Foremother Poet: Adelaide Anne Procter (1825-64)

Luke Fildes (1843-1918), Applicants for Admission to a Casualty Ward (1874)

Dear friends and readers,

I write this foremother poet blog to be able to present a poem (by Proctor) because yesterday morning it came to mind upon my reading and watching on DemocracyNow.Org the early dawn destructions of the Occupy encampments at San Francisco and Cleveland:

Homeless

It is cold dark midnight, yet listen
          To that patter of tiny feet!
Is it one of your dogs, fair lady,
          Who whines in the bleak cold street? —
Is it one of your silken spaniels
          Shut out in the snow and the sleet?

My dogs sleep warm in their baskets,
          Safe from the darkness and sow;
Al the beasts in our Christian England,
          Find pity wherever they go —
(Those are only the homeless children
          Who are wandering to and fro.)

Look out in the gusty darkness —
          I have seen it again and again,
That shadow, that flits so slowly
          Up and down past the window pane: —
It is surely some criminal lurking
          Out there in the frozen rain?

Nay, our Criminals all are sheltered,
          They are pitied and taught and fed;
That is only a sister-woman
          Who has got neither food nor bed —
And the Night cries ‘sin to be living,’
          And the River cries ‘sin to be dead.’

Look out at that farthest corner
          Where the wall stands blank and bare: —
Can that be a pack which a Pedlar
          Has left and forgotten there?
His gods lying out unsheltered
          Will be spoilt by the damp night air.

Nay; — goods in our thrifty England
          Are not left to lie and grow rotten,
For each man knows the market value
          Of silk or woollen or cotton …
But in counting the riches of England
I think our Poor are forgotten.

Our Beasts and our Thieves and our Chattels
          Have weight for good or for ill;
But the Poor are only His image,
          His Presence, His word, His will —
And so Lazarus lies at our doorstep
          And Dives neglects him still.

Charles Dickens who was one of her mainstay publishers, wrote a touching obituary upon Proctor’s death, that has been placed on the Internet as part ofan excellent website about Proctor as a social reformer in the context of the harsh lives of her era. In a session at a January 2008 MLA meeting, I went to a Victorian women’s religious poetry session, and discovered that Cheri Lin Larsen Hoeckley spoke about Adelaide Proctor’s use of devotional sentimental poetry to focus on poverty, exile, homelessness, female communities; Proctor used the profit she made from Chaplet of VersesM to benefit women. Proctor saw women’s lives were a target for exploitation, & she attacked the way respectability became a way of excluding women from social help ruthlessly. Her philanthropic activities probably led to her early death: she contracted TB. Proctor’s best poem seems to be the dramatic narrative, “A Legend of Provence”

I can also respond to the thoughts and feelings of her poetry of sensibility:

My Journal.

IT is a dreary evening;
          The shadows rise and fall:
With strange and ghostly changes,
          They flicker on the wall.

Make the charred logs burn brighter;
          I will show you, by their blaze,
The half-forgotten record
          Of bygone things and days.

Bring here the ancient volume;
          The clasp is old and worn,
The gold is dim and tarnished,
          And the faded leaves are torn.

The dust has gathered on it—
          There are so few who care
To read what Time has written
          Of joy and sorrow there.

Look at the first fair pages;
          Yes—I remember all:
The joys now seem so trivial,
          The griefs so poor and small.

Let us read the dreams of glory
          That childish fancy made;
Turn to the next few pages,
          And see how soon they fade.

Here, where still waiting, dreaming,
          For some ideal Life,
The young heart all unconscious
          Had entered on the strife.

See how this page is blotted:
          What—could those tears be mine?
How coolly I can read you,
          Each blurred and trembling line.

Now I can reason calmly,
          And, looking back again,
Can see divinest meaning
          Threading each separate pain.

Here strong resolve—how broken;
          Rash hope, and foolish fear,
And prayers, which God in pity
          Refused to grant or hear.

Nay—I will turn the pages
          To where the tale is told
Of how a dawn diviner
          Flushed the dark clouds with gold.

And see, that light has gilded
          The story—nor shall set;
And, though in mist and shadow,
          You know I see it yet.

Here—well, it does not matter,
          I promised to read all;
I know not why I falter,
          Or why my tears should fall;

You see each grief is noted;
          Yet it was better so—
I can rejoice to-day—the pain
          Was over, long ago.

I read—my voice is failing,
          But you can understand
How the heart beat that guided
          This weak and trembling hand.

Pass over that long struggle,
          Read where the comfort came,
Where the first time is written
          Within the book your name.

Again it comes, and oftener,
          Linked, as it now must be,
With all the joy or sorrow
          That Life may bring to me.

So all the rest—you know it:
          Now shut the clasp again,
And put aside the record
          Of bygone hours of pain.

The dust shall gather on it,
          I will not read it more:
Give me your hand—what was it
          We were talking of before?

I know not why—but tell me
          Of something gay and bright.
It is strange—my heart is heavy,
          And my eyes are dim to-night

See the much longer feminist “Three Evenings in a Life”

She was wildly popular, Queen Victoria’s favorite poet it was said; I have de-emphasized her Catholicism so should say a good deal is to be found out about her when her name is linked to Catholicism and Catholic causes: see wikipedia, which also has a large and rich bibliography. Of the cited anthologies, I recommend Angela Leighton and Margaret Reynolds’s (edd.) Victorian Women Poets, An Anthology. She exchanged letters with Elizabeth Barrett Browning. These two seem worthwhile: Gregory, Gill. The Life and Work of Adelaide Procter: Poetry, Feminism and Fathers. Aldershot, Hants., England: Ashgate, 1998; Gray, F. Elizabeth. “Review of The Life and Work of Adelaide Procter: Poetry, Feminism and Fathers”. Victorian Studies 42 (1999): 682–684, and “Adelaide Procter’s ‘A Legend of Provence’: The Struggle for a Place”. In Victorian Women Poets: A Critical Reader. Ed. Angela Leighton. New Jersey: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

Ellen