PARAGON REVIEW

Issue 5

In search of Andrew Marvell

Relatively few literary figures are associated with Hull. Most are of fairly recent vintage, such as Edward Charles Booth, Stevie Smith, Winifred Holtby, Philip Larkin and Alan Plater. Before them lies a gap of several centuries to the most famous locally born writer of them all, Andrew Marvell. But Marvell is a pretty mysterious fellow, as Amanda Capern explains.

There is no single Andrew Marvell archive in the Brynmor Jones Library, yet important manuscript material for the study of Marvell can be found in three separate locations: in the papers of (James) Blair Leishman at DX/72, in the archives of the Thompson family at DDFA/39/26-29 and in Kenneth Macmahon's collections of local miscellany, at DDMM/28/1.

Leishman was senior lecturer in English literature at Oxford University and fellow of St John's College. He began his career translating and editing German poetry, later publishing work on Donne, Milton and Shakespeare, establishing himself as an expert in English Renaissance poetry. At the end of his life he became interested in Andrew Marvell and when he died in August 1963 he was close to the completion of a book on Marvell's poetry. The manuscript existed in the form of the series of lectures at DX/72 and these were used by John Butt to publish The art of Marvell's poetry in 1966.

Correspondence about Marvell scholarship in the same collection includes three letters from JW Lever of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem; one from Frank Kermode, editor of the new edition of Marvell's Miscellaneous Poems of 1681; one from Hugh Macdonald, another editor of Marvell's poems, and four letters from HM Margoliouth, the editor of the definitive edition of Marvell's poetry and letters.

Little is known about Marvell's early life. He was born in 1621 at Winestead, Holderness, where his father was rector. He was probably educated at Hull Grammar School, though there is no firm evidence for this. He went to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a sizar and graduated in 1638. He seems to have stayed at Trinity, but left before the opening of the Long Parliament in 1641. The next ten years of Marvell's life are obscure. He probably spent the years 1642-1646 abroad, but historians are only able to suggest his return to England by 1649 because of the publication of two of his poems in that year. In 1650 he was appointed by Thomas Fairfax as tutor to his daughter, Mary, and so Marvell returned to Yorkshire, spending two years at Nun Appleton. His association with Fairfax brought him into close contact with Cromwell and the political machinations of the Commonwealth. After years on the continent Marvell was a fine linguist and on 21 February 1653 Milton recommended that Marvell be appointed as his assistant (Milton was blind by this stage) in the secretaryship for foreign languages. He was also appointed by Cromwell as tutor to William Dutton, his ward.

Marvell's support for Oliver Cromwell was made most evident in his Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's return from Ireland written in the summer of 1650. However, it has been argued that one stanza of this poem indicates his Royalist rather than Cromwellian sympathies. And the fact that Marvell first became MP during the Interregnum but went on being an MP after the Restoration has kept the debate about his political sympathies alive. Marvell's letters as MP, written to the Hull Corporation, as well as to the masters of Trinity House Hull, survive in far greater number than his personal letters. However, as a source of information about Marvell's political and religious inclinations they are not very revealing. This has made historical research into Marvell's politics and religion difficult and the results are often controversial.

For example, John Wallace, in Destiny his choice (1968), has argued that it was not Royalism or Cromwellianism that explained Marvell's sympathies, but rather 'loyalism'. This interpretation is lent credence by the fact that as an MP he wrote scores of letters diligently, if cautiously, filled with news of London and parliamentary affairs. William Lamont has recently extended Wallace's 'loyalism' argument to include Marvell's religion; according to Lamont the nonconformist protestantism Marvell forged in the 1650s when Richard Baxter held influence with Cromwell was the same religious position Marvell carried over into the Restoration period.

Personal correspondence for Marvell is very thin on the ground and a third of the meagre forty-five personal letters surviving and in print represent correspondence with Henry and Edward Thompson (a further eight letters are to William Popple, Marvell's nephew and business associate of the Thompsons). The Brynmor Jones Library holds four of these letters. Two are addressed to Sir Henry Thompson, who had been mayor of York and owned a country estate at Escrick to the south of that city from 1668, and are dated 10 November 1674 and 25 April 1677. The third letter from Marvell is to Edward Thompson, younger brother of Sir Henry Thompson (15 December, probably 1674) and the fourth letter is to Marvell from Sir Henry Thompson (undated, but probably 1673).

The letters in the Brynmor Jones Library came to the attention of Marvell scholars only through the assiduous searches of Caroline Robbins who published them along with some of her other Marvell finds as 'Six letters by Andrew Marvell' in Etudes Anglaises, 17 (1964). They have since been reprinted in the third edition of HM Margoliouth's edition of The poems and letters of Andrew Marvell (1971). However, a letter not found by Robbins and one that has not made it into print is to be found amongst the papers of the local historian, Ken Macmahon. This is a photocopy of an autograph letter of Marvell's addressed to Henry Thompson and dated 29 December 1675. As the original does not seem to exist in any public repository, the copy alone is very important.

All the surviving letters to the Thompson family, including those in the Hull archive, were written in the 1670s. Much of what is known about Marvell, then, is constructed from the connections he had in the last decade of his life. In 1671 Marvell went into business with Richardm Thompson (cousin of Henry and Edward), Edward Nelthorpe (his own cousin) and two London merchant bankers, John Farrington and Edmund Page. However, by 1677 they were bankrupt, possibly as a result of organised activity in support of Baxterian religious nonconformity, and only a year later, on 18 August 1678, Marvell died of a sudden fever.

Posthumous wranglings in 1679, involving his creditors and a housekeeper who claimed a clandestine marriage with Marvell and hid his business associates, have lent a rather burlesque air to the end of this famous poet's life. Just enough is known to leave historians unsatisfied and wanting to know more. The unpublished letter in the Macmahon collection tells us about Hull politics, it tells us about London banking and attacks on the monarchy, and it even provides a bit of dirt on the Duchess of Mazarin. But like all of our sources it only inches us slightly closer to piecing together Marvell's life. Nevertheless, in the singularly frustrating search for Andrew Marvell even the tiniest of gems sparkles like the Colenso Diamond.

Amanda Capern