ABSTRACT
Frederick Bartlett’s single volume of poetry is ornamented with one of the most impressive single patrons won by a labouring-class poet since Queen Caroline’s patronage of Stephen Duck, 150 years earlier, and matched only by Ellen Johnson’s first two subscribers (q.v.). The title reads in full: ‘Flashes from Forge and Foundry. A Volume of Poems. Under the Distinguished Patronage of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, Premier; and H. H. Fowler, esq, M.P.’ Gladstone was not only Prime Minister, but a literary man and a classical scholar. The book is also freighted with a preface by Charles Lee, Vicar of Bilston (two miles southeast of Wolverhampton), who speaks of the local pride in its presentation, a common feature of provincial labouring-class poetry in this period: ‘To me it is a real gratification to know that our spirited little Black Country town has not only been enriched by many an inventive genius amongst the descendants of Tubal Cain, but has been, in more than one instance, ennobled by the offspring of the Muses also’ (p. iv). Bartlett himself was a working man from Bilston, Staffordshire, 12 miles southeast of Wolverhampton, and we can surmise from this reference to ‘Tubal Cain’, the volume’s title, and several hints in the text, that he was a blacksmith or a metalworker, working with others in a small factory or foundry. His own prefatory remarks are modest enough, and indeed despite the fireworks of his title, his poetry reads routinely, at least for the first half of the volume. Bartlett’s thoughts on climbing the Wrekin at sunset (pp. 1-5), or on the Duchess of Edinburgh’s first-born (pp. 6-8), hold few surprises. There is more energy, though, in the light verse of the later pages, which include an interesting series of Christmas poems (sampled here) and some light verses on rural and working-class life.
