Reading Walter de la Mare

by Walter De la Mare

  The description of the room as ‘tranquil’ (l. 3), like the use of the word ‘genius’, recalls de la Mare’s review of Mansfield’s first mature short story collection Bliss in The Athenaeum of 21 January 1921 (Mansfield had asked her husband J. Middleton Murry, the magazine’s editor, for de la Mare to be offered the book for review):8

  [T]he pitch of mind is invariably emotional, the poise lyrical. None the less that mind is absolutely tranquil and attentive in its intellectual grasp of the matter in hand. And though all, Miss Mansfield’s personality, whatever its disguises, haunts her work just as its customary inmate may haunt a vacant room, its genius a place.9

  Mansfield’s companion Ida Baker, who was making conversation with the other de la Mares present that teatime, records ‘Katherine’s queer little habit of holding her spoon in the air after stirring the cup. She was in the middle of a sentence, probably, and could not remember to put it down.’10 As an old man, de la Mare would say to Theresa Whistler, ‘You had only to see the way she held a spoon … to see how wonderful she was.’11

  The lulling of ‘thoughts and our voices’ (l. 7) is a prelude to enchantment: de la Mare is ‘musing’ (l. 8) – pondering, daydreaming and treating Mansfield as a muse – when an ‘old, old riddle’ (l. 8) creeps into his head, probably because of that riddle’s similarity both to Mansfield’s pen name and her maiden name, which was Beauchamp (‘beautiful field’). Like the riddle of the Sphinx (l. 28) (What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the afternoon? Answer: man), the riddle of the horse in a field is to be answered by seeing oneself in what it figures. In their correspondence, de la Mare and Mansfield both recall how Mansfield had seen a small chestnut horse; nevertheless, the poem has her see a roan, a switch made for reasons of symbolism.12 Half of the hairs on a roan are white: it is thus a subdued, daylight version of the white horse that will appear later in the poem. An old carthorse and rain suggest that de la Mare is feeling his years; if Mansfield sees a mare and a foal, her mind may be turning towards motherhood. The view of the West with the last teatime horse in a field evokes life’s evening for de la Mare, the ‘blue’ the void or perhaps heaven, the West the place of the setting of the sun.

  The ‘And now’ of line 16 indicates a momentous change (probably de la Mare’s reading of Bliss). In place of the flowers of teatime we have nettles and ‘clustering may’ (l. 19), the flower of the hawthorn (see notes to ‘“The Hawthorn Hath a Deathly Smell”’) that is a portal to the Other World of Fairie, as it is in ‘The Fairies’ by William Allingham (1824–89), and the cedar, the tree traditionally associated with immortality.13

  Though the ‘horse, milk-pale’ (l. 23) might easily be mistaken for the pale horse of Death to be found in Revelation 6:8, it is that of the Queen of Elfland, as depicted in the medieval border ballad ‘Thomas Rymer’.14 According to the version of the ballad collected by de la Mare in Come Hither, True Thomas ‘lay oer yond grassy bank’ and beholds a ‘lady gay’ riding a ‘milk-white steed’ from whose mane hangs fifty-nine silver bells.15 She was ‘brisk and bold’ and has a mantle of fine velvet and a ‘grass-green skirt’. Thomas takes off his hat and hails her as the Queen of Heaven. She corrects him, saying that she is ‘but the queen of fair Elfland’ come to visit him and that he must serve her for seven years. She takes Thomas behind her on her horse and, following the adventures of forty days and forty nights, shows him the narrow road of righteousness, the broad road of wickedness and ‘that bonny road which winds about the ferny brae’ (steep hillside or bank) ‘That is the road to fair Elfland’ where the two of them must go (hence ll. 46–7).16 Thomas, now suitably attired in a coat ‘of the even cloth’ and a pair of velvet green shoes, is not seen on earth for seven years.

  It is clear from de la Mare’s note to ‘Thomas Rymer’ in Come Hither that he is familiar with different versions of the text. He also informs the reader that Thomas meets his Queen while day-dreaming under the Eildon Tree, which is by tradition a hawthorn.17 De la Mare would also have been aware that the thirteenth-century figure Thomas the Rhymer, otherwise known as True Thomas or Thomas of Ercledoune, had a reputation not just as a poet, but also as a seer, his gift having been bestowed upon this journey.

