"Upon Appleton House" is a poem written by
Andrew Marvell for
Thomas Fairfax
Sir Thomas Fairfax (17 January 1612 – 12 November 1671) was an English army officer and politician who commanded the New Model Army from 1645 to 1650 during the English Civil War. Because of his dark hair, he was known as "Black Tom" to his l ...
, 3rd Lord Fairfax of Cameron. It was written in 1651, when Marvell was working as a tutor for Fairfax's daughter, Mary. An example of a
country house poem, "Upon Appleton House" describes Fairfax's
Nunappleton estate while also reflecting upon the political and religious concerns of the time.
Background
Nun Appleton Priory was a
Cistercian
The Cistercians (), officially the Order of Cistercians (, abbreviated as OCist or SOCist), are a Catholic religious order of monks and nuns that branched off from the Benedictines and follow the Rule of Saint Benedict, as well as the contri ...
religious house, until the
dissolution of the monasteries. At that point, or shortly afterwards, it was acquired by the Fairfax family.
One of the themes of the poem is a Protestant-slanted account of the circumstances under which Isabel Thwaites left the nunnery. She married William Fairfax of Steeton, in 1518, two decades before the Dissolution. Their son
Sir Thomas Fairfax of Denton was a member of parliament; and his son was
Thomas Fairfax, 1st Lord Fairfax of Cameron. The story of Isabel, released from wardship in the priory by legal order and William Fairfax's intervention, has not been verified independently of Marvell's account.
Thomas Fairfax, the dedicatee of the poem and son of the 2nd Lord Fairfax, went to live as a newly married man with his father at Denton. The domestic arrangements were soon changed, however, and Thomas Fairfax the younger soon moved to Nunappleton (now Nun Appleton), the estate on which
Appleton House was built.
Nun Appleton is just north of
Ryther, a village south-south-west of
York
York is a cathedral city in North Yorkshire, England, with Roman Britain, Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Foss, Foss. It has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a Yor ...
. Local geography enters the poem in the mention of
Cawood Castle, within walking distance of Ryther to the east. Both the ruined nunnery and the castle (associated with the Archbishops of York, and in particular with
John Williams
John Towner Williams (born February 8, 1932)Nylund, Rob (November 15, 2022)Classic Connection review, ''WBOI'' ("For the second time this year, the Fort Wayne Philharmonic honored American composer, conductor, and arranger John Williams, who w ...
) are contrasted in the poem with Appleton House.
Structure
The poem is written in 97
stanza
In poetry, a stanza (; from Italian ''stanza'', ; ) is a group of lines within a poem, usually set off from others by a blank line or indentation. Stanzas can have regular rhyme and metrical schemes, but they are not required to have either. ...
s, each of eight lines that are
octosyllabic The octosyllable or octosyllabic verse is a line of verse with eight syllables. It is equivalent to tetrameter verse in trochees in languages with a stress accent. Its first occurrence is in a 10th-century Old French saint's legend, the '' Vie d ...
, in
iambic tetrameter
Iambic tetrameter is a meter (poetry), poetic meter in Ancient Greek poetry, ancient Greek and Latin poetry; as the name of ''a rhythm'', iambic tetrameter consists of four metra, each metron being of the form , x – u – , , consisting of a spo ...
s forming
couplet
In poetry, a couplet ( ) or distich ( ) is a pair of successive lines that rhyme and have the same metre. A couplet may be formal (closed) or run-on (open). In a formal (closed) couplet, each of the two lines is end-stopped, implying that there ...
s. It has been analysed into six sections:
# Stanzas 1–10: architecture of the house.
# Stanzas 11–35: the story of Isabel Thwaites.
# Stanzas 36–46: the gardens and plants.
# Stanzas 47–60: the meadows.
# Stanzas 61–81: the wood.
# Stanzas 82–97: the river (closing with return to the house).
Dating
"Upon Appleton House" was published posthumously in 1681.
[Nicholas Murray, ''Andrew Marvell: World enough and time'' (2000), pp. 54–5.] It is dated by internal evidence to the early 1650s, but the dates are tentative. Worden says it was probably written in the second half of 1651, or in 1652. Its production was certainly connected to Marvell's period as tutor to Mary Fairfax; this is taken to start after the middle of 1650.
Since Marvell was back in London in late 1652, his period of tutor at Appleton House had ended by then.
Interpretation and influences
Marvell was replying to the royalist epic poem ''
Gondibert'' (1651) by
William Davenant
Sir William Davenant (baptised 3 March 1606 – 7 April 1668), also spelled D'Avenant, was an English poet and playwright. Along with Thomas Killigrew, Davenant was one of the rare figures in English Renaissance theatre whose career spanned bo ...
. The poem was influenced by works of
Mildmay Fane, 2nd Earl of Westmorland
Mildmay Fane, 2nd Earl of Westmorland (24 January 1602 – 12 February 1666), styled Lord le Despenser between 1624 and 1628, was an English nobleman, politician and writer.
Life
One of seven sons of Francis Fane by his wife Mary Mildmay, ...
and
Constantijn Huyghens; it also draws on
Antoine Girard de Saint-Amant, a poet whom Fairfax had translated.
There are numerous interpretations, including those of Abraham who sees the poem as a
memory map (to regain Paradise), and Stocker, who sees it as an "epic in miniature" and reads closely the later sections for apocalyptic language relating to
England as elect nation.
[Margarita Stocker, ''Apocalyptic Marvell: the Second Coming in seventeenth-century poetry'', Ohio University Press (1986), pp. 46–66.]
References
External links
Full text
{{Authority control
1651 poems
1681 poems
Poetry by Andrew Marvell
Poems published posthumously
Yorkshire in fiction