The Forgotten Preacher-Poet

Miscellaneous

Nov 9

If you’ve been following this page for any length of time, you’re likely to have come across some truly majestic authorship by members of this community over the past 150 years. While it’s easy to describe Lake Minnetonka, its size, beauty, and importance to others, it’s much harder to do so in a way that conveys the lake’s weight as it’s felt in the soul. That’s only natural, as I think it’s safe to say that many of us struggle with putting matters of the heart and soul into effective words.

However, once in a generation, an author can do just that. Perhaps none have done it so eloquently as the, almost entirely forgotten, poet George Benson Hewetson. Before we get to his poetry, let’s take a moment to recall the man himself — because he was certainly someone worth recalling.

George Benson Hewetson was born in England in 1865 to a lineage of high-profile religious leaders. Destined to follow in their footsteps, Hewetson became a well established member of the British Anglican church. However, he was not so inclined to remain there as, in the late 1800’s, he braved the Atlantic to make a new life in Canada and the expanding American frontier. He settled in the northern climate near modern day Minneapolis where he traveled to the Lake Minnetonka region to help establish Anglican churches in the region. He would later settle in Saskatchewan for the same calling. While doing so, he became somewhat famous for tidily juggling the church’s needs with his own ambitions as an author. It was through the 1890’s and 1900’s, that he published poetry which veered far from the typical writings of a religious man. His work covered topics ranging from complimenting the world’s natural beauties to harsh criticisms of labor standards and city life.

In 1914, Hewetson stepped down from his position in Saskatchewan and converted to Roman-Catholicism — to which the public rewarded with scorn and criticism. His familial relation to the Archbishop of Canterbury caused Anglicans to view his conversion as a betrayal of their trust, the Anglican religion, and to his own bloodline. At the same time, the conversion threw him into a fiercely anti-Catholic environment. In the 1910’s, Catholicism in Canada and the upper American Midwest was experiencing a broadside attack from groups like the American Protective Association and reformed Ku Klux Klan. Their claims were that Catholics in the region were more loyal to the Pope than to their own democratic governments. Hewtson’s realignment took him from a position of high respect and dignity to one of marginalization, scrutiny, and hate.

Yet he was not deterred and, while facing the onslaught, continued to pen some of his best works. While an official publication date is not currently known to the author, it is highly likely that he penned the following poem about Lake Minnetonka in this time of extreme turmoil. Knowing this, the impact of each verse becomes all the louder and its eloquent prose all the more radiant.

Let’s read what George Benson Hewetson has to say. . .

“On Lake Minnetonka enchantingly lie

The gold of the sunshine, the blue of the sky;

And its shores the bright waters in beauty enfold

In a setting of flowers and emerald and gold.

Why search ye for beauty across the wide seas

When here in your homeland are beauties like these?

Go, drink in the sunshine, and let its warm rays

Allure you to revels of life-giving ways!

Where each lovely day sinks in gold to its close,

And the night, silver-robed, invites all to repose;

Where rest is so tranquil, refreshing and deep

That the earth shares the joy and the beauty of sleep.”

Hewetson left behind a legacy of reverent love for the common man and nature as well as the stalwart determination to face down the injustices of a world which looks down on a group of people who did nothing beyond having differing views from their opponents. His poetry, read today, speaks volumes to the world he’s now 100 years separated from.