  Mansfield the friend at teatime and Mansfield the muse have disappeared, to be replaced by the horse in the field that is her revealed genius. The moon is a ‘sinking ship’ (l. 29); the saddle is ‘high-pooped’ (a poop being the cabin at the rear of a ship). The nautical imagery may obliquely recall Mansfield’s having originally sailed from New Zealand, or more likely how, when the poem was written, she was living in France and attempting to recover from tuberculosis. Bliss, and this vision, would have journeyed ‘riderless’ to de la Mare over the sea. But the description is also anticipating the ‘God-speed K.M.’ (l. 52) that wishes Mansfield well on her great journey. Though this is a dream vision rather than a literal description, Mansfield did possess a magnificent ‘cloak, chain-buckled’ (l. 32) with a damask lining. ‘Like Dian she broods, and steals to Endymion’s feet’ (l. 34) refers to the myth of Endymion. In the Roman version of the Greek myth, Diana, goddess of the moon but also of chastity, fell in love with Endymion, visiting him in his sleep, a story which has an obvious appropriateness to this dream vision. De la Mare would have known the story from Keats’s Endymion and may also be thinking of the tale as an allegory of Platonic love, as it is in the painting Diana and Endymion by Francesco Solimena (1657–1747). The horse is male, so presumably it is analogous to the female muses and other anima-like figures that de la Mare uses to represent his own creative spirit (see the notes to ‘Reflections’ and ‘Sallie’). While it is beautiful and intricately apparelled, it is idealised rather than sanitised: Mansfield and her genius are to take a road beyond Wickedness or Righteousness. The horse’s pedigree suggests its peace and beauty are the products of jeopardy and storm (l. 40).

  That June teatime was the last meeting of Mansfield and de la Mare, but it was important for both writers. ‘I love Delamare [sic], love the man who came to tea – with his wife sitting there by the fire and dark, young, lovely Florence. The memory of that afternoon is so precious,’ wrote Katherine Mansfield to John Middleton Murry in a letter of 12 October 1920.18 Mansfield now viewed de la Mare as an ideal reader (‘This one I’d like you and de la Mare to like – other people don’t matter,’ she writes to Murry, sending him her story ‘The Lady’s Maid’ in December 1920). She repeatedly wondered what to give de la Mare in her will. Her treasured ivory mirror? Her much-loved copy of Shakespeare? Another of her books? But it was to be her posthumous collection The Doves’ Nest which, being dedicated ‘To Walter de la Mare’, returned the gift made by ‘To K.M.’.

  ‘Horse in a Field’ was to appear again in what was now the Weekly Westminster Gazette on 20 January 1923 alongside Mansfield’s obituary, where it acted as an elegy.19 The poem was collected under the present title, without the epigraph, in the American volume The Captive and Other Poems (1928) and in the British volume The Fleeting (1933), with the epigraph but without the attribution to The Arabian Nights.

  In the revised edition of Come Hither, de la Mare’s note to Robert Herrick’s ‘Upon a Child That Died’ reflects on dying young or old, concluding with the words: ‘And in those who have not become old but who are soon to die the radiance of this new light is sometimes seen to shine. As if by a secret forewarning they have made haste in mind and spirit far beyond their years – Keats, Emily Brontë, Katherine Mansfield.’20

  NOTES

  1. Kathleen Jones, Katherine Mansfield: The Story-Teller (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), p. 488.

  2. Jenny McDonnell, ‘“Memorials of the Dead”: Walter de la Mare, Katherine Mansfield, and the Literary Afterlife’ in Katherine Mansfield and the Bloomsbury Group, edited by Todd Martin (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), ebook. McDonnell also establishes details of the poem’s first publication.

  3. De la Mare writes asking permission in his letter of 15
January 1922. It is clear from his letter that Mansfield had already seen the poem. Letter from Walter de la Mare to Katherine Mansfield, 15 January 1922, Newberry Library, Chicago, Katherine Mansfield Papers, Box 7.

  4. See Jenny McDonnell, ‘“Memorials of the Dead”: Walter de la Mare, Katharine Mansfield, and the Literary Afterlife’. De la Mare worked to place other stories by Mansfield.

  5. Letter from Walter de la Mare to Katherine Mansfield, 15 January 1922, Newberry Library, Chicago, Katherine Mansfield Papers, Box 7.

  6. J. Lawrence Mitchell tracks down the date and place of the meeting in ‘Katherine Mansfield and “The Man Who Came to Tea”’, Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 18, no. 1, Winter 1992, pp. 147–55: p. 149.

  7. Katherine Mansfield, The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks, vol. 2, edited by Margaret Scott (Canterbury, New Zealand: Lincoln University Press, 1997), p. 312.

