Sir Henry John Newbolt, CH (6 June 1862 – 19 April 1938) was an English poet, novelist and historian.[1] He also had a role as a government adviser with regard to the study of English in England. He is perhaps best remembered for his poems "Vitaï Lampada" and "Drake's Drum".
Background
Henry John Newbolt was born in Bilston, Wolverhampton (then in Staffordshire, but now in the West Midlands), son of the vicar of St Mary's Church, the Rev. Henry Francis Newbolt (1824–1866), and his second wife, Emily née Stubbs (1838–1921), the older brother of Sir Francis Newbolt.[2][3] After his father's death, the family moved to Walsall, where Henry was educated.
Newbolt married Margaret Edwina née Duckworth (1867–1960) of the prominent publishing family -Duckworth Books; they had two children:
a son, Capt Arthur Francis Newbolt CMG (1893–1966) and,
a daughter, Margaret Cecilia Newbolt (1890–1975), who in 1914 married Lt. Col. Sir Ralph Dolignon Furse KCMG DSO (1887–1973), the Head of Recruitment at the Colonial Service.
His first book was a novel, Taken from the Enemy (1892), and in 1895 he published a tragedy, Mordred;
but it was the publication of his ballads, Admirals All (1897), that created his literary reputation. By far the best-known of these is "Vitaï Lampada". They were followed by other volumes of stirring verse, including The Island Race (1898), The Sailing of the Long-ships (1902), Songs of the Sea (1904)[6] and Songs of the Fleet (1910).
The Twymans: A Tale of Youth (1911)is a short work of fiction wherein Newbolt fleshes out the features of his own extraordinary education at Clifton. One of the themes of the novel, as of Newbolt's preparation for college and for life, is indicated in this remark that a teacher makes to a "practical" parent inquiring about the school: "For information, you purchase a text-book; for education, you live in a society."
In 1914, Newbolt published Aladore, a fantasy novel about a bored but dutiful knight who abruptly abandons his estate and wealth to discover his heart's desire and woo a half-fae enchantress. It is a tale filled with allegories about the nature of youth, service, individuality and tradition. It was reissued in a new edition by Newcastle Publishing Company in 1975.
Probably the best known of all Newbolt's poems, which was written in 1892 and for which he is now chiefly remembered, is "Vitaï Lampada". The title is taken from a quotation by Lucretius and means "the torch of life". It describes how a schoolboy, a future soldier, learns selfless commitment to duty in cricket matches in the Close at Clifton College:
The engagement mentioned in verse two is the Battle of Abu Klea in Sudan in January 1885 during the unsuccessful expedition to rescue General Gordon. Frederick Burnaby is the colonel referred to in the line "The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel's dead...", although it was a Gardner machine gun which jammed, and while Mahdist warriors did break into the British square, it did not collapse disastrously as the poem suggests.[9]
"Drake's Drum"
According to legend the drum owned by Sir Francis Drake and carried with him on his voyages will beat in times of national crisis and the spirit of Drake will return to aid his country. Sir Henry reinforced the myth with his 1897 poem "Drake's Drum", "Drake he's in his hammock an' a thousand mile away...":
Drake he's in his hammock an' a thousand mile away,
Where the old trade's plyin' an' the old flag flyin',
They shall find him, ware an' wakin', as they found him long ago.[10]
The poem has been widely anthologised and has been set to both classical and folk tunes. "Drake's Drum" is the first of five poetic settings by the composer Charles Villiers Stanford. Stanford wrote two song cycles based on poems by Newbolt: Songs of the Sea and Songs of the Fleet.
Monthly Review
Newbolt was the editor of the Monthly Review from October 1900 to September 1904.[11] He was also a member of the Athenaeum and the Coefficients dining club.
War and history
At the start of the First World War, Newbolt – along with over 20 other leading British writers – was brought into the War Propaganda Bureau, which had been formed to promote Britain's interests during the war and maintain public opinion in favour of the war.
He subsequently became Controller of Wireless and Cables at the Foreign Office. His poems about the war include "The War Films", printed on the leader page of The Times on 14 October 1916, which seeks to temper the shock effect on cinema audiences of footage of the Battle of the Somme.[12]
In the late 1920s he was the editor of the Nelson's Classics series of books published by Faber and Gwyer and later by Faber & Faber.[14]
The Newbolt Report
In 1921 he had been the author of a government Report entitled "The Teaching of English in England" which established the foundations for modern English Studies and professionalised the forms of teaching of English Literature. It established a canon, argued that English must become the linguistic and literary standard throughout the British Empire, and even proposed salary rates for lecturers. For many years it was a standard work for English teachers in teacher training Colleges.[15][16][17]
Death and legacy
Sir Henry John Newbolt, Etching by William Strang. 1898
In his home town of Bilston, a public house was named after him, and a blue plaque is displayed on Barclay's bank near the street where he was born.
Early 20th century British composer Hope Squire wrote several songs based on Newbolt’s poems.[19]
In June 2013 a campaign was launched by The Black Country Bugle to erect a statue in Newbolt's memory.
Recordings were made of Newbolt reading some of his own poems. They were on four 78rpm sides in the Columbia Records "International Educational Society" Lecture series, Lecture 92 (D40181/2).[20]
During an April 2018 episode of Steve Jones's radio show Jonesy's Jukebox, John Cooper Clarke revealed Newbolt as one of his early inspirations, reciting from memory a portion of Vitaï Lampada.
^Denny, Barbara; Starren, Carolyn (1998). Kensington Past. London: Historical Publications. p. 114. ISBN978-0948667503. OCLC42308455. Henry Newbolt, the patriotic poet of Drake's Drum and similar verse, found his house, at 14 Victoria Road from 1889 to 1898 small 'but not dark or cramped.'
^Newbolt, Henry John; Hanbury-Williams, Charles, eds. (29 August 1900). "The Monthly review". J. Murray – via National Library of Australia (new catalog).
^Bogacz, Theodore W (2013). "A change of language? Sassoon, The Great War, The Times and The Nation". Siegfried's Journal. 23 (Winter). Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship: 17.
A Perpetual Memory and other Poems, an anthology by Sr Henry Newbolt, published in 1939 by John Murray.
Chitty, Susan (1997). Playing the Game: Biography of Sir Henry Newbolt. Quartet Books. ISBN978-0704371071.
David Gervais (article 'Newbolt, Sir Henry John (1862–1938)’) (2004). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
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