by Stevie Smith
Her rhymes are also never quite at home: an early uncollected poem satirises a girl who
only censures or approves
In pompous hesitating sixth form syllables
(‘Portrait of a Fool’)
The poem teases us for our tacit disapproval of the half-rhyme, and draws further attention to its excess of syllables. Sometimes Smith’s most distinctive rhymes are hired out from her poetic ancestors. ‘Suburb’ warns us we will ‘die remembering’ when the time comes for our ‘dismembering’, which seems to be half-remembering Robert Browning’s ‘disemburdening’ from ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’ (1855). Yet Smith’s rhymes also wander far from home for other reasons: she delights in the rhyming antonym, and many of her drafts find her vacillating between two words close in sound but opposite in sense. ‘Do Take Muriel Out’ finds its protagonist led out by a ‘deceiver’ or a ‘believer’, depending on when Smith reads the poem, and to whom. The speaker in ‘Look, Look’ is either waiting ‘happily’ or ‘impatiently’.17
Smith cares a great deal how her poems will be read, remembered, and sung, yet can be disarmingly off-hand about whether they’ve been published before, where the epigraphs might come from, or whether they should be collected in a book.18 ‘How do you see?’, a poem specially commissioned by the Guardian in 1964, worried over the ‘pious forgeries’ interpolated into the Bible, yet saw fit to incorporate in full ‘Oh Christianity, Christianity’, a poem Smith had already published elsewhere. A faithless lover looks on with ‘imperial carelessness’ in ‘Oh, If Only …’: the phrase suggests the degree of authority Smith’s apparent indifference might lend to her art. Both on the page and stage, Smith delighted in revising works for various audiences. A gathering of schoolchildren would prompt a careful reselection and rewriting of particular lines, although someone as clear-eyed about the savagery of infanthood as Smith often created her most uncompromising poems for her youngest audiences. 19 When selling individual poems to British and American newspapers, she changed words, titles or illustration to dodge copyright issues.20 Putting together a new collection would then present her with the challenge of deciding between numerous versions of a poem. At times, her choices were pragmatic: which newspaper could supply the original illustration or copy first would determine which version made the proof. Yet she could be categorical, threatening to leave publishers when they refused to include drawings alongside her poems, as Diana Athill nearly found to her cost.21 She adopted a series of postures towards her editors, from the author-in-distress, under siege from proliferating versions of poems and drawings, to the obstinate star-pupil. In truth, no writer was better served by choosing not to have an agent, a truth of which Smith was wryly aware.
Smith well understood the dangers a ‘collected poems’ might present for writers who dared to gamble with tone, rhyme and metre. While Smith would blanch at a reviewer comparing her to Thomas Hood, her 1940s radio programme on his collected poetry sounds a telling posthumous caution; ‘certainly not a heavy volume in the intellectual sense, but be careful how you skip, you may miss something good, suddenly, unexpectedly’.22 His ‘all too faithfully collected’ and ‘unpruned’ poems worry her lest readers take them in bad faith. Smith agonised over which poems and drawings to include in individual books or, more accurately, which to omit from them. While her most frequent rationale for exclusion was ‘too light’ or ‘too sentimental’,23 she knew her particular poetic performance was a balancing act, and an off-rhyme in one poem might upset a clean quatrain on the following page. Yet other poems were denied book publication for more prosaic reasons: the Observer poetry editor had the only copy of her 1961 poem ‘The Holiday’, and a tight print deadline meant it never found its way into Selected Poems (1962). Mindful of these omissions, this edition includes unpublished and uncollected poetry in the appendix, including the sixty-four poems included in Me Again (1981).
There are more poems and drawings by Stevie Smith than can be contained in one book, and little sense from her own criticism that any poet is served well by having only one title in print. Her 1958 book of drawings and captions for Gabberbochus Press was entitled Some Are More Human Than Others (1958) and, of her own poems, she might be happy to say some are more collected than others.
WILL MAY
1 Philip Larkin, ‘Frivolous and Vulnerable’, Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955–1982 (London: Faber, 1983), p. 153.