  8. See Theresa Whistler, The Life of Walter de la Mare, p. 307.

  9. Walter de la Mare, ‘Prelude’, review of Bliss and Other Stories, Athenaeum, 21 January 1921.

  10. Ida Baker [writing as Leslie Moore], Katherine Mansfield: The Memories of LM (London: Michael Joseph, 1971), p. 197.

  11. Theresa Whistler, The Life of Walter de la Mare, p. 306.

  12. Walter de la Mare to Katherine Mansfield, 22 January 1921. For Mansfield’s letter, see Theresa Whistler, The Life of Walter de la Mare, p. 306.

  13. https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/visiting-woods/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/common-non-native-trees/cedar/.

  14. J. Lawrence Mitchell, believing the poem to have been conceived as an elegy, mistakenly identifies this as the horse of death from Revelation 6:8, op. cit., p. 148.

  15. Walter de la Mare, Come Hither, vol. 1, p. 158.

  16. Ibid, p. 160.

  17. http://faeryfolklorist.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/thomas-rhymer-melrose.html.

  18. Katherine Mansfield, letter to John Middleton Murry, 12 October 1920, The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, vol. 4, ed. Vincent Sullivan and Margaret Scott (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 67.

  19. The details of the first publishing of the poem in the Saturday Westminster Gazette are noted by Jenny McDonnell in ‘“Memorials of the Dead”: Walter de la Mare, Katherine Mansfield and the Literary Afterlife’ in Katherine Mansfield and the Bloomsbury Group.

  20. Walter de la Mare, Come Hither, vol. 2, p. 772.

  The Feckless Dinner-Party

  ‘Who are we waiting for?’ ‘Soup burnt?’ ‘… Eight–’

  ‘Only the tiniest party. – Us!’

  ‘Darling! Divine!’ ‘Ten minutes late –’

  ‘And my digest –’ ‘I’m ravenous!’

  5

  “‘Toomes”?’ – ‘Oh, he’s new.’ ‘Looks crazed, I guess.’

  “‘Married” – Again!’ ‘Well; more or less!’

  ‘Dinner is served!’ ‘“Dinner is served”!’

  ‘Is served?’ ‘Is served.’ ‘Ah, yes.’

  ‘Dear Mr. Prout, will you take down

  10

  The Lilith in leaf-green by the fire?

  Blanche Ogleton? …’ ‘How coy a frown! –

  Hasn’t she borrowed Eve’s attire?’

  ‘Morose Old Adam!’ ‘Charmed – I vow.’

  ‘Come then, and meet her now.’

  15

  ‘Now, Dr. Mallus – would you please? –

  Our daring poetess, Delia Seek?’

  ‘The lady with the bony knees?’

  ‘And – entre nous – less song than beak.’

  ‘Sharing her past with Simple Si –’

  20

  ‘Bare facts! He’ll blush!’ ‘Oh, fie!’

  ‘And you, Sir Nathan – false but fair! –

  That fountain of wit, Aurora Pert.’

  ‘More wit than It, poor dear! But there …’

  ‘Pitiless Pacha! And such a flirt!’

  25

  ‘“Flirt”! Me?’ ‘Who else?’ ‘You here … Who can …?’

  ‘Incorrigible man!’

  ‘And now, Mr. Simon – little me! –

  Last and –’ ‘By no means least!’ ‘Oh, come!

  What naughty, naughty flattery!

  30

  Honey! – I hear the creatures hum!’

  ‘Sweets for the sweet, I always say!’

  ‘“Always”? … We’re last.’ ‘This way?’ …

  ‘No, sir; straight on, please.’ ‘I’d have vowed! –

  I came the other …’ ‘It’s queer; I’m sure …’

  35

  ‘What frightful pictures!’ ‘Fiends!’ ‘The crowd!’

  ‘Such nudes!’ ‘I can’t endure …’

  ‘Yes, there they go.’ ‘Heavens! Are we right?’

  ‘Follow up closer!’ ‘“Prout”? – sand-blind!’

  ‘This endless …’ ‘Who’s turned down the light?’

  40

  ‘Keep calm! They’re close behind.’

  ‘Oh! Dr. Mallus; what dismal stairs!’

  ‘I hate these old Victor …’ ‘Dry rot!’

  ‘Darker and darker!’ ‘Fog!’ ‘The air’s …’

  ‘Scarce breathable!’ ‘Hell!’ ‘What?’

  45

  ‘The banister’s gone!’ ‘It’s deep; keep close!’

  ‘We’re going down and down!’ ‘What fun!’

