"My father’s house stood in a quiet country town, through which a tidal river flowed.  The banks of the river were flanked by wooden wharves, which were supported on timbers, and projected over the water.  They had granaries behind them, and one of my earliest pleasures was to watch the gangs of men who at high tide towed vessels up the river, where, being moored before these granaries, cargoes of corn were shot down from the upper stories into their holds, through wooden troughs not unlike fire-escapes.  The back of my father’s house was on a level with the wharves, and overlooked a long reach of the river.  Our nursery was a low room in the roof, having a large bow window, in the old-fashioned seat of which I spent many a happy hour with my brother, sometimes listening to the soft hissing sound made by the wheat in its descent, sometimes admiring the figure-heads of the vessels, or laboriously spelling out the letters of their names."

A description of childhood, from . . . . Off the Skelligs.

. . . .
Sing on! we sing in the glorious weather
    Till one steps over the tiny strand,
So narrow, in sooth, that still together
    On either brink we go hand in hand.

The beck grown wider, the hands must sever,
    On either margin, our songs all done,
We move apart, while she singeth ever,
    Taking the course of the stooping sun.

He prays "Come over"— I may not follow;
    I cry "Return"—but he cannot come:
We speak, we laugh, but with voices hollow;
    Our hands are hanging, our hearts are
            numb.

A little pain when the beck grows wider;
    "Cross to me now—for her wavelets swell:"
"I may not cross "—and the voice beside her
    Faintly reacheth, tho' heeded well.

No backward path; ah! no returning;
    No second crossing that ripple's flow
"Come to me now, for the West is burning;
    Come ere it darkens;"—"Ah, no! ah, no!"

Then cries of pain, and arms outreaching—
    The beck grows wider and swift and deep:
Passionate words as of one beseeching—
    The loud beck drowns them; we walk, we
            weep.

A braver swell, a swifter sliding;
    The River hasteth, her banks recede:
Wing-like sails on her bosom gliding
    Bear down the lily and drown the reed.

Stately prows are rising and bowing
    (Shouts of mariners winnow the air),
And level sands for banks endowing
    The tiny green ribbon that showed so fair.

While, O my heart! as white sails shiver,
    And crowds are passing, and banks stretch
            wide,
How hard to follow, with lips that quiver,
    That moving speck on the far-off side.

Farther, farther—I see it—I know it—
    My eyes brim over, it melts away;
Only my heart to my heart shall show it
    As I walk desolate day by day . . . .

                                    And Niloiya said,
'My sons, if one of you will hear my words,
Go now, look out, and tell me of the day,
How fares it?'
                           And the fateful darkness grew.
But Shem went up to do his mother's will;
And all was one as though the frighted earth
Quivered and fell a-trembling; then they hid
Their faces every one, till he returned,
And spake not.   'Nay,' they cried, 'what hast thou seen?
Oh, is it come to this?'   He answered them,
'The door is shut.'

                                            And now thyself
Art loveliest in mine eyes; I look, and lo!
Thou art of beauty more than any thought
I had concerning thee.   Let, then, this robe,
Wrought on with imagery of fruitful bough,
And graceful leaf, and birds with tender eyes,
Cover the ripples of thy tawny hair.'
So when she held her peace, he brought her nigh
To hear the speech of wedlock; ay, he took
The golden cup of wine to drink with her,
And laid the sheaf upon her arms.   He said,
'Like as my fathers in the older days
Led home the daughters whom they chose, do I;
Like as they said, "Mine honour have I set
Upon thy head!" do I.   Eat of my bread,
Rule in my house, be mistress of my slaves,
And mother of my children.'

"Oh, what a curious place the world is, and what a number of things are found out afresh in it!  What faded old facts stand forth in startling colours, as wonderful and new, when youthful genius gets a chance of sitting still while it passes, and making unnoticed studies of it."

From . . . . Sarah De Berenger.

