«f^:?,J'^*' 
 
^;3ygjTT» f L' ^Li !. ^ /:^if^iiyi-itS'±:'-. i: » ^' 
 
 W^LXT^ '■V K>V V 
 

JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 HIS LIFE AND WORK 
 
 BY THE 
 
 RT. HON. ROBERT SPENCE WATSON 
 
 
 WITH THREE PORTRAITS 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 
 LONDON : ADELPHI TERRACE 
 
 LEIPSIC: INSELSTRASSE 20 
 
 1909 
 
• "* • • * ft * 
 
 {All rights reserved.) 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 JOSEPH SKiPSEY .... Froutispiece 
 
 SKiPSEY IN HIS WORKING CLOTHES Facing page 54 
 
 THOMAS DIXON ,, ,, 104 
 
 965812 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 PEKHAPS I should explain at the outset my object 
 in writing the following Life: Of Jp^epU Skip^ey..' 
 For forty years we were close frionds, and a month 
 seldom passed without our meeting.^ _ Hs ^ was ?, ■ co;.i- 
 stant guest at my house, and few events occurred to 
 either of us which were not made known to the other. 
 It is quite possible that the affection and esteem with 
 w^hich I regarded him may lead me to estimate him 
 somewhat more highly than I ought to do, but I am 
 not content that he should become a mere memory 
 without giving those of his countrymen who may care 
 to learn about him the opportunity of knowing who 
 he was and what he did. The task which I have 
 undertaken is not an easy one. To make a short 
 sketch of a few pages would indeed be a light matter, 
 and it probably would satisfy the great majority of 
 those who wished to know anything about him, but to 
 me it would be eminently unsatisfactory, and yet I 
 feel that my power to reproduce in any worthy sense 
 the man as he really was is quite inadequate. Amongst 
 the many whom I have been so fortunate as to know 
 who have achieved distinction in different walks of life, 
 I do not think that I can recall one who struck me as 
 distinguished in the same way as he was. Many have 
 
 7 
 
8 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 achieved far greater distinction ; many have carried 
 out useful and even invaluable work ; but as an inde- 
 pendent thinker, as a man of entirely original power, 
 as one who was capable of careful and deep thought, 
 and, at all events, in conversation of expressing its 
 results, he stands to me alone. All that he has ever 
 written taken all together can only give an inadequate 
 idea of his infinite resources, and yet he was the very 
 reverse of a man favoured by fortune, or it would seem 
 so'.'t© our'.perlia^i^s unwise method of weighing these 
 thing?. .What* he ' actually did was perhaps rarely 
 4)^rfeet:,''.but;* fit ial):. be^rs the impress of the man's 
 unique personality. He was a true poet, a seer as 
 well as a maker. Of course many makers are not 
 poets; no man is a true poet unless he is a maker, 
 but, far beyond that, a seer. He must have the 
 inward eye, he must be able to see the true meanings 
 and relations of things. He may not have the deep 
 poetic heart, the divine afflatus, or what you may 
 choose to call it, and thus he may never be a gi-eat 
 poet in any high sense. Skipsey was one of the elect 
 who had this as the comparatively few true poets must 
 have it. They may differ in the extent to which they 
 have it, and in the power which they have to give body 
 in words to their seeing. Some speak in a stammering 
 tongue. The leaders in the undying republic of letters 
 have insight and full voice; not in all, but in some 
 respects, Skipsey had both. His poems of the life 
 which was familiar to him are unique; they stand 
 alone. No one else has touched them. The life of 
 the pit which, at a distance, looks dark and gloomy 
 and is hazardous and uncertain, has its own beauty, 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 9 
 
 and we know it when that beauty is interpreted and 
 shown to us by Joseph Skipsey. 
 
 The true poet sings of that which is nearest and 
 dearest to him ; the life he knows, the country he 
 knows, and the inner meaning of that life and country 
 which are borne in upon him. Goethe has forcibly 
 expressed this in the lines — 
 
 ''Willst den Dichter du verstchen, 
 Musst im Dichters lande gehen." 
 
 The true poet whom we name great has usually had 
 things beautiful before his eyes from the earliest days. 
 He has lived in the country, and has received his im- 
 pressions of Nature from Nature herself ; he has listened 
 as time went on to the conversation of cultured people, 
 and those surrounding him have invariably reverenced 
 thought and knowledge. The grand literary relics of 
 the speech of the foremost people of the bygone world, 
 of the dead tongues, have lived for him; he has 
 travelled much, and so has learnt much of men ; he 
 has seen and studied the choicest art of many peoples ; 
 has learnt much not only from nature surrounding him 
 but from Nature's master-works in many lands ; and 
 he knows her many moods and can give the exact 
 speech expressing the real meaning to each. The 
 intellectual leaders of his day have been familiar in his 
 mouth as household words. From the cradle to the 
 grave he has been surrounded by the atmosphere which 
 makes that sentiment in which all that the mind can 
 acquire is as natural to him as his native air. If, 
 with the eye of the seer, and the mind of the maker, 
 he has been vouchsafed love and reverence, and above 
 
10 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 all sympathy, whatever direction his art may take, 
 whether he be a musician, painter, or poet, he will 
 discover and interpret new worlds of mind for mankind, 
 his limits will be wide, and his range vast and varied. 
 But when, on the other hand, his infancy has known 
 the pinch and squalor of dire want, his childhood has 
 been spent in grinding and abhorrent toil ; when he 
 has grown up where vegetation is stunted and grimy, 
 and Nature's highest efforts are neglected because of 
 bodily fatigue ; when his travels have been from 
 unlovely villages to yet more hideous towns ; when 
 worthy books have been dribbled out to him, and the 
 use and certainty afforded by competent teachers 
 denied ; when the great products of art are unknown, 
 and all mental attrition has been with minds which 
 have gone through a similar weary and stunting 
 process; then we must expect that, if the magic 
 strength of Nature still triumphs and a true poet should 
 emerge, his limits must be circumscribed and his 
 range a narrow one. It is indeed marvellous when 
 there is any emergence at all, and when, in true and 
 simple words which go to the heart, we listen to a 
 poet who sings to us of the life which lies about him, 
 its toils and pains, its joys and its dangers, its pathos, 
 its heroism. If there be humour in him it also will 
 out, and we learn something of the inner meaning 
 which lies behind it all. Thus I come to write about 
 my old friend with the most earnest desire to set him 
 forth as he really was, to let men know what manner of a 
 man we had amongst us, but wishing that at the same 
 time it should be clearly understood that whilst this is my 
 earnest desire I feel strongly the difficulty of the task. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 11 
 
 It is not altogether easy for us to realise what a 
 different country the land we live in was three-quarters 
 of a century ago. That is not a long period of time, 
 and yet, in social life, and especially in that part of 
 it which relates to the conditions of labour, everything 
 is changed, I have never met with a man who could 
 carry his mind back to the Thirties and the early 
 Forties, who did not agree that, in the time which 
 had intervened, we had passed through a great 
 industrial revolution and had passed through it 
 peaceably, and that the existing state of things, though 
 by no means ideal, was marvellously good when com- 
 pared with that which his early recollection brought 
 back to him. 
 
 In those early days of which old men can yet tell 
 their actual experiences, the conditions of labour 
 in Great Britain vv^ere indeed terrible in every branch 
 of industry. There is much remaining which has to 
 be set right. Men talk now of some two millions 
 of the working class who are on the very margin ol 
 existence, and who rarely get sufficient for proper 
 subsistence. But if we go back to the time of which 
 I am speaking, it is no exaggeration to say that the 
 entire working class were in that condition. There 
 was no man amongst them who had the proper means 
 of subsistence ; all were on the brink of starvation. 
 When the highest skilled labourer, with the exception 
 of the best men in the employments requiring the 
 greatest skill, received the magnificent wage of 3jd. 
 per hour, it can readily be imagined that men of 
 smaller skill or unskilled got very little indeed. 
 
 Combination amongst workmen, and peaceable 
 
12 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 meetings with the ohject of increasing wages, were 
 severely put down. In 1825 an Act was passed 
 repealing all the statutes then in force against 
 combination, although in the following year this 
 Act was itself repealed and partially re-enacted. 
 While Trade Unions were not legalised, a strike was 
 held by the Judges not to be illegal, but a combination 
 of workmen to bring about a strike was severely 
 punished as a criminal conspiracy. Trade Unions 
 could not enforce the payment of debts due to them. 
 Even when their secretaries embezzled their monies 
 the Judges held that they were not entitled to the 
 protection of the law, as they were societies constituted 
 for illegal purposes. The industrial war went on 
 constantly, and some of us have heard from the men 
 who remember the old strikes when they were children, 
 how bitter the strife was and how great the privation 
 which was submitted to with a courage and cheerfulness 
 which is surprising when we remember how often the 
 effort was a vain one. There was little public feeling 
 upon the matter until, in 1834, six Dorchester labourers 
 were convicted and sentenced to seven years trans- 
 portation for that which was called the crime of 
 combination. Then there was a great outburst of 
 popular indignation, and the men were pardoned 
 and ordered to be liberated. But they had been 
 hastened out of the country, taken over to Sydney, 
 quarantined for about three weeks, and then sold as 
 slaves for £1 a head. Several of them never heard 
 of their pardon until long years had elapsed, and some 
 of them would never have heard of it until the expira- 
 tion of their sentences if it had not been for the pure 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 13 
 
 accident that one, being employed at the Governor's 
 own house, happened to come across an English 
 newspaper, and so learned the truth. Perhaps the 
 state of industrial affairs in the United Kingdom 
 at this period is best shown by hearing what a 
 careful and intelligent observer from another land 
 thought about it. Frederick Engels visited the English 
 manufacturing districts in 1844, and he found " the 
 condition of the workmen and of their wives and 
 children so deplorable, the rate of wages so low, 
 health and morality so ruined, the greed of gain on 
 the part of the manufacturers so reckless, and the 
 state of society so indifferent," that he recorded the 
 gloomiest predictions, and saw no possible escape 
 but in violent revolution, which he regarded with 
 certainty as inevitable. 
 
 Dr. Baernreither, who came to study the conditions 
 under which our working classes lived some forty years 
 after this, and published an important work on '' English 
 Associations of Working Men," quotes the above view, 
 but adds *' that the violent revolution never came to 
 pass, and any one who to-day, after a lapse of forty 
 years, examines carefully the conditions of the 
 working classes in England, will be convinced that 
 it never will." 
 
 The industry which affects us most in the story 
 which I have to tell is that of coal-mining, and, in 
 1840, a Royal Commission was appointed upon the 
 motion of Lord Shaftesbury (then Lord Ashley) to 
 inquire into the employment of women and children 
 in coal-mines, and the evidence which this Commission 
 took was printed in a Blue Book with many illus- 
 
U JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 trations. It was simply appalling. For fourteen and 
 sixteen hours in the day children of seven, six, and, 
 exceptionally, only four years of age, were doomed 
 to labour in the dark and noisome mines. Women 
 of all ages worked with them. When the seams of 
 coal were narrow or low, women and children alike 
 had to crawl on their hands and knees dragging, often 
 through foul and fetid water, small trucks of coals 
 to which they were fastened by girdles and chains. 
 They were the prey of deformity and disease, and the 
 moral ill-health of the workers was more terrible than 
 the physical. The cruelties to which those children who 
 were apprenticed to some of the colliers, and even those 
 to which the wives and children of domestic slave- 
 drivers were subjected to are too revolting to dwell upon. 
 
 The worst conditions of all, scarcely obtained in the 
 Northern coal-field, where the employment of pitmen 
 was one of an hereditary character. Son often followed 
 father through many generations ; and this fact is true 
 of employer as well as of employed, so that there grew up 
 between the two a kind of almost family relationship, 
 and the natural interest and sympathy which are thus 
 begotten was theirs. But still when, in 1842, Lord 
 Ashley (afterwards Lord Shaftesbury) carried a Bill 
 to forbid the employment of women and children in 
 mines and collieries, the then Lord Londonderry, who 
 was a large coal-owner, moved that it should be read 
 that day six months. Although, happily, he could 
 not get a seconder to his extraordinary proposition, 
 he succeeded in considerably mutilating the Bill. 
 
 When things were probably at the worst, Joseph 
 Skipsey was born at Percy Main on the 17th of March, 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 15 
 
 1832. He was the youngest of eight children, and he 
 lost his father when he was only four months old. At 
 the time there was much excitement amongst the pit- 
 men in this district, the men were frequently out on 
 strike, and there were systematic demands for reforms 
 in their manner of working. 
 
 Three principal points were strongly urged, and, in 
 the light of to-day, I do not think that any one of them 
 appears to be unreasonable. They were — 
 
 First, that the miners should only be turned out 
 of the houses which they held by virtue of their 
 labour by the operation of law. 
 
 Second, that they should work eleven days a 
 fortnight at 3s. a day, which would leave them 
 29s. after deductions, or a fi'action more than 
 2s. 7d. a day. 
 
 Third, that a day's work should be reckoned at 
 twelve hours. 
 
 But, as is found even in these days, the most reason- 
 able demand when it becomes an object of dispute will 
 be argued hotly and contentiously, and the manner 
 of applying the arguments are even yet not infrequently 
 forcible. Seventy years ago there were awkward 
 encounters from time to time between the strikers and 
 the police ; meetings were held which the police insisted 
 on dispersing — and this is never a very safe or wise 
 proceeding. It is always better to let persons say all 
 that they have to say and the worst that is in them. 
 There is relief to the speakers and safety to all when 
 the steam has been let off. The encounters were 
 aggravated by the fact that many men were appointed 
 
16 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 as special constables who were not constables in the 
 ordinary sense, but were specially made such to protect 
 the non-strikers. Cuthbert Skipsey, the poet's father, 
 was an overman at Percy Main Colliery, and he had 
 much influence with the pitmen generally. On the 
 evening of Sunday, the 8th of July, 1832, there was an 
 affray between some pitmen and special constables, and 
 Cuthbert Skipsey interfered with the object of making 
 peace. Unfortunately, a special constable, named 
 George Weddell, misunderstood what his object was, 
 and pushed him away and at once shot him dead with 
 a pistol. 
 
 George Weddell was tried at the following Newcastle 
 Assizes in August for manslaughter, and he was found 
 guilty and was sentenced to six months' imprisonment 
 with hard labour. Although the sentence seems to be 
 a somewhat slight one, considering the excitement of 
 the time and the whole facts of the case, and the not 
 unnatural alarm of a special constable who found 
 himself in an awkward and threatening position, the 
 result was on the whole a satisfactory one. No one 
 supposes there was any malice in the matter, which was 
 the rash act of a man under great excitement and with 
 the idea that he himself would probably be attacked. 
 Still it was well that Justice should show that, even at 
 such troublous times, men entrusted with the upholding 
 of the peace should be doubly careful not themselves to 
 transgress, and that the taking of a man's life is never 
 to be overlooked. 
 
 It was a hard world for the poor, that into which 
 Joseph Skipsey was born. In after-days, when he 
 recalled his childhood and described the constant 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 17 
 
 labours and anxieties of his excellent mother, he used 
 to wax eloquent upon the mighty change which had 
 been wrought by the abolition of the Corn Laws. 
 Frequently when I visited him on that which proved 
 to be his deathbed, he spoke to me of the movement 
 which had sprung up against Free Trade, and spoke not 
 in anger but in sorrow. He always said that the men 
 who were leading the adverse movement had really never 
 understood what the condition of the working people 
 was before the abolition of the Corn Laws, for it 
 was impossible if they had had any practical idea of 
 what the great mass of their fellow-countrymen had had 
 to pass through, they should have advocated anything 
 which might possibly bring any part of the people of 
 this country back into such a bad condition. 
 
 Joseph Skipsey had no schooling. He went down 
 the pit regularly when he was seven years of age, 
 and he spent sixteen hours in the dark, from time 
 to time pushing open a door through which the tubs 
 of coal passed. It was a painful and a weary time, 
 but, with rare pluck and perseverance, he succeeded 
 in teaching himself to read, write, and cipher. At first 
 the loneliness and the darkness considerably afi'ected 
 his sensitive disposition, but he managed to possess 
 himself of printed bills, either obtaining them from 
 small shops or from places where they were stuck 
 up, and he got good-natured pitmen to give him the ends 
 of their farthing dips, and, with a piece of chalk, he 
 copied the letters on the sill, getting the names of 
 the letters (which he had some chance knowledge of 
 before he entered the pit) and explanations of meanings 
 from those pitmen who were kindly disposed and who 
 
 2 
 
18 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 were able and willing to help him. He was a wee 
 child in those days, and one of his brothers used to 
 carry him part of the way to and from the pit. In 
 winter he never saw daylight except on Sundays. 
 There was no cage to go down in ; the boys used to 
 cling to the chain, putting their feet into bits of rope 
 tied for the purpose ; and a dangerous business it was. 
 Skipsey has told me that he saw one little fellow 
 who began to lose his hold as he went up on the chain. 
 His brother was below him and he called to him, 
 " A'm gannen to faal, Jimmy." " Slide doon to me, 
 hinney," his brother replied. But, when he slid, 
 the brother could not hold him, and they fell down 
 the deep shaft together. 
 
 When Skipsey returned home after the weary day's 
 work was over he not infrequently heard from his good 
 mother, " Joe, hinney, thou'll just gan out and gether a 
 gud handful o' nettles and aa'l meyk th' a sup broth wi' 
 breed in't." She was a good, hard-working woman, but 
 few of the working classes in that day knew what it was 
 to have regular meals or sufficient quantity to eat. The 
 marvel is that any of the children grew up as strong 
 men and women as they did. 
 
 When he was fifteen years old he had read little, but 
 he had learned many bits of ballads from the older lads 
 in the pits. Then an uncle who had a few books offered 
 to lend him '* Paradise Lost," and it was a revelation to 
 him. He thought of nothing else day or night, and his 
 enthusiasm induced his uncle to lend him other books 
 and to present him with a copy of Lindley Murray's 
 Grammar — an invaluable work. Even with all the 
 reformations and improvements which have taken place 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 19 
 
 in the English Grammar during the past seventy j^ears I 
 doubt if anything so good as Lindley Murray has been pro- 
 duced. It is very old-fashioned and more scientific ways 
 have been invented, but no one ever mastered Lindley 
 Murray's book without being thankful for it, and feeling 
 that it was quite unnecessary to dive into the remoter 
 mysteries of the more modern effusions. Skipsey made 
 this book absolutely his own. He then borrowed Pope's 
 translation of the " Iliad," and heard for the first time of 
 Shakespeare's plays, of which he afterwards bought a 
 copy when seventeen years old, saving out of his small 
 pocket-money five shillings with which he became its 
 happy possessor. '' The book altered the aspect of the 
 world to me," was what he afterwards stated. These 
 books gi-eatly stimulated his imagination, and he read 
 and re-read them slowly and carefully, at first without 
 understanding a great deal, but by degrees, having his 
 difficulties cleared away from him by an aunt, who 
 helped him much. Later on she lent him Burns's 
 poems, and they had an extraordinary influence upon 
 him. It is strangely interesting to think of the pit-boy 
 growing up to manhood in difficult and uncongenial 
 surroundings, and yet having, in the time which he 
 could call his own, a benign influence of this kind 
 exercised upon him, leading him into worlds far 
 outside of anything with which he was acquainted. It 
 must have been to him a constant blessing and boon. 
 He was an eager and earnest student, and not one of 
 those books left his hands until it had been worked 
 through and through, and until many portions of it had 
 been committed to memory. He was a great reader of the 
 Bible — the first book he mastered when quite a child — 
 
20 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 and so strong an influence did its simple style exercise 
 U23on him, that he set deliberately to work to learn 
 it from beginning to end by heart. Fortunately, before 
 he had got very far with the painful and somewhat un- 
 necessary task, some good friend discovered what he 
 was about and succeeded in persuading him from going 
 any further with its commitment to memory. 
 
 There is no account of him in his early boyish days, 
 but, from what I knew of him afterwards, I am convinced 
 that he was not a mere bookworm, but that he would 
 take his part in the games and sports which went on 
 about him. He was very careful to save whatever 
 money he possibly could, and gathered together a con- 
 siderable sum, and, by the time he was twenty, he had 
 purchased several books — Joyce's " Scientific Dialogues " 
 and Chalmers' '' Political Economy " amongst them. 
 He became a subscriber to that valuable work, 
 *' Chambers' Information for the People," which came 
 out in penny numbers. He also got translations of 
 one or two of the Greek dramatists and of Homer and 
 Virgil, and these certainly produced a considerable effect 
 on his after-work. But I think that the translations he 
 obtained a little later of Goethe's "Faust," and, when 
 yet older, of Heine's poems, had the most influence of 
 all upon him. Of the first part of "Faust " he was a 
 constant student, and Goethe became a close friend to 
 him and remained such through life. There were 
 few things that he appreciated more than the setting of 
 Goethe's and Heine's songs to music. He loved to 
 listen to them being sung in the original, and he was 
 able thoroughly to appreciate them and to translate 
 them for himself into a language which he understood. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 21 
 
 Indeed, during his last ilness, when at times he was 
 unable to read, nothing, I think, gave him greater 
 pleasure than to listen especially to Heine's songs, 
 which, from time to time, my daughter went specially to 
 sing to him. It was most interesting to hear his 
 comments and to learn the point of view which made 
 these most precious to him. 
 
 I do not remember whose translation of *' Faust " he 
 first got hold of, but when we became acquainted, now 
 half a century ago, I found that he had close knowledge 
 of two or three versions, and that he knew minutely the 
 first part of that marvellous drama, and it had as it 
 were really entered into his life, and was to him a 
 constant joy. I shall never forget how, on one occasion 
 in 1870, Mr. Eirikr Magnusson was staying with me, 
 and Skipsey turned up accidentally to dine, and w^as 
 somewhat perturbed to find a stranger present. 
 He was still and grave, and took little part in the 
 conversation. Mr. Magnusson, on the other hand, 
 was a brilliant conversationalist, but he happened to 
 say something about Goethe and "Faust." He was 
 surprised w^hen, from the other side of the table, a deep, 
 thoughtful voice said, " I deny that," and he at once 
 engaged in an argument with Skipsey which was 
 exceedingly brilliant and exceedingly amusing, but in 
 which Skipsey held his own in a very remarkable 
 way. In fact I am inclined to think that he knew 
 more about Goethe and ''Faust" than his antagonist. 
 Mr. Magnusson whispered to me, " Who is this fellow ? " 
 and I told him, and said, '' You must make much of him, 
 for in half an hour's time he will be going away to the 
 pit, which he goes down to-night." He went up at 
 
22 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 once and took him by the arms and said, *'My dear 
 fellow, you must not continue to live here ; it is no place 
 for you ; you must come and live in London." " Not 
 if I can exercise any influence with him," was my 
 reply. 
 
