Ivor Gurney: Letters from the Asylum
Online Study Session on Ivor Gurney with Kate Kennedy
Sunday 31 October 2021, 6.00 pm British Time (GMT)
British poet and composer Ivor Gurney (1890–1937) was committed to a lunatic asylum in Dartford, near London, in 1922. He continued writing for 15 years until he died there in 1937. This lecture and seminar looks at some of the unpublished letters he wrote there, which often spill into poetry.
Below is some preliminary reading for the session.
MUSIC
Whilst the session will focus on his letter-writing, you might want to have a sense of Gurney’s voice as a poet, and even as a composer.
Here are some recommendations for listening:
‘Sleep’ by Ivor Gurney, sung by Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)
‘By a Bierside’ by Ivor Gurney, sung by Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)
POETRY
Here is a poem written by Gurney in 1918, to give a sense of his wartime poetry at its best:
To His Love
He's gone, and all our plans
Are useless indeed.
We'll walk no more on Cotswold
Where the sheep feed
Quietly and take no heed.
His body that was so quick
Is not as you
Knew it, on Severn river
Under the blue
Driving our small boat through.
You would not know him now ...
But still he died
Nobly, so cover him over
With violets of pride
Purple from Severn side.
Cover him, cover him soon!
And with thick-set
Masses of memoried flowers—
Hide that red wet
Thing I must somehow forget.
*
Here is a poem addressing his wartime comrades, written from within the asylum between 5 and 7 years after the Armistice:
Farewell
What! To have had gas, and to expect
No more than a week’s sick, and to get Blighty –
This is the gods’ gift, and not anyway exact –
To Ypres, or bad St Julien or Somme Farm.
Don Hancocks, shall I no more see your face frore,
Gloucester-good, in the first light? (But you are dead!)
Shall I see no more Monger with india-rubber
Twisted face? (But machine-gun caught him and his grimace.)
No more to march happy with such good comrades,
Watching the sky, the brown land, the bayonet blades
Moving – to muse on music forgetting the pack.
Nor to hear Gloucester with Stroud debating the lack
Of goodliness or virtue in girls or farmlands.
Nor to hear Cheltenham hurling at Cotswold demands
Of civilization; nor West Severn joking at East Severn?
No more – across the azure and the brown lands
The morning mist or high day clear of rack
Shall move my dear knees – or feel them frosted, shivering
By Somme or Aubers – or to have a courage from faces
Full of all West England, Her God-given graces.
There was not one of all that Battalion
Loved his comrades as well as I - but kept shy.
Or said in verse, what his voice would not rehearse.
So, gassed, I went back – to Northlands where voices speak soft as in verse.
And, after, to meet evil not fit for the thought one touch to dwell on.
Dear Battalion, the dead of you would not have let
Your comrade be so long – prey for the unquiet
Black evil of the unspoken and concealed pit.
You would have had me safe – dead or free happy alive.
They bruise my head and torture with their own past-hate
Sins of the past, and lie so as earth moves at it –
You dead ones – I lay with you under the unbroken wires once.
*
Here is a particularly challenging poem written during his years in the asylum:
Iliad and Badminton
Men hurl no more the quoits, or bend bow in Tothill
Fields, but a sight of Jessop at his crouch and act –
Stays with me still, though my arm with the rudder have racked.
Shot a hole through a German maybe, Vermands hill.
Hobbs and Strudwick – they keep the long thoughts like Shirley
Of so clear line – and of Boswell, I saw the burly
Past Cricket figure of him, W.G. of Graces.
Out soon – a venerable figure – as from Froissart merely;
Hector was valiant all, but Townsend defied courage,
Would glide where Hector smote, not noted ever on page.
They talk of Kreisler and Ranjitshinjhi, both princes.
Delicatest McNeill Whistler; etching like Paliaret surely –
Glory enough for one – neither glory for others nor wage.
*
In his manuscripts from the asylum that are still unpublished, there is a revision of The Tempest, from 1927, in which Gurney creates this speech for Prospero:
Prospero
Be sure this is pleasure to me, though they have sinned
And cast me out – yea, beastly from my adored City...
Cast me, as t’were a beggar, out of all my cares
Rare as prayer – books, virginals, clarinet, embraced -
To lose my power in a night, to go oversea, hidden, stowed-under...
Duke of the time’s treasures, to lie in a dark hold, reft
Of all, friends gone from me, in danger – with no light: till
At sea, safe from anger and courtesy, they (these)
Led by some sorcery past all prayer or detection
(Dazzled by lying promise) Set down me
And my dear daughter.
LETTERS
Here is a typical early asylum letter, written within the first few months of his incarceration in 1922:
To Ralph Vaughan Williams
November 1922
Barnwood House, Gloucester
Sir
I would pray you believe words, and to get me term of imprisonment, dangerous public service, work, freedom to go on tramp, but chance of death always – rather than to be left here, where conditions are not such as one can get well in, and one maybe never well enough to go. Have mercy, believe words. A living thing desires not to be cooped up; often under influence; will do almost anything for freedom and usefulness, but not to be left here to rust into disuse, after so much desperate trying. Doctors and superintendents say I may go if friends call for me. I am in Barnwood House – Please free me from the possibility of staying one more week. I will obey orders, and do what I can do.
