All the Poems

by Stevie Smith

  ‘The Frozen Lake’ (p. 455): cf. Tennyson, ‘Morte d’Arthur’ (1833). CP and SP have no speech marks for ll.3–4 or l.11 of stanza 11. In SP, the poem was illustrated with the drawing that accompanies ‘Not Waving but Drowning’ (p. 347).

  ‘Poor Soul, poor Girl! (p. 458): introduced in performance as ‘The Débutante’.

  ‘From the French (1)’ (p. 459): cf. Rimbaud, ‘Chanson de plus haute tour’ (1872). Early draft titled ‘My Boat is Drunk (first verse from Rimbaud)’ includes two further stanzas:

  Do I care? I do not,

  My old boat and I

  Are rather drunk

  And we roll along.

  The sea rolls too,

  My old boat is drunk,

  And so am I,

  We are older now.

  ‘Admire Cranmer!’ (p. 460): Robert Bolt’s successful play A Man for All Seasons (1960) cast Thomas Cranmer (1489–1566) as corrupt and power-hungry. In 1955, the Church of England set up the Liturgical Commission that would result in the Alternative Service Book (1980).

  ‘Votaries of Both Sexes Cry First to Venus’ (p. 461): versions in SP and CP note the refrain should be sung to ‘Angels of Jesus, Angels of light Singing to welcome The pilgrims of the night’ [Henry T. Smart’s ‘Pilgrims]’; the hymn ‘Hark, hark, my soul! angelic songs are swelling’ by Frederick William Faber (1814–63) is sung in Hymns Ancient and Modern to ‘Pilgrims’ (1868) by Henry Smart (1813–79).

  ‘From the French (2)’ (p. 463): cf. Mallarmé, ‘Tristesse d’été’ (1872) ll.7–8.

  ‘I Was so Full …’ (p. 464): Philip Larkin had reviewed SP enthusiastically for New Statesman (28 Sept. 1962), and echoes the third stanza in the closing lines of ‘Talking in Bed’ from his 1964 collection The Whitsun Weddings:

  Nothing shows why

  At this unique distance from isolation

  It becomes still more difficult to find

  Words at once true and kind,

  Or not untrue and not unkind.

  ‘God Speaks’ (p. 466): SP and CP has ‘faults’ for ‘flaws’; author’s MS copy in UT revises to ‘flaws’, noting ‘it was the original word but then I thought, when you say it, at poetry readings for instance, it sounds like “floors”’.

  ‘Edmonton, thy cemetery …’ (p. 467): cf. draft title ‘Doubt and Belief’ (UT).

  ‘My Muse’ (p. 468): cf. Baudelaire, ‘La Muse malade’ (1857); published in The Bystander, Christmas 1937, with additional middle stanza:

  O Lord incline my worldly ear to hear

  The patient mumblings of th’unearthly Muse

  For what the trivial gold, the social pause?

  These must I also lose if her I lose.

  Lord make me listen, and make her not proud.

  But speak her thoughts out plain and speak them loud.

  In performance Smith sometimes omitted the first verse.

  THE FROG PRINCE (1966)

  Published by Longmans in December 1966. The original edition included 156 poems in total: seventy-two new poems alongside eighty-four from her previous five collections. The volume also contained three drawings with captions; these have been retained, save for a picture that replicates the illustration for ‘My Hat’ (p. 362).

  ‘Exeat’ (p. 481): the final line offers a translation of the title, which puns on the vernacular ‘exeat’ as a permission for a temporary absence from an English boarding school. Cf. Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars (AD 121), which reports that Tiberius once refused to grant a criminal a speedy execution with the words ‘nondum tecum in gratiam redii’ (trans. ‘you and I are not yet friends’).

  ‘Easy’ (p. 482): cf. Shakespeare, Hamlet (1602), III.iv, ll.178–201.

  ‘The True Tyrant or The Spirit of Duty Rebuked’ (p. 487): cf. Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘The Raven’ (1845) and ‘Of the Father’s Love Begotten’, a hymn based on the Latin poem ‘Corde natus’ by Aurelius Prudentius.

  ‘Under Wrong Trees … or Freeing the Colonial Peoples’ (p. 488): cf. Jean-Paul Sartre’s preface to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), which names European colonisers as ‘zombies’; draft title was ‘Splendide, Stupide and Candide’ (UT).