 I need not go further into the growth of Skipsey's 
 reading. It continued throughout his life and became 
 very extensive, but what I was always most struck by 
 was the exceeding accuracy with which he read ; the 
 way in which he made himself master of whatever he 
 undertook, and the consequence that everything became 
 his own and he never forgot it. One peculiarly valuable 
 quality there was in his reading and his remarks upon 
 that which he read ; it was genuine, it was his own. 
 He did not read, until much later in life, criticisms ot 
 other men's work, but he formed his conclusions 
 himself. Thus, when you got him to discuss the 
 merits of an author, you got the views of an indepen- 
 dent and unbiassed man of a mind of great power of 
 thought. But ^* who often reads will sometimes want 
 to write," and Skipsey was no exception to Matthew 
 Prior's rule. He himself says, '' The life of the Muses 
 had grown with me from my infancy, and I had actually 
 practised verse-making while I was yet a child behind 
 my trap-door." Before I mention his early poems I must 
 give a few facts I have been able to learn about his 
 young life. I am indebted for them to his daughter, 
 Mrs. Harrison, of Harraton, his eldest living child. 
 
 At first he worked at Percy Main pit, which was laid 
 in in the year 1852, when he was twenty years old. 
 At that time the railway mania had passed its most 
 acute stage, but one of its results was that railways 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 23 
 
 were being laid down in many different parts of the 
 country, and, especially in London, there were great 
 preparations being made of stations and warehouses for 
 the accommodation of the traffic which it could readily 
 be seen was certain to come. Skipsey felt the not 
 uncommon desire of a young man to see something 
 more of tJie world than he had yet been able to 
 accomplish, and he made his wa}^ to London. He was 
 unable to afford a railway journey, which in those days 
 was not a cheap and easy thing as it is now, and he 
 walked most of the way, occasionally getting a lift in 
 a carrier's cart. He got employment at the works 
 connected with one of the large stations, and he lived 
 at a boarding-house kept by an East Anglian lady 
 who became his wife in the year 1854. By this time 
 he had had sufficient of the South, and he took his wife 
 to Coatbridge, in Scotland, where he worked as a coal- 
 miner for six months, and then he removed to the 
 Pemberton Collieries, near Sunderland, where he settled 
 for a considerable time. I think that it was then that, 
 the place of schoolmaster in one of the colliery villages 
 falling vacant, he undertook the work for a short time, 
 but, although he got plenty of pupils, he could not live 
 on the remuneration he received as fees. Afterwards 
 he returned to Northumberland, and found work at 
 Choppington. In 1859 he left the pits and became 
 storekeeper at Messrs. Hawks, Crawshay & Sons' works 
 in Gateshead. 
 
 Now I must say something of his early poems. It is 
 not quite easy to give dates to them. He first of all 
 published a collection of them in 1859. 
 
 There are several which relate to pit life, and to 
 
24 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 my mind they are the most valuable of anything which 
 he wrote. He is dealing with that with which he was 
 absolutely familiar, and the aspects which presented 
 themselves to him were of the most poetical kind. 
 They dealt simply with the greatest issues of life and 
 death. Some of them show the depression which his 
 severe and strange work brought upon him from time to 
 time ; and in them he deals with the most vivid aspects 
 of that uncertain, hazardous, and interesting calling 
 with which he is practically familiar. In them he 
 speaks as only one who knows from practical experience 
 can speak, straight from the heart to the heart. I 
 cannot give them certainly in the order of the years in 
 which they were written, but if we take that which deals 
 with the beginning of pit life for the young boy, we 
 have four simple verses which represent what Skipsey 
 himself no doubt felt when in his early life he was first 
 allowed to go down the pit, and which, until he left the 
 hard and uncertain calling, he must have constantly 
 seen. It is entitled ''Mother Wept," and runs as 
 follows : — 
 
 Mother wept, and father sighed ; 
 
 With delight aglow 
 Cried the lad, " To-morrow," cried, 
 "To the pit I go." 
 
 Up and down the place he sped — 
 
 Greeted old and young ; 
 Far and wide the tidings spread ; 
 
 Clapt his hands and sung. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPS'EY 25 
 
 Came his cronies ; some to gaze, 
 
 Wrapt in wonder ; some 
 Free with counsel ; some with praise ; 
 
 Some with envy dumb. 
 
 *'May he," many a gossip cried, 
 "Be from peril kept." 
 Father hid his face and sighed, 
 Mother turned and wept. 
 
 Then, when the pit-lad has grown into a young man 
 and he is contemplating matrimony, there are the 
 following lines, called " Willy to Jinny " : — 
 
 Duskier than the clouds that lie 
 'Tween the coalpit and the sky, 
 Lo, how Willy whistles by 
 Eight cheery from the colliree. 
 
 Duskier might the laddie be. 
 Save his coaxing coal-black e'e, 
 Nothing dark could Jinny see 
 A-coming from the colliree. 
 
 Those of us who have been present when the men 
 were leaving the pit, grimy and stained with their day's 
 work, can thoroughly appreciate the full meaning of 
 these lines. The dusky grime, which a short time 
 w^ould entirely remove, is not to be seen by the eye of 
 affection. 
 
 Skipsey has written many a song or a short poem to 
 the pit beauties, with whom he no doubt was acquainted 
 
26 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 in his young days. As to how far they represent real 
 persons, and how far they are creatures entirely of 
 the imagination, I cannot say, hut it is quite certain 
 that they are absolutely founded on fact ; and some 
 of these songs are full of a cheerful, simple lilt, although 
 they have not the merit of those I have already spoken 
 of as entering into the absolute workaday life of 
 the pitman. But he brings in constantly the different 
 pit villages about him and the lads and lasses hailing 
 from the different places which were familiar to him. 
 I might illustrate this by ''The Lad of Bebside": — 
 
 My heart is away with the lad of Bebside, 
 And never can I to another be tied ; 
 Not, not to be titled a lord's wedded bride, 
 Could Jinny abandon the lad of Bebside. 
 
 He dances so clever, he whistles so fine. 
 He's flattered and wooed from the Blyth to the Tyne, 
 Yet spite of the proffers he meets far and wide, 
 I'm alone the beloved of the lad of Bebside. 
 
 He entered our door on the eve of the Fair, 
 And cracked with our folk in a manner so rare. 
 Next morning right early with spleen I was eyed 
 To link to the Fair with the lad of Bebside. 
 
 Last night at the dancing, 'mid scores of fine queans, 
 The eldest among them just out of her teens, 
 He chose me, and truly with pleasure and pride 
 I footed the jig with the lad of Bebside. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 27 
 
 To wed me he's promised, and who can believe 
 A laddie like him can a lassie deceive? 
 The moon's on the wane — ere another he spied 
 I'll lie in the arms of the lad of Behside. 
 
 In " The Collier Lad " he gives a simple picture of a 
 pit champion, and tells of his skill at the various games 
 which are the delight of the young men of a colliery 
 village. 
 
 "O' 
 
 My lad he is a collier lad, 
 
 And ere the lark awakes 
 He's up and away to spend the day 
 
 Where daylight never breaks. 
 But when at last the day has pass'd, 
 
 Clean washed and cleanly clad, 
 He courts his Nell, who loveth well 
 
 Her handsome collier lad. 
 
 Chokus. 
 
 There's not his match in smoky Shields; 
 
 Newcastle never had 
 A lad more tight, more trim, nor bright 
 
 Than is my collier lad. 
 
 Tho' doomed to labour under gi'ound 
 
 A merry lad is he, 
 And when a holiday comes round 
 
 He'll spend that day in glee ; 
 He'll tell his tale o'er a pint of ale, 
 
 And crack his joke, and bad 
 Must be the heart who loveth not 
 
 To hear the collier lad. 
 
28 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 At bowling matches on the green 
 
 He ever takes the lead, 
 For none can swing his arm and fling 
 
 With such a pith and speed. 
 His bowl is seen to skim the green, 
 
 And bound as if right glad 
 To hear the cry of victory 
 
 Salute the collier lad. 
 
 When 'gainst the wall they play the ball, 
 
 He's never known to lag. 
 But up and down he gars it bound 
 
 Till all his rivals fag ; 
 When deftly — lo ! he strikes a blow 
 
 Which gars them all look sad. 
 And wonder how it came to pass, 
 
 They play'd the collier lad. 
 
 The quoits are out, the hobs are fixed, 
 
 The first round quoit he flings 
 Enrings the hob ; and lo ! the next 
 
 The hob again enrings. 
 And thus he'll play the summer day. 
 
 The theme of those who gad ; 
 And youngsters shrink to bet their brass 
 
 Against the collier lad. 
 
 When in the dance he doth advance 
 
 The rest all sigh to see 
 How he can spring and kick his heels 
 
 When they a-wearied be ; 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 29 
 
 Your one-two-three, with either knee, 
 
 He'll beat, and then, glee-mad, 
 A heel-o'er-head leap crowns the dance 
 
 Danced by the collier lad. 
 
 Besides a will and pith and skill 
 
 My laddie owns a heart 
 That never once would suffer him 
 
 To act a cruel part ; 
 That to the poor would ope the door 
 
 To share the last he had ; 
 And many a secret blessing's pour'd 
 
 Upon my collier lad. 
 
 He seldom goes to church, I own, 
 
 And when he does, why then, 
 He with a leer will sit and hear 
 
 And doubt the holy men ; 
 This very much annoys my heart, 
 
 But soon as we are wed. 
 To please the priest, I'll do my best 
 
 To tame my collier lad. 
 
 There are many little verses which deal with the 
 badinage which from the earliest time has gone on 
 between young men and young women, and in which 
 it must be owned that the women afford the greatest 
 skill, for they are the most successful in the art of 
 teasing. There is one, for instance, called " Tit 
 for Tat":— 
 
30 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 *'Say, whither goes my buxom maid 
 
 All with the coal-black e'e?" 
 ''Before I answer that," she said, 
 
 Give ear, and answer me, 
 
 " Pray hast thou e'er thy counsel kept ? " 
 
 "Ay, and still can," said he: 
 "And so can I," she said, and swept 
 A-lilting o'er the lea. 
 
 Then comes the time when the man is married and a 
 father, and every night when on the night-shift he is 
 called up in the dead hours by the caller who goes round 
 to see that the men are wakened. Here again is a short 
 poem of eight lines : — 
 
 "Get up ! " the caller calls, " Get up! " 
 And in the dead of night, 
 To win the bairns their bite and sup, 
 I rise a weary wight. 
 
 My flannel dudden donn'd, thrice o'er 
 
 My birds are kissed, and then 
 I with a whistle shut the door 
 
 I may not ope again. 
 
 It tells in the simplest — if you like, baldest — manner 
 of that which is regularly done and that which at times 
 follows. But it is a true gem and has never been sur- 
 passed. The final two lines of these verses call up, 
 as nothing else which I have ever read does, the real 
 nature of pit life, the danger which is faced every time 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 31 
 
 the miner descends into tlie pit. "Without any straining 
 after effect, hut with the simplest statement of fact, 
 Skipsey brings us to the true meaning which lies 
 hidden behind it all, and it is no marvel that these 
 lines have been favourites with all of the leading 
 poets of last century who were familiar with them. 
 The Imowledge and the real meaning of the life, and 
 the hidden meaning and the character of the work, 
 lending itself not to fear but frequently to depression, 
 is admirably shown in the little verses, '* The Stars are 
 Twinkling." 
 
 THE STARS ARE TWINKLING. 
 
 The stars are twinkling in the sky 
 
 As to the pit I go ; 
 I think not of the sheen on high, 
 
 But of the gloom below. 
 
 Not rest or peace, but toil and strife, 
 
 Do there the soul enthral ; 
 And tm'n the precious cup of life 
 
 Into a cup of gall. 
 
 I may also at this point quote two verses which speak of 
 the experience of the married man : — 
 
 0! SLEEP. 
 
 sleep, my little baby ; thou 
 
 Wilt wake thy father with thy cries ; 
 
 And he into the pit must go. 
 Before the sun begins to rise. 
 
32 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 He'll toil for thee the whole day long, 
 And when the weary work is o'er, 
 
 He'll whistle thee a merry song, 
 And drive the bogies from the door. 
 
 Now I must maintain that if Skipsey had never 
 written anything but the poems I have already given, 
 he would have been remembered as one who had 
 illustrated that which is little thought about, and then 
 perhaps with a feeling akin to contempt — the life of 
 the pitman — with the simplest realistic poetry which 
 all lovers of verse must be for ever thankful to him 
 for. It is the finest realism when without a word too 
 much the character and the manner of a life of which 
 we practically know nothing is brought vividly before 
 us, and in the very realism itself there is a vivid 
 touch of the rare romance which lies in a practical 
 life of this kind. 
 
 Before I pass these pit poems I must quote one 
 which he entitles " The Singer," and with which he 
 introduces his volume of '* Carols, Songs, and Ballads," 
 published in 1888. Here are two brief verses which 
 tell us so much about the man. There was no aspect 
 of pit life with which he was not familiar. He was 
 a wonderful workman. When a hewer, more than one 
 of his employers has told me that no man they ever 
 knew could hew with him. When he became an 
 official, a deputy or master shifter, he exercised the 
 greatest care and thought and performed his duty 
 admirably. I have said that the depression which 
 from time to time naturally overtakes a man in such 
 an employment was well known to him, but, through 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 33 
 
 all, his gift of song was to him an abiding strength and 
 a great delight. 
 
 THE SINGER. 
 
 What tho', in bleak Northumbria's mines, 
 His better part of life hath flown — 
 
 A planet's shone on him, and shines, 
 To Fortune's darlings seldom known ; 
 
 And while his outer lot is grim, 
 
 His soul, with light and rapture fraught. 
 
 Oft will a carol trill, or hymn 
 In deeper tones the deeper thought. 
 
 Whilst I am speaking of this set of Skipsey's poems, 
 I must mention two others of quite a different kind, 
 though still illustrative of pit life. 
 
 The poem called ** Bereaved " tells the story of a 
 widow who had lost two children by fever, and had 
 mourned their loss with their father ; and then he and 
 his two remaining boys had gone down the pit in the 
 early hours of the morning, and there had been an 
 accident, and they were all taken from her. It is a 
 little long, and is not so concentrated as it might be, 
 but it is well worth reading carefully as a tale of that 
 which constantly happens to one or another of the 
 inhabitants of a pit village. 
 
34 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 BEREAVED. 
 One day as I came down by Jarrow, 
 
 Engirt by a crowd on a stone 
 A woman sat mourning, and sorrow 
 
 Seized all who gave heed to her moan. 
 
 **Nay, chide not my sad lamentation, 
 
 But, oh, let," she said, "my tears flow — 
 
 Nay, offer me no consolation : 
 
 I know they are dead down below. 
 
 " I heard the dread blast, and I darted 
 
 Away on the road to the pit, 
 Nor stopt till my senses departed, 
 
 And left me the wretch I here sit. 
 
 **Let — let me sit. No! the bare stones 
 Are not half so hard, nor so cold, 
 
 As the fell blow by which all my dear ones 
 Must now be laid low in the mould. 
 
 " — My mother, poor body, would harry 
 Me still with a look sad and pale, 
 
 When she saw me determined to marry 
 The dimpled chinn'd lad of the dale. 
 
 ** Not that she had any objection 
 
 To one praised by all ; but his drear — 
 
 Ah, his drear lot induced a reflection 
 Too keen for her bosom to bear. 
 
 "Nay, chide not my sad lamentation — 
 My mother sleeps under the yew; 
 
 She views not the dire desolation 
 She dreaded one day I should view. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 35 
 
 " — Bedabbled with blood, are my tresses ? 
 
 No matter ! — Unlock not my hand ! — 
 When I bask'd in his tender caresses, 
 
 Their hue would his praises command. 
 
 "He'll never praise more locks or features, 
 
 Nor, when the long day-tide is o'er, 
 With me view our two happy creatures 
 
 With bat and with ball at the door. 
 
 « — Nay, chide not — A pair either bolder 
 
 Or better nobody could see; 
 They passed for a year or two older 
 
 Than what I could prove them to be. 
 
 " Their equals for courage and action 
 Were not to be found in the place ; 
 
 And others might boast of attraction. 
 But none had their colour or grace. 
 
 ** Their feelings were such— tho' when smitten 
 By scorn still their blood would rebel — 
 
 They wept for the little blind kitten 
 Our neighbour would drown in the well. 
 
 "The same peaceful, calm, and brave bearing 
 Had still been the father's, was theirs; 
 
 And, now we felt older a-wearing. 
 
 We deem'd they would lighten our cares. 
 
 " So I deem'd, as last night on his shoulder 
 
 I hung and beheld them at play — 
 Ah, I dream'd not how soon they must moulder, 
 
 Down, down in their cold bed of clay. 
 
36 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 " — Chide, chide not — This sad lamentation 
 
 But endeth the burden, began 
 When, to the whole dale's consternation, 
 
 Our second was crushed by the van. 
 
 ** That dark day, the words of my mother, 
 In all the deep tone which had made 
 
 Me like a wind-ridden leaf dother, 
 Rang like the dead-bell in my head. 
 
 *' Despair, the grim bird, away chidden 
 Would light on the housetop again ; 
 
 But still from my husband was hidden 
 Each thought that had put him to pain. 
 
 " He's pass'd from existence, unharried 
 
 By any forebodings of mine ; 
 But he pined when the lisper was buried, 
 
 And well for the lisper might pine. 
 
 **Ah yes! — To our fancy, the sonsy 
 
 Bit bairn with his hair bright and curled- 
 
 The bairn had appeared to our fancy 
 The bonniest bairn in the world. 
 
 "As round and as red as a cherry, 
 With dimple on chin and on cheek. 
 
 Was he — and an urchin as merry 
 As ever play'd hide-and-go-seek. 
 
 " His heart full of fun and affection. 
 Still, still with his canny bit ways. 
 
 He wheedled my heart from dejection 
 And pat a bright look on my face. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 37 
 
 **Full oft, upon one leg advancing, 
 
 Across to the door he would go, 
 Wheel round on his heel, then go dancing 
 
 With a hop-step-and-jump down the row. 
 
 " When — Let my hand go ! — When he perished 
 
 The rest were yet left to my view ; 
 But now, what remains to be cherished? 
 
 But now, what remains to me now? 
 
 *' — Barely cold was the pet, ere affected 
 
 By fever they lay, one and all ; 
 But they lay not like others neglected — 
 
 I slept not, to be at their call. 
 
 ** Day and night, night and day without slumber 
 
 I watched till a-weary and worn — 
 Nay, nay, when death lessen' d the number, 
 
 I'd barely strength left me to mourn. 
 
 *'I've mourned enow since — and tho' cruel 
 Mishap, like a curst hag, would find 
 
 Her way to my door still, the jewel 
 Has seldom been out of my mind. 
 
 ** Another so glad and so airy 
 
 Ne'er gladden'd a fond mother's sight ; 
 
 They call'd her a * wee-winsome fairy,' 
 And I heard her so call'd with delight. 
 
 ** Whilst others played, by me she tarried 
 
 — The cherub ! — and rumour avers 
 That nowadays many are married 
 
 With not half the sense that was hers. 
 
38 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 '' Adown on the hearthrug a-sitting, 
 The long winter nights she was heard, 
 
 The whilst her sweet fingers were knitting, 
 To lilt out her lay like a bird. 
 
 ''Did I but look sulky, a-stealing 
 To me, in my face she would keek, 
 
 With a look to the heart so appealing, 
 I could not but pat her bit cheek. 
 
 *' She, once when I prick'd this hard finger 
 — No, he who in grave-clothes first slept — 
 
 No, she — with the senses that linger 
 I cannot tell which of them, wept. 
 
 " She vanished at last ! — ah, an ocean 
 Of trouble appear'd, that black cup ; 
 
 But what was it all to the potion 
 I now am commanded to sup ? 
 
 *' My husband, my bairnies, my blossoms ! 
 
 — Well — well, I am wicked — yes, yes ; 
 But take my loss home to your bosoms. 
 
 And say if your sin would be less. 
 
 ** My husband, my bairnies, my blossoms ! 
 
 — Well, I will not murmur, but still 
 The anguish that teareth the bosom's 
 
 Not, not to be bridled at will. 
 
 ** The dear ones to perish so sudden ! 
 
 'Twas only last night, by the hearth. 
 Whilst I mended their fast-wasting dudden 
 
 They — they, the dear bairns, seem'd all mirth. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 39 
 
 " Their cousin came in, and they hasten'd 
 To hand her, and, handing the chair 
 
 The strings of her apron unfastened, 
 And slipt the hack comb from her hair. 
 
 " On leaving, the lassie discovered 
 The prank they upon her had play'd ; 
 
 Awhile hung her head, awhile hovered. 
 Then pinched both their noses and fled. 
 
 " They laugh'd, clapt their hands, and the father 
 — Yea, I too, had laugh'd with the rest; 
 
 But something came o'er me which rather 
 Brought a sigh than a laugh from my breast. 
 
 " The supper was set, and being over 
 
 I help'd them to bed, and I think 
 — As I thought when I spread the green cover — 
 
 They'd dover'd to sleep in a wink. 
 
 **I too laid me down, heart a-weary — 
 And when the birds rose from their bed, 
 
 Somehow by a dream dull and dreary 
 My eyes were fast lock'd in my head. 
 
 "Aroused by their voices, a-yearning 
 To kiss them, I sprang to the floor; 
 
 They kissed me, and bade me ' Good morning,' 
 Then whistled away from the door. 
 
 **Long after away they had hurried, 
 
 Their music arang in my ears. 
 Then I thought of the jewels we'd buried, 
 
 And thought of the jewels with tears. 
 
40 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 ''Again, in my fancy, tliey prattled 
 
 'Till — deem it no idle tale, when 
 I tell you — the window was rattled. 
 
 And I thought of the living again. 
 
 *' Anon, as if something a-seeking, 
 I open'd the door and keek'd out — 
 
 And, out in the darkness keeking, 
 
 The names of my darlings must shout. 
 
 " An echo came back from the quarry 
 
 Just over the way, and in dread 
 I bolted the door in a hurry, 
 
 And hurried again to my bed. 
 
 *' Did I sleep ? I did weep. To his calling 
 
 The father had gone hours before; 
 And now, in that havoc appalling, 
 
 He lies with the blossoms I bore. 
 
 ''Did I sleep? I did weep. Heart a- weary, 
 
 How oft have I wept so before? 
 Not to sleep, but to weep, lone and dreary 
 
 I've wandered the broken brick floor. 
 
