Within this website you will find contemporary scholarly analysis of Matthew Arnold's image, work, and life. Please visit often, and feel free to contact the webmaster with questions, comments, or possible content at shannon.gilstrap@ung.edu.
Good News! The Shott Scholar Award from University of North Georgia has funded another research trip in May 2023 which will continue expanding the content of the "Mapping Matthew Arnold's North American Lecture Tour (1883-1884): A GIS Digital Humanities Project." The last Shott Scholar award allowed many sites in and around Boston, MA, to be logged and photographed and archival access to many sites was granted. This latest Shott Award will cover northern New York state. This project visually renders, through precise static maps and an interactive web-based map, Matthew Arnold's first North American lecture tour through much of the United States and into Canada from October 1883-March 1884.
New! Read "Tailing the Scholar Gypsy," an invited blog post for the Placing the Author: Literary Tourism in the Long Nineteenth Century conference!
In Other News: Composition teachers may be interested in ordering Contribute a Verse (ISBN: 978-1-940771-21-2), a low-cost Freshman Composition textbook, in which I have authored a chapter. Please feel free to contact the University of North Georgia Press to request a review copy: UNGPress@ung.edu.
Arnold on the Rails: Railroads and Culture
Shannon N. Gilstrap, Ph.D.
Introduction
The map of Arnold’s 1883-84 North American lecture tour renders a striking visual of how closely his tour stuck to the major American rail lines. According to the maps, he deviated from the rails only six times: Oberlin College, Hamilton and Aurora, NY, and Concord, Salem, and Taunton, MA. This visual reminder of Arnold’s intimate acquaintance with the American railway system affords us pause to consider the role that trains played in Arnold’s life and, more importantly for this research project, the passing role trains played in Arnold’s criticism of America after his return from the lecture tour.
Contexts - Historical and Biographical
It is easy to take for granted that 19th century travel relied heavily on the railway system’s emergence. However, some scholars consider the railway system’s establishment in England one of the Victorian era’s defining starting points. Certainly, Thackeray himself wrote, “Your railroad … starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one…. We elderly people have lived in that prae-railroad world, which has passed into limbo and vanished” (qtd. Altick 75). The sheer speed at which the railway system expanded across England - changing the physical, social, and political landscape as it so did - became a point of nationalist pride, a sort-of guiding metaphor for the expanding British Empire and a symbol of its commercial power.
To Matthew Arnold, though, the British railway system produced mixed results. Whereas the trains brought formerly isolated towns and people into necessary contact with new ideas and cultures, thus reducing the “provincialism” that Arnold isolated as one of the Englishman’s greatest roadblocks to culture (“narrowness, one-sidedness, and incompleteness”), it also became an empty symbol of Britain’s national importance. In Culture and Anarchy he lampoons Mr. Bright who says to his constituency, “See what you have done! I look over this country and see the cities you have built, the railroads you have made...! I see that you have converted by your labours what was once a wilderness, these islands, into a fruitful garden; I know that you have created this wealth, and are a nation whose name is a word of power throughout all the world.” In response to this bombast, Arnold asks, “[W]hat are railroads but machinery?” - “machinery” being merely “external doing” of “varying value as its relations to the intelligible law of things vary” and “not absolute goods in themselves.” His famous mouthpiece Arminius in Friendship's Garland says the following about the British pride in their railway system, and the paradox at its heart:
Despite misgivings about the railroad’s importance in the national consciousness, Arnold depended upon the railroad for his occupation as an Inspector of Schools (HMSI). From his earliest days as an HMSI, Arnold lamented the time he had to spend on trains. “What a filthy line is the Eastern Counties,” he says very early in his career, “and what bad carriages” (Letters I.255). In a much more forthright letter just a few days later, he writes that the constant riding on trains is “positive purgatory” (Letters I.257). So often in the letters a careful reader sees Arnold rushing through a train depot, hastily stuffing a bun into his mouth before boarding the train to meet with pupil teachers or to read examinations in a far-flung county. Such a life on the rails continued throughout Arnold’s career. It seems fitting, then, that when Arnold joined the wave of British literati lecturing in America, this first trip to North America was forged by Scottish-American steel magnate Andrew Carnegie whose fortune grew in part thanks to America’s railroad. No eminent Victorian knew life on the rails more intimately than Arnold, and arguably there is no writer whose attitude towards them is more worthy of consideration.
American Trains and English Culture
Arnold never lost an opportunity to make practical application of his experiences - this is clear to any close reader of his collected works, despite what detractors in his own time and ours may say. Moreover, he often made metaphors and phrases from his experiences, which he often returned to in his work (think, for example of “deceased wife’s sister” or of the character “Bottles”). Railway metaphors can be traced all the way back to Arnold’s poetry, like the following from “The Buried Life”: “But hardly have we, for one little hour, / Been on our own line, have we been ourselves” (246, emphasis mine). Appropriately, when Arnold returned from his first lecture tour and wrote “A Word More About America” (CPW X. 194-217) he used his experiences to contrast American and English “progress” during the long 19th century, and uses the railway system to help prove his argument.
He asserts that America has solved “the political problem and the social problem,” but has not yet adequately solved the “human problem” (CPW X.198, 202). The line out of the former two, for England, has been laid by America; however, he links America and England together, at the close of the essay, as both struggling towards solving the latter (CPW X.216). Being countries linked by a common tongue and a common heritage (Arnold terms Americans the “English people of the United States” [CPW X. 203]), they are capable of learning from one another.
In one of his last essays, “Civilisation in the United States,” he takes these problems up again, and Arnold uses the American railway system for partial proof of America’s success in solving the political and social problems that England still faces. In both “A Word More About America” and “Civilisation in the United States” Arnold praises America’s lack of a class system. This lack of a rooted and rigid class system precludes America from institutionalizing inequality, as the British class system does; the result is a much more homogenous population. However, this means that Americans are by and large Philistines - the great middle class - “with the Barbarians [aristocracy] quite left out and the Populace [lower/working classes] nearly” (CPW X. 7). Although this group certainly has its faults, Arnold believes that such a large percentage of the population being so “homogenous” makes for much more equality across the nation in terms of material prosperity (either actual or potential) and means that the politicians speaking for the nation are actually adequate representatives of the population, not as in England the Barbarians controlling politics attempting to speak for the Philistines or the Populace.
This homogeneity and equality allows for greater opportunity for a greater percentage of the population, and, Arnold argues in “Civilisation in the United States,” greater accessibility to the comforts and conveniences of life for more people than in England. Whereas in England the trappings of luxurious comfort are available to and created expressly for the few whose income is “from three or four to fourteen or fifteen hundred a year” (CPW XI. 353), for “the class of people whose income is less than three or four hundred a year, things in America are favourable … society seems organized for their benefit” (CPW XI. 353-354). It is true that, unlike in England, the vast majority of Americans do not take personal cabs or hansoms; but the trains that they ride instead are much better appointed. Arnold writes, “The ordinary railway cars are not delightful, but they are cheap, and they are better furnished and in winter are warmer than third-class carriages in England” (CPW XI. 354). In consequence of such an observation, he asks, “[W]hich would [a philosopher] say was the more civilized condition - that of the country where the balance of advantage, as to the comforts and conveniences of life, is greatly in favor of the people with incomes below three hundred a year, or that of the country where it is greatly in favour of those with incomes above that sum?” (CPW XI. 354). Although Arnold wrote these lines late in his career, when in America, in one of his first letters to his sister Fan, he asserted these same sentiments: "What I like is the way in which the people, far lower down than with u, live with something of the life and enjoyments of the cultivated classes" (Letters V. 318).
Conclusion
Although Arnold finally concludes that the measure of a country’s civilisation does not rest solely in the greatest good for the greatest number of people, it is clear that his accolades for America’s successes in solving the social and political problems are based in part on his experiences with those elements of American society that show how America, unlike England, maximizes and celebrates is social homogeneity - at least as far as Arnold experienced and understood it. His intimate acquaintance with the railway system makes his use of trains as one example of America’s solution to one facet of the “social problem” most relevant and understandable, and this intimate acquaintance is visually rendered by the maps of his North American lecture tour.
Works Cited:
Altick, Richard D. Victorian People and Ideas. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1973.
Arnold, Matthew. Arnold: Poetical Works. Eds. C.B. Tinker & H.F. Lowry. London: Oxford UP, 1969.
---. “Civilisation in the United States.” The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold. Vol. XI. Ed. R.H. Super. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1978. 350-369.
