***** Andy Evans The Ohio State University
"Robert Southey and the Politics of Heroism"
...[T]he Poet Laureate and a radical turned conservative, Robert Southey came to contribute to this glorifying of British military success. He wrote the Life of Nelson in 1813, and later wrote the multivolume works English Seamen, which describes, among others, Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, and Sir Walter Raleigh, and The British Admirals, the first volume of which is titled The Early Naval History of England. These works memorialize members of the powerful British naval force and were part of the larger turn toward political conservatism which earned Southey the disdain of later Romantics, especially Byron, who lampooned him in his "The Vision of Judgment" and Don Juan. But the young Southey was as radical as the older Southey was conservative, and as a young radical he also understood the relationship between heroism and politics. This paper explores how these elements interact in two of his early poems, Wat Tyler (1794) and Joan of Arc (1796), arguing that while Southey did not shun the martial hero that was then a prominent feature of British culture, he did seek to support his then democratic and reformist political agenda by describing courageous and responsible heroism as existing outside of the British aristocracy. It further shows that in so doing he worked within a reformist poetic tradition.
The primary context for politically driven poetry in the 1790s was comprised of the newspapers and periodicals. As Betty Bennett states:
Both the establishment and the radical opposition attempted to stir up public opinion by means of pamphlets, broadsides, and public meetings, but recognized that the quickest and most effective means of reaching large segments of the public was through newspapers and periodicals. Political bias determined what was published . . .(16).
A common feature of these publications was poetry, a medium which, as J.E. Cookson notes, was particularly important for reformists, surpassing the visual arts (53). And while repressive government actions such as the Royal Proclamation Against Seditious Writing (1792) and the suspension of Habeus Corpus (1794-1801, 1817) certainly affected the activity of the reformist publications and societies (Scrivener 13, 20-21, 25), the degree of the suppression is often exaggerated (Cookson 93-103). Indeed, throughout the 1790s, "the number of anti-government newspapers always roughly equalled the number of pro-government newspapers" (Cookson 98). Before his turn to loyalist politics, Southey was an important part of this reformist movement.
The degree of his political commitment is immediately evident in Wat Tyler; A Dramatic Poem, which he wrote in 1794--when he was twenty years old, the treason trials involving prominent radicals were taking place, and he and Coleridge were still planning their utopian, egalitarian "pantisocracy" in America (Wordsworth). He never published the work, though, and by the time a pirated copy of this radical piece appeared in 1817 he was a confirmed royalist who had stated that when "'a man of free opinion'" writes, "'his very breath becomes venomous, and every page which he sends forth carries with it a poison to the unsuspicious reader'" (quoted in Wordsworth). The irony was of course immediately apparent, and Southey's response to the publication was simple: "'God be thanked that the worst which malice can say of me is no more than what I was once proud to say of myself, and never shall be ashamed of saying--that I was a Republican in my youth'" (quoted in Wordsworth). The high degree of radicalism evident in the then Poet Laureate's work did not go unnoticed; for example, William Smith, a Whig in the House of Commons, is reported to have stated during a Parliamentary session that "`Wat Tyler appeared to him to be the most seditious book that was ever written; its author did not stop short of exhorting to general anarchy; he vilified kings, priests, and nobles, and was for . . . perfect equality'" (quoted in Wordsworth).
Given the existence of the treason trials and the obviously radical bent of the work, it is not surprising that Southey chose not to publish it. A retelling of the Peasant's Revolt of 1381, the play is sympathetic to the rebels, and its primary events show an arrogant and dishonest aristocracy victimizing a hard working and increasingly distressed peasantry. Throughout its events King Richard II and his attendants are portrayed not as the noble warriors that loyalist propaganda presented such men as being, but as sneaky, cruel members of a selfish ruling class. Richard deceives the peasants by granting them a charter that he does not intend to honor (pp. 34-37, 59-60), and the peasants convincingly describe the war he is waging with France as vain and unnecessary. Tyler, the leader of the revolt, remarks:
What matters me who wears the crown of France? Whether a Richard or a Charles possess it? They reap the glory--they enjoy the spoil-- We pay--we bleed!--The sun would shine as cheerly, The rains of heaven as seasonably fall, Though neither of these royal pests existed. (6)
Denied the pretense of acting honorably in a noble war, the aristocrats are also repeatedly presented as oppressing the peasants while living lives of slothful ease. Tyler asks with regard to the state's ever increasing taxes:
who should pay for The luxuries and riots of the court? Who should support the flaunting courtier's pride, Pay for their midnight revels, their rich garments, Did not the state enforce? (7)
Similarly, John Ball, a radical preacher, says to the peasants:
Ye are all equal; nature made ye so. Equality is your birth-right;--when I gaze On the proud palace, and behold one man In the blood-purpled robes of royalty, Feasting at ease, and lording over millions; Then turn me to the hut of poverty, And see the wretched labourer, worn with toil, Divide his scanty morsel with his infants; I sicken, and, indignant at the sight, "Blush for the patience of humanity." (31)
Ball's criticism of and call for action against royalty and its privileges is further justified by the king's forces being afraid when the mob has an advantage over them (34-36) but merciless once the advantage is theirs (62). In all of these ways the aristocrats appear far removed from the heroic images that were then current in British culture.
