February 16: On this day in 1751, Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard" was published. Gray was a reclusive gentleman-poet and he did
not write many poems, but this one brought him immediate fame and became the
most reprinted poem of the 18th century. Written when England was on the
up-slope of its mercantile and imperial power, the "Elegy" is a
tribute to those country folk who chose other than "to wade through slaughter
to a throne" or to "heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride":
Far from the madding
crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never
learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd
vale of life
They kept the noiseless
tenor of their way.
Thomas Hardy borrowed the
title of his first major book from this passage, and a long list of novels and
paintings have been titled from other passages. More fundamentally, Gray and
his "Elegy" are central to the 18th century's idealization
of rusticity and reclusion, and its related obsession with sensibility. As
documented in Isabel Colegate's A Pelican
in the Wilderness: Hermits, Solitaires and Recluses (2003), these fads
could lead to some odd behavior. Lord Harcourt, a British diplomat and general,
was so determined to create a landscaped retreat around his new villa in
Oxfordshire that he had the entire village of Nuneham Courtenay moved a mile
down the road. Then Harcourt kindly invited the displaced villagers back for a
feast, and a lesson in rural living:
There were two pictures on
the lawn, one showing an idyllic cottage scene, with
clean little children playing peacefully on the doorstep while the housewife
plied her spinning wheel, and the other depicting a miserable and dilapidated
hovel, with dirty children neglected by a slatternly housewife. The deferential
villagers bedecked the first with flowers and the second with nettles, urged on
by their benevolent landlords, who then presented awards for virtue and
industry. Later on the most deserving villagers were visited, and granted a red
M for Merit to put in their windows.
Lord Harcourt had a
portrait of Gray in the study of his villa, and the villa itself is just down
the motorway from Stoke Poges, the village upon which Gray based his poem and
in which he is buried. But Lord Harcourt's most famous connection to 18th-century
poetry is through Oliver Goldsmith, who based "The Deserted Village"
upon the forced desertion orchestrated by m'lord.
Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.
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