Research Articles
Author: Sam Adams (Independent Scholar)
Discussion of the life and work of Thomas Jeffery Llewelyn Prichard (1790–1862) has steadily increased over the past forty years. His novel, Twm Shon Catti (1828), with its disputed claim to be ‘the first Welsh Novel’, has been the chief focus of attention, while his poems have been relatively neglected. That the bulk of his poetry consists of long narratives on historical and legendary subjects, which he considered by their very nature superior, has not helped his case. With the recent discovery of Theatrical Poems (1822), known previously only from citations on the title pages of his other publications, it becomes possible to survey and re-evaluate his poetic output. His true strength lay in satire. Satirical poetry, supporting the fallen Napoleon while condemning Louis XVI and European monarchies in general, testifies to his radical thinking, as does his consistent nomination as “publishers” of his work those who had risked legal sanction (and in some cases suffered imprisonment) for offences against the laws on libel. Some of his most powerful poems describe the suffering of the rural poor and attack callous landowners. In Theatrical Poems a similar furious concern on behalf of actors exploited by unscrupulous theatre managers re-emphasises Prichard’s close knowledge of the stage and tends to confirm his connection with the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.
Keywords: T. J. Ll. Prichard, theatre history, libel laws, publishers, radicalism, satirical poetry
How to Cite: Adams, S. (2018) “T. J. Llewelyn Prichard: Poetry (Including Theatrical Poems), Publishers and Politics”, International Journal of Welsh Writing in English. 5(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/ijwwe.781
The first substantial discussion of the life and work of T. J. Llewelyn Prichard was published more than forty years ago.1 Since then, interest in Prichard and in his position in the development of Welsh writing in English has steadily increased. Recent critical interest has tended to focus on Twm Shon Catti (1828), partly because of the claim made on its behalf to be the ‘first Welsh Novel’2 (though research has identified rivals), and because of its intrinsic interest, notably the satiric view it takes of English landowners in Wales. Although he was firstly by instinct and ambition a poet, laying siege to the editor of The Cambro-Briton under the alias ‘Jeffery Llewelyn’,3 less attention has been given to Prichard’s poetry, of which there is a great deal. That the long ‘historical’ poems, by which he set much store, are mostly tedious may have contributed to this relative neglect, but there was also the fact that the texts commonly available did not encompass the whole of his poetic output. The latter problem has, however, been overcome by discovery of the unpublished manuscript, ‘Medallions of the Memorable’,4 and, more recently, of his pamphlet Theatrical Poems (1822), a collection of satirical pieces mostly aimed at actors and theatre managers, which is a major theme of this essay. The publishers of his one substantial book of poems, Welsh Minstrelsy (1824), were ostensibly John and H. L. Hunt (of London), whose names appear on the title page. But the book was printed by John Cox in Aberystwyth and the vast majority of copies were distributed in Wales.5 Further, the poet’s name and the book title do not appear in any of the lists of works published by John and H. L. Hunt in the 1820s. This is intriguing. What part did they play in the publication of the book? Did they even know that they were the named publishers? Such ultimately unanswerable questions prompted my survey of the printers/publishers of Prichard’s other books, from the early poem pamphlets up to The Heroines of Welsh History (1854). The outcome suggests they were not chosen randomly (or, in Wales, as convenience probably dictated),6 but rather because, like the Hunt brothers, they were associated with antiestablishment, radical causes. If Prichard is allowed a talent as a writer, it is for his satiric eye and pen, and his choice of printer/publisher tells us more about the man, his aspirations and his political allegiance.
‘I shall never publish again, except on the terms of selling the copyright to a London publisher’.7 So Prichard wrote in a letter to an unknown correspondent on 24 November 1857. It was the kind of contractual arrangement he had never yet succeeded in making. Though ‘publishers’ appear on the title pages of some of his books, it is clear that in every case he negotiated with and employed a printer to whom he entrusted his manuscripts. He had always sold his books (or, in the case of Welsh Minstrelsy, subscriptions) from door to door. In 1857, at the time of writing his letter, he was on the road, selling Heroines of Welsh History, and was asking the recipient to forward him ‘14 copies of [the book] to be sent per Railway, addressed – To the care of Mrs. Whittington, Post-mistress, Neath’. He was a travelling salesman of his own work, Neath his next stop, and he was sixty-seven years old, had a wax nose, and was barely recovered from a long illness.8 He did not know that he had already written his last book. In January 1861, barely three years later, having been recently rescued from abject poverty, he died in Swansea after falling into his own fire.
At the beginning of his career as writer, while living in London,9 Prichard had his first book of poems, My Lowly Love (1822), printed by William Phillips in the town of Worthing – some considerable distance away, on the south coast of England. Only the chronically incurious could meet that fact without wondering why. He was, he said, motivated by the encouragement of friends, and by seeing copies of poems made in response to requests ‘ultimately, without my consent, [finding] their way into some of the periodical works of the day, under various signatures’. He set out, then, ‘to prepare against marauders, and stamp the maker’s name on the stragglers’.10 If these genuinely were his motives, we might still reasonably wonder why he would take the poems to Worthing. There were scores of printers in London, including at least one he was familiar with from his efforts to contribute poems to The Cambro-Briton.11 It could hardly have been by chance or whim that he carried his manuscript some sixty miles to the south coast to be printed. Had he, perhaps, been invited to spend a few weeks earning a guinea or two among the performers who were under the management of Thomas Trotter?12 And, once there, was the choice of printer, William Phillips, deliberate and significant? Phillips has a place in literary history as the printer of Shelley’s The Necessity of Atheism (1811). Would Prichard have been aware of this in 1822? It is of course possible and even likely, because he was an avid reader with a particular interest in radical thought, and because the reverberations of Shelley’s pamphlet continued to be felt long after its publication. In 1817, the first number of the anti-radical newspaper White Dwarf (to which I shall return below) was largely devoted to a spoof analysis of the reasons in Shelley’s upbringing and schooling for his supposedly deviant behaviour and atheistical writing. It is certainly arguable that Prichard knew such of Shelley’s work as had been published up to 1822, for Shelley was ‘one of the living race of writers’ whom he professed to admire.13 Indeed, his consistent choice of printers or publishers with radical connections for his later publications supports the contention that William Philips was just as deliberately chosen for My Lowly Love.
