Richard Aldington (born Edward Godfree Aldington; 8 July 1892 – 27 July 1962) was an English writer and poet. He was an early associate of the Imagist movement. His 50-year writing career produced "143 separate titles, including poetry, literary criticism, fiction, essays, anthologies, biographies, translations, and introductions. In addition, he published reviews of over 1,350 separate books, published hundreds of other articles, and wrote an immense quantity of letters, of which approximately 8,000 have been located since his death."Hewett, p. 11. At p. 25, Hewett offers specifics: "29 books of poetry, ... eight novels, eight short stories/collections of short stories, 14 essays/collections of essays, and 14 biographies and autobiographies, and edited six anthologies.... He wrote introductions to or edited 38 books, and translated, frequently with long and scholarly introductions, 29 works, including translations from French, Italian, and ancient Greek." He edited The Egoist, a literary journal, and wrote for The Times Literary Supplement, Vogue, The Criterion, and Poetry. His biography, Wellington (1946), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Aldington was married to the poet Hilda Doolittle, known by her initials H.D., from 1913 to 1938. His acquaintances included writers T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, Lawrence Durrell, C. P. Snow, and others. He championed H.D. as the major poetic voice of the Imagist movement and helped her work gain international notice.
Early life and education Edward Godfree (known from an early age as "Richard") Aldington was born in Portsmouth, on 8 July 1892, the eldest of four children of Albert Edward Aldington (1864–1921) and Jessie May (1872–1954), née Godfree. His father failed to establish himself as a solicitor,Vivien Whelpton (2019), Richard Aldington, p. 21. going into business as a bookseller and stationer on Portsmouth High Street, later a solicitor's clerk and amateur author; his mother was a novelist (as "Mrs A. E. Aldington") and keeper of the Mermaid Inn at Rye.Oxford Dictionary of National BiographyFred D. Crawford writes that Aldington hated his mother. "As late as 1950 Aldington refused even to read her letters and could hardly speak of her without withering contempt." Crawford (1990) pp. 350-351. Both his parents wrote and published books, and their home held a large library of European and classical literature. In addition to reading, Aldington's interests at this time, all of which continued in later life, included butterfly collecting, hiking, and learning languages – he went on to master French, Italian, Latin, and ancient Greek. He was educated at Mr. Sweetman's Seminary for Young Gentlemen, St Margaret's Bay, near Dover. His father died of heart problems at age 56.Charles Doyle (2016 ), Richard Aldington: A Biography, Springer, pp. 1–5.Caroline Zilboorg, ed. (2003), Richard Aldington and H.D.: Their Lives in Letters, Volume 4, Manchester University Press pp. 1–30.
Aldington attended Dover College, followed by the University of London.Peter Jones (editor), Imagist Poetry (1972), p. 163. He was unable to complete his degree because of the financial circumstances of his family caused by his father's failed speculations and ensuing debt. Supported by a small allowance from his parents, he worked as a sports journalist, started publishing poetry in British journals, and gravitated towards literary circles that included poets William Butler Yeats and Walter de la Mare.Poetry Foundation biographyEncyclopedia Britannica profileWar Poets Assoc. profile
In 1911, Aldington met society hostess Brigit Patmore, with whom he had a passing affair. At the time he was described as "tall and broad-shouldered, with a fine forehead, thick longish hair of the indefinite colour blond hair turns to in adolescence, very bright blue eyes, too small a nose, and a determined mouth."Vivien Whelpton (2014), Richard Aldington: Poet, Soldier and Lover 1911–1929, pp. 26–27. Through her he met American poets Ezra Pound and H.D., who had previously been engaged to each other. Doolittle and Aldington grew closer and in 1913 travelled together extensively through Italy and France, just before the war. On their return to London in the summer they moved into separate flats in Churchwalk, Kensington, in West London. Doolittle lived at No. 6, Aldington at No. 8, and Pound at No. 10. In the presence of Pound and the Doolittle family, over from the United States for the summer, the couple married. They moved to 5 Holland Place Chambers into a flat of their own, although Pound soon moved in across the hall.
The poets were caught up in the literary ferment before the war, where new politics and ideas were passionately discussed and created in Soho tearooms and society salons. The couple bonded over their visions of new forms of poetry, feminism, and philosophy emerging from the wake of staid Victorian mores. The couple felt a sense of peership, rejecting hierarchies and beginning to view Pound as an intruder and interloper rather than a literary igniter.
The couple met American poet Amy Lowell, and she introduced them to D. H. Lawrence in 1914, who would become a close friend and mentor to both.
Career
Aldington's poetry was associated with the Imagist group, championing minimalist free verse with stark images, seeking to banish Victorian moralism. The group was key in the emerging Modernist movement. Ezra Pound coined the term imagistes for H.D. and Aldington (1912).Michael H. Levenson, A Genealogy of Modernism (1984), p. 69. Aldington's poetry forms almost one third of the Imagists' inaugural anthology Des Imagistes (1914). The movement was heavily inspired by Japanese and classical European art.Robert Ferguson, The Short Sharp Life of T. E. Hulme (2002), p. 85. Aldington shared T. E. Hulme's conviction that experimentation with traditional Japanese verse forms could provide a way forward for avant-garde literature in English.Rupert Richard Arrowsmith, Modernism and the Museum: Asian, African and Pacific Art and the London Avant Garde. Oxford University Press, 2011, pp. 103–164.
