H.C. Beeching

Rev. Henry Charles Beeching (15 May 1859 - 25 February 1919) was an English poet and clergyman.

Henry Charles Beeching (1859-1919), National Portrait Gallery. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Life

Overview

Beeching was born on 15 May 1859. He was educated at the City of London School and at Balliol College, Oxford. He took holy orders in 1882, and after 3 years in a Liverpool curacy he was for 15 years rector of Yattendon, Berkshire. From 1900 to 1903 he lectured on pastoral and liturgical theology at King’s College, London, and was chaplain of Lincoln’s Inn, where he became preacher in 1903. He became a canon of Westminster in 1902, and examining chaplain to the bishop of Carlisle in 1905.

Youth and education

Beeching was born 15 May 1859 at 16 Dorset Street, London. He was the 2nd son of James Plumer George Beeching, and came of a Sussex family of shipowners and bankers who had long held land at Bexhill. His mother was Harriet, daughter of William Skaife, of Knaresborough, whose family had lived for many generations near Pately Bridge, Yorkshire.

In 1875 he went to the City of London School, where he came under the influence of Dr. Edwin A. Abbott, for whom he always retained an affectionate regard.

In October 1878 he went up to Balliol College, Oxford, as an open exhibitioner, and, soon became part of a circle which included John William Mackail, J. St. Loe Strachey, (Sir) Clinton Dawkins, (Sir) Rennell Rodd, and (Sir) Sidney Lee. His enthusiasm for English literature, especially for English poetry, was stimulated by his Balliol friendships, and his own gift for writing verse was early apparent.

Bowyer Nichols (left), John William Mackail, and Beeching. Photo by Frederick Hollyer (1838-1933), circa 1882. From The Earthly Paradise: Arts and crafts by Wiliam Morris and his circle in Canadian collections, 1993. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

He contributed to an undergraduate periodical called Waifs and Strays, and in 1879 published, in conjunction with Mackail and J.B. Nichols, a small volume of poems entitled Mensae Secundae; this was followed later by Love in Idleness (1883) and Love's Looking-glass (1891), both written with the same collaborators.

He graduated with a B.A. in 1883.

Career

In 1882 Beeching was ordained a deacon, and became curate of St. Matthew’s, Mossley Hill, Liverpool, where he remained until 1885. In that year he accepted the living of Yattendon, a small village in Berkshire, which he held for 14 years.

He married in 1890 Mary, daughter of the Rev. A. J. Plow, and niece of Robert Bridges, afterwards poet laureate, and had 3 daughters.

He was able to devote much of his time to literary work, particularly to the study of the English poets. In 1895 he published his best-known volume of verse, Love in a Garden and Other Poems. In 1896 he began to contribute anonymously to the Cornhill Magazine, of which his friend St. Loe Strachey was then editor, Pages from a Private Diary; these were published in book-form, also anonymously, in 1898; the 2nd edition (1903) bore the pseudonym ‘Urbanus Sylvan’. In 1900 his edition of Milton was published by the Clarendon Press.

In 1900 Beeching gave up his work as a country clergyman, and became chaplain of Lincoln’s Inn and professor of pastoral theology at King’s College, London. 2 years later he was appointed canon of Westminster, a most congenial post for a man of his tastes. He was select preacher at Oxford in 1896-1897 and again in 1912-1913; at Cambridge in 1903, 1909, and 1912; and at Dublin in 1905. In 1906 he published Provincial Letters, and other papers, and in 1909 a life of Francis Atterbury. During this London period he also produced several volumes of sermons and lectures, including Religio Laici (1902), The Bible Doctrine of Atonement (1907), and William Shakespeare … a reply to Mr. George Greenwood, M.P. (1908). He also edited 2 volumes of sermons and lectures by his friend Alfred Ainger.

In 1911 Beeching was appointed dean of Norwich. He became keenly interested in the history and services of his cathedral, and took an active part in the life of the city.

