Literary Celebrities of the English Lake-District

by Frederick Sessions

Still, we shall ever regret the change.

Some of his best life-work was done by Massey at Brantwood, on the shores of Coniston Water, including 'The Ballad of Babe Christabel,' 'Craig-crook Castle,' and 'War-Waits.' He had come here after a period of stress necessitated by his outward circumstances, which had been of the poorest. His father was a canal-boatman of Tring, in Hertfordshire, and for him, as for all of the wage-earners of those evil days of the Corn Laws and other oppressions, there was virtually no education. He was sent to work in a mill when eight years of age, for twelve hours a day, at 9d. to 1s. 6d. per week. It was the sorrows and sufferings of such little ones as he which inspired Mrs. Browning's never-to-be-forgotten 'Cry of the Children.' Possessed of a resolute will and an inquiring spirit, he taught himself all he could from the very few books accessible to him. While passing through years of poverty and hardship, engaged in straw-plaiting, he associated himself with like-minded youths of his own and a somewhat better social class, threw himself ardently into the progressive movements of the day, and soon found his way into print in some of the restricted and Government-worried local newspapers. When but twenty-one years old he was actually editing a serial called The Spirit of the Age. A year later he became one of the secretaries of the Christian Democratic movement headed by Maurice and Kingsley, wrote verses for various publications, and by-and-by mustered courage to issue his 'Voices of Freedom and Lyrics of Love.' This little book and his next brought him into contact or correspondence with Hepworth Dixon, W. Savage Landor, 'George Eliot,' and Tennyson. Tennyson writes him respecting the 'fine lyrical impulse, and the rich, half-Oriental imagination' he found in his poems. 'George Eliot' is said to have taken him for her model of 'Felix Holt the Radical.' She describes her hero as a somewhat eccentric-mannered young man, shaggy-headed, large-eyed, and strong-limbed, wearing neither waistcoat nor cravat, and in abrupt sentences denouncing unreality and humbug, though amenable to softening social and intellectual influences. This, at any rate, is her introduction of him to her readers. Massey's first love-story (he was happily married) was, at least, as much an idyll, it would appear, as that of Holt, and the deep home love, the consecrated affection of the wedded life, were the inspirations of some of his sweetest lyrics, just as his intense yearnings for the betterment of the common people were that of his patriotic ones. Later in life, after he had left Coniston, we find him an accepted essayist in some leading literary magazines, and a lecturer on literary subjects, living in Edinburgh. Another volume or two, with war songs and ballads among them, evoked by what England has long ago become ashamed of—the Crimean War—completed the first stage of his career, and the only one that concerns us here. He has collected into a volume—adopting a description of himself as 'the most unpublished of authors'—a few of his best poems, which one critic thinks contains everything of his worth preserving. I do not agree with this dictum. Some of his best are omitted, though we have to thank this self-same critic for preserving them for us.

Now comes for me the ungrateful task of selecting from his garden of delights, not posies, but a few blossoms and a few typical petals that may serve to show the form and hue of the blossoms. In doing so, many of the best must of necessity be passed over. Do you know 'Babe Christabel'? Is it not pathetically true to experience? Has it not set many a chord of many a mother's riven heart vibrating as she reads of

'A merry May morn,
All in the prime of that sweet time
When daisies whiten, woodbines climb,
When the dear Babe Christabel was born'?

and how, coming through the 'golden gates of morn' to what seemed a glorious destiny, and touching the earth with a fresh romance for the happy parents, she grew in loveliness only to be caught away, ere reaching womanhood, by angels who gathered her 'delighted as the children do the primrose that is first in spring.' And do you know 'Cousin Winnie'? It is almost as pathetic, and quite as true, only in a different way. It narrates a lad's love for a cousin, married, when she reached maturity, to a friend of his, who brought trouble upon her, and for whom he suffered as she suffered, unable to help, and never telling out his affection for fear of causing division and dissension.

His songs are far from being all sad. They are mostly redolent of bright fancy.

'Pleasant it is, wee wife of mine,
As by my side thou art,
To sit and see thy dear eyes shine
With bonfires of the heart!
And Young Love smiles so sweet and shy
From warm and balmy deeps,
As under-leaf the fruit may try
To hide, yet archly peeps;
Gliding along in our fairy boat,
With prospering skies above,
Over the sea of time we float
To another New World of Love.'

This lake-poet is not the Laureate of the love of courtship, but of wedded bliss.

'Oh, lay thy hand in mine, dear!
We're growing old, we're growing old!
But time hath brought no sign, dear!
That hearts grow cold, that hearts grow cold!'

begins another of what may be called the 'Darby and Joan' type.