 " Did I sleep? — Well, your kind arm, and steady 
 My tottering steps, and now — now — 
 
 Go, get out the winding sheets ready. 
 And do what remaineth to do. 
 
 " Get winding sheets — one for the father, 
 And two for our darlings and pride. 
 
 And one for the wife and the mother — 
 Ah, soundly I'll sleep by their side!" 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 41 
 
 But quite on a different and higher plane than this is 
 the ballad in which Skipsey tells of the terrible calamity 
 which befell the men at work in the Hartley Pit on 
 January 16, 1882. Some of us were privileged to take 
 some part in the consolation of the survivors, and knew 
 well the awful days of fruitless endeavour, the agony of 
 hopeless hope, w^hich stirred not only the wives and 
 mothers in the village of Hartley, but the whole of our 
 land, during those days of weary waiting. It was a 
 time such as has, happily, been rarely known. 
 
 The Hartley New Pit is situate near Seaton Delaval. 
 Over the mouth of the pit was the beam of a pumping 
 engine weighing about forty tons. This broke on the 
 16th day of January, 1862, and fell into the pit as the 
 men were being drawn up in the cage by means of 
 the winding engine. The huge mass crushed everything 
 in its way ; it met the ascending cage filled with men, 
 five of whom w^ere killed instantly, three being after- 
 wards extricated alive. It struck the top of the brattice 
 with such force that the whole of the wooden and iron 
 framework was hurled to the bottom of the mine, and 
 thus all means of escape from the lower portion, in 
 which two hundred and fifteen men and boys were 
 buried alive, was cut off. Everything was done that 
 could be done. For six days Mr. Coulson and his 
 gallant band of sinkers worked with little cessation day 
 and night, endeavouring to form a communication with 
 the men in the pit. From time to time there were 
 heard sounds of jowling from the men, that is, the 
 sides of the shaft were evidently struck with hammers, 
 and the sound reached the surface ; the torture of sus- 
 pense was intense. Every day wives, mothers, and 
 
42 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 children, and men who had not been down the pit, 
 gathered round to hear any item of news which sinkers 
 who came up for a short period for rest could give them. 
 Numbers of ladies and gentlemen flocked to the village 
 and did their best to console and comfort the weary 
 waiters ; but it was January 22nd before an opening 
 was made into the workings, and three men were able 
 to enter the mine. The air was very bad, and at great 
 danger to themselves they forced their way, finding 
 bodies strewn in all directions, for the whole of the two 
 hundred and fifteen men and boys were dead. Those of 
 us who were privileged to be present when the sad news 
 was confirmed can never forget the terrible time. The 
 cold, snowy, winter night, the hopeless misery of the 
 inhabitants of the cottages, and the distress of the men 
 who had laboured so long in the hope of finding some 
 of their comrades, at all events, still living, were really 
 terrible. It was not only in Hartley or in Northumber- 
 land that the thing was felt. Everywhere, from one 
 end of the country to the other, in rural hamlets as well 
 as in crowded cities, there was a deep sympathy with 
 those who had been left widows or fatherless, and an 
 intense desire to provide such help as could be given to 
 them. The Common Council of the City of London 
 laid aside its rules of action to give a hundred 
 guineas. The London Coal Exchange promptly sub- 
 scribed a thousand guineas ; the brokers in the Stock 
 Exchange and in Lloyds made large contributions. 
 Great meetings were held throughout the North, that 
 at Newcastle being in the old Guildhall on the Sandhill. 
 I think that the Mayor was in the chair, and Lord 
 Durham (the second Lord Durham), who was of an 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 43 
 
 exceedingly retiring disposition, and was rarely seen 
 amongst us, rose to propose the first resolution. He 
 spoke two sentences, describing the reasons for the 
 meeting, with difficulty, and then broke down alto- 
 gether, and, sobbing, resumed his seat. No speech 
 that could have been made would have been so effectual. 
 The meeting was a short one. Kesolutions were passed 
 immediately, but the subscription which followed showed 
 how intensely the sorrow and grief of the occurrence had 
 come home to every one. 
 
 It is little wonder that the event was one which 
 deeply moved Joseph Skipsey, and the ballad which 
 he wrote entitled "The Hartley Calamity" is to my 
 thinking one of the most powerful which has been 
 written in recent times. It is simple, direct, truthful ; 
 no words are thrown away, but the whole tale of woe 
 is told with the force of truth. The ballad became 
 popular, and Skipsey was called upon to read it in 
 public at many different places where meetings were 
 held for the purpose of obtaining relief for the sur- 
 vivors. I give it here, but I only wish that I could 
 in any words reproduce the effect which it made when 
 Skipsey himself read it. It was scarcely like reading. 
 I shall have something to say about this hereafter, but 
 in reading his own ballad he entered so evidently into 
 the spirit of the thing and brought out the terrible, 
 tragic nature of the slow death creeping over father 
 and son, carrying away brothers side by side, and told 
 by broken words scratched upon some of the tins, that 
 it was impossible to listen without being greatly affected. 
 The scenes in certain of the places where he read it 
 were almost too painful. 
 
44 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 THE HARTLEY CALAMITY. 
 
 The Hartley men are noble, and 
 
 Ye'll hear a tale of woe ; 
 I'll tell the doom of the Hartley men — 
 
 The year of sixty-two. 
 
 'Twas on a Thm'sday morning, on 
 The first month of the year, 
 
 When there befell the thing that well 
 May rend the heart to hear. 
 
 Ere chanticleer with music rare 
 Awakes the old homestead, 
 
 The Hartley men are up and off 
 To earn their daily bread. 
 
 On, on they toil ; with heat they broil, 
 And streams of sweat still glue 
 
 The stour unto their skins, till they 
 Are black as the coal they hew. 
 
 Now to and fro the putters go, 
 
 The waggons to and fro. 
 And clang on clang of wheel and hoof 
 
 Eing in the mine below. 
 
 The din and strife of human life 
 Awake in *' wall " and '* board," 
 
 When, lo ! a shock is felt which makes 
 Each human heart-beat heard. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 45 
 
 Each bosom thuds, as each his duds 
 
 He snatches and away, 
 And to the distant shaft he flees 
 
 With all the speed he may. 
 
 Each, all, they flee — by two — by three 
 
 They seek the shaft, to seek 
 An answer in each other's face, 
 
 To what they may not speak. 
 
 **Are we entombed?" they seem to ask, 
 
 For the shaft is closed, and no 
 Escape have they to God's bright day 
 
 From out the night below. 
 
 So stand in pain the Hartley men, 
 
 And o'er them speedily comes 
 The memory of home and all 
 
 That links us to our homes. 
 
 Despair at length renews their strength, 
 
 And they the shaft must clear, 
 And soon the sound of mall and pick 
 
 Half drowns the voice of fear. 
 
 And hark! to the blow of the mall below 
 
 Do the sounds above reply ? 
 Hurra, hurra, for the Hartley men. 
 
 For now their rescue's niofh. 
 
 'O' 
 
 Their rescue nigh ? The sounds of joy 
 And hope have ceased, and ere 
 
 A breath is drawn a rumble's heard 
 Re-drives them to despair. 
 
46 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 Together now behold them bow ; 
 
 Their burden' d souls unload 
 In cries that never rise in vain 
 
 Unto the living God. 
 
 Whilst yet they kneel, again they feel 
 Their strength renewed — again 
 
 The swing and the ring of the mall attests 
 The might of the Hartley men. 
 
 And hark ! to the blow of the mall below, 
 
 Do sounds above reply ? 
 Hurra, hurra, for the Hartley men, 
 
 For now their rescue's nigh. 
 
 But lo ! yon light, erewhile so bright 
 
 No longer lights the scene ; 
 A cloud of mist yon light has kiss'd 
 
 And shorn it of its sheen. 
 
 A cloud of mist yon light has kiss'd. 
 
 See ! how along it steals. 
 Till one by one the lights are smote. 
 
 And deep the doom prevails. 
 
 ** father, till the shaft is rid, 
 
 Close, close beside me keep ; 
 My eyelids are together glued. 
 
 And I — and I — must sleep." 
 
 " Sleep, darling, sleep, and I will keep 
 Close by — heigh-ho!" To keep 
 
 Himself awake the father strives — 
 But he — he too — must sleep. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 47 
 
 *• 0, brother, till the shaft is rid, 
 
 Close, close beside me keep. 
 My eyelids are together glued 
 
 And I — and I — must sleep. 
 
 *' Sleep, brother, sleep, and I will keep 
 Close by — heigh-ho ! " To keep 
 
 Himself awake the brother strives — 
 But he — he too — must sleep. 
 
 *^ mother dear ! wert, wert thou near 
 Whilst sleep ! " And the orphan slept; 
 
 And all night long by the black pit heap 
 The mother a dumb watch kept. 
 
 And fathers, and mothers, and sisters, and 
 brothers — 
 
 The lover and the new-made bride — 
 A vigil kept for those who slept, 
 
 From eve to morning tide. 
 
 But they slept — still sleep — in silence dread, 
 
 Two hundred old and young. 
 To awake when heaven and earth have sped 
 
 And the last dread trumpet rung. 
 
 But I must now leave the poems which deal directly 
 with pit life and return to his own story. After his 
 marriage and when children began to come, he made 
 repeated efforts to get some situation which was of a 
 less onerous kind than that in the mines, but it was 
 1859 before he succeeded in this. He then published 
 his first book of poems, and the attention of several 
 
48 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 persons of influence in the neighbourhood was thus 
 turned to him. The then editor of the Gateshead 
 Observer (long since given up), Mr. James Clephan, 
 was one of these. Those who remember him know 
 how great an influence he had, and how full of genuine 
 sympathy and true poetic feeling he was. He suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining Skipsey the place of under-store- 
 keeper at Messrs. Hawks, Crawshay & Co.'s works in 
 Gateshead, and he remained there for more than four 
 years, but a sad accident happened to one of his 
 children, who was run over and killed by a train of 
 waggons passing through the works, and this greatly 
 unsettled him. 
 
 The place of sub-librarian at the Literary and Philo- 
 sophical Society in Newcastle-upon-Tyne happening to 
 become vacant, his friends obtained this appointment 
 for him. It seemed at first as though it was a chance 
 of the most fortunate description, but it must be ad- 
 mitted that he did not fill the appointment in an 
 altogether satisfactory way. As a rule a librarian 
 must know where his books are, and he must know 
 something of what is inside them and be able to 
 satisfy the wishes of members who desire to refer 
 to them or to borrow them, but perhaps the less a 
 sub-librarian knows of the inside of books the better. 
 At all events, Skipsey, not unnaturally, with his intense 
 love of reading, finding himself in what appeared to 
 him boundless pastures, would become absorbed in 
 some passage of a well-known author, and he would 
 scarcely recognise the eager and impatient member who 
 wished for his services forthwith. So before a year had 
 passed he naturally grew discontented and unhappy, 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 49 
 
 and his friends had many a discussion as to what 
 the best line of action really was. He was popular on 
 the whole, and one of his poems, *' The Reign of King 
 Gold," was included amongst the selection which was 
 read by the Rev. Mr. Bellew at one of his lectures. I 
 give this poem in the Appendix, for it is of quite a dif- 
 ferent kind to any other which I quote. His friends at 
 length advised him to return to the coal-mines, and he 
 did so, and worked patiently away at hewing for many a 
 year. There were few men who ever came near him for 
 power and skill in this, and he at length was appointed to 
 be deputy overman, and he devoted himself to the superior 
 work in a patient, skilful, and conscientious way. In 
 the course of years it became evident that the responsi- 
 bilities which were laid upon him were so constantly 
 present to him, and the fact that to some extent he 
 held the lives and destinies of his fellow-workmen in 
 his hands became so burdensome, that it was desirable 
 again for him to leave the pits. He was at this time 
 at Backworth Colliery, but had been for many years 
 at Newsham, and for shorter periods at Cowpen and 
 Ashington since he returned to mining. 
 
 Backworth has, I may say, always been a centre of 
 intellectual life. Indeed, few people have any idea of 
 how much of this life is to be found in many of our pit 
 villages. I cannot but think that one great agent in 
 making the more thoughtful of our Northumbrian pit- 
 men the really cultured men they are (using the term 
 cultured not simply to signify booklearning) has been 
 the prevalence of religious societies amongst them. In 
 many pit villages you will find three Methodist chapels 
 — the Wesleyan, the Primitive, and the New Connexion. 
 
 4 
 
50 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 It would be wi-ong to say that there was any hostility 
 between them, but the natural competition for members, 
 and the admirable way in which all forms of Methodism 
 make use of all new-comers, and so interest them 
 actively in the work of their congregation, keep a 
 certain amount of spiritual life awake. "Wlien this is 
 turned in other directions you find a remarkable thirst 
 for knowledge and a willingness to go through consider- 
 able difficulties to obtain it. I remember in 1879, 
 when the Cambridge University Extension movement 
 had spread into Northumberland, Backworth was one of 
 the centres which took an active part in getting it taken 
 up by certain pit villages. There were, if I remember 
 rightly, foui* of these, and at one time the four villages 
 had 1,700 students. The population of the villages and 
 district was only 19,000, and I much doubt whether in 
 the educational history of the world there has ever been 
 a similar fact. 
 
 The Northumbrian pitman is certainly frequently 
 devoted to sports which have their rough but not their 
 brutal side. I should be sorry to draw too flattering a 
 picture of him, but, judging of him fairly, he is as 
 different from the popular idea as can well be conceived. 
 I do not mean to say that there are not many features 
 which exist amongst the class which it would be well to 
 alter, but taking them as a whole they are certainly a 
 remarkable body of men. I can perhaps best illustrate 
 this by telling a story which the late Major Duncan used 
 to tell of his experience amongst them when he was a 
 candidate for the Morpeth Boroughs in the Conserva- 
 tive interest against the well-known and tried member, 
 Thomas Burt. He had been asked to address a meeting 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 51 
 
 at Bedlington. He said that he went down, as it 
 happened, alone. He was met at the station by a 
 courteous and well-dressed man, who asked him to come 
 with him to his house and have a cup of tea before the 
 meeting. He went down and found in the small three- 
 roomed cottage one or two other men gathered, and the 
 good wife bustled about and made them an admirable 
 tea. After that they smoked their pipes and had a 
 talk, and by and by they went to the meeting. There 
 was a well-filled hall, his friend was voted into the chair 
 and introduced him in a few proper words. He then 
 proceeded to explain his political views, and, after speak- 
 ing some three-quarters of an hour, during which there 
 was perfect silence excepting for occasional applause, he 
 sat down amidst cheers and thought that he had made 
 an admirable impression. Then a highly respectable 
 gentleman got up and said a few words about the 
 address, and moved, '' That this meeting, having heard 
 Major Duncan's explanation of his political principles, 
 is of the opinion that he is not a fit and proper person 
 to represent the borough of Morpeth in Parliament." 
 A second gentleman seconded it, and it was carried 
 unanimously. They were perfectly kind, perfectly 
 polite, and thanked him for the trouble he had taken, 
 but he said that after two or three experiences of this 
 kind it became almost impossible to conduct such a 
 fight. Now, I have often wished that this tale could be 
 generally known. When I read of how political meet- 
 ings are disturbed and broken up because the speakers 
 are giving vent to opinions which do not agree with 
 those held by their hearers, it always seems to me that 
 the wisest, best, and most courteous way is that adopted 
 
52 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 by the Northumbrian pitmen. I have known several 
 cases where there have been meetings held upon labour 
 difficulties which were fiercely acute at a time when the 
 men and the officials of their Union did not agree. 
 This is perhaps the severest test to which men can be 
 put, but, although there was some turbulence and some 
 disorder, the meetings ended in patient listening to that 
 which had to be said in defence of conduct of which they 
 did not approve, and in votes of thanks to those who 
 addressed them. 
 
 But I am getting away from Backworth. There, as 
 I said, was a village which was a centre of intellectual 
 life and has more or less continued so through many 
 years. Not only have its people given great audiences to 
 lectures, but they have had societies for reading books 
 of authority, and I have seen them act plays — " The 
 School for Scandal" for instance — with remarkable 
 ability. Of course, there was a little difficulty some- 
 times as to the pronunciation, but considering all things 
 the performance was interesting and admirable, and 
 some of the performers were consummate actors. 
 
 It would be difficult to find a village which has been 
 visited by more men of scientific, literary, or artistic 
 distinction. In its one principal street you might find 
 Professor Owen or Professor Huxley with Sir William 
 G. Armstrong visiting Mr. Athey, a working pitman, 
 who had gathered together one of the finest collections 
 of fossils from the coal measures. If you entered 
 another cottage you would be greeted by a beautifully 
 framed platinotype of " The Golden Stairs," with the 
 legend inscribed upon it, " To his dear friend Joseph 
 Skipsey, from his friend E. Burne Jones," for Skipsey 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 53 
 
 had been to London with his friend Thomas Dixon the 
 corkcutter, to whom John Ruskin wrote the letters 
 ** Time and Tide, by Wear and Tyne." On their way 
 they had visited Oxford, where they stayed with 
 Professor Jowett at Balliol, who had been most kind 
 and com'teous to them. In London Skipsey saw many 
 of the men who formed so distinguished an artistic 
 circle, and amongst them Bm-ne Jones, the Rossettis, 
 Holman Hunt, and Tlieodore Watts. Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti was of real service to him, for they had corre- 
 sponded before meeting, and he afterwards wrote to him 
 letters of good and sound advice. I think that I ought 
 to give to my readers some extracts from these letters, for 
 they show how a man who was himself a worker of con- 
 summate ability in two realms of art held my friend, 
 and the real and unusual merit which he discerned in 
 his poetry. He appraised it at its true value, and did 
 not scruple to find fault where he saw that it was right 
 to do so. Much harm was done from time to time by 
 those who lavished indiscriminate praise upon the poems, 
 and who compared Skipsey with some of the greatest 
 men who lived dm-ing the beginning of last century. It 
 was a thing to be very grateful for that Dante Gabriel 
 Rossetti was kind and full of encouragement, and that 
 his praise was made more valuable by being tempered 
 with a certain amount of blame. 
 
 In 1878 (October 29th) Dante Rossetti wrote to him : 
 " I am gratified to know that my poems appeal at all 
 to you. Youi's struck me at once. The real-life pieces 
 are more sustained and decided than almost anything of 
 the same kind that I know — I mean in poetry coming 
 really from a poet of the people who describes what he 
 
54 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 knows and mixes in. ' Bereaved ' is perhaps tlie poem 
 which most unites poetic form with deep pathos : the 
 Hartley ballad is equal in another way, but written, I 
 fancy, to be really sung, like the old ballad. * Thistle 
 and Nettle ' shows the most varied power of all, perhaps. 
 In this, and throughout the book, the want I feel is of 
 artistic finish only, not of artistic tendency : the right 
 touch sometimes seems to come to you of its own accord, 
 but, when not thus coming, it remains a want. Stanzas 
 similarly rhymed are apt to follow each other, and the 
 metre is often filled out by catching up a word in repeti- 
 tion — I mean, as for instance, ' May be, as they have 
 been, may be,' &c. 
 
 *' Other favourites of mine are ' Persecuted,' * Willy 
 to Lily,' * Mother Wept ' (this very striking) and 
 'Nancy to Bessy.' It seems to me that, as regards style, 
 you might take the verbal perfection of your admirable 
 stanzas ' Get Up ' as an example to yourself, and try 
 never to fall short of this standard, where not a word is 
 lost or wanting. This little piece seems to me equal to 
 anything in the language for direct and quiet pathetic 
 force." 
 
 I should like to give the whole of the poems specially 
 praised by Rossetti, but have already given " Mother 
 Wept," " Get Up," and " Bereaved." 
 
 Skipsey was one of those men who cannot do things 
 by halves, and when he went to the pit he gave his 
 mind thoroughly to mining, and was, as I have said, not 
 only an exceptionally powerful hewer, but also thoroughly 
 acquainted with the details of pit management. After 
 being made a deputy he became master shifter, and it 
 was interesting indeed, though not without a shade of 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 55 
 
 sadness, to know the great amount of thought and care 
 which he gave to the fulfihnent of his duties. 
 
 Before I follow him into his life away from the pits 
 I must note that he still devoted his leisure time to 
 literature, and published volumes of poems in 1871, 1878, 
 and 1881, and I must say a little about those poems 
 which, though not immediately illustrating pit life, 
 reflect the younger days of those who follow that life, 
 and give us, possibly, glimpses of some of the things 
 which passed through our poet's mind, and were recol- 
 lections of that which he had himself absolutely gone 
 through or had noted in the lives of his friends. It is 
 not possible to say how^ many of his little songs relating 
 to the difi'erent pits and the coal villages were inspired 
 by actual personal feeling, but there can be no doubt 
 that many of them have a charm of their own which 
 makes them appeal to the reader as truthful pictures of 
 that which not infrequently happens. 
 
 Perhaps I should put as one of these the poem entitled 
 *' Thistle and Nettle." It is rather long, but it is one 
 of the few instances in which Skipsey does himself justice 
 in a narrative. It is the record of the wooing of a 
 maid by one whom she had favoured in her early 
 days, but whom she had shunned when she grew to 
 womanhood, having conceived something of an aversion 
 for the male sex. When " Thistle " sought her out with 
 the pm'pose of wooing her, the state of her mind towards 
 the race of men was soon made clear. At first ** Nettle" 
 was exceedingly angry at his wooing her at all, and she 
 inveighed against the whole race of men, whilst he replied 
 to her with much gentleness and succeeded gradually in 
 bringing her to a milder mood. But it is not until he 
 
56 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 turns back to the days of childhood and their constant 
 happy intercourse then that he really makes an impres- 
 sion, and the poem ends happily. It is really one which 
 is full of nature, full of little touches of simple beauty, 
 at times of humour or of pathos, and I scarcely think 
 that any one will study it carefully without coming to 
 understand the high position which Dante Rossetti 
 gave it. 
 
 THISTLE AND NETTLE. 
 
 'Twas on a night, with sleet and snow 
 From out the North a tempest blew, 
 
 When Thistle gather'd nerve to go 
 The little Nettle's self to woo. 
 
 Within her father's cottage soon. 
 
 And quite alone, he found the maid ; 
 
 She then was knitting to a tune 
 The wind upon the window play'd. 
 
 His errand known, her needles down 
 She laid, and rising from the board. 
 
 She took the broom and swept the room 
 And spake her mind by deed and word, 
 
 *' Have I not seen enough to be 
 
 Convinced for ever, soon or late. 
 The maid shall rue the moment she 
 
 Attendeth to a wooer's prate? 
 
