Mary (Merry) Dalton (1.5): possibly based in part on Brigit Patmore (1882–1965), who was born in Dublin and christened Ethel Elizabeth Morrison-Scott. Her mother’s family had been landowners in Ulster, but Brigit rarely mentioned this fact, preferring to express her love for Ireland in the form of enthusiastic support for Irish independence. In 1907 she married John Deighton Patmore, grandson of the Victorian poet Coventry Patmore, and settled in Putney. A member of London literary circles before World War I, Brigit had met Richard Aldington and may have been his lover before either knew H.D.; the two may have been involved again at some point during the war (when Aldington was married to H.D.), though this is not certain. In the late 1920s Patmore and Aldington formed a relationship that lasted nearly a decade. In addition to two novels published in the 1920s, she wrote a volume of memoirs, My Friends When Young, which her son Derek Patmore edited and published in 1968.
It should be noted that certain aspects of “Merry Dalton” do not seem to correspond to Patmore, even though Merry is an early version of Morgan, the Patmore figure in H.D.’s Bid Me to Live (A Madrigal) (1960). “Lady Delia Prescott” in Asphodel (1.5) may also be based in part on Patmore, inasmuch as Jerrold and Hermione first meet at one of Delia’s parties, just as Aldington and H.D. met at one of Patmore’s.
Jerrold Darrington (1.7): Richard Aldington (1892–1962), born in Hampshire and raised in Dover and its vicinity. With Pound and H.D., he was one of the original Imagist poets and went on to a prolific career in letters. He and H.D. met sometime after her arrival in London in the fall of 1911, finding a common ground in their love of poetry and Greek art and literature. In 1912–1913 Aldington joined H.D. in Italy where she was travelling with her parents; their visit to Capri remained a cherished memory for both. They were married in London in October 1913. Their marriage, which was emotionally and professionally nourishing early on, became strained during the war years, especially after Aldington’s enlistment and his affairs with other women, and they separated in 1919 after the birth of H.D.’s daughter by Cecil Gray. They began to correspond again in 1929. In 1938 H.D. obtained a divorce, as Aldington wanted to marry Netta Patmore, Brigit Patmore’s daughter-in-law.
Phoebe Fayne Darrington (2.13): Frances Perdita Aldington (b. 1919), H.D.’s daughter by Cecil Gray, registered by H.D. as Aldington’s child. In 1928, Perdita was legally adopted by Bryher and her husband Kenneth Macpherson. Married in 1950 to a literary agent, Perdita Schaffner has described her European childhood and her two mothers, H.D. and Bryher, in several delightful memoirs, including “Pandora’s Box,” published in H.D.’s HER-mione (New Directions, 1981). Her family nickname was “Pup.”
Walter Dowel (1.3): Walter Morse Rummel (1887–1953), born in Berlin of German and American parents. His mother was a daughter of Samuel F. B. Morse. A distinguished pianist, he was a champion of Debussy’s piano music and played premieres of the Douze Etudes and some of the Préludes. He also composed his own music and collaborated on projects with Pound, H.D., and Aldington before the first war. H.D. met Rummel, probably through Pound, in America in the summer of 1910. His devotion to mystical thought intrigued her. He married the pianist Thérèse Chaigneau in 1912, divorcing her some years later. From 1918 to 1921 he was involved in a professional and romantic relationship with Isadora Duncan, performing joint recitals with her in various European cities.
Katherine Farr (1.10): probably May Sinclair (1863–1946), prolific British novelist and writer on philosophy, feminism, and other subjects. Pound, who had met Sinclair after his arrival in London in 1908, introduced H.D. to her in 1911. Sinclair became a strong public supporter of her poetry and in 1927 published an intelligent appreciation, “The Poems of ‘H.D.’ ” (reprinted in The Gender of Modernism: A Critical Anthology, ed. Bonnie Kime Scott [Bloomington: Indiana University Press , 1990], 453–67).
The Farrands (1.2): probably the Ashursts who, according to H.D. in The Gift (New Directions , 1982), owned “the best house” in the area of the Doolittle home in Upper Darby—“about two miles away or nearer, if you went across the fields” (103). In a note in the typescript of Her, H.D. described the Ashursts as “ ‘business people’—litt. [sic] type.”
