The factory exile: Ellen Johnston's Autobiography, Poems and Songs.

Hart, Monica Smith

Old Scotland shall feel proud ere long, When time your worth unfurl, That she you crowned the Queen of Song Was but a Factory Girl. Ellen Johnston, "An Address to my Brother Bards" (ll. 45-48) (1) Thou lovely verdant Factory! What binds my heart to thee? Why art thou centered in my soul, twined round my memory? Why dost thou hover o'er my dreams my slumbers to beguile? When falsehood of the deepest dye has doomed me an Exile. Ellen Johnston, "The Factory Exile" (ll. 1-4)

As of thirty years ago, the works of nineteenth-century Scottish factory worker and poet Ellen Johnston, known to her readers as "The Factory Girl" and the "Queen of Song," had all but disappeared. Thankfully, though, scholars dedicated to reclaiming the historical and literary legacy of working-class writers have reintroduced Johnston and a handful of her literary peers into Romantic and Victorian studies. Selections of her work now can be found in anthologies, online archives and databases, and collections of autobiographies; in addition, she has been the subject of a Dictionary of Literary Biography entry, an Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry, and one scholarly monograph. (2) In 2007, the US-based Kessinger Publishing, through their Legacy Reprint Series, made available a facsimile reprint of the 1867 first edition of Johnston's only volume Autobiography, Poems and Songs.

Johnston's work has been received primarily in socio-historical terms, delving into the ways in which she enriches our understanding of nineteenth-century working-class life and writing. Studies devoted to Johnston address similar concerns: discourses of gender and class, domesticity, dialect writing, recovery work, periodical publication, working-class literary expression, autobiography. (3) Thus, Johnston's poetry has been revived in valuable ways, to be sure, but in nonetheless limited ways.

As a power-loom weaver turned published poet, Johnston wrote of subjects ranging beyond the obvious ones open to "The Factory Girl." Uniquely possessed of the necessary bona fides to speak to her fellow workers in the pages of the Penny Post, she wrote about the pains and glories of mid-century working-class life: finding and securing work, making a life in the cities, struggling for acknowledgment as a laborer and credibility as a writer. At the same time, she also wrote of things familiar to many: raising children, falling in love, losing a loved one, strength in the face of defeat and despair. But for the Factory Girl, becoming the "Queen of Song" by engaging with the literary world was a risky act, one with the potential to harm her when others sought retribution not for what she wrote, but for her writing at all. Her poetic persona, shaped by being "The Factory Girl" and "The Queen of Song," is equally shaped by her experiences as "The Factory Exile." As a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, the mother of an illegitimate daughter, and a factory-girl turned poet, Johnston found herself exiled, sometimes violently, from numerous communities. She was sent out to factory service at age ten in an attempt to curb what her stepfather in particular viewed as her slipshod, dreamy, bookish ways. Following the birth of her daughter, Mary Achenvole, she found herself abandoned not only by the child's father, but also by her family members. Jealous fellow factory workers physically assaulted her in retribution for what they considered her pretensions to artistic creation and intellectual pursuits. Her lack of formal education and vernacular voice disqualified her from serious consideration within the literary world. Consequently, Johnston's exilic experiences function on numerous levels: professional, personal, and artistic.

But there is another aspect to Johnston's exile, one that this essay seeks to remedy. Like that of so many of her working-class peers, Johnston's poetry still suffers from a marginalized existence in literary criticism and nineteenth-century scholarship. By way of illustration, consider two examples: Florence S. Boos's essay "'Nurs'd up amongst the scenes I have describ'd': Political Resonances in the Poetry of Working-Class Women" and Regenia Gagnier's Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain, 1832-1920. First, in an overview of ten Victorian working-class women poets, Boos covers Johnston's verse in a category entitled "Explicitly Political Works," noting that among other topics, these writers composed poems that "espoused independence movements in Hungary, Poland, Italy, and Spain; and mourned the dead--Britons and others--in the Crimean War" (p. 139). Johnston certainly wrote these kinds of political poems. Curiously, though, Boos mentions only two poems by Johnston, neither remarkably or explicitly political. (4)

In the second example, Gagnier analyzes "subjectivity and value across social class and gender in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain." (5) Her "approach" to texts created by working-class writers, "like [her] interest in them, is literary, or more precisely, rhetorical" (Gagnier, pp. 3-4). As part of a brief discussion of Autobiography, Poems and Songs in a chapter devoted to working-class autobiography, she trivializes Johnston's successful lawsuit against the terms of her dismissal from a Dundee textile mill: "the Factory Girl has learned to imitate the middle class in more than literary hegemony" (Gagnier, p. 53). Of the "indomitable Ellen Johnston" and her poetic productions as a whole, Gagnier has the following to say: Within the narratives of her own class and local cultures, she publishes proud poems on her "illegitimate" daughter "bonny Mary Auchinvole"; composes many--including love poems--on behalf of less literate coworkers; includes in her volume addresses and songs written for her from other workers (to which she often composes personal responses); goes international with "Welcome, Garibaldi" and "The Exile of Poland"; and writes with irresistible affection for the material life of the factory, as in "An Address to Napier's Dockyard" and "Kennedy's Dear Mill." (p. 53)

Condescension creeps into Gagnier's remarks. While Johnston's verses on "material life of the factory" are described as written with "irresistible affection," while her verses about her daughter are "proud," and while her "love poems" are lauded as part of a philanthropic enterprise for her illiterate co-workers, her verses that engage with international politics show her "go[ing] international," operating "within the narratives of her own class and local cultures" (Gagnier, p. 53).

These two works seem to wrestle with a similar question: how seriously can we--should we--consider a working-class writer's political views and assessment of international affairs? Can we consider these poems as politically engaged, or do we concentrate instead on the ways that these verses draw on "complex regional and demotic contexts" and leave the poems that range beyond specifically classed or gendered subjects alone (Boos, p. 137)? These moments speak directly to a gap in studies of working-class poetry, one created as critics have been happy to "recover" working-class texts about work, class, and poverty, but less enthusiastic about those that address politics, except for those instances when those political verses bear out comfortable beliefs about class pressures and anxieties. "The Last Sark," for example, is not only Johnston's most frequently reprinted verse, but also the poem that current scholarship most frequently addresses. It has everything that we have been conditioned to respect and admire about working-class verse: verisimilitude supported by subject matter and, in this instance, the added bonus of dialect. (6) It sticks to ironically comfortable depictions of poverty and distress.

