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page 182
152 NOTES to pp. 113–18 ‘Bare winter suddenly is changed to spring’ P.B. Shelley, ‘The Question’: ‘I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way, / Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring’. Infantryman Passes By a very small village in Sussex Blunden was born in London, but the family moved to the village of Yalding in 1900, where Blunden’s father was the schoolmaster. It remained for Blunden the perfect English village. They moved to Framfield in 1913, when Blunden’s father was appointed schoolmaster there. Christ’s Hospital Founded by Edward VI in 1552, the school was for boys ‘of honest origin and poverty’, described by the poet and essayist Leigh Hunt as ‘medium between the patrician pretension of such schools as Eton and Westminster, and the plebian submission of the charity schools… The cleverest boy was the noblest, let his father be who he might.’ (See Webb, Edmund Blunden, pp. 26–27.) Lucky boys Pupils stayed on after 16 if they were judged capable of winning a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge, and were called ‘Grecians’ at this stage; Blunden went on to become Senior Grecian or captain of the school. They would usually get a scholarship (‘exhibition’) from the school as well, so their university education would be at no cost to their parents. ‘echoing cloisters pale’ S.T. Coleridge, ‘To a Young Lady, with a Poem on the French Revolution’, 1794. ‘Beat! beat! drums! – blow! bugles! blow!’ Walt Whitman (1819–92) wrote this at the beginning of the American Civil War, in 1861, and it was included in Leaves of Grass. It has been set to music by over a dozen composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Kurt Weill. ‘the long way to Tipperary’ This music-hall song, ‘It’s a long, long way to Tipperary’, was composed in 1912, and reported as being sung by the Connaught Rangers marching through Boulogne in August 1914. It was widely taken up by other units and further popularised when recorded by John McCormack in November 1914.
page 183
NOTES to pp. 118–21 153 a little volume or two These were Poems and Poems Translated from the French, both published by Mr Price of West Street, Horsham, in editions of 100 copies each, priced at 6d. Webb notes that none of these poems, published in October 1914, was to be reprinted (Edmund Blunden, pp. 39–40). ‘What will you lack, sonny, what will you lack’ Blunden is quoting from ‘Fall-In’, by Harold Begbie (1871–1929), which appeared on a recruiting poster in 1914. (See http://www.oucs.ox. ac.uk/ww1lit/gwa/item/5204?CISOBOX=1&REC=10, accessed 2 January 2014.) the price…of a sword The first casualty inflicted by the British Army in Europe during WWI occurred when Captain Charles Hornby of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards killed a German uhlan with his sabre, on 22 August 1914. (See http://www.militarian.com/threads/use-of-the-sword-in-ww1.7075, accessed 2 January 2014.) Keats’ friend Richards Probably Charles Richards, who worked as a printer for the firm that printed Keats’s Poems (1817); possibly his elder brother, Thomas, who was a good friend of Charles Cowden Clarke – Blunden wrote about this circle in his study of Leigh Hunt published in 1930. ‘O to recall! / What to recall?’ By Stephen Phillips (1864–1915), Christ in Hades and Other Poems (1897), of which the last stanza runs: O to recall! What to recall? Not the star in waters red, Not this: Laughter of a girl that’s dead, O this! ‘Through the dark postern of time long elapsed’ A much-quoted line from The Complaint or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality by Edward Young (1683–1765): How widow’d every thought of joy! Thought, busy thought! Too busy for my peace! Through the dark postern of time long elapsed, Led softly, by the stillness of the night, […] And finds all desert now; and meets the ghosts Of my departed joys, a num’rous train!

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152

NOTES to pp. 113–18

‘Bare winter suddenly is changed to spring’ P.B. Shelley, ‘The Question’: ‘I dreamed that, as I wandered by the way, / Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring’.

Infantryman Passes By a very small village in Sussex Blunden was born in London, but the family moved to the village of Yalding in 1900, where Blunden’s father was the schoolmaster. It remained for Blunden the perfect English village. They moved to Framfield in 1913, when Blunden’s father was appointed schoolmaster there.

Christ’s Hospital Founded by Edward VI in 1552, the school was for boys ‘of honest origin and poverty’, described by the poet and essayist Leigh Hunt as ‘medium between the patrician pretension of such schools as Eton and Westminster, and the plebian submission of the charity schools… The cleverest boy was the noblest, let his father be who he might.’ (See Webb, Edmund Blunden, pp. 26–27.)

Lucky boys Pupils stayed on after 16 if they were judged capable of winning a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge, and were called ‘Grecians’ at this stage; Blunden went on to become Senior Grecian or captain of the school. They would usually get a scholarship (‘exhibition’) from the school as well, so their university education would be at no cost to their parents.

‘echoing cloisters pale’ S.T. Coleridge, ‘To a Young Lady, with a Poem on the French Revolution’, 1794.

‘Beat! beat! drums! – blow! bugles! blow!’ Walt Whitman (1819–92) wrote this at the beginning of the American Civil War, in 1861, and it was included in Leaves of Grass. It has been set to music by over a dozen composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Kurt Weill.

‘the long way to Tipperary’ This music-hall song, ‘It’s a long, long way to Tipperary’, was composed in 1912, and reported as being sung by the Connaught Rangers marching through Boulogne in August 1914. It was widely taken up by other units and further popularised when recorded by John McCormack in November 1914.

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