The father of Frederick Locker Lampson (or Frederick Locker, according to
the name by which he is generally known) was Edward Hawke Locker, at one
time Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital. He is described in the
"Dictionary of National Biography" as "a man of varied talents and
accomplishments, Fellow of the Royal Society, an excellent artist in
water-colour, a charming conversationalist, an esteemed friend of Southey
and Scott." Frederick, the author of "London Lyrics," "was born," Mr
Augustine Birrell, his son-in-law, writes in _Scribner's Magazine_
(January 1896), "in Greenwich Hospital in 1821. After divers adventures
in various not over well selected schools, and a brief experience of the
City and of Somerset House, he became a clerk in the Admiralty, serving
under Lord Haddington, Sir James Graham, and Sir Charles Wood. He was
twice married--first, to Lady Charlotte Bruce, a daughter of Lord Elgin
(of the Marbles); and secondly, to the only daughter of Sir Curtis
Lampson, Bart., of Rowfant in Sussex."
The present volume is Locker's earliest literary venture; produced,
however, at the comparatively mature age of thirty-six. "In 1857," he
says in "My Confidences," "I published a thin volume--certain
sparrow-flights of song, called 'London Lyrics.'" Subsequently, about
1860, Thackeray, who was then editor of the _Cornhill Magazine_, invited
Locker to contribute; and poems published there and elsewhere were
collected and reprinted from time to time, the original title being
always retained. Ten editions, besides some selections privately
printed, appeared before the poet's death. In almost all something new
was added, in all something old was taken away; so that only eight of the
twenty-five pieces composing the early "thin volume" survive in the issue
of 1893, and some of these are much altered. It is hoped that readers of
Locker's later and more highly finished work will consider a
republication of his "Primitiae" justified by the interest which attaches
to all beginnings.
So many people even now confuse minor poetry with bad poetry that it is
almost invidious to call a poet minor. Yet there is no doubt that minor
poetry can be good in its way, just as major poetry can be good in _its_
way. "If he [Locker] was a minor poet he was at least [why 'at least'?]
a master of the instrument he touched, which cannot," writes Mr Coulson
Kernahan in the _Nineteenth Century_ for October 1895, "be said of all
who would be accounted _major_." Locker was not of those, in his own
opinion, who would be accounted major. "My aim," he says, "was humble.
I used the ordinary metres and rhymes, the simplest language and ideas, I
hope, flavoured with an individuality. I strove . . . not to be flat,
and above all, not to be tedious." It is not necessary to prove by
argument and illustration that Locker is a minor poet, nor that he
belongs to that honourable company of writers of what we now call "light
verse"--the masters of which are, after all, among the immortals--Horace
and Herrick. His place in that company is not so easy to define.
Probably he stands half way between the serious singers--who succeed by
virtue of grace and artistic finish, yet lack the touch of passion, the
indefinable something that makes greatness--and the bards whose primary
object, like Calverley's, is to make the reader laugh. "He elected,"
says Mr Coulson Kernahan, "to don the cap and bells when he might have
worn the singing robes of the poet": a description of one who chose to be
a jester when he might have been serious, and hardly applicable to
Locker, who is never a professed "funny man." Mr Kernahan is far more
just when he claims for "London Lyrics" a kind of sober gentleness which
moves neither to laugh nor to weep: "his sad scenes may touch us to
tender melancholy, but never to tears; his gay ones to smile, but seldom
to laughter." Locker's Muse is not the Muse of high spirits. He does
not start with the intention of jesting. He is the gentle and serious
spectator of things which are not the most serious in life--with a sense
of the humorous which is not repressible, and which enters into all his
reflections, but which he never allows wholly to master him.
It is really impossible to classify poets on any satisfactory principle.
Every good poet is a class by himself. But if the attempt must be made,
one may say that the author of "London Lyrics" belongs to that school of
which the other chief representatives, in English or American literature,
have been Praed, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mr Austin Dobson. It has
always been the fashion to class him with the first named of the trio as
a writer of "occasional verse" or "vers de societe." These titles, like
other parts of the nomenclature of the poetic art, are not satisfying.
