Alexander Pope Dunciad

Lowry alludes to Alexander Pope's poem 'Dunciad' in Chapter 3 of his novel Ultramarine: "Thy hand, great Anarch! Evil ghost who must follow me wherever I go! Hear chaos!" (Pg. 92).

The line of the Pope's poem is:

Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all

The Dunciad is a landmark literary satire by Alexander Pope published in three different versions at different times. The first version (the "three book" Dunciad) was published in 1728. The second version, in which Pope confirmed his authorship of the work, appeared in the Dunciad Variorum in 1735. The New Dunciad, in four books and with a different hero, appeared in 1743. The poem celebrates the goddess Dulness and the progress of her chosen agents as they bring decay, imbecility, and tastelessness to the kingdom of Great Britain. Read more on Wikipedia

Lola Ridge The Song of Iron

Lowry alludes to Lola Ridge's poem 'The Song of Iron' in his novel Ultramarine during Dana's drift around Dairen ; "The song of iron accompanied my footsteps infuriatingly until I realised I had gone the wrong side of the restaurant and was keeping too much to the line of the docks of the town." (Pg. 82).

Lola Ridge's poem was first published in a collection edited by Alfred Kreymborg entitled Others for 1919: An Anthology of the New Verse (1920). Both Ridge and Kreymborg were collaborators with Conrad Aiken hence Lowry's probable source for knowledge of the poem.

John Keats Endymion

George Frederick Watts Endymion 1872

Lowry quotes from Keat's poem Endymion during Dana's drunken drift around Dairen in the novel Ultramarine; "Ah sorrow who dost borrow the lustrous passion from a falcon's eye," (Pg.116).

Endymion is a poem by John Keats first published in 1818. It begins with the line "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever". Endymion is written in rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter (also known as heroic couplets). Keats based the poem on the Greek myth of Endymion, the shepherd beloved by the moon goddess Selene. The poem elaborates on the original story and renames Selene "Cynthia" Read more on Wikipedia

Keat's poem may have appealed to Lowry as in the poem  Endymion ventures into the underworld in search of his love corresponding to Dana's search for love in Dairen. Lowry would also have been aware of the coincidence in the name Cynthia being both the name of Endymion's lover but also the name of the woman lusted after by Demerest in Aiken's novel Blue Voyage.

Francis Thompson An Anthem of Earth

Lowry quotes from Francis Thompson's poem 'An Anthem of Earth' during Dana Hilliot's drunken drift around Dairen in Chapter 3 of the novel Ultramarine; "Ay, Mother ! Mother ! What is this Man, thy darling kissed and cuffed, Thou lustingly engender'st, To sweat, and make his brag, and rot crowned with all honour and all shamefulness?" (Pg. 116)

Rejoice with all their joy. Ay, Mother! Mother!
What is this Man, thy darling kissed and cuffed,
Thou lustingly engender'st,
To sweat, and make his brag, and rot,
Crowned with all honour and all shamefulness?
From nightly towers
He dogs the secret footsteps of the heavens,
Sifts in his hands the stars, weighs them as gold-dust,
And yet is he successive unto nothing
But patrimony of a little mould,
And entail of four planks. Thou hast made his mouth
Avid of all dominion and all mightiness,
All sorrow, all delight, all topless grandeurs,
All beauty, and all starry majesties,
And dim transtellar things;--even that it may,
Filled in the ending with a puff of dust,
Confess--'It is enough.' The world left empty

Lowry may have been drawn to Thompson's poem on man's mortality to reinforce the sense of death and decay which surrounds Dana on his drift around Dairen.

Lowry also puts the quote into the context of his mother's feelings about the trip to the Far East; "I don't want my son coarsened by a lot of hooligans?" However, Lowry cannot resist joking about his mother's perhaps prudish attitude to his conception; "My son whom thou lustingly engenderest?" (Pg. 116)

Marya Zaturensky's Russian Peasants

Lowry quotes from Marya Zaturensky's poem 'Russian Peasants' in Chapter 3 of Ultramarine; "They are dancing wildly tonight, wildly in the village of Czernoff." (Pg. 118).

