Massey was able to write only one article during 1858. ‘Poetry—The Spasmodists’ was published in February, and showed that he did not align himself totally with that style of poetry, demonstrated in particular by Dobell's ‘Balder’:

A poet should be a seeker and a finder of the truth and beauty that lie in realities around him, rather than a producer of beauty out of the deeps of his own personality.  What constitutes spasm, but weakness trying to be strong, and collapsing in the effort … Mr Dobell appears to select his subject, and the point of treatment, for their remoteness from all ordinary reality, and then to refine upon these until they are intangible to us … We urge a return to the lasting and true subject matter of poetry, and a firmer reliance on primal truths … As Realists, we do not forget that it is not in the vulgarity of common things, nor the mediocrity of average characters, nor the familiarity of familiar affairs, nor the everydayness of everyday lives, that the poetry consists … but those universal powers and passions which he shares with heroes and martyrs, are the true subjects of poetry … We must have poetry for men who work, and think, and suffer, and whose hearts would feel faint and their souls grow lean if they fed on such fleeting deliciousness and confectionery trifle as the spasmodists too frequently offer them …[13]

    At the end of March, Massey concluded his series of Edinburgh lectures at the Queen Street Hall by returning to familiar subjects.  In ‘Thomas Hood, and Wit and Humour’, Massey expressed the view that Hood's humour was of the most ethereal kind—neither coarse, like Swift's, nor sarcastic like Byron's—his wit being anchored fast in humanity.  The Scotsman on the 24 March 1858 reported that the lecture was received by a large audience who frequently applauded and gave a hearty vote of thanks at the conclusion.  The Scotsman followed with a report on the 27 March of Massey's ‘The Poetry of Alfred Tennyson’, which Massey greatly admired.  His views on the Laureate’s verse—they met once—are interesting …

On Thursday evening [25th], Mr Gerald Massey gave the last of his series of lectures in Queen Street Hall [Edinburgh], the subject being ‘The Poetry of Alfred Tennyson.’  Lord Murray presided.

    Mr Massey, by way of introduction, glanced at the two divisions of Poetry—the objective and the subjective. Tennyson came under the subjective class. By beginning his poetry with minute and careful particularising—not like those who broadly handled the brush and produced effects not to be desired—his reputation was slowly and securely built.

    Many people pretended to view his poetry unfavourably—they thought it was vague, involved and meaningless.  However, Tennyson never "moved with aimless feet."  His verse was pregnant with meaning, and though at times subtle and obscure at first sight, this vagueness occurred only when the poet reached one of those eternal truths which, like a cut diamond, might be six-sided, and present as many meanings.  The stream of his speech might be deep—perhaps unfathomable to many—but it was never muddy, except through the splashings and founderings of the reader.  The great function of the poet was to give expression to the beautiful; and surely, he did well who translated a page of that language.

    Tennyson's poetry was a world of beauty—not a world like Wordsworth's with the look of eternity in its aspect; not like Shelly's, so fantastic, so aspiring in its forms; not like Keats's, whose deity was Pan, who revelled in a wilderness of sweets, where the very weeds were fragrant; nor like Byron's, which was a volcano extinct.  Tennyson's world was like that fairer world of beauty of which they got glimpses only in the delectable views of the imagination.  It lay near heaven. It had a holy ground. It might be an invisible world to some, but others could glance up at it.  It was a world where the mortal met with the immortal, and saw the spirits of the past move by grandly and solemnly, with music perfect and ineffable, dying away into the faintest spirit-sweetness, seeming to be answered by an ethereal far-off echo in the life that is to come.

    The lecturer showed that it required a refined and educated taste to appreciate the poetry of Tennyson, which was noble, moral, and pure, having a womanly sanctity pervading it.