"Some people appear to feel that they are much wiser, much nearer to the truth and to realities than they were when they were children.  They think of childhood as immeasurably beneath and behind them.  I have never been able to join in such a notion.  It often seems to me that we lose quite as much as we gain by our lengthened sojourn here.  I should not at all wonder if the thoughts of our childhood, when we look back on it after the rending of this vail of our humanity, should prove less unlike what we were intended to derive from the teaching of life, nature, and revelation, than the thoughts of our more sophisticated days."

From...Off the Skelligs.

". . .  . in Kensington, a suburb of London, in a two-story-and-a-half stone house, cream-colored, . . . . .  Tasteful grounds are in front of the home, and in the rear a large lawn bordered with many flowers, and conservatories; a real English garden, soft as velvet, and fragrant as new-mown hay.  The house is fit for a poet; roomy, cheerful, and filled with flowers.  One end of the large, double parlors seemed a bank of azalias and honeysuckles, while great bunches of yellow primrose and blue forget-me-not were on the tables and in the bay-windows."

From. . . .Lives of Girls Who became Famous.

"Jean Ingelow thinks that women are entitled to either rights or privileges and usually have one at the expense of the other.  For herself she has decided to waive the rights and cling to the privileges."

Deseret News (Utah, U.S.A.), 18 March 1893.

PERSONAL MENTION

Two illustrious women who celebrate this year the seventy-fifth anniversary of their birth are Florence Nightingale and Jean Ingelow.

Salt Lake Tribune (U.S.A.), 13 June, 1895.

JEAN INGELOW'S HOME.

But a few moment's ride from London is the Kensington home of Jean Ingelow, whose poetry is so familiar to American readers.  This house is an old one, of cream colored stone, and one scarcely knows whether it has two or three stories.  Liberal grounds surround the house, and even in Winter show a gardener's care.  In Summer the entire lawn is bordered and dotted with flowers, for the poet is a pronounced horticulturalist.  Jean Ingelow's home is that of a poet, with books on every hand and always within reach wherever you may chance to sit down.  The poet is now in middle life, but her face shows not the slightest traces of years.  Her manner is most friendly, her conversation charming and she has a very musical voice.  She enjoys a remarkably correct knowledge of American literature, and titles of all the latest American books being spoken by her with wonderful fluency.  Her character is eminently practical, without a touch of sentimentality.  All her literary writing is done in the forenoon; her pen is never put to paper by gaslight.  She composes slowly, and her verses are often kept by her for a few months before they are allowed to go out for publication.  She shuns society, and the most severe part of the winter is spent in the south of France.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle (U.S.A.), May 30, 1889.

". . . . Later I heard that Miss Ingelow was extremely conservative, and was very indignant when a petition for women's rights to vote was offered for her signature.  A rampant Radical told me this, and shook her handsome head pathetically over Jean's narrowness; but when I heard that once a week several poor souls dined comfortably in the pleasant home of the poetess, I forgave her conservatism, and regretted that an unconquerable aversion to dinner parties made me decline her invitation."

From . . . .Jean Ingelow, the Poetess.

". . . . I have set up a dinner-table for the sick poor, or rather, for such persons as are just out of the hospitals, and are hungry, and yet not strong enough to work.  We have about twelve to dinner three times a week, and hope to continue the plan.  It is such a comfort to see the good it does.  I find it one of the great pleasures of writing, that it gives me more command of money for such purposes than falls to the lot of most women."

From. . . .Lives of Girls Who became Famous.

 . . . . the "Grace of Sunderland" was wrecked. . . .
And ne'er a one was saved.
                                                    They're lying now,
With two small children, in a row; the church
And yard are full of seamen's graves, and few
Have any names. . . .

From. . . 'Brothers and a Sermon'

_______________

                   . . . . and one could not hear
A word the other said for wind and sea
That raged and beat and thundered in the night—
The awfullest, the longest, lightest night
That ever parents had to spend.   A moon
That shone like daylight on the breaking wave.
Ah, me!  and other men have lost their lads,
And other women wiped their poor dead mouths,
And got them home and dried them in the house,
And seen the drift-wood lie along the coast,
That was a tidy boat but one day back, . . . .