Lowry probably read the poem in Harriet Monroe's Poetry: A Magazine of Verse XVI 1920.  This poem is possible example of Conrad Aiken's influence on Lowry's reading, after visiting Aiken in America in 1928, as Aiken contributed to Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 

THEY dance wildly today at the village of Czernoff—
The men and women and little children.
They dance wildly before the great lord’s castle,
Snapping their heels, cracking their fingers and sobbing
In hilarious passionate abandon.    

Wilder and wilder shriek the cymbals and violins,
Wilder and wilder arise the cries of the dancers,
And wilder the songs and the mad laughter.

Their faces are aglow, their eyes are shining
Radiant with vision and joy and splendor.      
Lithe are the bodies of the young women,
Marvelous the grace of the young men,
And strangely beautiful the wild chant of the old men and women.

They pass in a scarlet maze, singing, laughing, weeping:
Scarlet the embroidered bodices and petticoats,      
Scarlet the blouses of the men,
And scarlet and riotous the exhilarating air.

Tomorrow we shall see them reaping,
Backs bowed, and eyes apathetic with labor.
They will speak to you sorrowfully, hopelessly:      
“There is no joy in life,” they will say;
“Only with God is our great gladness—
His peace and his light be with you, brother"

Lowry's use of the poem is linked to the Russian roots of the prostitute Olga Sologub, who Dana meets in the red light district of Dairen, in a similar to use of scenes from the film Love's Crucifixion starring Olga Tschechowa - Lowry's spelling - as well as Chekhova's Russian roots. Lowry's is part of his creation of an innocent peasant past for Olga which fits into his fantasy of rescuing her from the brothel. The dancing of the village contrast with the dancing in the brothel; "a Negro fireman had taken his shoes off and did a crazy dance upon his enormous bare feet, a coconut in each hand and a cigar behind each ear. The music rose to a scream of dreadful pain. Another Negro joined the first in his dance. Modo and Maha." (Pg. 118). Lowry's reference to Modo and Maha are 2 of the 5 fiends in Poor Tom named by Edgar's in Shakespeare's King Lear. This is a clear contrast by Lowry between the "light" of the Russain village and the "darkness" of the 2 black sailors.

Iloilo, Philippines

Iloilo is a province of the Philippines located in the Western Visayas region. Iloilo occupies the southeast portion of Panay Island and is bordered by Antique Province to the west and Capiz Province and the Jintotolo Channel to the north. Just off Iloilo's southeast coast is Guimaras Province, once part of Iloilo Province but now a province in its own right. Across the Panay Gulf and Guimaras Strait is Negros Occidental. Iloilo's capital is Iloilo City though the city itself is independent and not governed by the provincial government of Iloilo.

Lowry mentions Iloilo in his short stories 'Tramps' and 'Goya The Obscure' and later in Ultramarine; "……his tattooed arms (where had they been tattooed, ….Iloilo?)" (Pg. 26).

There is no documentary evidence to suggest that Lowry visited Iloilo as part of his 1927 voyage to the Far East. It would appear that Lowry's mention of  Iloilo is perhaps part of a youthful obsession with the "exotic East" which, manifested itself in the composing of the song 'I've Said Goodbye to Shanghai' with his Cambridge musical partner Ronald Hill. The reference to the Iloilo may have been influenced by Lowry's reading of Richard Eberhart's poem A Bravery of Earth published in 1930. Eberhart's poem reflected his experiences at Cambridge University and his time as a ship's hand in the Far East. In a letter Lowry wrote to John Davenport dated 27th October 1930; "The third - (Richard Ghormley Ebehart!), unamazed in meditation looked up from Persia - more likely sailing down the coast by Iloilo, Zamboanga, Sabang, anywhere, Eberhart Icarus at this time". (Collected Letters Vol 1 Pg. 73-74). 

John Gould Fletcher Branches of Adam

Lowry alludes John Gould Fletcher's preface to his book of poetry Branches of Adam (1928) in Chapter 5 of Ultramarine; "Chaos and disunion, then, he told himself, not law and order, were the principles of life which sustained all things" (Pg. 157).


