THE HOUND OF HEAVEN " IN COVENT GARDEN MARKET.

Otago Witness, Issue 2809, 15 January 1908, Page 79

THE HOUND OF HEAVEN " IN COVENT GARDEN MARKET.

THE TRAGEDY AND SPLENDOUR OF

FRANCIS THOMPSON. "No one, surely, ever had so sad a life [as Francis Thompson], 6O remote from all that makes the joy of \ife, lawful or unlawful — no one, at least, for whom the bells of fame have been asked to toll — not Keats, not Chatterton, not Poe I Yet toll they wall for him, and Wfyh good! cause, for a spirit of bhe very elect among us, a poet among our poets, has passed away." So writes Mr Wilfrid Scawen Blunt in the Academy of Francis Thompson, whose death we recorded recently. No move fcragio and pathetic story could be imagined of a man than, that he tells of this doctor's eon, ft man, of infinite vision, yeb %ho sffenfc nights under the arches of Covenfc Garden wrapped in the fumes of laudanum.

•n-A Caller of Cabe.— «

Here Is Mr Blunts amazing story : — • "Of his life in bhe London streets, where for fiva years he starved, he did not like to talk. I gathered, from him that at first his father - gave him a small allowance «i a few shillings & faeek, and put him in the^ way of getting pusinees em- 1 ployment, but that, finding* that jbe failed j repeatedly to keep his situations, ha v j finally fcithdr^w 1 all help, and left hjm to i his fate. 4s it was, he drifted ~dow"it Ihe stream of life in London almost without an effort, and by the" end! of his second year there, in agite of what w# kiLotf; w&il

in, his brain of literary power for verse or prose, he bad become a mere waif upon the streets, the most pitiful of the destitute poor — an educated man submerged.

"Work with his hands he could not do. ' For that,' he told me, pathetically, pointing to his poor, weak arms, no stronger than a child's, ' I was physically unfit.' All he could do was to earn the few daily pence he needed byi suoh half-mendicancy as the English law allows — the sale of matches in the streets, attendance at theatre- doors at night aa a caller of cabs, and casual messenger. He needed about elevenpence a day to live, and when this was won his daily, or r-ather his nightly, work was over, and he retired to rest under the Covent Garden arches, or on the waste ground hard by, where the refuse of the great market is thrown. He had no other lodging.

— A Stupendous Poem. —

And yet this was the man who wrote that stupendous poem, "The Hound of Heaven," which for mo vament and imagination is almost unsurpassed. It tells of a soul's flight from God, and how "that tremendous Lover" pursjied : I fled Him, down the nights and' down th« days ;

I fled, Him, down the arches of the years; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind ; and in the mist qf tears I hid from Him, and under running laHighter. Up vistaed hopes I sped And shoi, precipitated, Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, From those strong Feet that followed 1 , followed after. But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They teat — and a Voice beat - More instant than the Feet — " All things betray thee who betrayest Me."

I said to dawn: Be sudden — to eve: Be soon; With thy young akiey blossoms heap <ne over From this tremendous Lover! Float thy vague veil about me lest He see!

Hera is Mr Blunts account of his rescue from bis dreadful London life, but for wbioh he would never have written those majestic words : —

*'His rescue from this depth of. misery was as dramatic as anything in the history of literature," says Mr Blunt. "I do not owe my knowledge of its. details to himself, but to a source almost as direct. He had been five years thus in the streets when he mads up has mind, Mke Chatterton, to die. From time to time through all that period he had tried to get an entrance into the literary heaven of print by addressing publishers and editors with specimens of his verse and prose, written for the most part on scraps of paper gathered from the gutters, and always in vain. No favourable answer ever had been returned to him. Among others, he had addressed ,the then editor of the Catholic magazine, Merry England [Mr Wilfred MeynellJ, sending him, with some verses, an essay treating of the relations between Soul and Body. It had reached the editor wrapped in a dirty envelope, and the subject of it being unattractive it had been put aside in a pigeon-hole unread, nor was it till six months afterwards that, finding himself in want of material for his magazine, the editor took it down and examined it. He then found it to be full of originality, and with a wealth of illustration and quotation quite unusual in such contributions.

— How He was Rescued. —

"The verses, too, were of such excellence that they betokened discovery — perhaps of a true poet. They were signed 'Francis Thompson, P. 0., Charing Cross.' The essay and a poem were therefore published with his name, but when it came to forwarding payment for them the author proved undiseoverable. He was no longer to be found at the addtess given. Meanwhile, Thompson had seen his verses printed, and, finding as he thought all reward denied - him, finally yielded to despair, and having for some days saved up all therpence he could earn, he devoted them to the purchase of a single dose of laudanum; sufficient to end his troubles.With this he retired at night to his haunt, the rubbish plot in Covent Garden Market, resolved on death. Then by his own narrative the following incident occurred. H« had already taken half the fatal draught when he felt a hand upon his arm, and looking up saw on© whom he recognised as Chatterton forbidding him to drink the rest, and at the same instant memory came to him of how, after that poet's suicide, a letter had been, delivered at his lodgings which, if he had waited another day, would have brought him the relief needed. And' so with Thompson it happened j for after infinite pains the editor had that very morningtraced him to the ' chemist's shop , where the drug was sold, and relief for him was close at hand. .

—At Peace in Sussex.-— •

"This* was the beginning for Thompson of the new and better Mfe. Befriended by his good Samaritan, who clothed and fed and found, him. lodging, first in a hospital, for be needed! bodily cure, and ijext, for his mind's health, at Storrington, he came into his intellectual inheritance, aiid found mit salvation. There at the foot of the Sussex downs during the next two years Thompson wrote nearly all the great poetry the world knows as his — 'In Dial's Lag/ 'The Hound of Heaven,' 'Sister Songs,' and that splendid 1 'Ode to the Setting Sun,' which is the finest ot Its kind since the odes of Shelley." "But Thomipson, alas!" adds Mr Blunt, "wag essentially a town-dweller, nursed in the grime and glare of gaslit streets, and his heart hungered for them still. The country W36 never his true home, nor did he erer learn to distinguish the oak {torn the elm, or to know the name of the commonest flowers of the' field, or even, p? the garden- From his new para4ise at Storrington he w^Mer«d back into' the worfyf «>f London, which, wss to be his doom, Twice againi the friend!? who had first pessUfQi him, in their untiring zeal,

Bought to app v y the remedy which had-, produced such fair results. They found,.*.,, a home for him awhile with the Franciscan friars at Crawley and Pamtasaphj but no new blossom of happy verse resulted, and little by lititle hds life settled down into the way of death he had chosen with hardly an effort to avert the end."