Wordsworth’s American Champion Nearly two centuries ago, Penn professor Henry Hope Reed put William Wordsworth on America’s cultural map. More or less forgotten today (make that more), Reed was an impressive scholar whose enthusiasm for Wordsworth and English Romanticism helped shape the nation’s literary values. At a time when most schools barely acknowledged contemporary literature, he also played a role in the University’s rebound from its early 19th-century “Low Water” mark. By Peter Conn enn’s oldest surviving university average number of graduates for the In 1831, after practicing law unhappily catalogue is an eight-page pamphlet previous 15 years. The small size of the for a few years, Reed returned to Penn as published in 1825. Unlike its mod- class was a sad but accurate indicator of “assistant professor of moral philosophy, P ern descendants, this venerable the college’s early 19th-century decline. having charge of the Department of Eng- document contains neither course So, too, was Penn’s fi rst printed library lish Literature.” Four years later, the Trust- descriptions, nor a specifi cation of re- catalogue, published in 1829. It recorded ees elected him to the Professorship of quirements, nor the college rules (if there that, 80 years after the founding of the Rhetoric and English Literature, a position were any). Following a list of the 25 trust- University, the library owned only 1,670 they had designed for him. The combina- ees, the catalogue provides only the num- volumes, comprising 884 titles. Not sur- tion of Reed’s assignments perfectly bers of students, and the names of the prisingly, the fi fth chapter of Edward matched his own conception of his aca- University’s 17 professors, divided into the Potts Cheney’s 1940 history of the Uni- demic role: What he considered a moral categories of “Arts” (three faculty mem- versity, which reviews those decades, is imperative informed all of his teaching in bers), “Medicine” (seven), “Natural Science” titled, “Low Water.” language, literature, and history. (fi ve), “Law” (one), and “General Literature” The Arts graduates of 1825 included From the beginning of his 20-year teach- (one). Three non-professorial teachers 17-year-old Henry Hope Reed, the son of ing career, Reed championed the poetry are identifi ed (one each in French, German, lawyer Joseph Reed, Jr., and the grandson of William Wordsworth, ranking him, and Spanish), and the tally concludes of Joseph Reed, who had served as along with Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, with the janitor, William Dick. George Washington’s adjutant during the and Milton, as one of “the fi ve poets of the The Medical Department was thriving: Revolutionary War. Henry, a young man highest order.” While that judgment would 484 students had attended classes that “remarkable for his indiff erence to the not fi nd much support today, Wordsworth year. The undergraduate college, on the athletic games in which his comrades continues to command a central place in other hand, was doing rather less well. delighted,” was named the Latin Saluta- the history of English poetry. Just 16 men graduated from the “Colle- torian for his class, a forecast of the aca- giate Department” in 1825—about the demic distinction he would go on to earn. Facing page: Portrait of Henry Hope Reed by Samuel Bell Waugh. 42 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Nov|Dec 2018 The Penn Art Collection, photography by Candace diCarlo Nov|Dec 2018 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE 43 In teaching the poetry of Wordsworth, the spiritual elevation of mankind.” While mensely consequential essay, Nature, or indeed any contemporary literature, this is not the sort of vocabulary that later which would appear in 1836, just three Reed was something of a pioneer. “I doubt critics would deploy in their assessments years after his English sojourn. many American colleges or universities of Wordsworth, it seems to have stimu- Bryant and Emerson typifi ed a fervent of the 1830–1850s era were devoting fac- lated a wide appreciation of the poet appreciation of Wordsworth’s poetry but ulty positions and courses to the serious among antebellum readers. one that was embraced by a fairly narrow study of literature,” says John Thelin, a Wordsworth was by no means un- coterie of literary practitioners. Scholars professor of higher education and public known in the US prior to Reed’s edition who have examined the question of policy at the University of Kentucky who of his work. An American edition of Wordsworth’s reputation in America have is a leading authority on the history of Lyrical Ballads had been published in concluded that it was through Henry higher education in America. “Most of 1799, just a year after this landmark vol- Reed’s “interested eff orts”—his 1837 edi- the colleges were following