There are many ways of sitting down to an evening vigil. Unquestionably
the pleasantest is to fortify the soul with a pot of tea, plenty of
tobacco, and a few chapters of Jane Austen. And if the adorable Miss
Austen is not to hand, my second choice perhaps would be the literary
remains of a sad, poor, and forgotten young man who was a contemporary
of hers.
I say "forgotten," and I think it is just; save for his beautiful hymn
"The Star of Bethlehem," who nowadays ever hears of Henry Kirke White?
But on the drawing-room tables of our grandmothers' girlhood the plump
volume, edited with a fulsome memoir by Southey, held honourable place
near the conch shell from the Pacific and the souvenirs of the Crystal
Palace. Mr. Southey, in his thirty years' laureateship, made the fame of
several young versifiers, and deemed that in introducing poor White's
remains to the polite world he was laying the first lucifer to a bonfire
that would gloriously crackle for posterity. No less than Chatterton was
the worthy laureate's estimate of his young foundling; but alas!
Chatterton and Kirke White both seem thinnish gruel to us; and even
Southey himself is down among the pinch hitters. Literary prognosis is a
parlous sport.
The generation that gave us Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, Lamb, Jane
Austen, Hazlitt, De Quincey, Byron, Shelley, and Keats, leaves us little
time for Kirke White considered purely as a literary man. His verses are
grotesquely stilted, the obvious conjunction of biliousness and
overstudy, and adapted to the taste of an era when the word female was
still used as a substantive. But they are highly entertaining to read
because they so faithfully mirror the backwash of romanticism. They are
so thoroughly unhealthy, so morbid, so pallid with moonlight, so
indentured by the ayenbite of inwit, that it is hard to believe that
Henry's father was a butcher and should presumably have reared him on
plenty of sound beefsteak and blood gravy. If only Miss Julia Lathrop or
Dr. Anna Howard Shaw could have been Henry's mother, he might have lived
to write poems on the abolition of slavery in America. But as a matter
of fact, he was done to death by the brutal tutors of St. John's
College, Cambridge, and perished at the age of twenty-one, in 1806. As a
poet, let him pass; but the story of his life breathes a sweet and
honourable fragrance, and is comely to ponder in the midnight hours. As
Southey said, there is nothing to be recorded but what is honourable to
him; nothing to be regretted but that one so ripe for heaven should so
soon have been removed from the world.
He was born in Nottingham, March 21, 1785, of honest tradesman parents;
his origin reminds one inevitably of that of Keats. From his earliest
years he was studious in temper, and could with difficulty be drawn from
his books, even at mealtimes. At the age of seven he wrote a story of a
Swiss emigrant and gave it to the servant, being too bashful to show it
to his mother. Southey's comment on this is "The consciousness of genius
is always accompanied with this diffidence; it is a sacred, solitary
feeling."
His schooling was not long; and while it lasted part of Henry's time was
employed in carrying his father's deliveries of chops and rumps to the
prosperous of Nottingham. At fourteen his parents made an effort to
start him in line for business by placing him in a stocking factory. The
work was wholly uncongenial, and shortly afterward he was employed in
the office of a busy firm of lawyers. He spent twelve hours a day in the
office and then an hour more in the evening was put upon Latin and
Greek. Even such recreation hours as the miserable youth found were
dismally employed in declining nouns and conjugating verbs. In a little
garret at the top of the house he began to collect his books; even his
supper of bread and milk was carried up to him there, for he refused to
eat with his family for fear of interrupting his studies. It is a
deplorable picture: the fumes of the hearty butcher's evening meal
ascend the stair in vain, Henry is reading "Blackstone" and "The Wealth
of Nations." If it were Udolpho or Conan Doyle that held him, there were
some excuse. The sad life of Henry is the truest indictment of overstudy
that I know. No one, after reading Southey's memoir, will overload his
brain again.
At the age of fifteen we find the boy writing to his older brother
Neville: "I have made a firm resolution never to spend above one hour at
this amusement [novel reading]. I have been obliged to enter into this
resolution in consequence of a vitiated taste acquired by reading
romances." He is human enough to add, however, that "after long and
fatiguing researches in 'Blackstone' or 'Coke,' 'Tom Jones' or 'Robinson
Crusoe' afford a pleasing and necessary relaxation. Of 'Robinson Crusoe'
I shall observe that it is allowed to be the best novel for youth in the
English language."