Prichard had turned to writing trusting that ‘[the English] may ultimately be obliged to acknowledge Wales is not without her Rural Bard, who whether or not would feel no honor [sic] in a comparison with Bloomfield, the incidents of whose life have not been more inimical to the cultivation of poetry than mine’.14 He yearned to emulate the success of The Farmer’s Boy (1800), which had enjoyed enormous sales and launched Robert Bloomfield as a poet of some account.15 In Capel Lofft, however, Bloomfield had a patron to promote him, who had extensive estates in Suffolk, the poet’s home county, and was himself a writer and editor of note.16 In contrast, when later, perhaps too late to do any good, Prichard might have gained the patronage of Lady Llanover, he fell out with her and began his descent into penury.17
Prichard practised light, satirical verse, on the whole successfully, as in ‘A Lover An Ass’ (pp. 31–2), from My Lowly Love:
An Ass is an honest, faithful, gentle slave, An ill-used subject to some jade or knave, Who stumbling, oft is on his knees; So I, thy vanity have sought to please, Blindly partial, each caprice to brave. As kneels an Indian to his wooden idol, Fool that I was! I’ve knelt to thee, thou sly doll.
This, with its concluding Byronic rhyme, is an amusing piece of versification. A similar, theatrical skill in versifying colloquial language is displayed, for example, in ‘The Nervous Man’s Likeness’, from Prichard’s next collection, Mariette Mouline (1823):
What, leave me so? – in pain – in fever? – What go – and not a kiss at parting? You part in malice – go for ever? Nay – I’ll not your wish be thwarting – I always thought you, faced and featured, Like one that heaven stampt ill-natured. What, in tears? – the devil’s in me! To vex so good, so kind a creature! To be a wretch did heaven mean me, Accurst with such ungrateful nature! Nay, let me kiss those tears away – ‘Tis but in jest those things I say. (MM, p. 46)
Whether or not this is a portrait from life, contemporary criticism might consider how psychologically perceptive it is about complex and problematic relationships. Nonetheless, its primary aim is to entertain.
Prichard found other targets for epigrammatic verses, for instance in snuff-takers and venal clerics, notably the Revd Benjamin Jones of Builth.18 Such verses hint at his natural strength as a poet, but from the first, and to the end, he was convinced of the superiority of the genre of poetry that was long-winded, historical and moralising. The work he submitted to The Cambro-Briton in 1820 was of this latter character, as was his final poetic flourish, the manuscript, dated 1842, entitled ‘Medallions of the Memorable in a series of Historic Sonnets’.19 Confirmation that his ambition always lay in this direction is firmly underlined in the preface to Mariette Mouline, where he repeats an apology that had previously appeared prefatory to My Lowly Love, ‘for putting these petite and slight trifles into print, while, in [his friends’] estimation, I have constructed and possess many a mouldering Manuscript of more solid materials, higher pretensions in a poetic view, and greater amplitude’ (MM, p. [iii]).20
Mariette Mouline was printed for the poet by William Hersee (1786– 1854), whose office was in White Lion Court, which, as its name suggests, was a stubby cul-de-sac south of Throgmorton Street, in Cornhill. Prichard lived in Brook Street, which runs north of Holborn, a little to the west of and parallel to the broader thoroughfare of Hatton Garden. He and Hersee were not near neighbours. Indeed, since Prichard was chiefly occupied in the world of theatre, business with Hersee would take him a considerable distance in the opposite direction from his usual routes. He could not fall upon Hersee’s office by chance, and since (according to Rhynd’s Printers’ Guide) there were 210 Master Printers in London in 1804, and unlikely to be significantly fewer in 1820, it would be reasonable to suspect an element of deliberation in the choice.21
Hersee, an admirer of Bloomfield, was himself a poet – originally, like Prichard, a ‘rural bard’ of humble origins, with as scant a formal education.22 A clerkship in the Excise Office brought him to London, where he sought to augment his income by starting in business as a printer. Again, rather like Prichard, he turned his hand to longer, historical poems – on campaigns in the Napoleonic wars, promising subjects from the point of view of popular appeal and sales.23 In 1822/23, when he knocked on Hersee’s door at White Lion Court, Prichard could well have known of the dramatic versifier of events in the Peninsular War. But how did he know Hersee had a printing office? And what, in the first place, could have brought Hersee to his attention?
Hersee’s career as printer was brief and undistinguished: he printed a few small things ‘for the author’, though not his own work.24 At the end of 1817, however, he took over as printer of White Dwarf, a pro-government weekly, edited by Gibbons Merle,25 which was conceived as a response to Thomas Jonathan Wooler’s radical newspaper Black Dwarf. Hersee’s first production (number five) coincided with an attempt to widen the paper’s appeal by running theatre reviews and, later, occasional poems were added to leaven the staple of anti-radical politics. But unlike its rival, White Dwarf never gained a popular readership. It survived as far as number twenty-two only because it was covertly supported by government funds.26
That Prichard, whose political views were opposed to those expressed in White Dwarf, was a regular reader seems unlikely. He was, however, interested in theatre. That he was an actor we accept because there are witnesses to the fact.27 There is evidence also that he knew many plays and could quote extensively from them.28 Later in the present essay, I go on to suggest that he acted at the Theatre Royal Covent Garden as ‘Mr Jefferies’; but even if that is ultimately incapable of proof, the subscribers’ list to Welsh Minstrelsy tells us he had connections with that theatre. Drama reviews in newspapers and magazines of the period largely focused on Covent Garden and its rival and near neighbour, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. About 1818, when reviews began appearing in White Dwarf, they were almost invariably favourable to productions at the former, while pouring scorn on management and performances at the latter.29 Since supply exceeded demand, copies of White Dwarf were often freely available and Prichard is unlikely to have been unaware of them. This, then, may well be what brought him to Hersee’s door.
Prichard’s radical views are explicit in two of the poems in Mariette Mouline, ‘The Oak of Gaul’ and ‘The Yew of Gaul’, in which he appears allied to those poets and writers who, as young men, were supporters of the ideals of the French Revolution, and then of Napoleon. Despite the devastation wrought by war, and in contrast to some who had changed their views, Prichard still exalts the Emperor – though now broken, in exile – far above the monarchs of Europe, and fancies he is not alone among the British in that regard.
