John Masefield 1878-1967
John Masefield 1878-1967
John Masefield 1878-1967
I must down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to stear her by (Sea-Fever)
I must down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to stear her by (Sea-Fever)
He was to be the third of six children to Edward Masefield a solicitor working
in the family firm in Ledbury. John's grandfather had come to Ledbury from
Newport in Shropshire as it was the home of his in-laws, the Holbrooks. He
worked hard and built up a successful business as an attorney, which became Masefield
& Sons. He spent fifty years as clerk to the magistrates. He also was an avid reader
of history and a collector of books. The offices where the Masefield family still operate are pictured left. These are on Worcester Street in Ledbury.
John's maternal grandparents were from Great Comberton near to Bredon Hill and
the Avon in Worcestershire where his grandfather, Revd Charles Hubert Parker,
was rector. Grandpa Parker had shown a talent for pen-and-ink drawings of churches
during his youth as an Oxford undergraduate. He devoted himself to his parish for fifty-seven
years where he helped to restore the church, putting up new cottages, and keeping up the schoolhouse
. He had a great influence on John, manifesting itself in the biblical language and allusions
that were to enter his writings later on.
John's mother joined her children after tea playing piano and singing for them. She invented stories to tell them. She loved reciting poetry to her children too, and John later reminisced that the first two poems that had ever moved him he had learned off by heart from his mother. These were 'The dying swan' by Tennison & Thomas Hood's 'I remember, I remember'.
John maintained throughout his life that as a child he had lived in paradise.
He often described places, people and events that filled his memory amongst the
meadows, orchards, woodlands and hoplands of Herefordshire.
The canal fascinated John with its barges 'that were sailing from Paradise to Heaven carrying hearts of gold and cargos of wonder, and always, always returning a salute even at a distance'. Every summer their father took John and his elder siblings Harry and Ethel to Malvern to ride on the donkeys, passing along two long railway tunnels where father always lit matches to render the darkness less scary for them.
They were rarely taken into Ledbury itself, apart from on Sunday afternoons for the children's services at the Chapel of Ease in New Street. This was a corrugated iron building which provided a smaller place of worship than that of the cavernous parish church of St Michael & All Angels.
However, the experiences of nature that were most intense to John were when he wandered off alone to feel the beauty of nature which he came to regard as the shadow of something much more beautiful. This marked the start of his creative imagination.
When John was around the age of seven certain disasters struck the Masefields.
On January 20th 1885 his mother, Carrie, died a few weeks after giving birth to Norah. Then
their nurse Mary Hopkins (Maymie) had to go and look after her own mother. A new
governess, Mrs Broers, was put in charge of things, whom the children couldn't stand. She
later became the model for the obnoxious governess in Johns
The Midnight Folk (1927). The Masefield children were quite nasty to her too
, and John once stabbed her in the arm.
In March 1886 both their paternal grandparents passed away, and simultaneously there was a family fanancial crisis. This formed a heavy burden to bear.
Soon after the Masefields moved from the Knapp to a new home called the Priory. closer to the centre of Ledbury, overlooking the high street. The house was a great place for an imaginative boy which John described as a 'rambling pretty house in a great garden....a very, very old house full of passages, corridors, strange rooms, strange noises...a strange, dark uncanny place, with rooms never opened and cupboards and secret chambers'.
Beyond the garden was the churchyard, and John would gaze with such a wistful eye at the church's spire pondering what religion was all about.
John and his brother Harry would share the excitement of things that occurred after
bedtime. At times the fire bell would start clanging, then the noise and clamour
of the engines being hurried out into the streets. In the hunting season hundreds
of hounds would pass barking through the streets of Ledbury to their kennels.
Like many an imaginative child, John liked to have a secret hiding place. For him it was under the bed in a spare room that was hardly ever used where he would the exciting serial stories that he came across in grandfather's library, especially the fiction of Red Indians by Thomas Mayne Reid. Importantly he discovered that he could catch the interest of his two younger brothers by recounting the tales that he had read.
Across the Malverns into Worcestershire stands Wollas Hall near Bredon Hill. This belonged the the family of John's godmother, Annie Hanford-Flood, who had been close friends with John's mother since childhood. She was in many ways an ideal godmother for John in that she understood and encouraged him, was cultured, loved Italy and possessed a passion for archaelogy, opening his mind to new perspectives.
John's first visit to Woollas was in the summer of 1885, half a year after his mother had passed away. He was put on the train at Ledbury all alone under the care of a guard, with a pink aster in his buttonhole so that Annie could identify him when she met the train at Worcester.
The next year he was joined by his sister, Ethel, and a summer later, they stayed at Wollas for the whole week. They drove along in a little one-horse carriage, boated on the Avon, picnicked on Bredon Hill, and met their cousins and friends of their mother.
John visited Woollas until the time when he was thirteen. He took joy in wandering alone over the knowls and woods found near the house. Once he set off to locate there a chapel built in the reign of Henry III. He homed in on a spot he felt convinced must have been it.
At Wollas John was encouraged to rather that reproached for spending so much time poring over books. There were many in its small library that held the Ledbury lad spellbound such as ones on local history, ghosts and the macabre. The fearful fascinated him. His Midnight Folk alludes to Woollas.
The first poems written by John (He had composed ones earlier without putting them on paper) were composed when he was about ten. The one was about a pony called Gypsy, the other on a Native American. That same year he started school in Warwick. At first he felt very unhappy. He even tried to take his own life after it was discovered he wrote poetry. His chosen method was eating laurel leaves, though this just left him with a headache.
However when it 1889 the school opened a Junior House where the smaller lads could be under a more clement regime, he started to enjoy it. He made friends and loved the sports. Leaving at the age of 12, he was to remember it as a 'good school, the masters were a fine lot, and the place had a fine tone'.
Back home on holiday at the Priory he composed several more poems, though unfortunately, none of these have survived. One of these was in imitation of Sir Walter Scott, another a birthday message to a brother, about a horse, and one sending up a vicar.
John wrote a record of the Masefield children's 'society'; the Guinea Pig Association. John made a detailed account of the pets' names, markings, appearance, and when they were born or sold, and importantly how they fared in the annual 'guinea-pig races'. He even produced a spoof periodical, The Guinea Pig Free Press, taking the mick out of the Ledbury Free Press.
He went on a serve an apprenticeship on a type of ship called a windjammer which made voyages around Cape Horn, the tip of South America.
The sea inspired him to poetry, and in 1902 hisSalt Water
Ballards appeared, including such poems as "Sea Fever" and
"Cargoes".
Finishing his time at sea, he lived for a while in America where he ended up working in a carpet factory.
Returning to England, he took up a job as a journalist for the Guardian, and set up home in London, first at 30 Maida Avenue, then climbing to Well Walk, Hampstead.
In 1930 John was made poet laureate, and was consequently given the Freedom of the City of Hereford. He received the Order of Merit five years later.
The cat-loving Herefordian also penned adventure novels, Sard Harker, Odtaa,and Basilissa, sketches and pieces for children.
His ashes are to be found buried in Westminster Abbey 's Poets' Corner.
He once remarked of his birthplace "I am linked to this county by subtle ties deeper than I can explain..they are ties of beauty....I know no land more full of bounty and beauty than this red land, so good for corn and hops and roses.."