In John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation, Ouisa Kittredge directs a wonderful half-serious, half-jesting line to her rich South African friend Geoffrey, gently mocking the idea of visiting him in his homeland: "Oh, would we visit you and sit in your gorgeous house, planning visits to the townships, demanding to see the poorest of the poor? 'Oh, are you sure they're the worst off? I mean, we've come all this way. I mean, we don't want to see people just mildly victimized by apartheid. We demand shock.'" (7) Like Ouisa, contemporary critics of nineteenth-century poetry all too easily fall into the same stance: we relish seeing the poorest of the poor, for they reinforce our already formed notions of class and station during a time and a place that are not our own. We like it when working-class poets act like workers of the world, not citizens of the world.

But Johnston clearly saw herself as worker and citizen both, and the topics she addressed ranged beyond the expected plight-of-the-workers discourse. At no time are her opinions more passionately expressed than in those moments that address exilic experience. This essay, then, will examine first the ways in which Johnston's autobiography crafts a narrative exilic persona that works in tandem with her poetic persona. Next, an examination of "The Last Sark," "The Working Man," and "O! Scotland, my Country" demonstrates how deeply invested Johnston was in claiming and promoting her place in her working-class, national, and literary communities, even as she found that position constantly threatened by her exilic experiences. Last, by turning to "Welcome Garibaldi," "Mourning for Garibaldi," and "The Exile of Poland," we see the ways in which Johnston addresses the exilic experiences of others. Like Charlotte Smith in The Emigrants some seventy years earlier, when Johnston speaks to exiles, she speaks as an exile, one sympathetic to their sorrows since she too has known a kind of "Involuntary exile." (8)

Becoming "The Factory Exile"

In 1861, after her mother's death, Johnston mourned being "left without a friend, and disappointed of a future promised home and pleasure." (9) Preferring not to stay in Glasgow, Ellen left for Dundee, where her aunt lived. She found work in the Verdant Factory (quite a name for a textile mill), and she was successful, both in industry and in publishing. Her poetry was well-received in the local press, and her fabric was praised by factory bosses as exemplary, a model for other workers to follow. But then she was fired, an experience that led her to refashion herself as the "Factory Exile."

Johnston tells the story of her December 1863 dismissal in her poem "The Factory Exile." Summarily dismissed without justification or severance pay, Johnston chose to exercise her rights in the courts rather than slink meekly away. "Smarting under this treatment," she successfully sued the foreman for dismissal without notice and cause, receiving a week's wages as recompense ("Autobiography," p. 14). Her victory was a double-edged sword, though, causing her peers to turn on her with a vengeance:

But if I was envied by my sister sex in the Verdant Works for my talent before this affair happened, they hated me with a perfect hatred after I had struggled for and gained my rights. In fact, on account of that simple and just law-suit, I was persecuted beyond description--lies of the most vile and disgusting character were told upon me, till even my poor ignorant deluded sister sex went so far as to assault me on the streets, spit in my face, and even several times dragged the skirts from my dress. Anonymous letters were also sent to all the foremen and tenters not to employ me, so that for the period of four months I wandered through Dundee a famished and persecuted factory exile. (Johnston, "Autobiography," p. 14)

But it wasn't just Johnston's successful use of the courts in her own defense that sentenced her to factory exile. Instead, she specifically blames for her troubles the thing she also credits with her salvation: her poetry. In her autobiography, she writes that it was the "favour and fame of the poetic gift bestowed on me by nature's God" that made her "the envy of the ignorant, for the enlightened classes of both sexes of factory workers love and admire [her] for [her] humble poetic effusions, so far as they have been placed before the public." (Johnston, "Autobiography," pp. 14-15). In her verse, she claims that "falsehood of the deepest dye" precipitated her firing, and that falsehood has now "doomed [her] an Exile" (p. 4). (10)

"Exile," however, is a loaded word in any context, but particularly this one. After all, Johnston was fired from her job, not forbidden to return to her native land; she was never banished from her country, just a factory. But for this nineteenth-century British laborer such estrangement would indeed have felt as wrenching and as threatening as any exile could have been. Johnston's volume makes plain that the factory constitutes not just her place of work, hut virtually her entire community; she was known, after all, as "The Factory Girl." If she could not earn her living in a textile mill, what alternatives would be left to her? How would she support herself and her child?

She would not do it through her writing, certainly. As "The Factory Girl" turned poet, Johnston faced numerous obstacles, almost insurmountable ones, it would seem. Much has been written of the barriers women writers of the nineteenth century faced in attempting to join the literary world: freedom from the incessantly interruptible state thought necessary for womanhood, years spent childbearing and a lifetime spent childrearing, a lack of rooms of their own. All of these were shared by the working-class woman writer, and to this list, we should add a few: the demands of labor outside the domestic sphere as well as within, (11) aesthetic ideologies with no room for the concerns or productions of the workerpoet, (12) and middle-class control of publishing. (13) Publishing had never, and given the track record of her working-class poet predecessors, probably never would pay the bills. (14) Johnston needed her day job.

Johnston returns to this exilic self-construction repeatedly in her verse. She laments Dear Erin, Scotland was my home, The land where I was born; Though now an exile, here I roam, And wander all forlorn. ("The Lay of a Scottish Girl," ll. 9-12) (15)

She mourns that while It once was a garden both lovely and green, And 'Genius' placed there a song-weaving queen, But the false-hearted gardener, from motives unseen, Doomed her an outcast in the morning. Like a storm-bettered barque tossed on the sea, A poor 'Factory Exile' she wandered Dundee; Head-Tenters combined, at each committee-- For to keep her at bay in the morning. ("The Morning: A Recitation," ll. 13-20) (16)

She admits her joy at having found a new home after her exile from her factory: O I was sorry then, Jaime, a wand'ring poor exile, Begging my brothers of the earth to give me leave to toil; Pale poverty stood at my door, my hope on earth was fled, Until I found a resting-place within the Chapelshade. ("Lines to Mr. James Dorward, Power-Loom Foreman, Chapelshade Works, Dundee," ll. 5-8) (17)

Johnston clearly viewed these experiences as exilic, and she makes the pain of her ostracism and loneliness palpable for the reader.

The factory provided much more than just income for Johnston, however; it also provided her with both her social community and her literary one. She describes her travels around Great Britain in terms of where she worked, and the leisure outings she mentions were all taken with coworkers at the expense of employers. (18) But more even than these, Johnston's fellow workers provided her with a valued response to her verses, judging by the number of items included in her volume. (19)

So when she was fired from "Verdant Works" in Dundee, Johnston was threatened with losing much more than an already desperately needed income: she faced losing connection to the people who made up her most loyal and most vocal poetic audience. If she could not write to them as "The Factory Girl," then who was she? Losing her position as power-loom weaver threatened her position as poet in a very real and very frightening way; without her factory job, Johnston would be vulnerable to exile from her most vital communities, factory and literary. Autobiography, Poems and Songs presents us with an exilic figure no less exilic for its uniqueness. (20)

By the time of the publication of her subscription volume, Johnston had found other factory work in an atmosphere seemingly more congenial to her literary aspirations than her former environment. It is during this period between 1864 and 1867 that Johnston begins contributing to "Poet's Corner" in the Penny Post; through this publication, Johnston garners the most praise and the most attention she had ever received for her verse. (21) In this paper, her poems "seemed to cast a mystic spell over many of its readers whose numerous letters reached [her] from various districts, highly applauding [her] contributions, and offering [her] their sympathy, friendship, and love." Indeed, her effect on her readers was so intense that a number of them, "inspired by the muses," responded to Johnston "through the same popular medium" (Johnston, "Autobiography," p. 15). The "Factory Girl" poet carried on print correspondences with readers, all in verse.

