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Adelaide Procter

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Adelaide Anne Procter (30 October 1825 - 2 February 1864) was an English poet and philanthropist.

Adelaide Anne Procter by Emma Gaggiotti Richards

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825-1864), Portrait by Emma Gaggiotti Richards (1825-1912). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Adelaide Anne Procter
Born 30 October 1825
London, England
Died 2 February 1864 (aged 38)
Occupation Poet, philanthropist
Nationality English

Life[]

Overview[]

Procter was the eldest daughter of Bryan W. Procter ("Barry Cornwall"). Many of her poems were originally published in Household Words and All the Year Round, and afterwards collected under the title of Legends and Lyrics (1858), of which many editions appeared. In 1851 Miss Procter became a Roman Catholic. She took much interest in social questions affecting women. She wrote the well-known songs, "Cleansing Fires" and "The Lost Chord," and among her many hymns are, "I do not ask, O Lord, that Life may be," and "My God, I thank Thee who hast made."[1]

Family[]

Procter, the oldest child of Bryan Waller Procter ("Barry Cornwall") and his wife Anne (Skepper), was born 30 October 1825 at 25 Bedford Square, London. Her parents were residing there with Basil Montagu and his wife, Mrs. Procter's stepfather and mother (Barry Cornwall, Autobiography, p. 67). Her father delighted in her, addressing a sonnet to her in November 1825, beginning 'Child of my heart! My sweet beloved First-born!' and calling her in a song "golden-tressed Adelaide."[2]

The family had strong literary ties: novelist Elizabeth Gaskell enjoyed her visits to the Procter household,[3] and Procter's father was friends with poet Leigh Hunt, essayist Charles Lamb, and novelist Charles Dickens,[4] as well as being acquainted with poet William Wordsworth[5] and critic William Hazlitt.[6] Family friend Bessie Rayner Belloc wrote in 1895 that "everybody of any literary pretension whatever seemed to flow in and out of the house. The Kembles, the Macreadys, the Rossettis, the Dickens [sic], the Thackerays, never seemed to be exactly visitors, but to belong to the place."[7]

Youth and education[]

AdelaideShe early showed a fondness for poetry, and grew up amid surroundings calculated to develop her literary taste. Before she could write, her mother used to copy out her favorite poems for her in an album of small notepaper, which "looks," wrote Charles Dickens, "as if she had carried it about like another little girl might have carried a doll." Frances A. Kemble wrote in 1832: "Mrs. Procter talked to me a great deal about her little Adelaide, who must be a wonderful creature" (Records of a Girlhood, iii. 203). N.P. Willis describes her as "a beautiful girl, delicate, gentle, and pensive," looking as if she "knew she was a poet's child" (Pencillings by the Way).[2]

A voracious reader,[8] Procter was largely self-taught; she did, however, study at Queen's College in Harley Street in 1850.[2] The college had been founded 2 years earlier in 1848 by Frederick Maurice, a Christian Socialist; the faculty included novelist Charles Kingsley, composer John Hullah, and writer Henry Morley.[9]

About 1851 she and 2 of her sisters became Roman catholics. The incident does not seem to have disturbed the peace of the family (Barry Cornwall, Autobiography, p. 99).[2]

Career[]

Adelaide began her literary career, unbeknownst to her family, by contributing poems to the Book of Beauty in 1843, when she was 18.[2]

In 1853 she began a long connection with Household Words by sending some poems under the name of Mary Berwick. Charles Dickens, the editor, was her father's friend, and she adopted the policy of anonymity because she did not wish to benefit by his friendly partiality. He approved of her verses, and printed many of them in ignorance of their source. In December 1854 he recommended the Procters to read a pretty poem by "Miss Berwick" in the forthcoming Christmas number of Household Words. Next day Adelaide revealed her secret at home. All her poems, except 2 in the Cornhill and 2 in Good Words, were originally published in Household Words or All the Year Round.[2]

In 1853 she visited Turin.[2]

In May 1858 her poems were collected and published in 2 volumes under the title of Legends and Lyrics. A 2nd edition was issued in October, a 3rd and 4th in February and December 1859, and a 10th in 1866. In 1859 Miss Procter, who was thoroughly interested in social questions affecting women, was appointed by the council of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science member of a committee to consider fresh ways of providing employment for women (cf. Emily Faithfull, Victoria Regia, pref.) Mrs. Jameson and Lord Shaftesbury were on the same committee. In 1861 Miss Procter edited a volume of miscellaneous verse and prose, set up in type by women compositors, and entitled Victoria Regia. She contributed a poem entitled "Links with Heaven." Among other contributors were Tennyson, Henry Taylor, Lowell, Thackeray, Harriet Martineau, and Matthew Arnold. The next year Procter published a little volume of poems called 'A Chaplet of Verse,' for the benefit of a night refuge.[2]

She was of a cheerful, modest, and sympathetic disposition, with no small fund of humour. Her health was never robust. In 1847 Fanny Kemble wrote: "Her character and intellectual gifts, and the delicate state of her health, all make her an object of interest to me" (Records of Later Life, iii. 290).[2]

In 1862 Procter tried the cure at Malvern (cf. Wemyss Reid, Life of Lord Houghton, ii. 84-5); but, after being confined to her room for 15 months, she died of consumption on 2 February 1864. She was buried in Kensal Green cemetery (cf. the Month, January 1866: Mary Howitt, Autobiography, ii. 155).[2]

Writing[]

Miss Procter, if not a great poet, had a gift for verse, and expressed herself with distinction, charm, and sincerity. She borrowed little or nothing, and showed to best advantage in her narrative poems. 'The Angel's Story,' the 'Legend of Bregenz,' the 'Legend of Provence,' the 'Story of a Faithful Soul,' are found in numerous poetical anthologies. Her songs, 'Cleansing Fires,' 'The Message,' and 'The Lost Chord,' are well known, and many of her hymns are in common use. Her poems were published in America, and also translated into German.[2]

Critical reputation[]

Procter was "fabulously popular"[10] in the mid-19th century; she was Queen Victoria's favorite poet,[11] Readers valued Procter's poems for their plainness of expression,[12] although they were considered "not so very original in thought; [their merit is that] they are indeed the utterances 'of a believing heart', pouring out its fulness."[13] Procter herself expressed little ambition about her work: her friend Bessie Raynor Belloc thought that Procter was pained that her reputation as a poet had outstripped her father's, and quoted Procter as saying that "Papa is a poet. I only write verses."[14]

Procter's popularity continued after her death; the 1st volume of Legends and Lyrics went through 19 editions, and the 2nd through 14 editions, by 1891.[10] Her work was also published in the United States and translated into German.[2]

By the early 20th century, however, Procter's reputation had fallen so far that a textbook could mention her poems only to pronounce them "stupid, trivial and not worthy of the subject".[15]

Critics such as Cheri Larsen Hoeckley, Kathleen Hickok, and Natalie Joy Woodall argue that the demise of Procter's reputation is due at least in part to the way Charles Dickens characterized her as a "model middle-class domestic angel"[16] and a "fragile and modest saint"[17] rather than as an "active feminist and strong poet."[17] Emma Mason, however, argues that although Dicken's portrayal of Procter "extinguished modern interest" in her, it also "has helped rescue Procter from the kind of endless conjecture about her private life that has confused studies of women like Letitia Landon."[18]

Those who have, however, argue that Procter's work is significant, in part for what it reveals about how Victorian women expressed otherwise repressed feelings. The few critics who have examined Procter's poetry generally find it important for the way that Procter overtly expresses conventional sentiments while covertly undermining them.

According to Isobel Armstrong, Procter's poetry, like that of many 19th-century women poets, employs conventional ideas and modes of expression without necessarily espousing them in entirety.[19] Francis O'Gorman cites "A Legend of Provence" as an example of a poem with this kind of "double relationship with the structures of gender politics it seems to affirm."[20] Other critics since Armstrong agree that Procter's poetry, while ladylike on the surface, shows signs of repressed emotions and desires.[21]

Kirstie Blair states that the suppression of emotion in Procter's work makes the narrative poems all the more powerful,[22] and Gill Gregory argues that Procter's poetry often explores female sexuality in an unconventional way, while as often voicing anxiety about sexual desires.[23] However, Elizabeth Gray criticizes the fact that the few discussions of Procter's poetry that do exist focus primarily on gender, arguing that the "range and formal inventiveness of this illuminatingly representative Victorian poet have remained largely unexplored."[10]

John_McCormack_Sings_Sir_Arthur_Sullivan's_"The_Lost_Chord"_1922

John McCormack Sings Sir Arthur Sullivan's "The Lost Chord" 1922

Recognition[]

In 1877 the demand for Procter's poems in England was more than for those of any living writer except Tennyson (Barry Cornwall, Autobiography, 98).[2]

Many of her poems were made into hymns,[24] or otherwise set to music. Among these was "The Lost Chord", which Arthur Sullivan set to music in 1877 – this song was the most commercially successful of the 1870s and 1880s in both Britain and the United States.[25]

An engraved portrait of Procter by Jeens appears in the 1866 edition of 'Legends and Lyrics,' and there is an oil-painting attributed to Emma Galiotti.[2]

Publications[]

Poetry[]

Novel[]

Short fiction[]

  • "The Haunted House," a short story co-written with Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, George Sala and Hesba Stretton).

Edited[]

  • The Victoria Regia: A volume of original contributions in poetry and prose. London: Emily Faithful, 1861.

Collected editions[]

  • Complete Works (with introduction by Charles Dickens). London: George Bell, 1909.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[27]

See also[]

Voices_of_the_Past,_by_Adelaide_Anne_Procter

Voices of the Past, by Adelaide Anne Procter

A_Lost_Chord,_by_Adelaide_Anne_Procter_1825_1864

A Lost Chord, by Adelaide Anne Procter 1825 1864

Judge_Not_-_Adelaide_Anne_Procter

Judge Not - Adelaide Anne Procter

References[]

  • Armstrong, Isobel. "A Music of Thine Own: Women's Poetry — An Expressive Tradition". In Victorian Women Poets: A Critical Reader. Ed. Angela Leighton. New Jersey: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. ISBN 0-631-19757-5.
  • Belloc, Bessie Rayner. In a Walled Garden. New York: Macmillan and Company, 1895. No ISBN.
  • Blair, Kirstie. John Keble in Context. London and New York: Anthem Press, 2004. ISBN 1-84331-147-X.
  • Chapman, Alison. Victorian Women Poets. Woodbridge, Suffolk, England: D. S. Brewer, 2003. ISBN 0-85991-787-8.
  • Dickens, Charles. Introduction. Legends and Lyrics Together with a Chaplet of Verses. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1866. Reprint, 1914.
  • Gray, F. Elizabeth. "Review of The Life and Work of Adelaide Procter: Poetry, Feminism and Fathers". Victorian Studies 42 (1999): 682–684. Accessed through Project Muse on 7 May 2009.
  • Gregory, Gill. "Adelaide Procter's 'A Legend of Provence': The Struggle for a Place". In Victorian Women Poets: A Critical Reader. Ed. Angela Leighton. New Jersey: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. ISBN 0-631-19757-5.
  • Gregory, Gill. The Life and Work of Adelaide Procter: Poetry, Feminism and Fathers. Aldershot, Hants., England: Ashgate, 1998. ISBN 1-84014-670-2.
  • Gregory, Gill. "Procter, Adelaide Anne (1825–1864)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (subscription only). September 2004. Accessed 7 May 2009.
  • Hickok, Kathleen, and Natalie Joy Woodall. "Adelaide Anne Procter." In An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Revised edition. Edited by Paul Schlueter and June Schlueter. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
  • Hoeckley, Cheri Larsen. "'Must Her Own Words Do All?': Domesticity, Catholicism, and Activism in Adelaide Anne Procter's Poems." In The Catholic Church and Unruly Women Writers: Critical Essays. Edited by Jeana DelRosso, Leigh Eicke, and Ana Kothe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
  •  Lee, Elizabeth (1896) "Procter, Adelaide Ann" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 46 London: Smith, Elder, p. 416 
  • Lennox, Patrick (1911). "Adelaide Anne Procter". The Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.  Accessed 7 May 2009.
  • Markovits, Stefanie. "North and South, East and West: Elizabeth Gaskell, the Crimean War, and the Condition of England." Nineteenth-Century Literature 59 (March 2005): 463–493. Accessed through JSTOR (subscription only) on 24 September 2009.
  • Mason, Emma. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. Devon: Northhcote House Publishers, 2006.
  • O'Gorman, Francis. Victorian Poetry: An annotated anthology. New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004. ISBN 0-631-23436-5.
  • Psomiades, Kathy Alexis. "'The Lady of Shalott' and the Critical Fortunes of Victorian Poetry". In The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Poetry. Edited by Joseph Bristow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-521-64680-4.
  • Scott, Derek B. "The Musical Soirée: Rational Amusement in the Home". The Victorian Web. 2004. Accessed 27 August 2009.
  • Taylor, Emily. Memories of some contemporary poets, with selections from their writings. London: Longmans, Green, and Company, 1868. No ISBN.

Notes[]

  1. ↑ John William Cousin, "Procter, Adelaide Ann," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: Dent / New York: Dutton, 1910, 309. Wikisource, Web, Feb. 21, 2018.
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 Lee, 416.
  3. ↑ Gregory (1998), 5.
  4. ↑ O'Gorman (2004), 314.
  5. ↑ Blair (2004), 128.
  6. ↑ Hickok and Woodall (1998), 519.
  7. ↑ Quoted in Gregory (1999), 5.
  8. ↑ Dickens (1866), 3.
  9. ↑ Gregory (1998), 13.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Gray (1999), 682.
  11. ↑ Gregory (1998), 1.
  12. ↑ Belloc (1895), 173.
  13. ↑ Taylor (1868), 163.
  14. ↑ Belloc (1895), 170.
  15. ↑ Understanding Poetry, 1938, quoted in Psomiades (2000), 37.
  16. ↑ Hoeckley (2007), 125.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Hickok and Woodall (1998), 520.
  18. ↑ Mason (2006), 81.
  19. ↑ Armstrong (1996), 251, 265.
  20. ↑ O'Gorman (2004), 320.
  21. ↑ Hoeckley (2007), 130; Mason (2006), 88.
  22. ↑ Blair (2004), 135.
  23. ↑ Gregory (1996), 89.
  24. ↑ Lennox (1911).
  25. ↑ Scott (2004).
  26. ↑ A House to Let (London: Chapman & Hall, 1903). Project Gutenberg, Web, Oct. 27, 2013.
  27. ↑ Search results = au:Adelaide Procter, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Oct. 27, 2013.

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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Procer, Adelaide Ann

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