The Writing Life of Robert Story, 1795-1860: ‘The Conservative Bard’
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by LJMU Research Online THE WRITING LIFE OF ROBERT STORY, 1795-1860: ‘THE CONSERVATIVE BARD’ PHILIP JOSEPH CROWN A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Liverpool John Moores University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy February 2018 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 5 Abstract 6 Introduction 8 The Writing Life of Robert Story, 1795-1860: ‘The Conservative Bard’ Part One Chapter 1 29 Sketching the Life of Robert Story (1795-1860) Chapter 2 69 Awakening ‘the dormant chords’: Robert Story’s Reading Experiences Imitation and Innate Genius 70 Critical Voice 79 Types of Literature 83 Religious Verse 87 Ownership 89 Reading Labouring-Class Authors 90 Part Two Chapter 3 102 ‘My brother authors’: Identity and Class Provincial Poets 106 2 Democratic Vision 113 Tam O’Glanton 118 Aesthetics 120 Wordsworth 125 Burns 126 John Nicholson 129 Chapter 4 135 ‘Words which were seared into my brain as if by characters of fire!’: Critics and Scribblers of the Day Craven Blossoms (1826): Provincial Press 140 Metropolitan Response 146 ‘The Mind a Barometer; or the Moods of a Day’ (1826) 149 Critics and Scribblers of the Day (1827) 154 Chapter 5 171 ‘The Conservative Bard’: Robert Story’s Political Songs and Poems Context 172 Early Radicalism 179 Conservative Ballads (1834-1836) 183 ‘Public Questions’ and ‘Ale House Meetings’ 189 Speech to the Conservative Association (1835) 191 Tory Radicalism 196 Response to Story’s Political Writing 199 3 Part Three Chapter 6 206 ‘I am now, at its conclusion, MYSELF AGAIN’: Formal Experimentation in Story’s Poetry and Prose Love and Literature 207 ‘The Queen of the North’ 218 Chronicles of the Swan 225 Chapter 7 239 The Outlaw: Balladry and Romantic Melodrama Ballad, Song, and Popular Culture 242 The Outlaw in Context 253 Romantic Melodrama 256 The Labouring-Class Ophelia 260 Melodrama, Political Satire and Story’s Social Conscience 266 Conclusion 275 Bibliography 281 Appendix Transcript of Critics and Scribblers of the Day: A Satire by a Scribbler 307 Illustration: Figure 1. Robert Story, Mezzotint portrait by William Overend Geller, published 1861 in John James’ The Lyrical And Other Minor Poems Of Robert Story, With A Sketch Of His (1861). 30 4 Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisors Dr Helen Rogers and Professor Glenda Norquay who have provided their continuing support throughout my studies at John Moores University. This thesis would not have been possible without their patience and guidance. I am also extremely grateful to my partner, Clare, who has been at my side from my first trip to the Bradford archives and to my parents for all the encouragement they have given me in pursuing my ambitions. Their unwavering support has helped me complete this project. Finally, I would like to dedicate this thesis to my great grandfather, Dennis McParlan, who despite receiving no education taught himself to read and write and shared my love of books. 5 Abstract This thesis explores the writing life of the Northumbrian labouring-class poet Robert Story (1795-1860) who, during the political turmoil of the 1830s, achieved national celebrity for writing a series of songs and poems for Peel’s Conservative party. In his unpublished autobiography (c.1853) he alludes to building an archive of his work. Drawing on these manuscripts, all of which have until now remained hidden, and his published writing, this thesis investigates the relationship between Story’s apparent political conservatism and his progressive and experimental approach to writing. The study is organised into three main parts. The first forms a study of Story’s biographical manuscripts, using his accounts of reading to raise the wider complex theoretical questions that inform the thesis. It goes beyond Story’s connection with the pastoral tradition and hypothesises that Story’s writing was always rhetorical. Tracing Story’s circle of ‘brother’ poets, part two locates him in a distinctly labouring-class canon, imagined or otherwise, that he believed was at least equal to the polite realm of literature. This phase of research also resituates Story’s satirical modes of writing and his party ballads within the great body of political literature produced by working men during the first half of the nineteenth century. Story’s importance lies not only in his pursuit of politics but also in his cultural ambition: the third part of the thesis examines formal hybridity in his writing. It reveals how Story was searching for new forms of self-expression and asks to what extent his pursuit of literature was politicised and predicated on the belief that social and economic emancipation was 6 contingent on cultural equality. Overall this thesis argues that Story was using literature to challenge the political, social and cultural boundaries imposed on him as both a workingman and a labouring-class writer. 