Compare to John Gould Fletcher's preface "Chaos and disunion, not law and order, were the principles of life which sustained all things" 

Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass

Lowry quotes from Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in Chapter 3 of Ultramarine during a long internal dialogue by Dana Hilliot as he muses after his drunken drift through the red light district of Dairen; "All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it, They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon, The insignificant is as big to me as any."


Leaves of Grass is a poetry collection by the American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Though the first edition was published in 1855, Whitman spent his entire life writing Leaves of Grass, revising it in several editions until his death which has echoes of Lowry's own The Voyage That Never Ends.

Ernest Dowson Spleen (After Paul Verlaine)

Lowry refers to Ernest Dowson's  poem Spleen ( After Paul Verlaine) in Chapter 3 of Ultramarine during a long internal dialogue by Dana Hilliot as he muses after his drunken drift through the red light district of Dairen; I am so tired of holly-sprays and weary of the bright box-tree." (Pg. 112)

SPLEEN (After Paul Verlaine)

Around were all the roses red,
The ivy all around was black.

Dear, so thou only move thine head,
Shall all mine old despairs awake!

Too blue, too tender was the sky,
The air too soft, too green the sea.

Always I fear, I know not why,
Some lamentable flight from thee.

I am so tired of holly-sprays
And weary of the bright box-tree,

Of all the endless country ways;
Of everything alas! save thee.

Ernest Dowson The Sea-Change

Lowry refers to Ernest Dowson's  The Sea-Change in Chapter 3 of Ultramarine during a long internal dialogue by Dana Hilliot as he muses after his drunken drift through the red light district of Dairen; "I shall bend my sail when the great day comes; thy kisses on my face— and anger and regret shall fade, and in thy salt embrace all that I knew in all my mind shall no more have a place; the weary ways of men and one woman I shall forget...." (Pg111-12).

The Sea-Change

Where river and ocean meet in a great tempestuous
          frown,
Beyond the bar, where on the dunes the white-
          capped rollers break;
Above, one windmill stands forlorn on the arid,
          grassy down:
I will set my sail on a stormy day and cross the
          bar and seek
That I have sought and never found, the ex-
          quisite one crown,
Which crowns one day with all its calm the
          passionate and the weak.

When the mad winds are unreined, wilt thou not
          storm, my sea?
(I have ever loved thee so, I have ever done thee
          wrong
In drear terrestrial ways.) When I trust myself
          to thee
With a last great hope, arise and sing thine ultimate,
          great song
Sung to so many better-men, O sing at last to me,
That which when once a man has heard, he heeds
          not over long.

I will bend my sail when the great day comes; thy
          kisses on my face
Shall seal all things that are old, outworn; and
          anger and regret
Shall fade as the dreams and days shall fade, and in
          thy salt embrace,
When thy fierce caresses blind mine eyes and my
          limbs grow stark and set,
All that I know in all my mind shall no more have
          a place;
The weary ways of men and one woman I shall
          forget.


Sea-change or seachange is a poetic or informal term meaning a gradual transformation in which the form is retained but the substance is replaced, in this case with a marvellous petrification. It was originally a song of comfort to the bereaved Ferdinand over his father's death by drowning. The expression is Shakespeare's, taken from the song in The Tempest, when Ariel sings,


"Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange,
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell,
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them, ding-dong, bell." Read more on Wikipedia

Heres to Pa nds Pen Da Soci alho uR etc

Lowry used many signs in his work and there are many examples in his first novel Ultramarine. Most of the signs used appear to have been either noted down by Lowry in notebooks (most long lost) or memorised for later use:


Heres to Pa nds Pen Da Soci alho uR
InHa RmlE ssmiR THan
Dfunl Etfrie ENDshirEi
GnbeJ Ustand
Kin DanDevils Peakof None (Pg. 112)

The above translates as "Here stop & spend a social hour in harmless mirth & fun, let friendship reign, be just & kind & evil speak of none". 


