William Wordsworth and the Invention of Tourism,

Transcription

1 212 Book Reviews Saeko Yoshikawa William Wordsworth and the Invention of Tourism, (Farnham: Ashgate, mm. xii pp. 65) Ichiro Koguchi Tourism is not just an embodiment of the natural human desire for movement and fresh experience. As Saeko Yoshikawa s William Wordsworth and the Invention of Tourism, has demonstrated, it is a set of culturally charged practices, mediated in particular by the act of reading. Grounded in this conviction, this study has explored by referring to an impressive range of primary sources how William Wordsworth s poetry helped to invent a new form of tourism, and, through this process, how the notion of Wordsworth s Lake District came into existence. The book also suggests that the emergence of such tourism was related to the critical re-evaluation of Wordsworth s work in the late nineteenth century. Tourism has expanded throughout modern times. The grand tour flourished from the mid-seventeenth century, and in the next century, picturesque travel came into vogue. With the development of the mail coach system, followed by the advent of the railway, tourism became universalised in the nineteenth century, becoming available to almost any class and social group. Historically situated amid these periods, Romanticism was closely related to tourism, both domestic and across national borders. A number of scholars have turned to travelogues and other travel literature written in the Romantic age, delving into the cultural-literary implications of journeys made by writers. Curiously however, literary tourism, i.e. visits to sites related to authors and literary works, seems to have drawn relatively little attention. Indeed, a seemingly common expression, Wordsworthian tourism, is in

2 213 fact a neologism proposed by the book under review. Wordsworth is ubiquitous in the present-day Lake District, and his image tinges the perception of almost every visitor to the region. But researchers seem to have taken this too much for granted. Accordingly, no book-length study has examined how this Cumbrian area came to be recognised as specifically Wordsworth s Lake District the destination of Wordsworthian tourism. William Wordsworth and the Invention of Tourism, is an ambitious and successful attempt to fill this lacuna in academic studies. Documenting the formation of Wordsworthian tourism and Wordsworth s Lake District is a formidable task, as these phenomena are geographically and textually extensive, comprising an intricate web of numerous contributing factors. To face this challenge, author Yoshikawa focuses on travel guidebooks and pictorial albums published over the course of the nineteenth century, investigating their references to Wordsworth. With these textualpictorial evidences, Part 1 (Chapters 2 and 3) of the book examines the increasing significance of the poet Wordsworth in the Lakes and how this led to the birth of Wordsworthian tourism. Part 2 (Chapters 4 and 5) discusses changing representations of Wordsworth s housings in connection with the growth of interest in the poet s young days. Part 3 (Chapters 6 and 7) explores popular perception of Wordsworth by referring to local anecdotes, items and events related to the poet, as well as to illustrations of the Lakes in pictorial media. These discussions are framed by two chapters that serve not only to inform but also to please readers: Chapter 1 on a mid-victorian album with sketches of Wordsworth-related sites and Chapter 8 about a travelogue written by an early twentieth-century Japanese traveller. Overall, the book has convincingly shown how the practice of visiting Wordsworthrelated places came about, how episodes in Wordsworth s literary life, as well as compositional scenes of his poetry, were localised on the map and landscape, and how the Lake District was redefined as Wordsworth s country. A chapter-by-chapter look is called for to discern the book s specific achievements. Chapter 1 takes up an unpublished album of 1850, composed of sketches drawn on its anonymous artist-author s ten-day tour around the Lakes. His itinerary, starting with visits to Kendal and Hawkshead, included journeys to Ullswater, Rydal Mount, Grasmere, Keswick and Cockermouth. This looks quite ordinary, but as Yoshikawa argues, his footsteps, sketches and written comments were actually ahead of their time, foreshadowing an emerging trend of Lake District tours visiting places and observing landscape features associated with Wordsworth s life and poems. The artist s choice of

