Notes and References (The place of publication is London unless otherwise stated.) ABBREVIATIONS ASL A Shropshire Lad (1896) LP Last Poems (1922) MP More Poems (1936) AP 'Additional Poems', first printed in A.E.H. (see below) AEH A.E. Housman A.E.H. Laurence Housman, A.E.H. (1937) BL British Library Classical Papers The Classical Papers ofA.E. Housman, ed.J. Diggle and F. R. D. Goodyear (Cambridge, 1972) Gow, Sketch A. S. F. Gow, A.E. Housman: A Sketch (1936) Graves Richard Perceval Graves, A.E. Housman: The Scholar-Poet (1979) LC Library of Congress Letters The Letters ofA.E. Housman, ed. Henry Maas (1971) LH Laurence Housman Richards Grant Richards, Housman: 1897-1936 (1941) Selected Prose A.E. Housman: Selected Prose, ed.John Carter (1961) Trinity Trinity College, Cambridge Unexpected Years Laurence Housman, The Unexpected Years (1937) Withers Percy Withers, A Buried Life (1940) INTRODUCTION 'ALL THAT NEED BE KNOWN' PAGE I 'All that need be known': Letters, 309. Less than two years later, however, Housman unexpectedly provided fuller autobiographical information than on any previous occasion. A French research student, Maurice Pollet, sent him a list of twenty questions (given in Richards, 267-9); 209 210 Notes and References PAGE Housman 'thought that for the sake of posterity 1 might as well answer some of the young man's questions'. The reply, which is of great interest, was published by Pollet in Etudes Anglaises (September 1937); see Letters, 328-9. 1 'I have sometimes thought': Letters, 313. 2 J. A. Symonds: Memoirs ofJohn Addington Symonds Written by Himself; the two-volume typescript copy now in the London Library gives the date as 1893. 2 G. L. Dickinson: The Autobiography ofG. Lowes Dickinson & Other Unpub- lished Writings, ed. Dennis Proctor (1973). 2 'dreadful mistake': LH to Maude Hawkins, 8 November 1949 (LC). 2 'he must have guessed': Letters, 393. 2 'it says something': A.E.H., 213. 2 'to let me know the secret': LH, 'A. E. Housman's "De Amicitia"', En­ counter, 29 (October 1967) 39. 2 'I have known for many years': LH to Gow, 2June 1936 (Trinity, Add. ms. a. 7l. 188). 3 'what they say': G. L. Dickinson to AEH, 22 November 1922 (LC). Dickinson's friend E. M. Forster (who 'had loved A Shropshire Lad since Cambridge days', and wrote to Housman in 1907 expressing his great admiration for the poems) came to a similar conclusion: he told J. S. Phillimore that 'he thought the poems concealed a personal experience; and when Phillimore agreed, he became certain that the author had fallen in love with a man' (P. N. Furbank, E. M. Forster: A Life (1979) 152-3). 3 'Is it a coincidence': New Statesman, 15 (1 January 1938) 19; quoted in Richards, 297. 3 'I have a queer feeling': LH to Gow, 13July 1936 (Trinity, Add. ms. a. 7l. 115). 3 'It is strange': The Sunday Times (25 October 1936) 8. 4 'That Alfred's heart': H. W. Garrod, 'Housman: 1939', Essays & Studies, 25 (1939) 11-13. 4 'one of the wittiest writers': D. R. Shackleton Bailey, reviewing Classical Papers in Cambridge Review, 94 (1973) 190. 5 'How mean a thing': Coleridge, 'A Prefatory Observation on Modern Biography', The Friend, no. 21 (1810). 5 'No one, not even Cambridge': Auden's sonnet was first printed in New Writing (Spring 1939) and was collected in Another Time (1940). 1 quote the revised version, which appeared in Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 (1966), and which, apart from slight changes in the punctuation, incorporates two revisions: in the original version, line 4 reads: 'The leading classic of his generation', and line 13, 'Where purely geographical divisions.' Auden's poem may have been prompted by his reading of A.E.H., which he reviewed (under the title 'Jehovah Housman and Satan Housman') in New Verse in 1938. A reference to Housman in the original version of Auden's Letter to Lord Byron - in the poets' heaven, 'Housman, all scholarship forgot at last,lSips up the stolen waters through a straw' - was subsequently dropped. Notes and References 211 PAGE 6 'I have always thought': W. H. Auden, 'Straw without Bricks', New Statesman, 53 (18 May 1957) 643--4 (review of Watson's biography). 9 'biographies will continue': Richard Ellmann, Golden Codgers (1973) 15. 