MORE BOOK REVIEWS
By
BARRY VAN-ASTEN
Algernon Charles
Swinburne: A Study – by Theodore Wratislaw.
Published in 1900 this
212 page volume is a brilliant critical analysis of A. C. Swinburne (1837-1909)
the ‘singer of abnormal loves’ and his poetry, by the little known British poet
Theodore Wratislaw (1871-1933); concerning his poetry he goes into quite some
depth and breathes new life into some of his more tired compositions. The
author gives us a brief biography of the flame-haired poet, Algernon Charles
Swinburne who in facial features resembles a missing-link between Poe (1809-49)
and Paderewski (1860-1941), later alighting perhaps upon Charles Dickens
(1812-70), was born in London in 1837 and educated at Eton and Balliol (he left
Oxford without his degree). At Oxford
he became acquainted with D. G. Rossetti, Edward Burne Jones and William Morris
and published his ‘Undergraduate Papers’ in 1858 which consisted of essays on:
‘The Early English Dramatists’ (Marlowe and Fletcher), ‘Church Imperialism’ and
‘The Monomaniac’s Tragedy and Other Poems by Ernest Wheldrake, Author of Eve: A
Mystery. 1858’. In Italy
he met the poet Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864) whom he admired immensely.
When he was twenty-three he published ‘The Queen Mother and Rosamund’ (1860),
two plays, the former the Shakespearean influenced play concerning Catherine de
Medici and the latter, a Browning-esque drama in five scenes about the mistress
of Henry II.
His next work, ‘Dead
Love’ of 1864, is a prose story about a French Lady named Madame Yolande who
falls in love with the dead body of a French gentleman! But it is his
masterpiece of 1865 which cemented Swinburne’s name in literary history –
‘Atalanta in Calydon’,
a play of perfection in blank verse which soars with lyrical metre:
‘O fair-faced sun,
killing the stars and dews
And dreams and
desolation of the night,
Rise up, shine,
stretch thine hand out with the bow
Touch the most dimmest
height of trembling heaven,
And burn and break the
dark about thy ways,
Shot through and
through with arrows; let thine hair
Lighten as flame above
that flameless shell
Which was the moon,
and thine eyes fill the world
And thy lips kindle
with swift beams; let earth
Laugh and the long sea
fiery from thy feet…’
[Prologue. Atalanta in
Calydon.]
Wratislaw swoons like
a blushing schoolgirl over ‘Atalanta’ where we find Althaea, thinking of her
son Meleager, dying with his ‘loveliest loving lips’ and ‘little lightening
eyes’ and well he should for it is a masterful work of art by a highly skilled
poet, a poet on everybody’s lips whose dark mystery is born where the ‘hoofed
heel of a satyr crushes/ the chestnut-husk at the chestnut-root’. The play is,
as Wratislaw rightly says ‘as musical as Shelley, as noble as Sophocles, as
pathetic as Shakespeare’. (p. 24) Then, ‘when the hounds of spring are on
winter’s traces…’ Wratislaw turns his attention to ‘Chastelard’ (1865), a
dramatic poem which he rates highly; ‘Chastelard’ is the first in a trio of
Mary Stuart plays, the others being the historic drama in five acts, ‘Bothwell’
(1874) and ‘Mary Stuart’ (1881), but it is with the poet’s magnum opus, his
‘Poems and Ballads’ of 1866 that Wratislaw sings with ecstatic wonder over its
originality and its variety of metre combined with its lyric quality and erotic
imagery woven in rhythm and rhyme in such poems as: ‘The Triumph of Time’,
‘Dolores’, ‘Laus Veneris’ with its Tanhauser theme, ‘Itylus’, ‘Anactoria’,
‘Hymn to Proserpine’, ‘Ilicet’, ‘Faustine’, ‘The Garden of Proserpine’,
‘Hesperia’ and ‘Felise’. The volume caused praise and scandal in equal measure.
Leaving ‘Poems and Ballads’ (which was also published in a second series in
1878 and a third series in 1889) he has good things to say about ‘Songs before
Sunrise’ (1871) and ‘Songs of Two Nations’ (1875) before moving on to
‘Erectheus’ a tragedy in Greek imitation of 1876 which he finds ‘intolerable’;
neither does he like ‘Studies in Song’ (1880) with its fifty stanzas of sixteen
lines each. The long narrative in heroic couplets of ‘Tristram of Lyonesse’ of
1882 comes under his watchful eye and he discredits Tennyson’s ‘objective
prejudice’ in his ‘The Last Tournament’ from ‘Idylls of the King’ and Matthew
Arnold’s ‘stupid doggerel’ in his ‘Tristram and Iseult’ (1852) and elevates
Swinburne’s telling of the lovers tale to the height of Wagner in his musical
rendition which some would say is sacrilegious but Swinburne captures the mood
of the romance between Tristram and his beloved Queen Iseult of Brittany, their
marriage and his death perfectly.
The later works come
under the author’s scrutiny such as ‘A Century of Roundels’ (1882) and ‘A
Midsummer Holiday’ (1884) which are easily dismissed and he fixes his attention
upon ‘Marino Faliero’ of 1885, a quite unremarkable dramatic poem upon which he
scatters passionate petals of praise before slumping disparagingly through the
poet’s most recent work to date (1900): ‘Locrine’ (1887); a mediocre play
titled ‘The Sisters’ (1892), ‘Astrophel’ (1894), ‘The Tale of Balen’ (1896) and
finally ‘Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards’ (1899). It can be seen that Swinburne
has lost the fiery passion of youth, the erotic inspiration of the likes of
Byron and Baudelaire, and withered, faded into a pale version of Browning.
The second half of the
volume is concerned with Swinburne’s prose: ‘Notes on Poems and Reviews’
(1866), ‘William Blake’ (1868), ‘Under the Microscope’ (1872) and his excellent
‘Essays and Studies’ of 1875 which is a high watermark in literary criticism.
This is followed by ‘George Chapman’ (1875) the Elizabethan dramatist, ‘Notes
on Charlotte Bronte’ (1877) and then comes the highly praised ‘A Study of
Shakespeare’ (1880), ‘A Study of Victor Hugo’ (1886) whom Swinburne greatly
admires – alas Wratislaw does not share the enthusiasm; ‘Miscellanies’ (1886)
in which he sings of his admiration for Charles Lamb and attacks Byron,
literally demolishing his work and calling into question his quality as a man!
But Swinburne is not done yet, in ‘Studies in Prose and Poetry’ (1894) it is
Keats, that beautiful boy whom he wields his sword against, mercilessly
attacking him for what he sees as his ‘abject
unmanliness’.
Swinburne clings to
life for another nine years so we do not have the luxury of knowing what
Wratislaw would have made of his ‘A Channel Passage and Other Poems’ (1904),
‘The Age of Shakespeare’ (1908) and ‘Shakespeare’ (1909) but we can guess. In
the ‘Epilogue’ he says that Swinburne is the ‘greatest living English poet’ and
that his early works with their erotic emotion are greater than Tennyson or
Browning, or at the very least equal to them but he fails to mention (and who
can blame him with the object of his study and his admiration still resisting
death) that Swinburne succumbed to alcohol and other excesses which almost
destroyed him around 1878 and if it were not for his friend (whom Wratislaw
touches upon in the Prologue) Theodore Watts-Dunton (1832-1914) he would have
died before his later achievements. In 1879 he moved to the Pines in Putney
with Watts-Dunton who weaned him from the drinking and restored his health. It
is easy to let personal opinions cloud one’s critical judgement and Swinburne’s
enthusiasm for Shakespeare, Victor Hugo and Walter Savage Landor (another
notable Wratislaw does not share enthusiasm for) may be a point in case, but
who is to say that Wratislaw is not guilty of the same critical errors in his
own admiration for Swinburne and his works? Much of Swinburne’s ‘appetites’ it
has been suggested were merely a pose adopted to create an air of wild
excesses, yet here is something unspeakable about Swinburne of which it is not
spoken! But who is this man Wratislaw? Who is this admirer who dares to trample
in the temple of decadence? Perhaps a brief outline of the author’s life is in
order as many will not have heard of Wratislaw, the elusive ‘decadent’ of the
eighteen-nineties ‘fin de siecle’ who was himself greatly influenced by
Swinburne in his poetry. Theodore William Graf Wratislaw, (the ‘Graf’ is German
for ‘Count’), was born in Rugby, Warwickshire on 21st April 1871 and
educated at Rugby School from 1885-88. After leaving school he entered his
father’s firm of solicitors; his relationship with his father was always
strained. His first volume of self-published poetry ‘Love’s Memorial’ appeared
in 1892 together with a second volume ‘Some Verses’, both printings limited to
35 copies. Wratislaw saw himself as a decadent poet and in the early nineties
dallied on the fringes of Oxford University’s homosexual aesthetes, known as
the Uranians, such as Charles Kains Jackson; and he became friends with Aubrey
Beardsley, Arthur Symons, Lord Alfred Douglas and the ‘tender soul’, Ernest
Dowson. In 1893 he moved to London
and published his third collection of poems ‘Caprices’, in a run of 120 copies.
In September of that year he spent a weekend as Oscar Wilde’s guest at
Goring-on-Thames where he probably made little impression upon the great wit
but he did become known amongst certain literary circles and his poems were
published in The Strand magazine and The Yellow Book. In November he passed his
final law exams and briefly returned to Rugby before returning to London in the
autumn. Two years later in 1895 he published ‘The Pity of Love’, a verse play
and in August of that year entered the civil service at the Estates Duty Office
at Somerset House in London which he described in a letter of 1914 as ‘penal
servitude’. In May 1896 his fourth collection of poetry ‘Orchids’ was published
as a limited edition. In 1899 he married a Jewish London opera singer named
Sarah Esther Caroline Harris (born 1875) who contracted tuberculosis and died
in 1901 aged twenty-six. He published his much praised study of Swinburne in
1900 and in April 1908 he married his second wife, Theodora Russell (nee
Bankes, born 1875) which was a disaster and they divorced in 1912. He became
bankrupt in 1914 but fortunes began to turn when he met the wealthy Ada Ross
(born 1878) and they were married in May the following year. They moved to York
Lodge, Walton on Thames in Surrey in 1927 and three years later, after
suffering ill health he retired from the Duty Office, began an unfinished
memoir called ‘Salad Days’ and died on 13th September 1933 following
his last published work, a translation of Francois Villon’s ‘Two Ballades’ (60
copies).
Wratislaw, who has
been sadly too overlooked as a poet, has written an admirable introduction to
Swinburne and his works and I consider his slim literary output as something
rather strange and beautiful, not merely because I so happen to share the same
birthday as Wratislaw, but because through all the commonplace annoyances of
life he adhered to his poetic principles. Like the author, I too was infatuated
with Swinburne in my undergraduate days and ‘touched gently’ the gate of the
poet at The Pines in Putney where the poet died on 10th April 1909,
aged 72; two decades later I ‘hath sat upon the great man’s grave at Bonchurch
and inwardly wept and warbled my inadequacies and unworthiness as a fellow
poet!’ A marvellous book indeed!
Caprices: Poems – by
Theodore Wratislaw.
This slim volume of 44
poems which drips with ‘eighteen-nineties decadence’ was published at the end
of 1893 in 120 copies by Gay & Bird. It is Theodore Wratislaw’s third
published work after ‘Love’s Memorial’ and ‘Some Verses’ both 1892 and these
‘symbolist’ impressions in verse sing with his favourite themes: the pleasure
of music halls and dancing (he was infatuated by dancing girls) – ‘You, fair as heaven and as rainbow bright,
/You, queen of song and empress of the dance, /Flower of mine eyes, my love, my
heart’s delight!’ (The Music Hall); the transient nature of love: ‘Sweet love, thy heart is red and deep,/O
take me in thine arms to sleep/Within this bosom all the night.’ (Song in
Spring), and ‘In the crepuscule’s dying
gleam/Love’s tears and kisses vainly pass:/Our days have faded like a dream,
/And like a dream our nights, alas.’ (The Relic).
But throughout the
collection there is the distinctive scent of death, as in this poem ‘Trance’:
‘Ah! Press thy heart to mine and lay
Thy lips upon my lips and heed
No whit the griefs that rose today
Nor those the dawn is sure to lead.’
And the poem continues
in darker mood – ‘Swooning deathwards
blend/Our spirits in one perfect kill!’
Wratislaw also touches
upon his own death in the poem ‘Inscription’ (he is only twenty-two years old)
and imagines his body in the ground, as a stranger passes; his lifeless shell
sleeping amongst the ‘silent dead’
beneath ‘withered flowers and faded ivy
wreath,’ – beautiful.
Like Dowson’s
remarkable works there lingers a dark melancholy which permeates the collection
and seems to cloud the poems in a sad and wistful mist that shall ‘weep for pleasures dead too soon,’
(Odour) as in the poem ‘Le Piano Que Baise’ where the poet asks: ‘What is this sudden lull so quickly
born/That slowly sways my poor heart to despair?’
Many of the poems
recall the sea and flowers which he uses to good effect but it is the
overwhelming sense of desire and inner longing which remains un-satiated: ‘O flower of flesh, O beauty rare,/Yield up
thy pagan grace to me!’ (In Summer) and when it is satiated he wearies ‘of the
heat of hell, /The perfumed palace of thy love;’ (Satiety).
The mention of
‘perfume’ evokes the two poems ‘Opoponax’ and ‘Frangipani’ named after perfumes,
something the decadents, with their love of the ‘artificial’, especially Oscar
Wilde, held in high importance – Wratislaw was Wilde’s guest for a weekend in
September 1893 at The Cottage, Goring-on-Thames which he rented from June to
October of that year; Wilde’s family and Lord Alfred Douglas (‘Bosie’) stayed
there (Bosie worked on a translation of Wilde’s ‘Salome’): ‘Oscar proposed to spend the morning on the
river and later on joined me, clearly spraying himself with a scent which
filled the room. I inquired its name. “It is white lilac.” he said. “A most
insidious and delightful perfume.” [Oscar Wilde: A Memoir. Theodore
Wratislaw (John Betjeman and Karl Beckson). London. Eighteen Nineties Society. 1979]
Wratislaw, who is not
homosexual – ‘God is with me, God who for my right/Of old took arms against the
sodomite!’ (L’Eternal Feminin) is probably most well-known for his uranian poem
‘To a Sicilian Boy’ which captures perfectly the atmosphere of the fin de
siecle’s sexual ambivalence and predilection towards taboo subjects:
‘Love, I adore the
contours of thy shape,
Thine exquisite
breasts and arms adorable;
The wonders of thine
heavenly throat compel
Such fire to love as
even my dreams escape:
I love thee as the
sea-foam loves the cape,
Or as the shore the
sea’s enchanting spell:
In sweets the blossoms
of thy mouth excel
The tenderest bloom of
peach and purple grape.
I love thee, sweet!
Kiss me again, again!
Thy kisses soothe me,
as tired earth the rain;
Between thine arms I
find mine only bliss;
Ah let me in thy bosom
still enjoy
Oblivion of the past,
divinest boy,
And the dull ennui of
a woman’s kiss!
Wratislaw has so often
been classed as a uranian poet on the basis of this one poem when really he was
on the circumference of the Oxford poets and although in some ways these poems
fail to strike the perfect chord (some readers may even find him dull) I find
these simple and in many cases short verse rather enchanting!
Eros’ Throne – by George Ives.
This little book of poems published in 1900 by George Cecil Ives (1867-1950) contains forty poems over ninety-five pages, some of which are quite good. Ives, a campaigner for penal reform as well as a poet, manages to capture, intentionally or unintentionally, an odour of confinement amongst his verse (mostly written between 1898 and 1899), many of which are love songs – ‘
The fairy span of heavens bow,/ Valhalla’s bridge to Spirit-land,/Shines while the cloister-arch lies low/And rock-piled cities are but sand;’ (‘A Recollection’). Amongst the sense of claustrophobia comes a quite moving piece entitled ‘An Eton Boy’ which deifies a ‘
widow’s only son; crushed by a train when returning to school.’ A boy with ‘
fifteen summers’ work so well/ To break the mould of the spirit ere clay was hard.’ A boy whose unstained soul death came and ‘
snatched the agile form, untimely in earth laid.’ Unfortunately I found that many of his so called ‘love poems’ failed to attain any level of conviction: ‘
So true love lifts the weight of all the world/ In scorn of gravity and man’s restraint,/And casting up the many-towered hill/He bids it circle as a satellite.’ (‘Mark how the Sea’) or this from the end of ‘My Soul’ which almost becomes a religious experience, or would have been in a greater poet’s hands: ‘
And blessed and cursed are those who feel/Condemned to greatness, thus, to pain,/Where Nature makes its mute appeal,/And stars give not their light in vain.’ Other poems reek with a sense of darkness (or just a little shade) such as ‘For the Funeral’, ‘The Plague’ and the delightful ‘The Autumn Bud’ and ‘In Camera’ and this revelatory stanza from ‘Shrine of Huitzilopochtli’: ‘
Man hath a soul, they say, and yet no beast/Hath dug down to the depth of his disgrace/To offer up the font of human love/Before the nightmare spectre of his brain.’ Perhaps the greatest work in the volume is ‘Eros’ Throne: The Ascent of Life and Love’, an ambitious piece in nineteen parts which goes from ‘Boyhood’, ‘Girlhood’, ‘Divergence’, ‘Will’, ‘Emotion’ and ‘Beauty’ etc. The first section, ‘Boyhood’ contains these rather good lines: ‘
Under all the sun’s vast vision/
He is the most lovely.’ and ‘
Sappho sang in vain to Phaon, /Venus mourned her sylvan boy, /And another than Briseis/Steeped in blood the plains of Troy.’ Not a bad collection but I thought much of it fell short of the mark and there was that overwhelming smell of the prison which lingered and spoilt my enjoyment, but on the whole no too bad!
The Magic of My Youth
– by Arthur Calder-Marshall.
Published in 1951 by
the novelist and critic Arthur Calder-Marshall (1908-1992), ‘The Magic of My
Youth’ is a beautifully written autobiography which moves serpent-wise through
the threads of the author’s past, gently alighting upon distant visions and
occurrences, but mostly the book recounts his fascination with magical and
spiritual themes and his acquaintance with ‘Vickybird’ (Victor Neuburg, the
poet and disciple of occultist Aleister Crowley) – ‘having spent the first
fifteen years of my life in ignorance of Crowley’s existence, I became aware of
him from four separate sources in the course of six months: from a Sunday
newspaper, from my brother at Oxford; from a vision of the Tiger Woman, Betty
May, in full Bacchanal at a Bloomsbury Hotel and, most remarkable of all, from
the Steyning Poet.’ [Neuburg] (The Poet and the See-er: The Illusionist of
Islington. p.19.) Calder-Marshall summons up the way in which magic (or magick
as it is rightly spelt) seems to occur naturally, as if events are subtly
manipulated so that the desired intention is brought to pass, almost unobserved;
this is described perfectly in the tale told by Tom Driberg concerning ‘Cosmo
the Great Illusionist’ in the opening chapter, the Prelude. The author evokes a
picturesque vision of Steyning in the 1920’s and of the poet, Neuburg, who
‘each morning’ would ‘emerge from Vine Cottage with a string bag and an obese
white bitch and make for the High Street.’ (p.23) Vickybird really comes to
life through Calder-Marshall’s tender descriptive touches: ‘He carried an ash
stick, and he was always dressed in a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers, with stockings
which rode in rucks around his spindly legs, and shoes so old that the leather
was cracked.’ With his ‘thin venous hands’ and a ‘head which, by nature
disproportionately large for his body, was magnified by dark Medusa locks which
rose from his scalp and tumbled curling down his forehead.’ The bedraggled poet
with his razor cuts and threadbare clothing must have been quite a sight in
quaint old-fashioned Steyning!
Young Arthur and his
brother Robert, four years his senior, made friends with the odd poet as
children and later when Robert went to Oxford Arthur learnt all sorts of tales handed
down from ‘Bobby’ concerning the adventures of the harmless and amusingly
eccentric poet, Victor Neuburg and his relationship with notorious magician
Aleister Crowley – “In the first decade of the century, it appears that he went
into the middle of the Sahara with Aleister Crowley and, drawing a circle in
the sand, they summoned up the Devil.” (p.31) As in all books which reference
the Beast Crowley the usual sensational diabolic nonsense surfaces because as
humans we naturally gravitate towards the exaggerated truth spiced with a
little ‘invented myths’ which is after all more interesting than the mundane.
Neuburg corrects Arthur on their meeting, saying “in the first place, we did
not go into the middle of the Sahara, but
merely into the desert a few miles out of Marakhesh. And we did not draw a
circle, but a pentacle, which from a magical point of view is a very different
matter.” (p.34) The author describes a lovely scene in which Arthur’s father,
calling the author’s bluff visits Vine Cottage to meet the clumsy and seemingly
awkward Vickybird and his wife Kathleen, drawn with a light touch of comedy;
and young Arthur goes to Oxford and meets Vickybird’s equally eccentric Aunt Helen,
the See-er for tea with her two mongooses, a parrot and a half-blind
pine-marten – ‘She must, I thought, have been a very beautiful woman when she
was young. Even now, with her height and slenderness accentuated by the long
black gown, her tawny hair bound with a broad fillet of python-skin, she was
strikingly handsome.’ (p. 69) In London
she got to know Neuburg and Crowley
and became interested in the occult and read the stars; she lived on credit and
perpetuated the war between ‘Artists’ and ‘Philistines’. When the bailiffs came
calling it was Arthur who took care of her precious things in his Oxford rooms until the
University forbade him to visit her again. She died quite insane.
There are some
fascinating reminiscences of Arthur aged fifteen living in Bloomsbury when his
brother was at Oxford, of seeing the ‘Epstein model’ Betty May, the Tiger
Woman, which leads us naturally into Crowley’s Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu and
the young St John’s College, Oxford poet who married Betty May: Raoul Loveday (1900-1923)
whose ‘poetry was as wildly romantic as his love-making. He admired immensely
decadents like Dowson and Lionel Johnson who hid the pretty in grandiloquence,
bridging the gulf between reality and splendour with alcohol. He drank whisky
by the toothglass.’ (p. 111) A man who, Calder-Marshall tells us was ‘more than
half in love with death.’ (p.113)
At Oxford Arthur
performs a ‘Black Mattins’ in his college rooms and rumour of the Black Mass
swept through the colleges and an hour after it was performed he was sent for
by the Dean and asked if a Black Mass took place and if he had ‘the Consecrated
Host and a defrocked priest.’ Actually it was a harmless ‘Esbath’ celebration,
but he was almost sent down for it! He became Secretary of the Oxford Poetry
Society and he invited Neuburg to give a talk which he at first declined but
accepted on the promise of a suit from Arthur to wear for the occasion. He was
originally to lecture on Blake’s ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’ but decided
upon ‘Poetry and Poesy, or the Making, Mating and Matching of the Word’,
spending two months in preparation for it; the lecture was terrible but Neuburg
felt invigorated by it and deemed it a wonderful success! Arthur tells
Vickybird that he intends to invite Crowley
to speak and the Steyning poet opens up about himself and Crowley and tells Arthur that ‘one evening
they were invoking Mars, and the ceremony started as usual with Crowley as the High
Priest declaring, “The Temple is Open.” There were the appropriate liturgies
and invocations, and then Vickybird, who had been given a drug which he did not
specify, rose to ‘dance down’ the God. ‘Dancing down,’ as I understood it,
involved the abnegation of the dancer’s own personality. He became a vacuum
into which he drew the God.
“And then,” said
Vickybird, “instead of declaring that the Temple
was closed, he deliberately dismissed us. He pretended later that it was
forgetfulness. But he could no more forget that than a Catholic priest could
forget the Ite, missa est.” and he continues – ‘”The first thing I
remember was squeezing back into my soul. It was like being in a very small
room with an immensely powerful man who wanted to kill me by sheer pressure. I
told you that you wouldn’t understand, and pray God that you never will. The
God Mars is a killer and he wanted to use my body. I fought him for seventy-two
hours before I gained possession of my body again.” (p. 163-4) Then of course
we hear all about the Ione de Forrest episode on Thursday 1st August
1912, Neuburg’s lover who committed suicide – would Neuburg really have said
something so cruel as ‘All right, kill yourself!’ to her plea of ‘If you go out
of that door I shall kill myself!’ I don’t think so, but the young poet was
under mental distress at the time and attached to Crowley so anything is
possible. Vickybird blamed himself and Crowley for her death and guilt confined
him to the obscure pastures of Steyning. Meanwhile, Arthur’s brother Robert
dies and we hear all about the bohemians who inhabit London’s Fitzroy Tavern,
The Plough, and the Marquis of Granby, painters, writers and models drowning
their creative genius in alcohol. And of course he meets the socialite Betty
May who informs him that Crowley is in London and determined to see the Beast he
meets Crowley at the Eiffel Tower near the Fitzroy Tavern one evening after
dinner and they settled a date for Crowley to give his lecture to the Oxford
Poetry Society – its subject will be Gilles de Rais! Naturally the lecture is
banned a few days before it is to take place and the lecture was published and
circulated through the colleges. Arthur meets the Beast one more time in
December 1929 at a cottage in Knockholt, Kent where the magician is staying
with his wife Maria Teresa, and the two men do psychological battle over a
bottle of brandy, Crowley turning on the old hypnotic charm and Arthur not
falling for it, comically matching him across the table attempting to outstare
the Mage!
Towards the end of the
book Arthur writes his first rejected novel having taken three months to create
it and he takes a six weeks teaching job as Senior Classics Master at
Bogglesham Grammar School. In the Epilogue, ‘The Ship Comes In’, there is a
delightful re-acquaintance between Arthur and Vickybird in London, when the poet had found new love and
a new job as Poetry Editor for the Sunday Referee.
‘The Magic of My
Youth’ has been a wonderful experience and Calder-Marshall practices no
pretence and indeed it shall be a book I will turn to again. Being a great
admirer of Crowley it is nice to get this different perspective of him from one
who met him; a picture which does not place the great magician centre stage but
like a prowling tiger around the circumference and of course anything on
Neuburg is a delightful revelation as there is not enough on this gentle
magician-poet. The author keeps the narrative light and introduces some
wonderful moments of humour throughout the 226 pages. This really is an
immaculate little book (my copy has acquired a ‘loving energy’ from sensitive
hands and a delicate aged aroma familiar to all book lovers!) Excellent!
Wild Apples – by
Jeanne Robert Foster.
This exquisite little
book of poems (196 pages) by the American poet Jeanne Robert Foster (born Julia Oliver 1879-1970)
was published in 1916 and it is divided into seven parts: I.
‘The Great Sea Fight and Occasional Poems’, II. ‘Sonnets’, III. ‘Songs,
Ballads, Pastorals’, IV. ‘The Blazoned Rose’, V. ‘Silhouettes’, VI. ‘Orifiel’ a
dramatic fragment and VII. ‘The Eve of Sanhain’.
One of the most
striking poems which opens the book is ‘When I am Dead’ in which the author
asks – ‘Do I wish my name to be a Master-Word, /Whispered whenever the awe and
terror of power is stirred.’ And she answers: ‘No, none of this, - /Neither beauty
nor power, - for the groping hands of men/Will scatter my dust from its quiet
place, and re-create me again.’
There are some very
accomplished poems such as the worthy memorial poem to the poet Robert Lamier:
‘So brief his flight, so short his nesting time/Hardly within him had ripe
genius moved;’ – there is the essence of Yeats (in fact she dedicates the poems
to the poet’s brother, the artist J. B. Yeats R.H.A. 1871-1957) and her poem
‘W. B. Yeats – Reading’ has some magically inspired lines which conjure the
great Irish bard, who ‘rose/in the lamp’s flare, grave as the dark
waters;/forgetful of each face, sense winged beyond/The preen of curios eyes
and whispered praise.’ She describes his voice ‘murmuring of Dooney and of
Innisfree’, who made a dream ‘Not of thyself, but of the Mystic Rose/Thou
singest, and the Vessel of the Grail.’ Other Yeatsian poems in the collection such
as: ‘The Fairy Woman’, ‘Riders to the Sea’, ‘Songs of Bally Shannon’, ‘The
Emigrant’ and ‘The Stranger in the Glen’ all have a sense of the other world
beyond the veil where there is ‘drooping numbness with narcotic calm.’
(‘Moonrise’)
The author has a light
touch too as can be seen in the frail poem ‘Moth Flowers’:
The pale moth
Trembles in the white
moonlight;
Thus my heart trembles
with love!
The rose petals fall –
The red petals of my
heart;
On, the breath of
love!
Cool, sweet tears
Of honey, the jasmine
weeps;
Burning fall the tears
of love.
Oh, how bitter
Is the White Poppy,
Death;
There are no more
dreams of love.
In another poem she compares
herself to a ‘Wayside Flower’ that ‘loves and lives/and all itself to love so
freely gives,’ a flower that ‘droops and dies,’ yet ‘bravely dying knows not
pain/If only memory of its grace remain.’ Many poems also show a desire for
motherhood (alas she was infertile) and she weaves a delicate thread of magic
such as in ‘The Eternal Triangle’:
'Do not speak –
Twilight burns on the
hills; exorcise now
Those phantoms of old
loves; death comes apace
And Spring no more
will rim the barren bough.
Here swings the
censer; here the incense burns;
Here the Eternal
Athanor of Power,
Body supreme,
transmuter of our dross –
The Rose Alchemical –
the Magic Flower.’
It will come as no
surprise that a year previous to the publication of ‘Wild Apples’ the author
was in a relationship with the occultist Aleister Crowley whom she met on 10
June 1915; she took the magical name ‘Hilarion’ and was also known by Crowley
as the ‘Cat’ because of her feline nature and physical appearance. Aficionados
of Crowley will know that she is the magical mother of Frater Achad (Charles
Stansfeld Jones 1886-1950) who crossed the magical Abyss at the Autumn Equinox
of 1915 to become a Master of the Temple; the spiritual ‘child’ prophesied in
Liber Al vel Legis, but that is another matter and it should not influence the
poems.
Throughout the book
the author, the possessor of extreme feminine beauty, clings to her mystical
beliefs in a spiritual loneliness and longing for God: ‘The bosom of God/From
whence I came, /To which I have been eternally returning.’ (‘Refuge’) She is
also a competent writer of sonnets and one also finds the influence of Poe
where lingers an odour of the grave: ‘I would the seeping graveyard rain/Could
wake thee into life again, /And while in hell I burn thou couldst/In some red
rose forget thy pain.’ (‘The Soul’s Farewell’) These poems may not be to
everyone’s liking (let’s face it, there are some pretty awful ones too) but
there is a mood which pervades the book and that mood is for change, a
spiritual transformation or enlightenment and a physical longing for love and
God – “Zariel: ‘Old worlds spin down to vapour in the void/And new worlds rise,
but Law remains unchanged.’” (‘Orifiel’) Quite lovely!
Witchcraft: It’s Power
in the World To-Day – by William Seabrook.
Published in 1941,
William Seabrook’s oft’-cited book on witchcraft has become a staple of occult
literature and is a fascinating read. William Seabrook (1884-1945) was an American
travel writer with a life-long interest in the occult, a man who proudly
admitted to having eaten human flesh and studied under various witch-doctors in
Africa; he committed suicide by taking an
overdose. Once the reader has got over the initial arrogance of the author in
his Foreword ‘Exploding a Non-Sequitur perched on the Horns of a Dilemma’ one
actually finds it quite an engrossing book. Its 299 pages are divided into
three parts: I – ‘The Witch and her Doll’ which explores the origins and general
use of the ‘witch doll’ in various cultures, such as the ‘Monstrous Doll in Africa’, the ‘Doll de Luxe in London’ and the ‘Nail-Studded Doll in Toulon’. Part II looks at
the ‘Vampire and the Werewolf’, recounting such cases as Countess Elizabeth
Bathory (1560-1614), the ‘Vampire 1932 from Brooklyn,
New York’, the ‘Panther-Man from
the Ivory Coast’,
the ‘Caged White Werewolf of the Saraban’, and the ‘Werewolf in Washington Square’.
Part III ‘White Magic, Professor Rhine, the Supernormal, and Justine’ opens
with a ‘Presentation of an Open Question, to which a Negative Answer may not be
the Final Word’ and he gives examples from his own experiences such as the
‘Astral Body on a Boat’, ‘Upton Sinclair’s “Mental Radio”’, ‘W E Woodward with
a Hatpin driven through his jaws’, Justine Dervish Dangling’ and ‘Justine in
the Mask’ (Justine was his then girlfriend who assisted Seabrook in their
experiments with ESP and exploring future Time events). The Appendix has a
plethora of ‘Supplementary Notes, Anecdotes, and Illustrations’. It will not
come as any surprise to the reader for the author spells it out endlessly that
he does not believe in the existence of spirits and all the other
‘mumbo-jumbo’- connected with the occult or the ‘supernormal’ of which he says
is ‘anything which occurs contrary to the fixed, known laws of time-space, the
fixed, known rules of logic, or endours its supposed possessor with senses and
powers outside those laws and rules as known up to now’. (p. 145) In fact, I
found his opinions, although he has much knowledge and practise in the occult,
quite infuriating, as he remains sceptical as to the effectiveness of
witchcraft where there is no human intervention to cause the desired results:
‘when the intended victim believes the force attacking him is super-human the
doll, for him becomes a fatal image of certain doom, and he tends more easily
to crack up emotionally and functionally.’ (p. 46. ‘Wooden Doll in a Cave’) Of
course there is always the human element when a natural or unnatural desire is
set in motion and psychologically if the victim is aware that a ‘curse’ has
been placed upon them the result will be that more effective, but to dismiss
the world of spirits is absurd in my opinion. He maintains that all magical
phenomena occurs solely through human ‘physical’ and ‘psychological’
intervention or ‘induced-autosuggestion’ and fails to understand the simplest
laws of natural magic (or magick as I prefer to spell it) in which the
practitioner must have faith in his or her intentions and observe the correct
magical procedures to bring about those intentions just as if one were to cast
a fly onto the surface of a stream, by the proper motions a salmon is landed.
His arrogance does not let him understand the power of the mind during
conjuration (invocation and evocation) – the God Mars is just as tangible as
the Pope and just as deadly! Although he is correct in his assumptions that
‘dolls’ are merely symbols in sympathetic and imitative magic; a fetishistic
point to focus the force or current of the will and create a magical link, in
dark magic it is the focus of concentrated hatred and destructive thought.
In part III – ‘Our
Modern Cagliostros’ he mentions three ‘white magicians’ in the world today, who
have real power, two of whom he came to know: I. George Gurdjieff (1866-1949),
who seemed to have power over his acolytes to cause them to perform
unbelievable feats of acrobatic skills and physical endurance; II. Aleister
Crowley (1875-1947), the founder of the Great White Brotherhood whom he met
through Frank Harris in 1917 in New York, and III. Pierre Arnold Bernard
(1875-1955), a yogi known as the ‘Great Oom’ and founder of a ‘love cult’ whom
Seabrook did not meet and has little to say about. Interestingly he gives
examples of his meetings with Crowley, whom he describes as ‘a strange,
disturbing fellow, with a heavy pontifical manner mixed with a good deal of
sly, monkey-like, and occasionally malicious humour. He wore an enormous star
sapphire on the forefinger of his right hand, and had his head shaved’ (p. 173)
He goes on to give details about Crowley’s ‘Magical Retirement’ for forty days
and nights, travelling up the Hudson River in a canoe with his tent to Esopus
Island:
‘The provisions looked
suspicious and since we’d paid for them we decided to inspect them. They
consisted of fifty gallons of red paint, three big house-painter’s brushes, and
a heavy coil of rope. We investigated further. He hadn’t bought so much as a
tin of beans or a loaf of bread. He’s blown every cent for the red paint. He
had nothing in his pockets except the ticket for the trip up the river.
“What are you going to
eat, for crying out loud?” we asked, and he replied, in his heaviest pontifical
manner:
“My children, I am
going to Esopus Island, and I will be fed as Elijah was
fed by the ravens.” (p. 175-6) He was indeed fed, but not by ravens, by kindly
farmers for forty days!
‘all summer excursionists
going up and down the river saw painted on the cliffs south of Kingston two
enormous legends:
Every Man and Woman is
a Star!
Do What Thou Wilt
shall be the Whole of the Law.’ Seabrook adds that he had ‘rigged himself a
sling, and painted, we were told, from sunrise to sundown. Thereafter he had
sat cross-legged on the ground in front of his tent.’ (p. 176) After Crowley
returned to New York
in September, the next day Seabrook invited him to the Plaza for lunch and
Seabrook asked him what he had gained from his forty days as a hermit to which Crowley said he would
show him. They took a walk in the park – then 5th Avenue, near to
the Public Library and crossed 42nd Street, ‘ahead of us was
strolling a tall, prosperous-looking gentleman of leisure, and Crowley, silent
as a cat, fell into step immediately behind him. Their footfalls began to
synchronize, and then I observed that Crowley, who generally held himself
pompously erect and had a tendency to strut, had dropped his shoulders, thrust
his head forward a little, like the man’s in front, had begun to swing his arms
in perfect synchronization – now so perfect that he was like a moving shadow or
astral ghost of the other.
As we neared the end
of the block A.C., in taking a step forward, let both knees buckle suddenly
under him, so that he dropped, caught himself on his haunches, and was
immediately erect again, strolling.
The man in front of us
fell as if his legs had been shot out from under him – and was sprawling.’ (p.
177) He also mentions Jane Wolfe’s (although he does not name her) experiences
at Crowley’s
Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu and the death of Raoul Loveday. Despite such visual
evidence he still clings to his sceptical stance although he does admit that
Crowley had real powers and he comes close to admitting the possibility that
ESP may be a genuine factor in experiments of thought transference, all this
from a man who confesses to have ‘eaten cat in Naples and caterpillars on the
Ivory Coast. I have also eaten stewed young man. I have drunk the sacrificial
blood of goats and bulls at voodoo altars.’ (p. 181) A little erratic but
thoroughly compelling!
The Amazon of Letters:
The Life and Loves of Natalie Barney – by George Wickes.
Published in 1976 (I
read the 1978 edition) ‘The Amazon of Letters’ is a compelling biography of the
American writer, feminist and legendary lesbian socialite who made Paris her home, Natalie
Clifford Barney (1876-1972). At first glance one can be forgiven for thinking
the book a sprawling mass of nonsense about another frivolously wealthy,
independent, sexually liberated young woman collecting lovers and admirers,
particularly amongst the well-to-do and notable celebrity socialites who
frequented the Paris
salons, and who wrote almost unreadable atrocious poems and you would be half
right! When first picking up a book I like to sit with it a while before I
begin reading it, to get to know its idiosyncrasies and get a general idea of
the landscape ahead; to awaken my sense to it and the ‘Amazon’ took a little
longer than usual as I savoured its flavour and indulged in the foreplay before
the intercourse! So, upon a second glance one gets the impression of the
beautiful, brilliant and witty Miss Barney, the ‘sad and gentle page boy whose
studies could be summarized in a couplet: my only books/were women’s looks’ (I.
Origins. p. 17) as a female Don Juan seducing women; a scandalous cultivator
and mediator of friendships and a master of the epigram (she met Oscar Wilde in
1882 when she was just five years old). In fact, it was in the spring of 1898
when she was twenty-two that she first went to France and saw and fell in love
with the celebrated courtesan Liane de Poughy (Anne-Marie Chassaigne) whom she
sought to rescue from her plight! Natalie dressed as a page boy with flowers to
meet Liane, looking like ‘an angel from a painting by Fra Angelico.’ (p. 43)
and so their love affair began! In 1901 Liane wrote ‘Idylle Saphique’ which
portrayed Natalie as ‘Flossie’ and described their romance together. When
Natalie’s father caught her reading a love-letter from Liane he sent her back
to the States to mould her into ‘eligible marriage material’! It was not the
first time her father had cause for concern for in 1900 Natalie published her
first book, ‘Quelques Portraits-Sonnets de Femmes’, a volume of 34 poems
dedicated to her female admirers such as Evaline ‘Eva’ Palmer, one of her early
lovers; her father, Albert Clifford Barney attempted to buy-up all the copies
and destroy them but Natalie fortunately managed to save several copies!
After her father’s
death in 1902 Paris
became her permanent home and her sexual hunting plain – she met her first real
love: the English writer Pauline Tarn who wrote in French under the pseudonym
Renee Vivien, a poet with a preoccupation with death! Renee would prove to be
her greatest love which sadly ended tragically, told exceptionally well in chapters
5 and 6. She also became friends with the poet Pierre Louys and in 1902
produced her second book: ‘Cinq Petits Dialogues grecs’. She became acquainted
with the prolific French writer and recluse, Remy de Gourmont in 1910; the
author suffered from lupus and Capote describes him cruelly as ‘the ugliest man
in Paris’ (p.
289) – Remy fell for Natalie’s charms and amusing wit just as many intellectual
writers fell for her. Another great love of Natalie’s life was Lucie
Delarue-Mardrus who was twenty-two when she first met Natalie and Eva through
Vivien; Lucie was married to the orientalist, Dr. Joseph Charles Victor
Mardrus, sometimes referred to as ‘Jesus Christ Mardrus’; Lucie and Natalie
became inseparable and the love affair lasted from 1902-4 but the friendship
lasted for life. The author also has much to say on another love – the Duchess
de Clermont-Tonnerre: Elizabeth de Gramont, or ‘Lily’ who was close friends
with Natalie from 1910-15 and of course there is the famous Friday salons at Natalie’s home,
20 rue Jacob; the romance and love affair with the American painter Romain
Brooks and her friendships with Bernard Berenson, Ezra Pound, Colette, Ford
Madox Ford, Paul Valery, Mata Hari, Andre Gide, Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes,
Dolly Wilde, and hanging onto the fringes are James Joyce, T S Eliot and Marcel
Proust, until we reach Natalie’s last lover Janine Lahovary who seems an
unsavoury kind of woman but she did remain with Natalie to the end and took
care of her – Natalie was a very wealthy woman!
Part II ‘Epilogue’ is
a series of interviews by the author, George Wickes, two with Natalie in 1971,
the year before she died, and several with Berthe Cleyrergue, Natalie’s servant
since 1927; Janine Lahovary, friends, Jean Chalon, Francois Chapon and the American
student Cheryl Hughes. The delightful reminiscences continue in part III from
Eyre de Lanux, Virgil Thomson, Bettina Bergery, Truman Capote and Janet
Flanner.
Wickes has produced a
mesmerising journey through the Paris of the fin-de-siecle and beyond and a
picture of the pagan, Hellenistic culture at the centre of that world and of the
creative and intellectual salons unfolds and amidst the perfume and the
philosophy and the talks on books is a charming, hedonistic lover of women who
made a lasting impression in the minds and hearts of all those who came to know
and love her – a witty and fascinating read!
Tiger Woman: My Story
– by Betty May.
Betty May has led an
exhausting and adventurous life and she was only 36 when ‘Tiger Woman’ was
published in 1929. Throughout the eight chapters of the book we find a
headstrong, earthy and quite child-like personality, almost a victim of her own
fate who intrudes upon one improbable moment to the next; she could not help
but become a figure of hedonistic notoriety – ‘I have never tried to be
ordinary and fit in with other people. I have not cared what the world thought
about me, and as a result I am afraid what I thought has often not been very
kind.’ (Introduction) Betty and her three siblings were raised in squalor and
misery in London’s
Tidal Bay, but because of her misbehaviour she
was sent to live with her cruel and drunken father (he had a penchant for
bashing cats’ brains out against walls) who lived in a brothel with a Jewish
woman named Sarah. The father showed no sign of love towards Betty and was
eventually arrested (by his own father who was a Police man) for living off
immoral earnings and given two years in prison and Betty went to live first
with an Aunt on a barge and later with an Aunt on a farm in Somerset. Following a sexual encounter with an
older man, a Master of the local Grammar School she was sent out into the world
and naturally drifted towards London.
She wasn’t long in London when her beautiful yet wild looks began to attract
attention and when she failed to submit to the abuse, assaults, bribes and
threats of a man who proclaimed to love her, he took her by taxi to a club in
Leicester Square and pushed her down the stairs – it was her first glimpse of
the smoky underworld of London’s nightlife with its dancing and jazz music and
she became intoxicated by it. She began to frequent clubs such as the Endell
Street Club and the Café Royal where artists such as Jacob Epstein, Augustus
John and the art critic Roger Fry hung-out and held court amongst the bohemians
like Nina Hamnett and the artist’s models. Suddenly, Betty goes to Bordeaux on
a whim (all her adventures seem to be on a whim) with a man she later finds out
to be a ‘white slaver’ and she manages to escape his clutches; homeless and
hungry, she finds work dancing at a Café before being abducted by a street gang
leader known as ‘White Panther’ and taken to Paris where she becomes a member
of his gang and she is referred to as ‘Tiger Woman’. One of her more shocking
and shameful episodes concerns Betty leading a young English undergraduate on
and taking him to the gang’s headquarters where he is robbed and dumped outside
Paris; the young man informs the police who raid the HQ (the gang had prior
notice and fled). Betty is blamed and given an ultimatum: bring back the man or
suffer the consequences (in other words they would kill her) so she hunts the
man and finds him and lures him to the gangs new HQ and she is forced to brand
the young man with a hot knife on his breast before he is again dumped in
Monmartre. Again he goes to the police, the HQ is raided and gang members are
taken into custody – Betty returns to England and her adventures make her
the toast of the Endell Street Club and the Café Royal crowd.
She gets engaged to a
man named Arthur and the next day gets engaged to marry Dick and lives with his
parents in a village Rectory for three months, utterly bored – she escapes and
returns to London and on seeing Arthur she agrees to marry him in a week’s
time. The night preceding the eve of the wedding she is at the Café Royal where
she meet her friend ‘Bunny’ who declares his love for her – they get married on
the same day she was to marry Arthur! They honeymoon in Scotland and she finds
Bunny is a cocaine addict and Betty succumbs to the drug also – they are thrown
out of the hotel and back in London live at the home of Stewart Gray, the man
behind the ‘back to the land’ movement. At the outbreak of war Bunny joins up
and when he goes to France in December 1914 she is bored in Richmond, working
at a hairdresser’s and a tobacconists; she fears she has contracted leprosy
(from one of the hair nets manufactured in China) and she and Bunny agree to
divorce (as it turns out Bunny dutifully dies in battle) and Betty escalates
into a world of dope and drink and even becomes psychotic and suicidal. Before
Bunny’s death she had met an Australian Major who fell for Betty and they get
married and he attempts to help her get off the drugs and alcohol. While she is
living in Hastings
free of drugs she finds out her husband has been unfaithful with a French woman
and they get divorced.
She gets noticed by
the sculptor Jacob Epstein who makes the bust of her known as the ‘Savage’
which brings her minor celebrity (and artistic immortality) until she met a
brilliant, young Oxford undergraduate in 1922 named Raoul Loveday; within a
month they were married. Raoul, who had secured a First in History at St John’s
College, Oxford was interested in Egyptology and the occult and he soon became
acquainted with the notorious Aleister Crowley who asked him to join him at his
Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Sicily; Betty is fearful but afraid of losing Raoul
to the magician decides to go with her husband and they both travel to the
Abbey in November 1922. She describes life at the Abbey (if you are fond of
cats look away!) as she fights the hold Crowley (whom she does not name but
refers to throughout as the ‘Mystic’) seems to have over the young Raoul and we
are escorted through the events which lead up to poor Raoul’s death just three
months after arriving from drinking unclean spring water. Back in London, poor and in her Soho room, Betty’s luck changes when a journalist offers
to pay her £500 in return for her life story; the newspapers are filled with
the scandals concerning Crowley,
the Abbey and Raoul’s death! She then meets a strange woman by the name of Princess
Waletka, a mind-reader and she travels to America with her, spending three
months in her company and in her stage-show. Betty returns to England alone
and gets engaged (again!) to a man named Carol, a sporting journalist whose
mother is suitably unimpressed with Betty. They marry and there is a great
stand-off between mother and daughter-in-law until one day when Betty is ill in
bed she can take no more and Betty throws a cup of tea over her mother-in-law
before rushing off to London.
Her husband on hearing this resigns from his work, bundles her in a taxi and
takes her back – she is bored of hearing about the sport (hunting, shooting and
fishing) and of family history from Carol’s mother so Betty pitches a tent and
opens a cake and sweet shop in the village, making all the confectionary
herself, before growing tired of it and giving it up. One day Carol went out
shooting rooks and Betty joined him, wringing the necks of those which were
only wounded; a week later Carol is ill and Betty nurses him; her mother-in-law
accuses her of killing her son and Betty at the end of her rope attacks her
before doing what she does best – escaping back to London!
Throughout the book
Betty leaps from one wild adventure to the next, willing to settle down with
first this man and then that man, but it was inevitable that she would fail at
marriage, even the most ardent lover would find it difficult to cage a tiger.
The absence of a father-figure in childhood seems to me the single point which
continually propels her into marriage and into a Freudian un-satisfaction of
being dominated and conforming to what is expected and acceptable. She walks
blindly into matrimony just as she walks blindly into the excesses of London’s
‘bright, young people’, obliterating the memory of war’s devastation, and in
this she is in many ways, a modern woman, quite fearless and determined, easily
prone to boredom and fierce when needs to be. She does not look for sympathy;
she places her story down for the world to gawp at and merely says accept it
for it is who I am! Much of her tale concerning the Abbey differs to Crowley’s
version of events in his ‘Confessions’ – Crowley was not always wholly reliable
and prone to exaggerate while I think Betty does tell the simple truth, if
perhaps a little clouded by time as she never mentions keeping a journal which
would have been of vital importance for the sake of historical accuracy,
nevertheless, ‘Tiger Woman’ is the account of someone who did not fall for
Crowley’s magical personality and someone who breezed through life at the cruel
hand of fate and accepted it, good or bad! An astounding story and an
extraordinary life indeed!
Gerard Manley Hopkins
– by G F Lahey.
Published in 1930 (I
read the 1969 edition) this fascinating little book of a mere 172 pages does
credit to the author who obviously has a strong appreciation for Hopkins and
his work and he shows us a precocious, delicately honest and sensitive child
who is aware of ‘moral disorder and physical ugliness’; he brings the young
Hopkins into the light and exposes his youthful character which is not the
serious, brooding aesthete one assumes but a playful and stubborn adolescent
absorbed in the world around him; the world of nature and the frailties of
humanity – at school he observed that everyone drank too much liquid so he
decided to abstain from drinking all liquid for a week; the result of course
was that he collapsed but his determination and his will to endure proved
almost beyond human physicality; he did the same with less drastic results with
salt! Acts of such self-denial would become a common theme throughout his life.
The young Gerard was a dreamer and a lover of poetry, a ‘fairy child in the
midst of a commonplace, workaday world.’ During the Christmas term of 1863 he
went up to Balliol College, Oxford where he studied under Jowett, Riddell and
Pater, becoming a disciple of Pusey and Liddon, and he made some of his great
friendships here such as his cousin and fellow poet Robert Bridges (later Poet
Laureate), Digby Mackworth Dolben and William Addis. Dolben of course is an
interesting personality in himself; a young man who had a ‘mind no less penetrating
than his friend’s [Hopkins] and a soul equally sensitive to the seductive glow
of nature and of art!’ Lahey says that his ‘personality was intense and
affectionate, but buoyant and romantic.’ (p. 27) Like Hopkins, Dolben became a
Puseyite and under the name of Brother Dominic he joined the Third Order of St.
Benedict organised by Rev. Joseph Leycester Lyne. ‘I have written letters
without end’ [to Dolben] Gerard reports to Bridges, ‘without a whiff of
answer.’ (p. 28) These are of course the celebrated ‘dead letters’ to ‘dearest
him’ and the same sense of romance permeated Hopkins’ chivalrous desire for
Dolben as Dolben’s attachment to a boy at school whom he wrote love poems to. One
would have to be unbelievably naive to assume that Hopkins was not overcome by terrible erotic
thoughts for Dolben and would have wanted a deeper intimacy between them and it
is probably correct to say that he was warned against such a relationship, a
relationship which must remain by correspondence only if he desired to walk a
spiritual path. Intense friendships were forged in the all-male society of
public schools and colleges – if you have taken the trouble (as I have done) to
wade through that fairly innocuous curio published in two volumes in 1881 which
tells of the adventures of Jack Saul or the recollections of a Mary-Ann, under
the unassuming title ‘Sins of the Cities of the Plain’ (‘milking a cow will
never seem the same again!’) you will realise that homosexual practises did not
begin and end with the Ancient Greeks! But too much importance is placed upon Hopkins’ sexuality or
lack of it and his work should stand for itself as poetic masterpieces.
Dolben’s
eccentricities were well known such as his liking for dressing as a monk –
‘Walford believed that Dolben had been mobbed in Birmingham. He went in his habit without
sandals barefoot’ Hopkins
wrote to Bridges. Although they only met once, Hopkins unrequited love for
Dolben remained intense but at the time of Dolben’s death he had cooled towards
him or at least gave the impression that he had, writing to Bridges that he
would ‘someday like to see Finedon and the place where he was drowned.’ I have
made that curious little pilgrimage myself to Finedon and laid my hand upon the
cold stone of the young poet Dolben and left something of my sadness there with
him.
In the third chapter
‘Hopkins and Newman’ we are presented with the correspondence between them and
the meetings which took place and the four letters from H P Liddon to Hopkins
dated 16th, 18th, 19th and 20th October
1866 imploring Hopkins not to be hasty in his decision to be confirmed into the
Catholic Church – Hopkins was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Newman
in Birmingham on 21st October 1866. We get a sense of Hopkins the
man through his friendship and correspondence with the poet Coventry Patmore
who greatly appreciated Hopkins’ mental criticisms of his poetical works, even
to the point that he tossed his manuscript of ten years work called ‘Sponsa
Dei’ into the flames on Christmas Day 1887 after Hopkins’ critical comment that
to publish it would be ‘telling secrets’. (p. 66) The author takes an in-depth
look at Hopkins’
poems and the poetical structures he utilises in his Sprung Rhythm and analyses
the aesthetic conceptions of ‘inscape’ and ‘instress’. We also hear Hopkins’ theories on
Keats whom he compares to the young Shakespeare in his letter to Patmore dated 24th October 1887
and the letters from his friend Richard Watson Dixon almost read like the
blushing declarations of the heart in their favourable friendship. This is a
perfect little book about a curious man with a deep sense of devotion and
vocation.
The Correspondence of
Gerard Manley Hopkins and Richard Watson Dixon, edited with Notes and an
Introduction – by Claude Colleer Abbott.
Claude Colleer Abbott,
who was Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Durham,
has produced a splendid book which brings together the correspondence of two
gentle minds and two poets: Gerard Manley Hopkins and Richard Watson Dixon (1833-1900).
Canon R W Dixon was a distinguished if overlooked poet and a great historian
who attended King Edward VI School in Birmingham before going up to Pembroke
College, Oxford (graduating in 1857); after his ordination he was assistant
master at Highgate School (1861) for a short time and it was here where he met
the seventeen year old Hopkins as a pupil who had won the school’s Poetry Prize
in 1860. Dixon
was a friend of the artist Edward Burne-Jones and the poet Rossetti. Dixon
became a parish priest and wrote his monumental six volumes of ‘The History of
the Church of England from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction’ (1878-1902)
and various volumes of poetry including ‘Christ’s Company and Other Poems’
(1861) which has touches of Browning and Tennyson; his rather dull ‘Historical
Odes and Other Poems’ (1864), ‘Mano: A Poetical History’ (1883), ‘Odes and
Eclogues’ (1884), ‘Lyrical Poems’ (1887), ‘The Story of Eudocia and Her
Brothers’ (1888) and ‘Last Poems’ published posthumously in 1905. He was later
vicar of Hayton, Cumberland,
and of Warkworth, Northumberland.
Published in 1935 (I
read the 1955 second impression) these letters which begin with Hopkins’ first
introductory letter to Dixon dated 4th June 1878 from Stonyhurst
College, Blackburn in which there is high praise for the older poet and many
kind words of admiration and so begins a firm friendship between these two
crusty, literary men of God; in fact, an honourable trust is established and
Dixon values Hopkins’ critical judgements of his poems greatly and both are
gracious towards each other as throughout the charming correspondence which
throws up subjects on poetic form such as Hopkins’ notion of ‘Sprung Rhythm’
the sonnet and poetic metres (something he goes into great detail about); Keats,
Tennyson, Milton, Carlyle and Wordsworth all get their glory – there are some
interesting views of fame too, not to mention poem recommendations. They
managed to meet once after several attempts which their heavy workloads
prevented and Hopkins’ calls Dixon ‘shy’ in the letter following their meeting
which really brought the old Canon to life. It is true to say that Dixon was
the first to really recognise Hopkins’ ‘terrible pathos’ and great poetic
ability; he even attempted to have Hopkins’ poem ‘The Loss of the Eurydice’
published in a Carlisle newspaper which provoked the younger poet to protest
against it, resolved to the renunciation and sanctity of his ecclesiastical
work under the discipline and self-surrender of St Ignatius. There are a few
holes in the tapestry as some letters are missing which should have been
preserved but nevertheless, what remains gives a telling picture of two deeply
religious, thoughtful and literary-minded men – Dixon’s last letter is dated 7th
July 1887 from Northumberland and Hopkins’ 29th July 1888 from
University College, Dublin – Hopkins died on 8th June the following
year aged 44. The Appendix contains ‘A Prayer’ by Hopkins, his letters contributed to Nature;
his interests in art and music and there are ‘Poems by R W Dixon copied by G M
Hopkins. Many of these letters will seem familiar if you have read widely on Hopkins and so they
almost appear as old friends. A very touching and affectionate book!
An Experiment with
Time – by J. W. Dunne.
The British
philosopher, soldier and aeronautical engineer, John William Dunne (1875-1949)
published his astounding theories on the nature of time and consciousness which
he termed ‘serialism’: ‘An Experiment with Time’ in 1927 (I read the 1934 3rd
edition) to a welcome audience already becoming familiar with Einstein’s
Relativity and the concept of quantum mechanics. Dunne became curious about
‘time’ as a young boy and endeavoured to explain an adequate theory to
determine whether time or the chronological order of things (past, present and
future) can be viewed as in pre-cognitive dreaming to perceive future events.
His first ‘episode’ of pre-cognitive dreaming, or ‘clairvoyance’ occurred in
1898 when at his hotel in Sussex
he dreamt that his watch had stopped at 4.30
a.m. and on waking he found his watch had stopped at precisely 4.30
a.m. having re-wound his watch he returned to sleep and on waking found that
his watch had only lost a few minutes so it was logical to assume that he woke
at 4.30 a.m. having had the dream impression at the same time and the few
minutes lost were due to his winding of the watch. Dunne then began keeping
detailed records of his dreams which he found contained images of previous and
future events in his life to ascertain whether there existed a displacement of
time in the fourth dimension, whereby minor events can be observed. His early
hypothesis demonstrates that the state of being ‘awake’ in reality caused a
mental barrier to all knowledge of the future which led him to the supposition
– ‘what was the barrier which, in certain circumstances, debarred him from the
proper and comprehensive view?’ (p. 69) Several experiments with others
discounted the theory that temporal experiences or pre-cognitive phenomena was
a supernormal faculty and that it was a ‘normal characteristic of man’s general
relation to Time.’ (p. 91) He also records ‘waking experiments’ which also
proved fruitful.
He draws on the
conceptual theories of the British mathematician Charles Howard Hinton
(1853-1907), British Astronomer, Professor Sir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) and
the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859-1941) and concludes that Time has many levels, a
multi-dimensional theory of Time in which the time-line of the observer and a
higher time-line of the observer’s ‘conscious mind’ which experiences Time, or
the movement of Time, co-exist, in fact, infinite dimensions relative to
various perceptual states occur. ‘The Time dimension, for any given observer,
is simply the dimension in which his own world-line happens to extend through
the four-dimensional continuum.’ (p. 147) The theory illustrates the notion of
death in which the physical body is separated from the first dimensional level
of Time but the ‘consciousness’ remains on a higher, second dimensional level,
which is an interesting theory but it does not explain the perception of future
events fully and essentially the concept is flawed. He outlines his theory
admirably in part four ‘Temporal Endurance and Temporal Flow’ and makes a clear
definition of ‘Serial Time’ but time has shown in modern philosophical studies
that the multi-dimensional theory of Time is incorrect. Dunne published four
more works along similar lines: ‘The Serial Universe’ (1934), ‘The New Immortality’
(1938), ‘Nothing Dies’ (1940) and ‘Intrusions’ (1955).
I have unfortunately
not read much on modern theories of the subject as yet but my own opinion is
that any theory should take into account spatial-gravitational influence, human
biological ‘sentient’ awareness (with the small and limited range of sensual stimuli inherent) and species-specific perception (temporal 'presence') to determine
the nature of Time; of course other factors shall yield new information and paths of investigation but as to ‘seeing the future’ and even the concept of
Time-travel, which I believe is a genuine future possibility of mankind, but
that of course is a whole new paradox and only Time will tell! A compelling
case indeed!
Poems and Songs – by
Richard Middleton.
Like so many things I
stumbled upon the name Richard Middleton accidentally. I had never heard of the
name of Richard Middleton (1882-1911) until I came across him while reading a
book of uranian verse, ‘Men and Boys: An Anthology’ edited by Edward Slocum and
published in 1924 in which was reproduced his poem ‘The Bathing Boy’ which
Frank Harris called ‘finer than Herrick, nearly as beautiful, indeed, as The
Grecian Urn,’ well not quite, but it is particularly lovely: ‘And so I wept; I
have seen lovely things,/ Maidens and stars and roses all a-nod/ In moonlit
seas, but Love without his wings/ Set in the azure of an August sky,/ Was all
too far for my mortality,/ And so I wept to see the little god.’ and something
about him reached out to me and so I began another voyage of discovery! Richard
Barham Middleton was born in Middlesex in 1882 and he worked as a bank clerk
from 1901-07, a position which he detested; at night he moved in Bohemian
circles. ‘Poems and Songs’ (1912) is the only collection of his published
poetry (published posthumously) which is an accumulation of his work from
various magazines such as The English Review, and it has an Introduction by his
friend, Henry Savage. The volume, which he dedicates to another friend Frank
Harris (I read the second impression, also 1912), contains seventy-five poems
which have a richly haunting, melancholic sense about them which remains long
after the poem’s initial reading, (there are some fantastic lines also which
stand alone): ‘We are but moments in the tide of love, / Yet are we one with
love’s eternity.’ (‘To H. S.’) and in ‘Lament for Lilian’ we find: ‘The
yearning of the morning for the night, / The timeless passion of the
hemispheres.’ And again later in the same poem: ‘A human blossom glad for human
eyes/ Made pagan by a child’s serenity.’ – truly beautiful poetry! His verse chimes with musical tones that lifts
the heart and speaks of despair – ‘And when in dreams my lips repose on hers/
Kissing the pretty words that nestle there, / Her sweetness numbs my aching
brain and stirs/ Like a dim sound of her, the dream-hushed air,’ (One More
Song’). Middleton, like some large and bearded pirate had a child-like
enthusiasm and he evokes a lost pagan energy of childhood as here in
‘Chant-Pagan’: ‘No son of man shall fear you, / No woman shall come near you, /
Your lips may cry from your riven sky, / And the lovers shall not hear you.’
And again in ‘On a Dead Child’: ‘A little rose among the little roses, / And no
more dead than they,’ Many of his poems have inspired imagined dedications to
girls such as ‘To Dorothy’, Marjorie, Marguerite and Diana etc. and he
fantasised about a young and beautiful image of the ideal girl, a maiden pure
of heart and he inwardly raged towards his passionate ideal: ‘The love that
made you mine shall bear/ Harsh fruit before the end of this, / For in the
darkness you shall hear/ An echo that is none of his, / And you will droop with
sudden fear/ Beneath his fond, adulterous kiss.’ (‘Epithalamium’). His poems,
which are mostly love poems often echo the bitter longing and romantic
wistfulness one finds in Housman, but there is no English stoicism here as he
opens his heart like some morbid Browning. In ‘To C. M.’ which begins ‘Dear dreamer,
with the wonderful wide eyes, /You are not mine to love,’ there is the
realisation that he cannot attain the love he desires, and in the next stanza
we find ‘I know I am as nothing in your place/ Of sombre love and strange,
magnificent flowers, / But I have loosed your hair about my face/ To witch my
midnight hours;’ what a wonderful line that is – ‘To witch my midnight hours’, and
it ends: ‘There is a bitterness in love for me, /For every kiss shall burn my
flesh with fire, / I am a prince of thwarted ecstasy, / Of unasuaged desire. /
Yet would I know your new-bewitched skies, / Dear dreamer, and your passionate,
wide eyes.’ From such devotional verse we know that Middleton drew inspiration
from the young girls he knew (it seems he had more in common with Frank Harris
than their editorial work for Vanity Fair) such as Lilian, Christine and Irene
where he is ‘grieving in the graveyards of the moon’ (‘Irene’). That Middleton
had an obsession with death there is no doubt and we find it in lines such as
‘Come, Death, and free me from these earthly walls/ That heaven may hold our
final festivals/ The white stars trembling under!’ from ‘Love’s Mortality’ and
again in ‘To Melisande’ – ‘Let down your hair, let down your hair, / I’ll make
my shroud of it.’. Other poems of note are: ‘The Ballad of the Bacchanals’,
‘New Love’, ‘On a Dead Youth’, ‘Pagan Epitaph’, the Elizabethanesque ‘Any
Lover, Any Lass’, ‘The Silent Lover’, and the passionate ‘After Love’. There
are echoes of Poe in ‘The Dream’ with its lips, - ‘cold as stone’ – ‘Nightlong
I heard the passing-bell/ And knew the mourner’s smart.’…’All night your icy
kisses fell/ Upon my grieving heart.’
Middleton’s inner
turmoil is revealed in the poem ‘The Ascetic’s love Song’: ‘She doth not call
me old, in her embrace/ My body is made lovely, intricate/ With throbbing veins
and nerves that interlace/ My bones with threads of fire; more passionate.’
It will come as no
surprise that Middleton, a melancholic depressive who will be mostly remembered
for his collection of supernatural tales ‘The Ghost Ship and Other Stories’
(1912) took his own life at the age of 29 in Brussels on 1st
December 1911, and ‘Poems and Songs’ is an enchanting volume of splendid poems
by a very gifted yet tortured poet!
Richard Middleton: The
Man and His Work – by Henry Savage.
Throughout the twelve
chapters of this delightful book published in 1922 there is a sense of real
friendship by the author, Henry Savage for his friend the poet Richard Barham
Middleton (1882-1911) whose sad and short life Savage draws for us beautifully.
Middleton attended various schools from London’s
St Paul’s and
Merchant Taylor’s to Quernmore House, Bromley,
Kent and Cranbrook Grammar School. He went on to the University of London and in July 1900 passed the Oxford and Cambridge
Higher Certificate examinations (elementary and additional mathematics, English
and Natural Philosophy). He was a dreamer, a child-like figure with a love of
cricket – his friend Louis J McQuilland said of him that he was a ‘shaggy Peter
Pan with a briar pipe’ and in looks he certainly was with his shock of black
hair and wild beard. Of his own childhood Middleton says ‘I do not lament, and
I hope I shall never have to endure that state of aggrieved helplessness
again.’ And he goes on to say that ‘the whole atmosphere was charged with ugly
mysteries like an Ibsen play, and I was too introspective to be a happy child.’
(taken from and unpublished autobiography, quoted on p. 4) In early 1901 he
became a temporary clerk in the offices of the Royal Exchange Assurance
Corporation and nine months later became a permanent member of staff – he was
with them for five years and he hated every minute! He haunted the cafes as a
clerk and lost money on horses and bought countless books and wrote poetry. At
the age of twenty-three in 1905 he replied to an ad in the ‘Academy’ seeking
members for a new club, a society called the New Bohemians; he was invited to
the Prince’s Head for the ‘initiation into the mysteries’ and attended their
Thursday night gatherings (McQuilland was its secretary). Along with Frank
Harris and Austin Harrison, he asked Housman to lunch and they were sadly
disillusioned with the reality of the poet. Flying the family nest at Hampton Court in
1906, Middleton took two rooms at 7
Blackfriars Road and transcended into the bohemian
poet counting among his friends the likes of Henry Savage, Arthur Machen,
Randal Charlton, T Michael Pope and even Lord Alfred Douglas. He resigned from
his work as a clerk with the intention of making money from his pen, not an
easy task and there were moments of great depression for him: ‘You see I am
cheerful and I rejoice that it takes as little to make me happy as it does to
make me suicidal.’ (p. 68) Frank Harris who knew him quite intimately from
their editorial roles at Vanity Fair said that his ‘characteristic attitude was
a dignified, somewhat disdainful acceptance of life’s perverse iniquities.’ (p.
78) It is probably doubtful that he ever tasted the wondrous sensations of real
love without squalid attachment and not some vision of his ideal which acted as
muse to the poet; Savage discloses that he was ‘most powerfully attracted
towards the young girl who first inspired him, and later, and yet more
powerfully, towards that other – the Christine of his poems – through whom the
greater part of his poetic work was accomplished.’ (p. 79-80) Middleton
confesses to Savage in a letter that he wants ‘to love something or other
anyhow: Love kills the ego with a surfeit of egoism, and I appreciate but do
not like mine.’ (p. 81) Between 1908-9 he suffered much poverty and pain from
his neuralgia and we even find a mention of him meeting the notorious Aleister
Crowley on page 129! He got behind in his rent and ‘starved for four days and
walked back from Brighton’ (p. 130) and so in
early 1909 he took lodgings at 3
Alexandra Road, Wimbledon
before returning back to his parents in the summer at St
Albans. Savage suggested a holiday in Brussels and Middleton is at first reluctant
but they go in February 1911 and in Brussels
they take a room at 10 Rue de Joncker where after Savage’s return home to England,
Middleton remained. His book of poems ‘Dust and Dreams’ failed to make an
impression on publishers, in fact, no book of his was published during his
lifetime! In Brussels
he became more despondent and his letters to Savage are filled with his
melancholy anguish such as here, dated 5th November 1911 – ‘I myself am so much in the
deeps that I grow more hopeful. This is no paradox, but a plain statement of my
attitude towards existence. To-morrow I shall have been here four weeks, four
weeks of drunkenness and riggishness and unbroken idleness. During the whole of
that period I have been distinctly ill and very unhappy. I have no nerves left
and my stomach is completely disordered.’ (p. 177) Savage implores him to
return home but Middleton resisted the temptation of doing so, perhaps seeing
it as yet another sign of failure and decided to stay for ‘another month and
see how things go.’ adding ‘When I feel the need I shall create God for myself;
and I shall certainly not make him in my own image.’ Middleton seems to sink
lower and lower and his mood turns quite dark – ‘I do not wish that I were
dead: I wish that I had never lived…’ (from a letter dated 15th
November 1911. p. 185) His girls, Christine and the others who were chorus
girls left Brussels on the following day for Bordeaux and he could not say
goodbye; perhaps something ugly had occurred for in the same letter (15th
November) he adds ‘Poor Christine had better marry her Swiss boy…’ His next
letter (20th November) sees him in a more cheerful mood and he says
that he has started writing prose again – ‘The girls have gone and I hope I
have done with love for a long, long time.’
Savage’s reply was
dated 1
st December and it was found unopened in Middleton’s room at
10 Rue de Joncker – the same day, Savage received the telegram from Middleton’s
landlady, Mme Grey informing him that his friend was dead. The following day (2
nd
December) Savage and a friend Randal Charlton travel to Brussels and Charlton
breaks down the door that the police have sealed and collects Middleton’s
papers and letters, amongst which was found a farewell message on a postcard
intended for Savage but not posted: ‘
Good-bye! Harry I’m going adventuring again,
and thanks to you I shall have some pleasant memories in my knapsack. As for
the many bitter ones, perhaps they will not weigh so heavy now as they did
before. “A broken and a contrite heart, oh Lord, thou shalt not despise.”
Richard.’ (p. 193) On another message written on an envelope received at
Brussels and dated 25
th
November addressed to him from Christine, it simply said: ‘
Poor little girl.
Someone must write to her nicely to break the news.’ (p. 195) Middleton had
killed himself with chloroform (which he probably took for his neuralgia) and
‘in order to make more sure of the effect of the chloroform he had stuffed
cotton-wool in his nostrils.’ (p. 195) The following day his burial was
arranged and he was buried at
Calvoet
Cemetery on the outskirts
of
Brussels. He
died penniless, in pain and alone but thankfully his poems and prose are left
to us such as his ‘The Ghost Ship and Other Stories’ (1912), ‘Poems and Songs’
(1912), ‘The Day Before Yesterday’ (1912) and his ‘Monologues’ (1913) for all
the world to wonder at his masterful writing and in reading, honour the memory
of a strange and enchanted man whose death was a miserable tragedy!
A Problem in Modern
Ethics – by John Addington Symonds.
This 1896 publication
is subtitled ‘an Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Sexual Inversion’ and Symonds
steps delicately through the history of the ‘invert’ from the Christian opinion
during the age of Justinian and throughout the world of literature with its
pornographic and descriptive works such as Francois Carlier’s ‘Les Deux
Prostitutions’ (1887) with its study of female prostitutes and homosexuality within
the military; and of course he brings in the medical-forensic aspect of
literature on the subject with Auguste Ambrose Tardieu (1818-1879) and the
psychological does not escape his attention either with the impressive likes of
Jacques-Joseph Moreau (1804-84), Benjamin Tarnowsky (1837-1906), Richard
Krafft-Ebbing (1840-1902) and Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909). From the Historical
and Anthropological world Symonds brings the figures of Moritz Herman Eduard Meier
(1796-1855) and his ‘A Problem in Greek Ethics’, Julius Rosenbaum, Adolf Bastian
(1826-1905), Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), Sir Richard Burton (1821-1890) and Paolo
Mantegazza (1831-1910) to the arena while not forgetting the polemical writings
of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895) and the poetry of Walt Whitman (1819-1892),
on whom Symonds writes well and for me was probably the most interesting. In
fact, I found it difficult to like this book despite Symonds’s authority on the
subject and his engaging power as a writer; an inner hatred and aversion to
much of what he says grew measureless and at several points I was for
abandoning the book but with determination I continued, like the early Church
which condemned such a natural expression of love yet practiced it profusely to
become the vice of Popes and Kings alike. Symonds rightly suggests that the ‘invert’
or the homosexual (male or female) is not a product of any disease or mental
disorder brought about by abuse, poverty or masturbation, but is in fact an
innate condition. He brings to the table various actual accounts from ‘sufferers’
who tell their tales and we endure all the legal statistics churned out for
those ‘Medical Psychologists and Jurists’ the book is ‘especially addressed to’.
Frankly, I much preferred Symonds’s earlier work ‘A Problem in Greek Ethics’
(1873) and this volume became rather tedious and dull and the high moralistic
attitude of thankfully long-dead, over-righteous hypocrites who planted the
rotten seeds within the Church and the genteel population, who like good sheep
were satisfied by the deeds of the shepherd… it all seems ridiculous and rarely
do I regret reading a book but this volume has just won that coveted award!
The Ghost Ship and
Other Stories – by Richard Middleton.
This delightful volume
of strange tales published in 1913 after the author’s death the previous year
introduces the reader to the magical and somewhat disturbing world of Richard Middleton,
who masterfully weaves these fantastic pieces with moonlight and fairy dust to
create a sometimes nonsensical, sometimes perplexingly horrific world. Had he
lived he would have surely established himself among the likes of Machen,
Blackwood and Le Fanu, as it is the title story has secured him lasting fame in
the world of supernatural writing. In fact, it is Machen who writes the preface
to the volume and his enthusiasm and delight at the tales is touching as he
explains a little of the ‘alchemy’ behind the tales and the ‘puzzle’ within
them. ‘The Ghost Ship’, the best known story, is narrated by John Simmons, an
inhabitant of Fairfield Village, a most peculiarly haunted village frequented
by numerous ghosts where the story is set following the Great Storm in the
spring of 1897 (Jubilee Year). The Landlord of the Fox and Grapes has found
that a great wooden sailing ship has been blown into his turnip field, fifty
miles from the sea at Portsmouth.
On Jubilee Day, the Captain of the ship, Captain Bartholomew Roberts, fires off
a round of canon and blasts a hole in Farmer Johnstone’s barn. Drunkenness becomes
rife amongst the villagers and the ghostly population since the ship dropped
anchor in the turnip field. When it left during the second great storm of that
year it took all the young ghosts with it leaving the female ghosts to weep for
its arrival which of course it does not return. A strange and mesmerising tale
indeed! Other stories in the volume are: ‘The Drama of Youth’, ‘The New Boy’,
‘On the Brighton Road’, ‘A Tragedy in Little’, ‘Shepherd’s Boy’, ‘The Passing
of Edward’, ‘The Story of a Book’, ‘The Bird in the Garden’, ‘Children of the
Moon’, ‘The Coffin Merchant’, ‘The Soul of a Policeman’, ‘The Conjurer’, ‘The
Poet’s Allegory’, ‘Who shall say - ?’, ‘The Biography of a Superman’, ‘Blue
Blood’, ‘Fate and the Artist’, ‘The Great Man’ and ‘A Wet Day’. Machen declared
(of The Ghost Ship) that he ‘would not exchange this short, crazy, enchanting
fantasy for a whole wilderness of seemly novels’ and I quite agree, for this is
an intensely rewarding read and these fabulous tales will remain long after the
book is finished!
The Quiet Singer and
Other Poems – by Charles Hanson Towne.
Charles Hanson Towne
(1877-1949) was an American author, editor and poet, born in Kentucky the family moved to New York when he was
three and he remained there to become a well-known ‘New Yorker’. ‘The Quiet
Singer’ was published in 1908 and consists of eighty-seven poems (I read the
1914 edition) including the forms of quatrains and sonnets and sections titled:
‘Songs of New York’ and ‘Songs out of the Orient’. My enthusiasm waned and my
attention wandered in places as much of the poetry is derivative but there are
a few wonders which describe elements in nature and human expressions, such as:
‘I shall know, ere you will guess/ (Though with life I have no part),/ What new
golden loveliness/ Stirs within the old earth’s heart,’ from ‘A Distant Star’
which ends: ‘And the dreams that I shall dream,/ In that Spring when I am
dead,/ May arise until they seem/ Blossoms white and blossoms red!’ There is
also a sense that the author yearns towards God as in ‘Aere Perennius’ which
begins ‘As long as the stars of God/ Hang steadfast in the sky’.
And of course that old
spectre Love rears its ugly head as in his ‘Love, the Victor’:
‘No strength of mine
can hold thee back, O Love!
I thought that I was
safe beyond the will;
But after long, long
years, lo! here am I,
Obedient still!’
Other noteworthy poems
include: ‘A Rose Whispers’, ‘The Great and Silent Things’, ‘Villanelle’, ‘The
House of the Heart’ with its wonderful ‘Your footfall in my heart’s great
vacant ground,/ Your voice to sing and sing forevermore’ and this from
‘Haunted’: ‘I am the ghost of that pure deed/ You might have done, but did not
do;/ I am the ghost of that good seed/ You might have sown when Life was new.’
Not bad at all and Towne is an admirable writer of the sonnet of which here are
five and the simple beauty of ‘After reading Keats’ and ‘How bravely now I face
the marching days’.
Youth and Other Poems
– by Charles Hanson Towne.
Towne attended City
College in New York and went on to become editorial assistant at Cosmopolitan
and then assistant editor of the ‘Smart Set’ in 1901 before taking on the
mantle of editor from 1904-7 and later Harper’s Bazaar. This collection of
poems was published in 1911 and the volume (just 82 pages) is dedicated to his
friend Richard Le Gallienne. The long poem ‘Youth’ which takes up half of the
book has some worthy lines and there are a few poems which interested me such
as ‘Love’s Ritual’, ‘Night’, ‘Midsummer’, ‘At the end of September’, ‘Of Death’
and ‘Shelley’s Skylark’ – ‘From empyrean heights for ever shall fall/ Thy
silver madrigal.’ Overall I found the collection quite poor but still worth
reading.
Beyond the Stars and
Other Poems – by Charles Hanson Towne.
This collection of
thirty-one poems published in 1913 seems to be an improvement on his previous
‘Youth and Other Poems’ and the long poem ‘Beyond the Stars’ written in blank
verse is quite outstanding as verse goes and Towne lifts his poetic derivations
into new heights of near originality – ‘I clomb beyond the sun, beyond the
moon;/ In flight on flight I touched the highest star; / I plunged to regions
where the Spring is born, / Myself (I asked not how) the April wind, / Myself
the elements that are of God.’ Other poems fall into the mundane rhyme which in
Towne’s hands seems a little lacklustre but they are not beyond minor praise:
‘Peace’, ‘The Ballad of Shame and Dread’, ‘Love hath a Chalice’, ‘Two Songs of
London’, ‘An Easter Canticle’, ‘April Madness’, ‘How softly runs the afternoon’,
‘An August Night in the City’, ‘Penance’ and ‘The Dead March’. Towne went on to
teach poetry at Columbia
University (one of his
students was J D Salinger) and his autobiography ‘So far, so good’ came out in
1945. Other poetic works include ‘Manhattan’
(1909), ‘Today and Tomorrow’ (1916) and ‘A World of Windows’ (1919) which I
shall leave for posterity to decide whether his verse rises above the
amateurish consistency he aims to achieve.
Jane Wolfe: The Cefalu
Diaries 1920-1923.
Published in 2008 by
the Temple of
the Silver Star and compiled and introduced by Dr. David Schoenmaker who is the
founder and Chancellor of that Magical Order, ‘The Cefalu Diaries’ contains the
bulk of the surviving diaries handwritten and typed by Jane Wolfe during her
magical training under Crowley at the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu.
Sarah Jane Wolfe
(1875-1958) was an American actress born in Pennsylvania, who in 1910 moved to Hollywood and played
minor, supporting roles in silent films. A few years later she became interested
in the occult and read Crowley’s magical publication The Equinox and she felt
drawn to magick and contacted Crowley through the ‘International’ in which
Crowley had published some of his works and a correspondence was struck up.
Crowley became increasingly passionate towards Jane, there was something
mysterious about her, about the name which seemed to signify a young, lithe and
athletic wolf-like creature which appealed to him and a meeting was arranged at
Bou Saada on 25th June 1920; Crowley then changed the meeting place
to Tunis and sent a telegram to Jane which she did not receive and so while she
sat it out in Bou Saada feeling foolish and dejected, Crowley was in Tunis
wondering why this fascinating woman did not arrive! Jane, ever resilient and
determined, took it on herself to travel to Cefalu and so she met Crowley in July and all
the romantic illusions fell immediately away; Crowley was deeply disappointed and Jane
thought Crowley
and the Abbey filthy beyond belief. But, she had made the long journey there
from Los Angeles and it was her will to be there and there she stayed and she
proved a loyal and devoted student of Crowley and magick as the diaries show,
she practices her Asana, Pranayama and Dharana techniques in meditation,
recording her visions. Crowley accepted Jane as a Probationer of his magical
order on 11th June 1921 and she took the name Estai; two days later
on 13th June she undertook a 31 day Magical Retirement, taking a vow
of silence and living in Crowley’s tent on the beach near the Abbey.
Unfortunately the diary for this period is missing. But there is a wealth of
insight into the magical training at the Abbey with a few descriptions of Abbey
life and its ritual regime, the children, Leah Hirsig and Ninnette Shumway, the
fleas and of course Crowley’s comments are invaluable such as here when on 29th
May 1921, Frater Genesthai (C F Russell who was also a Probationer at the
Abbey) did a Tarot Divination for Jane (Crowley is bemused as Genesthai ‘can’t
do Tarot yet’); Jane types the results out for Crowley in her diary after which
Crowley adds, like a teacher marking a schoolboy’s exercise book – ‘This is the
most unintelligible drivel I have read for a long time.’
Wolfe went on to help
found South California’s Agape Lodge of the OTO, in fact she was Lodge Master
and she died at the age of 83 in 1958 and throughout her magical career she
remained a devoted friend of Crowley to the end, of which there were few. For
an excellent biography of Wolfe one can do no better than go to the College of Thelema’s ‘In the Continuum’ by Soror
Meral who was admitted as a Probationer by Wolfe on 3rd June 1940. We have Soror
Meral (Phyllis Seckler, 1917-2004) the magical student of Wolfe’s to thank for
preserving these valuable documents which also contains Crowley’s comments written in pencil and
produced here in facsimile. Wolfe’s magical diaries may be of little interest
to those who do not appreciate Crowley’s system of Magick or Thelema but to
those who do they are quite beautiful as we get close to her through the
writing which contains copious spelling mistakes, some quite amusing such as
‘math of the poon’ for ‘path of the moon’ – all that opium can become
distracting and take its toll on grammar and besides, all ‘Spelling is
defunct;’ (Liber Al. III. 2.) I would have liked to see an abundance of
footnotes but then I’m a footnote freak and one can never have too many! An
enlightening read!
Autobiography of an
Androgyne – by Earl Lind.
Published in 1918
under the assumed name of ‘Earl Lind’, the author, who also goes by the names
of ‘Ralph Werther’ and ‘Jennie June’, has written a fascinating account of his
double life as a respectable if somewhat effeminate university-educated office
worker and as an androgyne – a man-woman or as we would term it today, a
transgender male. The book is edited with an introduction by Alfred Waldemar
Herzog (1866-1933) who had the book published ‘as a psychological study’ after
it was refused countless times by other publishers. Earl Lind, or perhaps it is
more correct to call the author Jennie June and refer to her as a woman for she
is indeed female mentally and psychologically and only part masculine
physically, inscribed the book to ‘Nature’s Step-Children – the sexually
abnormal by birth – in the hope that their lives may be rendered more tolerable
through the publication of this Autobiography’. Born in Connecticut in 1874,
Jennie June, a most learned individual, reveals the often sad and disturbing
events of her life in the pursuit of fulfilling her natural instincts as a
woman, although shunned by society as an abnormal and disgusting ‘monster’. She
informs us of her childhood as a sensitive and misunderstood boy who wanted to
be a girl and please the other boys in displaying feminine characteristics.
From a young age Jennie was highly sexual and addicted to fellatio (her father
thrashed her with his boot when she was discovered under a desk in the act). She
attended the University in the City of New York in 1891 and so the need for a
double-life was called for as Ralph, a man who spoke several languages and
studied and as Jennie who paraded herself around the Bowery and other seedy
locations in pursuit of male attachments of the virile labourer and criminal
type; she emphasised her weakness and spoke as a baby-girl, flattering the men
she encountered, impressed with their strength and physical beauty. Highly
emotional, Jennie was prone to fall in love with one charming young thug after
another and repeatedly robbed, beaten, blackmailed, threatened, raped and on
some occasions almost half murdered! She suffered regular bouts of depression
and suicidal thoughts and as a deeply religious person implored God to make her
wholly woman – at the age of twenty-eight she was castrated. She found some
solace hanging around the soldiers, the strong, brave masculine types she
adored at their camps where she was known as a ‘fairy’; she would worship these
ruffians even at the cruel hands of their cruelty and be beaten beyond
recognition, such was her masochistic desire to be dominated. The sexual acts
are written in Latin which gives it an air of respectability; a sense of the
ecclesiastical in a profession where Latin covers many a sin. In fact, I had to
keep reminding myself throughout the 265 pages that this was occurring in the
1890’s and not the more recent past. Also included in the appendix are the
author’s thoughts on Oscar Wilde and ‘Impressions of the Author by a Business
Associate’. Alfred Herzog who found the subject matter ‘nauseating’ says
wrongly that there is little scientific or literary value in the work and
wanted to edit the autobiography, ‘butchering’ it in his clumsy hands.
Thankfully it stands pretty much as Jennie June wrote it, for the ‘general
reader’ and for those like Jennie who suffer the same sentence through life.
Now we look upon such people with more compassion and understanding of their
natures, but towards our enlightened stance, many have been viciously beaten,
incarcerated and murdered. Herzog, although he had the foresight to have the
volume published, seems the more repulsive for his failure to understand the
nature of the androgyne, or ‘invert’ as he also terms it and future publications
would suffer no loss at his removal from the volume and the remarkable story of
Jennie June should stand alone as a curious and deeply moving tale of courage
and of man’s ill-treatment against that which he does not understand!
The Female Impersonators
– by Earl Lind.
Again Lind, (Jennie
June) in the second part of her autobiography published in 1922 and again, the
jewel has been tarnished by the filthy hands of Alfred W Herzog in his attempt
at editing and providing an introduction which shall be overlooked. Jennie
relates her ‘Sequel to the Autobiography of an Androgyne and an account of the
author’s experiences during his six years career as instinctive female
impersonator in New York’s Underworld; together with the life stories of
androgyne associates and an outline of his subsequently acquired knowledge of
kindred phenomena of human character and psychology’. Written in eight parts
over 295 pages with 17 illustrations, The Female Impersonators summarises much
of Jennie’s life as given in the Autobiography of an Androgyne with some new
revelations and an interesting look at androgynes in mythology and history such
as Apollo, Hermaphroditos, Ganymede, Socrates, Plato, Alexander the Great,
Julius Caesar, Michelangelo and Raphael; she also assumes, to my utmost
displeasure and violent rage, that Francis Bacon was the author of
Shakespeare’s works on the defence that Shakespeare was too masculine to have
composed such ‘androgynistic characters’ and to be the author of those
beautiful sonnets – never underestimate a Warwickshire man! Of great interest
also are the biographical details of other female impersonators such as ‘Frank
– Eunice’ and ‘Angelo – Phyllis’ (poor Phyllis became another murdered
statistic) and ‘Newspaper Accounts of Murder of Androgynes’, ‘Medical Writers
on Androgynism’ and some verse penned by
Jennie. Those of you wanting to know more can turn to Jennie’s third volume of
autobiography, ‘The Riddle of the Underworld’ (1922) a ‘closing volume of the
trilogy depicting the life-experience of a bisexual university “man”’.
The Day Before
Yesterday – by Richard Middleton.
This volume of 33
astounding short stories by the hugely talented author Richard Middleton was
published in 1912 after his suicide and each miniature masterpiece confirms
Middleton’s genius as a writer and also the great loss to literature after his
death. Middleton, who was something of a child himself in many ways observes
the world in these stories through the eyes of a child who wonders at all the
strange and often inexplicable delights of nature; of the world of imagination and
make-believe which flourishes in childhood and diminishes with the grown-ups or
‘Olympians’ as the author calls them. Stories such as ‘The Enchanted Place’,
‘The Magic Pool’, ‘Children and the Spring’, and ‘On Digging Holes’ reveal the
magic the author conjures as childhood interacts with the natural world around
them where every woodland glade is a haunted dell; where treasure lurks beneath
each spadeful of earth and pirates drink and sing deep in coastal caves; the simplicity
of imagining a small pool as a boating lake and sailing walnut shell boats upon
it; stories of far away imaginative travel as in ‘The Magic Carpet’ or sworn
allegiance to one’s choice in the boat race in ‘Oxford and Cambridge’; the
author also writes from the standpoint of an adult either reminiscing about the
joys of childhood as in ‘On Nursery Cupboards’, ‘Real Cricket’, and ‘On going to Bed’ or entering their
innocent play as in ‘A Secret Society’ or just writing fantastic pieces as ‘A
Distinguished Guest’ about a cat the author took care of for a short time which
is simply wonderful! Charming and spellbinding, Middleton is marvellous and
these stories are some of the most beautiful I have ever read which captures
the magical essence of childhood and the naïve delicacy which makes everything
appear other-worldly and much more interesting than the ordinary way in which
things are viewed and experienced.
The Crucifixion and
Other Poems – by Benjamin George Ambler.
This volume of verse published
in 1880 contains along with the title poem, 64 miscellaneous poems and 11
sonnets over 140 pages but for me it was the title poem ‘The Crucifixion’ which
anchored this book in the sea of almost greatness and lifted it from the murky
depths of the really awful and almost unreadable! The poem is in four scenes:
1. the ‘Hall of Judgement’ which sees Christ confronted by Pilate; 2. ‘The
Temple’ where Judas makes his appearance; 3. ‘Mount Calvary’
where Christ is crucified between two robbers and Peter mingles with the crowd
and the Angel Gabriel, and 4. ‘The Sepulchre’ where we meet Mary Magdalene, the
two Angels in the tomb and Christ once more. Apart from this initial poem I
found little to get excited about and although I find a lot of satisfaction in
unearthing an obscure or neglected poet, I usually always find some worthwhile
beauty somewhere and there were several small examples here I thought, such as
in the poems ‘Invocation’, ‘Shadows of Life’, ‘Graves’, ‘In Memoriam – the
Princess Alice’, ‘The Dying Poet’, ‘The Night Winds’, ‘A Requiem’ and ‘Ode to
Silence’ with its gentle ‘Sadness incarnate, for the dark eclipse/ Must fall on
all, the sunny moments spend/ Themselves, thus swiftly pass, all pleasure hath
an end.’ Disappointing and unadventurous!
Song Favours – by C.
W. Dalmon.
Charles William Dalmon
(1862-1938) is a little read Sussex Poet and ‘Song Favours’ at a little under a
hundred pages and published in 1895 is the author’s second published work. John
Betjeman found much to enthuse about Dalmon, the 1890’s decadent who
contributed to the Yellow Book. The poems, many of them revisit the theme of
King Arthur; have a tendency to drift towards W. B. Yeats and William Blake in
their magical symbolism and faery-haunted folklore and mythology such as ‘Pan
Eating Honey’: ‘Stops to pipe a tune;/ Now to sing a ditty; / Now to look and
smile at me/ Out of love and pity.’ Other poems of worth are ‘Night Shades’,
‘Narcissus’, ‘The Sussex Muse’ and ‘Nimue’ which has echoes of Tennyson – ‘The
white owl crossed the moon path on the mere,/ And sank into the shadow
silently./ Transformed, and fallen, with no lover near - /Ah! Lady Nimue,’ The
book ends on a round of Drinking Songs and other published volumes worth
searching out are: Minutiae (1892), Flower and Leaf (1900), A Poor Man’s Riches
(1920), Singing as I go (1927) and The Last Service (1928).
Monologues – by
Richard Middleton.
This collection of
thirty-two essays written by Richard Middleton and published in 1913 is really
insightful and we get a glimpse of the table-talk of the large bearded man
which was said to be most eloquent with witty turns of phrases and intelligent
gems plucked from the world of literature. There are some dated expressions but
the simple variety and spellbinding range of his thought make up for that as he
talks about such things as ‘the decay of the essay’, ‘the tyranny of the ugly’,
‘the true Bohemia’, ‘suicide and the state’, ‘why women fail in art’, ‘the
virtues of getting drunk’ and ‘the philosophy of gambling’. In ‘the gift of
appreciation’ he delivers a masterful analysis of heroes and hero-worship and
some of his essays have something prophetic about them. I found such enjoyment
in these refreshing writings that I would refer anyone interested in learning
the art of essay-writing to study them diligently and wonder in amazement at
Middleton’s views of the world around him.
Shades of Eton – by Percy Lubbock.
Percy Lubbock
(1879-1965) has written a fascinating account of his time at Eton in this
volume published in 1923 (I read the 1932 ‘Life and Letters’ series) and he
positively chimes with devotional love and admiration for the hugely
influential gods of Eton, men of stature and simple characters but all towers
of scholastic learning, such as the Reverend Edmond Warre (1837-1920),
Headmaster of Eton from 1884-1905. Lubbock sketches the respectable Head with fond
memories and deep compassion for the boys; then there is James John Hornby
(1826-1909) Provost of Eton from 1884 till his death twenty-five years later;
we are led through the dusty corridors and meet such estimable Masters as
Edward Daniel Stone (1832-1916) the Greek and Latin Master, Pecker Rouse the
mathematics Master and Frank Tarver the French Master. We are also presented to
the Eton before Lubbock’s time and introduced to the scholar-poet of ‘Ionica’
fame, William Johnson Cory (1823-1892), a ‘difficult spirit’ who ‘in his day
was a figure at Eton like none other…’ a man who ‘stayed as a stranger and a
sojourner for his day.’ (p. 74) He was assistant Master in 1845 and resigned
from Eton under some suspicion in 1872.
Lubbock also goes on to mention the terribly gifted Greek scholar Walter
Headlam (1866-1908) who was a poet and a Master of Eton; Headlam, a Fellow of
King’s College, Cambridge, ‘forgot everything, forgot the hours and the days as
he sat among his books, reading and reading; and a call into the open brought
him out bewildered, staring wildly and comically; and then he caught up at last
with the new discovery of the day, and plunged into chuckling enjoyment of it.’
(p. 76) Lubbock gushes over Francis Warre-Cornish (1839-1916), Librarian and
Vice Provost of Eton from 1893 until his death, and his wife Blanche who were
housed in the cloisters; Mrs Cornish delighted the boys with her talk and an
invite to the Cornish household was a significant affair (Francis also wrote a
splendid volume on William Cory which I heartily recommend). Lubbock’s tutor and House Master, the poet
and novelist Arthur C. Benson (1862-1925) is also honoured by the pen of the
author; Benson won a scholarship to Eton in 1874 and taught there from
1885-1903; Benson introduced the young Lubbock to Edmund Gosse and the author
Henry James – Lubbock also wrote a volume on Benson’s Diaries which is very
extensive and definitely worth reading! Other stars in the Etonian star system
include the Reverend William Adolphus Carter (1815-1901), Bursar of Eton and
the Reverend Edward ‘Badger’ Hale, the Science Master; Sir Walter Durnford
(1847-1926), a House Master of Eton; Herbert Francis William Tatham
(1861-1909), Arthur Campbell Ainger (1841-1919), the Latin Master and Edward
Compton Austen Leigh (1839-1916) an Eton scholar in 1857; Leigh became the
Lower Master from 1887 until he retired in 1905. But as with Benson and Cornish
whom the author admires, it is with that worthy gentleman artist Henry Elford
Luxmoore (1841-1926) whose garden at Eton was
much talked about that Lubbock
has great affection and admiration for. Luxmoore was an Eton Master from
1864-1908 and throughout these eighteen chapters Lubbock conjures the old Eton
ghosts back to life, a race of sturdy men remembered fondly for their learning
and enthusiasm.
The Craft of Fiction –
by Percy Lubbock.
Originally published
in 1921 (I read a 1963 reprint), The Craft of Fiction over 276 pages and
eighteen chapters lifts the lid on the art and the craft of writing, in fact he
goes into detail on the distinction between the writing of the novel as a
‘craft’ or an ‘art’. He looks at the form of the story, the scenes and the
characters, the direction of the drama and the main themes in such classic
novels as Tolstoy’s ‘Anna Karenina’ and ‘War and Peace’; Flaubert’s ‘Madame
Bovary’ and Thackeray’s ‘Vanity Fair’ to ‘Henry James’s ‘The Ambassadors’.
Lubbock picks at each selected author’s scabs to reveal, as in ‘War and Peace’,
Tolstoy’s method or representing time and its length to the reader and the
truth of the character; Flaubert’s narration techniques – the voice of the
author and the voice of the character; his ‘indirect’ drama and the
authenticity of the character as opposed to Defoe who uses a more ‘direct’
method in his drama and utilises ‘historic truthfulness’. We are shown the
‘portrayal’ of Emma Bovary as a protagonist and the ‘character’ of her world;
the ‘panoramic scenes’ of ‘Vanity Fair’ which unlike Dickens is not
melodramatic and the chronology of the story. The author’s ‘pictorial
descriptive method’ is also laid before us – Thackery makes his presence known
on the page like Turgenev as a ‘reflective storyteller’, unlike Flaubert who
remains hidden. This is all very interesting but I couldn’t help thinking that
Lubbock was having too much fun with the reader showing off his impressive
knowledge and critical analysis of some of the greatest novels ever written,
and in nearly all cases from memory; he parades before us the likes of
Stendhal, Maupassant, Fielding, Scott and Samuel Richardson; he winks knowingly
as he pontificates on the narrator in the character of the first person, as in
Dickens’s ‘David Copperfield’ and Meredith’s Harry Richmond; Lubbock scoffs
with a glint in his eye, expounding the theory of the third person as in
Dostoevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’ and Henry James’s ‘The Ambassadors’; the
conscious thought process of the characters and the ‘drama’ of the ‘mind’
before Lubbock wrestles the reader into submission with the method of dialogue
– Henry James’s ‘The Wings of the Dove’ and the dramatic subject – ‘The Awkward
Age’ and Walter Pater’s ‘Marius the Epicurean before striking the fatal blow
with Balzac’s descriptive prose – the Human Comedy. Lubbock tears away at the illusion to expose the bricks and mortar of the writer's craft and reveal the magician's tricks and destroy the mystery which is all very well, yet at the end of the book one feels that nothing really has been desecrated and no sacred idols have been defaced, the writer's craft is still a noble mystery with or without the bag of tricks being displayed for the uninitiated!
A Dome of
Many-Coloured Glass – by Amy Lowell.
Lowell’s first collection of poetry published in 1912
(I read a 1955 reprint) takes the title from Shelley’s poem Adonais: ‘Life,
like a dome of many-coloured glass, / Stains the white radiance of Eternity.’
She divides the collection into Lyrical Poems of which there are thirty-three,
Sonnets which contains twenty-eight poems and ‘Verses for Children’. From the
Lyrical Poems I found the most interesting to be ‘Before the Altar’ with its
‘Empty and silent, I / Kneel before your pure, calm majesty. / On this stone,
in this urn/ I pour my heart and watch it burn, / Myself the sacrifice; but be
/ Still unmoved: Divinity.’ And from ‘Petals’ – ‘And the stream/ As it flows /
Sweeps them away, / Each one is gone / Ever beyond into infinite ways. / We
above stay / While years hurry on, / The flower fared forth, though its
fragrance / Still stays.’ Also noteworthy are ‘Behind a Wall’ and ‘March
Evening’ with its ‘Dying, forlorn, in dreary sorrow, / Wrapping the mists round
her withering form, / Day sinks down; and in darkness to-morrow / Travails to
birth in the womb of the storm.’ From the Sonnets which were moderately
accomplished I liked ‘The Poet’ who ‘spurns life’s human friendships to profess
/ Life’s loveliness of dreaming ecstasy.’ which could almost be my own epitaph;
‘At Night’ and ‘To John Keats’ whom she hails as a ‘Great Master! Boyish,
sympathetic man.’ I greatly enjoyed her blank verse but found her rhyming
rhythms dull and tedious. I failed to see the affection that most lovers of
poetry have for her but there were some great lines that rose above the waves
of dreariness. In a rage of curiosity I persisted in the quest to discover what
makes Lowell dear to many a poet’s heart and I then turned to her second
collection published in 1914, ‘Swords Blades and Poppy Seed’ and still I was
unmoved. I realise I am treading upon sacred ground for some, but there was
nothing to hold me and I found it even more dull and tiring than her first
collection! And so in desperation I turned to her third collection of 1916,
‘Men, Women and Ghosts’ which has many works written in her ‘polyphonic prose’
style and proved to be quite inventive,: ‘Figurines in Old Saxe’, ‘The Cremona
Violin’, The Cross-Roads’, ‘The Roxbury Garden’, ‘Bronze Tablets’, ‘War
Pictures’ which I certainly quite enjoyed; ‘The Overgrown Pasture’ and ‘Clocks
Tick a Century’. By this time I was clutching at straws and I almost felt as if
I could stomach Wordsworth! Terrible! In utter contempt and disappointment I
shuffled slowly towards her fourth collection, ‘Can Grande’s Castle’ of 1918
with its ‘Sea-Blue and Blood-Red’, ‘Guns as Keys: And the Great Gate Swings’,
‘Hedge Island’ and ‘The Bronze Horses’ and I felt completely abandoned and
dejected with disgust and frustration! Imagine a man crawling through the
desert, dying of thirst who then sees a beautiful maiden carrying large vessels
full of the promise of cool water, only to be offered mouldy cheese! But still
I persisted like a wounded beast returning to the fight and moved to her fifth
collection, ‘Pictures of the Floating World’ from 1919 and my persistence paid
off for it was a delightful and even tremendous collection! The book is again
divided into sections: ‘Lacquer Prints’, ‘Chinoiseries’, ‘Planes of
Personality’ (‘Two Speak Together’), ‘Eyes, and Ears, and Walking’, ‘As Towards
One’s Sleep’, ‘Plummets to Circumstance’, ‘As Toward War’ and ‘As Toward
Immortality’. Amy Lowell (1874-1925) was a follower of ‘Imaginism’ and came to England in 1913
and 1914 where she met fellow writers Pound, D H Lawrence and H. D. (Hilda
Doolittle). This is definitely her best collection with its flower imagery and
it seems that the cigar smoking old oddity has a heart after all and there is
an outpouring of love and romance! And so moved by the fire breathed into my
soul by Lowell I skipped like a child towards her sixth collection ‘Legends’
(Poems translated from the Chinese by Florence Ayscough and English versions by
Lowell) of 1921 which contains some quite lengthy prose poems which were so-so
and a bit of a letdown really. As you can imagine by now I did not crawl
towards her seventh collection ‘Fir-Flower Tablets’ also of 1921 and walked
away with my soul intact and what little dignity I could muster!
The Farmer’s Bride –
by Charlotte Mew.
