LOVE LYRICS

 

THE LOVE LYRICS OF ALAN STANLEY
BY
BARRY VAN-ASTEN

 

 

‘Your life was in its spring time when we met,
The flowers bent down in homage as you came
Whispering of love; I never could forget,
Once having seen, that body white of thine,
Or dear gold hair crowned with the purple vine,
And crimson mouth which set my blood a-flame.’
 

[Surrender. Love Lyrics. 1894. p. 10]

 

 

In 1894 a slim volume of poetry titled ‘Love Lyrics’ was published by the London publishers, Gay and Bird; its author was a young unknown poet named Alan Stanley, a pseudonym of Stanley Addleshaw, later Reverend Canon Stanley Addleshaw. The volume is not a very remarkable collection of poetry being for the most part derivative of the so-called decadent period and there are more than a few hints of ‘unwholesome’ or some would say ‘unnatural’ acts of passion. Many passages in Love Lyrics speak of the poet’s desire for a younger ‘golden haired’ lover, a love the poet has been cultivating for two years until there are signs of reciprocal passion. I believe the book relives this flourishing passion in poetic form with the usual mystique surrounding such intimate declarations of affection, necessary for its time. There are moments of sheer indulgence and attempts to merge into the world of sinful aestheticism centring on an overpowering lust, the blossoming fruit of every youthful thought; and there are instances when the verse fails, but there is tremendous promise if the poet had continued to develop, which unfortunately he did not. I do not wish to be a harsh critic, many others before me have filled that role; I value the book simply for its historical interest and somewhat endearing ‘schoolboyish’, naive charm, perhaps the flowering of the folly of youth.

Stanley Addleshaw was the fourth and final child (all boys), born to the Manchester solicitor, John William Addleshaw (1836-1924) and his first wife, Rachel Ann Heyes Hemingway (1839-1873) who were married at the Parish Church in West Derby, Lancashire on Thursday 16^th November 1865 (1). Their first child was the barrister, poet and author, William Percy Addleshaw, born 22^nd September 1866, [Christened on 28^th November 1866 at Bowdon, Cheshire] who like Stanley, had similar influences and desires. William, or Percy as he liked to be known, was educated at Shrewsbury School, entering in the Easter term of 1880 and leaving in 1886. He went up to Christ Church, Oxford, matriculating on 12^th June 1886, aged 19 and studied Law, B.A. 1890 and he was called to the bar in 1893. Percy, under the pseudonym, Percy Hemingway, published a collection of stories: ‘Out of Egypt: Stories from the Threshold of the East’ in 1895 and the following year a volume of poetry, ‘The Happy Wanderer and Other Verse’ (1896). (2) There are several instances in Percy’s ‘Happy Wanderer’ of a close-guarded love between it seems two young men (many of the poems had already appeared in The Academy and two of the poems were published in the Pall Mall Gazette). The volume opens with Percy’s poem to his friend – In Memoriam Roden Noel (obit May 26^th, 1894), where he declares that ‘the doors are shut, the locks are sealed, / and many weep above your grave, / some for the secrets unrevealed, / and all remembering what you gave.’ (p. 1) The poem goes on, saying ‘But I, who loved your songs and you, / a gracious presence still shall meet, / on peaceful days of August blue,’… In another poem, To John Addington Symonds (p. 17) he calls him ‘friend’ and he says they had made plans to meet but unfortunately Symonds died on 19^th April 1893 before it was carried out. In ‘The Refugee’ (p. 38) Percy, under the heavy ache the poet suffers for love, says that ‘It is my fate to suffer, this I know, / for I have touched the stinging hand of Sin, / and where he beckoned jauntily would go, / learnt all his tricks and skilfully grew therein.’ And in ‘Lovers’ (p. 40) he concludes ‘”For in his presence I may doff the sham, / because he loves me even as I am.”’ adding, ‘such is the love of friends in every land, / but only they who love may understand.’ Perhaps the most revealing of the poems is ‘All Souls’ Night’ (p. 43) where he confesses ‘’tis no phantom wooes me on this night; / my lover’s limbs are strong, his heart is light,’. The poet rounds off the volume with a series of quatrains he dedicates to Frederick York Powell (1850-1904) who was a lecturer of Law at Christ Church, Oxford and later in 1894, Professor of Modern History. (3) The next child born to John and Rachel Addleshaw was Harold Pope Addleshaw, born on 24^th February 1868 (Christened on 10^th September 1868 at Bowdon, Cheshire). Harold attended Shrewsbury School in the Easter Term of 1880 and left in 1886 and like his father, became a solicitor. (4) The third child born to the Addleshaw’s was John William Heywood Addleshaw, born on 14^th May 1869 (Christened 9^th October 1869 at Bowdon, Cheshire). J. W. H. Addleshaw entered Shrewsbury School in the Easter Term of 1883 and later became a solicitor. (5) Then the last child, Stanley Addleshaw, was born on Friday 1^st December 1871 at Chorlton. Actually, there was another child, Rachel Theodora Addleshaw, born in Whalley Range, Manchester on Thursday 11^th September 1873 who sadly died [Manchester Evening News. Friday 12^th September 1873. p. 4] and it was either giving birth or complications following the birth, that Stanley’s mother, Rachel Addleshaw died; she was just 34 years old. In the 1881 census [RG11, piece/folio: 3886/95. p. 12, line: 8] nine year old Stanley is living with his widowed, 43 year old solicitor father in Stretford, Lancashire. They have three servants: Agnes Reefe, 22 from Worcester, Emily Bexter or Bixter, 27 from Suffolk and Lucy Brown, 28 from Lincoln. Stanley’s brothers, 13 year old Harold and 14 year old Percy are boarding at Shrewsbury School in Shropshire which they entered in the Easter term of 1880 [RG11, 2649/16, p. 25, line: 17]; 11 year old John William H Addleshaw is possibly boarding at Harrow Moor School, Sharrow Vale Road, in Eccleshall Bierlow, Yorkshire, West Riding [RG11, 4634/10, p. 13, line: 9] but I cannot be altogether certain of this; but we do know that he entered Shrewsbury School two years later in the Easter term of 1883.

On Friday 24^th January 1890, the three brothers: Percy, Harold and Stanley Addleshaw attended a Grand Ball hosted by the Mayor and Mayoress of Manchester at the Town Hall, Albert Square [Manchester Courier. Saturday 25^th January 1890, p. 6]. The guests, of which there were between 400-500, arrived at 8 p.m. and were presented to Alderman and Mayoress, Mrs. Mark; there was a refreshment buffet and the large hall had three huge mirrors installed and was used for dancing while the music was courtesy of Mr. F. Vetter’s quadrille band – 18 waltzes, 2 Lancers and 2 polkas. Supper – ‘boars head a la Windsor’, was at 11 p.m. and the music resumed at midnight till after 2 a.m.

