Sonnets of Flowers and Trees - George Markham Tweddell 1823 - 1903

George Markham Tweddell

George Markham Tweddell  (GMT) 1823 - 1903 was born in Stokesley, North Yorkshire in 1823 and was variously a printer, publisher, author, editor, poet, Chartist, People's historian and much more. His wife, Elizabeth Tweddell (nee Cole) was better known as the poet Florence Cleveland whose book Rhymes and Sketches to Illustrate the Cleveland Dialect. One of her poems (Take Thy-self a Wife) has been set to music and is the title of an album by the Stockton on Tees folk duo - Megson. The full and interesting history of this 19thC couple can be found in more detail via this hub to their work http://georgemarkhamtweddell.blogspot.co.uk/

George & Elizabeth Tweddell

In 2005 I began work documenting the Creative Writing scene in Cleveland / Tees Valley which I had been involved with as a tutor and development worker and decided to research the area's older literary history. This led me to George Markham Tweddell's book The Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham - 1872 (a compendium of local authors going back to 500 AD). The book was long out of print and only available at the time in the local reference libraries or antiquarian shops. I endeavoured to put information from it on our website. As a result, one of GMT's descendant's Paul Tweddell, got in contact and we began a 5 year project to get GMT's work out into the public domain.

One day, Paul showed me some manuscript books by GMT which clearly showed that GMT was a more diverse and prolific poet than I had realised. You can find out more about his fuller collection of poetry on the site mentioned above.

Manuscript book

Paul Tweddell

One of the books in particular impressed me greatly - Sonnets of Flowers and Trees. GMT had attempted, before his death, to bring together all of his sonnets on those two themes. Some were never published in his life-time but others had been published in local and national newspapers or in masonic magazines in the United States and Europe.

Emblems and Symbols
GMT was well acquainted with the sonnet and had walked widely on the Cleveland hills where many of the wild flowers can be seen. Reading the poems I began to suspect that they worked on other levels through emblems and symbols. Paul Tweddell sent me a poem by George Wither - Marigold - that had influenced GMT (he had a similar poem The Marsh Marigold.0 I began to think the Whither poem was in some way symbolic. Then I noticed at the foot of the poem it mentioned that Whither was one of the best known Emblem writers, influenced by The Emblematum Libellus of Alciati (1522). I had also noticed a number of masonic symbols in GMT's work and mention of emblems in these poems. His wider work, especially his 100 Masonic Poems confirm the symbolic / emblematic aspects to GMT's poetry. A fuller discussion of the nature of GMT's poetry can be found here http://georgemarkhamtweddell.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/poets-view-of-george-markham-tweddell.html , along with links to his Collected poetical works, available as a free pdf file.

Here's an extract from the essay on his poems about Emblems and symbols linked above.

"After reading GMT’s poem for Elliot ‘The Bramble (Rubus Vulgaris)’  I wondered why many of these radical poets also had a strong interest in flowers and plants. Was it purely botanical or was there some kind of esoteric symbolism going on? This was reinforced by finding a Masonic reference in the GMT poem about The Great First Cause. In the Alchemist book The Secret of the Golden Flower, the golden flower is thought by some to be the Emerald Tablet and in the spiritual side of Alchemy part of the process of purifying the spirit. Symbols of flowers, colours, suns and moons are part of the symbolism. Freemasonry derives is symbolism from the Hermetic tradition and has its own path towards spiritual enlightenment. Could there be a deeper level to some of these poems, especially in GMT’s sequence of sonnets under the heading Sonnets on Trees and Flowers I wondered?"

I hope you find these poems enjoyable and interesting. If you have any thoughts on any aspects of these poems, please leave a comment.

Trev Teasdel - 2012