Poetry in the late nineteenth century- Buchanan's condemnation of what he termed Rossetti's offensive
"fleshly" poetry was followed some six years later by John Ruskin's
accusation that the American painter James McNeill Whistler was
"throwing a point of paint in the public's face." 5 (Whistler sued for libel,
receiving the belittling sum of a farthing's damages.) The assault on
contentious works of art continued in Mallock's "A Familiar Colloquy,"
which the Nineteenth Century published in 1878. In this absurd though
nasty piece, Mallock goes on the attack against French writer Theophile
Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835), requiring one of the speakers in
this "colloquy" to call the novel - notorious for its depiction of lesbian
desire - "the foulest and filthiest book that ever man put pen to. It is the
glorification of nameless and shameless vice." In response, another of
Mallock's interlocutors remarks that her brother "horsewhipped a man"
because he lent it to her sister. 6 Such fierce criticism makes it plain that
"Locksley Hall Sixty Years After" is very much the poem of a Laureate. It is
a poem that addresses the state of the nation.
IITennyson died in 1892. Who was to succeed him as Poet Laureate? The
question was often enough asked in the following years because, contrary
to custom, this post remained vacant until New Year's Day, 1896, when it
was announced that his successor was to be Alfred Austin. The prolonged
agonizing about this choice of Laureate has been well documented by
Norton B. Crowell. 7 There is no need for a lengthy discussion of Austin's
poetry. It was execrable. But, then, whoever made a case for earlier
Laureates like Laurence Eusden (1688-1730), say, or Henry Pye
(1745-1813)? During the eighteenth century the Laureateship was not of
much concern. During the nineteenth century, however, it most certainly
was. We need, therefore, to ask why Austin was allowed to succeed to a
post that Tennyson had filled with such colossal distinction.
The very fact that Tennyson made the Laureateship so visible, giving it
real luster, created an obvious difficulty. Who next to choose? His great
contemporaries were all dead. Matthew Arnold passed away in 1888. In
the following year, Robert Browning died (although, since he retained his
Republicanism to the last, his death probably came as a relief to the
appointees). And what about George Meredith, the poet whose controver-
sial volume Modern Love and Other Poems (in which the title poem
explores a disintegrating marriage) established his reputation in 1862? He
was still alive and still publishing but not a poet to compare with Tennyson.
Who, then, could measure up to Tennyson's stature? There were, as it
283