Charlotte Mew
(1869-1928) was an English poet and short story writer who appeared in the
Yellow Book in 1894. This first collection ‘The Farmer’s Bride’ published in
1915 and known by the title ‘Saturday Market’ in the United States (originally
seventeen poems, I read a 1921 edition with eleven new poems) brought Mew
recognition as a poet and the collection swirls with restrained expression
which is both powerful and passionate – it made her a cut above the other
Georgian poets before she took her own life in 1928. The collection has an
almost ethereal, spectral feel to it (I read the book with the scent of
bittersweet nightshade upon my fingers, the strange tomato-like scent lingered
in my nostrils for days afterwards) and it was an intoxicating read! There are
some wonderful images such as this from the title poem ‘The Farmer’s Bride’ –
‘Shy as a leveret, swift as he, / Straight and slight as a young larch tree,’
and again ‘The soft young down of her, the brown, / The brown of her – her
eyes, her hair, her hair!’ Marvellous indeed and we go on to the ‘new-born
lamb’ that is dead in the field whom she describes as ‘The moon’s dropped
child’ in ‘Fame’.
‘There is something
horrible’ begins the poem ‘In Nunhead Cemetery’, ‘about a flower; / This,
broken in my hand, is one of those / He threw in just now: it will not live
another hour; / There are thousands more: you do not miss a rose.’ And it goes
on: ‘There is something terrible about a child.’ Indeed there is! Still she
continues like some pagan enchantress – ‘Now I will burn you back, I will burn
you through, / Though I am damned for it we two will lie / And burn, here where
the starlings fly / To these white stones from the wet sky -;’ Other excellent
poems are: ‘The Fete’, ‘On the Asylum Road’, ‘The Forest Road’, ‘Madeleine in
Church’, ‘On the Road to the Sea’ and ‘Arracombe Wood’. There was always the
threat of madness with Mew (she made a pact with her sister never to marry in
case she passed the bad genes on) and it rampaged along with death through her
siblings. Prophetically, ‘The Quiet House’ ends ‘No one for me – / I think it
is myself I go to meet: / I do not care; some day I shall not think; I shall
not be!’ Splendid and anyone who can write like that and downs disinfectant to
end their life has to be either absolutely mad or a complete genius, I know
which I believe! Outstanding!
Earlham – by Percy
Lubbock.
Published in 1922 (I
read a 1927 reprint), ‘Earlham’ is the story of a house, Earlham Hall in
Norwich, Norfolk, built in 1642 by Robert Houghton where the author, Percy
Lubbock (1879-1965), a very powerful writer and critic, grew up as a child.
Throughout the volume’s three parts: ‘Indoors’, ‘In the Garden’ and ‘Outside
and Beyond’ it is the house, whether glimpsed from afar from some bosky dell
near a stream or from within its rooms, which takes the centre stage and
Lubbock, like some love-sick young romantic, praises every detail which he can
recall to his mind such as the eleven-sided room where he slept and the nursery
with its five doors; he swoons from one room to another summoning the odours
and colours, the fabrics and the portraits and the ghostly personalities which
inhabited and haunt the old hall in a wonderfully evocative eloquence which
transports the reader into the past among the dusty heirlooms and shadows of
the slightly sinister Great Room and the Blue Room before tripping along the
hallway to the East Room near the nursery and the Ante-room Chamber before
peering into the Chintz Room and the Green Room; we are drawn out into the
garden along the Wilberforce Walk to view the Dutch Garden, the paddock and the
Kitchen Garden before resting near the old ice house and moving on to the hot
houses and the orchid houses. And of course a hall is not a home without its
people and here we are introduced to the Gurneys, a Quaker family who lived
there and thus the reader steps through worlds to peek through the windows at
the strange assembly: the Gurneys were known and respected for Gurney’s Bank
established 1770 and when John Gurney (1749-1809) married Catherine Bell
(1755-1794) a member of the Barclay family, in 1775, Gurney’s Bank would become
Barclay’s Bank in 1896. John and Catherine had thirteen children including Richenda
Gurney who lovingly drew and painted numerous portraits of the house and Samuel
Gurney (1786-1856) the present author, Percy Lubbock’s Great Grandfather who
married Elizabeth Sheppard; their son John Gurney (1809-1856), Rector of St
Mary’s Church married Laura Elizabeth Pearse in 1842 and they took over Earlham
Hall when Joseph John Gurney died in the 1840’s. John and Laura had a daughter
named Catherine Gurney (1850-1934) the author’s mother, who married Frederick
Lubbock (1844-1927) a merchant banker in 1869, the son of Sir William Lubbock
and Harriet Hotham and so the author is woven into the tapestry of Earlham just
as the history is attached to the fabric of the building. This really is an
affectionate and beautifully drawn portrait of a country house and Lubbock’s
great love for the merest of details such as an old door knob and how it feels
in one’s hand or the magical experience of exploring the gardens really allows
the reader to immerse fully into this most intriguing and charming of volumes
by a great writer whose ‘intimate nostalgia’ re-creates an increasingly
disappearing vision of the past and its ancestral homes. Wonderful!
Roman Pictures – by
Percy Lubbock.
Published in 1923,
‘Roman Pictures’ is Percy Lubbock’s only novel and its fifteen chapters begins
with the narrator meeting an old school friend in Rome, at the Fontana Delle
Tartarughe; the narrator’s friend, a man named Deering, a preening, pompous
dandy who believes he has found the real Rome, not through its ruins and other
tourist-haunted sites, but through its people and he advises the narrator to do
the same, to forget about all one has learnt in books, in Hawthorne and Henry
James, and one’s preconceptions about Rome. And so the narrator begins his
journey like a pilgrim, discovering Rome
through its English-speaking Catholic converts, its ascetic priests and Italian
visitors whom Lubbock
draws like crafted caricatures. Deering introduces our pilgrim to a young
antiquarian priest named Maundy with the scent of the ecclesiastical archives
about him who wrote a great deal of poetry at Oxford where he kept an ‘old silver oil-lamp
burning night and day before a Greek statuette.’ Lubbock paints a satisfying
picture of the young fin-de-siecle aesthete with his fondness for the poetry of
Lionel Johnson and his favourite books ‘bound in apricot linen’ proudly
displaying his collection of thirty-five different scented soaps. Maundy was
introduced to the artist and aesthete Aubrey Beardsley in some eating-house in
Soho and written a ‘sonnet of strange perfumes and fantastic gems’ dedicated to
him, but later had ‘gone out into the dawn, and had wandered through Leicester
Square to Covent Garden, and had bought a bunch of mauve carnations; and he had
thought of sending them, with the sonnet, to the master who had inspired him –
but then he had returned to his lodging and had burnt the sonnet, heaping the
carnations for a pyre, having resolved to guard the experience, whole and
rounded and complete, in the secrecy of a faithful memory.’ Next our pilgrim is
introduced to an English dancer named Mr Jaffrey whom he meets at the Via
Nazionale and a man who works at the Vatican named Cooksey and a scholar
from the Vatican library named Mr Fitch. From
each of these fastidious acolytes he winds his way through the Villa Borghese
and is introduced to Teresa and her niece Berta who simply loves all things
English, and Berta’s brother Luigi who is an oily character looking for a rich
patron to help him up the social ladder and get to London; we find ourselves in
the company of Madame Olga de Shuvaloff, a Russian in the Albano with her child
Mimi and a German spinster from Dresden named Minna Dahl whom the narrator
refers to as ‘Erda, the earth mother’. Then there is the gathering of English
patriots abroad, Miss Nora Gilpin, an author who speaks perfect Italian and her
friends at the Via Sistinia; and of course a real picture of Rome would not be
complete without other English-speaking tourists to bring a piece of dear old
England to Rome, such as Mr Bashford, Miss Gainsborough, Lady Mullinger, Mr
Platt and Miss Gadge. But the narrator’s vision of Rome as a place of bohemian
splendour is fulfilled when he is invited to the studio of the artist Mr
Vickery, who has all the qualities of the old masters and the true artist; a
man who it is said once kept company with the Browning’s, poets close to the
heart of our narrator, yet he is too shy to ask the old painter about them but
he is satisfied that he has seen something of the real Rome and discovered a
real artist, disproving Deering’s comment that there are no real artists left
in Rome anymore.
Lubbock, who sadly
went blind in his old age, has written a brilliant and unusual travel novel
about Rome and
it was an absolute delight to read and I cannot recommend it enough!
In His Own Image – by
Frederick Rolfe.
This is Frederick
William Rolfe’s second book published in 1901 and it is a collection of
thirty-two stories told within the framework of a novel by a young sixteen year
old acolyte named Toto, a servant boy who is in charge of a small group of boys
who attend upon the wants and needs of the priest Don Friderico who eagerly
listens to the tales told by Toto. The book is dedicated to ‘Divi Amico
Desideratissimo’, the Divine Friend much desired (who by the way was Rolfe’s
friend Trevor Haddon) and that relationship is represented by the strong bond
of friendship between Toto and his ecclesiastical master; a deep attachment we
also find in Rolfe’s later novel ‘The Desire and Pursuit of the Whole’ written
in 1908 and published in 1934. Within the collection of stories are six tales
originally published in the Yellow Book in 1895-6 and published in book form as
‘Stories Toto Told Me’ in 1892, specifically: ‘About San Pietro and San Paolo’,
‘About the Lilies of San Luigi’, ‘A Caprice of some Cherubim’, ‘About Beata
Beatrice and the Mamma of San Pietro’, ‘About the Heresy of Fra Serafico’ and
‘About one way in which Christians Love one another’, these stories have been
collected with an additional twenty-six fables, all of which have Catholic,
religious themes told with piety and humour, narrated by the young Toto through
the Spring and the Summer (the six original tales were related before the
Spring and Summer sections), stories such as: ‘About the Miraculous Fritter of
Frat Agostino of the Cappuccini’, ‘Why the Rose is Red’, ‘About the Witch’s
Head and Santignazio of Loyola’, ‘About the Love which is Desire and the Love
which is Divine’, ‘Why Cats and Dogs always Litigate’, ‘About Divinamore and
the Maiden Anima’ (Spring), ‘About doing Little, Lavishly’ and ‘About our Lady
of Dreams’ (Summer). At 421 pages the reader will be richly rewarded in these
tales by Frederick Rolfe, the self-styled Baron Corvo, one of the strangest and
most intriguing writers you will encounter. I have found him a delightful
author of exquisite works although I might add that having read his last novel
‘The Weird of the Wanderer’ (1912), being the Papyrus records (thirty-four, in
fact) of some incidents in one of the previous lives of Mr. Nicholas Crabbe, of
Crabs Herborough, Kent; a man who has utilised magical incantations of ancient
Egypt and travelled back in time to a previous incarnation to find himself as
none other than Odysseus, one would have to be a real enthusiast of the Baron to
endure much of the tedious and dreary Egyptian cum occult drivel, but even at
his worst there are few authors who can evoke such bitter paranoia and hatred
so beautifully.
Red Wine of Youth: A
Life of Rupert Brooke – by Arthur Stringer.
I came across this
1972 reprint of the 1948 publication by the Canadian novelist and poet, Arthur
John Arbuthnott Stringer (1874-1950) which achieves in a little under three-hundred
pages and twenty-four chapters, a really well-rounded observation of the
beautifully doomed English poet Rupert Brooke (1887-1915). Stringer tells us
that the original biography was to be completed by the American author and
adventurer Richard Halliburton (1900-1939) a man who had swam the length of the
Panama Canal and who had made copious notes on Brookes before Halliburton
unfortunately died at sea and the notes were passed to Stringer who took up the
pen to complete the Life of the poet. The author uses much of the
correspondence between Brookes and Edward Marsh (1872-1953), a man who
recognised Brooke’s early poetic talent and like many others fell for his charm
and good looks and introduced the young poet to many notable literary men of
the time who became friends, such as G B Shaw, Henry James, Thomas Hardy, W B
Yeats, Walter de la Mare, John Drinkwater, Lascelles Abercrombie, and Edmund
Gosse; and of course he was praised by many who took an interest in him and became
his friends: John Masefield, Harold Munro, even Winston Churchill to name a
few, the list goes on. But we can look at Brookes the poet as travelling
through three stages of his short life – the scholar, the wandering adventurer,
and the soldier, and Stringer captures these various stages if with a somewhat
cold hand which lacks passion in chapters which take us from the ‘Unwritten
Odyssey’, and his days at Hillbrow Preparatory School where he makes the
acquaintance and lasting friendship with the composer and pianist who lost his
life at Gallipoli, William Charles Denis Brown (1888-1915); ‘Cambridge and
Change’; at King’s College, Cambridge he met fellow poet St. John Welles
Lucas-Lucas, known as St. John Lucas (1879-1934) whom Brooke met in 1905 and of
course Edward Marsh who became his literary agent and promoted him whenever he
could; ‘Grantchester and Growth’ through ‘Sickness and Soul Searching’, ‘London
Life and the Georgians’, ‘America and the Widening Scene’, ‘Samoa and the South
Seas’ to ‘Sunny Days and Darkening Clouds’, ‘The Antwerp Expedition’, ‘Shadowed
Days and Premonitions’ and ‘Journey’s End’. We learn about Brooke’s great love
of the theatre and Elizabethan poetry and his infectious love of life, yet all
too consuming thoughts on mortality. Having read Brooke’s poems many years ago
and recognising their greatness I always felt a reservation for the man who
wrote them and found it difficult to connect the two, the bright and beautiful
man who is surrounded by influential people all bowing before him, where was
the tragedy, yet after reading ‘Red Wine of Youth’ I am beginning to
re-evaluate my thoughts on Brooke and see him as a man who did suffer torments
and a man who transformed the lives of those he touched by his simple, boyish
wonder and enthusiasm for poetry. In his final hour, it was his dear friend
Denis Browne who saw him from this world and had the poet buried on Scyros, in a grove of the Gods where he surely belonged
for he has achieved immortality – Keats, Shelley, Byron and Brooke!
Poems – by St. John Lucas.
I merely read this
1904 publication out of curiosity due to the fact that Lucas was a friend of
Rupert Brookes and I am glad I did! St. John Lucas, or to give him his full if
somewhat preposterous name St. John Welles Lucas-Lucas (1879-1934) was born in
Rugby and educated at University College, Oxford and became Brooke’s friend in
1905; he wrote short stories and poetry and his work includes: ‘The Lost
Arcadian, and Other Papers’ (1899), ‘The Absurd Repentance’ (1903), ‘The Oxford
Book of French Verse’ (1907), ‘The Rose-Winged Hours: English Love Lyrics’
(1908), ‘The Oxford Book of Italian Verse xii-xix Cent’ (1910) and ‘Saints,
Sinners, and the Usual People’ (1911) etc. ‘Poems’, a 127 page volume is
divided up into three parts: the First Part (29 poems), the Second Part (13
poems) and the Third Part (10 poems) and Lucas, who does not wish to believe in
an absurd God, trusts his soul unto nature and its dark pagan worship where
ancient deities flourish in forests and mounds; in the first part we find Lucas
in almost Browning-like ecstasy over the tremulous sweep of nature in ‘The
Woodland God’, ‘The Dream of Youth’ and ‘The Modern Parnassus’; there is a dark
sense of decay and loss, something he captures in his poem ‘Dirge of Summer’:
‘Summer is dead
to-day.
The night was full of
moaning and sad sound,
Querulous voices,
immelodious chants;
The leaves, like tiny
ghosts, tap-tapped the panes
Until the tardy dawn.’
And he continues in
this forlorn vein to the end where we find: ‘What comfort can we find/ In autumn’s
shrivelled woods, who loved you so? / In winter’s dusky shrine, - who loved you
so?’ Quite marvellous of course! In fact, summer makes a joyous return in
‘Variations Upon Oxford’ where ‘Summer and youth go hand in hand/ Beneath the
burdened boughs of May!’ and in ‘The Warning’ we find Lucas questioning his own
spiritual perception, saying ‘Never ask me to unbind/ Bonds that are my
spirit’s sheath,/ Lest perchance, O love, you find/ Nothing fair beneath.’
before the solemn entrance of Death in the poem ‘May Morning’: ‘O speak once
more, most peaceful lips!/ Smile once again, O flower-like face!/ It is my
blood, not yours, that drips/ Upon Death’s dreadful altar-place.’ Other fine
poems in the first part include ‘In Memoriam W. B. L. A.’ and ‘Epitaph for the
Author’s Tombstone’.
The introspection continues in the second part with ‘De Profundis’ and the poet
dreams and finds in his ‘Nocturne’ that ‘Loud is the noise of the night,/ Heavy
the scent of the tuberoses,/ Yet the tired boy still dozes/ Uneasily, ‘neath
the light.’ Ahh, those infamous tuberoses that have crowded many a radiant
poet’s volume of verse! Flowers also appear in ‘Roses and Masks’ where the grey
petals are ‘sad phantoms of the wonders that they were’ and again the summer
fades swiftly in ‘The Death of Summer’ which informs us that ‘we met; we spoke.
Alas! our words, our smiles,/ Were wastes of unimaginable miles/ Set betwixt
heart and heart.’ And we are safe in Hardy territory here with that enormous
‘waste’ reminding us of Hardy’s great yet simple poem ‘We sat at the window’
where ‘great was the waste’… but the mood continues, re-echoing Hardy’s
haunting and shrill notion of time and its waste and the absence of love, in
‘The Ghost’: ‘Tread down the earth; strew dust. Alas! no more/ This path shall
be unhaunted; turn and fly;/ The phantom shall pursue thee till thou die/ Lost
in a sallow wilderness where gleams/ No waveless water of Lethean streams, /No
lamp from any sleep-enshrouded shore.’ And so we depart this chilling scene and
open onto the third part which strives towards lighter moods with its ‘The
Clerk and the Princess’, ‘Lullaby’ and the ‘Song of the Moon’, but it is
inevitable that death should once again creep apace and draw the author into
its cold embrace as Lucas confronts his own mortal clay and its end in ‘Last
Words’:
‘He loved his Art, but
lacked its finer grace;
Sought God, but found
him amid trees and birds
More near than by the
priestly altar-place;
Now he beholds, aloof
from grief that girds,
God, Nature, Art,
unsundered, face to face.’
A surprisingly good
volume of verse by a little known poet!
Rupert Brooke: A
Memoir – by Edward Marsh.
Marsh wrote this
memoir of his friend Rupert Brooke in August 1915, just a few months after the
poet’s death in April which struck Marsh enormously as they had met after the
end of the May Term at Cambridge in 1907 and by the summer of 1909 they were
firm friends, knowing each other pretty well, yet it was not published until
1918; it is known that Brooke’s mother was not too fond of the memoir thinking
it dwelt a little too heavily upon emotional and perhaps unmanly matters
throughout its eight parts but there are moments of tender feeling from Marsh
for the young poet. Edward Howard Marsh (1872-1953), [we shall throw in the
‘Sir’ because of his work in literature] was a classicist and a scholar who knew
numerous literary figures and who edited the influential ‘Georgian Poetry’
between 1912 and 1922 and edited Brooke’s ‘Collected Poems’ in 1918. There is
no need to affix episodes of Brooke’s life here as it is well documented
elsewhere but Marsh writes as one who knew the handsome poet intimately (Brooke
could come and go as he pleased at Marsh’s flat in Gray’s Inn) and we hear of
Rupert’s move to Rugby from Prep School at Hillbrow in 1901 and the Scholarship
the following year and the Fellowship at King’s College, Cambridge in the
spring of 1913 etc. but it is the picture of the young poet which persists from
letters and remembered talk – ‘…Theocritus almost compensates me for all the interminable
dullness of Demosthenes and the grammars on other days. I never read him
before. I am wildly, madly enchanted by him.’ (I.
p.18) We hear of his interest in the decadent authors of the eighteen-nineties
such as Pater, Wilde and Dowson which occupied him from 1905 to his second year
at Cambridge and a charming picture of the young man is sketched: ‘His first
year at King’s (1906-7) was rather unsatisfactory. He regretted Rugby; and he was (as always) rather shy, and (for the
first and only time) a little on the defensive with the strange people. This
“decadent” pose lingered; he had Aubrey Beardsleys in his room, sat up very
late, and didn’t get up in the morning. He thought it right to live entirely
for the things of the mind; his passion for the country had not yet begun, and
it seemed to him a wicked waste of time to walk or swim.’ (II. p. 25) Following
the memoir the Appendix includes fragments and poems found in Brooke’s last
notebook: ‘The Dance’, ‘Sometimes even now…’, ‘Sonnet: In Time of Revolt’, ‘A
Letter to a Live Poet’, ‘The True Beatitude’ and ‘A Sonnet Reversed’. Marsh
confirms that Rupert had some strange preoccupation with Death as if Brooke
knew his life would be short and time was of the essence; he had been quite
frail in childhood from illnesses which sometimes reoccurred in adulthood and
there was a joyous desire to wander through foreign climes yet a deep longing
for home persisted and perhaps it is no coincidence that Brooke should fall in
death and be buried upon the same day associated with Shakespeare and St George
for it was Friday 23rd April 1915.
Songs of the Field –
by Francis Ledwidge.
This first collection
of poetry by the Irish poet Francis Ledwidge (1891-1917) was published in 1916
with an Introduction by Lord Dunsany and it is really quite a fine collection.
There are fifty poems over 122 pages and the author evokes the ‘Celtic
twilight’ world of fairies and shades of the dead in the manner of Yeats in
such poems as ‘The Death of Ailill’ but Ledwidge is also drawn to nature where
blackbirds and woodbine and the spirit of the poet are equal manifestations in
the wilderness, as we find in Wordsworth and particularly in Claire, but there
is something odd in the associations the author makes as in ‘you brought me
facefuls of your smiles to share’ in ‘Inamorata’ or the ‘farmer’s boy,/ who
sleeps, like drunken Noah, in the shade.’ And in the same poem, ‘June’ we find
the sensuous line ‘even the roses spilt on youth’s red mouth / will soon blow
down the road all roses go.’ Ledwidge captures the essence of nature as
something mystical and connects it with the spiritual being of man and his
observations – ‘And the soul patient by the heart’s loud clock, / Watches the
time, and thinks it wondrous slow.’ (‘Music on Water’) There is some romantic
longing in the poem ‘In the Dusk’ where the poet declares that ‘Day hangs its
light between two dusks, my heart, / Always beyond the dark there is the blue.
/ Sometime we’ll leave the dark, myself and you, / And revel in the light for
evermore.’ In ‘The Visitation of Peace’ the poet invokes the spirit of the
immortal Keats as he asks – ‘Shall I meet Keats in some wild isle of balm, /
Dreaming beside a tarn where green and wide / Boughs of sweet cinnamon protect
the calm / Of the dark water?’ Other poems of worth are: ‘All-Hallows Eve’, ‘A
Memory’, ‘A Song’, ‘Growing Old’ and ‘An Old Pain’ in which the author, who was
sadly killed in action in Flanders’ reminisces
upon love and its passion of youth:
‘My heart has grown as
dry as an old crust,
Deep in book lumber
and moth-eaten wood,
So long it has forgot
the old love lust,
So long forgot the
thing that made youth dear,
Two blue love lamps, a
heart exceeding good.’
Songs of Peace –
Francis Ledwidge.
This is the second of
three collections of poetry by Francis Ledwidge published in 1917 with
thirty-nine poems over 110 pages and the same old drivel from that great bore
Lord Dunsany for an Introduction which really isn’t necessary as the poetry can
stand alone without his name. Ledwidge divides the book into sections: At Home
– In Barracks – In Camp – At Sea – In Serbia – In Greece – In Hospital in Egypt – and In
Barracks. Once again the author takes his inspiration from the Irish Celtic
legends and Classical Greek mythology; perhaps not as good as his first
collection although there are some very good poems such as ‘A Little Boy in the
Morning’, ‘The Shadow People’, ‘An Old Desire’, ‘Thomas McDonagh’, ‘The Lure’,
‘Song’ and this fine piece which is the first poem in the collection, ‘Dream of
Artemis’, where the blackbird’s ‘song bouquets of small tunes that bid me turn
/ from twilight wanderings thro’ some old delight’ and later in the same poem:
‘Oh, Artemis, to tend
you in your needs.
At mornings I will
bring you bells of dew
From honey places, and
wild fish from streams
Flowing in secret
places. I will brew
Sweet wine of alder
for your evening dreams,
And pipe you music in
the dusky reeds
When the four
distances give up their blue.’
Last Songs – by
Francis Ledwidge.
The final collection,
‘Last Songs’ by Francis Ledwidge was published in 1918 after his death the
previous year and there are thirty-three poems over 80 pages and an
Introduction once again from Lord Dunsany (but don’t let that put you off).
There are some lovely poems here or should I say rural songs for his poems have
a lyric quality. Many of the poems were written between 1916 and 1917 in Londonderry, France and Belgium and
some fine examples are ‘At the Poet’s Grave’, ‘After Court Martial’ and ‘Spring
Love’ of 1916 with its ‘I left my love upon the hill, alone, / My last kiss
burning on her lovely mouth.’ And the poet dreams of a fairy-girl in the poem
‘The Rushes’ written on 6th January 1917, in France – ‘And a
fairy-girl out of Leinster / In a long dance I should meet, / My heart to her
heart beating, / My feet in rhyme with her feet.’ Other songs include:
‘Soliloquy’, ‘The Dead kings’, ‘A Fairy Hunt’, ‘The Sylph’, ‘The Lanawn Shee’
and in ‘Pan’ written on 11th March 1917 in France Ledwidge shows us
a simple and seemingly harmless goat-god tending his flock, who ‘counts them
over one by one, / And leads them back by cliff and steep, / To grassy hills
where dawn is wide, / And they may run and skip and leap.’
Forgotten Places – by
Ian Mackenzie.
I have known the name
Ian Mackenzie, or to give him his full name Ian Hume Townsend Mackenzie
(1898-1918) for quite some time through his connection with the translator of
Proust, Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff and this is his only collection of poetry
published posthumously in 1919. The 67 page volume contains twenty-five poems
throughout its two parts and there is a very worthy and beautiful tribute by
Arthur Waugh, father of the writer Alec Waugh (1898-1981), whom Ian befriended
at Sandhurst Royal Military
College in the winter of
1916-17. Arthur sketches a portrait of the young poet, a man who ‘had all the
outward evidences of the poet’s heart, and all its inward spirituality. Born of
a family of tall and handsome men, with a wealth of locks, and beautiful,
sensitive features, he possessed many of the physical attributes of a young
pagan divinity.’ (p. 8) Mackenzie’s poetic inspiration comes from Shelley and
Swinburne, with a tender devotion to Tennyson and Bridges, he was, as Arthur
claims, a man with ‘the heart of the hunter of the soul, perpetually seeking
rest and finding none.’ (p. 8) We are told that he was a great enthusiast for
cricket and played in his School team and in several matches at Sandhurst, in
fact, he ‘loved cricket only less than he loved poetry.’ (p. 9) Poetry was
often the topic of conversation in the evenings at Sandhurst,
‘when the day’s military work was done’ and he could ‘forget the red-books for
an hour or two in the dreams of “Hyperion” and “Adonais”.’ (p. 9) Arthur, who
often entertained the young poet at his home in Hampstead with his son Alec, found Ian to be
‘the very spirit of irresponsible joy’ (p. 11) with a love of the theatre and a
passion for Gilbert and Sullivan; a beautiful youth with ‘the tenderness of a
child and the strength of a man.’ (p. 12)
The poetry of Ian
Mackenzie is in a modern metaphysical style which looks at the imprint the
material body makes; the shape one makes and leaves in life – ‘the flesh will
loosen every day / from that skeleton thing / that once was me.’ (I) One of the
themes through the poems is of something hidden or obscured as in a doorway or
barrier through which he is unable to pass beyond the threshold, and in the
poem ‘The Darkened Ways’ the poet sense the nearness of Death and stares
through the keyhole of the door that divides him from the spectre, ‘kneeling on
the floor, / searching for something in the dark, behind.’ Later in the same
poem the barrier appears to be ‘a dim unending wall of glass / through which I
could not pass. /yet I could see the days behind, / standing there without a sound.’
And there is the childish sense at the culmination of death’s acceptance – ‘One
day I wandered in a wood / And found my body lying on the ground.’ The poet
utilises the imagery of the bolting and unbolting of doors to signify perhaps
the impression of the mind over the body; the senses and the flesh – in the
poem ‘Dust’ there is a desperate longing to equate the inevitable end of the
material body with the history and story of life contained within the dust we
shall become –‘a pebble glittering in the sun / whispers a tale, but you will
not hear; / it is so tiny and so still, / of love that was known, / and anger
and fear / one time, near some forgotten hill.’ And the ultimate conclusion
remains: ‘Dust cleaves to dust, / And life desires life.’ In ‘The Secret World’
the poet dismantles his body, saying ‘take these eyes. I yet shall see: / let
them blossom silently.’ And then turns to his ears – ‘take these ears, let them
bring / flowers for the butterfly: / I still shall hear the wild bird sing….’
There is a real wealth of beauty in these wonderful verse and Mackenzie seems
to speak to me directly, I find, like no other poet I have come across for some
time, and I found myself reading the volume several times; there is a personal affiliation which resonates within –
‘I remember the
sliding lawn – the scent of heavy foliage,
The lilac, the tall
trees at the end,
And the moonlight
Twisting itself into
wisps,
And pushing through
the leaves,
Like fine white
feathers of grass.’ (Eyes. III)
In the poem ‘Self’ the
poet climbs ‘Time’s futile stair’ and dreads the emptiness of the last step.
Other notable poems include (from section one) ‘The Mind’, ‘Revelation’ and
‘The Telephone’; and from section two ‘Friends’: ‘Ordinary Things’ (a four part
poem written at Malleny Camp, Scotland, in 1917), ‘The River’, ‘The Hour’,
‘Night 1918’ (written in Edinburgh, Dec 1917), ‘Beauty’, ‘Reckoning’, ‘Song’,
‘Memories’, ‘Peace’, ‘Desire’, ‘Lines from Royal Military College, Sandhurst’
(August, 1916), and ‘A Vision’.
He found that the
‘ugliness of the material life distresses him, but it never overwhelms’ (Introduction.
p. 14) and Waugh concludes his touching tribute, saying that ‘the laughter and
the love of Ian Mackenzie were of eternal stuff. They were born of the
sunlight, and return with it again. For they are “memory when we die.”’ (Introduction.
p. 15) In the autumn of 1918, Ian was taken to hospital in Cambridge, gravely ill with pneumonia. He was
told that the war was over on Armistice Day, 11th November and he
died later on 12th November. The final word must be Ian’s, from the
first section of the book, (p. 37) his poem ‘The Room’ (part IV) written at
Sandwich in 1918 where Mackenzie recalls his time of thought in a room ‘closed
by clean whitewashed walls’ by the light of day and later where ‘the dark
shadows crept, / Leaving it slowly colourless, submissive to the night.’ His
thoughts ‘stretch out beyond it and away, / Reaching to something memory cannot
find’ –
‘O you who enter here,
when I have gone,
You will not know the
hidden lips that cry
To you “safety,” as
the night comes down.
You will not
understand the fear
In the grey waste of
grass and sands
That lie
Past the shutters
closed against the wind,
(Ceremoniously closed,
by your vain, foreign hands)…
And you will take the
security of those walls,
Not thinking of the compact
strength in them.
And when moon unfolds
between the curtains
And the shadows creep;
there will be beauty, then, that calls.
You will not hear.’
The Poetical Works of
Robert Bridges.
With some wild
masochistic desire I decided to read the six volumes of ‘The Poetical Works of
Robert Bridges’ which is no small undertaking, purely based on his friendships
with Dolben and Hopkins tow poets I happen to admire and who in my humble
opinion are much greater poets. To prepare myself for the arduous task ahead I
chose to read a biographical volume published in 1944: ‘Robert Bridges
1844-1930’ by a Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford
named Edward Thompson. At just over a hundred-and-thirty pages Thompson (a
scholar, novelist, translator and a historian), a man who knew Bridges
personally, seems to praise the poet’s earlier works such as his Shorter Poems
and narrative poems while dismissing much of his later dramatic works, although
he does have some interesting points on Bridges’ classical themes. A somewhat
harsh critic but undoubtedly right, and even though Bridges wished that no
biography should be published Thompson could not help himself from prodding the
corpse with a big stick, but honour was satisfied when Thompson expired two
years after its publication so time has allowed us to forgive his
indiscretions. Having stomached the old scholar’s ravings I turned to volume
one of the Poetic Works, originally published in 1898 at almost three-hundred pages
(in fact they all stretch to this). The volume contains: Prometheus the
Firegiver: A Mask in the Greek Manner (in two parts) in which we find there is
some exceptional and lengthy dialogue in the ‘mask’ and many beautiful lines of
verse, as here where Prometheus speaks in part one:
‘And now
this day
Behold I come bearing
the seal of all
Which hope had
promised; for within this reed
A prisoner I bring
them stolen from heaven,
The flash of mastering
fire, and it have borne
So swift to earth,
that when yon noontide sun
Rose from the sea at
morning I was by,
And unperceived by
Helios plunged the point
I’ the burning axle,
and withdrew a tongue
Of breathing flame,
which lives to leap on earth
For man the father of
all fire to come.’
And as if invoking the
spirit of Browning, the author has the Servant speak to Prometheus thus:
‘Speaketh of
fire;
And fire he saith is
good for gods and men;
And the gods have it
and men have it not’
In fact, Bridges
excels in his lyrical measure and like Keats he is rich and precise in his
diction as in these beautiful lines in part two when Prometheus utters these
words:
‘When her wild cries
arouse the house at night,
And running to her
bed, ye see her set
Upright in tranced
sleep, her starting hair
With deathly sweat
bedewed, in horror shaking,
Her eyeballs fixed
upon the embodied dark,
Through which a
draping mist of luminous gloom
Drifts from her couch
away, - when, if asleep,
She walks as if awake,
and if awake
Dreams, and as one who
nothing hears or sees,
Lives in a sick and
frantic mood, whose cause
She understands not or
is loth to tell –‘
The next work in the
volume is Eros and Psyche: A Narrative Poem (the story done into English from
the Latin Apuleius) in twelve measures which represent the months of the year
throughout the four quarters of spring, summer, autumn and winter, each with
their corresponding length of days. In the first quarter, ‘March’ stanza 11 we
are shown a powerful image of the goddess Aphrodite who is slowly falling out
of favour:
‘Which when in heaven
great Aphrodite saw,
Who is the breather of
the year’s bright moon,
Fount of desire and
beauty without flaw,
Herself the life that
doth the world adorn;
Seeing that without
her generative might
Nothing can spring
upon the shores of light,
Nor any bud of joy or
love be born;’
And later on in stanza
22 in her jealousy and rage at Psyche’s beauty we find:
‘Make her to love the
loathliest, basest wretch,
Deform’d in body, and
of moonstruck mind,
A hideous brute and
vicious, born to fetch
Anger from dogs and
cursing from the blind.’
But it was no monster
set to love Psyche for it was Eros, child of Aphrodite who came by the cover of
night:
‘for every
night
He came, and though
his name she never learn’d,
Nor was his image
yielded to her sight
At morn or eve, she
neither looked nor yearn’d
Beyond her happiness…’
[May: stanza 24]
In the second quarter,
in the 17th stanza of July, Psyche discovers the identity of her
lover:
‘She had some fear she
might not well discern
By that small flame a
monster in the gloom;
But she sees ‘O fair
to see!
Eros, ‘twas Eros’
self, her lover, he,
The God of Love
reveal’d in deathless bloom.’
This is all very
beautiful and through the third quarter we find Psyche wandering and in the
fourth (winter) she has her trials and reception into Heaven:
‘So thus was Eros unto
Psyche wed,
The heavenly
bridegroom to his earthly bride,
Who won his love, in
simple maidenhead’ [February: 24]
And so Aphrodite has
reconciled her differences ‘since her full defeat / Is kinder and less jealous
than before.’ [25]
The Growth of Love
also in the first volume is a sequence of sixty-nine sonnets ending in a
paraphrase of The Lord’s Prayer, which were published without the poet’s
permission in America
and so he ‘came to their rescue’ and published them here. The sonnet form in
other more skilful hands is the highest medium of the love lyric but in
Bridges’ hands they seem restrained of emotion; much of the passion we expect
to find in lyrics of love have been stifled, it is limited with no sudden
bursts; there is a serious, solemn and even sacramental feel to the sonnets
which sees a vision of love as religion in the manner of Keats; there is a
spiritual isolation of regret yet although austere and fastidious, they have an
unusual quality which accepts the spiritual sympathy within the sorrow of love.
‘Now doth my drop of
time transcend the whole:
I see no fame in
Khufu’s pyramid,
No history where
loveless Nile doth roll.
- This is eternal
life, which doth forbid
Mortal detection to
the exalted soul,
And from her inward
eye all fate hath hid.’ [29]
There is a sense of
the Renaissance devoid of exulted rapture and echoes of Dante:
‘I heard great Hector
sounding war’s alarms,
Where thro’ the
listless ghosts chiding he strode,
As tho’ the Greeks
besieged his last abode,
And he his Troy’s hope still, her
king-at-arms.’ [53]
The Growth of Love has
been highly praised in many quarters and damned as insignificant in others but
there is no denying the author’s poetic ability, his sense of stress and metre
which cascades like waves upon silky sand with simple astonishment and leaves
the reader either perplexed or stirred by inspiration. Volume Two of The
Poetical Works was published in 1899 and contains the poet’s Shorter Poems such
as his wonderful ‘Elegy among the Tombs (Book II, 10) where we are told to
‘read the worn names of the forgotten dead,’ to find that ‘their pompous
legends will no smile awake;’ and ‘Dejection’ (Book II, 11), ‘On a Dead Body’
(Book III, 4) where the corpse is a ‘freak of beauty.’ Bridges’ wrote such
tender yet simple nature verse idylls in original expression which capture the
English landscape and the fragrance of the field:
‘The summer trees are
tempest-torn,
The hills are wrapped
in a mantle wide
Of folding rain by the
mad wind borne
Across the country
side.’ [Book IV, 20]
Bridges explored new
rhythms and the shorter poems reveal these expressive techniques but they lack
physical passion and tenderness; there is no real human drama as we would find
in such poets as Browning, Tennyson and Swinburne for example. The elegiac mood
of the poems are subtle affairs which reflect Elizabethan more than the
Romantic sentiments; restrained by their suppressed feelings, love seems a
trivial matter with no ecstasy except a retrospective solemn joy which almost
climbs to the mystical, but falls short. Also in the volume are Bridges’ New
Poems such as his ‘Elegy’ and the excellent ‘The Summer House on the Mound’
where the poet would sit and watch some ‘fast-sailing frigate to the Channel
come’ and also ‘The Isle of Achilles’ (from the Greek).
The Poetical Works
volume three published in 1901 contains the First Part of the History of Nero, a
historical tragedy in five acts which seems to fail through derivative and
unconvincing scenes but we are spared disgrace by the inclusion of Achilles in
Scyros which I found to be a tremendous drama where we find the young Achilles
hiding on the Island of Scyros at the palace of Lycomedes, King of Scyros,
‘disguised among the maidens like a maiden’ named Purrha, he serves the
daughter of the King of Scyros. Ulysses and his companion, Diomede seek out
Achilles to lead their army and Ulysses suspecting the truth says to Diomede:
‘Whom the high gods
name champion of the Greeks,
Lurks in the habit of
a girl disguised
Amid the maidens of
this island court.’
Bridges was a
competent scholar of Latin and Greek and although he is not always faithful to
the classics Achilles in Scyros is a worthy
mask with many great moments. Volume four published in 1902 has Palicio, an
Elizabethan Romantic drama in five acts which I found rather dull and The
Return of Ulysses, also in five acts and frankly imitative much in the manner
of Byron, Tennyson and Browning, who do it so much better. A lot of Bridges’
dramas tend to lean towards the classics rather than the Romantics and he uses
Miltonic blank verse to good use but there is a ponderous sense that the author
just sometimes is not up to the effort and the lack of passion shows. Volume
five published in 1902 contains The Christian Captives in five acts which has
some good characterisation but on the whole is another let down and Humours of
the Court, a Shakespearean style comedy in three acts which is mildly amusing.
In Volume six published in 1903 we find The Feast of Bacchus: A Comedy in the
Latin Manner and partly translated from Terence, in five acts which is an
improvement upon many of his other dramatic works and even reaches heights of
sublime beauty with its fine metre and there are some superb exchanges between
the characters and the Second Part of the History of Nero in five acts which
only marginally shines above part one yet sinks dreadfully.
It’s easy to dismiss
much of Bridges’ works as being the result of a cold-hearted poet living in a
Victorian regime of high moral attitudes to passion and sex but at the bottom
of all the quite remarkable yet somewhat undistinguishable narrative lines
there was a man of flesh and blood who lived for the word as a poet, perhaps
not a very popular poet today but a much respected link to the classical poets
of his time. In reading the Poetical Works few if any real insights have been
exposed and if I were to read him purely on a non-academic basis I would
certainly avoid much of the dramatic pieces and concentrate on his greater
achievements in my opinion: ‘Prometheus the Firegiver’, ‘Eros and Psyche’, ‘The
Growth of Love’, ‘Shorter Poems’, ‘Achilles in Scyros’ and ‘The Feast of
Bacchus’.
Myrtle, Rue and Cypress: A Book of Poems,
Songs and Sonnets – by Eric Stanislaus Stenbock.
Eric Stanislaus
Stenbock’ (1860-1895) was a little known, flamboyant poet and this is his
second of three exceedingly rare volumes of poetry published in 1883. Stenbock
was born in Cheltenham of Swedish ancestry and he went up to Balliol College,
Oxford in 1879 and left without his degree two years later; at Oxford he became
a Roman Catholic and published his first collection of poems: ‘Love, Sleep and
Death’ in 1881. In 1885 he inherited the title Count and lived in Estonia until
returning to England in 1887; he became dependant on alcohol and opium and the
eccentric author who kept a menagerie of animals such as snakes and a monkey
and not to mention his life-size doll which he took everywhere with him could
be the essence of Huysman’s aesthete Jean des Esseintes in his novel of 1884 ‘A
Rebours’. The volume is well composed with songs such as ‘The Song of Love’ to
the memory of Adolf Henselt – ‘we tire of speech, of thought, and frequent
moving, / our memories are embittered with shatterings of faith; / love
conquers all we can never tire of loving, / for love is as strong as Death.’ And
sonnets such as his first sonnet written in St. Isaac’s Cathedral, St
Petersburg, which begins: ‘On waves of music borne it seems to float / so
tender sweet, so fraught with inner pain,’ and ends: ‘reviving for a time joys
long since dead, / and granting to the fettered soul release.’ The book is dedicated
to three individuals, respectively, the artist Simeon Solomon (1840-1905), his
cousin with whom he is said to have had a ‘close’ relationship and a young boy
he became infatuated with, probably as an undergraduate, the son of an
Oxfordshire clergyman; the boy died of consumption in 1880: ‘In this book I
dedicate the Myrtle thereof to Simeon Solomon, the Rue thereof to Arvid
Stenbock and the Cypress thereof to the memory of Charles Bertram Fowler.’ Stenbock is
certainly not a first-rate poet but the volume drips with the obsessive compulsion
of love and death with a flavour of the macabre reminiscent of Poe:
‘I DECKED mine altar
with faded flowers,
Because I was sad at
heart you see,
And cared no more what
the passing hours
In going and coming
might bring to me –
I said, ‘Alas, for the
lingering hours
Shall not bring ought
of delight to me.’ [Song I. Preludium]
And again later in the
same poem he is ‘sick unto death of the desolate hours / which came and went so
wearily.’ In Song II he asks ‘Love, is thine heart so hardened / when one tear
from thine eyes / might pour on sin unpardoned / a rainbow from Paradise?’ Many
of the poems, although competent seem quite juvenile in their decadent
posturing –
‘I have longed for thy
beautiful garden,
And thy nuptial
winding-sheet,
For thy face, ah!
tender lover,
Is gentle and wellnigh
sweet.’ [Song III]
In the rather charming
poem ‘The Nightingale’ Stenbock asks:
What passion of music
that moves to madness,
What secret thing doth
thy song express,
What excess of joy,
that is wellnigh sadness,
What agony bitter
beyond redress? –
What lights of love
and what pangs of passion
Through the thrilling
throbs of thy wild notes well,
What words too
wondrous for tongue to fashion
Would suit to thy
sweet song, tell, ah tell!’
But wherever beauty
clings we find that death is never far behind in Stenbock’s world and it is
evident in the poem ‘A Dream’ where we encounter a man, wearing a ‘long white
sheet’ whom the poet beckons – ‘come hither, darling, and I will fold / thee to
mine heart, for thy hands are cold;’ / ‘no wonder my hands are cold, ‘ he said,
/ ‘for very cold are the hands of the dead.’ Some good poems pepper the volume
such as ‘The Aeolian Harp’ which wails ‘for the world’s wrong,’ and weeps ‘for
the world’s woe.’ and ‘The White Rose’ at the mercy of the ‘wild withering
wind’ which ‘shall rive it ruthlessly’. Stenbock is at his best when he writes
of the fantastic and the macabre as in ‘The Lunatic Lover’ where the ‘moon with
silver feet / crept to thy bed, close to thy head, / and kissed thy forehead,
sweet, / giving thy lips strange wine to drink, / and alien flesh to eat,’ and
in ‘Reconciliation’ he implores that ‘all slain things lie slain /in the short
spell of sunshine after rain.’
The sensual arousal of
passion is found in ‘Song XI’ which begins ‘entwine thy limbs around me, love,
and let / thy sweet soft face lean closer kissing me’ and the sexual imagery is
obvious in ‘The Vampyre’ where the poet feasts upon a young boy, and drinks
‘from thy veins like wine / thy blood delicious and warm.’ He eagerly drinks
‘the bloom of thy boyhood away.’ as the sex and supernatural theme continues:
‘I would breathe with
the breath of thy mouth
And pang thee with
perfect pain;
And the vital flame of
thy youth
Should live in my
limbs again.
Till the vital elastic
form
Should gradually fade
and fail,
And thy blood in my
veins flow warm,
And glow in my face,
that was pale.’
Sonnet IX in simple
confession notes that ‘a spirit’s lips were pressed upon my own, - / - then I
arose to curse the wan daylight.’ and in the next Sonnet (XII) we could almost
be reading Housman:
‘But my true love had
not left me,
And stood by my grave
in pain,
And his tears fell
softly on me,
But I shall not wake
again.’
Stenbock is certainly
a curious and intriguing individual and for all his assumed decadence the
poetry is decidedly non-decadent, there are no flowery flourishes one would
expect and his style is more like Balzac than Baudelaire. He made a sort of
quasi-religion of eclectic spiritual practices which coalesced into a Catholic,
Buddhist and occult nature and although his poems do not reach the heights of
more established poets he is certainly a man to be sought out and devoured at
leisure!
The Shadow of Death: A
Collection of Poems, Songs, and Sonnets – by Count Eric Stanislaus Stenbock.
This is Stenbock’s
third and final volume of poetry published in 1893 and again the curtain parts
to reveal his sombre verse, dark and morose, lit by a single flame in the
darkened tomb of his macabre mind. The poems feature the subject of love and
death and there is something foreboding and uncanny in his verse which seems to
groan in the darkness – ‘A shadow crept thro’ the doorway / and kissed the pale
boy on the lips.’ (Viol D’ Amor) and love seems to have other-worldly attachments:
‘Did you know dear,
that I loved you?
One day your look was
kind,
And one day – oh, so
sad, love
Were I dead, dear,
would you mind?’ (The Death-Watch)
Stenbock also makes
good use of alliteration as in the poem ‘Gabriel’ where we find the lines: ‘The
sweet, slow, sleepy, solemn sounds that seem / Like incantations half heard in
a dream, / Or sad-eyed Syrian singing some strange sea spell, / Gabriel.’ In
the ballade, ‘A Passion of Sleep’ the author seems to long for sleep, or is
sleeping just a metaphor for death?
‘World of wormwood and
gall
Whose myrtle is only
rue,
Give me the cypress
tall,
And moon-thrown
shadows of yew.
Let weeping winters
strew
Snow on my bed for a
pall –
- This thing alone is
true –
Sleep is the best of
all.’
Other noteworthy poems
include: ‘The Red Hawthorn’, ‘To Saint Teresa’, ‘Chanson Solaire’, ‘Autumn
Song’, ‘Requiem’, ‘Birthday Song’, ‘Nocturne’, ‘May Blossom: A Vision’ and
‘Sonnet VI’ where the poet says that he ‘will not slay thee utterly - / Nay,
thou shalt live – I will implant in thee / Strange lusts and dark desires, lest
any should, / In passing, look on thee in piteous mood, / For from the first I
have my mark on thee.’
With a few
translations – a paraphrase from Sappho and from Meleager, the volume falls
away and we are left wondering who indeed was this strange and enigmatic man;
there is much to be unearthed for the curious amongst you and two very good
books to search out are: ‘Stenbock, Yeats and the Nineties’ (1969) by John
Adlard, and ‘Of Kings and Things: Strange Tales and Decadent Poems’ (2018)
edited with an Introduction by David Tibet. But there are two apocryphal
stories of Stenbock which I hope are indeed true, and one is that he carried
with him a wooden doll known as ‘le petit Comte’ (the little Count) which he
described as his son and heir and the other concerns the great Oscar Wilde, who
it is said, one day went to see Stenbock at his rooms in Sloan Terrace and he
ventured upstairs to Stenbock’s inner sanctum where burned a sacred lamp
between a bust of the poet Shelley and a little ebony image of Buddha. Oscar,
perhaps not realising the significance of such an altar, casually lit his
cigarette from the sacred flame only to find Stenbock shocked and furious, fall
to the ground, while a perplexed Oscar made a swift exit. How beautifully and
terribly decadent!
Studies of Death:
Romantic Tales – by Count Eric Stenbock.
This collection of
strange and supernaturally inspired tales was published in 1894, just a year
before the author’s death and there really are some charming little stories
here, such as ‘Hylas’ in which an artist named Gabriel Glynde meets a fifteen
year old boy named Lionel Langton, sketching by the river. The boy sits for
Gabriel as his model in his studio for a portrait of ‘David’. Lionel, the son
of Professor Langton, becomes Gabriel’s pupil but the boy falls hopelessly in
love with a woman, a woman which Gabriel marries in some heroic deed to save
the boy from her womanly ways and means but Lionel is overcome with sadness and
drowns himself in the river but not before sending Gabriel a picture he painted
of Hylas lying at the bottom of the river. It is beautifully told and Stenbock
has a delightful manner in his simple tales. The next story ‘Narcissus’ is
centred upon a handsome boy who through some misunderstanding is to marry a
girl named Enriqueta, the girl’s father questions him and the beautiful boy
declares that no such arrangement was entered into; Enriquetta, scorned, flings
a vial of liquid into the angelic face of the boy which corrodes his skin. The
boy, hideous to look at takes to nocturnal walking through the park when the
gates are locked shut and one night he encounters a young blind child named
Tobit who is also locked in the park and we are told that his mother left him there
to be rid of him. The once handsome boy takes Tobit as his companion and over
time they grow close. The boy, no longer of fair complexion, struggles with the
idea of an operation being performed on Tobit to make him see but decides to go
ahead with it and pays for the surgery which is successful. Tobit, now able to
see, looks upon the features of the once handsome boy and says: ‘and you are
the most beautiful person in all the world!’
‘The Death of
Vocation’ is a tale in which a young girl wishes to be a nun and ‘Viol D’ Amor’
is a story of astrology, magic and superstition which is almost as worthy as
Le Fanu in its telling. ‘The Egg and the Albatross’ is another magical, fairy
tale which involves a young water sprite named Marina and perhaps Stenbock’s
best known story is ‘The True Story of a Vampire’ which is utterly mesmerising
and there is a tale of gypsies and a boy who plays the fiddle and takes an
owl’s egg and buries it under a hazel tree for seven years in ‘The Worm of
Luck’. This really is some breathtakingly beautiful writing and it is a pity
that Stenbock did not live long enough to write more!
Stenbock, Yeats and
the Nineties – by John Adlard.
John Adlard (1929-1993), of Merton
College, Oxford has written a brilliant account of the life of the decadent
poet Eric Stanislaus Stenbock (1860-1895) in this 113 page (six chapters with
illustrations) volume published in 1969 (750 copies) with a hitherto
unpublished essay on Stenbock – ‘A Study in the Fantastic’ by Arthur Symons and
a bibliography by Timothy d’Arch Smith. Upon reading the volume one cannot help
but be reminded of A J A Symons’1934 landmark
book of biography ‘The Quest for Corvo’ which the author must surely have read
for he tells us that he began his research in 1960 and travelled far collecting
it and so it reads almost like a quest with Adlard’s delightful tone throughout
– if you were hoping for a large slice of Yeats in the book you will be sadly
unsatisfied for this is definitely a book about Stenbock, whom we are told upon
the first page was a ‘sick man, a pervert, and his life was short.’ Yeats, who
knew Stenbock, reiterates this view in his ‘Autobiographies’ (1961) saying that
Stenbock was a ‘scholar, connoisseur, drunkard, poet, pervert, most charming of
men.’ (p. 2) so what strange magic did Stenbock wield over those that knew him?
He was born on 12th March 1860 at Thirlestaine Hall in Cheltenham to
parents Erich Friedrich Diederich Magnus Stenbock and Lucy Sophia Frerichs who
were married on 1st March 1859 (after Erich’s death Lucy, Countess
Stenbock, re-married in 1864 to Mr. F Mowatt, and the young Eric grew to hate
his stepfather). Lucy’s family home, Thirlstaine Hall was sold in 1874 and the
family moved to Withdeane Hall, near Brighton.
Eric entered Wiesbaden school from 1875-77 and then took private education
before going up to Balliol College, Oxford in April 1879, staying only four
terms. Little is known of his time at Oxford but we do know he made two close
friends at Oxford: Terence Woulfe Flanagan, the son of an Irish judge and
landowner, and Benjamin Francis Conn Costelloe, the son of an Irish foreman
ship-builder in Glasgow; Benjamin became Eric’s manager and both Flanagan and
Costelloe knew the immortal poet Gerard Manly Hopkins, with whom they were
members of the Oxford Catholic Club. In 1881 Eric’s slim 44 page volume of
verse ‘Love, Sleep and Dreams’ was published, its poems speaking of a ‘beloved’
and a tortured soul under romantic infatuation… the beloved is revealed to be a
boy – perhaps the young boy he became romantically enflamed by was Charles
Bertram Fowler (1864-1881) to whom appears a dedication in Eric’s second book
of poetry ‘Rue, Myrtle and Cypress’ (1883). Adlard says that ‘he [Stenbock] was
in Oxford on
the 23rd May [1881], having his photograph taken. Twenty days later,
in the village of
Compton Beauchamp (some
twenty-two miles from Oxford)
a consumptive boy of sixteen died at the Rectory. He was Charles Bertram
Fowler, son of the Reverend Alfred Fowler, who had died the year before. He
concerns us now because it was to his memory that Eric was to dedicate a book;
other than this I have been unable to discover anything about him.’ (p. 16) It
would be interesting to know the nature of this relationship and Eric’s
reactions to the young boy’s death but all we know is that Eric (aged 21) was
in London on 20th June before travelling to Germany in July and then
on to Russia and Estonia at the beginning of August. He wrote thirty poems
between May and November 1881 so perhaps this was his outpouring of grief for
Charles. Eric’s father, old Count Magnus died in February 1885 and Eric arrived
in Estonia in April as heir to the title, family fortune and the estates at
Kolk, Konda and Neuenhof; at Kolk Eric became closely attached to his thirteen
year old cousin Karin Stenbock who was ill in bed and she seemed to fall in
love with him and wanted to marry him, despite the twelve years difference in
age. But Eric was not inclined to marriage, yet his time at Kolk was idyllic,
though not to last. There is a nice description of the poet during this time on
page 36 which says ‘he liked to wear a loose tie of fiery red, a silk shirt of
some dazzling colour, and soft red morocco slippers,’ and it goes on to say
that ‘he used a powerful exotic perfume and had in his wardrobe a great number
of fine silk dressing gowns and a notable collection of Oriental costumes.’ (p.
36) We learn of his fondness for animals and how they were allowed to roam free
among his rooms: ‘tortoises crawled across the floor, a monkey hopped this way
and that, and a snake, not always kept in its cage, coiled itself around the
plants. There was also an aquarium with toads, lizards and salamanders. To all
these creatures he was devoted, though he had an intense dislike of pigs and
could not even bear the sight of them.’ (p. 36-37) the monkey was named
‘Troshka’ and he also had a dachshund named ‘Trixie’. His bedroom was ‘painted
peacock-blue. Over the marble chimney-piece a great alter had been erected,
tricked out with Oriental shawls, peacock feathers, lamps and rosaries. In the
middle stood a green bronze statue of Eros. There was a little flame that burned
unceasingly, and resin in a copper bowl that scented the air. The floor was
covered with thick Smyrna
carpets, and over his bed was a big pentagram to keep the evil spirits at bay.’
(p. 37) It was on this bed that Eric would smoke opium with his beloved animals
gathered around him. Eric returned to London on 1st July 1887 and
took rooms at 11 Sloane Terrace; he was back among literary society and met old
friends such as the eccentric artist and idle drunk, Simeon Solomon, Aubrey
Beardsley, Wilde’s friends Robert Ross and More Adey, Aymer Vallance the art
critic and disciple of William Morris; John Lane the publisher, Herbert Horne,
art historian and poet (who in turn introduced Eric to the poet Lionel Johnson,
who probably then arranged a meeting between Eric and W B Yeats), Father Edward
Ignatius Purbrick, Rector of Stonyhurst and friend of G M Hopkins, and the
young sixteen year old composer Norman O’Neill whom Eric met in Piccadilly on
top of a horse-bus in May 1891. A young poet named Ernest Rhys met Stenbock at
the house of William Bell Scott, the poet and painter, at Beaufort House,
Cheyne Walk in the winter of 1887 and had this to say of his first meeting with
Eric: ‘his entry was a delicious piece of comedy. He was short, very fair,
small flaxen curls fringing a round smooth visage, with china-blue eyes. At the
door he paused, drew out a little gold vial of scent from his pocket, scented
his finger-tips and passed them through his hair before greeting his hostess.’
(p. 61) They became immediate friends and Rhys visited Eric at his rooms in
Sloane Terrace and recorded that ‘in a recess a red lamp burned continually,
between a Buddha and a bust of Shelley. The air was heavy with incense and
various perfumes. Throughout dinner Fatima,
his familiar – an enormous toad – sat on Eric’s shoulder, apparently asleep.’
(p. 63) Rhys also insisted that Wilde paid a visit to Eric’s rooms and offended
him by lighting his cigarette from the sacred flame that burned continuously to
Eric’s utter horror. In 1890 Eric moved from Sloane Terrace to 21 Gloucester
Walk and Adlard recounts that ‘on his travels he had to be escorted and with
him went a dog, a monkey and a life-size doll. He was convinced that the doll
was his son and referred to it as ‘le petit comte’. Everyday it had to be
brought to him; when it was not there he would ask for news of its health’. (p.
78) Stenbock had been ill for some time and in the winter of 1894-5 he was
diagnosed with Cirrhosis of the liver and his strength was failing. On 26th April 1895,
a day in which Oscar Wilde faced the first day of his first trial) Eric died at
his mother’s home, Withdeane Hall near Brighton
and he was buried at Brighton’s Catholic Cemetery on 1st May. Before
the burial his ‘heart was extracted and sent to Estonia, where it was placed among
the Stenbock monuments in the church at Kusal. It was preserved in some fluid
in a glass urn in a cupboard built into the wall of the church.’ (p. 85) It is
said that on the day of his death, Eric, ‘drunk and furious, had tried to
strike someone with a poker and toppled into the grate’. (p. 85) His mother
died at the Hall the following year on 14th October.
John Adlard has
written a very charming and interesting book on the strange and perplexing poet
Eric Stenbock, despite a lack of source materials available to him at the time
and his unwearying research has yielded a thing of beauty which is a lasting
tribute to Stenbock and a fine point of entrance to future aficionados to
continue the adventure and further the quest! Magical!
Of Kings and Things:
Strange Tales and Decadent Poems by Count Stanislaus Eric Stenbock – Edited and
Introduced by David Tibet.
Published by Strange
Attractor Press in 2018, this beautiful volume at 320 pages contains all of
Stenbock’s stories from his 1894 collection ‘Studies of Death’ and various
other tales such as the marvelous story and one of the best lycanthrope tales
‘The Other Side’; ‘Faust’, ‘La Girandola: a study of morbid pathology’, ‘The
Child of the Soul’ and a six part drama, ‘La Mazurka Des Revenants’. There is
an excellent Introduction ‘A Catch of a Ghost’ by the poet, artist and
musician, David Tibet who has pushed many boundaries in those forms and is a
fascinating man himself with his interests in mysticism, Buddhism, Aleister
Crowley and Stenbock. Included in the volume is a selection of nearly forty
poems taken from Stenbock’s collections: ‘Love, Sleep and Dreams’ (1881),
‘Myrtle, Rue and Cypress’
(1883) and ‘The Shadow of Death’ (1893) along with various typescripts. Much of
Stenbock’s poetry is influenced by supernatural agencies, desolate and riddled
with death and a desire for young men. Stenbock, born in 1860, became a Roman
Catholic while at Oxford
University, something his
stepfather thought of as a ‘ridiculous religion’ and he was not to complete his
Oxford
education at Balliol
College, possibly because
of this and he was sent to Kolk in Estonia, the home of the
Stenbocks’. He enjoyed his time at Kolk and had many happy times with his
cousins who were amused by his eccentricities; he took to drink and opium and he
later went about with a life-size wooden doll, ‘le petit comte’ whom he
believed to be his son! He died aged just thirty-five in 1895 of Cirrhosis.
David Tibet has
remained faithful to Stenbock’s original texts and punctuation, correcting
typographical errors and textual mistakes (Stenbock inserts various languages
into his writing) and Timothy d’Arch Smith, the author of the uranian classic
‘Love in Earnest’ (1970), a book which caught Tibet’s imagination and stirred
his enthusiasm for Stenbock, provides an afterword and there is a comprehensive
bibliography by David Tibet, Ray Russell and Mark Valentine. Tibet really has
done excellent work in researching this little known poet and enigmatic oddity
and bringing his spirit from the darkness to the light for all to see and love
and his passion and enthusiasm is more than evident; so if you wish to know who
died in the same bed shared by Stenbock and what strange connection links him
to Jack the Ripper, then you really must read this book!
A Dream of Daffodils:
Last Poems – by H. D. Lowry.
This charming 65 page
volume of verse by Henry Dawson Lowry (1869-1906) published in 1912 and
arranged for the press by G E Matheson and Lowry’s cousin, the author and
spiritualist Catherine Amy Dawson Scott (1865-1934) contains a rather
affectionate Memoir by Edgar A Preston along with thirty-two poems, seventeen
of which come under the category of ‘love songs’. Henry Dawson Lowry was born
in Truro, Cornwall on 22nd February 1869
and his father Thomas Shaw Lowry was a bank clerk in the town and later bank
manager in Camborne; Henry went to the Wesleyan School
in Taunton and
became interested in literature rather than ministerial work. He edited the
school magazine and his interest in chemistry won him a scholarship to Oxford, matriculating on
14th January 1888 aged 18 (BA 1891 and Honours – 3 Chemistry in
1891). Following University he lived in London
in 1893 and seemed to forget chemistry in favour of literature and attempted to
earn his living by the pen. He had work accepted in the ‘National Observer’ and
the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’; ‘Black and White’, ‘The Speaker’ and ‘English Illustrated’
and edited the ‘Ludgate Magazine’ in 1897 and later that year the ‘Morning Post’ printed his contributions, some
of which were published in his first volume ‘Wreckers and Methodists’ (1893)
followed by a volume of short stories ‘Women’s Tragedies’ in 1895; his only
novel ‘A Man of Moods’ appeared in 1896; a volume of children’s tales ‘Make
Believe’ in 1896 and a series of studies ‘The Happy Exile’ in 1898. He
published just two volumes of verse: ‘The Hundred Windows’ (1904) and his Last
Poems written before his death aged thirty-seven in 1906 at Herne Hill (and
published here in ‘A Dream of Daffodils’ in 1912).
Preston tells us in his memoir that Lowry ‘had not
fulfilled the promise of his youth’ (p. 7) and that he had ‘lots of
friendships’, and ‘one passion’, he was ‘in Love with Love – with an ideal, in
fact, which the Fates did not permit to materialize as he would have wished.
Always longing for that unattainable, Lowry from his early boyhood was unhappy,
as is so often the lot of poets; and there can be no doubt his song was
strengthened by suffering.’ (p. 9) As a boy he ‘filled his head with fairy
tales and Old Testament Scriptures’ (p. 11) and loved collecting possessions
such as family China and silverware and Japanese colour prints. ‘Once there was
a dog. He loved the very ordinary little animal, and thought it loved him, till
the day when, taken out for exercise, the beast – as other “friends” had done –
ran away and left him, angry and puzzled. Later there was a pet canary, which
survived him. And always there were flowers, which neither flatter nor
deceive.’ (p. 16)
Lowry has an almost
feminine appreciation in his verse and there seems to be a continual theme of
roses, loss and death –
‘So
ebbed away
Slowly to sleep, and
thence through dim-lit ways
Of shadowy dreams,
passed out beyond the verge
Of our sad earth into
a world more fair –
A land of dreams and
dreamy blessedness.’
This is taken from his
early poem ‘A Dream of Daffodils’ which goes on to conjure an image of feminine
slender beauty:
‘In a long vale I
stood; a tiny stream
Fled glistening
through a smooth-spread grassy plain,
Embrowned with tufted
mosses, and my heart
Went dreaming through
the vale till fantasies
Born of its loveliness
arose in me –‘
And a young
golden-haired maiden enters his mind wearing golden flowers in her hair, robed
in a sensuous ‘filmy’ dress, which showed ‘nebulous/ shadow of soft, round
limbs.’ Her form was the fairer for the robe which ‘could not hide its perfect
comeliness’. The maiden we learn is Echo who searches for Narcissus whom she
saw and loved, ‘but in vain!’ In ‘Love Lying Dead’ we find the poet at the end
of life’s thread, accepting death – ‘Then was I enamoured of sweet Death, / And
turned my back on Life, as on the fool / That set a riddle where no answer is.’
Lowry searches for that unattainable love which renders his heart asunder in
the poem ‘In the Street’ where we find a man walking in the rain dreaming of a
‘lost delight / And a goal that he could not gain.’ He finds ‘the wraith of a
girl was behind, / Following, following him. Her hair was blown by the wind, /
Her beautiful eyes were dim.’ Other worthy poems include: ‘A Prayer at Death’,
‘The Song-Seller’, ‘Dead Leaves’, ‘Death and Love’ (sonnet), ‘The June Rose’,
‘Let no man living dream of pitying me’ and ‘Love is Dead’ with its appalling
conclusion that ‘Love is dead, and for the dead, / Waits no refuse but a
grave,’ But the inner torment of the poet seeks some ‘transformation’ as can be
seen in the poem of that name:
‘And would you know
the man I was
A year ago, or half a
year?
Go! bid the Spring be
Spring no more,
And teach her how to
be less dear.
Bid her withhold, when
April’s here,
Green smock and gold
of daffodil;
Then search the
woodland far and wide,
Spring rapture of the
thrush to kill.
And steal the stars,
and veil the sun,
And make my lady grow
unkind.
The man I was a year
ago
You still may seek,
but shall not find.’
Lowry’s health failed
and he took to his bed and a week later on 22nd October 1906 he was dead. His
poetry is tragic yet beautiful and Preston’s
memoir only hints at a man who died too soon before his time with the promise
of some rather tender and passionate works which alas remained unwritten.
The Hundred Windows –
by H. D. Lowry.
This is Lowry’s first
volume of poetry published in 1904 containing 64 poems over a hundred pages. Most
of the poems are taken from the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’, the ‘Morning Post’, ‘Black
and White’, the ‘Pall Mall Magazine’ and the ‘Londoner’. In the dedicatory poem
‘To Beatrice’ we are told to ‘have pity on the man who long ago - / Dead
Yesterday is dead as Babylon - / Waited, a dreamer, with no dream to dream.’
Lowry writes with an assured sense of romantic yearning and invokes sensual
imagery into reality –
‘I will not move my
hand to where
I dream you sit with
silken hair
That waits for my
caress. Mine eyes
Are hungry for the
sight of you;
Yet are they closed,
for still ‘tis true,
Only the man who
dreams is wise.’ (XIV)
And in XV the tension
increases as the passion ascends new heights of fancy:
‘I watch you from
across the room
And still my wonder is
If, as you give me
glance for glance,
You’d give me kiss for
kiss.’
And the flame of lust
concludes:
‘Till now we’ve played
an idle game,
To while the time
away:
Sweet, if I chose to
stake my all,
Would you refuse to
play?’
Lowry sings soft upon
the delights of love for young maidens, his dream and his eternal fantasy – ‘I
dared to dream you dreamt of me, / And O, my love, my heart was light.’ (XX)
and he pours his soul upon the beautiful heart of his desire, saying ‘now that
my love lies sleeping’ in XXIV, and ending quite pathetically, ‘I gave into her
keeping / Everything I had.’ This is a really beautiful collection of verse
with a staggering sense of loneliness and dejection by a rather troubled young
poet who wrote much of the verse in his chambers in Middle Temple.
He has lain in obscurity for too long and should be reappraised and more widely
read!
Women’s Tragedies – by
H. D. Lowry.
As the Cornish author
Henry Dawson Lowry had the misfortune (or good sense) to expire at the young
age of thirty-seven I thought it only right to get my hands on as much of his
work as I could and pay him the tribute of reading his literary works! ‘Women’s
tragedies’ is his second published book from 1895 and it is a collection of
fifteen short stories all with a Cornish setting. Lowry’s female characters are
all strong creations and he delights in the mental description of his heroines
who succumb to motherhood as in the supernatural tale ‘The Torque’ or are
unfaithful following the death of a child and fall to murder as in ‘The Man in
the Room’. In ‘The Widow’s History’ Mark promises Marina that he will not drink
but when he is found drunk she calls off the engagement, yet love is strong and
Marina agrees to marry him still after he promises once more… Another theme of
Lowry’s is the mistaken belief that death has occurred when a person goes
missing as in ‘The Christening’ which sees a young wife, believing her husband
is lost at sea, re-marry and now there is a child to be Christened when who
should suddenly return but the first husband! A similar theme occurs in ‘The
Good-for-Naught’ and in ‘The Sisters’ we find two sisters who love one man; a
tale which ends in witchcraft and suicide. Another suicide story is ‘The
Coward’ which tells of a man who opts-out of a suicide pact with the woman he
loves. Throughout the volume there is a sense of pagan rites among simple folk
and love, deviated and cursed. Lowry writes well and there are some very
memorable little tales here to enjoy!
A Man of Moods – by H.
D. Lowry.
Lowry’s only novel
published in 1896 tells the story through twenty-one chapters of a man named
Guy Holden, the son of a clergyman and an Oxford graduate who became a writer
of reviews with a published novel behind him and some hack-work in journalism
to keep up appearances living in London; he is twenty-eight years old and after
having a second novel published he is working on his third. He is tired of London and its
pretensions and decides to go to Scilly after meeting a flower-man named John
Cunnack at Covent Garden Market who extolled the beauty of the Island to him. Possessions are of no consequence to him
and he ‘sacrifices’ many of his things before taking the train to Plymouth and to Penzance and the steamer to the Isle of Scilly. On Scilly
he searches out John Cunnack the flower-grower and meets his young twenty-year
old niece named Elsie whom he takes to be around seventeen from her child-like
appearance. Elsie’s father is dead and her mother ran off when she was young
and so her Uncle John takes care of her with his sister, Elsie’s widowed Aunt,
Mrs Chegwidden. Holden lodges at their charming house and Guy and Elsie grow
close to each other. Guy works on his novel and helps Mr Cunnack with his
flowers and eventually Guy asks Elsie to marry him; she needs time to think
about it and leaves him waiting until the end of the day. Suddenly, Elsie finds
her Uncle John dead amongst his beloved plants in the tomato house and although
distraught, she agrees to marry Guy. After they are married they take a steamer
to the mainland and stay the night in Penzance
before honeymooning in London,
a place Elsie yearns to be as she was born there and is bored by Scilly. Guy
finishes his novel and it is a success but Elsie remains dissatisfied with life
on the island and wants the lights and crowds and streets of London to feel alive; Guy is torn as he is
happy for the first time in his life on Scilly, not having to work to demand
and feeling spiritually free amongst nature. After being on Scilly a year, Guy
receives a letter from an old work colleague named Martin, he decides to meet
him in Penzance and leave Elsie for a few days, but feeling that he has ruined
Elsie Guy decides to go to London and hide him self there and sever the past.
He writes to Elsie telling her he is in London
but does not give an address; he sees a lawyer and signs his private income
over to her and writes to her a final time telling her to forget him. He lodges
off the Strand and writes about his
experiences on Scilly for an evening paper. Elsie is distraught and months pass
by until she has her baby delivered. She becomes weak and the Doctor says she
will die without her husband whom she loves and misses more than ever. With the
idea of going to London
and searching for Guy, Elsie makes a great effort to get well and strong again
and after a month recuperating she is well enough to go and so she travels with
the baby and Mrs Chegwidden to London.
Guy comes to the realisation that he must return to Scilly and ask his wife’s
forgiveness, but on the day before he leaves he goes to Covent Garden Market
and sees Elsie looking for him among the bunches of flowers he loved and they
embrace and kiss and their future together on Scilly with the new baby and Mrs
Chegwidden unfolds towards a beautiful future sustained by love. This is a delightfully
rewarding story and Lowry seems to draw on autobiographical material for his
protagonist, Guy Holden, who like Lowry was Oxford educated and a slave to the pen for
his living, while creating an image of purity and truth in the character of
Elsie, a young child-like maiden whom Lowry would surely have desired greatly.
Some parts of the plot seemed a little naïve such as Guy leaving Elsie, never
to return and Elsie remaining tenderly and rigidly in love with him throughout
the pain he caused by his leaving her with a child to raise, but for a first
novel this is a wonderful promise of things to come, which sadly never did in
the novel form. Superb!
Oscar Wilde: A Summing
Up – by Lord Alfred Douglas.
Lord Alfred Douglas
(1870-1945) published this, his final book in 1940, five years before he died
and much of his earlier maniacal ferocity and denial in his associations with
Wilde has dwindled to an almost humane acceptance of his part in the
sensational aspects of the tribulations. I read the 1950 re-issue (12 chapters
over 142 pages) with an Introduction by Derek Hudson who was born in 1911 and
still graces the land of the living at the time of writing this review (2018);
Hudson sides with ‘Bosie’ on much that he has to say about his relationship
with Wilde which was close between 1892-95 (they met in 1891 when Bosie’s
cousin, the poet Lionel Johnson introduced them; Wilde was 36, married with two
children and Douglas was 20 and an Oxford undergraduate, Magdalen College,
1889-1893, he left without a degree). Perhaps for the first time Douglas
explains his role in the downfall of Wilde, (if Douglas had not been so
careless as to leave incriminating letters in a suit he gave to one of his
‘male associates’ then Wilde would not have been subjected to blackmail
attempts), afterall, he is coming to the end of his life and he has come under
the spell and lure of Roman Catholicism which he embraced in 1911 as so many
whose sexuality remained either hidden or in denial had done and as we all know
confirmation in Catholicism ensures that no lie is spoken and truth and honesty
are the bywords of spiritual integrity, anyway, Douglas remains unmoved in his
attitude that homosexuality is a ‘sin of the flesh’ (p. 14) but not a ‘crime’ and
he is determined to hack away at the confusing statements and downright sordid
untruths of others to reveal some semblance of accuracy; he calls to the box
George Bernard Shaw whom he maintains was cruel in his judgement of Oscar and Mr.
Robert Sherard who upheld Oscar’s honour and at the same time deified the great
Irish author and defended him by insisting his homosexuality was some sort of
sickness or a form of madness, something Douglas strongly denies and rightly
so. Wilde, Bosie tells us was not beyond instigating such affairs with young
men, male prostitutes who were experienced in such arts and therefore not
corrupted by the older man; his part in satisfying his tastes were perhaps not
as innocent as we have been led to believe, it seems he was a prominent and
promiscuous user of street boys and lower class men in service whom he treated
lavishly to gifts (usually silver cigarette cases), dinners and money. If we
are to believe Mr. Douglas he stood by Oscar unto the end and that he was not
aware of the document known as ‘De Profundis’ which Wilde wrote at Reading gaol
and was meant to be despatched to Douglas by Robert Ross who Douglas claims
withheld the letter and he did not see the letter until 1912, twelve years
after Wilde’s death. In a letter to his mother in 1897, Douglas
stands by Wilde saying ‘don’t think that I have changed about him or that I
have changed my views about morals. I still love and admire him, and I think he
has been infamously treated by ignorant and cruel brutes. I look upon him as a
martyr to progress. I associate myself with him in everything.’ In reference to
those ‘ignorant and cruel brutes’ we can assume he has his adulterous and fiery
father the Marquess of Queensberry firmly in the front of his mind whom he
detested for the attacks upon Wilde and for the ill treatment of his family and
himself. Bosie goes on to say ‘I have, as I hope is well known, nothing but
abhorrence for homosexuality, but I have not changed the views I expressed to
my mother in the letter I wrote to her in 1897’ (p. 17). Douglas summons up old
hatreds and opens old wounds concerning Arthur Ransome and the case of 1913 and
Frank Harris who declared he did not know Wilde was less than truthful when he
denied the accusations during the trial until Wilde stated it plainly to him
during a conversation and of course Robert Ross who probably initiated Oscar
into homosexuality and who betrayed Oscar’s wishes concerning ‘De Profundis’.
There were many missed opportunities of escape for Oscar and behind it all one
can’t help feeling Bosie pushed him towards the inevitable end originally
through his selfishness in wanting to punish his father and see him imprisoned
but the Marquess found more than a hint of truth in the rumours of the poet and
the playwright and further incriminating evidence in the form of the sworn
testimonies from young male associates of Wilde had been discovered and so the
history of one of the greatest literary figures to walk the earth was all but
written and Douglas walked away, a ghost of only half-truths condemned to
infamy. A noble endeavour!
Make Believe – by H.
D. Lowry.
Published in 1896 and
illustrated by Charles Robinson (1870-1937), ‘Make Believe’ is a collection of
ten stories which feature a young girl named Doris who has many adventures with
her ‘real treasures’ which are ordinary things, in her garden and her imaginary
world with an adult visitor who treats Doris as an equal and in so doing encourages
her to talk about her childish and charming adventures. The stories are: ‘The
Meeting’, ‘The Magic Painter’, ‘The Lady and the Treasure’, ‘Green Grapes’,
‘The Doll’s Funeral’, ‘When Doris was a Mermaid’, ‘Dreams about a Star’, ‘A
March of Heroes’, ‘A London Picnic’ and ‘A Long Journey’. This type of thing
which features a young girl discovering the joys of life along with the sorrows
and pains associated with it was hugely popular in Victorian times and ‘Make
Believe’ is published thirty-one years after Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland’ (1865) and not long after his ‘Sylvie and Bruno’
(1889 and volume 2 1893); it also appears just three years after ‘A Naughty
Girl’ (1893) by the author Joseph Ashby-Sterry whose ‘Boudoir Ballads’ of 1876
was very popular. Throughout all of his writings Lowry seems to understand and
appreciate women, from the little girl to the mother and the old woman and
although he is not on everybody’s ‘to read’ list his timeless love of childhood
will endure. Delightful!
The Happy Exile – by
H. D. Lowry.
Most of these sketches
and studies, published in 1898, first appeared in ‘The National Observer’, the
‘Pall Mall Gazette’, ‘Black and White’, ‘The Speaker’ and ‘Chambers’. There are
six etchings by E. Philip Pimlott (which I thought a little below standard) and
Lowry writes well enough conjuring a world of Cornish beauty in such pieces as:
‘The Idyll of the Daffodils’, ‘The New Contentment’, ‘A Scandal in Arcady’,
‘The Wedding Morning’, ‘A Romantic Confession’, ‘On Sunday Morning’, ‘In the
Marshes’, ‘Interludes: 1. The Offering, 2. The Hammock, 3. Western Winter, 4.
The Blessing of the Rain, 5. The Unseen Singer’, ‘Midsummer Moonlight’, ‘A
Wayside Evangelist’, ‘Pilchards in the Bay’, ‘Payment by Results’, ‘The Spell
of the Sea’, ‘The Bible Reader’, ‘Marguerite in London’ (I and II), ‘The Smell
of the Good Earth’ and ‘New Year’s Eve’. Of course not all of these sketches
have stood the test of time and some appear a little tired but Lowry has a
charming turn of phrase which recalls some of the master short story tellers
such as Poe, Kipling and Hardy. Quite beautiful!
The Trials of Oscar
Wilde – by H. Montgomery Hyde.
Harford Montgomery
Hyde (1907-1989) was an Irish born barrister, politician and biographer who
studied History (first class) at Queen’s University, Belfast and Law (second class) at Magdalen College, Oxford. He has written a fine and thorough
Introduction to the ‘Trials of Oscar Wilde’ edited and published by him in 1948
with a Foreword by the Right Hon. Sir Travers Humphreys who was the only living
participant in the trials; the editor looks at Wilde’s background and associations
before revealing in-depth the lead up to the trials and their aftermath. The
story, or perhaps tragedy of the libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry
has become the stuff of legend and is well-known, from the instance that the
Marquess, John Sholto Douglas (1844-1900) left that infamous card with the Hall
Porter at the Albemarle Club in London for Oscar, who was a member, on 18th
February 1895 (Wilde received the card a fortnight later on the 28th
of February); and we are familiar that a warrant was issued for Queensberry’s
arrest on Friday 1st March and the next day he was arrested at
Carter’s Hotel, Albemarle Street. And of course the first trial lasting three
days began on Wednesday 3rd April 1895 at the Central Criminal
Courts in London where the Jury were in disagreement; Queensberry’s detectives
unearthed new evidence in the form of young men willing to testify against
Oscar as to improper conduct and Oscar’s arrest on Friday 5th April
around 6.30 p.m. in room 53 of the Cadogan Hotel in the presence of his good
friends Robert Ross and Reginald Turner; he had been waiting for the knock on
the door and let the precious hours pass where he could have got away to safety
abroad. There was some stubborn instinct which was leading him to destruction
and he seemed to walk towards it like a man to the gallows. What was it that
made him stay and face his judgement? Oscar was taken to Scotland Yard and then
Bow Street Police Station the next day. The second trial in which a parade of
young men such as Alfred Wood, the brothers Charles and William Parker,
Frederick Atkins, Sidney Arthur Mavor, Edward Shelley and Alfred Taylor and a
host of servants from the Savoy reporting on seeing Wilde in bed with a boy
(the chambermaid was short-sighted and wasn’t wearing glasses at the time and
Wilde swore she had mistook Lord Alfred for him but did not want to reveal this
and bring Bosie into the courtroom) and of course the dirty sheets became
crucial evidence as well – all in all everyone scented blood and were eager to
crucify Oscar; the trial began on Friday 26th April and lasted five
days; Wilde of course gives his famous explanation and defence of the ‘love
that dare not speak its name’ after two poems, ‘In Praise of Shame’ and ‘Two
Loves’ by Lord Alfred Douglas are read in court which stirs the supporters and onlookers
into shouts of sympathy and applause, but it is a momentary weakness in the
grinding system of the law and the third trial took place on Monday 20th
May over six days and the sentence of two years hard labour was given.
Montgomery Hyde brings all the drama of the case to the reader and the
prejudice of those who had already disliked and were jealous of Oscar’s
enormous fame and artistic talent; he was condemned and ostracised among
society before the verdict was reached and after the sentence prostitutes were
dancing in the streets outside the courts. ‘The truth is that Oscar Wilde was
amoral rather than immoral; and, in looking back upon the scandal of the trials
in which he was involved, the English public has an uneasy conscience about
him. For a good deal of the mud thrown at the time has stuck. It is still
thought in some quarters that Wilde was a debaucher of youth.’ (p. 100) It is
quite obvious to anyone who has studied their Wilde that Bosie was the
instigator of all that was rotten in the relationship and he remained a
tortured, arrogant monster for the rest of his life, despite falling under the
protective umbrella of Roman Catholicism; the trial had produced a wave of
panic throughout England and those who were committing the same so-called
‘crime’ or vice as Wilde were in preparation for a mass exodus across the
Channel where the air was a little more tolerant of such notions. The Appendix
has several interesting documents reproduced such as a) ‘A Plea of
Justification’ filed by the Defendant in Regina (Wilde) v. Queensberry, from
the Central Criminal Courts, London; b) Lord Alfred Douglas and Sir Edward
Clarke; c) Bankruptcy Proceedings; d) Lord Alfred Douglas and the aftermath of
the Wilde Trials; e) The Problem of Wilde’s Inversion and f) the Prevalence of
Male Homosexuality in England. A monumental work!
Oscar Wilde: His Life
and Confessions (Volume I) – by Frank Harris.
In reading Mr. Frank
Harris’s ‘Oscar Wilde’ one must first remember that the author is an enormous
egoist and an unreliable reporter of facts which of course one will know if one
has already read his autobiography, ‘My Life and Loves’. Volume one of his
Wilde biography was published in 1916 with sixteen chapters over 320 pages and
it opens with the court case of Wilde’s father Dr. Sir William Wilde who had a
civil action brought against him for libel by Miss Travers following her
accusation that he had sexually assaulted her under chloroform. Wilde was
vindicated but it made a lasting impression on the young poet Oscar. We see the
youthful Oscar at Portora School in Ireland and Harris recounts a story by
Wilde that a young boy there had become enamoured of him and how it was a great
revelation to him to realise the significance of that infatuation and those
first passionate flames – ‘I was very childish, Frank; a mere boy till I was
over sixteen. Of course I was sensual and curious, as boys are, and had the
usual boy imaginings; but I did not indulge in them excessively.’ (p. 31) At Magdalen
College, Oxford
Wilde came under the influence of Ruskin and Pater and we are told that Pater
knelt and kissed Wilde’s hand – ‘you must not, you really must not. What would
people think if they saw you?’ (p. 49) Whistler was another aesthetic influence
upon Oscar but they later fell out in April 1883 when Wilde returned to England from
his United States
lecture tour and Whistler accused him of plagiarism. The next year in 1884
Harris met Oscar and they became life-long friends meeting in theatres and
drawing rooms and Harris tells us that at first he was repulsed by Oscar’s
flabby and oily appearance which is strange coming from a man who was no oil
painting himself but he was impressed with Wilde’s ‘The Portrait of Mr. W. H.’
(Harris is a great Shakespeare enthusiast, I refrain from using the word
expert) and he delighted in Wilde’s novel ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ which
came to irrevocably damage his reputation. Lord Alfred Douglas is introduced
and he becomes the great temptation in Wilde’s life, bringing him to
destruction and bankruptcy; it is no wonder that Douglas, having wiped the
froth from his mouth, had nothing but harsh words about this book and its
author for he surely was the damaged seed of his father and bore the same
transgressions and vile, mean and insane vitriol his father held towards Wilde
and towards anyone who disagreed with him; Bosie even threatened to shoot his
father the Marquess. Rumours begin about the relationship between Oscar and
Bosie and Harris brings in ‘The Green Carnation’ as an example of how society
was beginning to view and ridicule Oscar. Harris offers his advice before the
trial begins to drop it and go abroad but we know that behind the scenes,
Bosie, like some rabid dog was pulling the strings, determined to see his
father in the dock and if he had his way at the end of a rope. He did not seem
to care that Oscar’s reputation was at stake and Oscar walked with the hand of
destiny to his fate. The outcome was surely inevitable, even to him, for the
‘uneducated middle class’ and the ‘barbarian aristocracy’ of England were
prejudiced against writers. Frank takes no end in telling us that he had a
steam yacht on the Thames at Erith, waiting to whisk Oscar off at a moments
notice but Wilde was determined to see the trial out to the end; he is staying
with his brother Willie on bail and confesses to Harris that even his own
brother would turn him in if discovered that he had left! Harris exaggerates no
doubt his own importance in the Wilde affair and unfortunately we cannot have
Wilde’s opinion of the conversations that allegedly took place between them but
nevertheless, with this in mind, it is still a fascinating read and yet another
facet to the great tragedy and comedy of Oscar Wilde.
Oscar Wilde: His Life
and Confessions (Volume II) – by Frank Harris.
In the continuation of
Frank Harris’s Wilde biography of 1916, the author offers a further eleven
chapters in this second volume at over three-hundred pages and we are treated
to the workings of the prison system and the effects of punishment and Frank
meets Oscar in Reading prison having secured permission to assess the effects
of prison life upon him and he listens to his complaints and assures him that
changes will be made such as books for him and writing materials. As good as
his word changes do occur after the prison Governor is dismissed and a new one
established. Frank even goes on to draw up a petition for Oscar to be released
early on remission on account of his ill health; the writer Meredith refuses
just as most notable authors and men of letters decline and so the petition
comes to nothing and Harris fails but at least Oscar now has some comfort in
his incarceration. Following prison Oscar leaves for France and stays at the Hotel de la
Plage in the village
of Berneval. Frank
notices the change in Oscar, the great compassion and pity which is at odds
with De Profundis which seems bitter and merciless in its attack upon the
shallow and selfish Douglas. Harris draws upon
the Ballad of Reading Gaol and reveals the influence of A E Housman’s ‘A
Shropshire Lad’ which according to Harris Wilde had read and enjoyed but it is
the second fall in Oscar’s life which now occurs following incessant pleadings
from Douglas to join him in Naples and Oscar falling for the temptation goes,
forfeiting his annual financial assistance from his wife who strictly forbad
him to see Douglas again (she does however help with regular funds). In Naples
the leach Douglas behaved deplorably and selfishly, urging Oscar to write so that
he could make money for Douglas to gamble with and enjoy fine dinners and
wines, even showing his violent and nasty side to the man who still loved him,
calling Wilde an ‘old fat prostitute’. Harris also urges Oscar on to work but
not for financial reasons, because he knows he is capable of creating beautiful
things and writing will heal his soul but Oscar comes across as stubborn and
lazy, there are many instances where Wilde refuses to walk, he takes a cab
everywhere; he acts just like a petulant child and refuses to write. Harris
moves on to Oscar’s death and how he himself was ill and could not be there and
the volume ends with Bernard Shaw’s ‘Memories of Oscar Wilde’ which is quite
interesting. The appendix reproduces the two poems by Alfred Douglas: ‘Two
Loves’ (Sept 1892) and ‘In Praise of Shame’ and the un-published portions of
‘De Profundis’. Both volumes have been an enjoyable read and it is always wise
to read several versions of the facts from different sources who each seem to
tell different accounts of the story; Frank Harris was counted as a friend of
Wilde’s and he paints himself in a wondrous and saintly light in terms of this
friendship, offering sensible advice and plentiful financial assistance to the
unfortunate Wilde, no doubt there is some semblance of truth in the matter and
after his death, Wilde becomes an easy target for egotistical second-rate
writers to attach themselves to him and gain some notoriety, but read the
volumes and make up your own mind as to the veracity of Mr. Harris.
Spirit Intercourse:
Its Theory and Practice – by J. Hewat McKenzie.
James Hewat McKenzie
(1869-1929) was the Scottish born founder of the British College
of Psychic Science who became interested in the paranormal in 1900. Following a
series of lectures in London,
Edinburgh and Glasgow during 1915, he
published ‘Spirit Intercourse’ in 1917. One can understand the need for this
book when one considers the awful loss of life on the battlefields of France and Belgium and the
need to console grieving parents and loved ones; an interest in spiritualism
exploded and filled the gaping chasm left by the church. The book is divided into nine chapters over
295 pages which looks at the various evidence such as materialization and
techniques of mediumship through objective and subjective phenomena. McKenzie,
who was a member of the Christian Church for thirty years came to the
conclusion through Christian worship that there was no evidence to confirm that
man had a soul or that even a spirit world existed; following his departure
from the church he underwent years of personal study in the science of ‘life
after death’ and his own belief in spirit communication was established: ‘The
records of the Society for Psychical Research have actually proved to my mind,
first, survival pure and simple, the persistence of the spirit’s life, as a
structural law of the universe; second, that between the spiritual and the
material worlds an avenue of communication does in fact exist; third, that the
surviving spirit retains, at least in some measure, the memories and loves of
the earth.’ (F. W. H. Myers. Quoted on page 35) He goes into great depth as to
the science and culture of the soul and the first steps in spirit intercourse,
mapping the spirit spheres and describing the laws that one may find there.
Psychic science, he says, proves that at the death of the body a person still
functions as a conscious being; that being is a refined spirit body or a soul
which has substance and weight. The soul existed with a physical body during
life and can communicate with persons on earth before and after death. McKenzie
states that the world of the spirit or the soul lies immediately around the
physical earth and that while alive, a person can leave the physical body and
explore the spheres of refined physical states – the spirit world for we are
triune beings: body, soul and spirit (ego, thought). The soul has a similar
organic structure to that of the physical, its own organs etc. This is all very
interesting and then McKenzie suddenly feels the need to question his readers’
moral behaviour and physical virtues and that old Christian devil rears its
ugly head in his chapter on the culture of the soul which he declares needs
four components to become aware of spiritual contact, firstly, aspiration (or
prayer), secondly, right diet (apparently cooked flesh is disagreeable with the
spirits!), thirdly, exercise and fourth is self-control; to this he adds
rhythmic-breathing, concentration and meditation. A lot of this I can swallow
but when it comes to ‘planetary spirit intercourse’ whereby the Earth spirits
of the seventh sphere can communicate with the Martian spirits of the seventh
sphere for example seems ridiculous to me and why when we enter the spirit
world are our souls clothed in human shape and why do we need to live in brick
(not actual material brick but an ethereal substance-like brick) buildings? Why
is not the soul condensed into a circular ball of energy? Although I cannot
agree with much that McKenzie has to say on the spirit world (the seven spheres
that surrounds the earth and the other planets in our Solar System) and his
belief that there is no danger in such communications as in possession and
negative influences etc. seems naïve, but the book does have some interesting things
to say and it is a good, understandable book for most of it.
Death: Its Causes and
Phenomena – by Hereward Carrington and John R Meader.
This massive tome at
nearly six-hundred pages with ‘special reference to immortality’ was published
in 1912 and the authors, Carrington and Meader, make a thorough examination of
the scientific aspects of life and death, the assimilation and disintegration
(attraction and repulsion) of the body and the inevitability of death – ‘dead
matter is cast aside, just as one would discard a worn-out garment, and new
matter is created to take its place. When this faculty ceases to perform its
functions, death follows speedily.’ (p. 4) We are led through the signs of
death in the physical which are quite obvious and mention is made of the
etheric or the aura and the ‘odor mortis’ (smell of death) and ‘rigor mortis’;
putrefaction (decomposition) is quite fascinating and we are told that it is
twice as rapid in air as in water. Chapter three (part one) looks at ‘Trance,
Catalepsy and Suspended Animation’ and goes into some depth on premature burial
and its preventions which I found absolutely fascinating, offering many
examples of such cases before presenting us with the delights in the facts of
burials, cremation, mummification and embalming. Nine examples of the causes of
death are examined from ‘sudden death’, ‘death by poisoning’ and even ‘death by
spontaneous combustion’ in chapter six before entering upon a scientific study
of old age. Carrington and Meader give their own theories upon death and their
conclusions before opening part two, the ‘Historical’ aspect of death with
theories concerningt immortality, (cannibalism, Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome)
which frankly I found a little less interesting, touching on the philosophical
aspects (Schopenhauer and Fichte) and then the theological aspects which acted
like a sedative upon me until I awoke to the final part which delves into the
‘Psychological’ aspect with the basic premise that ‘all things perish except
energy’. There are some interesting notions on the subject of the moment of
death and is there a sensation of pain ? etc. ‘so long as there is pain, some
attempt is being made to repair the vital damages; but when pain ceases, then
nature has given up the fight.’ (p. 301) The following chapters are quite
insightful – ‘Visions of the Dying’, ‘Death described from beyond the Veil’
(Clairvoyant descriptions of death: the separation of the soul and the body and
the process of dying as described by spirits), ‘Experiments in Photography and
Weighing the Soul’, ‘Death Coincidences’ (apparitions of the dying and
olfactory phenomena), ‘The Testimony of Science – Psychical Research’ (physical
phenomena and independent voices, raps, the case of D. D. Home etc.), ‘The
Mental Phenomena’ (Clairvoyance, phantasms of the dead, haunted houses,
planchette writing, mediums: Mrs Piper, Mrs Smead and Mrs Thompson) and ‘On the
Intra-Cosmic Difficulties of Communication’ before the authors conclude that
‘the nature of death is likely to remain unsolved for many years to come – so
long as we are ignorant of the nature of life.’ (p. 518) The Appendices have
some interesting topics such as ‘On Vampires’, ‘Life and Vitality’ and ‘Eusapia
Palladino’s Phenomena and Fraud’. Anyone reading this huge volume cannot fail
to recognise the scale and wealth of research that has gone into it by Messrs
Carrington and Meader who draw from many published works and although some
chapters may not interest every enquiring mind there will be some chapters that
do and instigate further research in that direction perhaps. If like me you are
of a macabre twist and find death in all of its many aspects thoroughly
fascinating, even a little romantic in the gothic sense, then I am sure you
will find something to delight and tickle your strange sense of philosophy in
this monster work on the subject.
Pastors and Masters –
by I. Compton-Burnett.
This short novel (126
pages) published in 1925 is the second novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884-1969)
and the action takes place at a Boys’ Prep School where we meet pupils and
staff under the seventy-year old Headmaster and owner of the school Nicholas
Herrick who lives with his un-married half-sister, Emily Herrick, twenty years
his junior, aged fifty. The Herricks are friends with the Fletchers, the
Reverend Peter Fletcher, Teresa his wife, the un-married sister Lydia and
nephew Reverend Francis Fletcher. Mr. Charles Merry the senior Master runs the
school and his wife Emily, known as ‘Mother’ assists him. Other teachers are
Miss Basden, the middle-aged, un-married school mistress teaching French and
music; Mr. Burgess the young and inexperienced graduate and William Masson and
Richard Bumpus, two un-married fellows who have been close friends for thirty
years. The story centres on the writing of a novel – Mr. Herrick regrets not
writing a novel and Mr. Bumpus wrote one in his youth but believed it was quite
worthless and had the manuscript buried in the grave of a friend. Mr. Herrick
found a typescript novel in the room of Mr. Crabbe, an elderly don, upon his
death so Herrick stole it and passed the work off as his own. Mr. Bumpus also
intends to re-write his earlier novel and it turns out both men are writing or
have written the same novel! Towards the end there is a dinner party consisting
of the Herricks, the Fletchers and the staff with the Reverend Henry Bentley
who has his two sons, Harry aged thirteen and John aged twelve at the school.
We also meet Henry’s thirty year old daughter Miss Delia Bentley and there is
plenty of interest in the dialogue which is tight and condensed and we get a real
sense of the tyranny and hierarchy that exists in such institutions, something
which Compton-Burnett excels in capturing, particularly among situations that
exist between family and domestics within a household; the inward-looking world
of Edwardian society that conceals its secrets and failures and reveals its
wealth and triumphs. Very good indeed!
Manservant and
Maidservant – by I. Compton-Burnett.
Published in 1947,
this is Compton-Burnett’s eleventh and greatest novel which features the
tyrannical, penny-pinching father, Horace Lamb who is detested by his five
children and even his wife Charlotte, who holds the purse strings and who is
contemplating eloping with Horace’s cousin Mortimer Lamb. Horace discovers the
affair. We are also introduced to the servants below stairs: Bullivant (the
manservant) and the cook, Mrs Seldon (the maidservant); George the young and
know-it-all footman from the workhouse who likes to help himself to things he
does not own and Miriam, the sensible young maid from the orphanage. The next
players on the stage are the Doubleday’s – Gideon Doubleday is the young tutor
to the Lamb children and through him we meet his mother, Gertrude a wise old
woman who likes to know everything that is occurring and Gideon’s un-married sister,
Magdalen who later gets engaged to Mortimer. The next character to engage the
reader is Miss Buchanon, the local owner of the general store who takes in
private letters for collection by the recipients and we discover her secret to
be that she is illiterate. The interplay between the characters is simply
wonderful and the dialogue has a fast pace to it which reveals essential
information quite matter of fact; the switch between people and groups of
people in the narrative is very casually done and almost unnoticed and there
are some nice touches of humour and observations. The children and their logic
hold especial appeal to the reader and their interaction with the adults is
simple and skilful. I do not wish to give too much away but there are Christmas
disappointments and even murderous intentions in this quite extraordinary novel
which sets Compton-Burnett high among the great writers of the twentieth
century. Fantastic!
Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Reconsidered – by Samuel Butler.
Samuel Butler
(1835-1902) published his ‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered’ (328 pages) with
introductory chapters, notes and a reprint of the original 1609 edition in 1899
and Butler feels confident enough to rearrange some of Shakespeare’s ‘sugared sonnets’
into the order he believes they were written. The original 1609 publication
printed by Thomas Thorpe contained misprints and carried the infamous and
mysterious Preface: ‘To the onlie begetter of these insuing sonnets Mr W H all
happinesse and that eternitie promised by our ever-wishing adventurer in
setting forth. T. T.’ He looks at the history of the sonnets through the
various publications such as Benson’s partial republication of 1640 and the
critical analysis that followed – the reprint contained omissions and was
disordered; the genders in the sonnets was changed substituting ‘she’ and ‘her’
for ‘he’ and ‘his’; and ‘Shakespeare’s Poems’ by Lintott in 1790. Benson goes
on to look at the various Shakespearean scholars who made textual emendations
such as Charles Gildon (1665-1724), Lewis Theobald (1688-1744) who published
‘The Works of Shakespeare’ in 7 volumes in 1733; Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730-1786),
George Steevens (1736-1800) who published the sonnets in 1766; Edward Capell
(1713-1781), Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) who published the plays in 12 volumes
in 1771 with an extra volume of Shakespeare’s poems and J. Bell: ‘If
Shakespeare’s merit as a poet, a philosopher, or a man, was to be estimated
from his Poems, though they possess many instances of powerful genius, he
would, in every point of view, sink beneath himself in these characters. Many
of his subjects are trifling, his versification mostly laboured and quibbling,
with too great a degree of licentiousness.’ (Anonymous Preface in the
supplement volume of Shakespeare’s Plays in 8 volumes by J. Bell and C.
Etherington. 1774). Butler states that it was the Reverend Edmond Malone
(1741-1812) who made the first serious attempt at textual emendation with
intelligent critical notes on the 154 sonnets (chapter III); Malone agrees with
Tyrwhitt that the identity of W H of the preface is William Hughes, believing
the word ‘Hews’ appearing in sonnet 20 is a play on the young man’s surname and
Butler seems to go along with this also. George Chalmers (1742-1825) made an
in-depth interpretation of the word ‘Begetter’ in Thorpe’s Preface (chapter IV)
publishing ‘An Apology for Believers in the Shakespeare Papers (1797) and ‘A
Supplement Apology for Believers in the Shakespeare Papers’ (1799); Butler
calls both books absurd and touches upon the Ireland forgeries (William Henry
Ireland 1777-1835) of December 1795 (dated 1796) – ‘Miscellaneous Papers and
Legal Instruments under the Hand and Seal of William Shakespeare’. It was
Malone who debunked the forgery of the letter from Queen Elizabeth which was
found in the volume and then in chapter five we are introduced to Dr Nathan
Drake M.D. who put forward the ‘Lord Southampton Theory’ in his book
‘Shakespeare and his Times’ (1817) which he worked on for several years –
‘during which if he treated his patients with the recklessness with which he
treated the Sonnets,’ says Butler, ‘he must have sent many a soul hurrying down
to Hades’. (p. 32) Drake believed the ‘Lord of my love,…’ (sonnet 26) is
addressed to Lord Southampton (Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, born
October 1573, the ‘W H’ is reversed) whose ‘love for him is without end’
(‘Shakespeare and his Times’. Volume II. 1817. p. 63-64) The Earl was the only
patron to Shakespeare known and Butler of course disagrees, and rightly so saying
the Earl was only twelve years old when the sonnets were written before he also
disagrees with another theory put forward by Mr Sidney Lee in his volume ‘Life
of William Shakespeare’ (1898), the ‘Lord Pembroke Theory’ (William Herbert,
the Earl of Pembroke born April 1580) saying that the recipient of the sonnets,
the ‘begetter’ was not titled so it could not be Southampton or Pembroke and
was probably equal to or beneath Shakespeare in status and not a man of rank.
In ‘The Secret Drama of Shakespeare’s Sonnets Unfolded’ (1872) by Gerald
Massey, the author suggests that the sonnets were addressed to Queen Elizabeth
which is absolute rubbish and went to supporting the Ireland forgeries but what
do we actually know? We know that the sonnets are probably autobiographical and
published under mysterious circumstances in 1609 when Shakespeare was 45 years
old, written probably ten years earlier; two of the sonnets were published in
‘The Passionate Pilgrim’, a collection of mostly inferior poems attributed to
Shakespeare. We know that the first 126 sonnets (which in all likelihood are
private letters) are addressed to the young man W H whom the poet is in love
with (the first 17 are designed to persuade Mr W H the handsome, feminine young
man to marry and pass his beauty on to future generations, to defeat time and
its ravages. The poet abandons the idea of marriage and proclaims that his
verse will be the medium to defeat time and preserve Mr W H’s beauty);
something disastrous happens when Mr W H plays some trick on the poet
(Shakespeare) and is then forgiven before the poet brings his mistress and Mr W
H together; Shakespeare becomes jealous of a rival poet (Butler suggests the
poet was possibly Thomas Watson) and that the remaining sonnets (127-154) are
addressed to the black-haired, black-eyed woman – the Dark Lady. Butler hypothesises that
the sonnets were begun around April 1585 before any of the plays were written
when Shakespeare was 21 years old and infatuated with Mr W H. The author bases
his argument on sonnet 127 (107 in the Quarto) which Butler states refers to
the defeat of the Armada and can therefore be dated 8th August 1588
or thereabouts and he concludes that Mr W H was probably born around 1567 or 68
and attained a bad reputation; he was vain, heartless, uncaring of Shakespeare
who loved him devotedly and liked to be flattered. Butler goes on to suggest
that W H probably gave Thomas Thorpe the sonnets along with ‘A Lover’s
Complaint’ which he had in his possession for some twenty years or so because he
was in urgent need of money and was probably reluctant and wished to remain
anonymous. Butler goes a long way to push his own theories as to the sonnets and
the story they reveal and the social status of Mr W H which are really quite
fascinating and makes more sense than some of the previous scholars on the
subject but I am not completely convinced, it is well known that Shakespeare
was fond of word play but the ‘hews’ connection in sonnet 20 is very tentative.
