KEY POINTS:
None of the present generation of Wordsworths is keen to occupy the bedroom once used by their famous ancestor, William, and his wife, Mary.
The problem is that Rydal Mount, in England's Lake District, where the great poet lived for 37 years, is not only a holiday home for his descendants but also opens to the public.
"That means," says great-great-granddaughter Susan, present owner of the house, "if you're not up by 9am, there's a risk of having some curious tourist peering round the door wondering if you're part of the display."
Family members are also reluctant to sleep in the bedroom once used by the poet's sister, Dorothy ... but that's for a rather different reason.
"It's haunted," explains curator Peter Elkington. "Several people have felt a presence here.
"It's not an unpleasant presence, it's William and Dorothy, but the family prefer to avoid it so they put visitors in here."
Elkington says he's never felt anything - "but then I'm not sensitive to that sort of thing" - however, he does have problems with a candle in the room which, no matter how firmly he jams it in to the candlestick, always ends up leaning at an angle.
While we're chatting, he puts huge effort into fixing the candle in its holder precisely upright. But, as soon as we turn to look elsewhere, it slumps over. Untidy ghosts? "I don't know what it is. But it's very strange."
Funny things also happen in the attic at the top of the house, built by Wordsworth as his study, these days used as a museum for memorabilia.
Elkington, a meticulous man, is vexed that the label on Wordsworth's favourite pocketbook, containing the works of the Roman poet Horace, keeps twisting out of square.
"I keep straightening it up and, yet a few days later, it's always crooked. It shouldn't be possible for it to move, because it's inside a glass case, but it always happens. Look," he says, as we arrive at the display case in question, "it's crooked again."
And, sure enough, the label explaining that Wordsworth often took the well-worn pocketbook on his walks across the fells, is lying at an untidy angle.
I don't know if Wordsworth was a practical joker but it does seem to me that his spirit, if not his ghost, is very much alive in his old house. Partly that's because it still has a lot of the same furnishings and the views of fields and gardens with Rydal Water in the distance are just as spectacular as they ever were.
But mainly I think it's due to the fact that Rydal Mount is not a museum but a family home and, just as in Wordsworth's day, rather than exuding a dignified silence it often echoes to the sound of children laughing; in place of pristine exhibits there may be discarded clothes lying about and the smell is not of musty exhibits but of dinner cooking.
Walking through the house brings a pleasant touch of humanity to a poet whose sublime verse tends to see him elevated to almost superhuman status.
Most of his homes were in the Lake District, which also provided the inspiration for most of his poems. His attitude to the area is summed up in a few lines from his great autobiographical poem The Prelude:
"There are in our existence spots of time,
Which with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating Virtue, whence,
... our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired."
Certainly sites associated with the poet and his poetry are all across the Lake District and even in winter they are incredibly beautiful.
Wordsworth was born there in the town of Cockermouth and his childhood home on the banks of the River Derwent, now owned by the National Trust, has been restored to show what life would have been like for the Wordsworth family in the 1770s.
The grammar school he attended in the charming old village of Hawkshead has also been preserved much as it was in Wordsworth's time, with an unusual vertical sundial above the front door and the original desks, including one on which the naughty young poet carved his name.
After a few years away in Cambridge, the West Country and Germany, Wordsworth returned to the Lake District in 1799 and never really left. Initially, he and Dorothy settled in the old Grasmere coaching inn, the Dove and Olive, renaming it Dove Cottage, and it was here he and Mary were married and their three eldest children were born.
Dove Cottage is where Wordsworth wrote his finest work and it has been preserved by the Wordsworth Trust very much as it would have been when the poet lived there. The story of his life and work is told in the associated Wordsworth Museum.
When we paid a visit to the cottage it was cosy enough thanks to the fires burning in the downstairs rooms, and filled with fascinating memorabilia, but the absence of electric light, the small windows, dank hillside looming above and misty rain hanging morsely over the landscape made it a dark and gloomy place.
After spending a couple of hours peering through the cottage's murky rooms, it wasn't hard to see why, as Wordsworth's household and his reputation as a poet grew, the family moved to bigger, brighter premises, initially to Allan Bank house and then the Rectory, both also in Grasmere, and finally 5km down the road to Rydal Mount, where he lived from 1813 to his death in 1850.
Even on a typical cold, wet, misty Lake District winter's day, Rydal Mount is a lovely house - light, airy and welcoming, with beautiful views to Rydal Water and the hills beyond, and it's easy to see why the poet loved the place so much. The gardens surrounding the house are still very much as they were planned by Wordsworth, with terraces where he walked in search of inspiration, and a summerhouse where he sat and jotted his ideas, including the lines:
"Oh happy gardens! Whose seclusion deep,
so friendly to industrious hours;
and to soft slumbers, that did gently steep
our spirits carry with them dreams of flowers,
and wild notes warbled among leafy bowers."
A booklet on Rydal Mount records that a servant once told a visitor, "This is my master's library where he keeps his books: his study is out of doors."
Just below the house is the lovely old church of St Mary's Rydal where Wordsworth was churchwarden in 1833 (though he, Mary and Dorothy are buried in the graveyard of St Oswald's in Grasmere).
Alongside the church is Dora's Meadow, which William and Mary planted in daffodils in memory of a beloved daughter, their golden blooms an annual reminder of what is probably his most famous poem (though that was inspired by a field at Ullswater):
"I wandered lonely as a Cloud
That floats on high o'er Vales and Hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."
It's many years since I read The Daffodils, but the charm of Rydal Mount and the beauty of its surrounds, even on a miserable day, was sufficient to stimulate a rediscovery of Wordsworth's glorious verse.
Much of the credit for providing such inspiration goes to his descendants who bought the house and grounds in 1969 after more than a century of neglect, and set about restoring them in to a suitable memorial.
This is, says curator Elkington, "an entirely self-funded exercise. All the income from admission charges goes back in to developing the property. The family takes nothing out and they get no public funding."
Nevertheless, over the years they have managed to buy back some items of furniture associated with the house - most recently chairs, a couch, Wordsworth's original bookcase - so it is steadily becoming more like the house he loved.
As great-great-granddaughter Susan explains, taking time out from peeling the potatoes for dinner, "We just try to keep it as we think he would like it. I hope he does."
LAKE DISTRICT, ENGLAND
GETTING THERE
Emirates flies from Auckland three times a day to Dubai, and from Dubai to several British airports including twice a day to Manchester (from September it will also fly to Newcastle which is closer to the Lake District). Basic round-trip fares start at $2460 plus taxes but there are frequent specials. See emirates.com or call 0508 364 728.
WORDSWORTH
Wordsworth House in Cockermouth is at www.wordsworthhouse.org.uk.
The Wordsworth Trust, which owns Dove Cottage, is at www.wordsworth.org.uk.
Rydal Mount is at www.rydalmount.co.uk.
MORE INFORMATION
General information on visiting Britain is at VisitBritain.com. Information on the Lake District is at www.golakes.co.uk.
* Jim Eagles visited the Lake District with help from Visit Britain and Emirates.