2 Philip Larkin, ‘Talking in Bed’, The Whitsun Weddings (London: Faber, 1964), p. 29.
3 Morrissey, Autobiography (London: Penguin, 2013), p. 87.
4 Amy Clampitt, ‘Stevie Smith: The Desolation of the Ordinary’, Predecessors, Et Cetera: Essays (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1991), p. 123.
5 ‘My Muse’, Me Again: The Uncollected Writings of Stevie Smith, eds. Jack Barbera and William McBrien (London: Virago, 1981), p. 126.
6 See Yvonne Thomas, ‘A Polite Murder, Cookery, and Melancholy’, Evening Standard, 3 December 1969, p. 22.
7 Stevie Smith to Hans Hausermann, 17 October 1957, University of Neuchâtel.
8 Novel on Yellow Paper (London: Virago, 1980), p. 25.
9 The Holiday, manuscript copy, The Stevie Smith Collection, Special Collections, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa. Hereafter UT.
10 ‘Dear Spots’, New Statesman and Nation, 17 May 1963, p. 766.
11 See ‘Up and Down’, ‘Little Boy Lost’, ‘The Deathly Child’, ‘Lot’s Wife’, ‘A Shooting Incident’, ‘Le Singe Qui Swing’, ‘The Engine Drain’, ‘Cat Asks Mouse Out’, and ‘The Ballet of the Twelve Dancing Princesses’.
12 See Patric Dickinson’s introduction to Scorpion (London: Longmans, 1972).
13 Seamus Heaney, ‘A Memorable Voice’, Preoccupations: Selected Prose, 1968–1978 (London: Faber, 1984), p. 200.
14 See ‘The Hostage’, ‘At School’, ‘Was He Married?’, ‘The Forlorn Sea’, and ‘The Galloping Cat’.
15 See ‘Spectator Competition’, The Spectator, 21 March 1952, p. 16, and Hilaire Belloc’s Caliban’s Guide to Letters (1903).
16 Derek Parker to William McBrien, 19 September 1979, UT.
17 See poem drafts held at UT, and William May, Stevie Smith and Authorship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 106–7.
18 See accounts in Spalding, Stevie Smith, p.252, and Jack Barbera and William McBrien, Stevie: A Biography (London: Heinemann, 1985), p. 241.
19 She describes the two versions of her poem ‘The Donkey’ when it is requested for a children’s verse anthology by Anthony Thwaite: see correspondence dated 16 June 1969 in UT.
20 ‘Pretty Baby’ was included in the US collection The Best Beast (Knopf, 1969) as a previously unpublished poem, though it had been published as ‘Sweet Baby’ in The Sunday Times (22 Dec 1968) and ‘Pretty Baby’ in The Queen (Christmas 1968).
21 Smith threatened to renege on her contract with André Deutsch for Not Waving but Drowning (1957) unless Athill included drawings: see letter dated 22 November 1955, UT.
22 Script for the programme ‘Thomas Hood’ for Book of Verse, 87, produced by John Arlott and broadcast on the BBC Eastern Service on 8 June 1946, held at the BBC Written Archives Centre, Reading.
23 Stevie Smith to James Laughlin, 26 November 1963, UT.
A Note on the Text
Smith was clearest on editorial matters after seeing her poems in print, once decisions became errors. Several of Smith’s personal copies of her books have amendations, as do the excised newspaper versions. While she never sent these post-publication versions to her editors, they were her reading editions for performances and broadcasts. As far as possible, these amended final versions have provided the source texts here. The punctuation in her first volume is very light, but when she began to perform her work she grew more concerned with how her poems might be misread, and punctuated accordingly. She revised a number of earlier poems for Selected Poems, The Frog Prince and Other Poems, and Penguin Modern Poets 8: I have followed the later version in each case, and note s
ubstantive variants.
The number of drawings included in each volume was often determined by Smith’s publisher. When given the opportunity, she would include as many as she could, as in The Frog Prince and Other Poems. While this edition returns us to the layout and chronology of the original volumes, drawings that Smith added when republishing the poems have been included here. In a few instances, Smith removed earlier drawings, but the alternatives were substitutes rather than replacements, usually dictated by book make-up; all original drawings have been retained. Smith sometimes reused drawings for subsequent collections. In these cases, a note has been made.
