wider impact.
We recently attended a performance of A Room of One’s Own at the outdoor Roman theatre in St Albans. A hour’s lecture on this very subject, as delivered by Virginia Woolf in Cambridge in 1928, and presented here with great passion and insight.
Eric, that sounds fascinating. I wish I’d heard that performance.