January 1933: The Maurice Pollet questionnaire

Richards described the Frenchman Maurice Pollet as ‘an admirer and student’ and his questionnaire as ‘very alarming in its length and in its gimlet qualities’. Pollet had brought it by hand to Richards’ office but Richards, knowing his Housman, had been extremely careful in taking it from him. ‘I have led him to expect no specific answer from you – that is to say, I have not encouraged him to expect too much.’ He made no recommendation on whether Housman should or should not reply. ‘I can smooth the matter out even if you make no reply to him at all. If you do make any kind of reply, I suggest that you should make it through me. I can give him any kind of message. I can, if it is desired, choke him off.’

Knowing of Housman's unwillingness to be interviewed and reluctance to answer personal questions, Richards was mightily surprised by Housman's response. Without further fuss Housman completed the questionnaire and returned it to Richards. ‘I thought that for the sake of posterity I might as well answer some of the young man's questions.’

His attached letter to Pollet gave his justification for answering. ‘As some of the questions which you ask in your flattering curiosity may be asked by future generations, and as many of them can only be answered by me, I make this reply.’ The fact is he replied clearly and fully to biographical questions but dealt less fully with questions relating to his motivation as a poet or meanings and intentions in his poems. He was lifting the veil but again, only slightly. Yet this remains the only occasion on which Housman would ever answer questions as probing as these.

Only one of his answers was demonstrably incorrect; he correctly described his father's family as Lancastrian in origin but his mother's family was not Cornish; they had been East Devonian for generations. On religion he was categoric. ‘I was brought up in the Church of England … which is much the best religion I have ever come across. But Lempriere's Classical Dictionary, which fell into my hands when I was eight, attached my affections to Paganism.