Chronology
1902 Born on 20 September in Hull as Florence Margaret Smith to Charles Ward Smith (b.1872) and Ethel Spear (b.1876); her sister Ethel Mary Frances (Molly) was born in 1900
1905 Her father abandons them to work as a pantry boy on the White Star Line after his family business goes bankrupt
1906 Moves to 1 Avondale Road, Palmers Green, with her mother, sister and aunt, Madge Spear
1907 Contracts TB, and spends three years at a children’s convalescent home in Broadstairs, Kent
1911 Attends Palmers Green High School; pupils are encouraged to recite Palgrave’s Golden Treasury; wins literature prize in her final year and is given Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus and On Heroes and Hero-Worship
1917 Follows her sister to North London Collegiate, although she does not receive a scholarship; the Smith family receive visits by soldiers convalescing in nearby Grovelands
1918 Florence is confirmed
1919 Her mother dies on 6 February, having suffered a heart attack
1920 Trains at Mrs Hoster’s Secretarial Academy; by 1922, she has taken up her post as secretary to Arthur Pearson, the magazine publisher, and adopted the nickname ‘Stevie’
1920s Begins a period of sustained reading, and writes her first mature poems; these include ‘Morbid Maltravers’ (1924), ‘The Everlasting Percy’ (1925), and ‘Huderina Elegans’ (1925), a tribute to the American fantasy writer James Branch Cabell
1928 Her sister converts to Roman Catholicism; Stevie meets Karl Eckinger, a Munich student researching the Sonderbund War
1929 Travels to Germany, visiting Halle and Berlin in the period of economic crisis which saw the Nazi Party make its first major gains in power
1933 Begins seeing Eric Armitage (‘Freddy’ in Novel on Yellow Paper); she calls off their engagement, and he marries in 1935
1934 Sends poems to literary agency Curtis Brown; an anonymous reader finds them ‘bitty’ and ‘so very ultra-1934’
1935 Ian Parsons from Chatto and Windus advises her to ‘go away and write a novel’ before they can consider her poems; she submits a manuscript by Christmas
1936 Novel on Yellow Paper, or Work it Out for Yourself published with Jonathan Cape (‘Under the Haystack’ and ‘Pompey Casmilus’ were both considered as titles); her poet-protagonist Pompey Casmilus links her name to Hermes, the messenger-god who can come and go freely from the Underworld; the book is an immediate critical and commercial success, and she begins a sequel
1937 Publishes A Good Time Was Had By All, which sells over 800 copies
1938 Over the Frontier published; begins her book reviewing career with work for London Mercury, Life and Letters, and John O’London’s Weekly; starts work on a novel manuscript entitled ‘Married to Death’, which she abandons in 1939; publishes second volume of poetry, Tender Only to One, which sells around 400 copies
1940–1 Begins friendship with George Orwell and poet Mulk Raj Anand
1942 Publishes wartime poetry collection, Mother, What is Man? and begins work on The Holiday
1946 Embarks on an affair with Scottish-Canadian psychotherapist (known as ‘Mary’ in Frances Spalding’s biography); The Holiday is rejected by Cape, and her friend Leo Khan unsuccessfully attempts to publish it (see ‘The Crown of Gold’)
1949 The Holiday is published by Chapman and Hall
1950 Publishes Harold’s Leap; though reviewed well, it sells fewer copies than any previous volume
1951 Makes first BBC broadcast, ‘Poems and Drawings’
1953 Makes unsuccessful suicide attempt at work, and is signed off with a full pension by Newnes
1954 Begins reviewing for the Observer and The Spectator; writes ‘Not Waving but Drowning’
1957 Publishes Not Waving but Drowning with André Deutsch; renegotiates contract when Diana Athill objects to her drawings; gives her first poetry reading at the Oxford Union; delivers public lecture, ‘The Necessity of Not Believing’, at invitation of the Cambridge Humanists
1958 Publishes a book of drawings and captions with Gabberbochus Press entitled Some Are More Human Than Others