A more substantial possibility (which Butler and previous scholars were
unaware) of more recent times (2015) is put forward by the American researcher
Geoffrey Caveney who connects a ‘W H’ to Thomas Thorpe who published the
sonnets; the candidate in question is William Holme, who like Thorpe was born
in Chester and also became a publishing apprentice in 1580’s London and had his
own London bookshop. Caveney suggests Thorpe may have found the manuscript
after Holme’s death in 1607 and the interesting preface in which Mr W H is the
‘begetter’ is more akin to a funereal inscription. Absolutely fascinating but while
it is interesting to speculate the mystery of the sonnets like the curse
attached to the great man’s bones shall endure. Marvelous!
Severn and Somme –
by Ivor Gurney.
The English poet and
composer and private of the Gloucestershire’s, Ivor Gurney (1890-1937)
published two volumes of verse, ‘Severn and Somme’ in 1917 and ‘War’s Embers’
in 1919; the former was written in France, many of the forty-six poems, five of
which are sonnets, were actually composed in the trenches and there is a
nostalgic yearning for his native Gloucestershire throughout the volume, as in
‘The Fire Kindled’:
‘The stars of
afterglow,
Venus, on western
hills;
Dymock in spring: O
spring
Of home! O daffodils!
…………………………….
Here we go sore of
shoulder,
Sore of foot, by quiet
stream;
But these are not my
rivers….
And these are useless
dreams.’
Gurney served on the
Western Front where he was wounded and gassed and the poems are a gentle
evocation of home, the Gloucestershire countryside summoned to him among the
‘dull sense of No Man’s Land again’ (‘Bach and the Sentry’) and the awful
conditions on the Somme, ‘not fit for cold/ and coward like-to passions Time
assuages.’ (‘To an Unknown Lady’). It is not surprising to learn that Gurney
had several mental breakdowns and in 1922 he was committed to a mental
institution where he remained for the rest of his life. There are many fine
poems throughout this seventy page volume such as: ‘Maisemore’, ‘Acquiescence’,
‘The Strong Thing’, ‘Influences’, ‘Winter Beauty’, ‘Song of Pain and Beauty’
and ‘Trees’. Unlike his fellow contemporary war poets Owen and Sassoon, there
is no real sense of the horror and loss of war in Gurney, it is as if he has
shut himself off to the affects of the suffering around him and one only
glimpses the ghosts of the dead, as in this from ‘Communion’ –
‘Mist wraiths haunt
the path
As daylight lessens,
The stars grow
clearer, and
My dead friend’s
presence.’
The savage futility
which Sassoon condemns, ridding the war of its romantic attitude, and Owen’s
attack upon patriotism which sanctioned the atrocities of the Great War are
absent from ‘Severn and Somme’ and there is not even a sense of Brooke’s
idealistic and heroic view of warfare, instead we get this flickering mind
meandering through the trenches dreaming of girls and Bach and Gloucestershire
which is not a bad distraction from the hell that surrounds private Gurney!
The Kingdom of Twilight
– by Forrest Reid.
The Irish novelist
Forrest Reid (1875-1947) published ‘The Kingdom of Twilight’, his first novel
in 1904 and it is written in seven books, each telling a stage in the life of
its protagonist, Willie Trevellyan. Willie, a peculiar boy, is the sixteen year
old youngest son of the Reverend Arthur Trevellyan and his wife Honoria, who
have seven children, three boys and four girls. Willie is clever yet does not
do well at school, he is a dreamy boy and his father is concerned for him; the
young boy shows no inclination to do well in his studies and spends most of his
time with his cousin, Eva Gower whom he declares his love for and who is seven
years older than Willie and lives with her widowed Aunt Clara Gower (Eva’s
parents died and her Uncle Anthony Gower died three years ago). Willie’s best
friend whom he adores is a boy named Nick Grayson who takes him to an
evangelical meeting but Willie finds it all dreadfully vulgar. There is some
unspoken tragedy which caused Willie’s expulsion from his previous school and
the reader can guess as to what Reid is alluding to and Willie becomes friends
with a boy named John Delomne, an artistic child who seems to ridicule Willie
and make fun of him and so the friendship is strained until they fall out and
fight, Delomne winning the schoolboy battle. In book two we find Willie as an
apprentice, unhappy in his work harbouring morbid thoughts on suicide. He meets
Delomne again who is doing well as an artist, studying in Paris and Italy; after getting drunk with
Delomne Willie enters a church and succumbs to his religious feelings which are
pagan in origin, and even considers a life within the church. He is dismissed
from work and spends the summer weeks with his Uncle, Major Redmond, his
mother’s brother in the country and it is here that Willie discovers the
beautiful young widow, Hester Urquhart whose husband died in a yachting
accident although some say it was suicide. Hester, who is several years older
than Willie, falls in love with the young boy and after a night of passion
Hester becomes pregnant; Willie learns this when he has returned home and he
contemplates ending his life. He knows he must tell his father about the child
but speaks to his great friend Nick first on the subject. In book five we find
Willie, divorced from Hester after just a year, caring for his son, Prosper and
making money from translating French novels. He has already published a volume
of verse and a collection of essays while living in London and then he returns back to Ireland. On
meeting his old friend (and foe) Delomne he discovers the artist has painted a
portrait of Hester but does not wish to see her, however he does meet her again
for the last time after Hester visits Prosper behind Willie’s back. Book six
shows Willie as the dutiful father with another book of verse, ‘Wind Songs’
published; he visits the Gowers and sees Eva who is still as beautiful as he
remembered her and there is still great love between them. On his return home
he finds Prosper sick with fever and there is no hope for him. Following the
child’s death, Willie is torn and resolves to spend his life alone. Reid, whom
I discovered quite by accident, has written a rather wonderful novel at just
over three-hundred pages and the lyrical portrayal of boyhood and friendship is
quite charming; the author creates a sense of the magical with references to
the mythical, numinous in nature, a supernatural element which contrasts with
the everyday nature of reality, somewhat similar to the great writer Arthur
Machen or perhaps more appropriately, Algernon Blackwood, with the strong sense
of the macabre, other-worldly presences about us. Amazing!
The Garden God: A Tale
of Two Boys – by Forrest Reid.
This is Forrest Reid’s second published work
from 1905, a novella in thirteen chapters at just over one-hundred pages and
dedicated to his friend, the author Henry James; unfortunately James found the
subject matter disagreeable or perhaps too close for comfort and never spoke to
Reid again. The book begins with an
Oxford
educated man named Graham Iddesleigh writing an unfinished letter to a fellow
Oxford friend named
Allingham. Graham falls into reverie concerning his life and we learn that his
mother died giving birth to him and so he was brought up by his father and
taught to read Greek. The boy is a dreamer, a sensuous and gentle boy who has
an imaginary friend, a playmate who is a fair boy, beautiful in the sense of
young boys depicted in Ancient Greece as a young faun or cup-bearer of the
Gods. Then it is time for Graham to enter public school where strangely he
becomes popular and immerses himself in school life and so his imaginary friend
ceases to visit. But it is at school where Graham suddenly finds the image of
his young, handsome imaginary boy in the form of a school boy, beautiful as an
angel, a ‘son of the morning’, named Harold, the youngest son of Aubrey Stewart
Brocklehurst, Esquire. The friendship flourishes and love blossoms between the
two boys which is both passionate and tender. The beautiful adolescent,
Brocklehurst is not liked by his fellow pupils as there are rumours as to why
he was sent home from school; Brocklehurst tells Graham that it was for leaving
the dormitory at night to walk and ‘run in the moonlight; to run over the
meadows; to bathe in the river; to be free’ like some pagan nocturnal being,
but we are never sure that there is not more to the reason he was sent home.
Graham falls deeply under Brocklehurst’s spell and accepts him as the physical
incarnation of his imaginary playmate of old and surrenders to his beauty and
astonishing presence. Brocklehurst stays with Graham and his father during the
summer holiday and the two boys find an idyllic enchantment in the quiet
splendour of nature around them and the feeling of being alone together; they
row a boat and bathe and make an offering upon an altar to an unknown God but
tragedy ensues when Brocklehurst, helping Graham to avoid some horses that have
broken free on the lane as they walk back home, gets crushed by them and dies.
Graham is distraught and attends the grave daily offering his tears and love,
but that was all thirty years ago and Graham, still deeply affected by the
tragedy, sits with his unfinished letter to Allingham. Reid evokes a tender
portrayal of homo-sensual friendship and desire and we are never far away from
the supernatural imaginings of youth with its loneliness and fondness for
romantic attachments, whether real or found in dreams. This is a wonderful and
beautiful portrait of young love written at a time when authors had to be
careful in how it was depicted and the fact that Henry James found it
distasteful says more about his own psychological peculiarities and
insecurities than it does for his literary appreciation. Excellent!
Strange Angel: The
Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons – by George
Pendle.
To anyone interested
in the occult, particularly Aleister Crowley and Thelema, the name Jack Parsons
will be a familiar one. The British author George Pendle (born 1976) of St
Peter’s College, Oxford has written a fascinating biography of Parsons and
‘Strange Angel’, published in 2005, tells that adventurous tale through twelve
chapters which capture the exciting and dangerous times of early rocketry and
jet propulsion and the dark occult obsession at the heart of Parsons. Jack was
born Marvel Whiteside Parsons on 2nd October 1914 in Los Angeles to parents Ruth Virginia
Whiteside and Marvel H. Parsons who were married in 1912 in Massachusetts. Unfortunately Marvel was less
than faithful to Ruth and she forced him to move out in January 1915 and they
split. Marvel tried to seek forgiveness but Ruth is adamant and they divorce
(he later attempted suicide and spent the rest of his life in hospital, dying
in 1947). Young Marvel became John (also Jack) and mother and child with Ruth’s
wealthy parents moved to Pasadena
in 1916. Little Jack was spoilt and solitary and an avid reader of science
fiction pulp magazines. He attended Washington
Junior High School aged
12 where he was bullied but soon made friends with a boy named Edward Forman
who had similar interests; Jack even tried to invoke the devil in his bedroom
and some success scared him witless! The occult fascinated him – ‘magic
suggested there were unseen metaphysical worlds that existed and could be
explored with the right knowledge. Both rocketry and magic were rebellious
against the very limits of human existence; in striving for one challenge he
could not help but strive for the other.’ (p. 11) He then went to John Muir
High School (1929-31) and
a short stay at Brown
Military Academy
for Boys in San Diego
where he was also bullied – he hated it there and blew-up the toilets! He was
expelled and returned to Pasadena
to the University
School in 1931 and
graduated two years later. He enrolled at the Pasadena Junior College
for just one term before finding work at the Hercules Powder Company in Los Angeles where he
learnt to handle nitroglycerine and gained knowledge of chemicals and
explosives. In July 1934, nineteen year old Parsons proposed to Helen Northrup
and they were married the following year on 26th April, he was 20,
Helen (who had been abused by her step-father) was 24. Jack went with his
friend Forman to Caltech in 1935 and spoke to the graduate in aeronautics,
William Bollay, who referred them to the twenty-two year old Frank Malina who
also had interests in rockets and space travel. Although Caltech did not fund
them they let them use the laboratories. This new rocket research group became
known as the Suicide Squad! Through Parsons interest in the occult he came
across the English occultist Aleister Crowley and was instantly fascinated;
‘both magic and rocketry had a basis in the imagination and in scientific
method.’ (p. 85) In 1939 he attended the Church of Thelema (established 1934)
at 1746 North Winona Boulevard, Hollywood, where the Agape Lodge of the OTO
celebrated a weekly Thelemic Gnostic Mass in the attic room. He now became
acquainted with the likes of 64 year old Jane Wolfe who had been with Crowley at Cefalu and an
English Thelemite, 53 year old Wilfred T. Smith who acted as Priest during the
Mass. Jack and Helen Parsons were initiated into the Agape Lodge of OTO on 15th
February 1941 and Jack’s motto was: ‘Thelema Obtentum Procedero Amoris Nuptiae’
which roughly means the Establishment of Thelema through Rituals of Love. Jack
persuaded his friend Grady McMurtry to join and became a sort of mentor to him;
he also became friends with Paul and Phyllis Seckler and met Karl Germer in New York, but all was
not well in the Parson household. When Helen went on vacation with her mother
in June 1941, Jack had an affair with her young half-sister, Sara known as
Betty who was seventeen years old. Helen found out on her return but stuck with
Jack until she fell into the arms of Wilfred T. Smith, Head of the Agape Lodge
and became the Priestess in the Mass and eventually became pregnant by Smith,
having a son named Kwen. The Lodge moved to 1003 Orange Grove Avenue in Pasadena and in January
1943 Crowley,
hearing rumours of Smith’s behaviour as Head, asked him to step down; Smith had
been banished and he took Helen with him to live on a turkey farm and Parson’s
became temporary Head of the OTO at Agape Lodge. It is at this time that a
charismatic creep with a bag-full of tall-tales enters the Lodge, the fantasy
writer – Lieutenant L. Ron Hubbard, (born 1911). Parsons fell under the spell
of the phoney Hubbard who took Betty from Jack and charmed his way through most
of the women at the Lodge. Parsons had always been drawn to dark magic and the
inhabitants of 1003 became concerned by the negative and hostile vibrations at
the Lodge. Jack performed a series of Enochian magic rituals (an operation
using sympathetic magic through solitary sex) to conjure a magical being to
replace Betty, an Elemental! Phenomena is reported at 1003 before Hubbard and
Parsons travelled to the Mojave Desert and at sunset Parsons declares that it
is done – on their return home that 18th January 1946 to the Lodge
Parsons finds the twenty-three year old Marjorie Cameron, known as ‘Candy’
waiting for him – Jack writes to Crowley saying his Elemental manifested and
before long they are performing sex magic together in an attempt to invoke the
incarnation of the Goddess Babalon. When Marjorie went to New York Jack went
into the Mojave Desert and heard the voice dictating ‘The Book of Babalon’
which was intended as a fourth chapter to Crowley’s Liber Al. Later in the
Desert he performs the rituals given in the Book of Babalon and Hubbard sees
vision – Jack believed that Babalon would be born in the world nine months
later! Jack sold 1003 Orange Grove Avenue and he, Hubbard and Betty went into
business together as ‘Allied Enterprises’, Parsons putting his entire savings
into the enterprise, over $20,000. Hubbard and Betty went to Miami to buy three yachts and sell them at a
profit; the gullible Parsons sat waiting for news and when it did not come he
went to Miami
where the cheating Hubbard and Betty were but wind of this got to them and they
sailed off! Parsons performed an Invocation Ritual in his Hotel room, the
Invocation of Bartzabel, the Spirit of Mars; Hubbard’s yacht hit a storm which
brought the charlatan and his whore Betty back to Miami. During the court case ‘Allied Enterprises’
was dissolved and Hubbard was to pay Parsons $2,900, a mere fraction of what
the swindling Hubbard had stolen; Betty and Hubbard married a month later and
the criminal Hubbard went on to form a pseudo-religious cult called Scientology
which unfortunately still brain-washes dullards drawn to its nonsense
today! Parsons resigned from the OTO and
Crowley gladly accepted and he moved to Manhattan Beach and married Marjorie
Cameron on 19th October 1946 (she later left him and Parsons was
reduced to practicing sex magic with prostitutes); he performed a Ritual of
‘madness and horror’ which lasted forty days, believing he was a Master of the
Temple, telling Wilfred Smith he was the Antichrist and was to open the way for
Babalon! The FBI investigate him and Marjorie eventually returns to his side
before he died in a horrible accident on Tuesday 17th June 1952 in
his laboratory at home at Orange Grove Avenue, Pasadena; a huge explosion from
the chemicals he was handling swept his right arm and the right side of his
face away before he died in hospital; he was thirty-seven years old. When his
mother Ruth heard the news, she took a lethal dose of pills and just four hours
after her son’s death she was dead too! Jack was cremated and his ashes were
fittingly scattered in the Mojave Desert. This
is an exceptionally interesting work by Pendle and the author really gets to
grips with the early stages of rocketry and jet technology; Parsons was
instrumental in the developments of jet propulsion and space travel yet he has
been neglected through his other ‘embarrassing’ interests in the occult which
sadly has overshadowed his life; those pioneering beginnings of the OTO Agape
Lodge in California which so frustrated Crowley are equally fascinating and
although many of its members do seem to be playing at devil-worship and
over-indulging in sex and drugs, losing their perspective on Crowley’s vision
for the Lodge and the true Light of Thelema (the serious and faithful Jane
Wolfe of course is the exception), Crowley even had Grady McMurtry who had been
with Crowley in England learning magical techniques, go to Agape Lodge and
write a report on the Lodge and its members, underlying its quite farcical
dramas, there was a serious attempt at spiritual attainment and the manifestation
of the Aeon of Horus, the Crowned and Conquering Child, as given in Crowley’s
Book of the Law, Liber Al vel Legis. There will be many tales told in the
future of the history of mankind’s will to explore outer space and inner space
and the author has produced an excellent biography of a man whose passion
helped us to achieve even to dream of such things! Very good!
On a Grey Thread – by
Elsa Gidlow.
Elsa Gidlow
(1898-1986) was born in Hull,
England and
lived her life in Canada
and America.
Since reading her autobiography ‘Elsa, I come with my Songs’ (1986) I fell
somewhat in love with her life and work and I have sought out ‘On a Grey
Thread’ (1923), her first published collection of poems and the first openly
lesbian book of poems in North America, for some years and on reading it I was
not disappointed: ‘My life is a grey thread/ Stretching through Time’s day;/
But I have slipped gay beads on it/ To hide the grey.’ (The Grey Thread) There
is a strong flavour of the modern woman unwilling to accept the old order of
things: ‘Gods! I want none of your gods. / Look to yourself – Man.’ (World Cry) and a sense of loneliness:
‘for life’s skeleton / I shall make flesh from desires!’ (Despair) but there is
also the supreme adoration of love: ‘the candles of desire are lighted, / I bow
my head, afraid before you,’ (Love’s Acolyte). In ‘I, Lover’ she declares ‘I
have loved too terribly and too much / ever to have any fear of love.’
The love poems were
mostly written for her lover, the Canadian Muriel Symington whom she met in New York in 1922. The
collection contains fifty-one poems which range through the various emotions of
love, as in the poem ‘Sudden Friendship’ which ends –
‘Yesterday, with
lighter joys,
We wantoned at the
outer portal.
Now, with love’s old alchemy,
We have made ourselves
immortal.’
In the poem ‘Youth’, we
feel the sense of movement where she ‘must go down, / down, down, / below the
crusts of things, / under the shadows, / into thought-haunted places/ where few
go’, Gidlow attempts to get at the heart of being, ‘below the good of things, /
below the evil of things, / where the calm roots of wisdom creep’ and she must
tunnel, ‘under the bloom of dreams, / under the framework of fancies’ and the
poem ends in typical passionate desire:
‘Living is crusted
with lies.
I want life naked,
Laughing and young.
Not fettered, not
tames,
But life unashamed,
With the cry of Desire
on her tongue.’
And again in ‘Come and
lie with me’ she requests ‘Bitterness’ to ‘touch me with your hands a little,
/kiss me as you lean above me, /with your cold sadistic kisses; /wind your hair
close, close wound me, / pain might dissipate this blankness. / Hurt me even,
even wound me, /I have need of love that stings. /Come and lie with one and
love me, /bitterness, / so that I may laugh at things.’ In ‘Ecstasy’ there is a
cosmic understanding:
‘I know a new joy,
stars,
A joy of the still
peak,
The wonder of airs
knife-sharp;
Stars, I have learned
to know them,
I have learned the
tongue they speak.’
The poem ends with ‘I
am strong with a new loneliness/ That no one understands.’
This is a truly
beautiful collection of poems and a very important one and I shall be returning
to it time and time again in a passion of pilgrimage throughout my life’s
passage but I feel the need to end with one of her poems which can say more
than I ever can on how special a poet Gidlow is, the poem is called ‘Episode’:
I have robbed the
garrulous streets,
Thieved a fair girl
from their blight,
I have stolen her for
a sacrifice
That I shall make to
this mysteried night.
I have brought her,
laughing,
To my quietly sinister
garden.
For what will be done
there
I ask no man’s pardon.
I brush the rouge from
her cheeks,
Clean the black kohl
from the rims
Of her eyes; loose her
hair;
Uncover the glimmering,
shy limbs.
I break wild roses,
scatter them over her.
The thorns between us
sting like love’s pain.
Her flesh, bitter and
salt to my tongue,
I taste with endless
kisses and taste again.
At dawn I leave her
Asleep in my weakening
garden.
(For what was done
there
I ask no man’s
pardon.)’
The Secret Rituals of
the O.T.O. – by Francis King.
This controversial
tome published in 1973 by the British occult writer Francis X. King (1934-1994)
really caused quite a furore among members of the Ordo Templi Orientis (‘Order
of Oriental Templars’, O.T.O.) as it was revealing their long-held ‘secrets’
which are acquired through steps or degrees of magical and spiritual
attainment. ‘Our Order possesses the KEY which opens up all Masonic and
Hermetic secrets, namely, the teaching of sexual magic, and this teaching
explains, without exception, all the Secrets of Freemasonry and all systems of
religion.’ (‘Oriflamme’. 1912.) As someone who has never been drawn to the
O.T.O. or other Freemasonic twaddle I found much of this volume a complete waste
of my time, much like being a member of the aforementioned organisations.
In part one, King, the
author of over twenty published works which include: ‘Ritual Magic in England’
(1970), ‘Sexuality, Magic and Perversion’ (1972) and ‘Witchcraft and Demonology’
(1991), presents us with a history of the order from its birth and development,
including the Manifesto of 1917, through to the structure of the degree system
and the great men who helped shape the order such as Theodore Reuss ‘Frater
Merlin’, Franz Hartmann with his Theosophical background in India and of course
Aleister Crowley who became the successor to the Outer Head of the Order
following the resignation of Reuss in 1922 and who revised the rituals to
conform with Liber Al vel Legis and devised a Gnostic Mass. Following Crowley’s
death in 1947 Karl Kelner ‘Frater Saturnus’ became the Head of the Order until
his death in 1962.
It is all really quite
laughable nonsense of course and any true adept will see through the worthless
Masonic-style rituals King has thrown together in part two of the book from
Minerval to the Sixth Degree; some would even suggest it is all about as
useless as the English Royal Family but thankfully I would never suggest such a
thing. Part three provides a little more interest and a little less laughter as
we get to the Secret Instructions of the Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Degrees: De
Natura Deorum [Of the Nature of Gods] (7th Degree), De Nuptiis
Secretis Deorum cum Hominibus [Of the Secret Marriage of Gods and Men] (8th
Degree), Agape vel Liber C vel Azoth [The Book of the Unveiling of the
Sangraal] and De Homunculo Epistola [Of the Homunculus] (9th Degree)
which over time have all been plundered before and sought out by the genuine
adept upon the path. Although King’s intention to publish the rituals was
honourable this is incomplete trash which has acquired some sort of mystique
over the decades due to the notion that so-called ‘secrets’ of sex magic are
being revealed, ‘secrets’ which any decent enthusiast of Crowley and ritual
magic already knows or is able to perceive from the written works. The rituals
are dreary and any young neophyte with an ounce of dramatic creativity and a
flair for romance can do a much better job and I would advise this as being
much more effective and relative. This may have caused a few ripples at one
time and even now copies are selling for outrageous prices, but the lake has
dried up, long ago. Don’t bother!
Aleister Crowley and
the Hidden God – by Kenneth Grant.
This wonderful gem
from the treasure store of magical publications appeared in 1973 (the same year
that King’s dire ‘Secret Rituals of the OTO’ disgraced the shelves) and its
eleven chapters (233 pages) is the second book in Grant’s Typhonian Trilogy;
eleven of course is the number of magick and chapter one: ‘The One Beyond Ten’
(which is eleven) explains the psycho-sexual energies involved in Crowley’s
reception of Liber AL vel Legis in 1904 and the similarities to the Tantras.
Eleven is also the number of the Qliphoth which must be evoked by formulating
the averse pentagram (the Star of Set) after balancing the five elements within
the self, represented by the upright pentagram (the Star of Nuit); eleven is
also the path of Aleph on the Tree of Life (Wisdom and Folly). Kenneth Grant
(1924-2011) who met Crowley in the autumn of 1944 at Netherwood in Sussex,
became the Great Beast’s personal secretary until June the following year and
learnt ceremonial magick with him before being initiated into the O.T.O.; in
fact, Crowley saw him as his successor (Grant was expelled from the O.T.O. in
1955 by Karl Germer, the Outer Head of the Order because of Grant’s conflicting
ideas and influences concerning Thelema). In 1954 Grant founded the New Isis
Lodge until 1962 and we can see from this book that he is very knowledgeable
concerning the Qabalah and mythology, especially eastern tantric systems which
are expressed in the form of the Scarlet Woman, whose number is 156, in chapter
two. She is Babalon in respect of the Vama Marg, the esoteric aspect of Tantra,
the exoteric being the Dakshina Marg; the number 156 conceals the functions of
the Scarlet Woman, Binah, the City of the Pyramids beneath the Night of Pan.
The Magic Power of Kundalini is raised which energises the Chakras, generating
vibrations, influencing the chemical compositions of the woman’s glandular
secretions. After appropriating the amrit (‘nectar’) precipitated at any given
chakra, these vibrations inform the fluids which flow from the genital outlet,
utilised by the Priest: ‘the Secret Seed of the Star is absorbed orally by the
Magician after it has been evoked into the Chakra: Masculine – ‘Blood of the
Lion’, Feminine – ‘Gluten of the Eagle’. This Kundalini is described in the
third chapter ‘Zone of the Fire Snake’ and Grant draws the distinction between
the cosmic forces associated with Crowley,
H P Lovecraft, Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood. Further associations are
made in chapter four ‘The Angel and the Aeon’ which brings into focus the
Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel in the aeon of Horus the
Crowned and Conquering Child whose menstruum is semen as opposed to blood which
was the menstruum in the previous Aeon of Osiris; Horus incorporates both
aspects in the blending of the sexes (bisexual) as in Baphomet. Chapter five
looks at the ‘Tantric Element of the O.T.O.’ and the Advent of the Aeon of
Horus (Crowley’s enlightenment through his encounter with Theodore Reuss in
reference to Crowley’s ‘Book of Lies’), Crowley’s experiments with the ‘secret
wisdom’ in the Paris Working of 1914 and the Law of Thelema Solar-Phallic
consciousness which superseded Christianity; this manifests in the active form
of the current of Heru-ra-ha (Horus) as Ra-Hoor-Khuit (IX Degree) and in the
passive as Set or Shaitan as Hoor-paar-kraat (XI Degree), the dual modes of the
operation of Baphomet. ‘Dream Control by Sexual Magick’ takes us into chapter
six and explains the mental and astral activity of dream control and the sexual
polarity induced by sexual arousal, the bodily ‘pranas’, saturating the kundalini
energy stored in the chakras of the Scarlet Woman who is the ‘Gate of Vision’
and manipulated by ‘mudras’ to produce ‘kalas’, vaginal fluids; this energy is
either absorbed by the magician or allowed to rise through the chakras enabling
the magician to explore the Aethyrs. Grant also touches upon Crowley’s method of annihilating the moral
prejudice and conformity, such as the absorption of repellent substances, as
given in Liber Aleph (chapters 22 and 23) and the formula of N.O.X. Other
formulas are dealt with in the seventh chapter ‘The Sabbath Wine and the
Devil’s Graal’, such as IAO: Isis-Apothis-Osiris. The Yod (Hand in Hebrew) is
the Hermit of the Tarot, the solitary seed (Virgo); A is Apophis, the ‘evil’
serpent represented by the whore; O is the true ‘eye’, Ayin (Yoni) attributed
to the Scarlet Woman. Crowley
developed this further into FIAOF whereby F (Vau) is the child, the Son – Love
under Will (see Magick). Grant goes on to say that Crowley misinterprets the
essence of the ‘unmentionable vessel’ in the eleventh degree which should not
be an act of sodomy as Crowley practiced it but the Lunar Current as expressed
in the ‘Elixir Rubeus’. Passing through chapter eight’s ‘Moon-Power: Its Names,
Numbers and Reverberant Atavisms’ which describes the full moon lunar current
together with certain symbols and sigils and ways of utilising them in ritual
form, we come to chapter nine, ‘The Witches’ Sabbath and the Reincarnation of
Primal Obsessions’ which incorporates the assumption of God-forms and the
nature of obsession – the birth of an entity, the subconscious thought-entity
which as it becomes stronger can enter the material plane; the author also
touches upon Crowley’s ‘Eroto-Comatose Lucidity’ (De Arte Magica. 1914). Coming
to the Cosmic Climax, Grant brings in his own interpretations of the formula of
Horus (Hoor-par-kraat and Ra-Hoor-Khuit) and the lunar-cosmic principles
involved in certain extra-terrestrial intelligences in chapter ten ‘Nu-Isis and
the Radiance Beyond Space’. He expresses the threefold formula of woman, the
earthly vehicle of Nuit as: (a) the lower Isis (unwedded and all pleasure),
Lilith/Babalon – Luna; (b) the middle Isis (procreatrix, Mother of Earth),
Eve/Venus – Venus, and (c) the Heavenly Isis (the Bride of Hadit [Set]: Nuit) –
Nu-Isis, the transplutonic Isis (Grant operated the New Isis Lodge of the
O.T.O. for seven years from 1955-1962 to transmit the knowledge of Nu-Isis,
before the great eruption of the final chapter, eleven, ‘Living Beyond Time’ brings
us the formula of Tetragrammaton (YHVH) and other aeonic formulas before
delivering the Elixir of Life and the 93 current. This is an invaluable volume
to any aspiring magician in the Thelemic System of Magick and Kenneth Grant is
a true visionary, as yet not fully appreciated.
Oscar Wilde: Fragments
and Memories – by Martin Birnbaum.
The Hungarian art
dealer Martin Birnbaum (1878-1970) has written what at first hand seems an
intriguing account of Wilde in this 1920 publication but one soon finds through
tedious passages that it is a slim book built upon general gossip and hearsay
about the great man. He tells us about Wilde’s friendship with a man named
Clyde Fitch who upon entering Wilde’s cab persisted in haranguing Wilde as to
the scandalous rumours circulating London about him and if there were any truth
in them; Wilde ended the friendship there and then, putting him out of the cab
and saying that he was not a gentleman. We hear about the meeting between the
actor Colquelin and Wilde, the former was disappointingly unimpressed with the
Irish wit and we are regaled with remarks concerning the poet Maurice Rollinat,
who ‘tried to rival Baudelaire on his own ground, and was going to pieces
mentally and physically when Wilde and Sherard knew him. “It was drugs,” writes
Sherard – “drugs with him morning and night, drugs for food and drugs for
sleep; cerebral excitement all the time.’ (p.15) There is tittle-tattle from
the American lecture tour and mention of the sculptor, John Donoghue whose work
Wilde praised and who unfortunately committed suicide; in fact, this is all
rather tiresome and the author paints a squalid picture of Wilde in
Paris. I’m sure Mr.
Birnbaum has written some marginally interesting books, but sadly, this is not
one of them and if I were anything less than a gentleman myself, I would
suggest that one would have to travel quite some distance in our solar system
to find a greater consummate bore than Mr. Birnbaum but that would be doing the
galaxy an injustice and I could never be so ill mannered!
The Poems of Lascelles
Abercrombie.
This collection of the
poems and plays of Lascelles Abercrombie (1881-1938) published in 1930 begins
with his first volume, ‘Interludes and Poems’, originally published in 1908
which I have read and enjoyed before, and on that basis I presumed I might in
fact enjoy his other collections – I was wrong. The ‘Interludes and Poems’
shows great mastery of poetic form expressed in romantic, metaphysical verse,
delighting in the spirit, the soul and its ecstasy, and then the rot sets in…
‘The Sale of Saint Thomas’ (1911) in six acts and dedicated to his friend
Arthur Ransome, is dreadfully disappointing, and so too is ‘Emblems of Love’
(1912) in three parts. The pitch rises a little with ‘Twelve Idylls’ (1928) dedicated
to Elizabeth and Robert Trevelyan, containing such poems as ‘Mary and the
Bramble’, ‘Witchcraft: New Style’, ‘Asmodeus in Egypt’ and ‘Ryton Firs’
reminiscent of G. M. Hopkins’ ‘Binsey Poplars’. ‘Four Short Plays’ (1922)
dedicated to Edward Marsh slides back into the dreary slime with its: ‘The
Adder’, ‘The Staircase’, ‘The Deserter’ and ‘The End of the World’ in two acts;
‘Deborah’ (1913) a play in three acts and ‘Phoenix’ (1923), also a play in
three acts dedicated to John Drinkwater fair no better. No doubt these poems
and plays must have given the author a great deal of pleasure to write but the
sad fact is the pleasure was all his and it is all very tedious and trite. As
much as I wanted to like old Abercrombie and provide excuses for his seemingly
endless and monotonous blank verse I heard myself shovelling the sods over this
deceased volume and muttering words of forgiveness for each of its
five-hundred-and-fifty pages. May it rest in peace!
The Journal of a
Disappointed Man – by W. N. P. Barbellion.
First of all W. N. P.
Barbellion (the W. N. P. stands for Wilhelm Nero Pilate) is a pseudonym of
Bruce Frederick Cummings (1889-1919) whose diaries from 1903-1917 are here
produced. The ‘Journal’ published in 1919 with the real identity of its author
and those he writes about undisclosed has an Introduction by H. G. Wells who
highlights Barbellion’s path between egoist and altruist. Born in Barnstaple on 7th September 1889, Cummings was the son of a
newspaper reporter; a boy with great interest in natural sciences who began
keeping a diary at thirteen years of age. In part one (1903) we find a typical
young boy, rambling in the countryside, making dens and smoking cigarettes,
hiding the packets under tree roots and reading the ‘Origin of Species’. On 14th December 1906
he writes: ‘Signed my Death Warrant, i.e., my articles apprenticing me to
journalism for five years. By Jove!’ He grew to dislike journalism and at home
he reads volumes on natural science and dissects endless insects; he is
ambitious and wants to make his mark in the world of science but doubts begin
to gather, he worries about his health, particularly his lungs; he becomes
introspective and melancholy with periods of self-loathing, doubting his
abilities, in fact, considering himself a failure. But he writes with
tremendous strength and honesty about his life and observations. ‘An Oak Sapling should
make an elderly man avuncular. There are so many tremendous possibilities about
a well-behaved young oak that it is tempting to put a hand upon its shoulder
and give some seasoned, timberly advice.’ (9th May 1908) On 1st
June 1908 he writes with all the comic cruelty of a Victorian collector upon
the Red Viper he discovered and placed his boot upon it to prevent it escaping;
a passing baker in his cart gave him some string and the boy tied it to the
snake’s tail – ‘it already appeared moribund, but I squashed its head on the
grass with my heel to make certain. After parting with the baker, to whom all
thanks be given, I remember that Adders are tenacious of life and so I continue
to carry him at string’s length and occasionally wallop him against a stone. As
he was lifeless I wrapped him in paper and put him in my pocket. So home by a
two hours’ railway journey with the adder in the pocket of my overcoat and the
overcoat on the rack over my head. Settled down to the reading of a book on
Spinoza’s Ethics. At home it proved to be quite alive, and, on being pulled out
by the string, coiled up on the drawing-room floor and hissed in a fury, to my
infinite surprise. Finished him off with the poker and so spoilt the skin.’
Cumming’s self-absorption and hypersensitive, morbid nature flashes through
these fascinating entries where he is disgusted at his own weak body –
‘Sometimes I think I am going mad. I live for days in the mystery and tears of
things so that the commonest object, the most familiar face – even my own –
become ghostly, unreal, enigmatic. I get into an attitude of almost total
scepticism, nescience, solipsism even, in a world of dumb, sphinx-like things
that cannot explain themselves. The discovery of how I am situated – a sentient
being on a globe in space overshadows me. I wish I were just nothing.’ (9th December 1910)
His father dies on 14th
September 1911 following a stroke and in part two ‘In London’,
(1912) we discover the sexually frustrated young man who has an assistant’s
position at the Natural
History Museum
in South Kensington, falling in love and
writing about his awkward love life with a beautiful yet slightly standoffish ‘E___’.
In 1913 he succumbs to partial paralysis of his right side and his speech is
affected which brings about thoughts of suicide. His mother dies on 20th August 1913
and our young diarist worries about going blind before noting on 1st August 1914
that ‘All Europe is mobilising.’ The war, in fact, gets little mention; neither
do other major events of the time for he is too immersed in his own inner world
and his own imagined importance, something very familiar to egotistical types
of characters, of whom I count myself. He asks the woman in question, E___ to
marry him on 9th
November 1914 and she refuses him which causes severe depression
and more thoughts on suicide, (he revels in Nietzsche and the Journal of Marie
Bashkirtseff) but on 29th November she has a turn of heart and
accepts his proposal and they become engaged. E___ is actually Winifred Eleanor
Benger, a quite remarkable woman who found out about the severity of Cumming’s
terminal illness from his Doctor and did not let on to her intended husband; he
in turn did not report to her the serious nature of his decline in health and
supposed she were unaware of it. The wedding takes place in September 1915 at a
Registry Office following his 26th birthday. In part three,
‘Marriage’, Cummings attends the recruiting office medical on 27th November 1915
and is dismissed as unfit after a brief examination, (he opens the letter from
his Doctor addressed to the medical examiner to find he has been diagnosed with
a terminal illness, what we now know as Multiple Sclerosis). This clarification
of his own futility, something he had always suspected but not known
definitely, strikes Cummings and he sets about enjoying what time he has left;
there is even some romantic fascination for death and his own doomed existence.
On 20th December
1916 he writes: ‘The reason why I do not spend my days in despair
and my nights in hopeless weeping simply is that I am in love with my own
ruin.’ The marriage brings him the contentment and love he always craved, and a
daughter named Penelope, is born in October 1916, but this does not soothe his
disappointment at not becoming a success; he hopes the diary manuscripts will
survive to tell his tale, which of course they do, and what a wondrous tale it
all is. His last entries are suitably harrowing and poignant – ‘I am only
twenty-eight, but I have telescoped into those few years a tolerably long life:
I have loved and married, and have a family; I have wept and enjoyed, struggled
and overcome, and when the hour comes I shall be content to die.’ (12th October 1917)
Following this he merely writes: ‘Oct 14-20. Miserable’ and ’31 Oct [1917]:
Self-disgust.’ The volume records that Barbellion died on 31st December 1917 aged twenty-eight,
but in actual fact he lived for two more years, dying in Gerard’s Cross,
Buckinghamshire on 22nd
October 1919. Those wishing to read more about dear Barbellion have
the delight of two more volumes to discover: ‘Enjoying Life and Other Literary
Remains’ (1919) and ‘A Last Diary’ (1920).
Marlborough and Other Poems – by Charles Hamilton Sorley.
Charles Hamilton Sorley
was born in Aberdeen
in 1895, the son of a Professor at the Aberdeen University,
he attended Marlborough
College from 1908-1913
and won a scholarship to University
College, Oxford. Unfortunately he could not take up
his studies due to the outbreak of war (he was spending six months in Germany at the
time). He became a Second Lieutenant in the Seventh (Service) Battalion,
Suffolk Regiment and eventually a Captain. Sorley went to France on 30th May 1915
and fell at the Battle of Loos on 13th October the same year. This
posthumous collection of his poem published in 1916 (I read the fourth edition
of 1919) contains the thirty-seven completed poems Sorley wrote and the volume
is presented in four parts: Of the Downs, Of School, Of Life and Thoughts, and
Of War and Death. I particularly enjoyed
the first part of the book, Of the Downs, with its vivid depiction of the
English countryside and his almost religious fanaticism for the beauty and
surging life confirming power of rain – ‘we held communion with the rain/ That
lashed us into manhood with its thong,/ Cleansing through pain.’ (Barbury Camp.
24 March 1913) and in other poems such as: ‘Rain’ (October 1012), ‘The Song of
the Ungirt Runners’ and ‘German Rain’. There is that immovable devotion to the
awe-inspiring magnificence of nature, the permeable essence of existence, as
can be seen in the last verse of ‘Stone’: ‘Souls like the dry earth, hearts
like stone,/ Brains like that barren bramble-tree:/ Stern, sterile, senseless,
mute, unknown - /But bold, O, bolder far than we!’ (14 July 1913). In ‘Marlborough’, a poem in
three parts written on 1st March 1914, Sorley invokes some magical
incantation in the simplicity of ‘The brook was silent and the night was wan’
before conjuring ‘The sinew of the hollow of his thigh’; indeed, there are some
very fine poems such as: ‘East Kennet Church at Evening’ (24 July 1913),
‘Autumn Dawn’, ‘Richard Jefferies’, ‘Le Revenant’, ‘Lost’, ‘The River’
(February 1913), ‘Rooks’ (21 June 1913), ‘Rooks II’ (July 1013), ‘To Poets’
(September 1914), ‘Peer Gynt’, ‘Deus Loquitur’ and ‘Expectans Expectavi’ (May
1915), but it is perhaps with his war poetry that many will associate Sorley,
which I think is a little unfair as he is a strong writer of verse, but
nevertheless, a reading of ‘A hundred thousand million mites we go’ (September
1914), ‘Two Sonnets’ (12 June 1915) and ‘When you see millions of the mouthless
dead/ Across your dreams in pale battalions go,’ will confirm Sorley’s status
as a great poet who stands alongside Sassoon and Owen. The volume then goes on
to produce his ‘Illustrations in Prose’ where the author writes knowledgably
upon Richard Jefferies, Ibsen, The Odyssey, Germany, Tennyson, Browning and
John Masefield. Definitely a sad loss to literature but the loss would have
been greater without this beautiful volume of poetry!
Enjoying Life and
Other Literary Remains of W. N. P. Barbellion.
This collection of
essays contributed to various periodicals by W. N. P. Barbellion (Bruce
Frederick Cummings 1889-1919) was published in 1919 and contains his written
work on natural history and literature from 1905 when he was sixteen years old
until 1917. Barbellion shows his learning and his wide reading on such subjects
as the Russian novel and such authors as Hardy, Samuel Butler, G. K.
Chesterton, Charles Lamb and Nietzsche and he writes well in the form of his
journal essays – ‘Crying for the Moon’ and ‘Insulation of the Ego’ before plunging
into the scientific respectability of the essay: ‘On Journal Writers’ which is
quite fascinating, ‘The Passion for Perpetuation’ written in 1916 and ‘An
Autumn Stroll’, 1905 (published in 1906). Less interesting I thought were his
two short stories: ‘A fool and a maid on Lundy Island’ and ‘How Tom snored on
his bridal night’ but the pace quickens again when Barbellion is in the arena
of natural history and his essays: ’Spallanzani’ (1915), ‘Colonel Montagu’
(1915), ‘Rousseau as Botanist’ (1916), ‘The Scarabee Monographed’ (1918), ‘New
Method in Natural History’ (1912) and other, one would expect, gloriously
boring, ‘Distribution of British Newts’ (1909), ‘Bird Roosts and Routes’ (1908)
and ‘Animated Nature’ (1906) are well worth giving precious time to!
A Last Diary – by W.
N. P. Barbellion.
This 1920 publication,
as the title suggests, is the last diary of Barbellion which begins on 21st March 1918
and ends on 3rd
June 1919. Unlike his first publication of 1919, ‘The Journal of a
Disappointed Man’ taken from his journals which ran to twenty volumes, ‘A Last
Diary’ is less raw and seemingly less spontaneous; there is a polished finish
to the entries and the disappointment of the first book seems to have decreased
to a delightful acceptance of death and even a welcome of it. The preface is
written by his brother, Arthur J. Cummings (with a little help from another
brother H. R. Cummings) and good old Arthur really gets into his stride, picking
at his brother’s veneer, gushing and blushing over his brother’s corpse,
extolling his virtue and his visionary genius; praising and flattering in equal
measure as he paints a study of the frail and shy brother with an insatiable
appetite for reading and knowledge – Barbellion’s identity as Bruce Frederick
Cummings has been revealed and it is disclosed to a general public wishing to
know more about his life and character, but Arthur can do no better than give a
few brief instances of his brother’s short existence and his water colour
portrait becomes less opaque until it runs as clear water. Better to read the
entries and wonder… ‘I haven’t talked of being in love with one’s own ruin,
Bashkirtseff of liking to suffer, to be in despair. Light, frivolous talk. At
the most, such moods are only short lulls between the spasm of agony of
suffering; one longs to be free of them as of acute physical pain, to be
unconscious. I look forward to night, to darkness, rest and sleep.’ (4th January 1919)
Cummings revisits his youth and his first loves and reminisces over birds and
beasts he has encountered as well as reading James Joyce and his concerns over
the publication of his first book, ‘The Journal of a Disappointed Man’.
Throughout it all there is the overwhelming sense of love from his wife E___
(Winnifred Eleanor Cummings) whom one dearly wishes to hear more of and more
from (her account would prove just as beautiful). Cummings entered a nursing
home in Eastbourne on 16th May 1919 and the last
entry of 3rd June reads: ‘Tomorrow I go to another nursing home.’
The end of the volume ends as Cummings wished it, simply ‘the rest is silence’.
He died on 22nd
October 1919.
The Story of Mary
MacLane – by Herself.
Mary MacLane
(1881-1929) is the Canadian born American writer who published this, her first
volume of her ‘self portrait’ in 1902, beginning in 1901 when she was nineteen
years old, Mary calls herself a broad-minded genius with a marvellous capacity
for misery and happiness and she writes in poetic prose over 322 pages with an
ease of revelation, her mind leaping from one set of ideas to another or one
observation to the next, only to serve it up later to re-chew and taste like
the wonderful sensualist she is. She admires Byron and compares herself to the
writer Marie Bashkirtseff and falls in love with Napoleon, she desperately
desires the strong forceful man and throughout the volume Mary has
conversations with the Devil and is awaiting his coming (the book was
originally titled ‘I await the Devil’s coming’) and we learn that she wants to
marry the Devil and would give all to him for happiness; she writes about her
dissatisfaction with her home life – there is no love lost between her parents
and siblings, and most of the time she is wandering alone deep in thought in
her hometown of Butte, a mining city and a ‘place of sand and barrenness’ in
Montana – ‘I have the personality, the nature, of a Napoleon, albeit a feminine
translation. And therefore I do not conquer; I do not even fight. I manage only
to exist.’ (14th
January 1901) Mary delights in her own sensuality and the curves of
her young body of just nineteen summers and she is in love with the only friend
she has, a woman ten or twelve years her senior named Fannie Corbin, the
‘anemone lady’ (MacLane was bisexual and had many relationships with women). In
fact, very few people get mentioned in the volume and all her love and
admiration is poured upon the ‘anemone lady’ and the Devil: ‘The Devil has not
yet come. But I know that he usually comes, and I await him eagerly.’ (17th January 1901)
But throughout the whole book there is the overwhelming sense of loneliness, as
she says on 1st
February 1901: ‘Oh, the wretched bitter loneliness of me! In all
the deep darkness, and the silence, there is never a faint human light, never a
voice! How can I bear it – how can I bear it!’
Still she awaits the
Devil’s coming, she says on 13th
April 1901 before we leap to October’s ‘L’Envoi’ on the 28th
where she writes finally: ‘Will the wise wide world itself give me in my
outstretched hand a stone?’ Lovely confessional sparks of womanhood that
reveals much about the female psyche of the period and also speaks to us today
with confidence about women’s concerns that have changed very little.
My Friend Annabel Lee
– by Mary MacLane.
Published in 1903,
this is MacLane’s second book and its twenty-five chapters (262 pages) are
dedicated to Lucy Gray of Chicago.
MacLane is twenty-one years old and she is living in Boston discussing various matters with
Annabel Lee, a porcelain figurine doll of a Japanese woman, apparently fourteen
years old and bought in a shop (at least that is what I presumed it was for
MacLane endows it with such life as it is difficult to determine). The
conversations drift over many topics such as Maclane’s deep admiration for the
writer J. T. Trowbridge whom she first read when she was fourteen years old in Great Falls, Montana
to reminiscences about her time at Butte
High School. She
constantly proclaims her genius and between herself and her friend Annabel Lee,
a very practical literary device for interjecting within an almost stream of
consciousness monologue, there are some delightful and interesting thoughts
which would ordinarily burst like soap bubbles but are here set in permanence
as if to prove to the world, yes, Mary MacLane is a genius, and you will
probably come to believe it too!
I, Mary MacLane: A
Diary of Human Days – by Mary MacLane.
Throughout the volumes
of MacLane’s writings one gets to know Mary and understand her extraordinary way
of thinking and this final volume, 317 pages of beautiful madness, ‘a crucible of
my own making’, published in 1917, finds her aged thirty-one, single and living
in Butte, Montana, making observations and manifesting her thoughts; her life
is very ordinary and filled by routine – ‘I live an immoral life’ she says, ‘it
is immoral because it is deadly futile.’ (p. 10) Mary is an exceptional and
sensuous writer as she describes her every, intimate, feminine details, from
her silk and lace underwear to her own imagined self-importance, even writing a
letter to God, care of the ‘Whistling Winds’; the confessional quality of her
writing suggests a woman reaching out towards the present, for there is an
almost timeless element to her moments of discovery: ‘I am rare – I am in some ways exquisite’ she
says about herself, before continuing, ‘I am pagan within and without. I am
vain and shallow and false. I am a specialized being, deeply myself. I am of
woman-sex and most things that go with that, with some other pointes. I am
dynamic but devastated, laid waste in spirit. I am like a leopard and I’m like
a poet…’ (p. 1) She goes on to say she’s like a ‘religieuse’, an outlaw, and
that she has a ‘weird sense of humour’, a fine brain; she is old-fashioned and
ultra-modern, wistful, infamous, brave, a fool, a liar, a spiritual vagabond…
She writes brilliantly on subjects such as: Lot;s
Wife, Judgement Day and the Sleep of the Dead and the smell of Turpentine,
which she says is ‘a goblin virulence’ whom ‘God has no power over’; a
virulence which ‘half-calls for a different Turpentine God.’ (p. 157) She also
has much to say on ‘cold boiled potatoes’, Carmen, her two black dresses, her
love of John Keats, her cleverness and of course her lesbianism. All in all she
is a fine woman indeed, perfect in body and perfectly strange in mind and she
has given me immense pleasure in the unfolding enigma of Mary MacLane –
wonderful!
A Number of People: A
Book of Reminiscences – by Edward Marsh.
Dedicated to his
friend, the writer and poet, Christopher Hassall and published in 1939, Edward
Marsh (1872-1953), who was educated at Westminster as a day-boy aged ten and
went up to Trinity College, Cambridge and best known for his ‘Georgian Poetry’ a
series of five publications which he edited between 1912 and 1922 and his
editing of Rupert Brooke’s Collected Poems in 1918, tells us over eighteen
chapters (420 pages) that this is not an autobiography but a volume of
reminiscences and anecdotes concerning the people he has known and what a fine
autobiography, I mean book of reminiscences this is! He writes exceptionally
well on his mother and his home influences and I particularly enjoyed the
chapter on his undergraduate days at Cambridge
and his insights into the distinguished lecturer Dr. A. W. Verrall and fellow
undergraduates: Bertrand Russell, the poet R. C. Trevelyan, Oswald and Walter
Sickert, G. E. Moore, Desmond MacCarthy and Reginald Balfour. What a rich and
varied group of associates and ‘personalities’ Marsh has in his sphere and he
has much to say on the likes of: Maurice Baring, Hillaire Belloc, the poet
Vernon Lee, Edmund Gosse, A. C. Benson, the poets Lionel Johnson, Austin Dobson
and Robert Bridges; poet and scholar Canon Beeching, Henry James and Rupert
Brooke of course on whom Edward writes exceptionally well in chapter XIII –
Rupert died on 23rd April, the same day as that lesser poet and
overblown versifier, William Wordsworth, but also the day associated with
Shakespeare and St George! Edward enters the civil service in autumn 1896 in
the Colonial Office, Australian Department and in 1905 he is promoted to First
Class Clerk in the West African Department. He later becomes Private Secretary
to Winston Churchill and we hear of the various social intrigues concerning
Lady Randolph Churchill and Count and Countess Beckendorff and other
opulently-stuffed dignitaries and he writes well on the Edwardian Society and
its illuminated butterflies: Sir John and Lady Horner, Mrs. Asquith (Margot
Tennant/Lady Oxford), Patrick Shaw-Stewart, the poet Julian Grenfell and Lady
Wemyss before tickling the reader’s notions of literary snobbery with G. B.
Shaw, J. M. Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, G. K. Chesterton and A. E. Housman and
then spoiling the soup with Ivor Novello, Francis and Alice Meynel (the latter
I greatly admire as a poet), Walter De La Mare, Ezra Pound, John Galsworthy,
Horatio Bottomley, Lady Cunard, D. H. and T. E. Lawrence; even that old devil
Aleister Crowley gets a mention in chapter XIV ‘Literary Diversions’, Edward is
reporting on Harold Munro who ‘imported a strange and baleful apparition, in
conjuror’s evening-dress, and sporting in the middle of his shirt-front a large
diamond which perhaps looked bogus only because of the frayed and gaping
stud-hole in which it wobbled – a singular contrast with the wholesome and
innocent and tweed-clad personalities of Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Gibson and the
others. He talked wittily, cruelly, diabolically, and we quaked and cowered
like Tweedledum and Tweedledee under the shadow of the monstrous Crow. It was
the Satanist Alistair [sic] Crowley;
and for once in my life I felt I had been in the presence of Evil with a
capitol E.’ (p. 328) In fact, the book reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of literary and
political figures and Marsh struggles towards the end of the volume telling us
of his great appreciation for art and his picture collecting from the likes of
artists: Duncan Grant, Stanley Spencer, Paul and John Nash and Mark Gertler
before stressing his love of the theatre and ending on some curious anecdotes
and witticisms, his retirement and award of the K. C. V. O. by the King at Buckingham
Palace. To say I enjoyed this book would be an understatement; I absolutely
enjoyed it and found the life and atmosphere of the late Victorian and
Edwardian world around the author immensely fascinating.
The Collected Poems of
James Elroy Flecker – Edited with an Introduction by J. C. Squire.
I came across the name
of James Elroy Flecker (1884-1915) In Edward Marsh’s ‘A Number of People’
(1939) and found him quite intriguing. Previous to reading the Collected Poems
I read Flecker’s volumes of poetry to get a ‘feel for the man’: ‘The Bridge of
Fire’ (1907) the volume I enjoyed the most which contains 34 poems (64 pages):
‘We’re of the people, you and I, / We do what others do, / Linger and toil, and
laugh and die, / And love the whole night through.’ (‘The Ballad of the Student
of the South’) and in ‘I have sung all Love’s great songs’ he praises ‘the arms
of my Love, / and her tender body’s swing, / and her eyes, and her lips and
breath’. And he declares in ‘The Old Poet’ that ‘not another poem will I write.
/ I will forget the books that I have read.’
‘Thirty Six Poems’
(1910) which contains many poems from ‘The Bridge of Fire’; ‘Forty-Two Poems’
(1911) which is basically ‘Thirty Six Poems’ plus six more poems over 86 pages,
and ‘The Old Ships’ (1915) containing most of the poems (17 in total over 31
pages) written during the last two years of his life, mostly patriotic and a
little restrained as they were not revised, a process he was continually
perfecting. Now, in coming to the Collected Poems (250 pages, published 1916 –
I read the tenth impression of Oct 1922) I knew I would be re-discovering many
poems I had read before and the Introduction by J. C. Squire, although
scholarly seemed most irreverent; he describes Flecker’s interest in the French
Parnassians and his liking for strong imagery, his clarity and compactness; his
fondness for the romantic (exotic) and the classic forms – he was a ‘poet of
the sun, not of the moon’ whose early influence can be found amongst Francis
Thompson, Baudelaire and Swinburne. There are twenty poems never published
before and dated and the ‘Juvenilia’ including his ‘Four Translations and
Adaptations from Catullus’ (1900-1901) written between the ages of 16 and 20
shows his progression, of particular value is his early poem ‘Fragment of an
Ode to Shelley’ – ‘He was too beautiful; he died too young,/ Before the mellow
season of his prime’. Of the Later Poems many had become familiar to me for
their lyrical and romantic content, especially: ‘The Ballad of Hampstead Heath’
where we find young Bacchus on the Heath, where there are ‘busmen, snobs, and
Earls, / and ugly men in bowler hats / with charming little girls.’ And of
course the title poem, ‘The Bridge of Fire’ which roars in ‘the dull profound
of Hell / spits reeling Typhon forth that in the dark did dwell.’ And later we
encounter the ‘ghouls of the revengeful dead, / Larvae and Lemures that clamour
to be fed.’ Flecker attended Trinity College, Oxford from 1902-07 and he has a
particular fondness for Oxford as can be seen in his poem ‘Oxford Canal’ where
he says it is ‘half town and half country – the lovely land of the Canal’; upon
love it seems the author is most perceptive: ‘when love became a loathing, as
it must’ (‘My Friend’) and how delightful that Flecker invokes the spirit of
Ancient Greece in many of his poems – ‘In English glades they watch the Cyprian
glow, / and all the Maenad melodies they know.’ (‘A Ballad of Camden Town’) and
the endeavours of the romantic poets – ‘O honeyed Poet, will you praise no more
/ the moonlit garden and the midnight
shore?’ (‘Invitation’), and again in ‘A Western Voyage’: ‘And I’ll go seek
through moor and dale / a flower that wastrel winds caress; / the bud is red
and the leaves pale, / the name of it Forgetfulness’. Other rather splendid
poems are: ‘The Welsh
Sea’, ‘We that were
friends’, ‘I rose from dreamless hours’ and the passionate longing of ‘Gravis
Dulcis Immutabilis’ –
‘Come, let me kiss
your wistful face
Where Sorrow curves
her bow of pain,
And live sweet days
and bitter days
With you, or wanting
you again.’
I thought many of
Flecker’s works important poems that should be recognised and he should be
honoured more than he is, sadly, but if he should be remembered at all I feel
it should be for the poem ‘To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence’ which has a
peculiar magic:
I who am dead a
thousand years,
And wrote this sweet
archaic song,
Send you my words for
messengers
The way I shall not
pass along.
I care not if you
bridge the seas,
Or ride secure the
cruel sky,
Or build consummate
palaces
Of metal or of
masonry.
But have you wine and
music still,
And statues and a
bright-eyed love,
And foolish thoughts
of good and ill,
And prayers to them
who sit above?
How shall we conquer?
Like a wind
That falls at eve our
fancies blow,
And old Moeonides the
blind
Said it three thousand
years ago.
Our friend unseen,
unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet
English tongue,
Read out my words at
night, alone:
I was a poet, I was
young.
Since I can never see
your face,
And never shake you by
the hand,
I send my soul through
time and space
To greet you. You will
understand.
I must admit that I
did not much care for the poems from his collection ‘The Golden Journey to
Samarkand’ (1913) which some will proclaim an outrageous statement to make and
some of his later works had very little interest for me.
He declared that he would ‘rather be / a
living mouse than dead as a man dies’ (‘No Coward’s Song’) – Flecker died of
Tuberculosis in Davos, Switzerland in 1915 aged just thirty – ‘he loved and
sang and sinned / with roses on his brow.’ (The Young Poet)
James Elroy Flecker:
An Appreciation with some Biographical Notes – by Douglas Goldring.
Douglas Goldring
(1887-1960) has written a splendid volume concerning the life of the poet James
Elroy Flecker (1884-1915) which was published in 1922 and in seven chapters
(200 pages) the author resurrects the memory of his friend whom he met in the
summer of 1907 at Flecker’s lodgings in Bloomsbury Square (they had met briefly
prior to this) and finds a young man far from the ‘lean and swarthy poet of
despair’ found in his poem ‘Envoy’. In drawing a sketch of the lone poet,
Goldring looks back upon the ‘absinthe-sodden gloom of the nineties’, to Oxford and the decadent
pre-war ideas of beauty and the reputations of artists and writers. In October
1908 Flecker entered Caias
College, Cambridge to study oriental languages for a
career in the consular service; he went to Constantinople
in June 1910 and was taken ill in August and returned back to England in September
where he entered a Sanatorium in the Cotswolds. Recovering, he returned to Constantinople in March 1911 and two months later in Athens he married Miss
Helle Skiadaressi. Flecker was a continual reviser of his poems yet I had to
disagree with Goldring who says Flecker found his ‘voice’ with the oriental
poems of ‘Samarkand’ (1913); they do have a mature sense of being worked but I
much prefer the earlier ‘Bridge of Fire’ (1907) poems which are less didactic
with their sentimental and subjective elements, something he tried to repress. Goldring
stresses the influence of Parnassian theory on Flecker, which was ‘a classical
reaction against the perfervid sentimentality and extravagance of some French
romantics.’ (Preface to the ‘Golden Journey to Samarkand’); the French Parnassians used
traditional forms and classical subjects in which the object was to portray
beauty. But he did know his limitations and although some of his poems fail to
capture what he wished to express, when he reaches the heights of beauty it far
supersedes many of his contemporary poets, such as the last line of his poem
‘Stillness’ – ‘And only know I should drown if you laid not your hand on me.’
In chapter seven, Mr.
John Mavrogordato, writing from Florence
on 14th January
1915, says that Flecker was ‘a clear soul burning with many flames,
loving physical beauty in many forms, and longing always to immortalise it in
words. He will not be forgotten.’ (p. 188) He was in Beirut in January 1913 ‘dreaming of Oxford’ when he was taken
ill again in March – he went to Switzerland
to recuperate and remained there until his death in 1915. Most enjoyable!
Patrick Shaw-Stewart –
by Ronald Knox.
Published in 1920,
Reverend Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (1888-1957) has produced a fascinating memoir
of his friend, Patrick Houston Shaw-Stewart who was born in Wales in 1888.
Through nine chapters and a little over two-hundred pages, Knox pays an
admirable tribute to his friend and fellow Balliol man who attended Eton
(Patrick’s autobiographical fragment of his early days at Eton is quite
charming). At Oxford we learn that Patrick studied Homer and preferred Greek to
Latin and was always late for lectures – many of his Balliol friends were to
die in the war: Charles Alfred Lister (1887-1915), Julian Grenfell (1888-1915),
Edward William Horner (1888-1917) and Victor Barrington-Kennett; Patrick’s
father died in July 1908 and his mother in December 1909. The good Reverend
Knox has drawn upon a fascinating correspondence from the years 1907-1910 where
much of Patrick’s thoughts are on Balliol and study, exams, scholarships,
social events and golf – on Bonfire Night (5th November) 1907,
fireworks not being allowed in college, a black pig was bought and taken to
Balliol where it ran through college, through the Senior Common Room among the
dons – ‘Julian [Grenfell] wrapped him up in his best dressing gown!’ – ‘we
shall have a pig supper soon.’ (p. 53) We hear of a trip to Florence in April
1908 where he stayed ten days and of King Edward’s funeral in May 1910, of Patrick
attaining his First in Greats and working for Barings in Bishopsgate and of a
visit to Italy in April 1913 and the United States the following year before
Monsignor Knox delights us with Patrick’s Navy exploits on board the Grantully
Castle in the Hood Battalion (he shared a cabin with the musician William Denis
Browne). Also on board was the poet Rupert Brooke whom Patrick befriended and
who sadly died on 23rd
April 1915 – Patrick was a member of the shore party on Scyros for Rupert’s burial: Charles Lister commanded the
burial party and Patrick the firing party – ‘Rupert Brooke suddenly sickened
and died in thirty-six hours of virulent blood-poisoning. He had never got
quite well, like I did, from illness at Port
Said, and so he was in a weak state for resistance. He
died the day we left the island, and that same night we took him ashore, and
the eight Petty Officers of the Company performed the considerable feat of
carrying the coffin a mile inland, in the dark, up-hill, along the most
fearfully stony track. I had to command the firing-party, which was anxious
work, as I am not strong on ceremonial drill, but all went well.’ (April 25
1915. p. 126) [William Denis Browne (1888-1915) also writes a worthy account of
Brooke’s last days] Patrick says of Brooke that ‘he was a delicious companion,
full of good jokes and perfect at other people’s.’ He goes on to say that he
‘will be a great legend now and have a great fame: it is encouraging to know
that his poetry is good enough to stand on its own merits: a soldier-poet’s
death casting a lustre over fairly but not very good poetry would have been
awful, wouldn’t it?’ (June 2 1915. p. 135) As a poet, Patrick is remembered for
one poem of seven, four-line verses which features Achilles in the trenches and
is a perfect example of condensed poetic brilliance and I make no excuse for
inserting it here, the poem was found written by Patrick in his copy of
Housman’s ‘A Shropshire Lad’:
‘I saw a man this
morning
Who did not wish to
die:
I ask, and cannot
answer,
If otherwise wish I.
Fair broke the day
this morning
Against the Dardanelles;
The breeze blew soft,
the morn’s cheeks
Were cold as cold
sea-shells.
But other shells are
waiting
Across the Aegean Sea,
Shrapnel and high
explosive,
Shells and hells for
me.
O hell of ships and
cities,
Hell of men like me,
Fatal second Helen,
Why must I follow
thee?
Achilles came to
Troyland
And I to Chersonese:
He turned from wrath
to battle,
And I from three day’s
peace.
Was it so hard,
Achilles,
So very hard to die?
Thou knowest and I
know not –
So much the happier I.
I will go back this
morning
From Imbros over the
sea;
Stand in the trench,
Achilles,
Flame-capped, and
shout for me.’
How marvellous is that
‘hell of ships’, the ‘hell of men’ and that ‘fatal second Helen’ before the
finality of ‘stand in the trench, Achilles, / flame-capped, and shout for me.’ Patrick
died on 30th
December 1917, aged twenty-nine when after being hit by shrapnel he
refused to have his wound dressed and was hit by a bursting shell on the
parapet which entered his mouth, killing him instantly. Knox has written a
beautiful memorial to Patrick Shaw-Stewart who was only one of the many fine
men of brilliant mind who were tragically lost to a senseless war.
A Spiritual Aeneid –
by R. A. Knox.
Ronald Arbuthnott Knox
(1888-1957) published this religious autobiography or ‘autobiology as he terms
it in 1918 and through its fourteen chapters plus epilogue and prologue (263
pages) he describes his spiritual journey towards Catholicism, a journey as if
coming home following an Odyssey, perhaps an unfamiliar home in an unknown
place, hence ‘Aeneid’. Knox was born on 17th February 1888, the youngest of six
children and up until the age of fifteen he believed in the Blessed Trinity,
the Incarnation, the Life, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of the Saviour,
our Lord Jesus Christ; of Heaven and Hell and the notion of forgiveness of sins
etc. in fact he felt he was ‘continually under the eye of a watchful God, just
in exacting punishment.’ (p. 7) Like most young, spiritually sensitive boys he
began writing hymns and poetry from the age of six and at the age of twelve
left his private school to enter Eton in autumn
1900. He was Confirmed, preliminary to First Communion in the Anglican Church,
at Birmingham
by his father, the Suffragan Bishop of Coventry
in 1903 and his mind turned towards the Tractarians and the Oxford Movement
before he became a Ritualist in the summer of 1904. For two years he read the
classics of literature and became interested in the Gothic style of
architecture and the Pre-Raphaelites. Fond of attending Evening Prayers during
his last year at Eton, his enthusiasm was ignited by exercises of
mortification, abstinence and self-denial and the idea of asceticism – ‘I think
I can still point to the precise place on “Chamber Stairs” where I knelt down
at the age of seventeen one evening and bound myself by a vow of celibacy.’ (p.
48) Knox went to Balliol
College, Oxford, renowned for its tradition, its
‘rowing, hard drinking, plain dressing, occasional gambling, and unexpected
because apparently unmerited academic triumphs.’ (p. 53) He joined the Fabian
Society, urged by his friend Charles Lister and with his joy for debating, he
became known as a good speaker. He never failed to hear Mass on Sundays and went
to visit Rome in the spring of 1907 with two brothers and after 1909 he became
devoted to the Blessed Sacrament when he visited the island community of
Caldey, and began using a Rosary in the summer of 1910 but he still could not
believe in the Immaculate Conception or the Assumption. A visit to Belgium
following a trip to Munich
impressed him before he left Balliol in 1910 and that summer he attended his
first Catholic service in England
for the Feast of the Assumption. During this time he can best be described as
an Anglican-Catholic for he was staying at the Anglican Church at Lyme Regis
and visiting the Catholic chapel across the valley; he lived at Pusey House for
the latter part of Michaelmas term and became a fellow of Trinity College,
Oxford where he lectured on Homer and Virgil. He was ordained as an Anglican
priest in 1912 at St Giles’ Church, Reading and spent seven weeks at Caldey
Monastery. ‘Foundations’ and ‘Some Loose Stones’ were published 1912 and 1913
respectively – ‘Ever since I can remember at least since the age of seven, I
have been possessed with the devil of lampooning.’ (p. 112)
In 1915 doubts began
to appear in his Anglican faith and there was much introspection and searching
– ‘once anybody goes down with “Roman fever”, the infection rarely fails to
spread itself;
proximus ardet Ucalegon, and the blaze once kindled is not
easily extinguished.’ (p. 193) but more was needed than doubts in the Anglican
Church, there must be ‘positive faith’. He had lost friends to the war and
during his two years of ‘spiritual exile’ where he was numb, in 1915 he entered
Shrewsbury School as a form master and laid ‘fallow’ – ‘
I could not pray in
chapel, I could only watch people pray and rejoice that they were doing it.’
(p. 218) Knox loved his time at Shrewsbury and was sad to leave its charming
and friendly atmosphere but he was destined to move on and did work for the War
Office in London before the great awakening in 1918 when he took a holiday, in
fact a ‘retreat’ from 8-24 September at Farnborough Abbey, with its French air
of Benedictine contemplation – he was Received as a Roman Catholic (he began
writing this spiritual journey a week after his reception) and later Ordained
as a Roman Catholic priest (he was made Monsignor in 1936). This has been a
thoroughly enjoyable and moving account of the deep struggle between the
Anglo-Catholic spirit within R. A. Knox and I would recommend it for its
immense strength of faith determined through doubts of belief and convictions,
whether of a Christian faith or not, the spiritual journey of a soul is
encouraging and enlightening and anyone who has been on that journey will
understand the hardships, mentally, physically and spiritually involved during
the illuminating ‘pilgrimage’ to achieve one’s journey home, one’s spiritual
Aeneid. Wonderful!
Nothing of Importance
– by Bernard Adams.
John Bernard Pye Adams
was born in Beckenham, Kent on 15th November 1890; he
attended Clare House School
in Beckenham where he won an entrance scholarship to Malvern (1904-09) where he
won many classical and English prizes before winning an open classical
scholarship in December 1908. He went up to St John’s College, Cambridge in
October 1909 and in 1911 was awarded the Sir William Browne’s Gold Medals for
Greek epigrams and a Latin ode; he won the medal again in 1912 for his Greek
epigram and graduated with a First Class in Classical Tripos. In his fourth
year he read Economics and following Cambridge
he was appointed Warden and Assistant Educational Adviser at a Hostel for
Indian Students at 21 Cromwell
Road, South Kensington. In November 1914 he joined
up as a Lieutenant in the 1st Battalion, Royal Welsh Fusiliers and
obtained a temporary Captaincy in the following spring; he was at the Front in
October 1915 and wounded in the arm in June 1916 and sent back to England to
recover. He was back at the Front on 31st January 1917 and wounded during an attack at
Serre on 26th February; he died the following day at a field
hospital. He was twenty-seven years old and he is buried at Couin New British Cemetery, France.
‘Nothing of Importance’, subtitled ‘Eight Months at the Front with a Welsh
Battalion’ is Adam’s fascinating account of trench warfare and his time in the
Line. Over seventeen chapters (334 pages) which go into great detail concerning
the author’s impressions of life at the Front – Cuinchy and Givenchy, working
parties (trench repairs and laying of barbed wire), the Bois Francais Trenches,
sniping and patrols; he is particularly good at explaining his feelings under
fire which seem quite jubilant and heroic, even a sort of ecstasy until the
reality of death strikes him when a handsome young boy-soldier is hit by
shell-fire and his handsome face is torn from him like a mask nearby, the image
seems to haunt Adams – ‘As I write I
feel inclined to throw the whole book in the fire. It seems a desecration to
tell of these things. Do I not seem to be exulting in the tragedy? Should not
he who feels deeply keep silent. Sometimes I think so. And yet it is the truth,
word for word the truth; so I must write it.’ (p. 192). Certain places are not
named of course and he uses pseudonyms for names of actual personnel. Moving
and poetic!
Cambridge
Poets, 1900-1913: An Anthology Chosen by
Aelfrida Tillyard.
Published in 1913,
this collection of over one-hundred and thirty poems (226) by thirty-eight
contributors is dedicated to ‘the memory of Dr. Verrall; to Mrs. Verrall; and
to all my Cambridge
friends.’ The introduction by Arthur Quiller-Couch drags up Dryden and
Boccaccio to explain the lyric form and the poetic impulse which is all
standard fare before the delight of the poems from the likes of John Alford
(King’s), Rupert Brooke (King’s) – ‘In Examination’, ‘Day that I have loved’,
‘Kindliness’ and of course ‘The Old Vicarage, Grantchester’. There are some
unexpected examples such as ‘Autumn Thoughts’ by Richard Buxton (Trinity):
‘Long life lies before us, years of living together; / Reason is not enough.
Kiss me, beloved, again.’ Of course that old devil Aleister Crowley (Trinity),
whom I happen to consider quite a fine poet, is included with ten of his works:
‘In Neville’s Court, Trinity College, Cambridge’ beginning ‘I THINK the souls
of many men are here / Among these cloisters, underneath the spire / That the
moon silvers with magnetic fire;’ and goes on to say ‘O soul contemplative of
distant things, who hast a poet’s heart.’ – ‘On Garret Hostel
Bridge’, ‘The Goad’, ‘The
Rosicrucian’, ‘Song’, ‘In Memoriam A. J. B.’, ‘The Challenge’, ‘Two Hymns on
the Feast of the Nativity’, ‘The Palace of the World’ and ‘Perdurabo’. With Crowley of course comes
fellow poet and magical assistant to the Great Beast, Victor B. Neuburg
(Trinity): ‘Under Magdalen Bridge’ with its picturesque ‘lapping, lapping,
lapping of the stream / Makes songs around my lazy-light canoe;’ and its
‘sleepy river ripples, ripples ever / Betwixt the old brown wall and meadow
trim;’ – ‘The Creation of Eve’, ‘A Lost Spirit’, ‘A Music Picture’, ‘Seascape’
(unpublished), ‘Epilogue’ (To The Triumph of Pan), ‘Serpens Noctis Regina
Mundi’ (unpublished. Invocation a la Lune. Ballade Argentee.) Also included are
Gerald H. S. Pinsent (King’s), Harold Monro (Gonville and Caius), J. C. Squire
(St John’s) and
I was glad to see James Elroy Flecker’s (Gonville and Caius) wonderful poem ‘To
a Poet a Thousand Years Hence’.
There are fine works
from women authors such as Amy K. Clarke (Newnham), Frances Cornford (nee Darwin), Margery Mines
(Newnham) and Aelfrida Catherine Wetenhall Tillyard (Mrs. C. Graham) throws
eleven of her unpublished poems into the poet – I can’t help wondering if a man
had chosen the poems there would be less examples from women, probably.
Cambridge Poets, 1914-1920: An Anthology Compiled by
Edward Davidson.
Published in 1920,
this second Cambridge anthology has forty-seven contributors (216 pages) where
we find six more poems from Rupert Brooke (King’s), J. C. Squire (St John’s),
R. C. Trevelyan (Trinity), Harold Monro and James Elroy Flecker (both Gonville
and Caius) and works from Frank H. Kendon (St John’s), S. Bellhouse
(Emmanuel), J. R. Ackerley (Magdalene) and Siegfried Sassoon (Clare): ‘Morning
Express’, ‘When I’m among a blaze of lights…’, ‘Villon’, ‘Before the Battle’,
‘How to Die’ and ‘Death’s Brotherhood’; but I think I was most impressed by C.
Colleer Abbott (Gonville and Caius) whose two poems ‘Honeysuckle’ and ‘Berries’
resonated strongly with me –
Berries
Would that your lips
desirable,
And elvish mood that
with them plays,
Were necromancing here
with me
Along the dark
woodways.
The wild wood
strawberries do swing
Where silence spills
and moonlight drips,
Waiting their ghostly
visitor
And her immortal lips.
They fold their
jewelled fruit in leaves,
Reluctant to be mortal
prize:
No matter for the
woods wild things
And all its watching
eyes,
I would find wild
berries for you,
All through the wood,
for your wild lips,
And I would gather
them to feed
With wood love, those
your lips.
And dip each crimson
berry in
Moon’s silver light,
as this and this
Do swing, and covenant
for each
Wild strawberry, a
kiss.
There are also some
fine examples from women: Olwen W. Campbell, Fredegond Shove and Kathleen
Montgomery Wallace (all Newnham
College). Although the
tragedy of war has permeated through most of these poems with some sense of the
loss, the surrendered acceptance that the awful waste of life has not been in
vain, there is a marked change in the lyrical form of the verse which is
perceivable with every touch of rural devotion and spiritual evocation.
Songs of a Sussex Tramp –
by Rupert Croft-Cooke.
Published in 1922 by
the outstanding Vine Press of Steyning (600 copies printed and 20 on hand-made
paper) under the sensitive hand of poet and magician, Victor Benjamin Neuburg,
this 32 page collection of ‘reveries of the road’ by the Kent born author
Rupert Croft-Cooke (1903-1979) has some beautiful lines, cast from
‘mermaid-haunted shallows’ where he says that in the ‘Spring’s appealing
weather / We sailed away together, / Into lands that lay and beckoned you and
me!’ (Dedication). Croft-Cooke, who declares in the Preface ‘I am a tramp’, went
to Tonbridge School and Wellington College, Shropshire before writing as a
journalist and these poems such as ‘Old Hastings’ (sonnet), ‘The Downs’ and
‘Birling Gap’ where he says ‘I feel a man! wild for heroic deeds - / I feel
outside the world’s desires and creeds!’ shows us a man immersed in nature in a
setting he adores where the conviction of strength and the history of our
heroic coastline seems overpowering to him. In ‘Sorrow’, inspired by epitaphs
in the churchyard at Hollington, Rupert could almost be writing about his
sexuality with the sad refrain: ‘Sorrow! oh sorrow! oh sorrow of earth!’ (later
in 1953 he spent six months at Wormwood Scrubs and Brixton Prison for acts of
indecency). In ‘Littlehampton
Beach’ he is ‘tired –
‘tired of the world, the weakest of weariness’ and he goes on to suggest the
‘real things of life’ – ‘Stomachs, the pain of the mother; / Bodies and hair
and love, food and muscle and stone.’ And he continues like some little god
making a list:
‘Eyes and wind and
yawns, lust and slaughter and seas,
Bowels and sleep and
worms, women and suns and scars,
Bellies and death and
sunrise, fear and teeth and disease,
Hunger and water and
legs, birth and valleys and stars.’
Not including the
dedicatory poem, there are fifteen poems in this superb little collection and I
enjoyed the warmth and emotion Croft-Cooke conjures in works such as: ‘The
Lover’s Seat’, ‘Winchelsea’s Thought’, ‘The Quest’, ‘Lewes Gaol’, ‘Chichester
Cathedral’ and ‘Sussex’. Outstanding!
Poems – by Claude
Colleer Abbott.
I came across the name
of Claude Colleer Abbott (1889-1971) in the anthology ‘Cambridge Poets,
1914-1920’ compiled by Edward Davidson and was most impressed with his two
contributions. Claude Colleer Abbott was born on 17th April 1889 in Broomfield, Essex, the son of a pork butcher,
George H Abbott and mother Mary Neal. Claude went up to Gonville and Caius College,
Cambridge and
in 1911 he became a School Master at the Grammar School in Streatham. In 1918
he joined the Artist’s Rifles as a Private and following the war he taught
English at a Secondary School in Middlesbrough and later (circa 1928) became
Lecturer in English at the University of Aberdeen before becoming Professor of
English and Literature at the University of Durham from 1932-1954 (he edited
the ‘Durham University Journal’ from 1939-1952).
‘Poems’ published in
1921 is a collection of twenty-eight poems over eighty pages mostly dedicated
to friends and colleagues, opening with a long poem: ‘My Lady of the Spring’
(for Ralph Hodgson) where ‘elfin her face was in its sweet impress - / the
first shy wind-flower touched with faintest rose.’ The author summons the
beautiful impression of nature as in ‘Within the Wood’ (for C. Lovat Fraser)
where the ‘wood of virgin leaves; / sweet silences, / banks where a dryad
weaves / Anemones, / banks where the moss limns green / cool tapestries, /
there flows a brook between / that happy is.’ There is the sensual urge of love
in ‘Wantons’ (for C. O. Harrey) where ‘he crushes her warmth to his face / and joys,
till her petals fold.’ And the scene continues:
‘She flames her body’s
pride to the censuring sun
While her lovers drink
her up.
Her beauty withers and
dies, her petals fall;
They have emptied the
cup.’
To a fellow poet he
implores upon him the song of the poet: ‘Though men are dying, men are dust, /
glad poet, sing because you must.’ [‘To James Stephens. June, 1918’] and in the
poem ‘Breakfast at Grantchester, May Day, 1916’ the ghost of Rupert Brooke
seems to move mysteriously through the stanzas. Also of interest are Colleer
Abbott’s ‘Four Sonnets From A Sequence’ – ‘I HAVE heard tell of such a love a
love that knows, / swift from its birth, high certainty and bliss’ (I),
‘Beautiful tales are these, and ever sweet, / to ponder quietly in candlelight’
(II), ‘My testament of love reveals a land / where pleasant vales invite my
truant tread’ (VII) and ‘There is a love, that goes arrayed in grey, / wherein
no tiger body burns for night’ (XI).
Other works by Claude
Abbott include: ‘Youth and Age’ (poems. 1918), ‘Nine Songs from the 12
th
Century French’ (with decorations by C. Lovat Fraser. 1920), ‘Miss Bedell and
Other Poems’ (1924), ‘The Life and Letters of George Darley: Poet and Critic’
(1928), ‘Ploughed Earth’ (poems. 1930), ‘Early Medieval French Lyrics’ (1932),
‘The Correspondence of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Richard Watson Dixon’ (1935),
‘The Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges’ (1935), ‘A Catalogue
of Papers relating to Boswell, Johnson and Sir William Forbes found at
Fettercairn House, a residence of the Rt. Hon. Lord Clinton, 1930-31’ (1936),
‘Further Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins including his Correspondence with
Coventry Patmore’ (1938), ‘The Sand Castle and Other Poems ‘ (1946), ‘Boswell:
A Lecture’ (1946), ‘Poet and Painter, being the Correspondence between Gordon
Bottomley and Paul Nash 1910-1946’ (with Anthony Bertram. 1955), ‘Summer Love’
(poems. 1958) and his ‘Collected Poems 1918-1958’ appeared in 1963. He
collected 19
th and 20
th Century British art, manuscripts
and old books and he died on
17th
September 1971. Delightful!
The Letters of Charles
Sorley.
Published in 1919 with
a preface written by the poet’s father, William Ritchie Sorley of Cambridge and letters
selected in collaboration with his wife, who incidentally wrote the first
‘biographical’ chapter, these letters are a touching tribute to their son,
Charles Hamilton Sorley. Born on 19th May 1895 in Old Aberdeen, the young
Charles moved with his family to Cambridge
at the age of five in 1900 when his father was appointed Knightsbridge
Professor in the University. Charles became a day-boy at King’s College Choir School and gained an open
scholarship to Marlborough
College in the autumn of
1908, aged thirteen. He gained another scholarship in December 1913 to University College, Oxford. In 1914 he went to Schwerin (January) in Mecklenburg
and Jenna (April) as a student of the University and returned in July. On
Sunday 2nd August he and a friend were arrested at Trier ‘and kept in separate cells for the
rest of the day. One damning circumstance was that they had no hats, though
Charles gravely assured the officers who examined them that such was the habit
of “the best people” in England.’
(p. 10) They were released that night ‘with permission and orders to leave the
country’ and reached home in England
on 6th August. The next day they applied to the University Board of
Military Studies for a commission in the Army. Charles became a Second
Lieutenant in the 7th Battalion, Suffolk Regiment and sent to a
training camp on the Berkshire Downs. At the end of May the Battalion was sent
to France
and in August Lieutenant Sorley became Captain Sorley. He was stationed in the
trenches around Ploegsteert and fell in the afternoon of 13th October 1915, ‘shot
in the head by a sniper as he led his company at the “hair-pin” trench near
Hulluch.’ (p. 12) Sorley’s volume of verse ‘Marlborough and Other Poems’ was
published posthumously in 1916 and the author E. B. Osborn describes him as a
modern and sincere poet expressing truth and beauty – ‘from the very first he
was a major poet; his matter life, his manner formed from within, and the two
woven together, as woof and warp, in a loom of his own invention.’ (The New
Elizabethans. 1919. p. 61)
‘The Letters of
Charles Sorley’, which covers 322 pages, is divided into six chapters: ‘Biographical’,
‘Marlborough’,
‘Schwerin in Mecklenburg’, ‘The University of Jenna’, ‘The Army: In
Training’, and ‘The Army: At the Front.’ The letters contained in the volume
are fascinating reading and Sorley has much to say on literary subjects such as
the poet John Masefield whom he adores and Goethe, Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy
and Richard Jeffries. There is the letter to his mother from Aldershot,
dated 28th April
1915 in which he mentions about hearing of the death of Rupert
Brooke in the Morning Post and the ‘sacrificial’ aspect of war. Of special
interest I found was Sorley’s papers on ‘John Masefield and the XXth Century
Renaissance’ read to the Literary Society at Marlborough on Sunday 3rd November 1912
and ‘A Shropshire Lad’ read on Thursday
15th May 1913. There is also a glowing impression of
Sorley from the Dean of Bristol and formerly Master of Marlborough College, Dr.
Wynne Wilson, and his House Master, Mr. A. R. Gidney. Sorley’s last letter to
his father dated 5th
October 1915, a week before his death says it all – ‘rain and dirt
and damp cold. O for a bath! Much love to all.’
The New Elizabethans-
by E. B. Osborn.
‘The New Elizabethans:
a first selection of the lives of young men who have fallen in the Great War’
was published in 1919 by the journalist and author Edward Bolland Osborn
(1867-1938). Edward was the brother of the little known poet Percy Lancelot
Osborn (1870-1951) of Magdalen College, Oxford, known for his volumes of translations ‘Rose Leaves from Philostratus’
(1901) and 'The Poems of Sappho' (1909). E. B. presents this book of memoirs celebrating the lives of
twenty-five, known and unknown soldiers who were ‘scholars, and sportsmen and
poets’ with quiet heroic solemnity. The title reflects Osborn’s collective
associations of the men with Elizabethan exuberance and war seemed to create an
instinct of brotherliness and a love of the land and the country; there is
brevity in their sacrificial devotion. Here you will find the likes of Harold
Chapin (1886-1915) the dramatist and playwright who left 16 plays (10 of them
in one act) and was killed at the Battle of Loos; Richard Molesworth Dennys
(1884-1916) the poet who died from wounds on the Somme; the athlete Anthony
Frederick Wilding (1883-1915); actor Basil Hallam (1889-1916); poets Alan
Seeger (1888-1916), Ivar Campbell (1890-1916) and Thomas Kettle (1880-1916) and
of course William Noel Hodgson (1893-1916) the third youngest son of the Bishop
of St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich who won the Military Cross and fell in the Somme
offensive. Osborn has devoted much love into the writing of this beautiful
tribute to those outstanding men who gave their lives for which he should be
highly commended!
The Poems of Robert W.
Sterling.
This short volume (89
pages) published in 1916 contains the published and unpublished works by the
poet. Sterling, a poet who ‘sped down Parnassus with a warrior’s pride / to
meet thy death in dark Thermopylae’ (‘Sonnet in Memory of R. W. Sterling’ by
Roger Quin) who was born on 9th November 1893 attended Glasgow
Academy and was a Sedbergh Scholar; he went up to Pembroke College, Oxford in
1912 as a King Charles’ Scholar (he won the Newdigate Prize Poem in 1914 with
‘The Burial of Sophocles’, included in the volume) before becoming a Lieutenant
in the Royal Scots Fusiliers. He was killed in action on St. George’s Day 1915. Following the fourteen
verses of ‘The Burial of Sophocles’ the book divides into Early Poems and Poems
1913-1915. The former has published poems written between 1909 and 1912 such as
‘The River Bathe’ of November 1910 – ‘dear will the memory always be / of the
glorious pools of Lune’ which are unremarkable yet show a lyrical talent; the
latter ‘unpublished works’ hold much promise of future greatness with their
memorable lines mostly dedicated to Oxford, ‘bow’d by Time’s relentless hand’
and we close the book upon an unfinished fragment called ‘Maran’ which begins,
as if reading Dylan Thomas: ‘the wind was wailing over the land wildly /
song-sighing, and the moon / languishing, a love-lorn maiden / pale-peering
from a shroud.’ It goes on in similar lyrical form – ‘O garden of years, golden
and glad, / bright with the blossom Love’ and ‘lovelier than the light of
lonely skies / o’er snow-white wastes.’ ‘The Burial of Sophocles’ seems quite
prophetic and could be sung over the graves of all those who gave their lives
in the Great War – ‘and so we laid him: even so he lies / to be for aye the
Muse’s pensioner: / poets unborn shall sing him, centuries / untold tell of his
fealty to her.’
The Muse in Arms – by
E. B. Osborn.
This 340 page
anthology published in 1918 is a ‘collection of war poems, for the most part
written in the field of action, by seamen, soldiers, and flying men who are
serving, or have served, in the Great War’. Osborn provides a long-winded
introduction to the book but once through his dribble the glorious poetry
begins – there are 131 poems written by 52 poets, 18 of which were killed in
action. The volume is divided into fourteen parts and you will find all the
usual examples of great poetry from Rupert Brooke’s ‘If I should die’, Julien
Grenfell’s ‘Into Battle’ – ‘all the bright company of Heaven hold him in their
high comradeship / the Dog-Star, and the Sisters Seven, / Orion’s Belt and
sworded hip’ which ends: ‘but Day shall clasp him with strong hands, / and
Night shall fold him in soft wings’ and William Noel Hodgson (‘Before Action’).
Other authors included are: Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Osbert Sitwell,
Charles Scott-Moncrieff and Dynely Hussey whose ‘Ode to a Young Man’ sings of
‘lovely youth, slaughtered at manhood’s dawn’ who in ‘virgin purity’ – ‘liest
dead.’ Osborn has made a fine selection but most of the poems hardly deserve a
place as they seem flat and lifeless yet we must forgive their failings as
their authors had gone through hell, but the great ones shine among them and
will shine for all eternity!
Poems – by Alan
Seeger.
This collection of
poems published in 1916 (I read the 1920 edition) with an introduction by
William Archer presents the reader with twelve poems designated as ‘juvenilia’,
thirty sonnets, translations and last poems. Seeger had a real passion for
beauty and he lived for the adventure and romance of life. He was born in New York in 1888 and in
1900 the family moved to Mexico
where they stayed for two years before returning to the United States.
He entered Harvard
College in 1906 and was a
frequent visitor of Boston Library. In 1912 he went to Paris, taking a room near the Musee de Cluny,
and soaking up the atmosphere of the Latin Quarter.
It was here in Paris
where Alan produced most of his ‘juvenilia’ poems. In 1914 he enlisted in the
French Foreign Legion, enthusiastic about the drama of war; he trained at Rouen and was sent to Toulouse. He had
attempted to publish his volume of poetry before the war but was unable to. His
poetry is sincere without affectation and like all true poets he observes, evokes
passion and reflects. Archer writes a worthy introduction to the poet – ‘Alan
Seeger had barely passed his twenty-eighth birthday, when, charging up to the
German trenches on the field of Belloy-en-Santerre, his “escavade” of the
Foreign Legion was caught in a deadly flurry of machine-gun fire, and he fell,
with most of his comrades, on the blood-stained but reconquered soil.’
(introduction. p. xi)
His longest poem is
‘The Deserted Garden’ which was inspired by his time in Mexico; there
are fifty verses with the flavour of Tennyson and the rhyming scheme: abababcc:
‘Close by upon a beryl
column, clad
In the fresh flower of
adolescent grace,
They set the dear
Bithynian Shepherd lad,
The nude Antinous.
That gentle face,
Forever beautiful,
forever sad,
Shows but one aspect,
moon-like, to our gaze,
Yet Fancy pictures how
those lips could smile
At revelries in Rome, and banquets on the
Nile.’
The shade of Keats
haunts the poem ‘Ode to Natural Beauty’ which ends quite splendidly ‘cheered
yet to think how steadfastly / I have been loyal to the love of Love!’ Seeger
seems to drift towards Swinburne in ‘The Sultan’s Palace’ and his sonnets are
fair and well composed. There is the flicker of sensual exoticism in his poem
‘An Ode to Antares’ and his translations include: Dante’s ‘Inferno, canto xxvi’
and Ariosto’s ‘Orlando Furioso, canto x, 91-99. The Last Poems have some fine
work from 1914-15 such as ‘The Aisne’ with its victorious ending: ‘hearts
worthy of the honour and the trial, / we helped to hold the lines along the Aisne.’ Other poems, ‘I have a rendezvous with Death’ and
‘A Message to America’,
the latter echoing the patriotic beauty from Whitman and Longfellow are
examples of Seeger’s skills as a poet and the twelve sonnets show an artist
mastering his craft. In conjunction with this I also read the 'Letters and Diary of Alan Seeger' published in 1917 which has some interesting details about life in the trenches (entries from September 1914-June 1916) with letters written to his mother, father and sister. That he died honourably in battle is both heroic and
tragic for a promising literary career was cut short, yet he encompassed the
spirit of romance and looked towards the greater poets, Keats, who died
‘coughing out his soul by the Spanish Steps’ and Shelley, whose ‘flame snuffed
out by a chance capful of wind from the hills of Carrara’ and Byron, who was
‘stung by a fever-gnat on the very threshold of his great adventure.’ (p.
xi-xii)
There is No Death:
Poems – by Richard Dennys.
This 110 page volume
of poetry was published in 1917 with a Foreword by author and collector,
Captain Francis Desmond Talbot Coke (1879-1931) of the Loyal North Lancs
Regiment, who presents a tender and devotional impression of Dennys – ‘he was
not in the dogmatic sense religious, but this gratitude to God for all the fair
things round him – the sea, the wind, the woods – was stronger in him than in
any man that I have ever met, and he was almost pagan in his reverence for
Nature.’ (p. 15)
Richard Molesworth
Dennys was a reluctant and shy poet born in Bengal, India
on 17th December
1884. Dennys was a very talented young man who enjoyed painting,
playing the piano, writing poetry and prose and acting; he was also quite
melancholic in his outlook: ‘the shelter of the shady woods, / where I may
spend my lonely moods’ (‘A Boy’s Thanksgiving’. Bexley. 1896) He went to Winchester College before studying at St.
Bartholomew’s Hospital for his final degrees (M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P.) in 1909
but he never practiced in medicine. He worked in Florence returning to England at the
outbreak of war and joined the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment where he became
a Captain. He went to France
on 31st July 1915;
he was wounded in the Somme advance at
Contalmaison on 12th
July 1916 and he died twelve days later in the British General
Hospital at Rouen on 24th
July, aged 32.
Many of the poems are
elegiac and have a mournful theme – ‘The world grows old; but this thing I do
know / the grave is nought, for Love hath conquered Death.’ (‘There is no
Death’) and the spirit of brotherhood is evident, where a ‘changeless memory, /
the truest and best of companions’ (‘To a Dear Friend’) suggests the
unbreakable bond of friendship continues beyond the grave. In section II,
‘Songs of Youth 1896-1898’, poems written at Bexley, Dennys burns with an
adolescent perspective of love – ‘weep not that the blooms of Youth are dying.
/ Love, true Love, lives on for evermore.’ (‘Song: Carpe Diem’. 1897) and in
section III, ‘Songs of Manhood 1910-1914’ the inevitable concern of approaching
age consumes him – ‘be sure the poet’s heart is never old, / nor dulled his
sight, nor fully passed his joy’ (‘The Hill of Youth’) and he continues in
similar melancholy strains in ‘I do not understand’ written in Florence in May
1914:
‘I do not understand
the eyes of the dead,
Nor the message of
stillness
From lips that have
loved
And hands that have
given caresses.’
The final section,
‘Songs of War 1914-1916’ has several interesting poems such as ‘The Question’ –
‘soldier-boy, it’s a grim old world / (Deny it, he who can), / who knows that
your life would have happier been, / had you lived to be a man?’ but quite
unsurpassable is the final poem ‘Better far to pass away’ which begins:
‘Better far to pass
away
While the limbs are
strong and young,
Ere the ending of the
day,
Ere Youth’s lusty song
be sung.
Hot blood pulsing
through the veins,
Youth’s high hope a
burning fire,
Young men needs must
break the chains
That hold them from
their hearts desire.’
Captain Coke, a friend
of Dennys says that ‘it did not seem possible beforehand that a dreamy nature,
so full of love and beauty, should make anything except a grudging patchwork
job of the rough, practical, ugly business of war.’ (p. 10-11) I enjoyed the
poems of Dennys immensely and perhaps the final lines of ‘Better far to pass
away’ are a fitting farewell – ‘my day was happy – and perchance / the coming
night is full of stars.’
Literature and Life:
Things Seen, Heard and Read – by E. B. Osborn.
This 1921 volume of
thirty essays by Edward Bolland Osborn (1867-1938) of Magdalen College, Oxford, has some quite interesting
pieces such as ‘King Lear’s Chaplet’ which examines the muse of madness,
(Osborn had an idea to present a volume of poetic insights from the English
asylums but had to decline due to the ‘slackness of the British lunatic’).
Osborn looks at the difference between the French literary lunatic who is
willing to write poetry as opposed to the inhabitants of the English asylums
who produce no real poetry. In ‘Blue Funk’ he makes an analysis of fear and in
‘The Scarlet Swallow’ he condemns the poets for not producing ballads on
sporting themes! In ‘Epic Liars’ Osborn summons Sir John Falstaff to the stage
and along the way we meet Baron Munchausen, Tartarin of Tarascon and Henryk Sienkiewicz’s
character Pan Zagloba. ‘Accidie’ delves into the ‘sickness of the soul’ and the
‘sorrow of the world’; the pessimistic mood of melancholia or moroseness, while
‘The Greatest Poetry’ analyses the ‘language of the spirit of man, the
quintessence of all human experience’ (p. 71). Also of interest is ‘The Spook’s
Progress’ with its investigation of phantasms and manifestations and ‘The
Unknown Muse’ of Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, D. G. Rossetti and W. B. Yeats. From
English mechanical Carillons (‘Concerts in the Sky’) and mermaids (‘Sea
Ladies’) to the Bolshevistic mystery of love attraction (‘Love or Eugenics’),
‘Literature and Life’ is a rewarding read.
Poems by Ivar
Campbell.
Published in 1917 with
a memoir by the English barrister and author Guy Ridley (1885-1947), ‘Poems’ by
Ivar Campbell is a small collection of 31 poems and 15 sonnets which were begun
in 1908 and continued in 1910 and shows a remarkable development in lyric
poetry which was sadly cut short by war. Ivar Campbell was born in 1890, the
son of Lord George Granville Campbell and Sybil Lascelles Alexander, (his
grandfather was the Duke of Argyll) he attended Eton where he studied
Elizabethan literature and Christ Church 1908-09 before travelling to Hanover,
Venice, Paris and America as honorary attaché to the British Embassy (1912-14).
Ridley’s glowing memoir of the poet presents us with a picture of a man who
loved to tramp through nature – ‘to Ivar Campbell, as I knew him, all things
were living. Nothing was ever dull. He was always amused, and his enthusiasm,
naturally intermittent, was unbounded and above all things, sincere.’ (p. 7)
Ridley says of him in
his memoir that he had a ‘quickness of mind and sincerity of purpose’ and that
his ‘face was of great beauty, with finely-drawn features’ (p. 8). Campbell had an
overwhelming desire to open a book shop in Chelsea under the name of Mr. John Cowslip
where he would sell drawings by modern artists and make holly walking-sticks!
At the outbreak of war Campbell
failed the medical examination due to weak eyesight but became an ambulance
driver for the Red Cross. On his return to England following another rejection
for the Army he was accepted in February 1915 and given a commission in the
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. He went to France in May of that year and was
attached to the 1st Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders in the
trenches before being drafted to Mesopotamia.
An attack was launched against a Turkish position and Captain Ivar Campbell was
shot leading his men and with fatal wounds he died the next day on 8th January 1916,
aged 26; he was buried that evening on the banks of the River Tigris.
There are some fine
poems in the collection, none of which speak of the horrors of war for they
were all written before the conflict: ‘The Ballad of a Dead Town’,
‘St. Ursula’ and the rather lengthy ‘The Marriage of Earth and Spring’, and the
particularly sombre ‘The Ballad of the Wood Baroleth’ which chimes with menace
– ‘the wood was all enchanted, / I stayed not to see. / Baroleth is haunted - /
the leaves were following me.’ Definitely worth seeking out!
Sonnets, Songs and
Ballads – by Rev. E. E. Bradford.
Having previously read
the good Reverend’s volume of poetry ‘The Romance of Youth’ (1920) and found it
tediously disappointing I swore I would not pursue a further dose of Bradford
yet here I am, rushing towards the old devil to worship once more at the fount,
(or should that be font?) of his sins! In fact, I was pleasantly surprised with
‘Sonnets, Songs and Ballads’ which was published in 1908 and it is divided into
six sections: Sonnets, Songs, Ballads, Notes and Sketches, Religious Verse and
Verse for Children. Edwin Emmanuel Bradford (1860-1944) of Exeter College,
Oxford, sets out his uranian stall from the first with his poem ‘Passing the
Love of Women’ in which he states when the ‘years have cooled the fever in the
blood, / the friend is all in all!’ and goes on to say about the ‘one man in a
thousand’ with ‘his firm, strong love’ that he fears ‘not our deepest stains to
scan / beneath the sinner sees and loves the man!’ And he goes further in ‘The
Child Divine’ which is ‘concealed in mortal guise’; a child ‘with more than
human love.’ Poor old Bradford gets lost in
his all too human-heavenly ecstasies, declaring that ‘since then I seek Him.
Here and there, I find / In one His smile, in one His tone of voice, / And in a
third signs of His mighty mind’. His desire intensifies in ‘Sundered’ where the
‘aching pain of that long, long night / will last till my life is o’er!’ and in
‘Side to Side’ the reality of his cruel desire attains the conclusion that
‘dark suspicion marked us out / as guilty of a ruthless crime, / and worthy but
to die!’ All marvellous stuff and there it ends for the ballads I found rather
poor and the rest of the volume tapers off into uninspired versification.
In Quest of Love and
Other Poems – by Rev. E. E. Bradford.
Once again the Vicar
of Nordelph lets his insatiable lusts rule his heart in this 1914 publication
which begins with the Tennysonian ‘In Quest of Love’ which runs to 166
four-line stanzas in 17 parts and sees the romping Reverend enjoying the
platonic charms of boyhood love of all variations in different nations – ‘that
Love has lightened, first and last / Love of any boyhood, he has passed /
beyond the reach of change or wrong’. In the poem ‘Free Love’ the man of God
calmly confesses that he ‘kissed young boys in dozens’ and other poems have
similar sentimental flourishes – ‘Shy Love’, ‘Childhood and Age’ – ‘and when
our lips meet at a time like this / it is our souls and not our mouths that
kiss!’, ‘The Heat of Love’, ‘Pure Love’ and ‘Love along the Ages’. At 112 pages
this is quite a delightful little book for anyone interested in uranian verse.
Lays of Love and Life
– by Rev. E. E. Bradford.
Feeling decidedly
pleased with myself for enduring and even enjoying the old goat of Nordelph, I
went on to read Bradford’s other collection ‘Lays of Love and Life’ of 1916
which has 53 poems in part one: Lays of Love, and 20 poems in part two: Lays of
Life, all of which has some contradictory poems concerning the Reverend’s
attraction to at one moment the spirit of youth – ‘No love is carnal’ in which
Bradford asks ‘who loves the body only? Grind it small, / bring him the bloody
mass – give him the whole. / Is he content? Nay, when he has it all, / all is
but nought without the informing soul.’ and again in ‘In the dark’, and then
the physical beauty of the body in ‘When I went a-walking’ for instance, where
he says that ‘I thought of him all day, / and I dreamed of him all night.’ In
‘Take it, lad, or leave it’ we get a sense of Housman with its playfulness and
melancholy repetition. A few good pieces: ‘Hadrian’s Soliloquy’, ‘The Forest
Boy’, ‘Joe and Jim’, ‘The Younger Eros’ – ‘let lover seek his mate, then side
by side / let them beget fair dreams – an offering glorified!’ and ‘The
Woodman’s Boy’; Bradford writes quite well upon nature too as can be seen in
‘Nature’, ‘The Woods in Winter’, ‘Autumn’ and ‘Sunset’.