Beeching was eminent both as churchman and man of letters. A man of wide sympathies and varied interests, he was beloved and successful alike as country rector, canon of Westminster, and dean of Norwich. As a preacher he showed learning and eloquence. He was a liberal churchman, but no controversialist, and he had a deep love for the ritual and liturgy of the Church of England. With his lovable personality, his charm of manner, and his gift of humour, Beeching was a man of many friends, one of whom called him ‘the wisest and wittiest of my Balliol contemporaries’.

His health began to fail in 1918, and on 25 February 1919 he died at Norwich from heart failure. His ashes were buried in Norwich Cathedral on 3 March.

Writing

Beeching will be best remembered as an essayist and critic of charm and distinction, with a prose style that reveals great delicacy of judgement, sure literary taste, and a rare vein of humor. Under the pseudonym of “Urbanus Sylvan” he published 2 successful volumes of essays, Pages from a Private Diary (1898) and Provincial Letters, and other papers (1906).

As a poet Beeching is best known for his share in 2 volumes — Love in Idleness (1883) and Love’s Looking Glass (1891) — which also contained poems by J.W. Mackail and J. Bowyer Nichols. His own poetry, though slender in volume, is marked by technical skill, by polished wit, and by the verbal dexterity which made his epigrams famous.

To him is attributed the popular epigram on Benjamin Jowett:

First come I; my name is Jowett.

There's no knowledge but I know it.

I am master of this college:

What I don't know isn't knowledge.

This is the opening verse of The Masque of B-ll—l (1880), a scurrilous undergraduate production in 40 verses satirizing Balliol figures. It was suppressed at the time; later research has given Beeching credit for 19 of the verses.

His works also include numerous volumes of sermons and essays on theological subjects.

Recognition

2 of Beeching's poems, "Prayers" and "Going Down Hill on a Bicycle (A Boy's Song)" were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

A colored drawing of Beeching, made by William Strang in 1908, was in the possession of Miss Phyllis Anne Beeching. A small pastel drawing by Arthur Batchelor belonged to Mrs. Beeching, and a drawing by Bowyer Nichols to Mrs. Guest-Williams, of Trowell Rectory, near Nottingham.

Publications

H.C. Beeching, In a Garden, and other poems, 1895. Courtesy Internet Archive.

Poetry

• Love in Idleness: A volume of poems (with J.W. Mackail & J.B.B. Nichols), London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1883.
• Love's Looking Glass: A volume of poems (with Mackail & Nichols). London: Percival, 1891.
• In a Gar­den, and other po­ems, London: John Lane / New York: Macmillan, 1895.
• St. Augustine at Ostia: Oxford sacred poem. London: John Lane, 1896.

Non-fiction

• Seven Sermons to Schoolboys. London: Methuen, 1894.
• Introduction to The Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist (edited by E.K. Chambers). (2 volumes), London: Lawrence & Bullen / New York Charles Scribner's Sons, 1896.
• Pages from a Private Diary, London: Smith, Elder, 1898.
• Conferences on Books and Men. (2 volumes), London: Smith, Elder, 1900. Volume I, Volume II.
• Religio laici : a series of studies addressed to laymen. London: Smith, Elder, 1902.
• The Grace of Episcopacy, and other sermons. London: James Nisbet, 1905.
• Provincial Letters and other Papers. London: Smith, Elder, 1906.
• The Bible doctrine of atonement: Six lectures given in Westminster Abbey. London: John Murray, 1907.
• George Borrow: A sermon preached in Norwich Cathedral on July 6, 1913. London: Jarrold & Sons, 1913.

On Shakespeare

• Introduction to William Shakespeare, The Sonnnets of Shakespeare. Boston & London: Ginn, 1904.
• The Religion of Shakespeare: The sonnets. 1907.
• William Shakespeare: Player, playmaker, and poet. London: John Murray, 1909.
• Shakespeare and the English Ideal. Norwich, UK: Public Library Committee, 1916.
• The Character of Shakespeare. London: British Academy / Humphrey Milford / Oxford University Press, 1917.

Translated

• The Epistle to the Hebrews: An experiment in conservative revision (by "Two Clerks": Beeching and Frederick Brooke Westcott]). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1912.

