Stephen Roberts looks at the life of ‘delusional poet’ Henry James Pye (1745-1813)
He was a man who reckoned himself a poet, although others disagreed. There’s confusion over where he was born, with Faringdon (Oxfordshire) posited, although my trusty biographical dictionary favours the catch-most of ‘London’. Debate, debate. He was an early exponent of sounding forth ‘Confident, Loud and Often’ as a sure way of getting noticed. His name was Henry James Pye (1745-1813), born on February 20, 1745.
The year of Pye’s birth, 1745, was an inauspicious one, for it was the year of the ‘45’ when the ousted Stuarts tried to wrestle back the throne from their supplanters, the Hanoverians. It was a campaign that led to Bonnie Prince Charlie’s defeat at Culloden the following year, the Skye Boat Song, et al. It’s the kind of stuff you could write poetry about, and people did.
Pye’s place of birth is aptly shrouded in a Scotch mist. One source claims he was born at Faringdon House (Berkshire at the time, but Oxfordshire today), the son of Henry Pye, MP and the owner of the Old Faringdon House, but almost in the next breath hedges its bets by declaring his place of birth to be London. You couldn’t make it up. His mother was Mary James and he was the nephew of an admiral, Sir Thomas Pye (c.1708-85), who served in many conflicts, including the American War of Independence.
We can state with certainty, though, if it is true that Pye was born at Faringdon House, that this would have been ‘Old Faringdon House’ which dated back to at least 1590 and had been in the possession of the Pye family since 1622 (Sir Robert Pye). The house was knocked about in the English Civil War but was presumably still habitable, with Henry James Pye becoming its owner in 1766. He was the sixth generation Pye to own the pile, and it was on his watch that the house was rebuilt into today’s Grade I-Listed edifice, the rebuild occurring between 1770-85. Pye must have ‘downsized’ 20-odd years after the builders had vacated, as the next owner is given as William Hallett in 1806. Our man Pye still had a half-dozen years of life left by that point. Faringdon certainly influenced Pye’s poetry, as one of his publications would be Faringdon Hill: a poem in two books (1774), written during the early stages of his rebuilding project.
One other thing we know for certain is that Pye studied at Oxford – Magdalen College, to be precise. He’d headed there in 1762, having previously been educated at home. That year was doubly noteworthy as Pye also had his first poem published – Ode on the Birth of the Prince of Wales – in the Oxford Collection (1762). It was a typical bit of toadying on Pye’s part, networking his way up with sycophantic, obsequious rhyme on the happy event of the birth of the future Prince Regent and later George IV. Pye obtained an M.A. from Magdalen in 1766 and later became D.C.L. (Doctor of Laws) in 1772.
Life wasn’t unadulterated pleasure by any means, as his father’s death in the same year (1766) left him saddled with family debts, plus a family home that had been badly burned shortly after he’d inherited it. Nevertheless, Pye also held a commission in the Berkshire militia and then in 1784 became an MP for the same county, a poet-politician no less. Although Pye had no real credentials as a poet, lacking the tools of the trade of the wordsmith, such as having a command of the native language, and an intuitive feel for what worked, he still claimed himself to be a poet. It rather puts me in mind of several people I know today; if you say it confidently enough, loudly enough, and often enough, then people will believe you. Pye did all of this in publishing several volumes of poetry.
One might think that Pye must have been sufficiently able, or well liked, to succeed Thomas Warton (1728-90) as Poet Laureate in 1790, except it didn’t quite happen like that. It seems that ability didn’t really come into it as the honour was bestowed most likely as a reward for ‘political favours’, this apparently relating to his fulsome support for William Pitt the Younger (1759-1806) in the Commons. The honours system, eh? Pitt had become our youngest PM in 1783, aged 24, and must have needed a bit of support, which Pye was happy to bestow. Incidentally, if you watched Blackadder the Third, it’s simply not true that there was a ‘Pitt the even Younger’. The King at the time of Pye’s appointment was George III, the one who lost his marbles. Pye was the first Laureate to be paid a fixed salary rather than being paid in vino.
Serving in this honorary, monarch-appointed position until his death, Pye would rack up 23 years, which makes him the equal-sixth longest-serving Poet Laureate, a record that won’t be eclipsed unless the rules are changed again in future (at the current time the incumbent only serves a fixed period of ten years). The suspicion that Pye had become Laureate for the wrong reasons began circulating quite quickly as his successor, Robert Southey (1774-1843) chucked a log on to this particular pyre: ‘I have been rhyming as doggedly and dully as if my name had been Henry James Pye’. Thwack. Returning to Pye, in this rather erratic tale, he retired from Parliament in the same year that he became Laureate, 1790, then became a London police magistrate in 1792 (as you do). Pye went for the 3Ps (prose, poetry and plays); his The Siege of Meaux acted at Covent Garden in 1794, with Adelaide following at Drury Lane in 1800 in which John Kemble and Sarah Siddons starred.
