by beatriceotto | Jan 16, 2018 | triologisms
The story hangs on the breathtaking physical beauty of Hetty, whereas Dinah is generally highlighted more in terms of her kindliness and wisdom. Yet here is an early allusion to her also having a certain loveliness alongside her finely-moulded soul. ‘…...
by beatriceotto | Dec 21, 2017 | a quote to note
In Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals, you sense the extent to which she supported her brother’s writing. Some things she records become material for his poems. She also reads aloud to him, including his own compositions, and copies out his poems. But beyond...
by beatriceotto | Aug 8, 2017 | triologisms
What a charming if old-fashioned sounding description of sloping beauty, in this case referring to voluptuous Europa. And ‘callipygous’ describes finely shaped buttocks, the owner of which would qualify as a callipygian. ‘Europa – lovely,...
by beatriceotto | Jun 6, 2017 | triologisms
My heart also expands at the spring-time welcome of where I live and where I visit. Here, the detail of Nicolson’s account roots the welcome in the Shiants, and I particularly revel in the ‘big, luscious chamomile’ and the ‘flowering cushions...
by beatriceotto | May 25, 2017 | a quote to note
I liked this expansive moon-scape and the detail of Wordworth keeping his curtains open to see it. ‘The moon shone upon the water below Silver-how, & above it hung, combining with Silver how on one side, a Bowl-shaped moon the curve downwards – the white...
by beatriceotto | May 25, 2017 | a quote to note
Dorothy Wordsworth’s eye for details, and her care in noting them, are a wonder, allowing her to converse with people born centuries after her. Feeling this easy affinity, I have to wonder if anything we say or write or think will resonate with people 200 years...
by beatriceotto | May 23, 2017 | triologisms
I eat flaxseed and have seen blonde hair described as ‘flaxen’, but in reading this I realize I have never seen flax grow. And what a refreshing image of a river plaiting a long green strand of clear water through the flax fields. ‘The river Enns...
by beatriceotto | May 2, 2017 | triologisms
One of Leigh Fermor’s teenage crushes, a girl who ran the local grocery shop, whom he spotted on an escapade from school. ‘She was twenty-four, a ravishing and sonnet-begetting beauty and I can see her now and still hear that melting and deep Kent...
by beatriceotto | Apr 19, 2017 | a quote to note
A few years ago I noted Keats’ references to and delight in a thrush in his garden, and so found a kindred joy in Dorothy’s writing about the singing thrush, which she later describes as ‘our own Thrush’, mentioning its ‘impatient...