She dedicates Autobiography, Poems and Songs to her fellow workers, "worker" being explicitly defined in this instance as those who work for social improvement, those with a social conscience: "Dedicated to all men and women of every class, sect, and party, who by their skill, labour, science, art, literature, and poetry, promote the moral and social elevation of humanity, by their obedient servant, Ellen Johnston, The Factory Girl" (p. iii). Throughout her volume, both in her autobiography and in her poetry, Johnston makes plain what she sees as her duty: to care for those in economic distress, despite the lack of warm, familial bonds between them; to fight for fair labor practices, even if that means endangering reputation, social standing, and future employment; and to establish a standard of responsible, conscientious, unselfish behavior. Ellen Johnston does all of this not only from the position of the Factory Girl or the Queen of Song, but also the Factory Exile: a woman who exists on the borderland between worlds, the laborer and the poet.

Borderland between Worlds: Laborer and Poet O call me sister, and I will Give deep, unselfish love away; O call me sister, for, like thee, I weary toil from day to day, And feel sharp worldly thorns each hour, Yet gather, too, sometimes a flower. ("Lines to the Factory Girl, by a Glasgow Lassie," 11. 19-24)

The first edition of Autobiography, Poems and Songs contains a section entitled "Poetic Addresses & Responses," which includes verses written to Johnston from her working-class readers, along with her responses to them, all of which had appeared in the Penny Post. Some have labeled Johnston's inclusion of this verse as self-aggrandizing, (22) but in the context of her exilic self-construction, their inclusion makes perfect sense. She prided herself on being a kind of spokeswoman; the voice of the worker, the voice of the love-lorn, the voice of the disenfranchised, the voice of the exiled. So it seems quite natural that she would proudly include the results of her poetic speech, the tangible proof that she was not shouting into a void, but instead that she was speaking to particular people who heard her, who identified, and who approved.

Johnston also needed to prove to her volume's readers that both women and men paid attention to her, and she needed to substantiate her claims that her verse had been popular enough to warrant a full volume. She knows that her claims alone most likely will not be believed, a recognition she captures in "An Address to Nature on Its Cruelty." "O Nature, thou to me was cruel," the poem begins; the poet-speaker is so "small" that she "cannot shine / Amisdst the great that read [her] rhyme" (ll. 1, 3-4). When the "men of genius pass [her] by," she is "so small they can't descry / One little mark or single trace / Of Burns' science in [her] face" (ll. 5. 6-8). But these "great men" did not ignore her for long, for the temptation to mock her was too great; Those publications that I sold, Some typed in blue and some on gold, Learned critics who have seen them Says origin dwells within them; But when myself perchance they see, They laugh and say, 'O is it she? Well, I think the little boaster Is nothing but a fair impostor; She looks so poor-like and so small, She's next to a nought-at-all; Such wit and words quite out-furl The learning of "A Factory Girl.'" (ll. 9-20)

In other words, she may be able to fool some people with her verses, but her body and appearance betray her. But critics will never be fooled, and charges of plagiarism will be leveled at her: And critics read my simple rhyme And dared to say it was not mine? Imperfect though my lays may he, Still they belong to none hut me. (ll. 53-56)

Unfortunately, such criticisms of the working-class poet's productions were far from rare. Ann Candler, Charlotte Caroline Richardson, Ann Yearsley, Elizabeth Hands, Janet Little, Mary Masters, Mary Collier, Mary Leapor, Susannah Harrison were all laboring- and working-class poets who faced charges of plagiarism because of their class status and lack of formal education. Many of them--Elizabeth Hands being a wonderful example--wrote verses with much the same sentiment as Johnston's "An Address to Nature on its Cruelty," defending themselves in poetry against these unjust allegations. (23)

During the time Johnston published in the Penny Post, "her verse and others' responses to it enlivened and sometimes dominated the Penny Post's poetry columns." While other contributors "achieved their own distinctive tones," it was Johnston who had a voice distinct from all others: no other verse "matched the confessional, almost Byronic dramatic qualities of Johnston's urgent sense of grievance and desire to tell her tale" (Boos, p. 508). And the story she had to tell was dramatic; an abusive stepfather, an illegitimate child, and a disastrous love affair all combined to make a dramatic and irresistible story for her readers, especially, it seems, her women readers. But despite these personal hardships, her voice was praised by her readers as being a "cheering strain" for all, the one with the power to wake "the harp that, idly unstrung, / Hung mute and tuneless on its cloister'd wall" (ll. 1, 11-12). (24) Her readers are confident that she will be known across the empire, from "Britain's isles" to "India's shore" (ll. 11-12). They honor her for her labors in the factory and on the page, for "weaving for [herself] a name" (l. 15). (25) Her readers were abundantly aware of the power of such a metaphor--for Johnston did weave a name for herself, both in the factory and in poetry. And should she lose her position in the factory, should she remain "The Factory Exile," she could lose this vital connection to her creativity and her readership. (26)

Most importantly, we should remember that the verses of "The Factory Girl," "The Queen of Song," and "The Factory Exile" inspired other members of the working-classes to write poetry. While she did have male correspondents who wrote to her via the Poet's Corner in the Penny Post, her female readership dominated her public verse exchanges. At least six women poets--"Elspeth," "Jessie, A Bookbinder," "the Ploughman's Wife," "Edith," "Isabel," and a "Glasgow Lassie, C.R." have been identified by Florence Boos as contributing poems to the Penny Post, and "the last three elicited direct poetic responses from Johnston" (p. 511). Her example was potent and powerful, and her actions gave others the courage to enter into a world they were told was beyond their reach.

Across her volume, Johnston makes plain that she is acutely sensitive to the needs of her fellow Scottish workers, and she happily assumes the role of activist and spokeswoman for them. She characterizes the difficulties she faced after suing her employer for back wages as "the persecution I was doomed to suffer in vindication not only of my own rights, but of the rights of such as might be similarly discharged" (Johnston, "Autobiography," p. 15). She uses her poetry to make plain the challenges faced by the working-class family. In "The Last Sark," Johnston movingly portrays what happens to the family of a laborer who finds himself out of work, who finds himself cut off from his employment and his community.

