Draft.

J.H.P.A. by Frank Merrick.

Annie Dobbie had been one of my mother's school-friends. Like her two sisters she was unmarried. The three lived in the next road to ours in Clifton. One of the brothers, Willie, was well known as Commander of the Armed Forces in Malta. About the turn of the century Annie and my parents often met at the local Theosophical Society's meetings, Annie having very likely been a member. One day she brought round John Redwood Anderson, and so started one of the most important friendships of my whole life. The Anderson family had recently left Brussels, and there Jack, as he was always called in those days, had been studying the violin with the famous violin teacher César Thomson. He invited me to a party at his house and arranged that we should play the Vital Chaconne together, by which I was most attracted, although what we played was the David version, no other being then available.

It seemed that wherever Jack went he widened his interests. Before Brussels the family had been both in Egypt and Switzerland, and in Egypt he had become deeply interested in the beliefs of the Gnostics. His mother was an ardent Theosophist, so that must have been one factor in his life-long pre-occupation with religious thought. Mrs. Anderson even arranged for Mrs. Besant to give a lecture in her back garden, at which I was present.

(What must have had much to do with Jack's interest in poetry must have been his great friendship in Brussels with the poet Emile Verhaeren (to be expanded).)

At the party I met Jack's family: his American father, his mother and maternal grandmother, his sister Pearl and his two brothers, Will and Geoff. His father was not destined to live for very long after

J.R.-A. by Frank Merrick. 2.

this. My idea of him is of a whimsical and humourous character, and mostly founded on two of Jack's narrations: One was that if his father's foot caught awkwardly when he was walking, he would turn round and raise his hat ceremoniously to that bit of ground where the trouble had arisen. The other was how, when a beggar at the door was getting nowhere, and burst out with "Have you no bowels of compassion?", Mr. Anderson's reply was "He-ery a bowel."

Jack and I were much together whenever we were both in Clifton, pretty often on the none-hole golf course on Durdham Downs, where much high discourse punctuated our somewhat mediocre strokes. Not long after the Andersons came to Clifton Jack published what I then supposed to be his first printed volume of verse, "The Music of Death". Often and often have I muttered to myself the very first words in the book, "Beyond the first faint crissom of the dawn", as well as other favourite lines. Jack often talked of subjects he thought of treating. I hated crowds and was amazed when we were in one (close to the turnstile the County Ground, prior to watching a cricket match) to hear him say what a lot of ideas filled his mind when he came into contact with a crowd. He certainly thought of writing a work on the subject. Whether he did I do not know, but a memorable line in one poem is "One of the hurrying crowd but hurrying not."

A year or two after that cricket match he wrote a poem called "The Cryes of God". Our friend Mrs. Rogers read it to a small gathering one evening. She was a teacher of elocution and also, I think, a Theologiet. He had pondered much on what must, he felt, bring sorrow to the Almighty, and many years later the idea lived on when in The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Oraunia" the "Harpers in the Wind" sang, "But all the stars of the

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but was probably later that he went into an establishment for ailing
people called "Feltwell", I believe on the East Coast. The cures
there were largely affected by Autosuggestion, and he certainly seemed
to have benefited from the treatment.

A near neighbour of ours in Manchester was Eileen McCarthy, a
very talented Post-Impressionist painter. Through us, she and Jack
became greatly interested in each other, primarily, it may be thought,
on the artistic plane. In any case, their marriage followed. I have
often pondered on the question why the enthusiasm with which the first
two marriages started did not last, and tend to believe that the
reason may have been Jack's intense mental absorption in various
directions. Hope and I always felt that his intellect was greater than
that of anyone else we had ever met, and his mental energy seemed to
match it. Apart from his exceptionally large output of poetical works,
he devoted a great deal of time and thought to the production of a
comprehensive work on English Metrie, with hundreds of examples going
back at least as far as Beowulf. He also began, when in his late
seventies, to write a book of philosophy, and completed a short version
of this. And in the last year of his life he was at least thinking of
learning Welsh really thoroughly. (?) It is of interest that Robert
Donat's reading of verse appealed to him more than that of anyone else.

I was always particularly fond of the way in which he read his
own works. It was as natural as his everyday speech and the rhythm-
mycal accentuation and timing were exceptionally convincing. A few
recordings have been preserved, from which core competent critics than
I can make judgments. In everyday talk he had one or two Americanisms.
When we say "kaant" for Can't, he would say "kant" swiftly, and he used
the word "without" for our "unless".

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As to his poetry, the sheer volume of his output was matched by the great variety of subjects covered. He read me a large number of his works, including the Trilogy on the Life of Hannibal, which he seemed to regard as his most important achievement. Another historical drama was "Akenaton" the early stoic and pacifist Pharaoh. Hope made one great mistake in the late twenties when she feared that his output had come to an end: were even half of his works written at that time?

I was always fascinated by his fondness for noting and making apt use of prosaic and everyday matters, both facts and sayings, some humourous. Reelling three instances there was, in The Human Dawn, and situated in the Garden of Eden, that "brown stream" which "though none listened, talked on incessantly". In another work his lover asks, "Deuslion, art alone?" and receives for answer, "Thou see'st I am alone - why ask what thine eyes read?" and after forty years I am still enraptured by "the chaotic laughter of a shunting train". From an ordinary person's point of view I think Gerick Schjelderup's likeness of him, taken on his seventy-fifth birthday, is one of the truest portraits I have ever seen. It is very like Jack indeed and the expression on his face is a thoroughly characteristic one.

Hope, a talented song writer, had often wished she could set something by Jack to music, but his poetry was singularly self-sufficient and little or none of it seemed as if it could benefit by the addition of music. In the fifties, when Natalie Moya said on the telephone, "But the Harpers in the Wind must be sung, not spoken", I replied, "But whoever could write the music?" Hardly had I

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replaced the receiver than I was pondering on what those spirit voices
would sound like - perhaps like telephone poles on country roads. In a
month or two I had set every word of those seven outbursts for
unaccompanied horns. Although Jack had imagined them to be just two
brothers he wrote later that my choruses had brought out the meanings
of the words in good measure. Then it became evident that Usheen's
lament should also be sung. It has been one of the greatest privileges
of my long life to perform this act of musical service to a great poet
who was also my great friend for many years. ( If his poetic
genius is little recognised up to the present, it is quite unbelievable
to me that the beauty and importance of his work will not secure wide
recognition some day. )