Hemans, Felicia D. (1793–1835)

views updated

Hemans, Felicia D. (1793–1835)

English poet and dramatist. Name variations: Felicia Browne. Born Felicia Dorothea Browne in Duke Street, Liverpool, England, on September 25, 1793; died at Redesdale, near Dublin, on May 16, 1835; fifth of seven children of George Browne (a merchantof Irish extraction) and Felicity (Wagner) Browne (daughter of Austrian and Tuscan consul at Liverpool); educated at home by her mother; married Captain Alfred Hemans, in 1812 (separated 1818); children: five sons.

The fifth of seven children, Felicia Hemans was born in Liverpool, England, in 1793. She was only seven when her father's business failed, and the family moved to Gwrych, near Abergele, Denbighshire, in Wales. There, the young romantic grew up by the sea, surroundings she would recall with pleasure. Distinguished for her beauty and precocity, Hemans' education in the hands of her mother was thorough, though haphazard. She studied Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German, played piano and harp, and devoured books—especially romances, histories, and poetry of all sorts.

In 1808, when Felicia was only 14, a quarto of her Juvenile Poems was unwisely published by her adoring parents. After receiving a drubbing in the Monthly Review, the young poet took to her bed. In 1812, she tried again, publishing The Domestic Affections and Other Poems. She also married Captain Alfred Hemans, an Irish soldier, who had served—along with her brothers—in the 1808–1814 Peninsular War, caused by Napoleon's attempt to annex Spain.

For some time, Hemans lived in Daventry, where Captain Alfred was adjutant of the Northamptonshire militia. Following the birth of a son and the death of her father, she and her husband moved in with her mother at Bronwylfa, near St. Asaph in North Wales, Lancashire. Hemans continued to write. In a three-year span, she published The Restoration of Works of Art to Italy (1816), Modern Greece (1817), and Translations from Camoens and other Poets (1818). But the marriage was not a happy one. After the birth of five sons in six years, Alfred journeyed to Rome, Italy, in 1818, supposedly for his health, and decided to remain. There seems to have been a tacit agreement that they should separate, and they never met again. Though in poor health herself and still living with her mother, Hemans now devoted her time to the education of her children and writing, generating income to add to the family's meager finances.

In 1819, she published Tales and Historic Scenes in Verse and The Meeting of Wallace and Bruce on the Banks of the Carron; in 1820, she issued The Sceptic and Stanzas to the Memory of the late King. She won the Royal Society of Literature award for her poem Dartmoor in June 1821 and, in the summer of 1823, published the poems, "Sieve of Valencia," "Last Constantine," and "Belshazzar's Feats." On December 12, 1823, her play Vespers of Palmero opened at Covent Garden, starring Charles Kemble, but closed after one performance. When the play was performed the following year in Edinburgh, however, Joanna Baillie requested an epilogue written by Sir Walter Scott and read by Harriet Siddons , and the play met with more success. It was the start of a close friendship between Hemans and Walter Scott; Felicia and her boys often stayed at Scott's Abbotsford. In 1824, she started work on The Forest Sanctuary.

In spring of 1825, Hemans moved from Bronwylfa to Rhyllon, a house across the river Clwyd, where she celebrated her beautiful surroundings in more poetry. The loss of her beloved mother in January 1827 had a profound effect on Hemans' health; from that time on, she was an acknowledged invalid. In the summer of 1828, the Records of Woman was published; that same year, she moved to Wavertree, near Liverpool, for her sons' education, but she was not happy with the provincial Liverpudlians. When Hemans moved to Dublin to live with a brother in 1831, her poetry was becoming more and more religious in tone. She died in Dublin on May 16, 1835, at age 41.

In her lifetime, Hemans' poetry was in great demand, and she received many awards and honors. She was admired by notables, including Lord Jeffrey, Lord Byron, Marguerite, Countess of Blessington , and Christopher North. Maria Jewsbury found her "totally different from any other woman I had ever seen…. She did not dazzle, she subdued me…. I never saw one so exquisitely feminine…. Her birth, her education, the genius with which she was gifted, combined to inspire a passion for the ethereal, the tender, the imaginative, the heroic—in one word, the beautiful."

Though extremely popular in her day, Hemans' poetry is now largely considered to be a compilation of sentimental love lyrics. Scott complained that her work was "too poetical," that it contained "too many flowers" and "too little fruit." Without great originality or power, her poetry was pleasing, and, like Longfellow, some of her lyrics, "The Voice of Spring," "The Better Land," "Casabianca," "The Graves of a Household," "The Treasures of the Deep," and "The Homes of England" were found in many school collections. In later life, Felicia Hemans regretted the haste in her work, but her prolific pen was often propelled by economic necessity.