God help the poor, who in lone valleys dwell, Or by far hills, where whin and heather grow ; Yet little cares the world, and less 'twould know About the toil and want men undergo. Bamford was the author of Passages in the Life of a Radical (1842), which shows how remote from his vision was the later-day claim for universal equality in riches and comfort. He was no materialist: The manufacturer's lady must not deem it beneath her to sit basting a good Yorkshire pudding without a fire-screen, instead of perching on a screw stool, thrumming a piano. Weavers should 'put up, as their grandfathers did, with jannocks and barley bread, and barm dumplings and brown ale.' There was wonderfully little class bitterness in such men's outlook on life. A contemporary Manchester song, quoted by Mrs. Gaskell, runs: How little can the rich man know Of what the poor man feels, When want, like some dark demon foe, This is always true. Sympathy can never be the same thing as experience. That the poor of early Victorian days should have almost universally looked askance at all projects of social revolution is a tribute to their sense of national solidarity which overrides class differences, to their religion, and to their patriotism. A generation without these qualities would have risen in revolt. The Chartists included at least two leaders with some gift for verse-Thomas Cooper, whom Disraeli befriended in 1844 and whose Truth is Growing is still occasionally sung, and Ernest Jones, the first English politician of modern times to see the potentialities of a 'land campaign.' Mark Hovell, in his book The Chartist Movement, gives an excerpt from Jones' diary in 1846. I am pouring the tide of my songs over England, forming the tone of the mighty mind of the people. Wonderful!' In the end he was more successful as a barrister than as a poet. Sic itur ad astra. The most effective poet of popular politics was Ebenezer Elliott, a Sheffield ironfounder. Free Trade was his first love. His Corn Law rhymes enjoyed a great vogue, and he believed that Free Trade inevitably diffuses plenty, And proclaims while the angels look down from above But even in our own day there is no more stirring song for a public meeting than his poem When wilt thou save thy People? When wilt thou save the People ! O God of mercy, when? The People, Lord, the People ! Save them from bondage and despair. Second only to Elliott in popularity among prophets of 'the good time coming' during the later Victorian Age was Edward Carpenter. In spite of its rather jolting metre, England, Arise! has an exhilarating swell, and its appeal reaches far beyond Fabian ranks : Forth then, ye heroes, patriots and lovers, Its cardinal flaw lies in the assertion that Over your face a web of lies is woven, Laws that are falsehoods pin you to the ground. On its bent back sits Idleness uncrowned. These lines cannot stand analysis. They are only a graceful rendering of what is bad politics, based on false logic and a deficient knowledge of economy. William Morris's March of the Workers is equally an unthinking proclamation of war upon all employers, which even its tune (John Brown's Body) cannot endow with charm. More characteristic of English working people were the songs sung by the countrymen who followed Joseph Arch in his task of organising the National Agricultural Labourers Union in the 'seventies. They make no pretence to literary polish, but they were written by workers for workers, and are in essentials truer to type. Arch's Autobiography (1898) pictures the men who used to sing them as 'white slaves of England, with the darkness all about them, like the children of Israel waiting for someone to lead them out of the land of Egypt.' The most popular ran : Come lads and listen to my song, a song of honest toil— I'll tell you all how he used to fare, and all the ills he bore, The song itself is only a parody, but it served as a rallying call for rural labourers, whose average weekly wage in 1872 was 12s. in England as a whole, 8s. in Devonshire, and 7s. in Somerset. Can we wonder at its appeal? There is an even more engaging simplicity in Stand like the Brave: Let hope then still cheer us, though long be the strife; It is hard to understand now why such men were ever thought to be revolutionaries. The growing strength of the extremist wing of the Labour Party has been reflected in recent times in the character of its propaganda. The temper is more bitter; the aims are far more sordid; patriotism is far less evident. No man can write a poem on the evils of capitalism and the desirability of civil war A hymn of hate is no hymn. Lo! the trumpet call is ringing, and the sky is clear and bright, This is a couplet from another Labour hymn sheet, and it has a thousand echoes in the sinister leaflets of Socialist Sunday schools. Evil projects of Communism, wild dreams of subverting all that makes society