CHAPTER 2

Schooldays

And the stately ships go on

to their haven under the hill;

but oh for the touch of a vanished hand,

and the sound of a voice that is still.

Break, break, break

at the foot of the crags, o Sea;

but the tender grace of a day that is dead

will never come back to me.

Lines from 'Break, break, break' by Alfred Lord Tennyson as quoted in Sabrinae Corolla

On the morning of 26 March 1871, the Housman children still at Perry Hall - Kate, aged eleven, Clem aged nine, Basil aged eight, Laurence aged five, and Herbert aged two - had been taken to church as usual. The first sign that something was wrong came when the mid-day meal was transferred from the dining- to the drawing-room. 'I asked why', Laurence recalled, 'and was told . that it was because I was late in getting ready for church that morning.' A few minutes after the meal had ended, Clem and Kate were on the front lawn with Herbert, while Laurence was walking with his nurse along the drive. Then Laurence saw their housekeeper cousin, Mary, come out of the front door: 'She said something I could not hear. I saw my two sisters burst into tears, and throw themselves into her arms.' Then all the children were taken into the darkened room where their mother had died. Sarah Jane's body was still lying in bed, her face pale, her eyelids smoothed down; at the foot of the bed lighted candles burned on either side of a crucifix in a wooden shrine. It was a solemn, haunting, and strangely beautiful sight, which explained, more than any words could have done, that their mother was finally dead; and, for those of the children who understood and believed in Christianity, the cross and the candles were a reminder that she had already begun a new life in heaven.

For the moment Alfred was simply overwhelmed. Indeed, Sarah Jane had told her husband that she was afraid that Alfred would lose his faith when she died, and Edward unfortunately implanted this idea in Alfred's mind by mentioning it to him in the letter giving news of her death that he sent to Woodchester. Alfred's prayers for his mother's recovery had, as it seemed to him, been callously ignored.1 Not that there was an immediate rejection of God. But the depth of his feeling is shown by the fact that, for the rest of his life, he carefully preserved every scrap of writing that he had ever received from or about her; and it is from this time that Alfred began to suffer from 'that most distinctly Romantic feeling - infinite, never appeased longing'2 which was always to weigh heavily upon him.

Wishing to spare his son unnecessary suffering, Edward suggested that Alfred should stay on at Woodchester until after the funeral, a separation of father and son at the very time when shared grief might have brought them closer together; and he was also apart from his brothers and sisters at one of the most important emotional turning-points of all their lives. Instead, Alfred turned for comfort to Miss Becker, and for companionship to Edith Wise. Edith became a very close friend, closer to him than any of his brothers or sisters; and when the sympathetic Miss Becker consoled him, he transferred to her some of the love which he had felt for his mother.3 She was less attractive than his mother had been; but she was witty, and clever, and made much of him, as his mother had done. The understanding which developed between them became, for Alfred, one of the most important relationships in his life; when as an old man he heard of her death, he admitted that he had loved and revered her from youth, 'his voice faltered, and a look of unutterable sadness suffused his face'.4

By the time that Alfred had returned home to Perry Hall, the moment for shared feelings and confidences with his immediate family had gone. As the eldest son, he felt responsible for putting a brave face on things; and, largely because of his influence, the children never discussed their loss among themselves. Alfred might have talked to Robert, but he was still an exile in Bath, suffering from his asthma. Grief was kept for the secrecy of the bedroom, where Laurence, for one, cried in bed at night for his mother to come back to him, half believing that if he prayed faithfully enough she would. Hiding his feelings became habitual for Alfred. His sister Kate remembered that, from this time on, it was never his way to speak of troubles, and she wrote: 'He was sensitive and easily wounded, but wounds he bore in silence.'

During her illness, Sarah Jane had withdrawn so much from the daily routine of the household that her death made little outward change. Edward Housman's younger sister Jane, who had come up for a while to help out, soon returned to Lyme Regis to look after their ailing mother, whose mental control was now so poor that she more than once had to be sent to an asylum for 'unbalanced condition of mind'.5 Mary Housman stayed on as housekeeper, and apart from a change of governess, family life went on outwardly much as before. But the family was in mourning. The children grieved silently, and wore harsh black stockings; while the tolling bells of Bromsgrove Church, which continued to regulate the hours, were another constant reminder of their mother's death.

During the next twelve months Alfred thought a great deal about his mother and, in the light of her death, he began to change his ideas about religion. He did not simply 'lose his faith' as Sarah Jane had feared. He was too deeply religious not to believe that there was a God; but he became less and less able to believe in the Christian Revelation. If Jesus Christ was the son of God, and really could answer prayers and intervene in the normal working of the Universe, then nothing so pointless and unjust as his mother's death would have been allowed to happen. Alfred wanted to believe in Christianity, but could not: years later he expressed this feeling in a poem called 'Easter Hymn' which, because of its controversial nature, he did not publish during his lifetime:6

If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,

You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain..

Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.

But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,

At the right hand of majesty on high

You sit, and sitting so remember yet

Your tears, your agony and bloody sweat,

Your cross and passion and the life you gave,

Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.

(MP 1) (More Poems)

By the time that he was thirteen, Alfred had secretly abandoned Christianity, and learned to think of himself as a Deist, believing that there was a God, but no more than that. Since he was a boy of eight and had looked into Lemprière's Classical Dictionary, he had been fascinated by legends of the pagan gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome; and his reading of these legends, together with his growing love for the beauty of the countryside, brought him closer to being a pagan or pantheist, and offered an escape for his sensitive mind from the bleakness of a Universe in which God is present but indifferent.

Unlike his son, Edward Housman did not turn his back on Christianity; but he did long to move from Perry Hall, where he could only forget his dead wife by indulging in bouts of heavy drinking. However, his professional life tied him to Bromsgrove; and Perry Hall belonged to his father's estate, so he was not really in a position to sell it. Then, in February 1872, the tenant of Fockbury House died. Edward's childhood home now belonged jointly to Edward and to his brothers and sisters, Thomas, Mary, Jane and Joseph. Income from the tenancy of Fockbury House helped Edward, who was its Trustee, to run Perry Hall; and he should have found a new paying tenant as soon as possible. But the prospect of a move was too tempting for him, and he decided that he and his family would go to live at Fockbury themselves. He would lose his income, but he planned - almost certainly without the consent of his brothers and sisters - to raise an immediate mortgage of £1,500 on the property, which would provide him with plenty of ready money for the time being.

Edward was a charming man, liked and respected throughout his life by many of the most influential people in Bromsgrove, and he was a leading member of many local societies and governing boards. But in making this move, he had succumbed to his fatal weakness: the wish to live the life of a prosperous country gentleman. His father had been able to live that life, and Edward had been brought up fitted for nothing else. But although he hoped for a great deal of family money in the future, he was not at present rich enough for the role he wanted to play. He never earned much as a solicitor, and had no lands to provide him with the income needed to maintain a large household. However, he would rather have the illusion of prosperity than nothing at all; and, to achieve it, he was quite prepared to sacrifice the future to the present. Photographs of Edward reinforce the impression of a man who has inherited some of his father's intelligence, but more of his determination than of his judgment. The mouth and the jaw are firm, even obstinate, but the eyes are weak and uncertain.

So Edward felt that a move to Fockbury House would suit him very well; Perry Hall...