Laurence Housman

Biographical fragments

Laurence Housman's 'auto-obituary'

If the editor is kind enough to announce by death "with regret" I beg my readers to believe that I die without any regret whatever. And my only regret now is that I do not know how or how soon I am going to die.

Suicide is possible, but not probable; hanging, I trust, is even more unlikely; for I hope that, by the time I die, my countrymen will have become civilised enough to abolish capital punishment. I shall not die young, for I am already near seventy: I may die old. If I live for another ten years I shall probably have written all that I want to write. If I die within the next year the book which I hope to make my best will remain unfinished; but even that I need not regret, for I may be quite wrong about it; senile "masterpieces" tend to be tedious things.

The mere dates of my existence do not interest me, except in one connection. When the Great War started I was too old to be acceptable as a volunteer; when conscription followed I was too old to be conscripted. That was luck: I should not then have been a conscientious objector; but I am quite sure that the abominations of war would have made me one, as soon as I got to the front. Before the war ended common sense had rescued me from any belief that war could do the human race, or my country, any good whatever.

"Too versatile"

And now as to my life and the things which have interested me. It is charged against me that I have been "too versatile"; but how can anyone with gifts of expression, whom life really interests, avoid being versatile? Life is the most versatile thing under the sun; and in the pursuit of life and character the author who works in a groove works in blinkers. Romantic in temperament, and religiously sentimental in by upbringing, I began by preferring things medieval to things modern; my poems, fairy tales, and legens were nearly all idealistic and fanciful - away from reality.

But a few years later sentiment and the fact that letter-writing came naturally to me induced me to try the trick of "An Englishwoman's Love-letters." It succeeded terribly well. But though a rather sloppy performance it brought good results; it set me free financially to risk money in doing exactly what I liked. I wrote, and got Gordon Craig to produce - at a big financial loss to myself, - my Nativity play "Bethlehem," and also found time to sit down and write my first novel (the first part largely autobiographical) "A Modern Antaeus." On that other novels followed: but I still wrote fairy tales and dreamy poems of another world. As a corrective in things contemporary, I had already become art critic to the "Manchester Guardian," and from 1898, with a short break, when for a time prosperity set me free, I did a good deal of respectable pot-boiling on very friendly terms with the paper and its editor till our official relations ended in 1914.

In 1905 Granville-Barker gave me a shock of surprise by telling me that I was one of the people whom he wanted to write for the English stage. Till then, in spite of my experiment with "Bethlehem," I had never thought of myself as a dramatist, and, for really good technical results, the thought came too late: a man of letters has become too wordy to write economically for the stage. But, coached by H. G.-B., first in collaboration over "Prunella," and then under his friendly watchfulness, I have since written, though not published, over a hundred plays and dramatic dialogues. St. Francis of Assisi, about whose coming popularity I made a prophecy in 1902, got hold of me in 1915, and the thirty-six "Little Plays of St Francis," first and second series, are the result.

It was then, I think, that I discovered that the best way of bringing a medieval subject home to my generation was not to be medieval in its treatment. The modern form of things had begun to appeal to me, also (as material for satire) politics, and the lives of the great and little, high up in the social scale. And so, having finished my "Little Plays of St Francis," I found myself tentatively following it up with little plays of Queen Victoria - though, from a sense of proportion, I did not give them that title. I had previously written two political novels, "John of Jingalo" and £The Royal Runaway," and I still find them good and amusing, but they did not attract much notice; and, unless some day or another a publisher can be found to reprint them, they have become unobtainable. A pity, I think, for they were more true, as a commentary on the contemporary relations of royalty to politicians, than I then knew.

When the first of them was published I heard that the private secretary of a certain Cabinet Minister exclaimed angrily, "How has this fellow got know these things?" I had not; it was merely intelligent guesswork, and the fact that he was angry showed that I had guessed well about things that he did not wish the public to know. In writing a subsequent novel, "Trimblerigg," concerning a politician whose reputation went up like a rocket during the war and came done like its stick afterwards, I risked prosecution for libel. But the libel was so obviously true and so much for the public benefit that I should almost have welcomed the prosecution.



Avoiding prosection

Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like. That happened during the suffrage agitation, where my inveterate sympathy for underdogs made me spend a good deal more time on "the women's cause" than was good for my reputation as an author - so far as producing books was concerned. But as an influence in bringing me down to date, out of my medieval predilections, the movement was valuable to me. It was of more doubtful benefit in enabling me to discover that, in spite of horrible nervousness, I was able to speak from a platform. that discovery has resulted in making me give many miserable hours to causes with which I sympathised, instead of sticking pleasantly to my books. But it has also enabled me to find my feet as a lecturer and a reader of my own plays to audiences who like to hear them; and that experience of immediate appreciation gives greater pleasure and more stimulus towards further activity than even the most laudatory of reviews.

For the last half of my life I have had the doubtful benefit of a brother whose literary reputation is much greater than my own. When I am not mistaken for him - as often happens - I am decisively "put in my place." A charming old man once said to me, "Are you the Shropshire Lad?" "No," I said, "I am only his brother." "Ah, yes; ah, yes!" he replied. "I too have a brother who is the better man."

I wonder, has he survived me? For, while this is written, he is still alive.

I wonder, also, how long I shall be? - after my death, I mean. My best chance is that, in a happy moment, I hit upon St Francis as the subject for a series of plays. Others might have written them better: but, as I have written them, the advantage will probably remain mine. It was wickedly said when Bernard Shaw wrote his "Saint Joan" that he did so to save her from Mr John Drinkwater. I might say, with equal truth, that I wrote my plays of St Francis to save him from Bernard Shaw. It wouldn't be true; but it is a nice sort of thing to say.

Finally, I have just done - this is written in the year 1932 - something which I don't think has ever been done before by any writer. I have written - not only this, my own obituary notice, - but a play of my own death-bed, in which next January (D.V.) I am going to take the "leading part" - the part, that is to say, of the dying author. It will be produced at University College, Gower Street, at the annual performance of my "Little Plays of St Francis"; and though, when this appears, it may be ancient history, it will, I hope, be still performed occasionally when my "Little Plays" are revived at that particular seat of learning which, more than any other, has given them a welcome.