{"id":2200,"date":"2018-09-05T09:44:46","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T09:44:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2200"},"modified":"2018-09-05T09:44:46","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T09:44:46","slug":"dorothy-wordsworth-mountaineering-pioneer-by-joanna-taylor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2200","title":{"rendered":"‘Dorothy Wordsworth, Mountaineering Pioneer’ by Joanna Taylor"},"content":{"rendered":"

A special post on the BARS Blog today to celebrate the new exhibition\u00a0‘This Girl Did: Dorothy Wordsworth and Women\u2019s Mountaineering’<\/a>\u00a0at Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Trust. Joanna Taylor presents an edited version of her recent talk at the Trust, ‘Dorothy Wordsworth, Mountaineering Pioneer’.<\/em><\/p>\n

On October 7 1818, Dorothy Wordsworth and her friend Mary Barker ascended England\u2019s highest mountain: Scafell Pike<\/a>. Wordsworth\u2019s account of the feat is among the earliest records of a recreational ascent of the mountain \u2013 and it\u2019s the earliest written by a woman.<\/p>\n

Wordsworth\u2019s and Barker\u2019s climb of Scafell Pike is notable for the daring it displays: this was not simply a mountain climb, but a rebellious act that opened up the mountain \u2013 and mountaineering \u2013 for successive generations throughout the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. More than that, reading Wordsworth\u2019s account today suggests new ways of understanding the mountains that go beyond tales of sporting prowess: as Wordsworth knew, examining the details of a mountainside can be as rewarding as the view from the summit.<\/p>\n

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Dorothy Wordsworth\u2019s \u2018irregular habits\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Alex Jakob-Whitworth\u2019s logo design for The Wordsworth Trust\u2019s current exhibition, ‘This Girl Did: Dorothy Wordsworth and Women\u2019s Mountaineering’.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Walking was an important part of the daily routine in the Wordsworth household, but they were well aware<\/a> \u2013 and proud of \u2013 the fact that their commitment to almost daily extensive walks was unusual. In September 1800, for instance, we find Wordsworth explaining to Jane Marshall that the frequency with which they walked \u2013 and the distances they travelled \u2013 was one of the household\u2019s \u2018irregular\u2019 habits. The Wordsworth siblings walked together most days for the best part of four decades; Thomas De Quincey estimated<\/a> that William walked between 175,000 and 180,000 miles over his lifetime, and Dorothy can\u2019t have fallen far short of that. Wordsworth bragged about the speed with which she could walk, and how little fatigued she was afterwards, until her mid-fifties.<\/p>\n

Walking was not something Wordsworth took for granted. Both at the start and end of her life, Wordsworth knew what it was like to not be able \u2013 or allowed \u2013 to walk. In her late teens and early twenties \u2013 before she moved in with her brother in 1795 \u2013 Wordsworth\u2019s walks were restricted by her relatives\u2019 views on social decorum. For instance, she defended herself against her aunt\u2019s disapproval of her \u2018rambling about the country on foot\u2019 by writing that:<\/p>\n

I rather thought it would give my friends pleasure to hear that I had courage to make use of the strength with which nature has endowed me, when it not only procured me infinitely more pleasure than I should have received from sitting in a post-chaise \u2013 but was also the means of saving me at least thirty shillings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wordsworth was justifiably proud of her walking prowess \u2013 in 1818, when she was 46, she boasted to Sara Coleridge that she could \u2018walk sixteen miles in four hours and three quarters, with short rests between, on a blustering cold day, without having felt any fatigue\u2019. That\u2019s an impressive pace of a little under four miles an hour around the Lake District hills!<\/p>\n

But the climb up Scafell Pike with Mary Barker was perhaps Wordsworth\u2019s most significant walking achievement. The two women initially only intended on climbing Ash Course \u2013 but, on reaching that point, they decided to push on to the Pike, since \u2018three parts up that Mountain\u2019. Although the distance turns out to be \u2018greater than it had appeared\u2019, still their \u2018courage did not fail\u2019.<\/p>\n

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One of the two surviving fair copies of the letter to William Johnson, in which Wordsworth describes the ascent of Scafell Pike. Used with permission from The Wordsworth Trust.<\/p><\/div>\n

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The letter in which Wordsworth describes this feat draws attention to different ways of reading the mountain. In one moment she describes a landscape that stretches out for miles from the summit on which she stands. But at the next, when she looks down, Dorothy realises that though the summit seemed lifeless at first glance, in fact beauty could be found clinging to the rocks if one looked closely enough:<\/p>\n