Stanley Addleshaw went up to Pembroke College, Oxford on Saturday 25^th October 1890, aged 18 – Third Class History 1894, B.A. 1895, M.A. 1905. Within his first month at Oxford Stanley is cox in the winning Pembroke College boat in the rowing tournament on 21^st November [The Oxford Magazine. 26 November 1890. p. 122]. While at Oxford, Stanley, like his older brother, Percy, wrote verse which extolled the beauty of young men and boys, a fashionable pursuit at Oxford in the nineties by young bachelor scholars. Percy and Stanley both came under the influence of Oxford’s aesthetic movement and both had become acquainted with the poet, and Cambridge Apostle, the Honourable Roden Noel (1834-1894). They also both later attended the funeral of the author on art and editor of The Studio – Joseph Gleeson White (1851-1898) which took place at Hammersmith Cemetery on the afternoon of Saturday 22^nd October 1898 – White died aged 46 on 19^th October and his coffin was of ‘polished elm, with massive brass furniture’ [Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette. Thursday 27^th October 1898. p. 6]. Gleeson White had designed the cover to Percy’s volume ‘Out of Egypt’ in 1895 and the following year included four quatrains of Percy’s in ‘The Pageant’ (6); along with Edward Fairbrother Strange (1862-1929), (7) Gleeson was the editor of the Bell’s series of Cathedral books and they had edited Percy Addleshaw’s book on Exeter Cathedral published in January 1898, nine months before Gleeson died in October.

Throughout the eighteen-nineties, the Addleshaw brothers, Percy, Harold, John and Stanley, generally took their holidays in Buxton and usually Mary McDonnell, whom John married in 1893, would come too; Mary Gertrude Shore whom Harold later married also attended on some occasions. In 1891, John, Harold, Stanley (of ‘Pembroke College’) and Miss McDonnel stayed at The Hollies in Buxton from 15^th - 27^th April (8).

Stanley Addleshaw had two articles published in The Spirit Lamp in 1892 and 1893; firstly, a ‘Short Note Upon a New Volume of Poems’, a review of ‘Silhouettes’ by Arthur Symons in volume II, number IV of the Spirit Lamp (6^th December 1892, pp. 117-118) in which he says Symons ‘writes as one bored with life; he is a pessimist and a cynic. Nearly every poem in the book is unhealthy; the atmosphere is that of the hot-house. Those of the poems which deal with nature are melancholy in the extreme, and those that deal with mankind show a morbid love of depicting sin in its most hectic colours.’ The article goes on to say that ‘these are the orchids of the muse, and he who loves but wild-flowers may not approach them.’ (p. 118) The second article is titled ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’ in volume III, number II of The Spirit Lamp (17^th February 1893, pp. 30-32) which is a review of the O.U.D.S. play of 1893 which Stanley believes was a poor choice and ‘cannot be called a very interesting comedy, and it is certainly much more charming to read it than to see it acted.’ (p. 31)

Love Lyrics appeared under the pseudonym Alan Stanley while Stanley Addleshaw was still an undergraduate of Oxford University in November 1894. (9) The poet served his dedication of the feast, the ‘poor, frail flowers’, ‘To G___’ like cold soup, somewhat embarrassingly on the final page of the book (p. 54), saying: ‘These poems are all of love, and you / inspired them, sweet. / Your beauty thrilled me through and through; / as melody to viola / so was I tuned to you. / What else, fond lover, can I do / but lay these offerings at your feet - / these poor, frail flowers at your feet?’ The first of the ‘frail flowers’ to adorn the volume is ‘At Evening’ (p. 2) in which the poet lays his sentimental agony before us right away – ‘Do your lips tremble now to mine? / In your eyes can I see / spring up a light of love divine, / a new born ecstasy? / Ah, dear, I shiver ‘neath your kiss, / have I not waited long for this - / that you should turn to me?’ And in similar mood he lays his tortured heart before the simple beauty of a child – ‘My heart’s desire is white and fair, / more gold than sunshine in his hair,’ and the syrup keeps on flowing from the poet’s sweet lips – ‘So frail he is, so slim and rare, / a willow wand he seems to be / that quivers with each passing air, / - My heart’s desire.’ But he is not done with us yet, for ‘His beauty fills me with despair, / it overwhelms me so; I dare / scarcely to pray on bended knee / that I may kiss him reverently, / fearing to stain beyond repair / my heart’s desire.’ [To a Child, pp. 4-5) In another poem, Love in Autumn, the poet’s ‘heart grows weary’ and he sighs to recapture ‘the golden glories that are fled’ (p. 7) before the reader succumbs to the charm of the final verse in ‘To a Dream’ (p. 12) and we find new peaks to the poet’s misery when he recalls how he ‘felt warm kisses fall / on upturned throat and barren breast, / then stirred I with a wild unrest / to know the sweetest kiss of all.’ One wonders if indeed he ever did get to know the ‘sweetest kiss of all’? The poet has placed a fair broth of sentimentality before us that we spoon down between prized lips all too eager to taste of that much talked about ‘sweetest kiss of all’, yet we must suffer in silence for now and continue in the hope of Swinburnian touches of brilliance. And it comes, or at least a passing shadow of lyrical beauty, in the form of The Dawn Nocturne (August Blue) where we find a young bather lingering around the third verse – ‘stripped for the sea your tender form / seems all of ivory white, / through which the blue veins wander warm / o’er throat and bosom slight, / and as you stand, so slim, upright / tho glad waves grow and yearn / to clasp you circling in their might, / to kiss with lips that burn.’ (p. 15) Quite beautiful and even the printing mistake following those ‘glad waves’ that should have read ‘glow’ and not ‘grow’ is a fortunate accident for indeed it defines the hunger in the yearning better, I believe. But let us not be too hasty to leave the water, for ‘a very nymph you seem to be / as you glide and dive and swim, / while the mad waves clasp you fervently / possessing every limb.’ (p. 15-16) Such heights of ecstasy seem almost unreachable for the young poet and it is almost certain that he was inspired by the famous painting by Henry Scott Tuke’s of four youths, three nude, bathing in Falmouth harbour, called ‘August Blue’ which was begun in Cornwall in 1893, a place Percy, Stanley and Roden Noel liked to visit; we can of course speculate that Stanley may have met Tuke or visited his studio. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition between 7^th May and 6^th August 1894 and it is probable that Stanley saw the exhibition and the painting inspired the poem. We can only assume in the next poem, Now Dies the Sun, (p. 17) that the remarkable youth has left the water and taken with him all the exhilarating rays of that glorious orb of fire and our poet once more is in darkness and despair, for ‘Lo! the pale moon by gentle breezes led / drifts like a wraith, ere night has yet begun, / all grows so hushed, the very world seems dead, - / now dies the sun.’ I am particularly fond of the poem, ‘Love at Hinksey’:

 

In the grey city at our feet
The lights gleam out, and one by one
Each gas-jet makes a mimic sun
Now the real sun has set, and sweet
The air grows with the heavy scent
Each flowering bush of May has lent;
The sky above a clear-cut gem,
And the moon rising from the sea
Trailing her white robes silently,
Has seven stars for a diadem.
 
