\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 [presumably Dorothy Cookson, her uncle\rquote s wife]
}{\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 and my uncle as to whether your father might be \lquote abusing\rquote
you but their conclusion, in common with any others in the parish who harboured the same thoughts, was that your own happy demeanour and unfeigned devotion to your father mi
tigated against any such suspicion. I must also say that your identical unfeigned devotion to your brothers acted the other way and confirmed in the minds of many including I suspect my uncle\rquote
s and, latterly at least, mine, that the source of your happy
demeanour was likely the outcome of this devotion to your brothers being taken to its logical conclusion but such matters are, of course, seen by all as purely and entirely a matter for parents or guardians to judge and control. I know my uncle would ha
v
e intervened instantly had you made any appeal to him for assistance against abuse, or indeed had your demeanour called attention to itself and demanded investigation, but as you always seemed so innocent, happy and hearty I know my uncle was content that
your father had matters well in hand and saw no reason to intervene.
Yet my uncle is a man, and you are beautiful. That white band around his neck does nothing to block the demands flowing from the clergyman\rquote s loins to his brain, although I grant it is
supposed to chain him to the obligations of his duty like the watchdog to its kennel, thereby to stop it indulging its nature by mauling its own flock. I am sure he would not have attempted to seduce you had he believed you were an innocent, but at age 2
1 and with the strong suspicion that you were sexually engaged with your brothers at least, I regret that few men in my uncle\rquote s powerful position would have been able to resist the thought of \'93I wonder if\'85\'94
and perhaps seek to satisfy that curiosity. I am glad that my uncle did not persist in the face of your refusal, and am grateful to you for not injuring his reputation by shouting of it to the world.
In light of that proven discretion I feel able to reveal to you that my uncle made trial of me also - and did not find me adverse. Regarding himself }{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 in loco patris }{
\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 to me he originally undertook to find me a husband - despite my assurances that I wanted no such thing - and took in hand my education with regard to a wife\rquote s duties. \lquote In hand\rquote
very well describes it, for he handled me a great deal and had me handle him even more. As I say, I was not adverse for although one\rquote
s own fingers are the more responsive and subtle the fingers of another relieve one of much distracting labour in the gratification of the
flesh, while I was ever of the opinion that while a man with a sword in his hands has a powerful weapon, a woman with his penis in her hands can wield both man and sword, and is therefore even more powerful!
My uncle even made trial of my virginity but, a
s with you, did not persist in the face of demure which I am sure he saw through, for no woman can surely have suffered her flows, nor her fertile time, as frequently as I claimed in those days. Certainly the fact I was his sister\rquote
s daughter did not dampe
n his ardour nor raise any scruple, but he is not a man to take any woman against her will of that I am sure. In truth I set little store by virginity for I can see no point in any woman suffering the agonies of denied desires in order to retain that whi
c
h only she can ever be certain she has but, yes, even then dear sister I must confess that like some Lady of Camelot I had determined to make of my virginity a gift, and for all my gratitude and devotion to him it was not a gift I wished to give my uncle.
(And, dear sister, to help pass these last few Sundays as you fidget on those unforgiving pews while my uncle lectures on morality from his pulpit, the following tale might ease the discomfort. That self-same pulpit was a place my uncle particularly enjo
yed taking me in hand (or I him!) for my education of a quiet evening. It was during once such tutorial that Mrs. D.E. }{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 [probably Dora Edwards, churchwarden at St. Peter\rquote s from 1775 -1801] }{
\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 entered the nave unexpectedly. Had she seen her vicar with his pen
is between the lips of his niece (and honorary curate, not to mention Sunday-school teacher!) and being ministered to in that highly unbiblical way I have no doubt at all that the entire parish would have known of it by sunrise and the whole County when n
e
xt it set. Fortunately, being on my knees as though meekly at prayer, I was invisible behind the pulpit walls. Aware that my uncle was near to his climax I determined that it would take too long a while for his manhood to retreat therefrom and return to
a sufficiently flexible state to be returned to respectability. Thus he with commendable composure and only an occasional unsteadiness of the voice addressed Mrs. E. and endeavoured to keep her at the length of the nave with some queries concerning the st
ate of the font while I used all my skills and \lquote education\rquote to bring the matter to a neat and successful conclusion. This effected, the usual immediate and often most inconsiderate rapid collapse of my uncle\rquote
s male member enabled me to feed it back into his
breeches and the laces retie, at which he was able to descend from the pulpit to engage Mrs. E in conversation leaving me kneeling in its shelter desperately swallowing at the tickle in my throat my uncle had left me with and shaking, although whether wi
th fright or laughter I could not have said even then.)