The poem's speaker is a laborer's wife, a woman left physically weak and emotionally frail by her family's predicament: My head is licht, my heart is weak, my een are growing blin'; The bairn is faen' aff my knee--oh! John, Catch hand o' him, You ken I hinna tasted meat for days far mair than three; Were it no for my helpless bairns I wadna care to dee. (ll. 21-24)

She vacillates between pity for herself, "My head is rinnin' roon about far lichter than a flee" (l. 3), worry for her children, "The weans sit greeting in oor face, and we ha'e noucht to give" (l. 15), and righteous anger at those she blames for the situation: Our merchants an' mill masters they wad never want a meal, Though a' the hanks in Scotland wad for a twelvemonth fail; For some o' them have far mair goud than ony ane can see-- What care some gentry if they're weel though a' the puir wad dee!" (ll. 5-8)

This last line is the poem's refrain, a repetitive call for help and simultaneous accusation against "the rich" who have "got the puir folk's share" (l. 10). The speaker does not feel that the world is "divided fair," particularly as she sits in a "hoose [that] ance bean an' cosey" but "Feels unco cauld an' dismal noo, an' empty as a barn" (ll. 9, 13, 14). The only thing left this family is the father's "auld blue sark" (l. 2). This family's poverty is real, and the woman's distress unmistakable; the poem presents no solution and gives no hope. John, the husband and father, is given no voice to speak either in defense of himself or to comfort his wife. This working-class verse constitutes no call to arms; rather, it aims to be a portrait of what happens to people when their livelihood disappears. (27)

But not all of Johnston's verses about working-class life are dour and mournful. In "The Working Man," a straightforward glorification of the worker, Johnston ends the verse by reminding her readers of Scotland's debt to laborers, and reminding laborers of the power they possess: The harvest soon will be, my freens, cheer up, you sons of toil, And the fu'some hand of plenty will store your domicile; Ye are the sons of nature's art, aye forming some new plan, Oh what would bonny Scotland do without the Working Man?" (ll. 25-28)

Entreating the "sons of toil," "Oh dinna let your spirits sink, cling closer aye to hope" (l. 4), the speaker rejoices in the cycles of the natural world and the comfort working people can take from the seasons: "The spring is come at last, my freens, cheer up, you sons of toil" (l. 1). (29) But Johnston gives her "Working Man" something to draw strength from besides a glorified Wordsworthian rendition of the natural world: If youth and health be on your side, you ha'e a richer boon Than him that's dressed in royal robes and wears a diamond crown; Nae widow's curse lies in your cup, you bear nae orphan's blame; Nae guilty conscience haunts your dreams wi' visions of the slain. (ll. 5-8)

He may be poor, and he may be worn down by labor, but the working man is infinitely better off than the aristocrat crippled by legacy, tradition, and guilt. She challenges "him that ne'er kent labour's yoke" to "come to Glasgow town" and "take a cannie walk her bonny buildings roon" (ll. 17, 18). She wants this privileged man "wi' his lady hands, his cheeks sae pale and wan" to "[s]tand face to face, without a blush before the Working Man" (ll. 19, 20), something the speaker makes plain that she feels this man cannot do. The poem may be addressed ostensibly to the working man, but Johnston's light hand with the dialect suggests that she hoped to leave open avenues for a larger readership to engage with this poem and wrestle with the question that concludes the poem: "Oh what would bonny Scotland do without the Working Man?" (l. 28)

In 1857, when she fled Scotland for Ireland, seeking a place to recover from both the physical demands of factory work and the emotional turmoil at home, Johnston wrote a song for her homeland, "O! Scotland, my Country." The first stanza mourns the land she left; she wonders when she will "gaze on [its] heath hills again," the "dear land where freedom's bells blossom" in glens that "are the martyrs and patriots' graves" (ll. 2, 5, 6). In the refrain, she invokes the name of William Wallace, a figure of substantial force in the volume, the messianic figure whose actions are the stuff of meditation and instruction: O! Scotland, my country, wherever I wander, Thy name to my bosom a guide star shall be; On the deeds of thy Wallace often I'll ponder, Wha focht and wha fell, my country, for thee. (ll. 9-12)

As Scotland's hero and its greatest martyr, Wallace is the one who, in Johnston's verse, could save Scotland. (29) The speaker's "heart bleeds to hear" of Scotland's sorrow and pain (l. 36), and she cries for a hero of old to save her nation: "O, God, that they had but their Wallace again!" (l. 38). Significantly, at this point in the verse it is "they" whose troubles she laments, not "we." She remains outside the suffering, even outside the label of "Scottish" in this poem written from Belfast in 1857. Exiled to Ireland in body, she has emotionally exiled herself: Let proud England boast of her high titled gentry, Her queens and her princes, her palace and throne; Despite a' her grandeur, she'll n'er be a country Emblazon'd wi' fame like my auld Caledon. Let green Erin boast of her wild woven bowers, Her ivy-clad walls and her green shamrock soil; The spirit of bigotry springs wi' her flowers. A feeling of discord inhabits her isle. (ll. 22-29)

Dismissively critical of England and Ireland, Johnston praises Scotland as the supreme nation of the British isles, simultaneously lamenting its fall and lauding its greatness. It is not, after all, even "Scotland" she aligns herself with here; it is "Caledon." Such an alignment for this Scottish poet is as telling as Byron's lamentations for the Albion of old in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. The current state of affairs makes identification with modern-day Scotland impossible for Johnston, and the only version of her homeland she can connect with and yearn for is one long since past.

By the end of the poem, though, the speaker's fire has died out. Rather than building to a triumphant declaration of personal intent, or sounding a battle cry to action, the poem ends on a helpless note of ineffectual and not particularly passionate desire, the only time the refrain changes: O! Scotland, my country, wherever I wander, My heart's purest wish still shall linger wi' thee; On the deeds of thy Wallace I often ponder, And wish for thy sake, I a Wallace could be. (ll. 39-42)

Instead of a patriotic rabble rousing, a route the poem could easily have taken, Johnston has chosen instead to continue a particular kind of exilic strain: the public mourner for the body politic, one whose role is to cry and bleed and inspire through, ironically, inaction. Johnston can never be a Wallace for Scotland; she is the Queen of Song, not a soldier. But by uttering this wish, by putting a figure of Scottish identity again and again in front of her readers, she can, through her very inability to occupy a space, draw attention to that void.

