Charles Harpur (1813 - 1868)

Born 23 Jan 1813 in Windsor, New South Wales, Australia

Husband of Mary Ann (Doyle) Harpur — married 2 Jul 1850 in Singleton, NSW

Descendants

Died 10 Jun 1868 at age 55 in Eurobodalla, New South Wales, Australia

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Australian Poet

Biography

Charles Harpur was born in the Colony of New South Wales (1788-1900)

Charles Harpur is Notable.

Charles Harpur was born on 23 January 1813 at Windsor, New South Wales^[1], the son of two convicts: Joseph Harpur from County Cork, Ireland^[2], and Sarah Chidley from Somerset, England^[3]. His father was employed by John Macarthur as his overseer, and later as a schoolteacher in Sydney and Windsor. But by 1830 Joseph was forced to sell his property, including his house. The children (Charles, his brothers Joseph and John, his sisters Elizabeth and Mary), went their separate ways. Charles initially worked as a clerk in the Post Office, Sydney. He acted in three plays at the Theatre Royal: Miller and his Men, Chrononhotonthologos, and Mutiny at the Nore in 1833. In that year he also published his first poem: The Wreck^[4].

He took up farming in the Hunter valley, at Patricks Plains and Singleton, later at Jerry's Plains. While writing more poetry and publishing frequently in newspapers he became involved in the then popular temperance movement, which was being organised at West Maitland by the Reverend Dean Lynch. He gave an eloquent address on the evils of alcohol on the 6th of September 1843 described effusively in the Maitland Mercury as 'one of the noblest bursts of oratory, in the opinion of all present, that was ever uttered'. It was probably there that he met his future bride, Mary Doyle, daughter of a local landowner, who was likewise the son of a convict, Edmund Doyle. In 1845 with the help of Henry Parkes he published his first volume of poetry: Thoughts, a series of Sonnets, one of which was dedicated to 'Rosa', which was a pseudonym for Mary Doyle. But they did not marry until 2 July 1850 at St Andrews Singleton, where they settled down. Washington, their first son, was born in the following year.

Harpur's fame was growing, due no doubt to the number of his poems that had appeared in newspapers, which were republished in more remote parts of Australia, and even in New Zealand. In this he was helped greatly by Henry Kendall, who acted as his literary agent, and his friend Daniel Deniehy the politician, who gave a lecture on Harpur's poetry in 1857^[5]. On the 31st of August 1859 he was appointed Gold Commissioner by the then governor William Denison^[6]. But it was made clear in a letter by John Robertson, Minister for Lands, to Mary Harpur, that he (i.e. Robertson) had arranged that appointment as a favour to his friend^[7]. Harpur threw himself into this new work, and neglected his poetry for the next six years. He was only made redundant because the office of Gold Commissioner was abolished by the NSW government. He was sorely missed by the miners whose disputes he presided over:

'Anything that can be urged against this gentleman would be uncalled for; for his unassuming habits, his ready tact in dealing with mining disputes, his determination to hear both sides of the question, and his invariably just and judicious decisions, all combine to render him deservedly respected by the diggers.'^[8]

Harpur's family overnight went from prosperity to relative poverty. Years later he complained to his brother Joseph that he didn't have enough money for his own funeral^[9]. Nevertheless he published in 1865 The Tower of the Dream, a long narrative poem purporting to be a dream written into verse, that was much admired by Henry Kendall^[10].

In 1867 his second son, Charles Chidley, shot and killed himself accidentally when out duck-hunting with his brother Washington^[11]. Harpur was hard hit by the disaster, especially as he now knew that he himself was dying of consumption. He worked hard in what time remained to him to order and prepare his life's work in neatly written manuscript volumes, but at his death on 9 June 1868^[12] they remained unpublished. His own efforts and those of his friends had failed to interest London publishers. His wife Mary tried with all the limited resources at her disposal to publish the complete works, and succeeded in producing a volume in 1883^[13], edited by a family friend, Henry Martin. But Martin had little respect for Harpur's work and sought to 'improve' it^[14]. Unfortunately, assessment of Harpur's poetry continued to be based on this bowdlerised edition for the next 100 years.