Oh! blasted by the lightnings stroke, Now lowly lies the regal Oak – More awful look his rended roots, Each that darkly upward shoots Than seem all other monarch trees That wave their high heads in the breeze; As towers each above the copse His root – their branches over-tops! – Leafless – ruin’d – on its side – Still lovely looks the forest’s pride! ... But Oak of Gaul, thou shalt not die! Thee, thee the muse shall vivify! ... With grief thy lot the Briton sees – Scorn not the nation of the seas! ... Their rulers wander basely wide, From the genius, soul, and pride Of these same lofty Islanders (MM, pp. 16–19)
‘The Yew of Gaul’ applies the same approach to Louis XVIII, who was manoeuvred onto the throne after the abdication of Napoleon in 1814 and, having fled at Napoleon’s return from Elba, regained it in 1815. The poem’s epigraph is from Hamlet, ‘Look on this picture – and on this!’:
Thou much abhorr’d foul venom’d yew, From Gaul’s proud soil that freedom threw! A junto for the right of kings Replants again; – but from it springs No scion for the time to be – A fruitless, barren, cursed tree! Its branches shelter prey-birds foul, Dark superstition’s gloomy owl, Reptiles of malignant power ... While all the liberal mind admires Beneath its baneful shade expires. (MM, p. 20)
Here and elsewhere in his writing, Prichard appears as a man of strong convictions and strong emotions. A similar allegorical attack on the monarchy and government of Britain would certainly have brought him to the attention of the authorities.
A search of the full catalogue of the National Library of Wales reveals only one book entitled Theatrical Poems (1822). 30 The poet’s name, ‘Jeremy Diddler’, given on the title page, is a nom de plume borrowed from the leading role in a successful farce, Raising the Wind, by James Kenney (1780–1849), first produced at Covent Garden in 1803. That the text is bound with My Lowly Love suggests whoever was the original owner of the volume suspected, or knew, Prichard was responsible for both. The preface to My Lowly Love (1822) tells us it was his first publication.31 In 1823, he began the preface of Mariette Mouline, by stating, ‘This is the third little work of mine that has appeared before a small part of the public’ (p. [iii]) and on the title page claimed he was ‘Author of “My Lowly Love,” “Theatrical Poems” &c’. Other clues tend to confirm the identification. Addressing his readers in the preface, ‘Diddler’ uses the word ‘fatidical’ (TP, p. [v]), which Prichard, self-schooled in Johnson’s dictionary, preferred to ‘prophetic’ here as elsewhere.32 Prichard’s signature is also apparent in a formula for poem titles employed in both books to signal particularly virulent personal attacks: in Theatrical Poems we have ‘A Wise Man A Fool’ (pp. 32–3), and in My Lowly Love, ‘A Lover An Ass’, ‘A Dandy A Flirt’ and ‘A Bishop A Thief And A Parson A Clown’ (pp. 31–2, 34, 33). In broader terms, Prichard’s known involvement in theatre and association with the Theatre Royal Covent Garden, allied to his strength as a satirist, underline his claim to authorship.
Prichard (taking him indeed to be the author of Theatrical Poems), giving full rein to his animosity towards certain barely disguised members of the theatrical profession, would not have seen Raising the Wind in 1803; what he had in mind was a revival more than a decade later, when the part of Diddler was taken by Richard Jones, to whom Theatrical Poems is dedicated, by ‘Diddler’, as ‘the best semblance of myself on the English stage’ (TP, p. [iii]). The dedication strongly hints at a closeness to the Covent Garden company under John Philip Kemble, which several of the poems tend to confirm. But why the masquerade as Jeremy Diddler? Most obviously, because Prichard feared the text might be considered offensive, lose him work in the theatre and expose him to opprobrium, if not danger.
The first poem, ‘The Strolling Manager’ (TP, pp. 9–16), is a case in point. It is also perhaps the best thing Prichard ever wrote in the satiric mode, a tour de force that wittily destroys a theatre manager, whom he names Gaggus, and his wife, on tour in a ‘paltry town’. The poem finds the pair in enforced idleness: theatres are closed during the obsequies for Queen Charlotte.33 They are an aging, ill-featured couple, and Gaggus is portrayed as an amalgam of all that is seedy, unprincipled, mean and grasping in theatrical management. He cuts plays, retaining unpruned only the best, youthful parts for himself and his wife, and cheats fellow actors of their due share of the box office takings. Gaggus’s claim to have received costumes and props from the hands of famous actors gives Prichard the opportunity to assemble a cast of witnesses to his familiarity with London theatre:
In veteran grace (or grease) here too appears Some cast-off gaudery, of London play’rs, That twice ten years ago, (as he’ll pretend,) Were given Gaggus, by a bosom friend; (Always an actor of the first renown! Though bought at many a rag-shop of the town.) ... The wig of Edwin, and a dog’s-ear’d book Said once to grace the Library of Cook; Old King’s Lord Ogleby’s choice of walking stick, The ruff of Bannister, and beard of Quick; A sword of Kemble’s, and a book of Plays That Siddons studied from, in younger days, Were few, among the many, and he dotes To tell of each, some patience-killing jokes, Worn out bon-mots, and well-known anecdotes ... Down in a corner near the window lies His pamphlet library, of dirty plays, Small cheap Editions from the shop of R—— On Oxberry’s manor who delights to poach34
The poem has many examples of a keen satiric edge. Mrs Gaggus is as determined as her husband to retain the best roles for herself:
To join the company when an Actress came, Youthful and sprightly, her pet-parts to claim, The ancient lady, full of wrath, would cry ‘Those parts are mine! I’ll play them till I die! ‘Jane Shore, Cordelia, Lady Caroline, ‘Belvidera, Juliet, and such like are mine, ‘I play’d them well full forty years ago – ‘The devil’s in it if I can’t too now! ‘What! be supplanted by a spouting Miss? ‘No! If I do – why let the audience hiss.’ O’er-awed, her junior would say no more, But mutter ‘Juliet at fifty four.’35
There is some variation in line length and rhyme pattern in the next poem ‘The Scene Painter’s Blunder; or, Satan and Saturn’ (TP, pp. 17–23), which introduces ‘Bluff ‘, another penny-pinching theatre manager.36 Bluff ‘s ‘so so’ actors are hissed by audiences, even when non-paying spectators (‘dead-heads’) are admitted by paper ‘orders’. He is urged to refresh productions by repainting scenery, but contemplating the expense involved,
‘D— me,’ cried he, ‘I scorn to be thought mean, I’ll pluck up courage, and have one new scene – A showy drop!’37
He employs ‘Mister Daub’ a painter ‘of least renown’, and instructs him to paint a scene from Greek mythology incorporating an image of Saturn devouring his sons. The baffled artist decides that by ‘Saturn’ Bluff means ‘Satan’, presents his work, and is cursed as a ‘stupid blockhead’. That this simple tale, which might have been delivered in a dozen lines, unfolds at considerable length suggests it may have been based on an actual event, and that ‘Bluff ‘ and ‘Daub’, hide identities well-known in theatrical circles. A detail added to the initial presentation of ‘Daub’, ‘the Taunton people prized him / For painting Ale-house signs’, reinforces the notion. And the description of Bluff as he leaves Daub to his work – he ‘waddled forth with shuffling air / To seek another town to play in’ – also suggests a real man lurking behind the comedic name.
