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'Felix Randal,' by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

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'Felix Randal,' by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

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Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then? my duty all ended,

Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome

Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it, and some

Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?

Sickness broke him. Impatient, he cursed at first, but mended

Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some

Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom

Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!

This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.

My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears,

Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;

How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,

When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,

Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!

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Hopkins expresses the difficulties of his workload in his letter to Baillie from Salisbury Street, Liverpool.

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Hopkins' Letter to Dixon, 22nd December, 1880.

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Hopkins' Letter to Dixon, 22nd December, 1880.

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"Liverpool is of all places the most museless. It is indeed a most unhappy and miserable spot. There is moreover no time for writing anything serious - I should say for composing it, for if it were made it might be written." (Phillips, 244)

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In spite of this, Hopkins was often greatly moved by individual instances of poverty during his time in Liverpool, as witnessed in his poem ‘Felix Randal.’ (Hallohan, np) The real Felix Randal was a farrier who Hopkins had visited and cared for prior to his death. Although Randal was not, in fact, Felix’s true surname,  we might surmise that Hopkins wished to protect the man’s true identity. It is worth noting that Hopkins worked for Randall Lightbound family in the much more pleasant surroundings of Lydiate (Mariani, 243), but additionally, Randal creates a sense of tonal unity with other words within the poem such as “rambled” or “ransom” ("Hopkins," 136).
Hopkins sought with language to create direct contact between the subject and the object world - his onomatopoetic theory described how he believed that all words originate in the sounds of the real world (Brown, 26). As a poet seeking order in the relationship between things, it is unsurprising that he endeavoured to seek order in his poetry in the chaos of impoverished Liverpool through language and sound.

This compulsion to seek unity is further witnessed through Hopkins’ use of structure. ‘Felix Randal’ is, firstly, a sonnet, often perceived by Victorian writers as an “enfeebled, outmoded form” (Regan, 17) which little scope for political expression. Yet, Hopkins utilises the traditional poetic form to help depict the social and political position of the Liverpool he knew. In fact, Hollahan regards Hopkins’ sonnets as some of his most “revolutionary” (np) poems, rewarding the poor with a rich and elite poetical style. If Hopkins’ perception of the truth and beauty of a subject was in the relationship and juxtaposition between the regular and the irregular, then here, the interplay between the traditional and his unusual use of structural form are indicative of this, and provide him with a means of exposing the truth of his life in Liverpool.
The very idea of telling the tale of Felix Randal through the elite Petrarchan sonnet “ennobles the life of a Liverpool labourer” (Regan, 18) and perhaps is Hopkins’ own way of drawing attention to the hardship and poverty he witnessed. Furthermore, the extension of the sonnet line, employing alexandrines rather than iambic pentameter, allows a sprung rhythm, and therefore affords a more elegiac tone to this sombre poem (Regan, 32). It may also perhaps instill a “creative vitality” (Bragg, np) which better replicates the rhythms of everyday speech, more befitting of Randal himself, a citizen of a city brimming with different languages and dialects. The unity between these colloquialisms and this privileged form is a case of “common speech heightened” (Eble, 131). Moreover, Hopkins uses the Lancashire dialect throughout, suggesting an affinity with the world of his parishioners and the language they spoke: “all road ever” for example, a saying which means “in whatever way,” and words such as “fettle,” which means “dress, case or condition” in the Lancashire dialect (OED, n.2) Even the very opening line combines classical poetic diction with spoken language:

“Felix Randal the farrier, O is he dead then?”

The “O” may seem  to be more suited to an elite romantic ode but slips into a common expression of surprise when joined with the conversational tone of the question, “is he dead then?” (Regan, 33)

It may be pertinent to note that there is a distinct fascination with human physicality through his depictions of Christ, seen in his sermons and in the poem. The descriptions in the sermon of a male figure once “strong and yet (...) lovely and lissome” fallen into a state “beaten down” draw comparisons with Hopkins' portrait of Randal. In keeping with his Jesuit beliefs, Hopkins structures his sonnets into an octave which explores the subject, and a sestet which explores a religious or moral perspective (Bragg, np). He describes the “mould” of the man, another dialectal word with many layers of meaning; it is an Irish dialect word which can mean to bury, suitable for one so close to death, possibly encountered through Irish immigrants (OED, v.3); moreover, perhaps this term common in the field of metal work is suggestive of an outer shell formed by the soul of a human, once described in tones of admiration as “big-boned and hardy-handsome.” Within this first octave, Hopkins “inscape[s] so satisfactorily the combination of strength and a fine physique which he admired,” (A Reader's Guide", 136) showing his observational skills are not exclusively reserved to nature, but extend to the citizens he cared for.

The final tercet captures a flashback of the farrier at his peak physical strength, during his “boisterous years”; possible connotations of Samson’s “boisterous locks” again reminding us of Randal’s immense power ("Hopkins", 77). Hopkin’s employs sprung rhythm to great effect in the final line to capture the sound of a falling anvil, or horses galloping along cobbles ("A Reader's Guide", 78):

“Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!”

