Thomas Gordon Hake

Thomas Gordon Hake
Portrait of Thomas Gordon Hake by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Born	(1809-03-10)10 March 1809
Died	11 January 1895(1895-01-11) (aged 85)
Occupation	Physician

Thomas Gordon Hake (10 March 1809 – 11 January 1895) was an English poet, physician.

He was born at Leeds on 10 March 1809, and was descended from an old Devonshire family who had 'lived on the soil for many years without being distinguished in any branch of science, literature, or art.' His father, whose usual residence was Sidmouth, possessed considerable musical acquirements. His mother, fourteen years older than the father, was of the Huntly branch of the Gordon family, being eldest daughter of Captain William Augustus Gordon, and aunt of General Charles Gordon. The father died when Hake was three years old ; his widow, left with a moderate competence, continued to live in Devonshire, and obtained for her son an admission to Christ's Hospital, where, first at the preparatory school at Hertford and afterwards in London, he received most of his education.

Having determined upon a medical career, he studied at Lewes under Thomas Hodson, 'the highest authority in his profession within the bounds of Sussex,' afterwards at St. George's Hospital, and at the university of Edinburgh and university of Glasgow, at which latter he graduated. After travelling for some time in Italy he settled at Brighton, where he was for five years physician to the dispensary, then proceeded to Paris for a year's study, and on his return in 1839 published Piromides, a tragedy on the mysteries of Isis, and the 'nebulous but impressive romance,' as Mr. W. M. Rossetti calls it, Vates, or the Philosophy of Madness, first issued in four incomplete numbers, with illustrations by Charles Landseer (1840, 4to), and afterwards republished in Ainsworth's Magazine as 'Yaldarno, or the Ordeal of Art-Worship.'

Towards 1844, 'it seethed in my brother's head,' says Mr. Rossetti, and it ultimately led to a friendship between Dante Rossetti and the author eventful for both. Hake next settled at Bury St. Edmunds, where he became intimate with George Borrow and J. W. Donaldson, of both of whom he has given interesting particulars in his autobiography. Between 1839 and 1853, he contributed numerous papers, chiefly of a scientific complexion, to the medical journals. About the latter date he gave up practice at Bury, travelled in America, and on his return established himself at Roehampton, and, while tilling the post of physician to the West London Hospital, became physician to the Countess of Ripon, who was related to his mother's family. The beauty of Lady Ripon’s woods at Nocton revived the spirit of poetry within him. He wrote his ‘Lily of the Valley’ and his ‘Old Souls,’ which, with other poems, were threaded together as 'The World’s Epitaph,' privately printed in 1806 in an edition of one hundred copies. One of these came into the hands of Rossetti, who admired it as enthusiastically is ‘Valdarno,' and the two poets met in October 1869. In Rossetti’s darkest days, when in 1872 his life was nearly terminated by laudanum, Hake rendered the greatest service. ‘He was the earthly providence of the Rossetti family,' says Mr. W. M. Rossetti. He took Dante Rossetti to his house during the wont of the crisis, afterwards accompanied him to Scotland, and consented to his own son George acting for a long time as Rossetti's companion and secretary, a position which the derangement of the patient's mental and physical health eventually rendered untenable.