When the sun set the breeze, too, fell,
Fluttering down like a wounded bird,
Now only its dying call is heard
From where wan river waters swell,
Amid tall lilies golden grown
We two in silence stand alone.
Your trembling hand in mine is prest,
I know within your sweet grey eyes
Love lights a torch which never dies
But flares for ever in unrest.
 
Ah dear, you love me now, and yet
Have I not often felt despair
Lest I should never touch your hair,
Or that our lips had never met?
I thought that you would never be
More than a simple friend to me.
Have I not known you two long years?
Have I not striven to make you love?
I think some angel from above
Has moved you by my aching tears.
 
You are a perfect poem, sweet,
Sung to an angel’s melody
Before the Throne in ecstasy,
Where choir to choir the song repeat
Through all the columned courts of Heaven.
Dear God to you such grace has given,
Has wrought you as a golden flower,
Or as a drifting nenuphar,
Or as a wondrous ivory tower.
 
For in the hush of that young corn
Where only birds and flowers may see,
You shall be all in all to me,
And we will rest there till the morn
Turns emerald-sky to ruby red
And crowns with gold your golden head.
And lends unto your eyes new fire,
And makes your splendid, curving mouth
A gorgeous poppy of the South
Culled for some God’s desire.

Hinksey is a little village just outside Oxford and the poet says he has known his friend for two years, which would be 1892 while he was an undergraduate at Pembroke College; I believe he is directly addressing the poem to the same ‘G___’ he dedicates the volume to and it is clear that on some beautiful evening, the poet and his friend stride out towards Hinksey. Stanley reminds me of A. E. Housman’s unrequited passion for Moses Jackson but unlike Jackson, Stanley’s ‘friend’ relents under the two years of tender bombardment and it seems that both succumb to an overwhelming passion and lips meet…

In the poem At Bournemouth (pp. 29-30) the poet is once again watching the bathers – he is not making a good impression upon the reader I’m afraid, with all this lurking about and staring at nude and scantily clad swimmers –  and he wishes to ‘join that happy throng, / and lose my care and laugh as they, / or kiss the lips of one I love,’ (p. 30) We can only guess whose lips, but most likely the same ‘golden haired’ G___ whom I believe also is the person the poet sits with ‘in the late afternoon’ at a café in Marseilles and their hands touch lightly and the poet ‘did not draw my hand away.’ (p. 35) The poet is torn by his feelings and back home, in the north of England with its ‘gas-jets’, ‘hawkers’ and ‘poor waifs of sin’, he reflects upon that touch and wishes to  be back in the south; yet he is tempted for a moment by the beauty of a woman –

 

‘Thinking of one, I could not stoop so low
Although her face was fair, and her great eyes
Grew pleading as she begged me with her go.
 
Aye, she was fair, and all the fire that lies
Deep in man’s heart began to burn and glow
In a white-heat of flame that never dies.
 
I stooped and kissed her lips, but lo, there rose
A visioned face that falling tears did stain,
And through my heart there shot a sudden pain,
As half aloud, I cried, “my loved one knows”.’

 

Then the poet ‘turned away! Nor kissed her lips again,’ [In a Northern Town, pp. 39-40] for he knows that he has sweeter lips to kiss. In the poem, A Night Thought (p. 44) he lies where the ‘fading roses lie, / in the drear garden of our dead delight?’ Dead perhaps because he can see no future in their passionate embraces, yet his nights are disturbed by thoughts of being with his heart’s desire, and ‘sometimes as I sleepless moan and sigh, / will you return to cheer my aching sight? / To kiss my lips, my falling tears to dry / within the night?’ The pain of loving someone and keeping the relationship secret takes its toll on the poet and in the poem, A Tragedy (pp. 48-50), the strain upon the lovers begins to unravel their bond – ‘we loved, and all around seemed gay / to our enchanted eyes, though cold / and keen the chilling winds would play / with autumn’s leaves, so dead, so old, / for us the air with song was filled, / though song and songbird now were stilled.’ The poem continues in similar measures of despair:

 

Through the long nights we two would sit
To tell our love, the well-worn tale,
Watching the fickle shadows flit,
O’er warm red walls and ceiling pale,
Your hand within my hands was prest,
Your head lay pillowed on my breast.
 
And yet you say I never knew
Nor cared to know your inmost soul,
I never looked you through and through
Nor all your secret fancies stole,
I knew your lips, your eyes, your hair,
But not the shy soul lurking there.
 
So you drift from me, O my sweet,
Still colder grows your glance each day,
Love flies us on his winged feet,
I plead, and yet he will not stay;
With tear-dimmed eyes I watch his flight
Till daylight falters into night.
 
But sometimes with reluctant voice
We whisper the old words again,
Feigning the long hours to rejoice
In pleasures that have turned to pain,
And ghosts of our dead joys arise
And mock us with their weeping eyes.