In doing so, Hopkins moves away from images of darkness and death and imparts the power and splendour of a horse he would have shoed upon Felix Randal ("Hopkins", 78)
While it is undeniable that Hopkins felt overwhelmingly unsettled and disgusted by the poverty in Liverpool, his more democratic sympathies emerge as he transforms the pitiful farrier into a majestic figure and his use of the elite sonnet structure combined with dialectal speech privileges the lives of the poor, the suffering, and the everyday common people he knew (Regan, page 33). For Hopkins, the central focus of his poetry was to “explain, to communicate and to praise.” (Storey, 58) Even in Liverpool, a city devoid of traditional, natural beauty, Hopkins used poetry to find beauty in and accurately portray the lives of the poor, whilst simultaneously acknowledging their suffering. The petrarchan sonnet is not merely juxtaposed with the common figure of the farrier, but rather, Hopkins unifies the grandest forms of poetry with everyday tongue to heighten the position and importance of his parishioners.

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"Liverpool is of all places the most museless."

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"Liverpool is of all places the most museless."

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Hopkins first arrived in Liverpool in October 1879. He took up work at St Francis Xavier's church in Salisbury Street, the largest Catholic parish in England, “with the care of some thirteen thousand souls” (Mariani, 239). A city founded upon overseas commerce, between 1801 and 1851, the population of the emerging city had exploded five times to over 375,000 people (Lawton, 89-93). The docks lay at the centre of Liverpool's economic success, reflected in the geographical landscape: Everton provided poorly conditioned and overcrowded slums for the growing numbers of Irish Catholic immigrants and workers; only minutes away, pleasant, spacious residences such as Abercombie Square were reserved for merchants profiting from sea commerce (Lawton, 93). It was a blatant example of “the extremely poor and the extremely rich living within a few yards of each other, sometimes divided only by a street.” (White, 320)

Hopkins  was an outsider, never truly comfortable amongst the middle-upper class nor with his parishioners; this, combined with his scientific approach to art and nature, made him a perfect observer, and to witness such social divisions and the subsequent deprivation affected him profoundly. To Dixon, he wrote: “Liverpool is of all places the most museless,” (Phillips, 244), and in a second letter described how his work left him “so fagged, so harried.” (White, 323) Evidently, for Hopkins, poetical inspiration would be difficult to come by and, in fact, he wrote little poetry during his time in "museless" Liverpool. Both an outcast of a prosperous family positioning himself best to help the poor, and a man  imbued with an “elitist temper” (Hollahan, np) which led him reject urban poverty and the associated  moral and spiritual corruption, Hopkins often expressed frustration at a human nature which he described as “so inveterate.” (Mariani, 255)

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The new urban experience for nineteenth century poets presented the challenge of seeking truth and beauty in “traditionally unpoetical surroundings.” (Thesing, 385) Victorian poets bemoaned the lack of inspiration found in the dirty, chaotic sprawl of industrial England, often associated with abject physical and spiritual degradation (Thesing, 387). During his time in the Northern cities of England, Gerard Manley Hopkins was forced to navigate personal, political, spiritual, and societal dichotomies, nowhere more so than in the city of Liverpool. Born a member of the English upper-middle class, Hopkins’ vow of Jesuit poverty allowed him a unique position to observe the poor, even if his conflicting interests often left him an outcast (Hollahan, np).

For Hopkins, both as poet and devout Christian, nature, science, religion, and beauty were all inextricably linked. Brown describes Hopkins’ view of God as “a rational principle that guarantees order and pattern in the universe” (16), and this scientific approach to nature and religion opposed contemporary Darwinian views of the natural world as being in a perpetual state of  flux (Brown, 20); an avid follower of Ruskin, Hopkins’ search for natural order lead him to seek defining laws in natural phenomena, (Brown, 17) developing concepts which he would later call inscape and instress. He rejected positivism,stating that understanding only occurred when sensory impressions were understood in relation to each other (Brown, 27). As he explained in his essay ‘On the Origin on Beauty,’ his vision of beauty was the harmony between likeness and difference,(Higgins, 141) and hence, Hopkins’ poetry was a ultimately a search for harmony amidst conflict.

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Bragg, Melvin. "Gerard Manley Hopkins." In Our Time: Culture, BBC Radio,  21st March 2019,    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003clk.
Brown, Daniel. Gerard Manley Hopkins. Devon, Northcote House Publishers Ltd, 2004.

Eble, Joseph. Levels of Awareness: A Reading of Hopkins’ “Felix Randal.” Victorian Poetry. Vol. 13, No. 2             1975, pp. 129-135.
Dickens. Charles. The Uncommercial Traveller. Cambridge, Riverside Press, 1869.
Higgins, Lesley. The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Volume IV. 2006. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Hollahan, Eugene. "Himmelfarb's Culture of Poverty and Hopkins's 'Poor Jackself.'" Clio, Vol.25, No.1, 1995, pp. 43-62.