---. Culture and Anarchy. The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold. Vol. V. Ed. R.H. Super. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1965. 85-256.
---. Friendship's Garland. The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold. Vol. V. Ed. R.H. Super. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1965.
---. The Letters of Matthew Arnold. Vols. I & V. Ed. Cecil Y. Lang. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 2001.
---. "A Word More About America.” The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold. Vol. X. Ed. R.H. Super. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1974. 194-217.
Some funding for the research underpinning this essay was made possible by UNG's Shott Scholarship.
Introduction
The map of Arnold’s 1883-84 North American lecture tour renders a striking visual of how closely his tour stuck to the major American rail lines. According to the maps, he deviated from the rails only six times: Oberlin College, Hamilton and Aurora, NY, and Concord, Salem, and Taunton, MA. This visual reminder of Arnold’s intimate acquaintance with the American railway system affords us pause to consider the role that trains played in Arnold’s life and, more importantly for this research project, the passing role trains played in Arnold’s criticism of America after his return from the lecture tour.
Contexts - Historical and Biographical
It is easy to take for granted that 19th century travel relied heavily on the railway system’s emergence. However, some scholars consider the railway system’s establishment in England one of the Victorian era’s defining starting points. Certainly, Thackeray himself wrote, “Your railroad … starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one…. We elderly people have lived in that prae-railroad world, which has passed into limbo and vanished” (qtd. Altick 75). The sheer speed at which the railway system expanded across England - changing the physical, social, and political landscape as it so did - became a point of nationalist pride, a sort-of guiding metaphor for the expanding British Empire and a symbol of its commercial power.
To Matthew Arnold, though, the British railway system produced mixed results. Whereas the trains brought formerly isolated towns and people into necessary contact with new ideas and cultures, thus reducing the “provincialism” that Arnold isolated as one of the Englishman’s greatest roadblocks to culture (“narrowness, one-sidedness, and incompleteness”), it also became an empty symbol of Britain’s national importance. In Culture and Anarchy he lampoons Mr. Bright who says to his constituency, “See what you have done! I look over this country and see the cities you have built, the railroads you have made...! I see that you have converted by your labours what was once a wilderness, these islands, into a fruitful garden; I know that you have created this wealth, and are a nation whose name is a word of power throughout all the world.” In response to this bombast, Arnold asks, “[W]hat are railroads but machinery?” - “machinery” being merely “external doing” of “varying value as its relations to the intelligible law of things vary” and “not absolute goods in themselves.” His famous mouthpiece Arminius in Friendship's Garland says the following about the British pride in their railway system, and the paradox at its heart:
"Your middle-class man thinks it is the highest pitch of development and civilisation when his letters are carried twelve times a day from Islington to Camberwell, and from Camberwell to Islington, and if railway-trains run to and fro between them every quarter of an hour. He thinks it nothing that the trains only carry him from an illiberal, dismal life in Islington to an illiberal, dismal life in Camberwell."
Despite misgivings about the railroad’s importance in the national consciousness, Arnold depended upon the railroad for his occupation as an Inspector of Schools (HMSI). From his earliest days as an HMSI, Arnold lamented the time he had to spend on trains. “What a filthy line is the Eastern Counties,” he says very early in his career, “and what bad carriages” (Letters I.255). In a much more forthright letter just a few days later, he writes that the constant riding on trains is “positive purgatory” (Letters I.257). So often in the letters a careful reader sees Arnold rushing through a train depot, hastily stuffing a bun into his mouth before boarding the train to meet with pupil teachers or to read examinations in a far-flung county. Such a life on the rails continued throughout Arnold’s career. It seems fitting, then, that when Arnold joined the wave of British literati lecturing in America, this first trip to North America was forged by Scottish-American steel magnate Andrew Carnegie whose fortune grew in part thanks to America’s railroad. No eminent Victorian knew life on the rails more intimately than Arnold, and arguably there is no writer whose attitude towards them is more worthy of consideration.
American Trains and English Culture
Arnold never lost an opportunity to make practical application of his experiences - this is clear to any close reader of his collected works, despite what detractors in his own time and ours may say. Moreover, he often made metaphors and phrases from his experiences, which he often returned to in his work (think, for example of “deceased wife’s sister” or of the character “Bottles”). Railway metaphors can be traced all the way back to Arnold’s poetry, like the following from “The Buried Life”: “But hardly have we, for one little hour, / Been on our own line, have we been ourselves” (246, emphasis mine). Appropriately, when Arnold returned from his first lecture tour and wrote “A Word More About America” (CPW X. 194-217) he used his experiences to contrast American and English “progress” during the long 19th century, and uses the railway system to help prove his argument.
He asserts that America has solved “the political problem and the social problem,” but has not yet adequately solved the “human problem” (CPW X.198, 202). The line out of the former two, for England, has been laid by America; however, he links America and England together, at the close of the essay, as both struggling towards solving the latter (CPW X.216). Being countries linked by a common tongue and a common heritage (Arnold terms Americans the “English people of the United States” [CPW X. 203]), they are capable of learning from one another.
In one of his last essays, “Civilisation in the United States,” he takes these problems up again, and Arnold uses the American railway system for partial proof of America’s success in solving the political and social problems that England still faces. In both “A Word More About America” and “Civilisation in the United States” Arnold praises America’s lack of a class system. This lack of a rooted and rigid class system precludes America from institutionalizing inequality, as the British class system does; the result is a much more homogenous population. However, this means that Americans are by and large Philistines - the great middle class - “with the Barbarians [aristocracy] quite left out and the Populace [lower/working classes] nearly” (CPW X. 7). Although this group certainly has its faults, Arnold believes that such a large percentage of the population being so “homogenous” makes for much more equality across the nation in terms of material prosperity (either actual or potential) and means that the politicians speaking for the nation are actually adequate representatives of the population, not as in England the Barbarians controlling politics attempting to speak for the Philistines or the Populace.
This homogeneity and equality allows for greater opportunity for a greater percentage of the population, and, Arnold argues in “Civilisation in the United States,” greater accessibility to the comforts and conveniences of life for more people than in England. Whereas in England the trappings of luxurious comfort are available to and created expressly for the few whose income is “from three or four to fourteen or fifteen hundred a year” (CPW XI. 353), for “the class of people whose income is less than three or four hundred a year, things in America are favourable … society seems organized for their benefit” (CPW XI. 353-354). It is true that, unlike in England, the vast majority of Americans do not take personal cabs or hansoms; but the trains that they ride instead are much better appointed. Arnold writes, “The ordinary railway cars are not delightful, but they are cheap, and they are better furnished and in winter are warmer than third-class carriages in England” (CPW XI. 354). In consequence of such an observation, he asks, “[W]hich would [a philosopher] say was the more civilized condition - that of the country where the balance of advantage, as to the comforts and conveniences of life, is greatly in favor of the people with incomes below three hundred a year, or that of the country where it is greatly in favour of those with incomes above that sum?” (CPW XI. 354). Although Arnold wrote these lines late in his career, when in America, in one of his first letters to his sister Fan, he asserted these same sentiments: "What I like is the way in which the people, far lower down than with u, live with something of the life and enjoyments of the cultivated classes" (Letters V. 318).
Conclusion
Although Arnold finally concludes that the measure of a country’s civilisation does not rest solely in the greatest good for the greatest number of people, it is clear that his accolades for America’s successes in solving the social and political problems are based in part on his experiences with those elements of American society that show how America, unlike England, maximizes and celebrates is social homogeneity - at least as far as Arnold experienced and understood it. His intimate acquaintance with the railway system makes his use of trains as one example of America’s solution to one facet of the “social problem” most relevant and understandable, and this intimate acquaintance is visually rendered by the maps of his North American lecture tour.
Works Cited:
Altick, Richard D. Victorian People and Ideas. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1973.
Arnold, Matthew. Arnold: Poetical Works. Eds. C.B. Tinker & H.F. Lowry. London: Oxford UP, 1969.
---. “Civilisation in the United States.” The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold. Vol. XI. Ed. R.H. Super. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1978. 350-369.
---. Culture and Anarchy. The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold. Vol. V. Ed. R.H. Super. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1965. 85-256.
---. Friendship's Garland. The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold. Vol. V. Ed. R.H. Super. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1965.
---. The Letters of Matthew Arnold. Vols. I & V. Ed. Cecil Y. Lang. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 2001.
---. "A Word More About America.” The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold. Vol. X. Ed. R.H. Super. Ann Arbor: The U of Michigan P, 1974. 194-217.