The peasants, on the other hand, are portrayed as noble and just. While they do engage in mob violence, such as beheading the Archbishop of Canterbury (47) and burning the palace of the Gaunt, they show a purity of purpose when they punish a peasant who was looting at the palace by throwing him into the fire (52-53). Moreover, Ball explains their violence against the aristocracy as a natural response to the tyranny they had suffered (47-48). He does not, however, advocate anarchic violence, and neither does Tyler. Indeed, Ball charges the peasants to be merciful (32-33), and Tyler explicitly orders them not to plunder (34) and not to hurt the king (40). Both of these men are treated as heroes in the work, as both die for nobly leading the peasants in their opposition to tyranny. Tyler is cut down by a royal attendant who feels he is insolent when talking with the king (44), and Ball is sentenced to be drawn and quartered for his support of the revolt (68). Significantly, Southey is careful to present Tyler in a more positive light than David Hume's History of England does, a relevant portion of which was published with one edition of the poetical drama itself. While Hume states with regard to Tyler's meeting with Richard that Tyler had "ordered his companions to retire till he should give them a signal, after which they were to murder all the company, except the king himself, whom they were to detain prisoner" (xxi), Southey simply relates Tyler's order: "on your lives I charge you, / Let none attempt to harm [the King]" (40). By omitting the rest of the plan Southey ennobles the rebel and thereby brings credibility to his cause. A similar effect attends Ball's composure when presented with his death sentence:
"Why be it so. I can smile at your vengeance, For I am arm'd with rectitude of soul" (69).
His portrayal of courage shows this peasant reformer to be superior to the vengeful, previously frightened aristocrats who are sentencing him to death; by extension his politics also appear to be superior to theirs.
Written in the year following the one in which the Jacobins had executed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Wat Tyler is filled with contemporary socio-political echoes and the strategies of reformist poetry. The peasants' dislike of the English war with France mirrors the disdain that Southey and other radicals felt with regard to British efforts to restore the French monarchy. Indeed, Southey and other radically minded British citizens were happy that the Duke of Brunswick's mission to restore the old order in France (1792-93) had failed (Carnall 18-19). In addition, unjust taxation still plagued the working class in the 1790s, and they still fought and died in wars from which they stood to gain very little (Wordsworth). Furthermore, the fear that Richard and his court have of the peasants' rebellion is similar to the fear of revolt that the British aristocracy felt after 1789, and John Ball's imprisonment for seditious speech reflects the dangers that later reformers faced in the light of government suppression of writing and activity that it considered seditious.
Southey's endorsement of the peasant uprising in such political times marks him as a notable radical, but his work is by no means singular in its themes. Instead it fits into a reformist poetic tradition that enjoyed significant currency at the time, as poetry plainly advocating democracy in Britain and France was then appearing in newspapers and periodicals. For example, "An Ode on the Restoration of Freedom to France" appeared in The Gentleman's and London Magazine in 1793, declaring: "France, we share in the rapture thy bosom that fills, / While the genius of Liberty bounds o'er thine hills" and "heav'n thro' all ages confirm the decree, / That tears off their chains, and bids millions be free" (Bennett 69, ll. 25-26, 31-32). "The Genius of France," which appeared in The Cambridge Intelligencer in the same year, also celebrates French liberty, but tempers its enthusiasm with warnings against the dangers of anarchy (Bennett 98-100). Less cautious in its tone is "The Triumph of Freedom," which also appeared in The Cambridge Intelligencer, but in 1794 (Bennett 128-29). This poem has as its chorus: "Fall Tyrants! fall! fall! fall! / These are the Days of Liberty! / Fall Tyrants! fall!" (ll. 5-7), and includes the following aggressive stanzas:
How noble the Ardor that seizes the Soul! How it bursts from the Yoke and the Chain! What Powers can the Fervor of Freedom controul, Or its terrible Vengeance refrain,
Fall Tyrants! fall! etc.