Pound sent three of Aldington's poems to Harriet Monroe's magazine Poetry and they appeared in November 1912. She notes "Mr Richard Aldington is a young English poet, one of the "Imagistes", a group of ardent Hellenists who are pursuing interesting experiments in vers libre."She considered the poem "Choricos" to be his finest work, "one of the most beautiful death songs in the language",Harriet Monroe, A Poet's Life, Macmillan, New York, 1938. "a poem of studied and affected gravity".LRB Vol. 37 No. 2 · 22 January 2015.Glenn Hughes, Imagism & The Imagists, Stanford University Press, 1931
H.D. became pregnant in August 1914, and in 1915 Aldington and H.D. moved from their home in Holland Park near Ezra Pound to Hampstead close to D. H. Lawrence and Frieda.According to Lawrence biographer Frances Wilson, Aldington and H.D. are portrayed by Lawrence in Aaron's Rod: "Aldington is Robert Cunningham, 'a fresh, stoutish young Englishman in khaki', H.D. is his wife Julia, 'a tall stag of a thing ... hunched up like a witch.'" Wilson, Frances, Burning Man: The Trials of D.H. Lawrence, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021, p. 138. . They felt calmer out of the bustle of the city, with more space and green. The pregnancy ended in a stillborn daughter, which traumatised the couple and put a great strain on the relationship; H.D. was 28 and Aldington 22. The outbreak of war in 1914 deeply disturbed Aldington, though no draft was in place at this time. H.D. felt more distant from the melee, not having a close affinity to the European landscape, geographical or political. This rift also put pressure on the marriage. Unhappy, Aldington dreamed of escape to America and began to have affairs. He began a relationship with Florence Fallas, who had also lost a child.
Between 1914 and 1916 Aldington was literary editor and a columnist at The Egoist.Hugh Kenner, The Pound Era (1971), p. 279. He was assistant editor with Leonard Compton-Rickett under Dora Marsden.Robert H. Ross, The Georgian Revolt (1967), p. 69. Aldington knew Wyndham Lewis well and reviewed his work in The Egoist. He was also an associate of Ford Madox Ford's, helping him with a propaganda volume for a government commission in 1914Hueffer, Ford Madox (1915). When Blood is Their Argument: An Analysis of Prussian Culture New York and London: Hodder and Stouton. and taking dictation for The Good Soldier.
World War I and aftermath Aldington joined up in June 1916 and was sent for training at Wareham in Dorset. H.D. moved to be closer to her husband. He was then sent to a camp near Manchester. They found the duality of their lives harsh, and the gruelling, regimented nature of the training felt hard for the sensitive professional poet. He felt fundamentally different from the other men, more given to intellectual pursuits than unending physical labour that left him little time to write. Their sporadic meetings were emotionally wrenching and the couple could make no plans for their future together. He encouraged H.D. to return to America where she could make a safer and more stable home. They both watched news come in of heavy troop losses in France at the Somme and on other battlefields. She could not have information given on her husband's future postings overseas, all held to be secret. Rationing and the forced draft began as the war turned against the British.
When Aldington was sent to the front in December 1916, the couple's relationship became epistolary. He wrote that he had managed to complete 12 poems and three essays since joining up and wanted to work on producing a new book, in order to keep 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 would affect him for the rest of his life. He was given leave in July 1917 and the couple enjoyed a reunion during this brief reprieve. He felt distant from old Imagist friends like Pound who had not undergone the torturous life of the soldiers on the front and could not imagine the living conditions.
In November 1917, Aldington joined up in the 11th Leicestershires and was later commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Sussex Regiment. He finished the war as a signals officer and temporary captain, being demobilised in February 1919. He likely never fully recovered from the trauma of World War I, writing of his field experiences in the collections Images of War and Images of Desire (1919), which were suffused with a new melancholy. By the end of World War I, he was feeling disconsolate about his own talent as a poet. Exile and Other Poems (1923) also dealt with the process of trauma. A collection of war stories Roads to Glory, appeared in 1930. After this point he became known as a critic and biographer.
Towards the end of the war, H.D. lived with composer Cecil Gray, a friend of D. H. Lawrence's. They had a daughter together in March 1919, the pregnancy much complicated by H.D.'s catching pneumonia towards the end. Neither Gray nor Aldington wanted to accept paternity. By the time of Aldington's return H.D. was involved with the female writer Bryher. H.D. and Aldington formally separated and had relationships with other people, but they did not divorce until 1938. They remained friends for the rest of their lives. He destroyed all the couple's pre-1918 correspondence.Vivien Whelpton (2014) Richard Aldington: Poet, Soldier and Lover 1911–1929, p. 18.