The English poet Christopher Smart (1722–1771) was confined to mental asylums from May 1757 until January 1763. Smart was admitted to St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics, Upper Moorfields, London, on 6 May 1757. He was taken there by his father-in-law, John Newbery, although he may have been confined in a private madhouse before then. While in St Luke's he wrote Jubilate Agno and A Song to David, the poems considered to be his greatest works. Although many of his contemporaries agreed that Smart was "mad", accounts of his condition and its ramifications varied, and some felt that he had been committed unfairly.
Smart was diagnosed as "incurable" while at St Luke's, and when they ran out of funds for his care he was moved to Mr. Potter's asylum, Bethnal Green. All that is known of his years of confinement is that he wrote poetry. Smart's isolation led him to abandon the poetic genres of the 18th century that had marked his earlier work and to write religious poetry such as Jubilate Agno ("Rejoice in the Lamb"). His asylum poetry reveals a desire for "unmediated revelation", and it is possible that the self-evaluation found in his poetry represents an expression of evangelical Christianity.
Late 18th-century critics felt that Smart's madness justified them in ignoring his A Song to David, but during the following century Robert Browning and his contemporaries considered his condition to be the source of his genius. It was not until the 20th century, with the rediscovery of Jubilate Agno (not published until 1939), that critics reconsidered Smart's case and began to see him as a revolutionary poet, the possible target of a plot by his father-in-law, a publisher, to silence him.
Smart was confined to asylums during a time of debate about the nature of madness and its treatment. During the 18th century, madness was "both held to reveal inner truth and condemned to silence and exclusion as something unintelligible by reason, and therefore threatening to society and to humanity".[1] It was commonly held to be an incurable condition, and anyone who had it should be isolated from society.[2] Physician William Battie—who later treated Smart—wrote:
In particular, Battie defined madness as "deluded imagination".[3] However, he was criticized by other physicians, such as John Monro, who worked at Bethlem Hospital.[3] In his Remarks on Dr. Battie's Treatise on Madness, Monro explained that those who were mad had the correct perceptions, but that they lacked the ability to judge properly. Although Monro promoted ideas of reform, his suggested treatment—beating patients—was as harsh on patients as Battie's preferred option, of completely isolating patients from society.[3]
In 1758, Battie and others argued that those deemed "mad" were abused under the British asylum system, and they pushed for parliamentary action. Battie's Treatise on Madness emphasised the problems of treating the hospitals as tourist attractions and the punitive measures taken against patients. The arguments of Battie and others resulted in the passage of the Act for Regulating Private Madhouses (1774), but were too late to help Smart.[4]
Modern critics, however, have a more cynical view of the 18th-century use of the term "madness" when diagnosing patients; psychiatrist Thomas Szasz viewed the idea of madness as arbitrary and unnatural.[5] Agreeing with Szasz's position, philosopher Michel Foucault emphasized that asylums were used in the 18th century to attack dissenting views and that the idea of madness was a cultural fear held by the British public, rather than a legitimate medical condition.[6] In particular, Foucault considered the 18th century a time of "great confinement".[7] This description is consistent with Smart's 1760s writings on the subject in which, according to Thomas Keymer, "the category of madness is insistently relativized, and made to seem little more than the invention of a society strategically concerned to discredit all utterances or conduct that threatens its interests and norms."[8]
18th century treatment of inpatients was simple: they were to be fed daily a light diet of bread, oatmeal, some meat or cheese, and a little amount of beer, which were inadequate in meeting daily nutritional needs;[9] they were denied contact with outsiders, including family members;[3] and they would be denied access to that which was deemed to be the cause of their madness (these causes ranged from alcohol and food to working outside).[10] If their actions appeared "afresh and without assignable cause", then their condition would be labelled as "original" madness and deemed incurable.[10] An institution like St Luke's, run by Battie, held both "curable" and "incurable" patients.[11] There were few spots available for patients to receive free treatment, and many were released after a year to make room for new admittances.[12]
During the 1740s, Smart published many poems while a student at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He eventually left the university in 1749 to devote his time to poetry. In 1750, Smart started to familiarise himself with Grub Street, London's writing district, and met John Newbery, a publisher. Soon after, Newbery began publishing Smart's works in various magazines and in collections, including Poems on Several Occasions (1752). Of these works, Smart was known for his Seatonian Prize-winning poems, his pastoral poem The Hop-Garden, and his mock epic The Hilliad. In 1752, Smart married Newbery's daughter, Anna Maria Carnan, and had two daughters with her by 1754.[13] Although many of Smart's works were published between 1753 and 1755, he had little money to provide for his family.[14] At the end of 1755, he finished a translation of the works of Horace, but even that provided little income. Having no other choices, Smart signed a 99-year-long contract in November 1755 to produce a weekly paper entitled The Universal Visiter or Monthly Memorialist, and the strain of writing caused Smart's health to deteriorate.[15]
