Wordsworth, William (1770–1850, age 64, DNB): DW’s elder brother, with whom she had made a home since both were in their mid-twenties. In 1834–35 WW was weighed down by his sister’s and daughter’s illnesses, his own chronic eye pain, his growing anxiety about the state of the nation, and the recent deaths of several close friends, including Walter Scott, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Charles Lamb.

He nevertheless remained actively engaged in local and national politics, his duties as Distributor of Stamps, and his literary pursuits, which included writing and revising numerous poems and overseeing the publication of his two critical and popular successes of 1835, the fifth (and final) edition of his Guide to the Lakes and his new verse collection, Yarrow Revisited.

Wordsworth, Mary (née Hutchinson, 1770–1859, age 64): WW’s wife and DW’s beloved friend and housemate. Like her husband, MW remained physically, socially, and intellectually vibrant during a period when many of her contemporaries had grown feeble or passed away. In 1835 Henry Crabb Robinson described her as “perfect of her kind,” and Hartley Coleridge remarked in 1832 that “Mrs. W seems remarkably flourishing, and does not grow older. Indeed, both she and her excellent husband belong to that class of persons, who look very old at thirty and very young at sixty.”

Wordsworth, Dora (1804–47, age 30): WW and MW’s second child and only surviving daughter, who, partly owing to her fragile health, continued to live with her parents at RM. In her twenties, Dora had had at least two serious suitors: her distant cousin Lt. Tom Robinson in 1825 (as chronicled in Notebook 1) and Rev. William Ayling, a visitor to Rydal who unexpectedly proposed in 1830 and was decisively rejected.

Between her chronic illnesses and an apparent eating disorder, Dora grew so feeble in the mid-1830s that her parents openly referred to her and DW as the twin “Invalids” of RM and WW privately worried that his daughter might need to be sent away, as “the state of [her] poor Aunt causes so much Distress to Dora that she cannot I am sure recover, if she remains here.” “The most painful part,” he continued, “is the effect which her Aunt’s illness produces upon the Niece. The poor Aunt is 64 years of age, but Dora is young.”

Wordsworth, Willy (1810–83, age 24): WW and MW’s youngest surviving child, who in his mid-twenties seemed uninterested in starting a family of his own (he would remain single until 1847) but was settling into a career as his father’s Sub-distributor of Stamps in Carlisle. Although WW had sufficient faith in his son’s abilities to nominate him as his natural successor when he relinquished his distributorship, MW continued to scold Willy for his carefree ways, warning him at one point to expect no further financial support from RM if he kept living for “the billiard room” and “balls.”

Hutchinson, Sara (1775–1835, age 59): MW’s younger sister, who, having never married, moved between the homes of her married siblings but spent most of her adult life in the Lakes with the Wordsworths. After a year away from Rydal, SH returned in June 1834 to nurse DW and Dora and help the Southeys cope with Edith’s confinement to a mental health hospital in York.

Having come to rely on her good health and her firmness in times of crisis, the family at RM was thunderstruck when, after seeming to have beaten the rheumatic fever, SH suddenly relapsed and passed away on 24 June 1835.

In the hours after her death, her dazed brother-in-law WW wrote that her “departure is something like a dream,” as she “was to this House an inestimable Friend, disinterested, generous, noble-minded, a sincere and pious Christian.”

Hutchinson, Joanna (1780–1843, age 54): MW and SH’s youngest sibling who, between stints with the Wordsworths, lived primarily with her brother Tom until 1826, when she and her newly retired sailor brother, Henry, established a home of their own on the Isle of Man. From 7 November 1834–30 March 1835, or most of the span of Notebook 15, she was in Rydal helping to nurse DW and her niece Dora, the latter of whom posited that her Aunt Joanna was “made to be loved” and was “the meekest spirit that ever breathed.”

Hutchinson, Elizabeth “Ebba” (1820–1905, age 14): The second daughter of Tom and Mary Hutchinson, beloved in-laws of the Wordsworths who for nearly a quarter century had lived as semi-genteel farmers in Herefordshire and eastern Wales. As a token of their love and respect, the Hutchinsons had asked DW to serve as Ebba’s godmother upon the child’s birth in 1820. Just how seriously DW took this charge is evident in a letter she sent Ebba in late 1834 expressing a fervent desire to see her “dear God-daughter before I quit this world” and imparting “a God-mother’s Blessing, with sincerest wishes that [she] may not waste the happy days of Youth.”

