I think Maz has it right regarding the monied classes of the 19th century and the writing (and reading) of poetry, though to find what actual attitudes were, perhaps it might be best to turn to a period source?
From Jane Austen:
<STRIKE>Capable Anne Elliot quickly rushed to his aid, casting an irritated glance at the naval hero who was looking on in total ineptitude, and instructed Mr Ferrars to carry Caroline to the nearest farmhouse where she was put to bed. She then sent him off to fetch the apothecary post haste. When he returned and the apothecary said Caroline could not be moved, Anne Elliot swiftly pulled a book of sonnets from her reticule, handed them to a bewildered Mr Ferrars, and ordered him to sit watch over Miss Bingley until what time she should awake. Edward Ferrars took her at her word, and was two weeks in that chair. Long enough to have memorised all the poems in the book; he had accomplished this by reading them out loud, and later Marianne Dashwood was heard to say that Miss Bingley should have woken much sooner if he had desisted. He did have a very lack-lustre reading style.
and elsewhere:</STRIKE> {Note: Perils of web research. The above is not from Austen herself, but a really good imitation from a novel called "Sofie" published at the Austen.com website . Thanks to Peter for the catch. The later two are actually from Northanger Abbey, however.}
So far her improvement was sufficient -- and in many other points she came on exceedingly well; for though she could not write sonnets, she brought herself to read them; and though there seemed no chance of her throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the pianoforte, of her own composition, she could listen to other people's performance with very little fatigue.
and Jane Austen in rant mode about the poetry publications of the time:
The progress of the friendship between Catherine and Isabella was quick as its beginning had been warm, and they passed so rapidly through every gradation of increasing tenderness that there was shortly no fresh proof of it to be given to their friends or themselves. They called each other by their Christian name, were always arm in arm when they walked, pinned up each other's train for the dance, and were not to be divided in the set; and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding -- joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens -- there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. "I am no novel-reader -- I seldom look into novels -- Do not imagine that I often read novels -- It is really very well for a novel." Such is the common cant. "And what are you reading, Miss -- ?" "Oh! It is only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.
I think Austen reports, quite credibly, that at the cusp of the 18th-19th century (the above from Northanger Abbey, scheduled for publication in 1803, but as I can say as a novelist, obviously started sometime earlier), that the practice of reading and writing poetry was considered genteel and fashionable, but not generally something that people actually did in everyday life, even those of the leisure and monied classes.
An awful lot like today, in fact.
[This message has been edited by Kevin Andrew Murphy (edited April 20, 2005).]
|