Cleone Essay

— The Corvey Poets Project at the University of Nebraska —

British Poetry of the later Eighteenth and Earlier Nineteenth Centuries

Bibliographical and Contextual Apparatus

[Grimstone, Mary Lemon], pseud. “Oscar”

Cleone, Summer's Sunset Vision. The Confession: with Other Poems. London: Whittaker, 1821.

Descriptive Essay

The book is dedicated to "Malvina" and the author hints that this may be the "child of imagination". The author, adhering to what seems to be the self-depreciating tradition with 19th Century poets, casts her plight to the public, presenting herself (actually `himself' since Mrs. Grimstone hides behind her masculine pseudonym through at least the first two of her volumes of poetry) as an "orphan to the benevolence of a stranger." (I wonder if Blanche Dubois read "Oscar's" works?)

The book consists of the main, rather lengthy piece, Cleone, Or the Discarded Daughter", along with twelve shorter poems and eight separate "stanzas". The author's subtitle to the main piece "...Or the Discarded Daughter" seems to move the poem from the "unrequited love poem" genre to a critique of the often unfeeling and arbitrary patriarchal society which was in place during the time period in which the poem was written. This would be in keeping with the calling Mrs. Grimstone a "Unitarian feminist," as Professor Michael Wheeler did in his inaugural lecture at the University of Southampton in February, 2001.

The poem is a romantic tale of a young woman who is in love with the narrator of the poem; however, the narrator hasn't a clue at the outset of the poem that this is the case. They were childhood friends and as they grew older, her friendship for him turned into a deep, abiding love. He had great fondness and respect for her, but he did not realize the depth of her feelings for him. When he left to seek his fortune in the world, she pined in her heart for him. She became melancholy and her virginal beauty began to fade under the grief of her longing. Her father, not knowing how to address her sorrow, became angry, not only over his inability to assuage that sorrow, but also over Cleone's continued grieving after he had forbidden it. He therefore decided to send her to a convent, in the hope that:
      That harsher still religious morbid gloom
      Should soothe her grief, or sepulcher its tomb (21)

This is when our hero (the narrator) returns after approximately a year has passed and spies her on the sea shore at Vespers hour. He sees and recognizes her as his beautiful childhood friend, Cleone, and notes the ravages that sorrow have taken on her countenance and demeanor. They speak, but the convent's Vespers bells call her away from their reunion; she asks him to join her at this same time and spot tomorrow. Over the course of several weeks, they meet each day and she unfolds her tale of sorrow. Our hero believes that Cleone's father has imposed this evil upon his dear friend, whom, over those several weeks, he comes to realize he loves. He laments:
      To end a life of loveliness in sorrow
      It was unkind - 'twas cruel there to part
      Joys, feelings, hopes so linked around the heart
     'Twas the most painful thought of all, and cast
     A mournful shadow on her brow of care.
     Conker'd her youthful cheek which, waning fast,
     Already wore the semblance of despair.(22)
At the poem's dramatic climax, she reveals in a section called "The Confession" that her untold love for him is the actual reason for her sorrow. He confesses his love for her. Though she is unable at this point to break her vows to God, she states that she feels `blest' in learning that he loves her too, knowing that their Fates are entwined. Then she dies.

The narrator then takes us to her grave at the Convent Cemetery:
      Where youth reposes on her still cold pillow
      Where hope, religion, innocence and love
      Sleep in the shade the cypress waves above. (34)
He shows us her tombstone, which is engraved only with two water lilies:
      The one young - faded by the suns bright beam
      The other blowing in the crystal stream
      The emblems truth a feeling heart might see (34)
It seemed to me that the poem, which is written in two Cantos, was much longer than would be necessary for the telling of a romantic tale. Mrs. Grimstone's point was obvious long before she reached it. The poem, therefore, became tedious in its length and transparency. The language and imagery were bright and clever in many instances, but the blunt instrument approach to driving home her point became unpleasant by the end of the reading.

Each of the volume's following poems and stanzas had the same theme of sweet, innocent, untold or unrequited love (often formed in mutual childhood friendships), which eventually, and sadly, dies. This theme was presented in well-couched phrases and often beautiful imagery, but the overall effect seemed unimaginatively redundant after one reads through several such pieces. For example, the imagery of "ocean" seemed much over-used -- and at the outset, even distracting. For the first several verses, I believed the action to be aboard a ship, though in reality the scene is set on shore in a seaport village. Though one must perhaps respect Mrs. Grimstone's unrelenting consistency, one can only sympathize with so many pale cheeks, heaving sighs and heaving bosoms -- of which there were an abundance in this book.

If, on the other hand, Mrs. Grimstone is presenting this poem and the volume containing it in tribute to "Malvina - child of imagination", then perhaps the theme of childhood love and innocence is one she intentionally focused upon for its dramatic (or melodramatic) effect, something that is much less likely to encourage a 21st Century reader to appreciate the tenderness of her work.

Mrs. Grimstone also had a "chain of memory...chain of heart" theme running through her poems. The chain of memory links the past and present, with memory being the bridge between the joy of past innocence and the pain of the reality of the present; the chain of heart is essential to love because without it, those who only reason forget to feel. In the poem "To Despondency" she intones:
     The unfeeling mock affections sorrow or tenderness
     Idly they laugh like Folly o're grief's epitaph (70)

Several of the poems in this volume are dedicated to "Isabel" - who is apparently a friend. The final poem in the book is a "Farewell to Isabel"
     If only it had not been love
     And feeling had not clenched the chain
     That deeply wounds in vain to part.

My last word shall be fare thee well,
Thou best of beings, my Isabel. (132)
I must admit that, at this point, I was happy to bid adieu.

The book contains "Notes" of explanation at the end of each poem. These are often simply references to works that the author has cited in the poem, with Shakespeare being one literary reference used especially frequently. Grimstone often opened individual poems with French or Latin quotations, which were rarely referenced in her "Notes". Apparently well educated in classic languages, classic literature and history, she wrote to an audience she must have felt was equally well educated and would therefore need no explanation of the Romance Languages with which she so often used in the openings of poems and which she often interspersed throughout the texts of her poems, along with the many literary references. This practice seems contrary to the trend in Romantic poetry which "had begun to emerge from its earlier elitism and had not yet deteriorated into the intellectual and social esotericism and isolation that has come to characterize it in the modern period, when it frequently appears a deliberately closed variety of communication accessible only to a limited band of cognoscenti and literati" [Behrendt.2]. Perhaps, since Mrs. Grimstone's work appeared near the end of what is usually regarded as the Romantic era, her writing reflected the beginning of the lonely descent on a slippery slope into esotericism.

Works Cited:

Behrendt, Stephen "English Romanticism-Some Introductory Considerations." Course Handout for English 4/802L, Fall, 2004.
Wheeler, Michael. www.pemberley.com/mwheeler.htm. November 24, 2004.