Winchester and Birth of Romanticism
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No.128No.125 NovemberMay 2018 2019 Thou hast thy music too: Winchester and Birth of Romanticism The school’s Chaplain and historian, the political and revolutionary; and Professor of Poetry, and also Poet Budge Firth, propounded the the aesthetic. Wikipedia suggests that Laureate. In term time, he resided notion that Romanticism began at Romanticism began around 1770, but in Trinity College, Oxford; in the Winchester College: ‘The group to a radically different view is possible. extensive vacations, he lived with his whom in some real sense the origins Romanticism is earlier, quieter, and brother and enjoyed the company of the Romantic revival are to be more local than is commonly realised; of Winchester’s pupils. Sociable and traced was devotedly and consciously the heritage of Winchester, not gregarious, Thomas was a member of Wykehamical’, he wrote in Winchester Philadelphia, Paris or Vienna. Doctor Johnson’s dining circle, The College (1948). The bicentenary of Any account of Winchester’s poetic Club. Keats’s ode ‘To Autumn’ has given tradition involves the Warton the opportunity to re-examine this Both brothers harboured reservations family. Thomas Warton the Elder claim. about the poetry of Pope, much (c1688–1745) was Professor of admired by Johnson and his Romanticism, we explain in Div, is a Poetry at Oxford. His oldest son, school. Their criticism, by contrast European cultural movement which Joseph (1722-1800), became Second with Pope’s admiration of ‘what explores the importance and rights of Master and then Headmaster. His oft was thought but ne’er so well the individual. It has three prominent second son, Thomas the Younger express’d’, stressed the importance characteristics: the philosophical; (1728-1790), became, like his father, of imagination: ‘It is a creative and glowing imagination, and that alone can stamp a writer’, argued Joseph. The Wartons were inspirational teachers. At least three Wykehamist pupils of Joseph (John Codrington Bamfylde, Francis Noel Clarke Mundy and Thomas Russell) became published poets, as did Henry Kett, William Benwell, Edward Gardner, Henry Headley and George Richards – all pupils of Thomas the Younger. The palm, however, goes to William Lisle Bowles, alumnus of both institutions, great nephew of a Fellow who tried to redesign Meads, and so loyal a Wykehamist that even when composing a sonnet about Ostend 1 No.128 The Trusty Servant he managed to mention Winchester river. ‘To Autumn’ lacks all specificity we are in a morning, in early autumn. College. Drawing on ‘To the River of location. The Wartons gave the In stanza two, we are in the afternoon Loddon’, a seminal poem by Thomas reader rivers; Bowles, Coleridge and mid-autumn. In stanza three, the Elder, Bowles devised a new style and Wordsworth gave them ruins – we are in dusk, with a heralding of of sonnet, characterised by riparian ‘Tintern Abbey’ was a poem Keats winter. Thus, there is progress, yet no settings, a poetic persona of youthful knew and greatly admired. Yet a poem progress. sensibility, a focus on personal conceived on a walk along a river, The uncertainties of ‘To Autumn’ development, and a tripartite towards an ecclesiastical edifice of reflect the uncertainties in Keats’s structural form involving scenes historic distinction, mentions neither. personal situation, as he decided which are left, revisited and then It is as though there is no irrigation, he must turn his back on poetry. recollected. only fruitfulness, a fruitfulness that Summer, with its nightingales and can only self-destruct. The effect of Bowles’s sonnets was Grecian urns, was behind him. River immediate: Southey, Coleridge and In Keats’s poem also, the narrator paths usually involve a progress, Wordsworth acknowledged their and his development remain especially in Bowles and Warton, yet profound force and impact. Only unmentioned. The contrast becomes this poem envisages none. Keats must Byron refused to be convinced, all the more obvious if one looks reconcile himself not only to leaving savaging Bowles as ‘the maudlin at Henry Headley’s ‘Address to a poetic career, but also leaving life prince of mournful sonneteers’. the River Isis’, where the narrator altogether. But he does it with none mourns his own impending death, of Bowles’s slightly self-indulgent and Keats, an ardent Wartonian in his linking it with the tidal progression affected melancholy. critical tastes, stayed in Winchester of the Thames. Keats introduces in 1819. He described the city as Few people now read Bowles. Hardly personification only in stanza two: ‘the pleasantest town I was ever in’, anyone reads the Wartons. But many that figure appears, only to disappear. ‘beautifully wooded’, and with air people worldwide read the poets There is no poetic persona in ‘To worth ‘sixpence a pint’. Keats cannot which these precursors inspired; and Autumn’, indeed there is almost