Alfred Edward Housman (March 26, 1859 –
April 30, 1936), usually known as A.E. Housman, was an
English poet and classical
scholar, now best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad.
Life
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 He was a brilliant student, gaining first class honours in classical moderations, but a withdrawn person whose only
friends were his roommates Moses Jackson and A. W. Pollard. Housman had sexual feelings for
Jackson which were rejected as Jackson was heterosexual (Summers ed. 1995:371, Page 2004). This rejection could explain Housman's
unexpected failure in his final exams (the "Greats) in 1881 (Cunningham 2000:981). Housman took this failure very seriously but
managed to take the exams for a pass degree the next year, after a brief period of teaching in Bromsgrove School.
After graduating, 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 hired at
Cambridge. During 1903–1930, he published his critical edition of
Manilius's Astronomicon 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 (Page 2004).
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
During his years in London, A E Housman completed his cycle of 63 poems, A Shropshire
Lad. After several publishers had turned it down, he published it at his own expense in 1896. The volume surprised
both his colleagues and students. At first the book sold slowly, but Housman's nostalgic depiction of brave English soldiers
struck a chord with English readers and his poems became a lasting success. Later, World War
I further increased their popularity.
Housman was surprised by the success of A Shropshire Lad because it, like all
his poetry, is imbued with a deep pessimism and an obsession with all-pervasive death, with no place for the consolations of
religion. Set in a half-imaginative pastoral Shropshire, "the land of lost content" (in fact
Housman wrote most of the poems before ever visiting the place), the poems explore themes of fleetingness of love and decay of
youth in a spare, uncomplicated style which many critics of the time found out of date compared with the exuberance of some of
his late Victorian contemporaries. Housman himself acknowledged the influence of the songs of William Shakespeare, the Scottish Border Ballads and Heinrich
Heine, but specifically denied any influence of Greek and Latin classics in his poetry.
In the early 1920s, when Moses Jackson was dying in Canada, Housman wanted to assemble his best unpublished poems together so
that Jackson could read them before his death. These later poems, most of them written before 1910, show a greater variety of
subject and form than those in A Shropshire Lad but also a certain lack of the kind of consistency found in his previously
published work. He published them as his Last Poems (1922) because he thought that his poetic
inspiration was running out and that he would not publish any more poems 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). He also deposited an essay entitled "A. E. Housman's 'De Amicitica'" in the British Library in
1942 (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 (Summers ed. 1995:371). 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. More Poems was more explicit, as in
no. 31 about Jackson 'Because I liked you better / Than suits a man to say' (Summers ed. 1995:372). His poem 'Oh who is that
young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?', written after the trial of Oscar Wilde
showed that he also explored the more general question of societal injustice regarding homosexuality in addition to his personal
emotions (Housman 1937:213). In the poem the prisoner is suffering 'for the colour of his hair' a natural and God-given attribute
which - in a clearly coded reference to homosexuality - is regarded as 'nameless and abominable' (recalling the legal phrase
'peccatum horribile, inter christianos non nominandum', 'the horrible sin, unnamed amongst Christians').
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 John Hanbury Angus Sparrow (see above) cites a letter written
before he died in which Housman describes 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 ... "
On this, he adds as a footnote later in the preface:-
"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."
Housman in other artforms
Literature
Housman is the main character in the 1998 Tom Stoppard
play The Invention of Love.
Housman's poetry ("There's this to say for life and breath, it gives a man a taste for death") supplies the title and is
quoted in Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise
thriller, A Taste for Death.
"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.
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 Chinua Achebe's novel No Longer At
Ease the main character Obi frequently refers to Housman's poetry, particularly "Easter Hymn."
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.
Housman's poetry appealed to 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. It is also suggested that the melancholy strain in the poems appealed to a generation of composers deeply influenced
by the carnage of the First World War. George
Butterworth, Ivor Gurney, John
Ireland, Arthur Somervell, and Ralph
Vaughan Williams all wrote Housman settings. A 1976 catalogue listed 400 musical settings of Housman's poems (Palmer and
Banfield 2001). Gerald Finzi repeatedly began settings, though never finished any. Even
composers not normally associated with the pastoral tradition, such as Arnold Bax,
Lennox Berkeley and Arthur Bliss, were attracted
to Housman's poetry.
While Housman's poetry had a marked impact on British music, it has not been limited in its appeal by time, place or style.
The American composer Samuel Barber set With rue my heart is laden. The
contemporary New Zealand composer David Downes includes a setting of March on his CD
The Rusted Wheel of Things.
Patrick O'Brian has a minor character quote from one of Houseman's poems (Poem AP IX
"When the bells justle in the tower") in his novel The Thirteen Gun Salute
[2]
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) The Dogs of War (film)
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 Denis 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
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)
External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
On Housman in general and his life
Topics
Texts online
A Shropshire Lad
References
- Housman, Laurence, A.E.H.: Some Poems, Some Letters and a Personal Memoir by his Brother (London: Jonathan Cape,
1937)
- 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)
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