WORDSWORTH

This is a rare letter written while he was staying with this great friends the Marshalls, who had a house at 41 Upper Grosvenor Street. John MARSHALL (1765-1845) was an immensely wealthy industrialist and politician. His wife, Jane Marshall, née Pollard (1765-1849), had known Dorothy Wordsworth from their school days. Marshall consulted Wordsworth on his Lake District estates, built Hallsteads on Ullswater with his guidance, and became a lifelong patron of the Romantic circle. The Marshall residence in London was a special place for Wordsworth; according to the scholar George Harris Healey, it was “the one place in London that he called ‘home’ ” (George Harris Healey, ed., Wordsworth’s Pocket Notebook (1972), p. 77). This letter is remarkably illuminating on two of Wordsworth’s core qualities: his love of walking and his frugal nature. Could he have had only one pair of shoes? Of course he then needed the one broken shoe mended immediately, since he needed to continue walking.