Yesterday marked William Wordsworth’s 250th birthday. He was born in Cockermouth on April 7th, 1770, and died at Rydal Mount on April 23rd, 1850. He’s buried in Grasmere. Cockermouth was touched upon in my recent post on The Printing House; which post shows a picture of Wordsworth’s rather impressive birthplace.

Trinity College sends an account of the Wordsworth family’s Cambridge connection. We all remember (or perhaps more realistically, are aware of) the poet’s evocation of Cambridge in The Prelude. Wordsworth went up to St John’s College in 1787. The Trinity blog quotes the bit, where Wordsworth looks out onto next-door Trinity.

“Near me hung Trinity’s loquacious clock,
Who never let the quarters, night or day,
Slip by him unproclaimed, and told the hours
Twice over with a male and female voice.
Her pealing organ was my neighbour too;
And from my pillow, looking forth by light
Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.”

Not quite a Wordsworth’s-eye view. That’s Trinity College’s Wren Library with the University Library in the background. Great Court with its clock and Newton’s statue is a sharp left from here. The blank wall in the foreground running down to the Cam, marks (I think) the edge of Trinity’s Master’s Garden which is next to St John’s.

Wordsworth seems not to have been the ideal student.

                            ” . . . Companionships,
Friendships, acquaintances, were welcome all.
We sauntered, played, or rioted; we talked
Unprofitable talk at morning hours;
Drifted about along the streets and walks,
Read lazily in trivial books, went forth
To gallop through the country in blind zeal
Of senseless horsemanship, or on the breast
Of Cam sailed boisterously, and let the stars
Come forth, perhaps without one quiet thought.”

                                  “. . . many books
Were skimmed, devoured, or studiously perused,
But with no settled plan. I was detached
Internally from academic cares;
Yet independent study seemed a course
Of hardy disobedience toward friends
And kindred, proud rebellion and unkind.”

All sounds pretty familiar — if you swap the horses for bikes. Cambridge was still encouraging such reading around the subject when I was there. The aim seemed to be rather to develop enquiring minds than to instill a body of knowledge. I was once assured “Our job is not to teach you facts, it’s to enable you to develop the ability to find them out for yourself” or words to that effect. However Wordsworth clearly picked up enough of the required knowledge to be able to get his BA in 1791.

Such literary immortality for Trinity College was not however the end of the family’s contribution to the university. Wordsworth’s little brother Christopher was Master of Trinity from 1820-1841. He had three sons, two of whom were also Fellows of Trinity. The Trinity blog post, perhaps unsurprisingly focusses primarily on their ex-Master.