A Literary Discovery

Sent to the Editor of Time and Tide, Dec. 1952

Dear Sir,

I was lately in a second-hand bookshop in East Grinstead and bought for fourpence a green cloth and gilt-edged edition of Longfellow’s poems (Crown octavo, Ward Lock & Co., London, 1875). Witness my surprise when I found inside it a piece of yellowish cream-laid paper (water-mark Mudie’s Libraries—Swedenborg Bond) with a manuscript poem. There was no surname in the flyleaf of the book, but an inscription read, “To Ellen from her loving husband.” The poem was certainly in the same hand as the inscription, a sloping rather clerkly fist suggesting long hours practising pothooks. Seeing that the verses refer to the celebrated novelist Mrs. Henry Wood (1814–1887) whose Christian name was Ellen, I hazard the guess that it is the work of her husband Henry Wood whom she married in 1836. The poem was placed in the leaves where “The Belfry at Bruges” appeared whose famous opening line requires Bruges to be pronounced as two syllables, American style, to obtain full beauty.

‘In the market place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown.’

Not far off is a similar poem “Nüremberg”, imparting factual information of a most inspiring kind from the guide-book. I quote a few stanzas from “Nüremberg” for it seems to have influenced the poet of the verses I have found:

In the Courtyard of the castle, bound with many an iron band,

Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde’s hand,…

Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple reverent heart,

Lived and laboured Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art;

Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft,

Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed.

I am hoping that some readers, as scholarly as I am, will be able to throw some light on the verses that follow. Important questions are raised. Did the Henry Woods ever live at Gomshall? When did Longfellow visit them? Did Henry Wood survive his visit? Was the house renamed? With the idea of helping other scholars, I have annotated the verses. I may say that, if you do not see fit to print this, I shall send it to The Times Literary Supplement where it will, no doubt, be published on that interesting back page.

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Where yon crenellated mansion on the hill surmounts the pines,

Many a long-departed merchant1 in the cellar stored his wines,

Hock for fish,2 for pheasant claret, as the sun sloped slowly down

Over ambient lawns and pinewoods backed beyond by Guildford town.

Once the railway out of London over twenty years ago3

To that crenellated mansion brought the poet Longfellow.

There were footmen to receive him, and a butler, stern as doom

Led him by the beetling antlers4 to the large withdrawing room.

She was waiting to receive him, by her side her husband stood

Who alive would see the husband?5 this was MRS. Henry Wood.

“Mr. Longfellow, delighted to receive you in our bowers!

Welcome and a thousand welcomes! Rest you here in Gomshall Towers!”6

Calmly in his Yankee accent, cultured, carefully and slow

To the greeting of his hostess answered Mr. Longfellow:

“Ma’am, your fine historic mansion7 is a dream of mine come true.

’Tis, amid its pines and hemlocks,8 some Helvetian rendezvous.”

In his ivy-mantled bedroom, dirty as he was from town,9

’Ere he touched the wash-hand basin10 did he write a poem down.

“Little Switzerland in England.” What could please a lady more

Than to find her Surrey mansion had inspired “Excelsior”?

“Little Switzerland in England,” still the name rings in my ears

When around the bend from Gomshall erstwhile Gomshall Towers appears.11