James Thomson (B.V.)

This article is about the 19th-century Scottish poet. For the 18th-century Scottish poet, see James Thomson (poet).

James Thomson (November 23, 1834 - June 3, 1882), who wrote under the pseudonym Bysshe Vanolis, was a Victorian-era Scottish poet famous primarily for his 1874 long poem The City of Dreadful Night .

James Thompson (1834-1882), from Selections from Original Contributions by James Thomson to 'Cope's Tobacco Plant', 1889. Courtesy Internet Archive.

Life

Overview

Thomson, born at Port Glasgow and brought up in the Royal Caledonian Asylum, was for some years an army teacher, but was dismissed for a breach of discipline. He became associated with Charles Bradlaugh, the free-thought protagonist, who introduced him to the conductors of various secularist publications. His best known poem is The City of Dreadful Night, deeply pessimistic. Others are Vane's Story and Weddah and Omel-Bonain. His views resulted in depression, which led to dipsomania, and he died in poverty and misery. His work has a certain gloomy power which renders it distinctly noteworthy.

Youth and education

Thomson was born at Port Glasgow, Renfrewshire, the son of James Thomson, an officer in the merchant service, by his wife, Sarah (Kennedy), a deeply religious Irvingite.

In 1840 the father became paralyzed, and 2 years later the mother died. The boy, now practically orphaned, was educated at the Royal Caledonian Asylum.

In 1850 he went to the model school, Military Asylum, Chelsea, to qualify as army schoolmaster, and a year later was sent to Ballincollig, near Cork, as assistant teacher. Here commenced his friendship with Charles Bradlaugh. Here, too, he won the love of a beautiful young girl, Matilda Weller, whose sudden death in 1853, the heaviest calamity of his life, was the cause of much of his later dejection.

Career

James Thomson (B.V.) from A Voice from the Nile, and other poems (1884). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

From 7 August 1854 Thomson served as schoolmaster in Devonshire, Dublin, Aldershot, Jersey, and Portsmouth, until, in company with some fellow-teachers, he was discharged from the army for a trifling breach of discipline, on 30 October 1862. During those years he had made some good friends, seen not a little of nature and open-air life, and done a vast amount of self-imposed study in English, French, German, and Italian literature. He had also written a good deal of poetry, some of which was published in Tait's Edinburgh Magazine.

By the friendly aid of Bradlaugh, work was now found for Thomson as a clerk and journalist. Under the signature "B.V." or "Bysshe Vanolis" (in memory of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Novalis) he wrote frequently in the National Reformer, and took an active part in the propaganda of freethought; and thus his poetical genius became known to secularist readers and to a few discerning critics like William Michael Rossetti. But a fatal weakness, inherited or self-induced, marred his best efforts. He became more and more subject to periodic attacks of dipsomania, a veritable disease in his case, aggravated by his poverty, loneliness, insomnia, and deeply pessimistic temperament.

From 1866 until his death, with the exception of a few months in Colorado in 1872 as agent of a mining company, and a visit to Spain as war correspondent in 1873, his home was a 1-roomed lodging, initially in the Pimlico district, afterwards near Gower Street; and thus the sad and sombre elements of London life were woven into the imagery of his poems. Under these circumstances he contributed to the National Reformer in March-May 1874 his "City of Dreadful Night," which brought him the appreciation of George Eliot, George Meredith, Philip Bourke Marston, and other distinguished authors.

After 1875, owing to an estrangement which had arisen between himself and Bradlaugh, Thomson ceased to write for the National Reformer, and transferred his services to the Secularist and Cope's Tobacco Plant. He had made a friend of Bertram Dobell, by whose help he at length obtained publication for his debut collection, The City of Dreadful Night, with some other poems, in 1880, followed a few months later by a 2nd volume of verse, and by a volume of essays in 1881.

During 1881-2 he spent some happy weeks at a friend's house near Leicester, but this revival of hope and poetic impulse proved illusory. After a period of homeless wandering in London, during which he abandoned himself to drink and despair, he died on 3 June 1882 in University College Hospital, and was buried without any religious ceremony in Highgate cemetery.

Writing

The striking contrast in "B.V.'s" character — a courageous, genial spirit, coupled with an intolerable melancholia; spiritual aspiration with realistic grasp of fact; ardent zeal for democracy and freethought with stubborn disbelief in human progress — is clearly marked in his writings, which are lit up here and there with flashes of brilliant joyousness, but blackly pessimistic in the main. His masterpiece is the "City of Dreadful Night," a great poem, of massive structure and profound symbolism; next to this are "Vane's Story," an autobiographic fantasia, and the oriental narrative, "Weddah and Om-el-Bonain."

Many of the lyrics, grave or gay, are poignantly beautiful, and the prose essays, satires, criticisms, and translations have great qualities that deserve to be better known. Shelley, Dante, Heine, and Leopardi were his chief literary models; his mature style, in its stern conciseness, is less Shelleyan than Dantesque.

His chief works are: 1. 'The City of Dreadful Night, and other Poems,' 1880; 2nd edit. 1888; American edit. 1892. 2. 'Vane's Story, Weddah and Om-el-Bonain, and other Poems,' 1881. 3. 'Essays and Phantasies,' 1881. 4. 'A Voice from the Nile, and other Poems,' 1884. 5. 'Satires and Profanities,' 1884. 6. 'Poems, Essays, and Fragments,' 1892. Collective editions: 'Poetical Works,' 2 vols. 1895; Biographical and Critical Studies, 1st vol. of Prose Works, 1896.

