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On October 21, 2000 some one hundred people gathered to celebrate the life and work of poet and memoirist Siegfried Sassoon, at Marlborough College, Sassoon's old school. The speakers were Dennis Silk, Jean Moorcroft Wilson and Dominic Hibberd. Owing to a slight contretemps with a wet step, Dominic Hibberd appeared later in the programme than scheduled, and with one arm in a sling !
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After the coffee break, Jean Moorcroft Wilson discussed Sassoon's post-First World War writing career, noting that all the First World War poets who survived faced the same problem after the Armistice - what to write about next, now that their major subject of the last few years was gone. Sassoon wrote a good deal less poetry during the 1930s and 1940s than he had written in the previous two decades (1). Wilson felt that Recreations (1923) and Lingual Exercises for Advanced Vocabularies (1925) were both a false start, and that the next collection that deserves equal consideration with his war poetry is The Heart's Journey (1927) (2). Wilson noted that the 1940s and 1950s were a time of great conflict for Sassoon personally with the end of his marriage and the departure of his son George to school and then university. Wilson read out Sassoon's account of the Flower Show Match. She noted that Sassoon engaged in a three-sided correspondence with T. E. Lawrence (author of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom and E. M. Forster (author of Howard's End and A Passage to India amongst others), and expressed her belief that Sassoon's inability to become a modernist led to the decline of his poetry. However, Wilson feels that Sassoon's position is more secure now than ever before.
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After lunch and a quick tour of the College grounds by Dr Terry Rogers (Marlborough College's archivist), Dominic Hibberd made a slightly shaky, but jokey, appearance as the third speaker. His title was Reading War Poetry Backwards: The Uniqueness of Siegfried Sassoon but he was far from advocating that war poetry should be read backwards ! Rather, his argument was that we read First World War poetry with hindsight, with the view that the First World War was a bloody, senseless slaughter. He opened by reading an unnamed poem by an unnamed poet and invited us to guess whether it was written by a soldier or a civilian, and whether it was written early or late in the First World War. The poem, he revealed, was 'Breakfast' by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, a largely forgotten poet of the First World War. 'Breakfast' was written in October 1914, and Wilson was a civilian. If the reader/listener was unaware of those facts, s/he might easily assume 'Breakfast' to be a trench poem by a soldier poet such as Owen or Sassoon might write. Hibberd then repeated the exercise with another poem, Robert Nichols' 'Dawn on the Somme', which was dedicated to Sassoon (with his approval) and was written in the summer of 1918. It is a Brookean poem quite unlike the trench poems of the soldier poets.
Hibberd went on to observe that Owen and Sassoon were untypical war poets, and unlike each as poets and men. Sassoon, commented Hibberd, was an extraordinary man who largely failed to complete the things he undertook. He started school at Marlborough College rather later than the average, and then did not stay as long as usual owing to illness. He started a degree in Law at Clare College, Cambridge, which he abandoned in favour of History (which he did not finish either). He then spent several years dithering between his sporting and poetic selves before the First World War broke out. For Sassoon, said Hibberd, the First World War was a useful diversion since it solved - temporarily - his problem of what to do with himself. Sassoon's military career, for all he enlisted at the earliest opportunity, was spent mostly out of the Front Line. He actually only spent around six weeks on the Western Front during his four years of service. Although he earned a Military Cross for his service, Sassoon was a rather impulsive man and frequently failed to complete things he began before, during and after the War.
Hibberd then discussed the three stages into which First World War poetry is assumed to fall:
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1 - Heroic/Sacrificial - most typified by Rupert Brooke. Sassoon wrote some poetry which falls into this category: 'Absolution' and 'To My Brother' being two examples. The heroic/sacrificial response was typical of a great many towards the War, especially in the early stages. Sassoon himself wanted to be a martyr. 2 - Bitter Disillusionment - Sassoon's late 1915 poem 'The Redeemer' is a cliched view of the Tommy but also represents the typical view of the era; a view, said Hibberd, propogated by the popular press, such as Horatio Bottomley's John Bull. The later published version of Sassoon's poem is ironic, negating the rest of the poem. Sassoon's 'In the Pink' indicates his move to 'realism'. Realism was already in use in poetry before the First World War - for example John Masefield's Everlasting Mercy (which Sassoon parodied in The Daffodil Murderer) and Kipling's verse. Realism did not begin with the soldier poets - both Harold Monroe and Wilfrid Wilson Gibson introduced realism into their poetry and neither served overseas during the First World War. 3 - Protest - political protest, calls for the war to be stopped. Sassoon's 1917 protest and Max Plowman's protest were both political, although Sassoon's failed to have the result he expected owing to the intervention of Robert Graves. Hibberd noted that Monroe considered protesting but was talked out of it. Since he had never seen overseas service, he was disliked for his comments about the need to end the war. There are very few protest poems amongst the poems of the First World War. Most of the protests made against the War were made by civilians, and soldiers frequently broke up pacifist meetings. Hibberd noted that Graves' Goodbye to All That is in complete contradiction to his war poems. Most of the ideas in Sassoon's own protest came from the civilians, such as Sir Philip and Lady Ottoline Morrell, John Middleton Murray and Betrand Russell. It should be noted that Sassoon's poetry was admired by both pacifist and non-pacifists such as Russell and Winston Churchill (who actually memorised some of them !).
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After Dominic Hibberd's talk, there was a chance to look at Jeremy and Anne Powell's bookstall and an opportunity for a cup of tea. A small number of us took the ten minute walk out to Cotton House, Sassoon's home during his years at Marlborough, where we viewed the House memorial (which lists Sassoon's younger brother, Hamo) and the various plaques listing the sporting achievements of the boys in Cotton House (where various Sassoons featured not infrequently !). We also had the chance to look into the library where Sassoon famously picked up a volume of poetry containing Thomas Hood's 'The Bridge of Sighs' which re-inspired the young Siegfried to reclaim his poetic talents after several years of neglect. The day ended with dinner at the local Cafe Uno for around 40 of us.
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1 - It is worth noting that during the period of the 1930s and 1940s, Sassoon was very busy writing his prose memoirs - Memoirs of an Infantry Officer appeared in 1930, Sherston's Progress in 1936, The Old Century and Seven More Years in 1938, The Weald of Youth in 1942 and Siegfried's Journey in 1945. Plus Sassoon's biography of George Meredith - Meredith - appeared in 1948. Poetry collections which appeared during these two decades are Poems by Pinchbeck Lyre (1931), The Road to Ruin (1933), Vigils (1934/1935), Rhymed Ruminations (1939), Poems Newly Selected (a collection Sassoon selected himself, 1940), and his first ever Collected Poems (again selected by Sassoon himself, 1947). (Editor's note)
2 - Between Lingual Exercises and The Heart's Journey Sassoon published his Satirical Poems collection in 1926. (Editor's note)
3 - A view shared by Dr Martin Stephen in The Price of Pity. (Editor's note)
(Report written by Michèle Fry, 2000. Photographs by Margo McRice, Michele Fry and Peter Middlebrook, 2000.)
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http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/sassoonday.htm
The view across the courtyard at Marlborough College 
Dennis Silk at the Sassoon Day (Photo: Margo McRice, 2000)
Lunchtime: Michele in full discourse mode ! Poor Anthony Boden (biographer of F. W. Harvey) is on the receiving end. 
Hamo Sassoon listed on the Cotton House memorial (Photo: Margo McRice, 2000)
