"Finished Mrs. Wordsworth's Journal. I do not know when I have felt
more humble than in reading it. It is so superior to my own. She
saw so much more than I did, though we were side by side during a
great part of the time."
Robinson advised Dorothy Wordsworth to publish her Journal of this
Continental Tour, and she replied to him, 23rd May 1824:--
"... Your advice respecting my Continental Journal is, I am sure,
very good, provided it were worth while to make a book of it,
_i.e._ provided I _could_ do so, and provided it were my wish; but
it is not. 'Far better,' I say, 'make another tour, and write the
Journal on a different plan!' In recopying it, I should, as you
advise, omit considerable portions of the description.... But,
observe, my object is not to make a book, but to leave to my niece
a neatly-penned memorial of those few interesting months of our
lives...."
X
In 1822, Dorothy Wordsworth went with Joanna Hutchinson to Scotland, for
change of air and scene. She wrote of this journey:--
"I had for years promised Joanna to go with her to Edinburgh--that
was her object; but we planned a little tour, up the Forth to
Stirling, thence by track-boat to Glasgow; from Dumbarton to Rob
Roy's cave by steam; stopping at Tarbet; thence in a cart to
Inverary; back again to Glasgow, down Loch Fyne, and up the Clyde;
thence on the coach to Lanark; and from Lanark to Moffat in a cart.
There we stopped two days, my companion being an invalid; and she
fancied the waters might cure her, but a bathing-place which nobody
frequents is never in order; and we were glad to leave Moffat,
crossing the wild country again in a cart, to the banks of the
river Esk. We returned to Edinburgh for the sake of warm baths. We
were three weeks in lodgings at Edinburgh. Joanna had much of that
sort of pleasure which one has in first seeing a foreign country;
and in our travels, whether on the outside of a coach, on the deck
of a steamboat, or in whatever way we got forward, she was always
cheerful, never complaining of bad fare, bad inns, or anything
else...."
It was a short excursion, but was memorialised in the usual way by
Dorothy's ever ready pen.