Proud Castles of Despotism, Dungeons, and Cells, The Tempest shall sweep you away;
From the East to the West the dread Hurricane swells, And the Tyrants are chill'd with Dismay.
Fall Tyrants! fall! etc. (ll. 8-17)
The poem closes by specifically advocating British liberty:
Shall Britons the Chorus of Liberty hear, With a cold and insensible mind? No--the Triumph of Freedom each Briton shall share, And contend for the Rights on [sic] Mankind. Fall Tyrants! fall! etc. (ll. 33-37)
Like such poems advocate freedom from monarchal governance, but they sometimes do so more explicitly than Southey's drama.
Another theme of reformist verse that Wat Tyler, shares is that of criticizing British war efforts. The peasants' disdain for the war with France is mirrored in a long line of anti-war poetry that appeared in the 1790s. Hob Carter, a peasant friend of Tyler, complains in the play's first act that government agents "lure, or force away our boys, who should be / The props of our old age--to fill their armies, / and feed the crows of France . . . ," and that they do so "to crown our chiefs / With glory!" (p. 6). He thereby voices a concern for the effect of war on families that was a common feature of the period's anti-war poetry. "The Drum: By the Late Mr. Scott, The Quaker" expresses disdain for the parading martial drum that then drew youths to battle and represented for its author war's miseries (appeared in in 1793, Bennett 80), and "Effects of War" shows how the sickness and famine that sometimes surround war can ruin a family (appeared in The Cambridge Intelligencer in 1794, Bennett 108-10). By calling war a "Royal Game" in which "Despots delight" and which kills Britain's "hapless sons" (ll. 55-58), the latter also concurs with the assertion in Southey's drama that war is an aristocratic concern that victimizes the lower classes. The effect that the death of a soldier can have on a family was another common element of such anti-war poetry, with young widows often presented as mourning their recent war losses and thereby expressing the pain, not the glory of war (see "The Field of Battle," "Anna's Complaint," and "The Widow"). Southey's own "The Battle of Blenheim," which appeared in The Annual Anthology of 1800 and was also included in the preface of the edition of Wat Tyler that featured the segment from Hume, also shows the tragic effects that war can have on a family (xii-xv).
While the 1796 Joan of Arc: An Epic Poem could not be classified as such purely anti-war poetry, it shares many of the concerns of Wat Tyler and of other reformist verse; it is certainly another instance of Southey showing support for liberty in France and England through constructing heroes who are conspicuously not members of the English aristocracy. Indeed, in this work they are not English at all, but French. This epic, which Southey originally wrote in 1793 and prepared for the press in 1795 (Carnall 35), tells of the fifteenth-century French military successes under Joan of Arc against the invading British army. The implications involved in writing such an epic during Britain's war with Revolutionary France was lost on neither Southey nor his reviewers. Southey wrote in the poem's "Preface": "It has been established as a necessary rule for the Epic, that the subject be national. To this rule I have acted in direct opposition, and chosen for the subject of my poem the defeat of my country. If among my readers there be one who can wish success to injustice, because his countrymen supported it, I desire not that man's approbation" (vii). Though "the aristocracy behaved with great liberality to the poem" (Carnall 36), a review of its less explicitly radical second edition that appeared in the royalist Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine addressed this issue of its subject, citing it as the "chief objection" to the work (120). The review asserts, in phrasing that echoes Southey's: "The established rule for the epic, that the subject be national, is, surely, founded on true patriotism. To this rule Mr. S. has acted in direct opposition, and chosen, for the subject of his poem, the ignominous defeat of the English" (120). It then goes on to ask:
if the subject that first struck his fancy appeared such, as to cooler reason, as must necessarily place his countrymen in a disadvantageous light, why treat it at all? Why violate a law of criticism, approved both by the ancients and moderns, and, at the same time, offend against the most amiable passion that actuates man, either in uncivilized or polished life, we mean, the love or our country? Why, at this crisis more especially, represent the English as continually routed and disgraced, in their conflicts with the French? Is there not a squint of malignity--a treacherous allusion in such a picture? And was it not rather a seditious than a poetic spirit that first contemplated the Maid of Orleans, as the heroine of an English epic? ("Art. II. Joan of Arc" 121)
The commentaries of both Southey and the reviewer recognize that the epic's favoring of the French has political implications, as does Southey's insistence on repeatedly revising the poem as his political views changed. What these commentaries do not reveal, though, is the degree to which the first edition of the poem criticizes both the British military and monarchal systems of government.