"Weep not for thy country": Political Exiles in Autobiography, Poems and Songs

Johnston's concern for the exiled figure, especially the political exile, appears early in her volume. Right after "The Factory Exile," two poems dedicated to exiled Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi, hero of the Italian Risorgimento and a man second only to Wallace in heroic status in Autobiography, Poems and Songs, appear. Johnston wrote her Garibaldi poems during her Dundee years, a time past the years of Garibaldi's exile in America and at the moment of his well-heralded arrival in England. (30)

In the first one, "Welcome Garibaldi," subtitled "A Voice from Dundee," the poetic voice welcomes the "Illustrious patriot warrior who set fair Italy free" (l. 2), the man who gave to "slaves of Inquisition a balm" and "burst the galling fetters that bound [his] nation's heart" (ll. 3-4). By the second stanza, it becomes clear that this "voice" is not Johnston's singular voice, but a collective one, a voice that speaks for Scotland: that Garibaldi is "king uncrowned, a conqueror" whom "we truly know" (l. 7), the we being the people of Scotland, not the royal we of the poet. Johnston speaks as her nation, for her nation, the "Queen of Song" speaking to the King of Liberty, a "king" more welcome in Scotland than any other monarch: "No king did ever wear a crown nor held a court levee / That we would make more welcome, brave warrior king, than thee" (ll. 15-16).

Johnston ultimately pays this Italian patriot the ultimate honor--she compares him to Wallace: Thou art welcome, Garibaldi! thou are the true born type Of our departed Wallace, who gained our country's right; Defying every danger, he rushed amidst the strife, And purchased Scotland's freedom with the ransom of his life. (ll. 25-28)

For Johnston, Garibaldi is the nineteenth-century hero, as he was for so many others around the globe. And so this new hero of national independence against imperialist oppression will be accepted and honored by both Scotland's rich and its poor, for all of Scotland loves this kind of hero. The "fare of the cottage hearth" and the "feast of palace hall" will be open to Garibaldi; indeed, "Old Scotland hath no honour that she would not give to thee" (ll. 30, 31).

Sadly, though, this hero's welcome will not transmute into a life of comfort and ease. Like Tennyson's faded hero Ulysses, domesticating Johnston's hero renders him powerless. While she ends the poem by wishing "Long life to Garibaldi!" (l. 37), it is a life of continued action, not retired repose, that she wishes for him: a life of purpose and success, and finally a hero's death: Long life to Garibaldi! and when all thy warfare's done-- When thy task on earth is ended, and thy last victory won-- Oh, sweet shall be thy dreamless sleep, with angels for thy guard, And a glorious crown in Heaven shall be thy rich reward. (ll. 37-40)

Warfare is seen as revelation--war allows Garibaldi to be true to himself, his purpose, and his place.

"Mourning for Garibaldi," Johnston's companion verse to "Welcome Garibaldi," appears just following it in her volume, and the second poem rages over the Italian patriot's treatment in England. While the first poem celebrated Garibaldi's heroism and Britain's wisdom in welcoming him, "Mourning for Garibaldi" laments England's actions, and what Johnston (and others) saw as a free nation's unforgivable behavior toward a hero. England's "fame-spreading story" is now "Wrapt in a cloud of heart-bleeding shame" (ll. 1, 2). This wrongdoing is specifically English, and Johnston even more definitively places the blame squarely at Queen Victoria's door: And where is the throne where thy sovereign is seated With the crown of royalty over her brow? Can she deem for one moment we thus shall be cheated By her lords, dukes, and earls, who basely did bow To a foreign despot, and his dastard dictations? (ll. 5-9)

If the English government thinks for one minute, Johnston says, that anyone will be fooled by the actions of a bunch of aristocrats, that government is sorely mistaken. Instead, by banishing Garibaldi, returning him to exile, England's action will bring shame to the realm: O! woe to thee England, the deed thou hast done Shall brand thee for ever the meanest of nations; Thou'st lost in one hour what in centuries was won. (ll. 10-12).

This charge is a severe one indeed; Johnston sees English treatment of Garibaldi as so wrong that it has the power to cripple an empire. The nation that "once wert the 'gem' of the world" now has seen its own "glory grown tarnished and dim" (ll. 15, 16).

Garibaldi's reasons for leaving England continue to be a subject of debate. (31) Was he unceremoniously hustled on board a ship by the government vis-a-vis Gladstone, fearing his presence would spark an outpouring of revolutionary fervor and a renewed support for insurrection? Did anxieties over his reunion with Mazzini while in London fuel suspicions that Garibaldi's seemingly more moderate post-1860 political turn was but a cover for more radical desires and plans? How much of a role did Victoria's discomfort over Garibaldi's enthusiastic reception play in his leave-taking? Or was his excuse of poor health a legitimate one? Whatever the reason, two things are clear: the UK, especially in London, was soundly in the grip of "Garibaldimania," and Garibaldi's abrupt departure from England was decried by those across the political spectrum. (32)

Upon his arrival in London, shops were crammed with goods bearing Garibaldi's likeness and name and cheering throngs lining the streets (Hibbert, p. 340). (33) Their collective enthusiasm must have been astonishing: tens of thousands gathered at the shore, and during his arrival in London, over 500,000 people crammed the streets. (34) Aristocrats feted him in their homes, and two receptions were held in his honor at the Crystal Palace. (35) The second one, "hilled as 'the people's reception,'" was "designed, in the words of the Annual Register, 'to give the humbler classes in various parts of the country an opportunity of enjoying the presence of the great object of their admiration'," and to facilitate, "special trains were laid on from all over Britain" (Riall, p. 333).

Aristocratic Tory reactions to his arrival in England, however, were as apprehensive as the popular response was enthusiastic. Garibaldi's popularity over the years had grown in Britain; English support for his Sicilian expedition outnumbered that of his native country, for example, and much of other support had come over the years from the British people: "In 1854, the working men of Newcastle had subscribed to give him a present; in 1861, 17,000 inhabitants of Brighton contributed a penny each to make him another; and these were typical of many such instances." (36) But both the English and the Italian governments were nervous about his motivations for traveling north: both governments feared an outpouring of revolutionary fervor and a renewed support for insurrection sparked by his presence, despite his assurance that his trip was only "to obtain the benefit of medical advice and to pay a debt of gratitude he considers he owes to the English people" (Hibbert, p. 339). (37) So twelve days after his arrival, Garibaldi departed England, ahead of schedule.

But when England refused to harbor him, Johnston asserts in her poetry, Scotland was blameless. Scottish "love-tears shall wash from [Garibaldi's] bosom [England's] shame," for "old Scotland's a nation true hearted" ("Mourning for Garibaldi," ll. 26, 31). In contrast to Scotland's excellent behavior stands England's unforgivable error: "And thy dastard insult ne'er in memory shall perish, / Thou hast snapt the gold link of our sister-wove chain" (ll. 27-28). England severed the link between Italy and Britain, the link that British poets across the century worked so hard to establish. (38) How, Johnston asks, can England be Italy's heir, the inheritor of the great ideals of Western culture, when it won't protect the greatest Italian patriot of the century?

