Epistolary Sisterhoods and Communities in Bessie Parkes’s ‘Summer Sketches’ (1854) by Alex Round
Alex Round, researcher on Pre-Raphaelite women, considers feminist political activism and friendship in the work of nineteenth-century Birmingham poet Bessie Rayner Parkes.
Women writers who pursued professional careers during the nineteenth century were inextricably tied to the political and social reforms of the era. Their intervention in the world of literature, a public sphere, was a political transgression, evidencing the female search for a public space outside of domestic roles. Scholar of 19th-century literature, Alexandra Wettlaufer, reminds us in her book Portraits of the Artist as a Young Woman (2011) that many women artists and writers at the time self-consciously constructed an artistic identity that engaged with larger issues concerning gender and used their art and poetry to publicly contribute their own political thoughts. However, few women sought to not only subvert the constraints they endured within the literary and artistic communities but also break the rigid structures of society as a whole. As a poet, editor, and activist, Bessie Rayner Parkes had ambitions to transcend the boundaries of what women could achieve through their work. Yet, despite her successful career, Parkes is still largely unknown to the public today.
In her time, Parkes became one of Britain’s household names whose political standing informed her professional identity as a writer.[1] Born in Birmingham, 1829, she grew up in a family who held progressive political beliefs. Her exposure to such radical politics from a young age led her to become increasingly aware of the bleak situation of women and education. Through her father’s political connections, she befriended Barbara Leigh Smith and, later, Anna Mary Howitt and Marian Evans (George Eliot), who were equally concerned with women’s ability to access the same opportunities as men. During their youth, they painted and wrote together, travelled across Britain and Europe, and strove to establish a new model of the woman artist and poet.
During one particular trip in the summer of 1853, Parkes, Leigh Smith, and Evans travelled to Ockley in Surrey for a writing retreat, along with Leigh Smith’s Aunt Julia, Sara Hennell, and the publisher John Chapman and his wife. After a few days of enjoying each other’s company, Leigh Smith, Parkes, and Smith continued their holiday to visit reformatory schools in Bristol, Bournemouth, and Poole before returning home.
These visits made their mark on Parkes. She began composing ‘Summer Sketches’ (1854), a poem that was mostly influenced by the group’s stay in Ockley. ‘Sketches’ illustrates the adventures of Parkes, Leigh Smith, and Evans, and is also proof of their collaborative practice. Parkes initially enlisted the opinions of the pair and asked them to read a first draft that she composed during that summer, and from that point they became heavily involved with the editing process. Having read Parkes’s early draft, Evans responded, ‘I will read as many verses of your ‘Poem preparing for the press’ as you like to send me. Miss Hennell and I were heartily amused by your specimen’.[2] In light of this, Leigh Smith and Evans are implicated in the poem as not just the protagonists, but as editors and collaborators.
The poem comprises of three verse-letters: the first two are written by Lilian (Parkes) about her adventures with Mistress Clare (Smith) and Ella (Leigh Smith) to their other friend, Helen (Evans), and the third is Helen’s reply. Lilian begins her first verse-letter to Helen by contrasting ‘dreary London, dark with smoke / But more obscured by crime’ (I. 60-61) with rural scenes of Ockley. She paints Ockley as a ‘noble green by Nature fight . . . / The sense of freedom, rest, and calm/Falls on the town-sick heart like balm’ (I 191, 210-211). Parkes’s juxtaposing descriptions of London and Ockley reinforce how the countryside offered her an invaluable space away from the constraints of the city to consider her position as a budding professional woman. Deborah Cherry notes in Beyond the Frame (2000) that the countryside empowered women as ‘spectators, writers and picture makers of the landscape’, suggesting that it offered women an escape from social convention. Parkes’s intricate description of Ockley implies the ample sketching and writing opportunities the girls must have had during their trip, enabling them the chance to develop themselves as artists and writers; and in Parkes’s case, a chance to practice her poetry undisturbed.
