In the tower Stephen has listened to Mulligan warbling
phrases from two vapidly rhapsodic early poems by "Algy": "great sweet mother" and "Ask nothing more of me, sweet."
In the library he takes his own, less sweet crack at the
famous English poet. Recalling words from a recently published
sonnet—"Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none / But
we had spared..."—he refers with withering irony to "the
concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne." His contempt for the
poem's defense of British atrocities in South Africa reflects
opinions expressed publicly in England, France, and America as
well as Ireland.
Swinburne wrote his
poem in response to the death of a fellow Northumberland native,
Lieutenant Colonel George Elliott Benson. Benson led a "flying
column" of 2,000 British troops that had been
clearing Boer settlements
during the day and effectively attacking Boer commandos at
night. On 30 October 1901 General Botha's forces surrounded the
unit's rear guard of 200 men while it was marching back to base
and annihilated it. Colonel Benson died of his wounds the next
morning. On November 9,
the
Saturday Review
published Swinburne's sonnet "On the Death of Colonel Benson,"
later included in Swinburne's final volume of poetry,
A
Channel Passage and Other Poems (1904):
Northumberland, so proud and sad to-day,
Weep and rejoice, our mother, whom no son
More glorious than this dead and deathless one
Brought ever fame whereon no time shall prey.
Nor heed we more than he what liars dare say
Of mercy's holiest duties left undone
Toward whelps and dams of murderous foes, whom none
Save we had spared or feared to starve and slay.
Alone as Milton and as Wordsworth found
And hailed their England, when from all around
Howled all the recreant hate of envious knaves,
Sublime she stands: while, stifled in the sound,
Each lie that falls from German boors and slaves
Falls but as filth dropt in the wandering waves.
Swinburne's jingoistic hatred for people defending their
homeland is fairly standard fare in times of war, but his
dehumanizing characterization of Dutch (not "German"!) women
and children as "Whelps and dams" sets a high bar of
moral hideousness that he quickly tops by congratulating the
British for confining these mongrels in camps where starvation
and disease could kill them, rather than simply butchering
them as a less advanced people would have done.
Thornton notes that the November 16 issue of the Saturday
Review, the next week, featured letters by Duncan C.
McVarish and Stephen Gwynn deploring Swinburne's justification
of the camps, along with a reply by the poet. Gifford
elaborates: "Swinburne's poem was regarded as a whitewash of
the concentration camps . . . One letterwriter called him
'unthinking' and 'excessive'; the other remarked: 'It is not
necessary to call the women and children 'whelps and dams'."
Swinburne "replied by citing a series of atrocity stories
about the Boers, whom he described as 'virtual slave
drivers'."
