Lives of Illustrious Shoemakers

by W. E. Winks

Another piece called “The Sailor’s Return” found a place in the “Poets’ Corner.” These efforts were enough to prove his taste and gifts as a versifier. The poetic power was latent in his mind, and only needed sufficient stimulus to bring it into full exercise. This stimulus came, as was natural, from the reading of poetry itself. A copy of Thomson’s “Seasons” and Milton’s “Paradise Lost” fell into his hands when he was about seventeen years of age. They belonged to a Scotchman who lived and worked at a house in Bell Alley, to which the shoemakers removed about this time. The eager youth read them with the passion of a born poet; and, as he read, the fire burned within. His imagination was now fairly awakened, and it was plain to all who watched him intelligently at this time, that melodies were being awakened in his heart that sooner or later must find their expression in song. The “Seasons” was his favorite poem. He read and re-read its glowing descriptions of nature, committed favorite portions to memory, and never tired of recounting its beauties in the hearing of his sympathetic friends. The “Seasons” struck the key-note of the “Farmer’s Boy,” though Bloomfield was no imitator of Thomson, nor of any one else, in either matter or manner. The thought and style of these two poets of nature are as unlike as their kindred subjects would allow them to be. Thomson’s music is that of a majestic and stately oratorio, while Bloomfield sings a sweet and simple pastoral symphony.

But the young poet was not yet to enter on his great task. Fourteen years passed away before his first and best published poem, the “Farmer’s Boy,” saw the light. During this time several important events in his history occurred. In his eighteenth year, in consequence of certain disputes in the shoe-makers’ trade about the legality of employing boys who had not been bound as apprentices, he went back again to Suffolk for a short time, and was taken into the home of his uncle and former master, Mr. Austin of Sapiston. Here for two months of happy leisure he roamed the fields where he spent so much of his time as a boy, reviving old impressions, and deepening in his mind that keen sense of the beautiful which city life and the imprisonment of a shoemaker’s occupation had not been sufficient to destroy. His companion at this time was still the favorite “Seasons,” from which, in the presence of the very charms which Thomson describes, the ardent youth derived new pleasure and inspiration.

The trade difficulty was got over by his becoming an apprentice for the remaining three years of his minority to a Mr. Duddridge, brother to George’s former landlord. At the age of twenty he was left alone in London, George having removed to Bury St. Edmund’s in his own county, and Nathaniel having married and gone into housekeeping. Robert now took to the study of music, and became an expert player on the violin. At the age of twenty-four he married the daughter of a boat-builder at Woolwich named Church. “I have sold my fiddle and got a wife,” he humorously writes to his brother. At first his home was in furnished lodgings, but by dint of hard work and strict economy he managed in a short time to furnish one room on the first floor of a house in Bell Alley, Coleman Street, the old quarters to which he had come fresh from the country on his first becoming a shoemaker. His landlord kindly allowed him the free use of a garret to work in during the day. “In this garret,” says his brother, “amid six or seven other workmen, his active mind employed itself in composing the ‘Farmer’s Boy.’” How long his mind was occupied in this task we cannot tell. One could hardly wonder if the process of composition was slow in the midst of such distracting and unfavorable circumstances. The marvel is that it should have been composed at all under such uncongenial and difficult conditions. So hard pressed for time was the poor poet-shoemaker, and so unable to find the proper materials for writing, that he is said to have made up and kept in his mind no less than 600 lines, that is, about the half of his poem, before he could manage to write it down. And when he did this, he was glad to lay hold of any odd scrap of paper for the purpose; the back of a letter or a printed bill, the margin of newspapers, pieces of pattern-paper, were seized as they came to hand and covered with writing, and then hidden away in cupboards, and occasionally even in some chink in the wall, until they could be collected and arranged for a fair copy, suitable to go into the hands of the printer. It was indeed a wonderful exhibition of mental abstraction and retentive memory. Few, even among poets, could have wrought to any purpose amid the din and conversation of a shoemakers’ workroom, and still fewer, even if the excitement of poetic thought had enabled them to compose, could have treasured up their productions in the memory until they amounted to 600 lines. A friend of Bloomfield named Swan, writing to Mr. Capel Lofft, says, “Bloomfield, either from the contracted state of his pecuniary resources to purchase paper, or for other reasons, composed the latter part of ‘Autumn’ and the whole of ‘Winter’ in his head, without committing one line to paper! This cannot fail to surprise the literary world, who are well acquainted with the treacherousness of memory, and how soon the most happy ideas, for want of sufficient quickness in writing down, are lost in the rapidity of thought. But this is not all—he went a step further; he not only composed and committed that part of his work to his faithful and retentive memory; but he corrected it all in his head!!!—and, as he said, when it was thus prepared, ‘I had nothing to do but to write it down.’ By this new and wonderful mode of composition, he studied and completed his ‘Farmer’s Boy,’ in a garret, among six or seven of his fellow-workmen, without their ever once suspecting or knowing anything of the matter!”[31]

Bloomfield was thirty-two years of age when his poem was complete and attempts were being made to find a printer and publisher. These attempts were for a time fruitless. One after another the publishers rejected the “copy” of the unknown writer. At length, it was sent by George Bloomfield, who always had full confidence in Robert’s powers, to a gentleman of literary tastes living at Troston Hall, near Bury, in Suffolk—Mr. Capel Lofft. This gentleman had the good sense at once to perceive the genuine merits of the poem submitted to his judgment, and to recommend its publication. By his kind influence and aid a publisher was soon found. Messrs. Vernon & Hood paid the poet £50 for his copy, and afterward, when the poem proved a success, honorably advanced an additional £200, besides giving the author an interest in his copyright.

