Christopher Smart's alleged madness

It was alleged by many who knew Christopher Smart that he was "mad" during the mid 1750s. On 6 May 1757, he was admitted into St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics, Bethnal Green, London, by his father-in-law, John Newbery. Although many felt that Smart was "mad", what this "madness" meant varied amongst those who knew Smart, and many felt that he was admitted unfairly.

Later, Smart's "madness" was used in order to ignore Smart's poem, "A Song to David" and to hide altogether Smart's "Jubilate Agno", two poems that are currently viewed as Smart's greatest works. During the next century, the Romantic poets, and their successors, such as Robert Browning, viewed Smart's "madness" as the source of his genius. It was not until the 20th century, with the rediscovery of "Jubilate Agno", that critics reconsidered Smart's case and viewed him more as a revolutionary poet ahead of his time and possible target of a plot by Newbery to silence Smart.

Background

During the 18th century, "madness" was "both held to reveal inner truth and condemned to silence and exclusion as something unintelligible by reason, and therefore threatening to society and to humanity." [Smith and Sweeny p. 16] It was commonly believed in the 18th century that "madness" was an incurable infliction and that people should be isolated from society. [Keymer p. 144] William Battie, who later treated Smart, wrote, that we

"find that Madness is, contrary to the opinion of some unthinking persons, as manageable as many other distempers, which are equally dreadful and obstinate, and yet are not looked upon as incurrable, and that such unhappy objects out by no means to be abandoned , much less shut up in loathsome prisons as criminals or nusances to the society." [Battie p.93]

In particular, he defined madness as "deluded imagination".Mounsey p. 209] However, Battie was attacked by other physicians during the 18th century, such as John Monro, who worked at Bethlem Hospital and wrote "Remarks on Dr. Battie's Treatise on Madness". Monro instead believed that those who were mad had the correct perceptions, but lacked the ability to judge properly, but his suggested treatment, beating patients, was as equally harsh as Battie's who sought to isolate patients completely.

To Battie's credit, he and others believed that those deemed "mad" were abused under the British asylum system and they pushed for parliamentary action, which resulted in the passage of the Act for Regulating Private Madhouses (1774), but was too late to ever help Smart. [Keymer p. 185]

However, modern critics have a more cynical view; Thomas Szasz viewed the idea of "madness" as arbitrary and unnatural. [Szasz 1972] Agreeing with this take, Michel Foucault emphasized that asylums were used in the 18th century to attack dissenting views and represented the cultural fear held by the British public instead of a legitimate medical condition. [Foucault 1989] In particular, Foucault called the 18th century as a time of "great confinement". [Foucault p. 6] This agrees with Christopher Smart's 1760s writings on the subject in which "the category of madness is insistently relativized, and made to seem little more than the invention of a society strategically concerned to discredit all utterances or condut that threatens its interests and norms."Keymer p. 183]

Regardless of the reasons why patients were admitted into mental asylums during the 18th century, the treatment for the patients were simple: they were to be fed daily a light diet of bread, oatmeal, some meat or cheese, and a little amount of beer, which was an inadequate in meeting daily nutritional needs; [Mounsey p. 205] ; they were denied contact without outsiders, including family members; and they would be denied the cause of their madness (these causes ranged from alcohol and food to working outside).Mounsey p. 204] If their actions appeared "afresh and without assignable cause", then their condition would be labeled as "original" madness and deemed incurable. An institution like St Luke's, run by Battie, would hold "curable" and "incurable" patients.Mounsey p. 206] There were limited spots available for patients to be treated for free, and many patients were released after a year in order to make room for new admittances.Mounsey p. 207]

Asylum

On 5 June 1756, Newbery published without Smart's authority Smart's "Hymn to the Supreme Being", a poem which thanked God for recovery over an illness of some kind, possibly a "disturbed mental state". [Curry p. 5] The "Hymn to the Supreme Being" marks the time in Smart's life after the mysterious "fit" was resolved and the beginning of Smart's obsession with religion and his praying "without ceasing." [Curry p. 6-7] During the "fit", it is believed that he was confined to Newbery's home.Anderson p. 37] Out of sympathy for Smart, many of his friends, including Samuel Johnson, began to write in the "Universal Visiter" to fulfill Smart's contractual obligation.