 " When men are void of falsehood, then, 
 
 But never may that time befall : 
 Of five times five-and-twenty men 
 
 There's barely five are men at all. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 57 
 
 " Before the timid maid they'll fall, 
 
 And smile, and weep, and sigh, and sue, 
 
 Till once they get her in their thrall, 
 Then, then she's doom'd her lot to rue. 
 
 **For her a subtle snare they weave, 
 And when the bonny bird is theirs, 
 
 Then, then they giggle up their sleeve, 
 Then, then they laugh at all her fears. 
 
 " When lilies on the docken bloom — 
 The cherry on the bramble grows — 
 
 When men are to be trusted — come, 
 And I will listen to thy vows. 
 
 "Yes, then I'll hear what thou may'st swear — 
 
 Till then I — I am on my guard; 
 And he, the loon that brings me down. 
 
 He, he'll be pardoned on my word." 
 
 Thus for an hour her tongue was heard; 
 
 By this her words grown faint and few. 
 She rais'd the broom at every word, 
 
 And thump'd the floor to prove it true. 
 
 In ardent tones the youth replied — 
 
 ''Dread hollow-hearted guile thou must; 
 
 But deem not all of honour void, 
 Nor punish all with thy mistrust. 
 
 *'A few, not all, the lash have earned; 
 
 Let but that few the lash then rue — 
 The world were topsy-turvy turned. 
 
 Were all to suffer for a few. 
 
58 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 "Destroy the weed, but spare the flower; 
 
 Consume the chafi", but keep the grain ; 
 Nor harry one who'd die before 
 
 He'd give thy little finger pain." 
 
 On hearing this, she sat her down, 
 Resumed her needlework, and then 
 
 — Tho' yet she strove to wear a frown — 
 Made answer in a milder strain : — 
 
 " End, end thy quest. Deceitful words 
 May be, as they have been, may be 
 
 A fatal lure to lighter birds — 
 
 They'll never prove the like to me. 
 
 " Still, by my honesty, I vow. 
 As I have kept the cheat at bay, 
 
 So, should I keep my senses, so 
 I'll keep him till my dying day. 
 
 *' The best that man could do or say, 
 The love of gold or jewel rare — 
 
 Not all that wealth can furnish may — 
 May ever lead me in a snare. — 
 
 *' So end thy quest." He only prest 
 His ardent suit the more, while she, 
 
 At every word he uttered, garr'd 
 Her fleeing needles faster flee. 
 
 ** My quest by Honour's justified, 
 I have still eyed and found thee still 
 
 The maid I'd like to be my bride — 
 Would I could say the maid that will. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 59 
 
 ** Hadst thou but been the daffodil 
 That dances to each breeze, for — yea 
 
 For all thy suitor valued, still 
 
 Thou so hadst danced thy life away. 
 
 '*Bat thou so fair art chaste." Thus he 
 
 Unto her answer answers e'er, 
 And that too in a way that she - 
 
 Must will or nill his answer hear. 
 
 Then, then the chair he'd ta'en, his chair 
 
 Unto her chair he nearer drew; 
 Recui'r'd to memories sweet and dear, 
 
 And in the softer key did woo. 
 
 "How canst thou me," he said, *' disdain? 
 
 How canst thou so my truth suspect ? 
 How canst thou put me to this pain? 
 
 Reflect, upon the past reflect ! 
 
 " A time there was, and time shall pass 
 
 To me ere that forgotten be. 
 When side by side, from tide to tide, 
 
 We played and sported on the lea. 
 
 *' Then, then have I not chased the bee 
 
 From bloom to bloom — oft chased and caught. 
 
 And, having drawn its sting, in glee 
 To thee the little body brought? 
 
 " Then, when a bloom of rarer dyes 
 
 Into my busy fingers fell. 
 To whom was reached the lucky prize ? 
 
 Cannot thy recollection tell ? 
 
60 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 ^' Nay, when the fleetful summer went, 
 Who pull'd with thee the haw, bright, brown, 
 
 — Brown as thine own brown eyes — and bent 
 For thee the richest branches down? 
 
 ** With blooms I've bound thy yellow hair ; 
 
 With berries fill'd thy lap ; thy hand 
 — That hand as alabaster fair — 
 
 Had every gift at thy command. 
 
 "Nay, tho' to others dour, yet meek 
 
 I ever was to thee, and kind ; 
 And when we played at hide-and-seek 
 
 I hid where thou wouldst seek to find. 
 
 ** Upon the playground still unmatched 
 Was I, unless with thee I play'd; 
 
 And then it seem'd to those who watched 
 My failures were on purpose made. 
 
 "None, up and down so well I bobb'd 
 To skip the rope with me would try — 
 
 Didst thou attempt ? my skill was robbed, 
 Another skipt thee out — not I. 
 
 " The ball I knock'd to others, mock'd 
 Their efforts to arrest its flight ; 
 
 But when the ball to thee I knock'd. 
 It would upon thy lap alight. 
 
 " Then, while I kepp'd another's ball. 
 Away thine went unkepp'd away ; 
 
 And did I win a game at all, 
 Say, was it by my efforts, say ? 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 61 
 
 ** As sure as e'er a race began, 
 
 That race was mine unless thou join'd ; 
 
 And then I alwa3's was out-ran, 
 For still with thee I lagg'd behind. 
 
 ** This fired the winner's self-conceit 
 — Once fired — till thou for winning-post 
 
 Again we ran — he ran to beat — 
 
 But thrice we ran, and thrice he lost. 
 
 " Time vanished thus, and childhood pass'd ; 
 
 But ere the lasses reach their teens 
 Atween them and the lads a vast 
 
 Mysterious distance intervenes. 
 
 " They seldom on the green appear 
 
 In careless sport and play, and if 
 They join the throng, erect they wear 
 
 Their head, and still their air is stiff. 
 
 ** They ail they know not what. And such 
 The change that on my lassie fell ; 
 
 Then would she shrink my hand to touch 
 And I half-feared her touch as well. 
 
 **Had I changed too? This can I tell — 
 That touch o'er me a spell would cast ; 
 
 And did I pass her in the dell. 
 
 With slow and snail-like pace I pass'd. 
 
 "Her voice had lost its former ring. 
 
 Yet, in that voice such power was flung, 
 
 I better liked to hear her sing 
 Than when of old to me she sung. 
 
62 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 "Her touch, her tone, her sight would gar 
 Me shake, and tho' with all my might 
 
 I strove to please, and please but her, 
 I ever blunder' d in her sight. 
 
 " When by the hearth she sewing sat, 
 
 Did I to thread her needle try? 
 Still, still my heart played pit-a-pat, 
 
 And still I miss'd the needle's eye. 
 
 ** Such, when I held to her the hank. 
 Such slips and knots occurr'd, we heard 
 
 Aunt's dreaded tongue go clink-a-clank 
 Before the dancing end appear'd. 
 
 ** * What ails the lass ? ' she often said — 
 * She's sound asleep ! ' once said, and flew. 
 
 And snatched and snapt the tangled thread, 
 While I — I know not how — withdrew. 
 
 *' Fled, fled, too fled those hours! alack! 
 
 They came and went like visions rare, 
 To mock the heart, delude and wrack, 
 
 And leave the gazer in despair. 
 
 **Ah, less — tho' sun-illumed — less fair 
 The blobs that dance adown the burn, 
 
 And let them burst, they'll reappear 
 Ere those delightsome hours return. 
 
 ** Yet they may live in thought, and could 
 They live within thy thought again, 
 
 Wouldst thou not change thy bearing? would — 
 Wouldst thou not change this bitter strain? 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 63 
 
 *'Wouldst thou thy lover still disdain? 
 
 Wouldst thou continue thus to gall 
 And put him to this cruel pain? 
 
 — Recall to mind the past, recall ! " 
 
 Thus onward, on, his ditty flows 
 
 Until — her ruffled brow is sleek — 
 Until the lily drives the rose. 
 
 The rose the lily from her cheek. 
 
 Then, then, entranced he press'd her side ; 
 
 "Wouldst thou consent" — averr'd — "ah, then 
 A knot should by the priest be tied 
 
 The priest should never loose again. 
 
 "In heart and hand excelled by none, 
 Henceforth I'd front the ills of life. 
 
 And every victory I won 
 
 Should be a jewel for my wife. 
 
 " So should the people of the dell 
 When they convened to gossip, say 
 
 For harmony we bore the bell, 
 
 And — Nay, turn not thine eyes away. 
 
 "Lift, lift thy head; be not ashamed; 
 
 If thus to feel — if thus to do — 
 As matters sinful might be blamed. 
 
 Then saints were sinners long ago." 
 
 Thus while the iron's sparking hot. 
 Around with might and main he swings ; 
 
 And down upon the proper spot, 
 
 With bang on bang the hammer brings. 
 
64 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 Deej^ silence then ensues. The cat, 
 That lately to the nook did creep, 
 
 To mark the sequel of their chat 
 Lies now upon the hearth asleep. 
 
 The needles that flew here and there, 
 And in their motions sought to vie 
 
 A moonbeam dance upon the mere, 
 Neglected on her apron lie. 
 
 In concord with the storm within, 
 The storm without forbears to blow ; 
 
 And 'tween the sailing clouds, begin 
 The joyous stars to come and go. 
 
 O'er all delight prevails. Her head 
 Upon the breast she just did seem 
 
 To dread, as man will death, the maid — 
 Lo, she, she's in a golden dream ! 
 
 Dream on, sweet May ! An hour like this 
 Annuls an age of cark and strife. 
 
 And turns into a drop of bliss 
 The bitter cup of human life. 
 
 The tear is by a halo gilt — 
 
 Our cares made pleasant to endure — 
 
 The doleful dirge a merry lilt. 
 
 By thinking on this happy hour. ^ 
 
 ** I've heard," in language low and soft. 
 At length her heart begins to flow; — 
 
 ** I've heard of honey 'd tongues full oft, 
 But never felt their force till now. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 65 
 
 '* Still would I fume, as day by day 
 I've seen the lasses bought and sold 
 
 By some I'd scorn'd to own, had they 
 Outweighed their very weight in gold. 
 
 " My hour of triumph's o'er. In vain 
 
 Did I my fellow-maids abuse ; 
 I've snatched the cup, and drank the bane 
 
 Which sets me in their very shoes, 
 
 ** That turns a heart of adamant 
 To pliant wax ; and, in my turn, 
 
 Subjects me to the bitter taunt. 
 The vanquished victor's ever borne : 
 
 ** That leaveth Nettle satisfied 
 
 To leave her kith and kin, and by 
 
 Her ever-faithful Thistle's side, 
 To shelter till the day they die." 
 
 One of the sweetest of the songs which he wi*ote, and 
 which come into the category of those which reflect 
 the younger part of his life, is " Mary of Crofton," and 
 the two last lines of the third verse are a charming bit 
 of natural sentiment. 
 
 MARY OF CEOFTON. 
 
 Ah ! a lovely jewel was Mary of Crofton, 
 
 And now she is cold in the clay, 
 We think of the heart-cheering image as often 
 
 As we pass down the old waggon way. 
 
 5 
 
66 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 So endearing and winning her bearing, the cherry 
 
 The heart of the stoic entranced ; 
 While yet her wee feet beat a measure as merry 
 
 As ever by damsel was danced. 
 
 Her voice had a sweetness that only the silly 
 
 Bit linnet to vie it might seek ; 
 And the rose in her hair was a daflfodowndilly 
 
 Compared with the rose on her cheek. 
 
 Sue, Bessy, and Kitty still ornament Crofton, 
 And rich are the charms they display; 
 
 But we miss the sweet image of Mary as often 
 As we pass down the old waggon way. 
 
 But I think that I have quoted sufficient of these 
 early works to show what Skipsey could do, and those 
 who wish for more must acquire his poems, or refer 
 to those I give in the Appendix. They have never 
 taken possession of what I may call the pit life of the 
 district. I do not think that any of them are set to 
 music, and perhaps none have the natural and inborn 
 lilt which distinguishes the true song. 
 
 From their very nature few of them appeal directly to 
 the reader, and they are lacking in the little touches 
 of natural feeling which give peculiar charm to the 
 songs of Burns, but they are well worth reading, and 
 reading carefully, because they are all characteristic 
 to some extent of an actual life, certain aspects of which 
 are admirably illustrated by them. There are certain of 
 them which have much wider tendency than others, and 
 express feelings which are the property of mankind. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 67 
 
 Those which treat of things which are peculiar in a 
 certain sense to the pit life, the meetings at fairs, the 
 little coquetries of the village beauties, and the like, 
 are too often given by a special and a characteristic name 
 a certain binding, as it were, to a special kind of life and 
 place, but there are others which are quite different. 
 For instance, there is one entitled '* The Slippers " : — 
 
 Two slippers in the morning red 
 
 Along the pathway flew ; 
 Two slippers down the burnside sped, 
 
 And lo, a sight to view! 
 
 Yon loath'd way now is my delight, 
 And what was long and rough, 
 
 Is now as smooth as velvet quite. 
 And far from long enough. 
 
 Yon bur, whose rudeness only earn'd 
 
 From me a grunt or so, 
 Is to a golden lily turn'd 
 
 To charm me as I go. 
 
 Yon pebble, late but fit for feet 
 
 To kick into the air. 
 Is now to me a jewel, meet 
 
 For any queen to wear. 
 
 Yon runnel that was only heard 
 
 A dreary noise to make, 
 Now pipes as sweetly as a bird, 
 
 And pipes so for my sake ! 
 
68 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 ** La, how comes this?" That question — Tut — 
 
 Who, who can answer ? Who ? 
 Go, put it to the slippers, put! 
 
 That down the footway flew. 
 
 This appeals more or less to all men who rememher 
 that they were ever young, and who have any recollec- 
 tion of the time when they themselves suffered from the 
 trials and delights of what they, at all events, called 
 love. 
 
 But all his songs or little poems are good, sound, and 
 healthy ones. There is nothing behind them ; nothing 
 equivocal in them ; they are all straight and true. Some 
 of them lack anything of inspiration — tliey are deliberate 
 makings and so not satisfactory. But they all had cost 
 him much labour, and some rewarded it. Although 
 in different editions of his '* Songs and Lyrics " many 
 of his verses were much altered it was not by any means 
 easy to persuade him to make any alteration. 
 
 I remember well in the first edition of his poems he 
 had taken the two lines from Shakespeare : — 
 
 "Hey Kobin, jolly Robin, tell me how thy lady 
 doth," 
 
 and went on — 
 
 ''Is she sighing, is she sobbing?" 
 
 and so forth. But with him '* sobbing" lost its '' g '* 
 and was made therefore into a good rhyme for Robin. 
 This frequent loss of *' g " final must be borne in mind in 
 reading all Skipsey's poems. It must not be forgotten 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 69 
 
 that his language and pronunciation were all to a 
 great extent racy of the soil, and therefore it constantly 
 happens that in his poems you find a rhyme which 
 you might think was a deliberately bad one if you did 
 not know how the poet himself would have read it. He 
 was very particular really upon the question of pro- 
 nunciation, but it was no easy task to convince him that 
 he ever erred in this respect. At one time we used 
 to meet twice a week, to read together, in order that he 
 might get away from some of the commonest and most 
 difficult of the faults which were his, but it did not 
 answer ; for he was no sooner corrected as to the 
 mispronunciation of a word than he would start to 
 argue how it ought to be pronounced, and to endeavour 
 to convince you that if it was not pronounced as he 
 pronounced it, his was the right plan. 
 
 In the next verse of *'Hey Robin" as it stood 
 originally, he had it — 
 
 ** Is she like a lambkin skipping, 'mid her maidens 
 in the hall," 
 
 and on telling him that I thought there was some 
 little mistake here because, so far as my knowledge 
 went, it was not the custom for ladies to skip in the hall 
 amongst their maidens and I thought it was a mistake 
 likely to produce ridicule, he saw the point and made 
 many alterations of the verse from time to time, but he 
 never got it to his satisfaction. The poem on the 
 whole is an admirable one. It has real ability, but there 
 is always the want of some motive for the second verse. 
 It stands once : — 
 
70 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 Is she like a finch so merry 
 
 Lilting in her father's hall, 
 Or the crow with cry, a very 
 
 Plague to each, a plague to all. 
 
 It would have been better if he had left it out altogether. 
 There is no need for it, and the rest ran well enough ; 
 but no, it was a very precious verse for some reason 
 to him, and have it he would, although he used from 
 time to time to alter it. The last time he altered 
 the finch to the lark, but that made it very little better, 
 because the idea of a lark lilting in a hall is not an 
 exquisite one. There was really no excuse for keeping 
 the verse in. But the last verse is a fine one. 
 
 HEY EOBIN. 
 
 (The first two lines are old.) 
 
 Hey Robin, jolly Robin, 
 
 Tell me how thy lady doth? 
 
 Is she laughing, is she sobbing, 
 Is she gay, or grave, or both? 
 
 Is she like the finch, so merry. 
 
 Lilting in her father's hall? 
 Or the crow with cry a very 
 
 Plague to each, a plague to all? 
 
 Is she like the violet breathing 
 Blessings on her native place? 
 
 Or the cruel nettle scathing 
 
 All who dare approach her grace ? 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 71 
 
 Is she like the dew-drop sparkling 
 When the morn peeps o'er the land? 
 
 Or the cloud in mid-air darkling, 
 When a fearful storm's at hand? 
 
 Tut, to count the freaks of woman, 
 Count the pebbles of the seas ; 
 
 Rob, thy lady's not uncommon, 
 Be or do she what she please ! 
 
 Skipsey remained at Backworth until the year 1882. 
 By this time he felt the weight of his constant daily 
 labour telling upon him. He was fifty years of age, and 
 the greater part of his life had been spent in arduous 
 and dangerous employment, and when he became an 
 official, in anxious responsible work. So his friends 
 again sought some place for him where he might have 
 more ease, and a caretaker being wanted at a new Board 
 School in Mill Lane, Newcastle, Mrs. Skipsey and he 
 were chosen to fill the place. This was on the whole 
 a congenial employment, but, as the school gi'ew, the 
 duties soon became too great, and the burden proved too 
 heavy for his good wife. 
 
 The first wing of the Armstrong College had been 
 built in 1887-8, and in September, 1888, Skipsey was 
 appointed porter of the establishment. He fulfilled his 
 duties admirably, but this too proved clearly not the 
 place for him. One morning I was taking Lord Carlisle 
 over the new building, and our Principal joined us 
 (Principal Garnett). As we went along the great 
 corridor, Skipsey, bending beneath the weight of two 
 coal-scuttles of considerable dimensions, met us. He at 
 once pulled up, and Lord Carlisle, recognising him, took 
 
72 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 him by the hand, and said, " My dear Skipsey, whatever 
 are you doing here?" We had a long talk, and ex- 
 planations were made, but I saw from that time that 
 it was quite impossible to have a College where the 
 scientific men came to see the Principal and the 
 artistic and literary men came to see the porter. It 
 was not easy to find the proper place for Joseph 
 Skipsey, for he was altogether an exceptional man, and 
 it was desirable that any place which he obtained 
 should give employment also to Mrs. Skipsey. 
 
 Now at this time some of us heard of a probable 
 vacancy which seemed to be the very thing for a man of 
 a poetical mind who required lighter work, but that of a 
 congenial kind. The Misses Chataway, who had for 
 many years been the custodians of Shakespeare's house 
 at Stratford-on-Avon were about to retire, and we urged 
 Skipsey to become a candidate for the place. After 
 paying a visit to the interesting town he did apply, but 
 there were many applicants. He, however, was the 
 chosen one, and it could scarcely be otherwise. The 
 list of those who supported him was altogether a 
 remarkable one — Browning, Tennyson, John Morley, 
 Burne Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Theodore Watts, 
 Leighton, F. R. Benson, Andrew Lang, Lord Carlisle, 
 W. M. Rossetti, Austin Dobson, Bram Stoker, Lord 
 Ravensworth, Thomas Burt, William Morris, Wilson 
 Barrett, Edmund Gosse, Professor Dowden and many 
 other men of mark, bore willing testimony to his intrinsic 
 value. The body with whom the election lay was a 
 large and important one, and he was asked to interview it. 
 There must have been a certain curiosity to see what 
 manner of man this was of whom so many leading men 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 73 
 
 spoke with enthusiasm. When he went in amongst 
 them they woiikl see a tall, portly, well-proportioned 
 man, with a fine, grave face — that of a thinker. He was 
 di'essed in a black frock-coat, and might have been one 
 of themselves, but for the somewhat retiring and aloof 
 expression of his eyes. His appearance was prepossess- 
 ing, but when he spoke there w^as some hesitation 
 amongst them. The account which he gave me of the 
 matter was sufficiently amusing. His accent was strong 
 racy Northumbrian with a curious South-country pro- 
 nunciation of certain words which he had no doubt 
 obtained when, as a very young man, he was working in 
 London. He w^as asked to withdraw, and the matter 
 was considered. When he was re-admitted the chairman 
 said, " Well, Mr. Skipsey, the Committee are very 
 favourably inclined towards you, but there is some 
 difficulty about your pronunciation." "I should like, 
 sir, to argue that question. I know that my pronuncia- 
 tion is not quite like yours, but I must be allowed to 
 say that I conceive it is much better, and should like to 
 proceed to prove it." That was not required, but it 
 says much for the excellence and wisdom of the 
 Committee that they should still have elected him, and 
 it also explains something of the true magnetism of the 
 man. Theoretically this place seemed an ideal refuge 
 for a poet, and I admit that I thought that in all 
 probability he would end his days at Stratford, but 
 some six months after he had entered upon the duties 
 of his office my wife and I went over to visit him. We 
 were much struck with the tranquil and delightful 
 beauty of the place. His house was charming; the 
 garden, in which the Misses Chataway had made a 
 
74 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 point of gi'owing all the plants which they could get and 
 which Shakespeare speaks of, was — to North-country eyes 
 at all events — a Paradise. But we soon found that the 
 work was not that for which our friends were suited. 
 They were too old to he transplanted from the North. 
 Mrs. Skipsey never took root amongst the kindly people 
 of a strange tongue, and she missed her children much. 
 It was worse with Skipsey. To have to conduct parties 
 over the little house, and explain each place and give a 
 history of each piece of furniture many times a day, was 
 in itself a great trial. The visitors were not always 
 thoughtful and reasonable. Some of the large parties 
 of Americans who came were especially difficult to 
 satisfy. They were very sceptical. How did he know 
 which room Shakespeare was really born in ? Was the 
 history which he gave of a table, a chair, or a desk 
 really true ? How did he know there ever was such a 
 man as Shakespeare ? In the States they had shown 
 satisfactorily that Lord Bacon of Verulam had written 
 the plays attributed to Shakespeare. It was much 
 more likely that a peer of the realm and a great lawyer 
 should write them than a poor play-actor. And so the 
 talk went on, and poor Skipsey' s temper ran short, and 
 his mind was often bewildered, and at the end of a busy 
 day he was quite exhausted and unfit for anything. I 
 found that he had begun to doubt that the story which 
 he had been taught was really in any sense true. The 
 constant suspicion and doubts freely and often cleverly 
 expressed had worked upon his mind. He felt that if 
 he were to make this his life's labour he would end by 
 doubting the very existence of Shakespeare, and so he 
 resigned his place and came home to the North. He 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 75 
 
 had been well and kindly treated at Stratford, but he had 
 tried in vain to do that for which he was not suited. 
 