  ‘I had a dream …’ (p. 489): cf. Homer’s depiction of Helen in the Iliad, III, ll.445–61; 480–505; XXIV, ll.760–75. The poem’s allusion to ‘the Trojan Women’ evokes Euripides’ eponymous tragedy (415 BC) and Cassandra’s promise that ‘if war comes, there is a crown in death For her that striveth well and perisheth Unstained’ (trans. Gilbert Murray, 1904). Poem published in Ambit 28 (1966) as ‘A Dream’ with italicised ‘I’ in penultimate sentence. A later draft substitutes ‘ninth’ for ‘tenth’, has line break after ‘colours and spirits’ and includes the following substitutions: ‘Cressid lay that night, but they did not say’ (l.20) and ‘So there we stood / On the walls of Troy’ (ll.23–4). Draft also includes following lines after ‘like a good girl’:

  I used to get so cross

  With everybody going. I wanted to make them cross too,

  Has it ever occurred to you, Troilus, I said, catching up with him one day,

  How

  Quite ordinary women

  Will use the decimal and duodecimal systems in one simple house-keeping sum

  Adding up the pence column in twelves and to the other ones in tens

  Without giving it a second thought. He, too, went.

  ‘Phèdre’ (p. 495): cf. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, vol XI: The Sweet Cheat Gone (1954), trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1957), p. 60, which describes the importance of Jansenism in Racine’s depiction of Phèdre, and Jean Racine, Phèdre (1677), I.i., ll.34–6: ‘all things are changed since the gods sent to these shores the daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë’ (trans. Margaret Rawlings, 1992). The significance of the line was discussed by George Steiner in The Death of Tragedy (1961) and Lytton Strachey’s essay ‘Racine’ (1922), and is mentioned as a title for ‘the longest poem’ Pompey has written in NOYP, p. 200. Marie Bell’s interpretation of Phèdre was captured in the 1968 film Phèdre, dir. Pierre Jourdan. In performances Smith noted the poem ‘might be called “From the Classical Sixth at St Agatha’s”’; author’s performance copies revised ‘honourable simple’ to ‘simple honourable’.

  ‘Everything is Swimming’ (p. 498): for final line cf. Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s short story ‘À un Dîner d’athées’, Les Diaboliques (1874); trans. ‘she continued to laugh like a hyena’. The poem appears as a series of captions in SAMHTO alongside the drawing used for ‘Northumberland House’ (p. 582).

  ‘The Persian’ (p. 499): in SAMHTO, the poem appears as a series of captions accompanying a drawing of a woman’s head. The first caption reads: ‘I had to be careful with potatoes’.

  ‘Monsieur Pussy-Cat, blackmailer’ (p. 503): trans. ‘this is the great Monsieur Pussy-Cat […] in front of the enormous fire […] indeed he knows something and blackmails his host, another reason why […] if grand and if justified, take care you don’t push the one who gives you such lovely dishes too far’. The drawing appears in SAMHTO with the caption: ‘C’est la vie!’

  ‘Si peu séduisante’ (p. 504): trans. ‘she was only a little ten-year-old, so very artless, who stumbled into the dining car, to find her parents. She was in her school uniform, so very artless, and a perfectly frightful little pair of shoes. But behind her pebble glasses, her eyes were so full of good nature and sincerity that every other aspect of this little schoolgirl, so very artless, really only made one like her more.’ The drawing appears in SAMHTO with the caption: ‘What shall I do with my hands? But what ever shall I do with my hands?’

  ‘To Carry the Child’ (p. 505): l.29 amended from ‘no man’s blood’ in author’s copy; ‘no man’s blood’ retained in CP, although performance introductions noted ‘this poem has a misprint in it’. Various drafts delete then reinstate the final verse.

  ‘The Last Turn of the Screw’ (p. 509): cf. Henry James, ‘The Turn of the Screw’ (1898), Benjamin Britten’s 1954 opera of the s
ame name, and the film The Innocents (1961), dir. Jack Clayton. The drawing appears in SAMHTO with the caption: ‘My little brother was delicate’. This version follows Smith’s performance revision of ‘make it sure’ to ‘make quite sure’ in l.78.

  ‘Company’ (p. 513): published in New Statesman (25 Nov. 1963) with drawing of man taking pills, overlooked by a shrouded figure.

  ‘Valuable’ (p. 518): cf. ‘Family Forum’, Daily Telegraph, 26 April 1963, p. 12, which discusses the rise of illegitimacy in Britain. A circus panther that had escaped and injured several people was caught at a Paris school in April 1963.

  ‘The Listener’ (p. 522): Evelyn Cheesman (1881–1969) was a British entomologist and expert on New Guinea, and the first female curator of Regent’s Park Zoo.

  ‘Hymn to the Seal’ (p. 523): the hymn ‘Soldiers of Christ Arise!’ by Charles Wesley (1707–88) is sung in Hymns Ancient and Modern to ‘Diademata’ by George Job Elvey (1816–93).

  ‘Fish Fish’ (p. 524): CP adds a comma to the title.

