Dorothy’s Room
Dorothy’s Room is an immersive installation inspired by Dorothy Wordsworth’s Rydal Journals in which she describes “rural sights and sounds” in vivid detail: “blue primroses of Alpine purple”; the Robin who became a “singing companion”; “…hail, wind, rain, snow – Oyster Feast”; “bright gleams & startling flashes of sunshine”; hazy bulky mountains among slanting rays of the sun…”
Due however to illness Dorothy became bedroom-bound, relying on memory to transport herself into the landscape she had once walked. Her multi-sensory remembering and noticing of the ‘natural’ world enabled her to access the world around her and the past in an immediate and direct way that was therapeutic – a healing process that brought joy and calm and kept her from the “wilderness of her mind”:
No need of motion, or of strength, Or even the breathing air: –
I thought of Nature's loveliest scenes; And with Memory I was there…
Extract from the poem “Thoughts on my Sick-Bed” by Dorothy Wordsworth.
Dorothy also brought “treasures” into her “quiet” room. The walls were hung with paintings, pots of flowers lined her window ledge, plants grew around her window, which framed the fells she once walked, sunshine and the “sweet sound” of a robin singing entered from the garden.
The installation, centres on Dorothy’s sick bed. Objects mentioned in her Rydal Journals nest amid twisted and disordered bed linen stitched with extracts of the later entries including a working-draft of part of her poem, ‘Thoughts from my Sick Bed’. A film brings the walks and landscapes she wrote about in those journals into the gallery, reflecting her memories and longings to be outside. It shows images, recorded by Louise whilst she re-walked Dorothy’s walks and walks that present-day women can no longer undertake, layered and edited to create an almost dream-like experience.
I went to see your video installation in the Scott Gallery - how well the spirit of your work simply shone out from it. There was a moment when lit water in the projections fell across the pillow which was so eloquent you hardly needed written exposition. Memorable.
Visitor, Peter Scott Gallery
Created and Designed by Louise Ann Wilson.
Project Assistance by David Honeybone.
Embroidery by Liz Bagley, Catherine Bartlett, Lois Kirtley, Jean Simpson.
Pace Eggs Made by Anne Wills.
Film Directed by Louise Ann Wilson.
Film Editing by Janan Yakula.
Sound Editing by Lisa Whistlecroft.
Produced by Louise Ann Wilson Company Limited.
Funded by The Wordsworth Trust, Faculty of Arts and Social Science at Lancaster University, Lancaster Arts at Lancaster University, wilson+Wilson.
Supported by Rydal Mount and the Wordsworth family, The Wordsworth Trust.
Thankyou to all at Rydal Mount and the Wordsworth family, Peter Elkington, Marian Elkington, Hazel Seddon, Nigel Crook. The Wordsworth Trust Jeff Cowton, Melissa Mitchell, Poppy Garrett, Susan Allen, Rebecca Turner, John Coombe. Simon Bainbridge at Lancaster University. Jenny Kagan and the late Harold Potter, who inspired this project.
Here is a film of me talking with Melissa Mitchell, Curator at The Wordsworth Trust about Dorothy's Room
Dorothy’s Room is a companion to Women’s Walks to Remember: ‘With memory I was there’ for which I am collecting the longed-for walks of that can no longer be walked. I re-walked each remembered walk and bring back 'treasures' – films, sounds, words, objects, maps – that are distilled into multi-layered memory-booklet to share with each woman.
An amazing atmosphere...creating a dreamlike mirage.
Visitor, Rydal Mount.
Visitors at Rydal Mount often spoke of their enjoyment of the installation with a number speaking to me about their loved ones who had dementia and found the installation showed a great understanding of the effects of dementia or an inability through ill health to no longer be able to continue with things they enjoyed in the past but with prompts, through words and objects etc,. could remember and reminisce.
Hazel Seddon, Rydal Mount Guide.
An amazing atmosphere...creating a dreamlike mirage.
Visitor, Rydal Mount.
Visitors at Rydal Mount often spoke of their enjoyment of the installation with a number speaking to me about their loved ones who had dementia and found the installation showed a great understanding of the effects of dementia or an inability through ill health to no longer be able to continue with things they enjoyed in the past but with prompts, through words and objects etc,. could remember and reminisce.
Hazel Seddon, Rydal Mount Guide.
Rydal Journals (1830-1835) – ‘longing’ to be outside words
a fine bright day & bright moon—Sadly forced to bed soon after 4.
a very fine day but I was ill & fast in bed.
Loveliest of Sabbath morn.g. How I long to be free of [in?] the open air! The Birds are all singing—Rooks every busy The earth & air & all that I behold seems a preparation for worship & Sabbath rest—the Bird & Beast have this one days security from Snare or slaughter…
A lovely warm morning … —Wind very bad in night—almost stifled above, & below sadly pained—The Medicine relieved me—I have taken a long walk with Wm in the house—Lovely morning time of the wildness of nature with the elaborate formality of old-fashioned Taste could not go out but was on Terrace/
.... very fine weather, yet a something that oppresses me. —I attempted going out after Tea but could not.
Sunshine to make me long to go out & feel it—but the blighting East wind still bars me up —Dear William even proposed bearing me in his arms to the Terrace.
In remembrance of many a moist tramp I recollect – One especially when we sate on the side of Nab fell to sun & rest ourselves, coming from Grasmere Church.
…a fine misty morning but cold & in/so extremely disordered, therefore dare not go out—… —walk very tempting—but no! I must not out … worse & worse.
A lovely bright morning, & fine all day & such an evening! I prudently confined myself with sitting before the window &c was never more cheared with sun set & moon rising & clouds gathering & melting away – It was perfect healing.
Rydal Journals (1830-1835) – ‘longing’ to be outside words
a fine bright day & bright moon—Sadly forced to bed soon after 4.
a very fine day but I was ill & fast in bed.
Loveliest of Sabbath morn.g. How I long to be free of [in?] the open air! The Birds are all singing—Rooks every busy The earth & air & all that I behold seems a preparation for worship & Sabbath rest—the Bird & Beast have this one days security from Snare or slaughter…
A lovely warm morning … —Wind very bad in night—almost stifled above, & below sadly pained—The Medicine relieved me—I have taken a long walk with Wm in the house—Lovely morning time of the wildness of nature with the elaborate formality of old-fashioned Taste could not go out but was on Terrace/
.... very fine weather, yet a something that oppresses me. —I attempted going out after Tea but could not.
Sunshine to make me long to go out & feel it—but the blighting East wind still bars me up —Dear William even proposed bearing me in his arms to the Terrace.
In remembrance of many a moist tramp I recollect – One especially when we sate on the side of Nab fell to sun & rest ourselves, coming from Grasmere Church.
…a fine misty morning but cold & in/so extremely disordered, therefore dare not go out—… —walk very tempting—but no! I must not out … worse & worse.
A lovely bright morning, & fine all day & such an evening! I prudently confined myself with sitting before the window &c was never more cheared with sun set & moon rising & clouds gathering & melting away – It was perfect healing.
