Christopher Smart
Christopher Smart was an English poet. He was a major contributor to two popular magazines, The Midwife and The Student, and a friend to influential cultural icons like Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Smart, a high church Anglican, was widely known throughout London.
Smart was infamous as the pseudonymous midwife "Mrs. Mary Midnight" and for widespread accounts of his years confined in a mental asylum by his father-in-law, John Newbery, due to Smart's supposed religious "mania". Even after Smart's eventual release, a negative reputation continued to pursue him as he was known for incurring more debt than he could repay; this ultimately led to his confinement in debtors' prison until his death.
His two most widely known works are A Song to David and Jubilate Agno, which are believed to have been written during his confinement in St. Luke's Asylum, although this is still debated by scholars as there is no record of when they were written. It is even more unclear when the works were written, as Jubilate Agno was not published until 1939 when it was found in a library archive, and A Song to David received mixed reviews until the 19th century. To his contemporaries, Smart was known mainly for his many contributions in the journals The Midwife and The Student, along with his famous Seaton Prize poems and his mock epic The Hilliad. Although he is recognized primarily as a religious poet, his poetry includes various other themes, such as his theories on nature and his promotion of English nationalism.
Biography
Early life
Christopher Smart was born in Shipbourne in Kent, England on the Fairlawne estate of William, Viscount Vane, younger son of Lord Barnard of Barnard Castle. He was, according to his nephew, "of a delicate constitution having been born earlier than the natural period". He was baptized in Wrotham parish on 11 May 1722. His father was Peter Smart, steward or bailiff of Fairlawne. His mother, Winifred was from Radnorshire, Wales. Before giving birth to Christopher, Winifred had two daughters, Margaret and Mary Anne.During his younger years, Fairlawne was the residence of Christopher Vane, 1st Baron Barnard and Lady Barnard, who bequeathed £200 to Smart. He supposedly received this sum due to his father's closeness to the Vane family, Smart being named after Christopher Vane, and the young boy being considered "the pride of Fairlawn". In 1726, three years after Christopher Vane died, Peter Smart purchased Hall-Place in East Barming, which included a mansion house, fields, orchards, gardens, and woodland, a property that was influential throughout Smart's later life. From the age of four until eleven, he spent much time around the farms, but did not participate, leading to speculation that he had had asthma attacks. However, not all scholars agree that he was a "sickly youth". The only written record of events during his childhood comes from his writing of a short poem, at the age of four, in which he challenges a rival to the affections of a twelve-year-old girl.
While at Hall-Place, Smart was sent to the local Maidstone Grammar School where he was taught by Charles Walwyn, a scholar from Eton College who had received an MA from King's College, Cambridge in 1696. It was here that Smart received an intensive education in Latin and Greek. He did not complete his education at Maidstone however, as his father died on 3 February 1733, and his mother took Smart and his siblings to live near relatives in Durham after selling off a large portion of the estate to pay off Peter Smart's debts.
Smart then attended Durham School, where the Reverend Mr. Richard Dongworth was headmaster; it is not known whether he lived with his uncle, John Smart, or with a school master. He spent vacations at Raby Castle, which was owned by Henry Vane, 1st Earl of Darlington, the grandson of Christopher Vane. Henry Vane and his wife Grace, sister to William and Henrietta Fitzroy the Duke and Duchess of Cleveland, had four children, Henry, Frederick, Anne, and Mary. They were only a few years younger than Smart and became playmates, with Anne and Henry "pairing off" with Christopher and his sister Margaret respectively. Although nothing resulted from the match, Anne has been traditionally described as being his "first love". During his time with the Vane family, Smart dedicated many poems to Henrietta, the Duchess of Cleveland. It was his closeness with the Vane family along with his skill for learning that encouraged Henrietta to allow him a pension of 40 pounds yearly, continued by her husband after her death in 1742. This allowed Smart to attend Pembroke College, Cambridge.
