Francis Joseph Sherman
Encyclopedia
Francis Joseph Sherman was a Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 poet.

He published a number of books of poetry during the last years of the nineteenth century, including Matins and In Memorabilia Mortis (a collection of sonnet
Sonnet
A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...

s in memory of William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...

).

Life

Sherman was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick
New Brunswick
New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...

, the son of Alice Maxwell Myrshall and Louis Walsh Sherman. He attended Fredericton Collegiate School, where he came under the influence of headmaster George R. Parkin, "an Oxonian
Oxonian
An Oxonian is a member of the University of Oxford, England. The term is derived from Oxonia, the Latin form of Oxenford or Oxford. The term can also refer to an inhabitant of the city of Oxford, but is less used in this context.The matching word for Cambridge and the University of Cambridge is...

 with an enthusiasm for the poetry of Rossetti
Rossetti
Rossetti may refer to:* Biagio Rossetti , an architect and urbanist from Ferrara, the first to use modern methods* Carlo Rossetti , an Italian Catholic cardinal* Cezaro Rossetti , a Scottish Esperanto writer...

, Swinburne
Swinburne
Swinburne may refer to:* A place:**Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia**Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus in Kuching, Malaysia**Swinburne Senior Secondary College in Melbourne, Australia...

, and, notably, Morris," who had also taught Bliss Carman
Bliss Carman
Bliss Carman FRSC was a Canadian poet who lived most of his life in the United States, where he achieved international fame. He was acclaimed as Canada's poet laureate during his later years....

 and Charles G.D. Roberts
Charles G.D. Roberts
Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts, was a Canadian poet and prose writer who is known as the Father of Canadian Poetry. He was "almost the first Canadian author to obtain worldwide reputation and influence; he was also a tireless promoter and encourager of Canadian literature......

. For a short time, Carman was one of Sherman's teachers.

Sherman entered the University of New Brunswick
University of New Brunswick
The University of New Brunswick is a Canadian university located in the province of New Brunswick. UNB is the oldest English language university in Canada and among the first public universities in North America. The university has two main campuses: the original campus founded in 1785 in...

 in 1886, but had to drop out after a year for financial reasons. Louis Sherman abandoned his family, and Francis, as the eldest of the seven children, had to help support them. In 1887 he took a junior post in the Merchants' Bank of Halifax in Woodstock, New Brunswick
Woodstock, New Brunswick
Woodstock is a Canadian town in Carleton County, New Brunswick located on the west bank of the Saint John River at the mouth of the Meduxnekeag River, 92 km west of Fredericton and close to the Canada – United States border and Houlton, Maine.- History :Woodstock was settled by Loyalists...

, transferring back to Fredericton the next year.

Charles G.D. Roberts, who first met Sherman in 1895, described him as "very tall, lean, very dark, with heavy black eyebrows like his mother, and with the large wistful eyes of the poet rather than the banker." Sherman was writing poetry at that time, and with Roberts's encouragement published his first book the next year.

Sherman was engaged to May Whelpey of Fredericton when they were both in their twenties. However, the marriage was called off after she was stricken with infantile paralysis.

By 1898 Sherman was the manager of the Merchants' Bank Fredericton branch, "the youngest man in Canada to hold such an office." He was transferred to the Montreal office in 1899, and in November of that year sent to Havana, Cuba, as the bank's first agent there. He "had established the bank's influence throughout Cuba and the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 by 1901, when the Merchants' Bank changed its name to the Royal Bank of Canada
Royal Bank of Canada
The Royal Bank of Canada or RBC Financial Group is the largest financial institution in Canada, as measured by deposits, revenues, and market capitalization. The bank serves seventeen million clients and has 80,100 employees worldwide. The company corporate headquarters are located in Toronto,...

."

Sherman last published work appeared at Christmastime, 1900, and he appears to have stopped writing poetry entirely in 1901. "Outside business hours, his chief hobby was reading, and collecting first editions. What little spare time remained he devoted to swimming and yachting. A love of the seas was in his veins. He sailed his own yacht, White Wings, in many races, and was Vice-Commodore of the Havana Yacht Club at the time of his return to Canada." Sherman stayed in Cuba until 1912, at which time he transferred back to Montreal.

When World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 broke out in 1914, Sherman left his bank position, enrolling with the Officers' Training Corps at McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...

, and then enlisting as a private for reinforcements of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry
Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry
Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry is one of the three regular force infantry regiments of the Canadian Army. The regiment is composed of four battalions including a primary reserve battalion, for a total of 2,000 soldiers...

 in 1915. In France, he became a captain and later was transferred to the Royal Canadian Pay Corps, where he reached the rank of major.

After the War Sherman returned to the Royal Bank, but had to resign in 1919 due to ill health caused by his military service.