civilised and stable, vague designs to drive England into chaos and misery, may afford subject-matter for rhetoric. They cannot inspire poetry. It is all the pleasanter to look back upon what British workers contributed during their war of emancipation to the literature of pathos. Education was then far less accessible and infinitely more valued. The man who had to fight for knowledge fell in love with learning. He had few distractions, for organised sport was almost unknown and cheap amusements were in their infancy. Charles Kingsley did nothing bizarre in making Alton Locke a tailor and poet. In the free libraries, the mechanics' institutes, and the adult schools of the industrial North poor men gloried in voluntary research, helped neither by the guidance of the expert nor by the grudging grants of the ratepayer. The moderate trade unionists of the 'sixties, like George Potter and George Howell, had behind them not only men who could work and fight, but men who could dream dreams and see visions. Only an idealist could have chosen as the motto for the Amalgamated Society of Journeymen Tailors in 1866 ' Woe to him who is alone when he falleth, for he has no one to help him up.' If the Labour movement of to-day cannot claim successors to those whose verse helped to gladden the pathfinders of social reform, it is because its hard and acrid tenets are irreconcilable with idealism. The idealists are still among us, but from these ranks they are banished. They have been caught up, happily for England, in the main current of national life, and they have enriched the country by talents which a century ago would have been exclusively at the service of one section of the people. The faith, hope, and charity which ennobled the song of Labour in the earlier days of Queen Victoria illumined the song of the citizen soldier in the Great War. Much that he wrote was, no doubt, merely comic, Such is the English way in time of stress. Much, of course, was only ephemeral. But when one looks through the numbers of some trench periodical like The Seventh Manchester Sentry, written on active service mainly by working men, one sees how great are their gifts. The following verses were written on the Sinai Peninsula in 1916 by a boy (T. G. King), whose civil job had been in a jeweller's shop: Where the Red Sea kisses Egypt, On a sloping beach of shells, You can see the roofs of Suez Light and shade at fall of day, When the moon unveils her beacon, And stars are falling riotous You can lie upon the desert, 'Neath the festive sky's array, You can watch the lights of shipping On the breast of Suez Bay. A critic may ask what these verses have to do with the songs of Labour.' The answer is that the happy state of England has enabled her young men to reconcile love of freedom with love of country. Instead of writing odes to republicanism and sonnets to revolution, they can in fact at the same time serve the State and the muses. This is a blessing to our people, and incidentally it explains why the Labour Party is without a poet. GERALD B. HURST. 1923 FREDERIC HARRISON Those that of late had fleeted far and fast Have charter'd this; where, mindful of the past, Here, in this roaring moon of daffodil And crocus, to put forth and brave the blast. WITH these words (it was in the month of March 1877) Tennyson inaugurated a new literary enterprise-The Nineteenth Century; and to the second issue of this periodical Frederic Harrison was a contributor. At intervals during nearly half a century his genius adorned its pages, and it seems fitting that they should now include a few words of appreciation and farewell. In a former article 1 I attempted a short estimate of Mr. Harrison, based chiefly on his books; there also I briefly examined his Positive System in its four important aspects: social, political, philosophical and religious; but on this occasion I must endeavour to record my impressions of the man rather than of his published writings. There are authors whom to know personally is a misfortune : too often the artist-the literary artist most of all-falls short of his achievement, and gains enormously by keeping out of sight. But with Frederic Harrison it was different: his was a personality that gave a fuller, perhaps even a loftier, meaning to authorship. And if with such a man the mere records of life and character throw light on his literary productions, it may happen that some measure of an actual personal intercourse may be yet more illuminating. It was in the autumn of 1918 that Mr. Frederic Harrison paid me a visit. Some years before he had come to see me when I was ill; but on this later occasion he stayed for a week, and during that week I learnt more of the subject of this article than I had gleaned or guessed from his books or his biography or even his letters. All these are something like the dumb show of the 1 The Nineteenth Century, January 1921. |