I spent a fascinating morning with Marion Tait, Honorary Curator of the William Barnes Gallery and Archive at the Dorset County Museum. I had booked a three-hour research slot at the Archive, and Marion had, almost miraculously, found the very items I was hoping to study.
I have a special connection with Bridport and West Bay, where my mother lived for twenty-five years, and I had always been interested in Barnes' poem
Bridport Harbour, which I first read in the second volume of
The Poems of William Barnes, edited by Bernard Jones (1962). Jones has a note on
Bridport Harbour, which begins: "Barnes wrote these stanzas for Louisa Colfox who, as she wrote in a letter of thanks on the day after they were written, was trying 'to replenish the empty purse of the Treasurer of the Art School' at Bridport. They were printed by Frost of Bridport in a small, green paper backed booklet with a title page: A POEM,/WRITTEN BY THE/REV. WILLIAM BARNES,/FOR/THE BENEFIT/OF THE/BRIDPORT SCHOOL OF ART. Mrs. Colfox also had the booklet illustrated with views of Bridport Harbour, or West Bay as it became at the wish of the railways which are now leaving it to its fate, and two of these, though not the same two, were pasted into each copy. The text of the poem was signed and dated the 29th July, 1872".
Many years later,
I bought a copy of the 1954 Jubilee Year edition of the Dorset Year Book (at Bridport's Saturday Market), which contained
Bridport Harbour, and a note on the poem by Giles Dugdale.
Dugdale writes:
"The poem was written 'For the benefit of The Bridport School of Art' which, like the Institute, was founded and fostered by the Colfox family and their friends. William Barnes many times lectured for them to raise funds for its support...The Bridport poem was printed and illustrated by photographs of West Bay, looking east and west. It contained a misprint, as will be seen from the letter he wrote to Mrs. Colfox:
Came Rectory,
7th of August, 1872.
Dear Mrs. Colfox,
I thank you for the booklings. You have made a nice little thing of my rhymes. I hope it will be of some service to the school. The compositor has misread one word. "Crest" in the 5th line should be "crew".
With kind regards all round,
Yours truly.
W. BARNES
I was very excited when Marion Tait produced for my inspection an original copy of the rare "bookling". This copy was presented to the Dorset County Museum by Mr. Henry Symonds in May 1931.
I reproduce my hasty photographs of some pages and the two illustrations here (with the permission of the archivist) with the intention that my posting will be linked to the excellent William Barnes Society website.
Marion Tait had also found other relevant items, posters and letters. William Barnes gave lectures and readings at the Literary and Scientific Institute in Bridport:
The members of the Literary and Scientific Institute wanted Barnes to read his poems rather than to give a lecture on a topic of his suggestion which "may not be so generally acceptable".
Thomas Hardy on West Bay/Port Bredy - from Fellow Townsmen
"The wind had already shifted violently, and now smelt of the
sea.
The harbour-road soon began to justify its name. A gap
appeared in the rampart of hills which shut out the sea, and on the left of the
opening rose a vertical cliff, coloured a burning orange by the sunlight, the
companion cliff on the right being livid in shade. Between these cliffs, like
the Libyan bay which sheltered the shipwrecked Trojans, was a little haven,
seemingly a beginning made by Nature herself of a perfect harbour, which
appealed to the passer-by as only requiring a little human industry to finish
it and make it famous, the ground on each side as far back as the daisied
slopes that bounded the interior valley being a mere layer of blown sand. But
the Port-Bredy burgesses a mile inland had, in the course of ten centuries,
responded many times to that mute appeal, with the result that the tides had
invariably choked up their works with sand and shingle as soon as completed.
There were but few houses here: a rough pier, a few boats, some stores, an inn,
a residence or two, a ketch unloading in the harbour, were the chief features
of the settlement."
