LITERATURE

Words themselves / Move us with conscious pleasure” (William Wordsworth, 1798)

Walking Wordsworth’s Bristol

In April we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the birth of poet William Wordsworth. Renowned as Poet Laureate and one of the Romantic-era ‘Lake Poets’, Wordsworth also spent his early years being inspired by the West Country. Historian Catherine Pitt looks at his time in Bristol...

Bristol has been home to some of the greatest artists, painters, musicians and writers in history. The city has always been a hotbed of radical thinking and dissenters and none more so than in the late 18th century. This period is known as the Romantic Era (c.1770-1850) and was an exciting but restless time. Romanticism was a reaction against the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment. The Romantics wanted to return to connecting with nature and with strong emotions. Just as Extinction Rebellion today looks to reconnect people with nature, so too did Romanticism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Around 1795, a young aspiring poet, William Wordsworth, returned to England from revolutionary France. On meeting likeminded supporters in London he was encouraged to visit Bristol. Wordsworth was known to enjoy walking tours of both Europe and Britain, so to celebrate his anniversary, we embarked on our own Wordsworth walk of Bristol.

No. 7 Great George Street Today the Georgian House Museum – which recently played host to the city’s first solo Yoko Ono exhibition – this was the home of John Pinney, slave owner and sugar merchant. Between 21 August and 26 September 1795 Wordsworth was invited to stay here by Pinney’s sons whom he had met in London. Pinney agreed to let William and his sister Dorothy stay in their property at Racedown, Dorset, rent free. Although Pinney had become wealthy on the back of slavery, he encouraged reformers and freethinkers to meet and debate at his home. It is believed that it was at one such event organised by Pinney that Wordsworth met, for the first time, Bristol-born poet Robert Southey and the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge with whom Wordsworth formed lasting (if not at times tempestuous friendships). “I stayed at Bristol at least five weeks with a family whom I found amiable in all its branches” – William Wordsworth to friend William Mathews, October 1795.

No. 48 High Street Joseph Cottle’s first bookshop in Bristol, on the corner of the High Street and Corn Street, opened in April 1791. Cottle befriended many of the young aspiring writers and poets of Bristol, offering cash advances for their work and publishing them in-house. Wordsworth would have visited with Southey and Coleridge for discussions with Cottle and others about works in progress and political thoughts. “So many men of genius were there congregated as to justify the designation, ‘The Augustinian Age of Bristol’” –J.Cottle.

No. 5 Wine Street Cottle moved his bookshop here in March 1798. It was a bigger site but, alas, not as prominent, which in the long run was to his detriment. It was at this shop that Wordsworth returned on 13 July 1798 after walking down Park Street to sit and write in Cottle’s parlour the poem known today as Tintern Abbey. Wordsworth also returned here in early July 1798 to help Cottle organise the release of Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s collaboration The Lyrical Ballads.

St Peter’s Hospital – site near St Peter’s Church in Castle Park One of the poems in The Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth was called The Mad Mother. It has been thought by some academics that the subject was a woman called Louisa known as ‘The Maid of the Haystack’ who had lived for a time at St Peter’s Hospital. She was discovered, in 1776, sleeping under a haystack for four nights but refused offers of help. Local women named her Louisa and clubbed together and bought her the haystack, but she was eventually taken to St Peter’s. After a time, she left St Peter’s and returned to live under her haystack for four more years until her death.

No. 6 Clare Street This address is recorded in 1811 as being the home of artist Robert Hancock. It is possible this was the same home and studio site that, in 1796, Wordsworth went to at the bequest of Cottle for his portrait to be painted. Often publishers needed a ‘head shot’ for works, just as they do today. Hancock produced chalk sketches of not only Wordsworth but Southey and Coleridge, too, for Cottle. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was usual for the subject to go to the artist’s home studio to sit for said picture. The sketch by Hancock was then sent to be engraved by Richard Woodman. In 1877 these portraits were purchased by the National Portrait Gallery in London. “Mr Southey deemed it an admirable likeness of Mr Wordsworth as he appeared in younger life” – Cottle’s reminiscences, 1 November 1836.

The Old Library – 30 King Street Today it’s a restaurant but back in the 1790s, number 30 King Street was the site of Bristol’s library. The building itself dates back to 1738-40 and replaced an earlier library on site. It was here that Coleridge, Southey and many others would read or borrow books and pamphlets, and Coleridge would undertake political lectures. Wordsworth didn’t have a subscription card, but it is very likely that during his stays in Bristol he spent some time here being shown the collection, using it in-house, and supporting Coleridge’s lectures.

No. 48 College Street (today no. 54 College Street) In College Street, both Coleridge and Southey shared lodgings and we know from all the three poets’ writings that Wordsworth visited them here. “I am going to Bristol tomorrow, to see those two extraordinary young men, Coleridge and Southey,” said Wordsworth to Mathews in 1796. Later Coleridge lodged at No. 25 College Street.

Park Street Wordsworth writes, in 1798, how on the four-day walk back from a visit to Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire he was composing in his head a poem, and that it wasn’t until he was walking down Park Street in Bristol that the last passage came to him. “I began it upon leaving Tintern… and concluded it just as I was entering Bristol in the evening… not any part of it was written down till I reached Bristol.”

No. 6 Dowry Square William and his sister Dorothy returned from Tintern via ferry to Aust in South Gloucestershire. They then walked back into Bristol, across The Downs and through Clifton to Hotwells where it’s possible Wordsworth paid a visit to Dr Thomas Beddoes who lived there. Beddoes had opened his Pneumatic Institution (1799-1802) at 6 Dowry Square in the hope of finding a cure for TB and the two men had met through their mutual friend lawyer and reformer James Losh. It was through Beddoes that Wordsworth also met chemist Humphrey Davy, though Coleridge and Southey were more involved with Davy’s experiments with nitrous oxide at the Institute.

Shirehampton Wordsworth lodged at Shirehampton in June and later in July 1798 – before and after his trip to Tintern Abbey – and although the exact location is unknown it was most likely with his friend James Losh. It was purported the reason for this was because Cottle’s shop in the centre of Bristol was too noisy for Wordsworth to concentrate. William and Dorothy were visited here by Coleridge and later left around 10 August to begin their journey for a walking tour in Germany.

It is not known whether Wordsworth returned to Bristol in the 19th century but it is more than likely that he did regardless of Southey and Coleridge having moved to the Lake District as he had done. In 1841 Wordsworth was in nearby Bath for his daughter’s wedding, and returned to the city in 1847, both times staying for weeks so it is highly likely that during either stay he would have ventured to Bristol once more. ■

Wordsworth (pictured) visited chemist Humphrey Davy in Hotwells, though Coleridge and Southey were more involved with his experiments with nitrous oxide