Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Credits
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Childhood
- Part II Oxford
- Part III The Patent Office
- Part IV Re-entry to the academic life
- Part V Pastures new
- Part VI Who am I?
- Part VII Paradoxical Housman
- Part VIII Cambridge – The glittering prize
- Part IX The Great War 1914–1918
- Part X After the war
- Part XI Last Poems A Requiem for Moses Jackson
- Part XII Last Things
- Part XIII Paris 1932
- Part XIV Academic apotheosis and swansong
- Part XV Last flights to France
- Posthumous publications published by Laurence Housman
- Epilogue
- References
- Bibliography
- Index
Part VII - Paradoxical Housman
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2018
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Credits
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- Part I Childhood
- Part II Oxford
- Part III The Patent Office
- Part IV Re-entry to the academic life
- Part V Pastures new
- Part VI Who am I?
- Part VII Paradoxical Housman
- Part VIII Cambridge – The glittering prize
- Part IX The Great War 1914–1918
- Part X After the war
- Part XI Last Poems A Requiem for Moses Jackson
- Part XII Last Things
- Part XIII Paris 1932
- Part XIV Academic apotheosis and swansong
- Part XV Last flights to France
- Posthumous publications published by Laurence Housman
- Epilogue
- References
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The return of Housman's muse
It is now time to return to the main thread of the narrative and observe what was happening to the poetic thread in Housman's life. In 1900 Housman's muse returned.
Five years had elapsed since he had sent A Shropshire Lad for publication. Between 1900 and 1905 he experienced a new surge of poetic activity that produced twenty-six poems. Between 1917 and 1922 he wrote another eighteen. In 1922 he had a total of forty-four new poems. He would eventually include only seventeen of them in Last Poems.
Four of them were soldier poems, Grenadier, Lancer, The Deserter, and Astronomy reflecting the impact of the Boer war on his choice of subject matter in the years 1899 to 1902. Astronomy was evidently biographical and related to his brother Herbert killed in that war: factually, he was not in a poetic drought, whatever he might say to other people.
Housman and his stepmother
Long letters he sent to his stepmother reflect his wish to entertain her. The effort he put into them showed his need for a continuing mother figure, even a stepmother. In September 1904 he wrote vividly about his visit to Constantinople, about Turkish graveyards and tombstones, which made ‘the downs look as if they were sprinkled with large hailstones or coarse grained salt’. His sunsets were atmospheric:
The sky would be orange and the hillside of the city would be dark with a few lights coming out, and the Golden Horn would reflect the blue or grey of the upper sky: and as there was a new moon, the crescent used to come and hang itself appropriately over the mosque of Muhammad the Conqueror.
He went on at length about animals he saw, white oxen, black buffaloes and sheep,
with the whitest and prettiest wool I have ever seen, but above all dogs which were all over the place and were extremely meek and inoffensive. Turkey is a country where dogs and women are kept in their proper place, and consequently are quite unlike the pampered and obstreperous animals we know under those names in England.
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- Information
- A.E. HousmanHero of the Hidden Life, pp. 159 - 177Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2018