1959 Produces the radio play ‘A Turn Outside’, which imagines an interview with a mysterious interlocutor, eventually revealed as death
1962 Publishes Selected Poems with Longman, prompting a fan letter from Sylvia Plath
1964 James Laughlin publishes an American edition of Selected Poems, which draws praise from Marianne Moore and Ogden Nash
1965 Records an LP of poetry readings for Marvell Press
1966 Publishes The Frog Prince and Other Poems with Longman; included in Penguin Modern Poets 8 alongside Geoffrey Hill and Edwin Brock; given the Cholmondeley Award for poetry
1968 Her aunt dies at 96 after a stroke
1969 Awarded the Queen’s Medal for Poetry; Robert Gottlieb publishes The Best Beast in the US, choosing the title and selection; performs at the Poetry Society Gala Recital on 4 February with Basil Bunting, Ted Hughes, Brian Patten, and William Plomer; moves in with sister after Molly suffers a stroke
1970 Edits The Batsford Book of Children’s Verse and begins work on Scorpion (published posthumously in 1972)
1971 Suffers from fainting fits and aphasia, later diagnosed as a brain tumour; dies on 7 March
ALL THE POEMS
OF STEVIE SMITH
A GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY ALL (1937)
The Hound of Ulster
Little boy
Will you stop
And take a look
In the puppy shop –
Dogs blue and liver
Noses aquiver
Little dogs big dogs
Dogs for sport and pleasure
Fat dogs meagre dogs
Dogs for lap and leisure.
Do you see that wire-haired terrier?
Could anything be merrier?
Do you see that Labrador retriever?
His name is Belvoir.
Thank you courteous stranger, said the child.
By your words I am beguiled,
But tell me pray
What lurks in the gray
Cold shadows at the back of the shop?
Little boy do not stop
Come away
From the puppy shop.
For the Hound of Ulster lies tethered there
Cuchulain tethered by his golden hair
His eyes are closed and his lips are pale
Hurry little boy he is not for sale.
On the Death of a German Philosopher
He wrote The I and the It
He wrote The It and the Me
He died at Marienbad
And now we are all at sea.
Papa Love Baby
My mother was a romantic girl
So she had to marry a man with his hair in curl
Who subsequently became my unrespected papa,
But that was a long time ago now.
What folly it is that daughters are always supposed to be
In love with papa. It wasn’t the case with me
I couldn’t take to him at all
But he took to me
What a sad fate to befall
A child of three.
I sat upright in my baby carriage
And wished mama hadn’t made such a foolish marriage.
I tried to hide it, but it showed in my eyes unfortunately
&nb
sp; And a fortnight later papa ran away to sea.
He used to come home on leave
It was always the same
I could not grieve
But I think I was somewhat to blame.
Bandol (Var)
Bandol (Var)
In the south of France, my dear,
Is full of the most awfully queer
Majors of the British Army, retired.
They live in boats tied up to the quay
(No income tax, no port dues here you see).
And they’re always trying to buy or to sell each other things
And they hope what they lose on the roundabouts they’ll make on the swings.
And they say
Quite in the best stage-army
traditional way:
‘England was quite a good place to live in before the War
Hawkahaw.’
They all seem to have got catarrh.
Bandol (Var)
How picturesque you are.
Egocentric
What care I if good God be
If he be not good to me,
If he will not hear my cry
Nor heed my melancholy midnight sigh?
What care I if he created Lamb,
And golden Lion, and mud-delighting Clam,
And Tiger stepping out on padded toe,
And the fecund earth the Blindworms know?
He made the Sun, the Moon and every Star.
He made the infant Owl and the Baboon,
He made the ruby-orbed Pelican,
He made all silent inhumanity,
Nescient and quiescent to his will,
Unquickened by the questing conscious flame
That is my glory and my bitter bane.
What care I if Skies are blue,
If God created Gnat and Gnu,
What care I if good God be
If he be not good to me?
Alfred the Great
Honour and magnify this man of men
Who keeps a wife and seven children on £2 10