    He contrasted it with the poetry of Byron, noticing how the latter was sunk in self-consciousness, while the former was patriotic and representing humanity.  He gave several readings from the more prominent of Tennyson's poems, and especially quoted from his In Memoriam.  He considered that it possessed so wide a range of thought and beauty in its expression that he could not but consider it as the greatest poetic effort of the last two hundred years—the climax and crown of Tennyson's poetic life, to be equalled by nothing he had yet done or would hereafter perform.

    Massey's life with Rosina was becoming an increasing problem.  Continually agitating to get away from Edinburgh, her frequent mood changes together with symptoms of illness that often confined her to bed, eventually forced Massey to move.  Very depressed, he wrote to Stirling in March:

I have determined on leaving Edinburgh this spring and I expect to take a little place in England near Hertford right in the Country.  Rent 20£ but I find that with all my Lecturing efforts and planning I shall run short of 20£ or so to leave here honourably and get there safely.  Whether I can honourably and safely appeal to you for that amount I am doubtful and am really ashamed to do so after all your kindness but I don't know what else to do.  My Lectures are over for this year and I have drawn on all my writing resources to the utmost penny to get clear of and pay the large expenses of moving our things a distance of 420 miles and still fall short.  I must trust to Lecturing for a Winter or two until I get my next Book done—a sort of Autobiography— but the Summer will be my difficulty … I am poor enough if you only knew it.  In Lecturing even I cannot leave my Wife at home she is not fit to be left.  Her head is sure to go bad when she is left alone …[14]

    Prior to his move, Massey prepared a list of lectures that he proposed delivering to Associations and Mechanics Institutes during the rest of the year.  In The Scotsman, 24 March, 1858, were advertised the following:

A course of Six Lectures on our chief living Poets.
Cromwell and the Commonwealth.
The Poetry of Wordsworth, and its influence on the Age.
The Ideal of Democracy.
The Ballad Poetry of Ireland and Scotland.
Thomas Carlyle and his writings.
Russell Lowell, the American Poet, his Poems and Bigelow Papers.
Shakespeare - his Genius, Age, and Contemporaries.
The Prose and Poetry of the Rev. Chas. Kingsley.
The Age of Shams and Era of Humbug.
The Sonz-literature of Germany and Hungary.
Phrenology, the Science of Human Nature.
The Life, Genius and Poetry of Shelley.
On the necessity of Cultivating the Imagination.
American Literature, with pictures of transatlantic Authors.
Burns, and the Poets of the People.
The curse of Competition and the beauty of Brotherhood.
John Milton: his Character, Life and Genius.
Genius, Talent and Tact, with illustrations from among living
        notables.
The Hero as the Worker, with illustrious instance of the Toiler as the
        Teacher.
Mirabeau, a Life History.
On the effects of Physical and mental Impressions.

 
     The family's removal from Edinburgh to Hertfordshire, which they hoped would ease their domestic strain, proved yet again to be unfortunate.  An account of their arrival was sent to Stirling on 6 June 1858:

Mount Pleasant
Monk's Green
Nr Hoddesden
Herts.

… I have managed to take the four-hundred-and-twenty-mile leap in the dark and alighted here three miles from Broxbourne Station about pennyless with a great deal of our furniture smashed in coming and wanting mending … I have got the farmhouse of a Gentleman who does not live on his farm who lets me house and garden for £20 Rent and taxes … It may be thought that when I ask 5 guineas per Lecture in a public advertisement I am pretty well off—but I am compelled to take my Wife with me wherever I go, which as you may imagine makes my expenses threefold—but this is quite necessary.  I could not leave her at home with the Children … [15]

    For the ensuing five years Rosina was to make Massey's winter lecturing tours, when they took place, a fearful but necessary ordeal.  Obliged on occasions to take her with him, he did find it possible at times to promote her as giving recitations of his poetry.  These were well reported by the press, saying that she read with exquisite taste and quiet power, but many indispositions made her appearance at times quite unpredictable.  Thomas Cooper, who had kept an interested eye on Massey's writing since he left the Chartist movement, was less understanding about his domestic difficulties.  He wrote to Thomas Chambers on the 22nd August 1861:

… Mrs. Cooper seems young again!  She runs after the wild flowers with the elasticity of a girl & the rapt enjoyment of a child!