Johnston's sympathy extends not only to the particular, famous, heroic political exile, but also to larger classes of political refugees. By 1863, political parties in Poland paralleled those of 1848 Italy in significant, and, for those who feared European uprisings, threatening ways: "The success of the Italian Revolution made it inevitable that a cry of anguish should go up from every oppressed nationality in Europe; and daily, insurrections were looked for in Hungary, in Poland, and in Turkey." (39) Of course, 1863 brought that uprising, and with it, a new group of exiles seeking refuge in the United Kingdom. In "The Exile of Poland," Johnston self-consciously speaks as the voice of Britain, gently admonishing, "Weep not for thy country, poor exile of Poland, / O'er the depth of her wrongs or the gall of her chain" (ll. 1-2), assuring that "while they are here we shall never deny them / Our dear country's best love" (ll. 9-10). More than anything, though, the poem calls for the exiles to be reunited with their homeland: "May the exiles of Poland once more be delighted / In the homes of their fathers at banquet and hall" (ll. 7-8); "we hope that oppression ere long will be vanished, / And sweet freedom restore them the land of their birth" (ll. 15-16). For "Russian eagles" to be "fetter'd for ever" is this verse's most potent refrain, for it speaks not only to Johnston's sympathy for the victims of imperial aggression, but also to her awareness of Britain's position regarding Russian territorial expansion. While the poem clearly voices a hope that the exile of Poland "yet may'st rejoice in Russia's defeat" (l. 28), the implicit desire undergirding the poem is that Britain too may one day rejoice in Russia's defeat.

Gustav Klaus addresses these three poems--"Welcome, Garibaldi," "Mourning for Garibaldi," and "The Exile of Poland"--as part of his chapter "Dundee and the People's Journal," and his readings suggest uneasiness with Johnston's political verses. He characterizes "Welcome, Garibaldi" as a poem produced when Johnson became "[c]arried away by the general excitement" of Garibaldi's visit to Britain in 1864 (Klaus, p. 50, emphasis mine). While he does make a place for the poem as one whose "main interest lies now in its evocation of an ardent political moment," his language betrays his own nervousness over Johnston's writings about international affairs, portraying her as "carried away" rather than intrigued, excited, engaged (Klaus, p. 51). Of "Mourning for Garibaldi," he has the following to say: "Once again, the poem demonstrates what might alternatively be seen as the volatility of Ellen Johnston's political moods or an eagerness to learn from, and please, her peers" (Klaus, p. 52). Klaus's language depicts Johnston as a woman swept away by her "moods" and eager to people-please.

Klaus demonstrates a hostility toward certain feminist readings. In his chapter "The Verdant Factory," after citing Johnston's depiction in her "Autobiography" of her firing from the Verdant Works, he characterizes Julia Swindells's reading of the same moment as follows: A modern "ignorant deluded sister" critic [Swindells] has gone so far as to pronounce this a "sexually reactionary" rhetoric. That a person was sacked for no apparent reason, but dared stand up for her rights, for which, though successful in court, she suffered blacklisting and destitution as a consequence, apparently matters less in some feminists' eyes than the faux pas of clashing involuntarily with members of her own sex. (43)

As part of a larger discussion of "Victorian sexual ideology" and "the Church's prescriptions of womanhood," here is what Swindells says:

Ellen Johnston's account of her fight for rights at the factory combines the rhetoric of militancy ("I was discharged by the foreman without any reason ... I summoned the foreman ... I ... struggled for and gained my rights") with a rhetoric which is sexually reactionary ("I was envied by my sister sex . ... they hated me with a perfect hatred"), sustained in the religious discourse of the martyr ("smarting ... envied ... hated"). (Swindells, p. 155)

Klaus's impassioned response to Swindells continues for another page, declaring that "Nowhere in her poems does Ellen Johnston exhibit a disdainful or haughty attitude towards other women" (p. 56).

Most telling about these two different critical reactions to Johnston's self-presentation is the way each one pushes her to the extremes, rendering her almost a caricature. Each one wants her to be one thing or the other, either militaristic and martyred, or noble and saintly. What Johnston's volume actually gives us is both/and. She does not hesitate to set herself apart from the "other girls" in her factory, and why should she (Johnston, "Autobiography," p. 9)? She's not like them. She does not hesitate to use the courts to her advantage, and while that was undoubtedly brave, does that make her a champion of working-class rights, one who was "breaking a lance for every factory girl in a similar position of subjection and dependence" (Klaus, p. 57)? Perhaps: or perhaps it makes her a woman who found herself in an uncommon situation, that of laborer and writer, someone with inroads into two different--and sometimes incompatible--worlds. As Johnston asserts again and again in her volume, she occupies a number of contradictory nineteenth-century spaces: as Scottish and British, as a poet and a factory worker, as part of a laboring-class community and part of a literary community, and as a woman and a writer. All of these combine to fashion Johnston's precarious exilic position, and it is precisely this exilic location that makes her perspective so unique.

Probably Johnston's most wrenching exilic experience occurs after Autobiography, Poems and Songs. In April 1873, four years after the second edition of Autobiography, Poems and Songs, the Penny Post issued an appeal for "our old contributor," relating that she was now under "distressing circumstances" and asking for those who were able and willing to send money for her aid (Klaus, p. 76). Distressing indeed: like an exile, Johnston died cut off from her communities, except she spent her last days not in a distant land, but in a cruel and foreign "home"--the Barony Poorhouse, a wretched place designed to house her until she died in 1874 of kidney failure complicated by anasarca: (41) "A dropsical affection of the subcutaneous cellular tissue of a limb or other large surface of the body, producing a very puffed appearance of the flesh." (42) In other words, perhaps because of extreme malnutrition, her body's tissues swelled with blood and fluid and her kidneys could no longer function. She died alone, with few from her communities--family, national, literary--coming to her aid, a pathetic end for a life-long exile devoted to people who apparently failed her in the end.

Notes

(1) All references to and quotations from Johnston's work, unless otherwise specified, are from the first edition of Autobiography, Poems and Songs (Glasgow: William Love, 1867) and will be cited parenthetically by line number.