 In September, 1880, Burne Jones sent Skipsey a 
 letter which runs as follows : — 
 
 ** North End. 
 
 " My dear Friend, — There is a little question I want 
 to ask you if I knew how to put it. 
 
 " You remember when we walked up and down the 
 garden here I talked of some happy possibility of your 
 ever being free from your present work ? I keep it 
 always on my mind, but it may be many a day before 
 we can compass anything. From time to time as I see 
 opportunity I feel my way, and one day I may be 
 successful, but meantime a friend of mine [this friend 
 proved to be Mr. Gladstone, who was then Prime 
 Minister] much interested in your work and in our 
 dear friend Dixon's life, would like to offer you a little 
 annual sum for the purchase of books or photogi-aphs, 
 or what not. It is not much — £10 yearly, I think — and 
 it comes straight from the Prime Minister, and you can 
 take it without feeling any discomfort, for it is from a 
 public fund for such purposes, and it was thought you 
 might not dislike it, and that it would help to fui-nish a 
 little library for you, however little leisure you now 
 have to read. Just tell me if you would like it. It has 
 been put so vaguely to me at first that I cannot quite 
 tell if it is permanent or ends with the present Ministry. 
 But I will ask that question to-day. If you dislike the 
 idea you will forgive my having spoken of it to you, but 
 it is meant to be some public recognition and sympathy, 
 and little as it is it might help you to collect a little 
 store of the books you love for happier days to come. 
 
76 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 Just tell me in a line if it would not be distasteful to 
 you, and I will have it settled at once. 
 
 ** I am writing in the middle of work, and so will end 
 with the business part of my letter. Only always 
 believe me 
 
 ** Your affectionate friend, 
 
 ** E. BuRNE Jones." 
 
 This was followed by a letter headed — 
 
 " The Grange. 
 *' My dear Friend, — I do not know whether you have 
 had definite notice from headquarters yet, but the grant is 
 an annuity for life, and is not affected by the going out 
 of a Ministry, and I am very glad you have accepted it, 
 for I know with what hearty goodwill it has been 
 offered. 
 
 *'In great haste, believe me 
 
 " Yours, 
 
 *'E. B. J." 
 
 In January, 1886, Skipsey received a donation from 
 the Royal Bounty of £'50, and the annuity was raised to 
 £25 a year. But his children were now grown up, and 
 they contributed to the housekeeping expenses, and I 
 think that the years which elapsed from this time until 
 the loss of his wife in 1902 were probably the best he 
 ever had known. 
 
 There were many matters with which he busied 
 himself. He had always, for instance, been greatly 
 interested in the subject of Spiritualism and devoted 
 considerable time to it. He also claimed to have 
 clairvoyant powers. In 1876 he wrote a complete 
 explanation of this matter as he then found it. In 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 77 
 
 writing to a friend he said, ** To tell you more than 
 you already know in regard to my seership would 
 require an elaborate treatise. You know that I get my 
 visions in the normal state, chiefly in the light at all 
 hours of the day or night, and with my eyes open. 
 Nearly all external objects, whether crystalline, opaque, 
 smooth, or coarse, polished or otherwise, serve as mirrors 
 or media in which or through which I may see. One 
 thing I have not explained to you, and that is when I 
 am in my best mood for seeing I very often feel as 
 though my face, beard, and other parts of my body, and 
 more especially the eyes, were anointed or steeped in oil. 
 This I experience let my visions be what they may, 
 whether of a celestial, a human, or a demoniacal 
 character. The great majority of my visions are human, 
 more especially since I began to make Spiritualism my 
 study. Visions of a symbolical character and of spirit 
 life I believe I have had, but I have always been very 
 careful what conclusions I drew from the sight of such 
 phenomena. Some seers are very fond of such visions, 
 but before they ask me to listen to their discussions, I 
 should feel obliged to them if they would relate 
 something they have seen, which can be proved to 
 have had an objective existence. The description of 
 the past life of the Samaritan woman by the Nazarene 
 at the well is to me of a thousand times more value 
 than the unnatm'al visions of St. John of Revelations, 
 which by the by are not revelations but riddles, in the 
 unriddling of which the reader is guided by no principle 
 drawn from the philosophy of life. I should tell you, as 
 you are so much interested in the welfare of Spiritualism 
 and the development of mediumship, that I believe the 
 
78 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 seer gift to be special, and that a person must be born 
 with it to be a good seer. I must also tell you that, 
 rare as this gift appears to be, its inheritor must also be 
 well endowed in other respects, and possess a qualified 
 mind before he or she can make a proper use of it, and 
 that it is folly, because a person has displayed some 
 symptoms of seeing, to encourage him to cultivate it 
 before he has become possessed of good mental training." 
 
 Then he goes on to lay emphasis on the word *' seer" 
 as being the word for the representation of that faculty 
 by which some people are enabled to see spiritual things, 
 and he goes on to relate a long conversation he had 
 with an old furnace-man in which Skipsey told him a 
 great deal about his life, and he ends by claiming the 
 power to see spiritual phenomena. 
 
 I cannot go in much more detail into this part oi 
 Skipsey' s experience. From time to time we discussed 
 points relating to seership and to Spiritualism, but as we 
 did not agree in our views upon the matter, we gradually 
 ceased to do this. The last thing I know about it was 
 that I was asked to attend a seance of avowed spiri- 
 tualists at which Skipsey was present. I need not enter 
 into any minute description of what went on. Such 
 things are now very well known. Suffice it to say that 
 as we walked away together after the stance I told 
 Skipsey that I had been impressed with one thing, which 
 was that the medium, who was a person of the highest 
 respectability, did not attempt wilfully to deceive the 
 congregation of persons present, but was herself 
 deceived, and went through a very considerable mental 
 struggle, but that I had seen sufficient to persuade 
 myself that the thing was absolutely a mistake from the 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 79 
 
 very bottom. A certain light which appeared upon a 
 baize curtain was interpreted to be a beautiful child. 
 It was impossible to see any detail of form or feature. 
 It entered into conversation with several people in the 
 room. I at last entered actively into conversation with 
 it, and as I happened to be very familiar with the ways 
 of children, I got it somewhat excited, and as soon as 
 I did this I noticed that the ** dis " and **dat" pro- 
 nunciation of the " th," which was always " d " at 
 first, ceased to be " d " and became " th." Every time 
 this happened I made a stroke upon my shirt-cuff, and 
 when we got out I told Skipsey what I had done. I 
 said to him, ''This is only a very slight matter, but it is 
 one which to me is far more convincing than anything 
 more elaborate. No child, however you may excite it, 
 who cannot pronounce * th ' will pronounce it because 
 of excitement. It has to be taught deliberately and 
 painfully to make 'd' into 'th.' You cannot bring 
 this result about in any other way, and here are eleven 
 times in which this supposed child made the alteration." 
 I remember well that Skipsey stood quite still and for 
 a considerable time said nothing, and then he said, 
 " You have opened a door to me, giving a clear view of 
 that which has long puzzled me ; I won't say more 
 to-night." From that day he never mentioned 
 Spiritualism to me, and I am informed by those who 
 were near to him that he abandoned it altogether. 
 
 In the year 1886 my wife and I persuaded Skipsey to 
 accompany us to the Lake District for a week or ten 
 days. He had at that time never seen mountains or 
 lakes. It was the first real holiday which he had ever 
 had, and his wonder and delight were a ioy to witness. 
 
80 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 We first went to Portinscale. Everything was new to 
 him. When he came down to breakfast on the first 
 morning he looked worn and weary. He explained that 
 he had wakened at daylight and could not get to sleep 
 again for the shouting of the little owls. I assured him 
 that there were no owls in the tower of the hotel or in 
 the immediate neighbourhood, but he was quite certain 
 I was wrong. After breakfast I went up with him to 
 his bedroom and found the swifts circling round and 
 round the tower and uttering their shrill twitter, and he 
 had taken this noise for the hooting of the owls. 
 
 He was much delighted with the Druidical Circle, 
 *' Meg and her daughters," and he had great satisfaction 
 in seeing for himself, for the first time, the prehistoric 
 remains of what was probably a religion long since 
 extinct. But boating on Derwentwater, visiting 
 Southey's house, seeing the water come down at Lodore, 
 and walking up Borrowdale, quite excited him with 
 intense delight. Never have I seen anj^thingto approach 
 his enjoyment. Eemember that mountains and lakes 
 were before this unknown to him, that the farms, the 
 sheep and cattle, the country folk at work, and the 
 streams babbling down the dale, were unlike anything 
 he had ever seen ; and then the mere fact that Coleridge, 
 Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, and De Quincey, Sir 
 Walter Scott, Christopher North, Thomas Gray, and 
 many another of the great men of the past, had lived in 
 or visited these scenes gave to them a sacred character 
 which he felt strongly. We passed on next to stay at 
 a lovely house situate on the pony path above Grasmere, 
 and were gracefully entertained by the lady who owns it. 
 Every day gave Skipsey fresh joy. We rowed along 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 81 
 
 Grasmere Lake and climbed Longhrigg, and in doing so 
 we chanced upon a bird's nest with four eggs in it. 
 These he carefully inspected, but was most anxious that 
 no harm should come from the inspection, and we sat 
 down some little distance away until, to his great joy, 
 we saw the mother bird return. This excursion is 
 recorded in the following lines : — 
 
 THE FAIR ROWER. 
 
 She took the oars and rowed along 
 
 With such a grace, the mere did waken 
 
 Into a sweet melodious song, 
 
 At every charming stroke was taken. 
 
 And at each sound, the hills around. 
 By many a magic memory haunted, 
 
 And skies did seem with joy to gleam 
 Within the mere, her strokes enchanted. 
 
 A second he entitled *' To a Startled Bird, on 
 climbing Loughrigg with some friends, 1886." 
 
 Fly not away, wee birdie, pray ! 
 
 No weasels we, no evil bringers. 
 Would make thee bear the pangs that tear 
 
 Too oft the hearts of sweetest singers. 
 
 Long may thy nest with eggs be blest. 
 
 And prove with these brown four, yet fountains 
 
 Of tender lays to charm the days 
 Of future climbers of the mountains. 
 
 Another day we visited Rydal Mount, Dove Cottage, 
 and the touchingly beautiful churchyard at Grasmere. 
 
 6 
 
82 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 He was often too much moved for speech. Indeed, he 
 was naturally not a talkative man. He was in the hahit 
 at home of staying much in a room by himself excepting 
 at meal-times, and working there and thinking out his 
 poems, and it was generally only at the family meals 
 that his wife and family saw anything of him, but then 
 he conversed freely upon all manner of matters. When 
 in a general company he joined in all conversation, and 
 held his own on whatever the subject might be. But in 
 the grounds of Rydal Mount he was most silent. I 
 cannot tell what actual estimate he had formed of his 
 own poetic powers. He certainly felt himself a full 
 member of the Fraternity of the Bards, and had the 
 sense of a certain kinship with the great men who had 
 gone before him. In the verses which he afterwards 
 wrote describing this time he imagines Wordsworth 
 stooping to crown him " The Rustic Bard." But there 
 is nothing of conceit in this. He knew that at times he 
 had felt the true inspiration ; he knew also that in these 
 things there are those who belong and those who do not, 
 and that the barrier between them cannot be passed. 
 He further knew that among them *' there is no first 
 nor last," that some have wider sympathies and greater 
 variety, but that '* all service is the same to God." He 
 listened perhaps too much and too frequently to those 
 who, without judgment or knowledge, thought to please 
 him by extravagant and undigested praise. They 
 would say that such and such a song about '* Lily" or 
 ** Annie" was beyond anything which Burns had ever 
 written, but he was not spoiled by such talk, only a little 
 moved for a moment ; then the truth made way, and it 
 was here that the calm, thoughtful good sense of Dante 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 83 
 
 Gabriel Rossetti was of so much service to him. I do 
 not think that his judgment of his contemporaries or of 
 those close to him was always to be relied upon, as is 
 shown in these very lines. He would put Wordsworth 
 and Rossetti side by side as of equal importance, but I 
 think that this was only carrying beyond its reasonable 
 limits the fact that there is no first nor last in questions 
 of this kind. 
 
 But to return to Grasmere, and the happy visit to 
 Heugh Folds. As I have pointed out, Skipsey had 
 always a hankering after the supernatural, and he was 
 by no means a disbeliever in ghosts. One morning 
 when he came down to breakfast he had a look which 
 showed clearly that something had happened, but he 
 would not say what. He acknowledged that he had 
 not slept until the dawn of day. After some time he 
 told us that he was falling asleep about midnight, when 
 he heard soft sounds proceeding from different parts ol 
 the room. Then there was quiet for a time, and again 
 the noises came, and the bedclothes were gently moved. 
 There was some one in the room who could enter with- 
 out opening the door. He lay in anxious expectation 
 until the light of day gleamed through the blinds, when 
 he got up to unravel the mystery and heard an unmis- 
 takable mew from his nocturnal visitant. He was not 
 quite pleased at the free laughter at his adventure, but 
 it was recorded in the host's visitors' book — 
 
 At dead of night strange murmurs came, 
 Poor Skipsey' s heart went pat ; 
 
 Alas for his poetic fame. 
 
 The ghost mewed! 'Twas the cat. 
 
84 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 He was always fond of music, and had an excellent 
 taste in that which he cared most about. But he was 
 chiefly touched by songs, and especially by the old 
 Scotch and Irish songs, although he had a large 
 acquaintance with German songs and song-writers to 
 which I must allude hereafter, and which had a great 
 influence upon his own verses. The old North-country 
 songs, old Irish ditties. Burns' and Scotch songs gene- 
 rally, were his great delight. He made the acquaint- 
 ance of a young lady at Grasmere who was a sweet 
 singer, and who was liberally kind in satisfying his 
 insatiate desire, and, naming her by the name of her 
 father's house, he speaks of her grace and worth, 
 and then adds — 
 
 Had we the power 
 A song would be yon lady's dower. 
 As sweet as e'er in midnight hour, 
 
 To bugle ring 
 Did Echo from her airy tower 
 
 In rapture sing ! 
 
 Ay, could the deed the will display 
 
 Then, then were sung what thou, mad fay, 
 
 Sweet Echo, to its spells a prey, 
 
 Would yet prolong. 
 Till all the world had pass'd away 
 
 In one wild song ! 
 
 This first holiday in the real country, far from towns, 
 manufactories, or mines, with nothing to do but enjoy him- 
 self, with the reminiscences of the great school of Lake 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 85 
 
 poets, and with the beauties of nature always around 
 him, made a lasting impression on Skipsey, and his 
 mind constantly turned back to it as to a great land- 
 mark in his life. 
 
 But he was to have a time of still greater excitement. 
 Amongst the many friends he had made were a young 
 married couple, Mr. and Mrs. J. R. Wood, who were 
 spending a year or two in the old country before they 
 returned to the land of their adoption, Australia. Amongst 
 other things they were the possessors of a yacht, and 
 they kindly persuaded Skipsey to make a voyage to 
 Norway with them. That is a great experience for any 
 man ; for him it was a real revelation. There is much 
 affinity between our North land and that glorious 
 country, and that affinity has existed since the earliest 
 historic times. In our popular speech we habitually use 
 many Norse words, and I have known Northumbrians 
 who, fancying that they could understand whole sentences 
 spoken by Norwegian peasants to each other, joined in 
 the conversation without obtaining any satisfactory 
 result. 
 
 In 1893 Fridjof Nansen was already preparing for 
 the voyage of discovery towards the North Pole which 
 he had carefully contemplated. Skipsey had met him, 
 and had been charmed with his wide and accurate 
 knowledge of our literature. He had been present on 
 the memorable Sunday in February, 1892, when, at the 
 Tyne Theatre, Nansen explained to three thousand 
 persons his plans, and the reasons for the startling con- 
 clusions to which he had come, in so simple and lucid a 
 way that every word of that which was really a highly 
 scientific discourse was not only heard, but understood 
 
86 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 and treasured by an entranced audience. When the 
 lecturer at length brought his discourse to a conclusion 
 there was a scene of intense enthusiasm, and some 
 management was required to prevent the excitement 
 becoming painfully great. In October of that year the 
 Fram was launched, and she sailed on Midsummer Day 
 of the following year. 
 
 Amongst other places which Skipsey visited was the 
 yard in which she was being built, and it was a 
 thrilling thing to gaze upon her almost ready to pass 
 away beyond the dense veil which, at that time, hid the 
 far Arctic regions from the habitable world. Skipsey 
 recorded the yacht's voyage in a rhyming letter to Mr. 
 and Mrs. Wood when they returned to Australia, and I 
 extract the following lines from this letter. They 
 show how thoroughly the spirit of the glorious country 
 had entered into his mind, and all Norwegian travellers 
 will appreciate the way in which many of the salient 
 features of the land are alluded to. 
 
 When the Muse returns, then a song that burns 
 
 Will the harp ring out when the Muse returns ! 
 
 Then away, away, will Care take wing. 
 
 And the heart will dance and the harp will ring. 
 
 Then the harp will ring, and the song shall be 
 
 Of two young rovers from over the sea, 
 
 The one as fair and the other as bold 
 
 As ever were sung by a harper old. 
 
 And the harp will ring and the strain prolong 
 
 How they cheered the heart of a child of song ; 
 
 Then the harp will ring, and ring with power, 
 
 Of a fleet, fleet yacht, and a Nordland tour! 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 87 
 
 How with the bard they swept the wave 
 And saw the land of the Viking brave ; 
 Of the wild weird fjords up which they sailed, 
 And the pine-clad hills up which they scaled, 
 And the glory and roar of the waterfall 
 They viewed and heard, will the harp recall. 
 And the harp will ring, and ring with might. 
 Of the great wild birds, and their cries by night ; 
 Of the deep, deep lakes no plummet can sound ; 
 Of the vale where the Viking ship was found ; 
 Of the hope they breathed, of the awe they felt, 
 When they saw the ship for Nansen built. 
 And the prayer that welled in the heart for one 
 Who dared to do what no Viking had done. 
 0, the harp will ring, and a song that burns 
 Will the harp ring out when the Muse returns ! 
 
 In 1885 Skipsey became the editor of several of the 
 first volumes of poetry published under the title of the 
 Canterbury Poets by Walter Scott. Those for which he 
 was immediately responsible were Coleridge, Shelley, 
 Blake, Burns and Poe. In each case he wrote a preface 
 for the volume containing a short biography and a 
 critical appreciation of the author. From these Intro- 
 ductions much insight may be obtained into the working 
 of Skipsey's mind. By this time he had read much, 
 including a great number of criticisms, and if you really 
 wished to know what he was as a critic, you had to give 
 him some book as yet unknown to him, and wait until 
 he had carefully read and weighed it. You would then 
 get a clear and unbiassed judgment which, whether 
 you agi-eed with it or not, you would be compelled 
 
88 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 carefully to consider, and would in all probability 
 treasure. 
 
 I remember giving him on one occasion "Tom Jones" 
 to read, and when he returned it he said, " That is a 
 marvellous work. It is no ordinary novel or romance. 
 It is a piece of actual history, far more genuine and 
 simple than any other novel I have read." 
 
 But it was yet better to hear him discuss some point 
 of literature with a man of trained intellect and know- 
 ledge. Perhaps the best instance of this which I can 
 recall was when he met Mr. Edmund Gosse, then the 
 Professor of Poetry at Cambridge, who was much in- 
 terested in him, and, after a brief conversation, Skipsey 
 became at home with him to a quite unusual extent. 
 There was, if I remember rightly, no real point of 
 difference between them, but Mr. Gosse, with gi'eat 
 ability, drew him on until he got into an eloquent and 
 close comparison between Shylock and Marlowe's Bar- 
 rabas in the ''Jew of Malta." You might have thought 
 that Skipsey had known them both, and he contrasted 
 their characters and dealt with their actions as though 
 he was speaking of two men with whom he had held 
 intimate communion. There were other points of dis- 
 cussion and conversation which I need not mention, but 
 this unpremeditated discourse has always recurred to me 
 as being of special value. 
 
 In the prefatory notices which I have alluded to, 
 although the biographical part is necessarily slight, the 
 criticisms when he is at his best are all his own, and the 
 frequent excursions which he makes into comparisons 
 with other poets have a peculiar interest. I have said 
 that he had by this time learned what other men had 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 89 
 
 said of most of tliem, and he had a gi-eat power of 
 assimilation. But let me give a specimen of his own 
 words. 
 