Some funding for the research underpinning this essay was made possible by UNG's Shott Scholarship.
Static Maps: Matthew Arnold's North American Lecture Tour (1883-1884)
This is a static map representation of Arnold's North American lecture tour, created by Woody Depew with research by Dr. Gilstrap. You can click on the map and it will open in a new window. The dates of Arnold's lectures, as well as their locations, are listed and the lecture he gave at a specific spot is indicated by the color-coded icon. Additionally, railway lines have been layered onto the map.
This image should be considered the property of the creator(s) and should not be used without permission.
This map is an on-going project, and will be updated regularly. Please report errors to the webmaster.
Some funding for this research was made possible by UNG's Shott Scholarship.
This image should be considered the property of the creator(s) and should not be used without permission.
This map is an on-going project, and will be updated regularly. Please report errors to the webmaster.
Some funding for this research was made possible by UNG's Shott Scholarship.
Sir Samuel Luke Fildes "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" Illustrations
"Under the Trees"
"At the Piano"
"On Dangerous Grounds"
Artist: Sir Samuel Luke Fildes
Published: 1870
Park Honan, in his work Matthew Arnold: A Life, writes:
[Arnold's] face had been thin enough, in 1870, to cause Charles Dickens to ask an illustrator [i.e. Sir Samuel Luke Fildes] to portray Edwin Drood as "Mr. Matthew Arnold." (One picture of the villain of Dickens's novel Edwin Drood shows Arnold's thin, ominous face.)Which of the above images Honan references in his parenthetical aside is up for debate, as he provides no plate name or citation. However, since in "Under the Trees" Drood appears to wear a mustache, and Arnold (even in 1870) preferred his mutton-chop sideburns, that illustration can be eliminated (although it is still included in this series for reference). "At the Piano" and "On Dangerous Grounds" are the better choices.
Although James Tissot's Vanity Fair caricature is the first direct and clear caricature of Arnold, these illustrations, since they appeared in print a year before Tissot's, may arguably take priority; however, as Dickens's request and purpose was not to directly caricature Arnold, Tissot's still holds its ground. Arnold's physical appearance, though, might not have been the only reason for Dickens's request to Fildes, and considering these illustrations in light of caricature reveals some connections with other caricatures of Arnold.
In "At the Piano," Drood appears second from the right, playing with a fan. Landless, in the novel, describes Drood as having an air of "leisurely patronage and indifference" about him, supported in this image; more importantly, this air is a characteristic emphasized in later caricatures of Arnold, specifically Tissot's Vanity Fair piece with its corresponding reference to "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" and Beerbohm's piece.
Secondly, in "At the Piano," Drood's appearance is remarkably feminine. As mentioned in the commentary accompanying Frederick Waddy's caricature from Cartoon Portraits & Men of the Day, Arnold's masculinity was occasionally called into question, specifically concerning his frequent admonitions to remain aloof and "disinterested" when contemplating social problems.
A third interesting observation concerns "On Dangerous Grounds," in which Drood is presented, far right, leaning against a fireplace. Beerbohm's piece in The Poets' Corner likewise has Arnold leaning against a fireplace, looking down at Mary Augusta Ward. It may be possible that Beerbohm took a cue from Fildes's illustration when working on his own, which could introduce into Beerbohm's drawing a certain sense of confrontation.
All images originally scanned and posted by Philip V. Allingham. Please link to The Victorian Web for Allingham's original commentary on these and other illustrations from Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
The Barefooted Newsboy
“Matthew Arnold and the Barefooted Newsboy.” The Illustrated Sydney News (26 July 1888): 24.
This article is more anecdote than it is caricature; however, Arnold’s humanity and general good-naturedness seems to come across quite well in this story in this Australian newspaper, via The Boston Herald:
“Matthew Arnold (says the Boston Herald) was greatly struck by the democratic government of our reading-room when he was in Boston. He came in here one day and saw a little barefooted newsboy sitting in one of the best chairs, enjoying himself apparently for dear life. The great essayist was completely astounded. ‘Do you let barefooted boys in this reading-room?’ he asked. ‘You would never see such a sight as that in Europe. I do not believe there is a reading-room in all Europe in which that boy, dressed as he is, would enter.’ Then Mr. Arnold went over to the boy, engaged him in conversation, and found that he was reading the ‘Life of Washington,’ and that he was a young gentleman of decidedly anti-British tendencies, and, for his age, remarkably well-informed. Mr. Arnold remained talking with the youngster for some time, and as he came back to our desk, the great Englishman said, ‘I do not think I have been so impressed with anything else that I have seen since arriving in this country as I am now with meeting this barefooted boy in this reading-room. What a tribute to democratic institutions it is to say that, instead of sending that boy out to wander alone in the streets, they permit him to come in here and excite his youthful imagination by reading such a book as the ‘Life of Washington!’ The reading off that one book may change the whole course of that boy’s life, and may be the means of making him a useful, honorable, worthy citizen of this great country. It is, I tell you, a sight that impresses a European not accustomed to your democratic ways.’”
This article was accessed through Trove: Digitized Newspapers and More.
This article is more anecdote than it is caricature; however, Arnold’s humanity and general good-naturedness seems to come across quite well in this story in this Australian newspaper, via The Boston Herald:
“Matthew Arnold (says the Boston Herald) was greatly struck by the democratic government of our reading-room when he was in Boston. He came in here one day and saw a little barefooted newsboy sitting in one of the best chairs, enjoying himself apparently for dear life. The great essayist was completely astounded. ‘Do you let barefooted boys in this reading-room?’ he asked. ‘You would never see such a sight as that in Europe. I do not believe there is a reading-room in all Europe in which that boy, dressed as he is, would enter.’ Then Mr. Arnold went over to the boy, engaged him in conversation, and found that he was reading the ‘Life of Washington,’ and that he was a young gentleman of decidedly anti-British tendencies, and, for his age, remarkably well-informed. Mr. Arnold remained talking with the youngster for some time, and as he came back to our desk, the great Englishman said, ‘I do not think I have been so impressed with anything else that I have seen since arriving in this country as I am now with meeting this barefooted boy in this reading-room. What a tribute to democratic institutions it is to say that, instead of sending that boy out to wander alone in the streets, they permit him to come in here and excite his youthful imagination by reading such a book as the ‘Life of Washington!’ The reading off that one book may change the whole course of that boy’s life, and may be the means of making him a useful, honorable, worthy citizen of this great country. It is, I tell you, a sight that impresses a European not accustomed to your democratic ways.’”
This article was accessed through Trove: Digitized Newspapers and More.
"The Necklong" from Punch
Author Unknown. “The Necklong.” Punch (28 Nov. 1881): 250. Following is the full-text of Punch’s parody of Arnold’s “The Neckan.” It appears, as mentioned previously, with a visual caricature.
IN summer, in Sky-Limbo,
High o’er PHILISTIA’S throng,
Sits NECKLONG with his harp of gold,
And thrums a dismal song.
Thick herds, beneath Sky-Limbo,
The incult dull British P.,
And there Gath’s shallow singers chaunt
Their Laus Philistiae.
They sing not of High Culture,
In pure perfection pale,
Of earth, gross earth, the Gathites sing –
They have no other tale.
But NECKLONG, in Sky-Limbo,
Soft pipes a somber stave,
Sweetness and Light inspire his lay,
Bland taste and manners suave.
He chaffs the Swell Barbarian,
He chides the stolid clown,
The dull dissenter, BOTTLES,
JONES, ROBINSON, and BROWN.
Upon the middle classes
His feather-flail he lays,
And the D.T.’s ‘young lions mocks,
Whose roars to him are brays.
Pooh-pooheth all the Parties,
Their fuss and fi-fo-fum,
And twitteth their small tweedledee,
And smaller tweedledum.
He sings how from the Chapel
Comes nought but narrow pride,
And how the Church’s shibboleths
Pure Reason doth deride.
How Beauty, lone, sits weeping,
Midst wastes that round her lie,
‘PHILSITIA shares my state,’ she weeps,
‘No cultured mate have I.
How if that fed on Sweetness,
Exposed to Lights’ soft rain,
Even the Philistine himself
True Culture might attain.
He sings how on an evening,
Beneath the willows cool,
He sat and thrummed upon his harp,
And wept into the pool.
Beside the pool sat NECKLONG,
Tears filled his soft blue eye;
On his slow mule, across the bridge,
The Philistine rode by.
‘Why sitt’st thou there, O NECKLONG,
And hrum’st thy harp of gold?
