1

THE VILLAGE, DESERTED AND OPPRESSED

The social ideas of Goldsmith's The Deserted Village were condemned by some contemporary reviewers,l Thomas Comber, who argued that

and also by the agricultural writer

nothing can so much contribute to the convenience and comfort of the countryman, both farmer and labourer, as the great and rich man's choice to make his invirons Csicl smile, and to promote a spirit of improvement throughout, which shall reach far beyond the pale of his park.2

Nevertheless, The Deserted Village provoked several analogous poems and furnished some popular images - the country maiden seduced and deserted, for instance - for the confused debate about the changes taking place in the English countryside. to show, in the conventional idyllic pastoral mode, the life of Auburn before, as it were, the fall: the 'once-flourishing state of that Village, which Goldsmith so elegantly deplores', is a type of Eden.3 Similarly optimistic is Thomas Dermody's later poem, also called 'The Frequented Village', in which the village is rebuilt, the alehouse sign restored, and the 'wretched matron' given a new cottage.

Would the rich man but thank the lab'rers' toil, And cheer the brow of anguish with a smile ... So should sweet Auburn more majestic rise, And glad with new delight the poet's eyes.4

Anthony King's The Frequented Village purports

'The Peasant of Auburn' describes the life of the desperate exile, his wife and children dying on the voyage to America, and his only surviving child captured into Indian slavery,5 and there is even a broadsheet version of The Deserted Vi l lage, with crude woodcuts, abbreviated for cottage con- sumption and transposed into a humbler gnd more urgent ballad metre:

0 Luxury! detested name,

How ill exchang'd, alas! Thou curst by heav'n's decree,

Are things like these for thee!

Perhaps the most interesting of these analogous poems is The ViZZage oppress'd, a little-known poem by a Norfolk man, John Robinson.7 Goldsmith's, Robinson's descriptions were condemned by the reviewers: the complaints of oppression were 'imaginary', 'alike ideal', 'the same fairy system' .8 Like Goldsmith too, Robinson upholds Augustan values, although his Poems of Various Kinds (1768) contain, as well as satires, more senti- mental works - an answer to one of Jerningham's effusions was praised by the MonthZy Reuiew.9

Like

In the main, however, his work implies a dependence on

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the Augustan hierarchical values - order, restraint and decorum in life as in art.

By the 1770s, rapid commercial and industrial expansion was too obviously disrupting the old social order to be idealized, as had been possible earlier in the century. Robinson sees the spread of luxury as the cause rather than the symptom of the social changes he condemns, as does Goldsmith. There were more percipient observers. John Brown had some fifteen years earlier characterized luxury as the 'third and highest stage' of the increase of cormnerce, which 'begets Avarice, gross Luxury, or effiminate Refinement among the higher Ranks, together with general Loss of Principle' .lo Robinson inverts this argument, condemning the 'unnecessary extension' of commerce, which is provoked (as he sees it) by the needs of luxury.11 This 'unnecessary extension' manifests itself in the older agricultural world both in the stabilisation of commercial fortunes in real estate, as in The Deserted ViZZage, and in the application of capitalistic methods to farming, with the pushing out of the less efficient small farmers, as in The kZZage Oppress'd.

Against this, Robinson appeals, as Pope did, to the honest man, using the same myth of the virtue of the old rural society. Similarly, Goldsmith saw himself as a 'professed ancient' in his attack on luxury.12 This myth, in the work of Pope and the literary opposition to Walpole, is used to point up the corruption of the City, both in its general and its particular sense (the Man of Ross against Sir Balaam) . I 3 is more sentimental than satiric, the extent to which poets depend on the idea of rural virtue, now destroyed or in the process of being corrupted, seems t o reflect a partial and confused recognition of the enormous social changes of the later eighteenth century - both in agricultural organization and in the growth of industry and the factory system. historians tend Co play down the extent of the decline of the small 'owner occupiers'l4 - Goldsmith's 'bold peasantry' or yeomanry15 - and it is to Robinson's credit that, like Crabbe after him, he also recognizes the hard- ships of the already substantial mass of landless rural workers, a mass that historians of all persuasions acknowledge as steadily growing, and increas- ingly depressed and pauperized until well into the nineteenth century.16 Similarly, in the dedication to Goldsmith, we see the gradual change from the earlier idea of charity as a quasi-natural expression of the social order - flowing from the rich down to the poor - to the explicitly prudential idea of benevolence as a prophylactic against disorder which is more common in the 1790s: Robinson wants to convince the rich 'that as it is repugnant to benevolence, so likewise is it to their own interest, to harrass and oppress the poor'. 17

