He was a humble postman whose poems, written while walking
the rural lanes of North Devon on his daily round in the mid-19th
century, won plaudits from the Prime Minister and the support of the biggest
literary names of the day. He was to become known nationally as the Postman
Poet and was referred to as ‘the Devonian Burns’.
Yet today, two years short of the 200th
anniversary of Edward Capern’s birth, many of his fellow Devonians are unlikely
to have heard of his remarkable story, let alone people from further afield.
But that could be about to change. Recognition could again
come knocking for Capern (1819-1894), thanks to collaboration between Bideford
author Liz Shakespeare and folk musicians and songwriters Nick Wyke and Becki
Driscoll, also from Bideford – the town where Tiverton-born Capern resided for
most of his life.
Liz has written The
Postman Poet, a novel based on the life of Capern, and at the same time is publishing
34 of his 600 poems in The Poems of
Edward Capern. During her research, Liz found that some of his poems were
intended to be sung and Nick and Becki have spent the past 12 months choosing which
ones to set to music for their CD, The
Songs of Edward Capern.
The book and CD launch takes place
with an evening of reading and songs at the Royal Hotel in Bideford on 25th
March, two days before they officially go on sale.
Capern was from a poor family and as
a boy only went to school for four months. He was entirely self-taught but he
had a local benefactor, William Frederick Rock from Barnstaple, who saw his
early poems in a local newspaper and was behind the publication of Capern’s
first volume of poems. Its subscribers included the Prime Minister Lord Palmerston,
Lord Tennyson and Charles Dickens. He was also admired by Poet Laureate, Alfred
Austen.
“It was a remarkable achievement for a working-class man to become
nationally known and I think he deserves a larger audience today,” said Liz. While writing the novel, Liz drew on
historical research and details in the poems to tell the extraordinary story
through Edward’s eyes as he struggles to support his family, a story that
captures the opportunities and inequalities of Victorian North Devon.
Capern would jot down poems while he was walking and he
often wrote on the envelopes he was about to deliver: “He had to ask the
recipients if he could keep the envelopes because he’d written poems on them,”
said Liz, whose own cottage in Littleham just outside Bideford was on Capern’s
round.
It was during his daily two-hour break on the Bideford to
Buckland Brewer route that most of his poems were written. It seems that one
day he was invited into a cottage to sit in the warmth of the kitchen while the
women of the house went about their daily chores. It was an invitation he was
to accept every day after that.
While carrying out her research, Liz discovered that, quite
by coincidence, the cottage is now owned by a good friend, local historian and
genealogist Janet Few: “When you’re in the kitchen you can imagine Edward
sitting there writing up a poem about the nature he’d seen and the people he’d
met that morning,” said Liz.
When it came to Nick and Becki setting Capern’s work to
music, they found that the poems had a particular rhythm to them: “You could
tell he’d written them while walking,” said Nick, “because there is a walking
feel to the rhythm of the lines.”
This “walking feel” was used when they composed the music,
as Becki explained: “The feel informed the rhythm and we then created the
melody to ‘fit’ what the words were saying. And the melody informed the choice
of instruments.”
“The songs are certainly folk-influenced because that’s our
background and it’s probably the music Capern would sing. But it’s not
traditional folk music. It’s a much more contemporary sound.”
Nick and Becki initially sifted through Capern’s collection
of poems that he’d written for music in his volume, The Devonshire Melodist, only to discover his words had been disastrously
misinterpreted by composer Thomas Murby. His piano arrangements were clearly
intended for the well-to-do and a review in the Illustrated London News decried Murby’s melodies as “artificial,
laboured and hard to sing”.
As a result Nick and Becki have recorded just two of the
songs as they were written – Christmas
Bells and Come List, My Love, and
have set a third from the collection, The
Robin Is Weeping, to their own music. Nine further Capern poems are set to
their folk-influenced interpretation.
“It’s pretty obvious
that folk was his genre,” said Nick. ”We think he’d be happy with what we’ve
done.”
Although he was careful not to upset the aristocracy who
bought his work, Capern was keen to use his pen to champion the cause of the
poor. One poem Nick and Becki have set to music is The Dinner Bell, a tale of the haves and have-nots where Capern
laments the plight of families who could hear the sound of distant dinner bells
but had no food themselves. In recognition of Capern’s commitment to social justice, £1
from each copy of the poetry collection sold is being donated to the Northern
Devon Food Bank.
Capern died in 1894, aged 75, and is buried in the
churchyard at Heanton near Braunton, with his trusty postman’s handbell fixed
in a niche in the headstone.
So how will 21st century readers view Capern’s
poems? Liz admits some are rather sentimental for today’s tastes but added: “The
best of them are as fresh and honest now as they were then. The poems I’ve
selected are those which best reflect his life and the locality. He loved his
job, despite the weather and the long hours and it’s this love that really
comes across in his work. His poems are written from the heart.”
Photo: Liz Shakespeare, Nick Wyke and Becki Driscoll
👀👀👀
The Rural Postman (an extract):
O, the postman’s is as happy a life
As any one’s, I trow;
Wand’ring away where dragon-flies play,
And brooks sing soft and slow;
And watching the lark as he soars on high,
To carol in yonder cloud,
"He sings in his labour, and why not I?"
The postman sings aloud.
And many a brace of humble rhymes
His pleasant soul hath made,
Of birds, and flowers, and happy times,
In sunshine and in shade.
