The City of Dreadful Night and other poems/Newspaper cutting
THOMSON THE POET OF DESPAIR.*
The late James Thomson, the "poet of despair," was one of those writers who found life a losing fight—to quote his own words, "one long defeat." To most of us perhaps the name James Thomson suggests nothing more than the amiable Georgian poet of "The Seasons," surviving now chiefly in "Histories of English Literature"; yet when, seventeen years ago, the second James Thomson ended in a London hospital a career which had been singularly forlorn of opportunity, there were even then not a few who believed that the succeeding generation would find the author of "The City of Dreadful Night" ranked high among the poets of his time. The belief has proved well founded. Seventeen years is long enough for many a poet who flourished gayly in his day to be forgotten, but Thomson's works have been steadily gaining ground.
Thomson was born at Port Glasgow in 1834 of middle-class parents, his father holding a position in the merchant navy. The death of his mother and the intemperate habits of his father caused the home to be early broken up, and the young Thomson was placed in the Caledonian Orphan Asylum, which is described by his friend and biographer, Mr. Dobell, as an excellent institution, but which could hardly furnish suitable opportunities for the unusually gifted boy, As it proved, the only occupation open to him was that of an army schoolmaster, and during eleven years Thomson discharged the uncongenial duties of this position. During the first year of his service as assistant schoolmaster, when hardly more than a boy, he met the young girl he calls his "good angel," whose untimely death cast a shadow over her lover's life. Another army association which was to influence him deeply was his acquaintance with Charles Bradlaugh. Although Mr. Dobell assures us that Thomson reached his extreme theological position as a result of his own reading and Meditation, and independently of his intimacy with Bradlaugh, yet it was due to the famous atheist that Thomson had even the slight opportunity of gaining the public ear that was vouchsafed him. With the exception of a few poems published from 1858 to 1860 in Tait's Magazine and "Sunday Up the River," which appeared in Fraser's, all Thomson's important poetical work from 1860 to 1875 appeared in Bradlaugh's National Reformer. In spite of the unusual power and beauty of some of the poems—the exquisite "To Our Ladies of Death" was published as early as 1863—his work attracted little notice until 1874, when "The City of Dreadful Night" appeared. The critics were roused by this poem, and many appreciative notices followed its publication.
In spite of the measure of recognition awarded him, Thomson's life, at best an unequal struggle with poverty and melancholy, grew more and more burdensome. Apart from the precarious paths of such journalism as his pronounced views left open to him, he had no settled way of gaining a livelihood. After leaving the army, in 1862, be had for some time held a Clerkship in Bradlaugh's office. In 1872 he visited America in the capacity of Secretary to a short-lived mining company, and in the following year he spent two months in Spain: as Special correspondent of The World-our own World—during the Carlist rebellion. But toward the end of his life his contributions to such periodicals as would accept his work were his chief support, and that he was but poorly paid is shown by the following: In 1875, owing to an unfortunate disagreement with Bradlaugh, he ceased to contribute to The National Reformer. For the next six years his main dependence was a trade journal called Cape's Tobacco Plant—a trade journal with literary tendencies, however, for Thomson's writings for it included articles on Ben Jonson, Rabelais, John Wilson, James Hogg, and Walt Whitman, and Mr. Dobell tells us that Thomson probably, earned as much from his contributions to The Tobacco Plant as from all his other literary work put together. Still, these were hard years for him. In 1879 he writes: "I can still but barely manage to keep head above water—sometimes sinking under for a bit". The words off praise which had greeted his masterpiece had not found sufficient echo to encourage the unfortunate author, now all but ready to give up the battle. For "seven songless years" he wrote no verse, only breaking silence shortly before his death, when through the kind offices of Mr. Dobell two volumes or his poems found a publisher in the liberal-minded firm of Reeves & Turner, and met with a favorable reception. The powerful "Voice from the Nile," which gives its name to the posthumous volume of fugitive pieces, issued in 1884, and the fine but almost unbearably painful "Insomnia" date from this period. The reader of the last-mentioned poem will not judge Thomson too harshly because of the intemperance to which he became a victim during the later years of his life. His biographer lays stress upon the fact that he did not willingly yield himself up to drink, but in the solitude and despair depicted so faithfully in "The City of Dreadful Night," with the terrors of sleeplessness added, the temptation to seek relief in the forgetfulness alcohol could give, finally grew too strong to be resisted. But in June of 1882 the struggle ended, and Thomson met his death exactly as the sole author with whom he can be said to claim any literary kinship—Edgar Allan Poe—had done thirty-three years before. Few literary lives have less brightness to set against the shadow, but it is through the very desolation of his life that Thomson has gained his sad eminence, since a happier man could not have portrayed despair so faithfully.
In these days of Kipling worship, Thomson's poems may gain additional interest from the fact that Kipling's writings show that their author knows his Thomson well. In "The Light That Failed" the artist-heroine paints a picture suggested by Thomson's marvelous description of the "melencolia that transcends all wit" in "The City of Dreadful Night." Eustace Cleever, in one of the "Plain Tales," mutters a quotation that is very evidently Thomson's:
Lips would not sing if they could but kiss.
To the gruesome "Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes" is prefaced the refrain, "As I came through the desert thus it was,"' from "The City of Dreadful Night," which Mr. Stedman has compared to "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," and the phrase "The City of Dreadful Night" has no doubt become familiar to us all since Kipling has used it as a title for a collection of sketches of Calcutta in its darker aspects.
"Shall not the wise as well as the witless have their poet?" asks Mr. Stedman, apropos of Landor. Thomson will never be popular—the character of his subjects is such as to render popularity impossible, but to adapt the critic's query: "Shall not the sad, as well as the merry, have their poet?"