Itamos: A Volume of
Poems – by Arthur Lyon Raile.
Arthur Lyon Raile is
the pen-name of the American art collector Edward Perry Warren (1860-1928) and
this 120 page volume of verse was published in 1903 and most of the 44 poems
are printed in the order in which they were written. The author shows great
skill as a poet but initially seems to lack conviction in his attempts at
passionate poetry – ‘my soul is famine-fed, my sense / aches, and a smothered
fire / feeds on my heart. Ah! wither tends / the unsubdued magnificence / of
limitless desire’ (‘Desires’). Treading poetical water through ‘The Passionate
Pilgrim’, ‘Memoria Amorum’, ‘Still Waters’, and ‘Across my path a shadow lies’
the stream widens and intensifies in its integrity and urgency towards what
looks like real songs of love – ‘where cottage by night / enclose all lovers in
the same surrender.’ (‘Winter Twilight’), ‘Death heathen god, that fillest all
my brain, / whose perfect counsel maketh sorrow plain, / whose sovereign word
alone hath power / to save each hour.’ (Hymn to Love’), ‘’Twas justice blind. /
We feel in youth what we confirm in age. / The blood informs the mind, / and
claims its due in midmost pupilage.’ (‘Lad’s Love’) and ‘Ah, could I bind him
to my soul, / if I could have his being whole, / I should not fear; I should
not tire / with pent desire.’ Which continues: ‘I fly to him, and find him
cold, / for “he is young, and I am old;” / I come in love, and meet a rough / and
hard rebuff.’ (‘The Loss’). In fact, I enjoyed the author’s blossoming and can
confirm that Mr. Edward Perry Warren did indeed have a heart to write such beautiful
lines as:
‘Enough, if once, once
only I had lain
With thee, and loved
thee once, and never again!
I knew not, trained
indeed to miss
The half of love, the
whole could be like this.’
[‘Adagio’]
and again in
‘Noontide’:
‘His human love
intense,
Burning at height
suspense,
From fiery wastes of
vaporous youth
Gathers the sullen
angers of the truth.'
All quite beautiful,
and whirling from this charming encounter from Mr. Edward Perry Warren I
thought to intensify the experience with a couple of volumes from Edward
Cracroft Lefroy (1855-1891) of Keble College, Oxford, whose collection ‘Echoes
from Theocritus’ had made such an impression on me, many years ago, and so I
had the misfortune to read ‘Windows of the Church and Other Sonnets’ (32 to be
precise) and ‘Cytisus and Galingale: A Series of Sonnets’ (another 32) both
published in 1883 and thoroughly disappointed with these dire and dreadful
works I resigned myself to heavy scourging and a hair-shirt for my foolish
endeavour!
Itchen Memories – by G
E M Skues.
George Edward
Mackenzie Skues (1858-1949) attended Winchester College (1872-77) and was a
solicitor and notable fly fisherman who developed the technique of modern nymph
fishing and his reminiscences of fishing the River Itchen, ‘Itchen Memories’
was published posthumously in 1951 (I read a 1984 reprint for the ‘Modern
Fishing Classics’ series, edited with an introduction by Antony Atha). Skues’
brother, C A M Skues writes the Foreword saying that his brother retired as a
solicitor in 1940 aged 82 and he stresses the importance he placed upon
observation as in the feeding habits of the fish, (Skues, with his one good eye
seemed to be a natural at interpreting his surroundings to apply his
techniques). We also get an Artist’s Foreword by the wonderful British
illustrator and fisherman Alex Jardine (born 1913) who studied at St. Martin’s School
of Art – there are nine
full-page ink illustrations in the book which are worth the price of the book
alone! This is Skues’ final book and it contains numerous papers and articles
from various angling periodicals relating to incidents that occurred on the Abbot’s
Barton water of the River Itchen above Winchester where the great man fished
for over fifty years; this is quite beautiful writing and it interests me
because I find some (not all) books on fishing, particularly fly-fishing have a
poetic quality to them and there are some humorous moments as in his escapades
with angry swans and bulls! There is his
‘Diary of an Itchen Week’ from the fishing Gazette, beginning Saturday 15th July 1911
and ending Saturday 23rd July which is superb – it is as if old Skues
had some magical ability to charm the trout out of the river! I shall certainly
read Skues’ other classic works such as his ‘Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream’
(1910) and ‘The Way of a Trout with a Fly’ (1921). Magnificent!
Verses – by Robinson
Kay Leather.
This dreary
abomination was published in 1891 by the Liverpool
born chess player and university professor Robinson Kay Leather (1865-1895).
The book is divided into four sections of poems and unrhymed lyrics and has
something like 55 poems over 98 pages. This really is quite abysmal stuff and
many of the so-called ‘poems’ seem unfinished and several run to only a few
lines amid the enormity of the white page; a real poet would have designated
these verses as ‘juvenilia’ and consigned them accordingly to their awful fate
– trial by fire! One poem only begins to touch the heights of amateur and shows
some promise of possibility in part I – ‘The Bridal of the Night’:
‘The moon is dancing
with the Night;
She floats through his
ebon hall,
Leaned back on his
shoulder in delight;
On her lovely face all
ivory-bright
Dark kisses
fall.
The moonbeams and the
shades of Night
To each other sing and
call;
And they follow the
Moon in her noiseless flight
To her cloudy bed with
the kingly Night
Thro’ the
dark west wall.’
But alas, there is no
more. We can thank the stars that Mr. Leather only produced one volume of
tawdry verse to insult the sensibilities of a literary readership and I hope
dearly that he was a better chess player than he was a poet!
Fishing’s Strangest
Days – by Tom Quinn.
This 2002 publication
by the journalist Tom Quinn compiles the extraordinary but true tales from over
two-hundred years of angling history, relating 126 stories of bizarre fishing facts
from strange baits such as ‘manfat’, ferocious pike, ghostly apparitions,
poaching, gillies and epic battles of the river from 1800 to 1986. Easy to read
and dip into and fascinating for all fishing lovers!
Thysia: An Elegy – by
Morton Luce.
Published anonymously
in 1908, this collection of sonnets (45 in the 3rd edition which I
read) is truly a work of art. In two parts: I – ‘Death and Love’ and II –
‘Rosemary’, Luce, a dedicated Shakespearean scholar and literary critic,
recounts the sorrow felt at the loss of his wife, his ‘sweet love mingled with
that cold mound’ (‘The Funeral’. 30th November 1907) and I can say
without doubt that these are some of the finest and most beautiful songs of
love and loss that I have ever read. Morton Luce was born in Buckinghamshire in
1849 and married Marriane Masters (born in Bristol) in Somerset in 1879. Luce does not name his wife
in the volume but she died a year prior to publication in the autumn of 1907,
aged 65. The deep devotion he felt for her is more than evident and overwhelms
the reader with emotion –
‘A WITHERED life, and
weary of the sun;
Dead weight of palsied
limbs, or limbs that tire;
Parched lips that open
but to close upon
Their broken, their
monotonous desire – ‘
[‘Ave’.
15th April 1907]
‘Sweet wife, I come to
your new world ere long,
This lily – keep it
till our next embrace.’
[‘Vale’.
27th November
1907]
‘And he that lives for
love lives evermore;
Only in love can
life’s true path be trod;
Love in self-giving;
therefore love is God.’
[‘Love’]
There are some
beautiful moments captured which anyone who has suffered grief at the loss of a
loved one will recognise, as in ‘Seven weeks later’ when he has not moved her
belongings which remain like a shrine, the ‘riven / comb, when you fell, and
were too brave to weep’ and the ‘folded pile of daily clothes’; the ‘faded
flowers’ kept from the funeral, and ‘there upon the floor the desolate glove, /
and there the little shoes, dearest of all.’ The author also writes with great
force upon the wonders of nature, the rustic simplicity of the rural idyll with
botanic precision as one would find in Crabbe or Clare and his authority on
Shakespeare and Tennyson (he wrote two splendid books: ‘New Studies in
Tennyson’ 1893 and ‘Shakespeare, the Man and His Work’, seven essays, 1893)
shines with confidence. It is a pity that Luce who died in 1943 was not
recognised in his lifetime as a great poet and scholar and he seems to have
become all but forgotten except by a handful of appreciative literary scholars.
Exceptional!
Threnodies, Sketches
and Other Poems – by Morton Luce.
Published anonymously
by ‘the author of Thysia’ in 1910, this volume is divided into three parts:
‘Threnedies’ (ten poems of Sorrow and six of Hope), ‘Sketches’ (12 poems) and
‘Other Poems’ as the title suggests and Morton Luce writes with a sense of deep
conviction on his love of nature in poems such as ‘Autumn’, ‘Trengwainton Carn’
and ‘The River Nene’ and with a romantic, sensual touch in ‘To a Friend’ (a
broken and contrite heart), ‘Memories’ and ‘Earth and Love’. A mournful shadow
seems cast over the whole volume yet there is some sense of perfection about it
and the fact that the author has entered his sixtieth year is hard to believe
for there is the notion of youth about it, a boldness which comes from the joy
of learning and a wisdom that comes of age. I can do no better than to
recommend this volume along with his previous ‘Thysia’ to any enthusiast of
poetry!
Idyllia – by Morton
Luce.
Again published
anonymously, this volume of poetry ‘Idyllia’ of 1911 by the ‘author of Thysia’
– Morton Luce (1849-1943) is an outstanding paean to nature with such
crystalline works as ‘Clevedon’, ‘A Wood in Somerset’, ‘Blackdown’, ‘A Scene on
the Wye’, ‘A Garden’ and ‘A Windmill’:
‘like a
pensive ghost
The old mill glimmers;
while over it there hang
Dusk, and a sunless
pall of mist. And now
Floats from the lonely
moor the lapwings cry,
The lean bat flutters,
and, rising chill, the wind
Sweeps from the naked
frame-work of the sails
A dirge, a sad
mysterious monotone,
A wail of night,
autumn, decay, and death.’
Luce has the finesse of a true poet and these
twenty-five poems only confirm what a great yet unrecognised poet he was.
Delightful!
New Idyllia: Sketches
of a Stream – by Morton Luce.
Morton Luce reveals
himself from the cover of anonymity and puts his name to a beautiful volume of
poetry published in 1923. In three parts – ‘The Stream in Spring’, ‘The Stream
in Summer’ and ‘The Stream in Autumn’, Luce far surpasses that over-rated
versifier, Wordsworth, in my opinion and reading Luce’s mesmerising blank verse
is like a magical incantation; he sings as a lover unto the joyous rapture of
nature in the embers of his long life as we can see from the end of the volume
where we are delivered into the arms of the divine –
‘O sunset sky and
lonely gleaming star,
Your beauty beacons
from the vast of space,
Where myriad heavens
the doors of Hope unbar,
And Love lies in
eternity’s embrace’.
The Youth of Beauty
and Other Poems – by Cecil Roberts.
Cecil Roberts, or to
give him his full name, Edric Cecil Mornington Roberts (1892-1976) was an
English journalist, dramatist, novelist and poet and this eighteen poem
collection was published in 1915 with a Foreword by Professor D. Macmillan,
Lit. D. There are some fine poems here such as ‘She moves, the lady of my
love’, ‘Love’s Silence’, ‘Love that waited’, ‘To Marjory: In Springtime’ and
‘After Vacation’ and Roberts expresses his feelings with true delicate
un-restrained passion as in this ode to transient beauty – ‘and now I make
lament – the old lament, / your loveliness will fade, your youth will die, /
and so I shudder, knowing days that went / swiftly and gloriously, like all
things by;’ and he goes on in almost Housman-like mournful tones: ‘knowing that
you will laugh, and live content, / while all my days are passed in dreary
banishment.’ [‘Appassionata’] He ends in almost euphoric rapture at the memory:
‘Therefore my joy is
somewhat fraught with pain
Distilled from happy
days recalled in vain;
We met, we spoke, we
parted, now with me
The vision of your
face is dwelling constantly.’
In ‘To a Lady who
painted my Portrait’ he is overcome by the supernatural manner in which something
deep within his soul has been exposed – ‘art, with its deeper sight, has seen /
something to which the world is blind.’ There is a musical quality to ‘On the
Severn’ where he is in a boat and drifting ‘to dreaming Arley / climbing high
beyond the bend.’ In the long poem ‘Andromache’ Roberts writes sensually upon
the Trojan princess:
‘Slowly along the step
ravine she clomb
As one deep-stricken
to the heart with woe,
And all her robes hung
fold on fold about
Her grief-expressive
figure, dark, enswathed
Save where the ivory
brow gleamed forth above
Two eyes that were as
wells of sorrow where
No sunlight ever
glanced.’
In another long poem
‘A Child’e Eyes’ he echoes Tennyson’s ‘ringing grooves of change’ – ‘on
lettered shelves the great, undying dead, / whose singing souls, in pilgrimage
elect, / still wing them down the ringing ways of Time, / with Fame’s immortal
banner o’er them furled.’ Other volumes by Roberts include: ‘Twenty-Six Poems’
(1917), ‘Charing Cross’ (1919) and ‘Poems’
(1920). A minor masterpiece!
Love in a Mist – by
Francis Bourdillon.
At first glance I
wasn’t too impressed with this hundred-page volume of poetry published in 1892
and I had come across the name of Bourdillon several times over the years with
the full intention of reading his works and so I braced myself. Francis William
Bourdillon (1852-1921) was a notable English scholar, poet, and writer of
Christian essays and translator who was educated at Worcester College,
Oxford. His
poems are rather short affairs with some whimsical turn about them – ‘and then
I crept / where love lay sleeping, / and wept, and wept, / and still am
weeping.’ [‘The Happy Spring’] He is not above delivering some tragic lines
that capture the full intensity of love and desperation as in ‘The Poet’s Love’
where he notes that ‘languorous lashes make a thousand hearts despair, / but he
chooses the Divine.’ In ‘Vae Victrici!’ he confesses with a terrible ache that
‘of all men who have loved me I have loved only one.’ And he seems stricken by
desire and admiration for the beauty of a ‘fair boy, of all hearts master, /
who makes the world your plaything,’ but is at a loss at the end of the stanza
as to an inevitable outcome: ‘but we – what shall we do?’ Other poems of note
are ‘Hellenica’, the ten ‘Love Sonnets’ and ‘Lucid Intervals’. Not a bad
collection though I thought it fell short of perfection as so many seem to do,
yet I persevered and read several more of his volumes: ‘Love Lies Bleeding’
(1891), ‘Chryseis’ (1894), ‘Moth-Wings’ [Ailes D’Alouette] (1913) and ‘Easter
Lilies for Nineteen Hundred and Fifteen’ (1915) and was confirmed in my
assumptions that he is a fair poet and ‘Love in a Mist’ is probably his best
work.
Twenty-Six Poems – by
Cecil Roberts.
This is a very worthy
collection of poems by Cecil Roberts published in 1917 which he divides into
three sections: ‘Of Ships and Sailors’, ‘At Peace’ and ‘Inscriptions. Roberts
writes with great clarity on the notion of love and is philosophical when he
says – ‘who knows, dear heart, perchance you move / nearer in love than I in
thought, / and with these premonitions prove / love is not far and comes
unsought.’ [‘In the Wood’] and his lines to a fellow poet, James Elroy Flecker
seem suitably uplifting and praiseworthy, where lips are ‘locked in silence
‘neath the alien skies, / and all the tales are told that he shall tell.’ He
goes on in equal measure of admiration, calling Flecker a – ‘moon-led pilgrim
seeking for the Thing / which dreams spake in the days long gone,’ […] ‘he
holds a wider converse with the stars, / and roams unfettered through the
jewelled night, / his song flows in the wind ‘mid nenuphars / swaying and
rustling in the dawning light.’ [‘A Dead Poet’] ah, those ‘nenuphars’! Other
instances of Roberts finery are: ‘The Moon a Lovely Maiden is’, ‘A Garden at
Rydal’, ‘To Richard Le Gallienne’ and ‘The Portrait’. Superb!
Poems – by Cecil
Roberts.
This large volume (244
pages) of Cecil Roberts published in 1920 has a Preface by none other than John
Masefield whom we can assume with his love of the sea and sea-faring found old
Cecil an intriguing poet, (Roberts dedicates his poem ‘The Great Ships’ to
Masefield) yet he points out that Roberts is quite unknown as a poet and
mysterious as a man before he sets to harking on about the war and poetical posterity,
‘what will they care ten years hence for your name, / who cares a damn who died
at Salamis?’ [‘Futility’] but he is hopeful and looks forward to the future.
The book is in two parts: ‘The Dark Years’ (23 poems) and ‘Other Poems’ (22
poems) and Roberts writes starkly upon the horror of war with its ‘slow
processional of pain’ as soldiers return from the Front – ‘human refuse / -
left by extravagant war – borne away in the night.’ [‘The Dark Years’]
Many of the poems we
have encountered in previous volumes of course so there is a tender familiarity
in such verse as ‘Springtime in Cookham Dean’, ‘The Enchanted Wood’, ‘To a
Lady’, ‘Memories’ and ‘Habberley Valley’; here we find a Hylas and there we
encounter Andromache and my favourite of Roberts’ poems ‘In a Wood’ is there.
The war is an ever
present shadow and in the poem ‘Eclipse’ he says ‘there is a question to be
asked, / there is an answer to be given, / and traitors who shall stand
unmasked,’ before ending with a positive turn – ‘and new worlds made from old
worlds riven.’ Other brilliant poems in the first section include: ‘Lusitania’,
‘Watchmen of the Night’ and ‘The Dover Patrol’ while the second section has many
of his memorable works such as ‘Helen of Troy’, ‘The Youth of Beauty’,
‘Habberley Valley Revisited’ and ‘A Boy’s Laughter’ – a fine collection indeed!
Andrea and Other Poems
– by Gascoigne Mackie.
Edmund St. Gascoigne Mackie (1867-1952) was born in
Gloucestershire and attended Sedbergh Grammar School and Keble College, Oxford,
matriculating on 19th October 1886 aged 19 (B.A. 1889); he was also
a chorister at Magdalen College from 1876-81. This slim volume at 63 pages
containing just eleven poems was published in 1908 and the title poem ‘Andrea’
is in the manner of English rural, peasant poems and for my liking went on much
too long seeming to drift into a third-rate Browning but once that catastrophe
was over with Mackie finds his footing and had my full attention; he writes
quite elegantly upon the senses and the essence of desirability, saying that
man has – ‘deep within his memory are stored / layers of life extinct, monsters
abhorred, / chimaeras, lawless kingdoms of dead lust, / now a mere charnel of
chaotic dust.’ (‘Nature and Human Nature’) how true! He reveals his romantic
colours by calling Shelley the ‘imperishable soul of passionate song’ (‘The
Shelley Memorial’ at University College, Oxford) and he lets his classical mask
slip in ‘At Clapham Junction’ (November 13th 1895) as he invokes the
ghost of Oscar Wilde, feeling that he is hunted like the ‘Cretan stag’ by a
jeering rabble of ‘hounds’; he wistfully looks to Oxford for release and to the
daffodils, crocuses and fritillaries of Magdalen meadow; he stands ‘bowed with
bitter shame / and handcuffed in the pillory.’ –
‘I shall survive the
mob’s malign
Mean “digito monstrori”:
One must be damned to
be divine –
Hurl me to hell – what
care I?
Though Time’s dark
banks, as Time runs by
To-morrow and
To-morrow,
Re-echo “Oscar” to the
cry
Of outraged love and
sorrow –
Out of the ashes of my
lust
A Phoenix re-arisen
I shall emerge,
spurning the dust
And infamy of prison.
The poets will be on
my side
And they shall tell my
story –
The legend of my sin
and pride
Shall last till Time
be hoary.’
Mackie is consumed by
the thought that life will inevitably end – ‘till I forgot that you, like me, /
a pinch of breathing dust, will die’ (‘A Butterfly’) and looks to greater
things of spiritual significance, in ‘A Sign’: ‘wide Thy cords of mercy reach /
to bind mankind in one great whole.’ But he becomes almost hallucinatory with
vision in the poem ‘The Straw’ where he sees a straw on the platform of the
train station at Christmas Eve and descends into visions of ancient Egypt and Bethlehem; to Naomi,
Mahlon, Chilion, Elimelech, Ruth,
Moab and
Christ, who perhaps first looked upon the husk of straw! The author closes with
a paean to poesy in ‘After Twenty Years’ –
‘I have, and faint not
yet, for I have learnt
How few are born to
serve the Spirit of Song
Or bear the burning
torch of Beauty strange,
To breathe her secrets
with a mortal tongue
And haunt the lonely
heights her lovers range.’
Short Poems – by Gascoigne
Mackie.
This collection of
thirty-three poems by Mackie was published in 1907 and there are some wonderful
poems such as ‘How fair thou art’, ‘The humming Hawk-Moth’, ‘Why hast thou
whispered’ and ‘Autumn in Wadham
Garden’ where ‘stooping
from heaven with a smile / shall he behold her, and obey: - / some Aidan of a
sunnier isle, / some Francis of the fuller day.’ In ‘Home from France’ we find
that ‘the steadfast evening star / shines down on the hills of Sare, / I shall
wish that I too had wings; / and remembering happy things, / I shall remember
you!’ He invokes an antique energy in ‘Clevedon’ where we learn that:
‘The wizard once beneath
these skies
Sang his weird legend
of the sea:
The dust of him who
yonder lies
Is praised to all
posterity.’
Other excellent poems
are: ‘Her spirit walks these starry fields’, ‘By a Roman well’, ‘Oh, may no
dungeon-cloud of sin’, ‘Look down, O love’ and ‘O for a humble life’ which ends
bitterly: ‘what thou the soul of youth be like the rose / eager to open to the
sun and rain, / love’s deepest petals never quite unclose, / the heart is
hidden in a world of pain.’
Mackie published
several volumes of poetry including: ‘Poems Dramatic and Democratic’ (1893) and
‘Charmides and Other Poems’ (1912).
Charmides and Other
Poems Chiefly Relating to Oxford
– by Gascoigne Mackie.
Originally published
in 1898, I read the revised 1912 edition with over sixty poems at just over
one-hundred pages – the section on ‘Oxford’ was originally published in The
Spectator 1897. In the Preface we are told that ‘Charmides owes its existence
to the late John Addington Symonds’ who encouraged Mackie, who then tells us
that ‘there is not a word in this book about my college friends or my college
days. I have almost forgotten my college days, and my friends have forgotten
me.’ The volume contains the usual Oxford
debaucheries that pass for love and have been the ruin of many a minor poet;
‘Charmides’ is the name Mackie gives to his unidentified youthful lover. In
part one we get a sense of those far off Oxford
days in ‘Old Magdalen Bridge’
where ‘within the shadow of her antique walls / youth passes like an unabiding
stream.’ In ‘Life’s Oxymoron’ we are told that ‘the path is not the prize of
life / is ours who, striving, never quite achieve.’ The gentle life before the
upheaval of war is invoked in ‘Arcades Ambo’:
‘And Charmides, who
gave me the narcissus.
Where Isis flows, beneath a white syringa
Sleeps by the Norman Tower
on Ilffley Hill:
And o’er them both
burns the same morning-star
Of beauty, like a
tear.’
Other poems in the
section are equally superb – ‘Magdalen Mill’, ‘Marston Copse’ and ‘Intermezzo’.
Part two opens with ‘Invocation’ where the poet waves his ‘willow-wand’ to
‘call thee from the lake’… ‘Awake, and look upon thine earthly friend / who
loves thee yet, and would again behold / the phantom of the first he ever
loved.’ The poet and Charmides have a picnic and watch the butterflies in
‘Wytham Wood’ and bathe at ‘Parson’s Pleasure’, that notorious peeping hole and
in ‘Godstow’ they row to that fair place, where ‘at that moment / the mighty
mother touched me, and I felt / the first strong throb of that which rules me still.’
Other ‘strong throbs’ in part two are: ‘Magdalen Chapel’, ‘A Garden at
Donnington’, ‘May Morning’, ‘Madrigals’ and ‘Gloria in Excelsis’. The beautiful
flow of sentimental passion continues in part three with the optimistic ‘still
shall love triumph, still shall love redeem us, / dear Charmides, - for Love is
Lord of all.’ [‘Alpha and Omega’] In fact, there is not a bad poem in the whole
collection in my opinion and I was pleasantly surprised with such wonders in
part three as: ‘New Magdalen Bridge’, ‘The Wells of Sleep’, ‘The Fellow’s
Bridge’, ‘Dante and Browning’, ‘Sunset at Sare’, ‘Six Sonnets’, ‘The Shelley
Memorial’, ‘An Oak near Oxford’ and ‘In the Botanic Garden’ (after the Oxford
Pageant, July 2nd 1907)… Several of the poems from 'Charmides' also appears in 'The Glamour of Oxford: Descriptive Passages in Verse and Prose by Various Writers' edited by William Knight (1911) which is also very interesting. 'Charmides': Utter perfection!
Eight Harvard Poets.
This 1917 publication
features poems by eight Harvard men: E E Cummings, S Foster Damon, J R Dos
Passos, Robert Hillyer, R S Mitchell, William A Norris, Dudley Poore and
Cuthbert Wright. This is a fine collection and all the poets have something of
the budding greatness about them, some more than others; Edward Estlin Cummings
(1894-1962) went on to be quite prolific and here he has been given space for
eight poems – ‘will I complete the mystery / of my flesh / I will rise / after
a thousand years / lipping/ flowers / and set my teeth in the silver of the
moon.’ [‘Crepuscule’] From the nine poems by Samuel Foster Damon (1893-1971) I
enjoyed his ‘The New Macaber’ and
‘Incessu Patuit Deus’ – ‘she is a goddess left for us, / veiled with the
softening veils of time; / her blue-veined breasts are now sublime, / her
moulded torso glorious.’ [‘Venice’]
John Roderigo Doss Passos (1896-1970) offers seven interesting pieces like
‘Saturnalia’ where ‘men mutter runes in language dead, / by night; with
rumbling drum, / in quaking groves where the woodland spirits are hailed.’ But
one of the poets I enjoyed the most was Robert Hillyer (1895-1961), a prolific
poet who has eight pieces here; I especially liked his ‘Four Sonnets from a
Sonnet Sequence’, here is the end of the first:
‘Fair child of
loveliness, these endless fears
Are nought to us; let
us be gods of stone,
And set our images
beyond the years
On some high mount
where we can be alone.
And thou shalt ever be
as now thou art,
And I shall watch thee
with untroubled heart.’
And here is the fourth
in full:
‘Long after both of us
are scattered dust
And some strange souls
perchance shall read of thee,
Finding the yearnings
that have crushed from me
These poor confessions
of my love and trust,
I know how
misinterpreted will be
These lines, for men
will laugh, or more unjust,
Thinking not once of
love, but only lust,
Will stain the vesture
of our memory.
And yet a few there
may be who will feel
My deep devotion and
my true desires,
And know that these
unhappy words reveal
Only new images in
changeless fires;
And they perchance
will linger with a sigh
To think that beauty
such as thine must die.’
Also of value is
‘Domesday’, ‘My peace I leave with you’, ‘Elegy for Antinous’ in which
‘Antinous is dead, we kneel before / the portals of our past in vain,’ and ‘The
Recompense’ where Hillyer predicts that ‘in some future far beyond surmise /
you will dream here with half-remembering eyes, / and I shall write these
words, content awhile / in the slow round of time to see you smile.’
Robert Stewart
Mitchell (1892-1957) is represented by the most poems, eleven in fact, ‘Love
Dream’, ‘Threnody’, ‘Helen’ and ‘Lazarus’ of which are pretty fair. William A
Norris strikes no heights with his nine works but ‘Qui Sub Luna Errant’ comes
close to passable and Dudley Poore (1893-1982) sacrifices six of his works here
of which ‘The Philosophical Garden’, ‘After Rain’ and ‘Cor Cordium’ show a
touch of maturity, but Cuthbert Wright (1899-1948) like Hillyer, stood out for
me. Wright, a poet, critic and Professor published his first collection, ‘One
Way of Love’ in 1915 and a book, ‘The Story of the Catholic Church’ in 1926. He
has six poems representing him in the volume: ‘The End of It’, ‘The New
Platonist’ (circa 1640) where ‘the painted windows burn and flame / up through
the music-haunted air; / these were my gods – and then you came / with flowers
crowned and sun-kissed hair, / making this northern river seem / some
laughter-girdled Grecian stream.’ – ‘The Fiddler’, ‘Falstaff’s Page’ (to Reginald
Sheffield), ‘A Dull Sunday’ (after Debussy) and ‘The Room over the River’ where
Wright whispers ‘GOOD NIGHT, my love, good night; / the wan moon holds her
lantern high,’ and he goes on in similar passionate vein – ‘flower of my soul!
Let us be true / to youth and love and all delight’. Yes, lets! Tremendous!
The Quest of Truth and
Other Poems – by Hugh R Freston.
Hugh Reginald (Rex)
Freston (1891-1916) was born in Surrey, attended Dulwich College (1904-06) and
in October 1912 went up to Exeter College, Oxford with the intention of taking
Holy Orders, yet his interest in literature overwhelms his honourable spiritual
intentions and poetry consumes him. At the outbreak of war, this most
unlikeliest of soldiers becomes a 2nd Lieutenant in the 3rd
Royal Berkshire Regiment and in December 1915 is sent to the Front – ten days
later in the trenches he is killed in action on 24th January 1916, aged just
twenty-four (he is buried next evening). Freston published his book of poems
‘The Quest of Beauty’ in 1915 and this second volume, published posthumously in
1916 at just under one-hundred pages is a fitting memorial to a fine young man
who was at the beginning of his poetic journey before the senseless slaughter
of war took him from us, as he says himself in his poem ‘The Quest of Truth’:
‘The new Christ must wear a helmet, / in His hand a gun.’ But Rex seems to
accept death as a measure of fate and somehow knew he would not come through it
– the same poem ends: ‘better die a faithful failure, / than not to have dared
at all.’ Throughout much of this book there is a sense that Rex loved his
mother Elizabeth dearly; there was a strong bond between mother and son and
there is the ever-present notion that he is foretelling his own death (‘When I
am Dead’, ‘Death’). In ‘The Sinner’ he confronts Christ but not in heaven –
‘and there among them as of old / walked One, whom I knew well, / who opened
wide His arms to me: / I found my Christ in hell.’ A simple little poem ‘Love’s
Shadow’ is almost reminiscent of Alfred Douglas –
‘There was sunshine
that day in the garden,
And all the world was
fair;
When one passed by
singing,
And left a shadow
there.
O he passed by
singing,
And he was very fair;
And he went on his way
singing;
But he left a shadow
there.
There is sunshine still
in the garden,
And still the world is
fair:
But for one, who holds
his secret,
The shadow is ever
there.’
Freston like all young
Oxford poets opening their souls to the world says something of his tender love
which has a melancholy air in the poem ‘Despair’, like an awkward adolescent
deep in admiration he says: ‘I loved you shyly first and half ashamed, / as
young things always love: a quietness, / a patient dignity lay in your eyes; /
and round your mouth a curious tenderness.’ The poem goes on to reveal –
‘So did I love your
soul: but after years
Of loving that strange
sweetness, that I knew
Was your true self, I
longed to kiss your lips,
Your hands, your hair:
I loved your body too.
But since you never
loved me; nor would lend
Or soul or body, I
watch the world of men
Carelessly – this
man’s eyelids sometimes twitch;
And that man coughs a
little now and then…’
This sense of the
unrequited continues and he says with almost masochistic tones in the poem
‘Reproof’ – ‘your frown I welcome, having not your smile. / I love you so, your
very hate would be / a paradise, your loathing a caress.’ Most enjoyable and
not the standard poetry of war one comes to expect from the legions of doomed
youth!
Carmina: A Volume of
Verse – by James Henry Hallard.
Who is James Henry
Hallard? Little seems to be known but we do know that he was born in Edinburgh on 4th April 1861,
went up to Balliol
College, Oxford in October 1881 (B.A. 1884) and died
in Surrey aged 81 in 1942. So what of his
poetry? This volume published in 1899 holds 24 poems, 4 of which are
translations. There are some fine pieces such as ‘The Promise of Love’, ‘Broken
Heartedness’, ‘To Maud’ and ‘A Boy’s Love’: ‘a Boy, but passionate as man may
be, / with less of man’s control, / with hell and heaven flaming in my soul, /
despair and ecstasy.’ And so we get a taste of his proclivities which are
echoed in ‘An Interlude’: ‘alas for youthful love! Its tender flushing /
blurred by a sudden scornful hurricane, / that o’er the spirit’s rosy cloudland
rushing / makes Life’s new-risen sun a lurid stain!’ ah that sweet ‘tender
flushing’ and that ‘lurid stain’! And as if that wasn’t enough he opens the
door wider that his lusts should be exposed further in ‘Passing the Love of
Women’ – ‘still glows my heart remembering thy face, / still lives the memory
of my bygone joy, / still do I feel thy sweetness and thy grace, / still beats
my heart as when I was a boy’. But it is to dignified matters he turns next
with ‘The Thames: A Rhapsody’ that ‘River
of England! old, heroic
stream’ and he writes with enthusiastic passion and a sense of doom upon the
notion of continuity as here at the end – ‘unheeding thou shalt flow beneath
this span / of heaven’s blue, till this outwearied world / flash from its orb,
terrifically hurled / to utter nothingness, and Time shall lie / upon the
threshold of Eternity.’ But the tranquillity must return and we find it in the
form of Ganymede in ‘Ganymede’s Redivivus’ – ‘yes Ganymede is here among us
now, / the gods have lent him for a summer’s day.’ How kind of the gods! And so
Hallard drifts into ‘Poems in French and Latin’ before falling exhausted from
the ‘Translations from Catullus and Horace’. Some remarkable work with that
expectant Oxford
flair for the sensual, ‘Carmina’ is a most enjoyable volume and Hallard
published several more books which may interest the general voyeur such as:
‘The Idylls of Theocritus’ (translated into English. 1894), ‘Gallica, and Other
Essays’ (1895), ‘Gold and Silver: an elementary treatise on bimetalism’ (1897),
a translation of ‘Omar Khayyam’ (1912) and ‘Idylls of the Tweed’ (1935).
The Cult of the Purple
Rose: A Phase of Harvard Life – by Shirley Everton Johnson.
This volume at nearly
two-hundred pages was published in 1902 and the author divides it into five
sections: ‘Denholm’s Purple Tea’, ‘The Cult of the Purple Rose’, ‘The Cult
Adopts Rules’, ‘Literary Efforts’ and ‘The Cult’s Publication’. The novel is
set in 1894 where the air is thoroughly decadent and undergraduates adopt a
bohemian attitude to life in the manner of Wilde and Beardsley, and it is here
where we find the delicate and somewhat shy young Lucian Denholm, studying
English at Harvard who wishes to be popular in College; a nice enough chap but
is he suitable material for college societies? well not after he says that he
‘doesn’t care much for societies’. But through certain psychological
manipulations, as in giving a ‘Purple Tea’ and entertaining his aesthete friends
etc. he is induced to join. All very likeable froth of course and the ‘Green
Carnation’ is mentioned by pleasure-loving students spouting epigrams at the
drop of a hat and attempting to be brilliant. We learn how the Cult of the Purple
Rose is formed and how their periodical, ‘The Pink Mule’ a caricature of ‘The
Yellow Book’ is published and the stories and verse it contains, which are
given at the end of the book. A ponderous parody? Yes! Pretentious preenings?
Yes again! But a harmless distraction!
The Taking of Alba and
Other Poems and Translations – by Lord Francis Hervey.
Lord Francis Hervey
(1846-1931), we shall not hold his title against him, attended Eton College and
Balliol College, Oxford (B.A. 1869), published this volume of verse in 1873 and
dedicates it to the Rev. Edmond Warre, his friend and tutor before he gets down
to the order of the day: translations into English of Lucretius, Horace,
Sappho, Plato and Aeschylus before displaying further dexterity in translating
into Latin: Byron, Cowper, Shelley, Longfellow, Sophocles, Henry Vaughan and
Berkeley. The strait-laced Hervey delivers a starched tongue translating sacred
hymns in Latin and English before enjoying himself as much as a stiff-necked
aristocrat with a mind full of Latin text can do with miscellaneous Latin verse
and miscellaneous English verse and here his Lordship throws caution to the
wind, loosens his collar and tie, unbuttons his shirt and casts his trousers to
the wind and all but dances naked under moonlight in a primitive love-dance,
for we find old Hervey has a soul and not dust where a heart should be; poems
such as 'Haec olim meminisse juvabit’, ‘Song’, ‘How can Love’s eye be true?’, ‘A
Question’, ‘Amarum non Amari’ and some rather passable sonnets seem to confirm
this although I would not wish the endeavour upon anyone less than an enemy!
The Temple of Friendship
– by Vincent Benson.
This volume of poems
was published in 1903 and I found it very difficult to be enthusiastic about
it. Benson is a competent poet of sorts but a very gloomy one at that and a few
pieces stood out from the rest as having some poetic quality on the fringe of
being mediocre, such as: the sonnet sequence ‘The Temple of Friendship’, ‘The
Thought of Man’, ‘Mnemosyne’, ‘The Heart Knoweth’, ‘O Wind, softer than breath’
but all in all it was a quite dreadful experience. Benson translated Henri
Bergson’s ‘A New Philosophy’ in 1913 which I hope was a greater success!
Love-Sonnets – by
Evelyn Douglas.
Evelyn Douglas is the
pseudonym of John Evelyn Barlas (1860-1914) of New College,
Oxford (matriculating
in 1879 aged 19 – B.A. 1884) and he was a friend of Oscar Wilde which is worthy
of my utmost attention in my book! Also notable on the scale if interesting is
the fact that he went out of his mind and spent the end of his days in an
asylum which is always a fascinating talking point and essential in the claim
of poetic genius. Anyway, ‘Love-Sonnets’ was published in 1889 and through
eighty pages (and 64 sonnets) Barlas proves himself a master of the sonnet form
and there is a real sense of passion – ‘why are we thus divided having kisses?
/ why are we yet two bodies and not one?’ (XI). He is technically quite
brilliant and much of the sonnets show an influence of Swinburne and Tennyson
with that mood of melancholy one finds in Hardy – ‘yes you must die: I can but
borrow thee. / Nettles are flowering on some destined grave.’ (XXX) And in the
same sonnet we find a ‘black-blue cedar tree’ as if nature herself has absorbed
the sadness within – ‘…yes thou must die – die?’ the foreboding continues:
‘dead, dead – why must I love thee? – dead and gone.’ In the next sonnet the
theme of death seems overwhelming and the sonnet ends: ‘the bitterness of our
funeral love / where each kiss is a lingering farewell.’ Truly beautiful
indeed! It is easy to rush through these sonnets thinking them quite
insignificant, oh it’s just another dull Victorian baring his soul in poetry,
but it is essential to read them slowly and carefully to appreciate them fully.
Poems Lyrical and
Dramatic – by Evelyn Douglas.
Barlas again under his
pseudonym Evelyn Douglas with his first volume of poetry published in 1884 with
62 poems. There are some lengthy pieces in the volume such as ‘Eucharista
Mystica’ – ‘Poet, I warm, I glow / through all my sickening flood; / I faint, I
melt, I flow, / I throb throughout thy blood; / I circle round thy brow, / and
o’er thy bosom run; / not twain be I and thou, / nay, but one.’ And some fine
traditional works in the manner of Greek mythology – ‘HAIL, Queen Artemis, the
terror of the deep Arcadian valleys’ (‘Hymn to Artemis’), in fact, Barlas takes
much of his inspiration from the Greek classics and is more than familiar with
them in poems such as: ‘Hymn to Eros’, ‘Heloise and Abelard’, ‘Alcaeus’, ‘Ode
to Euterpe’, ‘Cupid and Psyche’ and ‘The Loved of Apollo’. Recommended!
A Mathematician’s
Apology – by G H Hardy.
Godfrey Harold Hardy
(1877-1947) of Winchester
College, and Trinity College, Cambridge felt the need to write this
‘apology’ which is not an apology as in the seeking of forgiveness but a
defence or justification for his subject: mathematics. Hardy specialised in
number theory and was a ‘pure mathematician’ and he published this short volume
(29 chapters over 56 pages) in 1940 when he was in his sixties and at the end
of his mathematical career; it is no wonder that the tone is that of a
disappointed man despite his early achievements for he begins the work as he
means to continue: ‘it is a melancholy experience for a professional
mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician
is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to
talk about what he or other mathematicians have done.’ (p. 1) He points out
that mathematics is a ‘young man’s game’ for one must be ambitious and says by
way of an excuse for mathematical apathy that Newton did little after the age
of forty and gave it up at fifty. After insulting his reader by saying that
‘most people can do nothing well’ he calls mathematics a ‘perfectly harmless
and innocent occupation’ before going on to talk of ‘ambition’ in mathematics
in chapter seven, saying that essentially one needs an ‘intellectual
curiosity’, a sense of ‘professional pride’ and an egotistical desire for
‘reputation’ and mathematical fame – ‘mathematical fame, if you have the cash
to pay for it, is one of the soundest and steadiest of investments.’ (Chapter
8. p. 12) He says that ‘chess problems are the hymn-tunes of mathematics’ (p.
15) and then degrades chess as worthless on a mathematical level – ‘very little
of mathematics is useful practically, and that that little is comparatively
dull.’ (p. 16) He rightly says that the Greeks were the first real
mathematicians which are still ‘real’ to us today with their essential
permanence and gives examples with Pythagoras, Euclid’s Theorem of Infinity,
and also Fermat’s Two-Square Theorem; just as some whom the gods look down upon
are blessed with the capacity to appreciate a score by Bach and see and hear
the beauty of the work, equally there are those who truly appreciate the aesthetic
quality of a beautiful theorem – Hardy sees mathematics as a creative art form
like painting and poetry and states that if the beauty of a theorem as in those
examples given are not perceptible then one has no aptitude for mathematics,
which is a fair comment, and he then trots off in a mathematical huff to draw
the distinction between pure mathematics, a far superior and more beautiful
form of the art which has no practical application in the outside ‘real’ world,
and applied mathematics, such as geometry, which is inferior, dull and ugly by
comparison. Hardy, if one looks into his career had a notable competitive
nature and his defence of mathematics is a defence of the self, which although
very interesting, can leave one with a sense that he was a very bitter old man
indeed!
Prelude: A Novel – by
Beverley Nichols.
This is the first
novel published by the English writer Beverley Nichols (1898-1983) in 1920 and
it is presented in four books: The Prelude (6 chapters), Modulations (7
chapters), Resolutions (7 chapters) and The Last Movement (3 chapters); the
book ends upon a Coda. Nichols declares that personages and events are not
drawn from reality but we are safe to assume that some of the adventures are
autobiographical from the author’s own time at Marlborough College
and Balliol College, Oxford, which he entered in 1917. And so the
book begins, unveiling its major character, the young Paul Trevelyan in
September 1912 on the threshold of entering Martinsell public school; Paul’s
father died when he was very young and as an only child he stayed with his
mother whom he adores and did not go to private school so he was allowed to
develop in imaginative ways, becoming dreamy and effeminate – ‘the boy will
grow into a monstrosity if you don’t look out,’ said his Uncle. And so his
tranquil life with his mother and his kitten Pasht is to be disrupted by the
vulgar necessity of school. Parallels can be drawn between Alec Waugh’s first
novel ‘The Loom of Youth’ published three years previously in 1917 which Nichols
obviously read and doesn’t mind even boldly mentioning the book in the text as
being read by some of the protagonists. And so Paul enters Martinsell School
and as we should suspect, not being good at sport, the ‘touchstone of
intelligence’, he quickly becomes unpopular and lonely. He tentatively makes
one friend after another who seems to drop him, such as Jack Temperley and a
boy named Rice who shows signs of excelling in rugby and so the friendship ends
at the end of the first term. Alone and wandering through the Forrest one day
Paul comes upon a house and decides to ask for tea, the maid shows him in and
we meet the mysterious parson, the Vicar of Hadley (two miles from Martinsell).
The Vicar, Mr. Carstairs we are informed is a man in his thirties who also
attended Martinsell fifteen years ago and like Paul was in ‘A House’ and terribly lonely, so much so that he ran away.
His advice to young Paul over tea is to make friends for they will get him
through his time at school. A little later in the book there is the scent of a
scandal as the Vicar of Hadley is referred to as ‘rather a notorious blighter’
for he was ‘bunked’ from Martinsell but Paul is not told what for; the reader
of course does not have to have read the ‘Memoirs of a Voluptuary’ (1908) to
understand what the author is inferring. In April 1913 Paul enters Down House
or ‘D House’ as it is known under the Housemaster Dr. Peregrine Storey and
Paul’s next friend is a boy named Harrington who is good at game and a scholar;
both sing in the choir. One of the
Masters, a Balliol man named O’Rane known as ‘Padsy’ is running a Prize on
Erasmus; Paul enters and wins with his essay, being the only competitor. In the
Army Training Corps Paul meets a young dilettante named Cecil and the two join
the Signallers and become friends (Jack Temperley is in the Corps too whom Paul
still secretly likes). After discovering Paul is a good runner, the School
Captain, a handsome ‘blood’ named David Rufus invites Paul to tea, a great
honour, Paul being younger. Rufus is looked upon as a sporting hero at the
school and greatly admired. Paul, taking Rufus as an example of how to be
popular, enters the school races and wins two outright before coming second in
the hurdles and third in the ‘hundred yards’; Paul collapses with a bad heart
and Rufus tends to him with great tenderness in his study, and one might say,
falls in love with the younger boy. Paul is sent from school to recover at
home. When Paul returns to school Paul wants to break their friendship as he
does not want the young chap to get hurt by rumours; there has been talk about
Rufus indulging in peculiar friendships at the school. The outbreak of war ends
the second book.
Book three sees Rufus
gain a commission in the Guards and Paul gets his own study which he chooses to
share with Harrington and they decorate it to their tastes and give fantastic
teas – Paul wanted to share his study with Jack Temperley and to get Harrington
out of the way Paul puts ipecacuanha in his soup which makes him sick and from
then on Paul interferes with all his food and drink; eventually, Harrington
decides to move out and share with another next term. There is a wonderful
little passage at the end of book three between Paul and Mr. Carstairs, the
Vicar of Hadley when they are in his garden picking violets which the older man
gives to Paul – ‘as they went in Paul paused. “I feel that with all lovely
things you want to be able to touch them as well as see them.” Carstairs looked
at him curiously. “How do you mean?”
“Well, flowers and
things; I feel I simply want to squash those violets.” They paused on the
steps.
“I know you do – I saw
that as soon as I ever met you. But Paul, you’re making the greatest mistake of
your life. For instance, the violets, what happens if you crush them?”
“They smell all the
sweeter.”
“Yes – and for how
long?” Paul laughed. “You always go one step further than I do.”
“And what has become
of the beauty of your violet when you’ve crushed it?” He looked beyond Paul
into the darkening Forest. “What’s become of
its beauty?” He pointed to the Forest. “Look
out there.”
Paul looked. “Yes?”
“Well, that’s the
vision – a perfectly lovely thing – almost dark now. And what is it really?
Something that’s got its roots in clay and dung. You can’t do it – you can’t
crush your violets – I’ve tried to.” He spoke bitterly.
Paul took his arm.
“But look here, to go on with the metaphor – aren’t there enough flowers in the
world to go on crushing them and crushing them, and they’ll still smell sweet?”
Carstairs looked at
him sadly. “There may be”, he said, “there may be. But it’s usually only one
flower that matters.” (p. 184-185)
And so during the next
term of Lent, Paul shares a study with Jack Temperley. Paul becomes a
specialist in History and his essay on the Art of the French Impressionists
shows great promise but all is not well as Jack becomes attached to a younger
boy named Northcote who does splendid mimicry and makes him laugh; Paul
obviously becomes jealous – the astute Cecil realises the truth of Paul not
being himself – the ‘green-eyed monster’ before it all erupts into a tirade of
tears (‘Broken Melodies’) and confessions when Paul says to Jack: ‘Oh, there
are times when I should like to kill you, by God, you brute. You’ve been the
cause of everything that’s spoiled things here for me. You’ve led me on and on
and then turned away. My God, I’d like to kill you and torture you and beat
you. You’ve been cruel to me – I don’t see why I shouldn’t be cruel to you.” He
pushed open a little drawer and took out a bottle. “D’you see that? – that’s
chloroform. I’ve taken a pretty strong dose of that before now because of you,
and it’s been pretty nearly you many of these days. Very melodramatic, isn’t
it? No? oh, sorry, I forgot – I’m never melodramatic – merely boring.” (p.
213-214) Apologies and forgiveness follows all round and the friendship is
strong again.
During the vacation
Paul is bored of church and goes to the Brompton Oratory where he is
overwhelmed by rapture with Catholicism. When Summer term begins, Cecil, who is
concerned for Paul, informs his friend and Master, Mr. Sargeant about Paul’s
thoughts towards Roman Catholicism – ‘he’s reading nothing but Francis Thompson
now, his room stinks of incense, and he carries a crucifix about with him and
goes to Mass and all that sort of thing.’ (p. 227) Cecil, a confirmed atheist
confronts Paul and accuses him of being taken in by the glamour of the Catholic
Church, the aesthetic elements that ensnare the romantically minded; Cecil’s
cynicism makes Paul realise his mistake and at the end of book three – ‘after
chapel he went slowly down to the wilderness and sat down by the bathing-pool.
By and by he drew from his pocket the little crucifix that had started all the
trouble. He dropped it rather wistfully into the water and watched it dive with
a little flash of silver into the deep black weeds below.’ (p. 236-7)
In book four, Paul and
Cecil go to Oxford in 1915 for examinations and Paul is awarded the Exhibition
Scholarship for Modern History at the University of Oxford; we learn that Rufus
has become a Captain and still writes to Paul from the Front and then we find
Paul staying with Cecil and his father and the two boys go to the Café Royal to
soak up some of its bohemian atmosphere; Paul seems decidedly unimpressed, and
then a little later Cecil takes Paul up in a plane. All very jolly of course
but then in the Coda we are told the tragedy that Rufus is dead and now Paul
Beaumont Trevelyan, that young effeminate boy who developed into a young
gentleman at Martinsell, has fallen in battle in December 1916; the young
officer died of wounds after being in France only six weeks before going
missing at the Ypres Salient. At just shy of three-hundred pages, ‘Prelude’ has
been a marvellous read with some excellent character development and evolution
and all from a young prolific author who went on to write over sixty books.
This is not just a story about Paul Trevelyan, but hundreds of young men like
him who sprung from their childhood at public schools and were shaped by
education and men of rigorous ideals only to be trampled into the trenches as
bricks of flesh against mortar shells – a disgusting and shameful waste of life
which shows how the intricacies of life which becomes infused with many other
lives around become insignificant by war. Genuinely beautifully written and an
essential classic!
The Idylls of
Theocritus, translated into English Verse – by James Henry Hallard.
Published in 1901,
Hallard does a pretty good job of translating these ‘idylls’ by Theocritus of
Syracuse and says with pride in the preface that it was a ‘labour of love, and
therefore a delight’; the love and the delight are more than obvious as one
reads this volume and the author confesses that he has had to take some
liberties to give these thirty songs the same sense of spirit in English as one
gets from the original Greek, for instance as a general rule he uses blank
verse for dialogue and description, anapaestic hexameters for lyric passages
and dactylic hexameters for narrative. Among some of the idylls are: ‘The Song
of the Death of Daphnis’, ‘The Incantation’ (‘ah, me, for I am all aflame for
him / that left me not a wife nor yet a maid’), ‘The Desperate Lover’, ‘The
Triumph of Daphnis’, ‘Polyphemus’s Complaint’, ‘The Passionate Friend’, ‘The
Rape of Hylas’, ‘The Vengeance of Love’, ‘The Lover’s Complaint’ and ‘The
Lover’s Lament’ – Hallard has great fun in these saucy, bawdy and bucolic tales
of singing contests and course and vulgar herdsmen and no doubt many scholars
and classicists will be divided over Hallard’s rendition of the idylls and pick
holes in the textual authenticity of the translations which are easily
over-emphasised in its aspects of the sensual or thoroughly stilted and dull;
Hallard manages to walk both lines at the same time and I almost enjoyed it as
much as the author, but not quite!
Sexuality, Magic and
Perversion – by Francis King.
Published in 1971 (I
read a 1974 paperback edition), Francis King, who certainly has a way with
titles, completely redeems himself in my eyes after I forced myself to read his
dreadful ‘Secret Rituals of the OTO’. In over two-hundred pages and three
parts: ‘A Witch, a Pornographer and Oriental Sex Magic’, ‘The Occidental
Background’ and ‘Sexuality and Magic in the Modern World’, King goes into great
depth and is quite bold (chapter one is titled ‘A Dildo for a Witch’) in his
investigations and in part one we find an enigmatic fellow by the name of
Edward Sellon (1818-1866), a Captain in the army, a coach-driver,
fencing-master and a pornographer, in fact he is ‘the man whose writings had
first brought Tantricism to the attention of occidental occultists.’ (p. 9) Sellon
published his influential ‘Annotations upon the Sacred Writings of the Hindus’
in 1865 and King quotes freely from his autobiography ‘The Ups and Downs of
Life’ (1867) which has some fascinating points, but on the whole King says that
‘Sellon’s failure to arrive at any faint conception of the inner philosophy of
Tantricism completely invalidated his interpretation of the cult.’ (p. 29)
After a life of sexual indulgence and adventure Sellon shot himself and thus
fades from history another forward-thinking man! And so King saunters through
Buddhist and Hindu tantric practices and Chinese Sexual Alchemy (the Tao, Yin
and Yang) before arriving at part two at ‘Primitive Fertility Cults’. Chapter six
‘The Great Mother Falls on Evil Days’ grabbed my attention as it speaks of ‘The
Sacred Magic of Abra Melin the Mage’, something I am particularly fond of; ‘Malleus
Maleficarum’ and the Devil in Witchcraft – the Blood Sacrifice; and with the
door of darkness fully open we step inside the temple to find the next chapter
discussing ‘Masses – Black, White and Amatory’ and meeting such gentle souls of
debauchery as the Abbe Guilbourg and Madame de Montespan, before rising to the
occasion with ‘Priapus Rediscovered’ and authors such as Richard Payne Knight
and his ‘Essay on the Worship of Priapus’ (1786) and the sexual symbolism of
Hargrave Jennings. Part three opens with ‘Templarism and Sex Magic’ which most
occultists and ceremonial magicians will be familiar with – the Ordo Templi
Orientis (OTO) with its alchemical symbolism which was founded by the German
Karl Kellner; in 1905 when Kellner died Theodore Reuss assumed the Headship of
the OTO, and so we reach the zenith of chapter ten – ‘Enter Baphomet’: The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and
Aleister Crowley. King includes the ‘Supreme Ritual’ and mentions The Paris
Working which Crowley
undertook with Victor Neuburg (Crowley became Head of the OTO when Reuss died
in 1922). Chapter eleven introduces us to sigils, Karl Germer and astrological
sex magic – ‘Saturn-Gnosis, Sex Magic, and Planetary Aspects’ and chapter
twelve brings some light relief with the curious ‘Bishop and the Boy’ and
anyone who has studied Theosophy will no doubt be familiar with the identity of
the ‘Bishop’ for it is none other than that old ex-Anglican curate and
influential Theosophist, Charles Webster Leadbetter (1847-1934) who had some
unsavoury ways with teaching young boys to masturbate. He was ordained as an
Anglican priest in 1879 and had a curacy in Hampshire before meeting the
seemingly mesmerising figure of Madame Blavatsky in 1885 and so the spell was
woven. Leadbetter spent several years in India and Ceylon but had
to resign from the Theosophical Society due to his masturbatory habits with
boys and a subsequent trial, but the old devil was not down! After the death of
the Theosophical big-wig, Colonel Olcott, Leadbetter saw his chance to once
again grease his palms so to speak and climb his way back into favour with the
Society (he was instrumental in the rise of Krishnamurti and all that old tosh)
and so in 1909 he was back in and no doubt up to his old tricks. In 1913 he
went to Australia,
probably to escape more rumours and a possible scandal and safe down-under he
was made a Bishop! But there is no evidence to suggest that Leadbetter was
utilising dark, occult techniques – ‘however odd his sexual beliefs, whatever
his relationships with some of his pupils may have been, he was not “a Black
Magician using homosexual activities to create a reservoir of astral power” –
there is not a shadow of proof for the allegations made by Dion Fortune and
accepted unthinkingly by so many occultists’ (p. 141), no but it is an
interesting concept nonetheless and wouldn’t he have made a charming dinner
guest! Let us pass quickly through the next chapter – ‘Sexual Magic in the
United States’ for it is all now too familiar: Charles S. Jones, Jack Parsons
and Agape Lodge, Kenneth Anger, Pierre Bernard, Anton La Vey and the Church of
Satan etc. and chapter fourteen: ‘Magicians, the Orgasm and the Works of
Wilhelm Reich’ and fifteen, ‘A Whip for Aradia’ which takes a dip into
Sado-Masochism, and sixteen, ‘The Future of Sexual Magic’ to arrive at the
Appendices to which there are six: Appendix A – ‘The Dildo in History’ is an
eye-wateringly frank, yet brief account of the penis-shaped pleasure aid
through history – B ‘Robert Graves, Witches and Islamic Mysticism’ – C
‘Copulating with Cleopatra’ (the Prophet Vintras, Abbe Boullan and the Church
of Carmel) – D ‘Another Sex Magic Ritual’, in fact, Crowley’s ‘Ritual to Invoke
Hice [Isis] or any other Divine One’ – E ‘Ralph Chubb, Boy Love, and William
Blake’, anyone who is enthusiastic about the uranians will come across the name
of Ralph Chubb at some point and this is a fascinating glimpse into the world
of Ralph Nicholas Chubb (1892-1960) who was born in Harpenden, Hertfordshire
and moved to St. Albans. He won a scholarship to Selwyn College,
Cambridge in
1910, was a great chess player and artist and attained his BA in 1913. He
enlisted in the Army in 1914 (Loos 1915) and was mentioned in dispatches; as a
Captain he was invalided out in 1918 and studied at the Slade School of Art; he
built his own printing press with his brother in Berkshire and began printing
his illuminated works in the manner of William Blake. Chubb is an absolutely
fascinating though rather neglected figure in literature and his quasi-occult,
erotic works are rare – ‘Manhood’ (1924), ‘The Sacrifice of Youth’ (1924),
‘Fable of Love and War’ (1925), ‘The Book of God’s Madness’ (1928), ‘Songs of
Mankind’ (1930) and several more equally marvellous publications. King rounds
the book off with Appendix F ‘Crowleyanity in Switzerland’ – yes it is one of
those books that have attained cult-like status among a certain readership; yes
it is cited frequently and listed in many distinguished books on the subject
and yes it has become highly sought after and no matter what one thinks about
the author and his sensational title tactics (ahead of his time perhaps) this
is a well-written, well-illustrated (thirteen illustrations) volume that
delivers just what the title says it does – Sexuality, Magic and Perversion!
Songs of Adieu – by
Lord Henry Somerset.
First of all who is
this scoundrel Lord Somerset? He is Lord Henry Richard Charles Somerset
(1849-1932) 2nd son of the 8th Duke of Beufort and he was a politician and a composer of harmless ditties. This
volume of poetry came to fruition after his wife, Lady Isabella (they were
married in 1872) discovered he had been carrying on with a seventeen year old common boy named Henry Smith, in fact, he had known the youth since the age of seven and was completely infatuated by him and lost his head (and his
heart) to the young fellow – the marriage collapsed and Lady Henry sued Lord Henry for custody of their only child, Henry Charles Somers Augustus which she won in 1878 and his Lordship went to
live in exile in France and Italy to avoid the scandal and probably prison. The romance with the
youth severed, Somerset, aged forty, published this volume of poems, fifty-four
in fact, in 1889, a volume which morbidly rakes through the embers of the
relationship – he writes as if the boy has died physically although I am not
sure if this is just a literary device, as the poet stoops beside a grave to
pick a flower – ‘for from that flower to me / there came a lingering,
long-forgotten scent, / and straightway a strange throb of memory / through my
heart went.’ [‘Buried Memories’] and he continues in the same poem, to dig down
and ‘there at rest they lay, / the dear, dead bones of memories still sweet.’
This is getting into some dark obsessive territory here for we reach the end of
the poem to find ‘then my hard heart I hurled / into that grave, and laid it low
beside / those bones beloved – then to the outer world / in them it died.’ The
grieving lover continues in the next poem, ‘Come Back!’ saying ‘I CANNOT live
without thee – oh, come back! / come back to him that, weeping, waits for thee’.
Somerset travels
over some familiar ground as he re-traces his steps where he and his young
lover dallied – ‘and let me see sometimes a moment’s peace / in listening to
your songs that are so fair: / perchance in them my heart awhile shall cease /
from dull despair’ [‘The Birds in Dean’s Court, St Pauls’]. In the poem
‘Finished’ he reaches out to God, implores Him bitterly – ‘Thou beauteous god!
imperial monarch! Love! / that holdest in thy hand the lives of men, / why dost
thou show thy fair face from above, / and, having toyed with us, draw back
again?’ The poet goes on to say finally: ‘Finished! finished! the love, the
life, the day!’ the melancholy devotion does not cease and we find him writing
in ‘The Exile’ – ‘yea, dear one, morning, noon, and night, / I think, and weep,
and pray for thee, / and through my tears my one delight / is born of thy dear
memory. / My life with thine is past o’er, / we can but weep for evermore!’ Of
course there are some fine poems of heartbreak here: ‘Ten Years Ago’, ‘Two
Roses and a Lily’, ‘Have You No Word?’, ‘Forget You?’, ‘O My Dear One!’, ‘I
Love You!’ and ‘Remember Me!’ well he is hardly likely to forget you after the
continuous pestering and adulation you throw upon the poor lad in the grave, if
indeed he does rest in the grave? And so we come to the end of the book after
just over one-hundred wrist-cutting pages of love’s bleak torment and the final
poem ‘Forsaken’ in which Somerset
must accept the stark reality of death and the final parting: ‘Ah! now, a
blight on all the roses, / Death to the dream of a life divine! - / so must it
be, since thus you wish it, / so must it be, I know, for aye - / and this my
answer – O God bless you! - / love, loved so dearly, Good-bye! Good-bye!’ When Oscar Wilde reviewed the book he said that it 'has nothing to say and he says it', which is a fine observation but perhaps a little harsh, Lord Somerset is no poet but for sheer audacity he rightly deserves some applause.
Desiderium
MCMXV-MCMXVIII – by Norman Davey.
Norman Davey
(1888-1948) was an engineer who attended Clare College,
Cambridge from
1907-10 and served as a soldier in the Great War with the Royal Engineers; he
wrote several novels, his most popular being ‘The Pilgrim of Smile’ (1921).
This volume of poems was published in 1920 and it is divided into three books.
Davey proves himself a fine poet and in Book One (my particular favourite book
of the three) we find the poem ‘A Word in Fealty’ in which the author writes
with almost Betjeman-like clarity and humour – ‘when first I had seen you and
claimed you / for worship under the sun, / Wendy and Peter I named you; / boy
and girl in one’ and later on we find: ‘dearest in dual gender, / Wendy and
Peter Pan’. In the poem ‘The House’ there is an almost menacing foreboding –
‘safe in its wattled home, the timorous hare / quaking at unknown sounds and
sudden sway / of grasses in the still, untroubled air, / not at your footsteps
rose and ran away’, and again in the same poem: ‘sometimes on summer nights you
stole away / into the quiet dark, gracious and cool, / and on the cliff-edge,
gazing downward, lay / counting the stars drowned in St. Swithin’s Pool’. Davey
can be sharp and cruel as we find here in the poem ‘A Quarrel’ when he refers
to a girl as ‘still in her teens: a black-haired chit; / what is it that you
see in it? / I met her once; a prig, a scold; / in years too young: in mind too
old’ and the insults fly thick and fast when he goes on to say that ‘her mouth
is large: her hair is thin: / she has no colour in her skin.’ and ends with the
simple plea: ‘take me and kiss me, face to face; / so that to show our troth is
riven / I can return your kisses given.’ His poems can be whimsical and even
harsh in their observations and in Book Two he relates in poetic form his
travelling in Tuscany with his friend Jack and Book Three concludes with his
six ‘Sonnets out of Sequence’ which are satisfactory as sonnets go but not
stupendously brilliant. An enjoyable read indeed – ‘I yet remained disdainful
of your spell - / inept, incurious, and infidel.’ [‘A Word of Farewell’]
Oxford Verses – Edited by Rosslyn Bruce.
Rosslyn Bruce
(1871-1956), a clergyman of Worcester
College has sought to
perform a miracle and attempted the impossible in turning this sow’s ear into a
silk purse; he fails miserably and slips one of his own poetic attempts in for
good measure, as if it could inflate this sinking ship. Not that I would wish
to discredit Mr. Bruce’s ambitious editing of this volume published in 1894 for
it does have the odd glimmer of salvation among the twenty-one poets it
displays with their forty-four poems – there’s that old rascal Lawrence Binyon
(1869-1943) of Trinity College, Oxford whose memorable poem ‘For the Fallen’
has kept bread on his table (and wine in his cellar); M. T. Pigott (1865-1948),
A. Godley (1856-1925), Stanley Addleshaw and Morley Richards… but like a
diamond atop of mud there lay the good Reverend George Gabriel Scott Gillett
(1873-1948) of Westminster School and Keble College, Oxford to lift the
proceedings with his ‘Love Songs’ (he published a volume of verse, ‘A Garden of
Song’ in 1923 which must be worth hunting out!). On the whole a hundred pages
of third-rate disappointment which attempted to prove that ‘poets never die,
but live sublime / in the sweet measure of their deathless rhyme’ (‘Poetic
Immortality’, Lord Rosslyn) but with a few minor exceptions: poor!
Flowers of Passion –
by George Moore.
An air of mystery
surrounds this first volume of verse by the Irish novelist and poet George
Moore (1852-1933) published in 1878 for like all young poets he wished to throw
bile and phlegm upon the waters of his macabre seductions and swagger in sin
like the notorious Baudelaire and Swinburne, well, the thirty poems, twelve of
which are sonnets, and each one like ‘roses that have grown / bitter as
frothing of blood’ (‘Dedication: To L__’) certainly got him noticed! It was
brandished a depraved book for depicting quaint old scenes of rural England and other sweet pastimes –
lesbianism, homosexuality, incest, suicide and necrophilia, challenging the
notion of masculinity and sexuality at a time when such things only went on at
the local vicarage – ‘a darkling void cloaked in a clinging night / unstirred
by any light?’ (‘Ode to a Dead Body’); the same poem goes on ‘poor breasts!
whose nipples sins alone have fed. / Poor desecrated head!’ and further still:
‘I gaze upon thy face now changed in death / in fear and awe-held breath, / and
ponder if this clay-built tenement / be of divine intent’. In one of the twelve
sonnets, ‘The Corpse’, the romance of death continues and one finds the
beautiful ‘bosom rent / is opening rose-like ‘neath the sun’s warm ray’. Of
course all this sexual surrendering plays havoc with one’s constitution and so
we have some light relief in the form of a lovely little poem in four scenes –
‘Ginevra’ which is set like all great love tragedies in Verona; here we find
Antonio telling his friend Orisino about Antonio’s ‘unholy passion’, his sexual
desire for his own sister, Ginevra for they have been lovers for a long time as
brother and sister until their father took Ginevra to the convent. The siblings
have arranged an assignation in the cemetery (scene II) so that they may run
away together. Secretly Orisino is disgusted by this for he loves Ginevra too
and intends to kill his friend Antonio. It all gets very messy and as the
siblings are kissing in Antonio’s chamber, Orisino is outside the door
listening; Ginevra vanishes into thin air for she is the departed spirit of
Antonio’s sister and Orisino rushes in and kills Antonio! And so in a fever of
erotic un-sustainability we are dispelled, or is that discharged? As readers
and go like the lost soul ‘thro’ pathless wastes of heaven unknown / my soul
did wander thus in fear, / seeking the yet unrisen sun, / not knowing whither
side to steer’ [‘Ballad of a Lost Soul’]. It will come as no surprise that
impressed with Mr. Moore’s elegant and disturbing images I went on to read his
next collection ‘Pagan Poems’ of 1881 and found another twenty-six poems (some
from ‘Flowers of Passion’) to titillate and stimulate any novice just as the
corpses in his ‘Ode to a Beggar Girl’ – ‘amused me for a while’; yes there is
the same lascivious intentions and one might even say the poems have a shadow
of Hardy to them, but a young and virile Hardy with lust ever-present in his mind.
Definitely worth reading!
Monographs – by
William Frederick Allen.
The forty-nine poems
produced in this volume from 1919 have an ultra-modern quality about them (I
find many of the American poets from Whitman onwards have this same notion of
progress and looking towards the future) and there are certainly some good,
expressive lines here – ‘on when the pensive daylight dies / he dreams on thee’
(‘Hyacinthus’), ‘we gather up dead dreams as diamond dust / and shape new
dreams, the better for their death!’ (‘Seers of Vision’), ‘his look fends
thought from my speech, / why show him pomegranates he never can reach?’ (‘The
Stoker’). The initial admiration (he could almost be a ‘New Elizabethan’)
turned much to frustration with Mr. Allen for although there are some quite
mesmerising stanzas – ‘my veins time sluggish to the cast-off dead / who “rest
eternal – light perpetual keep” - / mere deadwood, hush of summer fire and
green?’ (‘Bewilderment’) he does insist on littering his verse with ‘God’ and
‘Christ’ and by the end of the book I was as sick of ‘God’ and ‘Christ’ as it
is possible to be! However, the author did publish a book of sonnets in 1911
‘In Sonnet Wise’ under the name Fred Raphael Allen which may be worth a look as
soon as I get the foul taste of the God-Christ from my mouth!
A Portrait of a
Generation – by Robert McAlmon.
This 1926 publication
at around one-hundred pages contains the author’s piece ‘The Revolving Mirror’
and sections of the book are divided into ‘Fragments and Miscellany’, ‘Jewels,
Vegetables and Fish’ and ‘Contemporary Irritations and Didactics’. I know very
little about the American author Robert McAlmon (1896-1956) but the book has
some rather lovely and witty works which seem conversational and gossipy yet
abstract. In ‘Romance I’ we find an Italian labourer working in a quarry who is
hit by a stone and injured. He is taken to hospital where the ‘nurses undressed
that gorilla of a man. / They got a shock. / His body was shaved. / He had on
women’s chemise / with ribbons at his breast. / He had on lady’s silk
stockings. / A surprise that to the nurses, / and they get used to a good
deal.’ He unfortunately died two days later! In ‘Romance IV’ we learn that the
author ‘aint had so much fun / since the day ma caught her tit in the wringer.’
The book is also interspersed with ‘Historical Reminiscence’ – here is part of
one: ‘those great days of blood and lust / when father raped daughter / and son
raped brother, / while all men rushed without breeches / into battle, /
committing buggery and fornication / with great gusto / all whilst on horseback’,
which is almost a perfect description of the English monarchy! pre-Victoria of
course, we’re not savages! Anyway, I went on to read McAlmon’s earlier volume,
‘Explorations’ from 1921 with its four parts: ‘Surf of the Dead Sea’ (‘White
Males’), ‘Air Rhythms’, ‘Prose Sketches’ and ‘From Adolescence to Intelligence’
and came away most perplexed! Quite good!
Witchcraft Today – by
Gerald Gardner.
This is a classic on
the subject from witch and author Gerald Brosseau Gardner (1884-1964) published
in 1954 shortly after the witchcraft laws were repealed in England in 1951.
Most people were unaware that witches still existed let alone practiced the
‘old tradition’ due to the fact that they had to remain secret for fear of
persecution which history shows became a sort of mania in society. Gardner strikes the right
tone in dispelling wrongly accumulated myths and tunes into that interest and
curiosity from a mostly ignorant population who have been force-fed
stereotypical imagery of the old evil hag on the broomstick casting spells and
consorting with demonic spirits. The book with its thirteen chapters (of course
there would be thirteen) goes into great detail on the origins of witchcraft
from the earliest theories from the stone age through to the murderous hatred
of the Church of England and the Puritans. Dr. Gardner (actually a self-assumed
‘Doctor’) delights in telling us that witches were not involved in the Black
Mass with the ‘unfrocked priest’, or at least not to his knowledge which
sometimes falls short of perfect as he does not always seem confident of his
theories but on other matters he is reliably rigid; he states correctly
concerning the difference between the circle in witchcraft and from a
ceremonial ‘ritual’ magic point of view for in witchcraft within the circle the
witch is ‘between worlds’ and the circle keeps the power inside the circle,
preventing dissipation; from the ceremonial or ‘diabolic’ aspect, the circle,
with its names of protection, keeps the harmful spirits outside and the
magician cannot leave the circle’s circumference as opposed to witchcraft where
the witch can move freely in and out of the circle. Gardner drools over the fact that witches
perform their craft naked, for ‘being realists’ they ‘have few inhibitions and
if they want to produce certain effects they do so in the most simple way.’ (Chapter
1: ‘Living Witchcraft’). The great-wanded one goes on to describe the ‘Myth of
the Great Mother’ and the ‘Horned God of hunting’ stressing that the woman (not
the old hag of fiction and misrepresentation, but a beautiful maiden) as a
representative of the Goddess is always dominant in the cult. That old
murdering tyrant in cahoots with the Church of England, Mathew Hopkins,
certainly got his pound of flesh from witch-mania – he was paid a ‘pound a head
for all convictions’, the fact that most if not all of his victims did not
practice witchcraft seemed neither here nor there, under torture, the most
ardent believer in Christ will admit to salacious activities from cavorting
with the Devil to murdering children – such persecution has sadly gone on
within the Church and amongst other faiths for centuries and even in modern day
culture it continues. The ‘mysterious’ Druids and the fact that witches believe
in reincarnation are all very interesting and even his mention of the ‘Little
People’ gets past one’s sentry of credibility but then in Chapter four, ‘Witch
Practices’ he says that ‘the only man I can think of who could have invented
the rites was the late Aleister Crowley’. They had met in 1947. Gardner goes
on: ‘When I met him he was most interested to hear that I was a member, and
said he had been inside when he was very young, but would not say whether he
had rewritten anything or not.’ Here Gardner
is suggesting that Crowley
was a) a member of a witch coven, possibly under Old George Pickingill (as
Doreen Valiente suggested in her book ‘Witchcraft for Tomorrow’ in 1978) and
that b) Crowley
was responsible for writing all or some of the Rites. Nowhere does Crowley
mention being involved in Witchcraft but it is possible that Gardner ‘borrowed’
or had Crowley assist him with certain aspects of the rites, rites of which
Gardner is only too familiar to tell us that he is forbidden to mention – ‘now
I have seen things I’m forbidden to talk about, and quite admittedly I’m
superstitious because of what I have seen of witches’ powers’. Well, perhaps he
has good reason to be cautious for anyone working within occult circles will
know that the power of the craft is very real and although most witches are
forbidden to do harm (although it is well within their power to do so) there is
always the possibility of being drawn to darker aspects, as in any spiritual or
religious society or ‘cult’; I think that old Gardner would be surprised at the
growth of witchcraft and its popularity within the media and film, its
acceptance (almost) with today’s multi-beliefs and practices and that is why
Witchcraft Today is still relevant today and tomorrow! Excellent!
The Happy Wanderer and
Other Poems – by Percy Hemingway.
Percy Hemingway is the
pseudonym of that well-travelled barrister and writer of Christ Church,
Oxford, William
Percy Addleshaw (1866-1916) who published a book of short stories ‘Out of Egypt’
in 1894 and not to mention a biography of Sir Philip Sidney. There are some
fine pieces in the volume like his ‘In Memoriam Roden Noel (obit May 26th
1894)’ – ‘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.’
Addleshaw was a friend of the poet Roden Berkeley Wriothesley Noel (1834-1894)
the 3rd son of the Earl of Gainsborough who attended Harrow and
Trinity College, Cambridge – Noel abandoned Holy Orders and became a poet, some
would say he made a wrong decision, but nevertheless a poet he became and
Addleshaw wrote the biographical and critical preface to Noel’s ‘Selected
Poems’ of 1897 which I though wise to read before plunging into ‘The Happy
Wanderer’ – Addleshaw takes thirty-two and a half pages to lament over his
friend and what he says is actually infinitely better than the thirty-nine dire
poems of Noel within the book! Anyway,
‘The Happy Wanderer’, (what makes him happy?) has over forty poems and
twenty-three quatrains to contend with which are like drinking a cheap burgundy
and feeling a little cheated, but we can forgive Addleshaw and sip freely as
when he heard about his friend John Addington Symonds’ death he was startled
‘when a harsh voice proclaimed that you were dead’; it seems his friends are
dropping like flies upon a windowsill! Another good poem is ‘This Summer Night’
and ‘The Tyrant’ – ‘madman am I, who give my vote for death, / yet heed not the
grim hand that beckoneth.’ And of course what self-respecting volume of poetry
would not be complete without a sweet dish of ‘Eros and Psyche’? – ‘LOVE did not
leave his bride long destitute, / but hastened back to kiss away her pain; /
and yet man’s soul knows no such happy fate, / whose joys once fled will not
return again.’ How true!
Interflow: Poems,
Chiefly Lyrical – by Geoffrey Faber.
Geoffrey Cust Faber
(1889-1961) is of course a founding editor of the renowned ‘Faber and Faber’ publishing
company who was educated at Rugby School and Christ Church, Oxford and this 1915
publication contains 78 of his poems. There are some fine, if rather
unmemorable pieces here, songs of love and war poems all very lyrical and
sensual and a rather nice poem on the death of Rupert Brooke which ends with
the bitterness of finality – ‘how Glory might have winged his name / with now
unspoken words, words ever unspoken!’ Faber is also the author of ‘Oxford
Apostles’ (1933) which surely must be added to one’s reading list! Very good!
The Green Window – by
Vincent O’Sullivan.
Vincent O’Sullivan
(1868-1940) was an American writer of short stories, poetry and criticisms in
the decadent style; a friend of Oscar Wilde and he calls this volume ‘The Green
Window’ published in 1899 a ‘book of monologues’ which reveals his intention
for them to be read aloud. The book is divided into 25 prose sketches which are
observational and philosophical in turn and somewhat strangely titled, such as
‘Sob’, ‘White’, ‘Crave’ and ‘Rush’; the latter has this to say: ‘it is a good
point of wisdom to arrange your plans in tranquillity so that when the time
comes for quick action you may appear to your opponents indolent and trifling.’
(p. 55-56) In ‘Owe’ O’Sullivan delivers a logical examination of the parent’s
expectations of the child, and in ‘Was’ there is a look at ‘death and sleep’. I
felt there was a feminine quality to the author’s style of writing which for me
seemed to drift between the macabre nature of Algernon Blackwood and the
intensely claustrophobic interior monologues of Katherine Mansfield. Quite delightful!
The Rebirth of
Witchcraft – by Doreen Valiente.
I absolutely love
Valiente’s style of writing since first reading her book ‘Witchcraft for
Tomorrow’ (1978) and ‘The Rebirth of Witchcraft’ published in 1989 ( I read a
2007 edition) is a perfect introduction to the ‘old craft of the wise’ –
witchcraft. Before my own interest and involvement in ceremonial magic I felt a
natural inclination towards witchcraft and to this day it seems a perfectly
sensible expression of one’s spiritual essence and unlike the passive
devotional sublimation of Christianity, witchcraft actually works! In thirteen
chapters Doreen Valiente (1922-1999) pieces together the facts that we already
know of traditional witchcraft and seeks historical confirmation, beginning at
the trial of Helen Duncan in 1944, the last witch trial in England, looking at
the reform of the witchcraft act of 1735 in 1951, stressing that the same year
saw the publication of John Symonds’ biography of Aleister Crowley, ‘The Great
Beast’; these two factors, along with a third: the opening of the Witches’ Mill
at Castletown on the Isle of Man, instigated the ‘Rebirth of Witchcraft’. She
briefly outlines the literary forerunners which helped create interest in the
old religion, such as the folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903) whose
‘Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches’ (1899) is still influential; and
Margaret Alice Murray’s ‘The Witch-Cult in Western Europe’ (1921) and ‘The God
of the Witches’ (1931) along with Robert Graves’ 1946 masterpiece, ‘The White
Goddess’. And so we come to the enigmatic figure of Gerald Gardner and
Valiente’s introduction to the craft in 1952 through an article in a weekly
called ‘Illustrated’, titled – ‘Witchcraft in Britain’ by Allen Andrews which
mentioned the New Forest witch coven and Mr. Cecil Williamson’s Museum of Magic
and Witchcraft on the Isle of Man. Valiente, who was living in Bournemouth with
her husband, had been on a quest for occult knowledge finding Dion Fortune’s
‘The Mystical Qabalah’ which led to Symonds’s ‘The Great Beast’ and thus to
Crowley’s ‘Magick in Theory and Practice’ which she found in the library, how
scandalous! She wrote to Cecil who forwarded her letter to Gerald and the rest
is history as they say and they met in the autumn of 1952 at Christchurch; Gerald had been initiated by
Old Dorothy Clutterbuck in the New Forest and
he in turn initiated Doreen Valiente in 1953. In chapter four she explores the
techniques of working with Gerald and the concept and origin of the Book of
Shadows which he devised before informing us that Gerald had told her that he
met Crowley in 1946 and the Great Beast made Gerald a member of the O.T.O. – sex
plays an important part in most occult societies, as in witchcraft through
ritual flagellation and of course the Great Rite or the ‘Sacred Marriage’.
Valiente found the influence of Crowley
in Gardner’s
Book of Shadows too overwhelming and offered to re-write it herself which she
did. She looks at the origins of the Watchtowers at the cardinal points of the
circle, the four angelic guardians and Gerald’s indiscretions with Fleet Street
as he sought (somewhat naively) publicity through sensational statements (and
absurd lies); eventually following the press attacks the coven split in the
summer of 1957 and a deep trust in Gerald was also broken. Also of interest is
Doreen’s own account from August 1964-May 1966 in chapter 7 ‘A Voice from the
Past’ of her communications with a discarnate spirit of a traditional witch
named John Brakespeare before we become consumed by several figures known
within witchcraft circles such as the powerful witch Robert Cochrane who
attacked the ‘Gardnerian’ witches; a man who was ‘obsessed with the question of
the ritual use of herbal psychedelic drugs.’ (p. 133) Cochrane was definitely
mentally unbalanced and following a suicide threat he eventually carried out
his own destruction. And then there is the paranormal investigator, Leslie
Roberts (1905-1966) who wrote the novels ‘Feathers in the Bed’ and ‘Shepherd
Market’; during a lecture he spoke of a baby sacrifice in Rottingdean and caused
a furore with a Police probe etc. and so we enter the mysterious world of Alex
Sanders whom Valiente never met; he was a publicist and a fantasist and the man
holds no interest for me personally. Before we descend into the ‘Age of
Aquarius’ in chapter 13 there is time to look at feminist witchcraft and material
relating to old George Pickingill of Canewdon who died in 1909 and the possible
connection to Crowley being a short-term member of his coven (along with Crowley’s
friend and fellow magician Allan Bennett); but we are told in various books on
Crowley and from the great man himself that he met Bennett sometime after his
initiation into the Golden Dawn on 18th November 1898 so why would a
man learning the techniques of ceremonial magic suddenly wish to become a
witch? I believe that it was Bennett who had been drawn to witchcraft either
before or during his time in the Golden Dawn and Crowley, in awe of Bennett’s
personality (they later shared a flat and Bennett taught Crowley certain
elements of magic) wished just to be near this great and powerful magician, a
man who impressed Crowley more than any other man! Whatever the truth is it is
entertaining to assume Crowley
entered a coven and was possibly thrown out as ‘undesirable’. We are told of
this infamous ‘photograph’ that is said to exist depicting old George with
Allan Bennett and a young man who looks terribly like Crowley, if so where is
it and why are there no reproductions of it anywhere? Unless Jimmy Page has it
stashed away somewhere in his vast Crowley
collection we are unlikely to know the truth! Doreen Valiente has produced an
absolutely fascinating and well-researched volume on the rebirth of witchcraft
which no doubt has helped many on their journey along the way and will continue
to do so. A marvellous book indeed!
Pyramid – by Lionel
Birch.
A delightful novel
seemingly influenced by Alec Waugh’s ‘The Loom of Youth’ from 1917 so the
reader can anticipate the usual school story scenarios. The author, Jack Ernest
Lionel Birch (1910-1982) draws upon his own school experiences at Shrewsbury where he was a
skilled cricketer and prefect and later at Clare College,
Cambridge where
he attained a First in English. The novel, Birch’s first of two novels, was
published in 1931 and centres upon young Anthony Roreton whom we meet in the
first of its twenty-three chapters, a thirteen year old at Meston House
Preparatory School in High Merringham on the day before his confirmation. The
school is run on a joint Headmastership, Mr. Lanbury and Mr. Strethens and Tony
is called to see the latter on a matter of his intimate relations with a boy
named Philip How, in fact, they are in the habit of kissing each other. The
offence is resolved and promises are made not to do it again, in fact,
following this the boys are separated as Philip will go to school in Hatton and
Tony will go to Tower Hill. Tony is confirmed and a week later goes to the
family home, Burnans Manor, to his mother and father, Francis Roreton, an
English gentleman (later Tony’s Uncle Sir Anthony Roreton dies and Francis
inherits the baronetcy). At the new
school, Tower Hill, where fagging and flogging are the order of the day for and
by the ‘bloods’ and the prefects, missing Philip, Tony goes in search of the
‘one perfect friend’, and so in his search he encounters several handsome young
boys who may fit the bill, such as Roy Merrivale, Ronny Banton and Peter
Sladen, the latter of whom Tony is lost in unrequited love and stalks his every
move, when they finally exchange a few words Tony is in rapture; looking back
with the wisdom of years behind one it all seems rather pathetic but in the
immortal yet alarmingly naïve state of youth it is the very essence of life and
death. He joins the Corps and attends
camp in Yorkshire and befriends a boy named Dick Canning who is infatuated with
Merrivale; Tony secretly writes to Peter Sladen and Sladen’s mother discovers
the letter and there is a fearful wait as to the outcome of this – Sladen’s
father, the Major, writes to the school forwarding the letter which contains a
filthy limerick; Tony denies any untoward behaviour and escapes expulsion.
Peter and Tony become drawn together but is later bored by Tony mooning after
him all the time and breaks the friendship – Tony had worshipped him for two
years! Now Tony and Roy Merrivale become close through their involvement in the
theatre, a play for speech day – Tony arranges a meeting following the play
between Roy and Canning who secretly adores the boy; and so in chapter
twenty-seven Dick Canning waits for Roy Merrivale with Tony watching from afar.
Roy appears
with a boy named Congreve and mocks Canning, cruelly laughing and sneering at
him – distraught, Canning falls to pieces with the shame and is not at School
next term! The author handles the romantic entanglements and secret desires of
the boys well and Canning is almost a sacrificial Christ-like figure tortured
by mental flagellation. Tony becomes Captain of the House and falls in love
with his friend, Ronny Banton’s sister, Helen, they dance and kiss and Tony
makes more of it than he should and she writes to him saying she doesn’t feel
that way about him.
In chapter seven Tony
stays with his Aunt Helen in London and is introduced at cocktail party’s and
meets Comte Reni de Maulois, an interesting decadent character whom Tony later
agrees to stay with in Paris (chapter 15) where they enjoy the theatre, dinner
and luncheon party’s and an air of artificial wickedness in the Bastille
Quarter where men dance with men and girls with girls.
After spending time
with a clergyman name Toppin to whom he swears he will not hunt, on the last
day of the hunting season, Tony’s father gives him a new horse and so in a
dilemma, Tony keeps his word and does not hunt, much to his father’s annoyance.
His father goes on the hunt and is thrown from his horse and killed – Tony is
now Sir Anthony Roreton! Tony becomes the ward of his Uncle, Herbert Roreton
and Tony sums up his relationships: Philip How (perfect), Peter Sladen (pain),
Ronny Banton (inadequate companionship), Helen Banton (a brief mishap) and Roy
Merrivale (most suitable). In the last chapter Tony is at camp and meets Philip
How, his first love and they have a ‘melon-party’ with Roy, Ronny and Peter; on
the last night of camp Tony expects Roy Merrivale to join him in his tent but Roy
with the same cruel satisfaction that destroyed Dick Canning says when asked –
‘probably not at all’ and shatters Tony’s heart in two. The next day Tony says
goodbye to Roy
and a ‘considerable part of his being had died in the night; and for that part there
would be no resurrection.’ (p. 306) Another interesting character in the book
is Tony’s tutor, Mr. George Kitson who in chapter four sets the class an essay
and Tony’s choice is ‘friendship’. Kitson invites Tony to tea to discuss his
essay and we find they are of the same mind. We later find that Kitson and
Helen Banton become close and it is assumed he will ask her to marry him but he
cannot go through with it, as he says in chapter 21 – ‘you see I could never
have really surrendered myself.’ In the following chapter Kitson says to Tony:
‘think of your experience as being the four sides of a pyramid. You have scaled
the pyramid from each of the four sides. Each ascent has led you to the same
place – the apex.’ (p. 289) Yes the book is a little rambling in places and
there are some tedious, long-winded passages concerning cricket and other such
sports but Birch gets deeply below the surface of his characters to reveal
their failings and their passions and no matter what the form of love which
flows from us the awkward moments are the same and linger in the memory, the
ghastly torments of unrequited love to which we all have suffered at some time
are the wounds that never truly heal and accumulate into the sum of what we are
– searching for the ‘one true and perfect friend’. Birch went on to write his
next novel ‘The System’ published in 1932 before becoming active in politics
and served in the Royal Artillery during the war. Worth searching out is his
slim volume of poems published in 1929 while a student at Cambridge, ‘Between Sunset and Dawn’.
Nocturnes and
Pastorals: A Book of Verse – by A. Bernard Miall.
Arthur Bernard Miall
(1876-1953) was a British translator and a seen as a decadent and this, his
first book of poetry published in 1896 is divided into four sections: Nocturnes
(13 poems), Pastorals (11 poems), A Ballad and Other Poems (15 poems) and
Sonnets (17 poems). The volume is gorged upon romantic pastorals and Miall
writes well but I found it all quite tedious and dull, I mean, all those limp and
pale swooning young Burne-Jones and Rossetti women like flower stems in vases
without water, wilting everywhere… when he is not obsessed by unapproachable
maidens he writes quite well or at least passably so – ‘but he, the sun – ah,
too bold lover, / who kisses her all over / and never prays for kisses, / he
knows not what he misses!’ Ah, we cannot escape his kisses I fear nor his
fascination or fixation upon sensual body parts which coyly touch. I suppose if
he had a fetish upon cabbages his verse would be filled with brassicas? His
sonnets are fair and three years later appeared another book of poems called,
er, ‘Poems’ which no doubt has the same subdued virginal content.
Firechild: The Life
and Magic of Maxine Sanders ‘Witch Queen’.
This fascinating
autobiography published in 2008 is masterfully written and there is a real
sense of honest revelation from Maxine, who was conceived on Bournemouth Beach
‘under a full moon’ in 1946 and we learn that her life had the most unfortunate
of beginnings suffering at the hands of her violent, atheist father Victor –
‘from the age of six, I was beaten, tied up, sexually abused and locked in dark
places.’ (p. 18) She kept silent of course as she did not wish to hurt her
Catholic mother Doris and escaped reality by conversing with the ‘fire mice’ as
she called the salamanders in the flames and taking refuge in ‘out-of-body’
experiences. Maxine Morris was born 30th December1946 in Cheshire and has a deep
fascination for fire, even crawling into the flames as if transfixed by them
and suffering burns. Her mother is interested in the psychic world, especially
astrology (she befriends Alex Sanders, a spiritual healer in the local
Spiritualist Church little knowing Maxine would marry him twenty years later)
and Maxine who dislikes people and has an affinity with the natural world
develops her own psychic awareness before she is sent to a Roman Catholic
Convent School where she is absorbed by ritual and astral projection; in fact,
Maxine is so good at ‘leaving her body’ that her mother asks her to spy on her
father, in fact, aged ten Maxine sees her father’s workplace on fire – ‘several
people died in those flames; I was disappointed that he had not been one of
them.’ (p. 21) She develops her occult ability and is ‘opened’ when she is
thirteen as a member of a Subud spiritual group, undertaking two years
spiritual training in 1960 by a man named John Bennett at Coomb Springs,
Kingston-Upon-Thames – ‘there were a few odd characters who were permanent
residents. One chap would go mad at the full moon. He would take an axe and
chop at anything in front of him. I learned to avoid him. Then there were the
‘full moon nudies’ who insisted on walking the grounds stark naked even in the
middle of winter.’ (p. 26) Bennett teaches her about Gurdjieff’s movements and
meditation. When she is fifteen she becomes enthralled by ancient Egyptian
mysteries through a woman named Pat, a distant relative of Howard Carter of
‘King Tut’ fame and is driven to a cave in the Cheshire countryside for a
frightening initiation ceremony which she completes; spiritually we see Maxine
as a very strong adolescent yet at this time she also contemplates suicide
quite often and the fear of being left in an asylum if she exposes her father’s
abuse keeps her silent on this. At fourteen she leaves school and becomes a
sales assistant and one day her father is particularly abusive to her and she
stands her ground against him and wishes him dead; they are the last words she
says to him for ‘he dropped dead in the elevator of the Grand Hotel the next
day.’ (p. 38) And so the middle aged Alex Sanders comes back into their lives
once more and Maxine, finding him quite ordinary and not the ‘witch’ she
assumed he would be begins to fall in love with him and becomes involved in
witchcraft – she takes part first of all in a ‘hair-restoring spell’ in the
garden and there is the funny escapade of the King Edward potato being buried
in a spell to gain finances (they have to retrieve it quick so that Maxine’s
mother doesn’t die and Maxine in turn receive £3000 life insurance payment) –
it turns out ‘bald Susan’ who took part in the hair-restoring ritual did indeed
grow hair again!
Maxine leaves Manchester and moves to London to work as a nanny
but soon quits and then is initiated by Alex and has to undertake 28 days of
preparation including fasting and purification. In the ceremony she is naked,
bound and blindfolded and Alex as High Priest scourges her forty times and she receives
her witch name Veda; in turn she scourges Alex one-hundred and twenty times,
three times her allotted strokes. Maxine develops her psychic self-protection
and strengthens her evocational skills before suddenly being elevated into the
public’s attention through the press which during the summer solstice ritual of
1965 photographed Maxine and the coven members nude at Alderley Edge in
Cheshire; in headlines such as ‘Ex- Convent Girl in Witchcraft Rites!’ she soon
became hounded by the press and public alike: she is evicted and has to return
home; her mother had a Catholic priest and two large ‘altar boys’ exorcise her
against her will and she is also interrogated by the Police one of whom later
tries to rape her in his car, returning home torn and bleeding her mother on
seeing her just went to bed, saying goodnight – it was the end of the
mother/daughter relationship. After her mother’s death Maxine is shunned at the
funeral by relatives and living in her mother’s house the neighbours become
very aggressive, throwing stones at her in the street and trying to burn her
out of the house – the front and back door have bonfires lit against them,
luckily the French windows were not alight and she escaped – the next night
they burnt the garden shed down! She sells the house and moves into an old
Victorian property with mice for company and it is here that she creates an
Elemental humorously in the form of the Home Pride flour man, which duly
appeared but quickly multiplied; Alex was angry and told her to banish them
which was difficult and near impossible! Alex had to step in to get rid of
them. He also later banished all the mice! Through the coven’s notoriety and
Alex’s shameless seeking of publicity they work on a film for MGM Studios in
1965, ‘Eye of the Devil’ starring Sharon Tate and David Niven, (Alex apparently
initiated Tate into the Craft on set) and having exhausted Alderley Edge for
ritual work due to prying eyes wanting to see the witches, they re-locate their
ceremonies to Saddleworth Moor which is unfortunate as Myra Hindley and Ian
Brady have been using it for quite a different purpose and are arrested for the
abduction and murder of children – of course Alex and Maxine get roped in by
the Police and are questioned (they were forced to listed to the recordings the
murderers’ made while torturing a child!) But there is a happy ending as Maxine
and Alex are joined together in the witch way of a ‘handfasting’ before Alex
becomes the ‘chosen one’ of the Council of Elders who require him to be the
‘King of the Witches’ something Alex initially refuses, three times in fact,
before accepting and being crowned. We also learn that Alex is in fact bisexual
and has a lover named Paul and there is some debacle concerning a ‘moon child’,
a baby born influenced by the moon – Maxine becomes pregnant and takes a
‘potion’ to be rid of it, however she has a baby girl named Maya and four
months later Maxine and Alex marry on 1st May 1968 at Kensington
Registry Office – the Kray twins turn up at their home and a gun is found! It
all sounds like some sensational novel, but Ronnie Kray sends flowers by way of
an apology! Next we hear about the ‘Process Movement’ who have interests in
Aleister Crowley and want to borrow one of Alex’s Crowley manuscripts; Alex agrees and
fires-off the manuscript to the States. At a lecture Maxine is giving in Alex’s
stead, she meets the young magician and writer Gerald Suster, a great Crowley enthusiast and
they become firm friends. The Crowley manuscript is returned from California
defaced with scrawls of ‘kill the pigs’ – in August 1969 Sharon Tate and her
three house guests were murdered and ‘kill the pigs’ was daubed on the walls in
Tate’s blood and so there is a tentative link to the ‘Manson Murders’ as well
as the ‘Moor’s Murders’! There follows ritual performances, she meets the
writer Denis Wheatley and is ‘kidnapped’ in Ireland and taken to woodland where
she must prove her right to be the ‘Witch Queen’ (she retires from this role in
1972 when she is twenty-six and no longer nubile enough for the position). In
the same year Alex and Maxine separate when Maxine refuses to let Alex’s lover
John live with them. And so we come to the latter years and the ‘Temple of the Mother’ and
Alex’s ill-health in 1980 – by 1986 he was fully aware of the cancer and died
on the witchcraft festival of Beltane, 30th April 1988. Three years previous to this
Maxine herself was diagnosed with breast cancer and has some bizarre treatments
but all in all the book has revealed an exceptionally brave and steadfast soul
whose endurances and sufferings have been overcome by her balanced spiritual
progress; her subtle manner in which she works as opposed to Alex’s brash and
loud flourishes of magic is one that has appealed to many now involved in the
craft who have come to its ways through Maxine for as she says and closes the book:
‘I am a witch learning to listen, once again to my inner voice, waiting in
joyful anticipation for the next adventure, and trusting in the magic as the
child who once communed with fire mice.’ (p. 303) With 33 illustrations over
its 24 chapters, ‘Firechild’ has been a splendid journey and no doubt shall
become a classic literary monument in the witchcraft oeuvre. Beautiful!
A Chaplet of Love
Poems – by Ethel Maud De Fonblanque.
Ethel Maud De Grenier
Fonblanque was born in Brighton in 1858; she was
a friend of those genteel gargoyles, the Sitwells and she married Arthur
Cornwell Chester-Master and later married Arthur Harter before gracefully dying
in Sunnydale in 1942. A Chaplet of Love Poems was published in 1899 (I read the
second edition from 1903) and there are some fine verses here – ‘Lent Love’,
‘Now you are mine’ and ‘Fidelity’ which has a bitter taste about it:
I long have ceased to
love you. – yet I feel
In your mere presence
shaken to the soul
With all the torments
of uncertainty,
Fearing my heart still
held in your control.
To prove I do not love
you, I have taught
My lips to frame for
you a careless speech;
My eyes can calmly
meet your calm regard,
And I have learnt what
lessons pride can teach.
All that I can do, to
brave the thrall
In which you captive
held my heart and will;
When you are far I
dream that I am free,
But when anear I know
I love you still!
There are also some
rather good translations, thirteen in fact, from the Italian, German and French
and poems of tragic sensuality which Fonblanque (Mrs. Harter) pours upon both
sexes and her children alike – ‘My heart has slept’, ‘Beyond Recall’, ‘I wish
that you were Dead’ and ‘Come Near’: ‘I thirst for thee, as thirst the severed
lips / of some poor soul who faints in life’s eclipse; / come near, and lay thy
sweetest mouth on mine / and straightway thirst is quenched by love like wine.’
Early poems are more than satisfactory – ‘An Altered Heart’, ‘Her Grave’ and
‘Oblivion’ abound with the light feminine touch of a true poet which often goes
unrecognised and the volume is definitely worth more than a casual glance.
Good!
Out of Egypt: Stories
from the Threshold of the East – by Percy Hemingway.
Percy Hemingway is the
pen-name of William Percy Addleshaw (1866-1916) and this rewarding collection
of stories was published in 1895. Part I, ‘Gregorio’ is the tale of a Greek man
named Gregorio Livadas living in a street full of prostitutes in Alexandria with his wife
Xantippe and young son. Gregorio is very poor and owes money to a Jewish
money-lender named Amos who suggests he put his beautiful wife on the street. Gregorio
is furious at this and goes in search of work without any luck. They all suffer
from lack of food and come to the grim conclusion that Xantippe must sell her
body which she reluctantly does. Wanting his money, Amos takes their furniture
away and tells Gregorio he will forget the debt owing him if he is given
Gregorio’s son to bring up as his own. Gregorio refuses and Xantippe, realising
that her husband has fallen short in his duties as a husband and a father
begins to hate him; Gregorio sits in café’s all day talking to Madam Marx and
kissing her while Xantippe is degrading herself on the street. One day Gregorio
returns home to find his son is missing and he has a stroke (Madam Marx who is
strangely in love with him takes care of him). Gregorio plots to confront Amos
and ask for his son back and so with his friend Ahmed and two companions they
go to the house of the Jew. When Amos denies that he has the boy Gregorio stabs
him to death and Ahmed and his companions rampage through the house killing every
man and woman servant in the house. When he returns home he finds his wife
packing to leave him; she has fallen in love with a wealthy English client and
tells Gregorio she has put the boy in a safe place – Gregorio stabs her in the
heart and with the police after him hides out in the desert to grow a beard.
Without water he dies in the desert and Madam Marx finding his body buries it –
the tale paints a sordid picture of the poor in Alexandria and the only winner is the boy who
will be brought up a wealthy son to the rich English man returning to England. In
Part II, ‘The Egyptians’, dedicated to the memory of John Addington Symonds,
the author writes well, giving his observations upon the Arab world and its
people and customs; the travelling protagonist eventually returns home years
later to England only to find his wife changed by age and not what he expected;
he rides off in his fury and astonishment but does return and ‘with eager feet
he strode up the path.
The lights in the
cottage were extinguished.
But the stars still
shone.’
The Word of Teregor –
by Guy Ridley.
Cecil Guy Ridley
(1885-1947), an English barrister who attended Harrow
and New College, Oxford published this early British fantasy
novel in 1914. The nine chapters reveal the history of the Forest
where the great oak King Teregor once reigned over all things and now the place
of his death is still known as the Mound of Teregor. The trees in the Forest who are sentient become distrustful of man after
he hurls a stone at the leveret; man rebels against the Forest
and plants pine-trees from the Northern
Land. In the first
chapter we discover how sound came to the Forest when the birds began to sing
and the songs of the blackbird, nightingale and the skylark all fought for
supremacy; we also hear how Anith the young Ash tree enticed the Fair Ivy upon
her to wear its beauty all winter only to find it destroys the tree and how Mit
the Terrible ruled after Teregor in the days when the Pine trees were
introduced and how Forgar rules the Forest now. I love stories about trees ever
since I was spellbound by Algernon Blackwood’s tale ‘The Man whom the Trees
Loved’ and if you like Tolkien you will probably find something of interest
here too!
The Intersexes: A
History of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life – by Xavier Mayne.
Xavier Mayne is of
course the pseudonym for the strangely named American writer and journalist Edward
Iranaeous Prime-Stevenson (1858-1942) and this massive tome at over 600 pages
published in 1910 explores through thirteen chapters the psychological facts
concerning the ‘Intersexes’, the social, moral and legal standpoints. The
author looks at the theory and reality of male and female human nature in
comparison with the intersexes arriving at a ‘normal’ male type and notions of
masculinity; the effeminate male is non-virile; the predisposition of sexual
unity and the masculine female – Mayne gives examples of strong women in
history, mental and physical before outlining the same principles in nature. In
this third sex, the intersex, the male is generally termed the ‘urning’ or
‘uranian’ while the female is the ‘uraniad’, the feminine sexually
masculinised. Chapter three ‘Alterosexual Love and Friendship: Similisexual
love and Friendship’ explains the possession and surrender of the physical and
the psychical (love); the physical is friendship (platonic) and the duality is
Love (also Desire) which is all very interesting and then we delve into the
world of intolerance to such love, the religious standpoint and the Christian question
of ethics – what is the male uranian attitude to women and how has this evolved
through various ancient cultures such as Greece? We look at various historical
personages (Shakespeare, Byron, Marlowe, Milton, Smollett, Walpole, Pope,
Wilde, Tennyson, Richard Burton and Walt Whitman etc.) and their
characteristics (and the need for concealment) before we are given dozens of
examples of biographical cases to study (uranian and uraniad); the perception
of the intersexes as degenerates and criminals and the relation to ‘marriage’
etc. but for me I found the most fascinating part of the book chapter thirteen
which sheds light upon August von Platen (1796-1835) – the ‘Life and Diary of a
Uranian Poet’ which gives exerts from his diary showing the depth of his
youthful adorations and suicidal thoughts; his depression, lust and sexual
desire. Published just over a century ago it is hard to believe that such
individuals were persecuted for their beliefs and their sexuality, we have come
a long way in accepting what essentially is a natural state for the human sex
instinct – the freedom to love and express that love in accordance with our
sexual belief; there will always exist moral and ethical restrictions in some
form or another and the future notions of ‘gender’ seem difficult to grasp for
now. Humanity is moving in unfathomable directions! With four Appendixes this
really is a comprehensive early study of ‘similisexuality’ and the author
proves himself to be a worthy writer on the subject. Good!
