Mary Chandler

Mary Chandler was born at Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England in 1678. Her family moved to Bath where her father Henry Chandler was a minister. Chandler was ‘to be brought up in business, and very early employed in it’[1] as noted by her brother Samuel in his biography of her, published in The Lives and Poets of Great Britain and Ireland: to the time of Dean Swift Vol V (1753).[2] Samuel describes ‘her firm belief that her station was the appointment of providence, and her earnest desire of being useful to her relations…brought her to the fatigues of her business, to which, during thirty five years, she applied herself with the upmost diligence and care.’[3]

 

Chandler had a fondness of poetry from an early age where she was observed ‘entertaining her companions, on a winters evening, with riddles and verse’.[4]

​

Of Chandler's education it is noted she ‘often regretted the loss of’ it and ‘endeavoured to repair, by diligently reading, and carefully studying the best modern writers, and as many as she could of the ancient ones, especially the poets, as far as the best translations could assist her.’[5] Chandler demonstrates her knowledge of books by referencing several of them within the poem.

​

Autodidacts 

Women without formal education such as Chandler could educate themselves more easily with the increase in the printing of books, pamphlets and periodicals of the time. Julie D. Prandi suggests ‘instead of relying on schooling or circles of friendly intellectuals for their access to literature, the self-taught depended on lending libraries, booksellers or acquaintances with libraries.’[6]

 

In Chandler's biography it is made clear that she feels, to be an accepted member, she needs to be learned. Prandi continues, ‘It should come as no surprise that the self-taught poets were of a lower social status …self-taught poets often worked in the agricultural or service sector.’[7] Though Chandler was neither maid nor farm labourer, she was still having to rely on herself, working to make a living as did such agricultural and service workers.

 

Claudia Kairott explains that ‘For Eighteenth Century women, reading and writing were complimentary activities. Their writing revealed their reading and their reading inspired their writing.'[8] Considering autodidactic poets would learn their form and style from their readings, we can trace the origin of eighteenth century poems back to the classics in epics such as Homer’s The Odyssey, bucolic writings of Theocritus, and mainstream contemporaries of the time such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift.

 

Melting Pot Poetry 

The poem itself is an amalgamation of different forms of poetry, showcasing Chandler's self-taught craft of poetry. The poem is written in heroic couplets, popular with Alexander Pope, whom she admired and mentions several times in the poem. The couplets are used in epic narrative poems which compliments Chandler here, as she takes the reader on a journey through the historical, mythological, social, and political topography of Bath.

 

David Shuttleton highlights that ‘Linda Veronika Troost has recently observed that Chandler’s Bath poem “follows a well-established tradition of topographical poetry” which effectively combines various classically derived forms: the journey poem, the town poem, the country house poem, the satiric spa poem, and the meditative local poem.’[9] The topographical poem describes a natural scene and reflects on historical, political and social subjects.[10] The following verse demonstrates this;

​

'Blest source of health seated on rising ground,

With friendly hills by nature guarded round;

From Eastern blasts, and sultry south secure;

The Air’s balsamic, and the soil is pure.'[11]

​

The natural surroundings in the poem are linked with the health benefits of the spa town itself with the emphasis on Bath being the best place to retreat to.

 

Shuttleton suggests, ‘like much spa poetry, Chandler’s poem borrows traditional tropes from classical eclogues and pastorals to figure Bath as, borrowing Benedict’s terms, a “sympathetic society” divested of labour and based upon “natural” social exchange rooted in pleasurable, if regulated, desire.’[12]

 

When considering the pastoral, Terry Gifford suggests ‘from the beginning of its long history the pastoral was written for an urban audience and therefore exploited tension between the town by the sea and the mountain country of the shepherd…between people and nature, between retreat and return.’[13] Chandler has created a tension between urban and rural spheres, becoming more integrated for genteel society to retreat to, despite the consumerist way in which the natural resources of the land were marketed.

 

The country house poem features in Description due to the complimentary verse on buildings and the people that own or funded them. William A. McClung states the country house poem ‘includes poems that memorialize particular estates, rather than pieces of landscape.’[14] Bath itself can be regarded as the country house collectively with its developers, patrons and innovators. McClung outlines the tropes found in the country house poem defined by G. R. Hibbard. The poet will praise ‘buildings and grounds, gardens, fields and meadows, the master's virtue, his charity to his dependants and friends.’[15]

 

The country house genre within Description is suggested by Sharon Young to be a ‘means of promoting her own millinery business by skilfully using the panegyric mode of the country house genre to emphasise the social aspect of her own business premises in a manner reminiscent of a country house.’[16] By complimenting prominent people such as Richard ‘Beau’ Nash (1674-1761) and Ralph Allen (1693-1764), Chandler was able to circulate her name and reputation among the wealthy, attracting business and patronage to her writing.