You confession to me of your \lquote indiscretion\rquote with W. was unnecessary for I knew of it and harbour no ill-will towards you because of it. Nor can I see any reason why I should for you are sister, not r
ival, and W is not my husband despite all that passes between us. I must say, though, that I know of it only because W told me of it some months ago when your first letters arrived. I certainly knew nothing of it at the time.
How well I still remember you on those Sunday-school benches, the picture of the modest and innocent young lady blushing at the very mention of Adam\rquote s nakedness. Yet even before you seduced my brother, you with your father and your brothers
\lquote under your belt!\rquote were the woman and I,
the strict and omnipotent dispenser of knowledge before the class, was the virgin! And as we walked together down the lanes or shied stones into the village pond and I donned the mantle of elder sister if not mother to pass on warnings about the ways of
men\'85 Now I blush to remember of it, and think you could not have helped but secretly pity me my ignorance.
You do not say during which visit of his your attempt upon my brother was successful, not that I would imagine it required a siege of any magnitude, but I can assure you that he kept the secret successfully even from me, whom even then was closer to him t
han any. Had I known, though, at the time I must confess I would have hated you, sister, for fear that you might make my own attempt upon my brother even more difficult than I expected it to be, if not impossible.
Your brothers, to be sure, made no trial of me which I attributed both to my looks (or lack of them) }{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 [According to de Quincey, Dorothy's face was of \'93Egyptian brown\'94
, "rarely, in a woman of English birth, had I seen a more determinate gypsy tan. Her eyes were not soft, as Mrs. Wordsworth's, nor were they fierce or bold; but they were wild and startling, and hurried in their motion."]}{
\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 and my bible-barricaded status, for what man would dream of attempting the seduction of a Sunday-school teacher? (Well, perhaps many dream but who would dare think of embarking upon such a campaign?). I
\rquote m sure even my uncle only made such use of me because I was extremely convenient to him, especially during D\rquote s pregnancies. What hope did I really have that my handsome brother with his lofty ideals, whom I knew wou
ld never consider seducing his own sister even were she as beautiful as Helen, would possibly respond with anything other than appalled disgust and rejection were I to offer myself to him. Had I know at the time that I would have been offering myself i
n competition to your beauty and sweet femininity I think I would have given up the attempt even before it was launched.
Oh, how close I came to doing that anyway. I adored W and the thought of earning his rejection, the fear that I might disgust him both
in myself and in my designs, terrified me. Too, I was not then entirely free of that biblical morality which invests even the thought of brother-sister carnality let alone its practice with the promise of hell-fire and brimstone retribution. That you,
younger than I and five-times guilty of such \lquote sin\rquote
, were able to attend church and Sunday-school with such purity of conscience now fills me with amazement, and if any ignorant words of mine at that time ever caused a shadow to fall on that conscience I no
w most humbly beg your forgiveness. Of course that such joy could ever be considered a sin is, to my mind now, the only sin involved.
Yet back to my seduction of my brother, which I hope you will not think amiss if I describe just as one sister might sha
re the events of the surrender of her virginity with another and by doing so relive them, for I have no other sister with whom to share them. Many were the false starts during my brother\rquote
s visits, those chances missed when alone with him I might have bare
d my heart (and all the rest of me!) but cowardice prevailed. I watched him as a hawk a mouse for any lingering of his gaze upon my bosom, which at times I fear I thrust at him most shamelessly, and searched the front panel of his breeches for any sign o
f that stiffness which might betray some thoughts of me he might think secret and hid, to no avail. How oft between those visits did I imagine my uncle\rquote s fingers upon my breasts or between my legs were W\rquote
s and the stiff and throbbing manhood in my hands or mouth my brother\rquote s, and so deceive myself that the pleasure I was receiving and giving was ten times the greater because of it.