A note attached to ‘The Iron Penny; or, Spartan Currency Revived’ reveals the target of this poem to be ‘a certain [theatre] Manager in the west of England, (well known at Bridgewater, Wells, Taunton, and Barnstable,) no less remarkable for his alleged consanguinity to the celebrated Caleb Quotem than for his bad Poetry, bad Acting, bad Salaries, and bad Payments’ (TP, p. 26). This is Henry Lee (1765–1836) who owned and managed theatres at the towns mentioned above, and was the author of Caleb Quotem, a farce performed at the Haymarket Theatre in 1798 (under the title Throw Physick to the Dogs).38 Prichard accuses Lee not only of meanly defrauding his players, but of hypocrisy in claiming (in his poetry) a generous heart to help his fellow man:
Coin thy heart? good – very fine! To those who know thee not – divine! For me – and others, not so bless’d, It is, in sooth, ‘a rueful jest.’ – With a vengeance this is Canting – Morality where truth is wanting – Mild mercy preach’d by Anti-Christ – The Devil turn’d Philanthropist! – A can’t-be truth – a shallow fiction – A gullery – a contradiction. (TP, pp. 26–7)
Are Lee and ‘Bluff ‘ one and the same? Possibly; at least something of Lee is in Bluff ‘s portrait. It suggests Prichard had experience of Lee’s regime in theatres in the west of England and had formed a very low opinion of him.39 The poem is an example of the vigour and vitriol of Prichard’s writing when his wit is stirred by anger. He is equally scathing in ‘A Wise Man A Fool’ (TP, pp. 32–3):
Men say, the over-loyal hector, Ch—— Kl——’s but a sorry actor, A fop by art, a fool by nature, A grovelling squab in form and feature: – That he ne’er play’d a single part Consistent with dramatic art, Except, perchance, once in his noon Whil’st Covent Garden’s pantaloon: – But much they err who so assert And slander his unknown desert: ‘Though to depict him quite defies man,
Yet him, with ease, I’ll prove a wise-man. If true – the old proverbial rule, ‘A wise man best can play the fool’ – Then Ch—— what wondrous wisdom sways, A fool who makes each part he plays.
A furiously defamatory note to the poem confirms a sense of particular connection between poet and subject: ‘This outrageous little grub of loyalty’, it begins, ‘is manager of a beautiful Summer Theatre, in a fair town on the banks of Thame, not ten miles West from London, where with a “Major Dumpling”40 sort of face and figure, and voice scarce more melodious than a crack’d warming-pan, he flourishes away as a tragic hero, and (Heaven save the mark!) light comedian!! his management is no less contemptible than his acting, and equally disgusting to a very elegant and liberal audience, whom he insults by engaging performers at very low salaries, if possible, worse than himself, but should any one, by mischance prove better, and approved of by the audience, they are immediately put to play characters out of their line, and never get a second engagement in his company ... otherwise, he has no objection to clever people who will stay with him for a guinea a week’ (TP, p. 32). The detail of the portrait and the sense of grievance displayed point to a close knowledge of the subject. It seems supremely likely that the poet suffered at the hands of this theatre Manager, and that his resentment was heightened by the perception that Ch—— Kl—— owed him an unacknowledged debt of loyalty.
The initials and the description of the theatre in the town on the Thames west of London enable a positive identification: the ‘outrageous little grub’ is Charles Klanert, who had so far succeeded in his theatrical career that, by 1822 at least, he had become manager of the Theatre Royale at Richmond. In his anecdotal memoirs, referring to Klanert, Edward Stirling recalls ‘playing tragedy, comedy, etc., to our veteran manager’s Macbeths, Romeos, at the ripe age of sixty-four. An actor of small parts at Covent Garden’, he continues, ‘Klanert, on his own ground, Richmond, became an actor of great proportions – so at least he thought.’41
A playbill for the opening of the theatrical season at Covent Garden, 16 September 1805, has Klanert in the cast of a ‘musical farce’ called The Padlock, as follows: ‘Scholars, Mess. Klannert and Jefferies’.42 Thereafter, through the season (to 13 June 1806) both Klanert and Jefferies perform frequently, occasionally in the same production. For example, in another musical farce, Hartford Bridge (11 October 1805), they are paired together as ‘Waiters’. In Othello (12 October) Klanert plays Antonio, Jefferies Julio; in The Fair Penitent (22 October) they are listed together with others as ‘Gentlemen’. Occasionally, as in Venice Preserved (31 October), some differentiation is signalled in the billing: Theodore is played by ‘Mr KLANERT’ and Durand by ‘Mr Jefferies’. In King Richard the Third (28 November 1805) ‘Mr JEFFERIES’ as Sir James Blunt lords it over ‘Mr Klanert’ as Sir Richard Ratcliff. In Hamlet (20 March 1806), Rosencrantz is played by Klanert, Guildenstern by Jefferies. Little distinction can be made in the size and importance of the roles performed by Jefferies and Klanert – all are minor. Evidence in Theatrical Poems pointing to a close (if resentful on one side) association between the two, adds weight to the proposition that ‘Mr Jefferies’ is the stage name of Thomas Prichard. It might be objected that Prichard, born in 1790, would have been only fifteen in the 1805–06 season. But youth alone was no impediment to a stage career. Many major actors of the period began as children: in the production of Hamlet mentioned above the leading role was taken by ‘Master Betty’, a fourteen-year-old phenomenon.43
Theatrical Poems contains other theatrical references, the most interesting, ‘Kean and his Imitators’, being an analysis of the great tragedian’s revolutionary acting style, and a critique of its influence on less-gifted performers:
He is indeed, the glass, wherein The day’s tragedians now do dress themselves; They have no skill that practice not his gait, And speaking hoarse, which Nature made his blemish, Becomes the croaking of the would-be Actors; – For those who can speak clear, melodiously! Do turn their own perfection to abuse, To seem like him; so that in mode and geer [sic], E’en from the shoe-tie to the ringlet wig – In artful trickery for Stage effect, Abrupt delivery, transitions quick, O’erwhelming passion, or sarcastic sneer – In standing, moving, action, or in speech, He is the mark and glass, copy and book That fashions others; his defects combined They mimic, – all things, save creative mind. (TP, p. 31)
‘Sonnet. To Patty’ (TP, p. 33), a lighter example, urging the young lady ‘[t]o look more cheerful’, is aimed at a character in the opera The Maid of the Mill – which was revived at Covent Garden in 1818 – rather than at Ann Maria Bradshaw (1801–62), the singer/actress who played her and who ‘owed her popularity to the pathos in her voice’.