  ‘Venus When Young Choosing Death’ (p. 526): draft in UT has ‘But not for friendship’ in penultimate stanza.

  ‘Pearl’ (p. 530): early drafts from the 1950s offer various subtitles including ‘a self-portrait in American disguise’, ‘a self-portrait in a dreary disguise’, ‘epitaph for an American Poetess committing suicide’ and ‘lines on a failed American poetess committing suicide’. In performances after the poem’s publication, Smith explained she had ‘made her American as I want two syllables on Pearl’, downplaying the apparent reference to Sylvia Plath’s suicide. The illustration is from the late 1930s, first published in London Mercury and Bookman (Dec. 1937) to accompany ‘Swift to Depart’.

  ‘Yes, I know’ (p. 531): cf. the Leonardo da Vinci drawing once thought to be of Lucrezia Borgia (1480–1519), illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Borgia. See also the popular historical novel Light on Lucrezia (1958) by Eleanor Hibbert (under the penname Jean Plaidy).

  ‘Voice from the Tomb (1)’ (p. 534): cf. Matthew 25:14–30. The poem was titled ‘Here Lies …’ in Poetry 105:2, Nov. 1964.

  ‘Voice from the Tomb (2)’ (p. 535): cf. the 1819 hymn by Reginald Heber is sung in Hymns Ancient and Modern to music by Lowell Mason (1823), though in ‘A Turn Outside’ Smith suggests it can also be sung as ‘Jerusalem the Golden’ (MA 335) to the tune by Alexander Ewing (1853). Celia sings ‘From Greenland’s icy mountains’ in TH, p. 6. The poem was published as ‘This Heart is Not Cold’ in Time and Tide (author’s undated clipping in UT).

  ‘Voice from the Tomb (3)’ (p. 536): originally titled ‘On Being Neglected’.

  ‘The Dedicated Dancing Bull and the Water Maid’ (p. 537): the popular French horn player Dennis Brain and pianist Denis Matthews performed the sonata for BBC broadcast in 1946, and in concert at the Victoria and Albert Museum, 25 Jan. 1953: Brain died in 1957.

  ‘Night Thoughts’ (p. 539): cf. Edward Young’s poem The Complaint, or Night Thoughts (1742–45).

  ‘The Small Lady’ (p. 544): variant draft has ‘magic’s daughter’ for ‘without help’.

  ‘Animula, vagula, blandula’ (p. 545): translation of the poem allegedly composed by Roman emperor Hadrian (76–138) shortly before his death.

  ‘Friends of the River Trent’ (p. 546): title taken from an article in Angling Times from 1953. Copies of the poem given to Kay Dick and Kathleen Farrell were inscribed: ‘to remind us Literary Chaps that Others, too, have Their Troubles’, and had ‘body’ for ‘number’ and omitted ‘And’ (l.11). See SSACB, p. 214.

  ‘Is it Happy?’ (p. 548): Smith’s character names evoke writing contemporaries including Jürgen Thorwald (1915–2006), Barbara Pym (1913–80), and romantic novelist Jean Plaidy (1906–93); ‘Lady Pym’ also appears in OTF.

  ‘The Grange’ (p. 564): first published in Punch, 13 Oct. 1954, with ‘bloodhound’ for ‘butler’. ‘The Death of Nelson’ was a popular patriotic tune written by John Braham, and first heard in the opera The Americans (1811).

  ‘I am a girl who loves to shoot’ (p. 572): CP runs together third and fourth stanza.

  ‘Coeur Simple’ (p. 575): first published in The Holiday Book (1946), p. 60.

  ‘Nodding’ (p. 576): an early draft gives last line as: ‘But the thought’s gone nodding’.

  ‘v.’ (p. 578): draft titles included ‘Dr Nott’ and ‘Dr Nott is v. Nice’.

  ‘A British Song’ (p. 579): draft title was ‘Bird Bath’.

  ‘Northumberland House’ (p. 582): Smith elides the 1605 Percy family house on London’s Strand (demolished in 1874) with the mental hospital near Finsbury Park, which closed after World War II. A draft illustration for the poem depicts the hospital and cinema as it appeared before demolition in 1955. Cf. TH (p. 24), which mentions the ‘fine mansion in Clapton where they have cures for these nervous disorders’.

  ‘The Crown of Gold’ (p. 584): an allegory for the troubled publication history of The Holiday (1949); after Cape and Duckworth rejected the novel, her German-Jewish friend Leo Kahn agreed to publish it, but financial difficulties meant he had to abandon the project. See SSACB, p. 191.

  ‘Why do I …’ (p. 587): a variant version prepared for an unpublished essay on death has ‘loneliness’ for ‘nerviness’, and ‘kind Death does’ for ‘sweet Death does’ (UT).

