Extract from The Biographical Dictionary(1921)

Rawlings, Martin (1835–1876), one of the most interesting minor poets of the nineteenth century, was born on the 3rd April 1835, in St William Square, Belgravia. His father, the Rev. Stephen Rawlings, was Minister of a Presbyterian congregation, and Martin completed his education at a Unitarian College. His father hoped that Martin would enter the Dissenting ministry, but it soon became evident that the boy had no inclination to the Church, and the family’s financial circumstances made it impossible for his father to indulge Martin’s wish to study at a University. For some three years after leaving the Unitarian College he lived an idle and quarrelsome life at home, and although it does not seem that he indulged in any very serious dissipation, even such small debts as he incurred were of serious importance to one in his father’s straitened position. Martin decided early in life that he wished to be a poet, and he wrote a great deal of verse between his eighteenth and twenty-first years. None of it has been preserved, and he acknowledged in later life that it was perhaps not worth preserving; but there is evidence that at the time he was indignant at the failure of his family and friends to appreciate his work. At the age of twenty-one, after a family quarrel more bitter than usual, he left England to live in Italy.

We have only brief glimpses of his life in Italy during the next fifteen years, as it was seen through the literary circles of Rome and Florence, who did not share his own conviction of his genius. He married Maria Tambinetta, a beautiful Italian girl, and maintained her and his young son very precariously by occasional journalism, combined with many odd occupations, such as (for a short time) that of gravedigger’s mate in a cemetery. In 1868 the publication in England of Passion and Repentance, a series of sonnets on the themes of sacred and profane love, made him famous overnight. This fame was partly the result of a genuine critical appreciation of the force and splendour of Rawlings’ poetry: but the effect of this genuine admiration was enhanced by the storm of moral indignation which greeted the book. It was denounced, in a typical phrase, as “a most indecent contribution to the school of fleshly poetry, which revels in revealing the ignobler impulses of mankind”. Many famous men of letters took part in the furious controversy that followed, in which the purely poetic merits of Passion and Repentance remained largely unconsidered.

Although there can be no doubt that the book owed some of its success to this notoriety, Rawlings was delighted by the praise, and also by the improvement in his financial position brought about by the book’s sales. A second son had been born to him, and his early wildness gave way to a comparatively humdrum and peaceful existence. Before the publication of Passion and Repentance he had been converted to the Roman Catholic faith, and his two later books, Meditations (1869) and Poems Lyrical and Devout (1871) were largely inspired by his conversion. These books were greeted tepidly by the critics, but had a large sale.

Rawlings had for some time considered returning to England; and now a fortunate circumstance made his return necessary, and at the same time placed him in a position where monetary worries troubled him no more. A cousin, John Rawlings, who had left England at the same time as himself to become a gold prospector in Australia, had been fortunate in his adventure. John Rawlings died on his voyage home from the Antipodes and the poet found himself the sole beneficiary of his considerable fortune in Australian gold and English real estate.

In 1871 Martin Rawlings returned to England, and took up residence at a house in the village of Millingham. He showed himself a surprisingly capable man of business, and appeared to enjoy the problems involved in the management of the estate and in the conversion of the remainder of his cousin’s fortune into freehold property. He lived a simple and ascetic life, was strict and even severe in personal habits, and wrote no more poetry. His wife, who had been a faithful companion in times of hardship, died in 1873, and Martin was much affected by her loss. He died quite suddenly three years later, from a heart attack, at the early age of forty-one.

There is something enigmatic in both Rawlings’ life and his work. Throughout his life he had few friends; none of them knew him intimately, and we possess very scanty information about the important part of his life lived in Italy. It is difficult, also, to estimate the final worth of his poetry. At the time of their publication the sonnet series, Passion and Repentance, astonished many critics by force and strangeness of epithet; today some of the strangeness seems merely obscure, and the extravagance of epithet is not pleasing to a modern taste. There is, nevertheless, an undeniable vigour in these sonnets, and it is on these pagan pieces that his reputation is likely to be maintained. His two later books are certainly inferior to the first, although they contain one or two delightful lyrics, which have deservedly found a place in anthologies.

A brief account of Rawlings’ early life and family quarrels, together with a sketch of his life in Italy, can be found in “A Turbulent Boy”, one of the essays in Michael Blackburn’s Sesame Without Lilies.