The God of the Witches
– by Margaret Alice Murray.
Margaret Alice Murray
(1863-1963) the Egyptologist, anthropologist, historian and fellow of
University College, London published this hotch-potch of mumbo-jumbo in 1931
and feigning some sort of authority on the subject delights on informing us of
the Horned God and how it came into being; the horned deity can be found
throughout ancient civilisations such as Egypt. The transformation of the
‘Horned God’ evolves into the concept of the Devil – ‘
in the thirteenth century
the Church opened its long drawn-out conflict with Paganism in Europe by
declaring “witchcraft” to be a “sect” and heretical.’ (Introduction. p. 11); and
just what is the significance of the sacred dance? Now I am no defender of the
Church and have always opposed the propaganda it spreads in the name of
Christian love while behind closed doors it is the most corrupt and vile of
organisations practising the most evil things imaginable; hypocritical and
complicit in war and its atrocities – the Church is merely a “sect” and
heretical so the author is not far from the truth there and she picks fairly
discriminately through various 16
th and 17
th century
witch trials to bolster some of her theories before moving on to the connection
between witches and fairies, or the Little People.
Murray really gets into her stride with
explaining the roles of worshippers – ‘
the number in a coven never varied,
there were always thirteen, i.e. twelve members and the god.’ (p. 64) and the
Priesthood; the Esbat and the importance of the ‘garter’; the feeding of the
familiar spirits, the broom and flying ointment… for some reason Murray seems
to assume that all witches are connected to devil worship and thus all the
ceremonies and rites are dark and distasteful – ‘
the Devils do not make express
paction with the children vowed to them until they reach the age of puberty.’
(p. 99) In fact, she is but a short breath away from saying that all witchcraft
is nothing but sodomy, Satan and sacrifice, which is surely what she believes. She
falls prey to the evidence given in the witch trials which we must remember was
given under extreme torture and is therefore unreliable; she brings forth the
sacrifice as if it is an everyday occurrence and all those orgies which one
simply had to attend. All in all Murray jumps to conclusions concerning
witchcraft and its association with devil worship without fully integrating the
evidence from the witch trials; she assumes witchcraft to have been more established,
organised and prolific during the early Christian period than it actually was.
Readers will notice how she draws upon J. G. Fraser’s ‘The Golden Bough’,
another fascinating if not altogether accurate volume, even adopting his tone,
which like ‘The God of the Witches’ has been discredited and is unreliable.
Having said that, this is a perfectly enjoyable read and those in search of
further comedy can read her 1921 publication, ‘The Witch Cult in
Western Europe’.
Gallica and Other
Essays – by James Henry Hallard.
James Henry Hallard, a
lecturer on French in the University of Liverpool is mostly known for his
excellent translation – ‘The Idylls of Theocritus’ published in 1894 and he
proudly displays himself , no doubt after some success, as the ‘translator of
Theocritus’ on this, his next book ‘Gallica and Other Essays’ the following
year (1895). This 160 page volume is dedicated to the poet Matthew Arnold whom
Hallard respects highly and a large proportion of the essays concern French
literature. In ‘Gallica’ Hallard puts forward his theories and preferences for
learning French, stating that the study of Greek is fading from University
education and should be replaced by French! He eloquently puts forth his
argument for French language through its literature, science, psychology and
its poetry which unlike English is not as easily adaptable and needs an
intimate knowledge to understand. Hallard prefers the intricacies of the French
tongue over the English to replace Greek as it is an intellectual and logical
language; in fact, one begins to believe this has become somewhat of a minor
obsession, even a mania for Hallard and in private he secretly assumes a French
persona and delights himself thoroughly with his clever French linguistic
skills perhaps while performing some sacred sexual rite to the complexities of
the garlic bulb! And so he dribbles his way through the world of literature and
the stage to make comparisons and bolster his ridiculous theory – ‘the French
mind is in some ways a more serious mind than ours.’ (p. 12) He dashes through
some of the French literary lights such as the dramatist Pierre Corneille born
1606, Racine
and the fall of his popularity (Hallard saunters through Racine’s drama and looks at the influence of
Greek classical drama), the poet Alfred De Musset and Paul Bourget. Yes French
is a beautiful and romantic language but can it really replace Greek? That is
surely for the reader to decide but Mr. Hallard has already made up his mind.
And so we turn away from the French and to his ‘other essays’ which for me
holds the jewel in the rather shoddy crown – ‘The Poetry of Keats’. Rarely does
a poet, especially of the English variety, have a bad word to say about Keats
and Hallard is no exception for he gushes with great satisfaction over the
beautiful poet and everything is ‘lovely’ with lots of ‘loveliness’ about it –
‘he penetrates deeper into the mysterious loveliness of flowers than any poet
either before or since. He seems to live with their life and rejoice in it.’
(p. 120) Well, who can argue with that? He seems to suggest an almost
‘spiritual projection’ into the world around him, into the ‘portion of the
loveliness of nature, and, rose-like, mingled with the roses.’ Keats had a
natural sympathy with nature (many poets do) but not nature in relation to man
as one finds in that old duffer Wordsworth, but as Hallard puts it ‘simply and
solely in the light of its own loveliness.’ Hallard quotes extensively from the
‘Hymn to Pan’ (Endymion), shows the celtic influence of ‘La Belle Dame sans
Merci’ and looks at the criticism of the day before calling ‘Lamia’ – ‘perfect’
and ‘Hyperion’ the ‘greatest’ and ‘grandest’ of his works, saying that only
Aeschylus can match him in lyricism. Hallard next looks at the ‘Poetry of
Swinburne’ to which we all know produced a provocative and fiery output in his
youth (‘Poems and Ballads’) before descending into the dull dreamy drivel of
political and social nonsense – Swinburne ‘loved the sea’ the author tells us,
unlike Keats who ‘loved land and was alien to the sea.’ (p. 140) Hallard ends
his volume with ‘The Autobiography of Solomon Maimon’ an 18th
century Polish Jew and so we say ‘au revoir’ to Mr. Hallard and leave him with
his French fantasies and Gallic dreams!
A Hasty Bunch – by
Robert McAlmon.
This is an outstanding
collection of around two dozen short stories by the American author Robert
McAlmon (1896-1956) which was privately published in Paris in 1922. The stories are handled with
superb skill and are modern, frank episodes from life in the manner of James
Joyce; the characters are intense and sometimes brooding manifestations;
outsiders, passionate, with frustrated tensions and sexual desire. In
‘Obsequies for the Dead’ a macabre fit of the giggles breaks out at a funeral;
in ‘Elsie’ we find an orphan girl who fakes a burglary and hides the
silverware, tying herself up only to look good in the eyes of the Wilsons to
whom she has been placed. In ‘Filling the Pulpit’ there is gossip and snobbery
concerning the Rev. Woolan and his wife as social inferiors. There are stories
about an artist interested in spiritualism (‘From Maine’), a young woman in
Montparnasse named Dania who is flirtatious yet afraid of life and experience
(‘The Psychoanalyzed Girl’), two sisters frozen in death (‘Snow’), the
plain-speaking ‘Abrupt Decision’ which slips in a reference to masturbation and
the ‘dangers of jacking-off’ before ascending quite beautifully to the story of
a loveless marriage in which the husband goes off with other women and the
wife, a mother of two, comes to her senses; the wife (Mrs. Stoddard) is found
upstairs having taken her own life with a razor. In the delightful ‘A Boy’s
Discovery’ all that sexual tension and mystery rears its head and we find Harry
Wright, a delicate boy of nine befriending another delicate boy named Harold
Morris; Harold can handle himself and protects young Harry who is infatuated by
his protector. The two boys discover horses one day, ‘breeding’ and Harold
tells the naive Harry that ‘men and women do that same thing, - only a man’s
thing isn’t quite as big as a stallion’s’. This of course leads them on to
girls showing them their parts and attempts at ‘breeding’ with them in the hay
barn before young Harry tragically dies six months later of lockjaw. The volume
also contains ‘Momentary Essays’ and ‘Creation: A Protoplasmic Farce’ in four
acts. An absolute delight to read!
New and Old: A Volume
of Verse – by John Addington Symonds.
Published in 1880,
‘New and Old’ is a fine collection of poetry from John Addington Symonds
(1840-93), a writer who is drawn to the Hellenism of the Renaissance and whose
every work is coloured by his admiration for male beauty and intense devotion
to the idea of Platonic love – ‘Into my room he seemed to glide;…/ He kissed my
lips, he kissed my cheek; / I could not kiss him back nor speak: / I feared the
blissful sleep to break.’ (‘Ich Hor Es Sogar Im Traum’) Love transcends beyond
the physical into the spiritual realm – ‘A pilgrim to your shrine I came; / I
sprinkled myrrh upon the flame - / Myrrh of my spirit, tears and sighs, / With
eloquence of earnest eyes.’ (‘The Rejected Suppliant’) The collection is
divided into sections: ‘Lyrics of Life and Art – part I’, ‘Poems on Greek
Themes’ (‘Hesperus and Hymenaeus’, ‘To Rhodocleia’, ‘At Diocles’ Tomb at
Megara’), ‘The Love-Tale of Odatis and Prince Zariadres’, ‘Sonnets’, ‘Among the
Mountains’, ‘In Italy’, ‘Lyrics of Life and Art – part II’ and ‘The Valley of
Vain Desires’. There are some beautiful lines, especially among the sonnets
such as these from the second sonnet of ‘A Dream’ which ends: ‘Might I not plod
along the road and keep / My recent thoughts from banished Paradise?
/ Might I not glue my face to books, or fast? / Till long oblivion sealed the
erring past? / Oh, it is hard! Prayer, penance, sacrifice / Must slowly wipe
away short sleep’s delight, / And years repair the ruin of a night.’ When one
looks beyond the surface one finds elements of the erotic and the sensual,
something which appeared in his previous collection of 1878, ‘Many Moods’ which
he dedicated to his friend and fellow poet the Hon. Roden Noel and which is
also worth immersing oneself in for he writes like an intoxicated Browning,
delighting and enjoying himself immensely in such poems as ‘The Lotus-Garland
of Antinous’, ‘Sonnets on the Thoughts of Death’ and ‘The Meeting of David and
Jonathon’. I was impressed with both collections which came in at around 250
pages each and found the lyrical beauty of John Addington Symonds rather
superb!
Magpies in Picardy – T. P. Cameron Wilson.
Published by the
Poetry Bookshop in 1919, this astonishing book of poems by the English
schoolmaster and soldier, Theodore Percival Cameron Wilson (1888-1918) shows
considerable promise of greatness to come, yet he was so tragically wasted in
war. There is a touching introduction by Harold Munro in which we learn that T.
P. was born in Devon, the son of the Vicar of Little Eaton in Derbyshire, attended
Oxford but gained no degree, became a teacher at Mount Arlington Preparatory
School, Hindhead, Surrey; published his first novel ‘The Friendly Enemy’ in
1913 (a second novel ‘Bolts from the Blue’ was published posthumously in 1929)
and joined the Grenadier Guards in August 1914 before being commissioned in the
Sherwood Foresters – Captain T. P. Cameron Wilson was killed in France just a
month short of his thirtieth birthday on 23rd March 1918; Munro also
tells us that he was shy and not boastful over his verse, in fact, a fine man
indeed. The book is really in two parts, the war poems of which there are 28
and The Sentimental Schoolmaster, a further 8 poems. But the poems speak for
themselves about the harsh realities of war and the author’s attitude to war
which was sometimes disgust and sometimes a brave humour; here is the first
verse from the opening poem ‘Magpies in Picardy’ – ‘The magpies in Picardy /
are more than I can tell. / They flicker down the dusty roads / and cast a
magic spell / on the men who march through Picardy,
/ through Picardy to hell.’ The poem continues
and the magpie tells the author ‘secret things’ and we learn that the ‘hawk is
cruel and rigid…’ and that the ‘rook is slow and sombre, / the robin loves to
fight.’ A sense of the hell he witnessed runs through the poems – ‘in Delville
Wood / the splintered trees saw hell below’ (‘Song of Amiens’) and here in ‘A
Soldier’ where a shell is ‘moving a destined way, / thin and swift and lustful,
making its moan.’ In the same poem we also find: ‘a moment his brave white body
knew the Spring, / the next, it lay / in a red ruin of blood and guts and
bone.’ And again in ‘France, 1917’ – ‘young flesh, through which life shines a
friendly flame, / was crumbled green in the fingers of decay…’ and later in the
same poem we find: ‘a forgotten boy, who hid as though in shame / a face that
the rats had eaten…’ and later the ‘still land’ is described as a ‘witch who
held her breath’ who ‘with a lidless eye kept watch for death.’ That brave
humour can be seen in the poem ‘During the Bombardment’ where ‘each of us wore
his brave disguise, like a mummer, / hoping that no one saw, when the shells
came over, / the little boy who was funking – somewhere inside!’ T. P. was not
the typical soldier type; he was a sensitive schoolmaster, a poet, and as a
friend Harold Begbie wrote – ‘a glorious man among our glorious dead in France,
a man who loved boys, was loved by boys, and by many was deemed the ideal
schoolmaster.’ (‘Waste Paper Philosophy to which has been added Magpies in Picardy and Other Poems’. Introduction. p. v. Robert
Norwood. 1920) It is therefore no surprise that some sensitive minds would turn
towards their own ruin, perhaps to hide passions and a sense of guilt, even if
tinged with romanticism, as in the poem ‘The Suicide (August Bank Holiday)’: ‘I
will stand up and strip these clothes away - / one real white body shining like
a star / out of the coloured dark of their array - / give myself fiercely to
the sea’s embrace, / sink on her bed nor let my life arise; / feel her salt
lips upon my drowned face.’ Other outstanding poems in the first half of the
collection are: ‘Sportsmen in Paradise’, ‘On Leave’, ‘An Old Boot in a Ditch’,
‘The Mad Owl’, ‘Stanzas Written Outside a Fried-Fish Shop’, ‘Under the Frosty
Stars’, ‘Dear, if your blinded eyes…’, ‘Time’s Fool’ and ‘Captain Oates’.
The eight poems of
‘The Sentimental Schoolmaster’ contrast starkly with the war poems and we find
verse ‘To an exceeding small New Boy’, ‘To the School Radical’ which asks
‘could not the great blunt fingers of the Day / push back the guards that held
your tears in sway, / and yet Night kiss them from their stubborn line, / O
little friend of mine?’ – ‘The Mathematical Master to His Dullest Pupil’, ‘To
His Blackboard’, ‘To a Boy Who Read Poetry for His Pleasure’, ‘To the Football
Captain’ and ‘To a Boy Who Laughed at Him’ but it is the final poem which was
found in his pocket after his death, called ‘Heaven’ which simply says:
‘SUDDENLY one day
The last ill shall
fall away;
The last little
beastliness that is in our blood
Shall drop from us as
the sheath drops from the bud,
And the great spirit
of man shall struggle through,
And spread huge
branches underneath the blue.
In any mirror, be it
bright or dim,
Man will see God
staring back at him.’
In conjunction with
‘Magpies in Picardy’ I also read the earlier quoted ‘Waste Paper Philosophy’
from 1920 with an introduction from the Canadian poet, Robert Winkworth Norwood
(1874-1932) who calls Cameron Wilson a ‘spirit as fine as the spirit of Rupert
Brooke’ (Introduction. p. vi). There are several additional poems in this
collection, some found among his papers from the trenches and unpublished, such
as ‘Battlefield’, ‘Violin’ and ‘The Thrush’ and one to his sister (‘London’);
his sister Marjorie also adds a poem to The Sentimental Schoolmaster called
‘L’Envoi’. But it is from the manuscript found after his death ‘Waste Paper
Philosophy’ which is written as if giving advice to an imagined son that we
learn more about the author, much of which is really quite profound, as can be
seen here: ‘
when you first go into a room make it instantly a shrine, for if
you live there it is well that you live with nothing ugly. And thoughts clothe
an empty room more certainly than wall-paper.’ (xii) And so if I were to
recommend one book only it would be ‘Waste Paper Philosophy’ for it has
everything in ‘Magpies in Picardy’ (minus the Munro introduction) and a further
thirteen poems plus the philosophical piece. Wonderful!
The Friendly Enemy –
by T. P. Cameron Wilson.
This is the first
novel from Theodore Percival Cameron Wilson (1888-1918) published in 1913 and
its twenty-one chapters tell the story of a young boy named William Wilder, the
son of a drunken convict who works on board a trawler named the ‘Grace of God’,
harboured in Brixham, Devonshire; Bill is bored and unhappy with his lot and
returns home to London, to his hovel of a home and his father’s arms, fresh
from prison. In the next chapter we meet a secondary character named Clement
Anstruther Goodwin, an eighteen year old who is tired of his rich father
treating him like a child; Clem is hungry for love and adventure – he steals a
five-shilling postal order and confesses to his father and in private, Clem
acts out scenes of heroism. That night he decides to steal twenty-four
sovereigns from the cashbox and runs away to London. Now the author brings these unlikely
‘friends’ together through a street thug named Seely who with his gang are
picking on the young toff Clem until Bill steps in to help; Bill and Seely
fight, the latter wins but is impressed with Bill’s pluck etc. and Bill helps
Clem find lodgings. Later in the novel we meet Seely again pretending to be a
cripple, selling flowers and Mr. Larby, the Vicar and his ‘Conversation Club’
who shows Bill kindness and finds him a job in a match factory but there is
‘something’ missing, a ‘something’ Bill can’t describe, not being very
articulate; in his frustration he gets angry with his mother and curses her; he
talks to his girl Lily Carfax who doesn’t understand and finds it all amusing;
he opens up to Clem but he equally doesn’t understand as Bill cannot express
his emotions; he goes to see Seely but finds he is in prison and not out till
the following day. And now that the scenes are set and the players are in
position, the novel takes an interesting turn as in chapter XII ‘Of
Stuffiness’, we meet the eccentric Dickensian character of Mr. Dixon, a very
wealthy man who is tramping around and meets a young woman down at heel in a
ditch with her drunken husband; Dixon, in fine Pickwick manner, persuades her
to leave her man and takes her to a place of safety, her name is Mary Salt.
Then we learn that this great man Dixon was the man who met Bill Wilder in the
train to London at the opening of the novel and Bill wrote his name and address
down for him, Dixon remembers the remarkable young boy who was dissatisfied
with his work onboard ship and just up and left, so he calls on Mrs Wilder who
is recovering from a night of drunkenness; Dixon finds Bill at the match
factory and offers him a new life on a farm. Bill tells Dixon of his friends,
Clem and Seely and Dixon asks if they will come too, Clem agrees to go and so
does Seely (Seely mentions his sixteen year old orphan friend Dick who is also
invited) so we see the beginning of a sort of social experiment on Dixon’s
behalf, a genuine benefactor wishing to help those more unfortunate than
himself. They all set off on a comical train journey to Mereham and there they
watch a ‘mad’ mute, gypsy girl dancing whom Bill sympathises with, being unable
to express himself before arriving at the cottage where they find Mary Salt.
‘There is something about eleven
o’clock in the morning which is astonishingly destructive of all
that is best in humanity.’ (p. 267) – Bill gets directions to Witnor Farm from
a young farm girl he meets named Betty Handen, a fine specimen of country girl.
At the farm Bill chooses his own puppy to care for then on taking butter to the
widow Handen, he meets Betty again and a sweet spark plays between them. But
all is not well as the ‘experiment’ seems to fail; Seely is unsatisfied with
the boredom and emptiness of country life, he is too used to the ways of the
city and so is young Dick; Clem wishes to return to London also (to be a clerk)
but Bill wants to stay, there is still ‘something’ which he desires yet cannot
express.
Two years later we see
Bill still at the cottage with Mary Salt, Bill tells Mary of Betty who is in
love with him, but Bill hates Betty, or so he says for really he is in love
with Mary Salt, she is the ‘something’ he has been looking for all along but
being inarticulate he cannot tell her. When Mr. Dixon returns he asks Bill to
travel to London
to see how the others have been and so he goes and looks up Tom Seely, Clem and
Dick. Seely seems to be changed, much stronger in himself and confident,
thinking of a political career (Dick is just the same) and Clem seems very
unhappy, Seely tells him as he cannot find love; Bill calls on his father, Mr.
Wilder who is sober and happy after finding religion; Bill thought Mr. Dixon
had a hand in his improvement but as the chapter is headed it was ‘One Greater
than Mr. Dixon’ – God! Bill goes to see Clem but finds Mr. Goodwin, his father
ushering him into the lodgings, Clem’s father is furious and wants to kill Mr.
Dixon for leading his boy astray as he thinks; it seems Clem has become
addicted to vice and become ill and lies upstairs (Mr. Goodwin will take him
home that day); Bill declines seeing Clem. Back at the cottage he meets Mary
and fell to sobbing, he really loves her but cannot tell her; Bill rushes out
in the rain and goes to the Handen cottage where he hears Betty singing inside
– fate is awaiting his decision as he only has to knock on the door for a world
of possibilities to open before him for she does love him – Bill knocks! And so
we are left wondering what the future held for young Bill and Betty and what
happened to Mary! The author has written a fine first novel if indeed it takes
a while to establish the characters and there is a lot of parochial ‘cockney’
and street slang which I personally detest but Cameron Wilson handles it very
well and the lives of the poor somewhat simple beings he creates have a
vibrancy of emotions which endures time and it is a novel certainly worth
reading; a novel which predicted so much from Mr. Cameron Wilson before his own
fate took a decidedly different turn of events in 1918. Marvellous!
The Encyclopedia of
Horror – Edited by Richard Davis.
Originally published
by Octopus Books in 1981 (re-published by Hamlyn in 1987), this near
two-hundred page encyclopedia is a wonderful journey through the world of the
supernatural and the occult. It was this book (along with the splendid
‘Monsters and Vampires’, 1976 by Alan Frank) which had such a lasting effect
through my formative years and still to this day, being always drawn to shall
we say, darker dimensions! The great Peter Cushing provides the foreword before
we get into the first chapter, ‘Evil Monsters’ by Tom Hutchinson which looks at
Divine and Bestial Monsters, taking in the Lambton Worm and Satan: Public
Monster Number One! Celluloid monsters such as ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ (1968) and
monsters within (‘Jekyll and Hyde’) are given as fine examples before Michael
Parry looks at the ‘Frankenstein Saga’. Richard Cavendish delights us with ‘The
Devil’s Army’ and brings out the black goat of witchcraft and the Fall of
Lucifer before we succumb in Satanic splendour to the demon hierarchy,
possession and Faust. ‘Vampires and Werewolves’ take up the next chapter, by
Basil Copper and here we find such gems as ‘Dracula’ (1931), ‘Dracula’s
Daughter’ (1936) and ‘The Wolf Man’ (1941) a masterpiece in my opinion before
Copper asks ‘what is a vampire’? and shows us some great ‘vampires’ in history.
It was here as a young boy my mind found something familiar, something Gothic
in my own thinking – names of those which became familiar to me: Gilles de
Rais, Elizabeth Bathory, Sgt Francois Bertrand (1823-78), the Pere Lachaise and
Montmartre Vampire, Fritz Haarman (1879-1925) the Hanover Vampire, John George
Haigh, Gilles Garnier who died in 1574; Michel Verdun and Pierre Bourgot, Jean
Peyral, executed in 1518 (I should also mention the lovable Ed Gein, Victor
Ardisson 1872-1944 and Peter Kurten 1883-1931) but enough of my childhood
companions, the next chapter also held such wonder for me for it spoke of
literature which seemed forbidden – ‘The Supernatural’ by Michael Ashley,
describing such fantastic writers as: Elliott O’Donnell (1872-1965), the Gothic
novel: Horace Walpole (1717-97) and ‘The Castle of Otranto’ (1764), Matthew
Gregory ‘Monk’ Lewis (1775-1818) and the fabulous Anne Radcliffe (1764-1823)
with her ‘Mysteries of Udolpho’ (1794); The Ghost Story and its development
leads us into Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49), Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-73),
Bulwer-Lytton (1803-73) and the ‘Evil Ghost’, Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) and
the remarkable Arthur Machen (1863-1947) before the Golden Age of M. R James
(1862-1936). Richard Davis himself looks at the ‘Undead’: the cult of voodoo
and great films such as ‘I walked with a Zombie’ (1943) and Hammer’s ‘The
Plague of the Zombies’ (1966) and Doug Hill provides us with a final chapter: ‘Travelling
Beyond’ – H P Lovecraft and Cthulhu etc. The book ends with a comprehensive
list of films (by Richard Davis) and comics (by Denis Gifford). This is a
beautiful book; a desirable book and it is very well illustrated and even
though as a young boy, a child more supernatural creature than human, a child
obsessed with death and nocturnal terrors with romantic notions; a boy of dark
passions and obsessions delighting in such wonders as ‘Cat People’ (1943) and
‘Night of the Demon’ (1958) and ‘The Wolf Man’ (1941) and ‘I walked with a
Zombie’ (1943)… the book does a splendid job in unlocking strange new worlds to
eager young minds wishing to find such romantically frightening realms and live
within them, as much as one can within the horrors of reality, horrors which
far supersede any vampire infatuation or sweet arousal from the grave! Perfect!
Better Angel – by
Richard Meeker.
Richard Meeker is the
pseudonym of the American puppeteer Forman Brown (1901-1966) and ‘Better Angel’
(the title is taken from Shakespeare’s sonnet 144: ‘the better angel is a man
right fair’) was published in 1933. The book is in four parts (22 chapters) and
begins by introducing the main character, Kurt Gray (clearly autobiographically
the author), a thirteen year old, only child of Elmer Gray the furniture store
owner and his wife Abbie who live in Barton,
Michigan. Kurt is awkward and
effeminate and gets teased at school; his mother could not persuade him to
fight back and so instils in him a sense of pride at his ‘difference’. Young
Kurt has a fear of the dark because he is afraid of being blind and he has a
fondness for the boy next door, Arthur Bronson, known for some reason as ‘Nob’;
being a few months older than Kurt he takes on the protective role. Kurt
becomes more alone and secretive and succumbs to the temptation and joys of
masturbation and one day he and his friend Barry Van Cleet who is two years
older, go to a disused cemetery and innocently take off their clothes: ‘they
stood there in the warm sunshine like two green figurines come suddenly to life
in a place of forgetfulness and silence. There was animal joy then, sheer
pleasure in the joy of nakedness, of the touch of flesh, of sun and wind on
uncovered bodies.’ The author handles these first experiences of sexual
awakening quite well and then we find that during a game of hide and seek,
Beany Gorton, who is two years older, attempts to molest Kurt who resists but
is disturbed; yet this is no ‘Teleny’ (1893) with its sexual excess and the
erotic moments are subtle such as when Kurt is naked before a mirror wearing
only his mother’s necklace and watching himself as he masturbates and is
frightened at his first ejaculation. Of course all that self-satisfaction
causes terrible guilt in a young boy and Kurt begins to attend the local Methodist Church meetings, eventually feeling the
urge to take the rostrum and be ‘cleansed of his sins’. At Barton High School
Kurt and Nob are talking about ‘funny dreams’ (masturbation) in the boat house
and Kurt realises that it is more common and not such a ‘sin’ after all.
Following graduation Kurt goes to University in Ann Arbor and rooms with his friend Derry
Grayling with whom he falls hopelessly in love; Kurt is also friends with Derry’s sister Chloe who gets married (but unhappy with
married life she will later divorce). Kurt writes Derry
a letter declaring his love for him and in turn Derry
wants Kurt to meet his friend David Perrier who is keen to meet Kurt. David is
quite the young bohemian aesthete and Kurt stays the night with him when Derry
says there is no room at home due to his Aunt’s staying over after Chloe’s
marriage; David is charming and sophisticated and tells Kurt he has been in
love with him for some time and that Derry was only a means of getting close to
him – phew, when the reader catches their breath they kiss before Kurt goes to
New York to study music and composition. At Christmas Kurt gets a letter from
Roy, Chloe’s husband saying that Chloe gave one of her reasons for divorce as
her love for Kurt and he wants to meet him to discuss it… later Chloe goes to
New York just as Kurt, now 22, receives his scholarship to Europe; he finds her
a room and they meet in the evenings and surprise, surprise, become quite close
and Chloe kisses him and declares her love for him on a bench in Central Park
but Kurt tells her the reality that he is ‘different’, that he loves her
brother Derry – Kurt goes off to Europe and at Sauvergne in Italy takes studio
rooms at the house of Leo Rubin an artist. Chloe writes to tell him Derry and David have become close, sharing a studio
together and Kurt is shattered! A telegram arrives from a young 21 year old
actor named Tony McGauran whom he met at Nice (they travelled on the boat
coming over together and struck up a friendship); Tony ‘was Byronic, like the
pictured hero of some Victorian romance’, a ‘conversational exhibitionist’, a
‘Don Juan and St. Francis in a single body’. Tony confesses about his sexuality
and his hedonistic, promiscuousness with both men and women and Kurt opens up
to him despite being quite appalled at the notion of sex without love – he
calls it ‘ugly’. Tony of course offers Kurt the cure and pulls him into the
bedroom! Yet another surprise: Tony knows David Perrier and his friend Ozzy
Brosken, his ‘guardian’! It turns out Ozzy is not David’s guardian but an
‘American Oscar Wilde’! Kurt and Tony, anticipating Mr. Rubin evicting them,
(Rubin’s wife disliked Tony) find a new place to rent in the village of St. Paul where Kurt composes and Tony
writes and rehearses his play – they both decide to collaborate and do Tony’s
play ‘The Duchess Decides’ as an operetta/musical, Kurt providing the music and
Tony the libretto. At a final dinner together before Tony goes back to New York, the Rubin’s
and their friends were in the restaurant, mocking them; Kurt goes to Paris to complete the
manuscript of the ‘Duchess’. Back in New York Kurt meets David, Derry and
Chloe, who is still in love with him and David tells him about Ozzy and how now
Derry has become involved with Ozzy and his coterie; he meets Tony too and his
old music teacher Mr. Korlov who helps Kurt get a job teaching music at
Brookway School in Connecticut. David visits him at the school and they receive
a phone call telling them that Derry is at the
Police Station charged with ‘accosting’; when they see him he explains that he
was set up by an under-cover police officer at the theatre; Kurt bails him out
and eventually Derry is acquitted. Tony tells
him the ‘Duchess’ has been sold and a pupil named Ford Clayton at Brookway, a
boy much like himself, gives Kurt a small gift of a bronze figurine of Donatello’s
‘David’. When Kurt goes to see David he finds a note from Ozzy for David to
meet him – Kurt is devastated and ends up in bed with Chloe, making love in a
hotel room; Chloe is disappointed of course and Kurt receives a telegram from
David saying he can explain everything and so it ends, with Kurt still
believing in David and their future together. It has been quite a journey and
the pace rarely slowed as romantic entanglements begin and sever and begin
again which are not easily anticipated but it has been an enjoyable read and
‘Better Angel’ is certainly worth reading!
Sonnets for Youth – by
Frank Oliver Call.
This slim twelve page
volume of sonnets was published in Toronto by Ryerson Press in1944 (250 copies)
by the Canadian poet and Professor of Modern Languages at the University of
Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, Frank Oliver Call (1878-1956) with a rather
lovely cover design by James Edward Hervey (1873-1932) and Thoreau MacDonald
(1901-1989). These twelve poems have a delicate beauty which evoke the wild
shimmer of nature as in ‘Autumnal’ with its shade of Housman – ‘upon the hills,
the poplars, bending double, / become mad dancing partners of the wind’; and
from the same poem: ‘it is the clash and clang of the old battle / between the
marshalled hosts of life and death’ and the aesthetic statuesque qualities of
youth as seen in ‘White Hyacinth’ – ‘pale and dead / before our eyes young
Hyacinthus lay / upon the Spartan shore’ and again from the same poem: ‘you
paused a moment as you left the room, / bending a slender form above a bowl /
of white and blue where hyacinths were abloom.’ The ‘bowl’ appears again in a
question of antiquity in the poem ‘A Roman Bowl’ – ‘”Strange,” you said, / “the
hands that formed it twenty centuries dead, / and still the work lives on. Is
life the whole, / or is it but a slowly-opening door?’ The celestial loneliness
of humanity that worshipped a ‘dead god upon a burnt-out star’ (‘Sceptic’ II)
seems fleeting yet the permanence of time is captured in the poem ‘Frozen Garden’
which begins: ‘HER GARDEN stands today as once it stood / frozen in memory
within her brain’. Call is certainly a very astute poet whose observations seem
to reach out into the present. Other books include: ‘In a Belgian Garden’
(1916) which I also read and enjoyed; the title poem has the mesmerising lines:
‘and where green poplars tremble / stand shattered trunks instead, / and lines
of small white crosses / keep guard above the dead.’ I also read his ‘Acanthus
and Wild Grape’ (1920) with its rhymed poems and free verse: the poem ‘The Old
Gods’ declares ‘OLD gods are dead’ yet goes on to say ‘human hearts still long
for human love’, simply beautiful; ‘Blue Homespun’ (1924), ‘The Spell of French
Canada’ (1926) and ‘The Spell of Acadia’ (1930). I shall end with his quite
lovely ‘Wild Swan’:
‘THE POOL lay black
within the silent wood,
Like polished onyx in
an inlaid frame
Of silver birches,
mountain ash like flame,
And dark green
spruces. Strangely mute you stood,
Slender and youthful,
the swift-coursing blood
Tinging your cheeks.
Across the dark pool’s breast
A wild swan glided
from its hidden nest
And floated in the
shadows. From that flood
Of infinite beauty,
like a soul parched and dry,
I drank – wood,
mirrored in the pool, wild swan,
And youth’s brave,
eager turning to the dawn
Of beckoning life.
Then came a startled cry
Of sudden wonder from
your lips, as on
White flashing wings
the swan rose to the sky.’
Georgian Poetry –
Selected and Introduced by James Reeves.
First published in the
Penguin Poets series in 1962 (I read the 1968 paperback edition with a cover
design by Stephen Russ), ‘Georgian Poetry’ brings together 19 poets who
contributed to the brief ‘Georgian’ period of modern poetry with its English
rural settings, inflammatory descriptions of war: ‘the war gave the movement an
almost unforeseen impetus’ (Introduction. p. xv) and simple, non-obscure
language, before ‘Georgian’ became a term of contempt. James Reeves
(1909-1978), playwright, poet and teacher, of Jesus College, Cambridge gives a
fine introduction to the volume which is clear and concise; Edward Marsh, the
Secretary to Winston Churchill at the Admiralty was so impressed with the poet
Rupert Brooke that they decided to issue a collection of modern poems,
introducing new poets – Marsh came up with the name ‘Georgian Poetry’ and the
first anthology appeared: ‘Georgian Poetry 1911-1912’. This new energy in
poetry with its anti-Victorian sentimentality, crossing swords with old
literary giants who had sank into the vast lethargy of Victorian dullness
towards the end of the old century, men like Hardy, Masefield and Bridges who
were once revered but now despised for their ‘stuffiness and didacticism’,
seemed to strike a chord with the nation’s literary readership. Five volumes
appeared edited by Marsh (1912-1922) – it is interesting to point out that 1922
is regarded as a watershed for during that year Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ was published
and all was irredeemably lost, or perhaps found! The Georgian era was
quintessentially English with all the sturdy bile, pessimism and cynicism that the
English nation produces in its quietly brave young men and women, especially
during post-war bohemian artistic movements before the mental hedonistic annihilation
of the gay twenties; Harold Monro (1879-1932) says that Housman (included in
this volume) was the Georgian’s ‘spiritual father’ and that Marsh was its
‘temporal patron’ – Housman (1859-1936) and to some extent, Hardy, could in
fact be called ‘Georgian’ before the term was coined when one looks at
Housman’s verse, as this example shows from the author’s selection: ‘her strong
enchantments failing, / her tower of fear in wreck, / her limbecks dried of
poisons / and the knife at her neck.’ Or in ‘Tell me not here, it needs not
saying’ which could almost be Rupert Brooke, but the ‘Georgian movement as a
whole was not as Brooke believed, a movement of rebellion against Victorian
romanticism, itself the decadent stage of Wordsworthian romanticism; it was
merely the final phase of a long deterioration.’ (p. xviii) And so the volume
contains the new young shoots of poetic freedom with a little of the old ‘dead
wood’ of the past (such as John Masefield and W.H. Davies) but we are blessed
with the likes of Edward Thomas (1878-1917), Charles Sorley (1895-1915), James
Elroy Flecker (1884-1915) and his wonderful ‘To a poet a Thousand Years Hence’
and ‘Tenebris Interlucentum’; Sassoon, Gurney, Graves, Blunden, Brooke and Owen
all disturbingly beautiful along with Victoria Sackville-West (1892-1962) the
only woman represented in the volume with her poem ‘Full Moon’. A name quite
new to me was Andrew Young – ‘when coltsfoot withers and begins to wear / long silver
locks instead of golden hair’ (‘Cuckoos’) and his poem ‘A Dead Mole’ is a good
place to end:
‘Strong-shouldered
mole,
That so much lived
below the ground,
Dug, fought and loved,
hunted and fed,
For you to raise a
mound
Was as for us to make
a hole;
What wonder now that
being dead
Your body lies here
stout and square
Buried within the blue
vault of the air?’
The Mountainy Singer –
by Seosamh MacCathmhaoil.
This 1919 publication
by the Irish poet Joseph Campbel (1879-1944) [Seosamh MacCathmhaoil is the
Gaelic form of his name] contains eighty-two short poems over 134 pages: ‘I am
the Mountainy Singer’, ‘Lament of Padraic Mor mac Cruimin over his Sons’,
‘Reynardine’ and ‘I am the Gilly of Christ’. Belfast born Campbel took part in the Easter
Rising of 1916 and many of his poems are lyrical ballads based on Irish legends
and folklore, the Celtic twilight which Yeats popularised. I also read the
author’s earlier work, ‘The Gilly of Christ’ from 1907 (fifteen poems over 38
pages) which contains poems such as: ‘I follow a Star’, ‘By a Wondrous
Mystery’, ‘When Rooks fly homeward’ and a few excellent verses which I actually
liked: ‘The Dark is Magical’, ‘Twilight fallen white and cold’ and ‘The Moon is
in the Marshes’. Not bad!
Sonnets of
Shakespeare’s Ghost – by Gregory Thornton.
Published in 1920,
this short (32 page) collection of twelve sonnets dreamt-up by the author and
passed off as the work of Shakespeare’s ghost seems to defend the original
sonnets and the Bard’s love for his muse, scorning those who should mock such a
sacred wonder: ‘They who this doubt never such beauty knew, / Nor what to poet
love alone can do.’ (end of sonnet I). Sonnet II continues the theme of this
platonic devotion - ‘They say a man ne’er bore such love to man, / Or, if he did,
‘twere but a cause for shame’… and it goes on: ‘My fire and air, my spirit,
adored thee’ before ending: ‘Then should I not love thee and give thee place /
Above all love of sense of woman set? / In love of beauty, whate’er shape ‘tis
in, / There’s nought of Truth, if it must think of sin.’ In Sonnet III the
author/Shakespeare’s ghost, argues that adoration and love matter not ‘what sex
it be’, the specific ‘male or female to our senses’ is immaterial – ‘All thy
gifts were made more rich, more rare, / By inward sweetness kind beyond
compare.’ sonnet V suggests, but in XI the author asks: ‘Wherefore should I
mine own heart not unfold, / And his true workings to the world disclose?’
before announcing graciously in the final sonnet that ‘No shame or scruple
might my judgement see / To tell of that true love I bore to thee.’ All very
interesting and incredibly well written of course but should Shakespeare’s
ghost ever communicate with the living I do not think he would waste words
defending trifles as this, something which is really very minor in the Bard’s
life, he is too large an entity to dwell on past defences or reveal any
mysteries and what mention of the Dark Lady? – none! A curious piece of
literary nonsense which is really quite enjoyable!
The Cruel Solstice –
by Sidney Keyes.
Sidney Arthur Kilworth
Keyes (1922-1943) is an exceptional poet and this, his second collection from
1944 and dedicated to his friend and fellow poet John Heath Stubbs (1918-2006)
appeared after his presumed death in Tunisia (Keyes joined the army in
1942). The author has an elegiac quality with an almost sensual and absorbing
fascination for death which can be seen in such poems as ‘Four Postures of
Death’ from the first section of the volume – ‘Landscape and Figures’; in part I
‘Death and the Maiden’, Death requests that the Maiden shall dance which she
does, and Death says: ‘My people are gentle as lilies / and in my house there
are no men / to wring your young heart with a foolish pleasure.’ The Maiden then
has this to say: ‘Because my boy had crossed me in a strange bed / I danced for
him and was not afraid. / He said, “You are too beautiful for any man / to finger,
you shall stay a maid / forever in my kingdom and be comforted.”’ … ‘He
beckoned’ she says, ‘and I knew that I must follow / into the kingdom of no
love.’ In part II ‘Death and the Lovers’ the line ‘briar-nails tear free / my
soul into your wisdom, ravish me / since she will not…’ has a distinctly erotic
suggestion which continues through part III ‘Death and the Lady’ and into part
IV ‘Death and the Plowman’ where ‘crooked trees / bend like old fingers’. In
‘Two Offices of a Sentry’ the cloak of Death sweeps over some rather beautiful
lines: ‘I am in love with the wildness of the living. / I am in love with the
rhythms of dead limbs. / I am in love with all those who have entered / the
night that smells of petals and of dust.’ (II. ‘Office for Midnight’) Section II of the volume – ‘The
Cruel Solstice’ opens with the title poem and begins: ‘To-night the stranger
city and the old / moon that stands over it proclaim / a cruel solstice, coming
ice and cold / thoughts and the darkening of the heart’s flame.’ The notion of
love rears its ugly face in ‘The Doubtful Season’ which ends – ‘O in July it
was our love was started / like any hare among the watchful grasses; / its
running is my song, my only story / how time turns back and the doubtful season
passes.’ Section III, ‘Legends’ has the enchanting poem ‘The Glass Tower in
Galway’ in four parts, and the magically uplifting ‘Simon Magus’ with its last
verse ending triumphantly – ‘Go pray, Simon; hide your noisy heart /
clapper-tongued and lolling with conceit. / Meet your master in his house of
fire / and practice wonders on the silly dead. / For you the mathematics of desire,
/ the frigid neophyte, the cold symbolic bed.’ The rage in those last lines
seems to yawn from a chasm of boredom at the ‘silly’ conjurations. On Adonis
the author says that his ‘beauty was a wound in the world’s side’ (‘Lament for
Adonis’) and in ‘Rome Remember’ he ends with perfect ease: ‘how alien the
lovers of your ghost’. Keyes is certainly a modern romantic and love appears
always disfigured in some cruel jest, out of reach or withering away somewhere
– ‘There is no speech to tell the shape of love / nor any but the wounded eye
to see it’ (‘The Uncreated Images’ from section IV ‘The Wilderness’).
Tremendous!
God Save the King and
Other Poems – by Brian Howard.
Published in Paris in 1931 I found
very few of these eighteen poems worthwhile or memorable. Brian Howard
(1905-1958) of Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford tries much too hard to be
astonishingly brilliant yet never quite reaches the mark. Poems such as ‘Young’
– ‘Dry death will follow quick, and I / will burn, my tears will turn to steam’
(Madrid 1925) and ‘A Small Crucifixion’ which ends: ‘with blood in his voice,
balanced upon infinity / he made his bed, he made his choice, nails are now his
trinity’ (November 1929) have a mild appeal yet one comes away from this slim
volume thinking only how superficial these verses are, much like the author
himself! Forget his poems, read ‘Brian Howard: Portrait of a Failure’ by
Marie-Jaqueline Lancaster instead!
The Collected Poems of
Sidney Keyes.
Impressed with Keyes’
second collection of verse, ‘The Cruel Solstice’ (1944) and under his magical
spell, I sought out the ‘Collected Poems’ which was published in 1945 (I read
the 5th impression from 1962) with an excellent Memoir (and Notes)
by his friend, the English translator and biographer, Michael Meyer
(1921-2000). Meyer, who does a fine job editing the Collected Poems, tells us
that Sidney Keyes (1922-1943) was a frail and sickly child who lived with his
grandparents (his mother died a few weeks after his birth) and grew up isolated
with his nurse; imaginative and intellectual, he had a ‘menagerie of birds,
small animals and reptiles.’ He did not attend school until he was nine years
old – ‘outwardly he was an amiable child, good-looking, lean and
olive-screened, with fine hazel eyes. Inwardly, he lived among the heroes of
his imagination. Almost from the beginning he was split by this duality.’ (p.
x) He attended Dartford
Grammar School and
Tonbridge, like his father, but young Sidney ‘retired into himself, and became
an anchorite, though an amiable one’. (p. xi) He began writing 'mature' poetry at the
age of sixteen with a fondness for the Romantic poets and two of his early
poems are included here: ‘Elegy’ (In Memoriam S. K. K.) from July 1938, with
its fascination upon death – ‘It is a year again since they poured / the dumb
ground into your mouth’ … and ‘gave you to the worms’, and ‘Prospero’ (also
1938) who ‘knows the secrets of the earth and air / and of men’s hearts.’ …
‘his clear eye / could outshine Death, and make him powerless’; in the poem,
Death and Prospero ‘yarn on for hours of charms and spells, / discuss the
properties of mandrake-root, / and argue whether wolf’s-bane or hemlock / is
better sleeping potion.’ In October 1940 Keyes went up to Queen’s College, Oxford to study History
and Meyer paints a morbid picture of the young poet saying that he ‘had either
inherited or been infected with a sense of guilt and of evil destiny. The
subject of pain and death fascinated him’. (p. xii) In fact, it is this sense
of the macabre that drew me to Keyes, being somewhat in the same way afflicted
with the notion of death and romance. By the end of 1941 Keyes had the
manuscript of his first collection of poems – ‘The Iron Laurel’ which was
published the following year, ‘a study of pain and death from the viewpoint of
the necromancer; death is a ghoul, and the poet is a doomed child wandering in
a sour land.’ (p. xiv) Keyes joined the army in Omagh, Northern Ireland in
April 1942 and was commissioned into the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment
in September; he left England in March 1943 and just a fortnight into active
service he was taken prisoner in the Tunisian Campaign – he died of ‘unknown
causes’ on 29th April 1943 in ‘enemy hands’ aged twenty; it is that
fact which reminds us poignantly that had he lived how wondrous his poetry may
have bloomed! The poems, which number nearly one-hundred, are in chronological
order, except for ‘The Wilderness’. Throughout the poems there is a pervading
childlike sensuality in the mystery and fascination with death – ‘come night,
sleep, death, my only joy’ (‘Nocturne for Four Voices’, July 1939) which
becomes seductively sexual – ‘the childish promises of lilac / seduce the
corpse and break his serenade; / willows and Wagner sigh like / the sentimental
gossip of a shade.’ (‘Lament for a Dead Symbolist’) and here, in ‘Sour Land’
(part II, from November 1940) – ‘when night came knocking at the panes / and
bats’ thin screeching pierced his head, / he thought of copulation in the lanes
/ and bit his nails and praised the glorious dead.’ In the same poem we find
the image of a ‘running demon’ that ‘jogs along the / fallow all night long /
black under moonlit cloud, though shadowless.’ But not all of the poems are
dark for in ‘Nefertiti’ we find that her ‘fingers were obelisks’ and she was
‘love-stricken for a tabby-cat’! Wild flowers are plentiful in Keyes’ poems and
images of the garden conjure a vanishing English landscape – ‘the trees /
grabbed at the sun like grey anemones’ (‘Anarchy’ March 1942); ‘the lilac
dreaming in the lover’s garden; / the wild thyme splayed against the
paving-stones’ (‘Images of Distress’ June 1942) but the overall essence of the
poems is one of love, pursued and fleeting (Keyes was in love with Milein
Cosman (1921-2017) to whom many of the poems are dedicated, yet the love
remained unrequited): ‘O never trust the heart’s assurance - / trust only the
heart’s fear’ (‘Song: The Heart’s Assurance’ July 1942); ‘I’d have you proud as
red brocade / and such a sight as Venus made / extravagantly stepping from a shell.’
(‘Hopes for a Lover’ March 1942); Keyes can be seen as a metaphysical romantic,
questioning love and mortality:
LITTLE DRAWDA
All Soul’s, ‘41
Under the shaken
trees, wait O unlucky
Returner, you rejected
one:
There is no way of
comforting you. Wait
Under the shaken trees
and the clock striking one.
In the moon’s wicked
glitter linger now
You tired ghost:
You have no stance of
safety but shift
In the moon’s glitter,
an uprooted ghost.
On this strong night,
remain you lonely
Seeker beside me, though
my heart is dumb:
We may together solve
the unexpected
Secret of living, now
that the clock is dumb.
Passages also appear
in praise of the sea, with its cold, compassionless folding over humanity, with
‘drowned bones above the tidemark’ and the ‘thin lament / of broken shells
remembering the sea.’ (‘The True Heart’ written at Omagh on 15th April 1942); ‘the
wind lifted / the hard leaves of the bay; the white sand drifted / under the
worm-bored rampart, under the white eyelid.’ (‘Seascape’ August 1942). Meyer
tells us that ‘his inspiration consisted, not of a series of lyrical impulses,
but of a constant and urgent force’, (p. xxi) this force, as I see it, a
sexually instinctive force which drives the poems has a restrained beauty which
is never quite fulfilled; the poems erupt like orgasms, perfectly formed yet
still there is the sense of longing:
‘Night ravished him,
and so was brought to birth
A great cold passion to destroy the earth.’
(‘Anarchy’ March 1942)
Minos of Crete: Plays and Stories – by Sidney Keyes.
This volume published
in 1948 is edited with selections from Keyes’ notebooks and letters and some
early unpublished poems, by his friend Michael Meyer (1921-2000). It contains
two plays: ‘Minos of Crete – A Journey Under Venus’ in three acts written in
the summer of 1940 while Keyes was at Tonbridge and ‘Hosea’ a modern morality
written in a series of tableau; the former is rather well done and the exchange
between Minos and Theseus is quite beautiful. Keyes calls the play ‘short,
brutish and nasty’ for indeed it does not keep to accepted mythological
accuracy. We must remember that the author was only just eighteen when he wrote
the play and that he was attempting something new, yet ‘he lacked the true
dramatists ability to portray the whole spectrum of emotions; and that he had,
like his master Wordsworth, no true sense of dramatic flow.’ (Preface. p. vii)
His stories frankly hold less appeal although they do show the young Keyes as
he develops in his prose; the stories include: ‘The Albatross’ written a few
weeks after his sixteenth birthday in July 1938 at Tonbridge; ‘Judy and the
General’ written at Oxford; the rather sensual ‘The Hot Street’ written at
Oxford in May 1941 and the amusing ‘The Famous Race between the Hearse and the
Steamroller’, also at Oxford in December of ’41; ‘Mexico’ from Oxford the
following year is an exercise in dullness but a commissioned piece, ‘The Artist
in Society’ from March 1942 has some interesting points. But for me the jewels
of the volume are the extracts from his notebook 1942-43 – ‘I make darkness
because I am continually asking for love, yet never find it’ and selections
from his letters 1940-43 to such friends and imagined lovers as the poet John
Heath Stubbs, Michael Meyer, Milein Cosmann and Renee-Jane Scott; his letter to
Violet Keyes, from Oxford, dated 1st November 1941 casts some light
upon the writing of the poem ‘Little Drawda’ written on All Soul’s ’41 – ‘last
night, being All Soul’s, I went to a spiritualistic séance in a haunted room in
one of the colleges.’ But also of immense importance are the four unpublished
poems: ‘South Wind’ written in July 1934 when the poet was just twelve and two
months old; ‘Cathay’ – ‘I cannot help but dream of far Cathay’, from June 1937
when he was fifteen; ‘Meditation of Plebus the Phoenician’ a dream poem from
January 1939 and ‘Richmond Park’ (1940) – ‘this park has always been misty,
uncouth / and bestial, since King Henry ran the deer.’ Juvenilia, yes, but damn
good juvenilia which shows real potential as a poet; the poem continues with
the third verse, declaring that ‘Herne,
too, haunts the thickets sere / homeless and hanged, poor Herne - / the antlered idiot who will learn /
no other wisdom but following the deer.’ Already a confidence is appearing –
the poem evokes a romantic pastoral of the Royal Park:
‘ghosts of dead deer / bellow by the unseen stream forlorn.’ Magnificent!
Sapphic Songs:
Eighteen to Eighty – by Elsa Gidlow.
I was mesmerised,
spellbound even by Gidlow’s autobiography ‘I come with my Songs’ and her first
collection of poetry ‘On a Grey Thread’ (1923), a truly tremendous work of
poetry and these ‘Sapphic Songs’ (the first edition of ‘Sapphic Songs:
Seventeen to Seventy’ appeared in 1976) published in 1982 shows a great poet
writing some of the deepest, most revealing love poems in the English language:
‘my wide basin is full of starlight, / my moon is lighted with new fire, / I
have lit every sun in the firmament / with the hurting flame of my desire’ (‘To
the Unknown Goddess’ 1918); ‘but I who am youth among your lovers / come like
an acolyte to worship, / my thirsting blood restrained by reverence, / my heart
a wordless prayer’ (‘Love’s Acolyte 1919); ‘oh how many love years / across
fields of the dead / does your fragrance / travel to me?’ (‘Invocation to
Sappho’ 1965)…it is a sensual celebration of love with verse spanning eight
decades. There is a very worthy and beautiful Foreword by her friend Abigail
Hemstreet which praises the poet’s mystical quality like some Goddess wielding
words from pagan earth – ‘in her work, she finds herself in “the realm of the
sacred, the nourishing care of human life”.’ (p. ix) In fact, I find an
affinity between Gidlow and that other great female poet, the Russian, Anna
Akhmatova, who like Gidlow, distils pure magic from the soul of womanhood in a
sisterly appreciation of what it is to be a woman and to feel the soft caress
of love; the intimate friendship and ‘fellowship’ of feminine nature and the
bond between the female sex: ‘you came to me last night, you came in a dream. /
I walked all night at your side on a bleak beach’ (‘In a Dream 1932). But the
realisation of love is not always romanticised – ‘one does not speak prettily
of love’ as she says in her poem ‘Regions of no birds’ (1958), it is real and
there is heat and sweat between bodies, dissolving into each other, succumbing
to notions of an earthly barrier between the souls, ‘entranced, / as deities
reprieved of time, / cleansed of yesterdays: knowing / in tomorrows no refuge’
(‘Out of Love’s Timeless Egg’ 1972). Some of the poems, to which there are over
seventy, have been revised but they have not lost any of their initial power
and in this collection you will find classic masterpieces of her art: ‘For the
Goddess too well known’ (1919), ‘The Grey Thread’ (1918), ‘Valley with Girls’
(1931), ‘So still the Dawn’ (1967), the deeply pagan ‘Chains of Fires’ (1969),
‘Woman at the Lakeside’ (1974) and the wonderful ‘Love in Age’ from 1974 –
‘here on this bed holding you / in passion-shattered wonder, lip to lip / limb
twined with limb / in oblivion of Thee and Me, / breathing our mingled sweat, /
juices spilled out / mutually anointing / here on this bed, holding you / so
human in your need / (and knowing mine) / miraculous, the human veil is rent.’
Beyond praise and timeless!
The Strange World of
Willie Seabrook – by Marjorie Worthington.
Marjorie Muir
Worthington (1900-1976) has written a very vivid and enthralling account of the
writer William B. Seabrook (1884-1945) and their time together in this 1966
publication. The author, who confesses to being part of the ‘lost generation’,
recounts how in April 1926, she and Willie set sail for France where they
stayed on and off until 1934; of her untiring love for the strange and
enigmatic writer who ‘had a way of making a nice woman feel that he needed her,
that she alone could help him get rid of the demons that beset him, his
drinking and his sadism.’ (p. 11) Marjorie tells us with almost romantic
wistfulness how they lived in an apartment in Toulon with no electricity, water
or gas and every morning emptied the slops bucket into the harbour; of how
Willie smoked successive pipes of opium (Marjorie refused) and his leasing of a
ruined Chateau overlooking the Mediterranean which because of the lack of water
was uninhabitable and only used for picnics accompanied by ‘Boubou’ Willies
little brown monkey he brought back from the Ivory Coast. Those familiar with
Seabrook will know about the reference to eating human flesh with a tribe of
cannibals in his book ‘Jungle Ways’ (1931) where a ‘young warrior who had been
killed in a tribal battle’ was eaten and Willie took part in the feast! The
truth is just as fantastic – Willie did eat human flesh but not in the African
jungle, in Montmartre! Marjorie takes great
pleasure in describing the incident and Willie ate it roasted, broiled and as a
ragout: Marjorie, who never tried it, rushed out and was sick! We find them in New York during the
Depression of 1930 before they journey to Timbuctoo! Willie’s alcoholism
escalates, drinking two bottles of brandy a day; they survive a car crash where
Marjorie is thrown from the vehicle and Willie is pulled from the upturned car
before it is engulfed in flames and so Willie decides on a cure at a hospital
in New York.
They decide to separate for a while and while Willie was living in his
penthouse he had a ‘trained nurse present during his sadistic sex games’ just
in case anything went wrong! It seems the English may have cornered the market
on sodomy, but when it comes to sado-masochism, we can’t hold a candle to the
Americans! At the heart of Willie’s psychological problems was a ‘deep-rooted
hostility towards his mother, Myra,’ which affected all his relations with
women – ‘love-making, for Willie, was a complicated process, all mixed up with
his complexes, fetishes, and compulsions.’ (p. 103) Still drinking, Willie
voluntarily commits himself to Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane; Marjorie,
alone, contemplates suicide. And so with Willie ‘cured’ of his alcoholism, they
buy a cottage and land in Rhinebeck on the Hudson River – both Willie and
Marjorie had been married previously (both their ex-partners married each
other!) and so they decide to get married, which they did in Connecticut before
Willie goes ‘under-cover’ at the New Hampshire State Asylum for the Insane to
discover the difference between private and public institutions for an article
he is writing.
Some readers will
discover Seabrook through his writings on witchcraft, as I have done, for it
was ‘one of the things that interested him passionately’; he was an authority
on occult customs and ritual ‘what he called Black Magic.’ (p. 193) ‘In some
ways’ Marjorie writes, ‘and I believe it dated from his earlier association
with Aleister Crowley during the Greenwich Village period [1917] in both their
lives – Willies witchcraft and magic were tied in with his sexual sadism.’ (p.
193-4) In certain rituals pain and sex was used to elevate the consciousness of
the practitioners onto a spiritual/magical plane to induce visions and Willie’s
preference was for young girls chained – ‘Lizzies in chains’ as Marjorie calls
them. He does not seem ashamed by his strange desires, in fact, he flaunts it –
‘he made no secret of his sexual twist. He wanted people to know about his
sadism, and to talk about it. I always felt that it was something private and
horrid, to be kept out of sight like a running sore or a malignant disease.’
(p. 209) Towards the outbreak of war, Willie started to drink heavily again and
in 1940 he received a gift from Harrison Smith, his first editor at Harcourt.
Smith was visiting Haiti and sent Willie a ‘Ouanga’, a charm used in Black
Magic (it was a bag filled with various objects, sent to a person with the
intention to do either harm or to bring good fortune); Willie and Smith had
been friends but this ‘gift’ turned Willie against him for he was suspicious of
the Ouanga – Marjorie burnt it behind the barn much to Willie’s relief. Ah the
famous barn! Willie spent two weeks in that barn with ‘Lizzie number two’,
chained to the beams, in fact, we learn that the ‘Lizzie’, according to
Marjorie, ‘plunged Willie’s elbows in boiling water and held them there.’ No
doubt this was at Willie’s suggestion, but he had to spend time in hospital
with his arms bandaged, and tied in such a way as he was unable to use them for
several weeks. By this time Marjorie was sick of the ‘Lizzies’ and went to her
sisters’ house, eventually returning to Willie at Rhinebeck in a fit of
jealousy, wanting to kill the ‘Lizzie’ (Miss Kuhr) but it was the last straw,
she leaves him and they divorce. Marjorie later finds out through a newspaper
article that Willie has married Miss Constance Kuhr – Willie later dies in his
bed from an overdose of sleeping pills in September 1945!
This has been a
fascinating read and along the way we have touched shoulders with such
luminaries as: Ford Madox Ford, Jean Cocteau, Gertrude Stein and Alice B.
Toklas, Noel Coward, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, who was certainly not
kind to Willie; Aldous Huxley, Thomas Mann, Dashiell Hammet and William
Faulkner. Seabrook was certainly a damaged man, but a damaged man who could
write a hell of a story; a man who ‘experimented with anything that would move
life above or below the normal and respectable.’ (p. 24) But this is more than
a book about Willie Seabrook, it is a book about Marjorie Worthington, a fine
writer in her own right and a woman who goes beyond all reasonable boundaries
for love, who in the end could just take no more and who could blame her?
Utterly mesmerising!
Corvo: Saint or
Madman? – by Donald Weeks.
It is a gloomy
prospect to encounter such a well-researched book as Donald Weeks has written
on such an almost forgotten literary genius, where pedantic nerves of steel are
necessary, and having read much on the Baron, through all his misfortunes and
devilish entanglements with the Catholic Church; his impoverished life devoted
to spiritual endeavours and writing, one feels almost a sense of shame for
those who hastened to call him friend, and then avoided him due to his insufferable
requests for money. Such men are an exception and should be recognised as such,
but it is an exceptional man who puts his faith and finances into such
creatures! He was a man who lived through the written word – why speak when the
pen can flow more fluently? Why indeed and when Mr. Weeks’ pen flows just as
fluently why stop it? And so, ‘Corvo: Saint or Madman?’ published in 1971 is a
hugely entertaining volume if one happens to be just as obsessed about the
Corvo as the author is for it is a massively researched and meticulous biography.
Like many people, Weeks, who draws much from Rolfe’s novel ‘Hadrien VII’ (1904)
and his ‘Desire and Pursuit of the Whole’ written in Venice in 1909, came under
the spell of Corvo through that beautiful classic ‘experiment in biography’ – ‘The
Quest for Corvo’ (1934) by A. J. A. Symons, a book which rekindled interest in
the forgotten Frederick William Rolfe (1860-1913) the eccentric and erudite
writer who seems to blunder through life and never quite grasp at success. Over
fifteen chapters (and more than 500 pages) Weeks tells his story in as much
detail as even Rolfe himself would have admired to the point of ejaculation no
doubt, from the young schoolmaster becoming Roman Catholic and seeking
ordination (he was refused twice, the second time in Rome; he was found
‘unsuitable’ for Holy Orders); following his rejection he attempted to make a
living as an artist in Christchurch, Hampshire and in Holywell, North Wales and
as a photographer in Aberdeen, (he was unceremoniously ejected from his
lodgings) all unsuccessfully. We can clearly see the development between the
poems of ‘Tarcissus’, the young Roman martyr, and the ‘Ballad of Boys Bathing’
(1890) where Rolfe’s blossoming adoration and physical attraction for youthful
boys emerges; in the same year as ‘Boy’s Bathing’ he had met the uranian poet
Charles Kains-Jackson (1857-1933) and the art critic, Gleeson White (1851-1898)
who no doubt encouraged certain traits in Rolfe. In fact, 1890, a year of
change, is pivotal in the study of Rolfe for he turns from the Rome of
Catholicism towards art (painting and photography) and literature (from poetry
to prose). The attacks in the Aberdeen
newspapers of 1898 had ‘stripped him, mentally and spiritually; and Holywell
had exhausted him, bodily and financially. He posted all his pawn tickets to
himself in care of the main London Post Office, St Martin’s-le-Grand,
and fled to the workhouse.’ (p. 172) In fact, Rolfe was so poor he had to walk
the 140 miles from Wales
to Oxford. Corvo’s
life is indeed a journey and on the trail we encounter a cavalcade of cranks
and curiosities, some familiar and some not so, such as the poets, John Gambril
Nicholson (1866-1931) and Horatio Brown (1854-1926); Monsignor Robert Hugh
Benson (1871-1914), Charles Harry Clinton Pirie-Gordon (1883-1969), Professor
Richard MacGillivray Dawkins (1871-1955), Sholto Osborne Gordon Douglas
(1873-1937), Henry Harland (1861-1905), Trevor Haddon (1864-1941), Henry
(Harry) Charles Bainbridge (1874-1954), Maundy Gregory (1877-1941) and Dr.
Ernest George Hardy (1852-1925), Principle of Jesus College, Oxford, all with
their own curious tales to tell of Rolfe. It all reads like some Victorian
farce or dark fairy story, the alienation, the paranoia, the romanticised poverty
and sordidness of Venice and the infamous letters that flow like boyhood’s inky
romantic flourishes with dirty pictures of nude boys enclosed under the banner
of art to such like-minded souls as Mr. Charles Masson Fox (1866-1935): was
Rolfe merely pandering to Mr. Masson Fox’s peculiarities in the hope of
extracting finances from him or were Rolfe’s exploits genuine? here Mr. Weeks
seems a little naïve to assume the Corvo, disillusioned by his thwarted
ecclesiastical ambitions should not still consider himself as ‘celibate’ in the
heterosexual sense of the word and his sweet stolen kisses were perfectly acceptable
in the Venetian climate where Kains-Jackson’s ‘New Chivalry’ (1894) had
eulogised upon the Platonic caress of youth like some sacred, spiritual
devotion; the grandiosity of grime covered in silk is all too common within the
Catholic Church so it comes as no surprise that the Baron should not do
likewise – he quarrelled with publishers and priests alike and like a spent
match his end was undramatic, dying of heart failure at the age of fifty-three.
A very worthy and splendidly written work on a misunderstood misfit of his age!
Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall – by Chris Fujiwara.
This analysis of the films of Jacques Tourneur (1904-1977) published in 1998 with a Foreword by Martin Scorsese is a real work of art and excellently researched by Fujiwara. To most lovers of horror or supernatural films, of which I include myself, Tourneur will forever be remembered for directing four masterpieces of cinema, three of which were in partnership with the great producer Val Lewton. The son of Maurice Tourneur, the film maker and director, Jacques grew-up in a rather unaffectionate household and attended the Lycee Montaigne and the Lycee Lakanal. The Tourneurs went to the United States in 1914 and Jacques attended the New York Public School, before settling in California in 1918 and becoming a U.S. citizen the following year. In France during the thirties he began making films, his first being ‘Tout ca ne vaut pas l’amour’ (1931) and his last and best ‘Les Filles de la Concierge’ (1934). From 1934-1938 he worked at MGM as a director in the Second-Unit; he made shorts from 1936-1942 before making his first great and hugely successful film in collaboration with Val Lewton: ‘Cat People’ (1942). Lewton and Tourneur worked exceedingly well together and their films are memorable for their atmosphere and ambiguity, suggesting ‘transformations’ rather than showing them and using light and dark to provide spaces or ‘visual barriers’ for the imagination to fill in the gaps, a more frightening prospect than having the terrors visible. In Cat People, Simone Simon, plays Irena Dubrovna, a commercial illustrator, who becomes obsessed with an old Serbian legend concerning a ‘cat woman’; in a psychological sense we can see a fear of sexuality as something evil and the changing into a panther (as in the lycanthropic tendency of the Wolf Man) there is a mental as well as a physical fear with Freudian connotations. This can also be seen in the next great film to come from the Tourneur/Lewton partnership: ‘I walked with a Zombie’ (1943), a film for which I have great affection for which has remained with me as it would any true connoisseur of the genre. The film is a sort of ‘West Indies version of Jane Eyre’ and Frances Dee who plays Canadian nurse, Betsy Connell goes to St. Sebastian to look after Jessica Holland (played by Christine Gordon), the wife of a sugar plantation owner (Tom Conway) who has succumbed to a strange illness. Jessica is taken to the Houmfort, a voodoo temple in a memorable and atmospheric walk through the sugar canes which provides more shivers than any ‘shown’ shock horrors. Central to the film is the figure of Ti-Misery, a statue of St. Sebastian pierced with arrows which we learn was the figure head of a slave ship. The film is a true masterpiece of horror and describes the sexual tension and fear of superstition perfectly. The next film, although I would not consider it a masterpiece, is certainly a great film made in the same year as ‘I walked with a Zombie’ – ‘The Leopard Man’ (1943). This would be the last film Tourneur directed with Lewton producing before Tourneur went on to direct films such as ‘Days of Glory’ (1944), ‘Out of the Past’ (1947), ‘Berlin Express’ (1948), ‘Anne of the Indies’ (1951) etc. but in 1957 Tourneur directed the last of his horror masterpieces – ‘Night of the Demon’. Based on the story ‘Casting the Runes’ by the wonderful master of the English ghost story, M. R. James, the film (also known as ‘Curse of the Demon’ in the U.S.) sees a sceptic named Dr. John Holden (played brilliantly by an alcoholic Dana Andrews) investigate the mysterious Crowley-like cult leader Dr. Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis). There are some very memorable scenes in the film such as Karswell in the British Museum and later conjuring a storm while dressed as a clown! The film also stars Peggy Cummins as Joanna Harrington, the niece of Professor Henry Harrington (Maurice Denham) who is killed by the demon in the opening shots; and Brian Wilde as the wonderfully named Rand Hobart. The film, like ‘Zombie’ and ‘Wolf Man’ and many others has been etched into my subconscious and is as much a part of me as breathing is. But the question of the demon being shown: Tourneur did not want to show the ‘monster’ and if the film falls from magnificent, it is for that reason; had Lewton been involved as producer I’m sure they would have decided against it but a man named Frank Bevis was producing the film and there was a fashion for showing the ‘monsters’ in Hollywood; however we can forgive the decision as the lovable old demon has become quite a charming character in his own right. Tourneur, a modest man, went on to direct several more films and films for television but he shall be remembered for the four films which have the power to persist in the mind. Entertaining!
Feasting with Panthers: A New Consideration of Some Late Victorian Writers – by Rupert Croft-Cooke.
Published in 1967, the book is divided into three main sections: Algernon Swinburne and Le Vice Anglais, John Addington Symonds and the Greek Ideal, and Oscar Wilde and the Iron Lilies. The author begins his research in the year of Swinburne’s meeting with the Pre-Raphaelites – 1857, when the Pre-Raphaelites are at Oxford. The poet Swinburne, an alcoholic and a masochist delighting in the torments of flagellation, seems to think of nothing but young school boys undergoing the misery of a good flogging, writing of it to his correspondents where we meet such eccentric and decidedly English perverts and misfits as Lord Houghton (Richard Monckton Milnes 1840-1890) whom Swinburne met in 1861 and had a huge library of erotica; the Welsh friend, George E. J. Powell (1842-1882) and Charles Augustus Howell (1840-1885); the transvestites Boulton and Parks and the Jewish painter Simeon Solomon (1840-1905) who was convicted for six weeks following lewd behaviour in a public lavatory in 1873 – Swinburne cut the friendship with him following this incident and Solomon after a spell in hospital and the workhouse, ended his days as a pauper in the latter. Also mentioned are Adah Isaacs Menken (Dolores McCord) and the drearily drab and dull man who saved Swinburne’s life and probably killed his poetic spirit: Theodore Watts-Dunton (1832-1914) who took the alcoholic poet into his care at the Pines in Putney – he was already dead and remained so until his body saw fit to join his mind and spirit in death.
The writer John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) proves himself to be a sneak in his youth and behaves abominably and despicably having heard that the Headmaster of Harrow, Dr. Charles John Vaughan (1816-1897) is having a relationship with Symonds’ friend Alfred Pretor (1846-1908); Symonds informs his father of the love letters from Pretor to Vaughan and the Headmaster is forced to resign. In 1858 Symonds goes up to Balliol College, Oxford and the following year his friend G. H. Shorter comes up from Rugby and the two become lovers before quarrelling over a Magdalene choir boy! Shorter sends Symonds’ letters and poems addressed to him to six Magdalene Fellows and Symonds leaves Oxford for a nervous breakdown, which some might say is the rightful fate for his behaviour with Pretor and Vaughan! Two friends of Symonds who were both schoolmasters have the same hunger after youth and are not so reticent about fulfilling that hunger: Arthur Sidgwick (1840-1920) a Master at Rugby, and Henry Dakyns (1838-1911) a classics Master at Clifton College, these two, along with the poet Roden Noel (1834-1894) and even the American poet, Walt Whitman, a correspondence with Symonds helps shape his thoughts on sexuality (Dakyns introduced Symonds to the seventeen year old love of Symonds’ life, Norman Moor in the Sixth Form at Clifton College, but Moor was sexually attracted to young boys and went up to Balliol College when he was 20; after travelling through Europe together the relationship ended. Moor became a classics Master at Clifton College and married six years later) but it is two Eton schoolmasters (both mysteriously dismissed by the Headmaster Dr. Hornby) who have a more profound effect upon the young man, namely the poet of ‘Ionica’ whom he sadly never met, William Johnson Cory who was at Eton 27 years and almost overnight had to resign his Fellowship from King’s College, Cambridge and changed his name to ‘Cory’, and Oscar Browning (1833-1923), a lifelong acquaintance and personal friend of Simeon Solomon (they went to Rome together). For Symonds, 1872 when he was 32 years old, became a pivotal year, he had lost Moor and discovered he was no longer sexually interested in boys and turned to the adult male.
Another name to conjure with is the author, Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883) who when he was 23 fell in love with the 16 year old William Kenworthy Browne (1818-1859) who died in a horse riding accident, and the poet Horatio Brown (1854-1926) who was in the Sixth Form at Clifton College, that hotbed of homosexuality where Symonds lectured to him, in fact, Brown seems to have worshipped Symonds and they went to Venice together, but we must not forget other set pieces in the game such as the poet Edward Cracroft Lefroy (1855-1891), the Rev. C. L. Dodgson better known as Lewis Carroll and a weak-eyed, ugly epileptic asthmatic named Edward Lear (1812-188), but we must move on to Wilde and the father of aestheticism, Walter Pater, a not very pretty hunchback who seems to have said nothing in all of his writings! We are of course in no doubt that Frank Harris is a damned liar when it comes to his role in the Wilde debacle and exaggerated pretty much the whole of his literary connections, but of interest are Wilde’s early friendships such as Lord Ronald Sutherland-Gower and the portrait painter Frank Miles (1852-1891) whom Wilde knew at Oxford and shared rooms with in London before quarrelling, Wilde moving towards literary success and Miles to a lunatic asylum and eventual suicide! The poet John Gray is of course brought into the story who met Wilde in 1889 when Gray was 23 and Marc Andre Raffalovich who met Gray in 1892 and the pairs descent into Catholicism like so many others, such as the alcoholic dwarf, Lionel Johnson who met Wilde in 1890 at Oxford through Pater (it was Johnson who introduced Wilde to ‘Bosie’ – Lord Alfred Douglas); and Ernest Dowson, who met Wilde at the Rhymers Club and who became obsessed and poetically inspired by a 12 year old girl named Adelaide Foltinowicz (his father died of an overdose in 1894 and his mother by hanging shortly after, Dowson found her lifeless body), Dowson himself died young in February 1900, just eight months before Wilde; and also Count Eric Stenbock (1860-1895) whose eccentricity and poetry mark the excesses of aesthetic decadence and debauchery! The book of course ends with Wilde’s trials in 1895 when the public became aware of such ‘exotic’ and flamboyant behaviour and were sick of it! Wilde could have chose to escape the proceeding mockery but something made him stay to face the shame and humiliation, something brave within stood up to the onslaught and fell victim to it! Rupert Croft-Cooke has produced a most exquisitely beautiful book which I have no doubts about calling a masterpiece of literary research and criticism. Prior to reading ‘Feasting with Panthers’ I limbered up my muscles with ‘The Road of Danger, Guilt and Shame: The Lonely Way of A. E. Housman’ by Carol Efrati (2002), ‘Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford’ by Linda Dowling (1994); the genitally-obsessed ‘The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century England’ by Steven Marcus (1964) and a book whose style I failed to appreciate – ‘The Man who was Dorian Gray’ by Jerusha Hull McCormack (2000) originally the doctoral thesis published as ‘John Gray: Poet, Dandy and Priest’ (1991), all quite unnecessary of course as ‘Feasting with Panthers’ needs little or no prior ‘warm-up’ to its enthusiastically written accounts of some rather marvellous and not quite forgotten individuals who still have the power to breathe new light into those decadent years, the eighteen-nineties. Glorious!
The Men of the Nineties – by Bernard Muddiman.
This is one of those books, published in 1920, quick to follow-up the interest in the nineties and to capture something of the atmosphere before it is lost forever or left to lesser men to write about, as indeed it shall be. Muddiman, in quite a short book at only 156 pages, describes the French influence upon the English writers and artists of the eighteen-nineties and how Oscar Wilde rose swiftly above the rest in the theatre; but of course, Muddiman gives his central role to Aubrey Beardsley whom he gushes over like a schoolgirl with wet knickers, enthralled by his personality as well as his intellectual learning. To the table he brings Henry Harland (1861-1905) of The Yellow Book fame and Arthur Symons, responsible for The Savoy periodical; other side ornamentation are put in place such as the critic and short story writer Hubert Montague Crackenthorpe (1870-1896) whose body was found in the Seine on Christmas Eve 1896 – ‘none of the nineties men produced a great novel’ says Muddiman which is quite true, even ‘Dorian Gray’ has its failings; and we are introduced to Dowling and the poet John Davidson (1858-1909) who later succumbed to suicide which seemed to be all the rage at one time. Muddiman goes a short distance to prove that the eighteen-nineties ‘fin de siecle’ was a pivotal decade announcing the death of Victorian morality and ushering in the splendour of the twentieth century with of course Wilde the Artist (and some would say Saint) as the inevitable sacrifice for such decadence which became a byword for degeneracy. It would take a world war before the re-emergence of such ‘Artistic’ principles could rise again to be articulated in painting, verse and the theatre. In its wake I read W. G. Blaikie-Murdoch’s ‘The Renaissance of the Nineties’ (1911) which if you prefer a more polished, pompous, dry and humourless account of the nineties you will certainly enjoy or you may fancy a long-winded yet scholarly approach as in Osbert Burdett’s ‘The Beardsley Period: An Essay in Perspective’ (1925) which I quite enjoyed or perhaps another book I found fascinating – ‘The Eighteen Nineties: A Review of Art and Ideas at the Close of the Nineteenth Century’ by Holbrook Jackson (1913) which gives an excellently researched and invaluable account, but not bad Muddiman, not bad!
Poets of the ‘Nineties: A Biographical Anthology – by Derek Stanford.
This is a hugely enjoyable collection of decadent oddities from Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898), Ernest Dowson (1867-1900), Victor Plarr (1863-1929), W B Yeats (1865-1939) to Richard Le Galliene (1866-1944) and Lord Alfred Douglas (1870-1945) published in 1965. The poets of the nineties wished to express the intensity of life’s moments such as the Scottish poet John Davidson (1857-1909) whose ballads became infused with atheism and Nietzsche’s philosophy (I read his collection ‘In a Music-Hall and Other Poems’, 1891 and found it quite dreadful though many praised it at the time); Stanford almost seems to suggest that there was a curse upon the poets of the nineties, a curse which few survived, John Gray lived till 1934, Yeats of course lived till 1939, Arthur Symons and Lord Alfred Douglas till 1945 and Richard Le Galliene till 1947 so perhaps a few were exempt from such a curse, but it does seem to be a cult of the consumptive and the suicidal – John Davidson, fearful of his own failures and disappointments, fabulously drowned himself in the Seine at the age of fifty or thereabouts, his body was discovered some six months later by some fishermen; Dowson died of consumption aged 32; Lionel Johnson, a dipsomaniac, had a stroke and died aged 35; Wilde, disgraced and imprisoned was dead after just three years exile in France, aged 46; Beardsley, another consumptive was taken aged 26; the American poet William Theodore Peters starved to death in Paris in 1904; Hubert Crackenthorpe took John Davidson’s example and was found in the Seine; Francis Adams committed suicide, so did Francis William Lauderdale Adams who put a revolver to his head in 1893; Henry Harland who edited the Yellow Book died of consumption aged 43, Francis Thompson, an opium addict and consumptive died aged 48 and the artist Charles Conder who went mad and was placed in an asylum died at 41, coincidentally, it was the same asylum Arthur Symons went to following his attack of madness in Italy in 1908. ‘Poets of the ‘Nineties’ is a fascinating read and of all those men who burned with a ‘hard gem-like flame’ one is left with the haunting image of poor Dowson like a monstrous phantom in Soho – by 1897 the young girl Adelaide for whom he yearned had married and his father took poison and his mother took to the rope – Dowson went himself in 1900 just as the eighteen-nineties had flickered to a close. I followed this up with a 1970 reprint of ‘Poetry of the Nineties’ (1926) by Clarence Edward Andrews which adds a few more lesser-known poets to the great consumptive and drowning collective. Splendid!
Posies Out of Rings and Other Conceits – by William Theodore Peters.
William Theodore Peters (1862-1904) is an American poet but we should not hold that against him for he has produced quite a nice little book of poems in this 1896 publication which contains 87 poems most of which consist of just two, three or four lines which try to be more than they are so don’t get too comfortable. ‘Requiescat’ has eleven lines (he must have been spectacularly inspired that day) and is reminiscent of Wilde and begins: ‘
Our Love is dead! Our love is dead! / Let’s cover him with summer flowers.’ The ‘Pierrot and the Statue’ ends as if seeming to sum-up many of the eighteen-nineties poets, including Peters: ‘
the Statue faintly flushed, it seemed to strive / to move, - but it was only half alive.’ Actually, the more I read the more Peters became disagreeable to me and perhaps grudges should be held afterall! – his ‘Song’ is the most terrible, infantile muck one could wish to read with its six verses droning on about ‘fairy harps’ which stood ‘in a castle old’; the fact he knew Dowson and dedicates a poem to him – ‘Epilogue to Ernest Dowson’s “The Pierrot of the Minute” almost redeems him, but not quite. He died of starvation in Paris in 1904.
The Blue-Fly in His Head: Poems – by John Heath-Stubbs.
This slim volume (86 pages) published in 1962 has some marvellous poems based on classical mythology such as ‘The Cave of the Nymphs’ and these lines from ‘Not being Oedipus’:
‘Celibate, he had nothing to fear from ambitious sons;
Although he was lonely at nights,
With only the Sphynx, curled up upon his eider down.
Its body exuded a sort of unearthly warmth
(Though in fact cold-blooded) but its capacity
For affection was strictly limited.’
Poet and critic, of Queen’s College, Oxford, John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs (1918-2006) takes his title from the Jewish tradition in which Titus is afflicted with an insect in the brain for his punishment after the destruction of the Temple. We can see the author’s playfulness in poems like ‘Theseus on Naxos’ – ‘
Delicate girls in the blush of beauty, / boys in their galloping grace, to the Beast - / product of hideous and comic lust: / the obscene guzzle, the bull-thing’s feast.’ (I); ‘Plato and the Waters of the Flood’, ‘Titus and Berenice’, ‘The Peacock and the Snake’ and ‘Household Devils’: ‘
Articles don’t get written, / poems don’t get copied; / the grime of sloth settles on my life.’ Other good poems are: ‘Lament for the Old Swan, Notting Hill Gate’, ‘To Edmund Blunden on His 60th Birthday’ and some lovely little animal poems such as ‘The Hare’ which is ‘
sacred to the Moon / a type of innocent sacrifice’ and ‘The Nightjar’ which appears ‘
less bird than voice’ and is ‘
twilight’s great moth-winged, moth-pursuing swallow, / bark-mottled invisible squatter’ or the one line poem ‘The Ants’ which simply reads: ‘
You could have been human, but you aren’t’. Heath-Stubbs went blind in his left eye in 1961 and his right eye followed suit in 1978; he died at the age of 88 and his work is certainly worth searching for!
My Father and Myself –
by J. R. Ackerley.
Joe Randolph Ackerley
(1896-1967) has written a brilliant account of his mysterious father, Alfred
Roger Ackerley, a guardsman whose secret life unfolds throughout the eighteen
chapters of this delightful book published in 1968. The author, a young
‘bed-wetter’ who says that he was ‘pissing upon a world that had not accorded
me the whole-hearted welcome my ego required’ (p. 76), describes his
relationship with his father who became one of the directors of the fruit
merchants, ‘Elders and Fyffes’ thus becoming known as the ‘Banana King’;
Alfred, the King of the Bananas, married his first wife Louise Burckhardt who
died in 1892, the same year that Alfred met the author’s mother, Janetta
Aylward on the Channel boat. Janetta became pregnant in 1895 and Alfred refused
to marry her due to an inheritance allowance from the Buckhardt’s; he was also
seeing other women. And so the author’s unwanted older brother Peter was born
(Peter died in the final moments of the war when he was decapitated by a shell
in August 1918); a sister, Nancy was born in 1898; the author joined-up in 1915
and was wounded at the Somme, on his return to the Front he was made a Captain
and wounded again before being taken prisoner and sent to Germany. Following
the war J. R. went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge in the autumn of 1919 to
study Law where he began writing poems – this was also the year in which the
first ‘secret’ occurred and was not revealed until after the author’s father died
of cancer of the tongue and strokes in October 1929 – in 1919 his parents were
married! Hardly the stuff of damnation today and I was half expecting him to
accuse his father of being Jack the Ripper or something outlandish but at the
time there was a great stigma attached to such dishonourable and immoral
behaviour. Following Ackerley senior’s death the author researches and wades
through the evidence as to his father’s life and another anomaly rears its
head: his father was the handsome young guardsman who attended upon two rich gentlemen
– one, a Mr. Fitzroy Paley Ashmore, a barrister who matriculated from
University College, Oxford in 1864 (born around 1846 he died in 1883), and the
other, Count James Francis de Gallatin (1853-1915): just what was the
relationship between the young and astonishingly handsome Alfred Ackerley and
these two men? It was known that it was customary for young guardsmen to
respond to rich, older gentlemen who required their company in return for money
and sexual encounters were regular occurrences discussed in the Albany Street
Barracks, Regents Park (where Alfred enlisted in 1879), and the conduct
receiving the usual nudges, nods and winks was common affair. In fact, there
was a notorious tobacconist shop nearby where Mrs. Truman took messages from
gentlemen wishing to meet young guardsmen. The author, a homosexual himself who
describes with relish some of his own sexual encounters and exploits, has more
revelations up his sleeve to reveal, another mystery, his father’s ‘secret
orchard’ for he had a mistress named
Muriel Perry and three daughters, twins Sally and Elizabeth, born 1909 and
Diana born 1912 (the author hadn’t the heart to reveal this information to his
mother, Netta who remained blissfully unaware of the situation, and he himself
did not keep in-touch with his half-sisters): what other revelations may have
come to light had not Alfred’s locked desk from Elders and Fyffes containing
personal items and papers not been burned un-opened is anyone’s guess!
In 1925 the author
took lodgings at number 6 Hammersmith Terrace owned by the Needhams, three
marvellously dilapidated Dickensian characters who were gunsmiths and workers
in metals: Arthur Joseph Needham, an inventor in his sixties and a ‘haunter of
Hammersmith urinals’; the reclusive Helen Louisa Needham (Miss Louie) and their
brother Walter Cecil Needham known as ‘Cis’ who succumbed to cancer. It turns
out that the camp and curious Arthur knew Count James Francis de Gallatin in
his younger days and the Count, a notorious homosexual known for his encounters
with guardsmen and sailors lived nearby at 3 St. Peter’s Square and so the
flames of suspicion are fanned once more – was the author’s father the
plaything of wealthy gentlemen? We can only speculate and Arthur died in 1941
aged 78 taking any unspoken truths to his grave with him. And so the author
takes a job with the B.B.C. in 1928 and began the idea for writing this book in
1934 but it was put away for two decades after a bomb fell outside his flat
bringing the ceiling down in 1940. The Appendix describes his problems with
premature ejaculation and impotence before he reveals much too much about his
unhealthy relationship with his dog, Tulip! All in all a fascinating and moving
account with some lovely portraits of the odd eccentric personalities of which
there are too few of today. Tremendous!
The Darkling Plain –
by John Heath-Stubbs.
The Darkling Plain: a
study of the later fortunes of Romanticism in English Poetry from George Darley
to W. B. Yeats, was published in 1950 and the author writes with clarity and
distinction with his poet’s eye (he unfortunately lost his sight later in
life), revealing the contrast between the ‘Classical’ and the ‘Romantic’, a
revolt of ‘intuitive imagination’ against the rationalism and empiricism of the
eighteenth century. From the beginning Heath-Stubbs rights-off the Victorian
poets of metaphysical doubt and questioning, Browning and Tennyson, dismissing
their rambling, epic works that fall dismally short of Byron and Shelley to
concentrate on the lesser-known poets: Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803-1849) who
committed suicide, Thomas Hood (1799-1845) and George Darley (1795-1846) whose
morbidity and strange grotesque works were not popular. We are taken on a
journey through the realms of folk traditions and the regionalists in chapter
two, the medieval minstrels, country songs, ballads and village mummers before
alighting on the minor romantic poet John Clare (1793-1864), a peasant-poet and
a madman who was largely ignored during his lifetime; of all the Romantic
poets, John Clare, the son of a labourer who pulled himself from the slime of
his wretched situation in his attempt to escape his peasant poverty and reveal
his poetic intellect showed an unusual integrity lacking in better-known poets
of greater social fortune. Like Yeats love for Maude Gonne, Clare was devoted
to his first, unrequited love, Mary Joyce, whom in his less lucid days he
believed he was married to and this compulsion drove Clare to write his
evocative poetry, a spiritual correspondence between Man and Landscape, yet the
frailty of the mind would be all too consumed by the Lunatic Asylum. Housman’s
‘pastoral-dream of lost adolescence’ is touched upon although one feels
Heath-Stubbs hasn’t much time for the scholar and poet whose impact influenced
the new ‘Georgian’ poets. Those two old stalwarts of popularity, financially
fat and bloated by applause, Browning and Tennyson are summoned in chapter
three – the poetry of doubt and despair, whom the author accuses of being
dishonest for failing to observe or record the changes of their age (although I
must say Tennyson from the perspective of his ivory tower was aware of
something called the ‘railway’ which he apparently believed incorrectly to
travel upon ‘grooves’ so he was almost a faithful recorder of change); other
old steam engines are stoked-up and taken out of their sheds once more, such as
the ‘wistful unbelievers’, Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), Arthur Hugh Clough
(1819-1861) and the ‘intellectual pessimist’ James Thomson (1834-1882) whose
‘City of Dreadful Night’ influenced the fin de siecle ‘suicidal’ poets. The
Roman Catholic mysticism of Coventry Patmore (1823-1896), G. M. Hopkins
(1844-1899) and Francis Thompson (1859-1907) with his opium-infused visions are
explored in chapter four before the author explodes with utter dismay at the
conceited delusions of those aesthetes, those ‘Swinburnian derivatives’ of the
eighteen-nineties with their ‘affected archaism of diction’ for he has little
praise for such eternal spirits as Ernest Dowson (1867-1900) and Lionel Johnson
(1867-1902) whom he dismisses, saying ‘those who did not die young outlived
their talents and their reputations’ (p. 151); it is true that most of these
poets were all play and no passion with little energy towards any iconoclastic
revolt but I think the author is a little hard on the younger generation who
quietly rebelled against the imposing moralistic edifice of Victorian decency, ah
but there is hope in the much neglected and almost obscure poet, Wilfred Scawen
Blunt (1840-1922) whose ‘eighties and ‘nineties poetry is simply Byronic in
style but that hope dwindles rapidly into whispered praise, but watch
Heath-Stubbs gush like an embarrassed boy with an erection over the French
Symbolists – Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine and Mallarme etc. and his enthusiasm
spills across the page and of course we are led to the sado-masochistic (and
probably impotent) Swinburne and the Pre-Raphaelites and aestheticism’s transition
towards imaginative realism; but what is this? Could it be that Mr. Wilde with
his polished façade is making an entrance, paraded before us as a figure-head
of Platonism (absolute beauty), a philosophical tradition whereby an aesthetic
metaphysics can be constructed, before being told to stand at the back of the
room like a naughty child and be silent while others take their turn – George
Meredith (1828-1909) an inferior Browning – Robert Bridges (1834-1930) who
dissolved into dreary dribble and Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) with his
jingoistic tosh and Charles Doughty (1843-1926) with his epic style in the
manner of Milton… all come under the scrutiny of the author’s astute learning but
one possible exception who rises above the dross is John Davidson (1857-1909)
who expresses colloquially the ‘dingy urban images’ of reality before he took
like a stone to water and so we therefore come to the esoteric doctrines and
Celtic mythology of W. B. Yeats whose early Pre-Raphaelite-influenced works
progressed steadily towards a modern realism. Heath-Stubbs, a rather good poet
himself, has produced a breathtaking study of Romanticism which is both
perceptive and enlightening.
Meditations in Motley
– by Walter Blackburn Harte.
This collection of six
essays, or as the London-born author Walter Blackburn Harte (1867-1899) terms
them, a ‘Bundle of Papers imbued with the Sobriety of Midnight’ was published
in 1894 and what an erudite and witty ‘bundle’ it is! In the first essay, ‘On
Certain Satisfactions of Prejudice’, we are heartily reminded no to ‘mistake
“prejudices” for “convictions” or vice versa’ and the author illustrates the boundless
joy to be found in certain prejudices before moving on to the more serious
‘Jacobitism in Boston’. Harte, an admirer of Ambrose Bierce and Walter Pater,
immigrated to Canada in 1886 and became a journalist before moving to New York
in 1890; he was assistant editor of ‘New England’ and ‘Arena’ magazine in
Boston and editor of ‘The Flyleaf’ (1896) and ‘The Lotus’ (1897), and
undoubtedly his own failure to earn a living from his pen in London sustained
and increased his condemnation of publishers for he writes scathingly of both
publishers and the popular novels in his essay ‘about Critic and Criticism,
with other Matters, Incidental and Irrelevant’. A pessimistic cloud descends
upon the author’s essays and permeates every line as he spits fury yet he
writes brilliantly and dazzlingly with savage accuracy on social and literary
criticism with a thread of irony that shows his perceptive skill at analysis;
the bile builds in ‘Some Masks and Faces of Literature’ only to whisper
passionately like a lover upon the ‘Fascination of New Books’ before singing
sweetly with a ‘Rhapsody on Music’. Although originally the volume failed to
sell there is a wealth of fascinating literary subjects to be found within this
‘bundle’ and anyone wishing to know more about the author who died much too
soon without sufficient recognition, should consult ‘The Fin de Siecle Spirit:
Walter Blackburn Harte and the American/Canadian Literary Milieu of the 1890’s’
by James Doyle published in 1995.
In the Key of Blue and
Other Prose Essays – by John Addington Symonds.
Published in 1893, the
thirteen essays contained in the volume range from ‘The Dantesque and Platonic
Ideals of Love’ with its examination of the love between Dante and Beatrice,
notable Greek mythological gods and men and the notion of chivalrous love, where
he says that ‘Love, like poetry and prophecy, is a divine gift, which diverts
men from the common current of their earthly lives; and in the right use of
this gift lies the secret of all human excellence’ (p. 71); the desire is not a
physical sensuality, not an appetite but a ‘state of the soul’. Symonds looks
at the similarity between Greek and medieval chivalry, a ‘pure spiritual
enthusiasm’ originally a Dorian and ‘soldierly passion’ (it is not adulterous
and excludes marriage); ‘Medieval Norman Songs’ and ‘The Lyricism of the
Romantic Drama’ to ‘Lyrics from Elizabethan Song Books’, all worthy subjects
and handled well in the author’s skilled hands of course but more interesting,
I found were his essays containing his descriptive Italian walking tours in the
‘footsteps of Shelley’such as ‘Among the Euganean Hills’, ‘On an Alter-Piece by
Tiepelo’ and his ‘Notes of a Somersetshire Home’. But the high-points for me
was his touching essay on the poet whom he sadly never got to meet, ‘Edward
Cracroft Lefroy’ (1855-1891), that Neo-Hellenic ‘muscular Christian’ and author
of the much admired poetry collection and catalyst for uranian outpourings,
‘Echoes from Theocritus’ published in 1885, a man of ‘simplicity and absolute
sincerity of instinct’; staying with the uranian theme, ‘Clifton and a Lad’s
Love’ has some memorable lines of verse where the author no longer feels the
need to ‘curb the current of his blood’ –
‘I found him in a
lowly place:
He sang clear songs
that made me weep:
Long nights he ruled
my soul in sleep:
Long days I thought
upon his face.’ (I)
Clifton College in Bristol
is where Symonds lectured and met the seventeen year old Edward Norman Peter
Moor (1851-1895) and engaged in a four year affair with him (Moor later taught
Classics at Clifton in 1874). Clifton seems to have housed many notable
‘uranians’ and almost equalled Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford in its
debauched delights (Symonds attended both educational institutions and at the
former his seeds of hypocrisy were sown [see the case of Pretor and Vaughan]
and the latter under Benjamin Jowett, his enthusiasm for choirboys) for we find
at Clifton a distinguished and depraved coterie of literary men who worked as
Masters and kept up a circle of correspondence, such as Horatio Forbes Brown
(1854-1926), the poet who studied under Symonds; the Classics Master, Greek
translator and Venetian historian Henry Graham Dakyns (1838-1911) who was at
Clifton from 1862-1889; Mathematics Master, author (see his ‘Clifton Memories’
1927) and poet, John Rickards Mozley (1840-1931) and the Manx poet and Master,
Thomas Edward Brown (1830-1897) who actually died at the College and probably
haunts its halls! I once stayed in Clifton
and was harassed by a very persistent ghost.
Symonds is a great
authority on the history of the ‘Divine’ or Greek ideal of love and writes with
passion but he is also a worthy poet so let us return to ‘Clifton and a Lad’s love’ to end upon:
‘To thee far off, more
far than death,
To thee I make my
lonely rhyme,
Condemned to see thee
not in time,
Though life and love
still rule thy breath.
Our pulses beat, our
hearts strike on;
They beat, but do not
beat together;
Our years are young,
but lusty weather
Wakes in our blood no
unison.’ (XV)
In the Dorian Mode: A
Life of John Gray – by Brocard Sewell.
This hugely
interesting volume published in 1983 is divided, like the poet, John Henry Gray
(1866-1934), into two parts: part I – ‘A Walk on the Wild Side’ looks at his
hedonistic rise in aesthetic circles and part II – ‘The Canon in Residence’
concentrates on his Catholic spiritual endeavours. Gray was born in London’s
Bethnal Green to a working-class Methodist family; bright and studious, young
Gray unfortunately had to leave school at thirteen to contribute to the family
finances and worked at the Woolwich Arsenal as a metal-turner, studying
languages, Latin, French and German in his spare time, not to mention learning
the violin and aspects of drawing and painting. After three years at the lathe,
in 1882 aged sixteen, he studied for his Civil Service (Lower Division)
Clerkship and passed in October of that year to become a Boy Clerk at the
Savings Bank Department of the London General Post Office. In 1888 he joined
the Foreign Office, aged twenty-two and took rooms in the Temple, rubbing shoulders with the likes of
Arthur Symons, W B Yeats and George Moore. With ambitions to become a writer,
Gray met Oscar Wilde in January 1891 at a Fitzroy Street poetry reading (or was it
in 1889 at a dinner party in Fulham, there is some contention?) and Wilde seems
to have lost his heart to the boy and introduced him to London society; the
intense friendship with Wilde seems to have lasted until 1893. So here is Gray,
aged twenty-three with no real experience of love or sex (we assume: was he
really so naive?) with a deepening feeling towards Catholicism which led him
into the faith on Valentine’s Day 1890 when he was received and shortly after
confirmed at St Mary’s, Cadogan Gardens, Chelsea. Gray became acquainted with
artists Charles de Sousy Rickets and Charles Hazelwood Shannon who published
‘The Dial’ to which Gray contributed and a close friendship was established
with French poet, Pierre Louys (1870-1925), a notorious ‘bisexual’; during
their friendship word of Wilde’s romance with ‘Bosie’ would have been mentioned
and discussed in sordid and seedy corners of London and it would prove too much
for the sensitive Gray who was tired of being seen as the inspiration for
Dorian Gray in Wilde’s novel and who in November 1892 suffered a nervous
breakdown and even came close to suicide over it – there would also be some
guilt over Gray’s rejection of his father and his working-class background,
having pulled himself free from the slime of poverty; he became disgusted with
life. Yet another factor would be introduced into this confused state during
that November and that is Grays blossoming friendship with the homosexual poet
and author Marc Andre Raffalovich (1864-1934), whom he met in Arthur Symons’
rooms in the Temple.
Raffalovich and Wilde were at extreme odds with each other and he may have
played a part in separating Gray from Wilde but it is not known to what extent
(Wilde had originally bore the costs of Gray’s poetry collection ‘Silverpoints’
published in March 1893, but cancelled prior to this in January). Raffalovich
and Gray shared a love of the theatre and both took to the teachings of
Swedenborg and spiritism. Gray abandoned Wilde when the friendship
deteriorated, along with Raffalovich, Louys and Beardsley, in some cases after
several attempts to warn Wilde of his behaviour and the rumours circulating London and Paris. Following the
inevitable downfall of the great aesthete, Gray retreated in December 1897 to
the Jesuit fathers at Manresa House, Roehampton as a candidate for priesthood,
a place attended by the poet G M Hopkins and visited by myself while an
undergraduate at Roehampton. And so Gray resigned form the Civil Service at the
end of November 1898 to study Holy Orders at Scot’s College in Rome. He was ordained in Rome on 21st December three years
later in 1901 before being offered an assistant curacy at St Patrick’s Church,
Cowgate, in Edinburgh’s
Old Town (he would become Rector of St
Peter’s aged forty-one and remain so for the next twenty-seven years). There
were some intermittent publications from Gray such as: ‘Spiritual Poems’
(1896), ‘Vivus’ (1922), ‘Poems’ (1931) and a novel ‘Park: A Fantastic Story’
(1932). Raffalovich died in February 1934 and Gray died just four months later
on 14th June; as to the nature of their relationship the author
believes it was platonic and I tend to agree for although Raffalovich was
definitely homosexual, Gray seemed less committed and may even, like Louys been
bisexual, but like Hopkins, Gray seems to have hidden his desires within the
Catholic Church and spiritual asceticism. For another perspective on Gray and
an altogether different psychological analysis you may wish to turn to as I
have done, to Jerusha Hull’s ‘The Man who was Dorian Gray’ published in 2000, (unfortunately
I did not like her narrative approach to biography but it is a scholarly work
nonetheless), all in all, Brocard Sewell has written a thoroughly interesting volume
about a brilliantly perplexing and much divided man!
Unforgotten Years – by
Logan Pearsall
Smith.
‘Unforgotten Years’ is
an immensely interesting autobiography by the American born essayist and
critic, Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) published in 1938. Written in an
informal style which is a pleasure to read, Smith tells us of his Philadelphia
Quaker up-bringing and his early life attending Quaker meetings with his
parents – ‘there can be no doubt’ he says, ‘that I was born a vessel of wrath,
full to the brim of that Original Sin we all inherit from that crude apple that
diverted Eve’ (p. 36). Yet at a young age, through the influence of his older
sister who became interested in literature and philosophy, the Divine essence
seems to leave him – ‘since I attained the state of Sanctification at the age
of seven I have never felt the slightest twinge of conscience, never
experienced for one second the sense of sin’ (p. 40). The Smith family
travelled to England in 1872 and young Logan was taken with London, staying at
the grand houses while his parents talked on Quakerism; in 1882 Logan, his
father and his sister went to visit Walt Whitman (his ‘Leaves of Grass’ had a
profound effect upon his sister and thence upon Logan); Walt stays with the
Smiths for a month and they visited each other quite often, remaining firm
friends throughout the poet’s remaining years. At the age of nineteen in 1884 Logan attended Harvard
and entered its intellectual social scene with relish and it was at Harvard
that he discovered and admired the writing of Matthew Arnold and Theosophy.