Of such a wife a Poet might sing; but I wonder that poor Gerald Massey parades the figure of the drunken plague to whom he is so sillily tied himself … [16]

    Robert Burns' centenary fell on 25 January 1859.  To honour this event the directors of the Crystal Palace Company organised a special poetry competition with a winner's prize of fifty guineas.  Massey was quick to respond, as did 620 other entrants, but he failed to win the prize.  This was awarded to Miss Isa Craig, a contributor of verse to The Scotsman under the pen-name ‘Isa’.  There were 14,000 people present for the reading of her prize poem.  However, the judges, Richard Monckton Milnes MP for Pontefract and prominent literary figure, Tom Taylor, author, playwright and one time editor of Punch, together with Theodore Martin, author and translator of literature, recommended that the first six be published.  Massey was placed fourth in merit, and his entry Robert Burns: A Centenary Song was published in March.[17]

    The reviews which referred also to some political items on Palmerston that Massey had included in the book, were later to cause him some concern.  James Macfarlan had also entered the competition [Robert Burns: A Centenary Ode], but was unplaced.

    For some time a number of friends had been suggesting that he should make an application to the government to be placed on their Civil Pension List.  This had not been proceeded with, due to Massey's political views that had received considerable attention in previous years.  However, with a change of government, he considered it now to be worth attempting.

    His decision was strengthened by the press, which had recently suggested such a step when they commented: ‘We are sorry to hear that calamity has been busy in Mr Massey's household, and that he is now struggling sorely to keep the wolf from the door … The bounty of the Crown … would allow him to give more time to his productions …’  They concluded rather pointedly with a phrase that must have made Massey wince, ‘It might also have the effect of making him a little more discreet in the expression of his political opinions.’  William Stirling promised to make Massey's request known to Lord John Manners, then in the Earl of Derby's Cabinet.

    As if to mitigate to some extent the loss of not winning the Burns competition, he was informed that the government, on the plea of Stirling, had granted him a gift of £100.  His wife, not knowing what to do, had a good cry, assuming that this would solve their debt and other financial commitments.  This it did, but only temporarily, and he had to turn again to Stirling for assistance.  Becoming in arrears with his rent and having failed to get any of his lectures published, he had offered a journal editor some of his poems for £20 and not received the money.  Stirling dealt with the legal affair, which was resolved satisfactorily, but Massey was left with the expenses.  In February 1860 he was called away from a lecture tour:

On getting home I find my Wife too ill to have written … I was sent for home as they thought her dying.  I think she may perhaps tide over her present attack but she is very ill.  And our present circumstances are enough to turn the scales against her.  We have to leave here this month and as I have a house offered to me in the Lake District, and as the Doctor thinks a change as soon as possible the only chance of getting my Wife out of her morbid mental condition, I think of going there if I can anyhow clear off to go, and raise enough money to move with but how to do it I don't know for my law-affair and this illness will break my back in a money sense for some months to come … [18]

    Before he left he wrote to Harney, who was then living in Jersey and editing the Jersey Independent, hinting at his availability for lecturing:

… The Bearer of this is a poor unfortunate Brother of mine whom Poverty has driven into the Army . . . He never was able to look after himself has worked and starved on and off for years—and perhaps a year or two in the Army may do him some good.  I thought that you would be able to speak a word of cheer to him in a place where he knows no one.  I dare say he will remember you—and that you would do this for Auld Lang Syne … Perhaps some day I may get invited to your place in my Lecturing capacity … [19]

    In all Massey's writings and letters he never makes reference to any of his brothers by name.  In his poem Our Heroes he mentions:

but none of his brothers is listed in published Crimean war deaths in battle.[20]

