Morwenna Statio (Robert Hawker)
About the Author: Robert Stephen Hawker (1803-1875)
Early Life
Robert Stephen Hawker, Anglican parson and Cornish poet, was born on December 3rd, 1803 at Norley Street in Plymouth. His father, Jacob Stephen Hawker, gave up his profession as a doctor a few years after Robert’s birth, leaving home to take his Holy Orders before taking up a curacy in Altarnun, on the Bodmin Moors (Breton). Robert was left in the care of his grandfather, Dr. Robert Hawker, who was the vicar of the local Charles Church. A strict Calvinist, Dr. Hawker was a popular preacher well-known for his skill in explaining the Biblical texts; “indeed George III used to hand him a text just before he entered the pulpit and he would expound it fluently” (Drummond 138).
Hawker did not take well to living with his puritanical grandfather, and “this lively lad reacted violently against ultra-evangelical doctrine and discipline” (Drummond 138). Initially educated at Liskeard Grammar School, Hawker briefly became an attorney’s apprentice until he realized that he did not like studying Law and returned to his studies at Cheltenham Grammar School (Drummond 138). In 1823, Hawker enrolled at Pembroke College in Oxford, graduating five years later. During that time, he won the Newdigate Prize for his poem, ‘Pompeii’ (Drummond 140).
As a young man, Hawker got into quite a bit of mischief and he became somewhat notorious for his pranks, often targeting members of his grandfather’s congregation. During the holidays, he would have random packages delivered to three prim elderly ladies who lived nearby; they finally moved to a different town when Hawker had a coffin shipped to their house (Drummond 138-139). On another occasion, while in the town of Bude, Hawker dressed himself up in seaweed and sat on a rock, where he sang under the moonlight to the surprise and consternation of passers-by. “He only ‘stopped being a mermaid’ when an exasperated farmer tried to shoot him” (Drummond 139).
While still in Oxford, Hawker married his first wife Charlotte, the daughter of the Colonel Wrey I’ans, who lived in Bude and was a close friend (Breton). Despite being twenty-one years her junior (Hawker was 20 and Charlotte was 41 when they married), he genuinely loved his new bride and they were happily married for forty years (Drummond 139). Since Pembroke College did not allow married undergraduates to live together, the couple moved to Madgalen. Charlotte’s two sisters also joined them, so that Hawker became jokingly known as “the man with three wives” (Drummond 139).
Morwenstow
In 1834, several years after leaving Pembroke, Hawker became parson of Morwenstow, where he served faithfully for 41 years. A staunch friend and advocate for the poor, it was written of him, “He feared man so little, because he feared God so much” (Breton). When he arrived at his new parish, the town had not had a resident vicar for over a century, and the old vicarage was a ruin past all hope of restoration (Breton). For the first five years, the Hawkers lived in a small cottage with only two rooms (Drummond 142), while Robert had a new vicarage built at his own expense. “It proved very costly to build and in consequence Hawker was a poor man for the rest of his days” (Breton). This fact did little to keep Hawker from pursuing future projects, building St. Mark’s School in 1843 and providing most of the funds for its upkeep out of his own pocket (Breton). Morwenstow was also a major site of shipwrecks; more than 80 vessels went down in the area between 1824 and 1874. During his time at the parish, Hawker would work tirelessly to rescue any survivors and minister to their needs (Drummond 148).
Morwenstow parish was home to about a thousand souls, about which Hawker wrote: “My people were a mixed multitude of smugglers, wreckers, and dissenters of various hues” (Drummond 141). Meanwhile, his own colorful habits were taken as proof of “a peculiar mind” (Breton), and biographers would document his many eccentricities in great detail. He hated the color black, and later in life Hawker could often be seen wearing a long purple coat and a blue fisherman’s jersey, to symbolize his calling as a ‘fisher of men’ (Drummond 144). He completed this unusual wardrobe with Hessian boots, a wide-awake hat, and a pastoral staff. “When at a clerical meeting some ‘brother-rascals’ commented on his attire, he replied that he preferred not to resemble a waiter or undertaker” (Drummond 144). Hawker’s approach to Church tradition was equally unique and individualistic; instead of preaching from behind a pulpit, “he would wander up and down the dim chancel, reading now in English, now in Latin; at certain points he would prostrate himself on the floor, with arms outstretched in the form of a cross” (Drummond 145). If Hawker had served in a typical English parish, his unusual habits would likely have driven his congregation away. In Morwenstow, among his fellow Cornish, he was accepted and understood by the community, even if they did not always share his unique perspective on the world. Like the locals, Hawker believed in supernatural phenomena, and easily accomodated their long-held superstitions as ‘Catholic tradition’ (Drummond 143).
In February of 1863, Charlotte Hawker passed away, leaving Robert heartbroken and emotionally distraught. One year later, while he was still mourning the loss of his beloved wife, he penned his magnum opus, ‘The Quest of the Sangraal,’ a poetic retelling of the Arthurian search for the Holy Grail. When Tennyson wrote his own treatment of the legend in 1870, he declared “Hawker has beaten me on my own ground” (Drummond 149). Although he devoted his life to the physical and spiritual wellbeing of Morwenstow, Hawker was a highly talented author and poet in his own right. Unfortunately, while his prose and poetry earned him a fair bit of recognition during his lifetime, he was never successful enough to support himself with his writing.
In December of 1864, Hawker remarried to Pauline Kuczynsky, the daughter of a noble Polish refugee. This time, he was sixty years old, while his new bride was twenty. Now that he was no longer alone, Hawker’s good spirits and health returned, and the couple had three children together, all daughters: Morwenna, Rosalind, and Juliet. In a bit of cosmic irony, Hawker had written to a friend just the year before, remarking, “How happy a fate it is to have no children. I think if I had only one Child it would bring on madness” (Drummond 151-152). While Hawker’s bustling new family did not exactly drive him mad, it did contribute to the growing stress on his nerves caused by poor health, a busy parish life, and numerous shipwrecks off the coast, all of which required his attention (Drummond 152). He finally left Morwenstow in the care of a Mr. Comber, traveling with his family to Plymouth, where he was officially received into the Catholic Church before he passed away in 1875. His tombstone was engraved with a line from ‘The Quest of the Sangraal,’ declaring “I WOULD NOT BE FORGOTTEN IN THIS LAND” (Drummond 153-155).
Hawker was not forgotten by Morwenstow, where he was fondly remembered for his many years of care and dedicated service. Readers interested in the poetic tradition of Cornwall during the Victorian period will find him an equally important figure for the present day. Hawker’s work is strongly marked by his deep affection for Cornwall and its people, expressed in rich imagery and sophisticated verse worthy of notice by such figures as Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson.
A strong patriot, Hawker was influenced by heroic figures from the past, drawing from their stories and legends to guide and inspire his readers. The supernatural is a constant presence in his work, as ubiquitous and powerful as the ocean winds that battered the coastline and tore at Hawker’s barn roofs. In the poem included below, “Morwenna Statio,” Hawker invites the reader to imagine a scene from the distant past, when strong men of faith built the region’s first church, following the example of St. Morwenna, for whom the region of Morwenstow was named. A Welsh saint associated with Cornwall, she was a daughter of King Brychan Brycheiniog who lived at a hermitage at Morwenstow, then called Hennacliff or the Raven’s Crag. According to tradition, she built a church there, carrying the stones for the building on her head (Antiochan). By reviving this old legend, Hawker memorializes the dedication and faith of those believers from centuries past, while at the same time developing a distinct feeling of Cornish identity and regional pride for the readers of his day.