These kinds of word puzzles can be traced back to the 17th Century. Removing the first letter of a word (beheadment) or the last (curtailment) was a device used by writers to add a new element of interest to their work. In the seventeenth century, the poet George Herbert included this form of word play in his poem, 'Paradise':

I bless thee, Lord, because I GROW
Among thy trees, which in a ROW
To thee both fruit and order OW.

What open force, or hidden CHARM
Can blast my fruit, or bring me HARM,
While the enclosure is thy ARM?

Enclose me still for fear I START.
Be to me rather sharp and TART,
Than let me want thy hand and ART.

When thou dost greater judgements SPARE,
And with thy knife but prune and PARE,
Ev'n fruitful trees more fruitful ARE.

The source of Lowry's puzzle may be traced to the following:


A former landlord of the inn at Croyde, near Ilfracombe, must have been a humourist in his way, and had probably read Pickwick before he composed the following, which, like the "Bill Stumps his Mark" -


   +
BILST
 UM
PSHI
S.M.
ARK


is easily rendered into English:


Here's to Pands Pen 
Das oci Al Hourin
Ha! R: Mm: Les Smir
Thand Funlet
Fri Ends Hipre:
Ign Be Ju!
Stand Kin
Dan Devils
Peak of No! no


The composition of this could have been no tax on the tapster's brain. Charles George Harper The old inns of old England: a picturesque account of the ancient and storied hostelries of our own country 1906. The reference to Dicken's Pickwick Papers relates to the following passage:


The exultation and joy of the Pickwickians knew no bounds, when their patient assiduity, their washing and scraping, were crowned with success. The stone was uneven and broken, and the letters were straggling and irregular, but the following fragment of an inscription was clearly to be deciphered:

+

BILST

UM

PSHI

S.M.

ARK


Mr Pickwick's eyes sparkled with delight, as he sat and gloated over the treasure he had discovered. He had attained one of the greatest objects of his ambition. In a country known to abound in remains of the early ages; in a village in which there still existed some memorials of the olden time, he - he, the Chairman of the Pickwick Club - had discovered a strange and curious inscription of unquestionable antiquity, which had wholly escaped the observation of the many learned men who had preceded him. Read more

Charles George Harper doesn't say the name of the inn at Croyde. But given the date of the text as 1906 then it can only be one of 2 inns - either Manor House Inn or Carpenter's Arms.

Lowry may have seen the puzzle at the inn at Croyde either on his family holiday to Looe in Cornwall (early 20's) or Budleigh Salterton, Devon 1924. He did travel around Devon in 1933 but Ultramarine was complete at that time.

Janet Rohtraut (Beauty Rohtraut)

Rohtraut by Rudolf Schiestl 

"Janet Rohtraut. Beauty Rohtraut, listen to me." Lowry refers to Rohtraut in Chapter 3 of Ultramarine during a long internal dialogue by Dana Hilliot as he muses after his drunken drift through the red light district of Dairen. Hilliot appeals to his lover Janet Travena by alluding to George Meredith's The Ballad of Beauty Rohtraut (1850), a translation from the German of Moricke Morike's " Schon-Rohtraut". The poem represents the gradually growing desire of a youth to be near the maiden ending in the fulfilment of the dream. The allusion is one of many in Lowry's works to desire, nympholepsy, sirens and muses.


BEAUTY ROHTRAUT (From Moricke)

What is the name of King Ringang's daughter?
Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!
And what does she do the livelong day,
Since she dare not knit and spin alway?
O hunting and fishing is ever her play!
And, heigh! that her huntsman I might be!
I'd hunt and fish right merrily!
Be silent, heart!

And it chanced that, after this some time, -
Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut, -
The boy in the Castle has gained access,
And a horse he has got and a huntsman's dress,
To hunt and to fish with the merry Princess;
And, O! that a king's son I might be!
Beauty Rohtraut I love so tenderly.
Hush! hush! my heart.

