Felicia Hemans

Childhood

Felicia Dorothea Browne was six years of age when The Battle of the Nile took place in 1799 and the whole country celebrated one of the defining naval battles of the Napoleonic wars.  Childhood impressions are very strong and even though the young Felicia would have only vaguely understood what was happening at such a young age, she later invoked the memories in a vivid and poignant poem which served to illustrate how strongly it had affected her.  The poem was called Casabianca and it told of an incident during The Battle of the Nile.


The Battle of the Nile ( 1799 )

When the young Napoleon Bonaparte returned fresh from his victories in Italy to be feted by the whole of Paris, his masters in The Directory were wary of his brashness and his latent power so when he himself proposed his next campaign, they readily agreed.  If it had taken time to reflect, The Directory would have seen that Napoleon's proposal was a laughably naive, boys-own adventure dressed up as a vague attempt to thwart British plans in India. 
With characteristic zeal, Napoleon quickly gathered a fleet at Toulon consisting of thirteen ships of the line, four frigates and a host of transports to carry an army of 31,000 soldiers.  Another army of engineers, botanists, archaeologists, civil servants, doctors and artists also gathered as an accompanying scientific expedition.  The armada was presided over by Admiral Brueys who sailed in the L'Orient which was at the time the biggest warship in existence and his captain was named Casabianca.
The fleet sailed across the Atlantic and almost as an afterthought anchored at Malta where they set about looting everything they could lay their hands on and finally landed at Alexandria in July, 1799.
Two great battles in the shadow of the Pyramids comprehensively defeated the Mameluke cavalry and Napoleon set about shaping the conquered countryside into his vision of what he thought it should be ( a characteristic of Napoleon throughout his life was that he shaped his environment in his own fashion whether it was a nation or a drawing-room ).  The scientists were themselves busy with the exotic new world around them and if there was one good thing that came out of the Egyptian Campaign it was the commencement of Egyptology which carries on to this day.  Vivant Denon catalogued artifacts to be carried back to France which later formed the beginning of the Egyptian collection in the Louvre { of which Denon was to be the first curator ) while a group of soldiers discovered lying in the sand what would later be the key to Champollion's deciphering hieroglyphics---the Rosetta Stone, now in the British Museum. 
The French fleet in the meanwhile remained at anchor in Aboukir Bay in positions which were to soon have fatal repercussions.  Broueys had placed his ships in such a way that they were too far from shore to have the advantage of shore batteries and had obligingly left enough sea between land and ships to be attacked from both sides.  In an age when the broadside was the cutting edge of naval warfare it was asking for trouble and it wasn't long in coming.  Nelson deployed his ships to come in on both sides of the anchored French fleet and his Band of Brothers in the Goliath, Vanguard, Bellerephon, Leander and Swiftsure blasted the French ships incessantly.  The battle went on through the night and the French ships were pounded unmercifully until morning found that four ships had escaped and the remainder were either sunk or aground.  Two thousand French sailors died and three thousand were taken prisoner in what was a complete disaster for French naval power and could be described as Napoleon's sea-going Moscow debacle.

L'Orient

Felicia was in her thirties when she recalled her childhood memories of the incident ------ but it wasn't the feats of arms that she remembered and it wasn't Nelson's glorious victory that she recalled,  Her romantic soul had polarised around the plight of a young French boy caught up in the maelstrom of the battle.

L'Orient was the flagship of the French fleet, seemingly indestructible and carrying Admiral Brueys, the fleet commander.  Every ship in the British fleet wanted the prestige of sinking the L'Orient but it was the Swiftsure which was her main protagonist and the battle between the two was long and hard.  Admiral Brueys had lost both legs but directed operations from an armchair on deck and such was the ferocity of the fighting it has become legendary in French naval folklore.  Brueys was finally killed by a cannonball but the fight went on with attacking ships unable to get too close as the heat from the burning ship was causing the pitch between the seams to melt.  Brouey's Captain Casabianca lay below dead and in all the confusion of falling masts, blazing fires and flying cannonballs his 12 year old son son remained aboard the dying ship agonising whether he should leave his father's body or remain faithful to the end.
The decision was made for him when the ship blew up taking 3 million in Maltese gold to the bottom of the sea ----- the explosion was heard over 20 miles away and there was a stunned silence throughout both fleets at the enormity and the nature of the loss.