Later in the century, when the mode

Modern economic

The poem opens with a sympathetic variation of the trope familiar from, for example, Gray's sonnet on West: the landscape, innocent and fertile, the true natura ridens, is contrasted not with the unhappiness of the poet, but with the oppression and misery of the rustic:

Alas: what pleasures now can touch his soul, His acts while power and frowning pride controul.

(11. 19-20)

That misery, in turn, is contrasted not with the far distant or classical past of Goldsmith's reference to a time 'When every rood of ground main- tained its man',l8 but with the more insidious myth of an organic society 'In times which now even memory well can trace' (1. 2 9 ) , when distinctions

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were maintained with amity, and each had his share. Here it may be allowed some validity: good harvests, when food prices were low and good tenants for farms thus much sought after.19 century that farmers were becoming increasingly genteel and discarding the earlier, and easier, relationship with their working men.20 the early eighteenth century, as in the 1770s, the majority of the population were, in Gregory King's terms, 'decreasing the wealth of the kingdom', partially or wholly dependent at some time in life on parish relief or on the charity of the great. of a previously interdependent community, with no great social gaps, which has been totally destroyed by the luxury of one man. The labourers are now reduced to slaves and considered only in their capacity for work: perhaps less an indication of Robinson's disregard of 'facts' than of his realisation that the methods of industry were being applied to agriculture that this was the normal view of the labourer in early eighteenth-century economic writing.21 as in a well-known contemporary poem:

the earlier eighteenth century is notable as a long period of

Conversely, it was noted towards the end of the

But even in

Robinson disregards this to present the picture

it is

Similarly, the yeoman farmer is stripped of his land,

Pity the sorrows of a poor old man, Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,

Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span: - Oh, give relief, and Heav'n will bless your store! ...

A little farm was my paternal lot; Then, like the lark, I sprightly hail'd the morn: -

But, ah! Oppression forc'd me from my cot; My cattle died, and blighted was my corn.22

In neither poem is there any explanation of the means by which the land is engrossed, nor any rationale other than the insatiable demands of luxury. We can hardly deny that the necessary, and fruitful, changes in agriculture looked like unbridled oppression to some contemporary observers, however misguided. The methods of commerce, applied in the country, were seen as an alien force - we remember that in CZarissa, Lovelace is more considerate of his tenants than the Harlowe uncles. Robinson does not even allow that engrossing may improve agricultural productivity: it merely 'swellCs1 the luxury of one splendid board'. (1. 52). The old community is thus destroyed not for use but for conspicuous consumption.23

Goldsmith, the improvident traveller praising the settled lives of his father and brother, had looked forward t'o his own return to the village in old age. Robinson, characteristically, changes this to the peasant's dream of a comfortable age:

How are his prospects vanish'd into air!

(1. 58)

This may refer not only to these dreams, but to the familiar appearance of the countryside around him, the fields perhaps once his, changed by 'improvement' as those around Helpston were to John Clare. The attack on the parasites of luxury which follows, a theme notable in other of Robinson's poems, does seem exaggerated, despite the disclaimer in the dedication, 24 unless we remember the frequently barbarous treatment of the poor by church- wardens and overseers observed by many contemporaries. Hannah More, for instance, wrote in 1795, 'I could now convict some overseers of murder if those who would redress these grievances would listen to me'.25 the young countryman, 'Who free from flattery speaks unstudied truth' (1. 821,

By analogy,

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i s t o be i d e n t i f i e d wi th t h e hones t poe t of Robinson's ear l ie r Poet's ManuuZ (17671, i n which t h e sycophants of t he wor th less Lord were f l a t t e r i n g poets . I n The Vi l lage Oppress 'd, t h e s e sycophants

Pamper'd wi th ease, now f a t t e n on t h e s p o i l O f hungry wretches doom'd t o ceaseless t o i l .

