Biographical tidbits on John Heath-Stubbs

So, I've been writing an article on John Heath-Stubbs, the British poets, who's of interest to Tolkienists because he studied at Oxford in the early 1940s and wrote one epic poem, Artorius, with major sections in the alliterative meter. (Everybody knows that Auden admired Tolkien's use of Old English poetics, but Artorius is actually much better than The Age of Anxiety.)

Anyway, I had the brilliant idea to look up some biographies of JHS's acquaintances in the hopes of gathering some more biographical detail on JHS himself. I found three relevant books, of which the third is the most interesting.

(1) Eddie's Own Aquarius, edited by Constance Short ad Tony Carroll.

This is mostly about Eddie Linden, the Irish-Scots poet who ran the magazine Aquarius for over three decades. He was close friends with JHS, though, and there's one reminisce by Robin Prising where he states that he knew nothing of JHS except his Blue-Fly poems, so Eddie took him "off to the Catherine Wheel to meet the poet whom we now consider the King of the Cats" (141). I have absolutely no idea what that joke is. 

(2) Who is Eddie Linden? by Sebastian Barker

Our library doesn't have this biography, but it certainly contains a few references to JHS. It only goes up to 1978, though, so isn't worthwhile to order off ILL.

(3) The Chameleon Poet: A Life of George Barker, by Robert Fraser

This biography has tons of references to JHS, although most of them come from his own autobiography Hindsights, so not much new information. There's a few nuggets, though; the biographer knew both Barker and JHS. So, the main thing is British literary culture in the 1950s. One of the "principal cultural dilemmas of the decade," says Frazer, is whether to be "a bohemian artist or draconin critic" -- i.e., whether to be George Barker or F. R. Leavis (305). And they were seemingly incompatible at this time. Here's what Frazer writes about Barker:

The problem was that, in his heart of hearts, Barker believed criticism and creativity to be incompatible. The Mecca of academic criticism in the early 1950s was decidedly Cambridge. Barker was conscious that the 'practical criticism' which had been introduced into the English School there by I. A. Richards shed little light upon his own incantatory verse, on top of which the bracing moral absolutes epitomised by F. R. Leavis were at odds with his whole way of life. Leavis was as powerful an influence in the academic culture of England in the 1950s as Barker was amongst the London bohemians. For young men caught between the ends of criticism and creativity, Leavis and Barker were the North and South Poles of literary life. (305)

Heath-Stubbs was a close friend to Barker, and he frequently lampooned Leavis himself, so it's clear where JHS's sympathies lie.

On a more troubling note, Frazer notes Barker's habit of issuing cutting anecdotes about people he liked, and here  is one for JHS: "He fondly mimicked Heath-Stubbs, groping with myopic lechery towards some invisible youth. 'Come hyere boy. Are you seventeen?" (468)

JHS was gay, and mostly blind by 1977, but this anecdote makes him sound something like Walter Breen, the husband to Marion Zimmer Bradley who spent the last years of life in prison for molesting young boys. There's no footnoted source for Frazer's story, so he probably witnessed Barker telling it. One hopes that Barker was exaggerating. JHS himself never talked about his romantic relationships, and even the fact that he was gay emerged publicly only after his death.