T.E. Brown

T.E. Brown (1830-1897). Photo by Emery Walker Photo, from Selected Poems of T.E. Brown, London: Macmillan, 1908. Courtesy Intrnet Archive.

Thomas Edward Brown
Born	5 May 1830 Douglas, Isle of Man
Died	29 October 1897 (aged 67)
Nationality	Manx
Occupation	academic, theologian

Thomas Edward Brown (5 May 1830 - 29 October 1897) was a Manx poet, scholar and theologian, considered the Manx National Poet.

Life

Overview

Brown was born at Douglas, Isle of Man, the son of a clergyman, and educated there and at Oxford. He entered the Church and held various scholastic appointments, including a mastership at Clifton. His later years were spent in his native island. He had a true lyrical gift, and much of his poetry was written in Manx dialect. His poems include Fo'c'sle Yarns (1881), The Doctor (1887), The Manx Witch (1889), and Old John (1893). He was also an admirable letter-writer, and 2 volumes of his letters have been published.

Youth

Brown was born at Douglas, Isle of Man. His father, Rev. Robert Brown, held the living of St Matthew's — a homely church in a poor district. His mother came of Scottish parentage, though born in the island. Thomas, the 6th of 10 children, was 2 years old when the family moved to Kirk Braddan vicarage, a short distance from Douglas, where his father shared with the parish schoolmaster in tutoring the clever boy until, at the age of 15, he was entered at King William's College, where his abilities soon declared themselves.

He proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, where his position (as a servitor) cost him much humiliation, which he remembered to the end of his life. He won a double first, however, and was elected a fellow of Oriel in April 1854, Dean Gaisford having refused to promote him to a senior studentship of his own college, on the ground that no servitor had ever before attained to that honour. Although at that time an Oriel fellowship conferred a deserved distinction, Brown never took kindly to the life, but, after a few terms of private pupils, returned to the Isle of Man as vice-principal of his old school.

Career

He had been ordained deacon, but did not proceed to priest's orders for many years. In 1857 he married his cousin, Miss Stowell, daughter of Dr Stowell of Ramsey, and soon afterwards left the island once more to become headmaster of the Crypt school, Gloucester — a position which in no long time he found intolerable.

From Gloucester he was summoned by Rev. John Percival (afterwards bishop of Hereford), who had recently been appointed to the struggling young foundation of Clifton College, which he soon raised to be one of the great public schools. Percival wanted a master for the modern side, and made an appointment to meet Brown at Oxford; "and there," he writes, "as chance would have it, I met him standing at the corner of St Mary's Entry, in a somewhat Johnsonian attitude, four-square, his hands deep in his pockets to keep himself still, and looking decidedly volcanic. We very soon came to terms, and I left him there under promise to come to Clifton as my colleague at the beginning of the following term."

At Clifton Brown remained from September 1863 to July 1892, when he retired — to the great regret of boys and masters alike, who had long since come to regard "T.E.B.'s" genius, and even his eccentricities, with a peculiar pride — to spend the rest of his days upon the island he had worshipped from childhood and often celebrated in song.

Brown in old age. Courtesy Isle-of-Man.com.

His familiar letters (edited in 2 volumes by an old friend, S.T. Irwin, in 1900) bear witness to the zest he carried back to his native country, although his thoughts often reverted to Clifton.

In October 1897 he returned to the school on a visit. He was the guest of one of the house-masters, and on Friday evening, 29th October, he gave an address to the boys of the house. He had spoken for some minutes with his usual vivacity, when his voice grew thick and he was seen to stagger. He died in less than 2 hours.

Writing

His poem "Betsy Lee" appeared in Macmillan's Magazine (April and May 1873), and was published separately in the same year. It was included in Fo'c's'le Yarns (1881), which reached a 2nd edition in 1889. This volume included at least 3 other notable poems — "Tommy Big-eyes," "Christmas Rose," and "Captain Tom and Captain Hugh." It was followed by The Doctor, and other poems (1887), The Manx Witch, and other poems (1889), and Old John, and other Poems — a volume mainly lyrical (1893).

Since his death all these and a few additional lyrics and fragments have been published in 1 volume by Macmillan under the title of The Collected Poems of T.E. Brown (1900).

Brown's more important poems are narrative, and written in the Manx dialect, with a free use of pauses, and sometimes with daring irregularity of rhythm. A rugged tenderness is their most characteristic note; but the emotion, while almost equally explosive in mirth and in tears, remains an educated emotion, disciplined by a scholar's sense of language. They breathe the fervour of an island patriotism (humorously aware of its limits) and of a simple natural piety. In his lyrics he is happiest when yoking 1 or the other of these emotions to serve a philosophy of life, often audacious, but always genial.

Critical introduction

by George A. Macmillan

The volume and range of Brown’s poetry is so great that it is hard to do it justice.... In the illuminating essay prefixed by his friend Mr. H.F. Brown to the selection in the Golden Treasury Series it is well said that "in his spiritual moods Brown is constantly reminding us of George Herbert, Sir Thomas Browne, Wordsworth, Blake, yet it is one of the signatures of his genuineness as a poet that the note is never identical; it is always the note of Brown himself, in harmony — yes, but not in unison." That is eminently true of his lyrical and reflective poems, but these after all are small in bulk compared to the Fo’c’s’le Yarns and other narrative poems, mainly in the Manx dialect, with which he first made his reputation. These are entirely his own and give him a distinctive place among our national poets.

The narrator in nearly all the tales is a fisherman, Tom Baynes, and many of the same characters recur. Brown used to say that he was himself Tom Baynes, and it is evident enough that through his lips, and in his racy speech, the poet was constantly giving utterance to his own ideas, though we may also detect the same unconsciously self-revealing note in his “Pazon Gale” (partly drawn from his own father) and in Doctor Bell. These two portraits from The Doctor are surely characteristic of Brown himself and of his attitude to his fellow men.

  “Man to man—aye, that ’s your size,
That ’s the thing that ’ll make you wise
That ’s the plan that ’ll carry the day—
Lovin’ is understandin’—eh?
Lovin’ is understandin’. Well,
He’d a lovin’ ould heart, had Docthor Bell.”

and

  “The Pazon? Yes! aw, yes! well, maybe—
Aw, innocent! innocent as a baby,
And good and true; but, for all, a man
Is a man, and I don’t know will you understan’,
But you know there ’s people’s goin’ that good
They haven’t a smell for the steam of the blood
That ’s in a man; or, if they have,
They houlds their noses, and makes belave
They hav’n’. But the Pazon—no!
True and kind; and the ebb and the flow
Of all men’s hearts went through and through him—
The sweet ould man, if you’d only knew him!”

This note of human sympathy runs through all these tales of the tragedies and humours of love, and amid the almost boisterous flow of the narrative breaks out now and again into passages of the utmost tenderness. As to the manner of telling, with its rapid twists and turns, its constant asides, its scraps of dialogue, the reader who would appreciate it must let himself go as the writer does, and will then be amply rewarded. To some the dialect will always be a bar, but there is no doubt that it adds to the raciness and dramatic force of the impression. At any rate, for those impatient of dialect the two touching stories of Mary Quayle and Bella Gorry, told in ordinary English, will reveal something of the poet’s narrative gift.

Even in the tales there are many indications of the poet’s sympathy not only with man, but with Nature in all her moods, and of his faith, amid all questionings, in the Divine Love which controls the universe. These feelings, however, find more definite expression in the lyrics, of which some examples follow, while it is all but impossible here to give extracts from the narratives which would really do them justice.

As to the lyrics, on the deeper theme of man’s relation to his Creator light is thrown by the remarkable dialogue entitled Dartmoor, in which the boldness of treatment does not mar its essential reverence. In "Aber Stations" we have the prolonged heart’s cry of a father who has lost a little son, ending on a note of pious resignation. In Old John is given a charming portrait of an old Scotchman, touched with special sympathy by the fact that the writer "also had a root in Scottish ground" (Brown’s mother was Scotch), and following it comes a companion portrait of a Manxman, Chalse A. Killey, full of tenderness and humour. In the delightful "Epistola ad Dakyns" we are told of "the three places" which had a special hold on the poet’s heart, Clifton, Derwentwater, and his beloved Isle of Man. These, and the exquisite Lynton Verses, are, alas! too long to quote, though I would fain have found room for the Symphony which closes the last-named series; but no one who wishes to appreciate Brown’s genius should forgo the pleasure of reading these and many more. Of the shorter lyrics I have done my best to give typical examples.

The poems as a whole reveal a man of strong personality, which found its readiest expression in poetry, for he seems to have been reserved in ordinary intercourse. Thus we are told by H. F. Brown that in his twenty-eight years at Clifton he left “a deep imprint on the school, but the inner man was withdrawn into the sacred recesses of his family affections, his long and solitary musings on the downs, and the steady accumulations of his poems, about which I believe he seldom spoke, though the calm and assurance with which he forged ahead clearly indicate that in literature lay his true life’s work.” He was eminently a scholar, with a deep love of the classics, and especially of Greek ("Ah, sir," he said once, "that Greek stuff penetrates"), and this is shown in the careful finish of many of his lyrics.

It was in his beloved island that he spent the last five years of his life, but it was perhaps a happy fate which brought it to a sudden close when on October 29, 1897, he was in the act of delivering one of those stimulating addresses to the boys at Clifton which his old colleagues and pupils so vividly remember. For fuller estimates of Brown’s character and genius the reader is referred to W.E. Henley’s Introduction to the Complete Poems, and to Mr. Horatio Brown’s preface to the Golden Treasury selections.

Recognition

4 of his poems ("Dora", "Jessie", "Salve!", and "My Garden") were included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

A bronze statue of T.E. Brown by Amanda Barton was erected in 1998 at the top of Prospect Hill, Douglas, Isle of Man.

Publications

Poetry

• Betsy Lee: A fo'c'sle yarn (published anonymously). London: Macmillan, 1873.
• Fo'c'sle Yarns: Including Betsy Lee, and other poems. London: Macmillan, 1881.
• The Doctor, and other poems. Swan Sonnenschein and Co., 1887.
• The Manx Witch, and other poems. Macmillan, 1889.
• Kitty of the Sherrah Vein / The Schoolmasters. London: S. Sonnenschein, 1891.
• Old John, and other poems. London & New York: Macmillan, 1893.
• The Collected Poems (with introduction by W.E. Henley). Macmillan, 1900.
• Selected Poems (with introduction by H.F.Brown). Macmillan (Golden Treasury Series), 1908. (reprinted 1908, 1912, 1915, 1919, 1922 & 1930 - this collection does not include Fo'c'sle Yarns)
• Thomas Edward Brown (23 poems). London: Ernest Benn, 1931.

Letters

• Letters of T.E. Brown, author of 'Fo'c'sle Yarns]. Westminster: A Constable, 1900. Volume I, Volume II.

Etc.

Dora Thomas Edward Brown Audiobook Short Poetry

• The Manx Society published a T.E.Brown Calendar containing a quote for each day of the year, in 1913 (reprinted 1927).

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy Isle-of-Man.com.

See also

• List of British poets

References

•  Quiller-Couch, Arthur (1911). "Brown, Thomas Edward". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 662. 

External links

Poems

• Thomas Edward Brown in the Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900: "Dora", "Jessie", "Salve!", and "My Garden".
• Thomas Edward Brown in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse: Pain, Disguises, Land, Ho!, Specula
• Selected Poetry of Thomas Edward Brown (1830-1897) (5 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Brown in The English Poets: An anthology: "Braddan Vicarage," "Scarlett Rocks," "Clifton," "The Intercepted Salute," Bach's Fugues (from Tommy Big-Eyes)
  • Extract from Clevedon Verses: Norton Wood (Dora's Birthday), Poihmation: For J.P., Boccaccio, "O God, to Thee I yield," My Garden, Specula
• Thomas Edward Brown at PoemHunter (15 poems)
• Thomas Edward Brown at Poetry Nook (143 poems)
• Collected Poems of T.E. Brown, online

About

• Thomas Edward Brown 1830-1897 at Isle-of-Man.com.
• Thomas Edward Brown at the Manx National Heritage Library.
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at "Brown, Thomas Edward".