At the death of Mary Harpur in 1899, the manuscripts were claimed by Mary Araluen Baldwin, his youngest daughter^[15], who sold them on immediately to D.S. Mitchell^[16]. Several years later, Mitchell donated the now 26 bound volumes, as part of his huge private collection of rare books and manuscripts, to the State Library of New South Wales.

His most popular poems are 'Creek of the Four Graves' and 'Midsummer Noon in the Australian Forest', romantic celebrations of nature, but there are many charming shorter works such as 'The Cloud', 'The Anchor', or 'On Leaving XXX, After a Residence There of Several Months', perhaps his best unpublished work:

For either I was too rare for them,
Or they were too rare for me:
At all events, between us
There was little sympathy.

Politically, Harpur was one of our earliest republicans. Many of his poems attack royalty and privilege, especially squatters and nobility:

Men of the hardy hand!
Men of the sturdy heart!
Tis ye that harrow and harvest the Land,
For what?--an hundreth part.
Is this what God designed?
(Could God design a cheat?)
Who doeth no work of body or mind,
Let not that recreant eat.

Harpur was also not averse to writing humorous verse. When a young girl stole one of his newly planted apple trees he quipped:

In the history of all sinners
There is none to compare with thee:
Eve only stole an apple,
You have filched an apple TREE.

Harpur's legacy is a collection of around 700 poems, surviving in 2,800 manuscript, print and newspaper versions. The themes of love, politics and nature dominate. His fairly extensive prose works remain unpublished. His 'Discourse on Poetry' makes it clear that, had he chosen, he would have been one of the foremost literary critics of his day. The surviving letters to, from or about Charles Harpur number around 150. They are addressed to some of the key figures of the mid-nineteenth century: Henry Parkes, Henry Kendall, Henry Halloran, John Robertson, N.D. Stenhouse, W.A. Duncan and his brother J.J. Harpur, the M.P. for Patricks Plains.

In his 'Nevers of Poetry' Harpur concludes the poem with a witty assessment of his own worth:

And lastly, never take for Gospel all
Your friends say of your genius, when they call
Its merits o'er; but, at the same time, see
That you do never think yourself to be
So great an ass as your known foes declare
They do most solemnly believe you are.

1. ↑ NSW Birth Registry 3034/1813 V18133034 1A
2. ↑ Joseph Harper, one of 301 convicts transported on the Royal Admiral, March 1800.
3. ↑ Sarah Chedley, one of 306 convicts transported on the Fortune and Alexander, January 1806.
4. ↑ Original Poetry The Wreck The Australian 20 December 1833, p.4
5. ↑ Harpur--Homer--Milton , Sydney Morning Herald 28 November 1857 p 4
6. ↑ Appointment of Charles Harpur as Gold Commissioner
7. ↑ Letter from John Robertson to Mary Harpur 9 November 1868
8. ↑ Empire 30 June 1862, p.8d
9. ↑ Letter from Charles Harpur to Joseph Jehoshaphat Harpur 23 February 1868
10. ↑ Letter from Henry Kendall to Charles Harpur 16 Octoer 1867
11. ↑ Accidental Death by Firearms, Empire 12 May 1867, p.5f
12. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald 25 June 1868, p.1a
13. ↑ Charles Harpur, Poems, G. Robertson, Melbourne, 1883.
14. ↑ Preface to Poems, 1883. Salier, C.W. Salier, MS A98-2, Mitchell Library Sydney, 1945
15. ↑ Sydney Morning Herald 19 June 1899, p.1f.
16. ↑ Letter from D.S. Mitchell to Mary Araluen Baldwin 27 June 1899

• Birth: NSW Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths 3034/1813 V18133034 1A
• Death: Empire 20 June 1868 p.1a
• Marriage to Mary Doyle: NSW Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths 153/1850 V1850153 79

See Also:

• Charles Harpur, wikipedia