‘Tis pretty twanging, I admit,
But finical and cold.
‘A soft-curled SAMSON, doubtless,
Or dandy DAVID, you;
But all your songs and sneers won’t dash
PHILISTIA’S merry crew.’
The Philistine rode onwards,
And vanished with his mule;
And NECKLONG, in the twilight grey,
Wept on into the pool.
He wept: ‘This earthly blindness
Would shame the burrowing moles.
By Hecate, I begin to doubt
If Philistines have souls!’
All Summer, in Sky-Limbo,
Above PHILISTIA’S throng,
Sits NECKLONG with his harp of gold,
And pipes this plaintive song.
Matthew Arnold is presented here as the Neckan of his own poem (the NECKLONG of the poem spoof). Similar to contemporary conceptions of Arnold, the Neck-Long sits apart from the movement of life, “Philistia’s throng,” weeping over it and playing a “dismal song.” The poem associates Arnold/Necklong with “Sky-Limbo,” removed from any association with earthly (read “practical”) concerns, while Philistia concerns itself only with gross and earthly matters (although Philistia is presented in the poetic spoof as much happier than Necklong, who is weeping throughout the poem; near the poem’s end, the Philistine has a “merry crew”). The poem references several of Arnold’s frequent targets in his prose, including Dissenters, the character (from Friendship’s Garland) Bottles, the Daily Telegraph young reporters, and current theology.
IN summer, in Sky-Limbo,
High o’er PHILISTIA’S throng,
Sits NECKLONG with his harp of gold,
And thrums a dismal song.
Thick herds, beneath Sky-Limbo,
The incult dull British P.,
And there Gath’s shallow singers chaunt
Their Laus Philistiae.
They sing not of High Culture,
In pure perfection pale,
Of earth, gross earth, the Gathites sing –
They have no other tale.
But NECKLONG, in Sky-Limbo,
Soft pipes a somber stave,
Sweetness and Light inspire his lay,
Bland taste and manners suave.
He chaffs the Swell Barbarian,
He chides the stolid clown,
The dull dissenter, BOTTLES,
JONES, ROBINSON, and BROWN.
Upon the middle classes
His feather-flail he lays,
And the D.T.’s ‘young lions mocks,
Whose roars to him are brays.
Pooh-pooheth all the Parties,
Their fuss and fi-fo-fum,
And twitteth their small tweedledee,
And smaller tweedledum.
He sings how from the Chapel
Comes nought but narrow pride,
And how the Church’s shibboleths
Pure Reason doth deride.
How Beauty, lone, sits weeping,
Midst wastes that round her lie,
‘PHILSITIA shares my state,’ she weeps,
‘No cultured mate have I.
How if that fed on Sweetness,
Exposed to Lights’ soft rain,
Even the Philistine himself
True Culture might attain.
He sings how on an evening,
Beneath the willows cool,
He sat and thrummed upon his harp,
And wept into the pool.
Beside the pool sat NECKLONG,
Tears filled his soft blue eye;
On his slow mule, across the bridge,
The Philistine rode by.
‘Why sitt’st thou there, O NECKLONG,
And hrum’st thy harp of gold?
‘Tis pretty twanging, I admit,
But finical and cold.
‘A soft-curled SAMSON, doubtless,
Or dandy DAVID, you;
But all your songs and sneers won’t dash
PHILISTIA’S merry crew.’
The Philistine rode onwards,
And vanished with his mule;
And NECKLONG, in the twilight grey,
Wept on into the pool.
He wept: ‘This earthly blindness
Would shame the burrowing moles.
By Hecate, I begin to doubt
If Philistines have souls!’
All Summer, in Sky-Limbo,
Above PHILISTIA’S throng,
Sits NECKLONG with his harp of gold,
And pipes this plaintive song.
Matthew Arnold is presented here as the Neckan of his own poem (the NECKLONG of the poem spoof). Similar to contemporary conceptions of Arnold, the Neck-Long sits apart from the movement of life, “Philistia’s throng,” weeping over it and playing a “dismal song.” The poem associates Arnold/Necklong with “Sky-Limbo,” removed from any association with earthly (read “practical”) concerns, while Philistia concerns itself only with gross and earthly matters (although Philistia is presented in the poetic spoof as much happier than Necklong, who is weeping throughout the poem; near the poem’s end, the Philistine has a “merry crew”). The poem references several of Arnold’s frequent targets in his prose, including Dissenters, the character (from Friendship’s Garland) Bottles, the Daily Telegraph young reporters, and current theology.
H.D. Traill
Parody of “Poor Matthias” in The World.
In a letter, Arnold writes of having read a parody of his elegy to his canary, Matthias, in The World. “I wonder,” he writes in the letter, “if it is that demon Traill.” However, Arnold ultimately says that he read the parody “with pleasure.” The poem is re-printed in Traill’s Letters. According to Tinker and Lowry, in The Poetry of Matthew Arnold: A Commentary (1950), the parody refers “of course to the monotonous tone of the elegiac verse which marks the close of Arnold’s poetic career” (314). The full text follows:
Poor Matthias! many a year
Has flown since first upon our ear
Fell that sweetly-doleful song
With its ancient tale of wrong.
Now those curls, were wont to stray
O’er that brow so gravely gay,
Thin have grown and streaked with gray,
And the crow’s cross tracery
Mars that eye’s lucidity.
But the burden never falters,
But the chorus never alters;
Those smooth periods no more vary
Than the song of your canary.
Won’t you give us something new?
That we know as well as you.
(reprinted in Tinker & Lowry’s The Poetry of Matthew Arnold: A Commentary 314-315)
Traill's parody, however, does go beyond the monotonous tone of the verse. Triall begins by making the direct connection between the canary of Arnold's original poem's name, Matthias, with Matthew Arnold himself. Traill, then, is not so much parodying the poem as he is parodying Arnold. Traill's attack makes use, additionally, of the cultural relevance of animals, particularly birds, in Victorian literature. As Martin Danahay asserts in an essay within Victorian Animal Dreams (edited by Danahay and Deborah Denenholz Morse), canaries are the least powerful animal.
In a letter, Arnold writes of having read a parody of his elegy to his canary, Matthias, in The World. “I wonder,” he writes in the letter, “if it is that demon Traill.” However, Arnold ultimately says that he read the parody “with pleasure.” The poem is re-printed in Traill’s Letters. According to Tinker and Lowry, in The Poetry of Matthew Arnold: A Commentary (1950), the parody refers “of course to the monotonous tone of the elegiac verse which marks the close of Arnold’s poetic career” (314). The full text follows:
Poor Matthias! many a year
Has flown since first upon our ear
Fell that sweetly-doleful song
With its ancient tale of wrong.
Now those curls, were wont to stray
O’er that brow so gravely gay,
Thin have grown and streaked with gray,
And the crow’s cross tracery
Mars that eye’s lucidity.
But the burden never falters,
But the chorus never alters;
Those smooth periods no more vary
Than the song of your canary.
Won’t you give us something new?
That we know as well as you.
(reprinted in Tinker & Lowry’s The Poetry of Matthew Arnold: A Commentary 314-315)
Traill's parody, however, does go beyond the monotonous tone of the verse. Triall begins by making the direct connection between the canary of Arnold's original poem's name, Matthias, with Matthew Arnold himself. Traill, then, is not so much parodying the poem as he is parodying Arnold. Traill's attack makes use, additionally, of the cultural relevance of animals, particularly birds, in Victorian literature. As Martin Danahay asserts in an essay within Victorian Animal Dreams (edited by Danahay and Deborah Denenholz Morse), canaries are the least powerful animal.
Anthony Hecht "The Dover Bitch"
The Poison of Cool: Arnold’s Beach and America’s Bitch
Contributed by Paul H. Schmidt, Ph.D.
Georgia State University
At first glance, Anthony Hecht’s "The Dover Bitch" (1967) reads like a derisive modern caricature of the hyper-grave Matthew Arnold, evangelist of Victorian high seriousness, as he appears in his famous dramatic monologue “Dover Beach” (1867). And initially, from the point of view of laid-back twentieth-century America, there is much to mock in Arnold’s uptight stance of moral rectitude.
In Arnold’s poem, the speaker (certainly a version of Arnold) addresses his “love” from the window of a beach cottage, looking out to sea and reflecting profoundly about Sophocles (15) and the meaning of life in a world “Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,/Where ignorant armies clash by night” (36-7). The speaker’s lover passively receives his pronouncements, and does not reply to his passionate plea for their love to provide all that is lacking in a world bereft of “joy . . . love . . . light . . . certitude . . . peace . . . [and] help for pain” (33-4). The auditor’s passivity might simply be a consequence of the poem’s dramatic monologue structure, but the speaker’s self-absorption is still palpable.
