London Lyrics Part 1

London Lyrics.

by Frederick Locker.

INTRODUCTION

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 Suss.e.x."

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 t.i.tle 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 pa.s.sion, 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 cla.s.sify poets on any satisfactory principle.

Every good poet is a cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s him with the first named of the trio as a writer of "occasional verse" or "vers de societe." These t.i.tles, 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 pa.s.sion, 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 cla.s.ses; 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 cla.s.s "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 ant.i.thetical 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. .h.i.t off Praed very well-if one does not exactly see what "Society" has to do with ant.i.thetical rhetoric.

These two poets, so often cla.s.sed 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, ant.i.thetical, 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 quant.i.ties 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 nave (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 _navete_ 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 "ant.i.thetical 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 nutsh.e.l.l'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 gra.s.s, And one fine day a fine young man Came up, and kiss'd the pretty La.s.s: 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 pa.s.sion:

"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 Pa.s.sion-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 pa.s.sages. 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 ant.i.thetical 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."

So in "Bramble-Rise"

"My bank of early violets Is now a bank of savings"

("you mark the paronomasia, play 'pon words"?) does not continue to please the taste of the pun-despising _fin-de-siecle_ public or of Locker himself: the corresponding stanza in the poem as published in 1893 is purified of such tricks. These alterations are characteristic of Locker's literary method. He was keenly critical of himself-"never,"

says Mr Birrell, "could mistake good verses for bad"-and was therefore always changing and polishing his work, adding here, pruning there. Thus only eight poems from the 1857 volume form part of the "London Lyrics" of 1893, and only five of these-"Bramble-Rise," "Piccadilly," "The Pilgrims of Pall Mall," "Circ.u.mstance," "The Widow's Mite"-have maintained their footing throughout in all intervening editions: the three others are, as it were, "rusticated" from the very severely edited selection of 1881.

The variety of forms under which his verses appear at different periods will probably make the poet's works a happy hunting-ground for the future commentator, who will no doubt a.s.sign this "lay" (as he will probably call it) to Locker, that to Lampson, that again to the Lockeridae or the Lampsonschule. The method is familiar. No one, probably, ever was so careful of the "limae labor." "He took," we are told, "great pains with his verses," always aiming at a more perfect finish, with no loss of that naturalness which, as has been said, characterises all his work.

According to the saying quoted by Matthew Arnold of Joubert, he "s'inquietait de perfection." Perfection, to him, implied an appearance of spontaneity: what _looked_ laboured or artificial must be elaborated till it _looked_ spontaneous-as it was in thought if not altogether in development. His critical sense seems to have grown keener with his interest in the making of verses: "he was a great student of verse," Mr Birrell says, and a student especially of that kind of verse of which he was himself one of the masters. In 1867 he published the well-known collection "Lyra Elegantiarum," a.s.sisted by Mr Kernahan: the preface, written by Locker, contains some excellent rules for "light verse," from which the selections are made. This anthology ranges over the whole field of English poetry, and, like everything else of Locker's, it shows the man. "Its charm," writes the editor's collaborator, "is entirely of the editor's individuality"-at least, from his favourites in literature, one may make a very fair guess at some part of his character. So, too, "Patchwork"-a kind of sc.r.a.p-book, a collection of miscellaneous anecdotes, mostly humorous, but not as a rule broadly or farcically funny-ill.u.s.trates his delicate and subtle perception of the laughable.

Locker married Lady Charlotte Bruce in 1850, and soon after left the service of Government. Thenceforward he appears to have led a very placid life, happy in his family, seeing much of his large circle of friends, devoted to poetry and book-collecting. "Lyra Elegantiarum" was published in 1867, "Patchwork" in 1879. In 1886 Locker published a catalogue of what he called the "Rowfant Library"-his collection of rare and valuable books (mostly the poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) and autographs-of which Mr Andrew Lang has sung:

"The Rowfant books, how fair they shew, The Quarto quaint, the Aldine tall, Print, autograph, portfolio!

Back from the outer air they call The athletes from the Tennis ball, This Rhymer from his rod and hooks, Would I could sing them, one and all, The Rowfant books!"

Locker's first wife died in 1872. In 1874 he married Miss Lampson, adding her family name to his own. The rest of his life was spent for the most part at Rowfant: he died there, 30th May 1895. His autobiography, "My Confidences," was published posthumously in 1896.

THE CASTLE IN THE AIR

"I would build a cloudy house, For my thoughts to live in, When for earth too fancy loose, And too low for heaven!

Hush! I talk my dream alone: I build it bright to see; I build it on the moon-lit cloud, To which I look with thee!"