Under a grey old oak they sat,
Beauty, Beauty Rohtraut!
She laughs: 'Why look you so slyly at me?
If you have heart enough, come, kiss me.'
Cried the breathless boy, 'kiss thee?'
But he thinks, kind fortune has favoured my youth;
And thrice he has kissed Beauty Rohtraut's mouth.
Down! down! mad heart.

Then slowly and silently they rode home, -
Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!
The boy was lost in his delight:
'And, wert thou Empress this very night,
I would not heed or feel the blight;
Ye thousand leaves of the wild wood wist
How Beauty Rohtraut's mouth I kiss'd.
Hush! hush! wild heart.'

Wie heißt König Ringangs Töchterlein?
   Rohtraut, Schön-Rohtraut.
Was tut sie denn den ganzen Tag,
Da sie wohl nicht spinnen und nähen mag?
   Tut fischen und jagen.
O dass ich doch ihr Jäger wär'!
   Fischen und jagen freute mich sehr.
- Schweig stille, mein Herze!

Und über eine kleine Weil,
   Rohtraut, Schön-Rohtraut,
So dient der Knab auf Ringangs Schloss
In Jägertracht und hat ein Ross,
   mit Rohtraut zu jagen.
O dass ich doch ein Königssohn wär!
Rohtraut, Schön-Rohtraut lieb ich so sehr.
- Schweig stille, mein Herze!

Einsmals sie ruhten am Eichenbaum,
   Da lacht Schön-Rohtraut:
Was siehst mich an so wunniglich?
Wenn du das Herz hast, küsse mich!
   Ach! erschrak der Knabe!
Doch denket er: mir ists vergunnt,
Und küsset Schön-Rohtraut auf den Mund.
- Schweig stille, mein Herze!

Darauf sie ritten schweigend heim,
   Rohtraut, Schön-Rohtraut;
Es jauchzt der Knab in seinem Sinn:
Und würdst du heute Kaiserin,
   Mich sollts nicht kränken:
Ihr tausend Blätter im Walde wisst,
Ich hab Schön-Rohtrauts Mund geküsst!
- Schweig stille, mein Herze!

Phlebas

Lowry refers to Phlebas in Chapter 3 of Ultramarine during a long internal dialogue by Dana Hilliot as he muses after his drunken drift through the red light district of Dairen; "Proceed, Phlebas, to the forecastle head, binoculars in hand!" (Pg. 111). The allusion is to T.S. Eliot's character in section IV of the poem The Waste Land. As a mythological character, he seems to have influenced authors across the ages, including Shakespeare in his writing of The Tempest; Phlebas as a character is comparable to Alonso.


IV. Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell
And the profit and loss.
         A current under sea
Picked his bones in whispers.  As he rose and fell
He passes the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
        Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

The character Phlebas the Phoenician who dies by drowning best symbolizes the chance of renewal in The Waste Land.  Although Phlebas appears in the shortest section of the poem, “Death by Water”, his seemingly small role in death represents a greater picture of bringing life back to the Waste Land.

Throughout the poem water is a very prominent symbol. Water usually is used to symbolize baptism, rebirth, relief, and regeneration. In The Wasteland, however, it brings both life and death. It cleanses the Earth but also leaves behind the raw imperfections of humanity. 

When Phlebas drowns, he seems to forget all his worries and cares from his mortal life, “Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, / Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell/ And the profit and loss.” (2054) His death is simple.  It is not profound or even all that tragic. It is simply just death. It happens. It also was foretold in the first section of the poem by Madame Sosostris when reading the tarot cards, “Here, said she, Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor,” (2046) It was expected to happen so really, why should it matter? Why should you, the reader, care? There obviously is a significance in Phlebas’s death because the narrator directly addresses the reader and says, “Gentile or Jew/ O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, / Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.” The narrator wants the reader to stop and think about what this really means. One interpretation of Madame Sosostris’s reading is that there can be hope in his death.  “(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)” This line, explained in the footnotes, is an allusion to Shakespeare’s Tempest when Ariel sings of Prince Ferdinand’s father’s death as “something rich and strange.” (2046) Death comes with sorrow and despair but death can also bring the chance of gaining something good and treasured. By dying in water, it can go back to the whole baptizing thing. Sins are washed away in the moment of death and the soul is clean and pure for the afterlife in heaven. It also can be related to regeneration and rebirth in that when the soul is cleansed of impurities, it is ready for a new life after death with God.  It is almost like a second chance. It relieves the soul of mortal suffering and imperfections so that the focus is on the faith in God.  But then Madame Sosostris goes on to say, “Fear death by water.” There always has to be a catch. She is saying that although this kind of death can be looked at as positive, one should beware things that seem too good to be true. It’s like the only way to escape the Waste Land and to have a better life, you have to end it. Depending on the strength of one’s faith, there might not be a promise of another life after death. Death could be absolutely final with no chance for the soul to pass on and T.S. Eliot tries to express throughout the poem that that is what truly makes a Waste Land.