    The house to which the family moved, ‘Brantwood,’ overlooking Lake Coniston, was owned by his friend ‘Spartacus’ of earlier Chartist days, W. J. Linton.  A wood engraver and former contributor of poems and articles to Harney's papers, he had in 1849, together with Thornton Hunt, commenced the weekly radical Leader with G. H. Lewes as literary editor.  But no sooner had the family moved to Brantwood, than Massey found that circumstances appeared as usual to conspire against any form of successful literary endeavours.  The first incident occurred on the family's arrival at Coniston railway station, several miles from Brantwood, when he found that he had insufficient money to redeem the furniture, which had to remain at the station.  At that time he hoped to be able to furnish some rooms in the property, which he could sub-let in the summer months and make a good profit.  The second incident followed a three week lecture tour, for which he received four five pound notes.  He had managed to clear his furniture from the station, but still remained in debt.  During his absence an attempt had been made to distrain on his furniture, which appeared to be the only items of value he possessed.  As he was about to enclose some of the money ready to post, his children who were playing near him and asking for various pieces of paper, took them with some other loose sheets, and put them on the fire!

    Fortunately William Sterling was again able to help out and Massey, very dispirited, wrote glumly that not much choice was given to him in anything that he did, and that his circumstances at times placed him in a position that was as painful to him, as perhaps appeared unaccountable to other people.  The only things he could rely on were his lectures during the winter months, and these were frequently interrupted from home.  In this situation, he again considered the possibility of being placed on the government pension list, although as he mentioned to Stirling, he felt strongly against any appeal being made personally to Lord Palmerston, again in power with a Liberal Government, as he had no faith in him politically.  In a second letter he reiterated his doubts, due this time to his previous literary indiscretion:

When writing to you about Lord Palmerston, I quite forgot that I had written about him in my last publication, and the Saturday Review quotes it as very funny.[21] The fun to them would be death to me, I expect with regard to any chance with his Lordship and friends.  I don't suppose he reads my verses but I suppose they all see the Saturday Review … [22]

    That journal had reviewed his Robert Burns: A Centenary Song and Other Lyrics not entirely favourably.  While acknowledging his eye for external beauty, his ear for melody and an appreciation of feeling and grace, it denied him possession of fancy or facility.  It considered that Socialist and Chartist poetry was too narrow in thought, and his poetical faculty debased by a selfish view of social relations; but that he still might win an abiding place in literature if he would leave off politics.  Despite these criticisms, the Review did consider that his poem 'Old Harlequin Pam' was yet more amusing than the other political silhouettes in Craigcrook Castle's 'Glimpses of the War'.  In these poems he had made allusions to Czar Nicholas, Napoleon and Palmerston.  Nicholas had been referred to as a statue of Satan, looking down on a drooling and mumbling British Lion ineffectually wagging its tail.  But in Massey's poem, 'Nicholas and the British Lion', the Lion has some particularly sharp teeth that it uses, when Czar Nicholas dares to thrust his head in its mouth, to bite it off [23]:

But the poem on Palmerston was far less subtle:

    During his short stay at Brantwood, he wrote one article for the North British Review on ‘American Humour’.[24]  Most of his published articles were based on lectures delivered during the winter months, when not interrupted by his wife's illness.  In this article he argued that humour preceded wit, the former commencing with the practical joke that deals with outward things, the nature of the action, and reaches both the educated and uneducated.  Wit is concerned more with the quality of thoughts, and is more artificial, being culturally connected with a more complex state of society.  He considered that the greatest of all American humorists was James Lowell, whose Biglow Papers reminded him of the lusty strength and boundless humour of great Elizabethan literature.