The older brother to whom these comments were addressed was living in
London, apparently a fairly successful man of business. Henry permitted
himself to indulge his pedagogical and ministerial instincts for the
benefit and improvement of his kinsman. They seem to have carried on a
mutual recrimination in their letters: Neville was inclined to belittle
the divine calling of poets in their teens; while Henry deplored his
brother's unwillingness to write at length and upon serious and
"instructive" topics. Alas, the ill-starred young man had a mania for
self-improvement. If our great-grandparents were all like that what an
age it had been for the Scranton correspondence courses! "What is
requisite to make one's correspondence valuable?" asks Henry. "I answer,
_sound sense_." (The italics are his own.) "You have better natural
abilities than many youth," he tells his light-hearted brother, "but it
is with regret I see that you will not give yourself the trouble of
writing a good letter. My friend, you never found any art, however
trivial, that did not require some application at first." He begs the
astounded Neville to fill his letters with his opinions of the books he
reads. "You have no idea how beneficial this would be to yourself." Does
one not know immediately that Henry is destined to an early grave?
Henry's native sweetness was further impaired by a number of prizes won
in magazine competitions. A silver medal and a pair of twelve-inch
globes shortly became his for meritorious contributions to the _Monthly
Mirror_. He was also admitted a member of a famous literary society then
existing in Nottingham, and although the youngest of the sodality he
promptly announced that he proposed to deliver them a lecture. With
mingled curiosity and dismay the gathering assembled at the appointed
time, and the inspired youth harangued them for two hours on the subject
of Genius. The devil, or his agent in Nottingham, had marked Henry for
destruction.
In such a career there can be no doubt as to the next step. He published
a book of poems. His verses, dealing with such topics as Consumption,
Despair, Lullaby of a Female Convict to Her Child the Night Previous to
Execution, Lines Spoken by a Lover at the Grave of His Mistress, The Eve
of Death, and Sonnet Addressed by a Female Lunatic to a Lady, had been
warmly welcomed by the politest magazines of the time. To wish to
publish them in more permanent form was natural; but the unfortunate
young man conceived the thought that the venture might even be a
profitable one. He had found himself troubled with deafness, which
threatened to annul his industry in the law; moreover, his spirit was
canting seriously toward devotional matters, and thoughts of a college
career and then the church were lively in his mind.
The winter of 1802-3 was busily passed in preparing his manuscript for
the printer. Probably never before or since, until the Rev. John
Franklin Bair of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, set about garnering his
collected works into that volume which is the delight of the wicked, has
a human heart mulled over indifferent verses with so honest a pleasure
and such unabated certainty of immortality. The first two details to be
attended to were the printing of what were modestly termed
_Proposals_--i.e., advertisements of the projected volume, calling for
pledges of subscription--and, still more important, securing the
permission of some prominent person to accept a dedication of the book.
The jolly old days of literary patronage were then in the sere and
saffron, but it was still esteemed an aid to the sale of a volume if it
might be dedicated to some marquis of Carabas. Accordingly the
manuscript was despatched to London, and Neville, the philistine
brother, was called upon to leave it at the residence of the Duchess of
Devonshire. A very humble letter from honest Henry accompanied it,
begging leave of her Grace to dedicate his "trifling effusions" to her.
Henry's letters to Neville while his book was in preparation are very
entertaining, as those of minor poets always are under such
circumstances. Henry was convinced that at least 350 copies would be
sold in Nottingham. He writes in exultation that he has already got
twenty-three orders even before his "proposals" are ready:
"I have got twenty-three, without making the affair public at all, among
my immediate acquaintance: and mind, I neither solicit nor draw the
conversation to the subject, but a rumour has got abroad, and has been
received more favourably than I expected."
But the matter of the dedication unfortunately lagged far behind the
poet's hopes. After the manuscript was left at the house of her Grace of
Devonshire there followed what the Ancient Mariner so feelingly calls a
weary time. Poor Henry in Nottingham hung upon the postman's heels, but
no word arrived from the duchess. She was known to be assaulted from all
sides by such applications: indeed her mail seems to have been very
nearly as large as that of Mary Pickford or Theda Bara. Then, to his
unspeakable anxiety, the miserable and fermenting Henry learned that all
parcels sent to the duchess, unless marked with a password known only to
her particular correspondents, were thrown into a closet by her porter
to be reclaimed at convenience, or not at all. "I am ruined," cried
Henry in agony; and the worthy Neville paid several unsuccessful visits
to Devonshire House in the attempt to retrieve the manuscript. Finally,
after waiting four hours in the servants' hall, he succeeded. Even then
undaunted, this long-suffering older brother made one more try in the
poet's behalf: he obtained a letter of introduction to the duchess, and
called on her in person, wisely leaving the manuscript at home; and with
the complaisance of the great the lady readily acquiesced in Henry's
modest request. Her name was duly inscribed on the proper page of the
little volume, and in course of time the customary morocco-bound copy
reached her. Alas, she took no notice of it, and Mr. Southey surmises
that "Involved as she was in an endless round of miserable follies, it
is probable that she never opened the book."
