The Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges; The Correspondence of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Richard Watson Dixon

THE MAN of the MONTH

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

[Oxford University Press, 2 vols., $10.00]

IN at least four ways the correspondence of Gerard Hopkins (edited by Claude Colleer Abbott) forms a valuable contribution to English letters and biography. It elucidates the practice and the theory of a Victorian poet whose writings were small in bulk, eccentric in expression, but unquestionably fired with an intense, rare, and genuine gift. It records remarkable friendships among men of talent, friendships which were candid, generous, and ardent, free from the least tincture of self-interest, and fit to stand with the noblest examples of devotion between man and man. It enriches the fund of English criticism and epistolary comment with many flights of wit, many shrewd and pungent judgments, many sincere and penetrating avowals of belief. And finally it adds to the great realm of biography a man, an individual in the true cast of his mind and feeling, and a life dedicated to self-discipline and mortification ‘for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake.’

Gerard Hopkins was an English Jesuit, and this is the determining fact of his life. He writes to Canon Dixon that he destroyed what verse he had written when he entered the society, ‘and meant to write no more.’ A superior suggested the fitness of the wreck of the ship Deutschland, on which five Franciscan nuns were passengers, for poetical treatment. Hopkins acted on the suggestion; ‘but that being done it is a question whether I did well to write anything else. However I shall, in my present mind, continue to compose, as occasion shall fairly allow, which I am afraid will be seldom and indeed for some years past has been scarcely ever, and let what I produce wait and take its chance; for a very spiritual man once told me that with things like composition the best sacrifice was not to destroy one’s work but to leave it entirely to be disposed of by obedience . . . there is more peace and it is the holier lot to be unknown than to be known.’

This was the regard which Hopkins paid to the prizes of literary reputation, for which so many contend; but he continually advised his friend Bridges to publish and to become known, and continually regretted that the poetry of Canon Dixon had remained so little honored. The upshot of leaving his poems ‘entirely to be disposed of by obedience was that they never appeared between covers until many years after his death. Not until 1918 did Robert Bridges judge that the time might be ripe for their publication; he edited them from the manuscripts in his possession, with scrupulous care, and brought them out.

Especially in his letters to Canon Dixon, Gerard Hopkins gives a full, clear, and connected account of his poetical history and a detailed exposition of his theory of versification, with all its formidable baggage of cryptic terms, ‘overreave,’‘sprung rhythm,’ and the rest. A general review is not the place to discuss these matters; it is enough to say that the term ‘sprung rhythm,’ when fully digested and understood, may prove to be of general convenience to describe certain ways of versifying which Hopkins often carried to an extreme, but which are in no sense peculiar to him. It is clear also that although Hopkins exercised no influence at all through the printed page during his lifetime, he exercised a very powerful personal influence on Robert Bridges both in general verse-theory and in detailed criticism. The extent of this influence on the writings of Bridges, both his studies in metric and his poems, including The Testament of Beauty, will be a topic of scholarly investigation in the years to come.

The scrupulous prose paraphrases which Hopkins gives of lines or passages in his own poems provide an indispensable means of understanding his often perplexing work, but sometimes reveal the fact that he subjected very simple ideas to unbelievably tortured expression. For Hopkins was necessarily a brilliant but severely hampered amateur of poetry, as he was of music. The hours he could give to either of these passionate avocations were few; and the impression of his life is on the whole a sad one. ‘1 have never wavered in my vocation,’he writes to Dixon, ‘but I have not lived up to it.’

That his vocation, his dedication to Christ, absorbed all his conscious and voluntary allegiance, there can be no doubt; that it exhausted, discouraged, and perhaps destroyed him is made equally clear. His confessions of weariness in the performance of his duties, which for a considerable period consisted of setting and reading enormous numbers of academic examinations, will be understood by everyone who has felt the attrition of a daily task wearing away the capacity to do the work that crowds eagerly to one’s brain, then wearing away the capacity to do any work at all; first rubbing down to the quick of the nerve, then dulling even the nerve and leaving only fatigue and despair. ‘But I have long been Fortune’s football,’ Hopkins writes to Bridges, ’and am blowing up the bladder of resolution big and buxom for another kick of her foot. . . . Arid I do not know how it is, I have no disease, but I am always tired, always jaded, though the work is not heavy, and the impulse to do anything Fails me or has in it no continuance.’

This is but one of many, and far from the least despairing, of such expressions. The hand was on the plough; the mind was faithful; but the flesh sank down in weariness. Yet, feel as one may the pathos and the waste of such a situation, it is not to be forgotten that, whatever one’s theology or one’s want of all theology, a self-dedicated life commands its own intrinsic respect. One cannot rise from such a spectacle without silent honor to the hero of it; and some readers will finish the correspondence of Gerard Hopkins grateful even more for a man whom they can venerate than for a poet whom they can admire.

THEODORE MORRISON