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Walter de la Mare (1873-1953) - pen name Walter Ramal | |
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British novelist and poet, loosely connected with the literary tradition of Wordsworth and Coleridge. De la Mare's reputation as a poet was established by the volume THE LISTENERS AND OTHER POEMS (1912). Vita Sackville-West once called him a "poet of dusk". De la Mare wrote for both children and adults. His best-known novel is MEMOIRS OF A MIDGET (1921), which described sympathetically the world of the minute Miss M. or Miss Thomasina. The book won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1922. Look thy last on all things lovely, Walter de la Mare was born at Charlton, Kent, in the south of England, of well-to-do parents. His father, James Edward Delamare (as the name was originally spelled), was an official of the Bank of England. His mother, Lucy Sophia (Browning), was related to the poet Robert Browning. He was educated in London at St. Paul's Cathedral Choir School, which he left aged 16. From 1890 to 1908 he worked in London in the accounting department of the Anglo-American Oil Company. His career as a writer started in about 1895 and he continued to publish to the end of his life. His first published story, 'Kismet' (1895), appeared in the Sketch under the pseudonym Walter Ramal. In 1908 de la Mare was awarded a yearly government pension of £100, and he devoted himself entirely to writing. He retired to Taplow in Buckinghamshire, where he lived with his wife, Constance Elfrida Ingpen, and four children. His son Richard became chairman of Faber & Faber, and published several of his father's books. In 1915 he became one of the legatees of his fellow poet Rupert Brooke. De la Mare received the CH in 1948, and the OM in 1953. He died in Twickenham, near London, on June 22, 1958. De la Mare is buried in St Paul's Cathedral. His first stories and poems de la Mare wrote for periodicals, for The Sketch amongst others, and published in 1902 a collection of poetry, SONGS OF CHILDHOOD, under the name Walter Ramal. It attracted little notice. Subsequently de la Mare published many volumes of poetry for both adults and children. In 1904 there appeared under his own name the prose romance HENRY BROCKEN, in which the young hero encounters writers form the past. THE RETURN (1910) was an eerie story of spirit possession. Arthur Lawford suspects that an eighteenth-century pirate, Nicholas Sabathier, is seizing control of his personality. "'Here lie ye bones of one, Nicholas Sabathier,' he began murmuring again - 'merely bones, mind you; brains and heart are quite another story. And it's pretty certain the fellow had some kind of brains. Besides, poor devil, he killed himself. That seems to hint at brains..." De la Mare's first successful book was The Listeners; the title poem is one of his most anthologized pieces. In the work supernatural presence haunts the solitary Traveller, the typical speaker of his poems: "Is there anybody there? said the Traveller, / Knocking on the moonlit door; / And his horse in the silence champed the grasses / Of the forest's ferny floor.... / But no one descended to the Traveller; / No head from the leaf-fringed sill / Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, / Where he stood perplexed and still." In 1923 he produced a collection of other people's poetry, COME HITHER. In his poems de la Mare has described the English sea and coast, the secret and hidden world of nature. His favorite themes, childhood, death, dreams, commonplace objects and events, de la Mare examined with a touch of mystery and often with an undercurrent of melancholy. His novels have been reprinted many times in horror collections because of their sense of wonder, and also hidden malevolence. However, de la Mare did not have the morbid atmosphere of Poe, but his dreamlike visions had many similarities to Blake. Three jolly gentlemen, Among de la Mare's books of children verse and stories are PEACOCK PIE: A BOOK OF RHYMES (1913) and BROOMSTICKS AND OTHER TALES (1925). One of de la Mare's most successful books for children was THE THREE MULLA MULGARS (1910), which told a story of three royal monkeys on a long journey. Later the book was retitled THE THREE ROYAL MONKEYS. De la Mare wrote about 100 short stories. The collections include THE RIDDLE, AND OTHER STORIES (1923), ON THE EDGE (1930), and A BEGINNING, AND OTHER STORIES (1955). COME HITHER (1923) is a widely admired anthology for children, incorporating long prefaces and commentaries. From the mid-1930s de la Mare wrote no more short stories, but focused on poetry. Essays and critical work include studies of R. Brooke (1919) and Lewis Carroll-L.C. Dodgson (1932) and an edition of C. Rossetti in 1930. For further reading: Imagination of the Heart: The Life of Walter De La Mare by Theresa Whistler (1994); Walter De La Mare: An Exploration by John Alfred Atkins (1975); Walter de La Mare: A Biography and Critical Study by R.L. Megroz (1972): Walter De LA Mare: A Critical Study by Forrest Reid (1970); Walter De La Mare: A Study of His Poetry by Henry Charles Duffin (1970); Walter de la Mare by D.R. McCrosson (1966); Walter de la Mare by K. Hopkins (1953) Selected works:
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