In Hecht’s version, the speaker, using sloppy late-twentieth-century colloquial diction—itself a mockery of the fastidious stylings of Arnold’s poetry—reveals that he “knew” the lady in question (6), and tells the story of the sea-side rendezvous from her perspective, that of a well-read but trivial-minded cocotte, who had come to the sea for pleasure and “blandishments in French” (15) yet received neither, and who had voiced her anger and disappointment in the experience of being brought down to the eponymous shore only to be addressed as a “sort of mournful cosmic last resort” (19). (It should be pointed out here that this woman may be the biggest weakness in the Hecht poem, as it is hard to imagine the honorable Matthew Arnold taking vacation with such a demi-rep).
But in order for this poem to work as a parody of Arnold, the reader has to have some respect for the speaker. Initially, the speaker’s casual, knowing disposition seems a welcome and irreverent relief from the solemnity of his Victorian predecessor. He reflects the hedonistic attitudes and values of the middle twentieth-century, and he seems able to understand the physical needs of the woman Arnold’s speaker seems so blind to. But on second consideration, we see that Hecht has slyly undercut his speaker’s position as judge of Matthew Arnold.
One of the primary problems modern readers have with Arnold’s poem is the speaker’s obliviousness to the thoughts and feelings of his partner, and the Hecht speaker at first seems to offer a corrective to that. However, by the end of “The Dover Bitch,” we see that while the speaker does give the woman what Arnold could not – a nuit d’amour – contrasted with the Arnold speaker, he is shallow and even more brutally indifferent to her. He uses her for his own pleasure (“she always treats me right” [25]) and believes he has secured her good will with a bottle of perfume (29). And although unlike Arnold’s speaker, he listens to what she has to say and accepts her as he finds her (“She’s really all right” [24]), he still reduces her to “this girl” (twice 1, 6), and cannot really see beyond her body, as he points out that she had been “pretty” but is now “running to fat” (19, 28).
So whereas Matthew Arnold’s speaker may be a bit pretentious and too earnest by twentieth-century standards, he approaches the world with conscience and moral seriousness. The Hecht speaker has no moral concerns at all and, far from taking the world too earnestly, lives without any ethical considerations other than the desire to get whatever pleasure he can. The sub-title of “The Dover Bitch,” is “A Criticism of Life,” a phrase taken from Arnold’s essay “The Study of Poetry” (Matthew Arnold: Selected Prose, Penguin, 1987, 340-66). And the poem works as a criticism not so much of Arnold’s world, but of the developing American slacker “cool” outlook of the twentieth century, much like what Matthew Arnold refers to in the same essay as “charlatanism,” an approach to life that does not concern itself with making “distinctions between excellent and inferior” (341), or right and wrong for that matter.
Arnold’s anguished speaker struggles to understand his role in a seemingly meaningless world, while Hecht’s speaker thrives there, has long ago given up trying to discriminate between right and wrong in his own behavior, and lives without distress. He reports mockingly that on that night at Dover, Matthew Arnold paced about, played with his watch chain, and seemed “to sweat a bit” (21), clear signs of anguish, indications of some kind of crisis that neither Hecht’s speaker nor the woman seems to care about or understand. Their only concern is for their own pleasure, for having “a good time” (26).
Clearly the Matthew Arnold character is not cool, and Hecht seems aware of how poorly this uncool kind of anxiety plays in a world where cool is all that matters. And yet I think his final sympathies lie not with the relaxed, easy-going speaker of his own poem but with the tortured soul of “Dover Beach.”
Contributed by Paul H. Schmidt, Ph.D.
Georgia State University
At first glance, Anthony Hecht’s "The Dover Bitch" (1967) reads like a derisive modern caricature of the hyper-grave Matthew Arnold, evangelist of Victorian high seriousness, as he appears in his famous dramatic monologue “Dover Beach” (1867). And initially, from the point of view of laid-back twentieth-century America, there is much to mock in Arnold’s uptight stance of moral rectitude.
In Arnold’s poem, the speaker (certainly a version of Arnold) addresses his “love” from the window of a beach cottage, looking out to sea and reflecting profoundly about Sophocles (15) and the meaning of life in a world “Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,/Where ignorant armies clash by night” (36-7). The speaker’s lover passively receives his pronouncements, and does not reply to his passionate plea for their love to provide all that is lacking in a world bereft of “joy . . . love . . . light . . . certitude . . . peace . . . [and] help for pain” (33-4). The auditor’s passivity might simply be a consequence of the poem’s dramatic monologue structure, but the speaker’s self-absorption is still palpable.
In Hecht’s version, the speaker, using sloppy late-twentieth-century colloquial diction—itself a mockery of the fastidious stylings of Arnold’s poetry—reveals that he “knew” the lady in question (6), and tells the story of the sea-side rendezvous from her perspective, that of a well-read but trivial-minded cocotte, who had come to the sea for pleasure and “blandishments in French” (15) yet received neither, and who had voiced her anger and disappointment in the experience of being brought down to the eponymous shore only to be addressed as a “sort of mournful cosmic last resort” (19). (It should be pointed out here that this woman may be the biggest weakness in the Hecht poem, as it is hard to imagine the honorable Matthew Arnold taking vacation with such a demi-rep).
But in order for this poem to work as a parody of Arnold, the reader has to have some respect for the speaker. Initially, the speaker’s casual, knowing disposition seems a welcome and irreverent relief from the solemnity of his Victorian predecessor. He reflects the hedonistic attitudes and values of the middle twentieth-century, and he seems able to understand the physical needs of the woman Arnold’s speaker seems so blind to. But on second consideration, we see that Hecht has slyly undercut his speaker’s position as judge of Matthew Arnold.
One of the primary problems modern readers have with Arnold’s poem is the speaker’s obliviousness to the thoughts and feelings of his partner, and the Hecht speaker at first seems to offer a corrective to that. However, by the end of “The Dover Bitch,” we see that while the speaker does give the woman what Arnold could not – a nuit d’amour – contrasted with the Arnold speaker, he is shallow and even more brutally indifferent to her. He uses her for his own pleasure (“she always treats me right” [25]) and believes he has secured her good will with a bottle of perfume (29). And although unlike Arnold’s speaker, he listens to what she has to say and accepts her as he finds her (“She’s really all right” [24]), he still reduces her to “this girl” (twice 1, 6), and cannot really see beyond her body, as he points out that she had been “pretty” but is now “running to fat” (19, 28).
So whereas Matthew Arnold’s speaker may be a bit pretentious and too earnest by twentieth-century standards, he approaches the world with conscience and moral seriousness. The Hecht speaker has no moral concerns at all and, far from taking the world too earnestly, lives without any ethical considerations other than the desire to get whatever pleasure he can. The sub-title of “The Dover Bitch,” is “A Criticism of Life,” a phrase taken from Arnold’s essay “The Study of Poetry” (Matthew Arnold: Selected Prose, Penguin, 1987, 340-66). And the poem works as a criticism not so much of Arnold’s world, but of the developing American slacker “cool” outlook of the twentieth century, much like what Matthew Arnold refers to in the same essay as “charlatanism,” an approach to life that does not concern itself with making “distinctions between excellent and inferior” (341), or right and wrong for that matter.
Arnold’s anguished speaker struggles to understand his role in a seemingly meaningless world, while Hecht’s speaker thrives there, has long ago given up trying to discriminate between right and wrong in his own behavior, and lives without distress. He reports mockingly that on that night at Dover, Matthew Arnold paced about, played with his watch chain, and seemed “to sweat a bit” (21), clear signs of anguish, indications of some kind of crisis that neither Hecht’s speaker nor the woman seems to care about or understand. Their only concern is for their own pleasure, for having “a good time” (26).
Clearly the Matthew Arnold character is not cool, and Hecht seems aware of how poorly this uncool kind of anxiety plays in a world where cool is all that matters. And yet I think his final sympathies lie not with the relaxed, easy-going speaker of his own poem but with the tortured soul of “Dover Beach.”
Mallock, W(illiam) H(urrell)
The New Republic; or Culture, Faith, and Philosophy in an English Country House.