From. . . 'Brothers and a Sermon'

She drave at the rock with sternsails set
    Crash went the masts in twain;
She staggered back with her mortal blow,
    Then leaped at it again.

There rose a great cry, bitter and strong,
    The misty moon looked out!
And the water swarmed with seamen's heads,
    And the wreck was strewed about.

I saw her mainsail lash the sea
    As I clung to the rock alone;
Then she heeled over, and down she went,
    And sank like any stone.

From. . . 'Winstanley'

_______________

     . . . . My boat, you shall find none fairer afloat,
      In river or port.
Long I looked out for the lad she bore,
      On the open desolate sea,
And I think he sailed to the heavenly shore,
      For he came not back to me—Ah me! . . . .

From. . . .'Songs of Seven'

The wrecking of the Grace of Sunderland . . . .

An old  fisherman recounts the story of the parson. . . .

                     " . . . . when he was a younger man
He went out in the lifeboat very oft,
Before the "Grace of Sunderland" was wrecked.
He's never been his own man since that hour;
For there were thirty men aboard of her,
Anigh as close as you are now to me,
And ne'er a one was saved.
                                                  They're lying now,
With two small children, in a row: the church
And yard are full of seamen's graves, and few
Have any names.
                                 She bumped upon the reef;
Our parson, my young son, and several more
Were lashed together with a two-inch rope,
And crept along to her; their mates ashore
Ready to haul them in.   The gale was high,
The sea was all a boiling seething froth,
And God Almighty's guns were going off,
And the land trembled.
                                             When she took the ground,
She went to pieces like a lock of hay
Tossed from a pitchfork.  Ere it came to that,
The captain reeled on deck with two small things,
One in each arm—his little lad and lass,
Their hair was long, and blew before his face,
Or else we thought he had been saved; he fell,
But held them fast.   The crew, poor luckless souls.
The breakers licked them off; and some were crushed,
Some swallowed in the yeast, some flung up dead,
The dear breath beaten out of them: not one
Jumped from the wreck upon the reef to catch
The hands that strained to reach, but tumbled back
With eyes wide open.   But the captain lay
And clung—the only man alive.   They prayed
"For God's sake, captain, throw the children here!"
"Throw them!" our parson cried; and then she struck:
And he threw one, a pretty two-years child;
But the gale dashed him on the slippery verge,
And down he went.   They say they heard him cry.

'Then he rose up and took the other one,
And all our men reached out their hungry arms,
And cried out, "Throw her, throw her!" and he did;
He threw her right against, the parson's breast,
And all at once a sea broke over them,
And they that saw it from the shore have said
It struck the wreck and piecemeal scattered it,
Just as a woman might the lump of salt
That 'twixt her hands into the kneading-pan
She breaks and crumbles on her rising bread.

'We hauled our men in: two of them were dead—
The sea had beaten them, their heads hung down;
Our parson's arms were empty, for the wave
Had torn away the pretty, pretty lamb;
We often see him stand beside her grave:
But 't was no fault of his, no fault of his. . . ."

From. . . 'Brothers and a Sermon'

THE DAYS WITHOUT ALLOY.

"When I sit on market-days amid the comers and the goers,
  Oh! full oft I have a vision of the days without alloy,
  And a ship comes up the river with a jolly gang of towers,
  And a 'pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!'

"There is busy talk around me, all about mine ears it hummeth,
  But the wooden wharves I look on, and a dancing, heaving buoy,
  For 'tis tidetime in the river, and she cometh—oh, she cometh !
  With a 'pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!'

"Then I hear the water washing, never golden waves were brighter,
  And I hear the capstan creaking—'tis a sound that cannot cloy.
  Bring her to, to ship her lading, brig or schooner, sloop or lighter,
  With a 'pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave, hoy!'

"'Will ye step aboard, my dearest? for the high seas lie before us.'
  So I sailed adown the river in those days without alloy.
  We are launched!   But when, I wonder, shall a sweeter sound float o'er us
  Than yon 'pull'e haul'e, pull'e haul'e, yoy! heave hoy!'"

From . . . .Monitions of the Unseen, and Poems of Love and Childhood.

