I'm celebrating two birthdays this week, after a fashion. One is my own; we spent the day at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, which is currently hosting Madame Tussaud's wax figures of the Presidents (yes, all of them) as well as some other historic notables. This is a limited engagement, with restricted entrance due to you-know-what, and will only run until January 3rd of next year. I very much encourage my readers to go if you have the opportunity, because it was really awesome! We also spent part of the day running around gathering markers for this blog, because that's what we do when we go somewhere.
The other birthday takes place tomorrow. Poetry enthusiasts (like my friend Rachel, who first mentioned today's subject to me a few years ago) may already be aware that tomorrow will be the 134th birthday of one of the most unique voices of the 20th century.
 |
| The marker is situated in front of City Center Plaza at 10 East Church Street |
She was born Hilda Doolittle on September 10, 1886, although the world knows her better as H.D. Her mother was Helen Wolle Doolittle, a member of the Moravian community and a sister of John Frederick Wolle, who has his own marker. Her father was Charles Doolittle, professor of astronomy at Lehigh University. H.D. was their only living daughter; they also had five sons (two from Charles's first marriage), and two more daughters who both died at birth.
H.D. was ten years old when the family relocated to Upper Darby, near Philadelphia, when her father accepted an appointment as Flower Professor of Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. H.D. graduated from Friends' Central High School, a Quaker school in Lower Merion Township (Greater Philadelphia), in the class of 1905. By that time, she was already friends with the poet Ezra Pound, who would have a long-lasting influence on her life, both personally and professionally. She attended Bryn Mawr College, majoring in Greek literature, but poor health resulted in a poor academic performance and she left after only three terms. Her time there was important to her, however; she made friends with established poets Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams, both of whom are associated with the modernist poetry movement.
For a few years after her departure from college, she published a series of children's stories under the pseudonym Edith Gray. She and Pound became engaged in 1907, but her father disapproved of the match, and they called off the engagement before he left for Europe the following year. H.D. was bisexual, and she had many relationships during her life with men and women alike; she was involved with a female art student when she moved to Europe in 1911. She intended only to be in Europe for a little while, but she ended up staying there for the rest of her life. In England she reunited with Pound, and was introduced by her then-girlfriend to the poet Richard Aldington, with whom Pound was also well acquainted.
Pound was impressed with H.D.'s poetry, in part because it so strongly resembled the ideas he and Aldington were already discussing about reforming contemporary poetry. The three called themselves Imagists, and often signed their poems with the name "Imagiste". Now, I'm going to be honest here and say that I don't know much about poetry movements, so I had to read up a bit on Imagism, which emerged in 1913 as a result of these three. Basically, Imagism involves writing poetry in which the verse has "dry clarity and hard outline," as the Encyclopaedia Britannica puts it. They more or less wanted to streamline poetry, achieving the desired mental picture through an economy of words. The work of the Imagists was chiefly published in the United States and England, and at its height the group seems to have had about a dozen members. H.D. continued to write in the Imagist style until about 1930.
In 1913, H.D. married Aldington. They had one child, a daughter who died at birth in 1915. The marriage struggled, possibly in part because of their child's death, and they became estranged. In 1916 she published her first book, Sea Garden, and she took over her husband's duties editing the Imagist anthologies while he went to serve in World War I. Her brother Gilbert was killed in the war, which impacted her later writings. In 1918 she moved to Cornwall, where she lived with the composer Cecil Gray; she became pregnant with his child, although she didn't discover she was expecting until after they had broken up. Aldington returned from the war, badly traumatized, and the couple separated formally. They attempted to salvage the marriage, however, and he even gave his surname to H.D.'s daughter by Cecil Gray, Frances Perdita Aldington, who was born in 1919. Despite their efforts, they finally divorced in 1938, but remained close friends for the rest of their lives. (At least, they did according to some sources. Other sources say that the relationship was somewhat strained.)
 |
| Doolittle family plot in Bethlehem's Nisky Hill Cemetery |
In addition to her poetry, H.D. also wrote a number of prose books. Writing on the Wall, published in 1944, is a memoir of her experiences with psychoanalysis under the auspices of Sigmund Freud. During World War II, she wrote The Gift, a memoir of her childhood in Bethlehem and the people and events of her youth which shaped her as a writer; this was published in 1960 and reissued in 1982. End to Torment, a memoir written in the 1950s, recalled her relationship with Ezra Pound and - with his permission - included a series of love poems he had written for her during their courtship and engagement. She continued publishing poetry, such as her well-known Helen in Egypt; this was an examination of epic poetry, with its male-centric view, and a reinterpretation of the Trojan War based on the Euripides play Helen. Trilogy, written in the 1940s, is a compilation of three long poems - The Walls do not Fall, Tribute to the Angels, and The Flowering of the Rod.
In 1960, H.D. returned to the United States to accept a medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters - the first woman ever to receive one. She then went back to her residence in Switzerland, where she suffered a stroke in July of the following year. She died a few months later, in Zurich, and was cremated. Her ashes were returned to Bethlehem for interment in the family plot, and lines from one of her early poems were used for her epitaph. All four of her grandchildren, the children of daughter Perdita and her husband John Schaffner, grew up to be writers; grandson Nicholas is notable as a biographer of the Beatles.
Enter the cemetery using the "Union Cemetery" gate at the intersection of Church and High Streets. Follow the path from that gate to where it meets a cross path, and bear to the left. Look for the very tall pillar stone of Robert Looney; it features a greenish plaque above his name in large letters. The Doolittle family is buried to the right of his stone, when viewed from the path, and H.D. is approximately at the center of the group. You can't miss her stone, with all the gifts from visitors who came before you.
Happy birthday, H.D.
Sources and Further Reading:
H.D. herself reads from Helen of Egypt, on YouTube
Hilda Doolittle (H.D.): From Bethlehem and Back Again, a special exhibition at the Lehigh University library, 2015.
Obituary of H.D.'s only child, Perdita Macpherson Schaffner
Hilda Doolittle at the Historical Marker Database; she also has another marker on the house where she lived on Mecklenburgh Square in London, England
If you've enjoyed this, please leave a comment!
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
Handy &thoughtful biographical resource, thank you. Especially thank you for the directions. They don't always have maps available. Luckily someone working for the cemetery showed me where it is, but yes the obelisk of Richard Looney is right nearby, and so is the little house for storage? I don't think it's a mausoleum) of yellow orange brick.
ReplyDelete