Arthur Symons

Poet

• Born: February 28, 1865
• Birthplace: Milford Haven, Wales
• Died: January 22, 1945
• Place of death: Wittersham, Kent, England

Biography

Arthur William Symons was born on February 28, 1865, in Milford Haven, Wales, to Wesleyan minister Mark and mother Lydia Pascoe Symons. Most remarkable about his early literary leanings is that he could not read until he was nine, as he “absolutely refused to learn” to do so. However, he was passionate about literature, absorbing it by way of those who read to him, and was ferocious in his first years at school—once, that is, he was admonished that he would be judged against others—writing his first poem at nine years old.

Symons was also reading with as much fervor, taking in all the influences he could. Robert Browning, Lord Byron, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Algernon Swinburne, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, for instance, would become his first literary models. Also to influence the young writer was his uprooted childhood: as minister, Symons’s father moved the family from parish to parish. This constant uprooting, which occurred every few years, was traumatic for the boy, who would later write that he had never “known what it as to have a home.” Though his father was supportive of his son’s writing endeavors and even stood behind the teenager’s decision to stop attending church, Symons found him to be a man whom he respected but never took much interest in.

The family moved to Bideford, England, in 1879. There Symons entered the High Street Classical and Mathematical School, where he met schoolmaster Charles Churchill Osborne, his first mentor, only six years his senior. The twenty-year-old Osborne soon left to work as a newspaper editor and critic, but stayed in close contact with Symons, who greatly benefitted not only from the literary support but also from the music, books, and magazine articles Symons had no access to in his small hometown.

This exposure, combined with an eye toward a “more contemporary course of literary study” and the feelings of being part of the London literary world by way of his membership in the newly founded Browning Society, added to Symons’s call to publish. At the end of the school term in June of 1882, he wrote Osborne, telling him of his decision to leave school. Symons had begun exchanging letters with one of Browning Society’s founders, Frederich J. Furnivall, who published one of Symon’s papers—“Is Browning Dramatic?”—and asked him to write introductions to works he was editing. The skillful criticism and literary discussions impressed the editor and created the literary niche Symons was destined to fit.

Though his first love was poetry and his reputation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries rests in translation, playwriting, short-story writing, and poetry writing, Symons’s literary criticism and biographical writings contributed significantly to our understanding of French Symbolism. He published his next piece in 1886, another study of Browning, and because of its acclaim was asked in 1887 to write a biography on an author of his choice. Symons chose Nathaniel Hawthorne, later switching to Edgar Allen Poe when he learned a biography on Hawthorne was forthcoming. When Symons learned that a Poe biography had been published in 1888, he forfeited that project as well.

Concerned that he would be seen foremost as a critic after his work on Browning was published, Symons wrote a collection of poetry, published in 1889, after he had confessed to a friend that he wanted his life’s work to be poetry. His collection was somewhat favorably received, but it was seen later as not much more than imitative of Robert Browning’s poetry.

In 1899, then, Symon’s returned to crafting what many consider his most important work, a biographical, critical collection titled The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899). Around this time, Symons also met the daughter of a wealthy shipbuilder, Rhoda Bowser, whom he married on January 19, 1901. Though the two were in love, Bowser’s extravagant lifestyle led to financial troubles and took a toll on the relationship.

Whether connected causally or not, in 1908 Symons had a mental breakdown that critics say greatly affected his later literary output. At the same time that the couple realized they were nearly bankrupt, they were doing an expensive remodeling job on their recently purchased home. The two borrowed money to escape to Europe on a brief vacation. In Bologna, Italy, Symons wandered the streets alone, ranting and “acting irrationally,” until he was arrested. Upon release, he was committed to an asylum for the insane in Bologna, until he was sent to England, where his wife was staying. Still displaying irrational behavior, he was sent to a hospital in Crowborough, Sussex, whereupon he attempted escape. Later he was sent to a more affordable but lesser equipped asylum.

Over the next two decades, Symons continued to write both poetry and literary criticism as well as travel and other pieces, many of the works using materials he had written before his breakdown. Here the historians and contemporary critics depart in their assessments, some saying none of his work after the breakdown was publishable, others conceding that his work was affected greatly but nonetheless contributed a body of work which remains important in establishing a much needed link between the Romantic movement and modernism.

When Rhoda Symons died in 1936, Arthur Symons remained in the care of the couple’s housekeeper, Bessie Seymour, who had nursed Rhoda in her final days. Together they remained until the outbreak of World War II, when Seymour took Symons to live in London until 1944, when Symons returned to the English coast to die in his home on January 22, 1945.