COVENTRY PATMORE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18457, 21 July 1923, Page 1 (Supplement)

COVENTRY PATMORE.

"THE ANGEL. IN THE HOUSE."

tor mataxga.

L some wiseacres in the sixties, peeping into the future, had seen July 23, 1923, given honour as : the centenary of Coventry Patmore, they would have rubbed their eyes in incredulous amazement.. For they.'knew. no particular reason why his birth should be viewed is worth making a fuss about. , ..'■''.'.-■

He had published some unpretentious verse in 1844, and Blackwood's Magazine waxed sordidly insulting about the life into which the slime of the Keatses and Shelleys of former times has fecundated.'" His poems were " the spawn of frogs" and , "the ultimate terminus of poetical degradation." Other reviews were very disagreeable; but none .so violently disgusting as Blackwood's. Professor Wilson, the editor, got sense enough years .afterwards, to apologise for that vulgar abuse so us fortunately characteristic of the periodical that presumed to send Keats "back to his gallipots," and was generally unaware of genius. " When "The Angel in the House * r appeared in its two parts, 1854 and 1856, some critics guffawed to their hearts' content. The Athenaeum, with a somewhat clever use of tho simple metre of "The Angel," began a studiedly cruel article thus— Tho gentle reader we apprize That this new Angel in the House Contains a tale not very wise About a Person and a Spouse. The author, gentle as a lamb, Has managed his rhymes 'to fit, And haply fancies he has writ Another In Menioriam." In that form the review continued. It was the work of a very notorious musical and literary critic, Henry Fothergill Chorley.

