A Book of Victorian Narrative Verse

Here’s another of CW’s editorial efforts for Oxford University Press. It was published in 1927 by Clarendon Press–which was the name for the Oxford branch, while the London branch was (confusingly) called Oxford University Press. Further confusion is introduced, at least for me, by the fact that this volume was produced in London, not Oxford, and overseen by Humphrey Milford [later Sir Humphrey]). In any case, the important thing for our purposes is that it’s an anthology with selections by CW, so we can see what he thought the most important Victorian narrative poems were, how he abridged them, and how he arranged them. You can find the full work at FadedPage.

The Preface is CW’s distinctive work, with his characteristically surprising assertions. He often puts forward the wildest claims in a bland tone, sometimes accompanied by an observation about how commonplace his views are. Here, he states that “One of the most interesting things about the Victorian age” is how it ranked George Eliot so highly. He does not quarrel with this ranking, even adding to it that she possessed the quality of “nobility.” The high ranking of George Eliot does not surprise me, but his insistence on her “nobility” does–not that she or her work were ignoble, but that it’s not the most intuitive assessment and certainly not the first or second or tenth to come to my mind when I think about Eliot’s work. I’m more likely to come up with descriptors such as insightful, incisive, probing, intricate, accurate, culturally astute, morally courageous, and so on.

How about you? How would you describe the work of George Eliot?

But then again, I’ve never read any of her narrative poetry–nor am I a Victorian. And as a 21st-century American (and a Yankee at that), I am suspicious of hierarchy, monarchy, the peerage, and nobility. However, that’s not the kind of nobility CW has in mind (as Mary Ann Evans was not of “noble blood”): he is evoking a kind of nobility of mind or spirit that he admires in her work and that he believes most endeared her writing to her peers.

The rest of CW’s introduction continues to to put forward one staggering generalization after another: about art, about eras, about poems, about persons. On art, he claims: “All genius, at the moments of its full exercise, becomes symbolical not so much of the age in which it is produced as of the universal life of man.” I detect the influence of his occult studies here in the hint of the Doctrine of Correspondence, or the idea that everything here on earth is a microcosm for some spiritual reality. Specifically, Williams seems to believe in a universal archetype of “the universal life of [humans],” which must follow some set pattern of unfolding. The greatest poets (or other writers and artists) depict this pattern in their greatest works, he suggests. He gives an example of this working-out of a universal pattern in his discussion of Tennyson, stating that “in the Idylls Arthur is presented as the soul.” This reminds me of his own volume of poetry published three years later: Heroes and Kings, in which Blanchfleur’s body is a microcosm for King Arthur’s court. Each of her body parts is represented by one of the other Arthurian characters.

Yes, that’s weird.

The broad brush strokes continue. Comparing eras, he claims: “where the thirteenth century sought to base its stability on an assumed supernatural basis, and the eighteenth within accepted rational limitations of the mind, the Victorian seems rather to have settled its stability upon conduct.” I mean, maybe he’s not wrong, if we’re looking at certain sectors of certain societies (like, literate land-owning white men, probably, #amirite), it seems like that his characterizations of majority discourse are correct. And it’s not as if he’s uncritically accepting Victorian standards; he goes on to point out that they were obsessed with “conduct without any adequate end, duty without interior and eternal significance, morals without metaphysics,” all designed to prop up an outdated notion of chivalry that in turn used its power to uphold monarchy.

Indeed, I am pleasantly surprised to see CW criticizing establishment institutions. When analyzing Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, for example ( a poem he greatly disliked), he asserts: “Tennyson’s King Arthur is an example of nobility become unmanageable, and wavering between nobility and mere pomposity.” I admire his cheek here, even while I myself am too feeble-minded a reader to encapsulate Idylls with anything like his ease. He ties together his overarching concern about the era with his criticisms of this poem: “The weakness therefore of the Victorian age, as of the Idylls, is in its concern with conduct but its failure artistically to suggest an adequate significance in conduct.” In other words, neither Tennyson’s Arthur nor Tennyson himself nor Tennyson’s era had sufficient reasons motivating the kind of behavior they praised and sought to practice or promote. I can’t say whether or not I agree with him; I have a hard time analyzing longer works and whole historical periods–they don’t stick in my head well, and I don’t find it easy to stand afar off and overlook the entire landscape–so I haven’t got the chops to agree or disagree with him.

What do you think? Does Tennyson’s Idylls ultimately present a wavering, out-of-control, pompous Arthur? Does Victorianism put forward a standard of conduct without sufficient moral or metaphysical motivations for such conduct?

Given that CW didn’t like Tennyson’s Idylls, didn’t particularly like Tennyson, and thought pretty poorly of the Victorian era, it might be surprising that he put together an anthology of the era. It was his job, after all, and I doubt that it was his idea. It’s yet another example of the kind of grunt-work he had to do for his day job at the Oxford University Press: putting together anthologies on topics he didn’t particularly fancy. He always committed to doing a good job even on tasks he didn’t like, and this appears to me to be yet another example of that principle.

The controlling idea for this book is that all the poems and selections included should be “concerned chiefly with one thing–telling a story.” Some of the stories don’t have great content, but the quality of the poetry makes up for that, in his opinion. You’re probably interested, then (if you’ve read this far) in what he chose to include. He’s got two poems each by Tennyson, R. Browning, Matthew Arnold, D.G. Rossetti, and William Morris. Then there’s one each by Longfellow, Thackeray, Kingsley, Christina Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Robert Louis Stevenson, and a couple of dudes I’ve never heard of. No E. B. Browning, which is an unacceptable oversight, considering she wrote the greatest narrative poem in English by a woman up until that date (and maybe since?? let me know if I’m wrong!). The most interesting inclusion, IMO, is George MacDonald, who is known nowadays neither as a poet, nor as a great writer, nor even really as a Victorian in the strict sense. Whether those observations say more about me and the 21st century or more about CW and the 20th, I don’t know.

What do you think? Do you like the selections he included? Who would you have left out? Who would you have put in?