Lawton, Richard. "The Population of Liverpool in the Mid-19th Century." Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Vol. 107, 1956, pp. 89-120.
Mackenzie, Norman. A Reader’s Guide to Gerard Manley Hopkins. London. Thames and Hudson Ltd.

Mackenzie, Norman. Hopkins. London, Oliver and Boyd Ltd, 1968.

Mariani, Paul. Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life. London, Penguin Books Ltd, 2008.
Martin, Robert Bernard. Gerard Manley Hopkis: A Very Private Life. HarperCollins Publishers, London, 1991.
Oxford English Dictionary. http://www.oed.com. Accessed 29th April 2019.
Phillips, Catherine. Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009.

Regan, Stephen. "Victorian Sonnet, from George Meredith to Gerard Manley Hopkins." Yearbook of English Studies, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2006, pp. 17-34.
Roberts, Gerald. Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Critical Heritage. Oxon, Routledge, 2013.

Storey, Graham. A Preface to Hopkins: Second Edition. New York, Longman Group UK Ltd, 1992.

Thesing, William B. Gerard Manley Hopkins's Responses to the City: The "Composition of the Crowd." Victorian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Spring, 1987), pp. 385-408. Indiana University Press.

White, Norman. Hopkins: A Literary Biography. New York, Oxford University Press, 1992.

Other Sources.
Artist Unknown. An Architect's Drawing of St Francis Xavier, 1844. 1844. Jesuits in Britain, http://www.jesuit.org.uk/blog/archives-st-francis-xavier-liverpool
Goya, Francisco de. Forja (The Forge). 1819. Google Arts and Culture, https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/the-forge/swGt7JNeg13U_A
Hopkins, Gerard Manley. Letter to Baillie, May 22nd, 1880. 1880, Omnia UCD Library, http://www.omnia.ie/index.php?navigation_function=2&navigation_item=%2F2064501%2Fhttps___data_ucd_ie_data_ivrla_4044&repid=1
Ordnance Survey. Ordnance Survey Map of Everton, 1851. 1851. Historic Liverpool, https://historic-liverpool.co.uk/everton/
Ruskin, John. Spanish Chestnut at Carrara. 1839-1900, The Victorian Web,  http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/ruskin/wc/19.html

Word Count: 1,648.

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La Forja (The Forge): Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, c. 1819.

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La Forja (The Forge): Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, c. 1819.

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A 19th century painting demonstrating the physical prowess of a farrier.

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Hopkins' Letter to Baillie, 10th July 1863.

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Hopkins' Letter to Baillie, 10th July 1863.

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Hopkins' love and intellectual appreciation of nature is abundantly clear through his letters.

"I think I have told you that I have particular periods of admiration for particular things in Nature; for a certain time I am astonished at the beauty of a tree, shape, effect etc., then when the passion, so to speak, has subsided, it is consigned to my treasury of explored beauty and acknowledged with admiration and interest ever after, while something new takes its place." (Storey, 57)

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“In his body he was most beautiful (...) I leave it to you, brethren, then to picture him, in whom the fullness of the godhead dwelt bodily, in his bearing how majestic, how strong and yet how lovely and lissome in his limbs, in his look how earnest, grave but kind. In his Passion all this strength was spent, this lissomness crippled, this beauty wrecked, this majesty beaten down.” (White, 317)

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Spanish Chestnut at Carrara, John Ruskin.

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Spanish Chestnut at Carrara, John Ruskin.

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The influence of Ruskin's scientific approach can be seen in Hopkin's discussion of beauty. Much like Ruskin's illustration shown here, Hopkins sought detail and precision.

"Then the beauty of the oak and the chestnut-fan and the sky is a mixture of likeness and difference or agreement and disagreement or consistency and variety or symmetry and change." - Hopkins, 'On the Origin of Beauty.' (Higgins, 141)

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Figure 3b: Population Trends in Townships Around Liverpool, 1801-1911.

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Figure 3b: Population Trends in Townships Around Liverpool, 1801-1911.

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Lawton demonstrates the steep increase in the population of Liverpool over the 19th century.

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An Architect's Drawing of St Francis Xavier, 1844.

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An Architect's Drawing of St Francis Xavier, 1844.

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Charles Dickens: A View from the Workhouse.

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Charles Dickens: A View from the Workhouse.

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An extract from Dicken's 'Uncommercial Traveller,' in which he describes the suffering of those living in the workhouse in Liverpool; the images presented are reminiscent of Hopkin's descriptions of the ailing farrier, Felix Randal:

"O the sunken eyes that turned to me as I walked between the rows of beds, or  - worse still - that glazedly looked at the white ceiling, and saw nothing and cared for nothing! Here, lay the skeleton of a man, so lightly covered with a thin unwholesome skin, that not a bone in the anatomy was clothed, and I could clasp the arm above the elbow, in my finger and thumb. (...) I think I could have recogni[s]ed in the dismalest skeleton there, the ghost of a soldier. Something of the old air was still larent in the palest shadow of life I talked to." (Dickens, 114-115)