 Of Shelley he says, after summing up his chief 
 works, ** Besides the great poems named, he had during 
 the same wonderful period of his life poured forth a 
 flood of lyric and lesser pieces which had won for him 
 a rank only second to the highest in literature. The 
 great poems named raise him amongst those who occu23y 
 the highest rank. In many of his pieces he displayed 
 too strong a predilection for the merely fanciful. But 
 his greatest efforts are beyond those of all other poets 
 since Milton for the magnificent and the sublime. In 
 sublimity he was only surpassed by Milton and Shake- 
 speare." Of course, this doctrine is questionable, but it 
 is Skipsey. He attributes Shelley's fault of a " chro- 
 matic brilliancy," *' dark with excessive light" (as 
 Leigh Hunt says), "to a plethora of fancy." "Besides 
 this fault, which arises out of a plethora of fancy, there 
 is another which is the offspring of an excessive fond- 
 ness for knotty mental problems and subjects which 
 belong rather to the sphere of the metaphysician than 
 that of the poet; and in the treatment of which he 
 necessarily discarded the example and precept of Milton, 
 who held that poetry ought to be ' simple, sensuous, and 
 passionate,' or ' impassioned ' as Coleridge has it, and 
 both of these defects infect even the very greatest of his 
 productions — the * Cenci ' excepted." Again he says: 
 " Shelley is in verity the king of verse melodists. That 
 title at least must be conceded to him, though in sheer 
 quality of melody and other essentials of lyric song he 
 has been at least equalled, if not excelled, by Shake- 
 
90 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 speare. Shelley, to whom the lyric was a channel through 
 which he would pour all his own richest and most 
 precious personal feelings, has indeed left a number of 
 pieces characterised by a beauty of sentiment which is 
 only equalled by two or three of the tiny songlets of 
 Shakespeare, to whom, on the other hand, the lyric was 
 merely the medium through which he would utter the 
 supposed feeling or fancy of the moment of others — but 
 against this must be set an airiness and spontaneity of 
 utterance in all cases unmatched even by Shelley — while 
 the wonderful dramatic propriety of expression displayed 
 in those utterances is in itself a quality of the highest 
 and most supreme value in song — and one, too, by the 
 way, to which Shelley can lay little or no claim. Indeed, 
 in this latter quality I know of no poet who has made 
 the least approach to Shakespeare except Burns, and 
 that poet, too, is also notable for his spontaneity, airi- 
 ness, and melody ; though in the second and last respect 
 he is far below Shelley, as in spontaneity and all other 
 song-essentials he is below Shakespeare, and so on the 
 score of sheer quality alone must be put aside in a 
 consideration as to whom shall be assigned the highest 
 honour in lyric song. But if, on the other hand, fer- 
 tility of faculty and quantity of lyric product, and that 
 product comprising as it does a series of pictures typical 
 of a vaster number of the various phases of human 
 passion and character than is to be found in any other 
 songsters be considered — and many eminent critics seem 
 to think that this ought on such an occasion to be con- 
 sidered — then it would be a question if Burns had not 
 as just a claim as either Shelley or Shakespeare them- 
 selves to the contested laurel. This is a question on 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 91 
 
 which critics, in all likelihood, will at all times differ, 
 and on which the mass of readers will exercise their own 
 judgment, whatever critics may think ; but of this we 
 may rest assured, whatever the prevailing opinion as to 
 the relative positions as lyrists these bards ought to 
 occupy, that just as the intrinsic value of their songs 
 will remain untouched by such opinion, so just will that 
 intrinsic value cause those songs through all time to 
 be cherished as among the brightest, the purest, the 
 richest, the rarest, and if in size the smallest, in quality 
 the most precious of all the precious jewels that sparkle 
 in the crown of British song." 
 
 I do not quote this as the final word on the subject 
 or as a specimen of classic prose writing, but in it and 
 in the quotations which I give from Skipsey's Introduc- 
 tions I wish to show what his views are on certain 
 points not without importance. The style of his prose 
 writing may also be well gathered from such an extract. 
 His fondness for exceedingly long sentences and his 
 love of introducing unexpected comparisons are manifest. 
 I also think it fair to give a full quotation which shows 
 the habit of the sudden introduction of new topics w^hich 
 was always a snare to him. In fact, there scarcely 
 seems a justification for this weighing of the merits of 
 Shelley, Shakespeare, and Burns as lyrists at all. 
 There is little enough space, in thirty-two pages of 
 prefatory notice, for biography and criticism, if the 
 latter be devoted to the works of the author, without 
 making any general excursions into the boundless 
 realms of comparison. It was not mere padding or 
 writing for the sake of writing, for it was thought out 
 and was introduced with deliberate intention. I have 
 
92 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 known Skipsey discuss such matters at much length, 
 and with excellent reasons for taking a wrong course, 
 and it was rare indeed that he was persuaded that he 
 had adopted one when he made a great digression. 
 
 It was often said in the critical notices of Skipsey's 
 poems which appeared from time to time during his 
 lifetime that he reminded the writers of Blake. I 
 cannot think that this is a sound criticism. Blake is 
 simple and direct, or mystical and remote. Skipsey 
 also is simple and direct, and there are a few poems, 
 amongst those which he published in early middle life, 
 which are tinged with mysticism, but it is a mysticism 
 which I do not think in any way recalls that of Blake. 
 Thus in the edition of "Miscellaneous Lyrics" which he 
 published in 1878 you find " The Seer," which can 
 scarcely perhaps be called mystical. It deals with the 
 reasons why the seer is worthy of man's love ; there is 
 certainly no resemblance to Blake in it. I may quote 
 the concluding verse of a somewhat long poem, and it 
 will be at once seen how even in a matter of this kind 
 he is quite simple and direct : — 
 
 Ah, to the last his words and deeds are sweeter 
 Than is the lark's song in the cloud above. 
 
 And rare the bard could find befitting metre 
 To hymn the love we owe this child of love. 
 
 But Blake had no great influence upon Skipsey. 
 There has of late years sprung up a Blake cult which I 
 do not think is altogether a genuine growth. The critics, 
 not knowing Skipsey, and finding much natural sim- 
 plicity in much of his writing, and having just learned 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 93 
 
 about Blake, made the comparison of the two. But 
 had they known, they would have seen that the great 
 influence upon him was that of Heinrich Heine, as I 
 know and think I shall prove. 
 
 Then there are *' Omega," " The Inner Conflict," 
 ** The Mystic Lyre," '' Arachne," '' lo P^ean," and those 
 which in the 1886 edition he entitles " Psychic Poems," 
 which are perhaps chiefly interesting because they 
 reveal an astonishing individuality. Where did Skipsey 
 get these thoughts ? How full of interest they are when 
 you compare them with the so-called poems which some 
 pitmen publish, and which are chiefly conspicuous for 
 want of all thought ! I print some of Skipsey' s in the 
 Appendix, as the reader should see the wide range of 
 thought and expression which this self-taught man 
 had. I shall have to show shortly how, in addition to 
 our own poets, he was deeply indebted to the translations 
 of German poets, especially of Heinrich Heine. But 
 after all Skipsey is never a mocking-bird. It has been 
 well said that the mocking-bird has no voice of its own, 
 and Skipsey, in the poems which are peculiarly charac- 
 teristic of him, has his own voice and no other man's. 
 However, Blake was a great favourite of his, and he 
 carefully read not only his poems but the difi'erent 
 works which were written about him. Still, I do not 
 think that his introductory sketch to the volume of 
 Blake's poems in the Canterbury series is satisfactory. 
 He did not follow Blake in his verse. At the outset of 
 the Introduction he gives a wonderful little song which 
 Blake wrote before he was fourteen years old, and then 
 proceeds to give Poe's "Song to Helen" without any 
 reason except that " he was about the same age." He 
 
94 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 next quotes Mr. Allingham, who supposed that Blake 
 may have met Emmanuel Swedenborg in the street and 
 walked beside him, and upon this baseless notion he 
 imagines what would have happened if they had met. 
 When he tells of his hero's marriage to Catherine 
 Boucher he is led to speak of the unsuitable women 
 men of genius have married, and Socrates, Dickens, 
 Bulwer Lytton, Sterne, Byron, Burns, Shakespeare, 
 and **even the divine Milton," are in turn brought 
 forth as witnesses. He points out that Blake must have 
 felt himself the herald of a new era in art and song, and 
 the ** Poetical Sketches" were put into print in 1783, 
 *' when Burns was only in his twenty-fourth year and 
 altogether unknown to fame, Coleridge in his eleventh 
 year, Wordsworth in his thirteenth, and Byron, Shelley, 
 and Keats were as yet unborn." 
 
 Although there is a slight yet charming sketch of the 
 man, there is nothing which can be called real con- 
 structive criticism of Blake's writings. Skipsey raises 
 the question whether an artist should not rest content 
 with one art, and not endeavour to combine poetry and 
 design, but he does not give any verdict upon it. To 
 discuss it would be merely an exercise of the mind, for, 
 after all was said that could be said upon the subject, 
 the career of a real genius would remain unaffected by 
 the issue. 
 
 Now, I cannot but think that with all his admiration 
 for much of Blake's simpler work he never was an utterly 
 congenial poet to Skipsey. When he came to edit 
 Coleridge you at once felt the difference. Here was a 
 man after his own heart, and he perhaps allowed himself 
 to be too much carried away by his worship of the great 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 95 
 
 poet — ** The great bard," as he says of him, *' who sung 
 for us and for all time, ' An Ancient Marinere,' 
 * Christabel,' * Kubla Khan,' and twenty other of the 
 sweetest, finest, and most marvellous songs that ever 
 flowed from the soul of a bard." Indeed, his criticism 
 becomes something of an extravagant panegyric, not 
 without excuse, for it is not easy to write about Cole- 
 ridge in ordinary words. Nor was it indiscriminate. 
 He says, for example: *' It is remarkable that, with all 
 his genius for poetry and his great powers as a dramatic 
 critic, he was not himself a great dramatist. In fact, 
 his original dramas arre neither an addition to his fame 
 nor to the prized treasures of om* dramatic literature." 
 He concludes his Preface by saying : " The memory of 
 the author of the * Ancient Marinere ' was such that, 
 when he died, the world may be said to have lost all 
 that could be lost of the greatest poet, if we except 
 Shelley, that England had produced since the days of 
 Milton, and in the domain of pure poetry such a one as 
 has not appeared in the world since." 
 
 But, as might be expected from his early acquaintance 
 with him and from the undoubted influence which that 
 acquaintance had upon him, Skipsey comes to his best 
 when Burns is his theme. He devoted two of the 
 Canterbury volumes to him, the first a book of poems 
 and the second a book of songs. The chief interest in 
 his Prefaces is that you learn not so much about Burns 
 but what Skipsey thought of his work and the place he 
 took amongst poets, and of the reasons for his exalted 
 position. Far too much has been written about Burns 
 apologetically by those who knew little about him but 
 the facts that at times he drank too much whisky and 
 
96 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 that be was never insensible to tbe charms of women. 
 But these things are stains upon the character of the 
 man freely admitted by all of his admirers and readily 
 accounted for when you are acquainted with the circum- 
 stances of his life and rightly forgotten when you come 
 under the sway of the poet. 
 
 As for his position, no Southerner, who needs a 
 glossary to understand him, can be allowed to give 
 evidence. If to touch the finest and best chords of the 
 people's heart wherever he is listened to is proof of 
 worth, then, with one exception, Burns stands alone. 
 
 And Skipsey shows why. He speaks of the points in 
 which William Shakespeare and Robert Burns stand 
 together, and how they are alike dowered with the 
 deepest human sympathy. And this is perhaps one 
 of the most certain tests in judging of a man's true 
 poetic character. The power to actually sympathise 
 with the world generally, not only with one class of it but 
 with all classes, with all the manifold varieties which 
 go to make up the human race in any country, and the 
 power to express that sympathy in such a way that 
 unobtrusively but certainly it reaches the heart and 
 understanding of every one who listens, is a mighty 
 power. Then Skipsey says: *' There is no foolish 
 desire, let me say, to compare Burns with Shakespeare, 
 but in his obvious love for what is noble and sweet in 
 human nature, in his mercy on human frailty, in his 
 sympathy with the oppressed, in his pity for the poor, 
 the helpless, the needy, with the corresponding power of 
 expression, he might be so compared, and when this is 
 said it is meant for the higest compliment that can 
 possibly be paid to any poet, for I am not, as already 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 97 
 
 intimated, one of those who appear to regard the great 
 dramatist as a sort of 'mere intellectual machine from 
 which when once set agoing anything or everything 
 might have been expected, hut as a man whose heart 
 was as brimful of love as his head was of wisdom, and 
 that, moreover, without such love no such wisdom could 
 have been had — that such wisdom, in short, was only 
 the natural and perfect blossom of a tree, the entire sap 
 in whose veins had for its chief element the essence of 
 love itself. In this respect then the dramatist and the 
 lyrist were identical. Neither was Burns deficient in 
 that dramatic power from the aid of which only can the 
 rarest of poetic creations be produced. He composed 
 no dramas so called, but ' The Dying Words,' ' The 
 Twa Dogs,' ' The Jolly Beggars,' and many more of 
 his poems and songs and ballads, display the dramatic 
 faculty in a supreme degree and exhibit in turn the 
 earnestness, the playfulness, the tenderness, the sarcasm, 
 the pathos, or the humour, or what else may be required 
 under the given conditions and at the moment from the 
 interlocutors in his miniature performances, and that 
 whether they be lordly warriors, ragged mendicants, base 
 hypocrites, hoary-headed sages, worldly-wise dames 
 * wi' wrinkled een,' or thoughtless love-smitten lasses ; 
 nay, and this dramatic power holds as good when dogs 
 and sheep are made to speak their minds no less than 
 it is evinced in the words and acts of our bard's women 
 and men." 
 
 Again speaking of Burns's gift *' to see into the 
 nature of men and things, and the daring and hardihood 
 to say what is thus seen," he says: "It was Burns's 
 glory to be able to do this, and it was his above all 
 
 7 
 
98 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 others to have expressed what he thus saw in language 
 which was at once understood by all, and went direct to 
 the heart of the people for whom he sang." 
 
 Skipsey also points out that you cannot read a few of 
 the songs or poems as masterpieces and then be content 
 to leave the rest, because you will thus fail to under- 
 stand the beauty and mystery of his powers. *' Nearly 
 all his poems and very many of his songs are notable 
 for some peculiarity of sentiment, observation, or turn 
 in the expression, and which in itself possesses a charm 
 for the mere reader of poetry, while it throws a light 
 into some hidden nook of the popular mind and serves 
 to bring out some trait of the national character." 
 
 This is a pregnant saying, and of perfect truth. His 
 language *' went direct to the heart of the people for 
 whom he sang." It did and it still does, although it 
 is more than a century since he was laid to rest. The 
 once well known Scotch vocalist, Mr. Kennedy, told 
 me that he and his family had given ''Nichts wi' 
 Burns" all over the world, and had never failed to 
 gather large and appreciative audiences. This was 
 perhaps peculiarly the case in Australia, where 
 great barns were cleared, the audiences gathered in 
 some instances from an area of hundreds of miles and 
 staying for one or two nights, keeping the powers 
 of the vocalists very severely taxed. Some of his songs 
 have been set to music by the finest German composers, 
 and they are favourites in Norway and Sweden. In 
 Scotland they are the familiar friends of every one, of 
 all classes alike. I have capped verses of Burns with 
 farm labourers and farmers in the Lowlands, great 
 grazing farmers who measured their farms by miles 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 99 
 
 and not by acres, professors, members of Parliament, 
 baronets, divines and gillies, and I can testify to the 
 fact that it is no love of jingle, no attraction of mere 
 words, no simple admiration, but a living and life-giving 
 affection, which the Scotsman bears for the verses 
 which go direct to his heart and are his daily food. 
 Burns was to Skipsey a treasury of good things of 
 the best and truest. 
 
 It is, perhaps, strange to find that his next choice of 
 a poet whose works he should edit was Edgar Allan Poe. 
 I cannot but think that he habitually overestimated that 
 strange, wild genius. Poe's eccentricities, his many 
 misfortunes, his constant strife under much opposition 
 and provocation, his many sorrows, all appealed with 
 intense force to Skipsey' s sympathetic mind, but that 
 Poe should seek consolation in the hour of bereavement 
 in the dangerous nepenthe of strong drink, though 
 explicable and intelligible, was certain to increase the 
 very complaint he took refuge from. Still, it is not 
 a thing to be considered when you are weighing his 
 merits as a poet, and it is difficult to place these nearly 
 so high as Skipsey does. When he says, for example, 
 that " * The Eaven ' took the world of letters by storm, 
 and produced a sensation throughout America, and 
 wherever the English language was spoken, such as no 
 single poem had ever done before or is likely to do 
 again,'* I can see no evidence to support the statement. 
 But if the whole of the critical introduction is read 
 I think that we find an eminently sane conception of 
 Poe's true place in poetry, in spite of an attempt to 
 justify the vain saying that ** a long poem is a 
 contradiction in terms," and to prove that Shelley, 
 
100 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 Tennyson, and Coleridge must rest their claims to 
 consideration as poets upon their short poems. 
 
 The editing of these volumes was the last con- 
 siderable work which Skipsey completed. From time 
 to time he wrote short verses which show in an 
 extraordinary way the influence which Heine had upon 
 him. He had not only studied him carefully in trans- 
 lation, but had heard him sung, and had sought for 
 explanation of many of his less clear passages. He was 
 specially affected by the way in which Heine drew a 
 picture or expressed a thought in two or three verses. 
 This is shown by several of Skipsey' s verselets in later 
 years. Many of these have a perfection and charm of 
 
 their own. 
 
 THE BUTTERFLY. 
 
 The butterfly from flower to flower 
 The urchin chased ; and when at last 
 
 He caught it in my lady's bower, 
 He cried Ha ! ha ! and held it fast. 
 
 Awhile he laugh'd, but soon he wept 
 When, looking at the prize he'd caught, 
 
 He found he had to ruin swept 
 The very glory he had sought. 
 
 Or the following lines on " The Dewdrop ": 
 
 Ah ! be not vain, in yon flower bell 
 
 As rare a pearl did I appear 
 As ever grew in ocean shell 
 
 To jingle at a Helen's ear. 
 
 So was I till a cruel blast 
 
 Arose and swept me to the ground ; 
 
 When, in the jewel of the past. 
 Earth but a drop of water found. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 101 
 
 But he knew and said that his chief work was done. 
 He wrote continually at a History of ^stheticism, hvit 
 he had not sufficient knowledge pi* ih'B ' many kindled 
 subjects which touched this to/ Really '; doa}' -with Si;!.c^ata, 
 task; and I think he found thiiS out •for'iiiinself: ^' StiH, 
 his conversational powers were never abated until long 
 and severe illness laid him on a bed of sickness, and, 
 even then, at intervals when his physical strength 
 was sufficient, it was a rare pleasure to listen to his 
 thoughts on poetry and poets, or, at times, upon the 
 changes which the passing years had made in the life 
 around him, or upon the great questions of foreign 
 and domestic policy which were agitating men and 
 to which he had always given much attention. He 
 took from early days a keen interest in domestic 
 questions and in all matters of foreign policy. 
 
 He was indeed a rare conversationist. No one who 
 really knew him at all intimately could fail to see 
 how much greater a man he was than even the best 
 of his works showed him to be. His knowledge of a 
 multitude of matters was extensive, and it was in- 
 timately accurate. I may illustrate this by what 
 happened one evening at Bensham Grove. Amongst 
 the persons who had gathered there by chance was 
 a lady from a neighbouring town, who had been reading 
 John Morley's "Voltaire." She asked where the line 
 of Shakespeare which he quoted, 
 
 ** Roses their sharp spines being gone " 
 
 occurred. Several of us thought that we could re- 
 member it in Shakespeare, but we failed to find it, and 
 
102 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 we sought in glossaries in vain. Mr. Morley happened 
 tohe stajing with us, and he was appealed to, but he 
 had'-^known* TJ^^h^n' he wrote it twenty years before, 
 th<JUgh he .coxdd not- now remember. Just then Skipsey 
 chknced to come' into the room, and before he greeted 
 any one, I asked him, *' Where does ' Roses their sharp 
 spines being gone' come from?" ''Well," he said, 
 *'they are the opening lines of Beaumont and Fletcher's 
 * Two Devoted Kinsmen,' but several good authorities 
 attribute them to Shakespeare, and I think there is 
 much to be said for that view." 
 
 I remember one night when a strong argument went 
 on between Mr. Chalmers Morton, who was then 
 Member for Devonport, and Mr. F. R. Benson, the 
 well-known actor, upon the question whether Shake- 
 speare was or was not an admirer of the dog as a 
 companion to man. They were well matched an- 
 tagonists, and the argument was interesting and 
 amusing. Skipsey came in by accident, and, to my 
 surprise, he at once took Mr. Morton's view that 
 Shakespeare thought but little of the dog as a friend 
 of man ; he depicted it as devoid of manners when he 
 mentioned it in a friendly way, and, otherwise, only 
 acknowledged its excellence as an instrument of the 
 chase. Skipsey said that Mr. Flowers, the well-known 
 Stratford man, had written a book upon the subject 
 which was in fact, in his opinion, a conclusive mono- 
 graph. Mr. Morton afterwards prepared a complete 
 statement, setting out every time the dog is mentioned 
 in Shakespeare's plays, and it in a remarkable way 
 confirmed this view. Skipsey never spoke at random 
 on such matters. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 103 
 
 The great interest of Skipsey's conversation lay in 
 its originality, simplicity, and sincerity. The fruits of 
 the long periods devoted to thought in the loneliness 
 of his daily avocation in the mine were poured out in 
 a way which was full of refreshment and instruction, 
 but he did not think of simply speaking for the sake 
 of producing a certain effect ; he thought of nothing 
 but the matter in hand. 
 
 In om* long walks he always broached some subject 
 upon which he cast a rare and often beautiful light. It 
 was marvellously interesting to see how open he was 
 to natural beauty, how in the things which lay close 
 about him, in the wayside flowers, in the march of 
 the clouds, in the colours of the sunset, he took 
 intense delight. He would often choose as a topic 
 some literary theme — a new poem, an essay on some 
 old poet, a question upon Shakespeare's Sonnets, 
 Goethe's Faust as contrasted with Marlowe's Dr. 
 Faustus — the deep instinctiveness of the one and the 
 weird objectiveness of the other, and his expositions 
 were always refreshing and full of light. 
 
 The songs of different lands and their local character, 
 and the way in which, without knowing the words, you 
 might tell what part of the world the song came from, 
 was a favourite theme, and many were the unexpected 
 illustrations which he adduced. A Norwegian captain, 
 a friend of mine, who had spent much time in the 
 islands of the Greek Archipelago, sang many of 
 the local songs to him, and there could be no doubt 
 as to their place of origin. He had an intense love 
 for music but a perfect passion for song, and he fully 
 appreciated the poetic richness of the German *' Volks- 
 
104 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 lieder." It was a pleasure to watch him as he listened 
 to old English hallads, to Burns' songs, to Stanford's 
 setting of *' Patrick Sarsfield," " The Arbutus Tree," 
 or the " Little Ked Lark." No doubt they spoke more 
 directly to him, but he was much devoted to Schubert 
 and Schumann, and took much delight in Goethe's 
 songs, as well as those of the German people. I have 
 never known any one who got more excellent enjoyment 
 out of song than Skipsey. Unfortunately it is im- 
 possible to give an idea in words of what such things 
 really were. Those who have seen him when he was 
 deeply moved can imagine how rarely it was possible 
 to pass an hour with him without going away feeling 
 the richer for the occasion. 
 
 He was an admirer of Robert Browning's poetry, but 
 cared much the most for " Pippa Passes," and 
 especially the wild, passionate scene between Ottima 
 and Sebald. Few of the longer poems he read at 
 all, and the same is true of Tennyson's poetry. 
 
 That there was a peculiar charm about his conversa- 
 tion and about the man himself is shown by the high 
 estimate formed of him by men of widely different pur- 
 suits, but who, in common, highly valued all that shows 
 a man to be a true thinker of power and independence. 
 