Southey's disdain for British attempts to restore the French monarchy is evident throughout the poem in its characterization of the British forces. British soldiers rarely act heroically, but often cruelly or with fear. Joan calls the British invaders "wolves" (3.198) and "those fierce sons of guilt" (1.271), and her colleague Conrade speaks of the merciless actions that inspired him to leave his gentle ways and take up arms against the invaders:
"the invader's savage fury Spares not grey age, and mocks the infant's shriek As he does writhe upon his cursed lance, And forces to foul embrace, the wife Even on her murder'd husband's gasping corse!" (1. 412-16)
This emphasis on the effect that the invasion had on French families is in keeping with the domestic emphasis of the previously described reformist poetic tradition and is typical of the poem's descriptions of the horrors to which the invasion subjected the French people. Many passages, for example, emphasize that starvation was common in the besieged French cities (see 1.132-39, 1.159-61, 1.265-70, 1.421-33, 2.601-77, 5.445-58, 8.219-33). The way that the poem challenges the British soldiers' heroic status by emphasizing their cruelty is perhaps best seen in its treatment of a revered British hero, Henry V. While a French survivor of Agincourt concedes that the "'honor that a conqueror may deserve / He merits, for right valiantly he fought / On that disastrous day . . .'" (2.535-37), he is most often described as merciless. The same character counts Henry as among the "`warrior scourges of mankind'" (2.666) and says of him:
"I did think There was not on this earth a heart so hard Could hear a famish'd woman cry for bread, And know no pity" (2.667-70)
and
"When we sent the herald to implore His mercy on the helpless, he relax'd His stern face into savage merriment, Scoffing the agonies." (2.681-84)
Given these assertions, it is not surprising that when Joan has visions of hell in the epic's ninth book Henry is among those suffering there. He says of himself:
"when I heard of thousands by the sword Cut off, or blasted by the pestilence, I calmly counted up my proper gains, And sent new herds to slaughter. . . ." (731-34)
Southey's negative portrayal of Henry was disturbing enough to one reader to elicit a poetic response--"Lines Written by Anna Seward, After Reading Southey's `Joan of Arc'" (appeared in The European Magazine in 1797, Bennett 198-99)--defending Henry and the British against Southey's charges of cruelty.
Like the aristocrats in Wat Tyler, the British soldiers are presented as being not only merciless, but also afraid. Just the threatening words of Joan's messenger inspires them with fear (6.243-51), and after their first defeat at her hands they lose the desire to fight:
vain the attempt To kindle in their breasts the wonted flame Of valour; for by prodigies unmann'd They wait the morning, or in silent dread, Or pouring out their fears in many a prayer. (7.36-40)
While some of their chiefs maintain their courage throughout most of the poem, the majority of the soldiers consistently experience such dread (see 7.483-90, 7.512-16, 8.156-58,10.390-94). They even retreat in a cowardly way, leaving their weak and wounded to the mercy of their enemies (10.247-53).
This negative portrayal of the British troops is countered by the work's heroic portrayal of the French. Their troops are not invading someone else's homeland, but valiantly defending their own (10.95-117), and they are enthusiastic about fighting; they awake in the midst of their campaign by "[l]eap[ing] up invigorate . . . / impatient to renew the war" (8.143-44). Their enthusiasm is equaled by that of their leaders, who are repeatedly presented as heroic in battle but conspicuously without Henry's cruel nature. Orleans, who lost to Henry at Agincourt, is presented as both valorous and benevolent (2.487-90, 2.496-503), and while Dunois, Conrade, Theodore, and Joan all consistently show courage and effectiveness when at arms, they are capable of being merciful and even humble (see, for example, 5.494-500, 6.263-73, 6.380-86, 8.76-83, 8.492-95, 8.507-21, 10.559-63, 10.577-82). Southey, then, not only presents the British as losing to the French, but as also inferior to them in character; written during a time of British and French conflict, such a presentation seems an endorsement of the French revolutionary project and a critique of British resistance to it.
