“Truth and Tradition’s Mingled Stream”: Robert Bloomfield’s The Banks of Wye

ANDREW SMITH “Truth and Tradition’s Mingled Stream”: Robert Bloomfield’s The Banks of Wye I N AUGUST 1807, THE “SHOEMAKER POET” ROBERT BLOOMFIELD EMBARKED on a ten-day tour with wealthy friends along the river Wye and through the surrounding countryside, eventually publishing a poetic account of this journey in The Banks of Wye (1811).1 Modeled on the fashionable journals kept by picturesque enthusiasts of their travels, the poem records Bloom­ field’s impressions of the spectacular scenery he witnessed and responds to the region’s cultural geography—the literature, antiquarian research, social and political history, and scientific observation that had grown up around the river. Often dismissed by scholars as Bloomfield’s attempt to capitalize on the picturesque vogue, The Banks of Wye has recently been the subject of several revisionist readings, which have presented it as a more sophisti­ cated poem, and Bloomfield as a more ambitious writer, than previ­ ously thought.2 Bloomfield’s interest in, and sympathetic representation of the Wye’s laboring-class communities has received particular attention, prompting interpretations of the poem as a subversive response to the official historical record of the region, to contemporary picturesque writ­ ings, and to the influential literary tradition that had immortalized the river.3 1. In this article, I will be quoting from a corrected edition of the poem: Robert Bloomfield, The Banks of Wye: A Poem in Four Books, 2nd ed. (London: Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1813). All line references will be cited parenthetically. 2. For a convenient overview of the poem’s contemporary and modern reception, see John Goodridge, “‘That Deathless Wish of Climbing Higher’: Robert Bloomfield on the Sugar Loaf,” in Wales and the Romantic Imagination, eds. Damian Walford Davies and Lynda Pratt (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007), 161-79, n. 7. 3. See, in particular, Tim Burke, “Colonial Spaces and National Identities in The Banks of Wye: Bloomfield and the Wye after Wordsworth,” in Robert Bloomfield: Lyric, Class, and the Romantic Canon, eds. Simon White, John Goodridge, and Bridget Keegan (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2006), 89—112; and Simon White’s chapter “‘History from SiR, 52 (Winter 2013) 537 538 ANDREW SMITH Bloomfield’s interest in these communities does indeed represent a shift away from the attitudes of conventional picturesque texts and those influenced by “the Romantic ideology,” which tend either to ignore or condescend to a landscape’s inhabitants. However, we should be wary of reading too much into Bloomfield’s interest in the Wye’s vernacular cul­ ture. As Bloomfield himself reminds us, “he alas! could only glean / The changeful outlines of the scene,” prompting him to ask forgiveness from the locals for “the stranger’s meagre line, / That seems to slight that spot of thine” (1:117-20). Bloomfield’s anxieties about his potentially superficial representation of the Wye surely raise doubts over claims that he becomes “the voice of the people he encounters in the landscape.”4 More interest­ ing, in my view, is the way Bloomfield combines these local perspectives with a number of other discourses by which the Wye’s geography, history and culture could be understood. Bloomfield describes the stories told about one of the ruined castles he visits as “truth and tradition’s mingled stream” (3:51), a resonant phrase that suggests the profound influence of previous writers, historians, and tourists on how the Wye is perceived and represented by those who follow in their wake. Pursuing this watery metaphor a little further, we find that this min­ gled stream is characterized by discursive eddies and crosscurrents that pull Bloomfield in various directions when he comes to describe his own experiences. Although these shifts and contradictions could be read as po­ etic flaws—Bloomfield’s inability to maintain a steady perspective on his subject—I interpret them, more constructively, as a sophisticated response to the Wye’s complex cultural geography, and as experiments with alterna­ tive narrative personae other than that expected of a “peasant poet.” By the time Bloomfield undertook his tour, Wales was well established as a tourist destination for the English gentility. There were at least two dis­ tinct tours that attracted visitors: the North Wales tour, which...