 I take the following from the " Memorials of Edward 
 Burne Jones," by Lady Burne Jones. She writes : 
 *' This summer (1880) brought us a brief friendship, 
 and then took away the friend it gave — Mr. Thomas 
 Dixon, of Sunderland, to whom Buskin wrote the letters 
 afterwards published as ' Time and Tide by Wear and 
 Tyne.' Mr. Dixon had already written to Edward, but 
 he first came to the Grange one day early in June, when 
 
THOMAS DIXON 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 105 
 
 he lunched with us. We felt the delicacy of his nature, 
 and liked him at once ; and the liking was quickened 
 when we found that his great pleasure was not to intro- 
 duce himself but to bring his chief friend and hero, Joseph 
 Skipsey, up from Newcastle to London for a few days in 
 order to make him known to some of the men whose 
 work he specially honoured, and who he thought would 
 recognise Skipsey' s gifts. What he said of his friend is 
 well known : that he had worked in a coal-pit from the 
 time when he was seven years old, but that a ray of the 
 divine light and genius had lit up even that black world 
 for him, and by this time he was a man to be worshipped 
 by at least one other — who was telling us the story. 
 
 "A few days after this Mr. Dixon dined with us to 
 meet Morris, and my diary says it was * A good evening,' 
 but details are lost. The Sunday following is clearer in 
 memory. It was a beautiful summer day, and the two 
 friends came to the Grange together, and we all walked 
 and talked together in the garden before supper. Skipsey 
 was a noble-looking man, with extremely gentle and 
 courteous manners. Edward talked much with him, 
 and was much struck with his wide knowledge of 
 English literature and his poetic vision, but felt that 
 the circumstances of his life had left him at a dis- 
 advantage in the art of writing poetry, for which nothing 
 could make up. He felt also that one so sensitive in 
 nature must see this clearly and must carry about with 
 him the pain of knowing that all he did could only be 
 judged after allowance made. Thinking of this Edward 
 wrote sadly yet hopefully : ' Of course his poems are 
 not much to us ; only one measures by relation, and 
 sometimes the little that a man does who has had no 
 
106 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 chance whatever seems greater than the accomph'shed 
 work of luckier men — on the widow's mite system of 
 arithmetic, which is a lovely one.' 
 
 " Twice again the friends lunched with us during the 
 week they remained in London, and the last time was 
 farewell for this world in Mr. Dixon, who went back to 
 Sunderland, took to his bed, and in little more than a 
 fortnight sank and died of exhaustion following on the 
 excitement and exultation of carrying out his generous 
 plan. 
 
 " The thought of Skipsey working in a dark mine 
 whilst he himself painted pictures by daylight was 
 intolerable to Edward, who was not comforted until 
 things were altered and the poet and his wife had 
 obtained the post of caretakers of Shakespeare's house 
 at Stratford-on-Avon." 
 
 Perhaps one of his closest friendships was that with 
 Thomas Dixon, who was one of the most beautiful 
 characters I have known. He was emphatically a 
 gentleman, a man of refined taste, of much thought, 
 and careful reading. He had a remarkably wide 
 acquaintance, corresponding with Professor Max Muller, 
 Charles Kingsley, F. D. Maurice, John Stewart Mill, 
 Thomas Carlisle, and many others, including a con- 
 siderable number of leading artists. It is an interesting 
 fact that Professor Max Muller sent him the proofs of 
 his lectures on " The Science of Language " for his 
 perusal and suggestions. He was of great value to 
 Sunderland in bringing the committee of its Art Gallery 
 into immediate touch with many artists, and there are 
 few men who have been more widely consulted by young 
 people as to their courses of study in either literature or 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 107 
 
 art. He was a man of few needs, and generous exceed- 
 ingly. His friends gave him what they produced. 
 Books came to him from innumerable quarters, and 
 yet his library was always a small one. So soon as 
 he had mastered a book and stored it away in his mind 
 he felt it a duty to hand it to others, and thus he became 
 a missionary of knowledge. How many of us have 
 stores of books on om* library shelves which are seldom 
 referred to, and which, while they stand upon the shelves, 
 are worthless, only becoming of use when they are 
 actually used ? Dixon held that it was wastry to keep 
 a book which was not being read or referred to. I 
 remember once, when he spent a day or two with me 
 when George Macdonald was also visiting me, and the 
 conversation turned upon Blake's ** Book of Job " with 
 iTill illustrations. This happened to be unknown to George 
 Macdonald, but Dixon had had a copy of it presented 
 to him by John Linnell, the gi-eat artist, and, so soon as 
 he returned home, he sent it as a gift to George Mac- 
 donald, who was uneasy at receiving so costly and 
 unique a book as a present from one to whom its special 
 value must be a matter of considerable importance. He 
 wrote to Dixon gratefully for the kindness of his thought, 
 but told him he would study the book carefully and then 
 return it to him. This was said as gently and delicately 
 as he could phrase it. I wish I had kept a copy of 
 Dixon's wise, firm, and beautiful reply of persistence, 
 which showed him to have the highest qualities of the 
 true man. He was always the same gentle being — 
 genuine, generous beyond belief. And he was a rare 
 friend to Skipsey, being himself widely and well known, 
 partly, no doubt, owing to the fact of the twenty-five 
 
108 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 letters on "Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne" — letters 
 to a working man of Sunderland on the ** Laws of 
 Work " by John Kuskin. He introduced Joseph Skipsey 
 to many brilliant circles of thoughtful men, to whom the 
 best thought of the time owed much. 
 
 Perhaps I may be allowed to say here what as I write 
 is very present with me now that all of these men are 
 passed away, how the memory of the old days when we 
 met together in close communion is one of my most 
 cherished possessions. Three men of humble origin, 
 only one of whom, by virtue of being a Scotsman, was 
 entitled to be called educated in the ordinary sense, a 
 novelist, a corkcutter, and a pitman, but whose con- 
 versation, whose habitual thought were quiet, simple, 
 refined, always noble, penetrating and elevating. You 
 never parted from any one of them without true regret, 
 never met them without rejoicing. Such men are not 
 only worthy to stand before kings, they are above all 
 worldly titles or possessions ; they are the salt of the 
 earth. 
 
 Thomas Dixon died on July 11, 1880, and Dante 
 Rossetti wrote that he never met with one of equal 
 worth in his own single-minded devotion to the intel- 
 lectual good of others. 
 
 Dante Gabeiel Eossetti to his Sister. 
 
 " 16th July, 1880. 
 *' I think I told you of a visit I had a few weeks ago 
 from Thomas Dixon, of Sunderland (whom you must 
 have long heard of, since Newcastle days with Scotus), 
 and Joseph Skipsey, the Northern Collier Poet, a man 
 of real genius. The other day I was shocked to get a 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 109 
 
 letter from Skipsey announcing poor Dixon's death. 
 Having overdone exertion in London, he succumbed to 
 chronic asthma on his return. He was a worthy man ; 
 indeed, I never knew of any one individual in any walk 
 of life — even a much higher one than his — who was so 
 entirely devoted to promoting intellectual good among 
 those within his reach." 
 
 To HIS Mother. 
 
 " Again," he says, *' I hear from Scotus in much 
 sorrow at poor Dixon's death." 
 
 Max Muller said : ** You know that Thomas Dixon 
 was not a learned man, but I can assure you that 
 his letters, in spite of occasional mistakes in 
 spelling, showed a clearer insight into the true 
 objects of all my writings and conveyed to me 
 more useful criticisms than many a review in our best 
 weekly, monthly, or quarterly journals. How he 
 found time to do all that he did, and to read all that 
 he read, and to think out all that he thought out for 
 himself, is still a riddle to me. Nothing gives me 
 stronger faith in the intellectual vigour and moral 
 strength of the English people than that such a man as 
 Thomas Dixon could have lived and passed away almost 
 unknown except to his friends and fellow-citizens. We 
 must not judge England by its so-called head or capital 
 city, but by its backbone that runs through the provinces, 
 and by its noble heart that beats so strongly in the 
 breasts of such men as Thomas Dixon — a provincial 
 corkcutter, if you like, but a truer, nobler man than 
 many a duke or a marquis." 
 
110 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 This was true indeed of both the friends. They had 
 alike the power of vision which neither position nor 
 education nor money can possibly give. 
 
 Perhaps you saw most clearly Skipsey's unusual 
 development and most intimately the man he really was 
 when you heard him read or recite. It was not at all 
 like the reading or recitation of other men. In the first 
 place, he did not often do it, and that which he read or 
 said was carefully selected. He used often to repeat to 
 me his own poems before they were written out, but the 
 ballad on the Hartley Pit accident we have frequently 
 persuaded him to repeat to small gatherings of friends, 
 and no one who heard him repeat that or read Clarence 
 Mangan's " Dark Kosaleen " or ** Kathleen Ny-houla- 
 han" will ever forget it. He waited quietly until he 
 felt the spirit of that which he was about to do come 
 upon him. Then he was as one possessed, everything 
 but the poem was forgotten, but that he made live, 
 or perhaps I should more truly say that he incarnated 
 it ; he actually became the poem himself. His features 
 changed with every expression of the verse, his hands, 
 nay, even his fingers, expressed the meaning of the 
 words, and that meaning thoroughly revealed itself. It 
 was far beyond what you had thought of, but it stood out 
 clear for you ever afterwards. When, on rare occasions, 
 he recited the " Hartley Pit Calamity" to a large audi- 
 ence, the emotion it awakened was almost painful to 
 witness. I think I have never known a reader, reciter, 
 or actor who could be compared with him for his power 
 over words. They indeed became living things; they 
 lived in him. 
 
 Of course he knew our Border ballads intimately, and 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 111 
 
 held them at their true high worth. Modern ballads 
 rarely touched him, though many modern songs did. I 
 read him one night Rudyard Kipling's "East is East 
 and West is West," and he was much moved by it. 
 ** That is the best ballad written since the old times," 
 was his remark. 
 
 Occasionally he went to the theatre, and intensely 
 enjoyed a really great drama. At times he lectured 
 upon such subjects as *' The Poet as Seer," and he 
 was then well worth listening to. 
 
 Looking back at him now that four years have passed 
 since he left us, and taking him all in all, I think that 
 I have never known a greater man. And yet I can 
 well understand that that verdict would seem strange to 
 many persons who knew him less intimately. I do not 
 speak only of what he did, but far more of what he was. 
 For more than forty years we were intimate friends, and 
 I knew him more closely than most men. It may be 
 to some extent I judge him by the facts of his life. It 
 is difficult to remove them from the mind, but as a poet 
 I do not think I have ever exaggerated him. He is a 
 poet, a true poet, but not a great one, though with him 
 the poetic faculty is real, not a common thing to find. 
 But it is as a man of thought, of intellectual power, of 
 quite marvellous insight, of strong and wide sympathy, 
 that he dwells in my mind. He had his failings and 
 shortcomings. He was too serious. He scarcely 
 possessed humour. All his stories were of actual life, 
 and generally of serious episodes in his own life. I 
 have not much further to say as to that life. I think that 
 the last few years were perhaps the happiest in that the 
 devotion of his children and the assistance which he 
 
112 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 received from the small Government pension which Mr. 
 Gladstone gave him satisfied his few wants, and he and 
 his wife lived quietly and happily with one or other 
 of his sons or, until they married, with both of them. 
 In August, 1902, Mrs. Skipsey passed away. This 
 was a serious blow from which he really never recovered. 
 Within a few months he was attacked by a serious 
 illness, and it soon became evident that it was to be one 
 from which he would not recover. He used to read the 
 newspapers a little, and took great interest in the 
 political questions which from time to time were brought 
 forward, but specially in the attempted revival of 
 Protection. This, as I have already explained, he was 
 strongly opposed to. He was also a great Peace man, 
 and from the beginning intensely averse to the war 
 in the Transvaal. He frequently talked for a short time 
 upon subjects relating to the possibility of a life beyond. 
 He explained how he had abandoned many views 
 which he had held for a time, as the light which he 
 thought thrown upon them rendered them incredible, 
 and that many had been laid aside for what to him were 
 more important or more absorbing. He had found that, 
 at times, those who stood forth as the apostles of a faith 
 were wrong, though they were not wilful deceivers, but 
 themselves deceived. But those of us who had the 
 privilege of sitting frequently by his bedside know that, 
 whilst he was untroubled by dogmas and doctrines which 
 men quarrel greatly about but do not understand, he 
 held firmly to the simple faith which was reduced 
 by Christ Himself into the love of God and the love 
 of man. He passed away in September, 1903, a little 
 more than twelve months after his gi'eat bereavement. 
 
APPENDIX 113 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 I HAVE added this Appendix, which contains certain poems 
 which I have not mentioned particularly before, because I 
 wish it to be seen by every one who is interested in the matter 
 that Skipsey had a very great variety of compositions. I 
 think that no one will read through the poems I give without 
 being satisfied that he is not in any ordinary sense a mere 
 rhymester. 
 
 The following are from what he calls Psychic Poems, and 
 are contained in the edition of his " Carols from the Coal-fields," 
 published in 1886. 
 
 THE EIDDLE BEAD. 
 
 I thank my God I ever lived to see the blessed day, 
 When the Spirit's immortality to me is rendered clear ; 
 
 Not by a logic might be made some other tune to play, 
 But by a flash of inner light too keen for doubt to bear. 
 
 Long, long can death, be death indeed ? I asked 'mid doubts 
 and fears; 
 
 Long vainly groped in darkness for the jewels I had lost ; 
 Long listened for an answer to the quest expressed in tears, 
 
 And only found what to the heart a bitterer struggle cost. 
 
 Oft in the visions of the night, I saw their golden locks; 
 
 I kiss'd their eyes as violets sweet when March mth bois- 
 terous breath. 
 The lordly oak itself — nay more, the lordly steeple rocks. 
 
 And ever as the morn arose I found them fast in death. 
 
 Then said I— if the " be all " and the " end all " of this strife, 
 Be but to furnish coronals the temples to adorn 
 
 Of Life's imperious Enemy, then, death, and not for life. 
 Should be the boon solicited whene'er a babe is born. 
 
 Far better man had never been, if in a circle he 
 Must travel till the little hour of mortal life is run, 
 
 To find when Life's dark riddle's read he then must cease 
 to be, 
 And the end of all his trouble is the end where he begun. 
 
 8 
 
lU JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 To labour in a night on which the sun will never rise — 
 To sweat and groan without a hope shall end the bitter 
 curse, 
 Save in a dissolution which shall only close our eyes 
 On all we love and cherish — all ? — what destiny were 
 worse ? 
 
 Nor worse were e'en the lot of those the Danaides of yore, 
 Condemn'd the hole-fiU'd tanks to fill from which the waters 
 gushed 
 As fast as they the fluid in poured or could the fluid in 
 pour, 
 And left them only for their pains a heart by anguish 
 crush'd. 
 
 Not worse to be like Ixion doom'd on a wheel to spin, 
 Transfix'd on which the victim sad arrived at every 
 round, 
 Just where he did the weary, dizzy, dreary round begin. 
 Which he — the sore confounded — served the deeper to 
 confound. 
 
 Not worse to be like Sisyphus, destined up a high hill. 
 With many an effort, many a pang, still to uproU a rock. 
 
 Which when the goal was all but won, despite an iron 
 will, 
 Ee-bounded in a way that made his labours vast, a mock. 
 
 Not worse to be like these, for these, amid their night of 
 pain, 
 Had intervals of hope that would the darkest hour 
 illume ; 
 But what avails to charm the soul who loves and toils — 
 and then 
 Learns not a vestige of his me can pass beyond the 
 tomb? 
 
 In vain to point the present — what can the present yield. 
 Except what proves a mock, and still the heart with sorrow 
 fills ? 
 And without the charm a Future Life affords, without a 
 shield 
 The soul is left to battle with the worst of human ills. 
 
APPENDIX 115 
 
 In vain to point the past, in vain, will not its sheen arise 
 
 Upon the mind about to be in death's dark cradle rock'd, 
 To keener make the thought that when the vital sparklet 
 flies, 
 Lock'd lies the spirit in the bonds in which the sense is 
 lock'd? 
 
 To die and be no more is more than we can think, with- 
 out 
 An effort such as rends the heart or petrifies the man ; 
 And when the soul has once began to tread the plain of 
 Doubt, 
 The valley of Despair is reached before we halt, or can. 
 
 Thus felt I till the truth was found by patient labour 
 sought, 
 — By labour and a spmt framed to brook the world's 
 harsh scorn ; 
 When gilded by its sheen a soul was mine with rapture 
 fraught, 
 And may be yours who seek aright the truths I sought to 
 learn. 
 
 THE SOUL'S HEEEAFTEE. 
 
 Dies not the soul when dust to dust is given; 
 
 Even as we are in earth -life are we still, 
 Save from the worn-out garment rent and riven, 
 
 That may have proved a fetter to the will. 
 
 Not imto demons void of good converted. 
 
 Not unto angels void of error — no; 
 But human-spirited and human-hearted, 
 
 "We on our way with pain or pleasure go. 
 
 Not reft of feeling — nay, with feelings keener 
 To others' woes, more keen to others' joys; 
 
 With bosoms purer and with minds serener — 
 Though human still, more humane we and wise. 
 
 Not more to be despised, nor venerated. 
 
 For aught from change of state acquired or caught, 
 But at our inner value estimated, 
 
 Shall we be shunned or courted as we ought. 
 
116 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 Not to their fabled hell, nor fabled heaven, 
 By the good Father's will are we consigned, 
 
 But to a sphere of human action — even, 
 To one adapted to each frame and mind. 
 
 Not one sweet feeling passeth unrewarded. 
 
 Not one black deed can go unpunished — not — 
 
 Not one swift thought can vanish unrecorded 
 And give no colour to our future lot. 
 
 Not words but thoughts, and not on faith but actions, 
 And on whatever gives our acts their hue, 
 
 The heart's allurements, and the mind's distractions — 
 Is based the verdict we shall prize or rue. 
 
 Yes, such the future that awaits the spirit ; 
 
 Then let us pause and think while pause we can, 
 How best we may the meed eternal merit. 
 
 That shall be to the weal eterne of man. 
 
 THE INNEK CONFLICT. 
 
 Thrice "lo Paean 1" let me cry, 
 
 And bless the hour that I was born; 
 
 And born thro' love in vain to sigh — 
 To cheer my longing heart a morn 
 
 Has risen in my ebon sky. 
 
 Such as did ne'er my sky adorn ; 
 
 And now with shout triumphant, lo 1 
 
 A victor on my way I go. 
 
 A tenant of some curse-girt sphere 
 Long seemed I — even so — and Pain 
 
 StiU by a destiny severe, 
 
 Had power my spnit to enchain. 
 
 Or to impel his venomed spear 
 Up to the hilt in heart and brain ; 
 
 And this he did — but this once done, 
 
 The measure of his power was run — 
 
 Yea, having brooked the worst, I felt 
 The power within, with steadfast gaze, 
 
 To scan the blows upon me dealt, — 
 Life's issues to their cause to trace ; 
 
APPENDIX 117 
 
 And whilst I looked, the fogs did melt 
 
 That swathed my ken — and face to face 
 I stood with Fate's own self and viewed 
 The secret of the lash I'd rued. 
 
 Illumined by an inner light,! 
 
 My past a pictured scroll became, 
 In which my sorrow, my delight. 
 
 My hope, my fear, my pride, my shame, 
 Assumed a shape and colour quite 
 
 Beyond the power of speech to name — 
 A chronicle mysterious, man 
 Engrossed by self might never scan. 
 
 Yet gazing on that mystic scroll, 
 
 Enough of its contents was read, 
 To teach my desolated soul. 
 
 Not all in vain she'd pined and bled 
 Beneath the lash, the dire control 
 
 Of passions fierce, b}^ beauty fed; — ' 
 Nor yet in vain her longings — if 
 She read aright this hieroglyph. 
 
 This learned I from that scroll, and learned 
 The way by which to rend the chain 
 
 Had kept my soul in self inurned : 
 Unhappy self that would obtain, 
 
 Whatever won is ever mourn'd. 
 
 Whose blessings e'er as bans remain — 
 
 Ah, would that men would reck this reed. 
 
 So would their hearts less often bleed. 
 
 With feelings sharpened — eye and ear — 
 
 For others weal I then did learn 
 To shed the sympathetic tear, 
 
 To wile the frown from temples stern; 
 To do the thing desired to cheer. 
 
 To speak the word required to warn 
 And in return a boon did find. 
 In all appeals to heart and mind. 
 
 Ay, with the All-enwoven — both 
 
 The outer and the inner world 
 Did I survey — e'en in the froth 
 
 By Life's imperious surges hurled 
 
118 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 In its unutterable wroth, 
 
 As worthy only to be furl'd 
 In hmbo's bosom — on Time's sands, 
 A sheen that seen the soul expands. 
 
 That glory in the grass, as sung. 
 
 By deep-souled bard, and in the flower 
 
 A glamour o'er my spirit flung. 
 And strove — nor vainly — to re-dower 
 
 Her with that bliss from which we sprung, 
 When in creation's natal hour 
 
 God said, " Let there be Light ! " — and up 
 
 She leapt enraptured with Life's cup. 
 
 Then " lo Paean 1 " let me cry, 
 
 And bless the hour that I was born, 
 
 And born thro' Love to languish — ay, 
 To curse that natal hour — a morn 
 
 Has risen in my spirit's sky, 
 
 Such as did ne'er that sky adorn : 
 
 And now with shout triumphant, lo I 
 
 A victor on my way I go. 
 
 The following do not belong to any named set of poems : — 
 
 THE LILY OF THE VALLEY. 
 To E. W. 
 
 This Lily of the Valley smells 
 
 Too sweet for human speech to say ; 
 
 And passmg beautiful those bells 
 That hide their faces from the day. 
 
 It is a gem, tho' small, too rare 
 
 For mortal hand to pluck, and twine 
 
 With any save an angel's hair ; 
 
 And that is why 'tis placed in thine. 
 
 A LULLABY. 
 
 Thro' the dark and dreary night. 
 Golden slumbers kiss thine eyes ; 
 
 Sleep, and in the early light 
 With a golden smile arise 
 
 Sleep, my baby, do not cry, 
 — Lulla, luUa, lullahy. 
 
APPENDIX 119 
 
 Trouble art thou 1 baby nay ; 
 
 Brightest star in all my sky, 
 Since was turned to night my day, 
 
 And thy father — Do not cry I 
 Sleep, tny baby, do not cry^ 
 
 — Lulla, lulla, lullaby. 
 
 The round red moon, she's sinking low, 
 The wind up-tears the very roof; — 
 
 The moon may sink, the wind may blow. 
 For thee, my child, I'm tempest proof. 
 
 Sleep, my baby, do not cry, 
 — Lulla, luUa, lullaby. 
 