the Yale ume appeared in England, and other tion of the poems and his 1839 essay, in Report [of 1828] and tended to have no editions followed. Furthermore, over the particular—that “Wordsworth was fi rst ‘majors’ and a fairly tedious classical fi rst three decades of the 19th century, a made widely known, and admired, in this curriculum,” in line with the document’s number of American poets had made country.” This conclusion was fi rst ven- defense of a traditional course of study their Wordsworthian loyalties clear. tured more than 90 years ago by Annabel built around Greek and Latin. “So, the To cite the most striking example, Wil- Newton, in her book, Wordsworth in fact that Penn would hire and allow a liam Cullen Bryant, America’s fi rst major Early American Criticism; most writers professor to teach English literature, Romantic poet, responded to Word- on the subject in the subsequent nine including the poetry of Wordsworth, sworth with an emotion akin to rever- decades have agreed. suggests a very distinctive university. ence. William Henry Dana, author of the Note that the aging and pious Word- Way ahead of the curve.” classic memoir, Two Years Before the sworth whom Reed celebrated in his Reed’s enthusiasm for Wordsworth’s Mast, reported that “I never shall forget lectures and essays was quite a diff erent poetry expressed itself most infl uen- with what feeling my friend Bryant … poet from the 20-something radical tially when, in 1837, he edited and pub- described to me the eff ect produced upon who had, nearly four decades earlier, lished The Complete Works of William him by his meeting for the fi rst time with famously welcomed the coming of the Wordsworth, the fi rst one-volume col- Wordsworth’s ballads. He said that, upon French Revolution: lection to appear on either side of the opening the book, a thousand springs Atlantic. (Wordsworth, motivated both seemed to gush up at once in his heart, Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, by pride and by a keen desire to enhance and the face of Nature, of a sudden, to But to be young was very heaven! his income, had been hectoring his own change into a strange freshness and life.” English publisher to bring out such an Ralph Waldo Emerson traveled to Eng- That youthful dream of heaven quick- edition, without success.) land in 1833, pilgrim-like, to meet Word- ly evaporated. As he watched the Revolu- A little over a year after his edition ap- sworth and Coleridge. Arriving unan- tion collapse into the Terror, Word- peared, Reed published an anonymous nounced at Rydal Mount, the Word- sworth’s allegiances shifted irreversibly and quite favorable commentary on the sworth family’s cottage in the Lake toward a reverence for the status quo, book in the New York Review. (Anony- District, Emerson was received with both in politics and religion. Edmund mous and friendly self-reviews occupied courtesy and spent several hours in a Burke, the towering defender of conser- a sizable place in early 19th-century criti- conversation that ranged from nature to vatism against revolutionary change, cism.) Much of Reed’s 27,000-word essay education to politics. Along the way, became the poet’s most important intel- is given over to establishing his high Wordsworth did not disguise his rather lectual mentor. claims for poetry among the arts and for low estimate of Emerson’s fellow Amer- Although Reed’s allegiance embraced Wordsworth among the poets. At its core, icans: “I fear that they are too much the entire Wordsworthian canon, it was Reed’s conception of poetry’s value is more given to the making of money, and sec- anchored primarily in his affi nity for the theological than aesthetic: “The highest ondly, to politics.” later work, in which the poet affi rmed the poetry must be sacred,” exhibiting “for its Emerson left Rydal Mount with a some- values of Christian piety and social order. own glory … its affi nity and subordina- what diminished admiration for the man In 1836, while Reed’s edition was still tion to religion.” Wordsworth, Reed con- he had traveled several thousand miles a work in progress, he opened a corre- tends, more successfully than any other to meet. Nonetheless, Wordsworth’s infl u- spondence with Wordsworth that con- modern poet, has, through his verses, ence can be detected across much of the tinued until shortly before the poet’s made “strenuous and constant eff orts for Emersonian canon, including his im- death. In all, the two men exchanged 71 44 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE Nov|Dec 2018 Painting of Rydal Mount, Wordsworth’s family cottage, and the poet’s favorite portrait of himself, both by Henry Inman. poems. He discloses a prompting “sense of obligation”: communing with these poems, he confi des, “I have felt my nature elevated.” Reed closes by pronouncing “blessings” on his idol.