It is believed that Smart was influenced by St Paul's command in Thessalonians to "Pray without ceasing" and William Law's "The Spirit of Prayer" that argues for a constant state of prayer to establish a connection with God. Smart's praying began in regular intervals but slowly devolved into irregular praying in which he would interrupt his friends activities and call them into the street to pray in public.Piozzi 1849 p. 24] This continued until an incident that Smart later described in "Jubilate Agno": "For I blessed God in St James's Park till I routed all the company... For the officers of the peace are at variance with me, and the watchman smites me with his staff" ("Jubilate Agno" B 90-91). [Smart 1980 p. 26]

Christopher Hunter, Smart's biographer and nephew, described the situation as:

Though the fortune as well as the constitution of Mr. Smart required the utmost care, he was equally negligent in the management of both, and his various and repeated embarrassments acting upon an imagination uncommonly fervid, produced temporary alienations of mind; which at last were attended with paroxysms so violent and continued as to render confinement necessary." [Hunter xx-xxi]

Hunter describes that Samuel Johnson would visit Smart while "mad", and it was Johnson who, "on the first approaches of Mr. Smart's malady, wrote several papers for a periodical publication in which that gentleman was concerned." [Hunter p. xx] At no time, however, did Smart ever belief himself to be insane, and these meetings started taking place before Smart was ever put into asylum because Smart still contributed, although not as much, to the "Universal Visiter". [Ainsworth and Noyes p. 90] In joking about writing for the "Universal Visiter", Johnson claimed: "for poor Smart, while he was mad, not then knowing the terms on which he was engaged to write ... I hoped his wits would return to him. Mine returned to me, and I wrote in 'the Universal Visitor' no longer". [Harvnb|Keymer|1999|p=188]

However, there are other possibilities: Newbery, Smart's father-in-law and publisher, used the imprisonment of his son-in-law as leverage to control the publication of Smart's work and as a warning against others who worked for Newbery to not cross him; or, Smart's actions were resulting from drinking and had nothing to do with a mental imbalance.Mounsey p. 200] However, Smart may have been imprisoned for embarrassing his father-in-law in some way, which could have resulted from an incident in which Smart would drink. Hester Thrale reinforces this later possibility when she claimed that Smart's "religious fervor" tended to coincide with times that Smart was intoxicated. Smart's own testimony that he "blessed God in St. James's Park till I routed all the company" ("Jubilate Agno" B 90-91) as representing his religious "madness" is equally dismissed as resulting from drinking because Smart was known for pulling pranks and the Board of the Green Cloth, the government body that controlled St. James's Park, would treat most disturbances in the park as resulting from "madness".Mounsey p. 201] If Smart was placed into asylum in result from actions at St. James's, he would not have been the only one since records show that the Board of the Green Cloth were responsible for admitting sixteen people to Bethlem Hospital for "frenzy" at St. James's Park during the previous century that Smart was placed in St. Luke's.

It is not known what exactly happened during his confinement, but Smart did work on two of his most famous poems, "Jubilate Agno" and "A Song to David". [Mounsey p. 202] What is known is that he may have been in a private madhouse before St Luke’s and that he was later moved from St Luke’s to Mr. Potter’s asylum until his release. [Mounsey p. 203] At St Luke’s, he transitioned from being "curable" to "incurable", and was moved to Mr Potter’s asylum for monetary reasons. [Mounsey p. 203-204] During this time, Anna, his wife, left and took the children with her to Ireland. [Sherbo p. 135] There is no record that he ever saw her again.Mounsey p. 239] His isolation led him into writing religious poetry, although he abandoned the traditional genres of the 18th century that marked his earlier poetry when he wrote "Jubilate Agno". [Guest p. 123]

During his time in asylum, Smart busied himself with a daily ritual of writing poetry; these bits of lyrics eventually formed his "Jubilate Agno" and "A Song to David". It is thought that writing poetry is a way to focus the mind and works as a type of self-therapy. [Smith and Sweeny p. 14] Although it is debated as to whether his turning inward to examine himself in his poetry represents an evangelical type of Christianity, his poetry during his isolation does show a desire for "unmediated revelation". [Hawes p. 140] There is an "inner light" that serves as a focal point for Smart and his poems written during this time, and that inner light connects him to the Christian God. [Hawes p. 141]

t Luke's Hospital for Lunatics

A "Commission of Lunacy" was taken out against Smart, and he was admitted to St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics on 6 May 1757 as a "Curable Patient". [Sherbo p. 112] It is possible that Smart was confined by Newbery over old debts and a poor relationship between the two; Newbery had previously mocked Smart and his immorality in his "A Collection of Pretty Poems for the Amusement of Children six Foot High." [Mounsey p. 181] Regardless of the exact reasons, there is evidence suggesting that Newbery’s admittance of Smart into the mental asylum was not based on "madness".Mounsey p. 200] In order to have Smart admitted, Newbery probably had to provide a small bribe although they were against the rules of St Luke's policy.