(11. 69-70)

Simi la r ly , Goldsmith had seen Poet ry d r iven from t h e land wi th the v i l l a g e r s of Auburn, implying t h e i d e n t i f i c - a t i o n of Poet ry n o t merely wi th an i d e a l i s e d p a s t o r a l o rde r , b u t wi.th a s o c i e t y i n which human and no t commercial va lues were paramount.

Here, t h e suppress ion of honesty i s exemplif ied i n t h e supposed d e c l i n e of marriage, because of t h e f e a r t h a t t h e c h i l d r e n w i l l know only misery and famine, and r igorous labour:

For boding Fancy p i c t u r e s f u t u r e harms, And t akes from wedded love i t s nob les t charms ... Beholds, i n e a r l y years , a p in ing race, .

(Misery and famine low'r ing i n t h e i r f a c e ) .

(11. 91-92 and 95-96)

There was cons iderable contemporary d i s q u i e t about a supposed d e c l i n e i n popula t ion (al though i t w a s , of course, i nc reas ing ) , and t h e accuracy of Robinson's d e s c r i p t i o n of t h e parents unable t o provide f o r t h e i r ch i ld ren i s confirmed by la te r writers. I n one of Southey's e a r l y poems a t r a v e l l e r , something of a straw man be l i ev ing t h a t d r ink and improvidence are t h e s o l e causes of t h e hardship of t h e poor, i s convinced by a poor woman t h a t marr iage and ch i ld ren , even f o r t h e 'deserving ' poor, b r ing unbearable d i s t r e s s :

But whkn I hea r my c h i l d r e n c r y f o r hunger, And see them sh ive r i n t h e i r r ags - God h e l p me! I p i t y those f o r whom t h e s e b e l l s r i n g up So mer r i ly upon t h e i r wedding day, Because I th ink of mine.26

Thus, i n t h e v i l l a g e oppressed by luxury, t h e n a t u r a l s a t i s f a c t i o n s both of honest labour and hones t love degenerate i n t o s l ave ry and immorality, and t h e n a t u r a l reward of a l i f e of labour , t h e dream of r e s p e c t and ease (11. 5 5 - 6 4 ) , is' rep laced by ever - increas ing he lp l e s sness and misery.

The o ld t r a d i t i o n of h o s p i t a l i t y has disappeared wi th t h e o ld soc ie ty of t he yeomanry and gent ry , whom Robinson sees as acknolwedging the sus- t a i n i n g labour of t he poor by s u s t a i n i n g them when they are p a s t labour: an i n t e r r e l a t i o n s h i p of r i g h t s and d u t i e s b i a s sed , even i n i t s i d e a l form, towards t h e r i c h , b u t f a r p r e f e r a b l e t o t h e anarchy where t h e luxurious house, b u i l t f o r show not use, and f o r one man only, i s f inanced and supported by t h e r u i n of o the r s . of denouncing t h e 'man of weal th and p r ide ' who 'Takes up a space t h a t many poor supp l i ed ' , t o cons ider 'what M r Pope long ago so happi ly and j u s t l y expressed, viz.

Thomas Comber had urged Goldsmith, ins tead

'27 ' Y e t hence t h e poor are cloth'd, t h e poor are fed.

Comber might, s i m i l a r l y , have urged Robinson t o cons ider , i n h i s e a r l y e igh teen th century golden age, Pope's Cot ta . t h e mythic q u a l i t y of t h e appeal t o an organic r u r a l s o c i e t y aga ins t t he encroachment of commerce and luxury, whether o r no t t h e r e i s some f a c t u a l

