Richard Aldington - Man of Letters

Man of Letters

Aldington's poetry was associated with the Imagist group, and his poetry forms almost one third of the Imagists' inaugural anthology Des Imagistes (1914). Ezra Pound had in fact coined the term imagistes for H.D. and Aldington, in 1912. At this time Aldington's poetry at this time was unrhymed free verse, whereas in later his verse the cadences are long and voluptuous, the imagery weighted with ornament. At this time, he was one of the poets around the proto-Imagist T. E. Hulme; Robert Ferguson in his life of Hulme portrays Aldington as too squeamish to approve of Hulme's robust approach, particularly to women. However, Aldington shared Hulme's conviction that experimentation with traditional Japanese verse forms could provide a way forward for avant-garde literature in English, and went often to the British Museum to examine Nishiki-e prints illustrating such poetry.

He knew Wyndham Lewis well, also, reviewing his work in The Egoist at this time, hanging a Lewis portfolio around the room and on a similar note of tension between the domestic and the small circle of London modernists regretting having lent Lewis his razor when the latter announced with hindsight a venereal infection. Going out without a hat, and an interest in Fabian socialism, were perhaps unconventional enough for him.

At this time he was also an associate of Ford Madox Ford, helping him with a hack propaganda volume for a government commission in 1914 and taking dictation for The Good Soldier when H.D. found it too harrowing.

In 1915, Aldington and H.D. moved within London, away from Holland Park very near Ezra Pound and Dorothy, to Hampstead, close to D. H. Lawrence and Frieda. Their relationship became strained by external romantic interests and the stillborn birth of their child. Between 1914 and 1916 he was literary editor of The Egoist, and columnist there. He was assistant editor with Leonard Compton-Rickett under Dora Marsden. The gap between the Imagist and Futurist groups was defined partly by Aldington's critical disapproval of the poetry of Filippo Marinetti.