  SCORPION AND OTHER POEMS (1972)

  Published posthumously in January 1972 with an introduction by Patric Dickinson: Smith began to choose poems for the new collection but the final selection was completed by John Guest. CP reprints thirty-eight of the forty illustrations, omitting two drawings for ‘Archie and Tina’ which had previously accompanied ‘A Dream of Comparison’ and ‘Nipping Pussy’s Feet in Fun’. The original volume also included ‘Farewell’ (NWBD), where it appeared between ‘Angel Boley’ and ‘The Donkey’.

  ‘Scorpion’ (p. 593): cf. Luke 12:20.

  ‘Seymour and Chantelle or Un peu de vice’ (p. 594): cf. ‘Swishing and Swinburne’, Smith’s review of Jean Overton Fuller, Swinburne: A Critical Biography (1968) in The Listener, rpt. in MA 187–91. The illustration appears in SAMHTO with the caption ‘I am an animal’.

  ‘How do you see?’ (p. 596): commissioned by the Guardian for Whitsun (16 May 1964); it includes the earlier ‘Oh Christianity, Christianity’ in full, omitting the line break after ‘altered it’. Smith’s reference to ‘the verse in Mark’ is to Mark 16:9–20, which describes Jesus’ resurrection: its authorship is disputed, and Roman Catholics are not required to believe it was written by him. In an unpublished essay on the Pope written at this time, Smith noted: ‘there seems to be much in the Pope’s speech that suppresses truth […] he should read Gibbon’, UT.

  ‘The Ass’ (p. 602): version published in Ambit 28 (1966) has ‘espargo’ for ‘esparto’; performance texts have ‘tufted over with’ for CP’s less plausible ‘tufted over the’.

  ‘A Soldier Dear to Us’ (p. 605): published in Ambit 34 (Jan. 1968) and The Honest Ulsterman (May 1968). The Ulsterman version omits: ‘He was a sweet-tempered laughing man’.

  ‘Angel Boley’ (p. 610): drafts are partly in prose; the poem was prompted by the Moors Murderers, who were arrested in 1965.

  ‘The Donkey’ (p. 616): Smith prepared an alternative version of the poem without the final stanza for inclusion in a children’s anthology; this was sent to Anthony Thwaite in June 1969, but never published (UT).

  ‘The Sallow Bird’ (p. 621): author’s own copy revises first line of last stanza from ‘Never seyd he word again’.

  ‘The Word’ (p. 624): cf. William Wordsworth, ‘My heart leaps up’ (1802).

  ‘Nor We of Her to Him’ (p. 625): original title ‘Of any help to him’ came from alternative final couplet:

  Which may be true but it is not

  Of any help to him.

  See also sixth stanza of ‘Who Shot Eugenie?’ (p. 334).

  ‘Oh grateful colours, bright looks!’ (p. 629): in performance, Smith noted the poem was inspired by ‘the idea you get
in The Iliad, where all is grey and languid, and the poor ghosts must lap up a saucer of blood before they can speak […] “Nox est perpetua una dormienda” would seem, by comparison, quite a jolly idea.’ The latin tag is from Catullus 5, l.6 (trans. ‘one everlasting night might be slept’), but the misremembered source is Homer’s Odyssey, Bk. XI, also recalled in ‘A Dream of Nourishment’ (p. 395).

  ‘O Pug!’ (p. 630): cf. Marjorie Fleming (1803–11), ‘Sonnet to a Monkey’, which begins:

  O lively, O most charming pug,

  Thy graceful air, and heavenly mug;

  The beauties of his mind do shine,

  And every bit is shaped and fine.

  The drawing appears in SAMHTO with the caption: ‘I could eat you!’, and as the illustration for ‘O Happy Dogs of England’ in TFP.

  ‘The House of Over-Dew’ (p. 637): cf. TH, pp. 177–81 for a prose version of the poem. Typed performance drafts have ‘overdue’, for as Smith explains in a 1968 radio broadcast, ‘it was written so long after the event’ (script in UT). Performance introductions call it ‘a very long poem indeed, and flat […] meant for several voices, say half a dozen, each playing in with each, as people do in conversations about friends they have in common who are not there’. The reference to Cynthia’s prayer invokes Book XI of Homer’s Odyssey, where Odysseus prays to Hades as he descends into the underworld.

  ‘The Galloping Cat’ (p. 647): draft version begins:

  He was a fairly furry cat

  But the hair had come from off

  The back of his head

  And when I asked him why, he said:

  In performance introductions, Smith called the cat ‘a real Tartuffe’, referring to Molière’s 1664 play about a pious fraud.