The poem ‘Two Rispetti’ (pp. 51-52) seems to suggest that the lovers are parted (the autumnal break-up of A Tragedy, and winter has passed) and the poet now in the spring, residing in the North, is dreaming of the South, the ‘city of the lilies’, (Oxford); the scent of those lilies ‘fills the darkened room, / the Angelus rings out, a crimson glow / of southern sunshine floods the northern gloom.’ The final verse conjures before the sleepless poet the voice and form of his lover: ‘I hear a well-known voice, I touch a hand / with love I roam along the pleasant land, / we pause and kiss, where flowers spring to out feet / “a kiss in dreamland yet a kiss most sweet.”’ In the final poem, Love’s Song, our poet declares his love, saying ‘I hold your hands and look into your eyes / and mark the violet glories sleeping there, / I bend and touch the splendour of your hair, / my joy grows manifold and never dies; / we are as one, O God, let never care / as some wild discord, marring all, arise / in Life’s sweet song.’ (p. 53)

Throughout the volume is a thread of a story being told, somewhat mysteriously perhaps due to the nature of that relationship, but it is being whispered in song – in At Evening the poet asks: ‘have I not waited long for this - / that you should turn to me?’ Well, yes he has, two long years apparently. And it goes on to suggest this love was hard won – ‘And you are silent, love, this hour / this last flushed hour of day - / is it because my love’s strong power / has drawn your soul away? / Do you regret your love of me? / Does your soul struggle to be free / flutter and fail always?’ (pp. 1-2) That this love was furtive and secret we are told in Love in Autumn (p. 7) where ‘the low wind moans a lullaby, / my loved one comes with gentle tread’, suggesting a secret tryst beneath the boughs of some secluded place in or around Oxford. This is further emphasised in The Old Story (pp. 8-9) in which ‘no sound unto my ears was sweet / as the soft echo of your feet.’ But a love played out in shadows and secrets is hard to sustain and we must remember that if this is a love between two undergraduates at Oxford, then we are on the threshold of the Wilde scandal and the plight of reputations and careers ruined; unfortunately, unlike the poet, society will not view it as a beautiful thing. The love proves not as strong in the end and seems to disperse upon the breeze as the poet rather naively asks: ‘was it because we loved too well, / we tired and broke the fervid spell?’ He concludes and has to accept the reality of his lover denying even their friendship – ‘I know not, and I do not fret, / because I hear that you forget / even that we have ever met.’ (p. 9) That ‘heard’ suggests a third-party has informed the poet and that the lovers are no longer on speaking terms, at least not publicly… secrecy and discretion, in these matters, were of the greatest importance – ‘you shall not hear me even breathe your name…’ (George G. S. Gillett. ‘To W. J. M.’ The Artist. April 1890. p. 113). The relationship was probably irretrievably lost at the time of the volume’s publication and the poet, although at a loss as to why the relationship has broken down, seems gracious and does not ‘fret’ for he knows that such unions are short lived; as he says in the poem At Evening which opens the volume (p. 3): ‘The nightingale in yonder grove, / lifts up his voice in praise, / he knows and chants our Lyric-love, / the love that never stays. / He sings “This moment is supreme / yet fleeting as a flitful gleam, / nor comes in after days.”’

Reviews of the volume were not altogether favourable and many dismissed it as poor poetry. One of the earliest reviews in The Scotsman (November 1894) had this to say about it: ‘The Love Lyrics of Mr. Alan Stanley are readable, and probably sincere; but they are so passionless that they can hardly be accorded any prominent place among poems of their class. It is pleasant, doubtless, to consider how the fancy unites associations derived from a contemplation of the beauties of nature with the thoughts and feelings inspired by the love of woman; and this part of the poetical business the present book performed with some success, although even in this branch of the subject it seeks distinctions where distinctions there are none, since, after all, Love at Hinksey is essentially much the same thing as Love at Bournemouth. But this is a serious subject, and demands some severity in the poet or he will be carried over the line, as the writer of the present volume is in several instances, in which trying to be passionate he succeeds only in being mawkish and sentimental in a sickly way. The book is only a small one, but it takes more talent than appears in it to sustain an interest through some thirty pieces all of which are based more or less exclusively on kisses and claspings, and golden curls, and yearnings and thrills, and all that sort of thing.’ (10) I beg to differ for there are moments of great passion as in this from The Dawn of Love (p. 42): ‘… fiercer grows / the passion that so long has in me burned, / Oh! How your falling raiment doth disclose / your neck’s fine curvings to my ardent gaze, / and lo I falter as my hot mouth strays / in trembling kisses o’er your throat upturned.’ Or this from Love’s Song (p. 53): ‘For as your lips seek mine in tender kiss / our two mouths grow together as one flower, / and naught to us the passing of the hour, / for each hour brings renewal of our bliss / in life’s sweet song.’

