James Elroy Flecker

FL E CK ER H I S o o m s AT A M B R D G E . , IN R C I Fron tisp wce. J A M E S E L R O Y F L E C K E R AN APPRECIATION WITH SO ME B I O GRA PHICA L N OTES B Y D OU GLA S GOLD RIN G LON D ON CH PM N H A L LTD A A L , . 1 1 HEN RIETTA TREET w c 2 , S , . 1 922 PREFA CE HE chapters which follow have b e e n written in the confident belief that the subj ect of them has secured a permanent position in English literary history, that his poetry will be read and admired centuries after those who were his contemporaries have passed away , and that in the years t o come generations o f poetry lovers will be eager to know what kind o f man he was , what he looked like , what his circle thought o f him . It has seemed worth o t while , therefore , to j down the impressions and reminiscences o f a few o f his friends w ho have been kind enough t o search their t o memories at my request , and to add this a m terial my own . My excuse for under V LI B RARf JAMES ELROY FLE CKER — taking the work is the fact that first as editor and contributor and then as pub — lishe r and author Flecker and myself were closely associated during the greater part of l his iterary life , and I was thus fortunate in hearing more o f his lite rary plans and o f his ideas about his own poems than most Who of his other friends , including many knew him far more intimately than I did . This small volume certainly makes no pretensions to be described as a Life of Flecker ; but it will, I trust, be found to contain a certain amount of information which lovers o f his poetry will find of in t e re st . As a complete biography of the poet will doubtless be issued in due course , I have refrained deliberately from tapping many important sources of information . I have , r howeve , gratefully to acknowledge the help which I have received from (among others) vi JAMES ELROY FLECKER Mr . Henry Danielson , Mr . Frank Savery , . I n e n . Mr Roger gp , Mr Trelawney Dayrell Ma r o rda t o . v o Reed , and Mr John g To Mr . Danielson I am expressly indebted for the bibliographical information given at the end of the book . DOU GLAS GOLD RIN G. Ma 22nd 1 922 y , . ILLU STRATION S FLECK ER N HI S OOMS A T CAMB R D GE Frontis ices , I R I p Facing pa g e Tw NGL HMEN FLE K ER A N D J D . B EAZ LEY o E I S ( C . ) — ENJ OYI NG TH EMSELVES I N GERMANY FROM A D RAW I N G B Y J D B EAZ LEY . J AMES ELROY FLECK ER (1 9 09) “ ’ CORRE CT ON S To OA K A N D L VE I N FLECK ER S I O I , HAND WR I TING P U EC LIAR glamour surrounds , in retrospect , the fourteen and a half years which separated the end of ’ the nineties from the outbreak o f the Great . 1 9 22 War Looking back , in , those of us ’ w ho are now in the middle thirties c a n see fu ourselves playing, all unmind l of our doom , in a world that then seemed almost shadowless . School days , undergraduate — t o days , early manhood life seemed grow better and better as the years slipped away which divided us from the great catastrophe . 1 9 1 3 and the summer of 1 9 1 4 must always have that historic interest which the human “ ” imagination attaches t o last moments . But if we like t o dwell on this queer pre war period , to think about it , to try to get 3 JAMES ELROY FLECKER it in perspective and disentangle some o f the main threads from its jumble o f ten d e nc ie s and ideas , and to keep green the memory of friends w ho died before the Great Adventure had been revealed t o stricken no t humanity as the Great Illusion , it is because we wish it back again or are mere praisers o f time past . Let us admit that o f if the present is a period short commons , f bewilderment , and suf ering, there is no i — ha Ve time like t except the future . We struggled through our disasters to man ’ s — estate ; we are compared with those of o u r contemporaries whose li ves ended before — - the war grown u p . We have gained much o f in the process , changed our sense values , ” become politically responsible , realised , however dimly and imperfectly, the human bonds which unite us with our fellow - men and women the world over . In these circumstances it is only natural that o u r ideas o f Beauty shoul d have JAMES ELROY FLECKER o f - — changed also . The artist to day poet , n — painter, ovelist , sculptor, musician is dis satisfied with much that might have given him pleasure a decade a go . He seeks more than what is at times contemptuously ” termed Beautiful Beauty ; and if he is taunted with accepting ugliness in its h place , he can reply that w at he seeks is — significance not the pretty Chinese lantern , o but the naked light within . S it is that much of the art produced between 1 9 0 0— 1 4 has become almost unbearable with the passage o f years . Reputations have flourished and withered , fashionable figures have had their day and night has covered - them : even the war poets have wilted . If the casualties in regard to reputation are u m l s o . expected , the survivors are equa ly Very few can claim t o have foretold on the publication of The Golden Journey to Samarkand that the status o f James Elroy - Flecker would be as high as it is to day . 5 JAMES ELROY FLECKER If it was the visible world which enthralled Flecker, and if the beauty that he sought t o create was an obvious , almost a tangible o f beauty , he had at least the advantage never being fashionable , and he had that quality of queerly detached effort which differentiates the pains taken by genius from those which are taken by talent . He worked at ’ his poems for his poems sake ; was de lib e rat e ly ascetic and austere in regard t o his art ; deliberately obj ective . He sup pressed ephemeral emotion , just as he ” suppressed the ephemeral message , - And fashionable philosophy , or what not . so , with everything of a merely momentary significance expunged , the precious metal of his verse has survived , has held its own and will continue t o be treasured perhaps as long as our language lasts . Having said this much , it must be added that James Elroy Flecker was at the same o time peculiarly the product f his age . He 6 JAMES ELROY FLECKER - was definitely , entirely pre war . He ’ died with the pre - war public schoolboy s idea of war undamaged , intact , and the dying embers o f his life were waked into their final flame by its fierce breath . But if his work is (as I believe) of a lasting worth , then like some masterpiece of Greek sculpture , it will be found to epitomise its period and will give the historian of the future some valuable clues as t o the nature and character of the age in which he lived . At present we are very much t o o near the decade in which Flecker grew to man t o t o d o hood , wrote and died , be able more than speculate , very tentatively , as to what may subsequently appear t o have been its salient features . It was f a strange period . It saw the birth o En lish Revie w t o the g , the rise fame of Ma se fi e ld John and Walter de la Mare , of Mr . Granville Barker and Joseph Conrad . George Bernard Shaw and H . G Wells JAMES ELROY FLECKER produced in it a good deal o f their finest work ; it witnessed a cult of the open air and the open road ; of nut cutlets and no — a t — a hats , and all events , at Oxford tre ’ m e ndo u s - o f cult of the eighteen nineties , l o f Wi de , of Beardsley , Verlaine , Baudelaire , and Ernest Dowson . Another dominating influence on English poetry during the period was A . E . Housman . Theatrical interest was divided between the imported musical comedies sta ged so superbly by the late Mr . George Edwardes (who that saw it will o f Les M erveilleu ses forget his production , ’ at Daly s and the activities o n a dif fe re nt plane of Mr . Shaw and Mr . Granville Barker , the Stage Society, etc . Of the social gaieties of the period , culminating in the Bacchanalian crescendo which ended 1 9 1 4 in July, , it is scarcely necessary to speak . A generation hence , volumes of memoirs will pour from the press making a vain attempt to describe what those w ho 8 JAMES ELROY FLECKER and James Elroy Flecker was essentially of the fine flew of our public school and Uni versity system - it was a time of unusual - opportunity for intellectual flower gathering .

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