Yours humbly
and desperately
I.B. Gurney
Here is a lengthy asylum ‘letter of appeal’ – typical of many hundreds of similar letters. It was written in 1925, three years after his incarceration in the City of London Mental Hospital, Dartford.
To the City Besançon
It is not many that have belief in friend of blood
With Briton Roman – found in night walking, when
I’d steal out of bed; as silent as sleep; and tread
The creaking stairs with fears till my work was done.
Of lacing boots; getting hat overcoat, all unheard; 5
And close the door to watch upward; stars a million,
the very stars of Gloucester, found in Beethoven.
Then, after stealth – walking hard on ways too nearly common,
Pass the old places, climb, panting till the Roman
Camps of Maximus many a name unheard 10
of Legion; panting at last, I stood highest on.
Whereby I learnt what gods give – what common pleasure
Is given to those who pay (after no great measure)
Prices – to receive immortal and divine Treasure.
Learnt truth of life – Truth to God, and creation. 15
To a half book, and my College made London debtors;
The great song of Death accepted, (Aubers and Tilleloy created)
Which London knew – the truth, the courage, the noble matters.
Albert, and Grandcourt, sickness, so Chance me threw
Into a Dump of Aveluy – where the carts awaited 20
Water; and the warmth of the dugout in bitterest
Winter made pity in me for all Infantry….
their blankets hung here; we dried them, and were cremated
Almost in a smother of coke and vapour free.
To write verses, see sturdy men and horses 25
Of Scots of all my Division a whole army.
And have New Year’s Eve (after Christmas curses)
Warm and romantic, song writing, till piper’s glee
Sung out from Aveluy as brilliant as bright memory
Of Scott, Burns, Ballad, read in my Gloucester courses 30
of my old night walking days after swift midnight hurryings
By Portway, Cranham, Commons of Legions Charges.
A song then – many verses; until as soldiers will
We sickened of our safety – and were glad of the Infantry.
So; perfect health asserting, we were set off marching 35
Many miles – cursing; to find a lost squad of muddy
Privates and striped folk, Gloucesters were known in fighting…
But still, just boys for bullying; billeted anywhere handy.
To Chaulnes (a three weeks Hell) to follow Retreat;
Pass Nesles and Y Caulaincourt; reach Vermand 40
(Remembering Napoleons man, and his dead,) to feel sleet
Snow, rain, beating at us, till some strange change
Brought a sun …. and in woods we hid, watching land
Worried by shells, none seen, and to take swift
Three woods…. Rain again; when last of my pain…. 45
Before Vermands wires I lay watching two fires
And feel my arm twisted thrice round; to lift
Voice and cry all Curses on Saxon or Bavarian
(The end of my music…) to leave, pass through a drift
Of machine gun bulletts, [sic] and get somehow safe to Rouen. 50
(A Roman place. Rome should have told me – Ignorant I left.)
Rouen (of rock and Statue and blue Seine)
Of terrible training – glad when off to Arras,
(Making music, making verses again)
Golden Arras for three weeks, then the order 55
Came for Ypres – we marched north to tiled Buysscheure,
Heard terrible guns to tremble the brave soldiers.
And went there – Hell of look, Hell of disorder
Ten escapes a day – a Machine gun job, this far better
Than infantry – Then gas took me – at last to the Border 60
Of France, overseas; North to another Border
Of Scott Burns Stevenson Ballad and all the greater
Things of making were more to me than the breaking
Of heart in battle…
(but such God willed) there to be writing 65
Hopeless verses, the makeweight of a dull letter.
Gas at Ypres – music and some more verses.
To Depot, a bitter place of any police torture;
Useless, but Winter still, knowing more bitter
Pangs of frost – I waited till February should cast 70
A flower to show what Picardy showed farther Southward.
Wrote an immortal song (the sixth of my tale)
And was betrayed to such hell of torture that none
May say ‘Punish’ for it is better alone
To hang offhand, not judge the tools of Belials hand; 75
Such evil they craft, such black soul desiring domination
Over a living thing – to rack past the mind
Of soul – to insult all high or all fallen Creation.
So by your hand was I paid warring England.
Seven months, 8. and 9, then they let me to be 80
Free; but poor and of duty I set my hand
To labour – work hard that all my fine body strained;
6 weeks – then hooted, shrieked the great sound of Victory,
And I was free for music again – my heart to be regained;
And take the pay of long pain by assured Mastery. 85
Wandering the streets, watching flags and the queerly
Moved folk – doubting even now; in doubt, yet gratefully
Watching flags to assure that indeed at last – Destiny
Victory indeed had come …war was ended – that seemed
Hopeless but 6 months before hooters snarled out or screamed. 90
I watched then, walking the dear streets, and returned to wrestle
With my Violin Sonata – At last Gloucesters out – freedoméd [sic]
From a Hell not of soldiers; terror never of battle.
