page_title: W. H. Davies
section_title: Marriage and later life
hierarchical_section_title: W. H. Davies / Life and career / Marriage and later life
caption_attribution_description: English: "Glendower" on Watledge Road, Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, England, the last home of Welsh poet William Henry Davies. This is a photo of listed building number 1120817.
context_page_description: William Henry Davies was a Welsh poet and writer. Davies spent a significant part of his life as a tramp or hobo, in the United Kingdom and United States, but became one of the most popular poets of his time. The principal themes in his work are observations about life's hardships, the ways in which the human condition is reflected in nature, his own tramping adventures and the various characters he met. Davies is usually classed as one of the Georgian Poets, although much of his work is not typical of the group, in either style or theme.
context_section_description: On 5 February 1923, Davies married 23-year-old Helen Matilda Payne, at the Registry Office in East Grinstead, Sussex, and the couple set up home in the town at "Tor Leven", Cantelupe Road. According to one of the witnesses, Conrad Aiken, the ceremony proceeded with Davies "in a near panic". His book Young Emma was a frank and often disturbing account of his life before and after picking Helen up at a bus-stop in the Edgware Road near Marble Arch. He had caught sight of her just getting off the bus and describes her wearing a "saucy-looking little velvet cap with tassels". Still unmarried, Helen was pregnant at the time. While living with Davies in London, before the couple were married, Helen suffered a dramatic and almost fatal miscarriage.
  Although Davies eagerly sent the manuscript for Young Emma to Jonathan Cape in August 1924, he later changed his mind and asked for the manuscript to be returned and the copies destroyed. Only Davies' lack of direct instruction prompted Cape to secretly keep the copies in a locked safe. Later, after Davies' death, when asked by Cape for his advice, George Bernard Shaw advised against publication, and the book was eventually published only after Helen's death in 1979.
  The couple lived quietly and happily, moving from East Grinstead, first to Sevenoaks, then to "Malpas House", Oxted in Surrey and finally to a series of five different residences at Nailsworth in Gloucestershire. The first of these was the comfortable detached 19th-century stone-built house "Axpills" (later known as "Shenstone"), with a garden of some character. In the last seven years of his life he lived in four different houses, all within a mile and the first three all within 300 yards (270 m) of one another. His last home was the small roadside cottage "Glendower" in the hamlet of Watledge. The couple had no children.
  In 1930 Davies edited the poetry anthology Jewels of Song for Cape, choosing works by more than 120 different poets, and including William Blake, Thomas Campion, William Shakespeare, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and W. B. Yeats. Of his own poems he selected only "The Kingfisher" and "Leisure". The collection was re-published as An Anthology of Short Poems in 1938.
caption: Davies' last home "Glendower", Watledge Road, Nailsworth, Gloucestershire
exif: {"Image Make": "FUJIFILM", "Image Model": "FinePix A405", "Image Software": "Digital Camera FinePix A405   Ver1.00", "Image DateTime": "2003:01:01 00:00:22", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "188", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/450", "EXIF FNumber": "7", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "160", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2003:01:01 00:00:22", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2003:01:01 00:00:22", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "3", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "44/5", "EXIF ApertureValue": "28/5", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "853/100", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "16/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, auto mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "11/2", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1280", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "960", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "2415", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "2415", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}