Narrative:

^[3] In an article published in the Wordsworth Circle in 2011, John Gardner opens with the apparently innocuous statement that “William Hone and Robert Southey had a complex relationship” (52). What I’d like to propose in this "conversation," is that the complexity of this relationship is perhaps even more profound than Gardner’s unassuming opener might suggest and, more important, that this complexity offers a window through which we can begin to understand the processes by which the intensely divisive political, moral, and economic polemics of the late Regency—that polarized discursive environment in which both Hone and Southey were key players—could become transformed into a unifying national (perhaps nationalistic) identity in the 1830s and beyond. By the late 1810s, of course, Southey was the Poet Laureate and one of the most prolific and eloquent conservative writers in the country. As such, he was frequently and energetically attacked by radical writers like Hone. For his part, Hone, beginning with his famous Trials in 1817 and then extending through the fantastically popular illustrated parodic collaborations with George Cruikshank in 1819-1821, was one of the chief voices among the radical polemicists. In other words, Hone energetically forwarded principles that Southey detested. A decade later, however, the two writers experienced a kind of rapprochement. By 1830, their relationship had altered to the point that, in a letter to Hone dated 26 November, Southey could claim, without irony, that “in feeling, there is I believe very little difference (if any) between us.”

^[4] The aim of the present "conversation," then, is in part documentary. Much of the primary-source material upon which the understanding of the Hone/Southey relationship is founded is still uncollected and unpublished; hence, it will likely be helpful simply to enrich the basic narrative—implicit in the chronology above—with a few significant details. But this brief narrative raises a number of questions regarding the explanation for the utterly transformed relationship between Hone and Southey in particular, and between radicalism and conservatism in general. I will at least suggest some answers to these questions in the closing paragraphs below.

---

^[5] For starters, let me describe the principal dates and documents:

^[6] The first phase of the Hone/Southey relationship was shaped by the political fractiousness of the later Regency period. By the time Hone began to establish himself as a writer/publisher (1815 or 16), Southey was already notorious both as the new Poet Laureate and, increasingly, as a conservative polemicist. This is all well known, but to Hone, Southey’s article in the Quarterly Review of October 1816 really seemed to call for a rejoinder. In describing the reformist press, for example, Southey writes:

If the opinions of profligate and of mistaken men may be thought to reflect disgrace upon the nation, of which they constitute a part, it might verily be said, that England was never so much disgraced as at this time. (Quarterly Review, Oct. 1816, p. 225.)

As a result, Hone (following the lead of a couple of other radical publishers) reprinted Southey’s early radical drama Wat Tyler, complete with a preface that took Southey to task for intolerance and apostasy, a selection of extended excerpts from other poems by the radical young Southey, and an introductory excerpt from Hume’s History of England describing the historical Wat Tyler episode. I don’t know that Southey took any particular notice of Hone—though certainly he tried to stop the embarrassing republications of his early drama, and he consistently spoke out against writers like Hone, calling even for their imprisonment.

^[7] The next (virtual) encounter occured in the wake of Southey’s Vision of Judgement (1820), which Hone skewered in his own illustrated, parodic "New Vision," published in his hilarious Slap at Slop and the Bridge-street Gang in 1821. (Hone’s parody, incidentally, was widely circulated and it pre-dates Byron’s more famous reply by several months.) In Hone’s poem, Southey’s “vision” occurs to him while he is in the offices of the New Times, an ultra-royalist newspaper started by another of Hone's early antagonists, John Stoddart. In Hone's rendition,¹ Southey witnesses the ascent into heaven of George III and he sees likewise that a place is reserved in Paradise for him. It seems that Southey’s early radical works are burning in “FLAMES and SULPHUROUS DARKNESS” thus freeing the poet by proxy from his earlier sin of radical utopianism.

^[8] At this point—between about 1822 and 1829—Hone largely dropped out of the active polemics of the journals, participating only by publishing a couple of pamphlets—Aspersions Answered and Another Article for the Quarterly Review (both 1824)—in which he defends his earlier publication of the Apocryphal New Testament (1820) against utterly scurrilous, ad hominem reviews of his work that had appeared in the Quarterly in 1821 and 1824. Instead, Hone turned his efforts to antiquarian works, producing his famous Every-Day Book and Table Book in 1825-1827. Then in 1829, having just emerged from bankruptcy (and nonetheless responsible for a large family), and having for four years been immersed in antiquarian writing and correspondence, Hone heard from the bookseller Thomas Rodd that Southey was working on a Life of Bunyan. This apparently seemed like a worthy project to Hone—to give them their due, even the radicals like Hone and his friend Hazlitt always recognized that Southey was a superb writer and very capable scholar—, so in 1829, Hone drafted a letter to Southey and prepared a packet of scarce materials that might be of use in Southey’s book. (A draft of a letter dated April 23, 1829, is in the Huntington Library in California.) At that time however Hone decided not to send the letter and packet, fearing—understandably enough—that Southey would not welcome any sort of communication from the likes of Hone.

