Songs of Graves’s and Gurney’s Friends Richard Carder Any contact between Robert Graves and Ivor Gurney has been hidden until quite recently, until revealed in a brief reference in Gurney’s Collected Letters, and the discovery of two letters from Graves in the Haines archive at Gloucester Library. Although Michael Hurd mentioned Gurney’s trip to Oxford in 1919 in his pioneering biography, The Ordeal of Ivor Gurney (1978), he did not suggest there that the two poets actually met on the occasion, though it seems likely enough. ‘Well, here goes for Masefield, Captain Stratton, Reynard the Fox and all!’ – as Ivor Gurney wrote to his friend Marion Scott on the train to Oxford on 8 November 1919. John Masefield had invited him with his friend the poet (and singer) Will Harvey to come and perform some of his songs at the house on Boar’s Hill. A few days later he wrote to John Haines, a solicitor and amateur poet: On Saturday […] we visited Masefield in his proper haunt at Boar’s Hill, where are Graves, Nichols and Bridges also. He was extremely nice, a boyish, quiet person, with a manner friendly enough, and easy to get on with. […] Neither FWH nor myself thought he cared much for ‘By a Bierside’, but ‘The Halt of the Legion’, & ‘Up on the Downs’ pleased him. Masefield expressed admiration for my last book [War’s Embers], and I fancy wants me to go to Oxford on a grant. This occasion was probably Gurney’s first meeting with Graves, who was living with his wife, Nancy, in a cottage in Masefield’s garden, while he studied at St John’s College. He had already expressed admiration for Graves in various letters the previous year: ‘Sorry that the reviewers think Graves cannot write; for he is a poet and I am not.’ Gurney’s six settings of Graves all followed
this meeting. They are: ‘Star Talk’, ‘Nine of the Clock’, ‘Goodnight to the Meadow’, ‘Hawk and Buckle’, ‘Loving Henry’ and ‘Brittle Bones’. To date, the first four have been published to date, as well as recorded. ‘Star Talk’, one of Graves’ earliest poems, (a modern nursery rhyme, from which Gurney chose just three of the five verses) is interesting as it was set twice: first in 1920, then again in 1925, when Gurney had been in the asylum for two years. It was the latter version which was published, and shows some signs of disturbance towards the end. Luckily his friend, Marion Scott, had made a copy of the first version, which has survived. The next known contact was a letter from Graves to Gurney in November 1920 from Boar’s Hill: Dear Gurney, Many thanks for yours, and glad to hear about ‘Brittle Bones’ being accepted by Rogers. – My new book should be out about Christmas [The Pier-Glass], and contains several lyrics of correct quality, but is very different as a book from Country Sentiment. Shanks is a very good fellow; Blunden one of the best in the world and solid all through; he is one of the great prose-writers of the future. He will never (but this is a private opinion not to be divulged) perhaps improve on The Waggoner volume in poetry though. Are you coming to Oxford? By the way, when fixing up an agreement with Rogers, please don’t sign away any copyright of mine. – Of course I won’t queer your pitch by asking too much for the words, but I have to do all these jobs through my literary agent. Yours sincerely, Robert Graves. Winthrop Rogers was an American music publisher in London
Gurney already knew Novello, as they were fellow pupils of the organist at Gloucester Cathedral, where a third pupil, Herbert Howells, used to be bribed by Novello to do his counterpoint exercises for him. This is not to deny that both Graves and Gurney also sought commercial success, but it never came to Gurney; and to Graves only after publication of Goodbye to All That in 1929, by which time Gurney had been in the asylum at Dartford for four years. Of the other residents of Boar’s Hill in 1920, Robert Bridges was the then Poet Laureate, and founder of the Society for Pure English before the war, to which Graves had contributed a piece, ‘On Hyphens’, in 1921; following which he wrote to Bridges that […] it would be far better for the language to remain slipshod & cloudy than to become hag-ridden by an Official Academy. […] But the purification is essential if, as I expect & hope, English is to become the World-Language […]. Although he liked Bridges, he was not uncritical of his poetry, as is apparent in a letter to Robert Nichols in February 1917: Yes, Bridges is just what you claim for him, a nice common little geranium flower from the nursery gardens – better than the tea roses of the nineties or the passion flowers of these bad fellows like Byron and Co., but […] there are harebells and rowan-trees on your own hills, what need ye more? Bridges fell short of Graves’s essential prescription for modern poetry, which was that it should use the language of everyday speech. He was still writing lines such as ‘Thou didst delight mine eyes’. Gurney, on the other hand, was not put off by the antiquated language, admiring the poems for their lyrical qualities, which he had started to set to music as early as 1909. Indeed, he was to set
So I did ‘The Rest Farm’, ‘Pipers Wood’ and ‘Minsterworth Perry’; all of which we shall do at Stroud on Saturday week. This performance started with milk, went on to Perry, which was succeeded by Champagne, to end with sloe gin! Only ‘Pipers Wood’ needs much attention. Needless to say this was the last of the set, made between 4 and 5 o’clock!! ‘In Flanders’, one of Gurney’s best songs, was composed while he was in the trenches of France at Christmas, 1916, being a song of homesickness: I’m homesick for my hills again – My hills again! To see above the Severn plain Unscabbarded against the sky The blue high blade of Cotswold lie […]. Both men knew well that view, and it was to recur many times in Gurney’s own poems. They had shared many walks, and sailing in Gurney’s dingy at Framilode on the Severn before the war. Harvey is probably most remembered today for his comical poem ‘Ducks’, written as a prisoner of war in Germany; but he also penned another war poem, ‘If We Return’, set by Gurney c. 1918, which regrettably he did not complete: If we return, will England be Just England still to you and me? The place where we must earn our bread? We, who have walked among the dead, And watched the smile of agony, And seen the price of Liberty, Which we have taken carelessly