The Jerwood Centre at Wordsworth Grasmere is home to the works of many exciting authors, particularly those with a local or regional connection. The aim of my visit this year was simple: to examine the manuscript writings of Cumbrian poet Susanna Blamire (1747-94). Her poetic works, many of which have only ever existed in manuscript form, cover a rich array of topics, including healthcare, the environment, matters of sociability, as well as travel, and religion. My own interest lies in Blamire’s reflections on her life as both a lay medical practitioner and patient of chronic ill health within her writing.
The Jerwood Centre at Wordsworth Grasmere is home to the works of many exciting authors, particularly those with a local or regional connection. The aim of my visit this year was simple: to examine the manuscript writings of Cumbrian poet Susanna Blamire (1747-94). Her poetic works, many of which have only ever existed in manuscript form, cover a rich array of topics, including healthcare, the environment, matters of sociability, as well as travel, and religion. My own interest lies in Blamire’s reflections on her life as both a lay medical practitioner and patient of chronic ill health within her writing.
Jonathan Wordsworth, the great-great-great nephew of the poet and former Chair of the Wordsworth Trust itself, proclaimed Blamire to have been ‘the poet of friendship’[1], while Patrick Maxwell, her first biographer and editor, labelled her as ‘unquestionably the best female writer of her age’.[2] Yet despite these glowing reflections, there is scarce little in the way of scholarly analysis of Blamire’s writings. Incidentally, great nephews have also become something of a theme within this research, not least of all because as well as having Wordsworth’s view, I also went to Grasmere with Susanna Blamire’s own great-great-great-great-great nephew in tow – at least in spirit and email inbox. Prior to making my visit, I was fortunate to have a conversation with Head Curator Jeff Cowton OBE and his colleague Rebecca Turner to discuss my work on Blamire and its potential significance to Wordsworth Grasmere. Jeff recommended contacting several interested parties, including said nephew, the wonderful Dr Christopher Hugh Maycock, whom he had made aware of my interest and who, I was told, was eager to hear from me. Since retiring from General Practice, Dr Maycock has been a guardian of sorts to Susanna’s legacy, preserving her works as a private owner of some of her manuscripts (which he has since donated to the Wordsworth Trust), and producing his own works about his ancestor.[3] Any story of rediscovering and rehabilitating Blamire to her rightful place in the literary canon would be impossible to tell without acknowledging his role.
I was nervous as I dialled, but Jeff’s recommendation was well made and Dr Maycock was delighted to take my call. A lively discussion about poetry and the poet herself was tempered only by his candid disclosure that he had recently received a diagnosis that, he already knew, would prove terminal. Even in light of such news, however, he was unquestionably clear in his wish to work with me on Blamire and that any matters of ill health should not prove to be an obstacle. His determination was admirable and so, when I packed up my laptop for the Lakes, it was with dedicated promises to keep him informed of all of my findings, particularly as the Trust has since gained Blamire’s collection of manuscripts that had been in another private collection so seeing them together was fulfilling an ambition for him as well as me.
My visit exceeded both of our expectations. The only scholarly article that currently exists on Blamire is Judith Page’s ‘Susanna Blamire’s Ecological Imagination: Stoklewath; or The Cumbrian Village’. Page’s offering analyses the poet’s most-anthologised poem of the same title and concludes that the verse is distinctive for its ‘concern for ecological wholeness and the dependence of the sustainability of nature on human care’.[4] In the archives, I found that such an attitude of care is also much exemplified in Blamire’s array of medical-themed writings and accounted for in ways that are scarce even mentioned in medical works of her lifetime. In addition to being ‘fam’d for skill/ In the nice compound of a pill’[5], Blamire astutely notes that her patients are ‘more revived by [her ‘chearfulness’] than even by her life-giving Cordials’.[6]
As this quote indicates, one of the most exciting finds of the visit was the complete manuscript of her only prose piece, entitled ‘An Allegory’, which documents with a fairytale-like quality, Blamire’s life as a local healer and producer of remedies. Describing herself as a ‘Physician – Counsellor – and Friend of Mankind’, Blamire recognises the importance of humanity within medicine. Emails and photographs danced between Grasmere and the Maycock family home, and it was a privilege to share my findings. Another with whom I shared my thoughts was Jeff. Towards the end of my visit, we sat down to hot coffee and a sausage roll and became excited by what we could see in the research. As a result of those discussions, and in addition to appearing in my own scholarship, Blamire has also been included in an exhibition at Wordsworth Grasmere ‘(Re)Acting Romanticism: Disability and Women Writers’ (curated by Harriet McKinley-Smith), new resource packs for Wordsworth Grasmere’s community activity, an outreach project with The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), and an online public reading of her works and discussion panel event, ‘Susanna Blamire, Medicine, and Romantic Women’s Poetry: An Exploration in Celebration of the Work of C. H. Maycock’, which is now available on YouTube.