College
Smart was admitted to Pembroke College on 20 October 1739 as a sizar under Leonard Addison. Although it is unclear why he chose Pembroke College, Addison was named in Peter Smart's trust deed. As a sizar, he occasionally had to wait on the "Fellows' table" and perform other menial tasks. On 12 July 1740, he was awarded the "Dr. Watt's Foundation scholarship", which granted him six pounds a year until he gained a Bachelor of Arts degree. In addition to this income, he was also granted four pounds a year for scholarship. Although he was successful academically, he began to run up debt in order to pay for his extravagant lifestyle while at the college.During his time at Pembroke, Smart borrowed numerous books spanning the fields of literature, religion, and science. These works helped when he wrote the three "Tripos Verse" at the end of each year. These poems were written in Latin and they, along with his other Latin poems like his translation of Alexander Pope's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, led to him being awarded the Craven scholarship for classics on 10 June 1742, which paid £25 a year for 14 years. These scholarships, combined with his becoming a fellow in 1743, justified Smart calling himself "Scholar of the University".
In 1743, Smart published his translation of Pope's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day as Carmen Cl. Alexandri Pope in S. Caeciliam Latine Redditum and paid for the publication himself. With this translation, he wanted to win Pope's favor and translate Pope's Essay on Man, but Pope rejected the idea and, after a lettered response and a possible meeting between the two, Smart translated Pope's An Essay on Criticism instead. The initial letter sent from Pope recommending the future translation was prized by Smart. In response to this letter and his budding relationship with Pope, the Pembroke Fellows honoured him with a portrait showing him holding the letter from Pope and allowed him to write a poem in celebration of Jubilee of Pembroke's 400th year in 1744.
In October 1745, Smart was elected Praelector of Philosophy, which paid one pound a year, and made one of three Keepers of the Common Chest. The next year, on 11 February 1746, he became a Master of Arts and was later elected on 10 October 1746, to Praelector of Philosophy, Praelector of Rhetoric, and Keeper of the Common Chest. However, he had run up more debt of over twice his annual income, and he was not re-elected in 1747 to the Praelectorship and was denied his control over the Common Chest accounts. However, he was made a "Preacher before the Mayor of Cambridge" at the college under the title "Concionatori Coram Praetore oppidano", and his modest living during this year allowed him to regain Praelectorship in Philosophy along with being made a catechist, which suggests that he was ordained in the Anglican church.
In 1746, Smart became tutor to John Hussey Delaval, but this was abruptly cancelled because Delaval was removed from Pembroke after a variation of broken rules and mischief. After recovering from this, Smart returned to studying. In April 1747, a comedy he wrote just months before, A Trip to Cambridge, or The Grateful Fair, was performed in Pembroke College Hall, with many parts, including female roles, played by Smart himself. The prologue was printed in The Cambridge Journal Weekly Flying-Post, which claimed that the play received "Universal Applause".
During his final years at Pembroke, Smart was writing and publishing many poems. On 9 January 1748, there were three proposals for "A Collection of Original Poems, By Christopher Smart, M.A., Fellow of Pembroke Hall, in the University of Cambridge" that would include "The Hop Garden", "The Judgment of Midas, a Masque", his odes, his translations into Latin, and some original Latin poems. Thomas Gray, on 17 March 1747, referred to this work as Smart's "Collection of Odes". This collection was not printed in 1748 but was delayed until 1752, and was re-titled Poems on Several Occasions.
Between 1740 and 1746, he was introduced to Harriot Pratt, and he began to write poetry about her. By 1749, he was in love with her and wrote to his friend Charles Burney, "I am situated within a mile of my Harriote & Love has robd Friendship of her just dues ... There was a great musical crash at Cambridge, which was greatly admired, but I was not there, being much better pleased with hearing my Harriote on her spinnet & organ at her ancient mansion", suggesting that he was living permanently in Market Downham, London. Although he wrote many poems dedicated to Harriot, his poem "The Lass with the Golden Locks" claims that he was done with both Harriot, Polly, and other women. The "lass with the golden locks" who replaced Smart's previous fancies was Anna Maria Carnan. Anna would be Smart's future wife and she was the stepdaughter of John Newbery, Smart's future publisher.
Influence
While Smart was prolific in his own right, he was influenced by many of his contemporaries, as well as those that came before him. His primary influences being Alexander Pope, Virgil and Horace. Pope's influence can especially be seen in Smart's poem The Hilliad, a play on Pope's poem The Dunciad.Smart also left his mark on writers after him. In his book Poor Kit Smart, Christopher Devlin writes of Smart's influence "Robert Browning, however, D. G. Rossetti and Sir Francis Palgrave proclaimed aloud that this madman's Song to David was along the masterpieces of the English language."