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A. E. Housman

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Alfred Edward Housman (IPA: [ˈælfɹɪd ˈedwəd ˈhaʊsmən]; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936), usually known as A.E. Housman, was an English poet and classical scholar best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900. Their wistful evocation of doomed youth in English countryside, their spare, strophic language and distinctive imagery appealed strongly to the Edwardian and Georgian English composers (beginning with Arthur Somervell) both before and after the First World War. Through their song-settings the poetry therefore became closely associated with that generation, and are undyingly associated with Shropshire itself.

Housman was counted amongst the foremost classicists of his time. He established his reputation publishing as a private scholar and on that strength was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London and later, at Cambridge. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius and Lucan are still considered authoritative.

Life

portrait photo
portrait photo

Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, the eldest of seven children of a country solicitor. His brother Laurence Housman and sister Clemence Housman also became writers.

Housman was educated first at King Edward's School, then Bromsgrove School, where he acquired a strong academic grounding and won prizes for his poetry. In 1877 he won an open scholarship to St John's College, Oxford, where he studied classics. He was a brilliant textual analyst, so involved in his texts that he omitted to revise ancient history and philosophy and failed to take even a pass degree. He was a withdrawn person whose only friends were his roommates Moses Jackson and A. W. Pollard. Housman had difficult and generally repressed sexual feelings for Jackson which were rejected as Jackson was heterosexual.[1] This rejection could explain Housman's unexpected failure in his final exams ("Greats") in 1881.[2]

After Oxford, Jackson got a job as a clerk in the Patent Office in London and arranged a job there for Housman as well. They shared an apartment with Jackson's brother Adalbert until 1885 when Housman moved in to lodgings of his own. Moses Jackson married and moved to Karachi, India in 1887 and Adalbert Jackson died in 1892. Housman continued pursuing classical studies independently and published scholarly articles on such authors as Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. He gradually acquired such a high reputation that in 1892 he was offered the professorship of Latin at University College London, which he accepted.

Although Housman's sphere of responsibilities as professor included both Latin and Greek, he put most of his energy into the study of Latin classics. His reputation in this field grew steadily, and in 1911 he took the Kennedy Professorship of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained for the rest of his life. It was unusual at the time for an Oxford man such as Housman to be appointed to a post at Cambridge. During 1903–1930, he published his critical edition of Manilius'sAstronomicon in five volumes. He also edited works of Juvenal (1905) and Lucan (1926). Many colleagues were afraid of his scathing critical attacks on those whom he found guilty of unscholarly sloppiness. To his students he appeared as a severe, reticent, remote authority. The only pleasures he allowed himself in his spare time were those of gastronomy which he also practised on frequent visits to France.[3] A fellow don described him as being 'descended from a long line of maiden aunts.'[4]

Housman always found his true vocation in classical studies and treated poetry as a secondary activity. He never spoke about his poetry in public until 1933 when he gave a lecture, "The Name and Nature of Poetry", in which he argued that poetry should appeal to emotions rather than intellect. He died two years later in Cambridge. His ashes are buried near St Laurence's Church, Ludlow, Shropshire.

Poetry

Later collections

In the early 1920s, when Moses Jackson was dying in Canada, Housman wanted to assemble his best unpublished poems so that Jackson could read them before his death. These later poems, mostly written before 1910, show a greater variety of subject and form than those in A Shropshire Lad but lack the consistency of his previously published work. He published them as Last Poems (1922) because he felt his inspiration was exhausted and that he should not publish more in his lifetime. This proved true.

After his death Housman's brother, Laurence, published further poems which appeared in More Poems (1936) and Collected Poems (1939). Housman also wrote a parodic Fragment of a Greek Tragedy, in English, and humorous poems published posthumously under the title Unkind to Unicorns.

John Sparrow[5] found statements in a letter written late in Housman's life which describe how his poems came into existence:

Poetry was for him ...'a morbid secretion', as the pearl is for the oyster. The desire, or the need, did not come upon him often, and it came usually when he was feeling ill or depressed; then whole lines and stanzas would present themselves to him without any effort, or any consciousness of composition on his part. Sometimes they wanted a little alteration, sometime none; sometimes the lines needed in order to make a complete poem would come later, spontaneously or with 'a little coaxing'; sometimes he had to sit down and finish the poem with his head. That .... was a long and laborious process ...

Sparrow himself adds, "How difficult it is to achieve a satisfactory analysis may be judged by considering the last poem in A Shropshire Lad. Of its four stanzas, Housman tells us that two were 'given' him ready made; one was coaxed forth from his subconsciousness an hour or two later; the remaining one took months of conscious composition. No one can tell for certain which was which."

