I am currently writing on 'Frost and the First World War' for Frost in Context, a volume of essays for Cambridge UP edited by Mark Richardson (whose blog I heartily recommend). It is a large topic to cram into 3000 words.Frost uses the exclusive term 'England' to describe the nation at war. This would be less surprising were it not for his own pedigree. Frost was proud of his Scottish ancestry, his mother having emigrated from Edinburgh to the States aged twelve. Correcting the impression in 1917 that he was a 'Yankee realist', Frost insisted that it would be more accurate to think of him as a 'Scotch symbolist'. He also referred to his 'Scotch-Yankee calculation': the hybrid identity lingered despite his never having spent more than a few weeks in the maternal homeland. (As an Englishman, I would never dream of suggesting that Frost was the great Scottish poet of the last century.) Yet in February 1915, on the point of returning to the States after two and a half years in England, Frost wrote a farewell note to Harold Monro in which he declared loftily that 'England has become half my native land — England the victorious'. If England is one half, it is safe to assume that America, not Scotland, comprises the other.
Foregoing his Scottish lineage, and ignoring or unaware of Monro’s, Frost seems to have slipped readily into a discourse of Englishness. This was not simply a performance for particular correspondents. A wartime notebook entry, complete with faulty syntax, reads as follows:
If it is sweet to Englishmen that England though a little island north away should half the lands and all the seas and make them better for her righteousness, why should not Germany wish such glory for their country in return? Wish it? Yes. And ask England for it if she dares. But why should not England deny her request?
England is not 'a little island' unless (as seems to have been the case here) it has subsumed Scotland and Wales. The word 'sweet' immediately evokes Horace's 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori', and situates Frost's 'England' in a myth of self-sacrifice. Frost had met Rupert Brooke, whose sonnet 'The Soldier' had done so much to popularise that myth: it referred to 'England' four times, and 'English' twice. That the myth of England should have infiltrated even the work of a sceptical Scottish Yankee like Frost is proof of its pervasive appeal.
And thus was Hadrian's Wall the ultimate inspiration for "Good fences make good neighbors." Yet thereafter hard Frost--New England conservative--felt a twinge every time he heard the labor union song ask: "Which Side Are You On?"
ReplyDelete(Adding to his national confusion, that song uses the melody of an old English ballad... so says Pete Seeger, anyway.)
Drinking guid Scotch just made things worse.
Robert Frost’s comments about Englishness and England reflect the ordinary terminology that those of who live in the U.S. heard throughout our lives -- the common reference used my parents, grandparents and great grandparents. Frost was of a generation of Americans who regarded England as the Mother country even if their heritage were Scottish or Welsh. My grandmother was of Scottish descent from Nova Scotia but she listed her nationality as English not as Scottish or Canadian, and always thought of herself as English despite an accent that suggested otherwise. My great grandmother was from Wales but she listed her nationality as “English” and regarded herself as English. Frost was merely identifying England the way we all did, particularly those on the East Coast and in New England. This identification with England and adherence to English traditions carried on strongly into the 1960s in communities with populations made up of Welsh, Scottish and English immigrants. We are still inclined here to use “England” to describe the land mass between the north of Scotland, the west of Wales and the Isle of Wight. Frost would have perceived “England” as a “little island” because given the vast size of the U.S. it does appear “little” to us. The six states of New England cover nearly 72,000 square miles only some 17,000 square miles less than all of England, Scotland and Wales.
ReplyDeleteI don’t think Frost’s use of England and Englishness is proof that he succumbed to any myth or felt any "hybrid identity" for very long, except perhaps a bit when in England. Quotes such as "Scotch symbolist" that he used to describe himself were surely said in a joking tone and not meant as a factual description.
Pam
I agree that 'England' is often used to mean 'Britain'---and not just by New Englanders--- but the crucial fact here is that Frost only fell into that myth when he was thinking of the country at war. He knew perfectly well that Scotland isn't England. He even teased English people about his Scottishness. And joking or not, he never referred to himself as an 'English symbolist'.
ReplyDeleteMyths tend to be created after the events. I think that during the war Frost was living very much in reality. He was worried about the dangers that war was imposing on his friends, particularly Edward Thomas, and on the nation to which he felt a bond and a closeness. It was only during this time that Frost had any reason at all to refer to the country (England, Britain, UK or whatever). Otherwise I don't recall that he had much to say about it. So, I'm inclined to feel that Frost was simply a man stating his honest concerns and not a subscriber to a myth.
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Perhaps Frost is more English than we suppose. When in 1994 one of my children had to study one of those anthologies compiled for GCSE, the teacher informed the class that the author of 'Mending Wall' came from Yorkshire (North of Boston Spa, presumably). The same teacher said that 'the Prado' in Heaney's 'Summer 1969' was a covered market ...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/29/robert-frost-edward-thomas-poetry
ReplyDeleteOh Alex, I'm glad I'm not the only one who meets that sort of teacher! Years ago I was doing a session in a school and the head of English, no less, asked me to explain a reference in a poem to what he called "the Maggie". It turned out he meant the Magi, of whom he had never heard under that name...
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