7 Introduction This thesis recovers the life and work of the Northumbrian labouring-class poet Robert Story (1795-1860) who, during the political turmoil of the 1830s, achieved national fame by writing a series of songs and poems for the Conservative Party. Using extensive archival findings, it considers whether Story can be categorised as a Conservative poet in political terms and still be viewed as a progressive and experimental writer. The study argues that his work was always self-aware and should be seen in terms of his literary ambition and his desire for cultural autonomy. Story not only questioned the restrictions placed on him as a self-taught poet, he also challenged, and attempted to change, the conditions that denied him the legitimacy attributed to those writers belonging to the polite realm of literature. Story’s cultural significance has hitherto gone relatively unnoticed by scholars. Critical work on labouring-class writing has been overwhelmingly on radical writers displaying class or gender consciousness. Although historians have uncovered the roots of popular Toryism, critics have yet to fully delineate a tradition of Conservative labouring-class writing and its relationship to both politics and literary culture. This thesis suggests that there is a need to go beyond the writing of Chartist and labour radicals in order to interrogate the strategies adopted by Conservative self-taught poets. The complex and often problematic methodological questions posed by Story’s reactionary political objectives shape this study: how do we reconcile his opposition to parliamentary reform with his struggle for cultural equality and his drive for self-determination 8 as a distinctly labouring-class poet? This question is not easily answered. And yet, it is exactly these idiosyncrasies that make him both a fascinating and frustrating case study. The thesis examines a wealth of unused archival sources to test a wide range of critical perspectives that have until now underpinned our understanding on labouring-class writing. Story currently resides on the boundaries of an already marginalised group of writers who are mentioned only in passing in the ground- breaking studies that have sought to recover working-class writers. He makes a brief appearance in David Vincent’s argument for the deficiency of rural education, before the historian comments on the poet’s first encounter with Watts’ Divine Songs for Children. 1 Jonathan Rose emphasises the poet’s recollections of Sir Walter Scott to demonstrate the importance of reading experiences in the cultural development of working people.2 By foregrounding Story’s cultural identity as a reader, both Rose and Vincent undervalue his importance as a writer. Brian Maidment, in his influential anthology Poorhouse Fugitives, tells us that ‘in using pastoral to shape a sense of self, Story follows the dominant pattern of pastoral lyrics by self-taught writers.’3 However, although pastoral and nature poetry were important to him, Story cannot be defined by these modes of writing alone. His political ballads, drama and his life writing were at least equally important in the formation of his cultural identity. Indeed, an eclectic range of forms, including satire, drama, epic, 1 David Vincent, Bread Knowledge and Freedom: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Working Class Autobiography (London: Europa Publications Limited, 1981), p. 55. 2 Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life Of The Working Classes (London: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 118-119. 3 Brian Maidment, The Poorhouse Fugitives: Self-taught poets and poetry in Victorian Britain, ed. by B. Maidment (Manchester: Carcanet Press Limited, 1987), p. 144. 9 autobiography, and prose fiction, underpinned Story’s sense of himself as a writer. Martha Vicinus is more generous than most scholars in the attention she gives to the poet. She acknowledges Story’s aesthetic sensibilities by placing him alongside the ‘more talented’ self-taught poets such as John Nicholson, John Critchley Prince and Joseph Skipsey.4 And yet, also assigning this same group to ‘a poetry little attuned to working-class life’, Vicinus does not fully recognise the breadth of Story’s work or the polemical nature of the writer.5 Whilst this thesis is indebted to the existing scholarship, it goes beyond his association with the hegemonic and naturalising imagery of the pastoral to interrogate his political and polemical writing. Each chapter centres on a different aspect of his writing life while situating his work within the wider context of labouring-class and self- taught poetry. In dislocating Story’s association with the pastoral and relocating him within these progressive modes of writing, the thesis tests the assumption that non-radical labouring-class writing was necessarily reactionary in form. It seeks to bring to the fore Story’s remarkable sense of himself as a writer and recover the ways in which his work was motivated by inequality and the hardships he endured as a self-taught poet.