De Amicitia (about friendship)

In 1942 Laurence Housman also deposited an essay entitled "A. E. Housman's 'De Amicitica'" in the British Library, with the proviso that it was not to be published for twenty-five years. The essay discussed A. E. Housman's homosexuality and his love for Jackson[6] Given the conservative nature of the times it is not surprising that there was no unambiguous autobiographical statement about Housman's sexuality during his life. It is certainly present in A Shropshire Lad, for instance no 30 'Others, I am not the first / have willed more mischief than they durst', in which 'Fear contended with desire', and in 44, in which he commends the suicide, where 'Yours was not an ill for mending'... for 'Men may come to worse than dust', their 'Souls undone, undoing others': he has died 'Undishonoured, clear of danger, / Clean of guilt..'.

More Poems was more explicit, as in no. 31 about Jackson 'Because I liked you better / Than suits a man to say', in which his feelings of love break his friendship, and must be carried silently to the grave.[7] His poem 'Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?', written after the trial of Oscar Wilde, addressed more general societal injustice towards homosexuality.[8] In the poem the prisoner is suffering 'for the colour of his hair', a natural, given attribute which - in a clearly coded reference to homosexuality - is reviled as 'nameless and abominable' (recalling the legal phrase 'peccatum horribile, inter christianos non nominandum', 'the horrible sin, not to be named amongst Christians').

Housman in other art forms

Music and art song

Housman's poetry, especially A Shropshire Lad, provided texts for a significant number of British - and in particular English - composers in the first half of the 20th century. The national, pastoral and traditional elements of his style resonated with similar trends in English music. The first was probably the cycle A Shropshire Lad set by Arthur Somervell in 1904, who had developed the concept of the English song-cycle in his Tennyson's Maud a little previously. Ralph Vaughan Williams produced his most famous settings of six songs, the cycle On Wenlock Edge, for string quartet, tenor and piano (dedicated to Gervase Elwes) in 1909, and it became very popular after Elwes recorded it with the London String Quartet and Frederick B. Kiddle in 1917. Between 1909 and 1911 George Butterworth produced settings in two collections or cycles, as Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad, and Bredon Hill and other songs.

Butterworth's death on The Somme in 1916 was considered a great loss to English music; Ivor Gurney, another most important setter of Housman, experienced emotional breakdowns which were popularly (but wrongly) believed to have arisen from shell-shock. Hence the melancholy strain of the poems and the earlier settings foreshadowed responses to the universal bereavement of the First World War and became assimilated into them. This was reinforced in 1921 when their foremost interpreter and performer, Gervase Elwes (who had initiated the music festivals at Brigg in Lincolnshire at which Percy Grainger and others had developed their collections of country music), died in a horrific accident. Elwes had been closely identified with English wartime morale, having given six benefit performances of The Dream of Gerontius on consecutive nights in 1916, and given many concerts for soldiers. More Poems was published in 1922.

Among other composers who set Housman songs were John Ireland (song cycle, Land of Lost Content), Michael Head (e.g. 'Ludlow Fair'), Graham Peel (a famous version of 'In Summertime on Bredon') and the American Samuel Barber (e.g. 'With rue my heart is laden'). Gerald Finzi repeatedly began settings, though never finished any. Even composers not directly associated with the 'pastoral' tradition, such as Arnold Bax, Lennox Berkeley and Arthur Bliss, were attracted to Housman's poetry. A 1976 catalogue listed 400 musical settings of Housman's poems.[9] Housman's poetry impacted on British music in a way comparable to that of Walt Whitman in the music of Delius, Vaughan Williams and others: Housman's works provided song texts, Whitman's the texts for larger choral works.

The impact in music of Housman's poetry has not been limited in time, place or style. The contemporary New Zealand composer David Downes includes a setting of March on his CD The Rusted Wheel of Things.

Literature

  • A Taste for Death is also the title of P.D. James´ 1986 crime novel, the 7th in her Adam Dalgliesh series.
  • A Shropshire Lad is mentioned in E.M. Forster's A Room with a View: one of the characters, Reverend Beebe, picks up the book from a stack whilst visiting the Emerson home, and remarks, "Never heard of it", perhaps lamenting the son's "unconventional" - if not sacrilegious - literary taste. [1]
  • Housman is mentioned and quoted several times by Diana Gabaldon in her popular historical fiction series, starting with Outlander.
  • Ashes Under Uricon (last words of the poem 'On Wenlock Edge') is the title of a book by Audrey R. Langer (New Saga Publications 1989).
  • There is a reference to Housman in Ian McEwan's novel Atonement, when Robbie, an English literature graduate from Cambridge, glances at his copy of Poems and A Shropshire Lad.
  • Another reference to Housman can be found in The Secret History by Donna Tartt. "With Rue My Heart Is Laden" is recited by Henry during the burial ceremony of Bunny.
  • In John Dos Passos' novel Three Soldiers, a quote from Housman's A Shropshire Lad is cited by the educated Andrews in part four, chapter one, "mocking" Andrews as it jingles through his head.
  • There are several references to Housman in Alan Bennett's The History Boys. One character quotes A Shropshire Lad: "The loveliest of trees, the cherry now...."

