Mrs. Hemans – Kicking It Old School

It’s hard to believe that a poet who was so popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries should be all but forgotten today.  But it’s true of Felicia Hemans, who was known as Mrs. Hemans in the Victorian age.  She was born Felicia Browne in 1793 and was the daughter of a merchant in Liverpool, England.  From the first she immersed herself in books, and had great gifts for memorizing poetry and learning languages.  Her father moved the family to Wales, where Felicia became fluent in Welsh and developed a great love of Welsh culture.

Felicia published her first book of poems in 1808 when she was only 15, and it won praise from some very credible sources.  Byron admired her work, and Shelley began to correspond with her.  Shelley and Felicia wrote to each other several times.  Then Felicia broke off the correspondence, feeling that she couldn’t trust Shelley’s motives—which showed her to be a good judge of character as well as a good poet.

But Felicia couldn’t remain a poet in Wales forever, because young ladies in those days were expected to marry and manage a household.  She married Captain Hemans, who had served in the British army with her brothers.  They had five children, but after a while they moved apart, probably by mutual consent.  It must have been difficult for a practical soldier and a poet to live together.  They never officially separated, but the captain went away on duty and never returned home.  He took two of the boys, and Felicia took the rest of the children and moved to her beloved Wales to live with her mother.

Felicia’s poetry tended to be sentimental or patriotic.  She wrote a poem on the early death of Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince Regent (who would be George IV).  She wrote a poem on the madness of George III, which was praised for being sensitive and compassionate.  Felicia described him this way:   “As a tired warrior, on his battle-plain/ Breathes deep in dreams amidst the mourners and the slain.”  She wrote “Valor and Patriotism” when England was at war with Spain.  She was definitely a loyal Englishwoman.  And she wrote on problems in her own life, too.  When her mother became ill and died, she wrote “The Better Land,” about a child who asks what heaven is like.  This is the last stanza:

Eye hath not seen it, my gentle boy!

Ear hath not heard its deep songs of joy;

Dreams cannot picture a world so fair–

Sorrow and death may not enter there;

Time doth not breathe on its fadeless bloom,

For beyond the clouds, and beyond the tomb,

–       It is there, it is there, my child!

Felicia’s most famous poem “Casablanca,” which most people know as “The Boy Stood On The Burning Deck,” is both sentimental and patriotic.  It tells the story of a little boy serving on a warship with his father, who is the captain.  During a battle, the father orders the boy to stand at his post on the deck, no matter what.  The father and all the crew are killed and the ship is burning, but still the boy won’t move.  The poem ends:

The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but he had fled;

The flame that lit the battle's wreck

Shone round him o'er the dead.

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,

That well had borne their part—

But the noblest thing which perished there

Was that young faithful heart.

People make fun of this kind of poetry now. But they forget that life was very different in the early 19th century.  The English were fighting for their existence against Napoleon.  So naturally they valued patriotism and self-sacrifice, very much like they did during the blitz of World War II.  And the Industrial Revolution, in addition to the Napoleonic Wars, brought many hardships to all but the richest people.  Poverty, disease and early mortality were rampant, so it’s no wonder people needed a little sentimentality to cushion the harsh realities of their lives.  It’s all very well to criticize their tastes, but life is much easier for us now than it was for them, so we have a very different outlook.

Felicia often wrote poems about people facing death or great tragedies.  They could be obscure, everyday people or emperors, but Felicia brought the same sense of compassion when describing their turmoil.  She had a gift for bringing her readers into those terrible moments and allowing us to share them.  One poem describes an Indian woman who decides to jump over the falls when her husband leaves her.  She takes their baby with her, so the child won’t have to go through life’s ordeals the way she has.  Another poem tells the story of Czar Ivan the Terrible, who killed his only son in a fit of rage.  Even though the czar is the unquestioned ruler, he has no power over guilt or death.  Felicia could take unsympathetic characters and somehow make them sympathetic.

Felicia was not only popular in her time, but also well-thought-of by her fellow poets.  She was friends with Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott, and spent time at both their homes.  She also received good reviews from critics.  An article in the Edinburgh Review described her writing as encompassing “that subtle and mysterious analogy which exists between the physical and the moral world.”

Although her poetry career went well, her aspirations as a playwright were doomed to failure.  In 1823 her play The Vespers of Palermo was produced in Covent Garden, and it flopped, even though the famous theatrical family the Kembles played in it.  But the next year Sir Walter Scott had it produced in Scotland, where it did better.  This was the high point of her theatrical achievements, though, and they went downhill from there.

After the death of her mother in 1827, Felicia’s life was never the same.  She moved to her home town of Liverpool, but hated it.  She thought the townspeople were ignorant, and they thought she was snobbish.  She stayed with Wordsworth for a while, then moved to Dublin.  Just eight years after her mother passed away, she did, too.

Felicia’s poetry was also loved in America.  The Poetical Works of Mrs. Felicia Hemans was reprinted over 24 times in Philadelphia and Boston between 1835 and 1867.  I have a volume that my great-grandfather gave to my great-grandmother in 1889, inscribed “To Edith with love from Frank.”  I think Felicia would have appreciated that.