Sherman married Ruth Ann Sullivan of Philadelphia on June 16, 1921. They had two sons, Francis and Jerry. Francis Sherman died in Atlantic City, New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

, in 1926, and is buried in Forest Hill Cemetery in Fredericton.

Matins

In 1896, Sherman visited Bliss Carman's publishers, Copeland and Day, in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, taking with him "a slim manuscript of thirty poems in an assortment of styles, most either sonnets or ballads." Copeland and Day published them as his first book, Matins. Copeland and Day subsequently became the regular publisher of Sherman's work. Bliss Carman called Matins "the most notable first volume of verse of the past year," while Roberts called it "a work of considerable significance.". In the United States, the Hartford Courant cited the book for “dignity, art, and much beauty of thought and expression”, and the Boston Transcript added that it was “of genuine literary importance.” Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...

 reportedly also praised the book.

The poetry of this first volume "is unmistakably derived from Rossetti and the early Morris". Many of the stories recall Morris poems: "a narrator speaks from beyond life, a fantastic setting is located beyond space and time, a ballad and a dramatic monologue are written in the Froissartian
Jean Froissart
Jean Froissart , often referred to in English as John Froissart, was one of the most important chroniclers of medieval France. For centuries, Froissart's Chronicles have been recognized as the chief expression of the chivalric revival of the 14th century Kingdom of England and France...

 tone, interior and exterior landscapes reflect the speakers’ disturbed psychological states, precise details of colour predominate, italics are used for effect, atmospheres are Medieval, and, in general, the subjects are love, fate, and death." At the same time, as Roberts notes, in "some respects Sherman was most akin to Rossetti. 'A Memory,' 'The Path,' 'The Last Flower” and “The Kingfisher' ... vividly recall Rossetti’s brilliance of light color, but most of all his rich imagery and sensuous recollection."

In Memorabilia Mortis

Sherman's next publication, In Memorabilia Mortis, also published in 1896, was an elegy he had composed just two months after Morris's death that October. The elegy consists of six stanzas, each of which is also a technically perfect sonnet. Roberts says of these that, "In mastery of the sonnet form, in beauty of cadence, in verbal felicity and adequacy of thought content, with the nineteen sonnets of lofty faith published, in 1899, under the title of The Deserted City, they fully establish him in the same rank with Lampman
Archibald Lampman
Archibald Lampman, was a Canadian poet. "He has been described as 'the Canadian Keats;' and he is perhaps the most outstanding exponent of the Canadian school of nature poets." The Canadian Encyclopedia says that he is "generally considered the finest of Canada's late 19th-century poets in...

, our master sonneteer."

The elegy contains obvious allusions to Morris's work: "the seasonal and perceptual subjects of Sherman’s elegy recall The Earthly Paradise sequence of lyrics as a whole; in a sense, In Memorabilia Mortis returns Morris’s art to him in a modified and relevant Canadian form and by so doing demonstrates the universality of his mythmaking project."

A Prelude

Sherman's long poem "A Prelude" was published privately by Copeland and Day in 1897. It "demonstrates a subtle shift away from the Pre-Raphaelites
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...

. Its diction is not as anachronistic as the previous collections, though it is still freighted with elevated language. Sherman incorporates Canadian foliage such as birches, maples, and pines more perceptibly here and allows himself a closer association to New Brunswick subject matter." Roberts called "A Prelude" "a sustained contemplative poem of nature interwoven with human interest, inspired with that seriousness, that unawareness of the trivial, so characteristic of all Sherman’s work. It is written, with unfaltering technique throughout, in that most exacting Italian verse form, the Terza Rima
Terza rima
Terza rima is a rhyming verse stanza form that consists of an interlocking three-line rhyme scheme. It was first used by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri.-Form:Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern A-B-A, B-C-B, C-D-C, D-E-D...

, which scarcely any one else except Shelley
Shelley
-Meaning:In many baby name books, Shelley is listed as meaning "From the meadow on the ledge" or "clearing on a bank". It is Old English in origin. As with many other names , Shelley is today a name given almost exclusively to girls after historically being male...

 has known how to handle successfully in English."

The Deserted City

Three years later, Copeland and Day published (again privately) The Deserted City, "nineteen lyrical and finely disciplined sonnets on faith and love, described by Roberts as the work of a ‘master sonneteer’." Modelled on Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...

's "House of Life," the sonnet sequence "demonstrates Sherman’s attempts to reconcile spiritual/secular dichotomies by exploring the soul/body conflict." The Deserted City "exhibits a less elevated language and explores the Canadian scene in a more realistic sense" than in his earlier work.

A Canadian Calendar: XII Lyrics

Sherman’s last collection was A Canadian Calendar: XII Lyrics, privately published in Havana in 1900. This cycle, meant to describe Canadian nature over a full year, show "a more authentic New Brunswick, partly because Sherman exhibits a greater diversity of metrical pattern than in previous works." Roberts calls this book "Sherman’s most mature and deepest work. Life has marked him inescapably. The tragedy of his great love and his great loss inspires every one of these twelve poems, but always it is expressed interpretatively in terms of the changing seasons."

