Richard Hutchins, the poet of "The Tree of life my soul hath seen" (Jesus Christ the apple tree)
Gerald Montagna
If I understand correctly from vague references on the Internet, both Northern Harmony and Shenandoah Harmony have recently revived the old folk hymn “The tree of life my soul hath seen” (I assume using the Ingalls 1805 tune, HTI #10972). I don’t know what these publications say about the authorship or origin of the text other than that it was popularized by the influential Divine Hymns series during the 1790s, as has long been realized. On the chance that these two recent publications don’t state anything specific about the poet, I will share what I have ascertained about him.
One often sees modern ascriptions to Joshua Smith, based on the rash assumption that if he published it and you don’t know the poet it must have been him; on the same reasoning dozens of poems have similarly been ascribed in modern times to Samson Occom and Richard Allen. The people who draw these inferences then proceed to analyze their works in order to define the distinct traits of American folk-hymn poetry. But in reality, all one has to do is to search digitally via Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) to discover that nearly all of these claims of American authorship are bogus, the poems having previously been published in Great Britain and usually identified with a specific British poet. Using ECCO I’ve found dozens of these pseudo-American poems, of which “The tree of life my soul hath seen” – often called the quintessence of American folk style – is one.
Henry Burrage (evidently informed by the great hymnologist F.M. Bird) wrote that “The tree of life” debuted in England in “The Spiritual Magazine” accompanied by ascription to “RH”. Interestingly, George Pullen Jackson added a footnote conceding this on the very same page where he pronounces this poem American and indeed the very quintessence of American folk style. The context makes it obvious that Jackson was only informed of this at press stage, when it was too late to alter the text on the page itself.
Until fairly recently the article “Jesus Christ the apple tree” on Wikipedia asserted that the poem in “The Spiritual Magazine” is a different poem from the American one with the same opening line; the anonymous author of said article reasoned that since all the literature says the poem is American, then this poem in The Spiritual Magazine MUST be a different one. As of today I see that said amateurish article has been replaced in its entirety by an author who took Burrage’s statement more seriously than the first author, although this second author doesn’t appear to have seen the Spiritual Magazine personally either. His or her confidence in Burrage’s accuracy is, rather, based upon discovery of an undated English broadside of the poem. This second author states that this broadside associates the poem with “Methodists”.
But there is no need to speculate on any of these issues, since “The Spiritual Magazine” is on ECCO enabling anyone to see it for themselves. The copy on ECCO is the magazine’s annual compilation as a book entitled Divine, Moral, and Historical Miscellanies, in Prose and Verse . . . (London, 1761), where the submission is found on p.138.
First of all, one emphasizes that Anne Dutton (the most important Baptist woman in 18th C. England) published this magazine for the use of Calvinistic Baptists, making it highly likely that the person who submitted the poem was a Calvinistic Baptist. We see further that the person who submitted the poem was not some third party, but was in fact the poet. Here is what “R.H.” wrote in introducing himself and his/her poems:
“To the Proprietors of the Spiritual Magazine. Gentlemen, Having spent some of my vacant time in the composition of short pieces of Divine Poetry, have sent you the following by way of specimen which, if thought worthy of a place in your Magazine, shall communicate the others regularly. I am Your well-wisher and constant reader, R.H.”
Evidently RH’s initial submissions were received favorably, for the poet followed through on this promise to “communicate the others regularly.” In the October and November RH followed up with The Lord of Host, my portion is / I can have nothing more (pp.202-03) and As thro’ the universe I wing’d my way (186-88). And here is our big break on the poet’s identity: this time, the poet’s home was identified Long Buckby.
So far we’ve ascertained that the poet was a Calvinistic Baptist living as of 1761 in the tiny Northamptonshire village of Long Buckby, located in the countryside between Northampton and Rugby. Up until 1743 the handful of Baptists of this village had been making a 7-mile trip to Flore. Beginning in 1743 the little band of Long Buckby Baptists began meeting informally under the leadership of laymen, notably messrs. Muddiman, Tolley and Coles. Finally in 1759 the dozen or two members formally organized a church and hired a young man as their pastor; from his subsequent actions it appears that he must have had had some training and been called to Long Buckby (as opposed to being ordained from within the congregation).