^[9] Thus begins the second phase of this relationship—the rapprochement. Southey, perhaps unaware of Hone’s uncommunicated interest in his work, completed his Life of Bunyan and, in the Introduction, dated March 1830, he included a warm and appreciative citation to Hone’s antiquarian works:

In one of the volumes collected from various quarters, which were sent me for this purpose, I observe the name of W. Hone, and notice it that I may take the opportunity of recommending his Every Day Book, and Table Book, to those who are interested in the preservation of our national and local customs. By these very curious publications their compiler has rendered good service in an important department of literature; and he may render yet more if he obtain the encouragement which he well deserves. (Life of Bunyan, p. c)

Hone was quick to acknowledge the acknowledgement. On 23 April, 1830—the day after he read Southey’s Bunyan—Hone wrote to Southey to thank him and to let him know about the unsent parcel. On 26 April, Southey replied with a warm acknowledgement of Hone’s letter and a rather condescending approval of Hone’s rhetoric of gratitude. At this point, Charles Lamb enters the dialogue, and it will be helpful to fill in one more important context.

^[10] Hone was a witty writer, an energetic and principled publisher, a reliable friend, a capable antiquarian—but a very bad businessman. His career is marked by periods of great fame, but also by episodes of insolvency. The latest of these occurred in 1826, and Hone had spent the last years of the 1820s within the rules of the King’s Bench prison while working to extricate himself from this financial embarrassment. Luckily, he had the assistance of a number of influential friends such as Walter Wilson (the Defoe biographer), William Behnes (the painter) and his brothers, Basil Montagu, John Childs (the prosperous dissenter/publisher), and most especially Charles Lamb. During the spring of 1830, Hone was trying to get enough capital together to open a coffeehouse and thus provide both sustenance and employment for his family. When he saw the warming relationship between Hone and Southey, Lamb also saw an opportunity to help his friend. On the 10th of May, Lamb wrote to Southey, recommending Hone to him and reinforcing Hone’s request that he might publish Southey’s letter:

My friend Hone, whom you would like for a friend, I found deeply impressed with your generous notice of him in your beautiful ‘Life of Bunyan,’ which I am just now full of. [Lamb encourages Southey to let Hone publish his letter, then] Our object is to open a subscription, which my friends of the ‘Times’ are most willing to forward for him, but think that a leave from you to publish would aid it. (Lamb to Southey, 10 May, 1830.)

Southey acquiesced, and the letter—actually an edited compilation of Southey’s letters of April 26 and May 10—appeared in The Times on 21 May. In the same issue, not surprisingly, was the announcement of a subscription that had been opened for Hone. Ultimately this effort proved successful and Hone opened The Grasshopper coffeehouse in Gracechurch street at six o'clock in the morning on 19 June, 1830.

^[11] 1830, however, turned out to be an eventful year. At the same time that Hone was getting his coffeehouse under way, the so called “Captain Swing” riots were beginning in the southern counties. Once again—as had happened during the economically pinched years of the late Regency—the newspapers were peppered with alarmed reports of hostilities between the wealthy and the poor and even with notices of a possible revolution. Over the same period, Southey and Hone had become—if not "friends" exactly, then amicable conversationalists—and the Swing riots form the topic of the last discussions and the last interchange of letters between them. Southey was in London during the autumn of 1830 where he met with Hone on at least a couple of occasions.

^[12] Naturally, we don’t have a record of the conversations themselves, but in a follow-up exchange of letters in November of 1830 we can get a sense of both the alignments and the differences between these writers. For his part, Hone sees the economic turmoil and rural disturbances as the sign of a socio-economic breakdown that needs a remedy:

‘"The whole country must reform. We must all go back -- give up our goods & trappings, make our homes homely, & live honestly."’ (Hone to Southey, 24 November, 1830)

And, not surprisingly, Hone takes landowners specifically to task for living lives of extravagance and luxury while leaving the management of their estates to stewards or other proxies. Thus, Hone advocates a much more active and informed management on the landlords’ part as the only solution to the conflict:

‘The vulgarity of fashion must be laid aside by farmers, their hunters be sold, [wine?] excluded, their daughters cured of piano-ing & pale faces by rising early & dairying, & their sons put to the plough. Great land-owners must promote the rebuilding of the farmhouses they pulled down during the war, & the farmers & their families sit at the same board with their laborers; & to get their work done see it done, with a "come boys," instead of "go fellows."’ (Hone to Southey, 24 November, 1830)