It seems like in order for things to begin to bloom again in the Waste Land, the people there, and actually just people in general, need to be strong and have faith in something, whether it’s in God or in each other. Phlebas’s death definitely draws attention to this and demands that one stops and thinks about where their life is headed and what their purpose in this world should be.American Lit

Elizabeth Gregory has this to say: 'Phlebas ... alludes to Philebus, Plato's dialogue on the nature of pleasure' [Quotation and Modern American Poetry, Texas Rice University Press 1996, p.52]. Another suggestion is that Eliot knew that phleps (the genitive is phlebos) is the Greek for a vein. It is derived, suggest Liddell and Scott, from phleo, 'to flow'; a whispery, almost onomatopoeic word ('A current under sea/Picked his bones in whispers'). "In what, in other words, is Phlebas drowned? Seawater, we think; although mightn't it be possible that he has slipped into another form of salty water, into the whirlpool of his own bloodflow? We all drown in that, in the end." Europrogovision

Fyodor Sologub

Fyodor Sologub born Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov, 1863 -1927 was a Russian Symbolist poet, novelist, playwright and essayist. He was the first writer to introduce the morbid, pessimistic elements characteristic of European fin de siècle literature and philosophy into Russian prose. Read more on Wikipedia

The poet shares the same surname as the prostitute Olga who Dana Hilliot meets in Dairen in Chapter 3 of Ultramarine; Hilliot asks her the question; "But isn't there a novelist? Russian? No relation?" (Pg. 106).

Lake Isle of Innisfree

The "Lake Isle of Innisfree" is a poem written by William Butler Yeats in 1888. The poem was published first in the National Observer in 1890 and reprinted in The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics in 1892. This is a poem by W.B.Yeats in which he dreams of escaping the busy streets of London. He remembers Innisfree as a perfect little island that would supply all his needs:


I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Lowry makes reference to the poem in his first novel Ultramarine in which he compares the peace of the lake to the the streets of Dairen; "Not like the Lake Isle of Innisfree, I thought, as we passed an hotel, the Oriental, blazing with light.

Mikhail Kuzmin

Portrait by Konstantin Somov (1909)

Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin (1872 - 1936) was a Russian poet, musician and novelist, a prominent contributor to the Silver Age of Russian Poetry. Read more on Wikipedia


Lowry refers to the poet in his first novel Ultramarine; "Mikhail Kuzmin's flute is heard, playing softly - Soldiers' Canteen." (Pg. 112). The flute is a reference to Kuzmin's poem Alexandrinische Gesange: 


When someone says: 'Alexandria,'
I see the white walls of a house,
a small garden row of gillyflowers,
an autumn evening's pale sunlight
and hear the music of distant flutes.


The reference to the Soldiers' Canteen is unidentified.

Amy Lowell's House, Brookline,

Poet Amy Lowell (1874-1925) was born in Brookline, near Boston, on a 10-acre estate “Sevenels” at 70 Heath Street to a wealthy and prominent New England family. She lived in the elegant mansion all her life, redecorating many of the rooms according to her own taste after the death of her parents.

Lowry refers to Amy Lowell's house in his novel Ultramarine in which the protagonist Dana Hilliot recalls; " strolling with my father through the Harvard Yard, passing the Widener Library, so absurdly like our Bibliotheket, and Amy Lowell's house."

