Robert Bridges
The information on this page is a biographical sketch for Robert Bridges; offering the reader a basic knowledge of his life and work. There are some suggestions at the bottom of this page for resources and links that should help those looking for additional information.
"In some ways Robert Bridges was as English as Chaucer, but as a writer he was rather a Latin or Greek: his subject matter was often more intellectual than emotional, his mood more reflective than intuitive, and like Milton he was first an artist, and only afterward a poet in the Shelleyan sense of the word. He never felt, as did Ruskin and Browning, that formal perfection was degrading." (Guerard, 3)
In order to understand who and what Robert Bridges was let us first consider his obituary written by the poet Henry Newbolt for The Times on April 22nd 1930.
"Newbolt spoke of his [Robert Bridges] great stature and fine proportions, a leonine head, deep eyes, expressive lips, and a full-toned voice, made more effective by a slight hesitation in his speech. His extraordinary personal charm was, however, due to something deeper than these; it lay in the transparent sincerity with which every word and motion expressed the whole of his character, its greatness and its scarcely less memorable littlenesses. His childlike delight in his own powers and personal advantages, his boyish love of brusque personal encounters, his naïve pleasure in the beauty of his own guests and the intellectual eminence of his own friends and relations—none would have wished these away. … Behind them was always visible the strength of a towering and many-sided nature, at once aristocratic and unconventional, virile and affectionate, fearlessly inquiring and profoundly religious." (Oxford, Dictionary of National Biography [DNB]) |
One seems always to be weighed by ones out put or by what one contributes to society as a whole. If we consider Robert Bridges in this light we would see someone who was a physician, as well as one who strived to entertain through his craftsmanship with words.
"Having initially trained and worked as a physician, Bridges ultimately became prominent in English letters during the late Victorian and early twentieth-century as a writer of lyrical verse. The English poet A. E. Housman described the lyrics in Bridge's famous collection, The Shorter Poems (1890-94), as universally excellent. While Bridges experimented with prosody and free verse, he is generally regarded as a classicist. His investigation into eighteenth-century classical forms culminated in The Testament of Beauty (1929), a long philosophical poem considered by many to be his masterpiece. Bridges served as England's poet laureate from 1913 until his death in 1930." (Literature Criticism Online) |
Robert Bridges: born October 23, 1844 in Walmer, Kent, England and died April 21, 1930 in Chilswell, Boar's Hill, Oxford, England. His death was brought on by cancer and the complications associated with the disease.
Father: John Thomas Bridges (1806-1853)
Mother: Harriet Elizabeth [née Affleck] Bridges (1807-1897)
After John Thomas Bridges died in 1853 Harriet married the vicar of Rochdale in Lancashire, John Edward Nassau Molesworth (1790-1877). (Oxford DNB)
Siblings:
- John (1832-1924)
- George (1836-1860)
- Harriet Plow (1837-1869)
- Julia (1841-1876)
- Edward (1846-1866)
Spouse: Monica [née Waterhouse] Bridges (1863-1949)
She was the daughter of architect Alfred Waterhouse (1830-1905) and Elizabeth [née Hodgkin] Waterhouse. Monica married Robert Bridges on Sept. 3, 1884. (Oxford DNB)
"Despite suffering a number of serious illnesses, Monica was Bridges' partner in many of his artistic projects. These ranged from music to modifications of spelling with a set of phonetic founts based on Anglo-Saxon letters, and development of typeface, especially the Fell types of the early sixteenth century which the Bridges brought back into press use by choosing them for the Yattendon Hymnal (1895–9). She helped Harry Ellis Wooldridge to provide Palestrinal harmonization for nearly eighty plainsong melodies used in the hymnal. She also became an expert calligrapher, publishing A New Handwriting for Teachers (1899), which was influential in establishing an italic hand in schools, and helping with a tract on handwriting (S. P. E. Tract XXIII). Bridges placed great trust in her literary judgement, not letting his work out of his hands until she had seen it. She transcribed the pages of The Testament of Beauty as he wrote it between 1924 and 1929 and Bridges instructed the Oxford University Press to rely on her judgement should he die before it were published. In 1927 Monica began to edit small volumes of Bridges' collected essays, partly as an experiment in his extended alphabet. After his death she guided the series to completion in 1936." (Oxford DNB) |
Children:
- Elizabeth (1887-1977)
- Margaret (1889-1926)
- Edward Ettingdene (1892-1969) He became Baron Bridges and received the position of secretary to the cabinet. He began his new duties as secretary to the cabinet on August 1, 1938. His formal title was secretary to the cabinet and permanent secretary of the combined offices of the cabinet, committee of imperial defence, Economic Advisory Council, and minister for the coordination of defense. (Oxford DNB)
Education: Robert Bridges began his studies at Eton College.