Why "smoothly written verse, where a boudoir decorum is or ought always
to be preserved: where sentiment never surges into passion, and where
humour never overflows into boisterous merriment" should be
conventionally called "society verse," or "occasional verse," is not very
clear. To write "society verse" is to be the laureate of the cultured,
leisured, pleasure-loving upper classes; but some poets satisfy the above
requirements--Locker himself included--yet certainly do not write
exclusively of or for "Society." Then again, what is "occasional"?
Many serious poems are inspired by the transient occasion. But we are
not, presumably, to class "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints" among
occasional pieces, nor is Wordsworth's sonnet on London at dawn to be
called occasional; yet the source of it, the fact that the poet happened
to be upon Westminster Bridge in the early morning, was transient, not
(apparently) inherent in the nature of things. However, these names must
be accepted as we find them. Here is Locker's own law: "Occasional
verse," he says, "should be short, graceful, refined, and fanciful, not
seldom distinguished by chastened sentiment, and often playful. The tone
should not be pitched high: it should be terse and idiomatic, and rather
in the conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and
the rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be
marked by tasteful moderation, high finish, and completeness: for,
however trivial the subject-matter may be, indeed, rather in proportion
to its triviality, subordination to the rules of composition, and
perfection of execution, are of the utmost importance." Among the
enviable versifiers who can satisfy these requirements Praed and Locker
both hold a high place. Praed, indeed, is the chief among writers of
"vers de societe," for not only does his manner conform to the laws laid
down by high authorities, but his theme is generally "Society" with a
capital S. "Praed," says Locker in "My Confidences," "is the very best
of his school: indeed, he has a unique position; for in his narrower vein
of whimsical wit, vernacular banter, and antithetical rhetoric, which may
correctly be called _vers de societe_ in its most perfected form, and its
exactest sense, he has never been equalled." These phrases hit off Praed
very well--if one does not exactly see what "Society" has to do with
antithetical rhetoric.
These two poets, so often classed together, are not really very much
alike. Both are certainly "in lighter vein"; but they differ apparently
in temperament, and certainly in method. No one would deny to Praed the
gift of humour. But the period in which he wrote was one which admired
primarily wit; and while it would be too much to say that his heart is
not in his theme--that he stands detached from it--still, his sympathies
are indubitably subordinated to the effort, the successful effort, to
bring off a neat point, to make a pun in the right place, to be striking,
antithetical, epigrammatic. His verses have the finish, in their way, of
Pope's couplet and Ovid's pentameter. His best known and most praised
work appeals, primarily, to the taste and the ear: always, perhaps, to
the head rather than to the heart. There is something of "hard
brilliance" in Praed: he writes for effect, he is epideictic. Of course,
this is one object of writers of "society verses":
"Sole secret to jingle and scan,"
as an unduly severe critic says somewhere. One need hardly say that this
is not Praed's sole secret: but technique is certainly his strong point.
"Where are my friends? I am alone:
No playmate shares my beaker:
Some lie beneath the churchyard stone
And some--before the Speaker:
And some compose a tragedy,
And some compose a rondo:
And some draw sword for Liberty,
And some draw pleas for John Doe.
Tom Mill was used to blacken eyes
Without the fear of sessions:
Charles Medlar loathed false quantities
As much as false professions:
Now Mill keeps order in the land,
A magistrate pedantic:
And Medlar's feet repose unscanned
Beneath the wide Atlantic."
This is the art which does not conceal itself. One may not be able to do
the trick; but it is possible to see how the trick is done.
"No one," says Locker, when speaking of occasional or society verse, "has
fully succeeded who did not possess a certain gift of irony." That is
profoundly true. A would-be writer of light verse who has not an
ironical habit of mind had better change his purpose and write an epic.
