Author: Hawker, Robert Stephen
Biography:
HAWKER, Robert Stephen (1803-75: ODNB)
Pseudonym Reuben
Hawker was the eldest of nine children of a surgeon, Jacob Stephen Hawker (1778-1845), and his wife Jane Elizabeth Drewitt (1776-1850). He was born at the Charles Church vicarage of his grandfather Robert Hawker (1753-1827) in Plymouth, Devon, on 3 Dec. 1803 and baptised on 29 Dec. When his father, about 1810, belatedly decided to become a clergyman and was appointed to a parish in north Cornwall, Robert remained under the care of his grandfather. He was educated at Liskeard grammar school and Cheltenham grammar school (where he published his first collection of poems) before going up to Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1823. Then, at the age of 19, he married Charlotte I’ans (1781-1863), a woman more than twice his age, at his father’s church in Stratton, Cornwall, on 6 Nov. 1823. The marriage was childless but evidently happy. Hawker transferred to Magdalen Hall (BA 1828, MA 1836), was ordained in 1831 and after a curacy in North Tamerton, Cornwall, was appointed vicar of Morwenstowe, Cornwall, where he stayed until his death. He was according to reports an eccentric but devoted vicar: some of his later collections of verse were published for the benefit of his parishioners and the parish school. Notable titles are Records of the Western Shore (1832, second series 1836), The Poor Man and his Parish Church (1840), Ecclesia (1840), Echoes from Old Cornwall (1846), The Quest of the Sangraal (1864), and Cornish Ballads (1869). After the death of his first wife he made a second unconventional marriage to a young governess, Pauline Anne Kuczynski (1844-92) on 21 Dec. 1864 at Paddington, London. They had three daughters. His wife said later that he had been “a Catholic at heart” for as long as she had known him; on his deathbed, he was baptised a Roman Catholic. Hawker died at 17 Lockyer St, Plymouth, on 15 Aug. 1875 and was buried in Plymouth cemetery on 18 Aug. He left assets valued at under £3000. In 1880 Pauline Hawker received a civil-list pension of £80 p.a. in recognition of his merit as a poet. (ODNB 24 Dec. 2024; ancestry.com 24 Dec. 2024; findmypast.com 24 Dec. 2024; Alumni Oxonienses)
Other Names:
- R. S. Hawker