When describing her journey on the train from London to Ockley, Parkes lists several reformatory schools headed or founded by women. She mentions Mary Carpenter, the headmistress of Kingswood School that Parkes, Leigh Smith, and Smith had visited after their stay in Ockley that summer. In the poem, Lilian labels Carpenter as one ‘who fills that hard and anxious part, /A mother, to the motherless’ (I. 104-105), which emphasises the importance of Carpenter’s role as a ‘mother’ to the poor and vulnerable in society. In her descriptions of Carpenter, Parkes also implies that the working woman in society must be considered equally important to the traditional stay-at-home mother.
Parkes also cites Carpenter in her political pamphlet, Remarks on the Education of Girls (1854), which advocates the importance of education for girls and working-class children. In Remarks, she praises a recent Bill that enabled young offenders to be sent to reformatory schools instead of prison, and uses Kingswood as an example of how valuable these institutions can be when they are headed by women. She calls it ‘at once an evidence and a symbol of the important functions which lie ready to the hands of benevolent women’, which reiterates the significance of women in reformatory work .[3] Christina Rossetti, whom Parkes befriended through the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood stressed that mothers should be given the right to vote:
If female rights are sure to be overborne for lack of female voting influence [. . .] who so apt as mothers – all previous arguments allowed for the moment – to protect the interests of themselves and of their offspring?[4]
Rossetti believed that motherhood is an honourable act (albeit within marriage) and also a responsibility that allowed for the function of day-to-day life. In her description of Carpenter, Parkes takes this further by elevating the state of motherhood to a political act, calling for women to be taken seriously within the public sphere. In likening Carpenter’s role as headmistress to being a ‘mother’, Parkes reiterates that the importance of working women to the operating of society cannot be understated.
Lilian continues to express her interest in women and education. Parkes references other schools funded, founded, and built by women. Lilian recalls that ‘happy Christians are taught at Shere’ (I. 145), referring to Shere School that was founded by Louisa Bray and Laura Lomax in 1842. Much like Carpenter, Bray, and Lomax were dedicated to bettering the quality of education for the working class, and funded the construction of their own school house in the village:
Shere School is not like ordinary schools, and was built under rather singular circumstances […] I had the boldness to suggest building a School house, and I was thought out of my mind. Where were the funds to come from? Laura offered £100, and I £40, and from this beginning we proceeded by the kind help of my brothers and brother-in-law.[5]
Although Lomax died in 1855, she posthumously founded the Lomax Educational Foundation, which continued to fund the school and its expansion. By 1892, there were over 259 people registered as students at Shere School with classes ranging from writing workshops for adults to basic reading skills for children from three years of age.
Continuing on the theme of women and education, Parkes then devotes fifty-four lines to Jane Scott, who was a patron of the Ockley School and the village. Scott was concerned with the conditions endured by working-class people, and left a large sum of money for ‘erecting, building and fitting up a School House in the Parish of Ockley for the use of the poor inhabitants and affording them gratuitous instruction therein’.[6]
Similar to Lomax, Scott died at a young age and was not able to see her plans unfold. Nonetheless, the School House was opened after her death in 1841. Parkes tributes Scott’s dedication to improving Ockley:
And I, a stranger, taught by thee,
Shall honour and forget thee not,
And blend with thoughts of saintly deeds
Those plain words eloquent – Jane Scott.
(I. 262-265)
Although Parkes and her friends never met Scott, she must have been one of the pioneering women that Smith educated them on during their travels. Parkes greatly admired those who were committed to the education and welfare of young people. Her references to Carpenter, Bray, Lomax, and Scott in ‘Sketches’, followed by her words in Remarks reinforce Parkes’s views on the accessibility of education and the role that women played in making it happen.