not have failed to realise that he was Wykehamists may be proud not only even a poet. moving in the footsteps of Bowles – of their poetic alumni, but also their but no one has ever related the Keats The tripartite time structure in ‘To vindicated school historian. masterpiece to the riparian poetic Autumn’ derives from Warton and This is a shortened version of a talk given traditions in which, almost literally, Bowles, but is more sophisticated. by the Headmaster on 19th September the poet trod. Time becomes as teasing as place. It is 2019, the bicentenary of the composition of simultaneously fluid and static. Every Keats’s individual aesthetic broadly Keats’s poem. stanza is about autumn, but autumn involved the hiding of the obvious. is three seasons in one. In stanza one, His objections to poetry which had palpable designs upon its reader, his invention of the term ‘negative ‘To the River Itchin’ capability’ (‘when a man is capable by William Lisle Bowles (1762-1850), OW. of being in uncertainties… without any irritable reaching out of fact’) and Itchin! when I behold thy banks again, his conviction that ‘the only means Thy crumbling margin, and thy silver breast, of strengthening one’s intellect is to On which the self-same tints still seem to rest, make up one’s mind about nothing’ Why feels my heart a shivering sense of pain! all demonstrate this tendency. A Is it, that many a summer’s day has past better understanding of Keats can Since, in life’s morn, I carolled on thy side! therefore often be obtained by Is it, that oft since then my heart has sighed, working out not what he has said, but As Youth, and Hope’s delusive gleams, flew fast! what he has hidden. Is it, that those who gathered on thy shore, Companions of my youth, now meet no more! ‘To Autumn’ carefully avoids the Whate’er the cause, upon thy banks I bend, Wartonian trilogy of topography, Sorrowing; yet feel such solace at my heart, poetic persona, and aesthetics. As at the meeting of some long-lost friend, Bowles’s sonnets were topographical From whom, in happier hours, we wept to part. about a particular place, a particular 2 No.128 The Trusty Servant English at Winchester, 1955-1990 Tommy Cookson (I, 55-60; Co Ro, 64-65, teaching Antony and Cleopatra (‘She’s former Head of English at Bradford 67-72, 74-90; Headmaster, 03-05) recalls not a sex kitten; she’s a sex cat’). Grammar School, had produced a the English Department of the ’50s, ’60s As an article in TS55 put it: ‘The widely-used edition of Hamlet. Jo Bain and ’70s: teaching of English should have its brought an encyclopaedic knowledge anarchic side. What matters as much of literature and the arts from Stowe. The English Department started life as anything is the enthusiasm of the Trevor Park’s knowledge of medieval in the early 1950s with two members, and classical literature could have HCA ‘Tom’ Gaunt and Michael teacher. If he enjoys certain works of overwhelmed but actually inspired Burchnall. Neither had an English literature, the odds are his boys will.’ his pupils to the point of discipleship. degree but both were accomplished If there were few English specialists, Lachlan Mackinnon produced writers —Tom as the author of hymns there was certainly plenty of English. frequent reviews for the TLS. The still sung today and Michael as the While the rest of the world relaxed, changes also affected the younger winner of the Oxford University Wykehamists spent Saturday evenings pupils. John Clark, imported from Prize for an English Poem on a writing essays of all kinds – some the Dragon School in Oxford and Sacred Subject, as well as the author requiring reasoned argument, others Michael Nevin, an Old Wykehamist of a body of secular poetry and the creative imagination – which were who succeeded me as Head of the Masque which opened New Hall. returned appreciatively read and Department, brought a range of new Their department was a bit like the carefully marked. Frequent Chapel teaching techniques to their divs as Habsburg Empire, enormous but services meant regular exposure to the well as encouragement both to read scarcely under their control. They language of the Authorised Version; out of class books suited to their age taught only a part of the A level and an enduring memory of evening group and to participate in the annual and none of the English Language Preces in Hopper’s is John Gammell’s junior play. or Literature syllabuses. These were reading of the poems of GM Hopkins. left to the div dons on the B ladder My house library was well-stocked And amongst these new specialists, or in what were then Senior and and well-used. still, was that original Renaissance Middle Part. In 1957, therefore, I was figure, Michael Burchnall, whose talks taught O-level English Literature by John Thorn’s arrival as Headmaster to the department on the teaching of a classicist and, in 1960, most of my in 1968 radically changed both grammar or the poetry of Thomas A-level books by a historian.