The Sunday Times April 3, 2022 19Travel Lake District
Above, Sean in the garden at
Rydal Mount and, right, in one of
the bedrooms. Left, the cottage’s
living roomWindermereAmblesideLake District
National Park
Rydal MountA591
A5933 mileschildren, Thomas and
Catherine, died. Rydal
Mount was their sanctuary.
Well-drained, south-facing
and relatively spacious, it
was a place where they could
recover, rebuild their lives
and prosper.
By 9.30pm, I’m tucked up
in bed. And, yes, I survive the
night without any poetic
visitations. I have a seamless
sleep too, courtesy of the best
bedroom in the house. It’s the
one that Wordsworth and his
wife used. With panelled walls
and wonky floors, it creaks
and looks over the treetops
towards Windermere. Comethe morning, the four-poster
is the perfect place in which
to sprawl with a cup of coffee
and further books
gleaned from coffee
tables and shelves.
Finighan leaves
them out with
the express
intention that
guests dip in.
I haven’t got
all day to lounge
about, though.
Overnight guests
can have Rydal Mount to
themselves between 5pm on
the evening they arrive and
8.30am the following
morning (although they will
need to pop out for dinner at
some point), but they are not
encouraged to lounge around
in their pyjamas after that.
Finighan needs to open the
house to the day visitors,
and to help us to move on,
breakfast is served not on site,
but in Rydal Lodge, a friendly
B&B at the bottom of the hill.
It’s a proper slap-up meal.
Then the Lake District awaits,
in all its weather-beaten,
lichen-encrusted glory.
Still, before all that, there’s
time for a poem, and I opt for
The Tables Turned from
Lyrical Ballads. Yesterday
afternoon, while we chatted
by the fire, Finighan revealed
that it was his favourite.
“Up! up! my friend, and
quit your books!” it begins,
and I can’t help smiling at the
volumes piled on the duvet in
front of me. It feels like he’s
talking directly to me. Not
surprising, really, given the
fact I’m sitting in his bedroom.
In the poem, Wordsworth
begs the reader to lay aside
the dry and distorted world
of academic study. “Come
forth into the light of things,”
he pleads. “Let nature be
your teacher.”
Crikey, William. I wish
you’d told me that when I
was 19, back in the days when
I stared longingly at the
sunshine through university
windows and wished I were
outdoors. I could have saved
myself ten years of blind
alleys and boredom. I snap
the book shut.
An hour later, Finighan is
waving me off. And over his
shoulder, so is Wordsworth.Sean Newsom travelled courtesy
of Avanti West Coast Railways.
Return fares from London to
Oxenholme or Penrith from
£31 (avantiwestcoast.co.uk).
He stayed as a guest of Rydal
Mount and Rydal Lodge. One
night’s B&B from £400 for
two (rydallodge.co.uk). Times
readers get a 20 per cent
discount for April and May
bookings by quoting RYDAL22Now the poet’s Cumbrian cottage is
open for overnight stays, guests can
dip into his library and even sleep in
his four-poster, says Sean Newsom
s
n
n
It’s an extraordinary and
visceral feeling, as though at
any moment I’m going to hear
someone’s voice. I am ever so
slightly spooked.
Don’t get me wrong, this is
a lovely room. Sometime in
the 1960s the wall between
the library and the adjacent
drawing room was knocked
down to create a big, open-
plan space, bookended by
cheerful fires and laid with
colourful rugs. Sitting here,
it’s not hard to see why the
Wordsworths were so relieved
to move in, or stayed so long.
They had endured a horrific
year in which two of theirA Life and it’s obvious that
Wordsworth’s career was not
a solitary undertaking — it
became the family business,
and everyone was involved
in some way.
As I take a copy of his
complete works back to my
chair, they all seem to be
gathering round. Here comes
the poet. He’s back from the
far terrace in the garden,
where he would pace the
path, composing verse.
There’s Dora, impervious to
the advances of an infuriated
William Ayling; there will be
trouble to come from that.
Upstairs, Dorothy is unwell.She was a crucial if uncredited
member of the literary trio
who in the late 1790s
hammered out Lyrical
Ballads, the book that changed
English poetry and laid the
foundations of the reputations
of Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. She lived
here until her death in 1855.
Alongside her was Mary,
Wordsworth’s wife, as well as
Dora, his precocious daughter,
his sons John and Willy, and
platoons of extended family
members and other guests.
Dip into these records
courtesy of a biography such
as Juliet Barker’s Wordsworth:E
very time I reach
for a book at Rydal
Mount, I feel I
should ask William
Wordsworth’s
permission. It’s 9pm on a
Friday night in March, daffodil
season in Cumbria, and I’m
about to spend a night in the
former home of the poet —
the first journalist to do so.
I’ve said goodnight to Leo
Finighan, the young curator
who lives in a flat at the back
of this half-house, half-
museum. And now it’s just me
and one of the most influential
writers of the past 250 years,
alone together in his library.
The couch in front of
the bookshelves where
Wordsworth loved to stretch
out, according to Finighan, is
suitably worn. The cover at
the far end is ripped, worried
almost to ruin by his restless
feet. At the other, the bolster
seems to have been dented
by the weight of his head.
On and off from 1813 to
1850, he was here, receiving
visitors, refining and editing
his work, catching the odd
40 winks. I can’t help feeling
his spirit is still around.
“This is still, in part, a
family house and we’re
probably not as precious
about it as we should be,”
Chris Andrew had told me.
He is Wordsworth’s great-
great-great-great-grandson
and the prime instigator of a
scheme to open Rydal Mount
to overnight guests for the first
time. “But we prefer it this
way,” he added. “It preserves
the closeness to the poet. We
can offer a more personal
connection as a result.”
No kidding. Admittedly, the
family’s link with Rydal Mount
was broken for more than a
century after Wordsworth’s
death — he was always the
tenant here, never the owner.
But when it was put on the
market in 1969 it was snapped
up by his great-great-
granddaughter, Andrew’s
granny. Scattered across
the country, among her
relations, was a load of
heirlooms. Portraits, books,
Wordsworth’s favourite
cutlass chair (designed for
someone wearing a sword,
but also a comfortable perch
for an avid reader) and that
couch. They were all returned
in preparation for the opening
of Rydal Mount to day visitors
in 1970.
With the heirlooms came
a powerful sense of the people
who had used them. How
they lived here is portrayed
in Wordsworth’s poetry and
the letters and diaries of the
people about him. Dorothy,
his devoted, unmarried sister
is the most entertaining guide.AT HOME
WITH THE
ANDREW MCCAREN FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES; STEVE VIDLER/ALAMYWORDSWORTHS
The feeling here
is visceral, as
though at any
moment I could
hear a voice