This piece was first published in the magazine Belgravia without the attributed author in 1876. It was published the next year, still without an author, in a two volume bound edition. The character “Mr. Luke” is described in this roman-a-clef as “a great critic and apostle of culture,” and is based on Matthew Arnold (24). Ruskin and Pater are some other thinly disguised characters. When the main character, Mr. Laurence, is observing the guests before the dinner proper begins, he says of Mr. Luke/Arnold that he is a "supercilious-looking man, talking rather loudly and rather slowly to [my aunt] about the dust in London" (24).
Mr. Laurence has established a menu for his dinner party conversation, to proceed in the following order: "The Aim of Life"; "Town and Country"; "Society"; "Art and Literature"; "Love and Money"; "Riches and Civilisation"; "The Present"; "The Future". When Mr. Luke comes to the first topic of conversation, "The Aim of Life," he "was heard in a loudish voice saying that his own favorite Muse had always been Erato" (30). As the conversation continues concerning the aim of life, after raking Christianity through the mud as a helpful aid to life and after Mr. Rose/Ruskin has waxed eloquent on home decorating as life's aim, Mr. Luke addresses the role that Culture and Christianity play in providing an aim in life.
On Google Books
This piece was first published in the magazine Belgravia without the attributed author in 1876. It was published the next year, still without an author, in a two volume bound edition. The character “Mr. Luke” is described in this roman-a-clef as “a great critic and apostle of culture,” and is based on Matthew Arnold (24). Ruskin and Pater are some other thinly disguised characters. When the main character, Mr. Laurence, is observing the guests before the dinner proper begins, he says of Mr. Luke/Arnold that he is a "supercilious-looking man, talking rather loudly and rather slowly to [my aunt] about the dust in London" (24).
Mr. Laurence has established a menu for his dinner party conversation, to proceed in the following order: "The Aim of Life"; "Town and Country"; "Society"; "Art and Literature"; "Love and Money"; "Riches and Civilisation"; "The Present"; "The Future". When Mr. Luke comes to the first topic of conversation, "The Aim of Life," he "was heard in a loudish voice saying that his own favorite Muse had always been Erato" (30). As the conversation continues concerning the aim of life, after raking Christianity through the mud as a helpful aid to life and after Mr. Rose/Ruskin has waxed eloquent on home decorating as life's aim, Mr. Luke addresses the role that Culture and Christianity play in providing an aim in life.
On Google Books
Caricature from The Poets' Corner
Published: 1904
Although not published until after Matthew Arnold’s death, Max Beerhohm’s caricature is worthy of inclusion, if for no other reason than Beerbohm’s celebrity status. The Poets’ Corner is Beerbohm’s collection of caricatures of 25 of the most influential poets up through the early 1900s. Other poets caricatured include Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Walt Whitman, and William Shakespeare. The fact that Beerbohm includes Arnold in this collection is a testament to Arnold’s continued influence, even close to 2 decades after his death.
Arnold is pictured with his niece, Mary Augusta Ward (a worthy late Victorian voice in her own right), who is asking him, “Why, Uncle Matthew, oh why, will not you be always wholly serious?” Ward’s appearance in the caricature might lead one to believe that she was just as much a target of Beerbohm’s pen as Arnold. Ward would have been in her fifties when Beerbohm published the cartoon, and presenting her as a young girl, dressed in childish clothing, and turned away from the viewer could be interpreted as a slight.
If we assume, though, that Arnold is Beerbohm’s target, we can begin extracting some conclusions from the picture. Arnold’s figure at rest is similar to Tissot’s Vanity Fair piece and, as such, the same inferences can be drawn, especially about his apparent nonchalant attitude towards “practical” concerns. His smile more insidiously brings to mind G.K. Chesterton's later vision of Arnold with "a smile of heart-broken forbearance, as of a teacher in an idiot school," thus Chesterton's assessment of Arnold's "enormously insulting" attitude towards the Populace and the Philistines. However, there are some significant differences between Tissot and Beerbohm’s caricatures. The clothing Beerbohm chooses to use appears much more in line with a “dandiacal” style of dress. The slacks Arnold wears are loose-fitting, recalling almost a Wildean fashion sense. The loose but large neckerchief, gaudy tie-pin, and slippers add to this dandy presentation. Arnold had become tied to Wilde's aesthetic vision, forming - if not a basis - then at least a point of departure for Wilde's artistic and critical project. Wilde famously inverts Arnold's pronouncement that the function of criticism is "to see the object as in itself it really is" by remarking, in "The Critic as Artist" that the function of the critic is to "see the object as, in itself, it is not" (Arnold, Complete Prose Works III.258).
Caricature from Punch
Published: 1881
This caricature comes from page 250 of Punch from 26 November 1881. It is, quite possibly, the most intricate visual caricature of all.
The text accompanying this caricature references the 1881 publication of Poems: New Edition, in which were reprinted many of Arnold’s early poems, including “Balder Dead” and “The Neckan.” The text reads: “Admit that Homer sometimes nods, that Poets do write trash, / Our Bard has written ‘Balder dead,’ and also Balder-dash.” “Balder Dead” was begun in 1853, first published in 1855, again in 1869, and then regularly after. The only exception is that it was excluded from Selections.
Arnold felt, according to a letter to his sister, that “Balder Dead” was “better than Sohrab and Rustum” (qtd. in The Poetry of Matthew Arnold 90). History has not been kind to Arnold’s own judgment of the poem, however, for “Sohrab and Rustum” remains infinitely more popular than “Balder Dead.”
A clue to the poor reception could come through the many inventions and alterations that Arnold made in and to the story of Balder, taken from the Edda which Arnold most certainly found through Mallet’s Northern Antiquities. C.B. Tinker and H.F. Lowry, in the notes to “Balder Dead” found in The Poetry of Matthew Arnold, take time to catalogue the many differences between the Norse story and Arnold’s rendering of it. Their judgment about the effect is as follows: “Arnold’s Scandanavia is certainly not the Norseland that Carlyle had praised in 1840 in his ‘The Hero as Divinity.’ The rough, homely, awkward ‘Hyper-Brobdingnagian business’ of the North is toned down by Arnold – assisted, of course, by Homer and Virgil – into something that at times comes very near to what Carlyle termed ‘the light gracefulness of the old Greek Paganism.’ […] Arnold selects from his sources – alters and invents – to stress, above all else, a Virgilian tenderness and a Virgilian pathos” (91, 92). Having been composed in the last few weeks of 1853, the preface for the 1853 volume of Poems was not far from Arnold’s mind, and so an emphasis on Greek and Virgilian style makes sense.
However, the epigram in the caption references not only “Balder Dead,” but also Balder-dash, and the latter half of the epigram is reflected in another caricature just underneath the picture. It is a poem titled “Necklong,” with the parenthetical comment, “After ‘Neckan’ – a reckless, neck-or-nothing attempt.” The poem parodies Arnold’s “The Neckan,” published first in 1853 and continually thereafter. “The Neckan” immediately preceded “The Forsaken Merman” in the 1853 and is probably meant to be a companion piece to the latter, although the poetics of the former are of inferior quality. The word “neckan” does not exist in the English language, and is a vulgarization (on Arnold’s part) of any number of terms for water devils or water spirits that populate Norse, Celtic, and British mythology (in England the term “Nicker” or “Nick” is more often used).
In the lower part of the right hand column is the following headline and blurb: “Is MR. MATTHEW ARNOLD an extreme land-leaguer? asks a Correspondent who, having heard the title of one of his poems read out, viz. ‘Resignation. To Forster,’ – wouldn’t wait for the remainder. The question is natural: only on referring to the book we found that ‘FORSTER’ is spelt ‘FAUSTA.’” William Forster was Matthew Arnold’s brother in law (married to his sister, Jane “K” Arnold Forster, who is the addressee of “Resignation. To Fausta”) and also Chief Secretary for Ireland beginning in 1880. A “Land-Leaguer” refers to a movement in Ireland to reclaim land for the Irish people from absentee English landlords. William Forster, during his career as Chief Secretary, opposed the Land League, even sponsoring a Coercion Bill allowing the British government to arrest and imprison the revolutionaries without trial. To suggest that Arnold’s poem was titled “Resignation. To Forster” implies that Arnold was entrenched with the Land-Leaguers and, therefore, opposed to his brother-in-law’s political moves. Arnold is presented as desiring his brother-in-law’s resignation. The critique of this blurb is three-fold: 1. It situates Arnold as a person actually interested in and agitating for very real reform; 2. It positions him as agitating for a reform that was considered “un-English”; 3. Since the whole blurb is based on a misunderstanding, the blurb undermines and further demonstrates Arnold’s distance from real reform. (See the Vanity Fair caricature, especially its caption.) On 17 December 1881, less than a month after this cartoon appeared, Arnold wrote a letter to E.K. Chambers declining to be involved with the League because “As I consider the maintenance of law and order in Ireland to be not less important than the establishment there of a plan of local government, I cannot join your League which declares itself opposed to the Crimes Bill.”