I even once embarked, taking the opportunity to remind W of those times when he, still a boy yet with those first stirrings of
curiosity as to the female form and his own response to it, sought to satisfy that curiosity with me as the only girl available to him. }{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
[No date or place can be allocated to this. Between 1778 and 1787 Dorothy and her brothers lived with different relations and it is hard to imagine such adolescent games taking place as late at the latter date, when William was 17 and Dorothy 16. Howeve
r the Wordsworth children and their guardians doubtless visited and spent time with each other often during this period.] }{\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
yet his response was immediately to colour and beg my forgiveness for his abuse of me so fervently that I was completely unable to inf
orm him that I was willing and only too eager for him not only to resume such investigations but avid for him to pursue them to the ultimate.
So did I come eventually to my Rubicon. With W bound for France and all the huge and dangerous uncertainties there }{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
[in 1791 with the King still living the possibility that the considerable opposition to the Revolution could unify behind him and plunge France into outright civil war, with neighbouring monarchies such as England coming to his assistance with troops, w
as very real] }{\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
while I faced a life-time of old-maidhood in Norfolk. I begged W to take me with him yet how could he, for he had no living to support himself let alone a sister as well. Yet in those last days of his visit he did handle me gently, on the s
houlders as a brother should yet how I thrilled even to that, and kiss me gently and chastely yet still setting my blood afire. And he promised that, if it came to it, he would do his best to support me and preserve me from an unwanted marriage, and eve
n
make a home for me. Yet I knew the home he had in mind - with me spinning unwanted and half-forgotten in the corner by the fire, housemaid to his wife - and that if I accepted it I would have to live within the expectations it entailed. Which I knew I
could not bear.
Thus it all came down to one last throw, on his last night in the rectory. I had to risk all and show my true self, and live forever with the consequences. In terror I crept into W\rquote s room and, naked, slipped into his bed. He woke to a sister
\rquote s hands and mouth upon his manhood, a sister\rquote s bare breasts pressed against him, a sister\rquote
s slippery sex seeking him. It seemed to me that my only chance was to wake the man before the brother woke, and my assault was successful for he was within me, my virginity given, before his eyes widened in the frosty starlight and he said my name.
Too late by then, of course, and he could no more stop himself from completing the act and impregnating me than water can run uphill. Then did he appreciate the tr
ue gift I had for him. Not the mere onceness of my virginity but that bliss I had to offer him any and every time he chose to take it, purchased not with coin or promises or even exchange of love\rquote
s duties, but on permanent, unlimited, unconstrained offer, free, and easy as breathing.
So, dear Emma, were the foundations of my present life laid in that bed that night, and with so much joy. And the moral, the purpose of this story?
It is, brave the risks and seize the moment. When I recall how terrified I was when I crept soft-footed along the corridor to my brother\rquote
s room, how close I came to turning back even as I laid my hand upon the door handle, I shudder now to think of it for without that mutual commitment, that exchange of crimson virgin blood
for snow-white seed (to be poetical - the red-rose and the white?) I never would have known the life and joy I now have.
So Emma, when that last day comes, that last moment in which the choice between your father\rquote s house and secret bed or a married life in India with your brother still lies before you, remember me creeping a virgin to my brother\rquote
s room, to leave it in the grey dawn a woman complete, with a brother\rquote s commitment to me rather than wife in my very womb. And if you have any last doubts just as
k yourself if you envy me the child of our coupling that night, for if you do your way will surely become clear.
My every wish for your happiness and good fortune will accompany you on that way, your affectionate sister, DW.
}\pard \qc \fi567\li0\ri0\nowidctlpar\faauto\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\f36\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 \'e2\'e2\'e2\'e2}{\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}\pard \ql \fi567\li0\ri0\nowidctlpar\faauto\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 Dorothy Wordsworth began her Alfoxden Journal on January 20}{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\super\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 th}{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
1798 but it contains no mention of any visit by Emmeline Gidding or her brother Lionel in the spring of that year so it seems they were able successfully to make their flight via London. We kno
w they did get to India, where they lived together with all the usual \lquote ups and downs\rquote but generally happily as man and wife for many years and produced five healthy children, because Emma tells us so.
Dorothy\rquote s letters to Emma were found in a strongbox in the basement of a law firm in Bombay where it had lain for many years with the note \'93Not to be opened until the year 2000\'94
. Creditably the firm respected this instruction. When finally opened it seems from the contents that Emma had prepared for the possibility of her early death and her children becoming aware of the actual relationship between her and her \lquote husband
\rquote by preparing a full explanation of her history, flight and love for her brother which she obviously felt Dorothy\rquote s letters would supplement
. As it happened Emma lived until she was at least 78 as the last note from her within the box was written in 1862. Presumably she felt by then that the secret could be \lquote buried\rquote
and it is likely that the box with its injunction was deposited or left with her lawyers under her will.