Theatrical Poems was ‘printed and published’ in 1822 by ‘H. Price, 19, Wych-Street, Strand’, London.44 The choice of printer is consistent with the tendency noted previously, that Prichard preferred to entrust his work to those who shared his radical views. Not a great deal is known about Price, but his name tells us he was Welsh, or of Welsh ancestry, and he was possibly the author, certainly the printer, of ‘A New Song, called The Duke done by the Upholsterer: Or, York House Carriage turning, Near Buckingham House’.45 As epigraph, this poem quotes an item from ‘Public Papers’:
The private carriage of His Royal Highness the ———— was arrested on its way to the Drawing-room at Buckingham House. The fair occupiers were compelled to alight, and the vehicle taken another way, under the direction of the ‘Jacks in Office.’ This was done by the Duke’s Upholsterer for a debt of 4000l.
The ballad, eleven scurrilous stanzas in all, dating from about 1810, is the print equivalent, though far less fine, of the caricatures of George Cruikshank and Thomas Rowlandson. Perhaps Price got away with it, but he had suffered for past satirical sins. At the foot of the sheet he added:
Printed and published by H. PRICE, Printer and Publisher to the Swinish Multitude (late of His Majesty’s Gaol of Newgate, for a Libel on the Duke of York,) at his PIG-STY, 19, WYCH STREET, STRAND.
PRICE ONE PENNY.
Prichard and Price, poet and printer-publisher, were well-matched. It is possible that fear for his future as an actor was not the only reason the former preferred to hide his identity beneath the mask of Jeremy Diddler. Complaints that individual poems gave offence – to Methodists (‘The Actors Piety’: TP, pp. 29–30), Jews (‘Epigram’: p. 36), the Irish (‘The Paternoster Improved; or, Whisky Nan’s Genius. A Comic Tale’: pp. 37–42) – would probably have been greeted with a shrug. But it might have been unwise even to mention Spenceans (p. 29, ‘The Iron Penny’),46 and the ‘black joke’ (p. 29. ‘The Actor’s Piety’), an indelicate reference to a bawdy ballad.
In 1824, seeking a publisher for Welsh Minstrelsy, Prichard turned to John and H. L. Hunt, whose premises were at 38 Tavistock-street, Covent Garden, close to the Theatre Royal, where Prichard was certainly familiar with the acting fraternity and, it seems increasingly likely, employed.47 Their proximity was convenient, but, like Price, the Hunt brothers also represented the radical political views with which he sympathised. Furthermore, their newspaper championed the ‘poets of the present day’ that he admired. It is impossible to know how much of the book John and/or Leigh Hunt read, if any, before they allowed their name to be attached to it. In any event, it was printed by John Cox far away in in Aberystwyth, and sold by subscription. Of some 858 subscribers only fifty-one have addresses outside Wales, almost all of these in London, and many with names indicating Welsh origins or ancestry. Whether the book was also sold or distributed by the Hunts in London we have no way of knowing, but a search among other, now digitised, books from their office that include lists of their publications reveals no reference to any work by Prichard. Indeed, as we have seen, towards the end of his life he as much as admitted he had never had the kind of arrangement which, in exchange for cash, surrendered the copyright and left to the publisher the business of distributing and marketing the product of his labour. In 1824/5, having the names of John Hunt and Leigh Hunt on the title page was not so much an indication of a business arrangement as a declaration of his support for their political views. It was the same reason that brought Shelley to their doors and, later, Byron.
Prichard did not espouse the Hunts’ radical cause with vehement condemnation of the failings of government, as they did, but he did describe impoverished peasants in Welsh Minstrelsy, implying the indifference of landowners and aristocracy to the suffering of the rural underclass that, in Wales, he witnessed for himself. ‘The Land Beneath the Sea’ (WM, pp. 11–139), an interminable version of the legend of Cantre’r Gwaelod, in which the influence of Coleridge’s ‘The Ancient Mariner’ and ‘Christabel’ affords momentary interest, has a brief description from direct observation of scenes at St David’s, ‘The city of unsightly cots / Where college – palace – fallen, rots’, and children ‘search for shell-fish, day by day / ... urged by necessity’s real distress’ (pp. 122 and 129). ‘The Noble of Nature’ (pp. [141]–205), a self-acknowledged rag-bag of pieces, is both bolder in this respect and more explicit. A late inclusion, as its prefatory note explains,48 it is roughly held together by eulogies to Byron, recently dead in Greece, which could only be Prichard’s: ‘Oh man of centuries, eternal Byron! / True heart of gold, though long mis-rated iron’ (p. 205). It includes previously published work and a few new poems that contribute to the theme of liberty, or are at least illustrative of the loss of freedom that accompanies a life spent in drudgery and deprivation, as in ‘The Woes of the Cottage’ (pp. 159–61):
They err, deeply err, who in rapturous strain, All pleasure attach to the sons of the plain; Seek highland or valley of Wales, they’ll disclose The cottage so envied! the cottage has woes; Scenes of Arcadia, in poesy fair, Supplanted by poverty, labour, and care. ... Ah! Who then can covet the poor peasant’s lot? Turmoil and misery await on the cot; Sickness and beggary – his rent in arrear – Driven forth by hard landlord in season severe! A heart-broken outcast that sufferings decay, A mere beast of burthen forth hunted away! His parish-bred young ones – Calamity’s hot rage – Keen, keen, are the woes, the dread woes of the cottage.