The night after wrote a poem of Victory
In the spaces of music and sent it to the 95
‘Journal’ who printed it, to my surprise, for nothing
Of present hope was with me – only of futurity;
Saw it published was pleased – and settled to word; ungraced.
A time of walking working (of forgetting torture)
Six or eight weeks before, 10 weeks before – 100
Here again police refusing pity to a young maker,
Now left alone – he knew not why – or to his strength
Only tested – his book came – the proofs finished, by dint
Of friendliness in London and writing poems – music done
A rest from making – love’s task – words more easily in managem’t. 105
London again – new hope – most terribly broken,
In six weeks, I clean-bodied to a bad shame
Of body – who paid all the prices right of night walking
Working at night; till sleep or a memory came
To call me to the night air; see dawn on the Tiding 110
Of Thames……
Again, police mark, to return to my own Gloucestershire
Again to torture; and (Laus Deo!) Farm labour, where
Rome had passed under great camps thrown sheer aloft
With soft turf – clement weather – a good man to serve 115
Upon the lower swerve of the height; and deserve
Will of God and Leo Count Tolstoi – to be tortured
There again – and after three months of farmers craft.
To be driven again to work (at least I had mastered)
Because the police willed it; Because tools of Belial willed it. 120
So the Camps and the fine toil were to me made bewildered
With the too easy leaving (it seemed) and the grieving
Useless, when such was done –
For not Rome withheld it.
1919 passed – in London I was placed – 125
Got work of organist; struggled on disgraced
Of body, tortured of head – best I might…
(Walking again roadways and byeways of night,
That Penn or Milton knew, and the Romans too)
Worked desperate; being by hot Carlyle advised, 130
And again evil crafted; again evil crushed….
So I returned to Gloucester (in holidays) again
To risk in London the study whereto my pain
Of France was directed. 1922 began;
Many songs were published. My hopes so were raised, 135
Rights of three nations….rights of love, exultations,
And of honours fashions…..June passed, July finished
My College time, and great work got accomplished;
By (O Leo Count Tolstoi!) how past your pay.
How tortured, how made bitter the natural day; 140
How black with Hell – how cruel the effort still
Made by the paid and greedy London or other evil….
August brought a post of Labour – my body tore at it –
(No defeat – terrible work, past my unused walking-state)
And then; a space of time left free for the rhyme 145
And form of music, my aunts great kindness untold –
Work from gold of morning to new mornings gold.
Masterpieces of two arts from my pen compelled.
(Honour of Masters) but never post could gain
(Lover of Elizabethans.) The fine musician, 150
The poet, the fine easily gloriously-exalted one –
Who had given fire to others – men preferred to declare
Faithfulness to old dulness, [sic] to deny honour,
Even to a war poet; even to a war maker;
And refuse mastership to one who had reckoned manner 155
Of Bach and Shakespeare, Whitman, Bridges in battle thunder,
Got truth – where richer ones got money; No ruth
Now for the soldiers who lacked influence and found the orders
Were for such to restrain themselves in Parish borders.
One got (these hardly searched for) a common cheat. 160
One other (evil again at me) evil’s cruel cheat.
A third came not for long (for these three weeks paying)
But came, and Police again 5 weeks at my pain
Tortured; evil determined; all reckless again
To have mark of cruelty – while to none might I 165
Appeal – Evil powerful; Gloucester a blooded city;
My father dead – honoured by all good all noble men.
Though I would work from dawn to dawn, truth to serve
Nothing would help – Belial punish what Hell must scorn,
The evil not soldier, destroying the soldier of nerve 170
Even; because their lust or an order willed it …
And none was near of strength that might then have stilled it.
So endlessly tortured – head scarred, back broken
Nearly – tortured to stillness – and none of this new work anyway known –
Save the great Gloucester and the Tewkesbury Poems… 175
Tortured, distracted by hideous currents of electricity
The prey of Belial: now cruel in cruelty’s lubricity…
Hurt of body – and never to work let be free….
Never let recover strength of body; nor any good the
Hurt thing asks – they trapped now to a Hell incredible 180
For sin – but to sin was all their power – all they were able.
Having England’s first right, right of the love of France.
Belgium – Love of Scotland and of all Ireland;
Thus by Labour – and a high right of labour unseen…
Denied seeing…. 185
Evil unthought clawed me to a den
Where it might have it’s [sic] way with a bloodless clear hand…
And torture till Hell spoke in those hideous men;
Hell spewed up again…..
Link
Kate Kennedy talks about Gurney on BBC Radio 3, 2014.
Kate Kennedy on Gurney and the asylum, Princeton University Press website, which publishes Kate’s biography of Gurney.