Edited

• A Paradise of English Poetry. London: Rivington, Perceval, 1893; New York: Macmillan, 1893.
• Lyra Sac­ra: A book of religious verse. London: Methuen, 1895.
• A Selection from the Poetry of Samuel Daniel and Michael Drayton. London: J.M. Dent, 1899.
• John Milton, Poetical Works. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900.
• Poems of Herrick. London & Edinburgh: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1910.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat..

Paradise of Eng. Poetry

• A Paradise of English Poetry was an 1893 anthology compiled by Beeching which included work by:
  

A.W. - Joseph Addison - Sir Francis Bacon - Richard Barnfield - Francis Beaumont - Thomas Lovell Beddoes - William Blake - Nicholas Breton - Emily Jane Brontë - William Browne - Robert Burton - George Gordon, Lord Byron - Thomas Campbell - Thomas Campion - Thomas Carew - George Chapman - Thomas Chatterton - Geoffrey Chaucer - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - William Collins - Henry Constable - Richard Corbet - Abraham Cowley - William Cowper - Richard Crashaw - Samuel Daniel - Sir William D'Avenant - Sir John Davies - Walter Davison - Thomas Dekker - John Donne - Michael Drayton - William Drummond - John Dryden - Ebenezer Elliott - Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex - Sir Richard Fanshawe - John Fletcher - Oliver Goldsmith - Thomas Gray - Robert Greene - Frances Greville - Fulke Greville - William Habington - Edward Herbert, Lord Herbert of Cherbury - George Herbert - Robert Herrick - Thomas Heywood - Thomas Hood - Samuel Johnson - Ebenezer Jones - Benjamin Jonson - John Keats - Henry King - Charles Lamb - Mary Lamb - Walter Savage Landor - Richard Lovelace - John Lylye - James Mabbe - Christopher Marlowe - Andrew Marvell - Jasper Mayne - John Milton - James Graham, Marquis of Montrose - Thomas Moore - Sir Thomas More - Thomas Nash - Edward Vere, Earl of Oxford - George Peele - Mary, Countess of Pembroke - Ambrose Philips - Katherine Philips - Alexander Pope - Matthew Prior - Sir Walter Ralegh - Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset - Sir Walter Scott - Sir Charles Sedley - William Shakespeare - Percy Bysshe Shelley - James Shirley - Sir Philip Sidney - John Skelton - Robert Southwell - Edmund Spenser - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey - James Thomson - Henry Vaughan - Edmund Waller - John Webster - George Wither - Charles Wolfe - William Wordsworth - Sir Henry Wotton - Sir Thomas Wyatt - Edward Young

Articles by Beeching

1. Richard Watson Dixon: Critical introduction

See also

Going down Hill on a Bicycle by Henry Charles BEECHING read by Various Full Audio Book

• List of British poets
• Timeline of British poetry

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Beeching, Henry Charles". Encyclopædia Britannica. 3 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 640-641. . Wikisource, Web, May 14, 2012.
•  Sprent, Frederick Puller (1927). Davis, H.W.C. & Wheeler, J.R.H.. ed. Dictionary of National Biography, 3rd supplement​. London: Smith, Elder. pp. 36-37. . Wikisource, Web, Oct. 25, 2024.

External links

Poems

• "Going Down Hill on a Bicycle (A Boy's Song)" and "Prayers" in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900
• "The Tree of Life" in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse
• Beeching in A Victorian Anthology: "A Summer Day," "To My Totem," "Knowledge after Death," "Prayers"
• 4 poems by Beeching: "Sick and sullen and sad the slow days go," "You came, the vernal equinox," "A Summer Day," "What is the world trying to say?"
• Henry Charles Beeching at Poetry Nook (3 poems)
• Henry Charles Beeching at PoemHunter (4 poems)
• Henry Charles Beeching at AllPoetry (5 poems)
• The Masque of B-ll--l at Representative Poetry Online

Books

• Works by H.C. Beeching at Project Gutenberg
• Henry Charles Beeching at Amazon.com

About

• Henry Charles Beeching 1859-1919 at Hymntime

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Dictionary of National Biography, 3rd supplement​ (edited by H.W.C. Davis & J.R.H. Weaver). London: Smith, Elder, 1927. Original article is at: Beeching, Henry Charles
 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.. Original article is at Beeching, Henry Charles