Clifton Fennel (1.1): possibly Joseph Pennell (1857–1926), born in Pennsylvania, American illustrator who settled in London and became noted for landscape and architectural views. Influenced by Whistler, Pennell wrote a biography of him (1908).
Bertrand Gart (1.2): Eric Doolittle (1870–1920), H.D.’s beloved half brother. He assisted his father at the Flower Observatory and later succeeded him as professor of astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania.
Carl Gart (1.2): Charles Leander Doolittle (1843–1919), H.D.’s father, born in Indiana. He became professor of astronomy and mathematics at Lehigh University in 1875 and later took a similar position at the University of Pennsylvania, where from 1896 he directed the Flower Observatory.
Eugenia Gart (1.2): Helen Eugenia Wolle Doolittle (1853–1927), H.D.’s mother, born into a Moravian family in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She married the widower Charles Doolittle in 1882 and bore him several children. H.D. later recalled her mother’s gift for music and painting. In the 1920s she lived for extended periods with H.D. and Bryher in Europe and travelled with them, becoming a third mother to H.D.’s daughter Perdita.
Hermione Gart (1.1): Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) (1886–1961), born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, moved with her family to Upper Darby outside Philadelphia in 1895. She attended Moravian schools in Bethlehem and later the Friends’ Central School in Philadelphia. In 1905 she enrolled in Bryn Mawr College but withdrew the following year for personal and academic reasons. After her engagement to Ezra Pound was broken off, and he had left for Europe, H.D. met and fell in love with Frances Gregg and went to Europe with her and her mother in 1911. Except for short visits to America, she remained in Europe for the rest of her life. In 1913 she married Richard Aldington. A child by him was stillborn in 1915; a second child, by Cecil Gray, was born in 1919. She spent the months of the latter pregnancy first in Cornwall, then in a cottage in Buckinghamshire, and finally in a nursing home in London, where Bryher helped her morally and financially through an illness that threatened her life and the baby’s. H.D.’s first “imagist” poems were published in 1913, and she soon became noted for short, intense lyrics of Hellenic quality. Between 1913 and 1919 her publications consisted chiefly of poems and translations of Greek choruses. She was assistant editor of The Egoist in 1916–1917, and helped Amy Lowell with the 1915, 1916, and 1917 volumes of Some Imagist Poets.
Isaac Lechstein (2.6): probably Jacob Epstein (1880–1959), British sculptor influenced by vorticism and African art and noted for his portrait sculptures. His prewar work, such as “The Rock Drill” (1913), was admired by Pound and other modernists. In 1917 Epstein was living with his wife Margaret Dunlop (“Milly Lechstein”) in a house-cum-studio at 23 Guilford Street, a block or so from H.D.’s apartment in Mecklenburgh Square. He was called up for military duty in the same year and served in the Artists’ Rifles. In 1918 Cecil Gray posed for Epstein, but the plaster was later broken up; Gray also posed for the hands of Epstein’s “Risen Christ.” Epstein made three heads of Gray’s friend, the composer Bernard Van Dieren (see Richard Buckle, Jacob Epstein: Sculptor [Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1963], pp. 82,104).
John Llewyn (1.12): John Cowper Powys (1872–1963), English writer and lecturer. He met Frances Gregg in 1912 and fell in love with her but, being married, urged his friend Louis Wilkinson to wed her. Because of the suddenness of the marriage, Wilkinson agreed not to consummate it for a year (see Oliver Marlow Wilkinson, “The Letters of Frances and Jack,” The Powys Review, no. 19 [1986]: 43–57). Powys accompanied the couple on their honeymoon to Europe and, with them, met H.D. in London in April 1912. She agreed to travel with the couple to Brussels, but Pound aggressively intervened and prevented her from going. The name “John Llewyn” may also contain an allusion to the writer Llewelyn Powys (1884–1939)
, John’s brother.