"He was a good but not top student and his love of music, games, and mild pranks meant that he fitted in easily. He began lifelong friendships with Lionel Muirhead, who was a fine artist, the musician Hubert Parry, and V. S. S. Coles, who later became principal of Pusey House in Oxford. Fascinated by language, Bridges wrote poems, exchanging criticism with his ‘cousin’ Digby Mackworth Dolben until, comparing his efforts with those of the great literary figures, he despaired and wrote very little for a number of years." (Oxford DNB) |
Bridges wasn't doing very well academically so in 1863 he transferred to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His education at Oxford continued in the same vain as Eton with an emphasis on a classical education. (Oxford DNB) His new friends at Oxford were William Sanday and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Sanday would later assume the position of Lady Margaret professor of divinity and Hopkins would become a poet. (Oxford DNB) Bridges had first thought of training to be a cleric in the Church of England, but after several events in his life involving death of friends and family members Bridges began questioning his own belief. Bridges ultimately chose medicine as a career and because many scientific papers were written in German he decided to study the language. He spent eight months in Germany learning the language and then registered in 1869 at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. (Oxford DNB) He unfortunately failed his final medical examinations in 1873. This presented a dilemma for Bridges because he could not retake the exam immediately. He allowed six months to pass and spent that time with friends, Muirhead, Wooldridge, and Rathbones in Italy learning Italian and about Italian art. In July of 1874 he went to Dublin in order to study medicine and in December he was re-examined and subsequently obtained his MB. (Oxford DNB) He began to practice medicine in 1874 at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London as a house physician. (Literature Criticism Online)
Influences on Robert Bridges Writing:
One of the first influences that helped formulate Bridges style came from his reading and comparing his own writing to that of published poets. At Oxford and continuing on into his years at St Bartholomew's he enjoyed the friendship of many artists in several fields including music, art, and architecture. These friendships helped to stimulate his own creativity. Bridges would eventually draw on these experiences as well as earlier friendships for writing material. Vivid lines and images were his primary style characteristics and this material came often from his own personal experiences. (Oxford DNB) In 1876 Bridges travelled to Paris and spent two months working in the Hopital de la Pitie. While in Paris, Bridges watched as much French theatre as he could. He later assimilated these experiences in to his own plays.
(Oxford DNB) Bridges enjoyed working in a collaborative environment with Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers Stanford, and Harry Ellis Wooldridge. They produced The Small Hymn-Book: the Word-Book of the Yattendon Hymnal in 1899. This hymnal is credited with reforming English hymnody and also restoring Elizabethan music in the church. (Oxford DNB) In 1913 Bridges was interested in developing a modern prosody.
" . . . independent of traditional rhythm and rhyme but, unlike free verse, was able to play off poetic units against syntactic ones. His experiments centred on syllabics, which he developed simultaneously with and independently of the American poet Marianne Moore. The strengths and variety of which the metre is capable can be seen in New Verse (1925) and The Testament of Beauty (1929)." (Oxford DNB) |
Occupation:
History will record Bridges as a physician first and then as a poet/writer but his experimentation with writing poetry was germinating before he began practicing medicine. Proof of this can be found in his poems published in 1873 before he had completed his training at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. After becoming seriously ill in 1881 with pneumonia he left the practice of medicine so as to devote himself exclusively to his writing. Bridges also had the benefit of substantial support from his family's wealth that allowed him the prerogative of discontinuing his medical practice.