Following his year at Harvard Smith went to Germany to study in Berlin and found a
fondness for Wagner – he met Matthew Arnold in Dresden and was deeply disillusioned by the
man. He returned to the United Sates in the autumn of 1886 and entered the
family glass bottle business, becoming a clerk in their New York warehouse with
the prospects of becoming a wealthy man, but he was disappointed by this and to
his father’s displeasure, abandoned it for a literary life and arrived in
England in 1888, aged twenty-three, where he enters Balliol College, Oxford,
befriending the great Benjamin Jowett and attending his dinner parties, even
staying with him in his Malvern cottage. He read Walter Pater at Oxford and was
hugely influenced by his writing before he graduated in 1891; and so the young
man of learning travelled to Paris, to the Montparnasse quarter, taking rooms
near Whistler’s studio and getting to know the artist quite well along with
Roger Fry and Lowes Dickinson (Smith is less than kind about the endless parade
of self-absorbed bohemian artists all painting the same variations of the same
old styles; there is little originality, he finds in Paris). In France he
admired the writings of Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant, immersing himself in
the richness of their style. His first book about Oxford was published in 1895 but was not well
received, but through its publication he became friends with the poet Robert
Bridges and got to meet the great fellow American writer, Henry James. Smith
then retires to an 18th century farmhouse, ‘High Buildings’ in
Sussex where he stayed for ten years in solitude, reading, mostly Pater and
Baudelaire and learning his craft of writing, consumed by the art of
literature. One of the most interesting chapters concerns his hunting for
manuscripts, unearthing forgotten letters in the archives of private houses,
ingratiating himself first with the owners of such literary gems usually
through a letter of introduction by a common acquaintance. In this manner he
was able to discover the unpublished letters of John Donne and Sir Henry Wotton
(see his ‘The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton’ (1907) and also the
correspondence between Carlyle and the second Lord Ashburton and Horace Walpole
to Madame du Deffand. Smith is a prolific
writer whose works include: ‘Trivia’ (1902), ‘More Trivia’ (1921),
‘Afterthoughts’ (1931) and ‘A Treasury of English Aphorisms’ (1943) and
‘Unforgotten Years’ is a tremendous and rewarding read, yet he tells us nothing
about his infatuations, there is no mention of love or sexual desire; he is a
man all too unconcerned by mere mortal frivolities of the flesh, or so it
seems, but under the façade of the man of letters there must have been great
passions, even if he chooses not to disclose them, which is a pity, yet it does
not alter the fact that Smith has written an absolutely fascinating account of
his life with little concern about inflating his ego or literary stature for
the eyes of posterity. Superb!
Ionicus – by Reginald,
Viscount Esher.
In 1858 a remarkable
volume of poetry was published titled ‘Ionica’ by the Eton schoolmaster William
Johnson (1823-1892) who changed his name to William Cory in October 1872
following his mysterious dismissal, in fact he was forced to resign, from Eton
in the Easter of that year. This book, ‘Ionicus’, published in 1923 by the 2nd
Viscount Esher – Reginald Baliol Brett (1852-1930), a somewhat
semi-distinguished historian and politician who was fifteen at Eton when he
came under the influence of Cory, then William Johnson. Brett presents here the
letters written to him by Cory which began in the summer half of 1868; Brett is
of course flattered and keeps up a correspondence with the poet and scholar
William Johnson. And so waves of letters ebb and flo between them filled with
idle, trivial matters of school life, politics and literary interests
interspersed with the worthless doings of inflated personages bound by titles
such as Lord such-and-such and Earl so-and-so, puffing-up the inherent,
nauseating snobbery of such privileged, and often odious, personages like
Brett, who left Eton in the summer of 1870 to go up to Trinity College,
Cambridge in October of that year only to surround himself with delicious, golden-haired
‘courtesans’. The Eton dismissal of Cory is touched upon, although much more is
not being said, for we are to understand that he was ‘encouraged’ to resign due
to his teaching methods and system of developing and appreciating shall we say
the boys’ romantic ideals in a classical manner; this was all too much for the
Headmaster of Eton (from 1864-84), a stuffed Victorian carcase by the name of
James Hornby (1826-1909), the same moralistic masochist who dismissed Oscar
Browning (1837-1923) from Eton for the same alleged offences. Having left Eton, Cory leads a far from cloistered life, for he
travels widely and accepts dinner invitations and other social engagements with
great enthusiasm and with his health failing his mind often flows over the pupils
he has taught, whom he has given so much to. Brett, still bearing a passing
resemblance to a scholar, grows a little fatigued with Cory’s correspondence,
or at least is not as dutiful in answering as he once was, yet the letters
reach Cory, a scholar and poet who will forever be remembered and revered for
the line ‘they told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead’ – who but the
heartiest philistine and simplest of mind could fail to see the beauty of that
line and what is it about these simple words which invoke such perfectly
uplifting wonder? And so the correspondence which began in 1868 ends with
Cory’s death in 1892. The volume ends with some notes upon the writing of the
poetry in ‘Ionicus’ (appendix I) and ‘Lucretilis’ (appendix II). I would suggest
reading ‘Ionica’, the 1905 edition edited by A. C. Benson before turning to this more selective volume
which throws more light upon the poet, yet never enough to reveal fully the
man, the scholar and the poet to step completely from the shadows. Quite good!
Private Opinion: A
Commonplace Book – by Alan Pryce-Jones.
This is an interesting
and innovative volume of recollections and criticisms published in 1936, based
on the author’s boyhood and adult book browsing which reads like a love-affair
with books in almost chronological order; he has this to say about dear old
Dodsley’s ‘Collection of Poems, in six volumes, 1743-1758’ which by the way he
says is ‘unreadable’ – ‘to re-open Dodsley is to renew the refreshing – at
times – experience of turning one’s eyes away from an untrustworthy embryo to
an accomplished funeral urn.’ (p. 14) Alan Pryce-Jones (1908-2000), critic,
author and book collector weaves his reminiscences of Eton – ‘the elms and the
cloisters at night, and the Delphin Classics (unread, though, for the most
part, by me) in the Library gallery’, and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he
read ‘The Poetical Works of John Langhorne D.D.’ (on a scholarly pretext for
playing truant to London), through the tangled web of youth (there is a mild fascination
for reading in lavatories) attaching great significance to the books he reads
(English, German and French authors) and his memories, such as ‘The Coral
Island’ by R. M. Ballantyne (1857) which brings to mind his grandmother in
Beningbrough, and thus his Nanny, Miss Snell squashing frogs with her ‘flat
nanny’s heel’ in the garden. (p. 47) Pryce-Jones was an extraordinary idle
school boy: ‘anybody with a strain of comfortable weakness in his nature is
likely to be incapacitated for life by six years of Eton’
(p. 21) He remembers some rather obscure volumes with all the affection of a
book-lover: Anne Blanchard’s ‘Midnight Reflections’ (1822), Sir Philip Sidney’s
‘Arcadia’ which he read in 1915 at the height of the war when he would walk in
the garden at Penhurst ‘with the wind the right way, we could hear a hollow
booming’ (p. 23), Shenstone’s ‘Essays on Men and Manners’; ‘Dr. Johnson’ by
Hollis (the author’s first review for the London Mercury), H. N. Brailsford’s
‘Voltaire’, Mrs. Molesworth’s ‘The Cuckoo Clock’ (1895) and William Gaunt’s
‘London Promenade’ (1930) which ‘has appeal chiefly for those who, like myself,
do not live there’ (p. 71)… these remembered books, like bombs are either
effective and explode with a wealth of vision upon the reader that lasts a
lifetime or they are ineffective duds which fall without fatalities and remain
on the shelf, unread and unloved by few; the lover of books finds excuses to
see beyond the ‘commonplace’ and so does Pryce-Jones in such unremarkable and
some would say unrewarding tomes as Sitwell’s ‘German Baroque Art’ or the
marvellous volume of ecclesiastical decoration by the Rev. Edward Cutt’s,
‘Essay on Church Furniture’ (1854) a ‘rare treasure’ whose ‘accuracy is
chilling’ or the six volume collection of ‘Seats of the Noblemen and Gentry’ by
Rev. F. O. Morris, which sent up a ‘unique and appropriate smell’, a smell
known to book lovers, an aroma of a ‘deserted summer-house with that of a
decidedly unused library, a smell at once damp and inky and nostalgic, a smell
of leisure, warmly damp, with a suggestion of port rather than of water, it
goes straight to the head.’ (p. 175) But the author does give us his opinion of
a bad book and gives examples to support this – ‘The Season: A Satire’ by
Alfred Austin, whose dreary lines of schoolboyish verse makes the reader squirm
with embarrassment, but no doubt there are many more examples if one were
unkind enough to reveal them. Pryce-Jones went on to be Assistant Editor at the
London Mercury (1928-32) and Editor of the Times Literary Supplement (1948-59)
as well as serving in the war in France with the 4th Hussars and in
Intelligence at Bletchley Park. Other works of his include: ‘The Spring
Journey’ (1931) detailing his travels in the Middle East, ‘People in the South’
(1932), ‘Pink Danube’ a novel under the pseudonym Arthur Pumphrey (1939) and
his autobiography ‘The Bonus of Laughter’ (1987). There is a touch of
sophistication about this book and a flavour of aestheticism which is
delightful and may not suit all tastes that prefer their reading matter less
stuffy, but this lovely little book is more than welcome to join the circle of
friendship.
If it Die – by Andre
Gide.
Published in 1920 and
later translated into English by Dorothy Bussy, ‘If it Die’ is a magnificent
memoir by Andre Gide (1869-1951) of his early life up until his mother’s death
in 1895. Gide presents us with the shameless truth about his infatuations with
young boys and is frank about his own habit of pleasuring himself – he was
dismissed from the Ecole Alsacienne for three months when caught masturbating
and eating chocolate in class, a perfect combination of sins! One can be
assured of the accuracy of what one is reading when the author declares such
intimate details about themselves. There are tales of bullying and of smallpox
before the young Gide shams nervous breakdown to escape the aggression at
school and Doctors suggest a water cure which certainly helps but then there
are the headaches… He becomes friends with Pierre Louis, later Louys (1870-1934)
poet and writer, famous for his ‘Les Chansons de Bilitis’, but of most interest
is his friendship with the painter Paul Laurens (1870-1934) with whom he went
to Africa with in January 1894 (Laurens was on a travelling scholarship); at
Biskra they immersed themselves in Arab life, in the cafés and markets and
between them they shared other pursuits such as the young body of a not yet
sixteen year old prostitute named Meriem – delightful excursions aside, Andre
was free to indulge his peculiarities such as his growing interest in young
boys, especially brown-skinned beauties. In fact, it was an endless round of
prostitutes and ill-health. Onwards went young Andre through Tunis, Sicily,
Naples, Rome and Florence where they parted and Andre went to Geneva. There he met his
old friend Pierre Louis and his friend Ferdinand Herold and mentioned some of
his escapades in Algeria, especially that of the little prostitute Meriem and
of course under the same sexually charged spell Louis and Ferdinand travelled to
Biskra and devoured her sexually also. Andre seemed to discover that sex was
actually good for his physical health, hmm, what took him so long? But after
breaking down again he spends time in Switzerland recovering his health
in the cold mountain air. With his new discovery in mind off Gide trots to
Algiers again in 1895, but alone in his hotel in Blidah and in despair, he is
about to leave when he notices the names of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas
on the arrivals board (Gide had already met Wilde in Paris and knew of his
reputation so removed his own name from the board with the intention of leaving
the hotel); Gide leaves the hotel but has a change of heart, perhaps thinking
Wilde had seen his name and would feel affronted at his leaving, anyway he
returns. Wilde in fact, had arrived in Algiers with the twenty-four year old
Douglas on 17th January 1895 and spent long hours watching the young
boys and smoking hashish; Wilde roamed the streets like an old rampant lion
with Douglas the young cub at his side (Douglas was the stronger personality
with an irresponsible fatality) and together they hunted the young ‘gazelles’
as Douglas was fond of calling the boys, one particular ‘gazelle’ Douglas took
a liking to was fourteen year old Ali. Gide paints an accurate portrait of
Wilde, unlike Douglas the deplorable liar and destroyer of Wilde, for we get a
sense of Wilde’s sadness at the approaching and inevitable confrontation with
Bosie’s father – ‘I have been as far as possible along my own road. I can’t go any
farther. Something must happen now.’ Then of course his hurt at those around
him who had abandoned him, such as Pierre Louis who tried to talk to Wilde
about his conduct; there was a misunderstanding in the words about Wilde’s
friends being his lovers, what Wilde actually said he reports was ‘Good-bye,
Pierre Louis; I wanted a friend; now I shall have nothing but lovers.’ Many had
walked away sensing a terrible fate awaiting Wilde in England. With
Bosie away enslaving the heart of Ali, Andre and Oscar went to a little café
and met ‘Bosie’s boy’ Mohammed, playing a flute and Andre was smitten. Outside,
Oscar asked Andre if he wanted Mohammed to which Andre answered ‘yes’; Oscar
found it all quite amusing and no doubt had great pleasure in thinking he was leading
Andre astray into a sinfully wicked wilderness, not of course knowing that
Andre had already explored some of this wilderness for himself. Later that
night after many cocktails they met the two boys from the café, Mohammed and
his friend and so they were taken each into the gentlemen’s rooms; Andre
writes: ‘long after Mohammed left me I stayed there in a state of quivering
jubilation, and although I had reached the summit of pleasure five times with
him I revived my ecstasy many more times, and back in my hotel room I relived
its echoes until morning.’ Wilde and Gide left Algiers on the same day while Bosie was busy
with his Arab boy, Ali, wanting to take him to Biskra. Douglas asked Gide to
meet him in Biskra which Gide was at first against doing but meet him he did
and the little Ali who was dressed like a prince with Bosie waiting on him hand
and foot like a servant; they stayed at the Royal Hotel and Gide was sick of
Douglas’s fawning over the little prince with the eyes of a ‘gazelle’, a little
prince who seemed to stray beyond Bosie’s grasp and into the arms of girls,
much to Bosie’s dismay and ultimate rejection. And so the book ends quite
abruptly with the death of Andre’s mother and his own engagement to his cousin
Emmanuele and whatever awaits him in the future!
A Cornish Childhood –
by A. L. Rowse.
This excellent
‘autobiography of a Cornishman’ was published in 1942 by the author and
historian, Alfred Leslie Rowse (1903-1997). Through its nine chapters Rowse,
with his ‘natural desire to leave some memorial of oneself, whatever may come
to us’ (preface) describes his struggle as an unwanted child in a working-class
family, growing up in Tregonissey, a ‘china-clay village of the ‘High Quarter’
near St. Austell in Cornwall to break free from the expectations that poverty
designed for him and immerse himself in education. Rowse writes beautifully
about village life where the ‘stoning of strangers by children is quite usual’;
the gossip and the various occupants that come and go within his small world
where his parents run a local shop, the boy’s duties forever getting in the way
of his intellectual pursuits. There is little love in the household and no
encouragement from the family and his older sister Hilda, whom he adores and
who brings out more strongly his feminine side, seems to take more care of him
than his mother Annie and his father Richard, sees no real good in the boy for
if he isn’t working and making a wage then he’s no good to anybody; he doesn’t
seem to see that attaining an education is a worthy vocation, even for a
Cornishman. As a child, Rowse is nervous and suffers night terrors, thanks to
his parent’s habit of frightening him every time he goes to bed, even at
Oxford he would suffer
from this disposition. Despite his background, Rowse, a solitary and
intelligent boy with a ‘nostalgia for life’ and a somewhat curious, inquisitive
interest in history, puts his mind and his soul to attaining a University
education and sets his heart upon Oxford, particularly Exeter College. We hear
about how he was affected by news of the Titanic sinking and fascinated by the
Crippen case before winning a scholarship to St Austell County Grammar School
where he became librarian and had the pick of the choicest books. With his
lovely singing voice he becomes a choirboy and is devastated when his voice
breaks and he says that the ‘
effect of preparation for Confirmation was to
increase my sexual interest and excitement’ (p. 156); he was attracted to
Anglo-Catholicism and considered entering the Church; later writing poetry
would replace any religious ambition or interest. Throughout the book one hears
the deafening resentment he felt for his position in life and towards his
family and his determination to succeed is highly commendable. Of course we
hear mention of the war and how it affected the village and work in the shop
(Rowse begins to keep a diary from April 1918 from which he quotes much of his
boyhood anger and joy). The small detail of village life going on around him as
he toils towards his University dream – during his examinations there were two
murders within half a mile of his home, a seven year old boy was lured away by
an older youth who threw his dead body into a disused clay-pit full of water
and followed him into it to his own death and a man also poisoned his wife. In
March 1921 aged seventeen he sits for an English scholarship to
Exeter College,
Oxford but
fails: ‘
a scholarship or suicide’ he writes in his diary (p. 251). He meets his
boyhood hero Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944) known simply as ‘Q’ who
inspires him and encourages him to go on with the pursuit of a scholarship,
which he does and wins a place at Christ’s Church, Oxford and later becomes a
Fellow of All Soul’s College, Oxford. This is a really splendid account of a
boy’s ambition against the odds of fulfilling his dream and breaking the mould
with which he felt he did not fit and there are some wonderful passages which
are quite enlightening on the working-class attitude to education and the
struggle to better oneself through a desire for learning. Outstanding!
Enemies of Promise –
by Cyril Connolly.
Published in 1938 (I
read a revised edition from 1949) and dedicated to Logan Pearsall Smith,
‘Enemies of Promise’ by the literary critic Cyril Vernon Connolly (1903-1974)
is set out in three parts: I. Predicament (9 chapters), II. The Charlock’s
Shade (7 chapters) and III. A Georgian Boyhood (8 chapters); although the
author writes with a little pomposity and some imagined Divine rite of
authority, he does indeed write well on the subject of literary criticism and
expounds his theories of literary longevity and writing for posterity –
‘Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice; journalism
what will be grasped at once, and they require separate techniques.’ (p. 19) He
gives various examples from passages in the books that have stood the test of
time examining the notion of ‘style’ (form and content), by authors such as:
Norman Douglas, E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley and Ernest Hemingway from the
Modernist school which incorporates the frivolity of ‘Dandyism’ – ‘Dandies are
perfectionists’: Eliot, Firbank (dialogue) and later David Garnett. Connolly
introduces the two styles of the ‘Mandarins’ (Realists 1918-28) and the
‘Vernacular’ or ‘anti-Mandarin’ (New Realists 1928-38), the former represented
by: Woolf, Strachey, Proust, Huxley, the Sitwells and Joyce (complexity), and
the latter by: Hemingway (slang), Lawrence (colloquial style), Maugham, Wyndham
Lewis (informal), Katherine Mansfield, Isherwood, Orwell (both left-wing) and
Gertrude Stein (simplicity); he brings Auden to the fold saying his poetry is
‘private’ and ‘esoteric’. In part II Connolly looks at the pitfalls of
‘successful’ literature and vents his anger towards the detrimental factors
that prevent ‘success’ – journalism, publishers, marriage and children (time
and finances) and of course ‘success’ itself! With the bile well and truly
exhausted (almost) he is free to turn to part III and the business of autobiography
in his ‘A Georgian Boyhood’ which begins profoundly: ‘I have always disliked
myself at any given moment; the total of such moments is my life.’ (p. 143) And
so we learn that he was born in Coventry on 10th September 1903,
lived in Africa and then Bath with his grandmother and then Ireland; that he
considers himself ‘ugly’ and in effect is nothing short of a spoilt snob; he
disguises the identity of his private school, St Wulfric’s (actually St
Cyprian’s School, Eastbourne) where he is friends with George Orwell and Cecil
Beaton; he has a romantic nature and is prone to playing the fool and being
witty, which makes him popular. He won the Harrow History Prize and went up to
Eton to flourish amongst the other snobs where he was educated in the noble and
gentlemanly art of punishment, persecution and bullying and regular torture,
particularly (but not exclusively) from a boy named Godfrey Meynell (1904-1935)
who later won the Victoria Cross! But Eton is not just a collection of snobs
engrossed in hurting others for pleasure in an endless whirl of abuse, no of
course not, Connolly learnt how to be a ‘fag’ under a ‘fag-master’ and to take
his humiliation like a man for they always provided a chair to lean across when
a good flogging was necessary, in fact it seems compulsory – ‘the Captain of
the school, Marjoribanks, who afterwards committed suicide, was a passionate
beater.’ (p. 182) And so like many a young flower crushed and trampled by the
heavy unrelenting boot of education, the author suffers from ‘ruined nerves’
due to the beatings but the author’s capacity to make others laugh ingratiated
himself towards his tormentor, Meynell and they became friends and Connolly
joined him in his sadistic delights in terrorising the boys: ‘Godfrey Meynell
was the Hitler, Highworth the Goering, and I the Goebbels, forming a Gestapo
who bullied everyone we could and confiscated their private property.’ (p. 183-4)
Ah, the joys of public school life! There are the usual boyhood romantic
attachments and affectionate intrigues in a sort of Machiavellian and psychological
jostle for hierarchy; he even makes the acquaintance of that deplorably useless
aesthete Brian Howard! In the summer of 1921 his father takes him to France and
young Connolly manages to get lured into a brothel by some pimp but without
money for the pleasure and probably not knowing what to do anyway as he is very
innocent in the ways of the flesh, he makes his excuses, like a frightened
cleric, turning out his pockets and paying what little he had for the drinks
and promising to send the rest of the money on, which he does, all the while
fearing his father may find out, which he doesn’t. In 1922 he won the Roseberry
History Prize and the Brackenberry History Scholarship to Balliol College,
Oxford. ‘Enemies
of Promise’ has been an enjoyable read and the ‘total of such moments’ in his
life are indeed quite interesting!
The Unquiet Grave: A
Word Cycle – by Palinurus.
Palinurus is the
pseudonym of Cyril Connolly (1903-1974) and ‘The Unquiet Grave’ was originally
published in ‘Horizon’ in 1944 (Connolly was Editor from 1940-1949) and the
copy I read was a 1955 reprint of the revised edition. This is a strangely
inspired and erudite volume consisting of quotations, epigrams, aphorisms,
axioms and reflections by the author, an ‘editor living in Bedford Square’
during the war years where he kept three notebook journals from the autumn of
1942 to the autumn of 1943: ‘in the diaries an art-form slumbered, - an
initiation, a descent into hell, a purification and cure.’ (Introduction. p. xii)
He goes on to say that ‘all grief, once made known to the mind, can be cured by
the mind’. (p. xvi) ‘Palinurus’ was the pilot of Aeneas in the ‘Aeniad’ who
fell overboard and so ‘Unquiet Grave’ can be seen as the tomb of Palinurus
where ‘the ghost of Palinurus must be appeased. He is the core of melancholy
and guilt that works destruction on us from within.’ (p. xiii) The volume is
written in three parts: part I, Ecce Gubernator (‘Behold the Pilot’), part II,
Te Palinure Petens (‘Looking for you, Palinurus’) and part III, La Cle Des
Chants (‘the Key to the Songs’); there is also an Epilogue which asks who was
Palinurus? Connolly stresses the importance of the permanence of the written
word, to strive for perfection and eradicate sorrow – ‘the human brain, once it
is fully functioning, as in the making of a poem, is outside time and place and
immune from sorrow.’ (p. xvi) It can all seem quite pessimistic but there are
some truly insightful passages – ‘No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who
has not something to teach us, - something more than we could learn by
ourselves, from a book.’ (p. 4) that cancels out most of the population then!
The quotations range from the sociological, political and philosophical aspects
of such notions as: ‘love’, ‘marriage’, ‘paganism’, ‘freedom’ (loneliness),
‘Christ and Christianity’, ‘women’, the ‘artist’, ‘sleep’, ‘pleasure’ and
‘angst’; authors quoted include: Sir Walter Raleigh, Matthew Arnold,
Schopenhauer, Yeats, Kant, Donne, Freud, Nietzsche, Flaubert, Heidegger,
Pascal, De Quincey and Blake. He also promotes a ‘justification of suicide’
giving four examples: Philip Hezeltine (composer Peter Warlock) who killed
himself by gas in 1930, aged 36; American poet Harry Crosby who shot himself
aged 40 in 1929; poet Rene Creve, who shot himself in 1935, aged 34 and the
poet Mara Andrews who killed herself aged 32 at the time this volume was being
written. All quite intriguing and sometimes perplexing, but interesting
nonetheless!
Rose Leaf and Apple
Leaf – by Rennell Rodd.
Published in 1882 (I
read the 1906 edition) and often cited as Rodd’s first volume of poetry, it is
in fact a re-working of his 1881 ‘Songs in the South’ with two poems removed
(‘Lucciole’ and ‘Maidenhair’ both dated
1879) and some additional poems (‘Hic Jacet’, ‘In Chartres Cathedral’, ‘A Song
of Autumn’, etc.) The volume has an introduction, ‘L’ Envoi’ by none other than
Oscar Wilde whom Rodd, the 1st Baron Rennell (1858-1941) who went on
to become a British diplomat and politician, associated with during his time at
Balliol College, Oxford. Wilde had arranged for the publication of ‘Rose Leaf
and Apple Leaf’ for Rodd while in the United States, inserting the introduction
which is verbose and quite superfluous to the poems which are surprisingly
good; it is unnecessary for Wilde to stamp his air of aesthetic superiority
upon the book and although Wilde meant no malice it displeased Rodd and
eventually came between them signalling the break-up of their friendship and
Rodd’s distancing himself from Wilde when the scandal began to break. But if we
ignore the introduction (Rodd wanted it removed from all future copies) we find
ourselves immersed in a perfect little volume of verse, in fact, Rodd far surpasses
Wilde in his verse (Wilde is a quite inferior poet) and that is the opinion of
one who is devoted to the great Irish man! The sonnets and songs throughout the
volume have a sublime yearning for love and a melancholy air of loss or
distance between souls that touch briefly and part – ‘By the high cliff’s edge
where the wild weeds twine, / and he would not speak or move, / but his eyes
would gaze from his soul to mine, / my eyes that would answer without one sign,
/ and that were enough for love.’ (‘If Any One Return’) One gets a sense of
Thomas Hardy’s dark mood as found in his ‘Wessex Poems’ of 1898 (‘Neutral
Tones’) or his later ‘Moments of Vision’
of 1917 (‘We sat at the window’). The author conjures the Roman legions in his
poem ‘In the Coliseum’ (Rome 1881) – ‘This is the hour of ghosts that rise; /
line on line of the noiseless dead’, and again in the beautiful 1879 poem ‘A
Roman Mirror’ where he finds a ‘broken mirror by a maiden dead’ and ‘the beads
she wore about her throat / alternate blue and amber all untied’. The third
verse goes on to say that there is ‘no trace to-day of what in her was fair! /
only the records of long years grown green / upon the mirror’s lustreless dead
sheen, / grown dim at last, when all else withered there.’ The passage of time
sweeps through the centuries where ‘she sighs / and sets the dead land lilies
in her breast’. The romance of the sea is not lost upon Rodd as can be seen in
‘By the South Sea’ (1879) which has a particularly lovely seventeenth verse –
‘shall we glide away in this white moon’s track? / does it not seem fair in
your eyes! / - to drift and drift with our white sail black / in the dreamful
light of the skies’ and also in ‘Where the Rhone goes down to the Sea’ (1880)
where one could almost be reading Masefield. Of the five delightful sonnets
represented here there are some splendid lines such as the beginning of ‘Une
Heure Viendra Qui Tout Paiera’ (1879): ‘It was a tomb in Flanders,
old and grey’ and ends portentously – ‘His only record is the dead man’s
threat, - / “an hour will come that shall atone for all!”’ In ‘Imperator
Augustus’ (1879) we feel the loss of the dead boy whose image has been set in
marble and there is definitely an erotic undertone: ‘tired of too much empire,
and it seemed a joy / fondly to stroke and pet the curly head, / the smooth
round limbs so strangely like the dead, / to kiss the white lips of his marble
boy / and call by name his little heart’s-desired.’ Rodd went on to write other
volumes: ‘Poems in Many Lands’ (1883), ‘Feda, with Other Poems Chiefly Lyrical’
(1886), ‘The Violet Crown and Songs of England’ (1891) and ‘Ballads of the
Fleet and Other Poems’ (1897) which no doubt I shall turn towards in the future,
but for now, ‘Rose Leaf and Apple Leaf’ has satisfied a quite demanding and
obsessive reader! ‘Oh wreck of the lost human soul set free / to gorge the
beast thy mask of manhood screened!’ (‘Actea’. 1881) Superb!
Transit of Venus:
Poems – by Harry Crosby.
Reading this
collection of poems published in Paris
in1929 by Harry Crosby (1898-1929) the American poet born into a wealthy Boston banking family,
can seem like a slap in the face for the reader until one digs a little into
the strange and colourful life of the author. Following his time at St Mark’s
preparatory school he served with the Ambulance Corps in France during
the First World War aged 19; the ambulance he was in was hit by a shell and Crosby escaped fate and was unharmed – he was awarded the
Croix de Guerre medal in 1919! After the war he attended Harvard from 1919-1921
but he had no intention of going into the family banking business and escaped
fate yet again; aged 22 he met Mrs. Richard Peabody (Mary Phelps Jacob
(1892-1970) and fell immediately in love with the married woman, six years his
senior. Mary, whom Harry called Polly, eventually succumbed to Harry’s charm
and they embraced an affair before Polly divorced her alcoholic husband in
1922. Free and financially secure the lovers were married (it remained an open
marriage) and lured by the European art and literary scene the pair went to
decadent Paris and to Bohemian Montparnasse where the immersed themselves in opium,
cocaine, hashish and champagne and planned a suicide pact (Harry seemed to have
a death-wish and suicide was always a romantic notion at the forefront of his
mind). Polly changed her name at Harry’s instigation to ‘Caresse’ in 1924 and
they both founded the ‘Black Sun Press’ publishing exquisite books by exciting
young writers (Harry published his first book ‘Sonnets for Caresse’ by Black
Sun in 1925). In fact, Harry became obsessed with sun symbolism and imagery; he
was a ‘sun worshipper in love with death’. The open marriage suited Harry as he
was free to explore his sexual identity, Caresse had an affair with Henri
Cartier-Bresson and in 1928, Harry met the 20 year old Josephine Noyes Rotch in
Venice and they had an affair until June 1929 when Josephine got married, but
in August the affair was fanned into flames once more by Josephine who was
cruelly jealous and possessive. The Crosby’s
returned to the United
States in November 1929 and Harry and
Josephine spent four days in a Detroit
hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Harry Crane – on 10th December Harry and
Josephine were found dead on the bed in a friend’s studio from gunshot wounds,
they both had a bullet hole to the head and Harry was holding the pistol in his
hand; there was no suicide note but it was stated that Harry had shot
Josephine, probably after they arranged a suicide pact and after he shot her he
spent around two hours with her body and maybe even going for a walk before he
lay next to her and shot himself! They were both dressed except for having bare
feet – Harry had tattoos on the soles of his feet, a cross on one and a pagan
sun symbol on the other; his toe nails and finger nails were also painted red!
Harry’s wedding ring was found on the floor, stomped flat. There are some fine
books concerning Crosby such as ‘Black Sun:
The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby’ by Geoffrey Wolff (1976)
and ‘Shadows of the Sun: The Diaries of Harry Crosby’ edited by Edward Germain
(1977) both of which I have read and found fascinating! After all that how can
his poems compare with reality?
The poems in Transit
of Venus, of which there are 62, were inspired by and dedicated to Josephine,
his lover, the ‘Fire Princess’ where the ‘moon / lives in her arms / shows in
her face’ (‘Priestess’) and mystical sun symbolism is a theme throughout the
volume. I have to say I found his life more interesting than his verse which is
something between William Blake and Gertrude Stein with the death obsession of
Stenbock thrown in – ‘hurled soon to the grave / rushed to and passed from the
earth’ (‘Goddess of Mirth’) though there is none of Stenbock’s decadence, the
poems are stark slithers of occult lore and mythological notions – ‘among
lanterns and torches / and flags unfurled / She and the Sun / are not of this
world.’ (‘Ritual’) Crosby read extensively on spirituality and philosophy,
including De Quincey which fascinated him and it is most likely that Transit of
Venus was inspired more by the narcotics he was taking rather than Josephine
but he expresses some sort of love compulsion for her – ‘a girl comes from afar
/ in naked ignorance / ghost of defunct / unburied circumstance / one soul in
two / two with one soul / to roll like a wheel / from the one to the other /
love to the lover.’ (‘A Girl comes from afar’) – an intensification of their
sexual union, an alchemy of desire that ‘grows less and less / as sleep devours
our nakedness.’ (‘Magic Formula’) The same powerful sexual imagery can be seen
in Crosby’s ‘Mad Queen: Tirades’ published in 1929 which I also read with its
‘first strong thrust of / Sun into the Soul’ (‘Heliograth’) and the poem
‘Invocation to the Mad Queen’ which ends: ‘burn to gold / fierce and unerring
as a conquering sword / I burn to gold / fierce and undaunted as a lion lord /
seeking your bed / and leave to them the / burning of the dead.’ (There is a
wonderful poem, ‘Target of Disgust’ in which Crosby curses Boston, as a ‘City of hypocrisy’ of ‘flatulence’,
‘stink-stones’ and ‘dead semen’; a city of ‘tea rooms’, ‘invalids’ and ‘fetid
breath’) The more astute will also notice in ‘Transit of Venus’ a fascination
for hands in several poems and in the poems ‘Hands’ and ‘Nicer Hands’ (we also
see the same in Crosby’s friend and fellow poet Hart Crane, such as his
‘Episode of Hands’). The poems will not be to all tastes (I struggled) but
there is feeling among the dark passions and sun symbolism and for those
wishing to read more there are several collections including: ‘Red Skeletons’
(1927), ‘Chariot of the Sun’ (1928) and ‘Sleeping Together’ (1929) and for
those wishing to know more about Caresse there is her own autobiography ‘The
Passionate Years’ which I refrained from reading as there are many inaccuracies
in it although it is no doubt interesting and there is a biography by Anne
Conover Carson, ‘Caresse Crosby, from Black Sun to Roccasinibalda’ (1989).
Strangely bewildering yet compelling!
Raiders’ Dawn and
Other Poems – by Alun Lewis.
This is the first
collection of verse from the Welsh poet Alun Lewis (1915-1944) published in
1942 (I read the 6th impression from 1946) and it really is a very
powerful and masterful collection. Lewis was a soldier involved in that old
‘dirty business’ of war, where – ‘the guns’ implacable silence / is my black
interim, my youth and age,’ yet like all poets (the term ‘soldier-poet’ seems
such an insult) he was an intensely compassionate, sensitive man enthused by
human nature and the solemnity of nature, not unlike Edward Thomas during the
First World War whom Lewis greatly admires and pays homage to in the poem ‘To
Edward Thomas’ (Lewis visited his memorial stone above Steep in Hampshire)
where ‘like you I felt sensitive and somehow apart, / lonely and exalted by the
friendship of the wind / and the placid afternoon enfolding / the dangerous
future and the smile.’ Lewis, the son of school teachers, was born in Cwmaman
near the town of Aberdare
in Wales;
in 1926 he attended Cowbridge
Grammar School before
going up to Aberystwyth
University in 1932 where
in 1935 he got a First in History (B.A.) before going to Manchester University
to study for an M.A. in Medieval History. He returned to Aberystwyth in 1937,
married teacher Gweno Ellis in 1941 whom he met in 1939 and in 1940 joined the
Royal Engineers before a commission in the infantry battalion; he was sent to India with the
South Wales Borderers in 1942. The volume is ordered into five parts: ‘Poems in
Khaki’, ‘Poems in Love’, ‘Songs’, ‘On Old Themes’, ‘And Other Poems’ which
displays the author’s poetic strengths to the full. In the title poem,
‘Raiders’ Dawn’ there is an almost nursery rhyme simplicity as it begins:
‘Softly the civilised / centuries fall, / paper on paper, / Peter and Paul.’
and ends rather darkly: ‘blue necklace left / on a charred chair / tells that
Beauty / was startled there.’ Lewis is great at depicting the small seemingly
insignificant moments of war unlike other poets of the time who dwell on its
horrors, as in ‘The Soldier’ (I) where ‘summer leaves her green reflective
woods / to glitter momently on peaks of madness.’ and in the poem ‘The Public
Gardens’ where Lewis walks in his khaki, observing the scene around him, the ‘twin
sycamores staring the darkness massively under balconies of leaf, / and an
empty rococo bandstand’… ‘a thin little woman in black stockings and a straw
hat with wax flowers’… ‘an older wealthier lady, gesticulating and
over-dressed’ and ‘a boy with his crutches laid against the wall.’ Throughout
the isolation and death which Lewis captures, the juxtaposition of nature and
the nostalgia of its remembered beauty also exists, as in ‘Odi et Amo’ where
‘summer blossoms break above my head / with all the unbearable beauty of the
dead.’ But perhaps the poem I personally admire the most is ‘Lines on a Tudor
Mansion’ which is quintessentially English with the steadfast,
centuries-weathered old brick house in the landscape, which begins: ‘slim
sunburnt girls adorn / lawns browsed by fawn and doe / through three long
centuries this house / has mellowed in and known / only the seasonal fulfilment
/ and the commemorated generations.’ Lewis goes on to invoke the ghost of
‘Samson dead / and Delilah dirtying her hair / in the dust of the fallen
Faiths.’ But for most nothing shall remain, there will be no time-withstanding
memorial of great distinctions achieved, ‘we leave no monumental homes, / no
marble cenotaphs inscribed with names.’
To any poet the death
of a child, the destruction of all the innocent human possibility is perhaps
the most profoundly disturbing and Lewis in his ‘On a Bereaved Girl’ recalls
‘the devilry of the dead’ which is ‘also passionately flung away for ever’.
Lewis was devoted and protective of his younger sister Mair, born 1921 (he also
had two younger brothers Huw and Glyn) and despite being thrown into the arena
of war he still held strong to his compassion; yet he does not shy away from
the stark reality and encounter with death, as in ‘To a Comrade in Arms’:
‘When bees swarm in
your nostrils
And honey drips from
the sockets
Of eyes that to-day
are frantic
With love that is
frustrate,
What vow shall we vow
who love you
For the self you did
not value?’
The most celebrated
and anthologised of the author’s poems is ‘All day it has rained’ which evokes
the harsh rain, ‘drenching the gorse and heather’; the rain that ‘possesses us
entirely, the twilight and the rain’ and soldiers’ talk of ‘girls, and dropping
bombs on Rome’; the ‘quiet dead and the loud celebrities / exhorting us to
slaughter’; the poem echoes Edward Thomas’s poem ‘Rain’ and Lewis begins: ‘All
day it has rained, and we on the edge of the moors / have sprawled in our
bell-tents, moody and dull as boors,’ before concluding in a pilgrimage ‘up the
wooded scree / to the Shoulder o’ Mutton where Edward Thomas / brooded long /
on death and beauty – till a bullet stopped his song.’
The volume speaks of
the grand tragedies of war yet the most tragic of personal tragedies occurred
on 5th March 1944 when twenty-eight year old Lewis, stationed in
Burma, was found dead at the officers’ latrines, a bullet wound to his head and
his revolver in his hand – was it an accident or was it suicide? Many seem to
believe it was the latter and that the Army declared it an accident in the line
of duty; out there, amidst the threat from the Japanese there was always a
sense of death – ‘the soldiers’ frozen sightless eyes / end the mad feud. The
worm is love.’ [‘Threnody for a Starry Night’] War intensified the physical
fear of death which was ever-present and attained, to the poet, mythological
proportions – ‘I felt the universe with my fingers; and it was / compounded of
bone and sinew, like the naked / loins of Theseus, the slayer, the young hero’,
[‘Fever’] Tremendous!
In the Green Tree – by
Alun Lewis.
Having read Lewis’s
first collection of poems ‘Raiders’ Dawn and Other Poems’ (1942) I felt
compelled to read this volume of ‘prose letters’ published in 1948. There is an
interesting preface by the Cornish historian A. L. Rowse who sadly never knew
Lewis and considers him one of the two greatest poets of the Second World War
(the other being Sidney Keyes); there is a ‘Sonnet on the Death of Alun Lewis’
by Vernon Watkins (1906-67) and I really liked the distinctive drawings by John
Petts. Lewis, whose ‘mind was sharp, resolute, independent – and fastidious’
(Postscript. p. 140) is a notable poet and his ‘abstract intellectual verse’
speaks of a ‘Celtic sensuousness’ in time of war and his poetic integrity extends
to his letters and prose for they are rich in the celebrations of the mundane
and personal thoughts; the ‘Letters from India’ which encompass his
correspondence to his wife Gweno from Christmas 1942 – 20th February
1944 (including the last letter to his parents dated 8th February
1944) are presented in stories such as ‘The Voyage’, ‘India’ and ‘Burma’ which have
some incredibly searching questions and realisations – ‘although I’m more and
more engrossed with the single poetic theme of Life and Death, for there
doesn’t seem to be any question more directly relevant than this one of what
survives of all the beloved, I find myself quite unable to express at once the
passion of Love, the coldness of Death (Death is cold) and the fire that beats
against resignation, acceptance.’ (‘India’. April 1943. p. 36) There
are also remarks which give further insight into Lewis such as this from 30th September 1943:
‘When I was leaving Karachi,
one of the instructors said to me, “you’re the most selfish man I’ve ever met,
Lewis. You think the war exists for you to write books about it.” I didn’t deny
it, though it’s all wrong.’ (p. 47) There is something haunting about the
‘Short Stories’, of which there are six: ‘Night Journey’, ‘The Raid’, ‘The
Earth is a Syllable’, ‘Ward “O”3 (b)’
and ‘The Orange Grove’ (both of which I enjoyed immensely) and ‘The
Reunion’; Lewis is a very skilful writer (see his poetry collections ‘Raiders’
Dawn’, 1942, ‘Ha! Ha! Among the Trumpets’, 1945 and short stories ‘The Last
Inspection’ 1942) and an enormous talent was taken from us that 5th March 1944
when, as I believe, he took his own life with his revolver. The most poignant
and touching moment of the volume is the Postscript by Gwyn Jones from the
Welsh Review of June 1944; Jones was a friend of Lewis whom he first met in
Aberystwyth early in 1941, calling him a humble, modest and compassionate man
who ‘saw and felt as only poets can, and despite his youth had lived through
cycles of experience.’ He goes on to say that ‘each year he grew increasingly
master of his craft, he was working free from the rarely literary influences to
be seen in his earliest writing, and the war years had matured him as he might
not have matured in ten years of peace.’ (p. 139) I would suggest, as I have
done, reading the first excellent biography ‘Alun Lewis: A Life’ by John
Pikoulis (1984) which gives a really good background to the development of the
stories and of course the poet’s life in Wales, England, India and Burma. Jones
kindly ascribes the poet’s death to ‘an accident while on active service. He
was at this time a Lieutenant with the Sixth Battalion of the South Wales
Borderers’ (p. 138) but perhaps the most touching note Jones has to say should
end this short piece on a grand and gracious fellow of enormous poetic stature,
cut tragically short – ‘He was a brave and splendid young poet, and his death,
like the death of all such, is a limb torn from the living.’ (p. 141)
Selected Poems
1930-1960 – by Vernon
Watkins.
Well, here I am on day
four of my ‘self-isolation’ during the Covid-19 virus pandemic and what better
opportunity to catch up on all the poetry reading I have been looking forward
to! And so, between thoughts of why there is such an urgent need for toilet
paper and a general compulsion to selfishly empty the shops of produce, I turn
to the ‘Selected Poems 1930-1960’ (1967) by the Welsh poet Vernon Watkins
(1906-1967) who was educated at Repton School, Derbyshire and Magdalene
College, Cambridge. Watkins was associated with Dylan Thomas whom he met in
1935 and worked at Bletchley
Park from 1942-45, but
what about his poetry? My initial thoughts were that there are some
interesting, lyrical pieces here with some quite beautiful lines such as ‘Not
yet! Do not touch, / break not this branch of silver-birch,’ (‘The Turning of
the Leaves’) and ‘White on my limbs in the linen sheet / and gold on my neck
the sun.’ (‘The Collier’) and he confidently uses repetition in the poem ‘The
Mummy’ – ‘His eyes are closed. They are closed. His eyes are closed. / His
hands are clenched. They are clenched. His hands are clenched.’ And again from
the same poem: ‘Year chasing year, following and following.’ He draws a
portrait of the ‘great Irish silly Billy’ in ‘Yeats in Dublin’ whose ‘raised head was noble, / his
voice firm and sweet.’ There is some depth to the poems and Watkins is a very
competent poet under the long shadow of Auden and I desperately willed myself
to like him, even clinging to his more macabre work such as ‘Gravestones’ which
usually cannot fail to capture my Gothic heart and my interest – ‘Sunk are the
stones, green-dewed, / blunted with age, touched by cool, listening grass. /
Vainly these died, / did not miraculous silence come to pass.’ One eye closes…
sneeze! ‘the dead live, and I am for their kind.’ Cough! In fact, I found his
poems just too damn busy to completely hold my attention, but withholding final
judgement and having the time between angry thoughts for those inconsiderate
bastards (toilet-roll hoarders again – what do they know that we don’t?) and
compassion for the elderly, alone and cut-off from society, those that we are
doing our duty to protect, I turned to several other collections by Watkins
while holding the feather of Maat and a box of tissues (perhaps the last box
whose value doubles every second!) and so I run my mind through ‘Cypress and
Acacia’ with its forty-six poems published in 1959, cough, cough, sniff…
‘Fidelities’ and its sixty-one poems published in 1969, yawn, cough, sneeze…
‘Affinities’ with its forty-one poems published in 1953 – splutter, sniff, and stretch
legs while damning those panic-buying sons-o’-bi’… and oh, I may actually like
this collection! There has been a reprieve for Mr. Watkins with his volume ‘The
Death Bell: Poems and Ballads’ published in 1954! Yes there is something
relative here, something which can speak to me about this time of catastrophe,
this bloody isolation! Maybe not, but there is something damned good here: ‘The
Strangled Prayer’ which speaks of ‘strange creepers where the moth-wing stirs.
/ Conscience fights echoes, footprints on worn stairs, / and my ten fingers
separate the stars, / bless my strained heels. I drown in a child’s hair.’
‘Bones make a circle
round my naked moan.’
Between nose-blows and
Breaking News Bulletins I read the ‘Pledges to Darkness’ and luxuriate to the
sensual beauty of Nefertiti with her eyes ‘set in death, being taught with joy
to see / the radiant Master guard the stations of her soul.’ I can appreciate
these poems, in my dark mood of reflection, poems like the ‘Ballad of Crawley Woods’ – ‘Who guards
the secret of this wood / dropping from hill to wave?’ Its death-imagery
soothes me; there is no fear, sniff, cough… ‘A skeleton rose near Crawley
Woods, / heaved the gravestone back, / dock-leaves covered his ankle-bones. /
The night around was black.’ It certainly is!
A Portion for Foxes –
by Anthony Thwaite.
An absence of
birdsong, civilisation crumbles, and isolation continues… I steered my poetic
enthusiasm through Jon Silkin’s ‘Amana Grass’ (1967) and ‘The Principle of
Water’ (1974) before diverting off to T. Sturge Moore’s ‘The Vinedresser and
Other Poems’ (1899) to alight on ‘The Portion for Foxes’ by Anthony Simon
Thwaite, published in 1977. Thwaite, born 1930 and educated at Christ Church,
Oxford was a close friend of Philip Larkin and spent two years in Japan; his
interest as an amateur archaeologist shows in many of these poems such as
‘Rescue Dig’ and ‘Digging a Saxon Cemetery’ where the archaeologists are
‘scavengers / dressed in our casual / clothes without ritual, / turning up
ornament, / weapon, cremation, / plotting your downfall.’ There is the mild
stink of Ted Hughes evoked in ‘The Unnamable’ where something ‘creeps away to
die, like animals, / but does not die. It burrows in the thick / compost at
ends of gardens.’ Oh the beauty of that rich compostable muck! The poem
continues incorporating the human element with its thin veneer between the
world of beasts –
‘You recognise the
sounds, you smell the scent:
More, you too crouch
in darkness, where an animal
Crawls on all fours,
head down, the collapsing tunnel.’
‘Metamorphosis’ is
quite a beautiful poem too which begins sensuously – ‘Something is changing.
Soft fold on fold of flesh / loosen, go liquid, swell, are filled with
sighing.’ The erotic imagery continues as ‘the wound opens, closes, aches
again.’ Further on the ‘fold on fold’ of ecstasy is more apparent as ‘the
body’s instruments, the choir of love, / tremble and falter; stumbling, become
one, / singing of such an ecstasy as can move / habitual gestures or inert
repose / into the dance of animals, the groan / dashed from the dropping petals
of a rose / as thorns thrust stiffly in a summer wind, / and pulse and impulse,
leaping, fell behind.’ Other poems vibrate with strong lines: ‘Boundaries’, ‘A
Moment in the South’, ‘By the City Wall’, ‘A Girdle Round the Earth’ and ‘A
Portion for Foxes’ where we find what the cat has brought in – ‘the heads of
sparrows, / a mole’s pink paws, the black and marbled innards / torn from a
rat, a moorhen’s claws: / rejected spoils, inedible souvenirs, / a portion for
foxes.’ In ‘My Oxford’ there is the ‘sound / of copious liquid drenching
someone’s bike’ before Thwaite presents us with a picture of Louis MacNeice who
was ‘underneath the mask a lonely man’; a ‘lugubrious comedian / or elegiac
dandy, more and more / driven into the corner of yourself.’ (‘For Louis
MacNeice’) and Sylvia Plath, who ‘breathed a legend out with your last breath’
is summoned back in the poem ‘Heptonstall: New Cemetery’. But I am one who
likes to meander through the mire of misery and melancholy so I found my
delight in ‘Witch Bottles’ that ‘squat / under some old cottage’s hearth or
threshold, / revealed by the wreckers, that they chill the air.’
‘In its belly rusty
pins transfix
A chopped-out felt
heart, musty in its faint
Stink of phosphate,
mingling plucked hair and piss.
Charmless, a talisman
exposed and shrunk
To this coagulated
baleful mass:
Corroded brass, nail
pairings, thorns, the scum
Gathering and
thickening, and now dispersed.
Somewhere a gaunt
crone shrieked in the fire’s heart,
Grey flesh annealed to
stone, its smeltings here.’
Thwaite is an
excellent poet and this collection has succeeded in turning my mind from the
ever-impending doom and disaster of the outside world and the increasing
worries of isolation; with eager fevered-brain I sucked-up and spat out his
fourteen poetry monologues ‘Victorian Voices’ from 1980, ‘The Owl in the Tree’
from 1963 and the impressive ‘The Stones of Emptiness: Poems 1963-66’ from 1967
with its excellent ‘Leavings’, ‘At Dunwich’ and ‘Personal Effects’, and all
before the barricades go up and armed Police and soldiers are patrolling the
streets!
The Collected Poems of
Theodore Roethke.
Balcony-singing and
social distancing; blood on the streets and the death-rate rises: we are all
turning animal now! A perfect time for poetry and here on day six of my
fourteen day isolation I am putting my poetic faith in the hands of the
American poet, Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) whose first two collections have
been on my list of great works to read for some time! I read the 1966 edition
of the ‘Collected Poems’ and wandered precariously through the first collection
– ‘Open House’ from 1941: ‘My secrets cry aloud. / I have no need for tongue. /
My heart keeps open house.’ Roethke’s introspection and deep sense of bodily
specifics and lineage pulls the reader in, as in the poem ‘Feud’ where we find
the ‘menace of ancestral eyes’ and that ‘exhausted fathers thinned the blood,’
and it goes on, ‘you curse the legacy of pain; / darling of an infected brood,
/ you feel disaster climb the vein.’ The internal menace escalates as ‘your
seed / denies the blessing of the sun’ and the ‘dead leap at the throat,
destroy / the meaning of the day.’ The dead raise their ugly heads once more in
‘Death Piece’ where ‘invention sleeps within a skull / no longer quick with
light, / the hive that hummed in every cell / is now sealed honey-tight.’ The
ghost of Roethke’s father seems ever-present throughout the volume as in the poem
‘Premonition’ where the young poet is walking with his father, ‘matching his
stride with half-steps’; beside the river, his father ‘dipped his hand in the
shallow: / water ran over and under / hair on a narrow wrist bone’. There is
also the fear of disease as ‘the scratch forgotten is the scratch infected’
(‘Prognosis’) and the same fear that is summoned as the ‘wind lay motionless in
the long grass. / The veins within our hands betrayed our fear.’ (‘Interlude’)
I felt a kind of affinity with the poem ‘The Signal’ which speaks of strange
light sources seen in the corners of the eye, the ‘things the eye or hand
cannot possess.’ From childhood the author was always close to nature and we
get a sense of this in poems such as ‘The Coming of the Cold’ where ‘the ribs
of leaves lie in the dust, / the beak of frost has picked the bough’ and ‘The
Heron’ who ‘jerks a frog across his bony lip, / then points his heavy bill
above the wood. / The wide wings flap but once to lift him up. / A single
ripple starts from where he stood.’ and again in ‘The Bat’ where ‘something is
amiss or out of place / when mice with wings can wear a human face.’ The fleshy
external wrapping of the soul, troubles Roethke, the ‘fabric stitched on bone’,
the ‘cloak of evil and despair’ is the subject of ‘Epidermal Macabre’ as the
poet says he hates his ‘epidermal dress, / the savage blood’s obscenity, / the
rags of my anatomy, / and willingly could I dispense / with false accoutrements
of sense, / to sleep immodestly, a most / incarnadine and carnal ghost.’ In the
second collection, the much celebrated, ‘The Lost Son and Other Poems’ from
1948, the author affirms his place among the literary greats with his
‘greenhouse poems’ – the young Roethke spent much of his childhood around the
climbing plants, the young shoots and rotting vegetables of his father Otto’s
market-garden greenhouses (Otto, a German immigrant, died of cancer in 1923
along with Theodore’s Uncle who committed suicide, the young poet was just
fourteen!). I particularly loved these poems as I too was fascinated by my
father’s greenhouse and brewed and conjured strange and repellent smelling muck
in warm plastic vessels like some mad professor; Roethke’s powerful eleven-line
poem ‘Root Cellar’ speaks directly to the earth-born child in all of us:
‘Nothing would sleep
in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of
boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and
drooped.
Lolling obscenely from
mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow
evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of
stinks! –
Roots ripe as old
bait,
Pulpy stems, rank,
silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure,
lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up
life:
Even the dirt kept
breathing a small breath.’
In ‘Moss-Gathering’
the author ‘always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road, / as if I had
broken the natural order of things in that swampland; / disturbed some rhythm,
old and of vast importance, / by pulling of flesh from the living planet; / as
if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.’ And in
‘Child on top of the Greenhouse’ the image of that glass cathedral is brought
to mind with its ‘splinters of glass and dried putty. / The half-grown
chrysanthemums staring up like accusers’. At the end of all this looking back
he asks: ‘What’s left of my life? / I want the old rage, the lash of primordial
milk!’ (‘The Lost Son’) The reader then encounters further collections: ‘Praise
to the End’ (1951) – ‘I hear the owls, the soft callers, coming down from the
hemlocks. / The bats weave in and out of the willows, / wing – crooked and
sure, / downward and upward, / dipping and veering close to the motionless
water.’ (‘I cry, Love! Love!’); ‘The Waking’ (1953) in which the title poem
begins: ‘I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. / I feel my fate in what I
cannot fear.’ And the poem Roethke wrote for one of his students thrown from a
horse, ‘Elegy for Jane’ in which he says: ‘if only I could nudge you from this
sleep, / my maimed darling, my skittery pigeon. / Over this damp grave I speak
the words of my love: / I, with no rights in this matter, / neither father nor
lover.’ ‘Words for the Wind’ (1958) has some light pieces and poems for
children as well as love poems and other meditations… ‘I am! says the Lamb’
(1961), nonsense poems and ‘The Far Field’ from 1964 before ending with sixteen
previously uncollected poems but in these dire times when we do not know what
will survive of us, one poem from ‘Words for the Wind’ seem more than relevant
during my forced isolation: ‘The Pure Fury’ – ‘How terrible the need for
solitude: / that appetite for life so ravenous / a man’s a beast prowling in
his own house, / a beast with fangs, and out for his own blood’. How true!
A Map of Verona: Poems – by Henry
Reed.
Coronavirus: Day Seven
of isolation! The sun is shining, birds are returning; people are nowhere! But
there is no need for despondency as today I am flying the flag for a fellow
Brummie poet, Henry Reed (1914-1986) who as well as being a fine poet was a
translator, journalist and radio dramatist who worked for the BBC following the
war in which he served in the Army; he was educated at King Edward VI School,
Aston and the University of Birmingham (sound of faint applause) and ‘A Map of
Verona’ is his only collection of poetry published in 1946. The first section:
Preludes, has the title poem, ‘A Map of Verona’ in which he sings: ‘and in what
hour of beauty, in what good arms, shall I those regions and that city attain /
from whence my dreams and slightest movements rise? / and what good Arms shall
take them away again?’ There is nothing shocking, just a solemn and quiet
romantic notion – ‘under your glance my dead selves quicken and stir, / and a
thousand shadows attend you where you go.’ (‘Morning’) and a sense of
loneliness: ‘after sunset must I be made to watch / the lawn and the lane, from
the bed drawn to the window, / the winking glass on top of the garden wall, /
the shadows relaxing and stiffening under the moon? / I am alone, but look, I
have opened the doors, / and the house is filling with cold, the winds flow
in.’ (‘Outside and In’) But perhaps the most popular poem from the collection
is his ‘Lessons of the War’ (in three parts), particularly part I ‘The Naming
of Parts’ in which Reed characterises an Army instructor giving a lecture on
the Lee Enfield rifle, juxtaposing the beauty of plants and flowers with the
weapon of death –
‘This is the safety
catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of
the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his
finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any
strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and
motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using
their finger.’
In ‘Chard Witlow’ Reed
seems to parody Eliot: ‘as we get older we do not get any younger.’ He goes on:
‘There are certain precautions – though none of them very reliable - / against
the blast from bombs, or the flying splinters, / but not against the blast from
Heaven,’ before we reach the refrain – ‘pray for me also under the draughty stair.
/ As we get older we do not get any younger.’ Six poems represent the next
section ‘The Desert’ and the final part, VI ‘Envoy’ sees the author planning a
garden – ‘whatever sort of garden / You, I, or we shall build, / neglected
much, or cared for, / and all its great designs / fulfilled or unfulfilled: /
built over ruined shrines, / where others have loved and worshipped, / or built
on virgin ground: / shaped or disorderly, / let it at least be / different from
this’… ‘let it suffer autumn and spring, / its trees deciduous, / let it flower
in sudden moments / for you, me, or us’… ‘whether it stand / with its precincts
walled or open, / or whether a city surround it, / or it stand at the sea’s
edge, / with the wild and the broken beyond it, / where the winds flicker and
hiss, / let it at least have this: / among its ruined temples.’ The third
section of the book is ‘Tintagel’ with its four parts before we get into the
more interesting ‘Chrysothemis’ for here be darkness to distress! Well, just a
little perhaps to lighten the dark days ahead! Chrysothemis is the daughter of
Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and the sister of Electra – ‘I cannot follow them
into their world of death, / or their hunted world of life, though through the
house, / Death and the hunted bird sing at every nightfall.’ … ‘I have set
myself to protect, / against the demons that linger inside our walls, /their
saddened, quiet children of darkness and shame.’ The fear continues: ‘It is my
house now, decaying but never dying, / the soul’s museum, preserving and
embalming / the shuttered rooms, the amulets, the pictures, / the doorways
waiting for perennial surprise, / the children sleeping under the heat of
summer, / and lastly the great bronze doors of the bridal chamber, / huge and
unspeaking, not to be pressed and opened, / not to be lingered near, then or
thereafter, / not to be pounded upon by desolate fists, / mine least of all.’
Ah, those ‘desolate fists’! The volume ends with ‘Philoctetes’ which has some
great writing; Philoctetes was the companion of Heracles (he lit Heracles
funeral pyre and received his bow and arrows; on the way to Troy he was wounded and left on Lemnos. Am oracle later reveals that Troy will not fall
until the bow and arrows of Heracles are brought back to the Greeks and so
Odysseus and Diomedes fetch Philoctetes back where he is cured of his wound – ‘I have lived too long on Lemnos, lonely and
desperate, / quarrelling with conjured demons, with the ghosts / of the men and
women with whom I learned to people / the loneliness and despair; and with
those others: / the silent circle / of the men and women I have been and tried
to be.’ The book ends almost prophetically: ‘the ghosts dislimn and vanish; the
god departs; / my life begins; and a man plants a tree at daybreak.’ An image
which seems more relevant in these troubling times!
Collected Poems – by
Peter Porter.
Shelley and sex and
sheets of gloom for the foreseeable future… perhaps a time will come when we
should all consider the ultimate in social distancing – suicide! On Day Eight
of my self-isolation during the Coronavirus outbreak I am reading the
‘Collected Poems’ of Peter Neville Frederick Porter (1929-2010), the
Australian-born, British poet who came to England in 1951. I didn’t know of his
two suicide attempts in England before returning to Brisbane at the time of
reading these poems or that his first wife Janice committed suicide in 1974, so
on that lighter note what did I think of the poems? The ‘Collected Poems’ was
published in 1983 and contains the eight published collections from 1961-1981
in chronological order and the first volume, ‘Once Bitten, Twice Bitten’ (1961)
has some dark and humorous pieces very wittily composed on many themes
encompassing tea rooms, cancer, hurried sex, suits and prams and alarm clocks…
There are some lovely little observations: ‘a thin heart hates a fat man’
(‘Once Bitten, Twice Bitten, Once Shy, Twice Shy’), images of sickness: ‘we do
not know whose kiss has bled / the pale lips on the vivid bed’ (‘Sick-Room at
Home’), suburban suicide: ‘give up thinking, work hard, buy a car, / get
married, keep a garden, bring up kids - / answers to all the problems that
there are, / except the love that kills, the death that lives.’ (‘Conventions
of Death’) and brief moments of sexual frenzy: ‘I’ll gear the dream to sex.
That sharp face / is with me now – it will not let me use / its landlocked
body. I try to kiss a place / where I have been. It scolds, its words refuse /
my tonguing. I am naked, in disgrace / with love, skulking under its
high-heeled shoes.’ (‘Death’s Morning Shadows’) and again in ‘Beast and the
Beauty’ which ends: ‘so he sits alone in Libraries, hideous and hairy of soul,
/ a beast again, waiting for a lustful kiss to bring / back his human smell,
the taste of a woman on his tongue.’ Those readers opposed to the sexual titillation
have the option of a ‘shilling’s worth of gas’ (‘Suicide Unmasked’). The sexual
imagery continues in Porter’s second volume ‘Poems Ancient & Modern’ from
1964; in one poem, ‘An Anthropologist’s Confession’, the protagonist witnesses
a rape – ‘I saw on the other bank a naked girl, / beautiful as pearl, wade from
the shelving shore / till waves tapped her vagina. She curled / her hair up
high and splashed her body.’ All perfectly innocent and lovely until: ‘two
naked girls stood behind her. Then / roaring upstream, a goatherd, miserly
thief of his own flock for the grim woven / cloth he wore, splashed to her
side, his bulging beef
Fuming with lust. He
spreadeagled her and laid
Her on the milky clay.
I watched from
Across the mild water,
my ears and eyes sprayed
By yells and splashes.
I felt the thong
Of his lust whipping
her, his short sword invade.
His tongue in my own
lips like a strap of fire.
Fill her with blood I
heard myself say.
I left the place
purged in
Conscience by this
rape as though my own
Semen had uncurdled. I
knew myself virgin
And my shame fell on
me like a stone.’
Porter seems to
confess to erotic fetishes – ‘I wish I were a nylon thread / meshed against
your thigh’ (‘Nine Points of the Law’) and something quite relevant to contemporary
scenes of panic-buying: ‘spending money is the kindest orgasm.’ (‘Shopping
Scenes’) The tone changes a little in the next collection, ‘A Porter Folio’
(1969) which is a very clever volume of historical and religious inspired works
resembling Eliot with threads of Betjeman in style and his erudite,
intellectual wings are stretched further in ‘The Last of England’ (1970) where
he seems to cram everyone and everything into the poems and does it very well!
‘Preaching to the Converted’ (1972) really goes to confirm that Porter is a
poet with ‘sex on the brain’ but always expressed with a fine sense of wit as
in ‘Sex and the Over Forties’: ‘It’s too good for them, / they look so
unattractive undressed - / let them read paperbacks!’ Other volumes are: ‘Living
in a Calm Country’ (1975), ‘The Cost of Seriousness’ (1978) and the delightful
‘English Subtitles’ (1981) in which the author asks: ‘How Important is Sex?’ –
‘Not very’, he says, ‘the sight / of mummy’s hair puts us on the spot, / a cave
more mysterious than the mouth.’ He goes on to say that ‘I am a respecter / of
power, having seen a skinny girl / screaming in the playground, oblivious / of
boys, wake to her hormonal clock.’ The book ends with Porter’s 1972 piece
‘After Martial’ which is the sort of Greek pornographic erotica one would
expect – ‘the flavour of sodomy comes out / the other end as halitosis.’ (XII.
Ixxxv) I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading Porter’s ‘Collected Poems’
and consider it compulsory reading for any lover of modern poetry or anyone in
search of the oblivion from Coronavirus – a strange thought enters my head: why
not read the complete works of Wordsworth, it is surely overdue? But things
haven’t got that bad just yet!
Sugar Daddy – by Hugo
Williams.
Being a natural hermit,
this isolation is no hardship! Day Nine of my Coronavirus self-isolation and
restriction increases as freedom diminishes in the preservation of humanity!
But there is only so much tea one can drink, how absurd is that remark coming
from an Englishman? I know, anyway, I put my idle hours to Hugo Williams, a
Windsor-born poet (1942) who attended Eton College and won numerous literary
prizes; he was also the son of the actor Hugh Williams and this collection,
‘Sugar Daddy’ was published in 1970. The book is in three parts and the poems
which are quite minimalist in style about such subjects as love and marriage,
fatherhood and separation; in the poem ‘Terminal’ we get a sense of the
bustling airport where ‘con-men come at you like squids’; where one finds ‘maps
in cobwebs’ and ‘neon arrows laughing.’ An obsession with other people and what
they are up to is expressed in ‘The Couple Upstairs’ which says:
‘She was not always
with him up there,
And yet they seemed
inviolate, like us,
Our loves in sympathy.
Her going
Thrills and frightens
us.’
In ‘Early Morning’ the
dull routine at the beginning of each day is given a greater importance – ‘the
mirror, the running water, / the delay the reckoning, like sex. / … The basin
is a porcelain pelvis / pressed against my own.’ The same ennui is found in
part two where we find the ‘Woman in a New House’ whose ‘mind is crammed with
love and ambition. / The future makes me fall asleep.’ (v) and in part three –
‘I don’t know what to do / as you pass your time / perfecting the darkness
between us.’ (‘Couple’) and ‘The Elephant is Overturned’:
‘Some hand
Has cut a section
through my house.
Our bedroom is an open
dig where we are petrified,
Naked as the lovers of
Pompeii’ (ii)
Some Sweet Day – by
Hugo Williams.
This volume of short,
abstract poems published in 1975 has some interesting and comic pieces on the
themes of childhood and love, mortality, the interior and exterior world; in
‘Sonny Jim Crowned’ a picture of a haemophiliac boy is painfully and humorously
brought to life as he is told ‘how good he is at Ludo / in case he dies before
we let him win again’ and later we are told that ‘we’re not allowed to mention
the bits of blood / which fly off him, staining our clothes, / when he skips
among us like a little doll, / showing off as usual.’ Nature of course is
summoned too as ‘a summer breeze / is drying out the sticky lime trees. / It
fills and lifts in the branches / and my ribs heave.’ (‘Home’) and again as in
the poem ‘Empires’ where the author stares ‘for hours / at the giant purple
weeds / wandering aimlessly over the battlefield / of the garden, their airborn
seeds / spiralling up over the graves / of the chrysanthemums’ and ‘Hemlock’ –
‘I have drawn up / all that is doubtful in the earth. / Mist gathers in my stem.
When I nod my head
late at night
The air fills up with
dust
And the books with
ignorance.’
Hugo Williams is an
exceptional poet evoking a world of childhood and childish gestures, observing
the world around him, through youth and adulthood; a world in which it is all
too easy to become over-sentimental, yet Williams cannot be accused of this. In
fact, I was so taken by these poems and those in ‘Sugar Daddy’ (1970) I went on
to read his wonderful ‘Writing Home’ collection from 1985 which has some lovely
autobiographical poems and splendid verse centred upon his father.
A Correct Compassion
and Other Poems – by James Kirkup.
Isolation-dreaming, a
literary lethargy: I am losing my grip on reality! Day Ten of Coronavirus
isolation and after a brief lapse of my rational mind in which I read Stephen
Phillips’ (1864-1915) collection of ‘Poems’ (1897) with its ‘Christ in Hades’ I
turned to ‘A Correct Compassion’ published in 1952 by the poet, translator and
travel writer, James Kirkup (1918-2009). Kirkup, who studied at Durham University,
writes with a Northern romantic perspective upon the rolling horror of the sea,
the harbours and the night crossings, where ‘passengers embark, anonymous /
beneath the swinging arc-lamp’s / gesticulating melodrama.’ (‘Tyne Ferry:
Night’) and there is a strong passionate link to the past, a masculine harking
for history in poems such as ‘A Matter of the Past’ where he asks: ‘was it a
day like this, beyond Eboracum, / that you were laid away, you Roman boy, in
stone and darkness?’ The ghost of Yeats comes through in Kirkup’s ‘Swan
Legends’ in which a ‘fellow swan has died’ and the remaining swan ‘soars into
the afterglow / of that deep summer where all deaths belong,’ The poem
continues wistfully – ‘into the stars, and sings alone, / then folds the wings
that will no longer soar, / and with one last wild cry, through endless day /
thunders down miles of darkness, like a stone.’ But perhaps the most
overpowering emotion in the collection is love: ‘though I knew it was some
other hurting, / I felt that first farewell as if it were our last.’ (‘First
Parting’) and the absolutely brilliant ‘Human and Divine Love’ where Kirkup
declares ‘the mortal pain / Love gives to the immortal loneliness of man’; yet
beyond the loneliness, beyond the sculpture-influenced poems and beyond the
‘Invocation for Raising the Dead’, is a positive desire for a cleansed and
miraculous new earth – ‘now shine, great Sun, upon a singing earth again, / and
let all clouds be golden, bringing a golden rain!’ (‘Elizabeth Regina as the
Four Seasons: Summer’) we find the image of a ‘fountain’ in the poem of that
name representing the poet’s love, as ‘a terrible enchantment binds me here /
in deepening darkness, and I cannot move, / fountain, bright fountain, image of
my love.’ More relevant of the days ahead perhaps and the catastrophe the world
is going through is the poem ‘The End of the World’ which states that ‘this is
the world with no horizon, excepting / where we stand together. For there / the
strange earth and stranger heaven / touch with delicate decision, and remove /
man’s loneliness in a miraculous confusion.’ The poem ends rather
prophetically:
‘But we are together.
And though I do not
know you, and never saw
Your unseen face, nor
heard your lifted voice,
And though you were my
enemy, my love – though we are blind,
Within this breaking
moment, at the world’s black end,
I feel your trembling
cease; and know,
Too late, that you
were once mankind.’
Sailing to an Island – by Richard Murphy.
Drowning in despondency
in my own absorption on Day Eleven of this damned yet necessary isolation
during the Coronavius pandemic, I swept my weary mind over Ivor Gurney’s ‘War’s
Embers and Other Verses’ from 1919 before alighting upon this marvellous
collection, ‘Sailing to an Island’ by the Irish poet Richard Murphy (1927-1018)
who studied English at Magdalene College, Oxford. Published in 1963, the volume
is divided into three parts and the title poem in part one the author depicts
the reality of the idyllic ‘sailing to an island’, where ‘the breeze as we
plunge slowly stiffens: / there are hills of sea between us and land, / between
our hopes and the island harbour. / A child vomits. The boat veers and
bucks.’ The poem ends with a sense of
relief: ‘later, I reach a room, where the moon stares / cobwebbed through the
window. The tide has ebbed, / boats are careened in the harbour. Here is a
bed.’ Murphy has a lyrical charm even when the subject is rather ghastly as in
‘The Cleggan Disaster’ (off the West Coast of Ireland in 1927) where ‘the night
was like a shell, with long sea surges / loudening from afar, though no one was
listening.’ The sea is an ever-present monster that drives men to awful deeds –
‘bothered by women no more than by the moon, / not concerned with money beyond
the bare needs, / in this boat’s bows he sheathed his life’s harpoon.’ (‘The
Last Galway Hooker’)
The sea subsides in
part two where we find ‘The Woman of the House’, a poem in memory of Murphy’s
grandmother, Lucy Mary Ormsby (1873-1958) who lived in the West of Ireland; a
woman whose ‘mind was a vague and log-warmed yarn / spun between sleep and acts
of kindness.’ There are many fine poems in part three but I personally liked
‘The Philosopher and the Birds’ which begins: ‘a solitary invalid in a fuschia
garden / where time’s rain eroded the root since Eden, / he became for a
tenebrous epoch the stone.’ A poem which goes some way in describing how I feel
at the moment – a ‘solitary invalid in a fuschia garden’! Murphy is a hugely
intellectual poet and does not fail to deliver on all levels of what the reader
demands from poetry; I went on to read his 1968 publication, ‘The Battle of
Aughrim’ (the battle fought in 1691, south west of Athlone in Ireland) which
was commissioned by the BBC and was just as impressed with Murphy! Sensational!
Antarctica – by Derek Mahon.
On Day Twelve of
self-isolation during this scourge of Coronavirus I wasted what little sanity I
had on reading the ‘Complete Poems: 1927-1979’ of Elizabeth Bishop and was
dreadfully disappointed and regretted it; I found nothing that spoke to me! But
hope remained and I found my salvation on Day Thirteen in ‘Antarctica’
published in 1985 by the Belfast-born poet, Derek Mahon (born 1941). The poet
presents us with a view of Kensington, where Ezra Pound lived, as a ‘great good
place / of clean-limbed young men / and high-minded virgins, / cowslip and
celandine,’ (I-ii) and he asks ‘what price the dewey-eyed / Pelagianism of home
/ to a lost generation / dumbfounded on the Somme?’
(‘A Kensington Notebook’. I-vi) A glimmer of that Irish humour and wisdom is
delivered in ‘Squince’ as ‘the eyes are clouded where / he lies in a veined
dish: / is this the salmon of wisdom / or merely a dead fish?’ The frenzy of
lust which is never very far from the subconscious mind is brought vividly to
life in the poem ‘Ovid in Love’ where the Latin poet, ‘aroused’, ‘grabbed and
roughly tore / until your gown squirmed on the floor. / Oh, you resisted, but
like one / who knows resistance is in vain; / and, when you stood revealed, my
eyes / feasted on shoulders, breasts and thighs. / I held you hard and down you
slid / beside me, as we knew you would. / Oh, come to me again as then you
did!’ (‘Ovid in Love’. Amores I,v) In the poem ‘Antarctica’, Mahon, who studied
at Trinity College, Dublin, captures brilliantly the atmosphere, the
‘ridiculous’ and the ‘sublime’ as he places the reader among the polar party,
there in that tent when Laurence Oates, on his birthday, 17th March,
walked out to his death in a noble endeavour of self-sacrifice to save his
three companions; poor ‘Titus’ Oates, Scott said ‘it was the act of a brave man
and an English gentleman – we all hope to meet the end with a similar spirit,
and assuredly the end is not far.’ How utterly heartbreaking is that stoic,
quiet reserve, the ‘nod’ and the ‘pretending not to know’ which the author
evokes:
‘I am just going
outside and may be some time.
The others nod,
pretending not to know.
At the heart of the
ridiculous, the sublime.
He leaves them reading
and begins to climb,
Goading his ghost into
the howling snow;
He is just going
outside and may be some time.
The tent recedes
beneath its crust of rime
And frostbite is
replaced by vertigo:
At the heart of the
ridiculous, the sublime.
Need we consider it
some sort of crime,
This thumb
self-sacrifice of the weakest? No,
He is just going
outside and may be some time –
In fact, for ever.
Solitary enzyme,
Though the night yield
no glimmer there will glow,
At the heart of the
ridiculous, the sublime.
He takes leave of the
earthly pantomime
Quietly, knowing it is
time to go: -
‘I am just going
outside and may be some time.’
At the heart of the
ridiculous, the sublime.’
Death, noble or not,
is never far from us, and in these troubling times, we wait, ‘as if ghosts
already, / we search our pockets for the Stygian fare.’ (‘October’) and
poignantly, in ‘Tithonus’ he declares:
‘I dream of the past,
Of the future,
Even of the present.
Perhaps I am really
Dead and dreaming
My vigilance?’
In the Stopping Train
and Other Poems – by Donald Davie.
This excellent
collection from 1977 by the Barnsley-born poet Donald Davie (1922-1995) of St.
Catherine’s College, Cambridge is a tour de force of abstract and astonishingly
lyrical verse, poems which as he says himself ‘describe their own birth, and
this / is what they are – a space / cleared to walk around in.’ (‘Ars Poetica’)
And so, as we walk around the volume there is some exceptional work here such
as ‘An Apparition’ where the poet, spying the shade of Gina, says he saw her
walk ‘suddenly, in white / brassiere and panties under / a fish-net wrap; your
sallow skin,… firm and sullen to fire,’ and in ‘Townend, 1976’ he asks: ‘when
does a town become a city?’ but it is the title poem of the collection, ‘In the
Stopping Train’ which achieves a certain greatness for we are reminded of
Edward Thomas and his ‘Addlestrop’ when Davie writes – ‘I have got into the
slow train / again. I made the mistake / knowing what I was doing, / knowing
who had to be punished.’ But who is to be punished? The poet answers: ‘the man
going mad inside me’ saying that ‘this journey will punish the bastard’, and it
shall, for anyone who has been on such a long train journey will know that
frustration and that form of ‘self-abuse’ is a regular ‘punishment’ for
commuters like myself. The same commuters will recognise the internal hatred as
‘he abhors his fellows, / especially children; let there / not for pity’s sake
/ be a crying child in the carriage.’ a punishment beyond endurance for most
men for who has not wanted to bash the brains out of some bawling brat on the
train? ‘Torment him with his hatreds, / torment him with his false / loves.
Torment him with time / that has disclosed their falsehood.’ Perhaps the most
obvious punishment is ‘time, the exquisite torment!’ And our poet continues in
philosophical mode – ‘what’s all this about flowers? / they have an importance
he can’t / explain, or else their names have.’ And with a touch of cynicism he
says ‘some people claim to love them. … Love them? Love flowers? Love, / love …
the word is hopeless: / gratitude, maybe, pity…’ before the poem ends on the
saddest words a fellow human can utter:
‘He knew too few in
love.’
This is such a
marvellous collection that I went on to spend Day Thirteen of my Coronavirus
confinement reading Davie’s ‘Collected Poems: 1950-1970’ (1972) and ‘Collected
Poems: 1970-1983’ (1983) which contained among such wonders his collections:
‘Brides of Reason’ (1955), ‘A Winter Talent’ (1957), ‘Events and Wisdoms’
(1964), ‘Essex Poems’ (1969), ‘The Shires’ (1974) and ‘The Battered Wife’
(1982) – this is definitely essential reading!
New Lines: An
Anthology – Edited by Robert Conquest.
After celebrating my
partial freedom from self-isolation during the Coronavirus pandemic with a
couple of volumes by Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840-1922), his ‘In Vinculis’ (1889)
appropriately written in an Irish prison, and ‘The Love Sonnets of Proteus’
(1882) – I needn’t have bothered! I turned to Robert Conquest’s ‘New Lines’
anthology published in 1956. Conquest seems to write quite detached and with
little passion in the introduction, saying that a ‘poem needs an intellectual
backbone’ (does it really?) and he simply relishes attacking those
‘metaphysical poets’, oh well he was a man approaching forty worshipping at the
shrine of William Empson. The volume attempts to contain nine poets, only one
of which is a woman, Elizabeth Jennings (1926-2001) into a very loose bracket
known as the ‘Movement’ (oh dear!), the usual malarkey ensues, anti-romantic,
insufferably witty… abstract and obscure trifles of little significance from
the likes of John Holloway (1920-1999) Kingsley Amis (1922-1995), D. J. Enright
(1920-2002) and John Wain (1925-1994), but there are some outstanding works
here, as one would expect, from Philip Larkin (1922-1985) such as his brilliant
‘Church Going’ in which he takes ‘off his cycle-clips in awkward reverence.’ and
he asks, ‘after dark, will dubious women come / to make their children touch a
particular stone’. Thom Gunn (1929-2004) is here with his ‘Lerico’ – ‘Shelley
was drowned near here’ and ‘Byron was worth the sea’s pursuit.’ The great
Donald Davie (1922-1995) puts in an appearance with his ‘The Fountain’ and ‘A
Head Painted by Daniel O’Neill’ before Robert Conquest (1917-2015) takes up the
gauntlet with such poems as ‘Epistemology of Poetry’ and ‘Antheor’. Mostly disappointing
but a few small glimmers of hope!
Collected Poems – by
William Plomer.
I have had my eye on
Mr. Plomer for quite some time and this 1960 publication of his Collected Works
is a really excellent volume containing his volumes: ‘Notes for Poems’ (1927,
‘The Family Tree’ (1929), ‘The Fivefold Screen’ (1932), ‘Visiting the Caves’
(1936), ‘Selected Poems’ (1940), ‘The Dorking Thigh’ (1945) and ‘A Shot in the
Park’ (1955); there are also poems from his ‘In a Bombed House’ (1942) and ‘The
Heart of a King’ (1955). William Plomer (1903-1973) divides his volume into
several parts such as ‘African Poems’, ‘Poems written in Japan’ and
‘Poems of the Affections’ etc. In his section called ‘Philhellinisms’ is the
beautiful poem ‘Archaic Apollo’, the ‘slender god’ on whose breast ‘the Aegean lay / while the whole of history was made; / that
long caress could not warm the flesh / nor the antique smile abrade.’ Plomer
goes on to describe Apollo as being ‘as he was, inert, alert, / the one hand
open, the other lightly shut, / his nostrils clean as holes in a flute, / the
nipples and navel delicately cut.’ In the excellent section ‘A Time of Prisons
and Ruins’ are found some rather good poems such as ‘The Ruins’ where we find
the lines: ‘snapped off and earthquake-scattered / segments of Corinthian
columns lie / fluted like celery-stalks in stone / buff-biscuit on the desert
grey.’ and ‘some stand, supporting yet / fragments of pediments soon to fall. /
Acanthus capitals can be kicked / out of the sand like fossils. Surely / - no
moral need be drawn from this? / bright poisonous gourds have coiled / over the
vast cylinders, but these / small wild musk-melons ought to quench our thirst.’
Another poem in the section is ‘The Silent Sunday’ and there are some pretty
dark references for which Plomer is known for; in verse two, ‘half way down the
hill a murder case / once drew idle crowds to stare’ and in the next verse,
‘face downward lay the huddled suicides / like litter that a riot leaves.’
Verse four mirrors the childish fears of most of us who have encountered some
strange person living like some animal – ‘they say some woman lived for weeks /
hidden in bushes on the common, then drew lots / and ate each other’… ‘an
almond tree suggests that this is spring / but on the right an oak retains its
leaves.’ There are some wickedly satirical poems in the section ‘London Ballads
and Poems’ such as ‘A Ticket for the Reading Room’, ‘Mews Flat Mona’ and
‘Father and Son’ (1939) or ‘The Playboy of the Demi-World’ (1938) where we meet
D’Arcy Honeybunn, of Mayfair who is a ‘rose-red sissy half as old as time’; a
‘perennial pansy’ who entertains ‘ambiguous couples wearing slacks and specs /
and the stout lesbian knocking out her pipe.’ In ‘The Murder on the Downs’ from
the ‘Country Ballads and Poems’ section we find Bert and Jennifer, lying in the
bracken as Bert ‘slowly pulls / a rayon stocking from his coat, / twists it
quickly, twists it neatly / round her throat.’ But my favourite poem with its
dark macabre tone is his masterful ‘The Dorking Thigh’ in which we encounter
Stanley and June who are house-hunting and find a ‘Tudor snuggery styled / ‘Ye
Kumfi Nooklet’. The salesman shows them around the house and June opens a
cupboard door and ‘out there fell / a nameless Something on the floor. –
Something the workmen left, I expect, / the agent said, as it fell at his feet,
/ nor knew that his chance of a sale was wrecked. ‘Good heavens, it must be a
joint of meat! – Ah yes, it was meat, it was meat alright, / a joint those
three will never forget - / for they stood alone in the Surrey
night / with the severed thigh of a plump brunette…’ The poem goes on to reveal
that a ‘trouser button was found in the mud / (who made it? Who wore it? Who
lost it? Who knows?) / but no one found a trace of blood / or her body or face,
or the spoiler of those.’ The grisly find deters the couple and June ‘made Stan
take a flat in town.’ The poem and the collection met all my expectations of it
and more, in fact, there is some absolutely brilliant writing here from Plomer
and I would definitely recommend his Collected Poems to any lover of good
poetry!
Collected Poems – by
Robert Gittings.
Published in 1976, the
‘Collected Poems’ of Robert Gittings (1911-1992) contains the following
collections: ‘Wentworth Place
and Other Poems’ (1950) with its long poem ‘Wentworth Place’ about John Keats: ‘The
garden darkens. Central summer / wheels its gold circle down to shade. / The
moths are out to hum and hover / over the upturned pale-faced stalks, / and she
too walks, / chasing a birdsfoot of annoyance / between her eyebrows, but at
once / checked by the tenderness of distance, / shaping a warmness from the
south / to share her mouth.’ and Gittings, of Jesus College, Cambridge, is at
his best in such poems as the interesting, ‘Roman Villa in England’, a
‘miniature of Rome’, where an ‘altar that a god / once guarded now is gone; /
where the white image stood / course lichens eat the stone; / the temple in the
wood / is worshipped now by none / but beetle, worm and brood / of weird
inhuman bone.’ ‘Famous Meeting: Poems’ (1953), ‘This Tower My Prison’ (1961)
which I found the most successful collection and has the poem ‘The Great Moth’
which begins: ‘Visitant to our dumbly human home, / dull coal or shrivelled
leaf, the great moth lay,’ and goes on in the second verse: ‘strange,
confident, the legs that crooked my finger / settled like truth, though little
I had to give, / knowing how short such breath-spans linger, / how brief the
creatures live.’ Also here is the poem on the vicar and diarist, Francis
Kilvert (1840-79), the ‘priest of the ancient rite’ in the poem ‘Kilvert at
Clyro’ where ‘an angel satyr walks these hills - / not only here but in us all’
and the poem ‘The Fox’ in which we meet Darwin on his Beagle expedition, land
at the island of San Pedro where he sees a new species of fox and casually
creeps up behind it to smash its head in and take it as a prize! Other
collections are: ‘Matters of Love and Death’ (1968), ‘American Journey’ (1972)
and ‘Dead Ones, Live Ones’ begun in 1972.
Collected Poems – by
Patrick Kavanagh.
The Irish poet Patrick
Kavanagh (1904-1967) who is somewhat reluctant to call himself a ‘poet’ says
that ‘poetry made me a sort of outcast. And I was abnormally normal.’ He goes
on to say that ‘I do not believe in sacrifice and yet it seems I was
sacrificed.’ (‘Author’s Note’, p. xiii) This Collected Poems published in 1960
is a testament to the man’s resilience who declares that ‘on many occasions I
literally starved in Dublin’
before confessing that ‘if I had a stronger character, I might have done well
enough for myself. But there was some kink in me, put there by Verse.’ (p. xiv)
– I like him already! The volume begins with his first collection published in
1936, ‘The Ploughman and Other Poems’ with its rural hardship, unsentimental
reality of poverty and peasant superstitions – ‘O PAGAN poet you / and I are
one / in this – we lose our god / at set of sun.’ (‘To a Blackbird’) and ‘CHILD
do not go / into the dark places of soul’ (‘To a Child’) and he conjures the
magnificent owl in his ‘Four Birds’ – ‘night-winged / as a ghost / or a
gangster, / mystical as a black priest / reading the Devil’s Mass.’ In his
well-received collection ‘The Great Hunger and Other Poems’ (1942) we find ‘the
Man after the Harrow’, ‘driving your horses through / the mist where Genesis
begins’ and the poem itself ‘The Great Hunger’ which begins ‘CLAY is the word
and clay is the flesh’ is a powerful work about Patrick Maguire, a farmer who
lives with his aged mother and his spinster sister Mary Ann; the sexual
frustration and loneliness is increasingly evident and the sense of melancholy
throughout the whole collection [other volumes are: ‘A Soul for Sale’ (1947)
and ‘Later Poems including Come Dance with Kitty Stobling’ (1960)] is quite
overwhelming and the author, an ‘outcast’ marked-out from society by poetry
says it all when he says: ‘my purpose in life was to have no purpose.’ (p. xiv)
Excellent!
The Whitsun Weddings –
by Philip Larkin.
This is Larkin’s third
volume of poetry published in 1964, containing thirty-two outstanding poems
which speak of the terrible search for happiness summoned from the ordinary
reality of sadness; the unpretentious perception of a changing world and his
response to it. The volume begins with this pessimistic yet also joyous tone in
the poem ‘Here’ which ends: ‘Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands / like
heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, / hidden weeds flower, neglected waters
quicken, / luminously-peopled air ascends; / and past the poppies bluish
neutral distance / ends the land suddenly beyond a beach / of shapes and
shingle. Here is influenced existence: / facing the sun, untalkative, out of
reach.’ There is an unbearable sense of melancholy here as one finds in Hardy’s
poems, whom like Larkin, I also adore, the ‘neutral’ transitional ‘nothingness’
of space inhabited between the urban and the suburban; a landscape of
provincial love and death; it is the same
impersonal desire for solitude and for the destruction of the self found
in Larkin’s second and first mature volume of poetry ‘The Less Deceived’ (1955)
after he had shaken off the Yeatsian influence of his first volume: ‘The North
Ship’ (1945) both of which I also read and enjoyed, as in the poem ‘Wants’ –
‘beyond all this, the wish to be alone’ and ‘beneath it all, desire of oblivion
runs’. There is a sense of belonging, as we can see in the poem ‘Mr Bleaney’,
who told himself ‘that this was home, and grinned, / and shivered, without
shaking off the dread / - that how we live measures our own nature’. But love
is always the barometer for ‘in everyone there sleeps / a sense of life lived
according to love.’ (‘Faith Healing’) Larkin (1922-1985), the novelist, poet
and librarian who read English at St. John’s College, Oxford (1940-43) is often
accused of being too gloomy and introspective but for me that is his strength,
he accepts the imperfect for what they are and does not strive for perfection;
within the innocent happiness wrenched from misery is great humour and a
rebellious nature that puts his fingers up to society and stuffiness and
records the world around him as can be seen in the beautiful ‘Whitsun Weddings’
– ‘we passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls / in parodies of fashion, heels
and veils, / all posed irresolutely, watching us go,’ and one can almost see
and hear the ‘fathers with broad belts under their suits / and seamy foreheads;
mothers, loud and fat; / an uncle shouting smut’ and of course there are the
women who ‘shared / the secret like a happy funeral’. Larkin may not be
considered a great love poet but the theme of love is never far from his verse:
‘how separate and unearthly love is, / or women are, or what they do, / or in
our young unreal wishes / seem to be: synthetic, new, / and natureless in
ecstasies’ (‘The Large Cool Store’) and again in one of Larkin’s best loved
poems ‘An Arundel Tomb’ with its metaphysical survival of the soul through love
and the fear of death accompanied by the desire for death which satisfies
Larkin’s acceptance of mortality and begins: ‘side by side, their faces
blurred, / the earl and countess lie in stone’; hand in hand, the poem like the
monument is a remarkable memorial to
love’s permanence, with a ‘faint hint of the absurd - / the little dogs under
their feet.’ Anyone who has been to the tomb, as I have will draw the same
poetic inspiration of love’s enduring devotion beyond the grave as indeed did
Larkin, in those two stone figures who ‘would not think to lie so long. / Such
faithfulness in effigy’ where ‘only an attitude remains’. Larkin reads the
stone and interprets the chivalric beauty where ‘time has transfigured them
into / untruth. The stone fidelity / they hardly meant has come to be / their
final blazon, and to prove’ and here Larkin seems to sum-up the whole meaning
of existence for humanity in two lines that end the poem: ‘our almost-instinct
almost true: what will survive of us is love.’ How true!
High Windows – by
Philip Larkin.
Larkin’s fourth and
final volume of poetry from 1974 containing twenty-four poems continues his
preoccupation with death and the same transient nature of life interlaced with
love but that old Arundel romance has gone – ‘when I see a couple of kids / and
guess he’s fucking her and she’s / taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, / I
know this is paradise.’ (‘High Windows’) and of course the much quoted ‘Annus
Mirabilis’ – ‘sexual intercourse began / in nineteen sixty-three / (which was
rather late for me) - / between the end of the Chatterley ban / and the
Beatles’ first LP.’ Despite the sexual revolution that went on around him he is
still able to notice the beauty of nature as in ‘The Trees’ which are ‘coming
into leaf / like something almost being said; / the recent buds relax and
spread, / their greenness is a kind of grief.’ The overwhelming urge to blame
is spelt out in ‘This be the Verse’ which begins famously ‘they fuck you up,
your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do. / They fill you with the
faults they had / and add some extra, just for you.’ – They certainly do! The
pleasure of sex and the knowing power of death over us are all that we really
have; sex is the lit row of candles that lights the way along a steady path
towards the inevitable end of life – ‘at death, you break up: the bits that
were you / start speeding away from each other for ever / with no one to see.’
(‘The Old Fools’) and we all become old fools, the lucky ones that make it,
those that can ponder life’s meaning as they are opening its back door –
‘perhaps being old is having lighted rooms / inside your head, and people in
them, acting.’
The Hollow Hill and
Other Poems 1960-1964 – by Kathleen Raine.
This collection from
1965 by the poet and critic Kathleen Raine (1908-2003) of Girton College,
Cambridge, is a really impressive volume drawing upon Raine’s deep inspiration
from the landscape of Northumberland and Scotland, the border-world with its
mystical and visionary qualities as well as her own experiences and impressions
from her childhood: ‘an impulse / of rose like the delight of girls’ breasts /
when the nipples bud and grow a woman / where was a child, a woman to bear / a
child unbegun’ (‘Rose’); this joyous awakening of childhood, of poetry and love
is all splendidly told in her first volume (of three volumes) of autobiography,
‘Farewell Happy Fields’ (1973) which I have also been reading along with her
second volume ‘The Land Unknown’ (1975) and enjoying immensely where she tells
of her strict Methodist upbringing, the first stirrings of love and how at the
age of fifteen she contemplated suicide (although not too seriously) when her
admirer Roland, who swore undying devotion to her, (a devotion thwarted by
Kathleen’s father when he forbade them to see each other) cast her aside for
the Roman Church. I really admire Raine’s poetry and read her early collections
some twenty years ago and felt an immediate connection. The title poem in this
collection, ‘The Hollow Hill’ in six parts has many references to death –
Kathleen at the age of 12 was moved when her 11 year old cousin Jimmy died of
cerebral meningitis: ‘his death invaded and possessed me’, she says in ‘Farewell
Happy Fields’ and that possession is still evident in The Hollow Hill, as can
be seen here in the second verse: ‘the moving now has drawn its thread /
tracing the ravelled record of the dead / through all the wanderings of the
living. / Reaching at last the sum of our becoming, / the line inwound into a
point again, / the space of the world full circle turn / into the nought where
all began.’ In the third verse death seems more poignant as ‘the grave is empty,
they are gone: / in the last place they were, their clay / clings crumbling to
the roots of trees, / whose fibres thread their way from earth to earth again.’
One is reminded of the powerful bull in the field she knew as a child that
gored the farmer; this symbol of strength and virility she feared yet
respected, that was shot by the butcher and its lifeless weight of flesh taken
away from the barn, that ‘dark house of the dead’ which can ‘pierce. / From
world to world there’s a needle’s eye: / … to touch with fingers of life a dead
man’s heart’. Part three tells us that ‘each star of life has gone its way /
tracing the cross-ways of the world’ before part five declares that ‘when a
soul departs, a white bird flies: / gull, gannet, tern or swan?’ This is a really
accomplished collection which far surpasses many of the volumes I have recently
read such as ‘The Collected Poems of William Empson’ (1949) a friend of Raine’s
which I found cold and abstract, intellect without emotion; ‘Tulips and
Chimneys’ (1923) by E. E. Cummings – complete nonsense and a couple of
collected works by Geoffrey Hill (1985) and Gavin Ewart (1980), both rather
good, but reading ‘The Hollow Hill’ has inspired me to re-read Raine’s works
and so I read ‘The Lost Country’ (1971) and ‘The Oracle of the Heart’ (1980) with
renewed respect and interest and with my fascination for things ‘otherworldly’
and beyond the grasp of the living, that romantic space concealed from us, I
felt the same fascination and repulsive shame as the young poet, forced to
drown her litter of kittens in a bucket of water and then to dig their grave –
‘so young, blood was already on my hands.’ (‘Farewell Happy Fields’. p. 55) Raine
does not constrict her spiritual views and expands into the world of the occult
in relationship to nature which can be seen in her first collection of poems
‘Stone and Flower’ (1943) – ‘Let my body sweat / let snakes torment my breast /
my eyes be blind, ears deaf, hands distraught / mouth parched, uterus cut out,
/ belly slashed, back lashed, / tongue slivered into thongs of leather / rain
stones inserted in my breasts, / head severed, / … if only the lips may speak,
/ if only the god will come.’ (‘Invocation’) and particularly in the ‘spell’
poems from the collection ‘The Year One’ (1952), but most of all I admire her
poetic independence and integrity, as she followed her own inner daimon; as she
says at the end of her poem ‘The Path’ – ‘and I must walk the path of fire /
that trembles, is scattered, reassembles / on all the sunlit moonlit waters of
the world’.
A Room in Chelsea Square – by
Michael Nelson.
Originally published
anonymously in 1958, this is a fabulously astute satire written by Michael
Nelson (1921-1990) in which we meet a witty collective of odd characters and
survivors from the sumptuous days of the ‘bright young things’, reminiscent of
Waugh’s ‘Brideshead’. Nicholas Milestone, a naïve, provincial reporter from a
poor home encounters the enormously rich (the book begins: ‘He was very, very
rich’) and terribly camp aesthete, Patrick, a nasty, manipulative character
Nelson based on Peter Watson. Patrick invites Nicholas to London on the promise of a job and has him
stay at his hotel suite. The flamboyant Patrick then decides with his friends
Ronnie Gras, an obese hedonist based on the writer Cyril Connolly, and
Christopher Lyre, a manic depressive based on Stephen Spender, to produce a
fashion magazine called ‘Eleven’. There are some good passages and plots –
Christopher is in love with Michael Herbert Henry, an ex RAF pilot who later dies
in a plane crash and all the signs point to suicide; there is the newspaper
proprietor Stuart Andrews of the Daily Gladiator who knows just what the public
wants: ‘sex and scapegoats’; and the moments when it all falls apart for
Nicholas when he hesitates on being asked to go away with the controlling Patrick,
in fact, he flees the hotel suite and comforts Christopher after Michael’s
death and finds himself cast aside by Michael who has a new man to take on
holiday with him and to spoil and manipulate as he wishes. Entertaining!
Minding My Own
Business – by Percy Horace Muir.
I read this
autobiography straight off the back of reading ‘Everyman Remembers’ (1931) by
Ernest Rhys with its talk of publishing and the likes of Wilde, Whitman,
Swinburne and Yeats (and who can forget poor old Frank Podmore condemned by
Rhys for sadistic, unspeakable acts, mysteriously taking himself quietly to a
pond to end it all) which in itself is a marvellous tome for bibliophiles to
drool over. Perhaps a little more concerned with the ins and outs of the
business end of publishing and the book trade is ‘Minding my own business’, the
autobiography of Percy Horace Muir (1894-1979) published in 1956; Muir, who
seems to have fallen into the business, like so many, quite accidentally, recounts
over twenty-four chapters, (227 pages) his avid book collecting and his joining
the firm of Elkin Mathews the antiquarian bookseller. Charles Elkin Mathews
(1851-1921) who with his partner John Lane (1854-1925) established The Bodley
Head bookshop and publishing company in 1887, (he left in 1894 to set up Elkin
Mathews Ltd) was instrumental in the decadent nineties as the publisher of The
Yellow Book quarterly (1894-7). The cut-throat world of the book trade, the politics
of book publishing and collecting during the twenties and thirties are
enormously interesting in Muir’s skilled hands as he has a familiar,
confidential manner in his writing and hugely entertaining are the many book-lovers
and those that work within the business appearing like musty gargoyles and
remnants from the decadent period such as the two monocle-wearing brothers,
Robert Gathorne-Hardy (1902-73) and Edward Gathorne-Hardy (1901-78), both of
Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, the latter, a bohemian socialist specialising in
18th century Literature; or A J A Symons (1900-1941) who wrote the
exceptional ‘Quest for Corvo’ (1934) which brings in the marvellous Christopher
Sclater Millard (1872-1927) of Keble College, Oxford, the Wilde bibliographer,
dealer in rare books and friend and secretary to Robert Ross (there is a fairly
decent biography of Millard, ‘Loyally Yours’ by Maria Roberts published in 2014
which is worth seeking out); Muir recalls an incident concerning Millard the
Jacobite socialist, whose ‘story was a sad one, and that “what had been folly
at Oxford became criminal misdemeanour in later life”’ (p. 50). That horrid old
man, Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) the American man of letters who lived
most of his life in England makes several appearances much to Muir’s annoyance
and abhorrence of him and there are passionate collectors such as Richard
Jennings (1881-1952) and Alfred Edward Newton (1864-1940) and throughout all
the sherry drinking and grubby searching for first editions, the disappointment
and skulduggery of forgers, this is a really intimate read; Muir falls on hard
times following the loss of a libel case but pulls through again but less
interesting to me were his trips away in the thirties hunting musical
manuscripts in Germany before the outbreak of war. ‘Minding my own business’ is
a tremendously understated little book which will appeal to those who love
books and the history of book publishing and collecting and worth it for me
purely for the few pages concerning the enigmatic Christopher Millard! Delightful!
From the Joke Shop –
by Roy Fuller.
I have waded through
so many sleep-inducing and altogether second-rate volumes of collected works
recently that I almost abandoned the will to live: Randall Jarrell, Richard
Aldington, John Berryman, Edwin Muir, Austin Clarke, Isaac Rosenberg and
Geoffrey Hill, all have left a nasty taste in the mouth, but poetry being hit
and miss, to fall upon a hit is so very sweet! And the source of all this
saccharine-shaped stupidity: ‘From the Joke Shop’, a poetry collection
published in 1975 by the Lancashire poet and
novelist, Roy Broadbent Fuller (1912-1991). Roy, who was Professor of Poetry at
Oxford from 1968-73 and whose first published work ‘Poems’ (1939) showed the
influence of Auden and Spender, takes on a more reflective stance, inhabiting
‘another’s alien softness’ (‘Orphans’) and contemplating the notion of old age
and its process where ‘days seem short in middle-age’ (‘Youth and Age’) –
‘Sunning myself (high summer in the garden), / my fingers brush against my
solid thigh. / I think: quite good material for compost.’ (‘Ludicrous
Reflections’). Fuller declares proudly that ‘I’m becoming odd enough / myself
to tempt a spare biographer’ (‘Insomnia’) and there is a slight recurring theme
of wakefulness and insomnia – ‘cold drinks, / hot drinks and pees have somehow
doodled in / the cipher hours of insomnia’ (‘Insomnia’) and ‘our petrified
existence with the dead / haunts wakeful nights like cocktail memories / sour
with the senseless things we did or said’ (‘Dreams Sacred and Profane’). All
poets are familiar with the small hours with their haunting sleeplessness where
the poet scribbles thoughts and words into a notebook only to find nonsense,
‘gibberish’ in the cold light of day: ‘The window frames a leggy yellow rose. /
I hurry out to rescue drowning bees. / The bedside notebook yields its
gibberish.’ (‘Variations’) This is a fine collection and a poetical reprieve
from the innumerable dross found between two covers of certain poets and it has
saved me from ‘a lingering death, in my mythology’ (‘Heart Disease’).
The Collected Poems of
T. E. Brown.
Published in 1900
after the Manx poet, Thomas Edward Brown’s (1830-1897) death, by his friends,
the classics scholar Henry Graham Dakyns (1838-1911), poet and Venetian
scholar, Horatio Forbes Brown (1854-1926) and the poet William Ernest Henley
(1849-1903), there are some fine lyrical pieces here, such as ‘Betsy Lee’ and
‘Kitty and the Sherragh Vane’. Brown, who liked to take solitary walks on the
Downs, was educated at Christ Church, Oxford (1849-1853) and he became a
schoolmaster; he joined the staff at Clifton College, Bristol in 1864 and
became firm friends with fellow Clifton master H. G. Dakyns and old Cliftonian,
Horatio Brown. In fact, H. F. Brown writes an impressive and almost intimate
introduction (he was a difficult man to know thoroughly) on T. E. Brown in the
‘Poems of T. E. Brown’, selected and arranged by H. G. D. and H. F. B. and
published in 1908 (and in my opinion is more preferable to the ‘Collected
Poems’) but
Brown was an earnest
poet; Brown was a private man;
A schoolmaster at Clifton whose poems
actually scan!
There’s beauty and
there’s spirit – a most unlikely don,
But his narrative
verse is like Browning, but worse,
It goes on and on and
on!
‘The Doctor’, ‘Tommy
Big-Eyes’, one about a witch of Manx:
Read and reflect on
the hours that passed from which you get no thanks!
There is a sort of
lyricism in ‘Foc’s’le Yawns’, I mean ‘Yarns’;
He was a natural-born
poet, shy in ways to show it
With gentlemanly
charms!
‘Betsy Lee’ and
‘Christmas Rose’, ‘Captain Tom and Captain Hugh’ –
I better read the lot
I suppose there’s nothing else to do!
Messrs Dakyns, Brown
and Henley in this hugely overgrown
Collected Works, such
a tribute lurks
To Thomas Edward
Brown!
Poems – by Percy L.
Babington.