Critical introduction

by Philip Bourke Marston

James Thomson, though his works were few and his death comparatively early, still ranks among the most remarkable poets of this century. Most of the poets of our time have flirted with pessimism, but through their beautifully expressed sorrow we cannot help seeing that on the whole they are less sad than they seem, or that, like Matthew Arnold, they have laid hold of a stern kind of philosophic consolation. It was reserved for Thomson to write the real poem of despair; it was for him to say the ultimate word about melancholia: for, of course, it is the result of that disorder which is depicted in The City of Dreadful Night. It was for him to gauge its horrible shapes, to understand its revelations of darkness, as Shelley and others have understood revelations of light.

The City of Dreadful Night. Courtesy Psychogeographic Review.

As soon as we have read the opening pages of The City of Dreadful Night, we feel transported to a land of infinite tragedy. It has been contended that because life itself is so tragic, such poems as Thomson’s are worse than needless; but the true reason for the existence of this particular poem is given by its author in the following lines:—

  ‘Yes, here and there some weary wanderer
  In that same city of tremendous night,
Will understand the speech, and feel a stir
  Of fellowship in all-disastrous fight;
“I suffer mute and lonely, yet another
Uplifts his voice to let me know a brother
  Travels the same wild paths though out of sight.”’

Happily all men have not walked in Thomson’s City of Despair, but too many have done so, and they must feel a bitter kind of comfort, such comfort as comes of tears, in having all its horrors so faithfully and sympathetically recorded.

In the gloomy delineation of life Thomson has had of course many predecessors, but perhaps none of them have equalled him in the intense spirit of desolation revealed in The City of Dreadful Night, not only in direct utterance, but in imagery large and terribly majestic, and in the thorough keeping of the illustrations of the poem with its general sentiment. The colossal imagination of both idea and symbol show the influence of no other writer. Equally graphic and equally earnest, though in a distinctly different vein, are 2 poems in the same volume called "Sunday at Hampstead" and "Sunday up the River." They are genuine idyls of the people, yet without any trace of vulgarity. They are charged with brightness and healthy joy in living, as fully as the leading poem of the book is fraught with darkness and despair.

In these days of poetic schools, to some one of which a man must generally be relegated, if his work is to be considered at all, there is something remarkable in the solitariness of this poet, who can be classed in no poetic fraternity. It is not likely that The City of Dreadful Night, through the awful blackness of which no ray of light penetrates, will ever be a popular poem, but amid the uncertainties of modern speculation, the hesitating lights which still too often discover no sure track, the poem will stand out as a monument of solemn and uncompromising gloom. Intense sincerity, joined to a vivid imagination, constitute Thomson’s claims to be remembered. Whether he speaks to us from the fastnesses of his Dreadful City, or in a happier mood breaks into snatches of song as he drifts down stream in his boat, one feels brought in contact with a strong personal individuality. This strong individuality, whether expressing itself in life or poetry, is not welcome to all persons, but those on whom it seizes find in it a fascination which it is difficult for any other quality to substitute.

Recognition

In 1889, 4 years after Thomson's death, Henry Stephens Salt wrote his first major biography, The Life of James Thomson (B.V.).

Portraits of Thomson appear in A Voice from the Nile, 1884, in the Life of Thomson by Salt, 1889, and in the Poetical Works, 1895.

4 of his poems ("In the Train," "Sunday up the River," "Gifts," and "The Vine") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

Publications

Poetry

• Doric Lays and Lyrics. Edinburgh: Seaton & Mackenzie, 1870.
• The Captive Chief: A tale of Flodden Field, and other poems. Edinburgh: Ballantyne & Co., 1871.
• The City of Dreadful Night, and other poems. London: Reeves & Turner, 1880.
• Vane's Story, Weddah and Om-el-Bonain, and other poems. London: Reeves & Turner, 1881.
• Shelley: A poem; with other writings relating to Shelley. London: C. Whittingham / Chiswick Press, 1884.
• A Voice from the Nile, and other poems. London: Reeves & Turner, 1884.
• Poetical Works. London: Reeves & Turner / Bertram Dobell, 1895. Volume I, Volume II.

Short fiction

• The Story of a Famous Old Jewish Firm, and other pieces in prose and rime. London: A. Heywood / J. Heywood, 1883.

Non-fiction

• Essays and phantasies. London: Reeves & Turner, 1881.
• Satires and Profanities. London: Progressive Publishing, 1884.
• Biographical and Critical Studies. London: Reeves & Turner, 1896.
• Walt Whitman: The man and the poet (edited with introduction by Bertram Dobell). London: B. Dobell, 1910.

Collected editions

• Poems, Essays, and Fragments (edited by J.M. Robertson). London: B. Dobell, 1892; London: A. & H. Bradlaugh / Bonner. UK: Reeves & Turner, 1892.
• Selections from original contributions by James Thomson to "Cope's Tobacco Plant". Liverpool, UK: Cope's Tobacco Plant, 1889.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

City of Dreadful Night by James Thomson 1 10

See also

• List of British poets

References

•  Salt, Henry Stephens (1898) "Thomson, James (1834-1882)" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 56 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 257-257  . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 6, 2017.

External links

Poems

• James Thomson 1834-1882 at the Poetry Foundation
• Thomson, James (1834-1882) (2 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Thomson in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "Melencolia," "Life's Hebe," from "He Heard Her Sing"
• Thomson in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900: "In the Train," "Sunday up the River," "Gifts," "The Vine"
• Extracts from The City of Dreadful Night
• "City of Dreadul Night" at Poetry Nook (25 excerpts)
• The James Thomson Poetry Works at the Vasthead.
• James B.V. Thomson at PoemHunter (43 poems)

Books

• James Thomson BV at Amazon.com

About

• James Thomson 1834-1882 in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• James Thomson 1834-1882 at Writing Scotland
• James Thomson in the Columbia Encyclopedia.
• "The City of Dreadful Night at Psychogeographic Review
• Essay on The City of Dreadful Night

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: Thomson, James (1834-1882)