Praise from the Discerning. Patsiora's earliest verses, published by 1 Moxoru attracted the praise of the discerning, however. Browning wrote "A very interesting young post has blushed into bloom this season. I send you hiu soul's child; the contents were handed and bandied about, and Moxon was told by - the knowing .. ones of the literary turf that ' Patmore was safe to win. - * So Moxon relented from his stern purposes of publishing no more verse on • his ,own account, and did publish this." I Leigh Hunt and Bulwar Lytton and Elizabeth Barrett ' fonnd ricTfi promise in the verses that Blackwood spurned. j Tennyson, too, then emerging to honour . and a competence, found the young poet and his work more than ordinarily interesting. Together they walked the' streets of London, night by night, rapt in close fellowship of free speech and freer reverie, for unreekoned hours, or sat long over a tete-a-tete meal, at a little table in a suburban tavern. They drifted apart in later days, and Patmore was known to speak of the years b* had wasted in following Tannyson about like a dog; but that was only % thie> querulous moments of Patmore '•-. ■•":'. agv Eis happ- : . >:'•* | was to ack.. oil .««*£ v the unequi. m : '■■ i vantage it aV«f'' : >3n him;'; as a y '■'■': ' >? two-ar ivtf'Xf. ;to ■ ahira ""may son's ! if-'uui- " j'i '■•'■:' '•>. nutual > ../ vrHi.' *!•••: ' peat maj' tin; , ox.! his cloaV. of s 'lent « -<~-,»v,c , iy ■ „~*a fl .°":'''\o wonderful sparkles ol thought abcut God ano! ma.l and the divine art of poesy. The Preraphaelite coterie found in Patmore a genial sort of elder brother, Miilais and Hoiman Hunt, Woojper and Dante Gabriel Rossetti delighted to show biro honour. One of the members of the ! inner Brotherhood records that from ( •' 1849 to 1853 x>« all saw a good deal of Mr. Patmore, and we all looked up to him much for his performances in poetry, his general intellectual insight and maturity, . and his knowledge ,of important persons whom we came to know thr-flngh nim —Tennyson in especial." It was at Patrnore's urging that Miliai*. began a diary, a/>4 Bus'-an"s famous Utter to the : Times ab3t! : . Aiillais' pictures aid all his defence : of .the Prerap'iielites were the outcome of I Patmore' .In^ad^nc. ■ .. .i;.'• .. ■-~.:':' :, : : ■li;%Jdn fiKnijil'-.; vb> ;«>rvs M alit;i.i too : | . ii;.., Term '-5 ■■'-. .s.act attentat : : a3l bey should." . OaLiyle's &.nproba'&v< .i-as l;wC..r»**Hf.-30.- li« if and "a great /v-iV of ! I ■ ' a o/etio light, aiii many excellent «1> 1 n.unts of valuable human faculty." Pat- j more chaffed him delicately on his sup- ! Sosed dislike of the vehicle of verse; but arlyle, wonderfully amenable, recommended—i" Go on, and prosper, in what vehicle you find, after due thought, to be the likeliest for you." Panoplied by such sympathetic encouragement, Patmore might welMlnd the shafts of Blackwood and tho Athenaeum endurable. : As Acknowledged Masterpiece. " The Angel in the House" fulfilled the hopes of the poet's friends. Eossetti was charmed with "the few astonishing lines" of its opening, written as a spasmodic beginning in 1849. Tennyson, who hud objected to the roughness of some of the sta'Asww la :i-S' first *:v>:!~-p, few of the Hues scemeu' ,;' .•': ? &" Js<?rfcu ; Up Out of old nati-^«ou6 5 —y-iij 'jiiiiiaid when they were given their needful polish. He read the proof-sheets of " The' Betrothal"—the u Angel's" first book" sitting on a cliff close to the sea" in the Isle of Wight, and told Aubrey do Vero in an unpublished ' letter that the work, " when finished, will add one more to the small list of Great Poems." To the poet himself Tennyson wrote"You have begun an immortal poem, and, if I am no false prophet, it will not be long in winning its way into the hearts of the people." Tennyson was a true prophet; his own " Idylls of tho King" and " Enoch Arden" had soon, < although Hot at once, to share their large popularity with, the " Angel." When " The Espousals," the " Angel's second part, came out, Carly]* took it with him into a holiday resort in Arran, as • " the only modern book" he cared to put in his luggage: " certainly it is a- beautiful little piece— ingenious,' fine." Walter Savage Landor wrote, " Never was anything more tender. ]' rejoice to find thai Poetry hail come out again safe, and that Love has* dipt his wings and cooled his tender feet in our own pure streams.'' From America, {Emerson sent warm congratulations : " I give you joy and thanks as the maker of this beautiful poem." A Poem of True Lova. In what lies the special charm of " The Angel in the House?" It resides in its subject, which, as Edmund Gosse says, is "singularly original." Its thread of story, on which bright jewels of philosophy and epigram are hung, is sexual love. That love, in all its pure nobility and refining passion, has been too little sung. ,Tho songs of troubadours extolled its fer-. vour, but missed its sweetness and sanctity. The lyrics of later years have often hidden it in a garb woven by convention. In our own. time it is the fashion to treat sex without lovea silly degradation that is excused on the false plea or realism. Here in "The Angel in the House," is realism indeed. If it bo not real to any reader, then i 3 ho morbid beyond easy recovery. Here is wholesome, virile —not a caprice of fancy, nor an imaginative pasr sion no love for oneself turned inside out, much less a mawkish or a prurient lust. • Pc.tmore's "Angel", is. a woman, not a 1 Plaything,nor a. syren; and his treatment of her wooing and winning is the, tale of 'rue love's refining 'coarse-.' . I'd \,h>i manner of its tolling, while marked by an artistic mastery that repays close scrutiny, is studiedly simple. Its metre is the , commoner invented, and Patmore '.~.lio&6 it of set purpose and used it with .".Eight as a measure full of quiet movement and homely gaiety. .:

' Mine is no horse with wmgs. to gain « The. region of the spheral chime; He does but drag a rumbling . wain, Cbeer'd by tho coupled bells of rhyme; And if at Fame's oewitching note , , My homely Pegasus pftrks an ear. ■ ITsii world's cert-colls* hugs his throat, And he't too wi*e to l»»ncfl or rear. ,_, go 'he'-introduces whai is, in effect, a breviary for lovers. No quotations can do it justice. A revival of its firsthand reading in Patraore's centenary year ■woald do ts9 W9»W m b*TO* Jo' ■■■