Just 11 days after our event, however, a phone call from James Maycock, Dr Maycock’s son, was the one I had dreaded. It was time to say goodbye. That evening I reminded myself of the therapeutic and restorative qualities of poetry to articulate thoughts and feelings that may be challenging in everyday life. Blamire did not let me down. Among a number of excellent poems that I will continue to explore elsewhere, is ‘Tomorrow. Written in Sickness’. In this verse, Blamire reminds readers of the promise of the future, even in the face of sadness. She writes
How sweet to the heart is the thought of to-morrow,
When Hope’s fairy pictures bright colours display;
How sweet when we can from Futurity borrow
A balm for the griefs which afflict us to-day! [7]
Her accounting for the role of emotions in preserving and improving health and wellbeing continues to strike me as really quite modern. I have been privileged to continue working with the Maycock family since the news of Christopher’s passing came later that evening and we have continued to commemorate the work of both Susanna Blamire and her great nephew. I am grateful for the support of the British Association for Romantic Studies which has allowed me to go beyond the original remit of my application and bring together the past and present of healthcare, poetry, as well as Susanna Blamire’s unique legacy, to new scholarly and public audiences.
In memory of Dr Christopher Hugh Maycock (1937-2022)
Ashleigh Blackwood is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in English Literature at the University of Northumbria. She works on the Leverhulme major project ‘Writing Doctors: Medical representation and Personality, ca.1660-1832. She has also been Co-Investigator of a number of Wellcome Trust Awards including ‘Thinking Through Things: Object Encounters in the Medical Humanities’ (2019-21) and ‘Networking the Critical Medical Humanities’ (2022-25). Her first monograph, Reproductive Health, Literature, and Print Culture, 1650-1800: Everybody’s Business, will be published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2023.
[1] Jonathan Wordsworth, Susanna Blamire — Poet of Friendship (Much Wenlock, Shropshire: RJL Smith & Associates 1994), p.4, 11-12.
[2] Susanna Blamire, ‘Epistle to her Friends at Gartmore’, The Poetical Works of Susanna Blamire, ed. Henry Lonsdale (Edinburgh, London, Glasgow and Carlisle: John Menzies, R. Tyas, D. Robertson and C. Thurnam, 1842), p.153-8, p.156.
[3] See Christopher Hugh Maycock, A Passionate Poet: Susanna Blamire (Penzance: Hypatia Press, 2003); Christopher Hugh Maycock (ed.), Selected Poems of Susanna Blamire, Cumberland’s Lyrical Poet (Carlisle: Bookcase, 2008).
[4] Judith Page, ‘Susanna Blamire’s Ecological Imagination: Stoklewath; or the Cumbrian Village’, Women’s Writing, Vol. 18, No, 3 (2011), pp. 385-404.
[5] Blamire, ‘Epistle to Her Friends at Gartmore’, pp.153-8, p.156.
[6] Susanna Blamire, ‘An allegory’, MS 2017. 1.19. Wordsworth Grasmere
[7] Blamire, ‘To-morrow. Written in Sickness’, p.71-2, p.71.