3 214 Book Reviews destinations and his will to see things as the poet saw them are prototypical of the Wordsworthian tourism that was to flourish in the next half century. Since the late eighteenth century, picturesque travel to appreciate the natural landscape had been popular. Chapter 2 shows how it was replaced by Wordsworthian literary tourism. Guidebooks to the Lakes began to refer to the poet and his work as early as 1802, and this became an established practice during the 1820s and 1830s. Quotations from The Excursion played a prominent role, and Rydal Mount was promoted as a place intimately associated with the poet. Then, as Chapter 3 indicates, the latter half of the century saw the appearance of guidebooks and illustrated anthologies of poems solely dedicated to Wordsworth and his Lake District. After the poet s death, Wordsworth s grave emerged as a popular destination featured in a number of guidebooks. Dove Cottage also began to attract attention in the mid-1860s. Thus the elderly Poet Laureate at Rydal was gradually replaced by the younger poet of Grasmere, with a wider range of poems associated with this village and the cottage becoming cited in various guidebooks. This means that a decade before Matthew Arnold set a critical trend to value Wordsworth s earlier, shorter poems, a similar reappraisal had been underway in the popular sphere. The Prelude, too, began to receive recognition. Quotations from this autobiographical poem led to the rediscovery of places related to the poet s youthful days, most notably the village of Hawkshead and his birthplace Cockermouth. Chapters 4 and 5 shed further light on interest in the younger Wordsworth by highlighting pictorial-verbal representations of his four principal houses in the Lakes: Rydal Mount, Dove Cottage, his home in Cockermouth and his Hawkshead lodgings. Initially Rydal Mount was the focal point of visitors attention, but with its closure to the public in 1866, they turned to a more genuinely humble place, Dove Cottage. This was in line with the aforementioned critical revaluation of the younger Wordsworth of Grasmere. The shift of interest to the younger poet called to people s attention the poet s birthplace, Cockermouth, and the village of Hawkshead. After Christopher Wordsworth s Memoirs of 1851 mentioned the poet s early days in Cockermouth, Wordsworth s first home there became featured in guidebooks and attracted growing numbers of visitors. Although the house itself was a local hub of business and politics, guidebook representations tended to see it, like Dove Cottage, as a humble place characterised by domestic life. Hawkshead also became recognised. Thomas de Quincey s Lake Reminiscences of 1839, Christopher Wordsworth s Memoirs and quotations from them in later guidebooks encouraged literary pilgrimages to the poet s lodgings and

4 215 the grammar school in the village. Hawkshead scenes and episodes from The Prelude also provided visitors with places of imaginative communion with Wordsworth. Wordsworth s footsteps and his posthumous presence were, of course, not only to be felt at these four houses. Rather, tourists looked forward to feeling his genius permeating the entire district. Chapter 6 traces how Wordsworth s presence came to be perceived across the region, by referring to the items, episodes and events that served to commemorate him and his poetry. Anecdotes and observations of his behaviour were circulated widely through print media. Stories vary, but they eventually crystallised into the collective image of a slightly eccentric, taciturn and solitary figure. Daffodils on Ullswater sung in I wandered lonely as a cloud became a ubiquitous symbol of the poet s genius as guidebooks associated them with other areas of the district. Through such stories and items, the image of Wordsworth, initially linked to Rydal Mount, Dove Cottage and other local areas, became pervasive as the presiding spirit of the English Lake District (Yoshikawa 170). Chapter 7 brings illustrations and other pictorial representations to the foreground. Quotations from Wordsworth were already used in the early nineteenth century in illustrated guidebooks and pictorial albums. From the 1830s onwards, pictorial albums began to feature scenes associated with Wordsworth s poems and the places he lived. These albums instructed reader-tourists how to feel and appreciate scenery as the poet did. They also became means of teaching the importance of preserving Wordsworth-related sites and sights as they were in the poet s days. Thus visual representations contributed to environmental conservation in the Lake District and eventually led to the establishment of the National Trust in the last decade of the nineteenth century. After tracing the fashioning of Wordsworthian tourism and Wordsworth s Lake District, the last chapter presents a lively account of an early twentiethcentury Japanese traveller. Ichinosuke Takagi, sent to Oxford on a government mission, visited Wordsworth s country during the summer vacation. A scholar of Japanese literature, he was also well versed in English poetry, especially that of Wordsworth. With a copy of The Prelude in hand, he made a pilgrimage to places associated with Wordsworth. The journey, informed by his reading of the poet s work, eventually brought Takagi to a profound recognition of Wordsworthian solitude and its significance. Through this episode, Wordsworth and the Invention of Tourism, suggests the global appeal of the poet and his landscape in the age of commercialised, internationalised tourism (Yoshikawa 207).

5 216 Book Reviews As stated, the establishment of Wordsworth s Lake District and Wordsworthian tourism has hitherto attracted little scholarly attention. This book has almost single-handedly turned the situation around by collecting and examining a great deal of evidence. Some recent studies have individually examined literary tourism, cultural memory, the landscape as a readable museum and the cult of celebrity (Yoshikawa 9 11). But it was not until the coming of Yoshikawa s book that we could integrate these critical views and put a vast amount of historical evidence into perspective. For the first time, Wordsworth s involvement in the invention of modern tourism has been fully elucidated. This impressive scholarly achievement invites us to further explorations of related fields. Specific links between the rediscovery of the younger Wordsworth at Dove Cottage and Matthew Arnold s reappraisal of the poet s earlier lyrics could be investigated by referring to literary, critical and tourism-related texts. Modern awareness of the environment in the context of the humanised landscape of Wordsworth s country may well be an area for ecocritical research. One can perhaps enquire into the significance of class structure in the formation of Wordsworthian tourism. Whichever subject or approach may be chosen, Yoshikawa s will remain the standard work that one will keep returning to and consulting. Our knowledge and understanding of Wordsworth, the Lake District and Romanticism will continue to be enriched by reading, quoting from and discussing William Wordsworth and the Invention of Tourism, for a long time to come. (Associate Professor, Osaka University)