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Both Richard’s parents wrote and published books and in their home was a large collection of European and classical literature. As well as reading, Richard's interests included butterfly-collecting, hiking, and learning languages – French, Italian, Latin and ancient Greek.
Educated at Mr Sweetman's Seminary for Young Gentlemen, St Margaret's Bay, near Dover, Kent, UK, and Dover College, Richard went on to study at the University of London. Unable to complete his degree because of the strained financial circumstances of his family, Richard began work as a sports journalist and started submitting his poetry to British magazines. He gravitated towards literary circles of the era, meeting fellow poets William Butler Yeats and Walter de la Mare.
In Kensington, London, UK in 1913, Richard married the American poet Hilda Doolittle (known as H.D.). The marriage was registsered in December 1913. Although the couple were later divorced they remained friends for the rest of their lives.
Between 1914 and 1916, Richard was Literary Editor and a columnist for the magazine “The Egoist”. “The Egoist” (subtitled An Individualist Review) was a London-based literary magazine founded by British Suffragette Dora Marsden as a successor to her feminist magazine “The New Freewoman”. The title and content was changed under the influence of American poet Ezra Pound into a literary magazine. Published from 1914 to 1919 “The Egoist” published important early modernist poetry and fiction.
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| Richard, WW1 |
Richard joined the British Army in June 1916 and was sent for training to Wareham in Dorset. He encouraged H.D. to return to America where she could make a safer and more stable home.
Initially joining the 11th Leicestershire Regiment, Richard was posted to the Western Front in December 1916. He wrote to H.D. telling her that he “managed to complete 12 poems and three essays since joining up and wanted to work on producing a new book, keeping his mind on literature, despite his work of digging graves”. He found the soldier's life degrading, living with lice, cold, mud and little sanitation. His encounters with gas on the front had a profound effect on him for the rest of his life. He was given leave in July 1917 and he and H.D. enjoyed a period of reunion.
Commissioned as a Second Lieutenant into the Royal Sussex Regiment in November 1917, Richard was gassed but finished the war as a Signals Officer and temporary Captain and was demobilised in February 1919.
After the war, Richard became a literary critic and biographer.
“Bombardment”
Four days the earth was rent and torn
By bursting steel,
The houses fell about us;
Three nights we dared not sleep,
Sweating, and listening for the imminent crash
Which meant our death.
The fourth night every man,
Nerve-tortured, racked to exhaustion,
Slept, muttering and twitching,
While the shells crashed overhead.
The fifth day there came a hush;
We left our holes
And looked above the wreckage of the earth
To where the white clouds moved in silent lines
Across the untroubled blue.
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Richard Aldington’s WW1 poetry collections were: “Collected poems” (Covici Friede, New York, 1928; “The Eaten Heart” (Chapele-Reanvile, France, 1919) and“Images and other Poems” (The Egoist, 1919) and his poems were included in thirteen W1 poetry anthologies.
Richard died on 27th July 1962 in Sury-en-Vaux, Cher, France where he had lived from 1958
Richard Aldington is among the First World War poets listed on the memorial Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. The inscription on the mmorial stone is a quotation from the work of a fellow Great War poet, Wilfred Owen. It reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."
Sources: Find my Past, FreeBMD, Wikipedia and
Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Pres, New York, 1978) pp. 38 – 39.