Perhaps, though, the most noticeable element of this caricature is just how unflattering the artist’s rendering of Arnold is. The visual image opens itself up to at least three readings. The first is that Arnold is presented almost as a Bacchanalian character. He is dressed in a toga, plays a lyre, and is crowned with leaves. The presence, on the right side of the cartoon, of the Sweetness and Light champagne bottle adds to an easy equation of Arnold with Bacchus. The dead tree in the background, as well as the presence of what appears to be a pile of trash or rubble, on top of which the champagne bottle sits, is an echo of a common criticism of Arnold – essentially, that he is turning his critical eye away from the deplorable condition of the world in favor of some phantom poetic solution to society’s ills. The second chapter of Culture and Anarchy, published in 1869, shows Arnold’s awareness of this criticism: “[T]he editor of the Morning Star, taunts me, as its promulgator, with living out of the world and knowing nothing of life and men. The great austere toiler, the editor of the Daily Telegraph, upbraids me, - but kindly, and more in sorrow than in anger, - for trifling with aesthetics and poetical fancies, while he himself, in that arsenal of his in Fleet Street, is bearing the burden and heat of the day. An intelligent American newspaper, the Nation, says that it is very easy to sit in one’s study and find fault with the course of modern society, but the thing is to propose practical improvements for it. While, finally, Mr. Frederic Harrison […] at last gets moved to an almost stern moral impatience, to behold, as he says, ‘Death, sin, cruelty stalk among us, filling their maws with innocence and youth,’ and me, in the midst of the general tribulation, handing out my pouncet-box” (The Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold V.115-116).
More likely, though, and considering the poem that follows this caricature, the artist is rendering Matthew Arnold as the Neckan of his own poem (the NECKLONG of the poem spoof). Similar to the exploration presented above, the Neck-Long sits apart from the movement of life, “Philistia’s throng,” weeping over it and playing a “dismal song.” The poet associates Arnold/Necklong with “Sky-Limbo,” removed from any association with earthly (read “practical”) concerns, while Philistia concerns itself only with gross and earthly matters (although Philistia is presented in the poetic spoof as much happier than Necklong, who is weeping throughout the poem; near the poem’s end, the Philistine has a “merry crew”). The poem references several of Arnold’s frequent targets in his prose, including Dissenters, the character (from Friendship’s Garland) Bottles, the Daily Telegraph young reporters, and current theology.
I have heard at least one scholar mention that Arnold was, occasionally, the subject of Anti-Semitic rhetoric stemming from a belief that he was of Jewish heritage in his line. I cannot help but see, in this caricature, certain features of Arnold face, especially, that seem to capitalize on this assumption (see, for instance, Nicholas Murray's comment on page 5 of A Life of Matthew Arnold; a later, contemporary line from the Annual Register which stated, in response to a new portrait of Arnold, that it was "markedly Semetic in aspect" [qtd. Murray 302]; and, finally, a line from a letter commenting on his "Jewish cast of face" [Letters V. 341]). This, of course, makes for a conflation of images – the Greek and the Semitic - which in its own turn references Arnold's frequent invocation of the terms Hellenic and Hebraic. Joep Leerssen, in "Englishness, Ethnicity, and Matthew Arnold" (European Journal of English Studies 10.1 [April 2006]: 63-79) has adequately shown that Arnold's frequent references to cultures and/or races are not meant to be racial conclusions, but are rather metaphorical "tags": "such ethnic, or national, labels are metaphorical predicates rather than taxonomic categories [demonstrating] that we are here dealing in commonplaces and tropes rather than literal ethnology or 'national psychology'" (74).
Arnold makes no mention of this caricature – any of its elements – in any of his letters.
Caricature from The Illustrated Review
Published: Thursday, February 1, 1872
This image is less a caricature and more a portrait, and it accompanied a lengthy biographical article about Arnold in The Illustrated Review Volume III Number 32. The article’s author is not provided, but Arnold, in a letter to his mother of 4 February 1872, writes that he believes it is by Charles Kent, a friend of Charles Dickens.
What makes this portrait worthy of consideration in a series that is otherwise devoted to caricatures is that it gave Arnold himself pause to reflect on his appearance. Arnold writes to his mother of the portrait, “the picture is not offensive but rather like an old sheep.” The simile Arnold uses suggests an awareness that he is perhaps overly benign and/or unaggressive. The use of “old” is telling, for, as several Arnold biographers have noted, Arnold was well aware that he was living on borrowed time, and sometimes, at the end of the year, he noted how many years older than his father he was when the elder Arnold died. Arnold would have turned 49 in December of the preceding year. His father, Dr. Thomas Arnold, died of a massive congenital heart defect (which Matthew Arnold inherited) when he was only 46 years old.
This image was accessed via ProQuest’s British Periodicals database, and is copyright 2006 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company.
Caricature Cartoon Portraits
Published: 1872; 1873
The book Cartoon Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Men of the Day collected prose and cartoon works originally published in Once a Week, an illustrated literary magazine in publication from 1859-1880. Cartoon Portraits was published in 1873, but this drawing and its accompanying text originally appeared in an 1872 issue of Once a Week. It follows, then, fast on the heels of Tissot’s Vanity Fair piece.
The picture is followed by the caption “SWEETNESS AND LIGHT.” The accompanying text for this caricature is mostly complimentary of Arnold, even though it does suggest that Arnold’s poems will “never likely […] be popular, in a wide sense of the word” primarily because of “their subject-matter and treatment.” Arnold’s poems are, however, complimented as being “full of original thoughts, expressed in the purest English” and are “models of style.” The anonymous author recommends that Arnold will be best known as an essayist and as the “great apostle to the Philistines of this later age, and the preacher of sweetness and light.” Of his essays, the author judges the most remarkable as his lectures on translating Homer and the collection Essays in Criticism, presumably, considering the time that the biographical sketch had to have been written, the first series.
Even though the accompanying text is complimentary, the caricature presents Arnold in a mostly negative light and relies on common criticisms about his temperament, commitment to the application of his own ideas, and mental abilities. Arnold’s “disinterestedness” had often been mistaken for “disaffection,” and his frequent lamentations about the conditions of working class men and women, as well as the pitiable conditions many children were living in, were considered disingenuous. One recalls the Vanity Fair caricature’s presentation of Arnold’s face (wearing a vapid smile and gazing off into the distance placidly) when looking at the expression that Waddy gives Arnold in this caricature. Arnold’s eyes are focused on nothing in particular, certainly not on either the audience watching or the trapeze bar he is poised to catch. Moreover, presenting Arnold as an entertainer for posh audiences (note, in the background, the men in top hats as well as the general elegance of the theater) reinforces many criticisms that Arnold was merely performing liberal or progressive “tricks” for the entertainment of the status quo. Finally, poising him between the two trapeze bars leaves Arnold hanging in midair as he jumps between “Poetry” and “Philosophy.” Such a combination of details conveys a common popular judgment against Arnold as the “preacher of sweetness and light” and a commentator of the “kid-glove persuasion.” It is possible that the “LIGHT” of the cartoon’s caption could be visualized by Arnold’s being poised between the two bars, as well.
One also must note the discrepancy between the masculine presentation of the face and the feminine presentation of the body. Arnold’s hair (“that perpetual miracle” he once termed it), especially his facial hair, is thick and dark. Such thick side-burns were evidence of one’s masculinity. Christopher Oldstone-Moore’s “The Beard Movement in Victorian Britain” (Victorian Studies 48.1: 7-34) emphasizes the relationship in the Victorian consciousness between masculinity and a man’s facial hair. However, the facial hair on Arnold’s enlarged head in this caricature is at great contrast to the smooth lines and tight-fitting clothing of the acrobat costume. Although the arms are stout, the legs are svelte and the feet are pointed, suggesting the artist’s judgment of a discrepancy between Arnold’s masculine ideas and his feminine fear of putting any of them into practice. Perhaps this feminine depiction is emphasizing the “SWEETNESS” element of the caption.
Having Arnold presented as a trapeze artist also implies a judgment about his commitment to the application of his own ideas. Flying deftly between “Criticism,” “Poetry,” and “Philosophy,” Arnold is presented as a jack of all trades, but master of none. He is, essentially, fully committed to neither poetry nor philosophy nor, one could surmise, social criticism.
