Sports Calendar

Dorothy’s phrasing tells us a great deal about her responses. It is only when she looks out of the window and sees “the two men running up the walk, coming to tell us it was over” that she can “stand it no longer”. Of all her experiences this morning, her glance down the walk is the most shattering; it is the only instance in her journal where seeing becomes a violent rather than a reassuring activity. Dorothy trusts the evidence of her eyes, and what she sees on the avenue – the bride and groom returning as a couple – confirms how vitally self-deceived she has been to believe that William’s marriage would include her. Throwing herself on the bed, she finds herself sinking down, down. Her eyes may be open but they are blank. It is a moment of terror; separation from William, Dorothy says, has the power to extinguish her being.

She can have remained like this only for a minute or two – the wedding party are nearly at the house – but in her account, which begins by noting the hour that the bride and groom left for the church, time now stops, all sounds and actions stop, Dorothy Wordsworth ceases to be. Then, just as suddenly, the volume comes back on, shapes reform and action begins again. But when she rises she is no longer a part of her body; she describes moving like an automaton across the room, down the stairs, through the hall, out of the door and onto William’s breast. The groom crosses the threshold of the house with his sister rather than his wife at his side.

After Mary bade farewell to her own home and siblings, the three Wordsworths departed in a post chaise for the honeymoon journey back to Grasmere. Dorothy sat in the middle. Only when they arrived at Dove Cottage two days later did William and Mary spend their first moments alone as a married couple. Mary became pregnant immediately. After a few more entries, Dorothy’s journal gradually petered out. It had lost its purpose.

Families harbour secrets; we know both most and least about those with whom we share our home. The secret William and Mary kept from Dorothy was the depth and exclusivity of their love, which increased after their marriage. Only when Dorothy’s back was turned would they steal a kiss or share a private thought. Noise travelled through the walls like a breeze through a broken window; during the summer Dorothy was able to hear William turning and sighing in his sleep, so the sound of love-making from the bedroom must have been stressful for them all. Letters were shared and William warned Mary against adding affectionate remarks Dorothy might find “obnoxious”.

Eight years after their marriage, in 1810, when William and Dorothy were both away, he burst into song for his wife back at home: “O Mary, I love you with a passion of love which grows till I tremble to think of its strength… Every day every hour every moment makes me feel more deeply how blessed we are in each other, how purely how faithfully how ardently, and how tenderly we love each other; I put this last word last because, though I am persuaded that a deep affection is not uncommon in married life, yet I am confident that a lively, gushing, thought-employing, spirit-stirring, passion of love, is very rare even among good people.” The presence of Dorothy can have served only to intensify their desire, snatched moments of intimacy giving married life the flavour of an illicit affair. “O my William!” Mary replied. “It is not in my power to tell thee how I have been affected by this dearest of all letters – it was so unexpected – so new a thing to see the breathing of thy inmost heart upon paper that I was quite overpowered, & now that I sit down to answer thee in the loneliness & depth of that love which unites us & which cannot be felt but by ourselves, I am so agitated & my eyes are so bedimmed that I scarcely know how to proceed… Indeed my love [your letter] has made me supremely blessed – it has given me a new feeling, for it is the first letter of love that has been exclusively my own – Wonder then that I have been so affected by it.”

Able to write freely without fear of Dorothy’s looking over her shoulder, and to talk to her husband without Dorothy being able to hear the murmur of their speech, Mary poured out her love.

For 50 years Wordsworth lived together with the two women he had married on the same day, and we are told that there was never a cross word between them. Dorothy was a second mother to Mary’s children, doting on the eldest son, John, as only she knew how. But for her last 25 years she succumbed to madness, brought on, I suspect, by the depression, disappointment and boredom of her later life, and it was now William’s turn to look after Dorothy. When her brother lay dying, there was a marked improvement in her health. She became for a moment, so a family friend said, “almost the Miss Wordsworth we knew in past days”. Dorothy, who lived until she was 84, survived William by five years. Mary, who died aged 90, outlived them all.

© Frances Wilson 2008. Extracted from The Ballad of Dorothy Wordsworth, to be published by Faber & Faber on March 6 and available from BooksFirst priced £17.09 (RRP £18.99), free p&p, on 0870 160 8080; timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy