Caroline Bowles Southey

Caroline Bowles Southey (1788-1854), from The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles, 1881. Courtesy Internet Archive.

Caroline Anne Bowles Southey (December 6, 1786 - July 20, 1854), was an English poet, who married Poet Laureate Robert Southey.

Life

Overview

Daughter of a captain in the navy, she submitted a poem, Ellen Fitzarthur to Southey, which led to a friendship, and to a proposed joint poem on Robin Hood (not, however, carried out), and eventually to her becoming the poet's 2nd wife. She wrote various other works, including Chapters on Churchyards and Tales of the Factories.

Youth and education

Southey was born Caroline Anne Bowles at Lymington, Hampshire, on 7 October 1786, and baptized on 10 January 1787 in Lymington church (parish register).

Her father, Captain Charles Bowles of the East India Company, appears to have retired soon after her birth, and to have bought and settled at Buckland Cottage, a small, old-fashioned house enveloped in elms. Here she grew up with him, her mother, Anne (daughter of George Burrard, and sister of General Sir Harry Burrard, her maternal grandmother, and her great-grandmother.

Career

Her mother's death in 1816, which left Caroline alone in the world, was followed by loss of property through the dishonesty of a guardian. Fortunately her father had an adopted son, Colonel Bruce, then resident at Bushire, who, hearing of her misfortunes, insisted on settling an annuity of £150 upon her, and regretted that she would accept no more. She was thus enabled to preserve her cottage, which, but for a single short and sad episode, continued to be her home for life.

She was diminutive, and had suffered from small-pox; the portrait prefixed to the edition of her correspondence is, however, by no means unprepossessing.

While in apprehension of poverty she had resolved to support herself if possible by her pen, and had sent a manuscript poem to Robert Southey, encouraged by his kindness to Henry Kirke White. Southey wrote back to her: "You have the eye, the ear, and the heart of a poetess."

Southey thought well of the poem, and recommended it to John Murray, who also admired, but would not publish. It was eventually brought out anonymously by Longman under the title of Ellen Fitzarthur: A metrical tale (London, 1820, 8vo). Like most of her works, it is a simple tale whose strength is in its pathos.

The Widow's Tale, and other poems (1822, 12mo) marked an advance in poetic art. Southey, who had become warmly interested in his correspondent, met her for the 1st time in 1820, and proposed that she should assist in his projected poem of Robin Hood. Not much came of the partnership, owing to Southey's stress of occupation and Caroline's inability to master the rhymeless stanza of Thalaba, in which the poem was to be composed; a fragment, however, was eventually published after Southey's death (Robin Hood, with other fragments, London, 1847, 8vo).

She visited Southey at Keswick, and the visit was mutually agreeable, although, engrossed in his books, he delegated the office of escorting her about the country to Wordsworth. Solitary Hours (1826, 8vo), a mixture of prose and verse, succeeded.

Next came the work which has given Caroline Southey her chief literary reputation, Chapters on Churchyards, a series of tales originally published in Blackwood's Magazine, and issued in a complete form in 1829. Though very unpretending, these are frequently both powerful and pathetic.

In 1823 she anticipated Mrs. Norton's and Mrs. Browning's protests against the ill-treatment of workmen by her Tales of the Factories, powerful if somewhat exaggerated verse. In 1836 she published her longest and most ambitious poem, The Birthday, which led Henry Nelson Coleridge, in his celebrated article on the "Modern Nine" in the Quarterly Review for September 1840, to characterize her as "the Cowper of our modern poetesses."

Marriage

In June 1839, she took the most momentous step of her life in accepting the fast-failing Southey's offer of marriage. Their correspondence of 20 years, published by Edward Dowden in 1881, attests their entire congeniality; but Southey's state of health should have forbidden what might have been fitting under different circumstances.

Southey and Bowles were married in 1840. Southey became senile soon after, unable to read, write, or talk, and died in 1843. The hopeless decay of Southey's faculties became apparent within 3 months of the marriage, and rendered his wife's situation miserable.

Caroline is entitled to honor for her devotion; it is not, however, true, as was stated in an obituary notice in the Athenæum, that "she consented to unite herself to him with a sure prevision of the awful condition of mind to which he would shortly be reduced," the contrary having been proved by Edward Dowden from her own letters (Dennis, Robert Southey, 442).

Her stepchildren, with whom she was compelled to live, detested her (cf. Mrs. Bray, Autobiogr.) She is barely mentioned in Cuthbert Southey's edition of his father's correspondence — a book at which she refused so much as to look. With Mrs. Edith Warter, Southey's eldest daughter, and her husband, however, who did not live at Keswick, she was always on affectionate terms; and the valuable collection of Southey's correspondence, published by Warter in 1856, came from her hands.

Southey's death must have been as great a release to her as to himself — "the last three years have done upon me the work of twenty," she wrote to Lydia Sigourney. Cuthbert Southey, took control of his father's literary estate, with Caroline retaining only the right to publish Robin Hood.

She returned to her beloved Buckland, and wrote no more. Southey, while behaving with perfect justice towards his children, left her £2,000, but this was far from compensating for the loss of Colonel Bruce's annuity, forfeited by her marriage.

She died on 20 July 1854, and was buried at Lymington.

Writing

Bowles's gifts were rather those of a story-teller than of a poet, and her poetry is generally the better the nearer it approaches to prose. Her strength is in the expression of pathetic feeling, which she conveys effectively in prose or blank verse, but less so in lyric, which usually lacks musical impulse, and, like much feminine poetry, is over-fluent and deficient in concentration. Her descriptions, whether in prose or verse, frequently possess much beauty.

Neither in prose nor in verse is Caroline Southey strong enough to maintain a high place. She will probably be best remembered by her connection with Southey and by her share in the volume of his correspondence edited by Professor Dowden. His part is the more important, but Caroline's letters prove that she possessed more liveliness and satiric talent than might have been expected from the author of Chapters on Churchyards.

Critical introduction

by Alfred H. Miles

Mrs. Southey’s verse had a greater charm for her own generation than it can ever have again. There is a natural simplicity about it which gives it a certain affinity with the so-called “Lake school,” and which was much newer in her day than it is in ours. And yet, after the lapse of so many years, like flowers that have been preserved, her work still emits a sweet mild fragrance, and recalls a tender, sympathetic personality. One can scarcely read her general poems without feeling that they came from a true, loving heart, nor peruse the poems which with an almost morbid recurrence she wrote upon the subject of death, without feeling that she had a true sense of the sublime.

Faulty in form, she possessed a spontaneity which some masters of form never show, besides in some degree that magic touch which invests a subject with the nameless environment which for want of a better term we call atmosphere. This may not always be in evidence, nor obtain to a very large degree, but in such poems as “The Pauper’s Death-bed,” and “The Christian Mariner’s Hymn,” short as they are, there is a something conveyed beyond that which is expressed, which is incapable of definition, but which counts for much in poetry. She was the earliest of her sex to follow Wordsworth’s lead, if indeed she followed any lead at all, and had a far better idea of the difference between true and false sentiment than most of the women poets of her time.

Critical reputation

Her earlier work was anonymous, and may be fairly said to have attained its reputation on its merits. Southey, who was ever ready to help anyone who appealed to him, assisted her in the Quarterly, and Moir, the Delta of Blackwood, gave her high if not extravagant praise. The whirligig of time has reversed this, and the writer, who was called “the Cowper of poetesses,” and declared to be equal to Mrs. Hemans in her own day, is now denied all praise, and treated with but scant courtesy.

Recognition

A crown pension of £200 was conferred upon her in 1852.

Her poem "To Death" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

In popular culture

The BBC made a televised drama on the romance between Caroline Bowles and Robert Southey, The Fly and the Eagle.

Publications

Poetry

• Ellen Fitzarthur: A metrical tale, in five cantos. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1820.
• The Widow's Tale: A poem, in four parts. London: privately printed by W. Johnston, 1822.
• The Widow's Tale, and other poems. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees , Orme, and Brown, 1822.
• Solitary Hours . Edinburgh: William Blackwood / London: T. Cadell, 1826.
• Tales of the Factories. Edinburgh : William Blackwood, 1833.
• The Birth-day: A poem, in three parts: To which are added, Occasional verses. Edinburgh: William Blackwood / London: T. Cadell, 1836.
• Gems Selected from the Poems of Caroline Bowles. Boston: Light, 1836.
• Autumn Flowers, and other poems. Boston: Saxton, Peirce / New York: Saxton & Miles, 1844.
• Robin Hood: A fragment; With other fragments and poems (with Robert Southey). Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood, 1847.
• The Floral Wreath of Autumn Flowers. 4th edition, Detroit: Derby, Miller, 1848.
• Poetical Works. Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood, 1867.

Short fiction

• Chapters on Churchyards. (2 volumes), Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood, 1829. Volume I, Volume II.
• The Early Called, The Stoic, and The Lansbys of Lansby Hall. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, & Blanchard, 1836.
• Harmless Johnny; or, The poor outcast of reason (edited by Dora Greenwell). London: Strahan, 1866.

Non-fiction

• Olympia Morata: Her times, life and writings, arranged from contemporary and other authorities. London: Smith, Elder, 1834.

Juvenile

• Mornings with Mama; or, Dialogues on Scripture for young persons,from ten to fourteen years of age. Edinburgh: William Blackwood / London: T. Cadell, 1830.
• The Cat's Tail: Being the history of Childe Merlin. Edinburgh: William Blackwood / London: T. Cadell, 1831.

Collected editions

• Selected Literary Works: Prose and verse. Hartford, CT: S. Andrus, 1851.

Letters and journals

• Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles: To which are added: Correspondence with Shelley, and Southey's dreams (edited by Edward Dowden). Dublin: Hodges, Figgis / London: Longmans, Green, 1881.
• Papers of Caroline Bowles (1787 i.e. [1786]-1854) and Robert Southey (1774-1843) from the British Library, London. Marlborough, UK: Adam Matthews, 2001.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

The River - by Caroline Bowles Southey (Memorization Song)

See also

• List of British poets

References

• Virginia Blain, Caroline Bowles Southey, 1786-1854: the making of a woman writer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998)
•  Garnett, Richard (1898) "Southey, Caroline Anne" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 53 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 282-283  . Wikisource, Mar. 3, 2018.
• Dennis Low, The Literary Protégées of the Lake Poets (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006)
• Patrica Sibley, Caroline and Robert: a Laureate’s Romance (Isle of Wight: Hunnyhill Publications, 1997)

External links

Poems

• "To Death"
• from "The April Day"
• "The Young Gray Head"
• Caroline (Bowles) Southey in Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century: "The Primrose," "The Pauper's Death Bed," "The Christian Mariner's Hymn," "To a Dying Infant"
• Caroline Anne Bowles Southey at PoemHunter (7 poems)
• Caroline Anne Bowles Southey at AllPoetry (7 poems)
• Southey, Caroline Bowles at Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry

Books

• Caroline Bowles Southey at the Online Books Page
• Caroline Bowles Southey at Amazon.com

About

• Southey, Caroline Anne at Encyclopedia.com
• Caroline Bowles Southey at the University of Rochester
• Critical and Biographical Essay in Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century]

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: Southey, Caroline Anne