". . . . It was a still, warm day.  A great bulging cloud, black and low, was riding slowly up from the south.  The cliffs had gone into the brooding darkness of this cloud, which had stooped to take them in.  The water was spotted with flights of thistledown, floated from the meadows behind the church, and riding out to sea.  Suddenly a hole was blown in the advancing and lowering cloud; the sun glared through it, and all the water where his light fell was green as grass, and the black hulls of the crowded vessels glittered; while under the cliff a long reach of peaked red roofs looked warmer and more homelike than ever, and on the top of them the wide old church seemed to crouch, like a great sea-beast at rest, and the ruined abbey, well up on the hill, stood gaunt and pale, like the skeleton ribs and arms of a dead thing in sore need of burial."

The harbour at Whitby, from. . . .  Sarah De Berenger

THE TIMES
July 21, 1897.

―――♦―――

JEAN INGELOW.

Miss Jean Ingelow, who died yesterday at her residence in Kensington, at the age of 77, was one of those writers who, without being among the greatest of their age, yet appeal strongly to the taste of the public of their day and win for their works a large, if not a lasting, meed of popularity.  One may hazard a guess that Miss Ingelow's poems and stories are not much read by the younger generation of today, whose taste lies in the direction of more strenuous talent; but in the sixties and seventies her volumes were sold in enormous numbers both in this country and in the United States.  One of them at least has gone through more than 20 editions, and the others were bought up in thousands and must have bought in down to a fairly recent date a large income for books of verse.

Miss Ingelow came, like Tennyson, of a Lincolnshire family, and the poetry of the great Poet Laureate had a considerable influence on hers.  Her stories in blank verse—"Laurance," "Brothers and a Sermon," and "Gladys and her Island" for instance—had a strong Tennysonian ring, and the dainty sketches, "Supper at the Mill" and "Afternoon at a Parsonage" might almost have been the early efforts of the Laureate himself, though in the lyrics Miss Ingelow scarcely succeeded so well in her blank verse, which was smooth and graceful and only lacked higher qualities in being too obvious an echo of a greater style.  The poems by which she is, perhaps, best known is one connected with her native county—"High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire."  These fine dramatic lines, with their haunting rhythm and refrain have long been a favourite with public reciters, and will live when their author's longer and more elaborate works—such as "Story of Doom," a tale of the world before the Flood—have been forgotten.  Others that were very popular in their day were "The Song of Seven," a kind of "Seven Ages of Women," and "Divided," which is more subjective in character than most of her poems.

    All Miss Ingelow's poetry has qualities that showed her to possess a genuine gift of expressing herself in melodious verse, and her powers were always devoted to worthy and to noble themes.  She never succumbed to what Matthew Arnold called "the strange disease of modern life," and if there be one dominant note in her song it is quiet joyfulness in the beauties of nature that forbids anything like querulousness or morbidity.  Her appreciation of the sounds and sights of the country was constantly evident.  In her pages we hear the birds in full song, see the flowers in bloom, and seem to be brought close to Nature by the thousand vivid touches that build up the scenes brought before us.  In the poem "Honours" it was one of the lessons she taught that in this love of natural beauty in its everyday form lay man's truest happiness.

. . . . . .

    Besides her poems Miss Ingelow wrote a number of prose works—fairy stories for children, related with much charm, and novels appealing mainly to young people.  The delicate fancy and strong sense of character that marked her narrative poems were also shown in these.  But it is as a poet that she will be remembered, a poet whose gifts were turned to high account, whose works gave sincere pleasure to very many and offence or pain to none.

THE SCOTSMAN
21st July, 1897.

―――♦―――

DEATH OF JEAN INGELOW.

