October 26, 1952

Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794 to 1847) was an writer, for periodical magazines, and also a painter. He had an inheritance and mixed with other literary figures in the heyday of the Romantic period. Hazlitt is said to have thought highly of Wainewright's work.

According to Andrew Motion (October 26, 1952) Wainewright was also -- an animal lover, and his cats are mentioned in the biography Motion wrote of this artist. An animal lover, and probably---- a murderer, in fact, probably a serial killer. Wainewright was sent as a convict to Tasmania, where he regained some respectability, and died.

Andrew Motion, author of Wainewright the Poisoner (2000),  is famous for his own poetry, and for his biographies of other artists, like Philip Larkin. Motion in fact was poet laureate of Britain the first decade of this century. That honor has evolved and poet laureates are no longer expected to write special verse for royal occasions. It is interesting to hear how the responsibilities are felt by that honor holder and we quote Motion's account (from The Guardian, March 20, 2009) of the situation:

There was certainly no job description - just an expectation, derived from precedent, that I'd occasionally write poems about events in the royal calendar. Did this mean that flunkies wearing frock coats would appear on my doorstep from time to time, and present me with my instructions written on a stiff card? Apparently not. The first time I met the Queen she said the same thing as Tony Blair, whom I'd also just met for the first time: "You don't have to do anything."

Both of them were smiling, but one of them made me feel I'd be put in the Tower if I really were to do nothing. As it happened, I didn't need much encouragement to get busy. Whereas most of my predecessors had interpreted the post as an honour, I felt from the start that it was more like a call to arms. In fact, my main reason for accepting in the first place was that I thought it was time for a respectful kind of revision. Specifically, I thought the laureateship needed to be changed from a courtier-like role into something more appropriate to modern times, which would be of benefit to poetry. With this as my aim, I split the post in my mind's eye into two parts: a writing bit and a doing bit. The writing bit, I thought, would contain occasional royal poems, but a larger number of what one might think of as national poems - poems about things in the news, and commissions from people or organisations involved with ordinary life. Hence the poems I wrote .... about homelessness for the Salvation Amy, about ... the Paddington rail disaster, about 9/11 .... and climate change for the song cycle I've finished for Cambridge University with Peter Maxwell Davies...
As I've already said, there has never been any formal request to write these - but there is a burden of precedent, maintained mainly by the newspapers and other media, that neither I nor my predecessors have felt able to avoid. (Hughes published an entire book of royal poems covering his 14 years in office.) You'll just have to take my word for it: every time there's been a royal birth or wedding or death in the past 10 years, a terrible low rumble has begun in newsrooms across the country. A rumble that has soon led to people ringing me up to ask whether I'm "thinking of doing something". The voice at the other end of the line puts the question in such a way as to make me feel that I'll be castigated as an idle sherry-swilling republican if I don't take the top off my pen and start rhyming at once.

I've written eight royal poems in the past 10 years: one about the wedding of Prince Edward, one about the 100th birthday of the Queen Mother, one about her death, one about the death of Princess Margaret, one about the 18th birthday of Prince William, one (set to music) about the golden jubilee, one about the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles as she then was, and one about the Queen's diamond wedding anniversary. I have to admit that no other writing that I've undertaken, of any kind, has been so difficult. The problem is partly to do with the subjects (if "subject" is quite the word for someone who is not a subject). How was I to connect with them, knowing only what newspapers tell me? How was I to steer an appropriate course between familiarity (which would seem presumptuous) and sycophancy (which would seem absurd)? And how was I to weigh and value them, knowing that a large part of the population doesn't want there to be a royal family, or feels indifferent to it? The other part of the problem is to do with reception. In every case, after I'd written these eight poems, I sent them to my agent, who sent them to newspapers, where they landed on news editors' desks. News editors don't think a poem is a story in and of itself, so they then get on the phone to as many people as it takes to find someone who doesn't like the poem - then they have their story: poet laureate writes another no-good poem.
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And for the record I've certainly never looked for thanks from the royal family, and have only been surprised and touched when it has come. (Which it has, from the Queen, Prince Charles and - for the poem I wrote about her 100th birthday - the late Queen Mother.)

Most artists, exist in between the poles of poisoner and panderer in their professions. Certainly Andrew Motion is a brilliant example.