Soon thereafter Ebba made the 200-mile journey north to help care for DW and her cousin Dora, and she ended up staying at RM for most of 1835, dividing her time between domestic chores (including spending long hours reading to DW), attending the Dowlings’ school in Ambleside, and socializing with fellow teenagers from families in the Wordsworths’ social set.

Arnold, Thomas (1795–1842, age 39, DNB) and Mary (née Penrose, 1791–1873, age 43): A large, energetic, and brilliant family who, after falling in love with the Grasmere area while holidaying at Allan Bank in the summer of 1833, decided to build a vacation home of their own and took possession of Fox How in Loughrigg in 1834. Since 1827 Thomas Sr. had been headmaster at Rugby, the prestigious boarding school in Wiltshire. While devoutly Christian and deeply moralistic, he zealously campaigned for ecclesiastical and parliamentary reform, often leaving him at odds with High Church Tory acquaintances like the Wordsworths.

These political differences notwithstanding, the Arnold parents and their nine children—the eldest of whom were their daughter Jane (1821–99, age 13) and the budding poet and critic Matthew (1822–88, age 12, DNB)—quickly became regular visitors to RM when in residence at Fox How.

Carr, Thomas (1795–1856, age 39) and Ann (née Dowling, 1784–1837, age 50): The local medical man whom H. C. Robinson described as “a thinker and a man of some reading” and “a superior man of the class of country apothecary,” and his largely bed-ridden wife, who before their 1824 marriage had run the girls’ school in Ambleside.

In the early 1830s Mr. Carr scaled back his practice and the childless couple moved from Cumpstone Lodge in Ambleside to Hill Top, a home in Near Sawrey now associated with its later resident, Beatrix Potter. Despite the move, Mr. Carr remained highly assiduous toward the Wordsworths, making the 18-mile round-trip journey from Hill Top to RM several times in a week when Dora’s or DW’s condition required. While DW teased him about needing an “ear trumpet” to hear his patients, she paid heartfelt tribute to this “faithful Friend” in her 1835 poem “To Thomas Carr, My Medical Attendant” [link to poem elsewhere in this edition].

Unlike her husband, Mrs. Carr makes few appearances in Notebook 15, as by the mid-1830s she was battling the maladies that would lead to her death in January 1837 at the age of 52.

Cookson, Elizabeth (née Mitford, 1775–1868, age 59), Elizabeth (1799–1891, age 35), and Hannah (1812–84, age 22): Three members (the mother and two eldest daughters) of the “Kendal Cooksons,” a family that for three decades had been among the Wordsworths’ closest friends. Amid the national financial crisis of the late 1820s, the Cooksons’ once—thriving textile businesses near Kendal became mired in debt. While their sons Strickland (1801–77) and Henry (1810–76) would escape to have successful careers as a London lawyer and Cambridge headmaster, their other sons were forced either to emigrate to America or take menial jobs in England, and their daughters Elizabeth and Hannah resorted to opening a girls’ day-school in Ambleside.

Meanwhile, having declared bankruptcy in 1831, the parents, Thomas and Elizabeth, decamped to the Isle of Man for its lower cost of living, only for him to die unexpectedly in the autumn of 1833.

Thereafter, the widowed Mrs. Cookson moved in with her daughters in Ambleside, where she apparently still resided during the period of Notebook 15. Her final decades would be spent at How Foot, a cottage adjacent to Dove Cottage where she lived to the age of 94.

Elliott, John (1763?–1835, age 71?) and Anna Maria (née Maltby, 1771–1855, age 63): A well-connected, peripatetic, and apparently childless couple who befriended the Wordsworths while leasing Ivy Cottage in Rydal from 1822–24. Mr. Elliott was the eldest son of Rear Adm. George Elliott and Mrs. Elliott the daughter of a successful Norwich merchant and sister of Edward Maltby, a Reformist clergyman who became Bishop of Chichester in 1830 and Bishop of Durham in 1836. After leaving Rydal, the Elliotts spent six years at various home near Ambleside and four years outside the area before returning to the Central Lakes in 1834.

After her husband’s death in October 1835, Mrs. Elliott passed her remaining years at her brother’s episcopal residence in Durham.