Casabianca

It was the comparatively trivial incident of the French boy's quandary that moved Felicia to write what is undoubtedly her most memorable poem and the sympathy of a little girl for a small boy caught up in a nightmare beyond his imagination was recalled years later via the pen of the adult Felicia Hemans.  As the lines resonate down the centuries, they are as poignant today as the day they were first written ;

The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but he had fled,
The flame that lit the battle's work,
Shone him o'er the dead

He called aloud "say,father say,
If yet my task is done?"
He knew not that the Chieftain lay,
Unconscious of his son

Childhood Days

Felicia Hemans was born Felicia Dorothea Browne in 1793 at 72 Duke St { now 118 }.  At that time Duke St was an upper class road with Georgian Houses on both sides.  It was a short walk from the bustling docks on one side and the tranquillity of St. James' Mount on the other ---- 150 years later to be the site of the Anglican cathedral.  Felicia's father, George Browne, was a native of County Cork who arriving in Liverpool caught up in a flurry of patriotic fervour for the Napoleonic Wars  found himself instead a married man with a family and a post in a mercantile merchant's office.  Felicia's mother was one of four boys and three girls born in Wolstenholme Square which was another prestigious area backing onto Duke St.  Her father belonged to the mercantile firm of Fahrer and Wagner and he had the distinction of acting as Venetian Consul. When John Bellingham assassinated Spencer Perceval in 1812, he was living in Duke Street. His family were distraught when he was sentenced to death and they were comforted by Felicia's parents and family.

Felicia's poetry has been described as "Often melancholy but seldom morbid " and perhaps the clues lie in her very early years ; to all intents and purposes, living in a fine house in a prestigious area with a lucrative post literally on his doorstep, George Browne had struck it rich but the year that Felicia was born he found himself caught up in what was Liverpool's Wall St Crash.  There was in the year of 1793 an unforeseen financial crisis throughout the city which resulted among other things in the city printing its own banknotes { a £5 note of the period was auctioned in London for £200 in 1995 } ---a completely unprecedented situation in the thriving seaport.  The extent of the crash was so-far reaching that even previously fireproof mercantile firms were affected and George Browne suddenly found himself bankrupt.  

With the only bread-winner in severe financial straits the house went up for sale, the furniture was auctioned off and a severely traumatised Mrs Browne took to her bed where she remained for many months afterwards.  It was reported that the incoming tenant, a Mr Cornelius Bourne, was "severely inconvenienced" as she was unable to be moved and this was seven months later.  The following year found the family in Bold St and when Felicia was around six or seven, their continuing financial problems caused them to decamp to Gwyrch { now the site of Gwyrch castle } near Abergele, forty miles into North Wales.  The sequence of events is a little blurred but it seems that twelve months afterwards, Felicia's mother and the children went to live in Bronwhylfa, St Asaph and according to all reports, Felicia's father ' vanished in the direction of Canada' and disappeared from all their lives forever.  


A Welsh Idyll

It was during her life in rural Wales which she loved so much that Felicia began to write poetry.  It can only be surmised as to why she felt moved to pick up her pen at such a tender age but it's not too difficult to picture a sensitive child with a father who had absconded and a neurotic mother, turning in on herself amidst all the domestic turmoil.  She once heard someone remark 
"that child is not made for happiness, her colour comes and goes too fast" which upset her and stayed with her for a long time and she refused to have her ears pierced as she was afraid of the pain.  So, Felicia expressed her emotions via her poetry.  Once she started the words flowed and she was still writing poetry when in 1808 her work from the age of eight to fifteen was collated and printed in Liverpool in a volume by G. F. Harris on behalf of T.Cadell and W. Davies of The Strand, London.  The publication was subscribed by 1,000 Liverpool people among them was William Roscoe.  Her new home became a haven of peace and she used to sit on a fallen tree trunk by the river near Pont Dafydd, Escob.  In later years when Felicia had become famous, it was pointed out as the poetess's favourite spot until floods washed the tree trunk away.  Felicia's first published works were met with a mixed reception with the harshest of the criticism coming from people who made no allowance for the fact that her verses were written in childhood and adolescence but it didn't halt the flow of words which became prolific and she wrote of everything and everyone that affected her.  Her home in Wales came in for special attention with a book of poems called Welsh Melodies which paid homage to the Welsh way of life and Cader Idris acknowledged as the best of the selection.  Her style was unreservedly flowery and romantic which was very much in keeping with the times and it brought her to the attention of two other great romantics, Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley ; Byron proclaimed himself an admirer and carried Felicia's poems around with him and Shelley began a regular correspondence.  Byron and Shelley might have been romantics but they were hardly pillars of the establishment ---- Byron was a womaniser and Shelley had earned a reputation as a loose cannon from his university days.  As a young girl it's easy to see how Felicia's head could have been turned by adulation from these handsome young men and a touch of "wildness" may have just have just added a little spice to any potential relationship but Felicia's mother, recovered from her bout of neurosis, swiftly put an end to any thoughts Felicia might have had in that direction.  In light of how Byron and Shelley finished up she acted entirely correctly but it's interesting to speculate how Felicia's sensitive nature would have reacted to a liaison with either man.


Marriage

Consistently, Felicia put down in verse her thoughts upon events which touched her ---she wrote To The New Born for the child of her eldest brother and when two of her other brothers entered the army she was inspired to pen England and Spain; Or Valour and Patriotism ( 1808).  Casabianca was one of the very few times that she wrote about reminiscences of the past.
Felicia's brothers served in Spain during the Peninsular War under Sir John Moore and she was just 18 years of age when she was introduced to another officer from the Peninsular War, Captain Alfred Hemans.  The relationship flourished and in 1812 the couple were married and set up home in St.Asaph.  During the following six years, a seemingly loving relationship saw five sons born to the couple but in 1818 Captain Hemans took himself off to live in Rome.  Reasons for the break up have never been fully explained ( it was rumoured that financial difficulties were to blame ) but what is immediately apparent is that history had repeated itself and just like her mother Felicia was left to fend for herself with a young family to take care of. It was rumoured that Felicia offered to join her husband in Italy but there was no response.  From this time onward, her poetry changed from a whimsical and absorbing hobby to a means of making a living and her output increased accordingly.  Fortunately, her work sold well and with it came celebrity and fame with The English Sappho and Literary Lioness the usual two soubriquets she enjoyed.  The poems she turned out were in complete accordance with the romantic ideals of the age she lived in and although some of her stanzas may seem today to be a little verbose and overdone they were completely normal to her readers then.  The poems she wrote in her days in Wales are undoubtedly her best work ------ He Never Sailed Again, 
and The Better Land { a favourite of Florence Nightingale }, The Storm Painter in His Dungeon and The Forest Sanctuary were popular then and still are today in many quarters. 
 There is a paradox to Felicia's work in that although the verses are unvaryingly couched in flowery prose and they often take some time to reach the point, many of her themes are of serious matters.  Wordsworth was an admirer but said much the same thing in a critique of her work which stated there were " too many flowers and not enough fruit".  On the other hand George Eliot thought The Forest Sanctuary was "exquisite".
Felicia's life continued in this way for the following nine years in which time she consolidated her reputation nationally and internationally ; the Americans had taken to their hearts a poem called The Landing of The Pilgrim Fathers which was of obvious appeal and remains today a standard text in many American schools.  In fact, just that one poem makes Felicia far better known abroad than in her own country.


Return to Liverpool

The death of Felicia's mother in 1827, marked a dramatic change in the lives of the whole family.  Felicia expressed her emotions outwardly in the usual manner composing Hymn By The Sick-Bed of a Mother  but it could not allay her extreme grief and from that point on she was never in good health.  The two eldest boys went to live with their father in Rome and for reasons that have never been explained but were possibly to have been to do with her remaining sons' education, Felicia decided to return to Liverpool and in 1828 at the age of 35 she left her beloved Wales never to return.  The return journey by coach was not a happy event and Felicia covered her face with her cloak telling her sons to let her know when her home was no longer in sight.
Felicia's new home was situated in what was then the picturesque village of Wavertree which was considered to be hardly a part of Liverpool at all.  The village had a chocolate-box, bow-window, cobblestone, Dickensian beauty ----traces of the old village can be seeen today if you look hard enough.  The house itself was a pleasant, Georgian, sandstone house standing in its own grounds with the walls of the front garden reaching as far as the road.  It was during this period that Felicia travelled to the Lake District, spending time with Wordsworth at Mount Rydal in 1830 where she also met the Duc de Chartres.  Evidently Felicia and Wordsworth were kindred spirits and Felicia was moved to say of her friend in a letter ;
"There is a daily beauty in his life which is in such lovely harmony with his poetry that I am thankful to have witnessed and felt it.  He gives me a good deal of his society, reads to me, walks with me, leads my pony when I ride and I begin to talk with him as a sort of paternal friend.  The whole of this morning he kindly passed in reading to me a great deal from Spenser and afterwards his own Laodamia, my favourite, Tintern Abbey and many of those noble sonnets which you so likewise enjoy.  Yesterday evening he walked beside me as I rode on a long and lovely mountain path high above Grasmere Lake.  I was much interested by his shewing me, carved deep into the rock, as we passed, the initials of his wife's name inscribed there many years ago by himself ; and the dear old man like Old Mortality renews them from time to time.  I could scarcely help exclaiming Esto Perpetua !

She also travelled to meet her brother who had also distinguished himself and was by this time Sir Thomas Henry Browne and a previous trip in 1829 saw her meeting Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford which inspired A Farewell to Abbotsford.  In the spring of that year, she took a trip across the Mersey with her three sons to the little sea-side town of Seacombe which entranced her and she wrote to a friend that she loved the beach and the " thousand of sails and streamers glancing and gleaming past" on the river.
It has been said that Felicia didn't like Liverpool but if that's true and if Felicia missed her home in Wales and found it difficult to adjust to her new home then it has to be said that it would be hard to sympathise ----- Wavertree then was picture-postcard beautiful and she was never short of visitors.  It is quite probable that it was not Wavertree that she disliked but the constant stream of visitors both welcome and unwelcome.  She was at this time a celebrated member of the literatii and as such her home became a salon for the rich and famous and included among others John Roscoe { William Roscoe's son }, Dr Bowring, a Miss Jewsbury, a Miss Parr and Mrs Lawrence from nearby Wavertree Hall.  Perhaps she could have lived with this kind of celebrity but there were also constant incursions into her garden by hosts of well-wishers and adulators who thought nothing of taking sprigs from her garden or pebbles as souvenirs.  It seems that American visitors to the city also made a point of making the excursion to Felicia's home and to a lover of serenity and peace it was all very tedious.  Felicia did make attempts to become part of the community and true to her lifelong habit, she composed 
On visiting a Girls School at the hour of Evening Prayer after a trip to the Wavertree Girls academy.
In 1831, after three years of life in Wavertree Felicia moved to Dublin to be near to one of her brothers.  Her failing health possibly prompted the move and from that time onward she slowly failed until in 1835 she died at the early age of forty one years.  Her death was attributed to a weak heart caused by a bout of rheumatic fever in her childhood.

Felicia Remembered

As a poetess, Felicia Hemans has the singular reputation of being immortalized by a single line.  The average person is unaware that Felicia ever existed and Casabianca is more likely to be known as a Spanish restaurant but a mention of The Boy Stood on The Burning Deck  brings instant recognition by one and all. 

Apart from Casabianca and The Pilgrim Fathers which is revered in America, Felicia's poetry is an acquired taste beloved of romantics and lovers of arcane adjectives from a by-gone age.  Her poetry has a medieval feel to it and retains a romanticized and sometimes adolescent vision of a world peopled by "maidens and rose-bowers", "vernal streams and chastened hearts", "crimson luscious cherries and vines luxurious berries", and so on.  Nevertheless, her poetry has touched many people all over the world and she retains a small but fiercely staunch following.

St Anne's Church is right in the heart of the city of Dublin and there is a tasteful and simple tablet commemorating Felicia.  St Asaph's Cathedral, which is incidentally the smallest Cathedral in the country, has a similar memorial and there is a marble bust of the poet in Dove Cottage, the Wordsworth Museum in Grasmere.


Felicia Forgotten

The house where Felicia was born, no. 118 Duke St, is still standing and remains one of a row of terraced Georgian houses.  The house next door is used as offices and has been immaculately restored but Felicia's birthplace is sadly dilapidated and has stood empty for years but is still recognizable as the place where Felicia Hemans' life was once celebrated.

In 1899, the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Liverpool unveiled a plaque on the front of the poetess's house, inspired, designed and paid for by her admirers in the Lancashire and Cheshire Historic Society.  The plaque combined the Rose of Lancaster and the Wheatsheaf of Cheshire in relief on a background of dark green Della Robbia pottery.  Her grandson, Alfred Hemans was invited to the ceremony but was unable to attend due to an accident, however, in the same year he passed the manuscript of The Forest Sanctuary into the safekeeping of Liverpool Public Library along with 18 unpublished stanzas and Felicia's revisions.  

The manuscript of the Treasures of the Deep was also given into the Library's care.
There are some rusted screws which once held the plaque in place but the plaque itself has disappeared and there is no indication whatsoever that a poetess who was once courted by Shelley, admired by Byron and befriended by Wordsworth, ever lived here.

The house in no 17 Wavertree Rd no longer exists which is a mystery in view of the fact that similar houses of identical age still stand and are in good condition to the rear, side and front of Felicia's old home.  In 1936, the Liverpool Post printed the following article;
"The house in Wavertree, once the home of Mrs Hemans, the poetess and a mecca for american pilgrims is to let.  It bears no historical identification and prospective tenants are unaware of its literary associations".

The following year, the Evening Express columnist wrote "How forlorn it looks"and complained that there was no identification.  In 1958, the house had gone "Engulfed by the tide of nondescript urban expansion" as the Post put it.  Later on, it was the local Postmaster who identified Felicia's old home ---- he had lived next door for many years.  

Even now there are local residents who remember Mrs Hemans old house and not one of them would have exchanged it for the drab filling station that now stands in its place.

Liverpool must be rich in poets and celebrities if it has nothing to recall a poetess who was courted by Shelley, admired by Byron and befriended by Wordsworth.  But the fact remains that in the whole of the city there is not one memorial to Felicia Hemans. There was at one time a street in Toxteth called Hemans St, right next to Thackeray St, but even this has disappeared without trace and it seems that the whole of Liverpool is conspiring to wipe her memory off the map ---- quite literally in this case.