Alfred Austin | |
|---|---|
 Alfred Austin, by Langfier, 1900. | |
| Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom | |
| In office 1 January 1896 – 2 June 1913 | |
| Monarch | VictoriaGeorge V |
| Preceded by | Alfred, Lord Tennyson |
| Succeeded by | Robert Bridges |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1835-05-30)30 May 1835 Headingley,Yorkshire, England |
| Died | 2 June 1913(1913-06-02) (aged 78) Ashford, Kent, England |
| Spouse | Hester Jane Homan-Mulock |
| Occupation | Poet, novelist, dramatist |
Alfred AustinDL (30 May 1835 – 2 June 1913) was an English poet who was appointedPoet Laureate in1896, after an interval following the death ofTennyson, when the other candidates had either caused controversy or refused the honour. It was claimed that he was being rewarded for his support for the Conservative leaderLord Salisbury in the General Election of 1895. Austin's poems are little remembered today, his most popular work being prose idylls celebrating nature.Wilfred Scawen Blunt wrote of him, "He is an acute and ready reasoner, and is well read in theology and science. It is strange his poetry should be such poor stuff, and stranger still that he should imagine it immortal."
Alfred Austin was born inHeadingley, nearLeeds, on 30 May 1835, to a Roman Catholic family. His father, Joseph Austin, was a merchant in Leeds; his mother was a sister ofJoseph Locke, the civil engineer and M.P. forHoniton. Austin was educated atStonyhurst College (Clitheroe, Lancashire),St Mary's College, Oscott,[1] andUniversity of London, from which he graduated in 1853.[2] He became abarrister in 1857 but after inheriting a fortune from his uncle gave up his legal career for literature.[2][3][4]
He unsuccessfully stood as a Conservative Party candidate forTaunton in 1865, finishing in fourth place, and atDewsbury in 1880.[5]
Politically conservative, between 1866 and 1896 Austin editedNational Review and wrote leading articles forThe Standard.[2] He was Foreign Affairs Correspondent with theStandard and served as a special correspondent to the Ecumenical Council of the Vatican in 1870; at the Headquarters of the King of Prussia during the Franco-Prussian War, 1870; at theCongress of Berlin, 1878 where he was granted an audience by German ChancellorOtto von Bismarck. An ardent imperialist and follower ofDisraeli he became, in 1883, joint editor of the National Review with W. J. Courthope and was sole editor from 1887 until 1896.[3]
On Tennyson's death in 1892 it was felt that none of the then living poets, exceptAlgernon Charles Swinburne orWilliam Morris, who were outside consideration on other grounds, was of sufficient distinction to succeed to the laurel crown, and for several years no new poet-laureate was nominated. In the interval the claims of one writer and another were assessed,[6] but eventually, in 1896, Austin was appointed to the post[2] after Morris had declined it. As a poet Austin never ranked highly in the opinions of his peers and was often derided as being a "Banjo Byron".
The critic Edmund Broadus wrote that the choice of Austin for poet-laureate had much to do with Austin's friendship withLord Salisbury, his position as an editor and leader writer, and his willingness to use his poetry to support the government.[7] For example, shortly before his appointment was announced, Austin published a sonnet entitled "A Vindication of England", written in response to a series of sonnets byWilliam Watson, published in theWestminster Gazette, that had accused Salisbury's government of betrayingArmenia and abandoning its people toTurkish massacres.[8]
SirOwen Seaman (1861–1936) gave added currency to the supposed connection withLord Salisbury in his poem, "To Mr Alfred Austin",In Cap and Bells, London & New York, 1900, 9:
At length a callous Tory chief arose,
Master of caustic jest and cynic gibe,
Looked round theCarlton Club and lightly chose
Its leading scribe.
