Robert Stephen Hawker

Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-1875) at 61. Photo by Richard Budd, 1864, from The Life and Letters of R.S. Hawker, by C.E. Myles. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker (3 December 1803 - 15 August 1875) was an English poet, Anglican priest, and antiquarian of Cornwall, and a reputed eccentric. He is best known as the writer of "The Song of the Western Men," which (under the name "Trelawney") is sung as the unofficial national anthem of Cornwall.

Life

Overview

Hawker was educated at Cheltenham and Oxford. He became parson of Morwenstow, a smuggling and wrecking community on the Cornish coast, where he exercised a reforming and beneficent, though extremely unconventional, influence until his death, shortly before which he was received into the Roman Catholic Church. He wrote some poems of great originality and charm, Records of the Western Shore (1832-36), and The Quest of the Sangraal (1863) among them, besides short poems, of which perhaps the best known is "Shall Trelawny Die?" which, based as it is on an old rhyme, deceived both Scott and Macaulay into thinking it an ancient fragment. He also published a collection of papers, Footprints of Former Men in Cornwall, 1870.

Youth

Hawker was born at Stoke Damerel, Devonshire, and baptised in its parish church, the eldest son of Jacob Stephen Hawker, then a medical man practising in and around Plymouth, but afterwards curate and vicar of Stratton, Cornwall. His mother was Jane Elizabeth, second daughter of Stephen Drewitt of Winchester, and later of Plymouth. His early education was under the Rev. Athanasius Laffer, head-master of Liskeard grammar school, and he was then articled to a solicitor, William Jacobson (W.H.K. Wright, Blue Friars, pp. 10, 66, 73), at Plymouth; but the work soon became distasteful and he was sent to Cheltenham grammar school.

Hawker as an undergraduate, 1825. Courtesy That's My Cornwall.

He matriculated at Pembroke College, Oxford, on 28 April 1823, at the age of 19, and on 6 November in the same year married, at Stratton, Charlotte Eliza Rawleigh, one of 4 daughters of Colonel Wrey I'Ans of Whitstone House, near that town (C.S. Gilbert, Cornwall, ii. 159–60). The bride was 41 and Hawker was not yet 20, but the marriage proved happy.

On his return to Oxford he moved to Magdalen Hall, where he earned a B.A. 14 May 1828, and an M.A. 25 May 1836, and made the acquaintance of Bishop Jeune and Bishop Jacobson (Burgon, Twelve Good Men, ii. 261, 273).

Hawker was ordained deacon in 1829 and priest in 1831. His first curacy was at North Tamerton in Cornwall. Early in 1834 he was offered by Bishop Phillpotts the vicarage of Stratton, but declined it in favour of his father, then curate there. He was instituted to the vicarage of Morwenstow 31 Dec. of the same year.

Vicar of Morenstowe

Morwenstow parish is situated on the north-east corner of Cornwall, and its rocky coast is the scene of many a shipwreck. The mariners who escaped found in Hawker a warm friend, and the bodies of more than 40 that perished were buried under his direction. The tithes are commuted at a pound a day, and there is a glebe of 72 acres. Hawker was, moreover, instituted in 1851, on the presentation of Lord Clinton, to the adjoining vicarage of Wellcombe. But he was imprudent in money matters, and for many years before his death suffered acutely from poverty.

To his parishioners he was known as Parson Hawker: a sturdy, strongly-built figure, with long fair hsir, blue eyes and an increasingly weather-beaten face. He dressed oddly and colourfully: often he woul wear a long purple coat or a yellow poncho he’d fashioned from a horse-blanket, with a fisherman’s blue jersey underneath; crimson gloves; brown or red trousers, and dark fisherman's boots. It was said that his only black clothes were his socks. He enjoyed hats, either broad-brimmed or a more flamboyant fez.

He kept a menagerie of pets: Robin, a domesticated stag which would sometimes pin vicarage callers to the ground; a coal-black pig named Gyp, which used to accompany him on his walks; several dogs; and at least 9 cats, which frequently formed part of his church congregation. (Though he is said to have excommunicated one cat for catching mice on Sunday).

In ecclesiastical affairs he did not spare himself. The church was restored in 1849. A new parsonage-house was secured through his exertions, and a central school established by him in the parish was largely maintained through his contributions. To add to his expenditure he became involved in a lawsuit, which he ultimately won, with the first Lord Churston over the ancient glebe and the well of St. John. His theological views were mainly those of the tractarians. As rural dean he set on foot in 1844 ruridecanal synods, and vindicated their existence in a pamphlet; he introduced about the same time a weekly offertory, which he advocated in a printed letter to Mr. John Walter of the Times.