One of the better reviews appeared in The Academy, of December 1894, which said that the ‘fault in this tiny volume seems to be youth and inexperience, which will therefore work their own cure. Mr. Stanley manages some difficult metres very deftly, he expresses his thoughts felicitously, and shows genuine poetical feeling. He should beware of too prodigal a use of epithets, and not weary us with frequent a display of “gold” and “ivory”. But he has skill and taste.’ (11) The Bookseller of January the following year said ‘Mr. Stanley is a very “loving” person, if we are to take these rhymed confessions of his seriously. Everywhere he “loves”, he “loves”: Marseilles, Bournemouth, Florence, Hinksey, Monte Carlo, it is the same tale.’ (12) Also of January is this example from the Gentlewoman (Thursday 3^rd January 1895, p. 54) which positively gushes over the volume, saying that a ‘young poet, timorously giving the world his first volume of verses has rarely had so little reason to fear the result as Alan Stanley. Love Lyrics (Gay & Bird) are the poems of a young man – a very young man – but the only sign of his youth is their freshness, their spontaneity, their beautiful love of love. Passion in the hands of poets too often touches upon morbidity, love of form too often upon mere carnality. Passion of the highest shines like a purple flower in the greater number of the lyrics, but it is healthy, vigorous. “White lilies”, “golden hair”, and “crimson mouth”, are well-worn poetic similes, but with Mr. Stanley they lose all sense of staleness, all feeling of commonplace, becoming frankly ingenuous, the only metaphor that fits his fancy. An indescribable charm, a softness and grace, lurk in the more amorous of the poems, a true vein of poetry in the descriptive lyrics. Now dies the sun is very charming, as a singer of love songs breathing exalted passion, Mr. Stanley has touched heights of expression which are but seldom attained at the first striking of the lyre.’ And the Literary World (February 1895) gave a most unfavourable review, saying that ‘Mr. Stanley sings of love: a very laudable and likely thing to do in the years between twenty and forty, but in not a few instances he does not do his subject honour, for his artistic education has not been enough prolonged to teach him when to pause, or when to use suggestion in the place of sentiment. All of Mr. Stanley’s faults are not those of youth, however, for he sins against good taste occasionally in a manner that it will not please him to remember when he has added a score to the present tally of his years.’ The article goes on to say that the poet is ‘devoid of originality. He is a derivative verse-maker, who has the knack of assimilating the vices of his models without being helped by their virtues. He uses some Swinburnian tags; he takes the worst of Mr. Arthur Symons, and thus equipped thinks to charm us with his piping.’ Suffice to say, the reviewer does not ‘conscientiously recommend it.’ (13) But perhaps the worst of the reviews in my opinion comes from the Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art in January 1895 under the heading: ‘Wanton Verse’ in which the reviewer brings God and Mrs. Grundy into the fight against ‘decadent’ and indecent poetry and literature. It starts by assuring us that ‘the book [Love Lyrics by Alan Stanley] which we take as an example of wanton verse has no importance in itself, but it is a convenient specimen of an affectation which is coming into vogue among the younger men.’ The review condemns such poetry and the ‘Decadent school, which has never existed, and will never exist, in England, and which has never existed in any definite or definable way even in France.’ The poor misguided fool goes on to say that ‘almost all French verse, for the matter of that, would distress that lady [Mrs. Grundy] if she could understand it.’ He singles out Stanley, saying that the poet was ‘in Marseilles, with some one who looked at him “o’er the half-filled glass of your absinthe dim.” This was in the late afternoon. By evening the absinthe had proved so effective that “your flower-like head sunk down on my breast”; but whether this, too, happened on the Cannebidre, and whether the neighbours imputed or to absinthe, or, as Mr. Alan Stanley does, to love, we are not told. Further, Mr. Alan Stanley addresses these incoherent remarks to a boy bathing: - King of the Sea, triumphant boy, Nature itself made thrall to God’s White work without alloy On whom no stain doth fall. Gaze on him, slender, fair, and tall, And on the yearning sea…’ His basic argument, after invoking Verlaine and Rimbaud, is that poetry should be firstly ‘sincere’ and secondly ‘good’, neither of which does this Lord upon High at the Saturday Review believe Love Lyrics and other poetry volumes like it,  contains, for there is ‘no sincerity, no real feeling; and we certainly cannot commend them as works of art. They impress one merely as a feeble attempt to live up to a ridiculous ideal. Certain people, who happened to be somewhat morbid and unbalanced, had written successfully about the sensations which they had really had; therefore, it appears, we must all try to be as morbid as we can, and write flounderingly about the sensations which we have not had.’ (14) And finally from the reviews, this nonsense from the National Observer of Saturday 20^th April 1895 (p. 29) – ‘Mr. Alan Stanley is a “sad bad mad” fellow, and is determined that his readers shall know it. His verse is full of “crimson lips” and “flower-like heads” and “warm kisses”; while his modesty may be measured by the subjoined quotation from what he is pleased to call Wreckage: “I looked into my glass last night To trace my beauty there, How wan I seemed by candlelight I who had been so fair.” The waste-paper basket is the proper receptacle for such unwholesome rubbish as this, which makes one positively blush for its progenitor.’ 

The integrity of the poems depends on whether one believes they are real or imaginary. If indeed the experiences in Love Lyrics are poetically factual and Stanley’s wondrous desires and yearnings were fulfilled and the two lovers parted amicably or were forced to part, then it may be a factor in Stanley’s future. Allow me the indulgence of throwing in a theory as to the identity of G___. We can assume he, and I believe it is a male, was a younger undergraduate at Oxford. The relationship between them has been ongoing for two years, over which it has intensified from an infatuation and blossomed into what the poet believes is love, to which the younger has succumbed. I believe the poem, To a Poet (pp. 31-32) is addressed to the same person of his affection and that the undergraduate also writes verse, and is the greater poet – Stanley admits his verses are ‘weak’ and that the poet sings a ‘chant more true’ his ‘passionate sweet song’. Stanley asks the ‘true songster’ to ‘smile but if you will / at this my praise, / yet keep your well-loved friendship for me still, / through life’s long after days.’ If Stanley were addressing a well-known poet he would have said so and not been mysterious, or at least applied initials so that the poet could accept the praise and perhaps return his thanks. It is a poet addressing a fellow poet, a ‘friend’ who must remain unidentified and only the poet addressed would know, which tells me it is the same person who inspired the volume – the lover. I would suggest that the poet addressed has also had undergraduate verses published either in The Spirit Lamp or in Oxford Verses; the latter has an obvious poet named G___ with similar romantic ideals as Addleshaw, and ‘born of ways torturous to the soul’: Gabriel Gillett. Addleshaw’s Love Lyrics was published in November 1894 around the same time as Oxford Verses which may have appeared soon after as the editor, Rosslyn Bruce’s ‘Acknowledgement’ (p. viii) is dated November, 1894. Gillett’s ‘Love Songs’ (pp. 28-32) appeared in the same volume of Oxford Verses (1894) as Addleshaw’s ‘A Tragedy’ (pp. 56-57), ‘An Old Picture’ (p. 58) and ‘Love at Hinksey’ (p. 59) and it is easily noticeable that Gillett is the better poet. (15) To continue on a similar thread, d’Arch Smith tells us in his hugely informative Love in Earnest (1970) that another poet, ‘A. R. Bayley, a friend of Gillett’s, who already contributed [to The Spirit Lamp] a harmless article on Peer Gynt, sent in a story which was too dangerous even for [Lord Alfred] Douglas to handle.’ (p. 53) Douglas published ‘a note in the editor’s “Answers to Correspondents” section’ which ‘apologised to an A. R. Bayley, who had sent in a story and two poems: “I like your story very much,” wrote Douglas, “but I dare not publish it.”’ (16) Bayley was, like the younger Stanley Addleshaw, an undergraduate of Pembroke College (17) and may have been an intermediary between Addleshaw and Gillett. George Gabriel Scott Gillett, coincidently, shared the same birthday as Stanley Addleshaw, 1^st December, although Gillett was two years younger, born in Hawley, Hampshire in 1873. He was educated at Westminster School where he was a member of the Debating Society and the Literary Society; in the latter he showed some talent as a performer, particularly in the role of Shakespearean ladies, perhaps because of his slender beauty [see The Elizabethan, for the Literary Society performances, volume 6, numbers 7-12, 1889] and gained a History Scholarship in May 1892 to Keble College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 15^th October that year, aged 18, two years before Love Lyrics was published. Gillett’s poem, ‘To W. J. M.’ which appeared in The Artist (1^st April 1890, p. 113) shows Gillett’s unrequited infatuation for another who may feel ‘disgust at passion you deem vile’. The poem ends with almost Houseman-like reserve – ‘Mine by the punishment as mine the blame / and though in hopeless fear my heart is numb / and its renunciation, yet still dumb / you shall not hear me even breathe your name.’ In Gillett’s poem ‘In Memoriam E. B. F.’ in The Spirit Lamp (volume III, number III, March 1893, pp. 72-73) and dated 10^th January of that year, the poet recalls his ‘friend and more than friend’ who has drowned – ‘Brave boy with the bright blue eyes, / faithful and fair and strong! / dead now – when the short day died / like a broken song, / and the night comes dark and long.’ Timothy d’Arch Smith tells us in Love in Earnest (p. 53) that according to fellow uranian poet and scholar of Exeter College, Oxford, Reverend Samuel Elsworth Cottam (1863-1943) the initials were fictitious.

 

‘Yet to him that giveth Love as a thing due,
Worship as a free will, Beauty lends the clue;
Whereby out of old things, Art makes all things new.’

 [To Kalon. Gillett. The Artist, 1^st December 1891, p. 355]

 

In Addleshaw’s poem, From North to South, (pp. 21-23) which in itself has an undercurrent of sexual meaning, the poet (Stanley) writing as Sappho, is residing in the ‘bleak’ North (Manchester, the home of the Addleshaw family) while his love with the ‘golden hair’ lies in the ‘fair’ South (Oxford or Hampshire perhaps) and ‘wine-red is his red red mouth’. He makes the distinction clear for he longs for ‘my lover’s mouth, / that kissing him I might lose my care’ –‘And my body yearns to follow my soul, / and my lips his lips to seek’… the poem ends with a tone of despair – ‘Nor does he know my fretting care, / as he wanders blithe and debonaire. / But O, how I long and yearn to be there, / for the North is bleak and the South is fair.’ Gillett can be just as mysterious and passionate: ‘Or, best of all, when the world lies sleeping, / your arms twin’d round me,your lips to mine, / Love shields us both with his pinions steeping / our souls in music and fore and wine.’ [Oxford Verses. Love Songs III, p. 31]

Later, like Addleshaw, Gillett entered the Church, he was ordained deacon in 1898 and priest the following year. This of course is mere supposition and a tantalising if very delicate thread. In the same year as Love Lyrics was published, Stanley and Percy Addleshaw’s literary friend, Roden Noel, died in Germany on 26^th May (1894); publishers, Elkin Mathews announced in September 1895 that two works would  be published: ‘My Sea and Other Posthumous Poems’ by the late Hon. Roden Noel with an Introduction by Stanley Addleshaw (published in January 1896), and ‘Selected Poems from the Works of the Hon. Roden Noel’ with a biography and critical essay by Percy Addleshaw (published in October 1897) – later, in 1902, came ‘The Collected Poems of Roden Noel’ by publishers Kegan Paul (London) with an Introduction by the late John Addington Symonds.

The following year after the publication of Love Lyrics, in 1895 Addleshaw entered the Clerical School at Leeds and was ordained deacon the following year and priest at Ely in 1897. Like Houseman, who threw his soul into scholarly solitude and study, following love’s disappointment, Stanley, perhaps threw his soul before God. But it is unwise to speculate without firm evidence, but we do know that Reverend Stanley Addleshaw had his article on Walter Pater published in the Gentleman’s Magazine in March 1897; it is an interesting theory by Addleshaw which compares two works by Walter Pater (1839-1894), who had a profound influence on the young undergraduates, including Wilde, on attitudes to art and aesthetics, which was not altogether wholesome. The two works: ‘Studies in the History of the Renaissance’ (1873) and ‘Marius the Epicurean’ (1885) by Pater, show, according to Addleshaw, a marked development between the Greek and Roman hedonism of the former, and the Christian, noble sense of duty and chastity of the latter; the pagan and the divine in art. Addleshaw grasps Pater’s concepts well, saying let ‘life be filled with sensation. Remember that no moment can return; let it then, be as exquisite as possible.’ One can almost hear Wilde in his phrases which contrast the individualistic and even narcissistic approach to art and beauty; the sense that art should not be condemned or judged for the sake of its moral or immoral influences, but purely on its aesthetic level which answers – does this work of art give me pleasure? (18).

Stanley Addleshaw became curate at Downham from 1896-1905 and Diocesan Missioner in the Diocese of Ely from 1901-05. He was vicar at Gorsefield from 1905-1915 and it was while he was vicar at Gorsefield that Stanley Addleshaw married the only daughter of Reverend Canon Elgood George Punchard (1844-1917): Rose Elgood Punchard (1880-1960) at St. Mary’s Church, Ely, Cambridgeshire, on Tuesday 13^th June 1905. Their first child, George William Outram Addleshaw was born on Saturday 1^st December (like his father), 1906 at Gorefield Vicarage, Wisbech, (19) and a daughter, Mary Rachel Addleshaw was born on Sunday 19^th September 1909, (Mary never married and she died in 1983). Reverend Stanley Addleshaw spends the following years at Gorefield busy and well-liked within the parish. In 1911, 39 year old Stanley, clergyman ‘established church’ and his wife Rose, 31, are living in Gorefield, Leverington, Cambridgeshire with their two children George, aged 4, and May [Mary] aged 1. They have two domestic servants living with them: Elizabeth Russell, 45 (born 1866 in Hillson, Cambridgeshire) who is the cook, and Dora Pentelow, 17 (born 1894 in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire) who is the housemaid (20).

On Monday 7^th February 1916, Reverend Stanley Addleshaw attended the inquest on his older brother, Percy Addleshaw at Hove Town Hall; his barrister brother, Harold Addleshaw was also there. Mr. Alfred Sams, who was the proprietor of the Clayton Park Hotel, Hassocks said he had nursed Percy for eight years, five years at the Hill Side Hotel and three years at the Clayton Park Hotel; on Wednesday 29^th December 1915, Alfred went to Percy’s room at 9 p.m. and at 10 p.m. and found him both times writing a letter, on checking on him later, he found Percy on the floor. Percy had slipped climbing the stair and broken his right arm and was attended to by Dr. William Halley Eggar, of Hassock’s Lodge. (21) The burial took place that day on Monday 7^th February at Brighton and Preston Cemetery. The Mid Sussex Times of Tuesday 8^th February 1916 (J. P.’s Fatal Fall. p. 8) said that following the accident Percy was ‘conveyed to a seaside nursing home, but succumbed to dropsy, accentuated by the mishap’ and died on Friday 4^th February. In the following article, on the same page, ‘Percy Addleshaw: A Friend’s Tribute’ said that ‘very few of those to whom the figure of the badly crippled gentleman was so familiar realised how many well-known people were interested in Hassocks simply because Mr. Addleshaw lived there. Fewer still realised how he towered over us intellectually. He was a great bookman, perhaps almost too much of a bookman. One could wish he had devoted less time to other men’s books and more to his own.’ The article goes on to say that he had a ‘curiously speculative mind combined with an enthusiastic love of the beautiful in nature and art. As a poet he was very good indeed, and occasionally great…’ ‘He was a devoted pupil and disciple of the late P. York Powell, the great Regius Professor of History at Oxford and the influence of The Yorker, as he used to call him, was a very marked feature in Mr. Addleshaw’s life. Among his other friends were Roden Noel, Lionel Johnson, J. Addington Symonds and other members of that brilliant literary circle which flourished in the nineties – the days of Aubrey Beardsley and the Yellow Book.’ A friend of Percy’s, the Anglican clergyman, poet and antiquary, Reverend Walter Harold Yeandle (1895-1952) wrote a fitting tributary poem, which was published in the Mid Sussex Times (Tuesday 15^th February 1916, p. 5) – ‘In Memoriam: Percy Addleshaw’:

 

‘And now you’ve gained that “cool and quiet inn”
For which you hoped; the “Sign o’ the Grave” swings high
Above the door; its walls will hush the cry
Of war, the roar of storm, for you. ‘Tis sin
To wish to bear you company from within,
So I instead must be content to sigh
And trust you’ll find your rest complete, close by
Those souls in gentle temperament your kin.
 
You taught me many things – friend, critic, guide.
Though you pass from me, still must there abide ere long
Some other voice may carry on the song,
Though you’re not here to censure or to praise,
Kindled by you, fresh beacons yet may blaze!

Harold Yeandle. B.E.F., France. Feb. 10^th 1916.’

 

Stanley became vicar of St. Mary’s, Ely and chaplain of Ely Cathedral from 1915-29 and Honorary Canon of Ely from 1925; Deacon of Fincham from 1932-35; Rector of All Souls with St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, Huntingdon in the Diocese of Ely from 1935; Rector of All Saints, Huntingdon from 1935-45 (and Rural Dean of Huntingdon from 1937-44). Reverend Canon Stanley Addleshaw, who was also treasurer of York Minster, died following a long illness at the age of 79 on Thursday 25^th January 1951 at his home, Green Leas, The Walk, Huntingdon. The funeral took place at All Saint’s Church, Huntingdon at 2.30 p.m. on Monday 29^th January (22).

 

‘Your wreath falls down, well, let the blossoms fade,
They matter not, the rose of love is sweet;
The morning birds sing out in the far glade
Raising a nuptial-song, for we are one,
And for our marriage-torch there comes the sun
Flaming through heaven, with swift ardent feet.’

 [The Dawn of Love. p. 42]

 

 

NOTES:

 

