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John Byrne Leicester Warren, 3rd Baron de Tabley (26 April 1835 – 22 November 1895) was an English poet, numismatist, botanist and an authority on bookplates.
He was eldest son ofGeorge Fleming Leicester (afterwards Warren),[1] Lord de Tabley (1811–1887), by his wife (married: 1832) Catherina Barbara (1814–1869), second daughter ofJerome, Count de Salis-Soglio.
The young Warren, as he then was, was educated atEton from 1847 to 1851, in the Rev. Edward Coleridge's house, and then atChrist Church, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1856 with second class honours in classics, law, and modern history. In the autumn of 1858 he went to Turkey as unpaidattaché toLord Stratford de Redcliffe. In 1860 he wascalled to the bar fromLincoln's Inn. He was commissioned as a part-time Lieutenant into theCheshire Yeomanry and unsuccessfully contestedMid-Cheshire in 1868 as a Liberal.[1]
After his mother died and his father's re-marriage in 1871 Warren removed to London, where he became a close friend ofTennyson.[1] Tennyson once said of him: 'He isFaunus, he is a woodland creature'.
From 1877 until his succession to the barony and estates in 1887, Warren was lost to his friends, assuming the life of arecluse. It was not until 1892, five years after becoming Lord de Tabley, that he returned to London life and enjoyed a renaissance of reputation and friendship.[1]
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During the later years of his life, Tabley made many new friends, besides reopening old associations, and he seemed to be gathering around him a small literary company when his health broke, and he died atRyde on theIsle of Wight in his sixty-first year. He is buried atSt Oswald’s Church, Lower Peover in Cheshire.[1]
Although his reputation will live almost exclusively as that of a poet, Tabley was a man of many studious tastes. He was at one time an authority onnumismatics (he was a first cousin of the numismatistJohn, Count de Salis-Soglio), he wrote two novels, publishedA Guide to the Study of Book Plates (1880), and the fruit of his careful researches in botany was printed posthumously in his elaborateFlora of Cheshire (1899).[1]
Poetry, however, was his first and last passion, and to that he devoted the best energies of his life. Lord de Tabley's first impulse towards poetry came from his friendGeorge Fortescue, with whom he shared a close companionship during his Oxford days, and whom he lost, as Tennyson lost Hallam, within a few years of their taking their degrees. Fortescue was killed by falling from the mast ofLord Drogheda's yacht in November 1859, and this gloomy event plunged Tabley into a deep depression. Between 1859 and 1862 he issued four little volumes ofpseudonymous verse (byG. F. Preston), in the production of which he had been greatly stimulated by the sympathy of Fortescue. Once more he assumed a pseudonym: hisPraeterita (1863) bearing the name ofWilliam Lancaster.[1]
In the next year he publishedEclogues and Monodramas, followed in 1865 byStudies in Verse. These volumes all displayed technical grace and much natural beauty; but it was not until the publication of Philoctetes in 1866 that Tabley met with any wide recognition.Philoctetes bore the initials M.A., which, to the author's dismay, were interpreted as meaningMatthew Arnold. He at once disclosed his identity, and received the congratulations of his friends, among whom were Tennyson,Browning andGladstone.[1]
In 1867 he publishedOrestes, in 1870Rehearsals and in 1873Searching the Net. These last two bore his own name, John Leicester Warren. He was somewhat disappointed by their lukewarm reception, and when in 1876The Soldier of Fortune, a drama on which he had bestowed much careful labor, proved a complete failure, he retired altogether from the literary arena.[1]
It was not until 1893, that he was persuaded to return, and the immediate success in that year of hisPoems, Dramatic and Lyrical, encouraged him to publish a second series in 1895, the year of his death. The genuine interest with which these volumes were welcomed did much to lighten the last years of a somewhat sombre and solitary life. His posthumous poems were collected in 1902.[1]
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Arthur Waugh gives the following assessment of Tabley as a poet:
The characteristics of De Tabley’s poetry are pre-eminently magnificence of style, derived from close study of Milton, sonority, dignity, weight and colour. His passion for detail was both a strength and a weakness: it lent a loving fidelity to his description of natural objects, but it sometimes involved him in a loss of simple effect from over-elaboration of treatment. He was always a student of the classic poets, and drew much of his inspiration directly from them. He was a true and a whole-hearted artist, who, as a brother poet well said, “still climbed the clear cold altitudes of song.” His ambition was always for the heights, a region naturally ice-bound at periods, but always a country of clear atmosphere and bright, vivid outlines.[1]
There is also a sketch of Lord de Tabley byEdmund Gosse in hisCritical Kit-Kats (1896).[1] This is an extract of what Gosse wrote:
His character was like an opal, where all the colours lie purdue, drowned in a milky mystery, and so arranged that to a couple of observers, simultaneously bending over it, the prevalent hue shall in one case seem a pale green, in the other a fiery crimson.
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One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Waugh, Arthur (1911). "De Tabley, John Byrne Leicester Warren, Baron". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 110.
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Baron de Tabley 1887–1895 | Extinct |
| Baronetage of England | ||
| Preceded by | Baronet (of Nether Tabley) 1887–1895 | Succeeded by Peter Leicester |