He built a driftwood hut on the coast, where he would sit on fine days, smoking opium and writing poetry and letters. On bad days he would walk the beaches looking for drowned seamen washed ashore, and carry them back to the church for a Christian burial. He is said to have rescued 50 bodies.

In 1843 he revived the medieval tradition of the harvest festival, now part of church tradition: a thanksgiving service to which his parishioners would bring fruit and vegetables they had grown, which afterward he would distributee to the parish poor.

His wife, an accomplished lady, who published 2 translations from the German, died 2 February 1863, aged 81, and was buried outside the chancel of Morwenstow Church. On 21 December 1864 Hawker married at Trinity Church, Paddington, Pauline Anne Kuczynski, whose acquaintance he had made when she was a governess with a family resident in his parish. Her father, Vincent Francis Kuczynski, a Polish exile, who held an appointment in the Public Record Office, had married Mary Newton, an English woman. By this union Hawker had 3 daughters.

His health began to fail in 1873. In April 1875 the church sent a curate to take over Mowernstowe, and Hawker retired to Plymouth. He died at 9 Lockyer Street, Plymouth, on 15 August 1875, and was buried on 18 August. In his last hours he was formally received into the Roman catholic faith. The question how long he had been in unison with that creed was fiercely debated for some weeks in the religious newspapers. He was buried in Plymouth's Ford Park cemeteery. At his funeral the mourners wore purple instead of black.

Writing

Hawker's chief poetical pieces were: 1. ‘Tendrils by Reuben,’ Cheltenham, 1821. 2. ‘Pompeii,’ a prize poem, 1827, and frequently republished; Sir Francis Doyle correctly points out (Reminiscences, p. 98) that he had made "considerable use" of Macaulay's prize poem on the same subject. 3. ‘Records of the Western Shore,’ 1832 and 1836. 4. ‘Ecclesia,’ 1840 and 1841. 5. ‘Reeds Shaken with the Wind,’ 1843; second cluster, 1844; a volume of poems mostly religious. 6. ‘Echoes from Old Cornwall,’ 1846. 7. ‘The Quest of the Sangraal. Chant the First,’ Exeter, 1864. This was the best of his compositions. It was composed in 1863 in his hut, "a rocky excavation overlooking the Severn Sea." 8. Cornish Ballads and other poems, including a second edition of the “Quest of the Sangraal,”’ 1869, and again in 1884.

He contributed many poems and essays in prose to periodicals; the titles of most of them are printed in the Bibliotheca Cornubiensis.

"The Song of the Western Men"

Hawker's ballads, direct and simple in style, were composed in the true spirit of antiquity. That on "Trelawny," the most famous of all his compositions, was, according to his own account, suggested by the chorus, which he professed to regard as genuinely old:

And shall Trelawny die,

Here's twenty thousand Cornish men

Will see the reason why.

But further evidence of the antiquity of these lines is wanting.

The ballad was composed in Sir Beville's Walk in Stowe Wood, Morwenstow, in 1825, and was printed anonymously in the Royal Devonport Telegraph and Plymouth Chronicle on 2 September 1826, pt. iv. It attracted the notice of Davies Gilbert, who reprinted it at his private press at Eastbourne, and procured its insertion in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1827, pt. ii. p. 409. Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens (in Household Words, 30 Oct. 1852) were among those who were deceived into the belief that it was an ancient ballad, but Dickens at a later date (20 November 1852) assigned the authorship to Hawker.

Recognition

Plaque to Hawker in the ruined Charles Church, Plymouth. Photo by Smalljim. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

While at Oxford he won the Newdigate Prize in 1827 for a poem on Pompeii.

His poetical works, "now first collected and arranged with a Prefatory Notice by J.G. Godwin," appeared in 1879. Several of his prose articles on the legends of Cornwall and the traits of its inhabitants were embodied in a volume titled Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall, 1870.

His driftwood hut, known as Hawker's Hut, is now a property of the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty.

2 of his poems, "King Arthur's Waes-hael" and "Are they not all Ministering Spirits?", were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

Biographies

Shortly after Hawker's death Rev. F.G. Lee, D.C.L., printed privately some commemorative verses, and in 1876 he issued a volume of Memorials of the Late Rev. R.S. Hawker, which was the expansion of an article he had written for the Morning Post, 8 September 1875. A second life, published in 1875 by the Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, was subjected to very severe criticism in the Athenæum of 26 March 1876. The result was the withdrawal of the volume and the appearance of a "new and revised edition." This in its turn was adversely criticised in the same review for 17 June 1876. 30 copies of these critical notices were struck off for private circulation in 1876, signed with the initials W.M., i.e. William Maskell, a friend and neighbor of Hawker. Subsequent editions of Baring-Gould's Memoir came out in 1876, 1886, and 1899.

