Laurence Housman
Laurence Housman has been called "so brilliantly versatile that there is hardly a field of letters which he has left untried and unadorned." Versatile he most certainly was, and distinguished not only as a writer, but as an artist and social reformer also. His literary output was immense, and his place in English literature would probably have been more significant had he permitted himself time to polish one work before launching into the next. Housman was conscious of this when, in a scene imagining his own death-bed, he causes himself to say: "My brother used to say that I wrote faster than he could read. He wrote two books— of poems—better than all mine put together." Nonetheless, though Laurence was inclined to regard himself merely as "the brother of the ' Shropshire Lad' ", he was very much more than that.
Born on i8th July, 1865, at Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, Laurence Housman was the sixth of seven children. His father was a solicitor. At eighteen Laurence left school, and went with his sister, Clemence, to study art in London. He found some difficulty in establishing himself as an artist, and turned more and more to writing as an alternative. However, he was a more than competent artist, and illustrated a number of books, both of his own and of others. At the end of his life he judged his illustrations for an edition of Shelley's " The Sensitive Plant", published in 1898, to be the best drawings he ever did.
Housman's early literary work was largely of fairy tales, legends and poems. In 1901 he gained a great popular success when he published, anonymously, "An Englishwoman's Love-Letters". These were attributed to about forty different people, including Queen Victoria, before the true author became known. Later he turned to playwriting, encouraged by Harley Granville Barker, and his most enduring work is undoubtedly to be found amongst his plays. He suffered most severely from censorship, and earned the description " England's most censored playwright". In all thirty-two of Laurence Housman's plays were objected to, because they represented members of the Royal Family or Biblical characters. These restrictions were later lifted.
He was a great champion of underprivileged sections of society, and was deeply involved in such issues as the Suffragette movement, and the treatment of conscientious objectors. In his own words, he was " unmarried, a rabid pacifist and internationalist, and a great admirer of the work of his brother, A. E. Housman, the poet—who, however, did not return the compliment." One should not miss reading his autobiography, "The Unexpected Years", published in 1937.
Laurence Housman's most considerable contributions to English literature are almost certainly his cycle of plays on the life of St. Francis of Assisi, and his Victorian plays. By far the greater part of these two long series of plays was written whilst Housman lived in Somerset.
He lived in Street for the last 35 years of his life—with his elder sister Clemence—in a house built on land of:
Good measure, meted out, and running over,
Into a field of elms, cows, rooks, and clover,
Where, fronting south, near by, in pleasant hands,
The little watch-tower of gazebo stands.
The house was "Longmeadow", in Burleigh Lane, Street; and those who know the spot will readily identify "the little watch-tower" on the garden wall of "Whitenights". Roger and Sarah Clark, of "Whitenights", were among the very closest friends of Clemence and Laurence Housman. Over the years an extensive collection of the works of Laurence Housman accumulated on the book-shelves at "Whitenights". Many of these books were presented and inscribed by the authorand many contain notes and impromptu verses addressed to members of the Clark family.
During the centenary year of Laurence Housman's birth the family of Roger and Sarah Clark presented this collection of books, (together with a long series of letters, some drawings, and other items), to the Street Library, with which the Clark family and Laurence Housman had long been closely connected. The books and papers are now housed, (in a cabinet especially made by Mr. Frederick Rivers, a local cabinet-maket), in the Street Library. Above the cabinet hangs the portrait of Laurence Housman, by Cecile Crombeke, done towards the end of Housman's life. The portrait is confidently thought to be the only one ever painted of Laurence Housman ; it was presented to the Library, by Mrs. Roger Clark, in 1964.
This catalogue sets out to indicate the extent of the Housman Collection. It makes no attempt to be an exhaustive or scholarly bibliography. Those items marked by a single asterisk contain manuscript or other material, often a simple inscription by Laurence Housman to Roger and/or Sarah Clark. The items marked with two asterisks include matter of exceptional interest such as letters or textual annotation. My thanks are due to those many many people who have been so helpful in the preparation of this booklet.