It i s important t o recognize

5

basis f o r Robinson's more b l e s sed ' t i m e s which now even memory w e l l can trace', o r Goldsmith's 'deser ted v i l l a g e ' , 2 8 One commentator p u t s t h e disappearance of t h e o ld t r a d i t i o n of h o s p i t a l i t y back in to the seventeenth century,30 l i t e r a r y oppos i t i on t o Walpole, b u t a t t h e end of t h e e ighteenth century, by r a d i c a l and conse rva t ive poe ts a l i k e , as an i m p l i c i t condemnation of the s o c i a l changes of t h e i r t i m e . That gran ted , however, Robinson makes the v a l i d p o i n t t h a t t h e f e a r of ' v i l e dependence, a t t h e publ ic c o s t ' (1. 118), i s i n t e n s i f i e d i n t h i s s i t u a t i o n , where t h e engrossing landowner i s now t h e s o l e ra te-payer of t h e p a r i s h , and probably e i t h e r himself t h e magist ra te , o r i n c o n t r o l of t h e m a g i s t r a t e t o whom t h e poor would appeal aga ins t t h e overseer o r churchwardens.

o r indeed Pope's Man of Ross.29

bu t t h e myth i s used not only i n t h e

From t h i s d e l i n e a t i o n of hopeless misery, t he poe t r e t u r n s t o the idea l i s ed r e t r o s p e c t of r u r a l l i f e , when t h e peasant w a s more conten t i n h i s innocence than t h e c o u r t i e r , t o a t t a c k W i l l i a m Somervile ( b e s t known as t h e au thor of The Chuce), who had i n HobbinoZ s a t i r i s e d the 'Luxury, the P r ide , t h e Wantonness ... of t h e middling S o r t of People ' [or t h e ' B r i t i s h Free-holder '] . of t h a t barefac 'd Knavery, and almost u n i v e r s a l Poverty, which r e ign without Controul i n every P lace ' .31 HobbinoZ - published i n 1740 - thus negates Robinson's i d y l l i c r u r a l happiness and p rospe r i ty .

' ... A s t h e s e a re the proper and genuine Causes

S t e r n HOBBINOL i n r u r a l P l en ty r e i g n s O ' e r wide-extended F i e l d s , h i s l a r g e Domain. Th'obsequious V i l l a g e r s , wi th Look Submiss ... 32

Robinson main ta ins , neve r the l e s s , t h a t t h e cause of t h e p re sen t oppression i s t h e luxury of t h e r i c h , and t h e i n t r u s i o n of commerce i n t o t h e country- s ide , r a t h e r than t h e homespun tyranny of t h e v i l l a g e ' g r e a t man', as i n Hobbinol. Thus t h e labour of t h e poor i s misd i rec ted t o t h e purchase of fo re ign luxur i e s :

super f luous s t o r e s ; S to res which t h e labours of t h e poor supply, Who seem f o r t h i s t o l ive , f o r t h i s t o d i e .

(11. 146-48)

They produce food, no t f o r themselves b u t f o r t h e makers of fo re ign luxury goods :

For them no p l en ty i s al low'd t o spr ing; To f o r e i g n climes t h a t qu ick ly i s convey'd, Aiding t h e schemes of luxury and t r ade .

(11. 226-28)

With t h i s w e might compare 'The Poor Man's Prayer ' (1766) , i n which Chatham i s urged t o s t o p t h e export of corn whi le t h e poor watch t h e i r c h i l d r e n p ine and d i e :

I n every p o r t t h e v e s s e l r i d e s secure ,

While w e t h e pangs of p re s s ing want endure, That waf t s our ha rves t t o a f o r e i g n shore;

The sons of s t r a n g e r s r i o t on our s tore133

A s i m i l a r complaint had been made twenty years ear l ier by S i r Matthew Decker.34 The ques t ion of t h e bounty on t h e expor t of corn w a s a vexed one i n a country undergoing t h e change from dependence on a g r i c u l t u r e t o dependence on indus t ry .35 A s l a t e as 1815 England w a s s t i l l an under-

6

developed country, with all the concomitant problems of huge gaps in living standards between the rich and the poor:

... too many proprietors turned a blind eye to the miseries of the system ... The increasing luxury and magnificence of gentlemen's seats contrasted strangely indeed with the plight of many of the labouring population. 36

For Robinson, the growth of commerce, as well as increasing the luxury of the landowner, brings the merchant himself into the country, and 'modish vices' with him, but he passes lightly over these to attack, in the manner of Thomson, the drunken hunting squire:

Such are their Sports - the tribes for whom no ray Of brightening science e'er illum'd the way ... Yet as Barbarians are consign'd to fame, And held least worthy of the human name.

