Full Solution to The Mystery of the Added Slip of Paper

On Column 5 of MS A Wordsworth sews in a slip from paper used by family friends, the Clarksons, onto the page just below a word count total of "377". The final line as first entered here is "Which in this happy they behold". A space is left in the fair copy line and filled by the later addition of "Valley" as well as the line above it (which throws out the line-count by one line). This means that the addition must have been made after Wordsworth entered the line-count number. The line-count is one line out on the slip itself and for the second "400" crossed out below. However, it is corrected at that point with a new "400" entered in the right place. We can conclude from this that Wordsworth entered the copy at the top of the page, the material on the slip and the lines under the slip, up to the second crossed out "400", before he added the new line at the top. Why does he not enter the word "Valley" in the space when it seems like the obvious word to go there? One possibility is that the phrase "happy Valley" was too loaded – with echoes of Johnson's Rasselas. In Johnson's moral fable, the prince lives in an earthly paradise but is unable to be content with being content and so seeks to escape from it. The phrase is therefore potentially ambiguous for Wordsworth, who wants to assert that Grasmere is his chosen abode and not to imply any doubts about it.

What is the order of entry here? Clearly, copying pauses at line 378. The ink is darker and the nib finer, continuing on from Column 4. The material on the sewn-in slip is really an extended metaphor, comparing the uncontrolled flow of "stream of consciousness" to a stream, and offering a prayer to the Valley which, through the power of external influence, can alter and calm the mind. It is an important passage in view of the overall stated aim of Home at Grasmere to show how "the external world is fitted to the mind" (MS B 1011).

The slip itself is presumably from an earlier fair copy of Home at Grasmere, preceding MSS A and B. Rather than re-copy it, the material is sewn in. (The fact that the Wordsworths keep this copied fragment would also seem to suggest that most of the prior material for MS A was not in a clean copy state).

Although the blank space beneath the slip corresponds closely to its dimensions, the slip itself is torn at the bottom with the fragment of what could be a letter "p" or "h" on the far right. The final half line on the slip "betrayed by tenderness" is clearly entered in the same pen as that of the sewn-in words. Perhaps on the sewn-in sheet, the copy broke down into draft at this point and this was why the page was torn off.

On the base text page the line "But not betrayed by tenderness of mind" was probably the first entered after the slip was sewn in. Re-workings above it, which run under the slip, were probably added later.