Then, in a continuation letter written the next day, Hone calls Southey’s attention to an article in that morning’s Times where one landowner (Lord Gage of Ringmer in East Sussex) agrees to meet with his discontented laborers, but then he turns out to be ignorant of such basic information as how much and how frequently his own laborers are paid. Hone finds this sort of managerial negligence intolerable, particularly when coupled with a life of relative luxury. He concludes with a rhetorical question for Southey:

‘“But what think you of Fox-hunting landlords in farming districts?”’ (Hone to Southey, 25 November, 1830)

^[13] Southey’s response to Hone is revealing. On the one hand, he largely agrees with Hone’s social and moral assessment of the Swing riots. As Southey expresses it,

[I]n feeling, there is I believe very little difference (if any) between us. Certainly none about machinery & manufactures, nor the condition of the poor, nor the moral state of society in all its parts. Our differences would be upon very inferior things, tho as remedial means, of great importance. (Southey to Hone, 26 November, 1830)

Southey’s solution to the manifest injustice of the current labor practices in the agricultural districts is quite different from Hone’s. Rather than advocating for Hone’s austerity measures, Southey pushes for something like a liberal version of what in the United States we call “trickle down economics” (or sometimes “Reaganomics”):

I would have all persons paid liberally, from the highest ministers down to the lowest labourer; – justly and largely paid; – they would then each in his degree, spend in proportion; – & perhaps I might not regard some degree of profusion on the higher ranks as an evil, because it affords employment to industry & means of honest [gain?] to thrift. (Southey to Hone, 26 November, 1830)

Southey, in other words, is not so troubled by “Fox-hunting landlords in farming districts” so long as their spendthrift habits serve to distribute resources down to the laboring classes. This, as Southey points out, is an important difference—essentially it is an argument between economic austerity and economic investment that sounds eerily familiar today.

^[14] But what I find more significant are the many points of agreement between Hone and Southey. Both writers, surprisingly enough, were considering ways to quell the Swing riots in such a way as to preserve rather than undermine or topple a hierarchical, aristocratic social order. This is hardly surprising from the conservative Southey, but perhaps unexpected from the erstwhile radical Hone. In Hone’s view, the adjustments required in the landowners’ standard of living and style of management were essential to the preservation of a viable class of landowners, a class that was facing an existential threat in the early 30’s. As he repeatedly emphasizes to Southey, it is in the landowners’ own best interest to change their way of life and to negotiate with the discontented laborers—it is not a sign of weakness or capitulation. And both writers are alike in their assessment of the "moral state of society in all its parts" (to use Southey’s phrasing). Neither condemns or ridicules (and thus dismisses) the claims of either the landowners or the agricultural laborers, and Southey shows, if anything, a greater sympathy for the conditions of the most impoverished of the laborers. They may differ in methods, perhaps, but Southey and Hone concur in what would constitute a desirable outcome.

---

^[15] This unexpected alignment of former adversaries raises a number of questions: How can we account for this rapprochement? Has one or the other of these writers markedly altered his views? Has the social/political environment changed from what it was in the post-Napoleonic years? We know that Southey has been famous as an apostate—the critical line on Southey in the late Regency was that he disavowed his earlier radicalism and “sold out” to enjoy a more comfortable existence of collaboration with the Tory administration. Is this true again, this time with Hone turning conservative? Has Hone also now outgrown his reputation as the Regency Radical and Arch Blasphemer and settling into a more conservative old age? Has Southey softened in his approach to the advocates of social reform? These are important questions to explore—their answers enable a more complex and nuanced understanding of the politics of the period than one can derive from the highly polarized discourse of radicals vs. conservatives, Tom Paine vs. Edmund Burke.

^[16] Naturally, at this point I wish I could present some unexpected, original, and utterly persuasive answer, but these are not questions that lend themselves to a simple, decisive, and comprehensive thesis—there are many contributing causes here. For instance, it is certainly true that Hone became more overtly conservative in the later 1820s and (especially) the 1830s. But I say “overtly conservative” because Hone never really was the radical he was made out to be by the more emphatic voices in the conservative press during the late Regency years. (Indeed, Hone plays with his own reputation in the introduction to Facetiae & Miscellanies, where he invents a dialogue with some customer in his shop who expects to meet a ferocious ideologue in the aspect of Satan rather than a mere amiable bookseller.) Neither was Southey a heartless, self-serving sycophant—as he was often described in the radical press (most particularly, perhaps, in Hone’s radical press). Still, the change was probably greater for Hone who had endured a crippling bankruptcy in 1826, the devastating sorrow following the death of his son in 1827, and (eventually) a religious conversion.

