Graham R.: Rosamund Marriott Watson, Woman of Letters (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Graham R.: Rosamund Marriott Watson, Woman of Letters Benjamin F. Fisher (bio) Linda K. Hughes . Graham R.: Rosamund Marriott Watson, Woman of Letters (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005). xxv + 397 pp. $46.95 (cloth). Rosamund Marriott Watson, well known in her day as poet "Graham R. Tomson," has proved to be an elusive figure, though thanks to shifting literary canons and, even more so, Linda Hughes' book, she emerges from the shadows as one whose writings will repay extended considerations. As another figure who actively wrote during the 1890s and beyond, Watson numbers among those from that era whose achievements are only recently getting the recognition they deserve. Watson's use of the "Graham R. Tomson" male pseudonym brackets her with other women writers at the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century who used male pseudonyms to get past publishers—and readers—wary of female authorship. Like "George Egerton" (Mary C. Golding Bright), "Gilbert H. Page" (Ella D'Arcy), "Charles Egbert Craddock" (Mary N. Murfree), or "George Eliot" (Marian Evans), Watson managed indeed to bridge that gap over which many women writers were reluctant to venture. The additional circumstances of her irregular life, as it would have been viewed even during the 1890s (which era did not begin on 1 January 1890 and conclude on 31 December 1899, just as "Victorian" overflowed 1837–1901), may also have created a long reluctance to acknowledge properly her accomplishments. As is the situation with many other authors from this era, e. g., John Davidson, W. W. Jacobs, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons, or even George Meredith, Wilkie Collins, May Sinclair, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon (whose writings admittedly span far more years than Watson's, albeit they all lived longer lives, consequently sustaining longer literary careers), hesitancy about investigations into and publishing about such literary lives has vanished, and Hughes' book therefore takes rank with those that have amplified our information about any of these other subjects. Her references and lists of works consulted for the book demonstrate her command of her subject and that this is not a book hastily tossed off, thus rife with inaccuracies, or poorly written in any way. Watson's life and career provide bases for worthwhile reading, and not solely to students of the 1890s. Hughes moves us deftly through that life, pausing—but without the pauses over writings that often too strongly break the narrative line of a book—to assess Watson's creative writings and work connected with them. Born Rosamund Ball, in 1860, Watson married while young, divorced, married Arthur Tomson in 1884, used his surname in her early volumes of verse, divorced him and married H. B. Marriott Watson (with whom she had commenced an affair and lived before her divorce was granted), whose surname has been the more commonly remembered as hers. Cancer that first showed up at the end of the 1890s eventually caused her death in 1911. [End Page 109] Watson experimented in several forms including verse, prose fiction, and non-fiction. (She also reviewed many books, including the first Book of the Rhymers' Club, to which she gave judicious notice, and wrote the "Wares of Autolycous" columns for the Pall Mall Gazette.) Since much of her work appeared in periodicals, Watson, like Poe, might aptly be categorized as a "magazinist." Poetry stands out as her chief métier, though, and some of her poems from the late 1880s and the 1890s constitute her best creative accomplishments. Heir in verse to Tennyson and Rossetti, Meynell and Morris in particular, Watson produced poetry that surpasses mere derivations from these models. She was among those who effected collapses of or meldings among the arts, as attested in her poems about painting. Like many other Victorian poets, Watson employed supernaturalism effectively in some of her best poems, perhaps most notably in "A Ballad of the Were Wolf," a dialect poem about grim violence, and others in A Summer Night (1891) and the title poem in Vespertilia (1895). The earlier poem originally appeared in Macmillan's Magazine, the latter in The Yellow Book. Tomson's female werewolf is literary kin to another such creature, though one more captivating in her human incarnation...