Visual art

A wall hanging of A Shropshire Lad was created and now hangs prominently in the St Laurence Church, Ludlow, England. A plaque honouring the poet is also installed on the church grounds.

Film

Nicolas Roeg's 1971 film Walkabout concludes with lines from A Shropshire Lad, spoken by a narrator.

John Irvin's (1981) film The Dogs of War ends with Epitaph for an Army of Mercenaries being sung over the end titles.

Meryl Streep, portraying Karen Blixen, quotes "To an Athlete Dying Young" at the gravesite of Denys Finch Hatton in Out of Africa (1985). Toward the end of the film, she accepts a drink from the exclusive all men's club in Nairobi, and toasts "rose-lipped maidens, lightfoot lads" -- an allusion to Houseman's "With Rue My Heart Is Laden".

A line from Housman's poem XVI "How Clear, How Lovely Bright", was used for the title of the last episode of the television movie series "Inspector Morse" (The Remorseful Day). Morse also quotes the last stanza of the poem 27 minutes into the episode.

Blue Remembered Hills, a television play by Dennis Potter, takes its title from A Shropshire Lad and features Potter reading part of the poem.

Works

Poetry

  • A Shropshire Lad (1896)
  • Last Poems (1922)
  • More Poems (1936)
  • Collected Poems (1939); the poems included in this volume but not the three above are known as Additional Poems. The Penguin Edition of 1956 includes an Introduction by John Sparrow.
  • Manuscript Poems: Eight Hundred Lines of Hitherto Un-collected Verse from the Author's Notebooks, ed. Tom Burns Haber (1955)
  • Unkind to Unicorns: Selected Comic Verse, ed. J. Roy Birch (1995; 2nd ed. 1999)
  • The Poems of A. E. Housman, ed. Archie Burnett (1997)

Classical scholarship

  • William White, "Housman's Latin Inscriptions", CJ (1955) 159 - 166, reports also a Latin elegiac poem, dedicating Manilius to M. J. Jackson, a Latin address to the University of Sydney signed by "The President of University College, London", and "Hendecasyllables", a translation of John Dryden's "King Arthur", printed in the Bromsgrovian (1882) over the signature "A. E. H." White's article includes the text of eight Latin inscriptions written by Housman for various memorial brasses.

Published lectures

These lectures are listed by date of delivery, with date of first publication given separately if different.

  • Introductory Lecture (1892)
  • "Swinburne" (1910; published 1969)
  • Cambridge Inaugural Lecture (1911; published 1969 as "The Confines of Criticism")
  • "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism" (1921; published 1922)
  • "The Name and Nature of Poetry" (1933)

Letters

  • The Letters of A.E. Housman, ed. Henry Maas (1971)
  • The Letters of A.E. Housman, ed. Archie Burnett (2007)

References

  1. ^ Summers 1995, p.371; Page 2004.
  2. ^ Cunningham 2000, p.981.
  3. ^ Page 2004.
  4. ^ Critchley 1988.
  5. ^ Collected Poems (Penguin, Harmondsworth 1956), preface by John Sparrow.
  6. ^ Summers ed. 1995, 371.
  7. ^ Summers ed. 1995, 372.
  8. ^ Housman 1937, 213.
  9. ^ Palmer and Banfield 2001.
  • Housman, Laurence, A.E.H.: Some Poems, Some Letters and a Personal Memoir by his Brother (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937)
  • Critchley, Julian, 'Homage to a lonely lad', Weekend Telegraph (UK), 23 April 1988.
  • Cunningham, Valentine ed., The Victorians: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)
  • Page, Norman, ‘Housman, Alfred Edward (1859–1936)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
  • Palmer, Christopher and Stephen Banfield, 'A. E. Housman', The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 2001)
  • Summers, Claude J. ed., The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1995)

Further reading

  • Shaw, Robin, "Housman's Places" (The Housman Society, 1995)
  • A. W. Holden and J. R. Birch, A. E Housman - A Reassessment (Palgrave Macmillan, London 1999).
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On Housman in general and his life

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A Shropshire Lad

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