^[17] What is perhaps more interesting than these individual, biographical matters are several large-scale cultural influences, influences that tell us a great deal about the transformations of English society and culture in the decade leading up to the Reform Bill in 1832. In other words, just as the first phase in the relationship between these writers was shaped by the contentious political climate of the later Regency, so too is the eventual rapprochement the reflection of larger cultural movements. Let me identify three of these movements—in each case, the Hone/Southey relationship can be seen as emblematic of the larger cultural transformation.

^[18] One of these has to do with a tectonic shift of the fundamental terms of social and political debate from a sort of ethical/political morality toward a more modern debate about economic policy. (One might think of this as the emergence of “political economy.”) Granted, I risk the inaccuracies of over-generalization here and it is easy to name counter examples, but the tenor of the social debate from the 1790s on through the Regency period tended to focus on issues that fall into a moral or ethical category. For instance, in the Paine/Burke ideological debates of the 1790s, the central issues were things like the form of the British consitution or the moral fitness of the Prince of Wales to serve as Regent. These were crucial issues to be sure, but note that economic policy seems tangential to the debate. The tacit assumption is usually that moral or political practice generates economic policy, not the other way around. The foundations of this debate begin to shift during the first decades of the 19th century, and there is an increasing sense that economic policy ultimately generates political philosophy. Thanks to economists like Malthus and Ricardo and philosophers like Bentham there is an emergent sense that human moral and ethical behavior is in some deep way the response to economic circumstances—an idea that was brought to fruition a couple of decades later in the work of Marx and Engels. I don’t mean to suggest that Southey and Hone were explicitly aware of this shift in exactly these terms, but clearly both writers are willing now to quickly stipulate moral and ethical concerns while they move on to the "real" issue—economic policy.

^[19] A second key influence here has to do with the consolidation of a British national culture—an emergent nationalism that would eventually become dominant during the Victorian era. One unexpected context for this nationalistic movement involved a heightened interest in popular history and antiquarianism—the effort to discover and publish the concrete, material evidence upon which one could construct a kind of inclusive national identity. It was on exactly this point that Southey commended Hone (recall his complimentary notes about Hone’s work and "the preservation of our national and local customs"). Antiquarian writing was crucial to this sense of a unified national identity because antiquarian writing documented the lives of the English people in all their local varieties—not just the traditional historical narrative of the lives and actions of the high and mighty. To paraphrase Marilyn Butler’s argument, Hone’s work provided an inclusive sense of history and cultural identity to readers in the nineteenth century, a sense that, by giving a unifying historical identity to all persons regardless of social and economic class, helped to consolidate an emergent English nationalism during the Victorian era and beyond.² Southey clearly recognized this potential in Hone’s writing, seeing it as serving an important documentary function in preserving the otherwise ephemeral cultural practices of common people and thus carving out a more comprehensive discursive space that could be unified under the banner of "Englishness."

^[20] Third, one begins to see here the influence of technology and automation. This is genuinely something new—perhaps without precedent in the Regency-era political debates about, say, the French Revolution or the sexual escapades and spendthrift habits of the Prince of Wales. On this point, Hone is prescient. The specific context once again involves the tactics of the Swing rioters who, in a strategy reminiscent of the Luddites twenty years earlier, often attacked and destroyed the newly-invented threshing machines on the grounds that this technology threatened the traditional livelihood of the agricultural laborers. Here is Hone’s assessment as expressed in a letter to Southey:

Machinery is the Jaggernaut of our country. The progress of the idol carriage is imposing and devastating—It will level all ranks & conditions to a common mass—property, title, all will be crushed—nothing will be saved or spared by this Giant Radical. (Hone to Southey, 25 November, 1830)

Hone’s horrified, apocalyptic language hints at a final cause for the rapprochement with a conservative like Southey. Undergirding the historically specific moral, ethical, and even economic issues of the early 19th-century was this emerging transformation founded on the advance of technology and the industrial revolution. In Hone’s view—a view with which Southey explicitly concurs—this “Giant Radical” will eventually trump economic policy much as economic policy had trumped traditional moral and ethical judgments.

^[21] Clearly, times were changing fast, and Southey and Hone—both veterans of the Regency polemics—were looking on with a melancholy resignation. The "landed man," to borrow Hone’s terms, is being replaced by the "monied man," and ordinary human relations are being reduced to economic calculations carried on among these "heartless" monied men. Such was the transformation that both Southey and Hone wanted to avoid but that, in the face of such cultural sea-changes, they were powerless to stop.