In this last book, "Sherman’s ability to apply the techniques of Rossetti and, especially, Morris to specifically Canadian subjects appears most clearly.... Sherman presents the particularities of seasonal changes in landscape, as well as the correspondent variations in human mood, with sensitivity and clarity. Form and content blend. 'A Song in August' and 'Three Gray Days' are examples of this suitability."

An Acadian Easter

“An Acadian Easter,” published in The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic Monthly
The Atlantic is an American magazine founded in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1857. It was created as a literary and cultural commentary magazine. It quickly achieved a national reputation, which it held for more than a century. It was important for recognizing and publishing new writers and poets,...

in 1900, is considered Sherman's strongest piece of work. "This is an attempt — a very successful attempt — to present an heroic and supremely tragic episode of Canadian history, the episode of Madame La Tour ... but impressionistically and by allusion. It is written in firmly woven but intensely emotionalized blank verse interspersed with plangent lyrics. It is a poetical, but hardly a popular, triumph."

The poem is a dramatic monologue spoken by Madame LaTour, "with varying stanza forms reminiscent of Morris’s 'Sir Peter Harpdon’s End' and 'Rapunzel'. Whereas the personal voice of Lady La Tour recalls that of Guenevere, her historical voice and situation have similarities with those of Peter Harpdon. The speaker’s reflections on her betrayal by both love and history give her words the psychological intensity and nostalgic depth of the Guenevere poems.... Her vision is, then, 'Pre-Raphaelite but, at the same time, distinctively Canadian."

In her essay, "'There Was One Thing He Could Not See': William Morris in the Writing of Archibald Lampman and Francis Sherman," Karen Herbert sums up: "Sherman’s integration of Canadian history, landscape, and perspective into Morris’s psychological narrative, colour symbolism, and form creates an exemplary Canadian myth. All in all, Sherman’s poetry acknowledges both his debt to Morris and Rossetti and his allegiance to a Canadian mode of vision and voice. This dialectic predominates in the work of Francis Sherman, a personally diffident but artistically assured turn-of-the-century Canadian poet."

Recognition

In a 1934 address to the Royal Society of Canada
Royal Society of Canada
The Royal Society of Canada , may also operate under the more descriptive name RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada , is the oldest association of scientists and scholars in Canada...

, Roberts referred to the complete neglect of Sherman’s work by critics.

In 1935 Sherman's Complete Poems were published, with a memoir by the editor, Lorne Pierce
Lorne Pierce
Lorne Albert Pierce was a Canadian publisher, editor, and literary critic who published and promoted Canadian literature for more than forty years during his tenure as editor of Toronto's Ryerson Press...

, and a foreword by Sir Charles G.D. Roberts.

In 1945, Sherman's name was added to the Canadian Government's list of Persons of National Historic Significance.

He is commemorated by a sculpure erected on the University of New Brunswick
University of New Brunswick
The University of New Brunswick is a Canadian university located in the province of New Brunswick. UNB is the oldest English language university in Canada and among the first public universities in North America. The university has two main campuses: the original campus founded in 1785 in...

 campus in 1947 that portrays him with fellow poets Bliss Carman
Bliss Carman
Bliss Carman FRSC was a Canadian poet who lived most of his life in the United States, where he achieved international fame. He was acclaimed as Canada's poet laureate during his later years....

 and Sir Charles G.D. Roberts.

Publications

  • Matins. Boston: Copeland and Day, 1896
    1896 in poetry
    — closing lines of Rudyard Kipling's If—, first published this yearNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:...

    .
  • In Memorabilia Mortis. Boston: Copeland and Day, 1896.
  • A Prelude. Boston: Copeland and Day, 1897
    1897 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Canada:* Jean Blewett, Heart Songs...

    .
  • Two Songs at Parting. by John Bodkin and Francis Sherman. Fredericton: n.p., 1899.
  • The Deserted City. Boston: Copeland and Day, 1899
    1899 in poetry
    — Opening lines of Rudyard Kipling's White Man's Burden, first published this yearNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:...

    .
  • A Canadian Calendar: XII Lyrics. Havana: n.p., 1900
    1900 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* In February, Myōjō , a monthly literary magazine, begins publication in Japan. between February 1900 and November 1908...

    .
  • "An Acadian Easter," The Atlantic Monthly, April 1900.
  • The complete poems of Francis Sherman. Lorne Pierce ed., Sir Charles G.D. Roberts fwd. Toronto: Ryerson P, 1935
    1935 in poetry
    Links to nations or nationalities point to articles with information on that nation's poetry or literature. For example, United Kingdom links to English poetry and Indian links to Indian poetry.-Events:* Canada -- Charles G.D...

    .


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy of New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia.

External links

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