Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Will Tennent's band of ‘bastards and rebels’: the Tennent family in its contexts
- 2 The ‘natural leaders’, part one: politics and personalities in Belfast, c.1801–1820
- 3 The ‘natural leaders’, part two: Belfast, Europe and the age of reform
- 4 ‘The manhood of the mind’: classicism, romanticism and the politics of culture
- 5 ‘Thank-offerings to the God of providence’: philanthropy, evangelicalism and social change
- Conclusion
- Appendix one: public activities of William Tennent and Robert Tennent
- Appendix two: known membership figures for the Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge, 1795–1832
- Appendix three: philanthropic and evangelical societies in Belfast, c.1801–32
- Appendix four: Numbers assisted by Charitable Society, Lying-InHospital Society and Dispensary and Fever Hospital
- Select Bibliography
- Index
4 - ‘The manhood of the mind’: classicism, romanticism and the politics of culture
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Will Tennent's band of ‘bastards and rebels’: the Tennent family in its contexts
- 2 The ‘natural leaders’, part one: politics and personalities in Belfast, c.1801–1820
- 3 The ‘natural leaders’, part two: Belfast, Europe and the age of reform
- 4 ‘The manhood of the mind’: classicism, romanticism and the politics of culture
- 5 ‘Thank-offerings to the God of providence’: philanthropy, evangelicalism and social change
- Conclusion
- Appendix one: public activities of William Tennent and Robert Tennent
- Appendix two: known membership figures for the Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge, 1795–1832
- Appendix three: philanthropic and evangelical societies in Belfast, c.1801–32
- Appendix four: Numbers assisted by Charitable Society, Lying-InHospital Society and Dispensary and Fever Hospital
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In December 1816 Robert Tennent penned a letter to James Jackson, a young relative who had, some time previously, quit Ulster for America. In an earlier letter, Jackson had identified ‘the deficiency of social enjoyment as the great drawback upon the comfort of an American residence’ and Tennent responded at length. First reflecting in general terms, he mused that ‘[i]t would require a very philosophic as well as a very impartial examination, assisted by much experience, to determine what degree of civilization is most conducive to human happiness’, before proceeding to encourage Jackson to exert the influence of his ‘mind enlightened by culture’ over the ‘ruder population’ among which he had come to reside. ‘Your previous experience has excellently qualified you for an undertaking of this kind’, he advised. ‘The Historic Society of Belfast is a good model to work from, only you may begin upon a smaller scale, and let your subjects be more adapted to the manhood of the mind.’
Readers unfamiliar with the literature on late Georgian Belfast might be forgiven for raising an eyebrow at Tennent's use of the language of enlightenment. ‘Civilization’, ‘human happiness’, ‘mind enlightened by culture’, ‘manhood of the mind’: such phrases do not fit with the popular perceptions of nineteenth-century Belfast which focus on its emergence as a workshop of the British Empire, albeit one that was periodically convulsed by outbreaks of violent sectarian rioting. Some, indeed, have gone so far as to suggest that the very values that facilitated Belfast's industrial expansion were, in themselves, inimical to culture and enlightenment. One thinks of Louis MacNeice's Belfast, ‘veneered with the grime of Glasgow […] A city built on mud; / A culture built on profit’; or of Robert Greacen's city ‘grasped’ by the hand of Protestantism, ‘worthy if not virtuous, hard-working and thrifty’. But it was not always thus. In the early nineteenth century, Belfast acquired a reputation for cultural and scientific endeavour and become known, to some, as the Athens of the North. Admittedly, the earliest references to Belfast as Athens carried political connotations. In February 1793 a prologue recited in a Belfast theatre confidently predicted that ‘old time shall yet, with glad surprize, / View in Belfast a second Athens rise.’
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- Information
- The ‘Natural Leaders’ and their WorldPolitics, Culture and Society in Belfast, c. 1801–1832, pp. 138 - 191Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2012