Given that in the 18th C. most male hymnwriters were pastors and further that the Baptist congregation at Long Buckby was so tiny that it seems unlikely they would have had more than one person by the initials “RH”, we may safely conclude that this pastor appointed in 1759 – RICHARD HUTCHINS – is the RH of Long Buckby who submitted his poems to Anne Dutton in 1761.
Very little is known of this man, other than that his poetry obtained a vogue (see at bottom). With such a small, impoverished congregation in Long Buckby, this church continually had problems holding its pastors, especially those with families; even as late as 1830 when it was growing and better established a pastor had to leave on account of his family’s poverty. We know that Richard Hutchins faced that same crisis, as we learn from the records of a Calvinistic Baptist church in London at Devonshire Square that he had been given a trial as pastor with the permission and even the compassionate encouragement of Long Buckby. Although a majority were agreeable to hiring him, Hutchins (in these records spelled “Hutchings”) declined the offer because this call was not unanimous. (See Walter Wilson, The history and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses, in London, Westminster, and Southwark . . . p.448.) Hutchins therefore returned to Long Buckby, but only briefly as in 1765 a new pastorate began with a Mr. Thomason.
Nothing further is known of the Richard Hutchins / Hutchings after his departure from Long Buckby. The name was a common one. This Baptist was most certainly not the namesake who an assistant to John Wesley. In 1773 a fanatical Calvinist named Richard Hutchings published two addresses given on the subject of the defeat of the Dissenters’ Relief Bill: see Gospel truths displayed, and gospel ministers duty (London) [also viewable on ECCO]. This man seems to have been prominent and respected amongst the London dissenters, and if he was the same man as in 1764 he had risen in the world very considerably. At present there is not yet any pressing reason to suspect that these two namesakes should be identified as one person.
As late as 1786 his poetry was still being preserved by others. That year “The tree of life” was printed in a brief anthology compiled by “C. Chandler” entitled A Handful of flowers for a Christian: A Collection of Hymns, extracted from the most evangelical authors (London 1786) [viewable on ECCO at Hymn #14, p.12]. This copy of “The tree of life” is now viewable on Google Books: https://books.google.com/books?id=N8JVAAAAcAAJ&pg=PR1&lpg=PR1&dq=%22a+handful+of+flowers+for+a+christian%22&source=bl&ots=dL4NOls0bd&sig=SAxMuxosGNlKQTFqXLBWK0zzMO0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiBluTaqrrOAhVoDcAKHSEpAnUQ6AEIKDAC#v=onepage&q=%22a%20handful%20of%20flowers%20for%20a%20christian%22&f=false
The biography of this “Chandler” might well provide a clue to Hutchins’ later years, but of this man I’ve managed to ascertain nothing. (Perhaps a thorough analysis of the rest of the collection might be helpful.)
Hutchins’ poetry was evidently remembered years later in the neighboring county of Buckinghamshire (Buckingham being about 25 miles south of Long Buckby). In 1820 a former resident of that county emigrated to South Africa, where in later years he still knew The Lord of host my portion is (one of the poems RH had submitted to Anne Dutton). (See The chronicle of Jeremiah Goldswain, Albany settler of 1820 (Capetown, 1946-49).
It may seem unbelievable that a poem could have been infrequently published in its native England only to explode to a first-rank in the U.S. But I’ve stumbled upon several other examples of a similar disparity, of which “The Voice of Free Grace” (from Yorkshire) comes most readily to mind as a very similar case. One possible explanation might be that the 18th C. British collections are not a representative as we would like to think they are. Another is that there may have been a tradition of hymn repertory in England that was passed down orally. If this were a real possibility, then it would be entirely possible that many of the features of what we call “folk hymnody” (both textual and musical) might simply have been transferred from Great Britain to the U.S. by an unwritten tradition.
Matt Bell
Gerald, this is great! Keep it up!
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