Back from his evening’s work he goes –
I wonder now what Bill was thinking;
Belike ‘twas nowt, for he’d been drinking,
And blokes that stumble home from boosing,
They haven’t got no thoughts worth losing;
He pass’d me by, all strain’d and ready;
Thump went my heart, but I was steady;
I’d got the pluck as wants no bracing;
I tripp’d him up and kick’d his face in –
Bill blinked his eyes and gave a guggle,
And lay there stiff without a struggle;
‘Here, Ted,’ said I, ‘I’ve clumped ‘im fair,’ –
Looked round, but Ted, he wasn’t there.
Ted never had the guts to do it;
I done the job and got to rue it.
The style was a clear departure from the work he produced earlier that year, ‘An Ode for Music’:
Angels of God and multitudes of Heaven
And every servant of the soul’s aspiring,
Be with me now, while to your influence bending
I strive to gain the summits of desiring;
Grant me in music’s name
Your symphonies of flame.
Sassoon was not inhibited by the obvious disparity in styles and sent both poems to T. W. H. Crosland, who had moved from The Academy and then the Athenaeum and started a periodical called The Antidote. He published ‘An Ode to Music’ on 1 February, and then on 10 February he published a thousand copies of The Daffodil Murderer as a 30-page booklet, priced sixpence. The front declared the contents to be ‘Brilliant Beyond Belief’. Sassoon’s name did not appear, but a pseudonym, Saul Kain. Crosland, under the guise of someone called William Butler, wrote a spoof preface, introducing the author: ‘Though a life-long abstainer, Mr Saul Kain is well acquainted with the insides of various public-houses.’ Only one paper reviewed the work, the Athenaeum, whose hatred of Crosland was reflected in a hostile review, which employed this acerbic comment: ‘The only conclusion we obtain from its perusal is that it is easy to write worse than Mr Masefield.’
Sassoon sent a copy of ‘An Ode for Music’ to Gosse but did not receive an immediate response. He sent him The Daffodil Murderer and waited. Three days after the publication of The Daffodil Murderer, Gosse wrote to Sassoon: ‘I have given a copy of the D[affodil] M[urderer] to Mr Edward Marsh. Mr Marsh is most curious to see what else you have written, and I would like you to make up a parcel of your pamphlets and send them to him. I should like you to get into friendly relations with Mr Marsh, who is a most charming man.’
It was a propitious introduction to another of the leading names of literary life in London and a senior civil servant with access to Asquith, the Prime Minister; he was also Private Secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. Like Gosse he enjoyed the literary and political gossip of the day, but, more importantly, they were both great encouragers of emerging talent. To this end Marsh used a bequest he had inherited to support young artists, especially young poets: ‘I should be ashamed of being comparatively well-off if I couldn’t take advantage of it to help my friends who are younger and poorer and cleverer than I am.’ Generous with his money and time, Marsh was also prepared to put his extensive network of well-placed friends and acquaintances at the disposal of his protégés. But he was not universally liked or trusted. Despite his sensitive position in the Civil Service, he could be indiscreet. Alan Lascelles, a future Private Secretary to the sovereign, records in his diary: ‘Eddie Marsh chatted to me so indiscreetly about other people’s indiscretions that I could have wrung his neck. He told me the last thing I should want to hear. I know why some people think it worthwhile hating him.’
Marsh was, however, a considerable literary critic and a generous friend. He was also, together with Harold Monro and Rupert Brooke, one of the prime instigators of the new movement of Georgian poetry. Recalling the genesis of the movement, he wrote:
There was a general feeling among the younger poets that Modern English Poetry was very good, and sadly neglected by readers. Rupert announced that he had conceived a brilliant scheme. He would write a book of poetry, and publish it as a selection from the works of twelve different writers, six men and six women, all with the most convincing pseudonyms. That, he thought, must make them sit up. It occurred to me that as we both believed there were at least twelve flesh and blood poets whose work, if properly thrust under the public’s nose, had a chance of producing the effect he desired, it would be simpler to use material which was ready to hand. Next day we lunched in my room and started the plan of the book which was published in December 1912 under the name of Georgian Poetry.
The timing could not have been more providential for Sassoon, who wrote to Marsh as suggested:
Feb 14th 1913
Dear Sir,
Mr Edmund Gosse has asked me to send you my privately printed verses, and I have great pleasure in doing so.
Yours very truly,
Siegfried Sassoon
Marsh replied to this tersely diffident communication the following Monday with a long letter. Complimentary, perceptive and full of advice, it echoed the criticism given by Gosse and Helen Wirgman:
I think you have a lovely instrument to play upon and no end of beautiful tunes in your head, but that sometimes you write them down without getting enough meaning into them to satisfy the mind. I believe there is a good as well as a bad sense in which there must be fashions in poetry, and that a vein may be worked out, if only for a time. The vague iridescent ethereal kind had a long intermittent innings all through the 19th century, especially at the end, and Rossetti, Swinburne and Dowson could do things which it is no use trying now. It seems a necessity now to write either with one’s eye on an object or with one’s mind at grips with a more or less definite idea.
Sassoon agreed with the analysis and was encouraged by its tone. Here, at last, was someone who could help release him from the restrictive influences of the Victorians to ‘emerge into an individual style’ of his own. Sassoon wanted to discover that voice with which the younger English poets were speaking, especially the ones whose work appeared in the volumes of Georgian Poetry edited by Marsh and printed by Harold Monro at the Poetry Bookshop. But the thought came again: could he find that voice by remaining in rural Kent? Uncle Hamo had already expressed his doubts about the intellectual calibre of his nephew’s country circle. Gosse, too, recommended exposure to the wider world: ‘It would be useful to you, I think, as you lead so isolated a life, to get into relations with these people, who are of all schools, but represent what is most vivid in the latest poetical writings.’
Marsh and Sassoon met for the first time in London in March at the National Club in Whitehall. It was an affable beginning to their subsequent friendship. Marsh repeated his compliments about Sassoon’s work, including The Daffodil Murderer, even though he was not certain what to make of it. Sassoon, as was his tendency