37 (11. 173-4 and 177-8)

The comparison of the hunters with the true Shaftesburian inquirer into nature, itself ironically phrased, leads Robinson into a typically Augustan digression on the dangers of a failure in self-knowledge:

And we, who torture with tyrannic art, We boast refinement and the feeling heart.

(11. 193-4)

Because he admits that the organic society has totally vanished - the village is not deserted, but surviving and oppressed - and because he denies the recourse of emigration to these villagers, Robinson can be much more optimistic and primitivist about America than Goldsmith:

... realms where never commerce found its way, Nor luxFry yet has made mankind its prey.

(11. 205-6)

This optimistic vision, however, is but 'some feeble tidings' heard by the villagers, and for them serves only as another blocked prospect and hopeless dream.

Robinson turns from this to their present state, again described by comparison with the old society. Earlier in the poem, the misery of the present was seen as the consequence of the breakdown of a society of independent and interdependent yeomen and labourers. The social order has now become a degenerate feudalism, where the corruption of the lord by luxury leads him to neglect his men, his 'honest vassals' (1. 219). This view is corroborated by Brown, among others:

... the ancient and generous Hospitality of the Country is neglected, and derided; and a kind of Selfishness takes its Place. The honest Peasant is racked to the last Excess . . .38

Even the man once securely independent - we remember the dream of the century exemplified in Pope's 'Happy the man whose wish and care / A few paternal acres bound' - is dragged down by threats and chicanery into landless slavery.

7

In his concluding exhortation to the great, Robinson urges them to live more simply, as of old -

Ere with politeness poverty arose.

(1. 262)

Their parasites he urges, as Young had done, to show their true refinement in benevolence :

Show Virtue still remains, and while ye heal Want's toilsome miseries, show yourselves can feel.

(11. 279-80) 39

Although it is not outstanding in poetic merit, T h e V i l l a g e Oppress 'd is a solid piece of journeyman's work, and especially interesting both for its relationship with T h e Deserted V i l l a g e and for its revelation of trends in late eighteenth-century rural poetry. Like Goldsmith, like Langhorne in The C o u n t r y J u s t i c e , and many lesser poets, Robinson reiterates the comforting vision of 'the golden Days of Hospitality',40 and thus offers even those of his readers who did not dismiss the description of rural oppression as 'imaginary' a palliative against their unease with the present in an idealised version of the pa~t.~1

Elizabeth Duthie, University College, Cardiff.

Footnotes

See G.S. Rousseau (ed.), Goldsmith T h e Cri t ical H e r i t a g e ( l 9 7 4 ) , extracts 1 8 , 19 and 2 2 ; Roger Lonsdale (ed.), T h e Poems of Gray, Collins, and G o l d s m i t h ( 1 9 6 9 ) , 672.

Thomas Comber, A Free and Candid Correspondence ( 1 7 7 0 ) , 103; see 'Letter the Thirteenth', p a s s i m .

Anthony King, T h e Frequented V i l l a g e ( 1 7 7 1 ; reprinted Dublin 1 7 8 4 ) , 6 . G.S. Rousseau, op. cit., queries 1771 as the date of publication, but the poem was reviewed in that year ('this piece in which mere description holds the place of sense', M o n t h l y - R e v i e w xlv ( 1 7 7 1 1 , 5 0 9 ) .

Thomas Dermody, 'The Frequented Village', in T h e Harp of Erin (18071 , I 125 (quotation 1 3 2 ) : cf. James Thomson, T h e S e a s o n s ( 1 7 4 6 1 , 'Winter' 11. 348-58.

P o e t r y O r i g i n a l and S e l e c t e d I1 no. xxiii ( 1 7 9 7 ) . The poem seems to have been written before the death in 1790 of John Howard, whom it apostrophizes.

British Library press-mark 1871 El ( 1 8 7 ) .