Dedicated to his
brother, Humfrey Temple Babington and published in 1911, this slim volume of
verse by Percy Lancelot Babington (1877-1950) of Tonbridge School
and St. John’s College, Cambridge (1896-99) are not the poems of a young
undergraduate of the fin-de-siecle, yet they have the same artistic sentiments
– ‘Thro’ balmy May this loving pair hath sped / unwitting of the future, or the
past; / careless of all save love, that in them bred / bright thoughts, and
fairy fetters round them cast.’ (‘Myrtilla and Erophile’. part I) But what is
love without death, for ‘Love is comfortless on Death’s dim shore.’ (part III)
The pre-war splendour of the English countryside is summoned in his ‘Ballade of
Kentish Woods’ and I particularly liked ‘The Deserted Home’ where ‘white
jasmine sways upon the lonely walls’ and where ‘solitude holds undisputed
sway’; a place where ‘birds have ceased their matin calls.’ A few of the poems
recall the beauty of Egypt (Babington was a Librarian at the Cairo Medical
School from 1899-1902) and what poet has never been possessed of the moon, as
in ‘To the Beloved’ where we find the sumptuous ‘moon-entranced sea’ before
Babington wonders off into the rather dull and ponderous ‘The Students’ until a
few final flourishes occur with his Sappho and Horace poems. The author, who
was an assistant master at Yardley
Court School,
Tonbridge (1904-10) and a Cambridge University Extension Lecturer in literature
(c. 1912-1937), only published this one slim volume of poems, which although
shows some flashes of inspiration, has signs of ‘last century’ tiredness about
it, before delighting the British public with his ‘A Collection of Books about
Cats, with notes’ (1918) and his ‘Browning and Calverley, or Poem and Parady’
(1925), but arguably his greatest achievement is his ‘A Bibliography of the
Works of John Addington Symonds’ (1925, republished 1968).
The Greek Anthology:
Epigrams from Anthologia Palatina XII – by Sydney Oswald.
Privately issued in
1914, this translation into English verse of the Anthologia Palatina XII by
Sydney Oswald, a pseudonym of Sydney Frederick Mcillree Lomer (1880-1926) of
the Lancashire Fusiliers and the King’s Royal Rifle Corps, is a very worthy and
tender translation of the works of Strato and Meleager, together with some
epigrams of uncertain authorship; there are passages of sensual beauty on
themes of Greek love as in these from Strato: ‘as pretext garlands from the boy
I bought, / then, leaving him, my house I lonely sought; / where round the gods
did I the garlands twine / with fervent prayers the boy might soon be mine.’
(‘The Garland Weaver’), or this from ‘Love’s Immortality’ – ‘how shall I know
if my love lose his youth, / who never for a day hath left my sight? / He, who
but yesterday was my delight. / I needs must love to-day if love be truth, /
and if I love to-day, to-morrow’s light / against our love will e’en forbear to
fight.’ In the preface Lomer gives his thanks to John Ellingham Brooks
(1863-1929) who helped with the translations (did Lomer’s friend Captain Lionel
Evelyn Oswald Charlton also help with the translation?) and to John William
Mackail (1859-1945) for permission to use the titles from Mackail’s book
‘Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology’ (1890), in fact, one wonders just
how much of the volume is Lomer’s actual translation. There is a melancholy
innocence which runs through the verse – ‘our childish lips did taste / of
pleasant kisses, culled by friendship chaste’ (‘Envious Time’) and again, in
‘Antiochus’ from Meleager – ‘on his tender lips did sate / Desire, and parching
thirst abate.’ Two years prior to its publication, in 1912, Lomer was involved
in a minor scandal when a nineteen year old bandsman from his regiment, the
King’s Royal Rifle Corps, named Robert Buchanan, apparently shot himself on
Lomer’s bed at Lomer’s home in Chesterfield (it is a fascinating tale, see my
article ‘The Dead Soldier’); perhaps Lomer was thinking of Buchanan when he
writes in the beginning of the volume, a ‘silent dedication’ – ‘To…’ which
ends: ‘here in this book I will not write thy name, / for this sad world shall
never know the might / of our grand love; so let it hidden stay, / graved in my
heart; and though men deem it shame / that thou and I should love, the very
sight / of thy dear face shall charm their scorn away.’ I do believe Lomer knew
more about the suicide than he gave in his evidence and carried that guilt
until his own passing in 1926 – ‘this line I’ll place upon the tomb above, /
‘Stranger, behold the murd’rous guilt of Love’.’ (‘The Guilt of Love’). A fine
volume of verse indeed.
Edward Perry Warren:
The Biography of a Connoisseur – by Osbert Burdett and E. H. Goddard.
Edward Perry Warren
(1860-1928), the eccentric Boston born American art collector and author on
uranian themes, began writing his autobiography towards the end of his life and
got no further than the first three chapters in this book published in 1941 which
recalls his schooldays, his time at Harvard (1879, BA 1883) and his exploits at
New College, Oxford University, of which we are on familiar ground; Warren as a
young boy was obsessed with religion and various aspects of religious ceremony,
in search of spiritual meaning in his life and a way of accepting his own
homosexual desires; drawn to poetry, especially that of Shelley, he would do
anything rather than enter his father’s paper mill business and young Warren,
viewed as ‘different’ by his parents and siblings, was mostly left to pursue
his own course. The three chapters are well written and one can’t help wanting
more of the same; Warren’s literary editor, Osbert Burdett (1885-1936)
continues the story of his curious life, looking at Warren’s, or ‘Ned’ as he
liked to be called, collecting mania, his travels through Italy and Greece and
his association with his friend and lover, John Marshall (1860-1928) who became
Warren’s secretary in 1889 (Marshall intended to go into the Church until he
met Warren at Oxford in 1884, in fact, Warren, an immensely wealthy young man,
wooed Marshall through his correspondence until the latter succumbed, much to
the disappointment of his parents). And so the two men lived together at Lewes
House, in Lewes, East Sussex, entertaining
fellow scholars and antiquarians – later, Marshall
married Warren’s
cousin, Mary Bliss in May 1907 and an air of bitterness entered the
relationship. The volume which stretches over 400 pages picks its way, almost
tip-toeing, through Warren’s written works: his poetry which he wrote under the
name of Arthur Lyon Raile – ‘Itamos’ (1903) and ‘The Wild Rose’ (1913), the
latter impressing the poet Robert Bridges, with whom Ned corresponded – ‘Eros,
abides/ until / thou come redeemer momently from ill. / Then, seeing the fair /
blossom of youth, though it were born to kill, / ‘tis his to dare.’ (‘The
Lover’) and ‘sink back, my soul, in sleep, / that youthful dreams may echo
round its close; / or deeper still, / even to the fountain of thy youthful
dream.’ … ‘truth springs upward from his love alone…’ (Lad’s Love); the short
story ‘The Prince who did not Exist’ (1900), ‘A Tale of Pausanian Love’
(written in Naples in 1887 and privately printed in 1927), ‘Alcmaeon, Hypermestra,
Caeneus’ (1919) and his ‘Magnum Opus’ in three volumes – ‘The Defence of
Uranian Love’ (1928-1930), that great ‘lonely monument of a lonely man’. ‘The
Biography of a Connoisseur’ is a disordered, rambling and repetitive read –
Burdett, who excelled himself with ‘The Beardsley Period’ in 1925, had the good
decency to expire in 1936, leaving this volume unfinished (much as Warren had
done in 1928, perhaps the curse was already in full swing when Burdett stepped
from the arena!) and so the task of finishing the cumbersome biography with its
seventeen chapters was left to Burdett’s assistant, Edgar Henry Goddard
(1896-1983) who had no hope of making sense of it all, yet he completed it and
probably gave a great sigh of relief! Yes it is sometimes difficult to read,
mostly through Warren’s
proviso that it be written without judgement or criticism, only statements of
facts, which leaves the author little room for exploring ideas and opinions,
but it shows a life lived through a passion for collecting. In fact, in
conjunction with this book I read ‘Bachelors of Art: Edward Perry Warren and
the Lewes House Brotherhood’ by David Sox published in 1991, a full
half-century from Burdett and Goddard’s soulless attempt and we finally have
something worthy of Warren’s reputation! ‘The Biography of a Connoisseur’ gives
us a curious glimpse through a dirty window upon the fascinating world of
Edward Perry Warren and there is much to commend the volume, such as the
extensive correspondence between Ned and Marshall (and Robert Bridges);
‘Bachelors of Art’ wipes clean that window and we can see clearly the strange
collection of odd gentlemen that surround Ned and Marshall, two delightful
bookends, and the obsession for antiques – I advise reading them both to get a
better perspective of Warren!
The Weary Road:
Recollections of a Subaltern of Infantry – by Charles Douie.
I have had this
fascinating memoir on my reading list for over a year and it was truly worth
the wait! Published in 1929 (I read the 1988 edition), there is a fine
introduction by Major-General Sir Ernest Swinton KBE CB DSO RE who was suitably
impressed when he read it in its original eight articles titled ‘Memories of
1914-1918’ published in ‘The Nineteenth Century and After’ (March-October
1928), edited by Carroll Romer. Charles Oswald Gaskell Douie (1896-1953) born
in London, seems to have had a lonely childhood when he entered boarding school
aged eight; he entered Rugby School in 1910 and gained a scholarship in History
to Oxford but unfortunately his education is interrupted when war broke out and
he left to join the army in August 1914. With his commission as temporary 2nd
Lieutenant, 7th Battalion, the Dorset Regiment, he went to France in
January 1916 and spent much of his time digging reserve lines on the Somme. The Weary Road with its ten chapters, begins with
his military service and his excellent observations as to the character and
conduct of the common soldier, the sense of duty and honour, the resolute
stoicism and silent heroism; the eternal flame of brotherhood formed by
battalions, powerfully written without the flowery sentimentality and
jingoistic nonsense one finds in some volumes on the First World War. The daily
plight of the soldier, the mud, the stuttering machine guns and bursting shells,
the trenches, barbed wire and dug-outs, littered by the corpses of comrades are
all distinctly recalled by Douie who has an excellent flare, one may even say a
poetic perspective, for noticing the beauty of nature away from the trenches,
the woods and rivers and the birdsong… in fact, it was his easy manner of
description which drew me towards The Weary Road when I read the following
passage as I stood in the little cemetery at Authuille: ‘One evening I stood
there looking over the broad marshes of the Ancre and the great mass of Aveluy
Wood beyond. There was a lull in the firing, and everything was still. The sun
was setting; perhaps the majesty of Nature had stayed for one moment the hand
of the Angel of Death. The river and marshes were a sea of gold, and the trees
of the wood were tinged with fire. To the South were the square tower of Aveluy Church
and the great trees surrounding the crucifix at the junction of the roads,
known as Crucifix Corner. Shadows were lengthening in the woods and on the marshes.
A cool evening breeze blew gently through the graves of our dead.’ (p. 142-3)
The scene as I stood there was a little different but the Ancre, the woods, the
quiet stillness around the graves was there; cows stood in the field beside the
Ancre, woodpeckers and the scream of peacocks were on the air and bats flew in
the twilight as I stood there and wept, not for the terrible waste of life, the
sadness of which is intolerable, but for the remembrance of having endured the
same horrors as Douie on the Somme in July 1916; of standing with ghosts at
Crucifix Corner and seeing the Church at Albert with the ‘image of the Virgin
and Child dependant at a miraculous angle from the tower.’ Douie is excellent
when recounting his time on the Somme in the Ancre valley, La Boisselle and the
Battle of Thiepval in the spring of 1916, he does not descend into romantic
tales of individual bravery, although he does touch on a few personal stories
of fellow soldiers who died in the line of duty, there is a sense of whatever
the hardship, whatever the discomfort, physical and mental, there is a purpose
to every action at the Front and to many, the exhilaration mixed with fear, and
death, ever-present with every footfall meant life was lived in a state of
nervous tension – War is a ghastly business but it needed to be done! Douie was in Italy during the Armistice and
wasn’t demobilised until the spring of 1919 to resume his education with a
Worfield scholarship to Queen’s College, Oxford;
he entered the Civil Service on the Board of Education in 1927 (he was also
educational advisor at Wormwood Scrubs Prison) before being invited to be
Secretary of University College, London
until 1938. In 1939 he joined the Ministry of Information; in fact, his post
war career is presented in his second volume of autobiography, ‘Beyond the
Sunset’ (1935). Tremendous!
Beyond the Sunset – by
Charles Douie.
The second and final
volume of autobiography by Charles Douie (1896-1953) published in 1935
concludes with his time following the Great War which he brought to life so
vividly in his first volume ‘The Weary Road’ (1929). ‘Beyond the Sunset’,
formed of eight chapters, shows Douie at a loss after his time as a soldier,
seemingly unable to fit into the world of peace as one might imagine for a
young man who entered the military straight from school; he accepts the
Worfield Scholarship to Queen’s College, Oxford in the spring term of 1919 –
‘at Oxford I did not work, but this was by arrangement with the dons’. (p. 24)
He passes his Civil Services Examinations and enters the civil-service in
London on the Board of Education and we hear about this committee meeting and
that debate or about his time on the Board of such-and-such and although it is
a comfortable read it is all rather dull compared to The Weary Road; there is
very little romance or passion, in his previous volume or in this, in fact, he
only stirs to anything resembling ecstasy when he is talking about the Russian
ballet or the memorable mountains he has climbed – his chapter on
mountaineering almost reaches peaks of greatness and there are flashes of his
old brilliance as he scales the Lakeland fells, participating in rescue parties
and he positively glows over his love of the Alps which he describes
wonderfully. Strangely, Douie married Margaret Cuthbert in 1931, a fact he
feels unimportant to mention, he’d much rather talk about his moments of
insomnia, meeting Siegfried Sassoon and other well-known personages, his
determination to bring libraries within the reach of the poor to improve
education and his time during the General Strike, all have their time in the
sun, but charming as the volume is, the sun has indeed set upon Mr. Douie and
the best of him was left in the trenches of the Somme. Worth a rainy-day read!
Oscar Browning – by H.
E. Wortham.
This delightful volume
at over three-hundred pages by Hugh Evelyn Wortham (1884-1959) of King’s
College, Cambridge (M.A. 1921) was published in 1927 and produced at the behest
of his Uncle, the educationalist and historian, Oscar Browning (1837-1923) in
June 1923. It is written in three parts: Eton (nine chapters), Cambridge (six
chapters) and Old Age and Wortham does not shy away from the controversies
which surrounded Oscar Browning’s, or the ‘O.B.’ as he came to be known, life;
in fact, O.B. stipulated that ‘there are some things which can only be
explained after my death and ought to be known’. (p. 2) But of course we get a
biased representation of the great man for the dutiful nephew sweeps away the
muck that naturally gathers around such worthy gentlemen of strange
distinctions and somehow much of the material consulted, such as letters and
other documents pertaining to O.B.’s Eton days has gone missing! There is no
mention of the artist Simeon Solomon who disgraced himself in a public lavatory
and only small mention of Wilde, but we do learn by way of compensation how
O.B. excelled in Latin and Greek and at the end of his life had mastered forty
languages, was spoilt by his mother and suffered frailty of body as a child,
and how upon entering Eton in January 1851, approaching fourteen years old, he
quickly came to dislike the school and became unpopular, suffering ill-health.
His tutor was the great William Johnson (1823-1892) another controversial figure
who published the influential volume of poetry ‘Ionica’ in 1858. Some of O.B.’s
early passions at Eton are recounted, such as
Lord Dunmore and F T E Prothero, but it was at Eton
that his ‘persecution mania’ began. Following Eton
he entered Cambridge
but it is as an Eton Assistant Master and his principles of reform where the
story takes an interesting turn; O.B. steadfastly called for the teaching of
classics, Latin and Greek, to take priority over science and athleticism, the
latter’s domination at the school was something which detested him. He seems to
have got on well when the new Headmaster of Eton, an ‘Oxford man’ named Dr.
James John Hornby (1826-1909) arrives in 1868 but they soon fell out over
O.B.’s unconventional teaching style, particularly the teaching of history and
preference for the classics; he was seen as a radical reformer, a liberal, and Hornby,
a horrid little man with an equally squalid little mind, thinks O.B. is
undisciplined and mistrusts him and even suggests O.B. encourages immorality
amongst the boys – O.B. certainly did become intimate with his pupils,
especially a boy named George Curzon (1859-1925), the son of Lord Scarsdale whom
O.B. met in 1874 and delighted on taking his ‘favourites’ on vacations to
Europe, to encourage their learning and develop their appreciation for art and
culture. Because of this, O.B. had to agree with Hornby’s request not to see or
speak to Curzon. The Halls within colleges reek of gossip and rumours and the correspondence
between the two stubborn giants is fascinating until on 16th September 1875 O.B.
is dismissed by letter from Hornby. He appealed to the Governing Body but to no
avail and he left at Christmas 1875. In September 1876 we find him at King’s
College, Cambridge
and O.B. has lost none of his fury for the vile and vulgar Hornby (whom by the
way also dismissed William Johnson for similar supposed offences), yet he works
tirelessly and establishes the DTC – Day
Training College
for teachers. The old persecution mania followed him wherever he went and he
made friends and enemies alike as he swept through the colleges on the
whirlwind of his fame, he seemed to know anyone who was anyone and doors would
open for him. But doors in the college remained shut and he was thwarted
several times on pursuing lectureships and professorships within academia which
would have meant a substantial rise in fortunes, yet obstructions seemed to
plague him. Regretfully, he retired from Cambridge in 1909 and later went to
live in Rome with the idea of writing the great historical books he had
intended in his youth and although he was prolific, the great works remained
dreams and he was a disappointed man. He died in Rome on 6th October 1923 and his ashes were
sent to King’s College, Chapel. Religion was at the heart of the man (he
flirted with Christian Science) and throughout all his life one cannot fail to
appreciate what a generous and kind-hearted man he was, even to the detriment
of himself; his interests were wide and so was his conversation; his faults
were many, he was vain, egotistical and even snobbish but he was a great
teacher who looked for the good in his students and encouraged the inner genius
to blossom – a little peculiar, yes with a distaste for authority but a force
to be reckoned with! Very good, but for a more accurate portrayal of O.B. read Ian Anstruther's 'Oscar Browning: A Biography' published in 1983, a book which really does put flesh back on old bones and summons the charm of a gentler, more innocent age!
Memories of Sixty
Years at Eton, Cambridge & Elsewhere – by
Oscar Browning.
Oscar Browning,
‘Senior Fellow and some time History Tutor of King’s College, Cambridge and
formerly Assistant Master at Eton College’, published these memoirs in 1910
when he could be regarded as quite harmless, being in his seventy-third year
(he died thirteen years later in 1923) but the old O.B. had lost none of his
steam! Through a blustering twenty chapters the great pedagogue relates the
history of his long and interesting life amongst dons, politicians and literary
figures and all the many adventures he has undertaken, in fact, the volume is
more a sort of travel book interspersed with moments of teaching for the old
dear certainly gets around! We read about the famous men and women he has known
such as Walter Pater, George Eliot, Tennyson and Robert Browning and he even
mentions briefly those who possess similar beliefs as himself such as Simeon
Solomon, Oscar Wilde, John Addington Symonds and Horatio Brown of whom more
should be written, although they are left to stand for themselves and he does
not go into questions of morality too deeply. And so comes the great battle
with the new Headmaster of Eton, Dr. Hornby, a deplorable figure who encourages
athleticism and manliness and accuses Browning of impropriety and familiarity
with the boys, thus encouraging immoral behaviour, although not in so many
words, he seems to dance around the real accusations and leaves Browning
perplexed as to why he is being dismissed or perhaps he is just pleading
ignorance, either way, Browning casually tip-toes past the great climax of his
end at Eton and leaves some of the angry bile found in his correspondence to
spill out in Wortham’s later biography of 1927. But through all of the volume
Browning’s love of teaching and his notions of reform and improvement are
firmly fixed; his passion for music and his strong bond of friendship show a
man determined to make his mark upon the world and he certainly did! Very
enjoyable!
My Life and Adventures
– by Earl Russell.
The author, John
Francis Stanley Russell (1865-1931), the 2nd Earl Russell and elder
brother of the philosopher, Bertrand Russell, published this volume of
autobiography in 1923 when he could look back over his mostly misspent and
privileged life with some sense that it hadn’t all been a failure and he writes
at great length over thirty-six, mostly inconsequential chapters to prove it. I
usually warm to an author in the midst of their autobiography but not the Earl
and after the interesting flourish of his school days at Cheam School
(1877) and his time at Winchester
(1870) his tale becomes a weary one. One of his only redeeming features was his
friendship with the poet Lionel Johnson (1867-1902) whom he met at Winchester and continued
a furious correspondence with. Russell entered Balliol College, Oxford in
October 1883 to study classics under the great Jowett, a man who later famously
accused Russell of writing a scandalous letter in May 1885 and when asked by
Russell to produce the letter Jowett refused until the debacle escalated to the
point of Russell leaving Oxford there and then in May; the ‘scandal’ and
suggestion of impropriety seems to dog Russell for the remainder of his life
while he continued to deny such abominable behaviour, but he sums his early
mishaps quite admirably as – ‘Birched by a Bishop, sent down by the great
Jowett, and prayed over by the Lord Chancellor; my experiences were
accumulating.’ (p. 111) His wealth carries him to the United States where he displays
a typical aristocratic arrogance and then in 1890 he is hooked by a woman named
Mabel Edith Scott who along with her viciously evil-minded mother ensnare the
Earl into marriage, a marriage which lasts three months; after much
mud-slinging and accusations – Mabel even throws sodomy into the pot to cook
the Earl with in court but it all turns out in the Earl’s favour, yet there is
a certain stink of wickedness which seems to follow the Earl for where there is
smoke… In 1900 the Earl puts his neck in the noose a second time and marries
Marion Somerville, known as Mollie, in Nevada
and in England
they make a home and fuss over their cats and dogs until the Earl is arrested
for bigamy in 1901 and sent to Holloway prison for three months! He pleads
ignorance of the law knowing he is still married to Mabel, the Countess Russell
– they eventually divorced and he and Mollie also eventually divorce in 1915;
it seems marriage is not agreeable to the Earl who attempts the suicidal act
one more time with third wife, Elizabeth, an author, in 1916 – he does not
mention her in the volume as they separated in 1919 and she took liberties in
using the Earl as a character in one of her trifling books. All in all it has
been a disastrously eventful life messing about with motor cars, marriages and
throwing money around as if it meant nothing; the only interesting thing he did
was to publish ‘Some Winchester Letters of Lionel Johnson’ anonymously in 1919
– not very wicked, just very silly!
Old and Odd Memories –
by Lionel A. Tollemache.
London born Lionel
Arthur Tollemache (1838-1919), a seemingly shadowy erudite figure in literary
circles who was educated at Harrow (1850-56) and Balliol College, Oxford
(1856-60) published this very interesting volume of nine chapters worth of
recollections, anecdotes and quotations in 1908 and there are some rather
curious but pleasant sketches of such people of his acquaintance as the great
Dr. Vaughan at Harrow who taught Tollemache Latin and Greek; Gladstone,
Benjamin Jowett, Herbert Spencer, Lord Houghton (Monckton Milnes) and the
‘peculiar and paradoxical’ Rev. C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll); he also puffs-up
his own historical importance (his ego strides over every page) and we get
chapter and verse on the Tollemache family history. Tollemache, an advocate of
euthanasia who suffered from weak eyesight, eventually going blind some years
before his death, recounts a wealth of intimate and personal anecdotes and
conversations of enormous importance to literary history although many of his
attempts at humour seem to fall flat or just do not translate to the present at
all for they are very dry and hardly worth a titter even from the most ardent
of titterers! He has little to say about his wife, the daughter of Lord
Egerton, Beatrix Lucia Catherine Egerton, a fair poet herself (see her
‘Engleberry and Other Verse’ of 1890) whom he married in 1870; she co-authored
Tollemache’s ‘Safe Studies’ (1884), a series of articles on such themes as:
historical prediction, longevity, literary egotism and physical and moral
courage which are really worth reading – for her part she supplied 28 of her
poems for the volume. Tollemache rambles on again much in the vein of Old and
Odd Memories in his ‘Nuts and Chestnuts’ (1911) which is a ‘second course’ to
the earlier volume where we find the likes of Tennyson, Dr. Johnson and Ruskin
among others being discussed; in fact, I had such a strange and mesmerising
pleasure, almost like being half-asleep, in reading the volumes mentioned
above, that I just had to continue the soporific splendour by reading his
collection of essays ‘Stones of Stumbling’ (1893) where we find him
pontificating on the delights of euthanasia, in the ‘Cure for Incurables’ with
its ‘legalised suicide by proxy’ and ‘The Fear of Death’ – ‘is the fear of
death less or greater in modern than in ancient times?’ he asks, before
Tollemache leads us into biblical criticism with the ‘Divine Economy of Truth’
and ‘Neochristianity and Neocatholicism’. Other books by Tollemache which I
shall not descend into include: ‘Recollections of Pattison’ (1885), ‘Mr.
Romane’s Catechism’ (1887), ‘Benjamin Jowett: Master of Balliol’ (1895),
‘Essays, Mock-Essays and Character Sketches’ (1898) and ‘Talks with Mr.
Gladstone’ (1903) – yes, Tollemache flaunts his intelligence and may be weak of
eyesight but certainly is not myopic in his vision for he has much to say and
sometimes says too damn much but he has a quality all of his own, making the
dry and dull almost fatally racy, if one’s imagination will permit such
liberties in stuffy old Victorian England, but not quite!
Olivia – by Dorothy
Bussy.
This charming tale of
a young girl’s passionate infatuation with her headmistress is based on
autobiographical fact for the author, Dorothy Bussy born Strachey (1865-1960),
sister of the more famous biographer and essayist of the Bloomsbury Group, Lytton
Strachey (1880-1932), who married Simon Bussy, a French painter in 1903,
recounts a year at a finishing school, Les Avons, in France as a sixteen year
old girl; this flower of English restrained sexuality bursting from its young
bud, Olivia, is awakening to her own romantic inclinations for Mlle. Julie, one
of two headmistresses, the other being the tiresome invalid, Mlle. Cara, at the
boarding school for thirty girls. This is the bisexual Bussy’s only novel,
written in the 1930’s but not published until 1949, and the school is based on
her own time and experiences at Les Ruches in Fontainbleau; the two
headmistresses, Julie and Cara are based respectively on Mlle. Marie Souvestre
(1830-1905) and her lover and fellow founder of the school, Mlle. Caroline
Dussaut (1833-1887); like Marie and Caroline, Julie and Cara’s affections for
each other become cold and there is a great falling out between them through jealousy
and much hurt in the relationship; Cara suffers from real or hypochondriacally
imagined headaches and eventually dies from an overdose of chloral. The tale
relates quite accurately real events and Dussaut probably died in similar
circumstances in 1887. There are a few tender moments and of course the
inevitable sad parting where Julie acts coldly towards Olivia, following Mlle.
Cara’s death, handing her a paper cutter as a parting gift which Olivia hurls
from a window, but no real surprises, yet the story is quite delightful and
pleasurable to read. Beautiful!
Memoirs of Life and
Literature – by W. H. Mallock.
Socialist, economist
and novelist, William Hurrell Mallock (1849-1923) published these splendid
memoirs in 1920 when he was on the threshold of death, almost, and he delights
in his remarks concerning his life in Torquay, his private tutor (and friend of
Tennyson) Rev. W. B. Philpot, his days at Balliol College, Oxford where he won
the Newdigate Prize in 1872 and his thoughts on liberalism; his association
with Benjamin Jowett and Lord Wentworth, the grandson of Byron and Wentworth’s
brother-in-law, the poet, Wilfred Blunt (1840-1922); Mallock also mentions other
regular literary scoundrels of his time that he came to know in some capacity –
Swinburne, Browning, Ruskin and Carlyle, a man who ‘blew his nose in a pair of
old woollen gloves’ (p. 49); Aubrey de Vere, the Irish Catholic poet, Lord
Houghton (Monckton Milnes), a man who ‘as Drydon said to Shadwell, would have
been the wittiest writer in the world if his books had been equal to his conversation’
(p. 44) and Lord Lytton, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), the novelist
and his poet son, Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton (1831-1891) who wrote under the
name of ‘Owen Meredith’. Of course he has much to say upon his own works: ‘The New Republic’
(1877), ‘Is Life Worth Living?’ (1879), ‘A Romance of the Nineteenth Century’
1881), ‘The Old Order Changes’ in three volumes (1886), ‘The Veil of the
Temple’ (1904) and ‘The Reconstruction of Belief’ (1905) and says it rather
well before the latter half of the volume descends into endless nonsense about
London and its Society and his time spent at various grand country houses and
castles, his support for Roman Catholicism and anti-socialist notions. All in
all the volume promised the beginning of a beautiful friendship but ended
rather tiresomely.
The Poetical Works of
Lord Houghton (in Two Volumes).
Lord Houghton, the
much referenced and quoted, Richard Monckton Milnes (1809-1885), of Trinity
College, Cambridge and Fellow of the Royal Society, is known for several
distinguished facts, such as his friendships with Tennyson, Arthur Hallam,
Swinburne and Thackery and that he was refused by Florence Nightingale and was
the owner of an extensive library of erotica which had a fine collection of de
Sade; he was a great talker and wit and wrote poetry as these ‘Poetical Works’
attempt to prove! These volumes contain works from his previous collections:
‘Poems of Many Years’, privately issued in 1838 and published in 1840, ‘Poetry
for the People and Other Poems’ (1840) and ‘Palm Leaves’ (1844); many of his
earlier works are typically sentimental and introspective and others show his
wide travels on the continent where he took up residence, particularly Greece
where he is able to flaunt his knowledge of the classics with verse on
Ullysses, Olympus, Corinth, a vision of the Argonauts and Sappho, who laid her
hand ‘lightly on low chords, - / a voice that sobbed between its words.’ (‘A
Dream of Sappho’) and there are his meditation fragments on Venice. I thought little
of his ‘Palm Leaves’ with their Arabian legends – Nimrod, Abraham, Moses and
Solomon, which I thought rather dull and he tops it off with his overly long
‘The Burden of Egypt’ before an attempt at rectifying this with his occasional
poems and his ‘Funeral of Napoleon’, but sadly all too late! Volume II
continues in the usual strain with poems of sentiment and reflection and
thoughts on friendship and love and a final attempt at the right to wear the
laurel leafs of a distinguished poet with his sonnets, songs, narrative poems
and legends – oh let him wear them, for he is dead and can sing no more! He had
the foresight to rightly declare in his preface (p. xi) that he came to the
realisation, like all decent poets inevitably do, that one is only ‘one among
many, and that his gift, small or great, is not the especial miracle he may
justly at first believe it to be.’ If one throws a stone one will surely hit a
poet, whether they declare themselves to be or not and the mystique, like certain
notions of romance, died a long time ago, alas. Houghton is probably more
widely known and praised for his ‘Life and Letters of Keats’ (1848) rather than
his poetry but it would be a pity to dismiss him completely as his verse is all
perfectly delightful and all perfectly forgetful!
Bosie: Lord Alfred
Douglas, His Friends and Enemies – by Rupert Croft-Cooke.
The author, Rupert
Croft-Cooke (1903-1979) was on friendly terms with Bosie for the last 25 years
of the poet’s life, having met him at the age of nineteen in 1922 when Bosie
had already been through pretty much the worst that can be thrown at any man,
condemned as the cause of Wilde’s downfall and for not suffering the same
ruination in prison. This book, published in 1963, attempts to set the record
straight concerning Bosie and the long-held belief that he betrayed Wilde and
turned against Robert Ross with all the Douglas
venom which his father, that old bore and bigot, the Marquess of Queensberry,
poured upon Wilde. Croft-Cooke, a sympathetic, intelligent and passionate man
on the subject, tells us how Bosie, a ‘spoilt and pretty’ boy, whose parents
divorced in 1887 due to his father’s adultery, left Winchester School aged
eighteen in 1888 to enter Magdalen
College, Oxford in 1889 (he left in 1893 without a degree) and became friends
with his cousin, the poet, Lionel Johnson who had met Oscar Wilde in Oxford in
early 1890 and how he, as if by fate, brought the great Irish wit, then aged 37
and Bosie, then aged 21, together one afternoon in 1891 at Wilde’s house on Tite
Street; and so the chess pieces were in place for this tragedy to commence!
Wilde’s position after Robert Ross seemingly led him astray into the underworld
of male prostitution and ‘feasting with panthers’ seems a precarious one,
invited to the great houses not on equal terms with his host, for he was not
from what one would call ‘upper class stock’, had it not been for his success
he would have been unworthy of such privileges and looked down upon, as it was
he was little more than an amusing court jester, brought out for the sake of
entertainment, and he played it to the hilt; but Wilde believed he was cut from
a finer thread and had a right to such splendour. Meanwhile the pawns and other
minor pieces play their moves: William More Adey (1858-1942), Reginald Turner
(1869-1938) and Robert Baldwin Ross (1869-1918) and the old familiar play with
its courtroom trial and imprisonment in 1895, and Wilde and Bosie together in
Naples, comes to its final scene, when Wilde, exiled to France, dies on 30th
November 1900, ten months after the despised Queensberry died in January, and
Bosie receiving the telegram on 1st December to arrive in Paris the
next day to find Oscar already nailed in his coffin. With this episode behind
him, Bosie tries to live a normal life, or as normal a life an aristocrat with
a great inheritance to waste can have, he buys a racecourse at Chantilly and
falls in love with fellow poet, Olive Custance – they elope and marry in March
1902 and a son, Raymond is born the same year; he becomes editor of The Academy
in 1907, befriending the assistant editor, Thomas William Hodgson Crosland
(1865-1924) who leads him into the world of litigation which takes off two
years later when he also ends his friendship with Ross, almost echoing the
paranoid persecution mania of his father, the Marquess: ‘I no longer care to
associate with persons like yourself who are engaged in the active performance
and propaganda of every kind of wickedness, from Socialism to Sodomy.’ (p. 225)
Ross still had Wilde’s prison letter, ‘De Profundis’ up his sleeve, originally
intended for Bosie, Wilde simply didn’t know what to do with it after he left
prison in 1897 and seemingly forgot all about it, but Ross never forgot and
kept it safe, along with certain letters of the Wilde and Bosie correspondence
he stole after Wilde’s death. In 1910 Bosie sells The Academy which goes
downhill and disappears and the following year he becomes a Roman Catholic. But
that terrible year of 1913 where his troubles escalated, a year in which he separated
from his wife, Olive and was made bankrupt in January and criminal proceedings
(libel action) against Bosie by his father-in-law began; the Arthur Ransome
libel in which Ransome with permission from Ross quoted from Wilde’s prison
letter (the unpublished portions from De Profundis) in his book ‘Oscar Wilde: A
Critical Study’ (1913), blaming Bosie for his downfall – Bosie also read the
unpublished parts of De Profundis and Wilde’s accusations really hurt him
deeply. There is also the Chancery case in which his father-in-law, Colonel
Custance who had no male heir and not pleased with the way his grandchild was
being brought up, began an action for a ward of custody of Raymond for a
substantial allowance to Olive which rankled with Bosie – from all this, the
Ransome case which Bosie lost, the one conclusion Bosie drew from this is that
Ross is to blame for everything and he is Bosie’s obsession: ‘enemy number one’
as Wilde was his father’s! Bosie hits back with ‘Oscar Wilde and Myself’ in
1914, an awful piece of blasphemous egg-throwing and a terrible attack on Wilde
and Ross written by Crosland and approved by Bosie; it is one of the explosive
factors which determines most peoples’ attitude towards Bosie as a vindictive
and shameless liar with the same persecution mania his father suffered; it
would begin several decades of mud-slinging and introduced many other figures
to the arena, such as the ‘unstable and disloyal but clever’ (p. 255) bibliophile,
bookseller and private secretary of Ross, Christopher Sclater Millard (1872-1927)
who published anonymously ‘Oscar Wilde Three Times Tried’ in 1911 and a
‘Bibliography of Oscar Wilde’ in 1914 (Croft-Cooke also knew him towards the
end of his life); William Sorley Brown, Herbert Moore Pim (1883-1950), John Betjeman,
who wrote to Bosie in 1924 while still a boy at Marlborough (unfortunately the
letters were destroyed by John’s parents). The libel cases continued – Bosie
and Crosland found a boy named Charles Garratt in prison willing to testify
against Ross on acts of indecency and Colonel Custance also brought another
action against Bosie – Bosie fled to France and Crosland was arrested and
charged with accusing Ross of committing sexual acts with the boy Garratt but
in court Garratt said he had never seen Ross. War breaks out and Bosie returns
to England
to face the charge by Custance (and unknown to him, Ross too, for ‘falsely and
maliciously publishing a defamatory libel on and about Robert Ross’) and he is
met by a detective and arrested at Folkestone. He is remanded in Brixton Prison
for five days and bound over for one night in Wormwood Scrubs which he hates;
in November 1914 the trial between Bosie and Ross begins and Bosie wins
settling for costs paid by Ross – it brought Ross to his knees and his health broke
down, eventually dying four years later in 1918. Bosie spends the remaining
years arguing over Shakespeare’s sonnets, attacking modern poetry and pouring
venom on T. S. Eliot whom he hated; meeting young disciples of poetry and
curious admirers of the Wilde scandal to whom Bosie behaved as the perfect
gentleman, and even being found guilty of libelling Winston Churchill in 1923
over Churchill’s part in the Battle of Jutland in 1916. His mother died in 1935
aged ninety-one and Bosie was devastated, the loss seemed to heal his soul of
much of the anger from the past and there are attempts at reconciliations. In
1944 he published ‘Oscar Wilde: A Summing Up’ in which he attempts to re-write
the truth about himself and Oscar, for many it is too little too late, but he
does take his share of some portion of the blame. Friends stayed by him such as
George Bernard Shaw and Marie Stopes (1880-1958) who petitioned for a Civil
List pension for Bosie, which he did not win. Olive died in 1944 and Raymond
had spent many years in a mental institution, eventually dying in 1964. Bosie
died with some serenity at 4 a.m.
on 20th March
1945 and was buried three days later at the Franciscan Friary, Crawley in Sussex next to his mother. The
author, Croft-Cooke who went on to write the excellent ‘Feasting with Panthers’
(1967) has produced a marvellous account of Bosie, his friends and his enemies,
and initiated a re-assessment of the poet and love of Wilde’s life who only
really wanted to see fair play done!
A Message in Code: The
Diary of Richard Rumbold, 1932-60 – edited by William Plomer.
William Plomer
(1903-1973), a fine poet and novelist, published these selections from
Rumbold’s diary in 1964 and it is presented in six parts: Oxford and After (1932-39), The War Years (1939-45),
Hunting for the Key (1945-54), Living in Ceylon (1954-56), The Unanswerable
Question (1956) and The Last Years (1956-61). Plomer edits the diary of his
friend and second cousin, Richard William John Nugent Rumbold (1913-1961) with
great care and attention and writes a splendidly sensitive introduction on the
young writer, whose first novel, ‘Little Victims’ in 1933 caused a scandal. It
was written while Rumbold was up at Christ
Church, Oxford and with all the tell-tale signs of a
first undergraduate publication; it received unfavourable reviews and did a lot
of harm to his reputation. Rumbold was brought up in the Catholic faith and
tragedy struck the family early on when his mother, Anne Christian Rumbold, nee
Nugent, committed suicide by throwing herself into the Seine River
in 1928 and young Richard was left to his detested, bullying and abusive
father, Captain Charles Edmund Arden Law Rumbold. The diary begins in July
1932, just after his 19th birthday and we learn of his literary
ambitions and friendships with such notable authors as Lord Alfred Douglas and
Harold Nicholson, the latter becoming a firm friend as well as his relative,
William Plomer. Rumbold, a depressive and effeminate man seems always to be
searching for something, for his own identity, for fame and literary success,
afraid of failure and afraid of inheriting his mother’s madness; he travels
widely in his efforts of self-discovery (and perhaps to escape his inner
torments), to Russia, Turkey, Greece, Switzerland, East Africa and the United
States; it is while travelling to the latter that he meets a woman who becomes
his devoted friend – Hilda Young. At the outbreak of war Richard joins the
Royal Army Service Corps but in March 1940 he is discharged as physically unfit
on account of his tuberculosis; he joins the RAF the same year as a pilot and
the thrill and freedom of flying gives him almost a religious ecstasy, and the
bond of friendship in the barracks is something he has been searching for but
again he is discharged in March 1943 as unfit on medical grounds. Exasperated
by feelings of eternal loneliness, a feeling which sometimes descends into
suicidal thoughts, he seeks psychiatric help from a psychoanalyst named Denis
Carroll (1901-1956), a Trinity College, Cambridge man with whom he forms a
great attachment and the diary becomes a method of therapy for him – ‘I want to
make life mathematical, to exclude emotions. Every problem should be regarded
as a sum’. (20th September 1942. p. 62) Despite Rumbold’s neurosis
and insecurity, he has a deep altruistic desire to help other people and worthy
causes and one gets a sense of his ‘separateness’ from the world around him and
the need to belong. The picture drawn from the diary entries are those of a
very distracted and unsettled young man who is in search of spirituality – he
becomes interested in Buddhism and travels to Ceylon, Japan and India in the
1950’s; an operation on his lungs in 1957 and a spell at a sanatorium gave him
some hope until he suffered a breakdown – news of the death of Denis Carroll in
1956 and the death of his sister Rosemary by suicide in 1957 did little to help
him and so with Hilda off he goes to Greece and Tangier where he experimented
with hashish and we learn that he had also undergone electric convulsive treatment
for his psychosis back in England and it is not surprising to read that this
deeply troubled man who followed up his first book, sixteen years later in 1949
with his autobiography, ‘My Father’s Son’ under the pseudonym, Richard Lumford,
and in 1953, published with Lady Margaret Stewart, ‘The Winged Life: A Portrait
of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Poet and Airman’, that he tragically, either by
suicide or accidentally, fell from his hotel window in March 1961 and was
killed instantly at the age of 47. His restless spirit which could not find
contentment or fulfil the promise of his art has now found the calm and
serenity he deserves and may the little literary work he has left us bring
enjoyment and a sense of the importance of life!
Life For Life’s Sake:
A Book of Reminiscences – by Richard Aldington.
The poet, biographer
and essayist, Richard Aldington (1892-1962) published this volume of
reminiscences in 1940 and to anyone unfamiliar with the Imagist Movement which
revolted against Romanticism and Victorian sentimentalism, he will be little
known and after reading this book the reader will remain sadly, still quite
perplexed and unenlightened. He was born in Portsmouth and almost dismisses his
childhood, saying little of his parents and not mentioning his siblings; he
studied at Dover College before entering the University of London and leaving
to become, shamefully, a ‘sport’s journalist’, redeeming himself in writing
reviews of French literature. We learn that he greatly admires Swinburne –
unfortunately Swinburne without alcohol to fire his poetic inspiration was like
Wilde without some young rough boy to entertain and amuse: dull and creatively
impotent. Aldington enters the literary circle of Ezra Pound (yawn), and W. B.
Yeats and becomes a great friend and champion of T. S. Eliot, so for
literary-minded readers it has some fascinating glimpses of such writers as D.
H. Lawrence, Herbert Read, Norman Douglas in Florence, Harold Monro, of whom he
paints a priceless picture of him drunk and hugging trees, and Reggie Turner, a
‘wrinkled ugly little man, with the habit of batting his eyelids like an owl.’
(p. 377) Aldington married the poet Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961), better known
as H.D. in 1913 (they divorced in 1938) and after a while the romance becomes
stale (no doubt due to the loss of their stillborn child in 1915, which he does
not mention); he joined the army in 1916 and went to the Front in December that
year and some of his accounts of narrow escapes are quite interesting if to be
believed and details of his mental fatigues after he was demobbed in early 1919
seem all to common – he suffered a
breakdown several years later, (his first novel, ‘Death of a Hero’ of 1929 is
based on some of his war experiences). Apart from the few humorous reflections
and literary observations, Life for Life’s Sake is quite an unrewarding read;
the book ends with Aldington saying that he ‘can say truthfully that during
approximately half a century of infesting this planet I have very seldom indeed
been bored; and that is as good as any other definition of success in life’ (p.
411) and if the reader can say the same after reading this book then there is a
good reason for living life, for life’s sake. A pleasant meander through
literary byways!
The Death of the
Scharnhorst and Other Poems – by Arch Alfred McKillen.
I had never heard of
Arch Alfred McKillen (1914-1984) which is not surprising as there is very
little information to be found on him, although we do know that he enlisted in
the United States Navy in 1939 and was at Pearl Harbour during the Japanese
attack in 1941 and that after the war he became a bookseller and published a
book titled ‘Lady Windermere’s Man’ in 1983. This volume of poetry published in
1952 contains 62 poems which delight in the melancholy wonder of love, a love
for his own sex where letters which say too much and are ‘boldly written’ can
be passed off as the ‘careless informality of friends’ (Of This Great Voiceless
Love) or an infatuation to fulfil one’s desires upon the Greek gods of old –
‘Beautiful pagan, possess me! / over thy body my fingers I race. / Hot on thy
cheeks are my kisses, / naked with thee in a lovers’ embrace’ (Apollo); a
desire for union and acceptance at any cost – ‘Hold me, and kiss me and teach
me to sin!’ (Lonely Heart). But there is always the heartbreak and the pain
which causes McKillen to give the advice to ‘beware of love! Be lonely, lad’
(Too Much of Life); that ‘lad’ echoes throughout some of the verse and harks
back to Housman’s Shropshire Lad poems and much of McKillen’s work is in the
ballad form – ‘spin onward, old world, to your ending. / The hearts that you
break and condemn / will someday rise madly against you, / reversing your
judgement of them’ (The Old Sea Wall). In contrast to love there is also the
horrors of war where we feel the surprise and shock of the attack on Pear Harbour
– ‘Harbour surprised, / torpedo and shell / tear through the living, / Harbour of Hell!’ (The Litany of Pearl Harbour) and
the title poem, ‘The Death of the Scharnhorst’, where we learn that ‘on
Christmas Day in forty-three / the Nazi Scharnhorst put to sea’ or the
landscape of death where the ‘fields of wheat are rotten / where a thousand
heroes fell’ (The Road to High Wood). The tone of the volume is sadness, the
sadness for the loss of love, its fatalistic emptiness and un-enduring
attraction when ‘someday you should look in mine’ (the face of the poet) ‘then
ever look away’ (Nocturne) and the sadness for those lost in war, an almost
pagan loneliness shaped by the elements – ‘it rains tonight and wolf-winds
howl’ (It Rains Tonight).
Shakespeare and
Company – by Sylvia Beach.
Shakespeare and
Company published in 1956 (I read a 1959 edition) is a magical journey along
the evolution of the famous bookstore in Paris which opened in November 1919 by
its American owner, Sylvia Beach (1887-1962) and the many literary-minded men
and women who haunted its shelves. Beach first had the idea of opening a French
bookstore in America but due to the high rental costs, her friend and fellow
bookseller (and eventual lover who committed suicide) Adrienne Monnier
(1892-1955) suggested she open a bookstore in Paris selling American books and
so Shakespeare and Company was born. Famous writers soon flocked to the store
such as Andre Gide, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas and of
course James Joyce whom Beach took on as her literary client, supporting him
financially and publishing his ‘Ullyses’ in 1922 and his ‘Pomes Penyeach’ in
1927; (G. B. Shaw refused to subscribe for a copy of Ullyses) and we learn
about Joyce’s bad eyesight and his strange fears and superstitions – he was
terrified of dogs and afraid of the sea, heights and infection to name a few;
more interesting are the tales of how copies of ‘Ullyses’ had to be smuggled into the U.S. from Canada aided by
Ernest Hemingway, who was undoubtedly Shakespeare and Company’s ‘best
customer’. In fact, Beach was so busy with Joyce that she had to turn down many
other publishing works including Lawrence’s ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ and
Aleister Crowley’s memoirs; she paints a rather unflattering portrait of the
Great Beast – ‘His clay coloured head was bald except for a single strand of
black hair stretching from his forehead over the top of his head and down to
the nape of his neck. The strand seemed glued to the skin so that it was not
likely to blow up in the wind. A self-mummified-looking man, he was rather
repulsive.’ (p. 94) Other memorable names include the composer, George Antheil,
poet, Robert McAlmon and his wife Bryher, the daughter of Sir John Ellerman;
Janet Flanner, Djuna Barnes, artist and poet, Marsden Hartley and poets Mina
Loy, Leon-Paul Fargue and Paul Valery. The volume is a fascinating glimpse into
the literary world of the nineteen-twenties, through the thirties’ depression
and the war when the Nazi’s attempted to confiscate the books (they were hidden
beforehand and the name of the bookstore painted over) and to Sylvia’s six
months in an internment camp whereupon after her release she went into hiding
right up to the liberation. Shakespeare and Company with its 23 chapters and
230 pages was an absolute joy to read and it is a testament to Sylvia’s
determination and strength to continue, even in the face of adversity, proving
herself and her bookstore to be an essential part of the literary world! There
are also quite a few superb photographs to illustrate the text and aid one’s
immersion into this absolutely fabulously written account of a simple bookstore
which became a legend to all bibliophiles!
A Roving Recluse: More Memoirs – by Peter F. Anson.
This volume of reminiscences by the writer of religious and maritime subjects, Peter Frederick Anson (he was born Frederick Charles Anson, 1889-1975) was published in 1946 as a companion to his first volume of memoirs, ‘Harbour Head’ in 1944. The eleven chapters of ‘A Roving Recluse’ are enthusiastically written and written well, concerning Anson’s childhood in which he made model theatres and collected theatre programmes, always with that deep interest of the sea to which he yearned; the theatre interest became a passion for architecture. He attended Little Appley prep school in Ryde as a day-boarder from 1898-1902 and then Wixenford School from 1902-04 where he excelled in music and drawing. Suffering from Influenza and rheumatic fever in 1904, he was expected to go to Eton or Harrow but never went to public school and it is from the age of sixteen that his interest in religion really began to take hold, especially the mode of ritual – ‘the external presentation of religion, that is, worship rather than a system of morals.’ (p. 12) Sceptical and logical, Anson spent nine months at Eyke Rectory in Suffolk, where he became curious about the Catholic Church and in 1906 he was staying with his grandmother in Windsor, (he was living in Bournemouth from 1905-08) preparing for Confirmation by the Rev. J. C. Ellison, the vicar of the Anglican parish church. With his mind ever on ecclesiastical matters, he became aware of Anglo-Catholicism – ‘the lure of incense, more than of vestments, drew me to other churches in the country’ (p. 30) and thus the dilemma within him began – ‘even at nineteen I began to suffer from “Roman Fever”’ (p. 32) and his interest began to alight upon the idea of monasticism and a life of contemplation – ‘I fitted up an oratory in a cupboard in the eaves of my bedroom, and furnished it with a crucifix and candlesticks’ (p. 36). In fact, one gets a sense of the erotic concerning his interest in the ecclesiastical accoutrements of Catholicism. He had a brief flirtation interest in Theosophy and Annie Besant and devoured books by Blake, Poe, Pater and Wilde before his name was entered for the entrance examination for Christ’s Church, Oxford – he failed the exams and thus never entered the hallowed halls of Oxford, destroying his notions of a diplomatic career; instead, he decided to study architecture and spent two years at the Architecture School in Westminster which he enjoyed immensely. Still with the lure of the monastic, he spent two weeks of the Easter vacation of 1910 at Caldey Island off the Welsh Pembrokeshire coast, a Benedictine monastery to test his vocation for life as an Anglican monk. Three months later he returned to become a novitiate. Along with Anson’s ‘sea fever’ (he had an overwhelming love for the sea and those who sailed upon it) was still the ever-present ‘Roman fever’ and so in 1913 he became a Roman Catholic. The remainder of the volume tells us about his journeys through Italy (Anson was an accomplished artist and spent three months on a painting tour in Tuscany in 1924) and the Franciscan monks in the monasteries he came to know (he joined the 3rd Order of Franciscans in 1922, taking the name ‘Peter’). We also learn something about the friends he made, mostly Catholic converts such as Canon John Gray, the poet and friend of Oscar Wilde who was ordained in 1901 whom Anson knew from 1919-34, and Gray’s lifelong friend, Andre Raffalovich who gave great parties in Edinburgh (p. 157-161); the author, Cecily Hallack (1898-1938), sculptors Eric Gill, whom Anson first met in 1917 and remained friends until Gill’s death in 1940, and Hew Lorimer (1907-93) and Scottish poet and novelist, George Scott-Moncrieff (1910-74), a nephew of the Proust translator, Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrieff (1889-1930). From 1936 Anson lived at Harbour Head in the north-east coast of Scotland where he could watch the sea and the boats being roughly tossed about, concluding that his life was ‘not unlike a long voyage on a choppy sea; my ship tossed about like a shuttlecock for many a long year.’ (p. 226) Anson has lived a full and interesting life but there is the sense that it has been a lonely life for there is no mention of love apart from the brotherhood born of the simple monastic life, which is a pity for the flower of any personality I would argue is the impulse towards sex and the spirit, the two channels which haunt us and I believe makes us quite remarkable, beyond that it is all teacups and roses; nevertheless, he writes awfully well and other books of his include: ‘Fishermen and Fishing Ways’ (1932), ‘The Quest of Solitude’ (1932), ‘The Benedictines of Caldey’ (1940), ‘Churches, their Plan and Furnishings’ (1948), ‘The Call of the Cloisters’ (1956), ‘Fashions in Church Furnishings, 1840-1940’ (1960) and ‘Bishops at Large’ (1964).
Ruling Passions, the Autobiography of Tom Driberg.
Ruling Passions, published posthumously in 1977 (I read a 1978 edition) is a very honest and frank account of the life of Thomas Edward Neil Driberg (1905-1976), a man ‘born out of due time’ in Crowborough, Sussex in 1905, shy and timid, he became an MP in 1942 and the volume centres mostly upon his sexuality – sex is the intrinsic compulsion of his life, the driving force behind everything he seems to do, his ruling passions. The sex seems to be all matter of fact, just another function like breathing, despite it being illegal at the time and one forms the opinion that he worships at the urinals like an altar in the church – he develops a ‘love-hate relationships with lavatories’ (p. 13). Apart from his various ‘lavatory sojourns’ (he seems to be an expert upon the locality of such temples to hurried love) we learn a little about his older brothers, Jack Herbert Driberg of Hertford College, Oxford who ate human flesh in Africa and had a pet lion, and James Douglas Driberg who studied medicine at London Hospital, won the M.C. as a surgeon in the First World War and went bankrupt, in fact, he describes his family members as being in one or other of the following camps – ‘insanity, religious eccentricity of various kinds, broken marriages, homosexuality, drug-addiction, and several cases of alcoholism’. (p. 43) Young Tom attended Lancing College from 1918-1923 where he became an acquaintance of Evelyn Waugh and suffered disgrace for his ‘nocturnal activities’ in his final year due to allegations against him by two boys who accused him of sexual overtures, he was set apart and lost his privileges and it was kept quiet so that his ‘delicate’ mother should not know; Tom does not miss the chance to mention that the Headmaster of Lancing College from 1909-1925, the Rev. Henry Thomas Bowlby (1864-1940) who became Canon of Chichester, was once arrested and charged with molesting little girls on a train and managed to get off with his clerical collar unstained. Tom went up to Christ Church, Oxford in 1924 on a scholarship where he became friends with W. H. Auden; in his final year he did some writing for the Cherwell and he left without his degree in 1927. He became friends with Robert Graves and Laura Riding but angered them to near homicidal tendencies over a silly misunderstanding in addressing them, Robert accusing him of ignoring Laura which is all very puerile of Graves; more satisfying to know is the rumour that the Russian ballet dancer Nijinsky could perform ‘auto-fellatio’ thus furnishing ‘the body with as much potassium as the normal healthy male should need.’ (p. 67) After Oxford Tom became interested in the Communist Party and spent a week as a pavement artist, forming friendships with the Sitwells and attending lunch with the notorious Aleister Crowley at the Eiffel Tower restaurant in London under Crowley’s misplaced belief that Driberg was enormously rich and fulfilled the criteria to become the next ‘World Teacher’, Driberg declined but enjoyed many of Crowley’s famous curry dinners cooked by A.C. himself. In 1928 Tom began working as a reporter for the Daily Express and wrote the William Hickey column from 1933-1943 (the identity of William Hickey was anonymous yet it would come to his aid and rescue several times when dealing with the police when caught in a sticky situation shall we say). There is a funny account, no doubt it was not funny at the time, of Tom being charged with ‘indecent assault’ in November 1935 and appearing at the Old Bailey, accused by two Scotsmen who he gave a bed for the night (and not missing the opportunity to sleep between them on the excuse that he did not want them alone either upstairs or downstairs) – he was found not guilty. He was expelled from the Communist Party, spent time in America just before the Pearl Harbour attack and met Alfred Hitchcock, staying with him for several weeks in Hollywood. He won the Maldon by-election and was M.P. for Maldon from 1942-55 (and M.P. for Barking from 1959-74); he saw first-hand the atrocities at Buchenwald in 1945, met Guy Burgess in Moscow in 1956 and introduced him to a favourable lavatory where he could meet certain young men; in fact, Driberg definitely led an interesting and at often times amusing life for he is a very witty writer, especially on the subject of his sexual encounters – there seems to be an awful lot of semen being thrown about during the inter-war years, and most of it Driberg’s! Undoubtedly some spotty boy will write a thesis upon it one day. Yes, his life certainly was ruled by ‘deviant sex, exotic religion – and Left-wing politics’, as perhaps it should be!
Private Road – by
Forrest Reid.
Having previously read
Forrest Reid’s first two works: ‘The Kingdom of Twilight’ (1904) and ‘The
Garden God: A Tale of Two Boys’ (1905) and been spellbound by his writing, I
wanted to know more about this fascinating Irish novelist and Private Road, Reid’s
second volume of autobiography published in 1940 (his first ‘Apostate’ appeared
in 1926) is a mesmerising journey into his life and passion for writing.
Forrest Reid (1875-1947) was born in Belfast and became apprenticed to a
Belfast tea-trade company before going up to Christ’s College, Cambridge to
read medieval and modern languages from 1905-08. His first book was published
in 1904 and he became friends with Padraic Colum, a disciple of Henry James and
another friend of his at this time was William Brown Reynolds (1874-1925), a
musician and inventor who had a scientific obsession to discover ‘perpetual
motion’. Reid, a collector with an admiration for Socrates, felt things deeply,
he had a ‘passion for humanizing things’ and lived in an almost twilight world
of river-gods and tree-spirits, absorbed in pagan mythology – a ‘divine world
existing beyond the flux of time and fate and change’ (p. 17). At Cambridge,
where he says there seemed to be ‘an almost total absence of any genuine
interest in literature, either early or contemporary’ (p. 54), he became
intimate friends with Augustus Theodore Bartholomew (1882-1933) who became
Librarian at Cambridge from 1900 until his death with whom he also shared a
love of Henry James, and he became acquainted with Osbert Burdett and Rupert
Brooke who were both at Kings, and Ronald Firbank of Trinity College, whom he
saw quite often, the latter he describes as ‘feline and sophisticated’ who
seemed ‘unreal’ (p. 55). Forrest was on the whole disappointed by Cambridge and even
begrudged an afternoon wasted at Magdalene listening to A. C. Benson reading
poetry, quite unmusically. He meets the Abbey Theatre players, Yeats and Synge
and goes into great detail about his love of animals, especially the many cats
and dogs he has had (even a marmoset monkey which had to go when the cat turned
against it). Also amongst his friends were E. M. Forster, Walter de la Mare,
whom he met in 1913, and the poet and dramatist, A.E. (George Russell,
1867-1935) with whom Reid discussed literary and spiritual matters, disagreeing
with much of A.E.’s views on literature,
and on spirituality – Reid disregarded the older Irish writer’s advice to
meditate, concentrating on symbols as in eastern mysticism, all Reid wanted to
understand was the ‘voice of nature’, but A. E. did say he saw ‘beings who were
not of this world’ (p. 132). I find Reid’s pagan, supernatural sensitivity to
the ‘spirit of place’ similar in outlook to Arthur Machen or Algernon Blackwood
who also have an atmosphere of dreaming and an occult mood about their work, in
fact, Reid says he once saw the ghost of a small boy descending the stairs
while in Eastbourne and followed him until he disappeared . He admired Anatole
France and the poet Ralph Hodgson (1871-1925) but was not taken by Edward
Thomas, who he didn’t like. Forrest Reid is such a sensitive writer that it
would be foolish to ignore his works which include: ‘The Bracknells: A Family
Chronicle’ (1911), ‘Following Darkness’ (1912), ‘At the Door of the Gate’
(1915), ‘Pender among the Residents’ (1922) and ‘Young Tom’ (1944). Excellent!
Following Darkness –
by Forrest Reid.
In Forrest Reid’s
fourth novel, ‘Following Darkness’ published in 1912, which the author
dedicated to E. M. Forster, we are told in the opening lines that it is an
unfinished autobiography of Mr. Peter Waring, an art critic who died in ‘tragic
circumstances’ aged 36, on 10th September 1911; the manuscript is in
the possession of Peter’s friend, Mr. Owen Gill, who says that Peter’s death is
a mystery, yet to him it is ‘perfectly clear that he was murdered’. He goes on
to say that ‘it is evident that he had come under the influence of strange and
disreputable persons, who professed to experiment in occult sciences – spiritualism,
and even magic.’ But the heart of the novel is Peter’s boyhood and tender
youthful steps towards love. Sixteen year old Peter Waring, the son of a
National schoolmaster (his mother left his father when Peter was young and he
does not remember her), struggles with the usual questionings and urges of
adolescence, rejecting his father’s Christianity to become an agnostic. He
spends much of his time at Derryaghy House in County Down,
the home of his wealthy benefactor, Mrs. Carroll, and it is here that he meets
brother and sister, Gerald and Katherine Dale, the former, a pianist and the latter
he falls madly in love with. When Peter goes away to school he lives with his
Aunt Margaret and Uncle George McAllister in Belfast above a shop with their children,
Gordon, Thomas, George (with whom Peter is horrified he has to share a bedroom
with) and ten year old Alice who is very affectionate towards Peter and puts a
dead mouse in the soup (liking him enough to warn him of her childish crime so
that he doesn’t have any!) At school Peter makes friends with Owen Gill, an
intellectual son of a solicitor who introduces Peter to Tolstoy’s ‘Anna
Karenina’ (Owen and Peter write to Tolstoy and Owen keeps up a correspondence
with him). Following an awkward party at the Gills’ residence Peter develops
the idea of confession although he does not specify to what sins he has broken,
presumably the usual boyhood abuse and misdemeanours – Peter’s father does not
fully trust him and there is a distance between them which remains; and so with
the idea of confession he writes to a priest, Mr. Henry Applin of St. Mary
Magdalene and at the meeting at the priest’s home Peter could not say what was
troubling him. Peter’s cousin George whom he shares a bedroom with shows Peter
his fine collection of dirty postcards kept under the floorboards and behind
Peter’s back reads his letters from Katherine (his Aunt Margaret also goes
through his pockets searching for letters and evidence of corruption) – when
George mentions Katherine they end up fighting and Peter giving him a bloody
nose before Aunt Margaret attacks Peter and almost kills him with a blow to the
head! Despite all this he does well in the school exams. When Peter’s best
friend, Owen meets Katherine the two get on very well and Peter becomes
jealous, thinking Katherine finds him more intellectually attractive – Peter is
alone with Katherine in the woods and behaves ungentlemanly when he attempts to
seduce her by kissing her; she is horrified and hits him. George’s dirty cards are
found and George blames Peter; Uncle George writes to Peter’s father and the
latter confronts Peter, accepting his innocence but at the same time also not
trusting him. Owen is sympathetic towards Peter and Peter brings the matter of
his ungentlemanly behaviour towards Katherine into the open. There is a nice
scene where Peter goes to Derryghary House with the intention of confronting
Katherine and apologising but he remains outside, looking in at them through
the window, ‘like a ghost’ before slipping away. Another nice scene is where
Peter is at the fun fair and meets the girl, Annie Breen who misunderstands his
question about being kissed, referring to Katherine, and she thinks he means
her and kisses him. On the carousel, Peter notices George and Katherine and
hears his name called – he looks for them but loses them before later Katherine
finds him and they make up and she tells him she loves him. Katherine’s mother
arrives at Derryghary and she is not pleased with the relationship and takes
Katherine away. Peter’s thoughts turn towards death and suicide – he decides to
stay out all night lying on the cold, wet ground; he becomes ill and is
diagnosed with acute pneumonia – his plans of entering Oxford are dashed as he has to go abroad for
the climate and he tells Mrs. Carroll that his illness wasn’t accidental and
she is quietly understanding and calls him her son for she is the mother he
never had. This is a most unusual book for its time with some rather wonderful
scenes, vividly visual and memorable which resonate with the reader who has
been wounded by love and wandered forward with a broken heart into the darkness
of life. Extraordinary!
A Son of Belial – by
Nitram Tradleg.
These
‘autobiographical sketches’ were published in 1882 by Nitram Tradleg, which
backwards reveals the author’s name, Martin Geldart, who later became an
Anglican priest. Norwich
born Edmund Martin Geldart (1844-1885) will be familiar to admirers of the poet
G. M. Hopkins as they were friends at Oxford and throughout these fourteen
chapters Geldart relates, sometimes quite humorously, the various incidents and
people he encountered during his short life. We discover in the first chapter,
‘A Happy English Child’ how Edmund enjoyed trapping frogs in flower pots before
skewering them with a pointed stick until his older brother, William
(1842-1858) came and cut them in half with his hatchet (p. 8); of their church
and chapel existence and how they moved from Waterfield Terrace, Blackheath to
Reigate in Surrey, a place he loved and called ‘home’ where they had a ‘doll’s
cemetery in the garden’ and where he symbolically executed his Governess, Miss
Atkinson, known as ‘mad Atky’ by beheading an effigy of her – apparently she
witnessed it and took it in good spirits! At Reigate
he attended an Independent chapel while harbouring a deep ‘fear of hell’ yet,
‘no love of God’ and ‘no sorrow for sin’ (p. 53). Edmund attended the Merchant
Taylor’s School in London
when he was eleven before leaving London
for Manchester,
or Altrincham to be precise, where he became a great enthusiast of bug hunting
and Greek as opposed to Latin. He won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford
in 1863 and there are some marvellous descriptions of life at Balliol, or
Belial, as he insists on calling it and of his friends and masters alike, such
as the great Benjamin Jowett (1817-1893), Professor of Greek and Master of
Balliol, to whom he gives the name Professor Jewell – many of the stories of
Jowett are familiar to those who have read wide on such subjects connected to
Balliol and its scholars; there are also sketches of Canon Henry Parry Liddon
(1829-1890), referred to as Canon Parry, and Vincent Stuckey Stratton Coles
(1845-1929), given the name Vicentius Staccato, and of course Geldart’s
‘ritualistic friend’, Gerard Manley Hopkins known as Gerontius Manley – Hopkins
rather unkindly described the ‘hagard hideousness’ of Geldart in a letter to
his mother dated 22nd April 1863 as having ‘grey goggle eyes’ a
‘shuddering gait or shuffle’ and a ‘pinched face’ and famously added that he
‘would not have had twenty Balliol scholarships to change places with him’, but
despite this they became intimate friends (Hopkins spent time at Geldart’s
family home in the summer of 1865 and was quite taken by Edmund’s younger
brother, Ernest, born 1848, saying in a letter that he was ‘looking at
temptations, esp, at E. Geldart naked’, see Robert Bernard Martin’s ‘Gerard
Manley Hopkins: A Very Private Life’. 1991. p. 114) Geldart, who regarded
himself as an Evangelical, took a teaching role after Oxford at Manchester
Grammar School and he seems to have suffered in 1868 some sort of nervous
breakdown and so he went to recuperate in Corfu and spent three months in
Athens. The following year he was ordained in the Anglican priesthood and
became curate of All Saints, Manchester
and in 1871 curate of St.
George’s, Everton, Liverpool
(he became a Unitarian the following year). Geldart wrote much on Greek and
religious matters and married Charlotte Frederika Sophia Andler (1841-1923) in
1868 but she doesn’t get a mention by name in the volume, just the casual fact
that he got married (they had three children, one dying before the age of one).
I found the volume most interesting, not the least because just three years
after it was published, Geldart, whose socialistic-style sermons disagreed with
his congregation, was asked to resign from his position as minister of the Free
Christian Church in Croydon and in a nervous state of health once more, he
decided to go to France to stay with an old friend but was reported missing on
the night boat to Dieppe, assumed drowned after committing suicide on Friday 10th
April 1885, he was 41 years old, the same age that his own mother, Hannah had
died in 1861. ‘I suppose it was suicide’, writes Hopkins to his friend Alexander W. M.
Baillee (1843-1921) on 24th April, saying that ‘his mind, for he was
a self tormentor, having been unhinged, as it had been once or twice before, by
a struggle he had gone through.’ Hopkins, who also suffered from his own
‘struggles’ and thoughts of suicide, thought A Son of Belial an ‘amusing and
sad book’ and perhaps it is no coincidence that his darker poems such as ‘I
wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’ were composed during this period, but
for Geldart, the struggles ended just three years after this volume was
published which makes it all the more poignant for the reader.
The Last of England – by
Ted Walker.
The Last of England
published in 1992 is the second autobiography by the Lancing born, West Sussex
poet Edward Joseph Walker (1934-2004) and it is a deeply honest and intensely
emotional memoir; an enduring love story telling the harrowing tale of his wife,
Lorna’s eight years of illness with cancer and the struggle of coping together,
and the raw nakedness of bereavement. Ted and Lorna Benfell, born 1933, met
when they had just entered their teens and they fell in love, a love which grew
in strength and so they were married in 1956 and had four children: Edward
(1958), Susan (1958), Margaret (1959) and William (1964); that love is
described and revealed in Ted’s first autobiography, ‘The High Path’ published
in 1982. Ted, who read modern languages at St. John’s College, Cambridge begins
the book five weeks after Lorna’s death and Ted, devoid of poetic inspiration
and stuck in a teaching job, wants to get away from all the kind people with
their good intentions, their sympathy and condolences and the memories of two
people joined together in love, now one person alone and so he leaves it all
behind and goes to France and then on to Spain, a country he loves and feels
will help with his grief (he travelled their in 1979, see his book ‘In Spain’
published 1987). And so through his time in Spain, such as attending a
bullfight with his daughter Susan (chapter 4), the story of his wife’s battle
with cancer begins to be unfolded from the first operation whereby a small
tumour is removed from the bone of her nose in 1978 through to a part of her
upper jawbone being taken away and eventually losing an eye also. This is a
remarkably revealing tale drawn deep from the soul of Ted, a master of
language, who confesses at one point that he once attempted suicide in the garden
with a shotgun and admitting appropriately that ‘in the midst of life we are in
farce’. (p. 21) The poetic muse may have left him and like Cyril Connolly in
his ‘Enemies of Promise’ he knows as all creative souls know that ‘domesticity
gets in the way of a writer’s progress’ (p. 16) but it is precisely the
domestic nature of love, the little things we do for each other that confirms
the presence of love more than any grand gestures ever could, the simplicity of
sharing and understanding and touching. On Christmas Day 1983 Lorna, who had
been a smoker like Ted, suffers a heart attack, probably due to the anxiety of
awaiting the operation on her jaw and she is taken to hospital and Ted like the
dutiful husband, lover, sensitive man and poet, throws his whole being, every
fibre into the care of Lorna, even becoming a non-smoker on 31st
January 1984 – four months later Lorna undergoes her jaw operation. In chapter
6 he tells us about the ‘cryo-surgery’, the burning off of tumours and the
awful smell that lingers, the smell of death from the dead tissue permeating
the whole existence of Lorna which was sometimes embarrassing but another part
of the tragedy of cancer surgery. Unfortunately the cancer continued to Lorna’s
lungs and she was given only weeks to live. The family gathered around the
hospital bed is an all too familiar scene trying to reach Lorna, all wanting to
connect with a wife, a mother, a grandparent for the final time, to say
something wise and necessary to hear, but everything seemingly inadequate – Ted
hears the death rattle (it is the first death he has witnessed) and there is a
‘sudden convulsion, and the rattle ceased, and she was utterly still.’
Following the funeral in April 1987, and Ted’s visit to Spain, he returns to
England and visits Lorna’s friend Audrey (Audrey Joan Hicks nee Baxter) who is
staying at a farmhouse in Yorkshire; Audrey is also recently bereaved and
together they work towards finding each other again and discovering life
without their partners – Ted recognises right away that he ‘loved and needed
Audrey’. She was happy and grateful to see Ted, her husband John had been dead
nine months to Ted’s loss of Lorna, now five months. And so gradually the two
lost souls build some sort of a life from the wreckage of death, witnessing the
devastation of the 1987 hurricane where Chanctonbury Ring had been ‘thinned to
a smudge’; drawing closer together, needing each other, they travel to Spain in
1988 and when they return they get married in Chichester and embrace a new life
together. This is a very beautifully written book and through all its chapters
it is the strength of love, the devotion and passion that makes us human and
able to give ourselves to another – Ted had Larkin’s words, perhaps the most
romantic in the English language, ‘what will survive of us is love’, carved on
Lorna’s tombstone, in fact, Ted is a much underrated poet, only true poets
themselves recognising his greatness – I much admired his first collection ‘Fox
on a Barn Door’ (1966) and his third, ‘The Night Bathers’ (1970); as a poet he
is very precise, his words are not merely ornamental, they are instrumental and
placed like the stones of a path. I should place him amongst the likes of
Auden, Larkin and Hughes and his poems have had a huge impact on me, much as
‘The Last of England’ has too (I defy any reader not to shed tears,
particularly through chapters three, five and seven). But what happened to Ted
and Audrey after they were married? The book does not obviously disclose this,
but they settled in Spain in 1997 and sadly Ted died there age 69, near
Valencia on 19th March 2004, yet there will always remain a deep
sense of Sussex about Ted Walker, a wonderful writer and a truly great poet!
T. H. White: A
Biography – by Sylvia Townsend Warner.
Sylvia Townsend
Warner’s biography of the novelist Terence Hanbury White (1906-1964) is an
extraordinary rewarding read, exposing White’s various eccentricities and
difficult relationships with his parents who subsequently separated – he was
born in India and came to England in 1911, entering Cheltenham College in
September 1920 until July 1924; he matriculated to Queen’s College, Cambridge
in the Michaelmas term of 1925 where he was a ‘dangerously attractive young
man’, which is hard to believe when one sees the older world-weary White, who
fell under the spell of his tutor and life-long friend, Leonard James Potts
(1897-1960) with whom he kept a long correspondence (see ‘Letters to a Friend’.
1982). White was diagnosed with tuberculosis and told he had just six months to
live (his mother was over-protective and enjoyed exaggerating his frailty) and
so on 21st June 1927 he was admitted to Brompton Hospital and a week
later sent to Frimley Sanatorium until his discharge on 18th
October. With his new lease of life, he was never really facing his own
termination, White travelled to Italy arriving at Naples on 6th
November 1927 where he learnt Italian; he commenced to Capri, Amalfi and Rome
and his inclinations were drawn to the homosexual both in life and in art, as
something rather ‘tragic’, perhaps something his mind fought against throughout
his life. He was back at Cambridge
for his final term when he published his first volume of poetry in March 1929,
‘Loved Helen and Other Poems’, a rather interesting little volume,
(unfortunately I failed to appreciate his verse after reading ‘A Joy Proposed’.
1980). After Cambridge he taught at a prep-school (1930-32) and then became
Head of the English Department at Stowe in Buckinghamshire from 1932-36 where
his first novel ‘They Winter Abroad’, published under the pseudonym James Aston
caused something of a stir. At Stowe White threw himself into his interests and
activities: fox hunting, fishing, shooting and flying – he learnt to fly at
Sywell aerodrome in Northamptonshire and other literary works followed: ‘Earth
Stopped’ (1934) and ‘England have my Bones’ (1936); during this time he became
an intimate friend, mostly through correspondence, with David Garnett
(1892-1981), for more on this see ‘The White/Garnett Letters’ edited by David
Garnett in 1968. White took a cottage on the Stowe estate and became fascinated
with falconry, living with his Goshawk from Germany which he trained making
mistakes along the way until it escaped; his next Goshawk he called ‘Cully’ (he
also had an owl called Archimedes and two sparrow hawks); Cully died and White
worked with two merlins – his volume, ‘The Goshawk’ published in 1951 is a
warts and all account of his passion for falconry. In 1938 came the first in
his Arthurian sequence of works, ‘The Sword in the Stone’ before he went to
live in Ireland in 1939 staying at Doolistown for six years, deciding not to
fight as a soldier and suffering feelings of guilt while corresponding with
those of his friends in England, like Garnett and the curator and collector, Sydney
Cockerell (1867-1962), who were subjected to the bombings. He lived in Alderney from 1946 until 1957 and lectured in the United States
throughout 1963-64. Much of White still remains a mystery despite the great
Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) casting a little light on her murky subject,
for instance, White became overwhelmingly obsessed with a young boy known as
‘Zed’ like some tragic Humbert Humbert figure pining after (and controlling)
Lolita or Hadrian for Antinous – he was fascinated by Hadrian and had enjoyed
Marguerite Yourcenar’s book on Hadrian, perhaps identifying with him, but who
was this young ‘Zed’ with whom White could not repair the damage of their
dissolved friendship? Whatever lies behind the mystery White still emerges from
this fascinating look at his strange and enigmatic life as a complex,
independent and strong-minded literary oddity! Excellent!
For Sylvia, An Honest
Account – by Valentine Ackland.
Valentine Ackland
(1906-69), born Mary Kathleen Macrory Ackland is known more for being the lover
of the writer Sylvia Townsend Warner than for her poetry and this book, written
almost as a love letter to Sylvia whom she met in 1930 was finished in July
1949. Published in 1986, there is a fine foreword from a mutual friend of
Valentine and Sylvia, Bea Howe, who introduces us to her first impressions of
Valentine before we are immersed in Valentine’s own account where we hear about
her desperate shyness, her ‘silent uncooperative’ nature and her sickly
childhood and the torment and persecution from her sister, Joan Alice Elizabeth
Ackland (born 1898), eight years her senior; the nightmares, the loneliness and
the walking in her sleep; her devout High Anglican mother, Ruth Kathleen
Ackland (nee Macrory) and Valentine’s confirmation aged eleven. As a child she
had a deep desire for security and love. She was sent to school in France where
she fell in love for the first time in May 1922 with a girl three years older
than her, aged twenty named Lana who returned that love, a perfectly innocent
and romantic love and nothing more; Valentine’s sister Joan found out about the
relationship by reading her letters and told her mother about it; Valentine’s father,
Robert Craig Ackland was disgusted and angry by the relationship and Lana’s
family were furious about it too. They had to swear never to meet or write to
each other again and despite this her father never forgot or forgave her and
because of this Valentine was sent to a domestic training college in Eastbourne
where she had to board as some sort of punishment, but the training college
turned out to be rife with lesbian activity and a very masculine Headmistress –
Valentine pined away without Lana choosing not to eat and eventually her
parents allowed Lana to stay over one night; eventually Lana married her cousin
and Valentine was made to attend the wedding, broken-hearted. Her sister Joan
got married and her father died of cancer in 1923 and Valentine decided to get
married purely to escape the wrath and domination of her sister who still
tormented her; Valentine got engaged to a boy she knew as an eleven year old,
now living and working in Java, meanwhile in 1924 she had met an older Roman
Catholic woman in Camberwell whom she refers to as ‘x’, a speaker for the
conservative party with whom she became a lover and they remained friends and
lovers for many years. In another turn of events, she meets a young man named
Richard [Turpin] whom she agrees to marry and breaks off the engagement with
the man in Java – they were married at Westminster Registry Office and Richard
being inexperienced with women and a homosexual could not consummate the
marriage (Valentine was still deeply absorbed by ‘x’); a week after the
Registry marriage the couple were married more formally at Westminster
Cathedral and Valentine shockingly wore her hair in the short Eton crop style
that was popular amongst bohemians. Richard, finding it hard to desire
Valentine and her pain during his sexual attempts (it was found she had an
abnormally tight hymen) and the excuses on her part to avoid intimacy took
their toll and Valentine, who was still seeing ‘x’, she began a drinking habit
which seemed to release her from the crippling shyness (she was introduced to
alcohol by ‘x’ when she was seventeen). Valentine had asked for help on more
than one occasion and was rebuffed by the doctors she sought help from. She
agreed to have surgery to correct her hymen and after the operation she went to
Dorset with ‘x’ and they lived in a cottage living on ‘biscuits & Bovril’
and visited the writer T. F. Powys (1875-1953) and his wife and sisters and
smoked pipes and it was here that any love for Richard fell away and she
decided to stay at the cottage in Dorset. We are told that she sat as a model
for Eric Gill and met Oliver Lodge and how she became pregnant from an affair
and suffered a miscarriage; her divorce from Richard and descent into
alcoholism and her meeting with Sylvia Townsend Warner in 1930. Despite all the
tragedy and confusion in her life and the damage caused by her sister, it was
poetry that seemed to fill the void and eventually, an acceptance of love, a
pure and honest love which Sylvia provided. She died in November 1969. ‘For
Sylvia’ is an outstanding and very rewarding read!
Ingram Bywater: The
Memoirs of an Oxford
Scholar, 1840-1914 – by William Walrond Jackson.
William Walrond
Jackson D.D. (1838-1931) a scholar of Balliol College, Oxford (1856-60) and
former Rector of Exeter College, Oxford (1887-1913) published this fine volume
of memoirs by his friend and fellow scholar Ingram Bywater (1840-1914) in 1917
and we are given a thoughtful account of Ingram, a delicate and sensitive only
child, born in Islington, London who attended University College School aged 13;
he then went on to study Greek at King’s College School, acquiring a distaste
for athletics and a liking for tobacco, he was an ‘inveterate smoker’. Aged
eighteen he won a scholarship to Queen’s College, Oxford, entering in the Michaelmas term of
1858 where he attended Jowett’s lectures, became acquainted with Walter Pater,
Algernon Swinburne and John Addington Symonds (along with Burne Jones, William
Morris and the poet Coventry Patmore) and became a member of the Old Mortality
Society. Following his departure from Queen’s College in 1862 he was elected a
Fellowship of Exeter College, Oxford (according to the statutes of the day a
Fellow and a Tutor must remain unmarried); in 1864 he learnt German in Hanover before
deciding to study the language and literature of Greek philosophy – his great
works were published subsequently: the fragments of Heraclitus in 1877 and
Aristotle’s the Art of Poetry in 1898. Following Professor Jowett’s death in
October 1893 the Greek Chair became open and after much deliberation Bywater
won the Regius Professorship of Greek. Bywater did eventually marry in 1885,
the widow of Hans William Sotherby (1827-1874), a charming woman named at
birth, Charlotte Cornish (1840-1908), a familiar name of ecclesiastical and
academic distinction, the daughter of Charles John Cornish (1804-1979) and
Elizabeth Rhodes Cornish (1804-1853); her cousin was the schoolmaster and scholar, Francis Warre Cornish
(1839-1916), Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge and Vice-Provost of Eton
(1893-1916) who as well as being a friend of the great M. R. James, published
the ‘Extracts from the Letters and Journals of William Cory’ in 1897; (his son,
Gerald Warre Cornish, born 1874, also of Eton and King’s College, was an author
too; he died at the battle of the Somme in 1916). Charlotte’s brother, Rev. Charles John
Cornish (1834-1913) became the vicar of Debenham in 1859 and her two nephews
also became writers: Charles John Cornish (1858-1906) on natural history and
Dr. Vaughan Cornish (1862-1948) on geography. Charlotte became ill in 1907 and passed away
the following year aged 67. Also mentioned in the memoirs is Bywater’s friend
and fellow scholar (Oriel College, Oxford), Mark Pattison (1813-1884) the
Rector of Lincoln College, Oxford with whom he kept up a correspondence –
Pattison’s ‘Memoirs’ published in 1885 are an excellent account of the ‘behind
the scenes’ grumbles and underhand dealings of the Oxford dons during the
1840’s and 1850’s, in fact, I found it equally as interesting as Bywater’s
journey of the self through the dreaming spires of Oxford, but then I am a
little peculiar. Also well-known and stressed throughout the volume is
Bywater’s love of books and collecting, in fact, he is a self-confessed
bibliophile and an interesting observation quoted from a letter received from
Sir Herbert Warren (1853-1930), Vice Chancellor of Oxford University from
1905-09 relates a conversation between himself and Bywater, discussing books: ‘‘There
are various reasons for buying books.’ [says Bywater] ‘Some people buy books
for the contents, and that is a very vulgar reason; and some people buy books
for the binding, and that is a little better and not so vulgar; and others buy
books for the printing, and that is really a very good reason; but the real
reason for which to buy a book is the margin! Always look at the margin.’’ (p.
161) And on that basis Bywater’s Memoir of an Oxford scholar is a wonderful
collection of perfectly precise margins which are nothing short of astounding!
On the Edge of Paradise: A. C. Benson, the Diarist – by David Newsome.
This utterly beguiling
biography of the schoolmaster and author, Arthur Christopher Benson (1862-1925)
was published in 1980 and the author, David Newsome makes excellent use of
Benson’s famous diaries which runs to 180 volumes dating from 1897-1925;
previously, Benson’s friend and fellow scholar, Percy Lubbock (1897-1965)
published extracts from the diaries in his excellent 1926 publication which I
enjoyed immensely. Newsome, through twelve chapters and over 400 pages (with
illustrations) really gets behind the fibres of the old Cambridge don and son
of the Archbishop of Canterbury who won a scholarship to Eton in 1874 and went
up to King’s College, Cambridge in 1885. Benson was inspired to keep a diary
after reading the ‘Extracts from the Letters and Journals of William Cory’ by
Francis Warre Cornish, published in 1897, itself a beautiful volume, and Benson
identified himself with William Cory (born William Johnson 1823-1892), the
schoolmaster and poet who romanticised his platonic friendships with boys and
was dismissed from Eton in mysterious circumstances. Benson’s whole life seems
to be a desire for love yet he was unable to form any intimate attachment and
although he was probably aroused by sexual thoughts he could never equate
romantic desire with the physical act of sex, which to him seemed repugnant and
the establishing of a new friendship or the pleasure of courting a young boy or
man and forming a romantic attachment meant everything to him – just as those
young undergraduate ‘swans’ of Charles Sayle (1864-1924) the Cambridge
University librarian and poet whom Benson met, thought of his young adored
disciples as something to be worshipped, his conquests, such as Archibald W. R.
Don (1890-1916) of Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge, were always rather
flagrantly ‘almost a religion to us’ [see Sayle’s Memoir of Archie Don,
(1918)]. Benson, unlike Sayle and other predatory satyrs such as Oscar Browning,
who flaunted his recent, tender acquisitions like splendid hyacinths, managed
to be less conspicuous with his sentimental emotions, confining his deepest
thoughts on the subject to his closest friends and to his diary; friends such
as Lubbock, Howard Sturgis (1855-1920) of Trinity College, Cambridge, Frank
Rayner Salter (1887-1967) of Magdalene College, Cambridge, Stephen Gaselee
(1882-1943) of King’s College, Cambridge and Gaillard Thomas Lapsley
(1871-1949), a Harvard graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge who all had
similar sentiments. Benson’s first crisis or ‘misfortune’ as he termed it
occurred on Thursday 9th November 1882, a depression bordering on
madness, no doubt a spiritual and a sexual crisis which seemed to shape his
attitude towards intimate affection, something he craved yet could not endure.
He always considered himself a ‘romantic and a realist’, a sentimental
spectator who continually lived ‘on the outside of things’. Newsome brings to
light Benson’s thoughts on the young fauns who seemed to be attracted to the
shy old bachelor, such as Hugh Walpole (1884-1941), the novelist of Emmanuel
College, Cambridge who became utterly infatuated with Benson and the old don’s
attraction to the beautiful young Eton scholars such as Edward Horner
(1888-1917), Julian Grenfell (1888-1915) and Geoffrey Madan (1895-1947), all of
Balliol College, Oxford; and Winchester scholar George Mallory (1886-1924) of
Magdalene College, Cambridge. We learn that Benson didn’t like his brother
Hugh’s friend Frederick Rolfe (1860-1913) known as Baron Corvo, or the
‘exorcist’ as Hugh called him, and that after an initial dislike of A. E.
Housman, another don who suppressed his sexual instincts, Benson warmed to the
scholar poet, just as he warmed to the brilliant scholar and ghost story
writer, M. R. James (1862-1936) Provost of King’s College, Cambridge and Eton
College who became increasingly difficult to know, for Benson recognised the
hunger and ache of the cloistered homosexual. Benson’s second devastating
depression in which he even contemplated suicide came between 1907-09 and again
in 1917 in which his breakdown resigned him to a stay at St. Michael’s nursing
home in Ascot. The war had taken some of the oldest and dearest friendships
from him: Rupert Brooke, Julian and Billy Grenfell, Archie Don and Edward
Horner and he seemed continually perplexed by the on and off friendship with
Edmund Gosse (1849-1928), that old literary pivot. Arthur Christopher Benson is
a fascinating man and his diary records a lost age of academic history and the
great personalities that distinguished themselves (and sometimes disgraced
themselves) and Newsome has given us a mere glimpse into that world, but a
magical glimpse all the same. Marvellous!
A Priest’s Psychic
Diary – by Rev. Jack Dover Wellman.
This interesting
little volume with a foreword by Richard Baker was published in 1977 and it is
in two parts: one – Encounters, and two – Reflections, the former is concerned
with the various spiritual assistance Reverend Wellman has given to those in
need, ministering to the sick, whether through prayer or the actual ‘laying-on
of hands’, the divine energy which flows through the healing power of prayer,
and the latter emphasises his beliefs in the paranormal process of healing.
Wellman touches on various branches of psychic techniques such as telepathy,
premonition and precognition before explaining the forces of evil through
demonic entities and haunting, to possessions and exorcisms. Wellman talks with
authority of mysterious things and experiences he has encountered throughout
his time as a priest and I thoroughly believe he had some degree of psychic
ability yet Wellman himself is a little mysterious too! The Reverend Jack Dover
Wellman (1917-1989) was born in Portsmouth and in 1939 he had high intentions
of going up to Oxford but for the outbreak of war; he joined the Royal Navy and
was stationed at HM Dockyard Portsmouth for his training before going to HMS
Vernon which was actually Rodean School which was taken over by the Admiralty
in 1941 from the War Office for torpedo and mine training. It was here that
Wellman met the artist Francis Cyril Rose (1909-1979) and Lord Evan Tredegar
(1893-1949), an occultist who performed the Black Mass at every opportunity.
From what one gathers from the book ‘The Dust has Never Settled’ (1992) by
Robin Bryans (1928-2005), Wellman was one of a dozen sailors who were drunk and
drugged (Tredegar was fond of adding drugs to the communion wine) and taken by
Lord Tredegar and a sixteen year old Robin Bryans to Ovingdean Church to
perform the Black Mass, in fact, Ovingdean Church seems to be the centre of
many sordid activities during the war and after! When the war ended Wellman
took theological training and was ordained a deacon at Rochester Cathedral on 5th October 1947,
aged 30. Following his ordination he served in the parishes of Christ Church,
Dartford, St. Margaret’s, Lee and St.
Michael’s, Chester Square,
London. He then served for three
years as a chaplain in the RAF until in April 1956 he became the vicar of
Emmanuel Church, Hampstead until his death in 1989 (apparently he also knew the
occult writer John Symonds). In 1988 appeared his other volume, ‘A Priest and
the Paranormal’ and he seems to have been married once for he mentions his
devoted wife several times in the book, in fact, she was Dorothy R M Kinsey,
born in Portsmouth in 1921 and they were married in Kensington in 1947 but it
seems they were only married for three years or less as she married James W
Preece in 1950 so perhaps she wasn’t all that devoted to Jack after all and for
all his psychic ability I bet he never saw that coming!
Author Hunting, by an
Old Literary Sportsman: Memories of Years Spent Mainly in Publishing 1897-1925
– by Grant Richards.
Published in 1932,
this is the second volume of autobiography, the first being ‘Memories of a
Misspent Youth’ (1932), in which the publisher and author, Grant Richards
(1872-1948) who brought out the World’s Classics Series in 1901, reminisces
over his publishing career which began in Henrietta Street in 1896 when he was
24 years old. Richards croaks through 21 chapters of mostly stupendously dull
literary chaff and for some reason he has a maniacal aversion to using ‘full
stops’; in fact, one would have to be an enormous book-crank to enjoy his
tit-bits on the likes of George Bernard Shaw and Edward Verral Lucas but then
comes the author’s saving grace for he has much to say on the ‘sombre’
scholar-poet who was always very ‘precise’, A. E. Housman; strangely Housman
didn’t want any profit from his volume of poetry, ‘A Shropshire Lad’ – Grant
Richards published the second edition in 1898 and also his ‘Last Poems’ in
1922. Other rewarding moments in Author Hunting are the fascinating glimpses
into the worlds of such authors as Alec Waugh (1898-1981) whose first novel
‘The Loom of Youth’ (1917) was a scandalous success; Osbert and Sacheverell
Sitwell, Llewelyn and John Cooper Powys and the impulsive, childlike Ronald
Firbank (1886-1926) who was ‘always looking over his shoulder’ and had
‘dealings with wizards, crystal-gazers, astrologers and soothsayers’ (p. 250),
really a remarkable ‘shy man with acute instincts’. Grant Richards manages to
turn a somewhat uninteresting book of dusty literary moments into an exquisite delight
and one cannot fail to admire such a man who actually had a heart and offered
support to many a struggling author that he favoured.
John Lane and the Nineties – by J. Lewis May.
This is a superb
volume of biography and literary reminiscences by James Lewis May (1873-1961)
who knew and worked for the publisher John
Lane (1854-1925) at the famous Bodley Head
publishing house. May dedicates the book which appeared in 1936 to his friend
and one of the first authors under the Bodley Head name, Richard Le Gallienne
(1866-1947) and over nineteen very pleasurable chapters he brings the image of John Lane and the
establishing of the Bodley Head to life. Lane, the Devon-born collector of
books and prints became a clerk at the Railway Clearing House before opening
the Bodley Head bookshop in Vigo
Street with co-founder, Charles Elkin Mathews
(1851-1921) in 1887. The Bodley Head (named after Sir Thomas Bodley) which
specialised in antiquarian books began publishing in 1894 and soon after Elkin
Mathews went his own way. There are some delightful anecdotes, one concerning
the poet A. C. Swinburne who lived on the first floor at 3, Great James Street;
on the second floor lived Lane’s friend from the Clearing House, William
Lestocq and his friend, poet and scholar, Hubert John de Burgh and the pair
were great entertainers and gave splendid parties to which Swinburne protested
at the noise and disturbance, shouting “this place is nothing but a dirty
pot-house, a dirty pot-house!” (p. 22) and the fact that Lane was a member of
that strange literary gathering the ‘Sette of Odd Volumes’ with their
periodical dinners to which on one occasion Oscar Wilde was guest of honour and
Lane was most impressed with his talk, as of course one would be (p. 30). And
so the familiar parade of dandies and decadents appear before us such as
Beardsley whom Lane greatly admires, poets Francis Thompson (1859-1907), John
Davidson (1857-1909) and Le Gallienne; even that weird old Baron Corvo
(Frederick Rolfe), ‘that strange, erratic creature, half-imposter, half-genius’
turns up on page 82. In April 1894 the first of an illustrated quarterly named
The Yellow Book set the literary world alight with its daring prose, poetry,
criticism and art; Henry Harland was an editor and Beardsley was art editor until
1895 when he took up with the Savoy; thirteen volumes appeared until it disbanded
in 1897; a year later Lane married Annie King, the famous ‘Mrs John Lane’ as
she is often known. Oscar Wilde also appeared in The Yellow Book until the
scandal erupted during his arrest and trial and there was some stone-throwing
outside Vigo Street (Lane was in the United States at the time and very
concerned with the trial) and Lane had to agree that Wilde should no longer
appear in any further editions of The Yellow Book; the Bodley Head had also
printed Wilde’s ‘Salome’ and Lane had great capacity and enthusiasm for his
authors whom he befriended, championed and supported, especially the poets such
as Ernest Dowson (1867-1900), Laurence Binyon (1869-1943), William Watson
(1858-1935) and Stephen Phillips (1864-1915) of ‘Christ in Hades’ fame and some
extraordinary publications appeared under the Bodley Head imprint, such as John
Gray’s ‘Silverpoints’ in 1893, George Egerton’s (pen-name of Mary Chavelita
Dunne, 1859-1945) ‘Keynotes’ (1893) and Norman Gale (1862-1942) whose ‘Orchard
Songs’ of 1893 has a lyrical, pastoral beauty. Gale, a minor poet who was also
an assistant master at Rugby was ‘rather a big, florid man, who wrote
discreetly fleshly poems about pretty milkmaids, and apple-blossom, and rustic
junketings’; a man ‘possessed of a pretty gift for turning melodious, flowing
verse of no marked originality’ (p. 103) and, as I found myself, an almost
erotic obsession for knees; a good example of his ‘fleshly’ un-original verse
(a little harsh there James) is his poem ‘Cicely Bathing’ which begins – ‘The
brook told the dove, / and the dove told me, / that Cicely’s bathing at the
pool / with other virgins three’. There is no denying the importance of John
Lane and the Bodley Head publishing house during those glorious nineties and
James Lewis May has produced a worthy volume, conjuring the smell of strong
coffee and Turkish cigarettes, the absurdities of aesthetes and the rush of
laudanum racing through one’s soul to sit beside such giants as Osbert
Burdett’s ‘Beardsley Period’ (1925), Muddiman’s ‘Men of the Nineties’ (1920)
and Holbrook Jackson’s ‘The Eighteen-Nineties’ (1913) to name a few.
Pages from a Private
Diary – by Henry Charles Beeching.
Published anonymously
in 1898 (I read the second impression from 1899), Pages from a Private Diary is
reprinted from the Cornhill Magazine with some alterations and omissions and it
is from the pen of the clergyman and poet, Henry Charles Beeching (1859-1919).
Beeching, who was educated at Balliol College, Oxford (1878-1881) before taking
holy orders in 1882, writes on various subjects, such as the joys of bicycling
– ‘so far I have escaped injury, but Bob, the fox terrier, was run over this
morning. No doubt he was a good deal to blame.’ [5th August 1896] (p. 68); or the
pleasure of yuletide where our good Reverend enters the festive spirit and asks
– ‘why do some folks wish me “a happy” instead of “a merry Christmas”? [25th December 1896]
(p. 139) and ‘Christmas cards I will never send: no, not even in revenge; and I
have a hope the custom may soon die,’ [1st January 1898] (p. 321) which are my
sentiments entirely, along with birthdays and other anniversaries! Other
entries are mostly of a literary turn, particularly concerning Shakespeare for
whom he has a special interest and Jane Austen, particularly Pride and
Prejudice which he has been reading; the diary begins on the author’s birthday,
7th May 1896 and ends on 23rd February 1898, taking in
the likes of Robert Burns, William Morris, Coventry Patmore and Benjamin Jowett
along the way while making some mildly interesting observations such as the one
on 21st June 1896 where he ‘stood for some time on the doorstep
drawing in the electrical force of London, and feeling like a mouse in oxygen.
It is only we country cousins who really enjoy London, just as it is only Londoners who
really enjoy the country’. (p. 35) or this from 24th November 1897: ‘If a man is a
poet or painter, and is sure of dying before his boom is over, let him write
his name in every book’. (p. 307) Beeching became the Canon of Westminster
Cathedral from 1902-1911 and the Dean of Norwich from 1911 until his death in
1919 and it is hard to believe this volume was published in 1898 while the author
was approaching 40 years of age as it seems quite stiff and old fashioned as if
he had not heard of, let alone read any of the so-called ‘decadent’ writers, which
he probably hadn’t. I also took the time, either from stupidity or curiosity,
to read several other books by Beeching from his poetry: ‘Love in Idleness’
(1883), ‘Love’s Looking Glass’ (1891), both in collaboration with his Oxford
friends and fellow poets, John William Mackail (1859-1945) and John Bowyer
Buchanan Nichols (1859-1939); ‘’In a Garden and Other Poems’ (1895) along with
his curiously interesting ‘Provincial Letters’ from 1906 which I heartily
recommend [Beeching also wrote volumes on Milton, Francis Atterbury (1909) and
Henry Vaughan (2 volumes in 1896) which are worth digging out]. Perhaps a greater
sense of humour would have helped the book from falling into the depths of
neglected volumes but one must remember Beeching is a member of the clergy and sadly
restricted by many modes of humour that falls towards the improper, which no
doubt the Balliol man enjoyed heartily in his undergraduate days, however, there
are moments of mirth such as his entry for 1st February 1898 when he
is mentioning his two peacocks whom he has wittily named ‘Thomas’ and ‘Love’;
to stop the peacocks wandering off he buys some guinea fowl to keep them
company yet their noise keeps him awake and it seems the Doctor is the only one
who enjoys the sounds as he likes to be kept awake – ‘peacocks or no peacocks,
doctor or no doctor, those birds must die.’ (p. 335) Readers of a strange turn
of mind and scholastic seclusion will no doubt find much to fascinate them in
this volume as I have found and a rainy day can become quite beautiful improved
with a dose of Beeching. Enjoy!
The Story of My Life
(in six volumes) – by Augustus Hare.
In masochistic mood I
decided to inflict upon myself the reading of the six volumes of autobiography
written by that supernatural enthusiast, travel writer, raconteur and eternal
bachelor, Augustus John Cuthbert Hare, who was born in Rome in 1834; quite an
undertaking, as most sane readers will prefer the abridged one volume,
‘Peculiar People: The Story of My Life’, but no, having an element of
Scandanavian blood, a people known for their capacity to injure oneself beyond
normal measures, I turned to volume one, published in 1896 and immersed myself
in the misery of Hare’s childhood to learn that he was a ‘most unwelcome
addition to his parents’ large family’, his parents being Francis George Hare
(1786-1842) and Ann Francis Paul (1788-1863). Soon after his birth he was
passed from his natural mother to his Aunt Maria, born Maria Leycester
(1798-1870), widow of the boy’s uncle, the Reverend Augustus William Hare
(1792-1834), his father’s brother. Maria had written to Ann Francis requesting
little Augustus be brought up as her own child and Ann agreed and wrote back,
saying ‘if any one else would like one, would you kindly recollect that we have
others’. As a child he was frequently in the presence of his uncle, the
Reverend Julius Hare and his wife, ‘evil’ Aunt Esther at Hurstmonceaux Rectory
in East Sussex; Aunt Esther, born Jane Esther Maurice (1814-1864), a foul and
despicable creature, ordered that the young boy’s pet cat, ‘Selma’, be taken
from him and hanged to death; she even took great pleasure in ordering the
child to be locked in the church vestry at Hurstmonceaux between services.
Augustus went to Harnish
School in Wiltshire where
he says he was taught nothing before going to Dr. Vaughan’s Harrow
in 1847 where he says he was still taught nothing but fell into the natural
regime of fagging and bullying. He was a sickly child and had to wear an iron
frame to correct his spine; he left Harrow
after one year and endured several tutors – ‘It is only by God’s mercy that I
did not commit suicide’. (p. 256) Drawing was a great resource to young
Augustus who showed a talent for landscape and architectural depictions (his
splendid illustrations run through each volume) and we hear about the ‘family
spy’, a strange and seemingly harmless gentleman who prefered to spend his life
just following the Hare’s around and observing them, knowing all their intimate
secrets and every move they make; nowadays we have the television to provide
marginally more interesting entertainment than stalking some familiar person or
persons. Augustus fills his volumes with letters written and received and
journal entries so that nothing seems to escape his meticulous accuracy in
painting this portrait of his life and those he has encountered. In 1853, aged
nineteen, Augustus entered University
College, Oxford where he fell under the spell of the
mighty Jowett of Balliol, with whom he became great friends while at Oxford. His Uncle Julius
died in January 1855. There is more on Hare’s Oxford life in volume two until
his time of leaving in June 1857 and then begin his wandering around Europe and
the Southern and Northern counties; his first book ‘Epitaphs for Country
Church-yards’ appears in 1856 before he was commissioned to write the ‘dusty,
dead and colourless’, ‘Handbook of Berks, Bucks and Oxfordshire’, published in
1861. Having the great fortune of the right family connections, Augustus is
welcomed into the many stately homes and castles where he delights in the sumptuous
dinners and table talk on the eccentric history and ghostly tales and legends,
often staying in the haunted bedrooms; Augustus is in his element describing
the architectural features and the landscape of such country piles whether in
Northumberland or in Tuscany and the antiquarian musings and family gossip he
attaches to his wanderings make it a very personal journey and one cannot help
thinking what a huge snob Mr. Hare is and why there is never any talk of
falling in love or romantic devotion; supposing he had some sort of a sex life he
seems to have been very careful in keeping it private, even from himself, yet
he is a sensitive young man and never fails to describe his dreams and
premonitions, something he does throughout the volumes, and we encounter the
mysterious Madame Martine Larmignar de Trafford, a seer who seems to predict
the future, and Hare’s sister ‘Esmeralda’, a devotee of Roman Catholicism since
1854 (she became an Oblate Sister of the Precious Blood), seems equally devoted
to Madame de Trafford. In the next volume his sister ‘Esmeralda’, actually born
Anne Francis Maria Louisa Hare in 1832, dies in May 1868 and there is much talk
and rumour of poisoning and that the likely suspect is Hare’s brother, Francis
George Hare (1830-1868); two years later (March 1870), Hare’s mother, born in
1798, suffers a paralytic seizure on her left side from which she never
recovers. Hare, the dutiful son whom some would argue had an unnatural devotion
to his mother, looks after her and travels with her while writing his ‘Walks in
Rome’ (published in 1871) until her death on 13th November 1870 and
her body remains at Holmhurst, their home in Sussex, until the 19th.