    Commencing in March 1860 he wrote a series of poetical contributions for Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round.  Five signed poems were published up to August, with three unsigned from August to November, for which he hoped to be paid ten guineas each.  But in a letter from Dickens' assistant William Wills to Massey, Dickens had considered that as the copyright was available to Massey after a reasonable time, following publication in All the Year Round, the sum of £50 in total was fair.  ‘… You will, I hope, believe on reflection that the fifty pounds is a fair and just remuneration for the advantage we derive from them.  If you do think so, we may at this moment cry, "quits!"…’[25]  Massey also contributed 30 poems to Alexander Strahan's Good Words magazine from October 1860 to April 1872, and poems and epigrams to Cassell's Magazine and Punch in the early to mid 1870s.

    By the spring of 1861 the family had made another move, probably finding that Coniston was too isolated and inconvenient for the travelling necessary for Massey's lectures.  Accommodation was taken in the High Street, Rickmansworth, between Basing House—built in 1740 on the site of William Penn's house—and the National School House.

    Massey's next book, published in April 1861, was Havelock's March and Other Poems, based on the revolt of the Indian Bengal Army.  Sir Henry Havelock's ‘Army of Retribution’ march for the relief of Cawnpore in 1857 formed the basis of the poem.  Massey described this as an ‘historic photograph’, rather than a poem in the aesthetic sense.  The book was received again rather tepidly by the press, as ‘abounding in gracious phrases and vigorous thought—yet quite unable to hold its place in the affections or in the memory’.[26]  The other material was largely ignored because, as Massey wrote in his own copy, ‘And the d—d fool of an Author forgot to say that the rest of the Book was new and so the Critics treated it as all reprint.’  But the treatment of the poem, Havelock's March, was well up to the partisan standard expected of Massey when he dealt with British nationalism:

    He ignored or appeared unaware of one of the immediate causes of the war which placed British behaviour in a less acceptable stance, and resulted in gross atrocities against the British residents.  Attempts to convert some of the Indian sepoys to Christianity had resulted in stories of compulsory conversion, and the annexation of the Oude province disbanded that king's army, thereby causing much discontent and some violence.  The additional story that pig and cow fat was used to grease a new paper made for cartridges spread rapidly among the Moslems and Hindus despite British efforts to deny it, and eventually the whole Bengal army of 100,000 men became involved.  The resulting massacres shocked the British public.[27]  During his lecture tours in the north of England Massey had made the acquaintance of John King, a type-founder from Sheffield who had developed as an author and poet.  As well as contributing to local papers, his small number of published works included a sketch of Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law rhymer, while his biography of Allesandro Gavazzi, Italian priest and social reformer, had been reprinted several times and was a source of finance for a number of years.  Now living with his wife and three children in a third floor apartment at 7 Newman Street, Oxford Street, London, King was enduring considerable hardship.  Unable to write due to pulmonary tuberculosis which confined him to bed, he was reduced to selling his household items in order to pay the rent.  Massey rather audaciously asked Stirling if he could visit King, and perhaps get him some aid from the Literary Fund.  Good natured as always, Stirling was pleased to assist.  But King had already obtained £25 from the fund two years previously, and they turned down his application on the grounds that between that date and the present, he had not written any more books.  King then ended all further chance of a grant when he wrote that ‘even dogs have received the sympathies of the poorest kitchen’, and that he could not stand the ordeal of making another application for fear of further refusal.[28]

    In May or June 1861 due to more pressing financial difficulties Massey wrote again to William Stirling, this time querying the possibility of obtaining a grant from the Royal Literary Fund on his own behalf:

... The immediate occasion was that my Father had just been finally turned off from his 8/- per week work and his future bread depended on me or the Workhouse.  He is nearly 70 years old and has worked at one place for 40 years.  They now turn him adrift penniless … [29]  Whilst I was down in the North my effects were sold by the Sheriff of Lancashire for debt—not a large one either, and I could not help it.  Yet according to all appearance I ought to be well off … For my last book I got £30 only which is not much in the way of repayment for the life-blood, time, and critical bullying it costs.  I don't want, and never have wanted to write for a living, only my home affairs have been such as prevented me from taking a situation from home … I don't understand the reception of my Book. [Havelock's March and other poems. Ed.]  It seems to have fallen dead almost.  I thought it had some life in it and would meet with a different response.  I am sure of having reached a greater simplicity and directness of speech.  So I am told that there is nothing in the Book to equal Babe Christabel, which was a merest imagery … [30]

