The Manchester Guardian, 30 September 1840, Notice to Correspondents (a column in which they respond to letters from readers)

IF Mr. Robert Rose, who calls himself “the bard of colour,” would have taken repeated hints, we should not now have had occasion to request him plainly, as we now do, to cease writing to us, or to any member of our establishment. We have no intention of noticing his book, and do not desire any communication with him.

==========

This classified ad was published a few weeks later and includes a cheeky response:

The Manchester Guardian, 21 November 1840, Classified ads

Publications

Just published, price 6d.

The Bard’s Cypress Wreath; on the Death of a Lady. By ROBERT ROSE, the bard of colour, and laureate of the Western Isles. With opinions of the press, from the highest literary authorities to the lowest; viz, from the London and Metropolitan Magazines down to the Manchester Guardian.

London: 11 Johnson, Paternoster Row, Manchester and Liverpool: BANCKS & CO.

==========

In the early 1840′s a literary group was formed. By 1842 it numbered about 40 and Robert Rose was the vice-chair. He was a black man “of wealth” who lived in St. Stephen’s Street in Salford.

The group published a book of poetry called the Festive Wreath and their meeting place was the Sun Inn on Long Millgate, opposite Chetham’s Library. 80 years later it was still known as “Poets’Corner“.

==========

The Manchester Guardian, 14 February 1849

Dinner to Samuel Bamford and the Lancashire Poets

On Saturday afternoon last, at the Royal Oak, Downing Street, Ardwick, a dinner was given to Samuel Bamford and the Lancashire poets. About 30 gentlemen sat down to dinner, presided over by Mr. Joseph Haley.

[CUT]

Mr. Robert Rose was not a native of Lancashire, but was of foreign extraction, — a West Indian, he believed, — and was a gentleman of colour. He had published a number of poetical pieces, and had one by him in MS. which in his (Mr. Bamford’s) judgement, only required the pruning knife to bring it out with great credit to himself.

Full article here.

==========

The stereotype is that in those days all black people were downtrodden, poor and discriminated against. But here’s a man who was educated, respected and liked enough to be made vice-chair of a literary group. He’s described as “extremely generous” and a “gentleman”. And it sounds as if, due to his wealth, he didn’t have to work.

Whereas many Victorians seem distant and stuffy, reading about Robert Rose I felt that I would have liked to have met him. He sounds like great company.

Unfortunately he died just a couple of months later, as described here by The Guardian on 20 June 1849:

I haven’t been able to find any hint of what, if anything, might have triggered this excess and it’s unlikely we’ll ever know.

According to the Manchester Guardian article he was arrested in the early hours of Tuesday 19 June 1849 and brought before the magistrates that same morning. He was then returned to his cell temporarily and died between 10am and 11am.

The idea of a black man dying in a police station is alarming and as I write this the case of Christopher Alder is in the news. But perhaps there isn’t anything sinister about the death of Robert Rose and tragically he had killed himself due to far too much alcohol.

In 1881, Fraser’s Magazine wrote:

A Lancashire Poets’ Corner, by J. A. Noble.

Another life, even more wantonly wasted than [John Critchley] Prince’s, was that of Robert Rose, known as the “Bard of Colour.” He was a finely-made, full-blooded negro, of whose early history I know nothing; but at the time when he was one of the poets of the Corner, he was a man of wealth—or of what seemed wealth to his poorer comrades—and lived in a good house in Salford.

He was a quick, vivacious fellow, with the inborn gaiety of his race, very companionable and thoroughly hospitable. He was fond of asking his friends to breakfast with him; and those who received an invitation for the first time, and asked at what hour they must put in an appearance, were somewhat startled at being informed that it was Mr. Rose’s habit to take his first meal at three or four o’clock in the afternoon.

Of course this meant that he did not retire to rest until the small hours were growing into large ones, and this turning of day into night was symptomatic of his whole life. He was a restless soul with a passion for adventure, and his favourite recreation was to run over to Liverpool and take a trip to sea in one of the pilot-boats belonging to that port. He contemplated embodying the imaginative results of these excursions in a poem the length of “Paradise Lost,” which was to be entitled “Ocean Mysteries;” but before the mysteries of the ocean were grappled with he was suddenly brought face to face with a greater mystery still.

After a presumably heavier drinking-bout than usual, he was picked up insensible in the street and carried to the lock-up, where, with no friendly hand to receive a farewell pressure or to close his eyes, the Bard of Colour breathed his last.

==========

More about him from “Literary Reminiscences and Gleanings” by Richard Wright Procter, 1860.

From this, it would seem that a verse from one of his poems appears on his headstone at the cemetery in Harpurhey:

I’d rather have my tomb bedew’d at eve
With the lone orphan’s or the good man’s tear
Who softly stole at twilight here to grieve
And sobb’d aloud — the friend of man rests here
I’d rather have this quiet humble fame
Than hollow echo of an empty name

This poem is called “Fame, Freedom and Friendship.” A “glorious triad ever dear to the poet,” writes Richard Wright Procter.

Robert Rose was 43 years old when he died. So he was born in either 1806 or 1807. The latter being the year of William Wilberforce’s Slave Trade Act which abolished the slave trade, though not slavery itself. This may be how he came to leave the West Indies as a child and ended up in England and why freedom was especially dear to his heart?

Chetham’s Library has some pages of Robert Rose’s work.

The ancient half-timbered Sun Inn, which stood on the opposite side of the street to Chetham’s, was an antiques shop in later years and was demolished in 1923.