George Lowndes (1.1): Ezra Pound (1885–1972), born in Hailey, Idaho, moved with his family to Philadelphia in 1889, soon settling in nearby Wyncote. In 1901, while an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, Pound met the fifteen-year-old H.D.; they were engaged, and disengaged, at least twice between 1905 and 1908. In the course of their romance, they shared ideas and literary discoveries, and Pound introduced H.D. to Balzac, Ibsen, Morris, and other authors. In 1908 he left for Europe, published his first book of poems (A Lume Spento) in Venice, and in the same year settled in London where he soon acquired a reputation for bohemian flamboyance and American bumptiousness. In September 1912 he helped launch H.D.’s career by editing some of her poems and placing them in Harriet Monroe’s Poetry under the nom de plume “H.D. Imagiste.” Pound met the Englishwoman Dorothy Shakespear in 1909 and by 1912 was unofficially engaged to her (she is the “fiancée” George Lowndes refers to in 1.15). They were married in 1914. Around this time, personal and professional clashes led to a cooling of Pound and H.D.’s friendship, but they later resumed correspondence, and H.D. recorded her abiding affection for him in her memoir End to Torment (New York: New Directions, 1979).
Miss Moore (1.13): probably Louise Skidmore, a friend of H.D.’s from Philadelphia and Port Jefferson, Long Island, who recommended a “rue Jacob pension” when H.D. went to Paris in May 1912 (H.D., “Autobiographical Notes,” entry for 1912 [Beinecke Library]).
Maurice Delacourt Morrison (1.11): Louis Umfreville Wilkinson (1881–1966) formed friendships with the Powys brothers while at Cambridge University. Between 1905 and 1919 he lectured in America, often in Philadelphia, and later was a University Extension lecturer for Oxford and London universities. He wrote several novels and a study of the Powys brothers (1936), some of these works under the pen name Louis Marlow. He married Frances Gregg in 1912, and they had two children. Frances obtained a divorce in 1923.
Clara Rabb (1.1): Julia Vanness Gregg (d. 1941), the mother of Frances Gregg. A widowed schoolteacher, she and Frances lived in North Philadelphia when H.D. came to know them.
Fayne (Josepha) Rabb (1.1): Frances Josepha Gregg (1884–1941), H.D.’s companion in Philadelphia. H.D. met her around 1910 and fell in love with her, later writing that Gregg “filled the gap in my Philadelphia life after Ezra was gone, after our ‘engagement’ was broken” (End to Torment, ed. Norman Holmes Pearson and Michael King [New Directions, 1979], p. 8). H.D. and Gregg were introduced by Pound to London literary circles in 1911, and Gregg had a minor career as a writer, publishing poetry and prose in Poetry, The Forum, The New Freewoman, and elsewhere. Although hurt by Gregg’s sudden marriage to Louis Wilkinson, H.D. remained in contact with her in later years. Gregg was killed with her mother and daughter in the bombing of Plymouth in 1941.
Vérène Raigneau (1.3): Thérèse Chaigneau (1876–1935?), a distinguished French pianist (H.D. makes her a cellist) “known in Parisian music circles for having organized the Concerts-Chaigneau (which promoted old and new music with participants such as Jacques Thibaud, Lucien Capet, and Marya Freund) and as a member of the Chaigneau trio, with her sisters Suzanne and Marguerite—violinist and cellist” (Charles Timbrell, “Walter Morse Rummel, Debussy’s ‘Prince of Virtuosos,’ ” Cahiers Debussy, no. 11 n.s. [1987]: 25). Before World War I, she performed with Walter Rummel, Harold Bauer, Pablo Casals, and others. She and Rummel were married in July 1912; they divorced in 1925. Chaigneau apparently suffered a mental collapse around 1918 and was institutionalized. Her father, Ferdinand Chaigneau, was a successful painter of the Barbizon School whose painting Cattle by Moonlight hung in the Luxembourg at the time of H.D.’s first visits to Paris.
Rallac (1.3): probably Edmund Dulac (1882–1953), noted artist and illustrator and friend of W. B. Yeats. Walter Rummel and Thérèse Chaigneau knew Dulac and his wife and stayed with them in London in May and June 1915 (see Colin White, Edmund Dulac [New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976], p. 76). In the same year, Dulac did a striking portrait of Rummel. Stories from Hans Andersen (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1911) contains illustrations by Dulac, including several evocative ones for the story “The Mermaid.”