Until he returned to Wales, Prichard was a town dweller for a good part of his life, indeed, a citizen of the ‘all-devouring Wen’, as William Cobbett styled London.49 What he knew of Wales he learned from The Cambro-Briton, the rather starch periodical he aspired to write for, as well as from the books of Romantic tourists. Touring Wales for himself, in pursuit of subscriptions, brought him face to face with the peasant reality.
Cobbett’s Weekly Register, which waged a long campaign against the Game Laws that gave landowners exclusive rights to hunting game and as a result ‘put into gaols a full third part of the prisoners’,50 is a possible source of the following lines in the same poem: ‘The crime of the poacher scarce merits the name, / The law that he breaks is his country’s worst shame’ (WM, p. 160). While there is no evidence of formal education, it is clear Prichard was an avid and retentive reader. Cobbett’s stirring commentaries on the state of rural England seem to have had their part to play in his understanding, as a city dweller, of the life of the peasantry. The influence of wider reading is also present in two poems in which he expresses not so much a statement of his politics as his vision of a ‘second Eden’ (p. 193), set against the implied oppression of the wealthy ruling classes, church, law and state.51 ‘The Star of Liberty’ (pp. 191–5) begins with rejection of the ‘nations miscalled civilized’ and proposes a new world where
No heartless master’s eye should awe, And impose the despot law; The thought ambitious neither, then, Should prompt to ‘slave our brother men; No wasting toil for niggard pay Or purse-proud’s frown to curse our day, Such hell-on-earth could never be Where beamed thy Star – loved Liberty.
and where the priest, the lawyer and the doctor are banished:
What though unblest by bloated priest, The God of all should bless our feast! What though no scoundrel lawyer plan Dispute and hate ‘tween man and man; ... Of tithes, of fees, of taxes free, All health we’d bless thee – Liberty.
What though no doctor, wigged and wise, Vending jargon, poison, lies, Insult us with his cold concern! While temperance, chief, our leech should be, And hallowed Star of Liberty.
Thus as the poem draws to a conclusion, a new world is greeted:
Oh! That I were and [sic] Indian free! The savage son of Liberty! Far from Europe’s sons of blood, The homicidal viper brood! Where men are as utensils made, Mere tools of art; where war’s a trade – Religion craft; where best is he Who stabs the heart of Liberty.
As one who grew to adulthood during the Napoleonic wars, Prichard was well acquainted with the appalling waste of lives as campaign followed campaign, year after year. His deep, well-founded antagonism towards authority, power and privilege is undeniable.
An ‘Indian free! / The savage son of Liberty!’ (WM, p. 195) suggests familiarity with the Romantic concept of the ‘noble savage’ and perhaps, for Prichard, another mentor-hero, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Prichard’s utopian vision is expanded in ‘Lew Chew’ (pp. 195–8), the poem that follows ‘The Star of Liberty’. All the details of a Pacific island with an agreeable climate, diverse vegetation and calmly integrated human society are drawn from a popular travel book of the time, Narrative of a Voyage in His Majesty’s Late Ship Alceste, to the Yellow Sea, Along the Coast of Corea, and Through Its Numerous Hitherto Undiscovered Islands, to the Island of Lewchew, by John McLeod.52 In McLeod’s text, the ship calls at the eponymous island for repairs. The crew are met with great hospitality and observe that land and sea produce food in abundance. Islanders assist the work on the vessel while ‘obstinately refusing any payment or remuneration whatsoever’ (p. 60). The island has no currency; ‘Crimes are ... very unfrequent among [the people], and they seem to go perfectly unarmed ... we observed no warlike instruments of any description’ (p. 112); ‘young people are permitted to make their own choice [of marriage partners], and to communicate without reserve’ (p. 121); they manifest the ‘gentle manners and kind behaviour of the most pacific people on earth’ (p. 98). McLeod’s prose releases a rush of limping lyricism in Prichard’s poem:
Yes, I’ll hie to the land – the sweet Island of spring! That Europe’s soft muses neglecteth to sing – ... Where the flower-tree’s blossom grows scarlet or pale, As on it smiles sol, or as eve-shades prevail. Thus the hue of delight to the virgin’s cheek rushes, As her loved one appears, in redundance of blushes ... ‘Tis the blest land of innocents! – cursed be the arm And heart of ambition that renders them harm! My dear native Britain – that ban on the crime If ever thy war-sword is gored in this clime. (WM, p. 197)
Following the defeat of Napoleon, Britain ruled the seas and, as expansion of colonial possessions by force of arms was proceeding rapidly, Prichard was right to fear for Lew Chew. It did not become part of the empire, but it did change. When the Bishop of Victoria visited in October 1850, the islanders still had no currency but, in his view, were content only because they had few wants and were easily satisfied. Lying, fraud and theft were commonplace, he reported; marriages were arranged and wives treated barbarously.53
‘Lew Chew’ is followed by ‘Kolatto and Adelaide: A Pathetic Tale’ (WM, pp. 198–204) – and another moral lesson. It describes, in explicit detail, a prolonged famine ‘in the German States’ at an unspecified time in the past:
In naked horror naked corses thronged, Like cattle midst the murrain54 of the herd, Heaped human corses, shroudless, uninterred, Barbarized the flinty, sterile, blast-swept earth, And thousands curst the hours of their birth.
To save some children, others are sold into slavery and the wealthy purchasers, knowing the desperation of the parents, ‘scant [their] price’. The poem focuses on the eponymous Kolatto and Adelaide who, having lost one child to starvation, are striving to preserve the remaining three. What can they do? Kolatto offers a solution: ‘ere Death’s dart strikes us cold – / One of our children, love, – one, must be – sold!’ Adelaide, ‘mad with horror of the thought’, turns on her ‘stony’ husband, whose human nature has deserted him. With a plunge into Johnson’s dictionary, she reproaches him:
‘Oh this fungosity!55 Thy heart is lead – Be mad – be thou any thing but thus – thus dead – ... Husband! Kolatto! Oh the thought was wild – You cannot mean it, love – to sell a child – The curse of heaven would blast the horrid gold! I die the moment that a child is sold.’