    A minor appreciation of his earlier efforts to uplift the working-class was made that year by a poet colleague, William Billington.  A pleasant little volume of poems, Sheen and Shade, had a lyric dedicated to Massey, in which he was referred to as:

    He noted Billington's kindness some years later, but at that earlier time he would have preferred hard cash to pleasant phrases.

    By November he had, on the advice of friends, decided to make an application to be placed on the Civil Service Pensions List, despite his disinclination to appeal to Viscount Palmerston, then Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury.  This involved asking persons of influence who knew him, his work and circumstances, to write testimonials on his behalf as being a proper subject for consideration.  Carlyle, Ruskin, Landor, Thackeray, Browning, Lady Alford and Tennyson responded.[32]  His request to Tennyson sent on the 20 November, stated that he was obtaining as many recommendations and testimonials as he could from persons of influence and authors of eminence, and that ‘… A word from you will help them much and me still more … The praise my verses have got has not meant much in the shape of pudding, and I find it desperate hard work to cling by the skirts of literature so as not to go down quite …’[33]  He sent a letter also to the Rt. Hon Benjamin Disraeli, asking if he would consider, in addition to the names already appended, to add his.[34]  Massey hoped, if his memorial was successful, to obtain a regular grant of £100 per year.  Unfortunately it was not.

    He wrote to Stirling on 18 July 1862, ‘… You will, I presume, have seen the published Pension List without my name?  I suppose my chance is gone now for a year.  What I am to do I don't know.  I was led to think from words dropped by Lord Palmerston that the application would have been successful …’[35]  Morgan Evans, who had drawn up the memorial on Massey's behalf and was aware of his circumstances, was able to solicit a few of the signatories of the memorial to join in a small subscription fund to give aid during Massey's pressing domestic difficulties.[36]  Lady Alford subscribed £25, but the total amount obtained is not recorded.[37]

    During 1861 he contributed thirty-five reviews for the Athenæum, which included John Greenleaf Whittier's Home Ballads and Poems. ‘Here is poetry worth waiting for, a poet worth listening to. . . It has the healthy smell of Yankee soil with the wine of fancy poured over it …’[38]  Two articles for the North British Review completed his literary output for that year, of which a sensitive ‘Poems and Plays of Robert Browning’ referred to Browning's lack of popular appeal at that time.  This was due, Massey considered, to his subject matter which required philosophic appreciation rather than the emotional energies of identification.  Nevertheless, he admitted, together with Douglas Jerrold and many others, to have found Browning's ‘Sordello’ incomprehensible.[39]  ‘Poets and Poetry of Young Ireland’, although dealing with poets less well known in England, benefited from a greater cohesive structure in poetic comparisons.  The differentiation between the Norse influence in Anglo-Saxon England and the Celtic in Ireland can be detected, he said, by the English appeals to principles, and the Irish for appeals to affection for a person; to the future when hopeful, but turning to the past when mournful.  These elements, Massey asserted, present themselves in their poetical subject matter.  His strong subjectively tonal description of the poet James Mangan, who was employed in Dublin University Library, is distinctly Dickensian:

The white halo of bleached hair round the head, the dark halo round his eyes—eyes of a weird blue, as of one who could see spirits; a lighted corpse-like face, with that faint lavender shadow which they wear who eat opium, and dream its dreams.  A strange figure, and yet not startling: a child would not have feared to pull the old brown carmelite coat, climb the offered knee, and kiss the face where queer humour and quaint pathos mingled …[40]

    He made another attempt to obtain a permanent job around late 1861 or early 1862 when he answered an advertisement for a well paid salaried social lead article writer for the Daily Telegraph.  Following an interview and having been appointed for a trial period, he was told after this time that whilst he had great ability, he was unsuitable on account of his articles being too political.[41]  This was another disappointment, as he had hoped, if successful, to have given up poetry for prose writing.  On taking up the appointment he had also given up his lecturing for that winter, and he found himself once again without any regular income.