There is little information known of Smart's condition during his stay at St Luke's, possibly because Battie's denied his patients from being visited by all guests, including their own family members. One of the few records that survive of Smart's time at St Lukes was an entry in "St Luke's Minute Book" which read:

12 May 1758
Dr. Battie having acquainted this Committee that Christopher Smart (who was admitted on the 6th day of May 1757) continues disordered in his Senses notwithstanding he has been admitted into this Hostpital above 12 Calendar Months and from the present Circumstances of his Case there is not Suffit. reason to expect his speedy Recovery And he being brought up and examined. Ordered. That he be discharged and that Notice be sent to his Securities to take him away."

During Smart's imprisonment at St. Luke's, not even other doctors were allowed to see Smart unless they were personally allowed by Battie.Mounsey p. 210] If Smart would have attempted to be freed via legal means, the rules for subpeoning release would have been almost impossible to follow based on the system that Battie had in place.

Mr Potter's madhouse

After being released from St Luke's, Smart was taken to a private madhouse.Mounsey p. 208] During this time, Elizabeth LeNoir, Smart's daughter, was brought to see her father.Sherbo p. 122] She described her experience visiting her father, who was "committed by Mr Newbery to the care of a "Mr Potter" who kept a private house at Bethnal Green", as being held in "small neat parlour". However, Mr Potter's private madhouse was not "homely", and Smart's treatments were far worse: "For they work on me with their harping-irons, which is a barbarous instrument, because I am more unguarded than others" ("Jubilate Agno" B 129)

Smart was left alone for four years, except for his cat Jeoffrey and the occasional gawker. [Sherbo p. 133] Piozzi described the gawkers when she discussed Smart's general situation: "He was both a wit and a scholar, and visited as such while under confinement for MADNESS." It is very possible that he felt "homeless" during this time and surely felt that he was in a "limbo… between public and private space" from being watched by outsiders. [Hawes p. 155]

In London, only a few of his works were still being published, but the proceeds were taken by Newbery. However, one work that Smart did get to see published was a collection of his work under the pseudonym Mrs Midnight titled "Mrs. Midnight's Orations; and other Select Pieces: as they were spoken at the Oratory in the Hay-Market, London".Sherbo p. 167] Smart did not profit from the work, but he was able to see at least some of his previous work being printed again. Smart only "had his God and his poetry", and it is no wonder that a few of his loyal friends did come to Mr. Potter’s and free him. [Sherbo p. 164]

Release

There is little information known about how and why Smart was released from asylum, but Elizabeth, his daughter, claimed:

"He grew better, and some misjudging friends who misconstrued Mr Newbery’s great kindness in placing him under necessary & salutary restriction which might possibly have eventually wrought a cure, invited him to dinner and he returned to his confinement no more."Mounsey p. 239]

Although this may be a misstatement of the events, Smart did leave the asylum on 30 January 1763 with John Sherratt. [Mounsey p. 240] Smart took with him the manuscripts of "A Song to David", many translations of Psalms, and "Jubilate Agno". To those around him, Smart appeared perfectly sane, and he was most likely released because of concurrent legislation being passed in parliament pushing for a reform of patient care.

Reaction

James Boswell describes a moment when Charles Burney inquired Samuel Johnson of Smart's state:

"Madness frequently discovers itself merely by unnecessary deviation from the usual mode of the worldMy poor friend Smart shewed the disturbance of his mind, by falling upon his knees, and saying his prayers in the street, or in any other unusual place. Now although, rationally speaking, it is greater madness not to pray at all, than to pray as Smart did, I am afraid there are so many who do not pray, that their understanding is not called in question.

