PAP 002

The Poet and The Paupers

I.002


Yet we still prize individuality. If we can, we renovate and modernize an old house because it has charm and is different; a thatched-roofed, flint-faced cottage tucked away down a lane in Sussex will command a higher price than the latest neo-Georgian semi on a modern estate development. Richard Lower’s two stories, Tom Cladpole’s Jurney to Lunnun and Jan Cladpole’s Trip to ‘Mericur, have the same charm as the cottage. Moreover, for their own time and place they were best-sellers; twenty thousand copies of the first alone, chiefly to Sussex cottagers and often into homes that knew no other book than the Bible. “In a marvelous way,” wrote the Reverend A.A. Evans in On Foot in Sussex, “the doggerel of Tom Cladpole’s adventures appealed to them. There was humour, touches of insight into the labourer’s mind, and its language was homely…. It is a tribute to the rare gifts of Richard Lower that he could so read and express the inner thoughts and sympathies of the field-worker that his little book won among them at once a wide favour.” “Richard Lower’s greatest contribution to literature was probably that which, incidentally, he made to our knowledge of the Sussex dialect. He was not, like so many who presume to write on local dialects, an outsider in level of life and outlook, but one of the people born and bred with them, and their language was his own. So he has caught and put down for us the words and forms of speech much of which has already passed out of use. There are also the ways of thought, the mental outlook, the domestic sympathies of men of toil, and with them there comes their feelings of resentment against the dull drudgery of daily existence to which they were condemned, the petty tyrannies, the fear of unemployment, of sickness, and shortage of food. But through it all, and giving spice and zest to his narratives, are the homely wit and merry jest which do so much to lighten the way of life for everyone.” And this highly-praised, sympathetic man was in real life the ‘Bumble’ of Oliver Twist! He was also, in the opinion of one qualified to judge, “the best English Grammarian I ever knew.” In fact he was a man of many parts, all of them useful. He listed them in a poem in which, from modesty or embarrassment, he omitted his own name:

Yet we still prize individuality. If we can, we renovate and modernize an old house because it has charm and is different; a thatched-roofed, flint-faced cottage tucked away down a lane in Sussex will command a higher price than the latest neo-Georgian semi on a modern estate development. Richard Lower’s two stories, Tom Cladpole’s Jurney to Lunnun and Jan Cladpole’s Trip to ‘Mericur, have the same charm as the cottage. Moreover, for their own time and place they were best-sellers; twenty thousand copies of the first alone, chiefly to Sussex cottagers and often into homes that knew no other book than the Bible.

“In a marvelous way,” wrote the Reverend A.A. Evans in On Foot in Sussex, “the doggerel of Tom Cladpole’s adventures appealed to them. There was humour, touches of insight into the labourer’s mind, and its language was homely…. It is a tribute to the rare gifts of Richard Lower that he could so read and express the inner thoughts and sympathies of the field-worker that his little book won among them at once a wide favour.”

“Richard Lower’s greatest contribution to literature was probably that which, incidentally, he made to our knowledge of the Sussex dialect. He was not, like so many who presume to write on local dialects, an outsider in level of life and outlook, but one of the people born and bred with them, and their language was his own. So he has caught and put down for us the words and forms of speech much of which has already passed out of use. There are also the ways of thought, the mental outlook, the domestic sympathies of men of toil, and with them there comes their feelings of resentment against the dull drudgery of daily existence to which they were condemned, the petty tyrannies, the fear of unemployment, of sickness, and shortage of food. But through it all, and giving spice and zest to his narratives, are the homely wit and merry jest which do so much to lighten the way of life for everyone.”

And this highly-praised, sympathetic man was in real life the ‘Bumble’ of Oliver Twist! He was also, in the opinion of one qualified to judge, “the best English Grammarian I ever knew.” In fact he was a man of many parts, all of them useful. He listed them in a poem in which, from modesty or embarrassment, he omitted his own name:

Copyright:This section is Copyright, the Author, 1980-2004. Copying of any of this material for other than individual, personal use is prohibited. Use of the materials, concepts and story contained in this section for any commercial use, any other money-making activity of any sort, or any type of academic activity is prohibited without the express, written permission of the author.