    Following the failure of his first attempt to obtain a Civil List pension, he was advised to present his memorial again to the government, for consideration early in 1863.  At the same time he began the necessary proceedings to make an application to the Royal Literary Fund for a monetary grant.  This also involved obtaining testimonials from persons of note, and Lady Marian Alford and Professor Blackie were, among others, willing to respond.  The application proved successful with the result of fifty pounds the following January.  Massey wrote to the fund acknowledging that the money had come at a time ‘… when my poor Wife is suffering from one of the worst mental attacks she has ever had and without your assistance I might have been unable to secure for her the aid and attendance which was so necessary’.[42]  Rosina's mental affliction had reached a crisis, and doctors were pressing for her removal to a mental hospital.  Usually able to control her violent episodes by mesmerism, Massey found that this was not having the usual calming effect.  One night they were woken up by sounds of scratching and knocking on the footboard of the bed.  When nothing was found to account for the noises, and the possibility of burglars had been investigated, the housekeeper and her mother were called to the bedroom and, by now, a hysterical Rosina.  The sounds continuing, Massey thought ‘epidemic delusion’ was no answer, and that the idea of ‘spirits’ making those noises was disgusting.  However, by means of a code of raps, they determined that the noises had been made deliberately to bring a communication to their attention.  Rosina, who appeared to see two people, sat up in bed, and said, ‘Mother—Mary!’  By further questioning using the same code, they learned that Rosina's daughter and mother were present.  Massey was told not to put his wife away the next day, although she would be worse, but that she would be better by the following week.  He was able to report later that, although the spirits had as often been wrong as right, on that occasion they had been perfectly correct.[43]

    The year 1862 continued the general unfortunate trend in Massey's affairs.  Healthwise he suffered from tonsil abscesses that he had to have lanced, and nervous stress showed itself by palpitations of the heart.  This latter condition continued throughout his life making him fear that he had heart disease, despite being assured otherwise by doctors on varying occasions.  That year he was able to write only four reviews and one article.  In ‘The Poems and other Works of Mrs Browning’ he commented (for that present era) with notable exceptions of Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot, on the lack of art and literature composed by women due, as he considered, to their whole of life uttered in one word ‘love’, and their whole world compressed in the one word ‘home’.  They live reality in such fullness, and there is no imperative need to seek refuge in an ideal world. And then, where is the incentive to sing or write?  The late Elizabeth Barrett Browning, he considered, was another of the distinguished women whose imagination, tenderness, feeling and vigour of thought made her poetry outstanding.  Her most famous and powerful work, ‘Aurora Leigh’ competes, Massey said, successfully with the novelist in enlarging the boundaries of the poet's outer world.[44]

    In early November and yet again almost pennyless, he deplored the fact that with winter approaching he was unable to afford the necessary warm clothing for his children.  Furthermore, because of his wife's mental condition he had been prevented from making bookings for winter lecture tours.  Virtually at the last minute however, he was able to arrange with Harney in Jersey to present two lectures on 26 and 27 November at the Lyric Hall, Cattle Street, St. Helier.  He had mentioned previously the possibility of lecturing in Jersey when he wrote to Harney in 1858.  In advertising the lectures a week in advance he was hopeful that his wife might at the same time be well enough to travel and give some poetical readings.  To give Harney much credit he gave a three column introduction in the Jersey Independent, with a biographical sketch of Massey together with two of his poems from Havelock's March.  Massey should have made his first appearance on the 26th, but was delayed and had missed the boat by less than a minute.  His first lecture on the 27th was heralded by a poem in the Independent, 'Welcome to Gerald Massey', that was written probably by Harney:

