thumb|Coventry Patmore, painted by John Singer SargentCoventry Kersey Dighton Patmore (
23 July 1823 -
26 November 1896) was an
English poet and
critic best known for
The Angel in the House, his narrative poem about an ideal happy marriage.
Life
Youth
The eldest son of author
Peter George Patmore, Coventry was born at
Woodford in
Essex. He was privately educated. He was also his father's intimate and constant companion and inherited from him his early literary enthusiasm. It was Coventry's ambition to become an artist. He showed much promise, earning the silver
palette of the
Society of Arts in 1838. In the following year he was sent to school in
France for six months, where he began to write
poetry. After returning, his father planned to publish some of these youthful poems; Coventry, however, had become interested in science and the poetry was set aside.
He soon returned to literary interests, moved towards them by the sudden success of
Alfred Lord Tennyson; and in 1844 he published a small volume of
Poems, which was original but uneven. Patmore, distressed at its reception, bought up the remainder of the edition and destroyed it. What upset him most was a cruel review in
Blackwood's Magazine; but the enthusiasm of his friends, together with their more constructive criticism, helped foster his talent. The publication of this volume bore immediate fruit in introducing its author to various men of letters, including
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, through whom Patmore became known to
William Holman Hunt, and was thus drawn into the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, contributing his poem "The Seasons" to
The Germ.
Major work
thumb|Patmore's wife Emily, the model for the "Angel in the House", portrait by John Everett Millais.
At this time Patmore's father was financially embarrassed; and in 1846
Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton obtained for Coventry the post of assistant
librarian in the
British Museum, a post he occupied for nineteen years, devoting his spare time to poetry. In 1847 he married Emily, daughter of Dr. Andrews of
Camberwell. At the Museum he was instrumental in 1852 in starting the Volunteer movement. He wrote an important letter to
The Times upon the subject, and stirred up much martial enthusiasm among his colleagues.
In the next year he republished, in
Tamerton Church Tower, the more successful pieces from the
Poems of 1844, adding several new poems which showed distinct advance, both in conception and treatment; and in the following year (1854) appeared the first part of his best known poem,
The Angel in the House, which was continued in "The Espousals" (1856), "Faithful for Ever" (1860), and "The Victories of Love" (1862). In 1862 he lost his wife, after a long and lingering illness, and shortly afterwards joined the
Roman Catholic church.
In 1865 he married again, his second wife being Marianne Byles, daughter of James Byles of Bowden Hall, Gloucester; and a year later purchased an estate in
East Grinstead, the history of which he wrote in
How I managed my Estate (1886). In 1877 appeared
The Unknown Eros, which unquestionably contains his finest work in poetry, and in the following year
Amelia, his own favourite among his poems, together with an interesting essay on
English Metrical Law. This departure into criticism continued in 1879 with a volume of papers entitled
Principle in Art, and again in 1893 with
Religio poetae. His second wife died in 1880, and in the next year he married Harriet Robson. In later years he lived at
Lymington, where he died. He was buried in Lymington churchyard.
Evaluation
A collected edition of his poems appeared in two volumes in 1886, with a characteristic preface which might serve as the author's epitaph. "I have written little," it runs; "but it is all my best; I have never spoken when I had nothing to say, nor spared time or labour to make my words true. I have respected posterity; and should there be a posterity which cares for letters, I dare to hope that it will respect me." The obvious sincerity which underlies this statement, combined with a certain lack of humour which peers through its naïveté, points to two of the principal characteristics of Patmore's earlier poetry; characteristics which came to be almost unconsciously merged and harmonized as his style and his intention drew together into unity.
His best work is found in the volume of odes called
The Unknown Eros, which is full not only of passages but of entire poems in which exalted thought is expressed in poetry of the richest and most dignified melody. Spirituality informs his inspiration; the poetry is glowing and alive. The magnificent piece in praise of winter, the solemn and beautiful cadences of "Departure," and the homely but elevated pathos of "The Toys," are in their manner unsurpassed in English poetry. His somewhat reactionary political opinions, which also find expression in his odes, are perhaps a little less inspired, although they can certainly be said to reflect, as do his essays, a serious, and very active, mind. Patmore is today one of the least known, but best-regarded
Victorian poets.
The Angel in the House is a long narrative and lyric poem, with four sections composed over a period of years: The Betrothed and The Espousals (1854), which eulogize his first wife; Faithful For Ever (1860); and The Victories of Love (1862), the four published together in 1863. Together they came to symbolise the Victorian feminine ideal, which was not necessarily an ideal among feminists of the time.
His son,
Henry John Patmore (1860-1883), was also a poet.
Trivia
Coventry Patmore was caricatured as the unpleasant poet
Carleon Anthony in
Joseph Conrad's novel
Chance (1913).
See also