THE death occurred yesterday, at her residence in Kensington, of Miss Jean Ingelow, the poet and novelist.  To the younger generation her name is perhaps mainly associated with the best of her lyrics which have found their way into the anthologies, and by the many charming songs which Sullivan and other musicians have enshrined in music.  But in her day she achieved a widespread popularity by her poems and by her novels, and she must be ranked among those women writers who, while not attaining to actual greatness, have nevertheless contributed much to the sweetness and purity of Victorian letters.  Miss Ingelow was born about 1830 at Ipswich, and was thus a mere girl when the Queen came to the throne.  She began to attract public notice about the time when Mrs Browning's song was failing.  Her first book of poems, entitled "A Rhyming Chronicle of Incidents and Feelings" appeared anonymously in 1850, and she soon became a busy and popular writer.  Between 1860 and 1870 she produced abundantly, and to this period belong "Deborah's Book and the Lonely Rock," "The Suspicious Jackdaw," "The Minnows with Silver Tails," "Studies for Stories," "A Story of Doom," "A Sister's Bye-hours," "The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire."  She tried her hand at novel-writing, and won considerable success with "Off the Skelligs" (1872) and "Fated to be Free" (1875.)  Miss Ingelow's verse belongs essentially to the class of minor poetry; but it stands high in its class, and will always find representation in any worthy anthology of Victorian verse.  The prominent note in her verse was its simple spontaneity.  Not that she could evade the influence of Tennyson, the music of whose verse compelled imitation.  But the emotion, whether it take the shape of joy in the sunshine and singing of the woods and meadows of England, or of a tender feminine sympathy with human aspiration and suffering, proceeds from the heart.  In many of her shorter pieces she follows a tendency of the age, to dream dreams and muse upon the things behind this veil; but as she does not go too deep she is easily understood.  It is not difficult to point to places where prolixity, hasty work, and lack of self-criticism may be charged against her; but in "The High Tide upon the Coast of Lincolnshire," which, with its antique dialect, won widespread popularity; "Winstanley," "The Long White Seam," and elsewhere we have manifestations of the poetic gift sufficient to entitle the writer to a high place among the singers who have brightened the Victorian era.  It is probably by her shorter lyrical pieces that her name will be preserved.  Many of these are of exceeding beauty of phrase and feeling.

―――♦―――

THE SCOTSMAN
7th August ,1897.

In its obituary notice of Miss Jean Ingelow, the "Athenæum" gives the following interesting details of her first collection of poems:— It is, we believe, not generally known that although this book was highly spoken of and admired, and the first edition was exhausted with reasonable promptitude, its publishers (Messrs Longman & Co.) were not prepared to follow it up by a second; and when Miss Ingelow, accompanied by her mother, went to propose that they should do so, they said that they did not consider it would be prudent to incur the risk.  As Miss Ingelow, who was much disappointed, was leaving their establishment, she passed in the doorway a man with a slip of paper in his hand, and two or three minutes afterwards was overtaken by a clerk, who came to say that Mr Longman would be much obliged if she would return to his office.  She went back, and was told that the man whom she had met had come with an order for 500 copies of her book.  This, of course, necessitated the publication of a new edition, to be followed by many more editions, and henceforth Miss Ingelow had no more difficulties with publishers.

JEAN INGELOW
From an early photograph by
Elliott & Fry, London.

"A girl and a guinea are both alike.  You never know how good they are till you ring them."

Jean Ingelow's 'Copyright Dinners.'

It was during the Holland Street days that Jean gave her 'copyright dinners'—for so it appears they were called.  These dinners were of a very unostentatious description, and were given twice a week to twelve convalescents, chosen by the Kensington clergy.  On one occasion I was present at the meal.  The dinners were served in a rather shabby, good sized room on what we should call the drawing-room floor, in a street approached by an archway close to the old churchyard, perhaps pulled down by this time.  A certain Mrs. Hulford, who owned the house, cooked the dinners.  They never varied: roast beef with Yorkshire pudding one day, with roast potatoes and plenty of gravy (the function lubricated by each convalescent being allowed a glass of small beer); boiled mutton and suet puddings the other day.  Mrs. Ingelow said grace the day I was there, and carved the large joint (she was a capital carver).  I suppose Jean, who always liked to keep in the background, handed the vegetables.  The viands disappeared with surprising celerity, and when all had eaten as much as they liked or could, the convalescents trooped down the narrow stairs with smiling faces.

From. . . 'Some Recollections of Jean Ingelow'