Concerning this unfortunate poet, Christopher Smart, who was confined in a mad-house, he had, at another time, the following conversation with Dr [Charles] Burney: - Burney. 'How does poor Smart do, Sir; is he likely to recover?' Johnson. 'It seems as if his mind had ceased to struggle with the disease; for he grows fat upon it.' Burney. 'Perhaps, Sir, that may be from want of exercise.' Johnson. 'No, Sir; he has partly as much exercise as he used to have, for he digs in the garden. Indeed, before his confinement, he used for exercise to walk to the ale-house; but he was "carried" back again. I did not think he ought to be shut up. His infirmities are not noxious to society. He insisted on people praying with him; and I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as any one else. Another charge was that he did not love clean linen; and I have no passion for it.' - Johnson continued. 'Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labour; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.'" [Boswell p. 97-98]

In an article printed in the "Gentleman's Magazine", Hester Piozzi wrote:

In every "other" transaction of life no man's wits could be more regular than those of Smart, for this prevalence of one idea pertinaciously keeping the first place in his head had in no sense, except in what immediately related to itself, perverted his judgement at all; his opinions were unchanged as before, nor did he seem more likely to fall into a state of "distraction" than any other man; less so, perhaps, as he calmed every violent start of passion by prayer.

Most of the journalists knew of Smart's time in asylum and, upon publication of his "A Song to David", they attacked aspects of the poem which they could use to claim that Smart was still "mad". In particular, William Mason wrote to Thomas Gray, "I have seen his Song to David & from thence conclude him as mad as ever." [Toynebee, P. and Whibley, L. p. 802]

19th century

Although it took a century later before a positive twist was put on Christopher Smart's time in a mental asylum, Robert Browning later remarked in his "Parleyings" (1887) that "A Song to David" was great because Smart was mad at the time of writing it.Jacobs p. 193] In the poem, Browning writes::"Armed with this instance, have I diagnosed:Your case, my Christopher? The man was sound:And sane at starting: all at once the ground:Gave way beneath his step...:... Then-as heaven were loth:To linger-let earth understand too well:How heaven at need can operate - off fell:The flame-robe, and the untransfigured man:Resumed sobriety, - as he began,:So did he end nor alter pace, not he!" [Browning p. 84]

Smart's temporary madness is what allowed the poem to rank alongside those written by John Milton and John Keats. Christopher Smart, as Browning's poem claims, :"pierced the screen:Twixt thing and word, lit language straight from soul, -:Left no fine film-flake on the naked coal:Live from the censer" ["Parleyings" 1887, p. 86] Browning's remarks brought about a later "appreciation: of "A Song to David" and Smart's "madness". [Smart 1983 p. 101] More specifically, on a review of Browning "Parleying" claimed that Christopher Smart was::"possessed by his subject... and where there is true possession - where the fires of the poet's imagination are not choked by self-consciousness or by too much fuel from the intellect - idiosyncracy, mannerism, and even conventional formulae are for the time 'burnt and purged away'." ["Athenaeum" 19 Feb. 1887 p. 248]

In addition to this review, Dante Gabriel Rossetti emphasized the benefits of Smart's madness and claimed that "A Song to David" was "the only great "accomplished" poem of the last century." [Smart 1983 p. 103] Two years later, Francis Palgrave continued the theme when he wrote that the "Song" exhibited "noble wildness and transitions from grandeur to tenderness, from Earth to Heaven" and it was "unique in our Poetry." [Palgrave, Francis T. "Treasury of Sacred Song" London, 1889. p. 350] Seven years after Palgrave, John Churton Collins agreed with Rosetti and Palgrave, but not to the same degree, when he claims, "This poem stands alone, the most extraordinary phenomenon, perhaps, in our literature, the one rapt strain in the poetry of the eighteenth century, the work of a poet who, though he produced much, has not produced elsewhere a single line which indicates the power here displayed." [Collins, John Churton. "Treasury of Minor British Poetry". London, 1896. p. 395]

20th century

The 18th and 19th century diagnosis of Smart has been held as correct by many people, and Smart's poems have been determine to "have sprung from such disturbances." [Smith and Sweeny p. 15]

However, there are many that disagree; Edward Ainsworth and Charles Noyes, when discussing Smart's "Hymn to the Supreme Being", say, "The mind that composed this hymn was not deranged. Yet in the poem one sees the morbidly religious mind which, in disorder, was to produce the "Jubilate Agno", and, with order restored, the "Song to David". [Ainsworth and Noyes p. 87] Additionally, they claim that Smart's

"preternatural excitement to prayer seems to have been poor Smart's only real mental aberration, unless his drunkenness be considered pathological. When his mind was removed entirely from the field of prayer, he was but little changed from his sane state. His powers of reason, though thus warped, were not taken from him, and he neither raved nor sank into mental lethargy."Ainsworth p. 88]

Ainsworth and Noyes aren't completely skeptical about Smart's diagnosis when they continued: "But when the desire to pray struck him, Smart abandoned what the world chose to call rationality."