I ought to have described the last part of our ascent to Scaw Fell pike. There, not a blade of grass was to be seen \u2013 hardly a cushion of moss, & that was parched & brown; and only growing rarely between the huge blocks & stones which cover the summit & lie in heaps all round to a great distance, like Skeletons or bones of the earth not wanted at the creation, & here left to be covered with never-dying lichens, which the Clouds and dews nourish; and adorn with colours of the most vivid and exquisite beauty, and endless in variety (quoted with permission from The Wordsworth Trust).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In focusing on these details close to hand, rather than rhapsodising on the distant prospect, Dorothy anticipates writers like Nan Shepherd: these women propose an alternative to more familiar accounts of mountaineering exploits that emphasise a victory over a feminised Mother Nature when the climber conquers the summit. Instead, Dorothy recognises that paying close attention reveals unexpected features even on a barren mountaintop.<\/p>\n

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Dorothy\u2019s Legacy<\/strong><\/p>\n

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A map from William Wordsworth\u2019s Guide to the District of the Lakes showing the Scafell massif.\u00a0 Used with permission from The Wordsworth Trust.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Wordsworth\u2019s account of the ascent of Scafell Pike was later included \u2013 without attribution, possibly at her own request \u2013 in William Wordsworth\u2019s Guide to the District of the Lakes<\/a><\/em>. The implication was that it was William who had undertaken the ascent. As a result, Wordsworth\u2019s legacy in climbing Scafell Pike is blurred into William\u2019s, and many of the people who followed in her footsteps were unaware that it was her they were emulating.<\/p>\n

Her ambitious walking practices established women\u2019s walking as an accepted practice in the Wordsworth, Coleridge and Southey families. Robert Southey, for instance, describes the delight which his daughter, Edith, and niece, Sara Coleridge, took from a young age in scrambling about on the fells around their home in Keswick, and Sara herself \u2013 not without some self-mockery \u2013 labelled them \u2018expert mountaineers\u2019.<\/p>\n

But Wordsworth\u2019s influence was much wider reaching. Harriet Martineau \u2013 a friend of the Wordsworths after she moved to Ambleside in the 1840s \u2013 seems not to have been aware that it was Dorothy who made the ascent, but her own account<\/a> of an ascent of Scafell Pike closely replicates Wordsworth\u2019s. Two decades later, Eliza Lynn Linton \u2013 the first salaried female journalist in Britain, though she\u2019s perhaps more (in)famous for her notorious Girl of the Period<\/a><\/em> essays \u2013 described Scafell\u2019s intimidating appearance on the approach to it in her guidebook, The Lake Country<\/em>, in 1865:<\/p>\n

Scawfell rose up, and looked bigger and more formidable than ever. As we proceeded he grew, and our work seemed only beginning: all the climbing we have had mere child\u2019s play to what was to come.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It did not put her off: Lynn Linton spent the night on the mountain. Lynn Linton\u2019s description indicates what an extraordinary feat this climb was for Wordsworth to undertake at a moment when such ambitious routes were considered well beyond a woman\u2019s capability. Wordsworth \u2013 like Martineau, Lynn Linton and countless others after her \u2013 made it clear that walking and other forms of mountaineering were as much for women as for men. Today, Wordsworth continues to offer a vision of the mountains that invites us all to look at, and move through, them in new ways.<\/p>\n

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This post is adapted from a talk given at The Wordsworth Trust on 1 September 2018; you can find a live video of the full paper <\/em>here<\/a><\/em>. <\/em>‘This Girl Did: Dorothy Wordsworth and Women\u2019s Mountaineering’\u00a0<\/a><\/em>opens at <\/em>The Wordsworth Trust<\/a><\/em>, Grasmere, on Saturday 1 September and runs until Sunday 23 December. A film about recreating of Dorothy\u2019s climb up Scafell Pike will premiere at the Kendal Mountain Festival on<\/em> Sunday 18 November; more details and tickets will be available <\/em>here<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A special post on the BARS Blog today to celebrate the new exhibition\u00a0‘This Girl Did: Dorothy Wordsworth and Women\u2019s Mountaineering’\u00a0at Dove Cottage and the Wordsworth Trust. Joanna Taylor presents an… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2200"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2210,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2200\/revisions\/2210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}