Arnold makes no mention of this cartoon, neither its original in Once a Week or the Cartoon Portraits of the following year.
Caricature from Vanity Fair
Published: 1871
This caricature was published in the 11 November 1871 edition of Vanity Fair. It was part of a series that included caricatures of other “Men of the Day,” including John Ruskin and John S. Mill. Following the caricature is a line from “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time”: “I say, the critic must keep out of the region of immediate practice” (Arnold, Complete Prose Works III.275). Arnold delivered “The Function” in lecture form as Oxford Professor of Poetry on October 29, 1864, and published it shortly thereafter in The National Review. Tissot lobbed the first public shot towards Arnold’s caricatures in the popular press, for his image is the first published caricature.
In the book In ‘Vanity Fair’ by Roy T. Matthew and Peter Mellini, the authors provide an excellent description of the French painter James Tissot’s caricature of Arnold as well as some background information about Arnold’s relationship with the magazine at the time. They write, “Vanity Fair acknowledged that Arnold was ‘eminently fitted’ to be a critic because of his extensive writings and experiences. The magazine recognized that Arnold had not been appreciated or understood for his efforts to ‘propagate the best that is known and thought’. […] The magazine admitted that, as a critic, he was ‘unsurpassed’; however, Vanity Fair disapproved of his proposal to increase the power of the State to solve England’s problems. Tissot’s caricature captures Arnold’s sense of elegance which he inherited from his mother. Charlotte Bronte, upon meeting Arnold, wrote ‘Striking and prepossessing in appearance, his manner displeases from its seeming foppery’. Arnold’s serious side, which Bronte appreciated, could not hide his dandyism. He was particularly vain about his hair which he anointed with French lotions. Tissot emphasizes Arnold’s hair and his mutton chop whiskers. His foppery is tempered by his clerical attire, but Tissot has caught the essence of his victim” (91).
Matthew and Mellini call attention to the languid pose and the quasi-aesthetic elegance that Tissot captures in the caricature, but Tissot’s pose is meant also to highlight what R.H. Super rightly calls the “keynote” of the essay from which the cartoon’s caption comes: “disinterestedness” (Super, Complete Prose Works 473). Of all of Matthew Arnold’s famous phrases, “disinterestedness” in all of its connotations has perhaps caused Arnold’s very practical critical legacy the most difficulty. The fact that Arnold’s eyes are clearly turned up accentuates a perceived removal or aloofness from the otherwise earnest tone of most Victorian social and intellectual critics. His cool smile suggests an almost willful ignorance of many very real Victorian social concerns. Tissot is capitalizing on both of these in his caricature.
Just how amused Arnold himself was with the caricature is difficult to ascertain. In a letter to his mother of November 19, 1871 (only a few days after the caricature was printed), he writes, “You will hardly have even been amused by Vanity Fair, it was so unlike. Something of a resemblance people find in the figure and attitude, but no one, I think, finds any in the face.” Displacing the dislike of the cartoon onto his mother seems rather like an admission that he does not find the caricature amusing. This letter is the only one in which he mentions the likeness.
Arnold is right, though, about the lack of likeness in the face. Contrasted with the other caricatures presented here, Tissot seems to have neglected the most oft-exaggerated features – the nose and mouth. Arnold’s mouth in this picture is close to pursed, and his nose is rather proportional to his face. Moreover, Arnold’s strong chin seems softened, as do his cheeks. However, as Matthew, Mellini, and Arnold all note, Tissot does capture Arnold’s demeanor, at least as he was presenting himself through his prose works.
Visual Caricatures
“Caricature is the tribute which mediocrity pays to genius.”
- Oscar Wilde
Click on these links to see and read Visual Caricatures & Analysis:
The Mystery of Edwin Drood Illustrations by Sir Samuel Luke Fildes
Vanity Fair by James Tissot
Cartoon Portraits & Men of the Day by Frederick Waddy
The Illustrated Review by R. Taylor
Punch by Edward Linley Sambourne
The Poets' Corner by Max Beerbohm
By all accounts, Matthew Arnold had a good sense of humor. He even admits in an early letter that his friends think he “laugh[s] too much.” When Matthew once got in trouble at Rugby and his own father sat Matthew behind him at the front of the classroom, the younger Arnold made faces at his father behind the eminent Victorian’s back, much to the delight of other students in the class. This sense of humor helped Arnold throughout his life, especially when he found himself, as he frequently did, the subject of political cartoons and caricatures.
Of course, caricature was nothing new to Arnold. When a child, he and his siblings published a family magazine, “The Fox How Magazine,” in which the children would frequently parody one another. One sibling parodied Matthew Arnold’s lifelong interest in his own appearance and his dandyism, writing of his rooms in Oxford, “Eau de Milles Fleurs, Eau de Cologne and twenty eaux beside, / Rowland’s Odonto, scented soaps, jostle his books aside.” In Friendship’s Garland, Arnold would make fun of himself, even, characterizing himself, in relationship to his doppelganger Arminius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh, as “a mere mouthpiece of this dogmatic young Prussian […] on the whole, my intellect was (there is no use denying it) overmatched by his” (Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold V. 3). And when he was parodied and satirized by the likes of Frederick Harrison, he found the satire to be well-done, and he took it in stride, telling one friend he laughed until he cried over one parody.
What follows on this page are some of the known published caricatures of Arnold, some context, and some interpretations. Not all were published during Arnold’s lifetime; however, their presence in the popular press attests to Arnold’s continued influence even after his death in 1888. Jerold Savory and Patricia Marks's book The Smiling Muse: Victoriana in the Comic Press (Philadelphia: The Art Alliance Press 1985) is an excellent text resource for more analysis of Matthew Arnold caricatures and those of many other Victorian personalities.
In addition to the visual caricatures and cartoons of Matthew Arnold, click on these links to verbal parodies or caricatures of Arnold.
The images used on these pages, unless noted otherwise, are out of copyright and their usage on this site is covered under at least one of the following: PD-1923; PD-1996.
- Oscar Wilde
Click on these links to see and read Visual Caricatures & Analysis:
The Mystery of Edwin Drood Illustrations by Sir Samuel Luke Fildes
Vanity Fair by James Tissot
Cartoon Portraits & Men of the Day by Frederick Waddy
The Illustrated Review by R. Taylor
Punch by Edward Linley Sambourne
The Poets' Corner by Max Beerbohm
By all accounts, Matthew Arnold had a good sense of humor. He even admits in an early letter that his friends think he “laugh[s] too much.” When Matthew once got in trouble at Rugby and his own father sat Matthew behind him at the front of the classroom, the younger Arnold made faces at his father behind the eminent Victorian’s back, much to the delight of other students in the class. This sense of humor helped Arnold throughout his life, especially when he found himself, as he frequently did, the subject of political cartoons and caricatures.
Of course, caricature was nothing new to Arnold. When a child, he and his siblings published a family magazine, “The Fox How Magazine,” in which the children would frequently parody one another. One sibling parodied Matthew Arnold’s lifelong interest in his own appearance and his dandyism, writing of his rooms in Oxford, “Eau de Milles Fleurs, Eau de Cologne and twenty eaux beside, / Rowland’s Odonto, scented soaps, jostle his books aside.” In Friendship’s Garland, Arnold would make fun of himself, even, characterizing himself, in relationship to his doppelganger Arminius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh, as “a mere mouthpiece of this dogmatic young Prussian […] on the whole, my intellect was (there is no use denying it) overmatched by his” (Complete Prose Works of Matthew Arnold V. 3). And when he was parodied and satirized by the likes of Frederick Harrison, he found the satire to be well-done, and he took it in stride, telling one friend he laughed until he cried over one parody.
What follows on this page are some of the known published caricatures of Arnold, some context, and some interpretations. Not all were published during Arnold’s lifetime; however, their presence in the popular press attests to Arnold’s continued influence even after his death in 1888. Jerold Savory and Patricia Marks's book The Smiling Muse: Victoriana in the Comic Press (Philadelphia: The Art Alliance Press 1985) is an excellent text resource for more analysis of Matthew Arnold caricatures and those of many other Victorian personalities.
In addition to the visual caricatures and cartoons of Matthew Arnold, click on these links to verbal parodies or caricatures of Arnold.
The images used on these pages, unless noted otherwise, are out of copyright and their usage on this site is covered under at least one of the following: PD-1923; PD-1996.
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Matthew Arnold
A rare photograph of Arnold smiling