Thomas Pringle

32Thomas Pringle (5 January 1789 - 5 December 1834) was a Scottish poet, prose author, and abolitionist, often called the father of South African poetry.

Thomas Pringle 1789-1834). Engraving by William Finden (1757-1852). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Life

Overview

Pringle was born in Roxburghshire, studied at Edinburgh, and became known to Scott, by whose influence he obtained a grant of land in South Africa – to which he, with his father and brothers, emigrated. He took to literary work in Cape Town, and conducted 2 papers, which were suppressed for their free criticisms of the Colonial Government. Thereupon he returned and settled in London, where he published African Sketches. He also produced a book of poems, Ephemerides. He was the earliest successful English-language author to describe South Africa's scenery, native peoples, and living conditions.

Youth and education

Pringle was born at Blaiklaw (now Blakelaw), Teviotdale, Roxburghshire, son of a farmer. His mother, who died when he was 6, he affectionately memorialises in his Autumnal Excursion.

Through an accident in infancy Pringle was permanently lame, and used crutches (Noctes Ambrosianæ, iv. 297). As a child his nurse found him thoughtful, but "not half so keen of divinity on a Sunday as of history on a week day."

After early education at Kelso grammar school, he entered the University of Edinburgh. Robert Story, whose reminiscences are full of regard for his friend Pringle, was a fellow-student and close companion.

An incident in his college career illustrates Pringle's enthusiastic temperament: He and his crutches, with the aid of 40 or 50 fellow-students armed with clubs, secured a favourable first night in Edinburgh for Joanna Baillie's Family Legend, which an organised body of opponents sought to condemn.

Early career

In 1811 Pringle entered the Register Office, Edinburgh, as copyist of old records, continuing his service for several years, and giving his leisure to literature. Dyspeptic and inclined to religious melancholy, he was able in lighter moods to co-operate with his friend Story in cleverly satirising the Edinburgh Philomathic Society as "The Institute".

In 1816 a contribution to James Hogg's Poetic Mirror brought him the friendship of Walter Scott, whose manner his poem imitated. In a dedication to Scott, long afterwards, Pringle gracefully said he had found the "minstrel's heart as noble as his lay." Scott's generosity was proven in 1817, when Pringle and his friend Cleghorn produced the 1st number of the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine for John Blackwood. Pringle's main contribution was a paper on gipsies, based on materials supplied by Scott, who had thought of using them for an article in the Quarterly Review.

On 19 July 1817 Pringle married Margaret Brown, daughter of an East Lothian farmer.

Pringle and Cleghorn edited 6 numbers of the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, but resigned through disagreement with the publisher. The chief result of the quarrel was the establishment by the publisher of Blackwood's Magazine, of which the first number appeared in October 1817, and which was managed by Blackwood himself.

Pringle, having now resolved to live by literature, undertook the editorship of the Edinburgh Star newspaper, and conducted for a time an Edinburgh Magazine for Constable. Neither venture prospered, and Pringle returned to the Register House in January 1819.

South Africa

Thomas Pringle

Owing to his narrow circumstances, Pringle arranged to emigrate to South Africa, and through Scott a grant of land was secured from Lord Melville for his father and brothers. The government plan of colonising required each party to contain at least 10 adult males, and Pringle gathered a company numbering 24. He trusted to get employment for himself in the civil service of the colony. In February 1820 they set sail, his touching "Emigrant's Farewell" being a memorial of the departure.

They settled in the upper valley of the Baavians river, or river of Baboons (a tributary of the Great Fish river), in Eastern Cape. By June 1821 they owned 20,000 acres of land, under the name of Glen-Lynden. After laboring hard to make the conditions of the settlement satisfactory, Pringle moved, with his wife and her sister, to Cape Town, where he became librarian in the public library.

Pringle worked hard for the colony, suggesting for the commissioners in 1823 a plan for defending the eastern frontier by a settlement of Hottentots, and in 1823-1824 he acted as secretary to the society for the relief of the distressed settlers in Albany. He published in London a pamphlet on the latter subject, and was largely instrumental in collecting for his purpose £7,000 from England and India, and £3,000 in the colony itself.

Meanwhile he and a friend, Fairbairn, started a private academy, which promised well, and they also published a newspaper and a magazine, The South African Journal and The South African Commercial Advertiser. Both publications were suppressed by the governor, Lord Charles Somerset. "Pringle might have done well there,’ said Scott, "could he have scoured his brain of politics, but he must needs publish a whig journal at the Cape of Good Hope! He is a worthy creature, but conceited withal."

Return to England

After the governor's action, Pringle resigned his posts at Cape Town, visited Glen-Lynden and found it prosperous, and then, with his wife and her sister, proceeded to London, which he reached on 7 July 1826. The government at home declined to grant him any redress, and he found himself involved in heavy expenses.

Pringle was editor of the literary annual, Friendship's Offering, for several years from its commencement in 1826, among his colleagues being Thomas Kibble Hervey and Leitch Ritchie. He also assisted Belfrage and Hay in their Memoirs of Dr. Alexander Waugh, 1830, 8vo. He supplied materials for George Thompson's Travels and Adventures in Southern Africa, 1827, 4to, and for John Philips's History of Cape Colony.

In 1831 he was largely instrumental in enabling Samuel Taylor Coleridge to retain his government annuity, Coleridge afterwards subscribing himself, in a grateful letter, as his "sincere friend and thorough esteemer."

Anti-Slavery Society

An article by Pringle on the South African slave trade, in the New Monthly Magazine for October 1826, brought him to the notice of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton and Zachary Macaulay, and led to his appointment in 1827 as secretary to the Anti-Slavery Society.

He inspired enthusiasm in other workers. Clarkson suggested that he should write the history of the abolition of slavery; and Wilberforce, in a letter of January 1832, thanked him for his exertions, adding, "I shall feel it an act of friendly regard if you will come and shake me by the hand."

On 27 June 1834 a document signed by Pringle proclaimed the abolition of slavery, and announced that the approaching 1 August would be a day of thanksgiving. The following day he became seriously ill, and rest and change seemed imperative. His friends helped him to take out passages to Cape Colony for himself and his wife and her sister, but he was unable to start, and died in London.

Writing

Pringle's earlier poems, under the title Ephemerides, were published in 1828. Several of the lyrics in Ephemerides are graceful and melodious.

In 1834 his poems on South African themes were reissued as African Sketches, the volume also including Pringle's vivid and impressive Narrative of his Residence in South Africa.

The highest achievement of the author is his African Sketches. Of these, "The Emigrants" is a creditable experiment in Spenserian verse, concluding with the tuneful hymn of "Farewell." There is a collection of passable sonnets, and several of the ballads are meritorious. "The Bechuana Boy" is a picturesque and touching narrative, while "Afar in the Desert" is a brilliant study of movement, which Coleridge considered "among the two or three most perfect lyric poems in our language."

Thomas Pringle memorial plaque, Pringle Family Church, Eildon, South Africa. Photo by Steve Baily. Courtesy Steve Bailey.

After Pringle's death the Narrative was republished, with a biographical notice by Josiah Conder. As Pringle's wife and her sister were left in straitened circumstances after his death, Leitch Ritchie published, in their interest, in 1839, Pringle's poems with a prefatory memoir.

Recognition

Pringle's remains were interred in Bunhill Fields, where he was commemorated with a memorial stone bearing an elegant inscription by William Kennedy.

In 1970, his remains were brought to South Africa, and re-interred in the Pringle Family Church at Eildon, Eastern Cape, near the farm his family owned in the Baviaans Valley.

Publications

Poetry

• The Institute: A heroic poem in four cantos. Edinburgh: James Clarke, for W. M'William, 1811.
• The Autumnal Excursion; or, Sketches in Teviotdale; with other poems. Edinburgh: Constable / London: Longman Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, 1819.
• Ephemerides; or, Occasional poems, written in Scotland and South Africa. London: Smith, Elder, 1828.
• Glen-Lynden: A tale of Teviotdale. London: Smith, Elder, 1828.
• Pangola: An African tale. 1831.
• African Sketches (prose and verse). London: Edward Moxon, 1834.
  • poems published as Poems Illustrative of South Africa: African sketches, Part I. Cape Town: C. Struik, 1970.
• Poetical Works (with biographical sketch by Leith Ritchie). London: Edward Moxon, 1837.
• Afar In The Desert, and other South African poems (edited by John Noble). London, Longmans, Green, 1881.
• South African Sketches: Poems. Edinburgh: Abbey Press, 1902.
• Thomas Pringle: His life, times, and poems (edited by William Hay). Cape Town: J.C. Juta, 1912.
• Some Poems (edited by Harry Rowntree). London, Edinburgh, & Boston: T.N. Foulis, 1916.
• African Poems (edited by Ernest Pereira & Michael Chapman). Durban, SA: Killie Campbell Africana Library / Pietermaritzburg, SA: University of Natal Press, 1918.

Non-fiction

• Some Account of the Present State of the English Settlers in Albany, South Africa ... London: T. & G. Underwood / Ediburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1824.
• Narrative of A Residence in South Africa. (2 volumes), 1834-1835.
  • (with biographical sketch by Josiah Condor). London: Edward Moxon, 1840.
  • (edited by A.M. Lewen Robinson) . Cape Town: C. Struik, 1966.
  • Brentwood: Doppler Press, 1986.
• The Pringle School Reader; from A narrative of a residence in South Africa (compiled by William Hay). Cape Town: J.C. Juta, 1924.
• Thomas Pringle in South Africa, 1820-1826 (edited by J.R. Wahl). Cape Town: Longman, 1970.

Letters

• The South African Letters (edited by Randolph Vigne). Cape Town: Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society for the Publication of Southern African Historical Documents, 2011.

Thomas Pringle - The Slave Dealer

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Afar In The Desert By Thomas Pringle - An Inspirational And Emotional Poem - Greatest Audioquotes

See also

• List of British poets
• List of South African poets

References

• Meihuizen, Nicholas, Ordering Empire: The poetry of Camões, Pringle, and Campbell. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang, 2007.
•  Bayne, Thomas Wilson (1896) "Pringle, Thomas" in Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 46 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 389-390  . Wikisource, Web, Sep. 28, 2016.

External links

Poems

• Thomas Pringle (1789-1834) info & 6 poems at English Poetry, 1579-1830
• Thomas Pringle (1789-1834) at Sonnet Central (8 sonnets)
• Pringle, Thomas (1789-1834) (12 poems) at Representative Poetry Online
• Thomas Pringle at PoemHunter (14 poems)
• Thomas Pringle at Poetry Nook (46 poems)

Books

IThomas Pringle 1789-1834 at Amazon.com

About

• Thomas Pringle in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Thomas Pringle in the Gale Encyclopedia of Biography
• Thomas Pringle at Electric Scotland
• Thomas Pringle at Author and Book Info.com
• "Thomas Pringle, journalist and editor of Cape newspaper Commercial Advertiser, dies in London" obituary at South African History Online
• Clan Pringle

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: Pringle, Thomas