The verdict on Pye appears to be that he was better than average as a writer of prose, but delusionally fancied himself a poet; his belief in his own ability and destiny earning him a rather scurrilous nickname, that of ‘poetaster’. This dismisses someone as a second-rate or inferior poet, yet someone who has delusions of grandeur where their rhyming couplets are concerned. The word was first conjured by the famed humanist Erasmus (1466-1535), who gave us a Latin version in 1521. It was Ben Jonson (1572-1637) who gave us the English word in a play of his in 1600, then going on to name one of his plays Poetaster in 1601. ‘Rhymester’ would be similarly disparaging. Pye did well as there don’t seem to be many first-rank poets who’ve had the label ‘poetaster’ slapped on them. You might be wondering how come I’m regarding Pye as a ‘great’.
The final ode as far as Pye was concerned came in Pinner, a sweet place near Harrow that would later be associated with one Elton John, as well as ‘Mrs Steve’ who still regards herself as a Pinner girl. Mrs Steve married twice and so did Henry Pye, who had two daughters by his first wife, Mary Hooke – whom he wed in 1766 when he was fresh out of Oxford and aged just 21 – and a son and daughter courtesy of his second spouse, Martha Corbett, whom he married in 1801. Pye’s mother lived to see him married for a second time, dying herself in 1806, by which time she was aged 88.
The accumulated works of ‘Poetical Pye’ (very alliterative) came to almost 20 and feature Alfred: an Epic (1801) but also a quantity of birthday and New-Year odes, which smack of loyalty to whomever they were written for/about, but also strike one as being irredeemably dull. His ‘birthday odes’, directed at King George III, were mocked; Poet the Blunder. If you’ve ever wondered where the nursery rhyme ‘when the pie was opened, the birds began to sing. Wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king’ might have come from, well, it was the satirical verdict of one of Pye’s rivals on the Laureate’s ‘gushings’. The rival was a contemporary wit by the name of George Stevens.
His most noteworthy piece of prose appears to have been Summary of the Duties of a Justice of the Peace out of Sessions (1808), a cracking bedtime read if ever there was but, to be fair to him, some of his prose was quite decent. Foolish he may have been in overestimating his poetic ability, but he was certainly no fool. Perhaps he should have stuck with the prose, though, for historian Lord Blake rated Pye ‘the worst Poet Laureate in English history with the possible exception of Alfred Austin’ (1835-1913) who served in the role from 1896 until his death in 1913, a century after Pye began pushing up the daisies. Coincidentally, it was rumoured that Austin also obtained the prestigious position due to political support rather than any innate ability. The honours system, eh?
CHRONOLOGY
1745 – Henry James Pye born at Faringdon House, Faringdon (February 20).
1762 – Pye’s first poem published: Ode on the Birth of the Prince of Wales.
1766 – Awarded M.A. by Magdalen, Oxford and marries for first time to Mary Hooke.
1774 – Pye publishes Faringdon Hill: a poem in two books.
1784 – Pye becomes an MP for Berkshire (until 1790).
1790 – Pye appointed Poet Laureate for political favours.
1796 – Death of Henry Pye’s first wife, Mary Hooke.
1801 – Marries for the second time, to Martha Corbett. Alfred: an Epic published.
1806 – Henry Pye gets rid of Faringdon House, its new owner William Hallett.
1813 – Death of Henry James Pye in Pinner, Middlesex (August 11), aged 68.
POET LAUREATES – LONGEST SERVING (in years)
42 – Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1850-92)
37 – John Masefield (1930-67)
30 – Robert Southey (1813-43)
27 – Colley Cibber (1730-57) & William Whitehead (1757-85)
23 – Nahum Tate (1692-1715) & Henry James Pye (1790-1813)
20 – John Dryden (1668-88)
References
Chambers Biographical Dictionary (1974)
Faringdon Community Website (faringdon.org)
Britannica (britannica.com)
Royal Berkshire History (berkshirehistory.com)
All Poetry (allpoetry.com)
Pye Family History (pyefamilyhistory.wordpress.com)
Poem Hunter (poemhunter.com)
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