Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photography (483) Wed, 11th Jan 2017, Edinburgh Lot 229

Estimate: £15000 - £25000 + Fees [Wordsworth, William, Mary and Dora] - Fenwick, Isabella - A collection of manuscript material comprising: Note: Henry Taylor (1800-1886), English dramatist and poet, official, and well-connected man of letters, met and Robert Southey on a visit to the Lake District in 1823. Jane Taylor had a first cousin Isabella Fenwick (1783–1856), and it was Henry Taylor who introduced Isabella to the Wordsworth family. Isabella was the daughter of Nicholas Fenwick, of Lemmington Hall, Edlingham, near Alnwick in Northumberland, and his wife Dorothy Forster, who was the first cousin of Henry Taylor’s step-mother. Taylor’s tribute to his cousin’s mind and character and his account of her relations with the Wordsworths are found in his Autobiography of Henry Taylor, (2 vols; London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1885).

"Isabella Fenwick first signed the visitor's book at in June 1831 though she probably met the poet first a year or two earlier. She spent months at a time as a guest of the Wordsworths before moving to Ambleside in 1838 to be close to her friends at Rydal Mount. In August 1838 she wrote to her cousin Henry Taylor that Wordsworth often visited her cottage, Gale House, at Ambleside, as a "refuge" from the crush of up to 30 visitors a day at Rydal Mount and for a month he and Mary Wordsworth were her guests there in February 1839. They conversed for hours at a time but Wordsworth also recited or read aloud to her portions of , which he was then revising.... Isabella Fenwick often walked with Wordsworth among the nearby valleys and fells surrounding Lakes Windemere, Rydal Water and Grasmere, places that held so many associations with his poetic life. This woman of intelligence, imagination and strong affections in some sense filled the gap left by Wordsworth's sister Dorothy in her debilitating illness, and his letters to her in her absence from Ambleside and Rydal Mount vividly attest to his deep affection for her. Trusted and loved as much by Mary and Dora as by Wordsworth himself, she was the mediating force which made possible Dora's marriage to Edward Quillinan in April 1841.... Later, when work proceeded with the publication of Poems, chiefly of Early and Late Years, Isabella Fenwick undertook to copy large portions of the text for the printer. A few months later, probably late in 1842, Wordsworth accepted her offer to take dictation of his notes to the poems, and they commenced work in January 1843. They completed their work six months later at Rydal Mount June 24th 1843. Among those outside the family, and many within it, there was no one better qualified for such a task, no one so in tune with its aim and spirit." (Jared Curtis, The Fenwick Notes of William Wordsworth.)

Dora and Edward Quillinan copied Isabella's notes into a leather bound folio notebook for use by family and friends, completing this task on 25th August 1843. None of Isabella Fenwick's original transcription of the dictated notes survives. "Two recent tours with family and friends provided impetus for his composing the ["Fenwick"] notes at this time. The first was in the summer of 1840 when Wordsworth, his wife Mary, their daughter Dora, Isabella Fenwick and her niece [also Isabella Fenwick (later Piotrowski)], and Edward Quillinan and his elder daughter Jemima, travelled through the Duddon valley, visiting scenes Wordworth had known from his days at Hawkshead School and written of in The Prelude, , The River Duddon, and in a number of descriptive poems centred on Black Combe... The second tour included his visits to Tintern Abbey in the Wye valley, and to Alfoxden and the Quantocks just before and after his daughter Dora's marriage to Edward Quillinan in the spring of 1841... Of this second leg Isabella Fenwick wrote to Henry Taylor of their visit to Wells, Alfoxden, &c.: "He was delighted to see again those scenes... where he had been so happy - where he had felt and thought so much. He pointed out the spots where he had written many of his early poems, and told us how they had been suggested" (Jared Curtis, The Fenwick Notes of William Wordsworth, p.12-13). Curtis notes that "without the presence and encouragement of Isabella Fenwick, however, it is unlikely that the notes would have been composed at all."

Footnotes: 2) Dorothy "Dora" Wordsworth, the only surviving daughter of the romantic poet William Wordsworth, immortalised in Wordsworth's poem, The Triad. Dora was devoted to her father and had a significant influence on his poetry. Their relationship was especially close. In 1843, with Isabella playing a crucial intermediary role, Dora married Edward Quillinan aged 39 against her father's strong opposition, and in 1847 died of tuberculosis. After her death, her father, distraught, planted hundreds of daffodils in her memory in a field beside St Mary's Church, Rydal, now owned by the National Trust.

3) A long news-filled letter from Mary Wordsworth, wife of the poet, to Isabella Fenwick, who seems to be the godmother of one of Mary and William's children, disusssing Mr Wordsworth's plans, Kate Southey, the health of her daughter Dora Quilllinan [neé Wordsworth] and the ecclesiastical appointments of her son William.

5) Wordsworth's close friend, Isabella Fenwick, to whom he dictated what are now known as the "Fenwick Notes" is immortalised in two poems by the poet, The Star which comes at close of Day to shine, and On a Portrait of I.F., painted by Margaret Gillies

9) We are Seven was first published in in 1798. This version differs from the published version in having "handkerchief" for "'kerchief" in verse 11.

10) Goody Blake and Harry Gill was first published in Lyrical Ballads in 1798. This version differs from the published version in several instances; for example, in the third verse of the present manuscript the line reads "Ill fed was she, and thinly clad", and the published version read "Ill fed she was." Isabella Fenwick's notes in the published edition: "Written at Alfoxden, 1798. The incident from Dr. Darwin's Zoonomia.

Thomas Thorp, 1797-1877, was educated at Trinity College, where he was elected a scholar in 1817, and a Fellow in 1820. " He held a number of College offices, including a tutorship and the vice-mastership (1843-4). Thorp is closely associated the Cambridge Camden Society, of which he was president for twenty years. The Society derived considerable support from William Whewell, Master of Trinity, [whom Wordsworth visited with Isabella Piotrowski [neé Fenwick] in 1845]. Thorp was strongly influenced by Romanticism and Wordsworth's appropriation of whatever was 'pure and imaginative, whatever was not merely utilitarian, to the service of both Church and State."... Influenced by the Oxford Movement, he once said that Wordsworth might be considered among the founders of the Society" [http://trinitycollegechapel.com/about/memorials/brasses/thor p/ ] The archive also contains some typed transcripts of autograph letters which are no longer present in the archive.

A substantial, fascinating and hitherto undocumented archive relating to an intimate friend of one of the greatest English Romantic poets.

Provenance: By descent from Dorothy Tudor [née Fenwick], sister of Isabella Fenwick (1780-1856) - Elizabeth Tudor (married Thomas Thorp) - W.T. Thorp - R.W.T. Thorp - R.J.F. Thorp - S.A.R. Thorp