Nevertheless, he persuades her it is the only way, and they are faced with the next dilemma: which child? On this they cannot agree and
At length, like fire from the lava fount, That rolls in the bosom of the labouring mount, A burst of sorrow from the mother broke, That powerful nature’s heroism spoke, ‘No! Let us die together! – never, never! Can I from either of our dear ones sever’
Exhausted, they consign themselves to death – and are saved:
In such an hour of heart-rending grief, Heaven sent the philanthropist, to yield relief, A British Howard! (long ere Howard’s day)56 There, chance directed, came to ask his way – ... The liberal Briton raised them from the ground
Prichard may have done better to present his story in prose, or better yet as a dramatic sketch for the stage, but what cannot be doubted is the profound seriousness and moral purpose of this poetic version.
The poets he so admired had turned their hands to drama. Byron had published Manfred in 1817, Marino Faliero, and The Two Foscari and Cain together in 1821, all essentially closet dramas. A fan of Byron, as Prichard claims to be, would have read all four. It is possible he had seen Coleridge’s play Remorse, which had its premiere at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on 23 January 1813 and, reaching its twentieth performance in May, brought its author applause and much needed funds.57 Even if Prichard did not attend a performance, he had certainly read the play, along with the published versions of other dramas by Coleridge. Here we have an undeniable link, for the choice of the names Kolatto and Adelaide is his humble salute to Coleridge himself. ‘Kolatto’ he lifted from the dramatis personae of Coleridge’s translation of Schiller’s Die Piccolomini, where the character figures as one of four generals, whose chief purpose is to swell the martial element on stage. Kolatto appears thus in a few scenes, but has only one line, uttered in chorus with his fellows, swearing allegiance to Wallenstein. It is another example of the sort of part – a presence on stage without much to say – that we can envisage Prichard, as Mr Jefferies, playing at Covent Garden. ‘Adelaide’ he borrowed from The Fall of Robespierre, a dramatic poem Coleridge wrote in collaboration with Southey and first published as a pamphlet in Cambridge in 1794.58 In this piece, Adelaide’s part is confined to a single scene early in the drama where she laments the degeneration of the liberating Revolution into the Terror.
Prichard appears to have first arrived in Aberystwyth in 1823–4, when the town may have served as temporary headquarters in an itinerant life. Almost at once, seeing a gap in the market, he plundered existing material to bring out The New Aberystwyth Guide to the Waters, Bathing Houses, Public Walks, and Amusements (1824), which was printed by John Cox, sold in Aberystwyth by Lewis Jones, bookseller, and ‘also, in London, Bath, Cheltenham, Shrewsbury, Birmingham, Worcester, Hereford, Bala, and Carmarthen’.59 How many copies were sold to would-be tourists in these distant places is impossible to guess, but the copy I possess was first bought by the Earl of Northesk, a Scottish noble, third in command of the victorious fleet at Trafalgar. Prichard brought his family to Aberystwyth from Builth sometime between 1826 and 1828, when his wife, Naomi, was listed in Pigot’s directory for Aberystwyth as a ‘straw hat maker’. He was clearly fond of the place and was at his most productive there. It was there that he wrote Twm Shon Catti, compiled an anthology, The Cambrian Wreath, and conceived and embarked upon the ill-fated Cambrian Balnea. There, too, he had earlier celebrated the ‘beautiful romantic Bathing Town’ with what he described as ‘English-Welsh blossoms … hastily formed into a bouquet’: a pamphlet entitled Aberystwith in Miniature (1824).60 This haste is discernible in the insertion of six poems previously published in My Lowly Love and/or Mariette Mouline, but the remaining ten represent another peak in Prichard’s achievement in poetic form.
Epigraphs on the title page of Aberystwith in Miniature remind us again of those ‘poets of the present day’ that he admired. The first is taken from Coleridge’s adaptation of the German of Saloman Gessner – ‘This is my hour of triumph! I can now / With my own fancies play the merry fool, / And laugh away worse folly, being free’;61 the second, ‘My Poem’s quizzical’, from Canto IX of Byron’s Don Juan. ‘The Drama’s Petition to the Ladies & Gentlemen of Aberystwith’ (AM, pp. 5–17), which begins the collection, is written in Byron’s Don Juan stanza, and with occasional Byronic rhymes (‘Aberystwith’, for example, rhyming with ‘highly bless’d with’). This poetic attempt to gain the support of the richer element of Aberystwyth society for the construction of a theatre worthy of the name has an undeniable charm and a measure of wit in its satire of anti-theatrical Methodism. It also has strong condemnation of the heedless landowner. ‘Yet claim I’, Drama says
something better than ye give To your poor peasantry – a wretched hog-house Dignified by name of Cottage; and I grieve To think ‘tis ten times viler than a dog-house; And some would far less punish than relieve, A rentless lodging in your County rogue-house; If brutal dwellings to the poor ye suit, What wonder if man degenerates to brute?
Prichard’s anger is half-stifled by his efforts to control metre. But it is anger – not the pitying glance at children scavenging for food on the Pembrokeshire foreshore, still less the dreamy vision of society perfected on a Pacific isle. He gives credit where it is due to ‘Gentry in this plenteous county / Of noble spirit! Who assign the poor / Handsome cots’, before driving home the contrast:
There the inmates smile in ruddy health, – There groan no objects, in dejection squalid, There no hedge-thief crawls by felon stealth, Beneath the moon-beams, like a spectre pallid, Nor robs the river of its finny wealth With mesh illegal – and, observe my ballad – If ye give them such beast holes to live in, Pray never wonder when they take to thieving.