Lowry must have become familiar with Amy Lowell's house during his trip to the USA in 1929 to visit Conrad Aiken.

Wallace Stevens 1879-1955

An American Modernist poet. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as a lawyer for the Hartford insurance company in Connecticut.

Read more on Wikipedia

Lowry mentions the Gulf of Tehuantepec (Lowry spells as Tehantapec) in 'In Le Havre'. This is one of the first mentions of Mexico in Lowry’s work and alludes to his reading of Wallace Stevens’s 1924 poem “Sea Surface Full of Clouds” set off Tehuantepec.

John Curtis Underwood 1874-1949

Poet of the chorus girl, the motion picture star, the straphanger, and all those various types which make up the every-day life, is John Curtis Underwood. Insurgent though he is, he has a knack of portraying the tenderloin in a realistic, graphic fashion. Howard Willard Cook; Poets Of Today.

Lowry paraphrases lines from poem ‘The Sands’ from collection ‘The Iron Muse’ (1910) in ‘In Le Havre’. Collection features images and subjects reflected in Lowry's work; ‘The Sea’ ‘The Lighthouse’, ‘The Liner’” and ‘The Coal Passers’.

John Curtis Underwood, poet and literary figure, was born July 26, 1874 in Rockford, Illinois. He graduated in 1896 from Trinity (Hartford, Connecticut) with a Bachelor of Arts. In November 1918, Poetry: a Magazine of Verse, awarded Underwood the Helen Haire Levinson prize for the best poem of the year entitled "The Song of the Cheochas." At the time he lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico and gave his check to the United War Work Drive. On November 28, 1928 he married Emily Rudolph, a Californian artist. In addition to their writing and painting, they ran the Pioneer Art Gallery in Santa Fe. Underwood, a supporter of the New Mexico Museum and the arts, gave 68 books to the Museum Library in 1921.


In 1925 he gave prize money for a poetry and painting contest. Raymond Jonson won the painting contest. Underwood purchased Jonson's prize winning work, The Power of God, for the Museum collection. Mary Austin won second prize in the poetry contest. During his career Underwood published various books of poetry and literary criticism. His poems were published in magazines like Everybody's, and Ainslee's Magazine. Some of his books are Trails End (1921), Americans (1912), The Iron Muse (1910), Interpreters (1939), Processionals (1915), Pioneers (1923), and Literature and Insurgency (1914). Reviews of his work can be found in newspapers as the New York Times and the Boston Transcript.


In the preface to his book, Literature and Insurgency, Underwood gives his opinion of American literature and ideas about what poetry should be. "Poetry that is real, that is fit to survive through the centuries, needs no defense. ..., it rises triumphant from each defeat to summon men and women to greater heights of aspiration, to greater intensities and charities of common humanity shared and exalted. Great poetry like all great literature is born of storm and stress in the individual or the community." John Curtis Underwood died at age 74 on January 14, 1949 on his ranch near Santa Cruz, New Mexico. University of New Mexico - Zimmerman Library

Clere Parsons (Trevor James Herbert) 1908-31

An English poet who was born in India who attended St Paul’s School where he met Lowry’s friend John Davenport. 

He later attended Christ Church, Oxford, where he edited both Oxford Poetry and Oxford Outlook, and (with Bernard Spencer) Sir Galahad, a magazine modelled on Jacob Bronowski and William Empson’s Cambridge University student magazine Experiment. He died in Oxford in tragic circumstances following a diabetic coma. (Geoffrey Grigson Recollections Pg. 23). 'Poems by Clere Parsons, Born 1908, died 1931' was collected by Herbert Read and published by T.S. Eliot.

Lowry quotes 2 lines from Clere Parson’s poem “Never Before Has Seemed Any Event…” as an epigraph to the story 'In Le Havre' , “A ship crossed, and beyond/Hull down, the lone sea’s curve”.

We must assume that Lowry was familiar with Parson's poetry through John Davenport.

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