(2) For selections of Johnston's poetry, see Isobel Annstrong and Joseph Bristow, eds. Nineteenth-Century Women Poets: An Oxford Anthology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998); Florence S. Boos, ed. Working-Class Women Poets in Victorian Britain: An Anthology (Ontario: Broadview, 2008); Valentine Cunningham, ed., The Victorians: An Anthology of Poetry & Poetics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000); John Goodridge, ed., Nineteenth-Century English Labouring-Class Poets, 3 vols. (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2005); Catharine Kerrigan, ed., An Anthology of Scottish Women Poets (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1991); Angela Leighton and Margaret Reynolds, eds., Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). For online archives and databases, see John Goodridge and Tim Burke, "Labouring Class Writers Project," (Nottingham Trent University), 21 January 2012. For collections of autobiographies, see James R Simmons Jr., ed., Factory Lives: Four Nineteenth-Century Working-Class Autobiographies (Ontario: Broadview, 2007) and "Ellen Johnston," Victorian Women Poets, ed. William B. Thesing (Detroit: Gale Research, 1999); Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 199, Literature Resource Center, 26 July 2010; Christopher A. Whatley, "Johnston, Ellen (c. 1835-1874)," Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 30 (2004): 354-355; H. Gustav Klaus, Factory Girl: Ellen Johnston and Working-class Poetry in Victorian Scotland (New York: Peter Lang, 1998).

(3) For studies addressing Johnston specifically, see Florence S. Boos, '"Cauld Engle-Cheek': Working-Class Women Poets in Victorian Scotland," Victorian Poetry 33, no. 1 (1995): 53-73; Boos, '"Nurs'd up amongst the scenes I have describ'd': Political Resonances in the Poetry of Working-Class Women," Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time, ed. Christine L. Krueger (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 2002), pp. 137-156.; Boos, "The 'Queen' of the 'Far-Famed Penny Post': 'The Factory Girl Poet' and Her Audience," Women's Writing 10, no. 3 (2003): 503-526; Margaret Forsyth, "Looking for Grandmothers: Working-class Women Poets and 'Herstory,'" Women's Writing 12, no. 2 (2005): 259-269; Klaus, Factory Girl; Judith Rosen "Class and Poetic Communities: The Works of Ellen Johnston, 'The Factory Girl,"' Victorian Poetry 39, no. 2 (2001): 207-227; Julia Swindells, Victorian Writing and Working Women: The Other Side of Silence (Cambridge: Polity, 1985); Susan Zlotnick, "'A Thousand Times I'd Be A Factory Girl:' Dialect, Domesticity, and Working-class Poetry in Victorian Britain," Victorian Studies 35, no. 1 (1991): 35-52; Zlotnick, Women, Writing, and the Industrial Revolution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1998). For valuable contextual studies addressing eighteenth- and nineteenth-century laboring- or working-class literary production, see Victorian Poetry 39, no. 2 (2001), special edition devoted to working-class writers; William J. Christmas, The Lab'ring Muses: Work, Writing, and the Social Order in English Plebeian Poetry, 1730-1830 (Cranbury, NJ: Associated Univ. Presses, 2001); Donna Landry, The Muses of Resistance: Labouring-class Women's Poetry in Britain, 1739-1796 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990); Anne Janowitz, Lyric and Labour in the Romantic Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998); Brian Maidment, The Poorhouse Fugitives (Manchester: Carcanet, 1987).

(4) Specifically, "An Address to Nature on Its Cruelty" and "The Last Sark" (pp. 140-141).

(5) Regenia Gagnier, Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain, 1832-1920 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991), p. 3.

(6) Zlotnick specifically addresses the value and role of dialect verse for women poets. Though she does not deal with "The Last Sark" specifically, she does read the larger tradition of dialect poetry as having a "controlling irony," that of a "class-based literature that consistently denies working women their class identity by refusing to recognize them as laborers" (p. 8). She argues that "dialect discourse was itself inimical to female self-expression, [for] working-class women were silenced by the dialect tradition, which, in its adherence to the ideology of domesticity, made it difficult for working women to write of their own experiences as women who worked" (p. 9). Nonetheless, in current criticism, dialect verse possesses an authority of authenticity and truthfulness--a Wordsworthian "real language of men," if you will--that working-class verses written in standard English do not.

(7) John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation, 2nd ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), p. 10.

(8) Charlotte Smith, The Emigrants The Poems of Charlotte Smith, ed. Stuart Curran (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), p. 155.

(9) Ellen Johnston, "Autobiography of Ellen Johnston, 'The Factory Girl'," Autobiography, Poems and Songs (Glasgow: William Love, 1867), p. 13.

(10) Johnston, "The Factory Exile."

(11) N ineteenth-century working-class women poets were acutely aware of a woman's domestic "second shift" so commonly lamented in the twentieth-century long before Arlie Hochschild's and Anne Machung's The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home (New York: Penguin Books, 1989) made the term part of our vernacular.

(12) Matthew Arnold, Preface to Poems, 1853, Prose of the Victorian Period, ed. William E. Buckler. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), pp. 409-420; and "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time," Essays In Criticism. Prose of the Victorian Period, ed. William E. Buckler. (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1958), pp. 420-441, are good examples here, though not the only ones, to be sure.

(13) As Klaus notes, "working people were at an immense disadvantage [in publishing] since the London- or Edinburgh-based journals and commercial publishers catered almost exclusively to middle-class taste. Until the rise of a working-class press after the Napoleonic Wars there was no alternative to the system of subscription, and this required a patron in the first place, with all the imponderables this involved. But even after the appearance of the initially often shortlived radical magazines the difficulties persisted for anyone trying to market a whole volume of poems instead of merely contributing a few to a sympathetic publication. Charles Fleming, a handloom weaver, succinctly summed up the dilemma in the middle of the nineteenth century: 'Extensive as the publishing trade is, and innumerable as are the volumes issued by it on almost every branch of knowledge, it is really a very difficult matter, except to a privileged class, to appear in print. The difficulty vanishes like a shadow before the man of wealth, influence, or rank; but to the one of lowly degree it is almost insuperable"' (pp. 12-13).

(14) While Gerald Massey, a working-class poet who was able to earn a living through publication, is a notable exception, Victorian working-class poets were almost always dependent upon their non-literary labors for survival. In Johnston's case, neither publishing nor factory work would suffice.

(15) This poem reflects on Johnston's time in Ireland, 1857-1859. See her "Autobiography," p. 13.

(16) This poem addresses Johnston's experiences after being fired from the Verdant Works in Dundee. See her "Autobiography," p. 14.

(17) This poem addresses Johnston's experiences during the three years before Autobiography, Poems and Songs was published (1867), a time she worked at the Chapelshade Factory in Dundee after her firing from Verdant Works. See her "Autobiography," p. 15.

(18) See "Galbraith's Trip" (p. 106) and "Tennants' Excursion" (p. 109) in Autobiography, Poems and Songs.

(19) See the next section of this article, "Borderland between worlds: Laborer and Poet," for more on these poetic addresses and responses.