Whether any descendants of Emma and her brother could still be traced is unfortunately beyond the resources and remit of this Trust, dedicated as it is to Dorothy Wordsworth\rquote s life and work. We are, of course, hugely honoure
d to have been entrusted with Dorothy\rquote s original letters by the Government of India but acknowledge that they are properly the property of anyone who can prove such descent.
For William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge the friendship begun in 1796 lasted until Coleridge\rquote s death in 1834 and for both men the years 1796 - 1800 produced some of their finest works including for Coleridge both \'93Kubla Khan\'94
and his \'93Rime of the Ancient Mariner\'94. To what extent these can be attributed to the \lquote bliss\rquote he fou
nd in Dorothy Wordsworth will never be known as Coleridge made no reference to it. However this should not be considered churlish as although estranged Coleridge was married and any public acknowledgement, or even hint, of a sexual relationship with Dor
othy Wordsworth could easily have dragged her into a divorce action in which her relationship with her brother might well have been placed under the microscope.
William Wordsworth does acknowledge the debt he owes his sister, although circumspectly. The \'93adventure\'94
in the summer of 1798 referred to by Dorothy in her last letter to Emma was a tour by the three friends of the Wye Valley in South Wales from which was born Wordsworth\rquote s poem, \'93Tintern Abbey\'94
, perhaps the most beautiful and perfect of all the po
etry of the Romantic Movement and well-deserving of its recognised place as one of the finest poems in the English language. No less than the final third of it is a open acknowledgement of his debt to his sister for \'93
another gift, of aspect more sublime: that blessed mood in which the burthen of the mystery, in which the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world, is lightened:\'94
and with the fresh insight into the exact nature of his relationship with her gained from her letters to Emma Gidding these words take on even greater passion, and indeed an eroticism they never had before.
The enigmatic allusions in the final paragraph of Dorothy\rquote s last letter to Emma are particularly interesting. There has never before been any suggestion that
she bore a child to anyone let alone her brother, even as a hint by the most savage of the detractors of her \lquote life-style\rquote
. Moreover and even though she wrote nothing with the intent that it be published and in fact nothing of hers was published until afte
r her death, there is still nothing anywhere within it to suggest she had a child or yearned for one, living or desired. My own view is that \lquote brother\rquote s commitment within her womb\'94 to which she refers is nothing more than William\rquote
s commitment to her rather than to taking a wife, while the\rquote child\rquote of their coupling that night was merely the fully-sexual life together which ensued.
Yet the possibility that she did conceive a child by her brother that last night in Forncett. St. Peter rectory cannot be totall
y discounted. With the gift of her virginity given Dorothy may well, perhaps just as a precaution, have no longer resisted her uncle\rquote
s advances and when she knew she was pregnant attributed it to him. Obviously the scandal of having made his own niece pr
egnant while in his care would have been catastrophic for the reputation and career of the Revd. Cookson and it is not improbable that in those circumstances Dorothy might well have \lquote disappeared\rquote
from Forncett St. Peter for a few months later in the year, in order to have the baby discretely \lquote out of view\rquote and have it adopted - something Emma at least might have been aware of.
With this regard it has always been accepted that while in France William }{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 Wordsworth }{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 fathered a child on one Annette Vallon. The child, a girl
called Caroline, is said to have been born in December 1792 and thus cannot have been Dorothy\rquote
s by William if this is correct. In August 1802 William and Dorothy took advantage of the Peace of Amiens to travel to Calais and meet with Annette and Caroline
. However it is slightly odd that after ten years separation, during most of which William struggled financially to support himself and Dorothy and would have been hard-pressed indeed to support a mistress and child in France, Annette should still have b
e
en willing to meet with him and give him access to the child. However, had Dorothy travelled to France to bear a child in 1791, a child what is more for which her uncle took responsibility, it is possible that Annette Vallon was merely a foster or adopti
ve mother and the child was financially maintained throughout this period by the Revd. Cookson with William, in his role as putative father, the \lquote official\rquote
link between the Cookson/Wordsworth families and the child. This would certainly be more likely had
the child been born in December 1791, which might indeed be the case with a simple error or confusion arising later as to the date for any number of possibilities. If this is the case one might wonder why Dorothy and William did not assume responsibilit
y for their child when they became able to - in 1802 if not earlier. However their uncle might very well have been unhappy at such a prospect, as might Annette Vallon and William\rquote
s then prospective wife. One can even imagine Dorothy not informing William
that the child was in fact his. Furthermore with England actually at war with France for most of this period it might well have been impossible even if desired. There is a record of another meeting between William, Dorothy, Annette and Caroline as late
as 1820, which also included Annette\rquote s husband whom, one might expect, should not have been at all happy for his wife to meet with her early lover and the father of the child he stood \'93in loco patris\'94 to.