  ‘Damp! Why, my shoes …’ ‘It’s slimy … Not moss!’

  ‘I’m freezing cold!’ ‘Let’s run.’

  ‘… Behind us. I’m giddy …’ ‘The catacombs …’

  50

  ‘That shout!’ ‘Who’s there?’ ‘I’m alone!’ ‘Stand back!’

  ‘She said, Lead …’ ‘Oh!’ ‘Where’s Toomes?’ ‘Toomes!’

  ‘TOOMES!’

  ‘Stifling!’ ‘My skull will crack!’

  ‘Sir Nathan! Ai!’ ‘I say! Toomes! Prout!’

  55

  ‘Where? Where?’ ‘“Our silks and fine array” …’

  ‘She’s mad.’ ‘I’m dying!’ ‘Oh, Let me out!’

  ‘My God! We’ve lost our way!’ …

  And now how sad-serene the abandoned house,

  Whereon at dawn the spring-tide sunbeams beat;

  60

  And time’s slow pace alone is ominous,

  And naught but shadows of noonday therein meet;

  Domestic microcosm, only a Trump could rouse:

  And, pondering darkly, in the silent rooms,

  He who misled them all – the butler, Toomes.

  from The Fleeting and Other Poems (1933)

  ‘The Feckless Dinner-Party’ is, with the exception of the last stanza, conveyed in direct speech: snippets of conversation from oh-so-sophisticated society guests on their way to a delayed meal. Their journey proves an unexpectedly long one; carnal gossip gives way to observations about what it’s like downstairs: the ‘frightful pictures’ of ‘nudes’ (ll. 35–6), the bad air (l. 43), the darkness, something slimy, which may well be considerably nastier than moss (l. 47). ‘Hell!’ (l. 44) says one of the would-be diners, without intended irony, but that is their likely destination. The butler Toomes has led them astray, and only he is left behind.

  It would be natural to interpret the reference to ‘Eight’ in the first line as indicating the time dinner was supposed to be served. However, since the next speaker takes ‘Eight’ as referring to those at the dinner party, it must refer to the number of the diners (an early version of the poem begins: ‘Every one here?’ ‘Yes;-six-seven-eight’).1 If that’s the case, there might appear to have been a miscount. Toomes, as butler, presumably isn’t included among ‘Us’ (l. 2); ‘The Lilith in leaf-green by the fire’ (l. 10) sounds like a description of Blanche Ogleton and not of a separate guest. But that would leave us with seven: Ogleton, Dr Mallus, Delia Seek, Mr Simon, Sir Nathan, Aurora Pert and Mr Prout (an old spelling of ‘proud’ and, like Ogleton and Mallus, a clearly Dickensian surname). Assuming the usual dinner party arrangement of
an equal number of men and women, we are one female guest short.

  But perhaps we have been too quick to count. The diner asking Mr Prout to take down ‘The Lilith in leaf-green by the fire’ (l. 10) is unsure whether she is Blanche Ogleton or not; in response, she coyly frowns. So Blanche Ogleton may be another of the party and Lilith the missing eighth guest. Lilith is more or less absent from the Bible, but she was, according to Jewish tradition, Adam’s first wife who refused to lie down beneath him and be subservient to him. She is a female demon who also figures in a number of ancient Middle Eastern mythologies and, when not blamed for the death of young children, is a byword for unrestrained female sexuality. Closer to de la Mare’s own time and culture, Lilith is depicted in well-known nineteenth-century paintings, such as Lady Lilith by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the near-pornographic Lilith with a Snake by John Collier. She is also present in D. G. Rossetti’s poem ‘Eden Bower’ and is the subject of George MacDonald’s 1895 prose romance Lilith. In the early twentieth century, the name had enough currency for the reference to ‘The Lilith in leaf-green’ to be taken as a highbrow joke about a vampy-looking woman whose skimpy green costume reminds the speaker of a fig-leafed Eve after the fall. Mr Prout responds by chafing the speaker about the ‘Old Adam’ (l. 13), meaning man’s inherently sinful nature, but also perhaps the fact that the lady in question was once his lover. However, since this is a poem in which ‘Hell!’ turns out to be literal, there is a possibility that this Lilith has been the wife of the literal Adam. If so, “‘Married” – Again!’ ‘Well; more or less!’ (l. 6) gives us a clue as to the possible identity of Toomes. In MacDonald’s Lilith, she is married to ‘The Shadow’, while in earlier versions of the story, her more-or-less husband is Samael, the Angel of Death (de la Mare was familiar with the figure of Samael and mentions him in Come Hither).2