Introduction

INTRODUCTION Thomas Hood's place in English literary history is secure. It depends upon his originality in romantic, comic, and humanitarian verse, and also upon his place in the traditions of such writings. In his twenties Hood writes in the romantic, lyrical mood of his period. In particular in his volume entitled The Plea of the Midsummer Fairies (1827) he reflects with uncanny skill the romanticism of Keats; he stands in the line between Keats and Tennyson, here as well as in such limpid lyrics as 'I remember,' 'The Death-Bed,' and 'Farewell, Life!' As a prolific comic writer Hood takes his place in a tradition that goes back to Shakespeare, but burgeons in the eighteenth century with Pope and Swift, Smollett, Sterne, and Fielding. From the more recent past he shares in the verse exuberance of Christopher Anstey, John Wolcott, and the brothers Smith, and looks forward to that of W.S. Gilbert. He belongs to the generation of comic prose writers, Theodore Hook amongst them, which nourished the early work of Dickens. He also looks forward to the achievement of Lewis Carroll. In his humanitarian writing - grotesque as in 'The Last Man,' serious as in 'The Dream of Eugene Aram,' 'The Song of the Shirt,' and 'The Bridge of Sighs' - Hood does not, as Wordsworth does, identify himself with the poor and outcast for the sake of the human spirit only (if one dare say only), but for the sake of social protest. Here he appeals most strongly to those modern readers who sym- pathize with the writer's attempt to combine his art with the expression of social conscience. The attempt was eagerly made in the years of crisis after the accession of Queen Victoria; it was made in the poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Caroline Norton, Barry Cornwall, and Hood himself, and led to the didactically inclined prose fiction of Dickens, Charles Kingsley, and Elizabeth Gaskell. The originality of Hood's comic contribution lies in his crackling puns, at which Xll INTRODUCTION he is uniquely adept - see for example 'Faithless Nelly Gray' - and the teeming extravagance of his fancy which finds full and formal expression in a characteristic early Victorian work like 'Miss Kilmannsegg and her Precious Leg.' In his romantic writing Hood sets out on a mythological exploration of his own but, owing to personal limitations, economic necessities, and an unfavourable social climate, the exploration remained uncompleted. However, what is unique to Hood is the way in which the horrific elements of his romantic verse pass through his comic writing and are taken over in the later humanitarian work. The grotesque images of the per- fervid youthful romantic imagination reappear to the maturer artist in the actual world of the early I 840s. It is worth collecting the letters of a man whose work is of fascinating interest on these three levels, different but united through his personality. Yet the interest of the letters is not confined to Hood's personality. He participated in the commer- cialized movement which produced the literary annuals of the second quarter of the nineteenth century. This phenomenon has not received a great deal of attention, though many of the literary men of the time were involved in it, and one wonders whether it is not a particularly characteristic creation of an age of cultural uncer- tainty yet growing wealth. Secondly, Hood participated in tentative movements again characteristic of the age, to achieve professional status for literature. His in- volvement in the movement to change the terms of copyright in favour of the author is documented in the letters, together with his share in attempts to organize authors to ensure their economic security. This edition of Hood's letters should enlarge and clarify the view provided by his children's Memorials (1860) and by his later biographers Walter Jerrold (1907), J.C. Reid (1963), and John Clubbe (1968). The new view presented in this edition is one of the age, the writer, and the man. Admittedly the age is seen very quietly, with few of its political, economic, intellectual, and aesthetic highlights in the fore- ground. The picture is primarily a quiet but fascinating personal one, with an interest not only for the close student who must have the information here presented, but also for the general reader who sees a human life running its course across many obstacles, with humour and heroic determination. My main purpose in this introductory essay is to evaluate Hood's character as it appears and develops in his correspondence, and to indicate the range of this correspondence. In the first place, however, notice should be taken of his immediate background, which was bourgeois and professional. His mother was the daughter of an engraver, and his father was a largely