Farquhar, Sir Minto (1809–66, age 25): The only child of Lady Maria Farquhar and her late first husband, Sir Robert. This dashing young baronet’s arrival from Vienna, where he was employed at the British embassy, sent ripples through the Wordsworths’ social set during the Christmas holiday season of 1834–35. Dora, for instance, teased her friend Maria Kinnaird, “Sir Minto, is ready for you & I will give my consent to your becoming his with all my heart—he has been at the Ivy Cottage for nearly two months & really is the nicest creature ever seen . . . & is moreover a most entertaining creature with a very handsome face [and] sings divinely.”

Any hopes, however, that this highly eligible bachelor would fall for a local girl were dashed when word arrived in late 1835 of his having married the daughter of a Scottish noble.

Fisher, Mary (née Dawson, 1777–1854, age 67): A former servant at Dove Cottage and RM who over time had become a valued family friend. Notebook 15 records her regularly visiting DW’s sickbed, and other documents from this period show SH taking tea at Mary’s cottage in Town End, Grasmere, and WW asking his family in a letter from London to “keep a glass of Mary Fisher’s Elder wine for me.”

Godwin, Thomas (1781–1852, age 53) and Catherine Grace (née Garnett, 1798–1845, ages 36, DNB): A retired East India Company surgeon and his literary wife, whose debut verse collection of 1824 had garnered praise from such poetic luminaries as WW, Robert Southey, and Joanna Baillie. The Godwins were married soon after this volume’s release and settled in Barbon, the village in the southeast corner of Westmorland where she had spent most of her adolescence. In 1829 Mrs. Godwin dedicated her second collection, The Wanderer’s Legacy, to WW, and it was in hopes of forging a closer relationship with him and his family that she and her husband repeatedly leased Spring Cottage in Loughrigg in ensuing years, including during the period of Notebook 15.

Writing on WW’s behalf in 1835, DW urged Edward Moxon to consider becoming her publisher, calling Mrs. Godwin and her husband “excellent and agreeable neighbours” and opining that “her style, language, and versification appear to me very much superior to those of most of the popular female writers of the present day.”

Hamilton, Capt. Thomas (1789–1842, age 45, DNB) and Lady Maria Farquhar (née de Lautour, 1792–1875, age 42): A middle-aged couple, who, having both been widowed, met in Rydal in 1833, married in February 1834, and lived at Ivy Cottage (his home since 1830) until late 1835, when they moved to Elleray, the Windermere estate of his friend and fellow writer John Wilson. Having inherited a large fortune from her father, an official in the East India company, the former Maria Lautour married her first spouse, Robert Townsend Farquhar, in 1809. A year later they welcomed a son, Minto, and left for Mauritius, where her husband would serve as the colony’s governor from 1810 to 1817 and, after acceding to his baronetcy in 1819, serve a second term from 1820 and 1823. During her earlier stint on this island, Lady Farquhar bonded with her fellow expatriate Letitia Luff, and twenty years later, after both had been widowed, she met her future husband while visiting her old friend in Loughrigg.

Prior to moving to the Lakes in 1830, Capt. Hamilton had spent eight years in the army—where he fought in the Peninsular Wars and spent time in Canada—before retiring to Edinburgh on half pay in 1818, becoming a regular contributor to the fledgling Blackwood’s Magazine, and having a minor hit in 1827 with his autobiographical novel Cyril Thornton. Such was this book’s renown that, upon Hamilton’s arrival in Rydal, Dora took to calling him “Cyril,” as in her letter announcing his engagement and reporting that Lady Farquhar “is still at Fox Ghyll & Cyril is there the day thro’.“

Harrison, Benson (1786–1863, age 48) and Dorothy (née Wordsworth, 1800–90, age 34): Affluent relatives of the Wordsworths who in 1827 had moved from Ulverston, where Benson’s father had made a fortune forging iron, to Green Bank, the spacious Ambleside home where they would spend their remaining days. “Cousin Dorothy,” as she was affectionately known at RM, was the youngest surviving daughter of WW and DW’s firstn cousin Richard Wordsworth (1752–1816) and had grown close to her Rydal relations while spending nearly a year with them in her early teens.

Their mutual affection only deepened after she returned to the area as an adult, with DW calling her in 1830 as “good a soul as ever lived.”