"Clifton Grove" was the title Henry gave the book, published in 1803.
It is not necessary to take the poems in this little volume more
seriously than any seventeen-year-old ejaculations. It is easy to see
what Henry's reading had been--Milton, Collins, and Gray, evidently. His
unconscious borrowings from Milton do him great credit, as showing how
thoroughly he appreciated good poetry. It seeped into his mind and
became part of his own outpourings. _Il Penseroso_ gushes to the surface
of poor Henry's song every few lines; precious twigs and shreds of
Milton flow merrily down the current of his thought. And yet smile as we
may, every now and then friend Henry puts something over. One of his
poems is a curious foretaste of what Keats was doing ten years later.
Every now and then one pauses to think that this lad, once his youthful
vapours were over, might have done great things. And as he says in his
quaint little preface, "the unpremeditated effusions of a boy, from his
thirteenth year, employed, not in the acquisition of literary
information, but in the more active business of life, must not be
expected to exhibit any considerable portion of the correctness of a
Virgil, or the vigorous compression of a Horace."
The publishing game was new to Henry, and the slings and arrows found an
unshielded heart. When the first copies of his poor little book came
home from the printer he was prostrated to find several misprints. He
nearly swooned, but seizing a pen he carefully corrected all the copies.
After writing earnest and very polite letters to all the reviewers he
dispatched copies to the leading periodicals, and sat down in the sure
hope of rapid fame. How bitter was his chagrin when the _Monthly
Review_ for February, 1804, came out with a rather disparaging comment:
in particular the critic took umbrage at his having put _boy_ to rhyme
with _sky_, and added, referring to Henry's hopes of a college course,
"If Mr. White should be instructed by alma mater, he will, doubtless,
produce better sense and better rhymes."
The review was by no means unjust: it said what any disinterested
opinion must have confirmed, that the youth's ambitions were excellent,
but that neither he, nor indeed any two-footed singer, is likely to be
an immortal poet by seventeen. But Henry's sensitive soul had been so
inflated by the honest pride of his friends that he could only see gross
and callous malignity and conspiracy in the criticism. His theology, his
health, his peace of mind, were all overthrown. As a matter of fact,
however (as Southey remarks), it was the very brusqueness of this review
that laid the foundation of his reputation. The circumstance aroused
Southey's interest in the young man's efforts to raise himself above his
level in the world and it was the laureate who after Henry's death
edited his letters and literary remains, and gave him to us as we have
him. Southey tells us that after the young man's death he and Coleridge
looked over his papers with great emotion, and were amazed at the
fervour of his industry and ambition.
Alas, we must hurry the narrative, on which one would gladly linger.
The life of this sad and high-minded anchorite has a strong fascination
for me. Melancholy had marked him for her own: he himself always felt
that he had not a long span before him. Hindered by deafness, threatened
with consumption, and a deadlier enemy yet--epilepsy--his frail and
uneasy spirit had full right to distrust its tenement. The summer of
1804 he spent partly at Wilford, a little village near Nottingham where
he took lodgings. His employers very kindly gave him a generous holiday
to recruit; but his old habits of excessive study seized him again. He
had, for the time, given up hope of being able to attend the university,
and accordingly thought it all the more necessary to do well at the law.
Night after night he would read till two or three in the morning, lie
down fully dressed on his bed, and rise again to work at five or six.
His mother, who was living with him in his retreat, used to go upstairs
to put out his candle and see that he went to bed; but Henry, so docile
in other matters, in this was unconquerable. When he heard his mother's
step on the stair he would extinguish the taper and feign sleep; but
after she had retired he would light it again and resume his reading.
Perhaps the best things he wrote were composed in this period of
extreme depression. The "Ode on Disappointment," and some of his
sonnets, breathe a quiet dignity of resignation to sorrow that is very
touching and even worthy of respect as poetry. He never escaped the
cliché and the bathetic, but this is a fair example of his midnight
musings at their highest pitch:--