Little or nothing is known of him. G.S. Rousseau, op. c i t . 8 8 , notes that his poem is 'similar' to King's (which is hardly exact), and that his dates are 1727-1802, but the John Robinson, 'politician', 1727-1802, in the DIVB is an extremely unlikely candidate, as he had no connection with Norwich, whence The V i l l a g e O p p r e s s ' d is dated. I have been

8

8

9

1 u

11

1 2

: 1

' 7

' 9

.\o

'1

12

2 3

24

unable positively to identify the poet among the many John Robinsons who appear in contemporary Norwich and Norfolk records and newspapers as churchwarden, merchant, attorney, man-midwife, hot-presser, and so on. He is not mentioned in R.W. Ketton-Cremer's 'Norfolk Satire in the Eighteenth Century', Norfolk ArchaeoZogy xxiii (1929).

Monthly Review xliv (1771), 261 (not a specific comparison with Goldsmith); Crit ical Review xxxi (1771), 73; London Magazine xl (1771), 41.

Monthly Review xxx&ii (17681, 149.

An Estimate of the Mmners and PrincipZes of the Times I (1757), 153.

The ViZZage Oppress'd (17711, v.

Lonsdale, op. cit., 675.

See Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his Circle' (Cambridge, Mass. 1968), 16, 96, 226.

G.E. Mingay, English Landed Society i n the Eighteenth Century (19631, 15, 50.

'bold peasantry' is glossed as 'yeomanry' in the Critical Review: see G.S. Rousseau, op. cit . , 76.

See J.D. Chambers and G.E. Mingay, The AgricuZtwlaZ Revolution 1750- 1880 (1966), 96-97.

Robinson, op.' cit., v. 2960 (Cambridge, Mass. and London 1965), 97-98.

See David Owen, English Philanthropy 1660-

See H.J. Bell, 'The Deserted ViZZage and Goldsmith's social doctrines', PMLA lix (1944), 769-71; Comber, op. c i t . , 104-05.

See M.D. George, England in Transition (1931), 13-14.

See J.8. Clapham, An Economic History of Modern Britain I (Cambridge 1926), 122.

See Edgar Furniss, The Position of Labour i n a system of Nationalism (New York 1920), 147-56. I owe this reference, and the reference to Sir Matthew Decker below, to Michael Jubb, whose help I should like here to acknowledge.

Thomas Moss, Poems on Several Occasions (Wolverhampton 1769) , 'The Beggar ' . See Raymond Williams, The Country and the C i t y (1973), 78.

Robinson, op. c i t . , vi: however much 'some circumstances may seem to be exaggerated, I believe the dispassionate reader will scarcely find a passage stretched beyond the bounds of reality'.

9

25 Quoted in M.G. Jones, Hannah More (Cambridge 1952), 156.

26 The AnnwrZ AnthoZogy I1 (Bristol 1800), 'Eclogue The Wedding' (quotation 122).

27 Comber, op. c i t . , 102, a misquotation 'of the 'Epistle to Burlington', 1 . 169.

28 See W.G. Hoskins, The Making of the EngZish Landscape(l955), 132-34; Robert Potter, Observations on the Poor Laws (1775), 64.

29 See Howard Erskine-Hill, The Socia2 MiZieu of AZexander Pope (New Haven and London 1975), Ch. I.

30 B.S. Allen, Tides i n EngZish Taste (Cambridge, Mass. 1937), 97.

31 HobbinoZ (3rd edition, 1740), x.

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

Ib id . , 5.

W.H. Roberts, Poems (1774), 115.

Sir Matthew Decker, Essay on the Causes of the Decline of Foreign Trade (1774), 30-31.

See Chambers and Mingay, op. cit. , 108-9.

G.E. Mingay, op. c i t . , 227.

Robinson is rather old fashioned, considering his denunciation of luxury, in mentioning the hunting only of the deer and hare: see Basil Taylor, Anha2 Painting i n EngZand (Harmondsworth 19551, 20; anon, AgricuZture and Commerce (1765), 11-12.

Brown, Estimate I1 (1758), 72: see Soame Jenyns, Works (2nd edition 1793), xxxi.

Edward Young, Night Thoughts. Night the First (1742), 11. 260-64.

40 John Langhorne, The Country Justice P a r t the Second (17751, 18; see Raymond Williams, op. c i t . , 80-82.

41 Cf. S.E. Fish, SeZf-Conswning Ar t i fac ts (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London 1972), 1-3.