 ALAS ! 
 
 Alas I the woe the high of heart, 
 
 Seem pre-ordained to undergo. 
 While proud ambition hides the smart, 
 
 And smiles delude the world below. 
 
 Their anguish, like a Samson blind, 
 Gropes on in darkness, till at length 
 
 It grasps the pillars of the mind, 
 And dies a victim to its strength. 
 
 THE PEOUD ONE'S DOOM. 
 
 " Queen Pearl's own equal — nay, 
 A fairer far am I," May Dewdrop said, 
 
 As Sol at break of day 
 Did kiss the sparkler on her grass-blade bed. 
 
 " None may my charms resist I " 
 
 "None," Sol still kissing answered, when alas! 
 The proud one turned to mist. 
 
 And with her pride did into Lethe pass. 
 
 THE HELL BKOTH. 
 
 The devil and the devil's brood 
 
 Around a boiling cauldron hung, 
 While in a nook in merry mood 
 
 Grim Death a dainty ditty sung ; 
 For guided by a baleful star 
 
 The devil himself had caused to beam, 
 Lo, myriads hurried from afar 
 
 To reap the fruit of a darksome dream : 
 
120 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 On, on they came with cheek a-flame 
 
 And lips that quivered as they sought 
 In tones subdued the demon brood, 
 
 For but a drop of the magic pot. 
 — Anon around was the hell-broth spun, 
 
 And a measure brimmed to old and young, 
 The while delighted with the fun, 
 
 Grim Death a merry ditty sung. 
 
 That potion quaft in his conceit, 
 
 Behold the dwarf a giant tread. 
 At least a hundred thousand feet 
 
 Above his worthier neighbour's head ; 
 Despising still or lord or serf. 
 
 About the land he strutting goes, 
 'Till bang against a brother dwarf. 
 
 The merry fellow runs his nose : 
 Thus many a one — loon, fop, and clown — 
 
 A lesson to their sorrow got. 
 And yet aloud they pray the brood 
 
 For deeper draughts of the magic pot. 
 — Anon around was the hell-broth spun. 
 
 And a measure drained by old and young, 
 The while delighted with the fun. 
 
 Grim Death a merry ditty sung. 
 
 New double-drugg'd the rout about 
 
 A soul-consuming furnace bore. 
 And what they took to put it out. 
 
 But only made it burn the more : 
 It burnt in heart, it burnt in brain. 
 
 And from its fumes arose a sprite, 
 One, whom her favours to obtain 
 
 They chased by day, they chased by night ; 
 And still as they deemed her their prey. 
 
 Away, away with a leer she shot, 
 'Mid cries right loud to the demon brood. 
 
 For deeper draughts of the magic pot. 
 ^ — Again around was the hell-broth spun, 
 
 And a measure drained by old and young. 
 The while delighted with the fun, 
 
 Grim Death a merry ditty sung. 
 
 So la, ta, la I — that fiery draught 
 Now led them one and all a dance : 
 
 Lo, ere the drug was wholly quaft, 
 Each threw on each a lurid glance ; 
 
APPENDIX 121 
 
 And from that glance a wasp took wing, 
 
 From busy tongue to ear it flew, 
 And ever around it bore a sting 
 
 The devil himself had cause to rue : 
 It stung them black, it stung them blue, 
 
 And with each sting the louder got, 
 Their cries right loud to the demon brood. 
 
 For deeper draughts of the magic pot. 
 — Again around was the hell-broth spun, 
 
 And a measure drained by old and j'oung, 
 The while delighted with the fun, 
 
 Grim Death a merrier ditty sung. 
 
 That horrid draught being duly quaft, 
 
 A cry o'er plain and mountain rolled, 
 At which the strong the weaker took. 
 
 And bartered body and soul for gold : 
 And of the gold thus gotten, they 
 
 At once a gloomy castle built. 
 Whose dome might from the eye of day 
 
 Forever hide their horrid guilt : 
 Tombed in their victims' blood-price thus. 
 
 Long revelled they and faltered not 
 To cry aloud to the demon brood, 
 
 For deeper draughts of the magic pot. 
 — But around no more was the hell-broth spun ; 
 
 Awe-struck the fiends in the pot had sprung, 
 The while surfeited with the fun. 
 
 Death cursed the merry lay he'd sung. 
 
 THE KEIGN OF GOLD. 
 
 It sounded in castle and palace. 
 
 It sounded in cottage and shed. 
 It sped over mountains and valleys, 
 
 And withered the earth as it sped ; 
 Like a blast in its fell consummation 
 
 Of all that we holy should hold. 
 Thrilled, thrilled thro' the nerves of the nation, 
 
 A cry for the reign of King Gold. 
 
 Upstarted the chiefs of the city, 
 
 And sending it back with a ring, ' 
 
 To the air of a popular ditty. 
 Erected a throne to the king; 
 
122 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 'Twas based upon fiendish persuasions, 
 Cemented by crimes manifold : 
 
 Embellished by specious ovations, 
 That dazzled the foes of King Gold. 
 
 The prey of unruly emotion, 
 
 The miner and diver go forth, 
 And the depths of the earth and the ocean 
 
 Are shorn of their lustre and worth ; 
 The mountain is riven asunder, 
 
 The days of the valley are told ; 
 And sinew and glory, and grandeur, 
 
 Are sapped for a smile of King Gold. 
 
 Beguiled of their native demeanour, 
 
 The high rush with heirlooms and bays ; 
 The poor with what gold cannot weigh, nor 
 
 The skill of the pedant appraise ; 
 The soldier he spurs with his duty, 
 
 And lo 1 by the frenzy made bold, 
 The damsel she glides with her beauty. 
 
 To garnish the brow of King Gold. 
 
 Accustomed to traffic forbidden 
 
 By honour — by heaven — each hour, 
 The purest, by conscience unchidden, 
 
 Laugh, laugh at the noble and pure ; 
 And Chastity, rein'd in a halter, 
 
 Is led to the temple and sold, — 
 Devotion herself, at the altar. 
 
 Yields homage alone to King Gold. 
 
 Affection, on whose honey blossom, 
 
 The child of affliction still fed — 
 Affection is plucked from the bosom. 
 
 And malice implanted instead ; 
 And dark grow the brows of the tender. 
 
 And colder the hearts of the cold : — 
 Love, pity, and justice surrender 
 
 Their charge to the hounds of King Gold. 
 
 See, see, from the sear'd earth ascending, 
 A cloud o'er the welkin expands ; 
 
 See, see, 'mid the dense Vcipour bending, 
 Pale women with uplifted hands; 
 
APPENDIX 123 
 
 Smokes thus to the bridegroom of Circe, 
 
 The dear blood of hundreds untold ; 
 Invokes thus the angel of mercy 
 
 A curse on the reign of King Gold. 
 
 It sounded in castle and palace 
 
 It sounded m cottage and shed, 
 It sped over mountains and valleys, 
 
 And withered the earth as it sped ; 
 Like a blast in its fell consummation 
 
 Of all that we holy should hold, 
 Thrilled, thrilled thro' the nerves of the nation ; 
 
 " Cling ! clang I for the reign of King Gold." 
 
 THE SEEK. 
 
 Would I could waken numbers, brighter, sweeter, 
 Than is the lark's song in the cloud above, 
 
 Then would I tell you in befitting metre. 
 How much the Seer is worthy of your love. 
 
 Shy, sensitive is he, and far from equal 
 
 Unto the battle of material life. 
 He strives unheeded and, too oft the sequel, 
 
 Unheeded falleth in the bitter strife. 
 
 Averse to falsehood and pretences hollow, 
 
 Averse to slander, cruelty, and wrong. 
 He scorns the gilded car of pomp to follow. 
 
 And underneath is trampled by the throng. 
 
 Too nobly strung of self to brook the mention — 
 Too sweetly strung to give another pain — 
 
 Too finely strung for pleasure in contention, 
 He seeks within the meed he would obtain. 
 
 Unlike the crowd who never dare look inward, 
 Lest they a hideous spectre there should meet, 
 
 Would point to secret longings prompting sinward, 
 He looks within and finds a solace sweet. 
 
 Ay, in a conscience pure he sees a charmer — 
 A harper from whose harp such tones are hurl'd, 
 
 They act as mighty spells, as tested armour, 
 To shield him from the malice of the world. 
 
124 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 " Go on, brave heart," he hears an anthem chanted, 
 The distant echoes of that harp's weird tones; 
 
 *' Go on — to thee a richer dower is granted 
 Than that which gilds a hundred monarchs' thrones. 
 
 •* Thou may'st be thrust aside and scorned and taunted 
 
 As being a lunatic, a knave or fool, 
 Thou hast within thy inner being planted 
 
 A power that yet shall put the world to school. 
 
 " Thou may'st be destined here to tribulation ; 
 
 Thy every pang shall prove a key, by which 
 Thou shalt unlock some safe of the Creation 
 
 And with its precious stores thy mind enrich. 
 
 "Illumined by that sun forever burning, 
 Deep in the centre of the inner spheres, 
 
 Thou shalt be gifted with the gift of learning 
 What lieth hidden from thy mortal peers. 
 
 "In every planet in the midnight heaven — 
 In every hue doth in the rainbow blend, 
 
 Shalt thou perceive a lore and meaning, given 
 To very few on earth to comprehend. 
 
 " The very flower upon the meadow blowing — 
 The very weed down trampled on the road, 
 
 Shall be to thee a priceless casquet, glowing 
 With glories hinting of the light of God. 
 
 " In every breezelet — nay, in the commotion 
 Of raging winds — in every streamlet clear — 
 
 Nay, in the roaring of the mighty ocean, 
 Shalt thou hear sounds will gladden thee to hear. 
 
 " Thus shalt thou in the Universe external, 
 The Universe internal read, and so 
 
 Possess what shall be to the weal eternal 
 Of earth's benighted 'habitants to know. 
 
APPENDIX 125 
 
 "The buried eons of the Past — their history, 
 Still glows in characters that thou shalt read ; 
 
 And from the future thou shalt pluck its mystery, 
 And point the goal to where the moments lead. 
 
 "Whatever thrills the heart with feelings precious, 
 
 "Whatever tends to cast the spirit down, 
 The deed delightful, or the hint pernicious. 
 
 Shall claim withal in turn thy smile or frown. 
 
 "Eemind shalt thou the soul aweary, weary 
 Even with the battle thou thyself hast fought, 
 
 How thro' deep failure and thro' toil uncheery. 
 Must every triumph worth his care be wrought. 
 
 *' Nay even at the hest of a volition 
 
 Still, still to highest purposes attuned, 
 Shalt thou go forth a monarch, and ambition 
 
 And evils many with thy glance confound. 
 
 " ' Woe,' black-browed guilt shall cry ; and ' woe ' and vanish 
 
 Despair and desolation, sisters sad ; 
 And for the hydra-brood thou thus shalt banish, 
 
 Celestial Love shall make the spirit glad. ' 
 
 " Uplifting them by slow yet sure gradations, 
 From spheres inferne into the spheres superne, 
 
 Shalt thou thus prove a boon unto the nations, 
 And in return a boon divine shalt earn. 
 
 " If not in monuments of brass or marble. 
 
 Deep in men's spirits shall thy glory glow ; 
 And little ones shall of the wonders warble 
 
 AccompHshed by the wise man long ago. 
 
 "All this and more than this shall be thy guerdon, — 
 The sense of having acted right ! " — So says 
 
 The happy echo of that harp's sweet burden 
 A certain Seraph in his bosom plays. 
 
 And this enableth the true seer ever 
 
 To triumph tho' he falleth, and to pray 
 That theirs like his may be a portion never, 
 
 Who plot and plan to take his life away, 
 
126 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 Ah, to the last his words and deeds are sweeter 
 Than is the lark's song in the cloud above, 
 
 And rare the bard could find befitting metre. 
 To hymn the love we owe this chUd of Love I 
 
 THE ELF. 
 
 If thou wilt persist to ponder 
 
 On the phantom fled. 
 Can there be a moment's wonder 
 
 Thou art ill bested ? 
 
 She who, robed in green so meetly, 
 Blink'd on thee and smiled, 
 
 Fleetly came and went as fleetly — 
 Was no mortal child. 
 
 She who sung to thee so sweetly. 
 
 And to airs so wild, 
 Featly danced, still danced so featly- 
 
 Was no mortal child. 
 
 Dream not on her tresses yellow; 
 
 Elf yet only can 
 Be to elf a fitting fellow. 
 
 Not to mortal manl 
 
 DAFFODIL AND DAISY 
 
 Adorned in many a gem this morn, 
 
 A daffodil without a peer, 
 I reared my head, and treat with scorn 
 
 A one-pearl-gifted daisy near. 
 
 That very hour, lo 1 wind-a-rock'd 
 Was I left gemless evermore; 
 
 Nay, made to envy what I'd mock'd, 
 That one sweet pearl the daisy wore. 
 
APPENDIX 127 
 
 THE MOTH. 
 
 To-night a gilded moth took wing, 
 
 And round- a-round yon wax-Hght flew ; 
 
 And, while his flight did her enring, 
 He nearer to the dazzler drew. 
 
 " So fair art thou," he cried, " to view, 
 
 I'd die upon thy lips to feed; " 
 And so must snatch a kiss and rue — 
 
 Ah, he was murder'd for the deed I 
 
 LOTTY HAY. 
 
 As I came down from Earsdon Town, 
 
 Upon an Easter day, 
 Whom did I meet but she, the sweet, 
 
 The blue-eyed Lotty Hay. 
 
 A crimson blush her cheek did flush. 
 
 Nor sin did that betray ; 
 The pearl is sure a jewel pure. 
 
 And so is Lotty Hay. 
 
 All evil flees her heart, yet she's 
 
 To Slander oft a prey, 
 And words of ill do nearly kill 
 
 The lowly Lotty Hay. 
 
 Some deem her proud ; in speech aloud 
 
 Some other yet will say 
 She's cold or fierce, and all to pierce 
 
 The heart of Lotty Hay. 
 
 Proud ? — She's not proud : to-day I viewed 
 
 A lammie near her stray. 
 And that wee thing kind blinks did bring 
 
 From soft-eyed Lotty Hay. 
 
 Fierce ? — She's not fierce ; a fly did pierce- 
 Once pierce her wee hand, nay 
 
 And made her cry, yet that bad fly 
 Was spared by Lotty Hay. 
 
128 JOSEPH SKIPSEY 
 
 Not proud nor bold, not fierce nor cold, 
 But meek, kind, mild alway — 
 
 A soul of light did meet my sight 
 As I pass'd Lotty Hay. 
 
 Upon her way so went the may, 
 
 And light as any fay, 
 Or thistle-down by breezes blown, 
 
 Went wee, wee Lotty Hay. 
 
 In cotton gown she tript to town, 
 
 And not a lady gay 
 In satin drest could be more blest 
 
 Than little Lotty Hay. 
 
 Looking lately through the fourth volume of my Visitors' 
 Book, I came, with the date March, 1894, on the following, 
 which is apparently a portion of a letter to me from Skipsey : — 
 
 "I believe I promised you a copy of the revised 'Bugle 
 Horn,' and will give it. Of all the lyrics I have penned none 
 are dearer to me than those I wrote during our visit to 
 Grasmere, 1886, and this I believe to be one of the best of 
 them." 
 
 THE BUGLE HOEN. 
 
 0, the bugle horn I heard last night ; 
 
 Its wild tone set the echoes flying. 
 And night-long in my soul, Delight 
 
 Danced, danced, her gift for dancing trying; 
 
 No wilder tone had echo known. 
 
 Since first upon the height she haunted ; 
 
 She cried to fly, yet fled to cry, 
 What awed, when heard, and yet enchanted 1 
 
 A little later I came upon the following poem, which seems 
 to me to be of special interest, because it is peculiarly illustra- 
 tive of a certain important part of pit life. The lamp is dying 
 out, but rather than attempt to trim it, which might be 
 dangerous, the man will work his way out of the pit in the 
 dark. 
 
JOSEPH SKIPSEY 129 
 
 THE MINER AND HIS LAMP. 
 
 ^Vhat ails the lamp ? It burns so dim ; 
 
 Yes, yes, its cup is dry ; 
 But I've no time to heed its whim 
 
 I£ oil it lacks — not I ! 
 
 See, see, it pouts, like all who pout, 
 
 The more its mood we mark — 
 Well, well, if so then — out — flick out ! 
 
 Than this I'll face the dark. 
 
 9 
 
INDEX 
 
 A 
 
 Annuity from Royal Bounty, 
 
 75 
 Appendix, 113 
 
 The Riddle Read 
 
 The Soul's Hereafter 
 
 The Inner Conflict 
 
 The Lily of the Valley 
 
 A Lullaby 
 
 Alas I 
 
 The Proud One's Doom 
 
 The Hell Broth 
 
 The Reign of Gold 
 
 The Bugle Horn 
 
 The Miner and his Lamp 
 Athey, Mr., collection of coal 
 
 fossils, 52 
 
 B 
 
 Backworth, 49 
 
 Baernreither, Dr., on "Associa- 
 tions of Working Men," 13 
 
 Benson, F. R., and Chalmers 
 Morton, on Shakespeare's 
 view of the dog, 102 
 
 Bible Poems, 96 
 
 Blake, Skipsey's view of, 92 
 
 Burne-Jones, letters from, 
 75, 76 
 
 Burne-Jones, "The Golden 
 
 Stairs," 52 
 Burns's Poems, 19 
 
 C 
 
 Canterbury Poets, edition of, 
 87 
 
 Clephan, James, influence of, 
 48 
 
 Coal-mining and Royal Com- 
 mission, 1840, 13 
 
 Coleridge edited by Skipsey, 
 94 
 
 D 
 
 Dixon, Thomas — 
 
 Visits to Oxford and Lon- 
 don, 53 
 Friendship with, 106 
 Max Muller on, 106 
 
 Dorchester labourers trans- 
 ported for combination, 12 
 
 Duncan, Major, and Morpeth 
 Boroughs, 50 
 
 E 
 
 Engels, Frederick, on Working 
 Classes, 13 
 
 131 
 
132 
 
 INDEX 
 
 England in the Thirties and 
 Forties, 11 
 
 F 
 
 •' Faust," influence of, 20 
 
 G 
 
 Goethe, Influence of, 20 
 Gosse, Edmund, and Skipsey, 
 85 
 
 H 
 Heine, influence of, 20, 93 
 
 Jowett, Professor, visit to, at 
 Balliol, 53 
 
 Lady Burne-Jones on Dixon 
 
 and Skipsey, 104 
 Lindley Murray's Grammar 
 
 lent Skipsey, 18 
 Lines on visit to the Fram, 
 
 86 
 Lord Carlisle and Skipsey, 72 
 Lord Londonderry opposes 
 
 Lord Ashley, 14 
 
 M 
 
 Macdonald, George, and 
 Thomas Dixon, 107 
 
 Magnusson, Eirikr, 21 
 
 Milton's "Paradise Lost" lent 
 Skipsey, 18 
 
 Morley's " Roses their sharp 
 spines being gone," 101 
 
 N 
 
 Nansen, Fridjof, at Tyne 
 
 Theatre, 85 
 Norway, yachting tour to, 
 
 with Mr. and Mrs. Wood, 
 
 85 
 
 Percy Main Pit, 22 
 
 Poe, Edgar Allan, Skipsey's 
 
 criticism of, 99 
 Poems — 
 
 Mother Wept, 24 
 
 Willy to Jinny, 25 
 
 The Lad of Bebside, 26 
 
 The Collier Lad, 27 
 
 Tit for Tat, 30 
 
 Get Up, 30 
 
 The Stars are Twinkhng, 31 
 
 O ! Sleep, 31 
 
 The Singer, 33 
 
 Bereaved, 34 
 
 The Hartlej^ Calamity, 44 
 
 Thistle and Nettle, 55 
 
 Mary of Crofton, 65 
 
 The Slippers, 67 
 
 Hey Robin, 70 
 
 The Fair Rower, 81 
 
 To a startled Bird, 2 
 
 The Butterfly, 100 
 
 The Dew-drop, 100 
 
 R 
 
 Rossetti, D, G., letter from, 
 
 October, 1878, 53 
 Rossetti, D. G., on Thomas 
 
 Dixon, 108 
 Rydal Mount, 82 
 
INDEX 
 
 133 
 
 s 
 
 Shakespeare's House, custo- 
 dian of, 72 
 Shelley, criticism of, 89 
 Skipsey, Cuthbert, shot, 16 
 Skipsey, Joseph — 
 
 Birth of, 14 
 
 Taught himself reading and 
 writing, 17 
 
 Borrowed " Paradise Lost," 
 "Iliad," &c., 19 
 
 Buys Shakespeare, 19 
 
 At Percy Main Pit, 22 
 
 Travels to London and 
 marries, 23 
 
 At Coatbridge in Scotland, 23 
 
 At Sunderland, 23 
 
 At Choppington, 23 
 
 At Hawks, Crawshay & 
 Co.'s, Gateshead, 23 
 
 First collection of poems 
 pubhshed 1859, 23 
 
 Pit life poems, 24 
 
 Sub -librarian at the Lite- 
 rary and Philosophical 
 Society, Newcastle, 48 
 
 Keturns to pits. Back worth, 
 49 
 
 Powerful hewer, 54 
 Master shifter, 54 
 Published poems 1871, 
 
 1878, 1881, 55 
 Caretaker at Mill Lane 
 
 Board School, 71 
 Porter at Armstrong Col- 
 lege, 71 
 Skipsey's reading and re- 
 citation, 110 
 Mrs. Skipsey's death, 112 
 Illness and death of poet, 
 112 
 Skipsey's interview with Com- 
 mittee at Stratford, and 
 appointment, 73 
 Songs of different lands, 103 
 Spiritualism and Clairvoy- 
 ance, 76 
 Strikes in 1832, 15 
 
 V 
 
 Visit with Skipsey to Lake 
 District, 80 
 
 W 
 
 Weddell, George, tried for 
 manslaughter, 16 
 
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, 
 WOKING AND LONDON. 
 
RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 
 
 TO— ► 202 Main Library 
 
 LOAN PERIOD 1 
 HOME USE 
 
 2 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 6 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 1 -month loons may be renewed by calling 642-3405 
 
 6-month loons may be rechorged by bringing books to Circulation 
 
 Desk 
 
 Renewals and recharges may be mode 4 days prior to due dote 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 
 
 
 Un"' ]■■■ ' 
 
 
 
 Ikl CTA^I^C 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 -■^ ^j r^/ 
 
 J 
 
 
 - m ^ 
 
 s»r 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 FORM NO. DD6, 40m, 3/78 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
 ®s 
 
965812 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY