Robert Stephen Hawker
Robert Stephen Hawker was a 19th-century English poet and clergyman, born on December 3, 1803, in Devonshire. Initially pursuing a career in law, he shifted his focus to literature and education, eventually attending Pembroke College, Oxford, where he began to publish poetry. His notable works include "Song of the Western Men" and "Records of the Western Shore," which reflect the life and legends of his Cornish parishioners. Hawker was ordained as a priest in 1831 and served as vicar of Morwenstow, where he engaged with local culture and community through his writing.
In addition to poetry, he wrote on church matters and produced essays on historical subjects. His later years were marked by personal tragedy, including the death of his first wife, after which he published his most ambitious poem, "The Quest of the Sangraal." Hawker's life was characterized by eccentricities, such as his opium addiction and unique fashion sense, but his poetry is praised for its emotional depth and vivid expression. He passed away on August 15, 1875, leaving behind a legacy of literary and spiritual contributions.
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Robert Stephen Hawker
Poet
- Born: December 3, 1803
- Birthplace: Stoke Damerel, Devonshire, England
- Died: August 15, 1875
- Place of death: Plymouth, England
Biography
On December 3, 1803, Robert Stephen Hawker was born to Jacob Stephen Hawker, a doctor who later became a minister, and Jane Elizabeth Drewitt Hawker at Damerel in Devonshire. He boarded at Liskeard Brammer School until the age of sixteen, when he determined to pursue law and went to work as a solicitor in Plymouth. He soon decided against that pursuit and determined to continue his education, entering Cheltenham Grammar School. His first collection of poems titled Tendrils (written under the pseudonym Reuben), was printed in 1821. The volume was remarkable only for the age at which he published it, eighteen.
In 1823, at the age of nineteen, Hawker entered Pembroke College, Oxford and later that year married Charlotte I’ans. “Song of the Western Men,” his best-known poem, was published by a local newspaper in 1826. Hawker transferred to Magdalen College and took his bachelor of arts degree in 1828. The following year, he was ordained a deacon and was ordained a priest in 1831. He served his first, brief curacy at North Tamerton, Cornwall.
Hawker once described his parishioners as “a mixed multitude of smugglers, wreckers, and dissenters of various hues,” and it is with these people and village life that his poetry mainly deals: smuggling, shipwrecks, everyday happenings in a village, and saints’ legends. He called the poems of an early published volume, Records of the Western Shore (1832), “legends of the district done in verse.” This volume is representative of much of his work not only in subject matter but in use of the ballad form. The same year his second volume of poetry was published, he completed a master of arts degree at Magdalen College. Three years later, on December 31, 1839, he was made vicar of Morwenstow. In 1851, he added the parish of Wellcombe to his pastoral duties.
While continuing to write and publish poetry, Hawker also wrote on church matters, including letters and sermons. Not long after his wife’s death on February 2, 1863, Hawker’s most impressive poem was published, The Quest of the Sangraal, Chant the First (1864). This incomplete, mystical, blank-verse narrative has been compared with Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. Likewise in 1864, Hawker married Pauline Anne Kuckynski on December 21, and the couple would have three daughters. Hawker began to mine his antiquarian interests, producing a collection of essays titled Footprints of Former Men in Far Cornwall in 1870. By 1873, Hawker’s health was beginning to fail, and he died at Plymouth on August 15, 1875. Hawker was awarded the Newdigate Prize for Poetry for his poem Pompeii in 1827.
Robert Stephen Hawker is often better remembered for his eccentricities: his opium addiction, said to have inspired some of the visionary passages in The Quest for the Sangraal; his penchant for unusual dress; his excessive fondness for animals; and his interests in the occult and the supernatural. However, his verse is remarkable for its genuine feeling and strength of expression.