​

The Rise of the Spa Town

The taking of waters was prohibited at the Reformation. Phyllis Hembry highlights, ‘To Henrican and later reformers, well worship was a special problem; a Romish and superstitious practice.’[17] The meetings at wells were seen to be a cover for meetings of ‘dissidents who rejected the new Erastian and Protestant regime’.[18] But as Elizabeth I took the throne it came to light that, though the wells had been associated with a Catholic past, affluent families were more tempted to go overseas to take waters there.

In the 1500’s Dr William Turner published papers with a more secular approach to taking waters in hope to reinvigorate popularity in the spas. Turner cited ‘twenty-five learned Germans and Italians who recommended the use of such baths’[19] as an endorsement that England had waters just as good and beneficial to those on the continent. As the spa town became more popular, it was noted that investment was needed to provide good facilities for visiting patrons.

Bath was undergoing rapid development in the 1700s. J.A Sharpe mentions ‘in the first half of the century it became very fashionable to go to spas to ‘take the waters’ and Bath expanded its facilities to accommodate for these arrivals.’[20] The first playhouse was built in 1705, a ball room in 1721,  and John Wood began construction of Queen’s Square, which was completed in 1735. With this in mind, and with Description first published in 1733, Chandler needed to gain business from new visitors to Bath as well as attracting investment for the wider development of the city.

When we consider Chandler as a businesswoman as well as a poet, A Description of Bath is a fusion of passion and enterprise. Chandler’s documented love of reading and poetry, combined with her notion that ‘as her person would not recommend her, she must endeavour to cultivate her mind to make her agreeable,’[21] married her own poetry’s impact of elevating her appreciation in society with her need for business of which ‘her firm belief that her station was the appointment of providence, and her earnest desire of being useful to her relations’[22] shows her need for financial stability to be at the forefront of her actions. This poem demonstrates the artful, self-taught and economical mind of an independent tradeswoman of the eighteenth century.  

​

End Notes

[1] Theophilus Cibber, The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland: to the time of Dean Swift, 1703-1758 Vol V (London, R Griffiths, 1753) p.345

[2] This is confirmed in The Dictionary of National Biography Vol X: ‘he wrote the life of his sister Mary Chandler in Cibber’s Lives of the poets’. Sir Leslie Stephen, The Dictionary of National Biography Vol X, (London, Smith, Elder & co, 1885) p.42

[3] Theophilus Cibber, The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland: to the time of Dean Swift, 1703-1758 Vol V (London, R Griffiths, 1753) p.347

[4] Ibid pp.352-353

[5] Ibid pp.345

[6] Julie D. Prandi, The Poetry of the self-taught: An Eighteenth Century Phenomenon (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2008) p.4

[7] Ibid pp.16

[8] Claudia Thomas Kairoff, 'Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Readers', in The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry, ed. by John Sitter,  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 157–76. (p.158)

[9] David Shuttleton, Mary Chandler's Description of Bath (1733): The Poetic Topographies of an Augustan Tradeswoman, Women's Writing, 7:3 (2000) 447-467 (p.6)

[10] M.H Abrams, Geoffrey Galt Harpham, A Glossary of Literary Terms, (Boston, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009) p.369 

[11] Mary Chandler, A Description of Bath, A Poem Humbly Inscribed to Her Royal Highness the Princess Amelia with Several other Poems (Bath, Henry Leake,1767) p.5

[12] David Shuttleton, Mary Chandler's description of bath (1733): The Poetic Topographies of an Augustan Tradeswoman, Women's Writing, 7:3 (2000) 447-467 (p.6)

[13] Terry Gifford, Pastoral, (Abingdon, Routeledge, 1999) p.15

[14] William A. McClung, The Country House in English Renaissance Poetry, (California, University of California Press, 1977) pp.18-46 (p.18)

[15] Ibid pp.18

[16] Sharon Young, (2015) The Country House in English Women's Poetry 1650-1750: Genre, Power and Identity. PhD thesis, University of Worcester. pp.250-259

[17] Phyllis Hembry, The English Spa 1560-1815, (London, The Athlone Press, 1990) pp. 4-20 (p.4)

[18] Ibid pp.4

[19] Ibid pp.7

[20] J. A. Sharpe, Early Modern England: A Social History 1550-1760 (London, Edward Arnold, 1987) p.82

[21] Theophilus Cibber, The lives of the poets of Great Britain and Ireland: to the time of Dean Swift, 1703-1758 Vol V (London, R Griffiths, 1753) p.347

[22] Ibid p.347