Augustus is of course devastated and throws himself into writing, spending
sometimes 12 hours a day, his three volume biography of his mother, ‘Memorials
of a Quiet Life’ (1872-76) which seems to offend some family members. Volume IV
(1900) concerns aspects of his solitary life and literary work at home and
abroad, his travels in Spain as his research for his ‘Wanderings in Spain’
published in 1872 before volume V leads us into his writing of the ‘Life and
Letters of Frances, Baroness Bunsen’, 2 volumes published in 1879 and his
meetings with Tennyson, Browning, Whistler and even a meeting with Oscar Wilde
on 21st June 1883 (p. 386); we also learn more about his friendship
with Lord Houghton – Richard Monckton Milnes (1809-85) the poet and collector
of erotic works. The final volume contains amongst other things his attendance
at the funeral of Matthew Arnold on 19th April 1888; his writing of the ‘Story of
Two Noble Lives’ (3 vols. 1893) about Charlotte, Countess Canning and Louisa Beresford,
Marchioness of Waterford, also the writing of the Gurney memoirs: ‘The Gurneys
of Earlham’ (2 vols. 1895). In early life Hare met Wordsworth and thought him
‘conceited’, no doubt he was, but Hare can also be accused of the same and
thank goodness he is or we would not have these lengthy (each touching or
exceeding 500 pages) volumes of reminiscences which Hare himself thought would
not be read by the average reader, or if so only dipped into, and that they
were only really intended for family members. But for me, it was his ghosts
that led me to Augustus Hare, stories such as the spine-tingling ‘Vampire of
Croglin Grange’ in Cumberland
or the ‘Haunted House in Berkeley
Square’ and it is with his ghosts that I shall
remain.
Memories and
Hallucinations – by D. M. Thomas.
This volume of
autobiography was published in 1988 by the poet, translator and novelist, Donald
Michael Thompson, born in 1935 in Redruth, Cornwall. The book is presented in the form
of a confessional, matter of fact, talk with his psycho-analyst, going over the
passage of his life and we learn from the off that he has an Oedipus complex
and he is very frank about what he would have liked to do to a youthful version
of his mother, who died in 1975. Perhaps not so shocking now but nevertheless
still a little startling and one must admire such honesty. Poems and fragments
of erotic dreams lead the reader through the 22 chapters of the author’s life
with its many strange Freudian ‘coincidences’ from his family’s two year
residence in Melbourne, Australia when he was 14 and their return to England;
his National Service days where he learnt Russian language and where aged
nineteen he learnt the noble art of masturbation, a bit of a late starter but
he was a dedicated practitioner, delighting in pornographic magazines and
‘sporting his oak’, through his time at New College, Oxford where he got his
First and became a teacher in Plymouth, to his marriage to Maureen and sad
suicide of his friend, Andrew. This is an excellent volume of autobiography but
one can’t help thinking what a dirty unfaithful bastard Thomas is for cheating
on practically every woman he got close to and seeing them as sexual objects, a
very primitive male view of women, from his wife Maureen, (he had two children
named Caitlin and Sean with her), whom he later divorced to marry Denise, the
woman he had an affair with, only to divorce her too, to the many students he
took advantage of as a teacher. Yes a complete shit in his attitude and selfish
gratification, but who wasn’t back in the sixties and seventies? Thankfully we
know better today, or do we? Sometimes I wonder… Of course he has much to say
on his own published works from his first poetry collections – ‘Two Voices’
(1968) and ‘Logan Stone’ (1971) to his novels, ‘The Flute Player’ (1979) and
‘The White Hotel’ (1981) for which he is perhaps most well known and he makes
living near Hereford Cathedral where he worked as a college lecturer seem
almost bohemian, but not quite, yet I must admit one thing I share with him is
his admiration of the Russian poets, Pushkin and Anna Akhmatova. Enjoyable and
revealing!
Rookery Nook – by Ben
Travers.
Not being familiar
with the author I decided to explore this rather charmingly titled volume by
the novelist and playwright, Ben Travers (1886-1980) and was delighted by every
turn of the page. Travers, a very sharp and witty writer of comical escapades,
known for his ‘Aldwych farces’ of the 1920’s, published Rookery Nook in 1926
and it is a rip-roaring depiction of society and manners during the ‘anything
goes’, or supposedly so, era of the twenties. ‘Rookery Nook’, is the home of Mr
and Mrs Mantle Ham who have taken a holiday to Scotland and let their house,
situated on Swallow Road at the corner of Lighthouse Road, Chumpton Town,
Somerset, to the recently married (three months) Augustus (‘Gussy’) Longhampton
and his wife, Clara, formerly Posset of ‘Posset Jam’ fame who live in London.
Unfortunately, Clara has to attend to her sick mother and cannot travel to
Chumpton with her husband which is surely a sign for mischief. On his arrival
at Rookery Nook, while Augustus is attempting to unpack in the much
ornamentally cluttered comfort of the Mantle Ham’s abode, he notices a
staggeringly beautiful blonde woman in pink pyjamas, a barefoot maiden, sitting
on the hall table and so the pieces are set for a delightful farce to ensue.
The woman, a ‘fugitive Venus’, we learn is Rhoda Marley who lives next door at
‘Pixiecot’ with her half-German step-father named Putz who has ‘run her out’
for eating wurtleberries (‘wurts’) and the maidservant, Nutts, told Putz – ‘You
ate wurts and Nutts split. What a vegetable tragedy,’ exclaims Augustus. Rhoda
is seeking sanctuary at Rookery Nook and does not wish to return to her
step-father, whom she actually admires as a man of strong manly notions and
Augustus decides to confront him and is ‘run out’ himself by Putz, a
wonderfully drawn character, and his bull terrier dog named Conrad. Also living
at Chumpton at a house named ‘Frascati’ are the Twines, now, Gertrude Twine,
formerly Posset, is Clara’s sister which makes Harold Twine, her timid,
hen-pecked husband, Augustus’s brother-in-law and this brother-in-law was in
Swallow Road and saw the silhouettes of Rhoda and Augustus in the bedroom
window and assumed that Clara was with Augustus and he dutifully informs his
nosey wife, Gertrude who in turn, believing Clara to be with her mother, tells
Harold to return and make sure. He enters the unlocked house, trips over the
unpacked portmanteau and Augustus causes him to doubt what he actually saw,
even suggesting Harold has been drinking. Naturally after much confused thought
Harold jumps to the conclusion that Augustus has a woman in the bedroom. Later
Harold and Gertrude return and Rhoda hides in the scullery; not finding a woman
in the house Gertrude tends to believe her husband has been seeing things again
and is mistaken. But it all unfolds when the ‘daily’ servant named Mrs.
Leverett arrives the next morning to take up the tea and sees Rhoda asleep in
the bed and it soon gets back to Gertrude who smells deception and beastliness
and wants her sister to know what sort of a man she has married! Meanwhile,
unaware of Mrs. Leverett finding Rhoda in bed asleep, Augustus wires to his car
salesman cousin, Clive Fitz Watters who has a flat in Kensington to come and
help him. Harold goes to see Augustus (Rhoda is hiding in the cupboard) and
ends up being chased by Conrad, Putz’s vicious dog, who causes havoc in the
house; Rhoda comes out of concealment to stop the attack on Harold and then
when Gertrude arrives Conrad has a new victim to chase while Harold and Rhoda both
hide in the cupboard; Gertrude secretly confronts Putz who tells her the story
of Rhoda and why she was ‘run out’ by him etc. all the while his trousers are
falling down as he holds Conrad in his arms and Gertrude has to hold his trousers
up; Augustus overhears their plans behind a fence and finds out that Clara is
scheduled to arrive the next day in a furtive attempt by Gertrude to catch
Rhoda in her pyjamas and expose Augustus as a philanderer – the plot continues
that Rhoda cannot leave without clothing and Putz keeps an eye on the house to
make sure she does not leave. Harold Twine usually plays golf with the fearsome
Admiral Juddy who being put out goes to Frascati searching for Harold; Harold,
now drawn into the deception after Rhoda saved his life from being torn to
shreds by Conrad, attempts to get some of his wife’s clothes for Rhoda to
escape the house which he does but on his return he walks straight into Putz
and Conrad who were waiting for such an attempt and in the struggle Putz takes
the suitcase full of Gertrude’s clothing to his house. Clive, who saw Gertrude
alone waiting for Clara at Bristol, helps Twine try to secure a hired car with
no success while Juddy goes to Rookery Nook looking for Twine and so Putz sets
Conrad into attack mode and the dog smashes up a room filled with ornaments as
he attacks the cat and Juddy ascending the stairs who hides in a bedroom and
sees the lovely vision of Rhoda who explains her predicament. Meanwhile, in Bristol, Gertrude has met
Clara and her mother and they go in the car while Gertrude intends to travel by
rail but she fails to get on the train when it leaves. At Rookery Nook, Putz
sneaks into the house and confronts Juddy and Rhoda and leaves with the few
‘oddments’ of clothing Harold was successful in retaining – Augustus and Juddy
both attack Putz and eventually put him into a car with the idea of Harold and
Clive stranding him somewhere in the marshes which they succeed in doing; then
Juddy goes to Pixiecot and forces Nutts to surrender some of Rhoda’s clothing
and the Admiral takes care of Rhoda taking her to his home just before Clara
and her mother arrive in the car. Being unwell and tired, the mother goes to
bed and finds Augustus’s blue silk pyjama trousers along with a pair of pink
silk pyjama trousers – the explanation is unsatisfactory and when Clive, Harold
and Augustus confront Clara it does not go well and Clara is in tears with the
intention of taking her mother and staying with her sister Gertrude; After
further explanation and making up she wants to see the girl for herself.
Harold, thinking he can resolve the whole mess goes to see Juddy and brings him
and Rhoda to Rookery Nook and Clara, seeing Rhoda recognises her as her old
friend from school. When Gertrude arrives later to find her mother in her bed
she goes to Rookery Nook and Augustus has it all out with her and Rhoda decides
to go back to live with her step-father, Putz, who comes to the Nook and makes
a fourth at Bridge with Juddy, Clive and Harold and even a submissive Conrad is
welcomed. Rookery Nook is a fine tangle of a tale and there were moments in the
story where I burst out laughing as Travers is an excellent conjurer with his
dialogue and mannerisms and his characters are so well drawn that they are believably
substantial in one’s mind. There is no doubt that Travers is a brilliant writer
and following on from Rookery Nook I read his other Aldwych farce also from
1926, ‘A Cuckoo in the Nest’ which is equally enjoyable and tremendously
comical in its misadventures. Simply wonderful!
The Legend of Aleister
Crowley: A Study of the Facts – by P. R. Stephensen.
Having read most of
what Crowley has written and much of what has been written about him, ‘The
Legend of Aleister Crowley’, published in 1930 by Mandrake Press, has always strangely
eluded me, so it is with a sense of curious satisfaction to finally turn its
pages. The book, which is a ‘Study of the Documentary Evidence Relating to a
Campaign of Personal Vilification Unparalleled in Literary History’ is composed
of five chapters: ‘The Man Crowley’, ‘Early Period, 1896-1907’, ‘”Equinox”
Period, 1908-1914’, ‘The War’ and ‘After the War’ and the author, Percy
Reginald Stephensen (1901-1965) an Australian writer with communist leanings known
as ‘Inky’, presents a worthy defence of Crowley’s character and reputation and
does not fall completely under the spell of Crowley, the magician, and all the
supernatural and ‘evil’ nonsense surrounding him; Stephensen, who had a hand in
running Mandrake Press, is a friend of Crowley’s and he stresses that after
all, he is ‘a man’, although he does blame Crowley’s schoolboyish ‘perverse
humour’ which spoils many of his finest poems for much of the initial attacks
against him, a humour whose fury was aimed at everything from Christianity,
Rationalism and the Rosicrucian’s, to Theosophy, Spiritualism and the Alpine
Club. Stephensen takes us through Crowley’s undergraduate verse, 1896-97,
(‘White Stains’, ‘Aceldama’) and 1898 (‘The Tale of Archais’, ‘Songs of the
Spirit’ and ‘Jephthah’) and the various reviews in the press, some of which are
favourable but most of which accuse him of being too serious, finding faults in
his youthful Swinburnian exuberance, which shows poetic potential, a ‘poet of
distinction, whose ideas nevertheless were possibly dangerous’ (p. 35); his
later poems written and published while Crowley was travelling through various
continents such as: ‘The Mother’s Tragedy’ and ‘The Soul of Osiris’ (both 1901),
the latter, attacked by that old windbag G K Chesterton in the Daily News and
‘Tannhauser’, ‘Ahab’, ‘The Star and the Garter’, ‘Alice, an Adultery’ and ‘The
Sword of Song’ (all 1902), the latter, one of his finest volumes of verse according
to Stephensen, containing his acidic reply to Chesterton, all either perplex or
astound the reader; Crowley was a poet, a true poet of fire and romance, earthy
and lyrical, who assumed the mask the poet wears and threw himself into
adventures; he did not care for public opinion which therefore infuriated his
reader; his poetry became overlooked and neglected for the more sensational
aspects of his life, whether real or not. Stephensen argues that Byron suffered
a similar fate! – Crowley’s
three volume Collected Works appeared in 1905-07 and Capt. J F C Fuller’s
winning essay ‘The Star in the West’ was published in 1907 having won a
competition to write a critical essay upon the Collected Works. Despite all
this Crowley failed to attain the heights as a poet that someone like Yeats
achieved, unlike Yeats, Crowley was unwilling to compromise and not merely
‘playing at religion’. Stephensen cites the Looking Glass trial of 1910 as a
major factor in bringing public attention to Aleister Crowley; The Looking
Glass reviewed the performance of the Rites of Eleusis and attacked the ‘New
Religion’ of ‘Crowleyanity’ and provoked the Jones [Crowley’s friend George
Cecil Jones] vs The Looking Glass libel trial following suggestions that there
had been ‘unmentionable immorality’ between Crowley, Jones and fellow magician,
Allan Bennett; and other specific factor was Crowley’s leaving England during the First
World War for America, taking a seemingly pro-German, pro-Irish stance and his
articles and editing of The International to the publication of his novel
(written in 27 days purely for financial reasons), ‘Diary of a Drug Fiend’ in
1922 which showed the principles of Thelema to free oneself from addiction, yet
it was misunderstood and then came the death of Raoul Loveday at the Abbey of
Thelema in Cefalu, a temple dedicated to ‘orgies of vice and all sorts of
sexual debauchery and indecency’, and the interviews with Loveday’s young wife,
Betty May who exposed the sordid life at the Abbey, all factors contributing to
Crowley being vindictively attacked in the press. This trail of venom was
followed by the 1923-24 hatred which appeared in John Bull and the Sunday
Express and Crowley
being in want of funds he was unable to defend himself and thus became a prey
to all sorts of filthy and scandalous accusations from murder to cannibalism!
Stephensen has produced an invaluable collection of reviews and newspaper
articles which tell the tale of a directed campaign of hatred towards a fine
poet and thinker, a man who ‘created his own thunderstorm’ at a time when the
average dullard took what was written in the newspapers as truthful and beyond
reproach. It is entertaining to dissect Crowley psychologically and to unravel
the myth but one must absorb his literary and magical works to understand him
and form an unbiased opinion and not get caught up in the infernal nonsense the
press has written about him, as Stephensen, a competent and knowledgeable
author, writes, ‘intelligent people will form a truer estimate of the case
concerning an English man of letters whose literary achievement is undeniable,
whatever else may be said or rumoured’. (p. 157)
Between Two Worlds –
by John Middleton Murry.
This intriguing
autobiography published in 1935 by the writer and critic, John Middleton Murry
(1889-1957) has some fascinating glimpses into the literary world of the Bloomsbury fringes that the author encountered and there
is a deep understanding of Murry through his own self-analysis. Born in
Peckham, his father was an ambitious civil servant and his mother was a pretty
dreamer whose dreams were not fulfilled, young Murry, precocious and pedantic,
a ‘timid little boy who could not sleep without a knotted towel for company’,
detested the poverty he was born into and all forms of ugliness; showing a
capacity for learning he was awarded a scholarship in 1901 to Christ’s Hospital
and with his intellectual growth he acquired the usual snobbish sentiments as
the gulf between his parents and the class he was raised in widened, as he says
himself he was ‘part snob, part coward, part sentimentalist – all these
elements were in me’ (p. 80). He wins a scholarship to Brasenose College,
Oxford and in 1910 travels to Paris where the naïve and virginal Murry first
enjoys the delights of sexual intercourse with a ‘petite femme’ he falls in
love with named Marguerite; when Murry returns to England they correspond for a
while and the love seems to deepen but when it comes to meeting Marguerite
again the coward in him comes to the fore and without a word he turns his back
on her – coward! He treated her appallingly and in his own words he sums up
that he sacrificed love because he was afraid of being ‘dragged back to’ his
‘old level of existence’. The weak-willed young scholar who never sought out
‘experiences’ but shimmered through existence letting encounters and experiences
happen to him seems to fall into literature and edits a magazine which he calls
‘Rhythm’ in the autumn of 1911 and through frequenting Dan Rider’s bookshop off
St. Martin’s Lane he meets that preposterous poseur whom many a young fool
hero-worshipped, Frank Harris (1856-1931); he also met a friend of Harris’s, a
young Oxford man, biographer, novelist, critic and editor of ‘Isis’ magazine,
Hugh Kingsmill (1889-1949), but upon meeting Harris there was the admiration
and respect towards the ‘generous’ older man of letters, but it wasn’t long
before Murry discovered Harris to be a plagiarist and he felt let down by him
although he said nothing of his discovery. During this time Murry was still in
love with Marguerite and saw himself somewhat like that other doomed author and
social outcast, Richard Middleton who committed suicide in Brussels because of
a ‘devouring love’; Murry, in a state of depression, to rid himself of the
memory of Marguerite did what any young, self-respecting undergraduate did at
the time and that was to seek out a prostitute and so he does and so he brings
back gonorrhoea as a reward and a new memory to cherish. But it is through this
degradation and self-loathing that the resurrection or liberation from the
memory of Marguerite (or more probably the guilt from the cowardly act of
leaving her with no word) begins, from the soul to the body, like an exorcism.
Soon after this at the end of 1911 he is corresponding with the New Zealand
born author, Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) having been impressed with her
stories. Murry, the coward who is ‘terrified of life’, begins to hate Oxford, which
seems ‘unreal’, seeing no future career for himself and after asking
Mansfield’s opinion as to whether to stay or not, she suggests he leave and so
he does. He lodges with Mansfield
and takes on some review writing for The Westminster Gazette and admits that he
drifted into literature to ‘avoid other occupations’ but he cannot avoid the
poverty he is once again plunged into. This seems to be a recurring theme
throughout his life, or at least the early part which this book is concerned
with, his love for Katherine which was filled with anguish and periods of
separation, their inability to settle anywhere for long, moving from one place
to another and Murry’s opinion that he was inhuman and without a sense of
belonging, the daemon which continually haunted his steps. Murry and Mansfield became
acquainted with the artist Henri Gaudier (1891-1915) and his Polish born,
author ‘wife’, Sophia Brzeska (1872-1925) and the couples seemed inseparable in
mind and body and they had plans to live together. Murry and Mansfield found a
house and decorated it; Gaudier, travelled there deciding to surprise them but
was shaken when he overheard Murry and Mansfield at an open window discussing he
and Sophie’s coming to the house and how it would spoil things and so upon
sending a telegram saying Sophie could move into the house they were dismayed
at the rebuff and eventually learnt the reason why; the friendship soured
beyond the point of repair and the hostility began towards Murry, even
threatening to kill him which Murry believed Gaudier capable of. The strain of
avoiding Gaudier’s threats were telling on Murry yet he could not be avoided
for ever and one day in May 1913, Gaudier bursts into Murry’s office (living
space) in Chancery Lane and confronts him, demanding money for drawings of his
which were published in ‘Rhythm’, even striking him. It appears that Murry
considered Gaudier’s friendship too intimate for a man towards another man,
something which would re-occur in the strange connection Murry and Mansfield
had with D. H. Lawrence and Frieda, the portrait he paints of Lawrence, one
minute worshipping Frieda and the next minute threatening to kill her is quite
disturbing and Lawrence to me seems quite insufferable as a person, as does
Murry for they each portray different aspects of male love and aggression,
Lawrence, a very physical man wants a relationship with Murry which is a firm,
manly bond almost in the ritualistic sense, he is wanting a token of their
‘togetherness’ which could be seen as a sexual act in the purely masculine,
something we gather from the wrestling scene in ‘Women in Love’ (1921) between
Rupert Birkin (Lawrence) and Gerald Crich (Murry) which is based on the
relationship between Lawrence and Murry, (Murry was decidedly not impressed) and
it is this notion of ‘connection’ which scares Murry to the point of abandoning
Lawrence and placing a barrier between them, once again the coward comes to the
surface. Murray and Lawrence frequently argued and disagreed on matters of
psychological differences and Murry’s belief in the importance and influence of
the writings of Dostoevsky (see his ‘Fyodor Dostoevsky: A Critical Study’.
1916) which opened Murry up to the possibilities of self analysis; Lawrence blamed
Oxford for Murry betraying his class, after all he was uprooted from one class
and prepared for another until he was not accepted in either and in doing so
became distant with his own family too. Despite all his cowardly actions and
snobbish mannerisms I was drawn to Murry and even felt some sort of parallel
with my own life, for I am equally ‘inhuman’ and prone to the same ‘snobbish’
abhorrence of ugliness and cowardly interpretations, as perhaps most of us are
when the façade of pretence is laid bare. When Katherine has her divorce from
her first husband Murry and Katherine marry on 3rd May 1918 at the Kensington
Registry office and although there is a deep love between them it seems the
love is deepest when they are not living together and writing to each other
about their need for the other. Katherine has a long illness before she died of
tuberculosis in France,
aged 34 in 1923 and the book, after thirty-two chapters (500 pages) just seems
to fade out of existence, like another long illness and like Murry it too has
walked between two worlds.
Roses, Pearls and
Tears – by Raymond Heywood.
This collection of
poetry published (by Erskine Macdonald) in 1918 by Lieutenant Raymond Heywood
of the Devonshire Regiment is dedicated to ‘the women of the Empire and those
of their splendid men who have fallen and to all who have known the discipline
of Pain and Sorrow’. Heywood, a deeply sentimental soldier-poet who composed
his poems while serving in France and in the East, and who devoted half the
proceeds from the book to help the women left by the men from his company who
fell, asks: ‘Oh, that it were within my power to stay the hand / of pain and
death – the bitter waste of years; / but what is time and life? – when in God’s
better land / love lies beyond our Roses, Pearls, and Tears.’ There are some
fine poems in the volume, many of which reflect upon the author’s love for
Devon: ‘I think that when the roses blow / down Devon way I’ll go again / to
some dear, quiet place I know, / and hear the blackbird’s sweet refrain: /
there, when the western shadows fall / around my world at close of day, / my
heart will understand it all, / and find sweet peace down Devon way.’ (‘Down
Devon Way’) and poems that speak of the horror of war such as ‘Eventide at
Ypres’: ‘A solemn stillness fills the air, / the shadows long and longer grow;
/ broad sunbeams lie across the square, / where soldiers come and go; / round
ruined tower stray swallows glide / and slowly, slowly sinks the sun / at Ypres
– when the day is done. / no more the shattered trees resound / with song of
many a happy bird; / but far beyond the fire-swept ground / the crashing guns
are heard! / and yet sometimes like whispers sighed / soft breezes through
those tree-tops run / at Ypres – when the day
is done.’ Many of the poems show a tender manliness towards his fellow soldiers
– ‘a little cross, / to compensate my loss; / crushed are the roses’ petals,
crimson red, / time does not matter now. My boy is dead.’ (‘Son’) and a
homoerotic devotion towards his ‘Tommy lads’ who have had their ‘sweetness
pressed from youth and love and life’: ‘To-day my hero-lover went away; / it
was so hard to part; / I stand alone – the hours / are sad and long, - the
flowers / are drooping, like my heart. / To-day my hero-lover went away. /
To-day my hero-lover went away, / he looked so strong, and now / he’ll tread
the soil that’s red / with life-blood of God’s dead. / He kissed me on the brow
- / my hero-lover when he went away.’ (‘A Prayer’) and again in ‘A Man’s Man’ –
‘he was a man… I linger where his cross / shines white among the shadows, and I
know / my very soul is strengthened by my loss. / My comrade still in death – I
loved him so.’ It seems difficult to associate Heywood the poet and Heywood the soldier when he writes such beautiful and tender verse as 'Rose Leaves' -
'I did not know so soon would end the day
In which the roses bloomed - scarce had they found
The sun's caresses, when they died away,
And shed their withered petals on the ground.
I did not know that when you had to go,
The sunshine with the roses would depart -
But you'll come back to me one day, and so
I'll keep the rose-leaves fragrant in my heart.'
Heywood is an accomplished minor poet who in my opinion deserves
better recognition, but there is a mystery surrounding the poet for I have
researched the Army archives and not found a Lieutenant Raymond Heywood serving
with the Devonshire Regiment; we know that he fought in France (poems are
listed as written at Neuve Chapelle (‘A Soldier Sleeping’, 12th
March 1915) and Givenchy (‘Reverie [in my dugout]’, Autumn 1915); also ‘To a
Robin (in Flanders)’ and ‘By Sanctuary Woods’ Ypres) and he was sent to
Macedonia, Salonika and was at Doiran (see poem ‘The Discipline of Sorrow’ by
Lake Doiran, Serbia 1917) and with that in mind it is probable that he served
with the 10th Service battalion of the Devonshire Regiment and that
‘Raymond Heywood’ is a pseudonym. He did survive the Great War and in 1919
published his second and final volume of poetry, ‘The Greater Love: Poems of
Remembrance’ (Elkin Mathews). He should be better known as a poet and sit
amongst the ranks of other soldier poets such as Owen and Sassoon and not
forgotten and perhaps one day his true story can be told!
The Roof Climbers
Guide to Trinity – by Geoffrey Winthrop Young.
I have had this small
volume on my reading list for two decades and finally got round to reading it.
Published in 1899, the author, poet and mountaineer, Geoffrey Winthrop Young
(1876-1958) writes rather wonderfully on the technical skills involved and the various
climbing routes of Trinity College, Cambridge, one of the most beautiful of the
‘College Alps’. There is something particularly romantic concerning the art and
sport of night climbing, the nocturnal meanderings around the college turrets,
towers and rooftops, the midnight expeditions avoiding the proctors and
prowling porters; the silent figures (climbers usually climb in pairs) in the
shadows like phantoms clinging to drainpipe and gutter, to pillar and parapet,
battlement and balustrade, making an ascent upon ‘staircase peak’ or the ‘Great
Library chimney’. Young takes us through ‘New Court’, ‘Nevile’s Court’ with its
Hall and Reading Room and the chimneys, ‘Castor’ and ‘Pollux’; ‘I Court’,
‘Great Court’, the Chapel and the Library and of course the Great Gate, which
was conquered in 1927, the ‘last great peak of the range to fall’, and one
really gets a sense of the outlaw undergraduate, the twilight Byronic climber,
the unsung hero making the summit – many of the dons turned a blind eye to the
practice (some even climbed themselves) and oftentimes the police overlooked
the climbers’ gentle art. Prior to the Second World War, another volume which I
enjoyed and can recommend for enthusiasts of the art was published in 1937 –
‘The Night Climbers of Cambridge’ by ‘Whipplesnaith’, pseudonym of Noel Howard
Symington (1913-1970) which contains some splendid photographs of the young
‘villains’ on such climbs as the ‘Old Library Traverse’ and the ‘O’Hara
Pinnacle’ also known as ‘Tottering Tower’; the reader clambers with the author
over St John’s, Pembroke, Trinity, Kings and Clare and the Bridge of Sighs,
first traversed in 1923 or 24; there’s even the great escape from the roof of
Marks & Spencer! Following the popularity of The Roof Climbers Guide to
Trinity, Young published his ‘Wall and Roof Climbing’ from Eton College in 1905
which is rather a dull affair on the history of such things as ‘rock versus
roof’ and ‘mountain versus wall’; in fact, the only thing I found of interest
(and I’m a peculiar sort of chap) was his piece on ‘Interior Climbing’
(doorway, window, chair, table, sofa, mantelpiece, staircase, passages etc.);
his volume of reminiscences, ‘The Grace of Forgetting’ (1953) has some
delightful descriptions of halcyon days
spent boating, canoeing and punting on the Thames before the world descended
into war and his time at Ypres and the Italian Front, but it is with the danger
and beauty of the night climb that the reader will think of Young and the
majestic pinnacles of the colleges. It makes me wonder if today’s
undergraduates experience the pleasure of ‘Wet Bobs Traverse’ or the ‘Kitchen
Plateau’, I do hope so!
Flannelled Fool: A
Slice of Life in the Thirties – by T. C. Worsley.
This absolutely
perfect volume of autobiography published in 1967 (I read the 1985 edition) by
the schoolmaster and critic, Thomas Cuthbert Worsley (1907-1977) is a
delightful account of the author’s early years as the son of the eccentric Dean
of Llandaff, a man who ‘disliked and distrusted the Welsh’ and whose life reads
like a series of Pickwickian misadventures; of Cuthbert’s time at Cambridge
where ‘the years had slipped by under the shadow of a wasteful attachment to a
friend’; his complete and utter ignorance of sex, knowing nothing of
masturbation at the age of nineteen; his own sexual awakenings during his time
as a schoolmaster; the death of his younger brother ‘Bengy’ and his time at
Gordonstoun school at the invitation of its founder, Kurt Hahn (1886-1974)
where they ending up throwing books at each others’ heads! Born in Durham in
1907, Cuthbert was the fourth of five children born to Frederick William
Worsley (1873-1956) and Catherine Ethel Payne (1874-1956) who were married in 1901;
his father, Frederick, D.D. (Durham University), M.A. (Cambridge) a man who
thought his children were just a distraction and didn’t even bother to visit
Cuthbert at Marlborough College where he was ‘always cold and usually hungry’
for the first four years (although he did write once a year on his birthday) is
a peculiar sort of man, easily bored by achievements whose ‘remoteness seemed
part of his superiority’. At Cambridge (St John’s College)
Cuthbert could ‘pride myself after two years at University that I had never
opened a book, apart from the set of books for the Classical Tripos: and even
these were shamefully neglected’. (p. 41) His father, Canon Worsley who had
spent most of his time playing golf, billiards and drawing nude women, anything
to distract from clerical duties, became Dean of Llandaff. At home, Canon
Worsley and his wife had been estranged for several years, they did not speak
to each other and the notion of ‘family’ was just pretence. One day, after a
silent dinner, the Dean announced – ‘I am leaving here tomorrow. You can all
find yourselves somewhere else to live.’ (p. 56) The next day he left without a
word. Later we learn, as did Cuthbert himself, that his father came from a long
line of country baronets; Canon Worsley’s brother, Frank, won the ‘Sword of
Honour’ and ‘seduced his Colonel’s daughter’ before being wounded and decorated
in the Great War, marrying his nurse from the hospital and giving her a
daughter, all before discharging himself from hospital, abandoning them and going
into permanent hiding which seems a common trait of the Worsley men! The Canon
himself, Frederick, was born in Singapore, educated at Brighton College, worked
in a bank where there was an ‘incident with the till’, tried to enter the
acting profession before deciding to study at London University, take Holy
Orders. Not long after his marriage to Catherine in 1901, the ‘first signs of
the fatal pattern began to show’, he was ‘bored by his success; he was unhappy
as a mere curate.’ He took a ‘living’ in Lincolnshire, a gift from a cousin and
spent all his time shooting and fishing; when the first child ‘John’ (actually
Francis Frederick Worsley) was born in 1902, the proud mother, Catherine, was
shocked to find her husband, the ‘future Dean in what they call a compromising
position with the nursery maid’. (p. 141) A ‘bastard son’ was born to the maid
and to prevent scandal she was paid off and dismissed. Wanting to better
himself, the family spent two years in Durham
while Reverend Worsley studied for his Doctorate – it was at Durham that Cuthbert was born on 10th December 1907.
Still unhappy, Frederick
wanted an ‘Oxbridge’ education so spent two years at Cambridge – it was at Cambridge in 1912 that the fifth and last
child was born: ‘Bengy’ (Richard Geoffrey Worsley). Frederick becomes Assistant Warden at the Theological College in Llandaff before he surprised
the family and took off to war as an Army Chaplain in France and Italy. At the
end of the war he was reluctant to hurry back to the family – there was a
‘little widow woman in Genoa’
who kept him busy. She even came to England and set up a house in London to
which the Warden retreated much too often until he was given an ultimatum and
had to remove her from his life; it was this which caused the great rift
between Frederick and Catherine Worsley and they hardly spoke a civil word
between them for eleven years after until Warden Worsley was made Dean – ‘now
there came into the picture a little masseuse from Tonypandy’ whom he took to
resorts – why did Catherine put up with this disgraceful behaviour? The end was
surely in sight, and so it was, the Dean was forced to resign on ‘ill health’
and as mentioned, walked out of the family home, the official residence of the
Dean. For Cuthbert, who
admits to being a ‘social, intellectual and athletic’ snob’ cricket and other
games supplied a ‘pretence of virility’, but in fact he was hiding his
‘repression of sexual potency. The excessive value placed on the athlete made
my ignorance acceptable both to myself and others. It enabled me to escape
noticing what in fact was missing. The generalised homo-eroticism which I
discovered in the rituals of the playing fields satisfied my inclinations
enough to keep them “pure”.’ (p. 89) Another factor, which
probably played a major part in the Dean’s decision to break-up the family and
in Cuthbert’s development, was the death of the youngest son, Bengy, who had
won a scholarship to St Edward’s College, Oxford,
by drowning. It occurred one Sunday in July 1928 while Cuthbert and ‘Bengy’,
both non-swimmers, were in the sea bathing at Dunraven Bay,
Southerndown, Glamorgan. Suddenly, they were swept out of their depth and in
the struggle for life, which mother witnessed from the beach, Cuthbert managed
to make it to the shore while fifteen year old Bengy was brought back from the
waves dead. Cuthbert had to telephone his father, the Dean – ‘”You bloody fool,
you!” was his comment.’ (p. 110) Cuthbert goes on to say that ‘however gentle
everyone was with me, I had the facts to face. I was alive and he was dead. He,
the specially beloved of them all, the little genius, the most precious of any
of us, hadn’t survived. I had. And how could I forget that in the final climax
of that deadly crisis, I had cast him off? I had torn myself free. If I hadn’t,
there would, of course, have been two deaths instead of one. True. But I had, I
had actually, physically, deliberately, wilfully torn his clutching hands away
from my thighs.’ (p. 111) When Cuthbert left Cambridge he was at a loss as to
his future prospects and so he fell into what all apathetic undergraduates fall
into – teaching; he became an assistant master at Wellington College (simply
known as ‘College’ in the book) and having failed to keep control of the
History class had to resort to the administering of a ‘beating’ with the cane;
five trouble-makers were ‘massacred’ in this way and the discipline problem was
solved! ‘Cuthie’ reveals some frank sexual feelings and activities such as his
first memorable erection as a schoolboy at Brightlands School
when he was in Mr. Donavon’s side-car with his chosen ‘little friend’ on his
knee, or his ten days in Munich with a boy named Heinz who showed him what to
do with his erection, or his seduction of Mr. Leith, one of the masters at
Wellington, all rather quaint now but in the thirties really quite dangerous
behaviour (though not uncommon). There’s the usual disagreements and fights
between the younger, more ‘left-wing’ members of staff, and the unmovable,
traditional, ‘old-guard’, masters such as ‘Talboys’ (Rollo St. Clare Tallboys,
1877-1953) and ‘Hoffman, the Hun’, differences which figure prominently among
schoolmasters and the Headmaster, Malim (Frederick Blagden Malim who was Master
from 1921-37) who walks a line between the two factions. Later, we hear that
his father, four years after walking out on the family is asking for £500 or he
will be in jail – apparently he tried to set himself up as an Estate Agent in
Portsmouth and his partner went off with the deposits – the money was sent to
him, ‘twice’; eventually he was ‘pensioned off’ if he ‘promised to stay put in
Bath and not attempt any more business ventures’. (p. 138-9) And here he
remained, taking up bowls (during the war he became a clerk in the Admiralty
Administrative Branch, in Bath, and some years after the war ‘died at his desk’,
aged 82. Cuthbert, like his father, feels the boredom of his profession and
wants adventure and time to write (he had several poems and articles published
in various periodicals and papers), and so, aged 26 and feeling alone, he left
‘College’ and became a private tutor. With the beginnings of a novel he
eventually abandons, he is enticed to Gordonstoun school for a term by its
Headmaster (and founder in 1934), Kurt Hahn to give a report on conditions and
teaching practices there while working on his novel and playing a little
cricket which sounds idyllic – the report is not favourable to Hahn and the
comic scene of the books being thrown at each other ensues. The novel is
discarded and through his friendship with the poet Stephen Spender he goes to
Spain and during the Civil War woks as part of an ambulance unit; in the second
World War he joins the RAF and finds it all ‘drill and bull’ before suffering a
nervous breakdown and being discharged until he finds his place among the staff
of the New Statesman. This is such a charming and rewarding volume of
autobiography that it leaves trails of faint joy in the mind which remains,
eternal. Cuthbert wrote several works under the name T. C. Worsley, such as
‘Behind the Battle’ (1939), ‘The Fugitive Art: Dramatic Commentaries 1947-1951’
(1952), ‘Television: The Ephemeral Art’ (1970) and ‘Fellow Travellers’ (1971).
He became ill with emphysema in 1964 and had to retire due to ill health in
1972; in increasing pain, he took an overdose at his home in Brighton
on 23rd February 1977.
Ronald Firbank – by
Jocelyn Brooke.
Published in 1951,
this biography of the innovative and sensitive novelist Ronald Firbank by the
author, Jocelyn Brooke (1908-1966) is a fascinating and enjoyable read. Arthur
Annesley Ronald Firbank was born in London in January 1886, the son of Sir
Thomas Firbank M.P., Ronald, as he became known, is a rather vague and
mysterious figure who seemed to create his own legend; a shy and reserved man
with a mother fixation who became a striking, rather eccentric character in
literary circles. As a sickly child, he was spoilt endlessly by his mother and
accustomed to the luxuries life had to offer. In 1906 he went up to Trinity
College, Cambridge, instead of the more aesthetically enlightened Oxford,
having already published his ‘Odette’, he became quickly sought out and talked
about by literary-minded undergraduates, yet he seems to have done little at
Cambridge, except host decadently lavish parties in his splendidly furnished
rooms, in fact, his ‘time there was a pleasant interlude, nothing more.’ (p.
31) He was up at Cambridge during the time Oscar Wilde’s son, Vyvyan Holland (1886-1967)
was there in the Michaelmas term of 1906 and they became close friends; Vyvyan
recalls his friendship with Ronald in his excellent volume, ‘Son of Oscar
Wilde’ (1954) where he says that ‘he was quite unfitted for playing any games,
and I do not think he ever did much work. I never knew what he read, but he
must have read something or he would not have been allowed to stay up.’ He goes
on to say that ‘Ronald Firbank and I came down together in June, 1909. During
the whole of his time at Cambridge,
Ronald not only never passed an examination, but never sat for one,’ He became
a Roman Catholic convert in 1907 and was received the following year. He left
Cambridge in June 1909 without a degree and with no future plans he seemed
destined for the diplomatic service according to his father’s wishes, but Sir
Thomas died in 1910, a ‘blessing in not a very deep disguise.’ (p. 37) Ronald’s
tall, slender, stooping figure and frivolous behaviour became well-known
amongst the aesthetes and other habitués of the Café Royal, clinging to fin de
siecle traditions; he was extremely shy and awkward, a neurotic aloof introvert
and he was vain also, ‘staining his finger nails with carmine’ and endlessly
dieting – he would sustain himself on ‘peaches and Champagne, varied
occasionally by a caviar sandwich.’ (p. 42); he overly indulged in alcohol and
drugs and found it tedious to settle down – Paris was his spiritual home. In 1911 he
travelled to Egypt
and became interested in Egyptology – ‘It is said, too, that at about this time
he became deeply interested in magic, under the influence of Aleister Crowley.’
(p. 38). Grant Richards, in his excellent ‘Author Hunting’ of 1960, describes
Firbank as ‘the most nervous man I had dealings with and in some ways he was
both cunning and suspicious’, a man who had ‘dealings with wizards,
crystal-gazers, astrologers and soothsayers’. At the outbreak of war in 1914,
he retired to Oxford and spent his time writing his early novels: ‘Vainglory’
(1915), ‘Inclinations’ (1916) and ‘Caprice’ (1917) before returning to London;
his novel ‘Valmouth’ appeared in 1919, and his works show the breezy, gossipy
dialogue and innovative narrative for which he became known for as an author.
His mother, Lady Harriet Firbank died in 1924 and Ronald’s health began to
break down. His last novel was the wonderful ‘Concerning the Eccentricities of
Cardinal Pirelli’ published posthumously in 1926; a tragedy set in Spain,
written in a series of scenes reminiscent of that other Catholic eccentric,
Frederick Rolfe, which opens with the christening of a dog at the Cathedral and
leads, through rather bawdy and unorthodox practices to the final scene, which
reflects Bloxam’s ‘The Priest and the Acolyte’ of 1894, where the satyr-like
Cardinal, naked, ‘nude and elementary now as Adam himself’, except for his
Mitre, is in pursuit of Chicklet, the choirboy, who had been chasing mice in
the Cathedral, missed the responses and failed to attend to the Cardinal. He is
subsequently locked in the Cathedral, alone with the mice. Feeling remorse,
Pirelli goes to free the boy who is ‘witching as Eros, in his loose-flowing,
alb’ and mad with desire and lust, Pirelli chases Chicklet through the dark
aisles of the Basilica, like a ‘dance of death’; the ghostly shadows haunting like some gothic, Anne Radcliffe-inspired
‘Udolpho’; unable to grasp the boy, the Cardinal falls lifeless to the floor. In
ill health, Ronald moved between Rome, Egypt, Paris and London and he died in
Rome on 21st March 1926, aged 40, and like some farcical episode in
one of his delightful novels, having been mistakenly buried in the Protestant
cemetery he was removed and interred in the Catholic cemetery: his life and
work seemed inseparable and distinctive to the end. His enduring appeal has
produced several biographies, all of which I enjoyed and can recommend, from
the excellent biography by Miriam Benkovitz (1970) who also wrote the Frederick
Rolfe (Baron Corvo) volume in 1977 and the Firbank Bibliography (1963); the
rather uninspired James Douglas Merritt’s offering of 1969 and the rambling
1973 volume by Brigid Brophy, ‘Prancing Novelist: a Defence of Fiction in the
Form of a Critical Biography in Praise of Ronald Firbank’, all are worthy, but
I found Brooke and Benkovitz more interesting!
Married to a Single
Life: An Autobiography 1901-1938 – by Wilfrid Blunt.
Wilfrid Jasper Walter
Blunt (1901-1987), artist, botanical illustrator, and man of many interests,
was born in Surrey, the son of the Reverend Arthur Stanley Vaughan Blunt and
Hilda Violet Master and brother of the more familiar, Anthony Frederick Blunt
(1907-1983), the art historian and Russian spy. In this 1983 publication,
Wilfrid speaks quite frankly about his life in the teaching profession and his
sexuality throughout eleven delightful chapters which begin with his arrival or
‘invention’ for he says he was ‘invented, along with the vacuum cleaner and the
Dorothy Perkins rambler, in the year 1901.’ The family move to Bournemouth in
1906 which is where his love of flowers begins and along with his brother,
Christopher Evelyn Blunt (1904-1987) he enjoys collecting butterflies, which
they called ‘bugs’ – one amusing fragment concerns his brother, Christopher,
who is showing the Bishop of Winchester his specimens and casually asks, ‘I
say, Bishop, are you a bugger too?’ (p. 16). Another interest, astronomy, is
ignited at his prep school, Hazelhurst in 1912 while his family are living in Paris. Wilfred then
attends Marlborough
College with its brutal
conditions and prison-like atmosphere where barbaric rituals are the order of
the day – if you wish to know the delights of the game called ‘bum-shaving’ or
the joys of ‘hot-potting’ (p. 60-61) then this is a book for you! He left
Marlborough in 1920 and won a scholarship to Worcester College, Oxford in
October of that year as an open mathematical exhibitioner and it was here that
he fell in love for the first time (Wilfrid is a late developer, sexually),
with his friend, Rupert Goodall – for a similar view of Marlborough at this
time and its tender flirtations see T. C. Worsley’s marvellous autobiographical
volume ‘Flannelled Fool’ (1967). Blunt studies at the Royal College of Art and
becomes the art master at Haileybury College from 1923-1938 under the
Headmaster, John ‘Bottie’ Talbot and finds himself in love once more with a boy
at the College, Stephen Haggard, who went on to become a talented young actor;
Wilfrid confesses his love for Stephen and the latter is shocked and although
they remained friends the love was never reciprocated – Stephen died in
February 1943 at the age of 32. In 1938 Wilfrid became the art master at Eton
which he touches upon in this fist volume of autobiography (he remained there
until 1959) with its Common Room flutters of romance and outrages from the
traditionalists at notions of change; it is at Eton that Blunt finds an
interest in pottery which is soon overshadowed by a fascination for singing in
which he almost obsessively begins to train and develop his vocal range – like
the butterflies his brother collected, Wilfrid seems to flit from one interest
to another, yet, he is always drawn to teaching. A further volume of
autobiography, ‘Slow on the Feather’ published in 1986 looks at his Eton years
(1938-1959) and one wonders whether a third volume was intended from 1959-1983
where he was the curator of Watt’s Gallery in Guildford, Surrey. Blunt died in Guildford in 1987 and ‘Married to a Single Life’, with
its abundance of photographic illustrations, is an absolutely enjoyable read!
The Story of the Catholic
Church – by Cuthbert Wright.
Cuthbert Wright
(1899-1948), a fine poet who has appeared in ‘Eight Harvard Poets’ (1917) takes
us on a breezy jaunt through history in this 1926 publication which tells the
story of the development of the Catholic Church. Of course it begins at the
beginning with the story of Jesus, an ‘obscure Syrian peasant’ and goes on to
recall the Saints and martyrs, those instigators, or should one say
perpetrators, of Christianity, such as the very ‘human’ Saint Augustin and his
confessions – ‘O God make me chaste, but not yet’ which seems to suggest the
whole of the Catholic Church’s attitude to sex and celibacy in one sentence; in
fact, there has always been an element of sensuality and seduction involved
with the Church, whether spiritual or physical – ‘Religion is another Eros
which allures and never satisfies.’ (p. 83) There are some delightful nuggets
too: the heretic Arius died in a latrine, don’t you know! But Catholicism is a
serious business and the Dark Ages are filled with ascetics, hermits and
solitaries (monasticism) before Saint Benedict (480-543) gave us the notion of
the cloistered sanctuary (Carthusians, Cluniacs and Cistercians) and then we
arrive at the pilgrimages and crusades into the Holy Land, the first in 1095 in
which several hundred Jews and Arabs are slaughtered and thus begins a pattern
throughout history for killing in the name of God; there are other crusades,
failures and fiascos which define the Middle Ages before we come to the
interesting ‘feudal’ period of Papal celibacy in which married priests are
excommunicated or even killed; in England, Henry II finds Church Law too
lenient and so makes his friend, deacon Thomas a Becket, Arch Bishop of
Canterbury believing that Becket is mine, therefore the Church is mine also!
But Becket took his duties seriously and as Primate of the English Church
refused to sign the King’s ‘Clarendon Articles’ (constitutions limiting Rome’s grip on the English Church) which would have given England
independence from the Catholic Church and an allegiance to the Church of God. In 1164 the king ordered that
Becket be arrested yet the nimble Archbishop, following the Convocation at Northampton (a feast for
the poor of the city), flees to the continent. He returns to England six
years later, arriving at Canterbury
where the ‘pestilent priest’ excommunicates the English Bishops. Four knights
knowing of the King’s rage against Becket, travel from Normandy and on the day
following Christmas, the eve of the Holy Innocents 1170, Becket is in the
sanctuary of the Cathedral when the four knights rush the nave and strike him,
dashing his brains out, the violation of the Church causes outrage and
eventually makes Becket the martyr, Saint Thomas of Canterbury. Wright sails us
through the conversion of Saint Francis, the abiding to poverty and chastity,
the redemption and restoration which led to the revolt of feudalism between the
serfs and the barons before he guides us through the turbulent waters of Rome
and the Renaissance and how art and the church embrace one another, from the
Romanesque to the birth of Gothic in 13th century England and France
and into the crashing waves of 16th century England and King Henry
VIII with his application to Pope Clement VII for divorce which the Pope delays
over which results in Henry’s Act of Supremacy in 1534 making the King not the
Pope the Head of the Church of England (the Church remained, like Henry,
Catholic); Protestant sympathies creep in with Archbishop Cranmer under King
Edward and thus begins the destruction of the monasteries – Queen Mary, who is
very Catholic (high church, ritualistic) has three-hundred Protestants burnt,
including Cranmer until a new English renaissance begins under Catholic Queen
Elizabeth whereby Protestants are tolerated until rival Queen Mary Stuart
persecutes the Roman Catholics. Wright introduces the birth of Baroque art and
Michelangelo before the joys of the
Inquisition under Phillip II of Spain – Mary Stuart is executed and her legacy
leaves the ‘crown’ to Phillip who in turn plans the invasion of England to
restore the Catholic faith; his Armada is defeated in the Channel in 1588. From
the French Revolution we enter upon the modern age of Romanticism, with the
Oxford Movement of Newman, Pusey and Keble and the Catholic theory and
philosophy continues with Cardinal Manning, Huxley and Matthew Arnold before
the horrors of the First World War of 1914. When laid out meticulously before
one it is not difficult to see how ludicrous the Catholic Church is but also
how hypnotically powerful defined by its papal wealth and intrinsic religious
hold of history, its vestments draw one in to the ritualistic devotion of
Christ and the Saints. A number of artists and writers have turned towards Rome and the Liturgy in
the past and no doubt will continue to do so. I can understand the appeal from
a romantic standpoint, the lure of the sensual ceremony of the mass, but I am
also drawn to the equally rich, pagan, satanic rituals of the occult with their
obscene and cruel deities, both have their poetic beauty. The history of the
Catholic Church is a long one which continues to grow and develop, slowly into
a new century and like the centuries before it strives to stir the spirit of
the faithful and define its relevance to our daily lives. Wright has written an
objective and perceptive account of the origins of the Catholic Church and
shows a deep understanding of the fabric of worship where faith is our only
strength, in the Catholic sense, faith in prayer and faith in the authenticity
of the Gospels for the ‘basic axiom of all religion is faith, and nothing but
faith.’ (p. 288)
Prompting the Age:
Poems Early and Late – by A. L. Rowse.
I have read many works
by the poet and Tudor historian, Alfred Leslie Rowse (1903-1997), from his
autobiography ‘A Cornish Childhood’ (1942), and his ‘Strange Encounter’ (1972),
‘Homosexuality in History’ (1977) and ‘The Road to Oxford’ (1978) to his
‘Collected Poems’ (1981) and I find him strangely compelling – I recently read
the superb biography about Rowse: ‘A Man of Contradiction: A Life of A. L.
Rowse’ by Richard Lawrence Ollard (2000) which is a must read for enthusiasts
of Rowse the scholar and poet. ‘Prompting the Age’, published in 1990 and
dedicated to Harold Acton is a collection of 75 poems which lies somewhat
between the Auden and the Betjeman in their feel. Rowse says that his poetry
expresses the ‘private side of my life, where all the history I was writing, by
which I earned my living, represented the public side.’ Rowse is an observer of
humanity, with little sympathy for them – ‘it is fitting that the weak in
general / should go to the wall.’ (‘Humans’) The sexual undercurrents are
definitely detectable with ‘shy sexy talk’ and ‘phallic cigarettes’ and the act
itself is often suggested unflinchingly in such poems as ‘Crickhowel’ where
‘lascivious lovers, hide behind the trees,’ and ‘the sight of lovers, to accost
the eyes. / each cosy nook of coast is not without / its couple about to
copulate.’ It is disturbing to think that just before the wild abandon of penetration
during the delights of al fresco sex some idle ‘passer by’ poet is watching your
sweet tremors of ejaculation from some seclusion in great detail – be warned
fellow enthusiasts of external passions! In ‘Voices’ we hear the ‘veritable
voice of love’ and in ‘Monmouthshire Bus’ we tremble at the sight where ‘Summer
sighs out / its heart in loaded boughs of sycamore’, a sight which surely
explodes upon the senses like those copulating couples. Rowse’s poetry has an
amusing and earthy quality which is sometimes unexpected; in ‘Sunday Evening at
Stratford’ he
reflects on how ‘men go to wives – the expectant ritual of marriage bed. / the
diurnal routine of vapid lives: / would it not be better to be dead?’ Perhaps,
for there is always the possibility that one’s spirit shall remain as long as
it ‘does not poke his nose in jug / like an ill-mannered pup or pug, / confines
himself to sniffing roses’ (‘The Spirit of the House’) – what an elegant way to
spend the afterlife – sniffing roses (and spying on copulating couples, no
doubt!)
Chasing Lost Time: The
Life of C. K. Scott Moncrieff: Soldier, Spy and Translator – by Jean Findlay.
Jean Findlay, the
great, great niece of Scott Moncrieff, has written such an evocative account of
the poet and translator’s life, that one feels the long wait for a biography
has been almost worth it. And so it has, for Findlay draws extensively on
unpublished letters in this 2014 publication and slowly shapes the man who
would famously translate Proust and show his two characteristics, that of the
purely masculine, the heroic soldier of the Great War, and that of the private,
feminine aesthete who was comfortable with his own sexuality. Charles Kenneth
Scott Moncrieff, born in Scotland
in1889, the son of William George Scott Moncrieff (1846-1927) and Jessie
Margaret Scott Moncrieff (1858-1936), was educated at Winchester College
on a scholarship in 1903. Four years later in 1907, he met Wilde’s literary
executor, Robert Baldwin Ross (1869-1918) who often held literary salons at his
house, 40 Half Moon Street, Mayfair, (see the excellent and perceptive 1990
biography, ‘Wilde’s Devoted Friend: A Life of Robert Ross’ by Maureen Borland
which I heartily recommend); Robert, who appears to be a most faithful and
diligent friend, introduced Charles to his private secretary and fellow Wilde
enthusiast and scholar, the bibliographer and antiquarian bookseller, Christopher
Sclater Millard (1872-1927); Millard, a ‘Jacobite’ and Roman Catholic of Keble
College, Oxford, lived at the Bungalow, 8 Abercorn Place, St. John’s Wood and
was almost reckless in his flagrant encounters with men compared to Charles
with his discretion (see Maria Roberts’ excellent biography ‘Yours Loyally: A
Life of Christopher Sclater Millard’. 2014 and also ‘The Quest for Corvo’ by A.
J. A. Symons. 1934). In 1908 the family moved to Edinburgh and Charles studied
Law and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh; in the same year, he
met a young fellow Scot who became his friend and lover, Philip Gillespie
Bainbrigge (1890-1918) of Trinity College, Cambridge, who later went on to become
a classics master at Shrewsbury School. It is not surprising to learn that in
the same year, Scott Moncrieff’s short story, with its outrageously homo-erotic
beginning suggesting an act of schoolboy fellatio, ‘Evensong and Morwe Song’
was published in the ‘New Field’ literary magazine. Charles graduated in 1914
with the intention of going to either Oxford or Cambridge but he did quite poor
in the entrance examinations and as signs of war were looming he was
commissioned into the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. In France, Charles
found ‘God in the trenches’ and became a Catholic convert while in Ypres in July1915, going to mass at every opportunity and
recording the churches and chapels he visited in his notebook. In April 1917 he
was wounded in the leg at Arras
and was forever lame; during that year Charles had several poems published in
the anthology, ‘The Muse in Arms’ by E. B. Osborn. On 23rd January
1918 while at the wedding of the poet, Robert Graves, Charles met the young,
handsome soldier poet, Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) and for Charles it was love at
first sight but Owen remained an unrequited love for Charles; soon after,
Charles introduced Owen to Bainbrigge and they met at an oyster bar in
Scarborough on 22nd February 1918 and an intimate friendship was
born – Scott Moncrieff was to lose the two dearest friends and loves of his
life to the war: Bainbrigge was killed in action on 18th September
1918 and Owen not long after, on 4th November; Charles was
devastated and in a poem to Bainbrigge he boldly wrote: ‘Mind of my intimate
mind, I claim thee lover.’ Another young soldier friend who was dear to Charles
died soon after Owen, a poet named Ian Hume Mackenzie Townsend who never saw
action and died in Edinburgh aged just 20 on 12th December 1918 –
his only volume of poetry ‘Forgotten Places’, a volume which is dear to my own heart,
was published posthumously in 1919. Charles wrote of Townsend that: ‘Like fire,
I saw thee / smiling, running, leaping, glancing and consuming’. After the war Charles
met and became friends with the young actor and playwright Noel Coward and
together they enjoy themselves in the literary sport of lampooning the
Sitwells. His first translation the ‘Song of Roland’ appears in 1919 followed
by ‘Beowulf’ in 1921 and a year later the first of his seven volume masterful
Proust translation of ‘Remembrance of Things Past’: ‘Swann’s Way’. Findlay goes
into great detail over the translations and shows what a brilliant and
instinctive translator Scott Moncrieff was with his fascination for ancestry
and obsession for accuracy, he brought Proust to life for many English speaking
readers of the time, particularly within the Bloomsbury circle. Perhaps we should
not be too surprised to learn that this man of tireless endeavours also worked
for the Secret Service as a spy in fascist Italy in 1923 and there became
enamoured for the works of the Italian writer Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) whom
he considered quite a genius and wanted to translate his complete works into
English but sadly Proust had consumed him, the final volume appearing in 1930,
the year Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff died of stomach cancer in Rome aged
just 40. At a little over 350 pages and at 16 chapters, Findlay has produced a lasting tribute to
Scott Moncrieff, ‘a man who one day could write a metaphysical poem of great
depth, and on the next a filthy, funny limerick’ (p. 295) and like the
translator, Findlay’s
biography will remain timeless!
Confessions of a
Convert – by R. H. Benson.
Robert Hugh Benson
(1871-1914), Catholic priest and author was ‘brought up’, he says in his
‘Confessions of a Convert’ published in 1913, ‘in an ecclesiastical household
for twenty-five years; I was a clergyman for nine years, in town and country
and a Religious House. My father was the spiritual head of the Anglican
communion’ (p. 3-4) In fact, Hugh’s father was Edward White Benson, Archbishop
of Canterbury, whom he goes on to describe as a stern and remarkable man,
outlining his father’s Anglican principles, contradictions and religious
matters – ‘Religion at home, then, was always coloured and vivified by my
father’s individuality’. (p. 10) He admits that his father ‘dominated me
completely by his own forcefulness’ and Hugh, his youngest son who suffered
with a stammer, tried always to impress and please him. Prior to reading the
‘Confessions’ I read the excellent two volume ‘Life of Monsignor Robert Hugh
Benson’ published in 1916 by the Jesuit, C. C. Martindale which quotes
extensively from ‘Confessions’, various letters and a book I read in
conjunction – ‘Hugh: Memoirs of a Brother’ published in 1915 (I read the 1920
edition) by A. C. Benson who says in his preface that Hugh’s ‘life before he
became a Catholic had a charm and vigour of its own’; Martindale who knew Hugh
as ‘too keen and alert to new impressions’ mentions Hugh’s close friendship
with Frederick Rolfe (Baron Corvo) although understandably not going into too
much detail as to why the relationship turned sour and their friendship ended
with Corvo spitting vitriol from every direction at Hugh. As the youngest
child, Hugh, when not ‘throwing stones at goldfish in the pond’ or ‘bored and
irritated by the poems of George Herbert’, grew up amongst his elder creative
siblings: Arthur Christopher Benson (1862-1925), schoolmaster at Eton
(1885-1903) and Magdalene College, Cambridge (1915-25) critic and author whom
he grew closer to in later life; Edward Frederick Benson (1867-1940), novelist and
socialite, and Margaret Benson (1865-1916), author and Egyptologist. Hugh was
closest in affection to his mother, Mary, with whom he shared all his thoughts
and Hugh was probably the least affected of the Benson oddities. Young Hugh seems
quite an ordinary if somewhat spoilt boy, as we can see from this letter dated 10th July 1881
from his sister Maggie to their brother, Arthur: ‘Hugh has a frightful craze
for inventing murderous instruments. He has invented one guillotine and two
guns.’ (‘Life and Letters of Maggie Benson’. A. C. Benson. 1917. p. 41); he went
to Eton College in 1885 and was confirmed in
1887 which must have pleased his father, yet he takes it all quite matter of
fact. He describes his interest in Theosophy and Swedenborgianism, and his deep
fascination for the supernatural or ‘mystical’ element of religion,
particularly through music; he was drawn to the self-discipline of denial and
asceticism through the simple ritual of the spirit – he believed in moral
beauty more than external beauty. On a mountain in Switzerland he had a near-death
experience when he fell unconscious – ‘I neither feared God nor loved Him’ (p.
26). Failing his attempt to enter the Indian Civil Service he goes up to Trinity College, Cambridge to study classics and theology in
1890 and chose the life of a clergyman: ‘marriage seemed to me then, as always,
quite inconceivable’. (p. 29) He studied under Dean Charles John Vaughan at
Llandaff in 1893 and was ordained as a deacon in 1894 ‘after a very strange,
solitary retreat, in which for about a week all religious sense deserted me.’
(p. 32) This retreat took place near Lincoln
and it was filled with prayer and meditation; A. C. Benson in ‘Hugh’ says that
he was in a state of ‘tense excitement’ and that the ‘solitude and introspection
had an alarmingly depressing effect upon him’ in which he found ‘no truth in
religion’, that ‘Jesus Christ was not God’ and that ‘life was an empty sham’,
declaring that he was ‘if not the chiefest of sinners, at any rate the most
monumental of fools’. His faith returned and he began his work at the Eton
Mission (Hackney Wick) in 1895. He was ordained as a priest by his father the
same year and ‘went into the Addington woods alone, telling myself that I was
now a priest’. (p. 39) Following the death of his father in October 1896, Hugh,
weak in health, a ‘great smoker of cheap cigarettes’ (‘Hugh’), left the Eton
Mission and went to Egypt, returning through the Holy Land and was enlightened
by the view that the Anglican Church was isolated, ‘lonely and provincial’ (p.
46) and thus the stirrings of his conversion began to radiate; the Holy Land
had ‘revived again his sense of beauty and width of proportion’ (‘Hugh’. p.
219) From May 1897-June1898 he took a curacy at St Mary the Virgin, Kemsing,
Kent before going to Mirfield, a Benedictine-like theological community where
he took his vows in 1901 and immersed himself in study and prayer; he could see
that Anglicanism and Catholicism both had their defects: the Anglican had a
‘certitude of faith, the unity of believers’ while the Catholic ‘flaws are
merely those of flawed humanity, inseparable from the state of imperfection in
which all men are placed’ (p. 151-152). He left Mirfield in 1903 and had come
to the conclusion that ‘there is nothing secular but sin’ (p. 155). In
September 1903 he was received into the Catholic Church and ordained as priest
the following year mostly to the disapproval of the ecclesiastical community
who believed he was being disloyal to his late father, although his family stood
by his decision and did not falter in their love for Hugh. Monsignor Hugh
Benson died of pneumonia in Salford on 19th October 1914
with his brother Arthur at his side; he was buried in the orchard at his
reputedly haunted Hare Street
house in Hertfordshire which he had bought and restored and lived in for
several years before his death. Despite the reverence and confessional aspect
of the volume, one cannot help feeling that Hugh leaves a lot unsaid and much
of his priestly yearnings is a romantic desire for the elegant accoutrements of
Catholicism, which drew many a soul to its confines. ‘Confessions of a Convert’
is a very rewarding book and a beautiful, thought-provoking entrance into the
world of his various writings!
As Good as God, as
Clever as the Devil: The Impossible Life of Mary Benson – by Rodney Bolt.
Coming hot off the
heels of Arthur Benson’s ‘Life and Letters of Maggie Benson’ (1917) I plunged
straight into Rodney Bolt’s ‘As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil’ (he takes
the title from a remark made by the composer Ethel Smyth about Mary Benson)
which was published in 2011 (I read a 2012 edition). The book is produced in
three parts and it tells the story of Mary ‘Minnie’ Sidgwick (1841-1918) born
in Skipton, Yorkshire who having at the age of just eleven attracted the
attention of her older second cousin, Edward White Benson (1829-1896) twelve
years her senior who was ordained deacon in 1853 and priest in 1857; Edward and
Mary came to an understanding when she reached the mature age of twelve and he
twenty-four through an intimate correspondence that they will one day marry –
Edward ‘restrained his passionate nature for 7 years, and then got me!’ (p. 54)
The marriage took place in Rugby on 23rd June 1859;
initially Mary had no ‘real’ love for Edward, but she felt a devotional duty
towards him, Mary travelled abroad for the first time during their honeymoon to
Switzerland.
On their return at the end of July 1859, Mary found herself almost forced into
settling down to married life at Wellington College, in Berkshire where Edward
was Headmaster from 1859-1872, and a very good one by accounts inspired by Dr.
Arnold; Edward ran a quite brutal regime of discipline at Wellington and Mary
came to be liked by the boys. Mary desperately wanted to please Edward but she
found the keeping of accounts, paying bills and other forms of ‘household
management’ a dull and tedious affair and often neglected her duties which
displeased Edward immensely and caused many a hurt word. Edward, since his days
as a schoolmaster at Rugby (1852), had
suffered from neuralgia and dark depressive moods which only intensified at Wellington. Another
aspect of Mary’s behaviour which infuriated him was her interest in
spiritualism and participation in séances with her philosopher brother Henry
Sidgwick (1838-1900) who had an interest in the occult; Edward denounced
spiritualism and forbade his wife to continue in these. In the year after the
marriage, their first child Martin White Benson (1860-1878) was born (with a
stammer) soon followed by: Arthur Christopher Benson (1862-1925), Eleanor Mary
‘Nellie’ Benson (1863-1890), Margaret ‘Maggie’ Benson (1865-1916), Edward
Frederick Benson (1867-1940) and Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914) who also
suffered from a stammer – none of the children were to marry. After the birth
of Hugh in 1871, Mary had a breakdown, she was diagnosed with neurasthenia and
sent to Scotland
to recuperate and failing this to Germany and it was there that she
met and fell in love with Ellen Hall. Mary had always been attracted to her own
sex and Mary’s love for women went beyond mere infatuation, there was a deep
mental, physical and even spiritual attraction for her and her close
relationships formed with young women seemed to fulfil something that Edward
could not achieve; she saw these relationships with women, these ‘carnal
affections’ or ‘fusings’ as a sacred and divine aspect of love which gave her
spiritual satisfaction as well as physical; in fact, it was these relationships
which, mostly with Edward’s blessing, sustained their marriage and kept Mary
relatively sane and interested in life. Ellen was one of many girls to attract
Mary’s romantic inclinations: just before Fred’s birth in 1867, the 26 year old
Mary fell in love with Emily Edwardes, said to be ‘number 39’ in her list of
lovers; Emily and her mother who indulged in spiritualism with Mary (séances,
automatic writing, table-tipping etc.) lived at the haunted Yately Hall and
after Mary spent a week with Emily at Hastings to recover from Fred’s birth,
she came home and confessed all to Edward, who with gracious understanding,
forgave her and relations improved. This seemed to become a pattern in Mary’s
life and Edward came to see how important Mary’s female friendships were to her
and to the peace and harmony of their marriage. Soon after Mary returned from Germany and the
arms of Ellen, Edward became Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral (1883-1896), but
Mary was racing towards her own spiritual crisis. This crisis played out during
a relationship she formed in 1875 with an older mysterious Evangelical woman
named Mrs Mylne, whom Mary called ‘Tan’, it was this woman with her strong,
domineering personality and spiritual beliefs which led Mary back to God again.
And so Edward became Bishop of Truro in Cornwall in 1877 (until 1882) but
congratulations were soon followed by commiserations the following year when
the Benson’s eldest son, Martin, who showed exceptional scholastic promise,
died at school in Winchester aged just 17 of ‘brain fever’ (meningitis); Edward
blamed himself for pushing the boy’s scholarly education and sank into his
depression yet it was Mary who was strong and gave strength and spiritual
support to Edward. Love blossomed once again for Mary the next year (1879) when
she met Charlotte Mary Basset, a woman whose riches were gained in copper
mining, and she became known to Mary as ‘Chat’. Edward accepted the
Archbishopric of Canterbury (1883-1896) and the Benson’s moved to the sprawling
Lambeth Palace where Mary came into her own as the Archbishop’s wife, losing
her youthful shyness, organising occasions with authority and entertaining
guests with charm and wit. She met the composer Ethel Smyth in 1885 who was 27
to Mary’s 44 and fell in love with her but to her surprise Ethel fell in love
with Mary’s daughter, Nellie, who reciprocated her affections and caused much
jealousy in Mary, but tragedy struck when Nellie died of diphtheria in October
1890, aged 27. Mary’s broken heart swiftly alighted upon Lucy Tait (1856-1938),
the daughter of the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, Archibald Campbell Tait
(1811-1882) following the death of Nellie, in fact it was Edward’s idea that
Lucy should live with them as a companion or ‘replacement daughter’ for Mary,
much to the annoyance of Maggie Benson, who had returned from her
archaeological excavations in Egypt with her new lover – the shy and retiring, Janet
‘Nettie’ Gourlay (1863-1912), whom Maggie had met in 1896 while assisting
Maggie on the dig in Karnak at the Temple of Mut (they published their account
of the dig in a book: ‘The Temple of Mut in Asher’ together in 1899); it seems
that homosexuality or some diversion of the sex instinct ran rampant through
the Benson family: Mary Benson’s desire for women, her two daughters, Maggie
and Nellie, expressing the same needs and her sons, Arthur (who after a failed
homosexual romantic attachment at Cambridge avoided all forms of intimacy) and
Frederic, the socialite who sought his same-sex affections in villas on the
isle of Capri and of course Hugh who was devoutly celibate, or so we are led to
believe. There is also this same-sex
desire found in the Sidgwick family, for example, Mary’s brother, Henry, the
philosopher, despite marrying Eleanor Mildred Balfour, had strong homosexual
urges throughout his life; and Mary’s nephew, Arthur Hugh Sidgwick (1882-1917)
[cousin of the Benson siblings and son of Mary’s brother, the Rugby
schoolmaster, Arthur Sidgwick (1840-1920)], of Winchester and Balliol College,
Oxford, who became a schoolmaster and author, was also homosexual. Mary soon
started over-eating, binging heartily and thus she became bulimic; Arthur sank
into depression. Tragedy struck once more when in October 1896 Mary’s husband,
Edward, the Archbishop of Canterbury, died during a visit to the Gladstones at Harwarden (he
was buried at Canterbury).
Unable to remain at Lambeth Palace, Mary and her lover Lucy, the children:
Maggie and Fred, move to Winchester, and later in 1899 to Tremans house, a fine
rambling pile in Horsted Keynes, Sussex and it was here that Mary once again
took an interest in spiritualism and the occult. Arthur brought his friends
such as George Mallory and Edmund Gosse to Tremans and Maggie brought her lover
Nettie; Hugh, who was in the process of converting to Catholicism, had become
enamoured and involved with the sham Catholic priest, Frederick Rolfe, whom he
brought to Tremans and whom Fred elegantly described as ‘picturesque and
depraved and devil-ridden’ (p. 308-9). Along with the strange sexual weavings
of the Benson family there ran a touch of madness which broke out at intervals
throughout the parents and siblings – Edward suffered much from his dark
depressive feelings and so did Arthur who spent much of his time in despair and
in nursing homes due to his depression and sometimes suicidal feelings; now
Maggie had succumbed and in 1907 her odd behaviour increased and she ‘tried to
strangle herself with a piece of string. She set her bedroom curtains alight’.
(p. 316) She became delusional and even violent and had to be restrained and
tied up after she either tried to murder her mother or kill herself, the record
of this is vague and perhaps deliberately so. Maggie was committed to St. George’s Convent, an
institution for the insane and later sent to the Priory in Roehampton. Arthur
believed it to be a break-out of the Benson insanity and was reassured that the
madness would not continue as neither of the siblings married or had offspring.
In October 1913 Maggie was sent to Wimbledon
for private care and just a year later Hugh died, caused by over-work and
pneumonia. Maggie never really regained her faculty of reasoning and died in
May 1916. During the following summer of 1917 Arthur suffered a complete mental
collapse and had to retire to a nursing home to recover as Mary became
increasingly deaf – she died on 15th
June 1918 and Arthur joined her in 1925. After Mary’s death it was
left to Fred, who would continue to enjoy life until his own death in 1940, to
clear the Benson paraphernalia at Tremans and he took great delight in burning
some of the ‘dangerous stuff that had better perish’. (p. 345) Despite this
loss of manuscripts, diaries and letters, the Bensons, who may appear as a
‘fuddy-duddy’ collection of dusty scholars and clerics, egotistical and much
too inward looking and family obsessed for comfort, proved to be quite modern
in their attitudes to sex and sexuality and they are assured a place in
literary history and their memory shall never perish; they created numerous
novels, poems, autobiographical and critical works which increase our
understanding of the Victorian and Edwardian literary period for which we
should be thankful! A very fascinating book indeed!
The Cement Garden
– by Ian McEwan.
Published in 1978, Ian
McEwan’s first novel is reminiscent of a gothic tale of horror yet it is placed
in the modern world, a world of teenagers, tower blocks and sports cars
surrounded by childish logic which is in places amusing and tragic. The
narrator of the novel, a 14 year old boy dealing with all the complex issues
that acne demands of him named Jack who presents a portrait of his life with
his parents and three siblings and the strange relationship between them all;
in fact, soon into the novel there is the incestuous game of ‘doctors’ played
by the young Jack and his elder sister by two years, Julie, upon Jack’s younger
sister by two years, Sue which although a charming exploration of childhood’s
infatuation with the mysteries of sex and the differences between the male and
the female, the game almost oversteps the boundaries of decent behaviour. Jack
seems driven by an outsider’s point of view and by his own compulsion to serial
masturbation which is a trait among most male adolescents. We learn that their
house is the only one left standing in the surrounding streets as all the
others have been cleared away to build a motorway which never got built; the
house stands alone except for a few tower blocks overlooking it. This sense of
isolation is paramount to the story and captures the feeling of confused
adolescence blossoming upon the derelict suburban wastelands where the prefabs
used to stand. The parents are equally alone, without visitors to the house and
the father, with his controlling manner and weak heart, has the notion of
cementing over the garden to make it more manageable; he is soon taken out of
the equation early on when he dies from the strain of carrying the cement bags
up from the cellar. The family become more insular and the mother succumbs to
illness herself, not really letting on the extent of her illness to the
children except Julie; there is a touching little scene in which Jack, on his
way to school, returns home and secretly watches his mother through the window
clearing away the breakfast dishes and he suddenly realises that his mother
continues to exist when he is not there, independent of himself and his
siblings. Eventually the mother becomes bed-ridden and all family ceremonies
(Jack’s fifteenth birthday where he sings and Julie does a handstand) take
place at her bedside. When the mother dies the children are faced with the
question of what to do with her. The plot seems completely convincing to me and
the children do exactly what I probably would have done in the situation,
afraid of being separated and their home left empty and broken into – they
decide not to bury their mother in the garden as they would be seen from the
tower blocks and that would be the first place she would be found, they have
the idea to encase their mother in cement in a large metal trunk in the cellar.
This secret between the siblings bonds them closer together and older sister
Julie, on the threshold of womanhood who likes sunbathing in her bikini naturally
becomes a mother figure, especially to the youngest boy, Tom, who is 6 at the
time of their mother’s death and regresses to babyhood (carried by Julie and
put in a cot at night); Tom also dislikes being a boy and finds pleasure in
dressing like a girl and wearing a wig and both older sisters enjoy the thought
of a little sister to dress up and talk girly to, seeing it as quite harmless.
Julie finds herself a boyfriend named Derek who is 23 and a professional
snooker player while younger sister, Sue immerses herself in reading and
writing imaginary letters to her dead mother in a notebook. Jack and Julie’s
relationship seems rather strained, he is aroused by her growing feminine
beauty yet her maturity increases the gulf between them, although she does
admit to him that nothing has happened sexually between her and Derek. Towards
the close of the book, a naked Jack goes to Tom who is crying in his cot and Jack
joins him in bed, trying to soothe his tears; motherly Julie watches from the
doorway and she and Jack become close, she undresses and naked together they
embrace as Jack in an act of babyhood, suckles her nipple. Just then, Derek
walks in on this tender incestuous brother and sister display and finds the
whole scene disgusting. After he storms out the siblings resume their tender
touches and seduction, comparing their body parts until Julie instigates sexual
intercourse with Jack, putting him inside her; later they are interrupted by
sister Sue and the sound of Derek in the cellar hammering at the cement casket;
soon after there is the familiar blue lights seen from the window as the police
arrive and no doubt, social services and we are left to wonder at the prospects
of these four children. A wonderfully written first novel which remains fresh
and relevant in today’s world!
Wilde’s Devoted
Friend: A Life of Robert Ross – by Maureen Borland.
This fascinating
biography of Robert Ross (1869-1918) was published in 1990 and outlines Ross’s
life through four parts: Moral Dilemma (1869-1900), Tranquil Years (1900-1913),
Bitter Years (1913-14) and Years of Despair (1915-18). Moments of his life are
perceptively drawn such as the great ‘ducking incident’ which occurred on Friday 8th March 1889
at Kings College, Cambridge to which he had matriculated in October
the previous year. Robbie, who was not discreet about his sexuality and
unashamedly displayed effeminate mannerisms, had attacked Oscar Browning, a
much favoured Master at Cambridge, in an article in the college magazine,
‘Granta’; for this transgression six undergraduates hurled Ross into the
college fountain and the incident caused Ross much upset, depression and even
thoughts of suicide – we are informed by author Brian Masters in his volume
‘The Life of E F Benson’ (1991) that one of the perpetrators was none other
than E F Benson himself and we are told that Ross forgave him for this. Not
surprisingly Ross was put off university and left, never to return; he also had
to leave home at the age of 20 due to his odd behaviour, in other words his
homosexual practices and his Roman Catholic leanings, for this he was ‘banished
to Edinburgh’ where none but the most ardent Catholic homosexual found some
vestige of pleasure and delight. And so in the wilds of Scotland, fervently
detesting Edinburgh, Ross settled to working for William Ernest Henley
(1849-1903) on the ‘Scots Observer’, despising his difficult relationship with
Henley as much as his time in Edinburgh; under such strain he fell ill in
February 1890 with peritonitis and had to return to London. Borland writes
exquisitely on the Ross-Wilde relationship, highlighting Ross’s complete
allegiance and devotion to the poet and dramatist; the firm and faithful
friendship that he offered, even when Wilde turned his back on Ross when Wilde
went back to Bosie despite Ross advising him not to for his own sake; even this
did not break the friendship and it is no wonder that Ross became Wilde’s
literary executor. After Wilde’s death in 1900 we find the shadow of one Walter
Edwin Ledger (1862-1931), an eccentric bachelor, manic depressive and sometime
‘homicidal maniac’ lurking in the wings, planning to compile his Wilde
bibliography and Ross as executor was thrown into his company. At the same time
Ross also became passionately entangled with a young clerk named Frederick
Stanley Smith (born 1886); Ross and Smith lived together and Smith acted as
Ross’s secretary. Enter upon the scene the fabulous Christopher Sclater Millard
(1872-1927), a fellow Wilde enthusiast and scholar who wrote under the
pseudonym Stuart Mason; Millard was also in the process of forming his Wilde
bibliography and Ross introduced him to Walter Ledger that they should combine
forces on the project. I personally find Millard fascinating in his own right
(see Maria Roberts biography ‘Yours Loyally: A Life of Christopher Sclater
Millard’. 2014); he was in Oxford in April 1906 and was arrested for gross
indecency committed in Iffley the previous July against 19 year old Harry
Tinson; Ross proved to be a worthy friend and stood by Millard, attending both
court appearances in May – Millard was charged guilty at the Assizes of gross
indecency and sentenced to three months imprisonment. Following his sentence
Ross found him work on the Burlington Magazine and he also assisted Ross with
editing Wilde’s 12 volume Collected Works. Due to Millard’s disgrace Walter
Ledger fell out with him and Ross in turn and abandoned his own part in their
joint bibliography. Ross had met and become enamoured of a young Winchester
College scholar named Charles Kenneth Scott Moncrieff (1889-1930) whom he also
introduced to Millard; the young Scot would later go on to translate the works
of Proust. Wilde’s Collected Works (12 volumes) were published in June 1908 by
Methuen and to celebrate the momentous occasion a dinner was held to honour
Ross and their publication at the Ritz Hotel on Tuesday 1st December
1908 attended by many notable scholars and public figures. Oh to have been
present at this strange collection of odds and sods which included: Ross and his
lover, Frederick Smith, Ross’s brother Alex, H. G. Wells, Walter Ledger, Osbert
Burdett, George Ives, Christopher Millard, Aleister Crowley, More Adey, Wilde’s
children Cyril and Vyvyan Holland, Frank Harris, Robert Sherard, Oscar
Browning, George Prothero (of Kings College, Cambridge), Sir Martin Conway…
Bosie was invited but did not attend. Borland rambles through the remainder of
the tranquil years into the years of bitterness and despair. Millard is up
before the beak once again after the arrest of Charles Nehemiah Garratt who
testifies to leaving Millard’s flat on 18th September 1913; in the
same year the Wilde monument by Epstein is unveiled by Crowley in an unofficial
ceremony at Pere Lachaise, the graveside is attended by a group of British
artists and poets. Ross died in 1918, the same year in which Millard is again
accused of gross indecency and sentenced to 12 months in Wormwood Scrubs
prison. On the 50th anniversary of Wilde’s death on 30th November 1950
Ross’s ashes are taken to France
and placed in a special chamber which Ross asked Epstein to design in the
monument, and so rests the remains of Robert Ross, eternally Wilde’s devoted
friend.
Bishops at Large – by Peter F. Anson.
I was led to this strange volume by the equally strange and not too insignificant autobiography entitled ‘The Dust has Never Settled’ (1992) by Robin Bryans (1928-2005) which has some fascinating insights into sexual behaviour and occultism, from sex with a prostitute in St Dunstan’s Church, Ovingdean and Evan Frederick Morgan, 2nd Viscount Tredegar (1893-1949) drugging the communion wine in order to have his wicked way with the sailors at Rodean, to Tredegar and his friend, the artist Francis Cyril Rose (1909-1979) performing the Black Mass and several connections with the magician Aleister Crowley…, but I am not writing a review in praise of Mr. Bryan’s most amusing book, and so, ‘Bishops at Large’, at almost six-hundred pages and published in 1964, is a stupendous collection of cranks, zealots, sex maniacs, faith healers and charlatans who belong to the autocephalous churches of the past one hundred years. I am already a convert to the excellent writings of Peter Frederick Anson (1889-1975) and have been for some time since reading his remarkable autobiographies: ‘Harbour Head: Maritime Memories’ (1944) and ‘A Roving Recluse: More Memoirs’ (1946) which are both beautifully written and depict Anson’s love of the sea and his rich and varied interest in religious and monastic life. Anson, an artist and author who spent time as an Anglican Benedictine monk on Caldey Island from 1910 when he was 21 years old until 1924, converted to Catholicism in 1913 and travelled to Rome to see the Pope, writes with passion and authority through experience upon the plight of the Catholic seafarer and upon maritime ways and the adventures of seamen; he is a student of ecclesiastical affairs and the religious life and has published some outstanding books on the subject, such as his ‘The Quest of Solitude’ (1932), ‘The Benedictines of Caldey’ (1940) and ‘The Call of the Cloister’ (1956). ‘Bishops at Large’, a massive undertaking by Anson and thoroughly researched and compiled, has a fine introduction written by Rev. Henry St John, who describes the ‘little known by-paths’ in 19th and 20th Century ecclesiastical life and the study of episcopal churches as “movements of a ‘Catholic’ type mainly deriving from dissatisfied and unstable elements of Catholicism or Anglo-Catholicism. They stand as a rule for ‘Catholicism’ without the Pope, but their preoccupation, amounting to obsession, is the recovery of Christian unity by the widespread, and, in effect, indiscriminate propagation of ‘valid episcopacy and priesthood’. (p. 15) In their mania for true Catholic orthodoxy and apostolic succession, the churches become fragmented, causing schisms and splits, becoming more and more eccentric in their beliefs based upon the ‘irrepressible, the ridiculous and the pathetic; naive goodness and sincere idealism, unconscious vanity and, at times, conscious roguery: its promoters frequently unstable to a degree, eccentric in some cases to the point of craziness moving in a dream-world of unreality’. (p. 16) Splinter churches become rivals and Bishops who found them, mostly lapsed Roman Catholics or disgruntled Anglicans prepared for excommunication, invent grand pretentious titles for themselves, claiming spurious university degrees and they give elaborate, pompous names to their churches. The first of these ‘Bishops’ Anson explores is Jules Ferrette, ‘Mar Julius’, (1828- c.1904), the French-born, ‘Syrian-Jacobite Bishop who was charged with being an impostor when he came to London to attempt to form the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church of the West in 1866; the so-called ‘Bishop of Iona’, a ‘freelance prelate’, was forced into hiding but not before finding a kindred spirit in the form of an ‘erratic, unstable, hot-headed Welsh clergyman’ (p. 44). Reverend Richard Williams Morgan (1815-1889) was a Welsh Anglican priest who accepted the validity of Ferrette’s episcopate and as a Welsh Nationalist who detested the English, seemed a perfect candidate for consecration – he took the name Mar Pelagius I, Hierarch of Caeleon-on-Usk, the first Patriarch of the restored Ancient British Church. Anson passes next to Dr. Julian Joseph Overbeck (1820-1905) the German lapsed Roman Catholic priest who wanted to re-unite the church of the east with the west, aided by the English Hellenistic, Stephen Georgeson Hatherly (1827-1905) who was part of the ‘underground movement’ of the Greek Orthodox Church; he introduced the Byzantine Rite to his chapel in Wolverhampton; both Overbeck and Hatherly would bring about the prevalence of the Eastern Churches, Russian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox in England a century after their attempts to reunite them. We next come to the visionary romantic, Ambrose Phillipps de Lyle (1809-1878) who was received as a Roman Catholic aged fifteen; Ambrose wanted to ‘restore the contemplative form of monastic life in England’; ‘restore the primitive ecclesiastical chant’ and see the ‘restoration of the Anglican Church to Catholic Unity, and thus to reunite England to the See of St Peter.’ (p. 57) He was also a friend of Henry Edward Manning. This is all the stuff of Catholic Saints and martyrs and one can get a sense that the religious life is not all one of continual devotion to Christ, but the everyday disturbances of what it is to be human and sometimes weak. Anson also introduces the ‘Scottish Pusey’, Alexander Penrose Forbes (1817-1875) who belonged to the Scottish Episcopal Church and who was influenced by the Oxford Movement; he became Bishop of Brechin in 1847 until his death. Next for the author’s scrutiny is Frederick George Lee (1832-1902) the poet and writer on theology, church history and occult phenomena who was vicar of All Saints, Lambeth and a friend of the Irish poet, Aubrey de Vere (1814-1902) before the charismatic figure of Richard Charles Jackson (1851-1923), the Oxford aesthete and collector, priest, Bishop and eccentric hermit, makes himself known; Jackson knew Walter Pater (1839-1894) who was infatuated with him and Jackson was the inspiration for Pater’s ‘Marius, the Epicurean’ (1885). Anson also looks at the Theosophical, Rosicrucian and occult influence within the Catholic church which is absolutely absorbing such as Joseph Rene Vilatte, ‘Mar Timotheus I’ (1854-1929) with his Theosophical and Ordo Templi Orientis links; Ulric Vernon Herford, ‘Mar Jacobus’ (1866-1938), the eccentric visionary and Unitarian minister, the Bishop of Mercia who corresponded with the notorious Frederic Rolfe, ‘Baron Corvo’ and we hear about Arnold Harris Mathew (1852-1919), the ‘Earl of Llandaff’ and ‘pseudo-Bishop’ of the Catholic Church of England who had deep interests in Theosophy (Annie Besant, Krishnamurti and Bishop Charles Webster Leadbeater, who himself had some rather unhealthy relationships with young boys) – “Father Mathews had continued to break the laws of the Catholic and Roman Church by taking a wife in 1892, and, later on, getting himself raised to the episcopate in a schismatic body.” (p. 212) Mathews felt persecuted by the Anglican Bishops as so many came into direct revolt; in 1914 the Anglo-Catholic parishioners made complaints over the sexual antics of the Bishop of St Pancras, Frederick Samuel Willoughby (1862-1928) of St Catherine’s College, Cambridge (1880-83) who was asked to resign by Bishop Mathews due to his homosexual activity and allegations of immorality in the form of sexually assaulting children. The remaining chapters deal with the claims of succession in various branches of the church, such as the ‘Ferrette succession’ where we find yet another sexual monster in the guise of the Bishop of Hackney – Reverend Francis George Widdows [Nobbs] (1850-1936) who was convicted at the Old Bailey in 1902 and received two years hard labour for ‘grossly indecent conduct’ with an altar boy (he also received ten years in 1888 for ‘criminal practices’ against schoolboys and there was another charge in 1896 of a ‘serious sex offence’ against a 14 year old boy); he is also the author of ‘Ex-Monk Widdows’ (1898); Herbert James Monzani Heard, ‘Mar Jacobus II’ (1866-1947), the Brixton Schoolmaster who did ‘curious things’ when he became Bishop in 1922. Then we come to the Vilatte succession which mentions that old rogue, the notorious Reverend Harold Francis Davidson (1875-1937), the Rector of Stiffkey and the ‘Prostitute’s Padre’ who died after being attacked by a lion named ‘Freddie’ at Skegness, and who can forget John Sebastian Marlow Ward (1885-1949) of Trinity College, Cambridge who was an authority on Freemasonry and the occult and his wife Jessie of Golders Green who had visions of the Apocalypse and Christ’s return in 1928 (they bought a property in New Barnet to welcome Christ back as a home for him); John and Jessie also founded the Abbey of Christ the King, a fifteenth century half-timbered Tithe barn chapel which was re-erected at Hadley Hall. Another eccentric is Dr. William Bernard Crow (1895-1976) the Freemason and authority on esoteric knowledge who became Bishop of Santa Sophia (ordained 1935); Crow corresponded with the occultist Aleister Crowley from 1944-47 concerning Crowley’s Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. Then follows the Mathew succession with Monsignor Bernard Mary Williams, real name – James Charles Thomas Ayliffe (1889-1952) and other Theosophists and occultists such as: Reverend William Frederick Geikie-Cobb (1857-1941), Reverend Colin William Scott-Moncrieff (1879-1943), Bishop Robert King (1869-1954), Reverend James Ingall Wedgwood (1883-1951), Bernard Edward Rupert Gauntlett (1881-1924), George Sydney Arundale (1878-1945) the ‘Bishop of India’ and Monsignor Frederick James, music teacher, Theosophist and actor who was said to perform occult ceremonies at his St John’s Wood Oratory and his Knightsbridge ‘Sanctuary’. After a brief mention of the Most Reverend James Bartholomew Banks, ‘Mar James I’ (1894-1975) who was consecrated Bishop by Willoughby in 1922, the final chapters deal with the ‘Catholicate of the West’ and brings us Hugh George de Willmott Newman, ‘Mar Georgius I’ (1905-1979) and the ‘Divine healer’, Reverend Harold Percival Nicholson, ‘Mar Johannes’ (1905-1968) before ending with the ‘miscellaneous churches’ which claim to be ‘Apostolic’, ‘Catholic’ and ‘Orthodox’. There is such an enormous amount of information in this volume that it would take several readings and further research to fully appreciate the magnitude of Anson’s work and no doubt a second volume should be produced by some competent scholar to show the succession into the new century. Bishops at Large is a fascinating read and confirms that religion, as well as bringing spiritual enlightenment and a firm basis in faith to the community can also breed perverted desires, egotistical fanaticism and psychopathic intentions which we have seen in our modern times can lead to very damaging results indeed in the form of extremist ideology. We see that there has always been extensive fractures within the church which are mostly caused by the disturbing appetites of the ecclesiasts who either want to build a New Jerusalem in the manner of obscure religious bodies (sects) or claim false validity to Episcopal authority – the human element in religious labours of faith are always open to corruption and wrong interpretations and as such, Anson has produced a masterpiece in the study of Episcopal churches and their sometimes controversial founders.
Slide Rule: The Autobiography of an Engineer – by Nevil Shute.
Written in 1953 and published the following year, ‘Slide Rule’ (11 chapters) by the engineer and novelist, Nevil Shute Norway (1899-1960) is the only non-fictional work the author published and it depicts his life from his birth in 1899 until 1938, mostly concentrating on his aeronautical engineering career or as he calls it ‘messing about with aeroplanes’. The author, who was born with a stammer, opens the book with quite an acute case of wind which he mistakes for heart attacks before beginning at the beginning, and his birth in Ealing in 1899. We hear about his education or lack of it for he was always playing truant, and of his time at the Dragon School in Oxford run by the Headmaster, C. C. Lynam, known as the ‘Skipper’, until he left in the spring of 1913; Nevil attended Shrewsbury School under the Headmastership of C. A. Alington in 1913 and at the outbreak of war joined the school’s Officer Training Corps. Now, let it be said that I have never read a Nevil Shute novel nor will I ever to my dying day, and nothing would induce me to change that, so why did I read this mildly interesting, if one is fascinated by airships (dirigibles), aeroplanes, engines and money, autobiography? I was simply drawn to the volume at the mere mention of that remarkable classics master of Shrewsbury School, who was ‘sent into the army and to France who never should have gone at all’, Phillip Gillespie Bainbrigge (1890-1918) whom Shute describes as a ‘brilliant young Sixth Form schoolmaster at Shrewsbury’ and goes on to say he was a ‘tall, delicate, weedy man with very thick glasses in his spectacles without which he was as blind as a bat. He had a great sense of humour and enormous academic ability; when the time came for him to go into the army I have no doubt that he went willingly and made a good officer in regard to morale and within the limits of his physical deficiencies’; Shute quotes Bainbrigge’s sonnet written in the trenches, ‘If I should die’, a parody on Rupert Brooke’s ‘The Soldier’ and calls it ‘one of the best war poems that I have ever read’ (p. 27-28) and certainly something I quite agree with; the poem begins ‘If I should die, be not concerned to know / the manner of my ending, if I fell…’ and famously ends citing some of the things Bainbrigge enjoyed, such as ‘good dinners’ and ‘curious parody’ – ‘swimming, and lying naked in the sun, / Latin hexameters, and heraldry,’ and of course: ‘Beethoven, Botticelli, beer, and boys.’ Not long after Bainbrigge wrote that sonnet, he was dead. Shute’s only brother Fred was wounded in France and died aged 19 in 1915. Nevil was in Dublin during the Easter uprising of 1916 – his father worked at the General Post Office and Nevil saw shots fired and men and horses killed; he helped as a stretcher bearer. At Christmas he left Shrewsbury School and the following summer was at Woolwich, Royal Military Academy; he failed his commission to become an officer and in August 1918 enlisted in the infantry as a private but would never see combat due to the Armistice in November. After the war deaths from Influenza mounted and Shute became a member of the Army funeral party. He went up to Balliol College, Oxford (1919-1922) of which, unfortunately, he says very little. After Oxford he worked for de Havilland aeroplanes and learnt to fly in 1923. He doesn’t say much about writing except that it was a way to relax in the evenings; his first attempt at a novel [‘Stephen Morris’] in 1923 was unpublished and left on the shelf, so was his second [‘Pilotage’] the following year. In 1924 he joined the staff at Vickers Ltd. as the Deputy Chief engineer under Sir Barnes Wallis of ‘bouncing bomb’ fame and worked on the airship R100. His third attempt at a novel became his first published work – ‘Marazan’ in 1926, a novel in which he devoted eighteen months of his evenings to writing, twice and sometimes three times (all the words “bloody” had to be changed to “ruddy”). And so we hear about the tests and difficulties with the R100 which was almost finished by the summer of 1929, its first flight taking place on 14th October that year, a year also seeing his second novel, ‘So Disdained’ published. But then occurs the disaster of the R100’s sister ship, the R101 in October 1930 which was on its way to India and the crash seemed to end the British interest in airships. In 1931 he sets up the company, Airspeed Ltd. which he runs until 1938, a year where he retires from engineering and poignantly ends his autobiography prior to war saying that ‘once man has spent time in messing about with aeroplanes, he can never forget their heartaches and their joys, nor is he likely to find another occupation that will satisfy him so well, even writing novels.’ Shute had planned to follow ‘Slide Rule’ with a further autobiography possibly titled ‘Set Square’ but it never got written and maybe we should be grateful for another book on his love of aviation and his passion for ‘nuts and bolts’ (along with a new found love of Australia where he settled) with an almost cold disinterest in writing (he wrote 22 novels) and exploration of feelings and emotions is hardly worth reading. For more on Shute take a look at the 1976 biography by Julian Smith which digs a little further beneath the skin. For me, Shute’s reluctance to open his soul and explore the non-engineering background made ‘Slide Rule’ like one of those engineering manuals Shute would have known so well, nevertheless, the early experiments in flight and aeroplane design more than makes up for the lack of the personal touch by the author and it is a worthwhile read.
The Haunted Mind – by
Hallam Tennyson.
I came to this
fascinating book ‘The Haunted Mind’ published in 1984 through reading Wilfrid
Blunt’s second volume of excellent autobiography, ‘Slow on the Feather’ (1986)
which recounts the years 1938-1959 in which Blunt taught art at Eton (Blunt’s
first volume, ‘Married to a Single Life’ published in 1983 is equally as
magical) and where he met the strange figure of Hallam Tennyson. Hallam, or to
give him his full name, Beryl Augustine Hallam Tennyson was born in Chelsea in
1921, the great grandson of the Victorian poet, Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) and
he describes himself as an ‘economic Marxist’, a ‘bisexual, self-centred, liar,
thief, cheat’ who is ‘capable of considerable generosity and self-sacrifice’
(p. 2). The original title of this volume was to be ‘Man on a Crossing’ because
it describes a man at the crossroads of ‘class, sex, religion, politics, race
and nationality’ and Hallam seems to be quite an extraordinary man with an
unusually high sex drive yet he is also ‘exalted’ by celibacy, a typical
‘introvert who hates sport’ but someone who acquired an almost fanatical mania
about tennis, a passion which ‘can only be described as demented’, in fact, his
one golden rule was: ‘no sex before tennis’. His parents, Sir Charles and Ivy
Tennyson had ‘hoped for a girl’ so Hallam was probably a disappointment,
nevertheless, he was often mistaken for a girl and young Hallam played up to
the role, acting as a girl to please his mother – he had a very special close
bond to his mother and all his life felt an intimate need for the company of
women whom he felt comfortable with. As a boy he was sent to Eton where the
normal sadistic undercurrents and harmless relationships are formed, in fact,
at Eton he was sexually active as were most boys and he discovered the joy of
mutual masturbation and on the other hand, so to speak, delighted in taking tea
with the great tutor, provost and ghost story writer, M. R. James. He passed
the Balliol entrance examination and went on to study medieval history. During
the war Hallam worked in Egypt and Italy with the ‘Friends’ Ambulance Unit and
in October 1945 he married Margot Walloch, a German Jew in North Kensington
(the couple were to have three children) and the following year they travelled
to West Bengal with the American Quakers where he met Gandhi; Hallam was so
taken by the Bengal people that he learnt their language and had a love for
them which remained all his life. After two years in Bengal
they returned to England
and lived in the East End where Hallam
considered becoming Catholic – he realised his mistake in time. He published a
volume of stories, ‘The Wall of Dust’ in 1948 and joined the BBC in 1956, the
same year as his novel, ‘The Dark Goddess’ was published; he remained 14 years with
the BBC as Assistant Head of the Drama Department. Although Margot who had
become ill was tolerant and understanding of Hallam’s homosexuality they eventually
separated though remained close – Hallam even tried ‘sex aversion therapy’ to
no avail. His relationships with men too often ended with violence against him
(Hallam was a pacifist) and sex seems to become a humiliation, a masochistic
tendency accepting sordid situations or perhaps even a sacrifice as in the
‘suffering maternal role’; for Hallam homosexual acts are ‘rites of symbolic
magic’ (p. 227); despite this, love was always around every corner or was it
just a physical need within him to satisfy his sexual desire? He believed that
‘love transcends obsessions’ and his search for love would have drawn him into
some dangerous intimacies and it was not surprising to discover that in December 2005, Hallam, aged 85 was found
stabbed to death in his bed in Highgate – the crime remains unsolved to this
day. When one knows the outcome on a life revealing itself with all of the
pitfalls it makes that life all the more poignant. ‘The Haunted Mind’ is a very
thoughtful and philosophical read which presents us with a detailed self
observation of a man consumed by the sexual and spiritual essence of being
alive.
Lighting Candles: New
and Selected Poems – by Ruth Bidgood.
This collection of 75
poems published in 1982 by the Welsh poet and local historian, Ruth Bidgood
(1922-2022) draws upon her early volumes of verse – ‘The Given Time’ (1972),
‘Not Without Homage’ (1975) and ‘The Print of Miracle’ (1978) with a small
section of new poems too. Bidgood, born Ruth Jones in Seven Sisters near Neath,
the daughter of the Reverend William Herbert Jones and teacher mother, Hilda
Garrett, attended Port Talbot Grammar School and St. Hugh’s College, Oxford
where she read English; during the war she was a wren in Alexandria, Egypt
before she married David Edgar Bidgood in 1946; they had three children – the
marriage lasted until the nineteen-seventies. Although she was writing poetry
around 1965 it was the following year that the poetry of Edward Thomas
influenced her work and the landscape of mid-Wales inspired her writing where
‘tended paths make patterns / of purpose quietly achieved’ (‘Microcosm’ from
‘Not Without Homage’, p. 32) which echoes Bidgood’s’ whisper in the Welsh
wilderness, the sense of the survival of the human presence in the landscape,
‘quietly achieved’ through the seasonal turning of time and like Thomas, she is
attuned to nature, immersed in its every movement, ‘to accept as mine this
given time, / to live the haunted present and know the forest’s shadow’ (‘The
Given Time’, p. 1). The poet is content to be part of a land praised for its
beauty and its mystery with no regrets or wish to know what lies beyond hill
and mountain, ‘no need to wonder what heron-haunted lake / lay in the other
valley’ (‘Roads’ from ‘The Given Time’, p. 4). In ‘Sheep in the Hedge’ from the
same collection she contrasts the soft wool of the ‘woolly maniac’ with the
sharp brambles and spiky thorns of the hedge where the bewildered sheep finds
‘there is too much world forcing itself / through slit eyes into her dim brain
- / a spiky overpowering pattern of thorns’ (p. 21) which are truly beautiful
lines conjuring the perfect aspect of the simple sheep too eagerly drawn to
roam in dangerous environments. In
‘Burial Path’ (from ‘The Given Time’) there is a sense of tradition as she is
one of four coffin carriers taking the deceased ‘up the old sledge-ways, the
sinew-straining tracks’ and she relates how ‘forty times and more / I put my
shoulder to the coffin / before the weary journey was accomplished / and down
at last through leafless oaks / singing we carried you to the crumbling church,
/ the ancient yews, at the burial place of your people.’ (p. 14) Death is
recalled in many poems such as ‘Feathers’ (‘Not without Homage’) where ‘white
feathers marked / where death had stopped.’ (p. 28) and in ‘Hanging Day’ (also
‘Not Without Homage’) the scene of the ‘doomed ones’ approaching the execution
is seen as a celebration, an ‘old pleasure’ full of mirth while the condemned
man or woman are ‘hooded, noosed, and jerked / into blackness’ (p. 23); the
same merriment one sees in ‘Girls Laughing’ (‘The Print of Miracle’, p. 67)
where the poet watches two girls attempting to fold a sheet which begins quite
tenderly ‘I can remember laughing like that.’ Bidgood is a poet of place and
community exploring rural tradition and the people who live in and work in the
landscape where there is a sense of permanence as we can see in the poem
‘Standing Stone’ (from ‘The Print of Miracle’)
where the ‘ephemeral’ trees may hide the stone waiting to be revealed by
time once more and offer ‘ancient orientation’; the poet places her hand upon
the stone ‘when the dark mind fails, faith lives / in the supplication of hands
/ on prayer-wheel, rosary, stone.’ (p. 43) and again, in ‘Burial Cyst’, from
the same collection, that same permanence invokes contemplative wonder when a
search for the remains of an ancient grave in the peat moor land reveals a
‘little slab-lined grave, / open and empty, we were silent’ as one feels one
should be like being in a church or chapel – ‘human only, sunk in the primeval
couch,’ (p. 51). Ruth Bidgood, a quiet and sombre poet in the pastoral
tradition is exceptionally gifted and I feel blessed for encountering her verse
which has left a rather beautiful and memorable impression upon me.
Thank you Joseph, I appreciate your kind words and good luck with your blog!
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