Austin served as Deputy-Lieutenant forHerefordshire. Austin died of unknown causes at Swinford Old Manor,[9]Hothfield, nearAshford, Kent, England, where he had been ill for some time.[10]
On 14 November 1865 Austin married Hester Jane Homan-Mulock, tenth child of Thomas Homan-Mulock and Frances Sophia Berry atSt Marylebone Parish Church, London. In hisAutobiography, Austin gives a curious account of how they met. Seeing the photograph of a young lady in an album belonging to his friendIsa Blagden in Florence, he had asked: "Who is that?" and received the reply, "The girl you ought to marry, if you can." Austin brought home a letter of introduction, the presentation of which led to his receiving at his cottage in Hertfordshire Hester (the young lady in the photograph), her sister and their chaperon, together with their friendThomas Adolphus Trollope, brother ofAnthony Trollope. At a second visit Hester became engaged to Alfred.[11] Throughout his career as journalist and writer Austin derived constant help and support from his wife. She died suddenly on 23 September 1929 at her residence in Kensington. His nephews included the Polar Explorer CaptainGeorge Mulock and British diplomatSir Howard William Kennard (1878–1955), British Ambassador to Poland at the outbreak of the Second World War.
In 1861, after two false starts in poetry and fiction, he made his first noteworthy appearance as a writer withThe Season: a Satire, which contained incisive lines, and was marked by some promise both in wit and observation. In 1870 he published a volume of criticism,The Poetry of the Period, which was conceived in the spirit of satire, and attacked Tennyson,Browning,Matthew Arnold and Swinburne in an unrestrained fashion. The book aroused some discussion at the time, but its lack of balance meant that its judgments were extremely uncritical.[2] Austin wrote of the "detestable gibberish" of Robert Browning, of Swinburne's "emasculated poetic voice," and of William Morris as "the idle singer of an empty day," and he prophesied that Tennyson'sIn Memoriam "will assuredly be handed over to the dust when a generation arises that has come to its senses." Austin himself, while he continued to "think that there was a strong element of truth inThe Poetry of the Period," soon came to deem "the tone in which it was written unfortunate," and in 1873, three years after its publication, he withdrew it from circulation.[12]
A contemporary critic, Walter Whyte, praised the "purity" of Austin's style: "He writes sound unaffected English; his meaning is always transparent. He has not sought to emulate Tennyson's exquisite elaboration of diction; his lines are seldom jewelled by 'curious felicities.' But they are always graceful, and sometimes admirably vigorous and hearty.[...] One of the charms of his poetry lies in the freshness and vividness of his descriptions of Nature. He has dealt powerfully with the grandeurs of Alpine scenery, but his happiest pictures are of English fields and woods."[13]
The criticGeorge Saintsbury, while endorsing the general view that "Alfred Austin hardly deserved to be made poet laureate," found him "a really vigorous and accomplished writer of prose, and a tolerable master of unambitious form in verse." Austin, he wrote, "could keep up poems of some length likePrince Lucifer andThe Human Tragedy," and approach a modicum of "vigour and passion in lyric."[14]
As poet-laureate, his topical verses did not escape negative criticism; a hasty poem written in praise of theJameson Raid in 1896 being a notable instance. A drama by him,Flodden Field, was performed at His Majesty's theatre in 1903,[2] with incidental music byPercy Pitt. A number of his poems were set to music byFrances Allitsen,[15] andAlexander Mackenzie's contribution toChoral Songs in Honour of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (1899) was a setting of Austin's occasional poem "With wisdom, goodness, grace".
Novels
Poetry
Drama
Other
Austin was the subject of aVanity Fair cartoon bySpy published on 20 February 1896.
He wascaricatured as "Sir Austed Alfrin" byL. Frank Baum in his 1906 novelJohn Dough and the Cherub.
Van Morrison's song "Haunts of Ancient Peace", the first track on his 1980 albumCommon One, took its title from Austin's 1902 book of the same name.[16]
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Now upon English soil I soon shall stand, | |
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Austin, Alfred".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 2 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 938. Foster, Joseph (1885)."Austin, Alfred" .Men-at-the-Bar (second ed.). London: Hazell, Watson, and Viney. p. 15.]
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| Preceded by | British Poet Laureate 1892–1913 | Succeeded by |