6 - ‘The future-hastening storm’: Chartist poetry in 1848

Summary

Ye whom the future-hastening storm drove far with victory heated, June-heroes of the Paris fight – ye conquerors though defeated!

Ferdinand Freiligrath, ‘The Dead to the Living’

Within Victorian Studies ‘1848’ remains a signifier of mythic proportions. The year of European revolutions, the ‘springtime of the peoples’, also witnessed a remarkable efflorescence of British fiction with Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Vanity Fair, Dombey and Son and Mary Barton, to name the most significant novels associated with this historical moment. In addition, 1848, or even more precisely the Kennington Common meeting of 10th April 1848, has often been offered as the quintessence of Chartism – the messy complexities of history distilled to the simplicities of a morality play in which sincere but misguided enthusiasts foolishly threaten violence, are subdued by the integrity of the middle classes, realise the error of their ways and commit themselves to the peaceful pursuit of piecemeal reforms thereafter. This is a remarkable historiographical achievement because in Chartist terms, 1848 was an atypical year – the only year when its history was dominated by the international context, especially events in Ireland and France.

Yet the task of understanding Chartist poetry in 1848 depends on evading the pressure exerted by the subsequent construction of the centrality of 10th April. In particular, it is important to recover a sense of the unease and uncertainty, the excitement and possibility which informed the prevalent ‘structure of feeling’ throughout that year.