ABSTRACT
Published 16 Nov. 1852; 2nd edn, Feb.–March 1853 (it is twenty-nine lines longer and has many changes); then 1855. It was T.’s first separate publication since becoming Poet Laureate. (While T. was still a child at Somersby, ‘the doings of Wellington and Napoleon were the themes of story and verse’, Mem. i 5.) On the background, reception, and T.’s response in revision, see E. F. Shannon, Studies in Bibliography xiii (1960) 149–77. The textual history of the poem, including a full account of the MSS and a record of all substantive variants, along with a critical discussion, is told in E. F. Shannon and C. Ricks, SB xxxii (1979) 125–57. (Supplemented by A. Day and P. G. Scott, SB xxxv, 1982, 320–23). The Duke of Wellington died 14 Sept. 1852; the funeral was on 18 Nov. Shannon in his earlier study connects ll. 8–9 with the protracted discussion of ‘when, where, and with what state … the great Duke of Wellington shall be buried’ (Illustrated London News). He quotes the Prime Minister’s letter of 20 Sept. that the Duke would be buried in St Paul’s, ‘there to rest by the side of Nelson — the greatest military by the side of the greatest naval chief who ever reflected lustre upon the annals of England’; cp. ll. 80–4. Shannon also relates the poem to T.’s many patriotic verses of 1852; see l. 171n. He notes that T. had been pressed for time for the 1st edition, and that it was to be an advantage to him to commemorate rather than anticipate the funeral. Many of the reviews were hostile; T. seems to have paid little attention to specific complaints (except perhaps for the opening lines), but he paid some attention to general suggestions. He also intensified the religious note. The early draft in T.Nbk 25 includes, deleted, the final stanza of England and America in 1782 (written 1832–4; published 1872). See Shannon and Ricks, SB 143–4, 154, on these lines in MS in VII. Immediately following the poem in T.MS is Will 10–20 (pp. 500–1), which has clear affinities with the Ode and which T. may well have considered incorporating. Martin (p. 368) notes that, strictly speaking, the poem ‘was not written as Poet Laureate, since it was not requested by the Queen and had no official publication, but T. none the less felt that it was his public duty. “I wrote it because it was expected of me to write”, he told his aunt Russell’ (Letters ii 50).
