A WORKHOUSE POEM.
[To THE EDITOR OF TES SPECTATOR:]
Sra,—I regret to have misinformed your readers upon the authorship of "The Last Voyage," quoted in my letter to the Spectator of February 2nd.
I now find, upon inquiry, that the old carpenter neither thought nor said that he had composed the lines in question. He only repeated them, as apposite to their talk, to the man working next him in the woodshed, my correspondent, who liked them so much that he asked for a copy, which, having received, he sub- sequently sent to me without the knowledge of the supposed writer, who had never so much as heard my name. My correspondent thought, or took it for granted, that the man who repeated the lines had composed them, both men being in the habit of making verses. The supposed author writes tome, "I have no knowledge of the Rules in Connection" (that is, with the mysterious art or craft of publishing). Therefore when I sent him through my friend an appreciative message on lines written by him, it probably never occurred to him that by written I meant composed. And when some weeks later I surprised him, "pleasantly so" he wrote, by the announcement that his poem was actually to be printed in the Spectator, my poor old friend, "not knowing the rules," evidently thought himself no more fraudulent than the man who publicly sings a song composed by another man. The mistake turns on the exact meaning of the verb "to write," which, I sadly fear, I ought to have taken more pains to define, knowing the different values words have for the literate and the illiterate, scribes and handicraftsmen. For my mistake I apologise. Still, it may give pleasure to your readers to know that aged and crippled craftsmen who, through no fault, have to spend the close of long, hard-working lives in the poor shelter of a workhouse, are able to beguile the grey monotony of their days in such gentle and innocent wise as say first letter indicates.
Previous page