Parkes also cryptically references the author Elizabeth Gaskell, having probably met her through her artist friend Eliza Fox. In the second verse-letter, Lilian and Ella mention a female writer who ‘keepest a conscience in her pen’ (II. 427), which has been speculated by Kathleen McCormack to be Gaskell. McCormack states that the line ‘thy revealings learn with Ruth’ (II. 420) alludes to Gaskell’s novel Ruth (1853). Given that Ruth was published during the same year of the Ockley trip, it is probable that the writer is Gaskell. Gaskell’s novel attracted controversy following its release, as it dealt with themes of fallen women and illegitimacy. It is clear that Parkes supported Gaskell and her novel, especially considering the glowing tribute that she pays to Gaskell in the poem. The abolitionist Margaret Fuller is also commemorated by the line ‘Margaret from thy seat in heaven’ (II. 340). It is likely that Parkes and Leigh Smith were introduced to Fuller by Julia Smith, who attended the World Slavery Convention with Fuller in 1840. Despite her death at a young age, she played a leading role in the women’s rights campaigns in America. Parkes and her friends held her in high regard, with Evans paying tribute to Fuller in her essay, ‘Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft’ for The Leader.
Above all, the poem is dedicated to Leigh Smith and Evans, and is a testament to their friendship and ambitions to be professional artists and writers. In the second verse-letter, Lilian observes Ella wandering down the street ‘with a rustic air / Twisting roses in her hair’ (1.306-307), which reflects Leigh Smith’s own bold personality in real life. During one passage, the two young women journey to the top of Leith Hill to enjoy a picnic together. Lilian recalled their adventure to be quite a challenge:
Poor small pony, lank and thin,
Surely expiates some sin
Committed in a human state,
Trudging on resign’d to fate.
Women will not beat an ass -
Tempt him on with freshest grass.
(II. 429-435)
Once they arrived at top of the hill, the pair soaked in the views for the remainder of the day, in which they ‘sat silently among the flowers / and [Ella] painted for eight mortal hours’ (II. 481-482). This charming passage shows the affectionate nature of Parkes and Leigh Smith’s friendship, as well as the activities that they enjoyed away from their gruelling routine of writing and politics.
Throughout ‘Sketches’, the friends alternate their discussion on women’s rights with serious spates of work, which mirrors the literal routine that Parkes and her friends carried out during their stay. Lilian calls it a ‘household plan / Framed without the help of man’ (1.236-237), in which the women find themselves ‘Escaped from every social tie, / Dwell at this inn, and… / Live just the life that suits us best’ (II. 96-98). Parkes illustrates her fictional country inn to only be occupied by women, with the only exception being the little boy who helped Lilian with her bags and referred to the women as ‘sirs’. The depiction of Lilian’s rural retreat for women reminds us how Parkes, Leigh Smith, and Evans used the open space that Ockley provided away from London to professionally and personally develop themselves. Similar to Lilian’s female world in ‘Sketches’, Parkes and her friends considered Ockley as their own women’s utopia; a liberating space that allowed them to practice their art and poetry and refine their political thought. Their discussions of women’s rights becomes more apparent in the second verse-letter:
. . . the question which the age demands,
“What is a woman’s right and fitting sphere?”
How best she may, with free and willing mind,
Develop every special genius,
. . . And . . .
Walk in a joint obedience with man,
And equal freedom of the law of God.
(II. 272-279)
As Deborah Parker Kinch rightly suggests, the ‘explicit feminist polemic within the poem reflects a shift in Parkes’s understanding of her role as a poet’. Parkes establishes the connection between her poetry and the role she must play in the campaigns for women’s rights, using her poetry not as just an art form, but as a political tool. In a brief discussion that follows, Ella declares that they both must encapsulate their thoughts through their respective art forms:
Lilian, you must write a poem
With these visions for a proem
So with pencil and with pen
We must translate our thoughts to men.
(II. 390-394)
These lines echo a previous conversation that Parkes and Leigh Smith had concerning the importance of their role as a women artist and poet:
Oh dear Barbara, your picture frame has made me think. What shall I do! What shall I educate myself for writing? […] I do not feel in the least clever. I can understand some things better than girls perhaps because, like you, I have had a peculiar education, but I can produce nothing and I cannot read any page of the Universe, much less translate it to my brethren.[7]
The use of the verb ‘translate’ in both is interesting, as it provokes questions as to why Leigh Smith and Parkes feel the need to ‘translate’ their thoughts. It is possible that the women’s need to ‘translate’ their thoughts suggests a curbing of communication, and is Parkes’s way of acknowledging women’s exclusion. However, Parkes’s use of the imperative verb ‘must’ adds urgency to calling for women’s need to be included. The change in phrase from ‘I can produce nothing…much less translate it to my brethren’ in Parkes’s letter to ‘we must translate our thoughts to men’ in ‘Sketches’ reflects her realisation of her identity as a woman poet and her role in the campaigns for women’s rights.