Beryl de Rothfeldt (2.10): Bryher (Annie Winifred Ellerman) (1894–1983), daughter of the wealthy British shipping magnate Sir John Ellerman. An admirer of H.D.’s poetry, Bryher sought an introduction to her in 1918. The two became friends, and Bryher provided support to H.D. during the later stages of her pregnancy. After an initially intense emotional phase that lasted into the early 1920s, she and H.D. settled into a lifelong companionship punctuated by intervals of separation, living in London and Switzerland and travelling widely with the help of Bryher’s funds. Bryher’s diverse writings include poetry, autobiographical and historical novels, literary and film criticism, and memoirs such as The Heart to Artemis (1962), which contains an account of her meeting with H.D. and their life up to the outbreak of World War II. She founded a film company with her second husband Kenneth Macpherson and published the review Life and Letters Today.
Shirley Thornton (1.13): Margaret Lanier Cravens (1881–1912), born into a wealthy family in Indiana, went to Paris in 1907 to pursue her musical interests, studying piano with Ravel, Harold Bauer, and possibly Walter Rummel and Thérèse Chaigneau. Rummel introduced her to Ezra Pound in 1910, and she became Pound’s friend and secret patron. Probably through Pound, H.D. met Cravens in May 1912, if not before, and visited her at her Right Bank apartment. Personal frustrations, depression, and a history of suicide in the family led to Cravens’s suicide on June 1, 1912. Cravens had invited H.D. to tea for the afternoon of June 2, and H.D. learned about her death from the maid at the apartment door. Cravens had not married.
The mention of a “Miss Thornton” (1.11), president of “Lyn Mawr” when Hermione was there, presumably alludes to Martha Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr during H.D.’s enrollment. This Miss Thornton should not be confused with Shirley Thornton.
Nellie Thorpe (1.9): Nellie Thorpe is the character who introduces Hermione to Fayne Rabb in Her. Nellie’s sister Jessie (who is called Mira in Asphodel) is said to have won a Paris art prize. In the typescript of Her, H.D. identified Nellie as “Mary—(?) (friend of Frances [Gregg]).” Nellie Thorpe may be modelled on Mary Herr (1885–1960), a lifelong friend of H.D.’s from her college days. Mary was in the Class of 1909 at Bryn Mawr and majored in German and English. Susan Stanford Friedman has written that H.D. met Frances Gregg “through her college friend Mary Herr, probably in 1910” (“Hilda Doolittle [H.D.],” Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 45 (American Poets, 1880–1945), ed. Peter Quartermain [Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1986], p. 120). H.D. maintained an affectionate correspondence with Mary and made a point of seeing her when she visited America in later years.
Barbara Guest claims, however, that H.D. and Frances Gregg were “introduced by Nan Hoyt, a mutual friend. Hoyt appears in HERmione as Nellie Thorpe” (Herself Defined: The Poet H.D. and Her World [Garden City, NY: Doubleday , 1984], p. 22). In her article “Hilda Doolittle and Frances Gregg,” Penny Smith mentions an Amy Hoyt who was a friend of Frances Gregg (The Powys Review, no. 22 [1988]: 48).
Captain Ned Trent (2.3): probably Captain James Robert (Jack) White (1879–1946), son of a famous British general of the Boer War. White helped organize the Irish Citizen Army in Dublin in 1913, worked with the Red Cross in France in World War I, and engaged in various pro-Irish activities. He was the original of Jim Bricknell in Lawrence’s Aaron’s Rod (see Harry T. Moore, The Priest of Love: A Life of D.H. Lawrence, rev. ed. [Penguin, 1981], pp. 364–65).
Cyril Vane (2.6): Cecil Gray (1895–1951), a Scottish composer and music critic who was among H.D.’s circle of friends during World War I. In the spring of 1918 H.D. joined Gray at his house at Bosigran Castle in Cornwall and by August learned she was pregnant with his child. They grew distant after this point, and later attempts on the part of H.D.’s friends to persuade him to contribute to the child’s support were unavailing.
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br /> About the Editor
Robert Spoo is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Tulsa and Editor of the James Joyce Quarterly.
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), 1886–1961.
Asphodel / by H.D. ; edited with an introduction and biographical notes by Robert Spoo.
ISBN 0-8223-1240-9 (alk. paper). — ISBN 0-8223-1242-5 (alk. paper : pbk.)
I. Spoo, Robert E. II. Title.
PS3507.0726A93 1992
813′.52—dc20 91-45620 CIP
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