10 'Housman remarked dryly': Graves, 209. II 'his emotional life': Gow to LH, 26 September 1936 (LC). Gow (1886-- 1978) became a Fellow ofTrinity in the same year (1911) that Housman moved to Cambridge, and was in residence from 1925. II something of an activist: As well as being involved in the pacifist and feminist movements, LH (1865-1959) seems to have campaigned for homosexual freedom. He was a friend of Oscar Wilde and Edward Carpenter, and was Chairman of the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology and a 'prominent member' of the Order of Chaeronea, a homosexual secret society that worked for law reform Oeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain (1977) 118, 124). Mr Weeks suggests that AEH 'was possibly also a member of the Order'; this strikes me as highly unlikely. He tells me that his suggestion is based on information supplied by a former owner of the diary of George Ives, the chief luminary of the Order. Until recently, the diary was in private hands and not freely available for consultation; it now reposes in the Humanities Research Centre of the University of Texas, and the point awaits checking (though the diary's use of code-names may make it difficult or impossible to check). 14 'the faintest of all human passions': Preface to Manitius I (1903) xliii. 14 'perhaps the reader will do well': Preface to Manilius V(l930) xxvi. A WORCESTERSHIRE LAD PAGE 17 'caught in his youth': Graves, 2. 17 'witty and wrote skits'; LH to Maude Hawkins, 24 October 1950 (LC). 17 'a tiny scattered hamlet': Katharine Symons to Gow, 2 August 1936 (Trinity). Mrs Symons (1862-1945), the younger of Housman's two sisters, corresponded extensively with Gow while his memoir was in course of preparation. 18 'Was there ever such an interesting family': Unexpected Years, 19-20; see also A.E.H., 22. 19 'At eight or earlier': Letters, 328. 20 'his youthful adoration': A. C. Benson, diary for 26 January 1923 (Magdalene College, Cambridge). 20 'My father': LH to Maude Hawkins, 24 October 1950 (LC). 21 'I became a deist': Letters, 328. 21 Graves: Graves, 7. 22 'I think the woman': LH to Maude Hawkins, 6 August 1950 (LC). 22 'deprived him of a guide': Katharine Symons, Introduction to Richards, Xli. 22 talked freely of her: A.E.H.,24. 212 Notes and References PAGE 22 'every scrap of writing': Katharine Symons, 'Boyhood', Alfred Edward Housman (Housman Memorial Supplement of The Bromsgrovian, 1936) 10. 22 'a very mixed character': LH to Maude Hawkins, 6 August 1950 (LC). 23 The school: see J. D. Collis, A Short History of the Grammar School of King Edward VI, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire (Bromsgrove, 1960); H. E. M. Icely, Bromsgrove School through Four Centuries (Oxford, 1953) 81,89. 24 'Excellent for those': Unexpected Years, 87. 24 'He was absolutely in love': Icely, op. cit., 93-4. 24 'took no part in games': Katharine Symons, 'Boyhood', 8. 24 'used to tread on him': A.E.H., 23. 25 'but I think, of all I have seen': Letters, 6. 25 'the rough sailors': Phyllis Grosskurth,John Addington Symonds (1964) 20. Symonds' unpublished autobiography (see above) makes the same point with greater wealth of picturesque detail. 25 'Yesterday I went': Letters, 7. 25 'has in it the authentic note': A.E.H.,27. 25 'commented severely': Unexpected Years, 62. 26 'As regards work': ibid., 71. 26 'streaks of puritanism': ibid., 97. 26 'two of our quite "respectable" domestics': LH to Maude Hawkins, 9 September 1950 (LC). 26 'in arm-in-arm pairs': Katharine Symons to Cow, 28 February 1937 (Trinity). 26 daily Bible-readings: Lucy Housman, diary for 24July 1882. Quotations from this diary are reproduced from a typescript document titled 'Extracts from the diaries of Mrs. Edward Housman' (Trinity); some of the entries are evidently summaries of the original made by Katharine Symons, presumably for Cow's benefit. 26 secular reading aloud: Unexpected Years, 76-7. 27 word-games and play-acting: ibid., 97, 99-100; A.E.H., 36-7. 27 'a way of making things': Katharine Symons, 'Boyhood', 16. 27 'subject to gloom': ibid. 27 'quick to see humour': ibid., 20. 27 'in a very quarrelsome family': Unexpected Years, 382. 28 'saying that his English': A.E.H.,39. 28 'they considered': J. M. Edmonds to LH, 28 November 1937 (LC). 28 'Alfred went to Oxford': Lucy Housman, diary for 15January 1877. 28 Herbert Millington later claimed: in a letter to the Journal of Education (1 February 1888), quoted by Gow, 'A. E. Housman at Oxford', Oxford Magazine, 56 (11 November 1937) 150. 2 OXFORD PAGE 29 'The great and real troubles': Letters, 363. Notes and References 213 PAGE 29 Oscar Wilde: quoted by H. Montgomery Hyde, Oscar Wilde (1976) 15; PhilippeJuliian, Oscar Wilde (1969) 33. 29 'By the third quarter': Ruth Fasnacht, A History of the City of Oxford (Oxford, 1954) 189. 30 'on Sunday': Sir Charles Oman, Memories of Victorian Oxford (1941) 86. 30 But even Oxford: see V. H. H. Green, A History of Oxford University (1974); W. R. Ward, Victorian Oxford (1965). 31 'the time for minute criticism': E. Abbott and L. Campbell, The Life & Letters of Benjamin Jowett, M.A. II (1897), 143 (letter of 16 February 1878). 32 'knowledge for its own sake': quoted by N.