Southey's then democratic leanings are also evident in the poem in ways beyond his constructions of warriors. It criticizes kings both English and French, not only showing Henry to be cruel but also insisting that the French King Charles VII was a profligate and corrupt coward. It particularly emphasizes Charles's living in luxury and ignoring the suffering of the people of Orleans while they are under British siege (3.87-100, 3.114-26, 4.1-7, 4.176-84, 4.187-98, 4.437-41). Charles is even known to have seduced away the noble Conrade's love Agnes (4.220-45), and he receives a stern warning against monarchal abuse when he receives his crown from Joan (10.712-46). Moreover, none of the primary French heroes are aristocrats, except Dunois, who is the bastard son of Orleans. Interestingly, Southey further enhances this democratic theme by insisting that, despite his faults, Charles, not Henry VI, is the monarch that the French people choose:
"France will only own as King Him whom the people chuse. On Charles's brow Transmitted through a long and good descent The crown remains. We know no homage due to English robbers. . . ." (5.372-80, see also 6.172-75)
This trace of the democratic is bolstered by explicit statements reminiscent of Rousseau that insist on a human bliss that existed before the development of social hierarchies and their accompanying oppression (7.440-65, 9.825-69). Significantly, the poem's closing lines are: "Thus the Maid / Redeem'd her country. Ever may the All-Just / Give to the arms of Freedom such success" (10.746-48). Though it ends with the crowning of a French king, this epic's insistence on the importance of social equality and the dangers of oppressive monarchy goes beyond favoring the French over the British to make a general statement against monarchal governance that is in keeping with the thrust of much reformist poetry.
In Wat Tyler and Joan of Arc, then, Southey contributed to a reformist poetic tradition by constructing heroes in a way that worked against the attempt to regain heroic status for the English aristocracy. His insistence on constructing politically involved, non-aristocratic heroes provided an alternative to the British warrior-hero so evident in his culture and challenges our current tendency to focus our thinking regarding heroes in British Romantic literature on those of the more egoistic, socially removed, and at times misanthropic Byronic tradition.
Works Cited
"Alexander the Great; or, The Conquest of Persia." The True Briton 13 Feb. 1795: 3.
"Anecdotes of Capt. Henry Harvey. . . ." The Sun 4 July, 1794: 2.
An Essay on Rural Architecture. London: The Philanthropic Society, 1803.
"Anna's Complaint. . . ." Bennett 149-50.
"An Ode on the Restoration of Freedom to France." Bennett 69.
"Art. II. Joan of Arc. By Robert Southey. . . ." The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine 3 (1800): 120-27.
"A Sailor's Letter." The True Briton 28 June, 1796: 1-2.
Bennett, Betty T, ed. British War Poetry in the Age of Romanticism: 1793-1815. New York: Garland Publishing, 1976.
Byron, George Gordon. Lord Byron: Don Juan. Eds. T.G. Steffan, E. Steffan, and W.W. Pratt. New Haven: Yale UP, 1982.
---. "The Vision of Judgment." English Romantic Writers. Ed. David Perkins. San Diego: Harcourt, 1967.
Carnall, Geoffrey. Robert Southey and His Age: The Development of a Conservative Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960.
Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837. New Haven: Yale UP, 1992.
Cookson, J.E. The Friends of Peace: Anti-War Liberalism in England, 1793-1815. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982.
"Description of the Medal Struck by Alexander Davison, Esq. as a Tribute of His Respect for Lord Nelson. . . ." The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine 2 (1799): 213.
"Effects of War." Bennett 108-10.
Hume, David. "From Hume's History of England." Southey, Wat Tyler: 1817 xvii-xxiii.
"Preface." Wat Tyler: 1817. By Robert Southey. v-xiv.
Reston, James, Jr. "The Monument Glut." The New York Times Magazine 10 Sep. 1995: 48- 49.
Scott, John. "The Drum: By the Late Mr. Scott, the Quaker." Bennett 80.
Scrivener, Michael. Poetry and Reform: Periodical Verse from the English Democratic Press 1792-1824. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1992.
Seward, Anna. "Lines Written by Anna Seward, After Reading Southey's 'Joan of Arc.'" Bennett 198-99.
Southey, Robert. Joan of Arc, An Epic Poem by Robert Southey. Bristol, 1796
---. Southey's Life of Nelson. Ed. Kenneth Fenwick. London: The Folio Society, 1956.
---. Wat Tyler: 1817. Oxford: Woodstock Books, 1989.
---. The British Admirals. With an Introductory View of the Naval History of England. By Robert Southey. 5 vols. London: 1833-48.
---. English Seamen: Hawkins, Greenville, Devereux, Raleigh. Ed. David Hanney. London: Metheun, 1904.
---. English Seamen: Howard, Clifford, Hawkins, Drake, Cavendish. By Robert Southey. Ed. David Hanney. 2nd ed. London: 1897.
"The Field of Battle." Bennett 112-13.
"The Genius of France." Bennett 98-100.
"The Siege of Valenciennes; or, The Entrance of the British Troops into France." The Sun 5 Oct. 1793: 1.
"The Triumph of Freedom." Bennett 128-29.
"The Widow." Bennett 153-54.
Wordsworth, Jonathan. "Introduction." Southey, Wat Tyler: 1817.
[The full article is available at <http://prometheus.cc.emory.edu/panels/5E/Evans.html>.] *****