CHAPTER 1
Influences and Early Poetry 1840â45
Establishing influences on a writerâs work is almost always a matter of balanced probabilities. Literary tropes are disseminated so widely and rapidly in modern societies that even pointing out apparent intertextual references between writers can be subject to the complications of the literary middleman, a secondary order of influence. A writerâs declaration of influence should not be accepted at face value but must be cross-checked by a careful study of texts; a writer may merely wish that a literary idol were their main influence. Poetry would seem to have the advantage of various formal elements to trace back to a possible original text or writer, but such forms quickly become ubiquitous, and the partially unconscious and synthetic nature of the poetic creative process provides myriad paths down which the critic can travel. It is almost a literary commonplace that writers are often the least qualified people to analyze their own work; inescapable subjectivity leads to unconscious dissembling, and the tendency to place emphasis where it should not necessarily be. Prudence, therefore, encourages the critic at least to attempt to quantify the probability of a possible influence being discussed, and to present such discussion within the frame of a cautious qualification.
Ernest Jones shared with most poets of his period the influences in varying degrees of the major figures of the British Romantic period, and it is these inheritances which are first explored in the following chapter. But it is also possible to trace influences of German Romanticism in Jonesâs writing absorbed during a childhood and adolescence spent in the Duchy of Holstein, and these influences form the basis of the second section of the chapter. The fact that Jones translated the works of several German poets strengthens the argument that his work was influenced by these writers. Jonesâs tendency to re-work early material for publication in Chartist periodicals provides some hitherto unexplored links between German Romantic poetry and mid-nineteenth-century British radical poetics. In order to fully examine evidence of poetic influence, the focus of this chapter will shift between Jonesâs Chartist and pre-Chartist periods of production. Due to Jonesâs habit of republishing his early work, this will also be the case with the last section of the chapter which deals with the original poetry that Jones published before his direct involvement with radical politics in 1846. One of the contentions of this study is that, contrary to previous biographical accounts, Jonesâs poetic development provides examples of a growing political consciousness in the period immediately preceding his Chartist âconversionâ.
British Romantic Influences
While it has been recognized that such historical demarcations can be problematic, the complex response of canonical Victorian literature to its Romantic precursor has been widely documented. For Leon Gottfried, the Romantic movement âstood like the Chinese Wall separating the nineteenth century from the dominant literary tradition of the eighteenth century represented by such key figures as Dryden, Pope, and Johnsonâ.1 Whether one accepts the degree of historical dislocation that Gottfriedâs simile suggests, it can seem that early Victorian literature is interpreted by modern critics in relation to the preceding literary period. It should be noted that two Poet Laureates of the early Victorian period were the aging Robert Southey and William Wordsworth, and that the mid-nineteenth century saw posthumous cults of celebrity emerge around the figures of Keats and Shelley. The perceived sexual, political, and indeed literary radicalism of the Romantics proved troublesome issues for many Victorian commentators and writers. In Romantic Echoes in the Victorian Era, Andrew Radford and Mark Sandy note âa neurotic fear that the potentially subversive, ungovernable essence of Romanticism will begin to work independently and possess the Victorian possessorâ.2 But for mid-nineteenth-century radicals, the politically subversive elements of British Romanticism provided both inspiration and important literary precedence. In Byron and Shelley, the late Romantic period produced widely-respected poets who were consistently critical of the political establishment; the early radicalism of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and even Southey served to make Romanticism appear a generation of dissent. Jones was not alone among Chartist poets in drawing on British Romanticism for inspiration and influence. The early poetry of William James Linton (1812â97) â in particular The Dirge of the Nations (1848) â was imitative of the work of Shelley, while the influence of Byron can be seen in the work of Jonesâs predecessor as unofficial Laureate of Chartism, Thomas Cooper (1805â92). At the same time as much canonical mid-nineteenth-century poetry (led by Browning and Tennyson) was becoming more insular and self-absorbed, adapting an emphasis on the consciousness of the self inherited from Romanticism, Jones and other Chartist poets were inheriting an adapted form of Romanticismâs political consciousness.