(20) Zlotnick sees Johnston's unemployment as being "removed from her spiritual home" and "becom[ing] an expatriate from paradise, a 'factory exile' who writes love poems full of passionate longing for the mill she left behind" (p. 23).

(21) For Johnston's involvement with this periodical as well as a general history of the Penny Post and 1860-1868 editor Alex Campbell, see Boos, "The 'Queen' of the 'Far-Famed Penny Post': 'The Factory Girl Poet' and Her Audience."

(22) Klaus's assessment of Johnston's decision seems especially harsh: "Just why these versified exchanges from the Penny Post have been included in a volume that would have been substantial enough without them is difficult to say. In Ellen's eyes and those of her publisher these tributes may have stood her in good stead, superseding Gilfillan's feeble recommendation. Yet as with all mutual admiration societies that seek public attention, there is something embarrassing about this display of reverence and flattering, and the affected tone of gratitude from the recipient of such honours and laurels" (p. 71). Unlike Klaus, I don't find these verses embarrassing at all; in fact, I find them encouraging, for a reason that Klaus goes on to note: the press could serve a very useful function for "culturally ambitious working people with no literary circle to turn to for support and encouragement" (p. 71).

(23) Elizabeth Hands's companion poems--"A Poem On the Supposition of an Advertisement Appearing in a Morning Paper, on the Publication of a Volume of Poems by a Servant Maid" (1789) and "A Poem On the Supposition of the Book Having Been Published and Read" (1789)--are two delightful examples of a laboring-class poet's flinty satirical response to criticisms via verse. Elizabeth Hands, British Women Poets of the 19th Century, ed. Margaret Randolph Higgonet (New York: Meridian, 1996).

(24) Mat[thew] Stevenson, "To the Factory Girl" Autobiography Poems and Songs, p. 145.

(25) Peter McCall, "To the Factory Girl" Autobiography, Poems and Songs, pp. 149-150.

(26) For more on the print relationships, Johnston and her readers crafted and cultivated, see Margaret Forsyth, '"Too Boldly' for a Woman: Text, Identity and the Working-Class Woman Poet," Feminist Readings of Victorian Popular Texts: Divergent Femininities, eds. Emma Liggins and Daniel Duffy (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 18-34.

(27) See Pamela Sharpe, "Population and Society 1700-1840," The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Vol. I, ed. Peter Clark (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000), pp. 510-511. This family's loss of income was not an unfortunate, singular situation, but an all too common reality in nineteenth-century Scotland, particularly in urban areas. While the late eighteenth-century showed improvements in nutrition, made possible by relatively low food prices prior to the French wars, improvements between 1820 and 1850 seem to have been diminished sharply because of the growing urban center, poorer diet, work intensity and accidents, and occupational disease (Sharpe, pp. 510-511). Women were hit particularly hard during these years; while their wages went down, their unemployment numbers went up. See S. Horrell and J. Humphries, "Women's Labour Force Participation and the Transition to the Male-breadwinner Family, 1790-1865," Economic History Review 48 (1995): 89-117. Population increases in Scottish cities, particularly Glasgow, were a serious and rapidly growing problem, one exacerbating other problems faced by industrial centers all over Britain; Glasgow's population increased threefold in just four decades, standing at 77,385 in 1801 and increasing to 274,533 by 1841 (Sharpe, pp. 510-511). See also R. Floud, K. Wachter, and A. Gregory, Height, Health and History: Nutritional Status in the United Kingdom 1750-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990).

(28) The speaker rejoices in three of the seasons, at any rate. Spring, summer, and fall are all mentioned, but winter is conspicuously absent.

(29) Today, Wallace is still a figure of profound importance, although one complicated by the mythic status that has continued to grow around his name in spite of a continued lack of solid historical materials. On 18 December 1999, for instance, the Scotsman reported the results of a Who's Who survey in Scotland that asked respondents their opinion on the greatest Scots in history. With 169 votes, Wallace edged out Robert the Bruce and his 161 votes for second place. Both political heroes, however, were left in the dust by a poet: Robert Burns pulled down a landslide victory with 268 votes. See Graeme Morton, "wallace.com," William Wallace: Man and Myth (Gloucestershire: Sutton, 2001), pp. 134-152, for a discussion of the Wallace cult over the twentieth century.

(30) See George Macaulay Trevelyan, "Epilogue," Garibaldi and the Making of Italy (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1912), pp. 288-291; Christopher Hibbert, Garibaldi and His Enemies: The Clash of Arms and Personalities in the Making of Italy (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1966), pp. 121-132 and pp. 339-351.

(31) For examples, see Lucy Riall, Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press, 2007); Hibbert, Garibaldi and His Enemies; Margot C. Finn, After Chartism: Class and Nation in English Radical Politics 1848-1874 (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993);

John A. Davis, "Garibaldi and England," History Today 32, no. 12 (December 1982): 21-26; Marcella Pellegrino Sutcliffe, "Garibaldi in London," History Today (April 2014): 42-49 and "Negotiating the 'Garibaldi moment' in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1854-1861)," Modern Italy 51, no. 2 (2010): 129-144.

(32) See Riall, pp. 332-345; Hibbert, pp. 342-351.

(33) Sutcliffe, "Garibaldi in London," pp. 43-44. See also Riall; Davis.

(34) Riall, p. 333. See also Hibbert, pp. 340-343.

(35) See The Times, London, 14 April 1864, p. 14.

(36) Denis Mack Smith, ed. Garibaldi (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969), pp. 72-73. See also Sutcliffe, "Negotiating the 'Garibaldi moment' in Newcastle-upon-Tyne."

(37) Giuseppe Garibaldi, Autobiography of Giuseppe Garibaldi, trans. A. Werner, vol. 2 (New York: H. Fertig, 1971), p. 291.

(38) Elizabeth Barrett Browning being a significant example, particularly in her Casa Guidi Windows. For more, see Maura O'Connor, The Romance of Italy and the English Political Imagination (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998).

(39) George Peabody Gooch and Adolphus William Ward, Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy, vol. II (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 2011), p. 456.

(40) Klaus, Factory Girl, p. 56. This moment seems especially reactionary when weighed against others in Klaus's volume, particularly those when he labels Johnston a coquette (p. 76). See the section "Becoming 'The Factory Exile'" in this article for the section in Johnston's autobiography from which Klaus appropriates the phrase "ignorant deluded sister."

(41) Not everyone agrees with my assessment of her last days. For the uncertainties surrounding Johnston's birth/death dates and circumstances, see Boos, Working-Class Women Poets in Victorian Britain, pp. 202-203 and Klaus, "New Light on Ellen Johnston, 'The Factory Girl,'" Notes and Queries (2008): 430-433.

(42) OED Online, "anasarca, n."