Locker has his full share of the necessary gift. Half gay, half
melancholy, always ironical--dissembling most of pain and some of
pleasure--he is in certain ways the appropriate spokesman of a society
like our own, which is really most natural when most dissembling, or
dismissing with a smile, its deeper emotions. There is nothing about
Locker which is not natural. As he is, so (apparently) does he speak:
far more candidly and with more of self-revelation than Praed, more
candidly than Mr Austin Dobson, who is apt to veil his personality behind
a mask of elegant antiquarianism. But Locker is more artless and naive
(which qualities are in him not the least inconsistent with irony) than
any modern writer, except, perhaps, R. L. Stevenson now and then; and
with the latter _naivete_ itself is sometimes an artifice. Mr Brander
Matthews rightly lays stress on this aspect of Locker's poetry;
"individuality and directness of expression"--that is the true note of
"London Lyrics." He is far more genuine and spontaneous than Praed. It
is difficult and perhaps invidious to compare the two as "humorists." It
may be that Locker's vein of humour is larger and truer than the earlier
poet's. Praed belongs, as has been said, to a period of other men and
other manners. Probably he is the wittier of the two; yet this might be
contradicted. Locker's humour has the reflective vein, with a suggestion
of pathos, of the great writers who flourished in the early and middle
Victorian era. We are perhaps a little out of tune now with the
sentiment of the middle of the nineteenth century and perhaps, too, with
Praed's "antithetical rhetoric"; but Locker's humour can never be quite
out of fashion. Readers will always smile (not laugh) at "The Housemaid"
or "The Pilgrims of Pall Mall" or the lines "To my Grandmother"--
"With her bridal-wreath, bouquet,
Lace farthingale, and gay
_Falbala_,--
If Romney's touch be true,
What a lucky dog were you,
Grandpapa!
. . . . .
What funny fancy slips
From atween these cherry lips?
Whisper me,
Fair Sorceress in paint,
What canon says I mayn't
Marry thee?"
But perhaps, for a nutshell's content of whimsical Lockerian humour, the
gem which will occur to most is the delightful reminiscence of infancy:
"I recollect a nurse call'd Ann,
Who carried me about the grass,
And one fine day a fine young man
Came up, and kiss'd the pretty Lass:
She did not make the least objection!
Thinks I. 'Aha!
When I can talk I'll tell Mamma.'
--And that's my earliest recollection."
(Locker's "mottoes," of which this is one, often contain his most
characteristic lines.) Praed could no more have written that, or the
lines "To my Grandmother," than Locker could have written "The Vicar."
Both poets have other strings. Praed's more serious vein could win a
contemporary reputation: but he would not have been remembered for this
alone, after eighty years. In "At Her Window," which Mr Coulson Kernahan
rightly calls "one of the most beautiful love-songs of the century,"
Locker is no longer ironical, but rises to the heights of real passion:
"Beating Heart! we come again
Where my Love reposes:
This is Mabel's window-pane:
These are Mabel's roses.
. . . . .
Mabel will be deck'd anon,
Zoned in bride's apparel;
Happy zone! Oh hark to yon
Passion-shaken carol!
Sing thy song, thou tranced thrush,
Pipe thy best, thy clearest;--
Hush, her lattice moves, O hush--
_Dearest Mabel_!--_dearest_" . . .
"I once tried," says Locker in "My Confidences," "to write like Praed."
The effort was not wholly successful: Locker is weakest where his manner
is most Praedian; and the poet, either realising this, or moulded by the
temper of his time, appears to have altered most of the obviously
imitative passages. Thus in "Tempora Mutantur" the last stanza runs, in
1857:
"What brought this wanderer here, and why
Was Pamela away?
It might be she had found her grave
Or he had found her gay";
but the antithetical pun is excised in the 1893 edition, where the lines
are:
"The pilgrim sees an empty chair
Where Pamela once sat:
It may be she had found her grave,
It might be worse than that."