His note on this stanza expands the point: ‘The Cottages on these Estates are equal to the best in England, while the worst in Ireland are on a par with others, not far from Aberystwyth’ (AM, p. 46). We cannot say whether he travelled in Ireland and witnessed the conditions in which the peasantry lived, but it is possible. From Theatrical Poems we have a strong hint he joined the companies of provincial theatres in Richmond and the west of England, when those of London took their summer break, and it was not uncommon for actors to tour as far afield as Edinburgh and Dublin. The description of the ‘cursed isle of Cove’ and its inhabitants, and its gluttonous priest, in ‘The Paternoster Improved’ (TP, pp. 37–42) is so bereft of sympathy as to be almost vicious, but does suggest a familiarity with that place.62
Even with its imperfections, ‘Drama’s Petition’ is a considerable success. Its arguments on behalf of theatre, ‘the child of Intellect and handmaid of Improvement, the censor of morals and polisher of manners’,63 may not have persuaded those who associated the performance of plays with vice, but are, as Prichard intended, an entertainment. Again, it is when he is possessed with anger that his poetry is most effective. In ‘The Cottage, one of the many near Aberystwyth’ (AM, pp. 38–40), the poetry strides forward in vigorous rhyming couplets:
Is this a human habitation? – this? Gracious and eternal powers! yes – Men, women, children, litter in this stye, And poorly shelter’d from the Seasons lie. – ... Thus nerveless, squalid, hopeless and inert, In sullen vassalage to care and dirt, And Fortune’s yoke, the pendulums of fate, Hang on each soul – a crippling, deadly weight! And this the kingdom too, that nations prize! So prompt to doctrinate and civilize The land of Savages, and infidels, Where human degradation never swells To such a sordid and debased extreme. – Quixotic missionaries! No more dream Of foreign conversion feats – but cease to roam, Convert the WEALTHY HEATHENS here at home.
Satire was Prichard’s principal talent as a poet, but just when he had hit on a vein of satiric verse that might have brought him lasting distinction, he turned to prose as the likelier path to a decent living. It probably worked for a time with The New Aberystwyth Guide and Twm Shon Catti. Perhaps via the failed attempt at the Cambrian Balnea, which involved historical enquiry, he saw himself as the coming historian of Wales, which constrained him and consumed his days in research and writing. When at last Heroines of Welsh History – a stout duodecimo of 586 pages – was complete, and he was struggling against failing health, then came the endless, hopeless days of book-selling on the road.64
With Heroines, did he sever ties with his poetic, liberal past? Not entirely, if we consider the publishers of that volume: in London, W. and F. G. Cash; in Bristol, C. T. Jefferies; and in Swansea, William Morris. Prichard’s relationship with Morris, who ran the Stamp Office in Swansea, has been discussed in previous iterations of this journal.65 He was not a publisher, but was someone whose business interests included occasional involvement in printing and, as ‘Gwilym Tawe’, was a keen eisteddfod competitor. C. T. Jefferies was a wealthy and well-known wholesale stationer, printer, bookseller and bookbinder, employing a large work force in Bristol.66 Nothing of any political colour manifests itself in connection with either Jefferies or Morris, who acted as printer and distributor (or mailing post) respectively. William and Frederick G. Cash, on the other hand, were deliberately chosen by Prichard for the support they gave as publishers to liberal causes. When Charles Gilpin MP, the Quaker orator and politician, retired from the printing business in 1852, they had taken over his office at 5 Bishopsgate Street (Without) in the city of London, where, in 1843, the Quaker weekly, The Friend, had been launched and published, and in the same premises they held fast to the same publishing policy. In 1852 they brought out Transactions of the Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends during the Famine in Ireland; in 1853, How Wars Are Got Up in India. The Origin of the Burmese War, by Richard Cobden;67 in 1854, The West Indies, Before and Since Slave Emancipation, by John Davy;68 in 1856, Juvenile Delinquents, Their Condition and Treatment, by Mary Carpenter,69 and so on. It is a formidable list, critically bold and extensive in its coverage of political issues at home and overseas, and indicative both of Prichard’s aspirations and of the milieu in which, as a historian, he hoped to place himself. Viewed objectively, it was out of his league. As with J. and H. L. Hunt, examination of book-lists appended to (digitised) copies of books published by W. and F. G. Cash reveals no sign of Prichard or any of his works. Their name on the title page of Heroines of Welsh History was symbolic – of its author’s fervent wish to be taken up and paid by a London publisher, of his continuing admiration for the ‘living race of writers’, and of his consistent adherence to the political views he shared with them.
The discovery of Theatrical Poems allows a complete survey to be made of the printers/publishers of Prichard’s work in verse and prose. All, with the possible exception of Heroines of Welsh History, which William Morris of Swansea may have financially supported, were printed at the author’s direction and expense. In this context, those books that bear only the name of a Welsh-based printer are of less interest, probably telling us little more than where Prichard was domiciled when the manuscript was ready for publication and where he could find the most economical arrangement.70 The others invite speculation about the reasons for his choice, and eventually yield a perception of deliberateness and consistency in favouring printers/ publishers – at the time still overlapping functions in book production – who were politically radical and anti-establishment, at some risk to their personal well-being and safety.71 These choices demonstrate where Prichard positioned himself politically and help to explain how he saw himself allied to the Romantic poets.
Interest in Prichard has largely focused on Twm Shon Catti, while his poetry has been generally neglected. Twm Shon Catti is a fable about a boy and young man who rises from poverty by his own wits and daredevil effort – and has fun on the way. The narrative framework is borrowed from folk tale. Much the most important of Prichard’s embellishments of the original story is satire. Initially he aspired to be a poet, a poet of Wales, preferably a commercially successful one. That did not turn out well. But now that Theatrical Poems completes Prichard’s published poetry in book form – and it is thus possible to view the whole – we can see that the satirical element stands the test of time. It is often driven by a keen sense of injustice at the suffering of the poor, on the land or on the stage, oppressed by rascally landowners or cheating theatre managers. The best of the poems, characterised by a furious and fluent vehemence, are successful and even memorable. They deserve more attention than they have hitherto received.
Sam Adams is an independent researcher who has pursued Prichard, the man and his work, for many years. His novel, Prichard’s Nose (2010), was inspired by a desire to fill large gaps in our knowledge of Prichard’s early life. He is the author of three monographs in the Writers of Wales series, and edited the Collected Poems and Collected Short Stories of Roland Mathias for the University of Wales Press. He is also a poet and has written over a hundred ‘Letters from Wales’ for the Carcanet Press journal PN Review.
The University of Wales Press wishes to acknowledge the funding received from the Open Library of Humanities towards the cost of producing this open access journal.