On 5 June 1756, Smart's father-in-law Newbery published, without permission, Smart's Hymn to the Supreme Being, a poem which thanked God for recovery from an illness of some kind, possibly a "disturbed mental state".[16] During the illness, Smart was possibly confined to Newbery's home and unable to write or be socially active. Out of sympathy for Smart, many of his friends, including writer and critic Samuel Johnson, began to write in the Universal Visiter to fulfill Smart's contractual obligation to produce content for the magazine.[17] The publication of Hymn to the Supreme Being marked the beginning of Smart's obsession with religion and eventual confinement for madness because he began praying "without ceasing".[18]
Smart's behaviour was probably influenced by St Paul's command in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians to "Pray without ceasing" and William Law's The Spirit of Prayer, which argues that a constant state of prayer will establish a connection with God.[19] Smart began by praying at regular intervals but this slowly deteriorated into irregular praying in which he would interrupt his friends' activities and call them into the street to pray with him.[20] These calls for public prayer continued until an incident that Smart later described in Jubilate Agno: "For I blessed God in St James's Park till I routed all the company... For the officers of the peace are at variance with me, and the watchman smites me with his staff" (Jubilate Agno B 90–91).[21]
Christopher Hunter, Smart's biographer and nephew, described the situation:
Hunter reports that Samuel Johnson visited Smart during the latter's confinement, and it was Johnson that, "on the first approaches of Mr Smart's malady, wrote several papers for a periodical publication in which that gentleman was concerned."[22] However, at no time did Smart ever believe himself to be insane; these meetings began before Smart was ever put into asylum because he still contributed, although not as significantly, to the Universal Visiter.[23] In joking about writing for the Universal Visiter, Johnson claimed: "for poor Smart, while he was mad, not then knowing the terms on which he was engaged to write ... I hoped his wits would return to him. Mine returned to me, and I wrote in 'the Universal Visitor' no longer."[24]
There are other possibilities beyond madness or religious fervor that may have led to Smart's confinement: Newbery may have used the imprisonment of his son-in-law as leverage to control the publication of Smart's work and as a warning to others who worked for him not to cross him. Another theory suggests Smart's actions were a result of alcohol, and had nothing to do with a mental imbalance.[25] However, Smart may have been imprisoned for embarrassing his father-in-law in some way, which could have resulted from an incident in which Smart drank.[25] Hester Thrale reinforced this latter possibility when she claimed that Smart's "religious fervor" tended to coincide with times that Smart was intoxicated.[25] Smart's own testimony that he "blessed God in St. James's Park till I routed all the company" (Jubilate Agno B 90–91) as representing his religious madness is equally dismissed as resulting from drinking, as he was known for pulling pranks and the Board of Green Cloth, the government body that controlled St James's Park, would treat most disturbances in the park as resulting from madness.[26] If Smart was placed into the asylum as a result of actions at St James's, he would not have been the only one, since records show that the Board of Green Cloth was responsible for admitting sixteen people to Bethlem Hospital for "frenzy" at St James's Park during the century prior to Smart being placed in St Luke's.[26]
The specific events of Smart's confinement are unknown. He may have been in a private madhouse before St Luke's and later moved from St Luke's to Mr Potter's asylum until his release. At St Luke's, he transitioned from being "curable" to "incurable", and was moved to Mr Potter's asylum for monetary reasons.[27] During Smart's confinement time, his wife Anna left and took the children with her to Ireland.[28] There is no record that he ever saw her again.[29] His isolation led him into writing religious poetry, and he abandoned the traditional genres of the 18th century that marked his earlier poetry when he wrote Jubilate Agno.[30]
During his time in asylum, Smart busied himself with a daily ritual of writing poetry; these lyric fragments eventually formed his Jubilate Agno and A Song to David. Smart might have turned to writing poetry as a way to focus the mind or as self-therapy.[31] Although 20th-century critics debate whether his new poetic self-examination represents an expression of evangelical Christianity, his poetry during his isolation does show a desire for "unmediated revelation" from God.[32] There is an "inner light" that serves as a focal point for Smart and his poems written during his confinement, and that inner light connects him to the Christian God.[33]
Few details are known about Smart's time at St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics. He was admitted to St Luke's on 6 May 1757 as a "Curable Patient".[34] It is possible that Smart was confined at Newbery's behest over old debts and a poor relationship that existed between the two; Newbery had previously mocked Smart's immorality in A Collection of Pretty Poems for the Amusement of Children six Foot High.[35] Regardless of Newbery's exact reasons, there is evidence suggesting that Newbery's admittance of Smart into the mental asylum was not based on madness.[25] To have Smart admitted, Newbery probably provided a small bribe, although bribes were against St Luke's policy.[11]
There is little information about Smart's condition during his stay at St Luke's, possibly because Battie's denied his patients from being visited, including by their own family members.[3] One of the few records that survive of Smart's time at St Luke's was an entry in St Luke's Minute Book, which read:
During Smart's confinement at St Luke's, not even other doctors were allowed to see Smart unless they had received personal permission from Battie.[36] It was improbable that Smart could have left the asylum without being released by Battie. Even if Smart would have attempted to obtain release via legal means, the rules for subpoenaing release would have been almost impossible to follow based on the system that Battie had in place, which isolated the individual from all contact.[12] Eventually, Smart was deemed "incurable" and would not have been released by the hospital but for its lack of funds.[27]