The third-verse letter consists of Helen’s long-awaited reply. It appears that Helen is as ambitious as Lilian and Ella, as the conversation becomes increasingly focused on women’s rights. Helen’s reply instructs Lilian to listen to recent calls for women’s rights in America, featuring work written by ‘brave New England women penn’d’ (III. 15). Similar to how Parkes and Leigh Smith’s characters reaffirm their commitment, Evans’s Helen also appears to confirm her ambition to be a successful writer,
From morn to eve, form morn to eve again,
Striving against the hindrance of time
And all the weight of custom; and I will,
I tell you Lilian, that I will succeed.
(III. 34-37)
Evans shares Parkes and Leigh Smith’s desire to work and be successful, confirming that her writing will be the tool to do it. Evans, Leigh Smith and Parkes know that they must urgently use their platforms to bring women and their thoughts to light. As for Parkes, ‘Summer Sketches’ is her way of making clear the depth of her commitment to her career as a poet and writer along with her campaigning efforts, and as Parker Kinch puts it, ‘turning her poetic voice into direct political commentary and engagement with the contemporary world’.
[1] Parkes published over fourteen books comprised of poetry, essays, children’s fiction and travel memoirs. Much of her literary work was well received by critics, including the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and art critic John Ruskin. She was also a prolific campaigner whose name frequently appeared in the press and became well known to the public.
[2] George Eliot and Gordon Sherman Haight, George Eliot Letters: 1852-1858, (Yale: Yale University Press, 1955) p. 109.
[3] BRP, Remarks on the Education of Girls, (London: John Chapman, 1854) p. 23.
[4] Kathryn Burlinson, Christina Rossetti, (Devon: Northcote House, 1998) p. 33.
[5] Diaries of Louisa Charlotte Bray, 8261/9/8, Albury History Society: Records, 1565-2006.
[6] The papers of Jane Scott are held by the community of Ockley on their website. Further information can be found at: https://www.ockley.org.uk/blog/emphatic-design-c75s2
[7] BRP, letter to BLS, 5th December 1849, GCPP Parkes 5/39.
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Bibliography
Manuscripts
BRP, letter to BLS, 5th December 1849, GCPP Parkes 5/39.
Diaries of Louisa Charlotte Bray, 8261/9/8, Albury History Society: Records, 1565-2006.
Published Sources
Burlinson, Kathryn. Christina Rossetti. Devon: Northcote House, 1998.
Cherry, Deborah. Beyond the Frame: Feminism and Visual Culture, Britain 1850-1900. Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 2012.
Haight, Gordon S. George Eliot Letters: 1852-1858. Yale: Yale University Press, 1955.
McCormack, Kathleen. ‘Bessie Parkes’s Summer Sketches: George Eliot as Poetic Persona’. Victorian Poetry. West Virginia: West Virginia University Press, 2004, pp. 295-312.
Parker Kinch, Deborah. ‘We who strive for the foundation of a principle’: feminism and suffrage in the biography of Bessie Parkes Belloc. Women’s History Review 29 (6), pp. 916–939. 2020
Rayner Parkes, Bessie. Remarks on the Education of Girls. London: John Chapman, 1854.
Wettlaufer, Alexandra. Portraits of the Artist as a Young Woman: Painting as a Young Woman: Painting and the Novel in France and Britain, 1800-1860. Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2011.
Alex Round is an AHRC-funded PhD researcher at Birmingham City University. Her work looks at how friendships formed between Pre-Raphaelite women informed their creative and political work. She is the 2023 recipient of the Rose Sidgwick Award and a recipient of the 2023 Dahesh Museum of Art Prize.