Jonesâs rise to prominence within the pages of the Northern Starâs poetry column in 1846 coincided with an increase in the number of Byron poems printed in the paper. In July 1845 the newspaper had begun a series called âThe Beauties of Byronâ. Mike Sanders has observed that âin 1846, Byronâs poetry provided more than a tenth of the poetry columnâs output and only Ernest Jones â who contributed eighteen poems â came close to matching Byronâs total of twenty poemsâ.3 While Byron was idolized by Chartists, his influence on the majority of Chartist poets was often limited to tonal and thematic aspects of poetry. The length of much of his work, and its characteristic geographical and historical sweep, made it literally inimitable for most Chartist writers. Another element of Byronâs writing that led to him being more inspirational than directly influential was what the Chartist activist Thomas Frost, in an article entitled âScott, Byron, and Shelleyâ published on 2 January 1847 in the Northern Star, described as âthe misanthropy which occasionally gleams forth in the writings of Byron, âthe stinging of a heart the world had stungââ.4 Byronâs occasional retreats into an injured individualism, coupled with the extra-literary image of his sartorial dandyism, did not align themselves easily with Chartismâs altruistic and morally upright nature, or with its essentially working-class aesthetic. Byron, as the nineteenth centuryâs first, and arguably greatest, literary celebrity, bolstered Chartismâs cause with his essential radicalism, but his manner, behaviour, and scabrous humour belonged back beyond that Chinese wall, in the pre-industrial decadence of the eighteenth century.5
In spite of the complications that Byronâs legacy left, his name remained a touchstone for literary excellence and, for radicals, the bold expression of political truths. Jonesâs versatility as a writer saw him occasionally emulate Byronâs poetic style. In âThe Painter of Florence: A Domestic Poemâ, a long poem published in 1851 in its authorâs newspaper Notes to the People, Jones references Byron in a concluding section that makes an argument for the public accessibility of art:
As well might Byronâs Harold,
In one dark folio kept,
In one manâs sordid chamber
Throâ endless years have slept. (ll. 689â93)6
The reference to Childe Harold is apt not just because of Byronâs fame, but because of his method of addressing directly his readership, insisting on an interdependent relationship between art and the public. In the same poem, Jonesâs description of a character called âLady Devilsonâ echoes Byronâs description of Don Juanâs mother, Donna Inez, notoriously based on his ex-wife, Annabella Millbanke:
But oh! beware how you approach her!
No thorn so mangles an encroacher!
Sheâll lure you on, with easy seeming,
To drop some hint of doubtful meaning,
Then turn, as hot as fire, to shew
Her virtueâs white and cold as snow;
And, dragging you forth in a storm of laughter,
Hurl the full weight of her chastity after.
Such, no line is overdone,
Is Lady Malice Devilson.
(âThe Painter of Florenceâ, ll. 99â108)
Moralityâs grim personification,
In which not Envyâs self a flaw discovers;
To othersâ share let âfemale errors fall,â
For she had not even one â the worst of all.
Oh! she was perfect past all parallel â
Of any modern female saintâs comparison:
So far above the cunning powers of hell,
Her guardian angel had given up his garrison.
(Don Juan, I, 125â33)7
Although Lady Devilsonâs morality is a mechanism for hypocritical teasing, and Donna Inez (at least in this section) appears a paragon of virtue, both descriptions satirize the cultural pretensions of female chastity. Jonesâs rhyming of âapproach herâ with âencroacherâ is eminently Byronic in its silliness, and the line âSuch, no line is overdoneâ, with its air of a theatrical aside, is an example of the influence of the self-reflexive nature of Byronâs later poetry. Given the detailed description of her personality, it is possible that Lady Devilson, like Donna Inez, was based on a real person.
There are also thematic examples o...