Through most of the period covered by Notebook 15, the Harrisons had six children at home—five from their own union (ages 2–10) and a 16-year-old daughter from Benson’s first marriage—but Cousin Dorothy would give birth to their last child in late September 1835.

Lloyd, Rev. Owen (1803–41, age 31): A nephew of DW’s brother Christopher who, after spending much of his childhood in the Central Lakes, had graduated from Cambridge, returned to the area as a schoolteacher, and become Curate of Langdale, a position he faithfully filled from 1828 until his tragically early death in 1841.

The scion to a wealthy Quaker banking family from Birmingham, Owen’s father, Charles Lloyd (1775–1839, DNB), had settled at Old Brathay near Ambleside in 1800 and, before suffering a nervous breakdown in the early 1810s, earned a reputation as a minor member of the “Lake Poets.” Perhaps biased by the Lloyds’ well-documented history of mental illness, Tom Arnold would later remember Owen as “generally talking to himself and eccentric in other ways” during their encounters in the mid-1830s.

Yet he was a clear favorite of DW and others at RM, and Sara Coleridge maintained in 1832 that, while Owen’s sisters were “very pleasing girls,” he was “the flower of the family.”

Pasley, Sir Thomas Sabine (1804–84, age 30, DNB) and Lady Jane Matilda (née Wynyard, 1806–69, age 28): A vibrant and well-connected young couple who, during a pause in his naval career, moved to Bowness in the early 1830s, where they were immediately welcomed into the Wordsworths’ social set. Lady Jane was the eldest daughter of Rev. Montagu John Wynyard (1781–1857), an army officer turned Yorkshire rector who in 1834 was appointed a spiritual advisor to William IV.

Sir Thomas was born not a Pasley but a Sabine, but changed his surname after acceding to his maternal grandfather’s baronetcy shortly before his fourth birthday. After attending the Royal Naval Cottage, he went to sea in 1818 and became a commander in 1828 and captain in 1831.

Both husband and wife were amateur painters and passed their interest to their daughter Jane (1827–95, age 7)—the eldest of the five Pasley children born by 1835—who in childhood was a regular visitor at RM and as a teenager delighted the family with an etching she made of WW.

Robinson, Capt. Charles (1788–1864, age 46) and Charlotte (née Kearsley, 1798–1861, age 36): Relatives of the Wordsworths who settled in Ambleside shortly after their 1822 marriage and his retirement from the navy. Capt. Robinson, a first cousin once removed of WW and DW, is a major presence early in the RJ but appears less frequently in later notebooks, likely owing both to DW’s limited mobility and the demands of raising the eight children he and his wife had welcomed by the end of 1835.

In her ledgers at the end of Notebook 15, DW twice records purchasing books for the Robinsons’ eldest daughter, Mary (1823–66, age 11).

Southey, Robert (1774–1843, age 60, DNB) and Edith (née Fricker, 1774–1837, age 60): The Keswick-based family of WW’s fellow poet and Tory polemicist who over the decades had grown increasingly close to the Wordsworths. The six-month span covered by Notebook 15 was a harrowing one for the Southeys, as, after years of severe depression exacerbated by the deaths of four of her eight children, Edith’s illness grew so distressing by the fall of 1834 that her husband felt compelled to admit her to a mental asylum in York.

Observing these events unfold, SH was so stirred by the poet’s solicitude toward his wife that she opined, “If any man ever deserved the Title of Christian Philosopher it is he—so much feeling with so much power to overcome I never before saw exemplified.” She was nearly as impressed by the fortitude shown by Bertha (1809–77, age 25) and Kate (1810–64, age 24), his two grown daughters still living at Greta Hall, writing, “Kate dear little Creature! is her father’s own child—She has behaved like a Heroine—& dear Bertha has done her best.”

Yet, despite their outward resilience, the family’s internal turmoil was captured by Southey’s moving report of 2 October 1834, when he wrote, “I have been parted from my wife by something worse than death. Forty years has she been the life of my life; and I have left her this day in a lunatic asylum.”

Over ensuing months, DW’s journal carefully tracked news from York and, along with her letters and poems from this period, her entries display abiding compassion for Edith and unmistakable affection for Bertha and Kate, with whom she had forged an unusually tight bond during their regular stays at RM.