self-made and successful publisher. His INTRODUCTION Xlll father and brother died when he was twelve years of age, and his mother when he was twenty-two. These deaths left a family comprising himself and four sisters. There seems to have been a strange coolness between him and them. His sister Betsy was a religious zealot and on this account antipathetic to him; Jessie was confined because of mental unbalance brought on, in his view, by similar enthusiasm. The death of his father probably deprived Hood of a decent education, and the early atmosphere of death is reflected in his own sickly life and morbid humour. At the age of sixteen Hood was sent off to relatives at Dundee, his father's home, and from there his first family letters were sent. They show him at this tender age already a humorist, the admirer of Hogarth, Smollett, and Christopher Anstey. Hood remained the duteous nephew until the end of his life, as the late letters to his uncle and aunt, Mr and Mrs Keay, show (650, 684). In Dundee he made several youthful friendships, and their extent is indicated in the letters written on his return to London. Here some hints are given concerning his activities as a busy engraver, learning something of the harsh business world, and as an amateur of letters, facile but not dedicated. In his literary attempts Hood was encouraged by John Taylor, the publisher of Keats. Taylor saw him not only as a bright young writer but also as a potentially useful lad about the office. His letter to Taylor on the death of his mother ( 25) shows real gratitude formally expressed and a strength of feeling which is evident elsewhere in the letters. Work for Taylor on his London Magazine introduced Hood to two groups of acquaintances, and hence to two sets of correspondents: the contributors to the magazine, and the family of one of these contributors, John Hamilton Reynolds, who had been Keats's friend. The London Magazine provided Hood with a perfect introduction to the world of letters. The drudgery of sub-editing was more than compensated for by the amiabilities ofliterary intercourse. The character of Hood's life work was fixed, and friendships made. These are not immediately documented, but their strong hold is indicated by letters written much later. In particular, the friendship between Hood and Charles Lamb leaves behind few epistolary relics, partly because the two men lived so close together that they did not need to corre- spond with each other. However, Hood gives a revealing account of the relationship in a letter to T.C. Grattan in 1837 (327), and there is a pleasant glimpse of Mary Lamb in her old age in a letter to J.T.J. Hewlett (473). Hood probably met Charles Wentworth Dilke, another friend of Keats, as a fellow contributor to the London Magazine, but their correspondence does not begin until the early 1830s, when Dilke was editor of the weekly Athenaeum. Thomas Noon Talfourd was another contributor to the London Magazine; Hood corresponded with him about 1841 on XIV INTRODUCTION the subject of literary copyright, reform of which they both favoured. H.F. Cary, another contributor and the translator of Dante, is a correspondent of I 844 (594); so is Mary Russell Mitford, author of Our Village. B.W. Procter, the poet 'Barry Cornwall,' is the object of a pathetic appeal made in Hood's last months (683). Hood's early letters to Reynolds' mother and to his sisters Charlotte and Marianne show a warmth which seems to have been but newly released, the playfulness and even passion which are his best characteristics as a letter writer, and a loquacity which shows his delight in writing for the delight of friends. (They contrast with the cool letters to his sister Betsy.) The one surviving letter to John Reynolds leaves us to regret the loss of the rest of this part of the correspondence. The letter to Jane Reynolds before their marriage shows Hood, already a sick man, amazingly easy in his wit, and restrained in his courtship. The floodgates of passion are only released in the earnest solicitude of the letters written during their later separations. At this earlier period, whatever the later developments, it was doubtless the Reynolds circle which fed that flame of romanticism in Hood which led to the production of the Keatsian Plea of the Midsummer Fairies volume and the melodramatic National Tales. Once Hood had settled on making his living by writing, much of his correspondence took on a professional character. He writes, generally without enthusiasm, to publishers and editors. Amongst general publishers, he writes to Blackwood, Constable, Murray, Bentley, Bradbury, and Smith and Elder. He also writes to the unfortunately less well-known publishers who were mainly responsible for issuing his own work, Charles Tilt and A.H.

Load more