The Background
Thomas Lovell Beddoes (30
June 1803 –
26 January 1849) was an English poet, dramatist and
physician.
Biography
Born in Clifton,
Bristol, England, he was the son of Dr. Thomas
Beddoes, a friend of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
and Anna, sister of Maria
Edgeworth. He was educated at Charterhouse and Pembroke College, Oxford. He
published in 1821 The Improvisatore, which he afterwards endeavored
to suppress. His next venture, a blank-verse drama
called The Bride's Tragedy (1822), was published and well-reviewed,
and won for him the friendship of Barry
Cornwall.
Beddoes's work shows a
constant preoccupation with death. In 1824, he went to Göttingen to
study medicine, motivated by his hope of discovering physical evidence of a
human spirit which survives the death of the body. He
was expelled, and then went to Würzburg to
complete his training. He then wandered about practicing his profession, and
expounding democratic theories which got him into trouble. He was deported
from Bavaria in 1833, and
had to leave Zürich,
where he had settled, in 1840.
He continued to write but
published nothing.
He led an itinerant life
after leaving Switzerland, returning to England only in 1846, before going back
to Germany. He became increasingly disturbed and committed suicide by poison
at Basel, in
1849, at the age of 45.
For some time before his
death he had been engaged on a drama, Death's Jest Book, which was
published in 1850 with a memoir by his friend, T.
F. Kelsall. His Collected Poems were published in
1851.
Reception
Critics have faulted Beddoes
as a dramatist. According to Arthur
Symons, "of really dramatic power he had nothing. He could
neither conceive a coherent plot, nor develop a credible situation." His
plots are convoluted, and such was his obsession with the questions posed by
death that his characters lack individuation; they all struggle with the same
ideas that vexed Beddoes. However, his poetry is "full of thought and
richness of diction", in the words of John William Cousin,
who praised Beddoes's short pieces such as "If thou wilt ease thine
heart" (from Death's Jest-Book, Act II) and "If there
were dreams to sell" ("Dream-Pedlary") as "masterpieces of
intense feeling exquisitely expressed". Lytton
Strachey referred to Beddoes as "the last Elizabethan",
and said that he was distinguished not for his "illuminating views on men
and things, or for a philosophy", but for the quality of his expression. Philip
B. Anderson said the lyrics of Death's Jest Book, exemplified by
"Sibylla's Dirge" and "The Swallow Leaves Her Nest", are
"Beddoes' best work. These lyrics display a delicacy of form, a voluptuous
horror, an imagistic compactness and suggestiveness, and, occasionally, a
grotesque comic power that are absolutely unique."
The Bride's Tragedy and
especially Death's Jest-Book are much quoted from in epigraphs
to the chapters of Dorothy
L. Sayers' book Have
His Carcase.” – Wikipedia.
And that, of course, is
where I first found him, and have been fascinated with his reputation and work
ever since. I was pleased to find this edition available on Amazon, and thought
it was about time I finally gave it a shot, though not absolutely enamored with
the cover. Falling between the Romantics and the Victorians, he occupies the
same time-slot that Edgar Allan Poe does in the United States, and evokes the
same kind of lush, macabre ornateness. Old
Adam, the Carrion Crow appears as a song in Death’s Jest-Book .
Old Adam, the Carrion Crow
Old Adam, the carrion crow,
The old crow of Cairo;
He sat in the shower, and let it flow
Under his tail and over his crest;
And through every feather
Leak'd the wet weather;
And the bough swung under his nest;
For his beak it was heavy with marrow.
Is that the wind dying? O no;
It's only two devils, that blow,
Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
In the ghosts' moonshine.
Ho! Eve, my grey carrion wife,
When we have supped on king's marrow,
Where shall we drink and make merry our life?
Our nest it is queen Cleopatra's skull,
'Tis cloven and crack'd,
And batter'd and hack'd,
Let us drink then, my raven of Cairo!
Is that the wind dying? O no;
It's only two devils, that blow
Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
In the ghosts' moonshine.
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