1. John William Addleshaw was the sixth child born to John Addleshaw, born 1799, and Maria Mundy (1800-1866) who were married on 9^th July 1821. Other children of John and Maria were: Thomas Mundy Addleshaw (1823), Elizabeth Mary Addleshaw (1824), Alfred Addleshaw (1826-1886), Ann Addleshaw (1831), Maria Addleshaw (1833), and after John William’s birth in 1836, came Mary Jane Addleshaw (1839). John William Addleshaw married Rachel Ann Heyes Hemingway, the daughter of Reuben and Martha Hemingway, on 16^th November 1865. John became a successful solicitor in the firm of Addleshaw and Warburton & Co. who had their offices at 67, King Street, Manchester, circa 1876, which later moved, around 1879, to 15, Norfolk Street, Manchester. They also had a London agent, Addleshaw, Warburton and Trenan, from around 1890, operating from 7, Newcourt, Carey Street, London, W.C. John William Addleshaw married again after Rachel’s death in 1873, to Laura Parkinson (1869-1941) in Manchester in April 1908. John William Addleshaw died on 10^th January 1924 and he was buried two days later on 12^th January at Bowdon, in the Metropolitan Borough of Trafford, Manchester.
2. William Percy Addleshaw died on 4^th February 1916 and is buried in Brighton, East Sussex.
3. In the Preface to Percy’s book, Sir Philip Sidney (London, Methuen & Co.) of October 1909, the author says ‘I wish to mention my beloved master, York Powell. He urged me often to write. In writing, though I realised he would at times have controverted the views I have put forward, I have regarded my task as a sacred duty owed to him. I like to think he is still, as he always was, my kindest critic.’ (pp. vii-viii).
4. Harold Pope Addleshaw married Mary Gertrude Shore (born 1872) in West Derby, Lancashire on 2^nd July 1895. They had three children: Harold Leslie Addleshaw born 1^st August 1896 (and dying in Aberconwy in 1982), and twins: John Lawrence Addleshaw, born 30^th October 1902 (and dying in Macclesfield in 1989) and Derrek (or Derek) Hemingway Addleshaw born 30^th October 1902 (and dying in Trafford in 1986). Harold Pope Addleshaw died on 8^th March 1943 and was buried in Bowdon, Manchester.
5. The Pageant, by Charles Shannon (1863-1937) and Gleeson White. London, Henry & Co. 1896 [150 copies. a second edition was published in 1897]. The four quatrains by Percy Hemingway (none of which are included in The Happy Wanderer) begin: ‘Ye cannot cheat the Master of your fate!’, ‘Why weep for days irrevocably dead,’, ‘To-night old poets through the city go,’ and ‘The future lies before us rich with gold’ (p. 130).
6. John William Heywood Addleshaw married Martha Lillian McDonnell (born 1868) in Fairfield, Derbyshire on 18^th May 1893. They had two children: John Hemingway Addleshaw born 27^th August 1895 (and dying in Wells in 1971) and Rachel Beatrice Addleshaw, born 23^rd April1905 (and dying, unmarried in Honiton in 1990). John William Heywood Addleshaw died on 18^th May 1931 and was buried on 21^st May at Torquay Cemetery, Hele, Devon.
7. Lt.-Col. Edward Fairbrother Strange, CBE., born in Worcester on 8^th October 1862, he attended Worcester Cathedral School and Kidderminster Grammar School before entering the Civil Service in 1881. He was a museum curator; assistant keeper of woodwork at the Victoria & Albert Museum, South Kensington (1889) and at the National Art Library (1891). He was an authority on etchings, engraving and Japanese colour prints and published several books: Palissy in Prison and Other Verses (privately printed, 1892), Alphabets: A Handbook of Lettering (1895), Japanese Illustrations (1897), Japanese Colour Prints (1903) and Chinese Lacquer (1926). He died on 14^th April 1929.
8. The Buxton Herald and Gazette of Fashion. Wednesday 15^th April 1891, p. 2 [Visitors]. In other years at Buxton we can see: 1892: John, Harold and Stanley with Miss McDonnell and Miss Mary Shore (who later married Harold) from 6^th -20^th April; 1893: Harold and Miss Shore, with John and Stanley from 19^th April – 10^th May; 1894: John and wife, Mary, Stanley, and Harold and Miss Mary Shore, from 28^th March – 7^th April; 1896: John and Wife Mary from 23^rd May – 6^th June; 1897: John and wife Mary, Harold and wife Mary, 19^th – 26^th June; 1898: John and wife Mary, 11^th May – 13^th July; 1899: John and wife Mary, 27^th September – 27^th December. Other holidays include: Stanley and Harold at the Imperial Hotel, Denbigshire, North Wales from 21^st August 1890, and Percy, Stanley and Miss Mary McDonnell staying at Kinmel Terrace, Pensarn from 30^th July – 17^th September 1892.
9. Three of the poems appeared in ‘Oxford Verses’ (1894) edited by Rosslyn Bruce under his real name: A Tragedy (pp. 56-57), An Old Picture (p. 58) and Love at Hinksey (pp. 59-61) so making the connection between Alan Stanley and Stanley Addleshaw was not a difficult process to a fellow admirer of such verse; in the same volume of Oxford Verses was another like-minded poet, Gabriel Gillett and his poems, Love Songs (pp. 28-32). Oxford Verses was reviewed in the Pall Mall Gazette, Wednesday 27^th February 1895, p. 4, which mentioned Stanley Addleshaw, along with other poets.
10. The Scotsman. Wednesday 28^th November 1894, p. 10.
11. The Academy, number 1181, 22^nd December 1894, p. 530.
12. The Bookseller. 9^th January 1895, p. 20.
13. The Literary World. 22^nd February 1895, p. 168.
14. The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art [Supplement]. London. Saturday 19^th January 1895, pp. 71-72.
15. Gillett had already had several ‘uranian’ poems published previously: ‘Triolet’ in The Artist, December 1889, volume x, p. 367; ‘To W. J. M.’ in The Artist, 1^st April 1890, p. 113, and ‘To Kalon’ in The Artist, 1^st December 1891 [Gillett’s 18^th birthday and Stanley Addleshaw’s 20^th birthday], p. 355.
16. Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas. New York. Hyperion. 2000. p. 43.
17. Arthur Rutter Bayley, born 27^th April 1868, Brixton, Surrey. The son of Rev. W. R. Bayley, Arthur was educated at Harrow School (leaving in December 1885) and went up to Pembroke College, Oxford on 28^th October 1886, aged 18. B.A. 1890. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Bayley had several works published: Peer Gynt, The Spirit Lamp, vol II, number IV, 6^th December 1892, pp. 98-100; in the same volume appeared Addleshaw’s A Short Note Upon a New Volume, pp. 117-118. In the Louvre: A Sonnet, The Spirit Lamp, vol III, number III, 10^th March 1893, p. 60; in the same volume is Gillett’s In Memoriam E B F (dated 10^th January 1893), pp. 72-73, and Charles Kains Jackson’s Impressions, p. 55. The Defence of Poesy, (pp. 71-78) and the poem, In Lyonesse (p. 86), The Spirit Lamp, vol IV, number II, 6^th June 1893. Bayley’s poem, Sunday Afternoon at Iffley, appeared in William Angus Kight’s The Glamour of Oxford, (Oxford. B. H. Blackwell. 1911. p. 240). He also compiled ‘A Catalogue of Portraits in the Possession og Pembroke College’ (May 1895) and Bayley’s book, The Great Civil War in Dorset, 1642-1660, appeared in 1910. A. R. Bayley seems to have the same ‘uranian’ desires as Stanley Addleshaw and Gabriel Gillett – upon Bayley’s death in 1948, the 80 year old bachelor left £20,000, his 20-roomed mansion, two cars and other personal effects to his secretary-chauffeur, (companion) Reginald Arthur George Surridge (born 1914), who Bayley, of Graham Road, Malvern, Wiltshire, had met when Surridge (now 34) was a nine year old choir boy: ‘I was only nine, Mr. Surridge said yesterday, when I first knew Mr. Bayley . He was a governor at the grammar school I attended, and when I was in Malvern Priory choir he often asked me to tea. On leaving school I started work for him.’ [the gross estate was worth £70,000] (The People. ‘Choir Boy Grew Rich’. Sunday 3^rd October 1948.p. 1).
18. Walter Pater. Reverend Stanley Addleshaw. The Gentleman’s Magazine, volume 58, March 1897, pp. 127-251.
19. George William Outram Addleshaw, M.A., B.D., F.S.A. (1906-1982), was educated at Bromsgrove School before going up to Trinity College, Oxford to study Modern History, B.A. 1929, M.A. 1932, B.D. 1935. he went on to study Theology at Cuddesdon College in 1929 before being ordained deacon in 1930 and priest in 1931 at Winchester. He was curate at Portswood, Southampton from 1930-37, before moving to Basingstoke. He was Vice Principle of St. Chad’s College, Durham from 1939-46, Examiner Chaplain to Archbishop York in 1942 and the Bishop of Chester in 1951; he was also Chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II from 1957-64. Dean of Chester Cathedral from 1963-77 and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society from 1949. He published several books: The High Church Tradition: A Study in the Liturgical Thought of the Seventeenth Century (1941), The Architectural Setting of Anglican Worship [with R. A. Etchells] (1948), The Beginnings of the Parochial System (1953), Rectors, Vicars and Patrons in Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Century Canon Law (1956) and Chester Cathedral (1967). He died on 14^th June 1982, aged 75.
20. 1911 Census for England and Wales. RG14, schedule type: 33, piece/folio: 65, p. 1, household identifier: 92850065.
21. Brighton Gazette. Wednesday 9^th February 1916. p. 1.
22. Death notice: Peterborough Evening Telegraph. Friday 26^th January 1951. p. 6. According to Canon Addleshaw’s will, he left £22209, 1s. 9d. gross £22081 12s. 6d. net value paid £3321. ‘He left £20 to his chauffeur Albert Howes, £50 cook Ellen E. Prigg, to parlourmaid Grace Cox if respectively still in service and not under notice, £25 to Ely Diocesan Association for Moral Welfare, effects to his wife and the residue upon trust for life remainder to his children. Probate has been granted to his son Canon George W. O. Addleshaw of 10, Precentor’s Court, York, and to his nephew, Harold L. Addleshaw, solicitor of 15, Norfolk Street, Manchester.’ [Saffron Waldon Weekly News. Friday 1^st June 1951, p. 9]