    Although the hall was not filled, 'Sir Charles Napier, the Conqueror of Seinde' was appreciated by the audience of about 150 who frequently interrupted by applauding.  But the Jersey Times for reasons not stated, did not consider Massey a first class lecturer.  The second lecture, ‘England's Old Sea Kings; how they lived, fought and died’, had a much greater attendance, and the subject matter lent itself better to Massey's ‘high poetical powers …  the lecturer's descriptions of our naval exploits were heart-thrilling and brilliant, and were received enthusiastically by the audience’.  Due to the success of those two lectures, an extra booking was made for ‘Yankee Humour’ early the following week.  By that time Rosina was well enough to appear personally, and she was able to replace her husband on the 4 December for recitations of his and other more well known poets' verse:

If an exception be made to the weakness of this lady's voice, it may be said, with truth, that she reads very well; her expression is sweet and pleasing, and her enunciation distinct.  The poems which she read embraced several of her husband's best productions, interspersed with choice selections from the Poet Laureate, Russell Lowell, and poor Hood … The interesting entertainment closed with ‘A National Anthem’, by Massey.

    Before leaving the Channel Isles, his wife feeling well at that time, he was able to arrange two more lectures, this time in Guernsey the following week.  Massey's religious opinions were then not yet overtly unorthodox, so his reception was in contrast to Charles Bradlaugh's lecturing venture in that mainly Catholic island in 1861, when he was met with great hostility.  Together with a threatened royal salute of rotten eggs, placards exhorting ‘Kill the Infidel’ were displayed in the town, and the lecture room was damaged.[45]  Massey repeated his carefully chosen ‘Old England's Sea Kings’ to a highly respectable audience of about six hundred, and the reporter ‘Found much to admire in his composition—much to confirm the reputation to which he has attained.’  But added, ‘We should observe that Mr Massey is not an elocutionist …’  Massey's second lecture that week was assisted as in Jersey, by Rosina's poetry readings.  ‘Mrs Massey read in what may be termed "a drawing-room" style, without any attempt at declamation.  Her reading was intelligent and touching and was much applauded.’[46]

    The lecture series barely saved Massey from total financial disaster that winter, and early in 1863 to his great relief he heard that he would be granted a yearly allowance of £70 Civil List pension.  The Scotsman announced the pension as having been awarded "in appreciation of his services as a lyric poet sprung from the people".  But fate had one more card to play, and in May he was compelled yet again to ask William Stirling for temporary assistance:

‘… it is the last effort I can make to save my Furniture from being sold on the 16th Inst.  The Pension has not yet come, and if it is not quick 'twill be too late … I have not earned a penny by lecturing now these two years, not being able to leave home.[47]  All my Books are in pawn at Mr. Wood's High Holborn, and in the last extremity I was driven to execute a ‘Bill of Sale’ on my Furniture.  And I am perfectly unable to meet a payment of £6.10.0 on the 16th Inst.  I do not know where to turn.  Lady Alford is in Madeira with her Son.  I know no one else who could help me with £10.  The position is not owing to any want of effort.  I have tried and tried desperately.  I have some £50 worth of matter not yet used in the hands of Publishers.  But the payments will come too late … P.S.  I enclose a Note which refers to the Bill of Sale which gives Mr. Hollingsworth it seems the right to ask for my Rent Receipts.  I don't know whether it makes the matter more serious by the Rent not being paid.’[48]

    Massey finally received his pension on 18 June, with a declaration of regret conveyed by Lord Mount-Temple, that the amount available at that time should have been so small. [49]

    Although not yet free from financial constraints, he was able to repay his debts to Stirling, and his position began to show a slight improvement.  Rosina, however, remained a cause of much disturbance, particularly in regard to his literary affairs and lecturing activities.

[Chapter 5]