Russel Brain, an early 20th century psychiatrist, diagnosed Smart as suffering from cyclothymia or manic depression.Brain 113-122] Brain based his diagnosis on Smart's own claims about how he felt, and he concluded that "in Smart's case the mental illness was not the result of his drunkenness, but he drank because he was mentally unstable." This has since been contested by later critics as ignoring the context of Smart's situation.

Clement Hawes, following Michel Foucault's interpretation of the 18th century that there was an "'animality' of madness", believed that Smart connected to animals because of the "medical stigmatization" he felt at the hands of his fellow man. [Hawes p. 161] Chris Mounsey, agreeing with this interpretation, believes that Smart's treatment was "a bestializing process and had taught him to hold his tongue and sit out his time as quietly as possible."

Notes

References

* Ainsworth, Edward G. and Noyes, Charles. "Christopher Smart: A Biographical and Critical Study". Columbia: University of Missouri, 1943. 164 pp.
* Anderson, Frances E. "Christopher Smart". New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1974. 139 pp.
* Battie, William. "Treatise on Madness". London, 1758.
*
* Brain, Russell, "Some Reflections on Genius and Other Essays". London: Pitman, 1960.
* Browning, Robert. "Parleyings with Certain People". London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1887. 268 pp.
* Curry, Neil. "Christopher Smart". Devon: Northcote House Publishers, 2005. 128 pp.
* Foucault, Michel. "Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason" trans. Richard Howard, London: Routledge, 1989.
* Guest, Harriet. "A Form of Sound Words: The Religious Poetry of Christopher Smart". Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. 312 pp.
* Hawes, Clement. "Mania and Literary Style: The Rhetoric of Enthusiasm from the Ranters to Christopher Smart". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. xii, 241 pp.
* Hunter, Christopher. "The Poems of the late Christopher Smart". Reading, 1791.
* Jacobs, Alan. "Diagnosing Christopher's Case: Smart's Readers and the Authority of Pentecost." "Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature" 50, 3-4 (Spring-Summer 1998): 183-204.
* Keymer, Thomas. "William Toldervy and the Origins of Smart's A Translation of the Psalms of David." "Review of English Studies: The Leading Journal of English Literature and the English Language" 54, 213 (Feb. 2003): 52-66.
* Mounsey, Chris. "Christopher Smart: Clown of God". Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2001. 342 pp.
* Piozzi, Hester. "Piozziana," "Gentleman's Magazine" CLXXXVI (July 1849).
* Sherbo, Arthur. "Christopher Smart: Scholar of the University." Michigan State University Press, 1967. 303 pp.
* Smart, Christopher. "The Poetical Works of Christopher Smart, I: Jubilate Agno". Ed. Karina Williamson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1980. 143 pp.
* Smart, Christopher. "The Poetical Works of Christopher Smart, II: Religious Poetry 1763-1771". Ed. Marcus Walsh and Karina Williamson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1983. 472 pp.
* Smith, Ken and Sweeny, Matthew (editors). "Beyond Bedland: Poems Written Out of Mental Distress". London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1997. 160 pp.
* Szasz, Thomas. "The Manufacture of Madness". London: Paladin, 1972.
* Toynebee, P. and Whibley, L. (editors) "Correspondence of Thomas Gray", Ed. P. Toynbee and L. Whibley Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935.

External links

* [http://www.mdx.ac.uk/WWW/STUDY/4_13_TA.htm#StLukes History] of St Lukes
* [http://oldlondonmaps.com/viewspages/0023.html Print] of the exterior, 1831
* [http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?
] of the interior, 1809
* [http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=8073 Song to David]
* [http://www.pseudopodium.org/repress/jubilate/ Jubilate Agno] HTML edition by Ray Davis.