Notes

Love in a Valley

1. Southern Electric 25 mins.

Cheltenham

1. Mortar board.

2. Schoolmaster.

A Shropshire Lad

1. “The Institute was radiant with gas.” Ch. XIX, Boyhood. A novel in verse by Rev. E. E. Bradford, D.D.

Bristol and Clifton

1. Shakespeare, of course.

Bristol

1.  1   2   2   4   4   5   5   3   3   1   1
2   1   4   2   5   4   3   5   1   3   2
3   4   1   5   2   3   4   1   5   2   3
4   3   5   1   3   2   1   4   2   5   4
5   5   3   3   1   1   2   2   4   4   5

Margate, 1940

1. Pronounced “Kee-ora”.

Invasion Exercise on the Poultry Farm

1. These lines in italic are by Henry Oscar.

Before the Anaesthetic, or A Real Fright

1. Adjective from Rumer Godden.

A Literary Discovery

1. The Woods then did not build the house but rented or bought it from city friends.

2. A wine authority tells me that hock with fish is a late innovation. How late?

3. He would have come either to Guildford (L. & S.W.R., L.B. & S.C.R., S.E. & C.R.) or Redhill (S.E. & C.R., L.B. & S.C.R.) and changed on to the beautiful bit of line which runs under Box Hill. Did he also call on Meredith and Tupper? It is a key line (in the poem, I mean, not the railway system) for it helps to date the verses.

4. I do not think this refers to the poet’s bushy eyebrows but to the decoration of the hall.

5. If it is Henry Wood writing, one can well understand the sad implication.

6. There is no “Gomshall Towers” on the ordnance map today. Sheet 170 London S.W. 1 inch. Ordnance Survey Office, Chessington, 1945.

7. The poet must be in error. There is no old mansion at Gomshall. But he may well have thought Gomshall Towers old because of the crenellations, and historic because of its hostess.

8. Mr. C. E. Cherry, Parks Superintendent of the London Borough of Sutton, kindly pointed out (March 1967) information which calls for my original note to be amended. He suggests with very sound evidence and wide knowledge that the poet must have been referring to the hemlock spruces which belong to the genus Tsuga. These are elegant evergreen coniferous trees with leaves like those of a yew, usually with horizontal branches and drooping branchlets. He is inclined to specify the Tsuga canadensis because it succeeds in chalk soil such as is to be found in the Gomshall district. This genus is represented also on both sides of North America.

9. The word “town” for London was in fashionable use until this century.

10. There would not, of course, have been running water in the bedroom. We are to envisage a brass can with a face-towel over it. The water may have been cold and the poet therefore wrote the poem while waiting for a fresh can to be brought. We must not lightly accuse him of uncleanliness.

11. Though the road bends here, I think the railway is intended, for it is more elevated and commands a view of the larger houses.

An Edwardian Sunday Broomhill, Sheffield

1. The statue of Ebenezer Elliott (1781–1849) the ‘Corn Law Rhymer’ outside the Mappin Gallery, Sheffield.

Delectable Duchy

1. The motto of Cornwall.

A Ballad of the Investiture 1969

1. The Reverend H. A. Williams, then Fellow and Dean of Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge, now a monk of the Community of The Resurrection, Mirfield.

For Patrick, aetat: LXX

1. Patrick Balfour, 3rd Baron Kinross, b. 1904.

Dumbleton Hall

1. Built by Repton, 1837, in neo-Jacobean style.

An Ecumenical Invitation

1. William Rees-Mogg, a Roman Catholic, had become Editor of The Times.

The Ballad of George R. Sims

1. This was a verse review in the New Statesman (October 25, 1968) of a selection of George R. Sims’ Ballads introduced by Arthur Calder-Marshall.

IX. The Opening World

1. Words by Rev. Colin Gill, Rector of St. Magnus-the-Martyr, City of London.

2. Words by R. Browning and J. D. K. Lloyd, F.S.A.

3. Words by A. Midlane (1825–1909), Osbert Lancaster and J. Betjeman.