In October 1802 William, by now in Dove Cottage wi
th Dorothy, married Mary Hutchinson. Both William and Dorothy had known Mary and her sisters since childhood. She certainly could not have been ignorant of the rumours surrounding them and as she had lived with William and Dorothy for several months wh
en they were at Racedown it is hard to imagine she was unaware of what we now know to be the truth of them. Dorothy herself did not attend the wedding as she was said to have been \lquote hysterical\rquote
, a catch-all medical diagnosis of the time for practically any mental distress of the female and invariably thought to have a sexual origin. However she seems to have quickly reconciled herself to the change in her status, or perhaps an \lquote
accommodation\rquote was reached between William\rquote s wife and sister. William and Mary\rquote
s first child, John, was born only eight months after the wedding yet a mere six weeks later William, Dorothy and Samuel Coleridge left Dove Cottage together for a tour of Scotland, leaving Mary holding the baby! In addition Dorothy\rquote s own \lquote
Grasmere Journal\rquote for this period is generally regarded as containing her finest work.
In 1806 one of Mary\rquote s sisters joined the household, and in 1808 so did her other one. It was between these two events, in 1807, that Thomas de Quincey stayed at Dove Cottage and later not only comments rather suggestively upon William\rquote
s having both wife and sister-in-law in his household but also hints that he is sleeping with his own sister. As might be imagined Dove Cottage is not the cosy two-roomed thatched nook the name suggest
s but is actually a reasonably substantial house, which is fortunate because in addition to his wife and collection of female relatives William\rquote
s growing fame and recognition as a poet and metaphysical thinker attracted a growing crowd of admirers such as Robert Southey as well as \lquote hangers-on\rquote
so that it was not unusual for there to be a dozen or more guests at Dove Cottage at any one time. Quite how William managed his m\'e9nage a quatre, whether Dorothy ever did get the opportunity to earn the unqualified
title of wanton and whether she seized it with both hands if she did, we will probably never know.
Dorothy\rquote s last years were not happy ones. She suffered physical ailments and increasingly with what would now be termed dementia. Regrettably some were quick to attribute this to a \lquote punishment\rquote for her \lquote life-style\rquote
(read \lquote incest\rquote ) with her brother, and perhaps they were not altogether wrong for in the increasingly moralistic and straight-laced atmosphere of the Victorian age her \lquote bold and brazen\rquote defiance
regarding her relationship with her brother must have become ever harder to maintain and a heavier burden as she herself grew more frail.
William Wordsworth, by then England\rquote s Poet Laureate, died on 23}{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\super\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 rd}{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 April 1850 and Dorothy on January 25}{
\i\lang5129\langfe1033\super\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 th}{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663 1855. It
is said that during their lives they were sometimes to be found lying side by side on the ground pretending they were in their graves and this macabre pantomime is now realised as they lie side by side in the graveyard at Grasmere, an arrangement more usu
al for husband and wife of course, but surely appropriate for this brother and sister.
}\pard \ql \li0\ri0\nowidctlpar\faauto\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\insrsid14378663 \'a9}{\f39\fs17\insrsid14378663 Rex Antioch 2004
v10la@operamail.com}{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}\pard \ql \fi567\li0\ri0\nowidctlpar\faauto\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}{\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}\pard \ql \li0\ri0\nowidctlpar\faauto\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}\pard \ql \fi567\li0\ri0\nowidctlpar\faauto\rin0\lin0\itap0 {\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}{\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}{\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}{\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}{\i\lang5129\langfe1033\langnp5129\insrsid14378663
}