The success of the poem was immediate and complete. It was warmly received by the public, and praised in all quarters as a masterpiece of natural poetic simplicity and beauty. Twenty-six thousand copies were sold in the first three years of its issue, seven editions having been called for. The position secured by the “Farmer’s Boy” on its first publication has been held until the present day. All lovers of poetry read it with delight. It is natural and graceful as the song of a bird “warbling his native woodnotes wild.” When the English song-bird sings in captivity there seems to be a touch of pathos in his note; and one can hardly resist the same impression in reading these sweet rustic melodies in verse which came from the lips of the shoemaker-poet imprisoned in a London garret. Yet there is something much more stimulating in Bloomfield’s lines than this. They are sweet and joyous, and full of that glowing enthusiasm for beauty which all fine natures feel. Besides the editions sent forth in this country, the “Farmer’s Boy” was printed at Leipsic, and was translated into French, Italian, and Latin.

Bloomfield now had many friends as well as admirers. The Duke of Grafton, on whose estate he had been employed as a boy, settled upon him a small annuity, and used his influence to obtain for him a post at the seal-office at 1s. per day. In addition to this, Bloomfield received frequent presents from the nobility, and even from members of the royal family. To the poor shoemaker, accustomed to the utmost obscurity, all this success, and popularity, and patronage “appeared,” to use his own language, “like a dream.”

In after-years he issued a number of small volumes of poetry, in which are found several shorter pieces of great merit, such as the two descriptive or ballad pieces “Richard and Kate,” “The Fakenham Ghost,” or the exquisitely simple piece called “The Soldier’s Return.” The first of these is one of the best modern ballads in the language, as it is certainly among the most, if it be not the most, spirited and original of his compositions. Of the last of the three just mentioned, Professor Wilson says: “The topic is trite, but in Mr. Bloomfield’s hands it almost assumes a character of novelty. Burns’ ‘Soldier’s Return’ is not, to our taste, one whit superior.”

The titles of the volumes that followed that by which his fame was established are “Rural Tales,” published in 1801; “The Banks of the Wye,“ 1811; ”Wild Flowers,“ and ”May Day with the Muses,” 1822. “Hazelwood Hall, a Village Drama, in Three Acts,” was published 1823, the year of his death. All these poems have since been issued in one volume, to which is attached a short sketch of the poet’s life, and the circumstances which attended the publication of “The Farmer’s Boy.” This account, given by Mr. Capel Lofft, Bloomfield’s kind friend and patron, is full of interest. It serves to show the value of a judicious friend to a young aspirant for literary fame, whose talents deserve recognition, but whose position in life prevents him taking the necessary steps to become known to the world.

The last twenty years of Bloomfield’s life were embittered by affliction and misfortunes in business. He did not long retain his position at the Seal Office, being obliged to abandon it through continual ill-health. After resuming the trade of a shoemaker for a short time, he was induced to open a shop as a bookseller, but this speculation brought him only disappointment and loss. His son, who was a printer, states that about this time the poets Rogers and Southey took a deep interest in the welfare of their poor suffering brother poet. Rogers, it seems, tried to obtain him a government pension, but without success. At length he removed from London to try the effect of the fresh air and quietude of country life. His last years were spent as a shoemaker at Shefford-cum-Campton, Bed’s. Toward the close of his life he was in great want and distress, having reaped little permanent gain from his numerous and popular poems. So intense was the strain of mind he endured from overwork, ill-health, and anxiety, that his friends entertained grave fears of his becoming insane. Death was preferable to such a life the death which is for men of Christian faith and character, like Bloomfield, the gate to a higher and happier life. Providentially for him, that gate was opened when life here had become a burden too grievous to be borne. He died at Shefford, in the fifty-seventh year of his age, August 19th, 1823, and was buried in the Campton churchyard.

Bloomfield’s character, unlike that of many of the more celebrated poets of his own day, exhibited a fair and lovely type of moral excellence. He was genuinely modest, affectionate, industrious, and pious. None regarded him with more respect and love than those who knew him most intimately. This fact speaks strongly for his real worth. His own brothers held him in the greatest esteem, and felt the most generous and hearty pleasure in his literary success. His generosity to his needy relatives, who were very numerous, often crippled his resources, and, indeed, left him at times as poor as those he had befriended. We have noticed how much he owed in early life to the loving care and good sense of an excellent mother. Bloomfield never lost sight of this fact. Like all good men, men whose lives are worth study and imitation, he was deeply attached to his mother; and it is well deserving of record that, like Buckle, the eminent philosophical writer, the young poet felt a more exquisite pleasure in placing his first published work in the hands of his mother than in the anticipation of any fame or advantage it might secure for himself as the author. When the first edition was issued a copy of it was sent to his mother, accompanied by these simple lines, which faithfully reflect at once the character of the true mother and the devoted son: