Friday 1 January 2021

Southey's "The Miser's Mansion" (1794)

 

One of Southey's early poems, this. It appeared in the collection he co-authored with Robert Lovell, Poems: containing the Retrospect, Odes, Elegies, Sonnets etc (1794 in Bath; reprinted, without the authors' names on the title page, in London, 1795). Inside the volume Southey's poems were attributed to ‘Bion’ and Lovell's to ‘Moschus’, which means that the volume is sometimes referred to as Poems by Bion and Moschus. In his later career Southey suppressed these early poems, although Lovell—who died young from a fever in 1796—had higher hopes for his. Southey's low opinion of his own work may have been influenced by Coleridge, who disliked this volume and singled out Southey's ‘The Miser's Mansion’ and Lovell's ‘The Decayed Farm’ for particular dispraise.

I am astonished at your preference of the Elegy [‘The Miser's Mansion’]! I think it the worst thing, you ever wrote —
Qui Gratio non odit, amet tua carmina, Avaro
Why — ’tis almost as bad as Lovell’s Farm house — and that would be at least a thousand Fathoms deep in the Dead Sea of Pessimism. [STC letter to Southey, 18 December 1794; CL 1:115]
Coleridge's Latin, there, is a parody of Vergil's ‘Qui Bavium non odit, amet tua carmina, Maevi’, with the names swapped: ‘Gratio’ is the name of the subject of Lovell's ‘Decayed Farm’ and ‘Avaro’ the subject of Southey's ‘Miser's Mansion’. Indeed, here is that poem, so you can see for yourself:
Thou mouldering mansion, whose embattled side
Shakes as about to fall at every blast;
Once the gay pile of splendor, wealth, and pride,
But now the monument of grandeur past.

Fall'n fabric! pondering o'er thy time-trac'd walls,
Thy mouldering, mighty, melancholy state;
Each object, to the musing mind, recalls
The sad vicissitudes of varying fate.

Thy tall towers tremble to the touch of time,
The rank weeds rustle in thy spacious courts;
Fill'd are thy wide canals with loathly slime,
Where battening, undisturb'd, the foul toad sports.

Deep from her dismal dwelling yells the owl,
The shrill bat flits around her dark retreat;
And the hoarse daw, when loud the tempests howl,
Screams as the wild winds shake her secret seat.

'Twas here AVARO dwelt, who daily told
His useless heaps of wealth in selfish joy;
Who lov'd to ruminate o'er hoarded gold,
And hid those stores he dreaded to employ.

In vain to him benignant heaven bestow'd
The golden heaps to render thousands blest;
Smooth aged penury's laborious road,
And heal the sorrows of affliction's breast.

For, like the serpent of romance, he lay
Sleepless and stern to guard the golden sight;
With ceaseless care he watch'd his heaps by day,
With causeless fears he agoniz'd by night.

Ye honest rustics, whose diurnal toil
Enrich'd the ample fields this churl possest;
Say, ye who paid to him the annual spoil,
With all his riches, was Avaro blest?

Rose he, like you, at morn devoid of fear,
His anxious vigils o'er his gold to keep?
Or sunk he, when the noiseless night was near,
As calmly on his couch of down to sleep?

Thou wretch! thus curst with poverty of soul,
What boot to thee the blessings fortune gave?
What boots thy wealth above the world's controul,
If riches doom their churlish lord a slave?

Chill'd at thy presence grew the stately halls,
Nor longer echo'd to the song of mirth;
The hand of art no more adorn'd thy walls,
Nor blaz'd with hospitable fires the hearth.

On well-worn hinges turns the gate no more,
Nor social friendship hastes the friend to meet;
Nor when the accustom'd guest draws near the door,
Run the glad dogs, and gambol round his feet.

Sullen and stern Avaro sat alone
In anxious wealth amid the joyless hall,
Nor heeds the chilly hearth with moss o'ergrown,
Nor sees the green slime mark the mouldering wall.

For desolation o'er the fabric dwells,
And time, on restless pinion, hurried by;
Loud from her chimney'd seat the night-bird yells,
And thro' the shatter'd roof descends the sky.

Thou melancholy mansion! much mine eye
Delights to wander o'er thy sullen gloom,
And mark the daw from yonder turret fly,
And muse how man himself creates his doom.

For here had Justice reign'd, had Pity known
With genial power to sway Avaro's breast,
These treasur'd heaps which fortune made his own,
By aiding misery might himself have blest.

And Charity had oped her golden store
To work the gracious will of heaven intent,
Fed from her superflux the craving poor,
And paid adversity what heaven had lent.

Then had thy turrets stood in all their state,
Then had the hand of art adorn'd thy wall,
Swift on its well-worn hinges turn'd the gate,
And friendly converse cheer'd the echoing hall.

Then had the village youth at vernal hour
Hung round with flowery wreaths thy friendly gate,
And blest in gratitude that sovereign power
That made the man of mercy good as great.

The traveller then to view thy towers had stood,
Whilst babes had lispt their benefactor's name,
And call'd on heaven to give thee every good,
And told abroad thy hospitable fame.

In every joy of life the hours had fled,
Whilst time on downy pinions hurried by,
'Till age with silver hairs had grac'd thy head,
Wean'd from the world, and taught thee how to die.

And, as thy liberal hand had shower'd around
The ample wealth by lavish fortune given,
Thy parted spirit had that justice found,
And angels hymn'd the rich man's soul to heaven.  BION.
Not the greatest poem ever written, although not altogether worthless I think. There are some nice pre-Tennysonian touches à la ‘Mariana’ here (which, plus the description of the toads ‘battening’ in the moat, like Tennyson's abyssal Kraken, makes me wonder if Alfred hadn't read and remembered this poem). But there we go: not republished in Southey's life, deprecated by Coleridge, a small cul-de-sac in Romantic poetry.

But wait a moment: the edition of this volume scanned-into Google Books is the original 1794 Bath printing (very rare), as you can see by the title page at the head of this post. And that edition contains the following marginalia at the end of ‘The Miser's Mansion’ [click to embiggen]:  



But here unfriended churl Avaro died
His heir rejoiced and not a neighbour sigh’d
His heir in rising rounds of fashion bred
Seiz’d on Avaro’s store—by folly led
Hastened for Italy’s far shores—intent
To squander that which Heaven’s work had leant
Home he despised—determined with his wealth
To gross in pleasure & to lose his health
And throws [?] Avaro’s Baggs [?] in folly sound
Never unspent unworthily as they were found
And show these mouldring ruins [wings?] and walls
Which Dawn unveil'st—when the night Owl calls
[Line crossed out]
Moments portend—to tell this timely truth
[Line crossed out]
The Miser’s Hoard begets the spendthrift youth
There is no name in the volume, so these scribblings could be anyone. Although, no, that's not quite right: anyone sets the net too widely. The Bath edition had a tiny print run and was mostly ignored. And we can narrow things a little further, for this is not Southey's handwriting, which was rounder and had more clarity of lettering.

It does, however, look a little like Coleridge's hand (several examples of which are included in this post, if you scroll down a bit). Here's a bit of Coleridge's handwriting, in a scrap that has also been signed by Southey, bottom right:


Coleridge certainly annotated Southey a good deal. Vol 5 of the Princeton Marginalia contains over a hundred pages of his Southeyan jottings (mostly from later in his life than the 1790s; none are recorded in this particular book). Might this be Coleridge writing something at the end of his friend's poem?

As you can see, this is not a standard marginalium, recording a comment or criticism. It is rather a continuation of the poem so as to bring it to (I presume the annotator believed) a more satisfactory conclusion. I have to say: the verse is clumsy and bad, and the handwriting has some features (like the little flourishes on its terminal ds) that don't look like Coleridge (he does often end his ds with an upstroke flourish, but not as fancily as here, I'd say). So it's probably nothing to do with him.

Of course, just conceivably that was the point: Coleridge mocking a poem he considered badly written and ludicrously pessimistic by extending its stanzas, badly, deeper in the pessimism of the next generation. That said: it's not likely.

3 comments:

  1. Southey's father died in debtor's gaol. His maternal aunt was a profligate (and a clean-freak apparently). Southey's paternal grandfather bequeathed the family fortune to his uncle John in Taunton (not uncle Thomas the high ranking freemason who lived in Bristol). John swore off giving his nephew any fiduciary assistance when he learned the Pantisocrat was a raging democrat. Both uncles John and Thomas were known to be misers and heirless, but something about this poem and its extension have me wondering if Coleridge did have a hand in the message.

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  2. It’s very much a rip-off of the Elegy in a Country Churchyard, isn’t it? Both in the form and the rhetorical structure. Some of the alliteration goes a bit far as well, but there’s some wonderful rumbunctious romantic phrasing. Thanks for bolstering its readership!

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  3. Arty Artificial intelligence - yeah I was also going to remark on Southey's poem - "ummmm, alliteration much?"

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