In popular culture

His character is delineated as Canon Tremaine in Mortimer Collins's novel of Sweet and Twenty.

Publications

Poetry

• Tendrils. Cheltenham, UK: Hatchard & Son, 1821.
• Pompeii: A prize poem, recited in the Theatre, Oxford, June the twenty-seventh, M. DCCC. XXVII. Oxford, UK: D.A. Talboys, 1827.
• Records of the Western Shore. Oxford, UK: D.A. Talboys, 1832.
• Poems. Stratton, UK: J. Roberts, 1836.
• Ecclesia: A volume of poems. Oxford, UK: Coombe, 1840.
• A welcome to the Prince Albert: Submitted to the Queen, on the approach of Her Majesty's marriage. Oxford, UK: 1840.
• The Poor Man and his Parish Church. London: Edward Nettleton, 1843.
• Reeds Shaken with the Wind. London: 1843
  • Reeds Shaken with the Wind: The second cluster. Derby, UK: Henry Mozley / London: James Burns, 1844.
• Echoes from Old Cornwall. London: J. Masters, 1846.
• The Quest of the Sangraal: Chant the first Exeter: privately printed, 1864.
• The Cornish Ballads, and other poems. Oxford, UK, and London: J. Parker, 1869.
  • new edition (edited and introduction by Charles Edward Byles). London & New York: John Lane, 1904.
  • facsimile of the 1869 edition. Delmar, NY: Scholar's Facsimiles & Reprints, 1994.
• Poetical Works (edited by J.G. Godwin). London: C. Kegan Paul, 1879.
• Poetical Works (edited by Alfred Wallis). London: C. Kegan Paul, 1879; London & New York: John Lane, 1899.
• Twenty Poems (edited by John Drinkwater). Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell, 1925.
• Selected Poems: Robert Stephen Hawker (edited by Cecil Woolf). London: Cecil Woolf, 1975.
• King Arthur's Waes-hael. San Francisco, CA: Bulnettle Press, 1994.

Non-fiction

• Footprints of Former Men in far Cornwall. London: John Russell Smith, 1870; London: Westaway Books, 1948.
• Prose Works (edited by John G. Godwin). Edinburgh & London: William Blackwood, 1893.
• Hawker of Morwenstow. London: Ernest Benn, 1926.

Letters

• "A Letter to a Friend: Containing some matters relating to the Church. London: Royston & Brown, 1857.
• Charles Edward Byles, Life and Letters of R.S. Hawker (sometime Vicar of Morwenstow). London & New York: John Lane, 1905.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

Trelawny - The Song of the Western Men

• List of British poets

References

•  Courtney, William Prideaux (1891) "Hawker, Robert Stephen" in Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 25 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 202-203  . Wikisource, Web, Feb. 11, 2017.
• Pierre Brendon, Hawker of Morwenstow. New York: Random House, 2002.
• A. Hale, "The Land Near the Dark Cornish Sea", Journal for the Academic Study of Magic 2 (2004), 206–225.
• Jeremy Seal, The Wreck at Sharpnose Point. London: Picador, 2003.
• H.R. Smallcome, "Passon" Hawker of Morwenstow. Plymouth: privately published, 1959.

External links

Poems

• Hawker in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900: "King Arthur's Waes-hael", "Are they not all Ministering Spirits?"
• Hawker in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse: "Aishah Shechinah," from "The Quest of the Sangraal"
• Robert Stephen Hawker at PoemHunter (2 poems)
• "Four Cornish Songs"
• Selected Poetry of Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-1875) (6 poems) at Representative Poetry Online.
• Hawker in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "The Song of the Western Men," "Mawgan of Meluach," "Featherstone's Doom," "Pater Vester Pascit Illa," "The Silent Tower of Bottreau," "To Alfred Tennyson"

Books

• Various texts by Hawker, Project Canterbury
• Robert Stephen Hawker at Amazon.com

About

• Hawker, Robert Stephen in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
• Robert Stephen Hawker in the Catholic Encyclopedia
• Reverend Hawker at That's My Cornwall
• Reverend Hawker, of Morwenstow Church at Cornwall Calling
• Robert Stephen Hawker Official website: his life and writings

Etc.

• Hawker Society

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: Hawker, Robert Stephen