Robert Stephen Hawker - Biography

Biography

Hawker was born in the vicarage of Charles Church, Plymouth, on 3 December 1803, He was the eldest of nine children and grandson of Robert Hawker, vicar of Charles Church. When he was about ten years old his father, Jacob Stephen Hawker, took Holy Orders and left Plymouth to become curate of Altarnun, leaving him in the care of his grandparents. By this time Hawker was already reading and writing poetry. He was educated at Liskeard Grammar School and Cheltenham Grammar School. As an undergraduate, aged 19, he married Charlotte Eliza I'ans, aged 41. The couple spent their honeymoon at Tintagel in 1823, a place that kindled his lifelong fascination with Arthurian legend and later inspired him to write The Quest of the Sangraal. This marriage, along with a legacy, helped to finance his studies at Pembroke College, Oxford. He graduated in 1827 and won the 1827 Newdigate Prize for poetry.

Hawker was ordained in 1831, becoming curate at North Tamerton and then, in 1834, vicar of the church at Morwenstow, where he remained throughout his life. When he arrived at Morwenstow there had not been a vicar in residence for over a century. Smugglers and wreckers were apparently numerous in the area. A contemporary report says the Morwenstow wreckers "allowed a fainting brother to perish in the sea without extending a hand of safety."

Hawker's first wife, Charlotte, died in 1863 and the following year, aged 60, he married Pauline Kuczynski, aged 20. They had three daughters, Morwenna Pauline Hawker, Rosalind Hawker and Juliot Hawker. Robert Hawker died in August 1875, having become a Roman Catholic on his deathbed. He was buried in Plymouth's Ford Park Cemetery. His funeral was noteworthy because the mourners wore purple instead of the traditional black.