Style of Writing:
Bridges style of writing spans a time in which English verse was attempting to reinvent itself but at the same time hold on to the old Victorian and the new Georgian ideas of love of nature with clear and concise personal experiences communicated in prose and poetry.
"Although Bridges wrote several long poems, he is perhaps best known for his shorter works. His sonnet sequence, The Growth of Love (1876), reveals Bridges's facility for the Italian and English sonnet forms and, indeed, are clearly influenced by the sonnets of Shakespeare and John Milton. The publication of The Shorter Poems (1890-94), selected from the best of Bridges's lyric poems up to that date, marks the summit of his growing fame as a poet. In addition to those written in irregularly stressed syllables, Bridges's lyrics also include many written in more conventional metric forms. The subjects of these short poems include the nostalgia of childhood, elegies on death, reflections on love, meditations on religious issues, and - what was of particular interest to Bridges - the nature of beauty and the beauty of the natural world. Bridges's collection of war poems October and Other Poems, reflects the prolonged and unexpected course of World War I as well as the poet's concerns about his son, Edward, who was stationed at the western front. Accordingly, the earlier war poems are stirringly patriotic, while the later poems depict the appalling conditions of trench warfare. Bridges's New Verse (1925) offers examples of his interest in classical Greek and Latin poetry; several of the poems in this collection are experiments in what he described as classical, 'neo-Miltonic syllabics.' Bridges's final work of poetry, The Testament of Beauty, consists of over 4,000 lines and is divided into four books. It has been described by critic Donald E. Stanford as a 'spiritual autobiography depicting the development of a poet's sense of beauty, his response to beauty wherever he finds it.' " (Literature Criticism Online) |
List of Works:
Complete list of works courtesy of Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. |
Awards and Honors:
- Honorary DLitt, Oxford University, 1912
- Poet Laureate, 1913
- Order of Merit, 1929
- Honorary LLDs from St Andrews, Harvard, and Michigan Universities
- Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians
- Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Society of Medicine
- Honorary Fellowship of Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Critical Response to His Writings:
"Bridge's poetry received little notice before 1912 when a collection of his poetry was published by Oxford University Press and garnered praise from critics and public alike. Critics of the mid-twentieth century, however, did not hold him in high regard. Some described him as a minor poet; others criticized his conservative, Victorian values. The subject matter of Bridge's poetry has also been condemned as trivial or empty; scholars have argued that it focuses on the prettiness of nature and the details of prosody rather than delving into more important topics. More recently, critics have commended Bridges for his experimentation with verse form and have praised him for his skill as a poetic technician. Most critics are united in assessing Bridges's final poem, The Testament of Beauty, as a masterpiece of both form and content." (Literature Criticism Online) |
Hamilton, Lee Templin. Robert Bridges: An Annotated Bibliography, 1873-1988. Newark: University of Delaware Press,1991. |
Phillips, Catherine. Robert Bridges: a biography. London: Oxford University Press, 1992. |
Sparrow, John. Robert Bridges. London: Oxford University Press, 1955. |
Stanford, Donald E. In the Classic Mode: The Achievement of Robert Bridges. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1978. |
Most of Robert Bridges's papers may be found in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. There are letters also in the British Library, London, the University of Reading Library, and in the archives of the Royal College of Physicians, London, as well as letters and manuscripts in the Cooper Library, at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina. (Dictionary of Literary Biography) |
Medical History - brief description of Bridges medical credentials dating from April 1961 |
Museum of Learning - brief comments on Bridges style |
National Portrait Gallery - Robert Bridges |
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - online (subscription required) |
Poet's Graves - Robert Bridges |
Poetry Foundation - biography and bibliography resources |
Wikipedia.org - Robert Bridges |