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In the summer of 2024, I undertook a research fellowship with Generation UCL. I analysed two relevant oral history interviews and researched A. E. Housman’s connection to UCL (through the lens of student experience). This blog post aims to present the key findings from that research.

Reading a manuscript of one of Housman’s countless letters in the UCL South Junction reading room.

It was very exciting to go from reading reproduced digitised letter collections to experiencing the original manuscript written by the person who I was studying, written over a century ago!

Who was Housman and how is he connected to UCL?

A. E. Housman (1859–1936) was UCL’s Professor of Latin from 1892 to 1911. Before UCL, he worked as a clerk and became Professor of Latin at Cambridge after leaving UCL. Housman was also a poet. Particularly, he wrote poems which contained coded references to homosexuality. Including those in his well-known poetry collection, A Shropshire Lad (ASL).

Portrait of A. E. Housman. Credit: National Portrait Gallery

What was Housman’s impact on students?

There is some evidence that Housman’s students engaged with ASL, which can be seen in students’ parodies of his poems. One such example is Gerald Gould’s ‘Ballad of the B.A. Classes (with apologies)’, published in the UCL Union Magazine in 1904.

Gould’s parody of Housman's poem , 'The lads in their hundreds to Ludlow come in for the fair'. Reproduced in R. W. Chamber’s Man’s Unconquerable Mind 

As well as a tongue-in-cheek parody on Housman’s choice of literary device, this encapsulates Housman’s interaction with students academically. Many students perceived Housman as cold, harsh and even sarcastic. Indeed, whether students came to his lectures or not didn’t seem to bother him and when they did come, he seemed to have few interactions with them. Infamously, he didn’t care to remember female students’ names because he had other things to remember such as Latin grammar. Also, he didn’t hold back from severely criticising his students’ work and his remarks would reduce women students to tears, or at least ‘[to] cause them to look as a rule most remarkably green.’ This harshness might also explain why, potentially, many students didn’t do well on exams and ‘c[ould] never get through’ their BA degree.

However, Housman fulfilled his teaching responsibilities as a Latin Professor, his lectures were highly regarded by students who publicly reminisced about them, and he gave additional voluntary lectures which he thought students would enjoy. Besides, though his comments can be biting, diligent women students acknowledged that they were just. Furthermore, Housman voluntarily taught more than one women student outside of class.

Beyond academics, Housman wrote warm references for students who were applying for jobs and supported their extracurricular endeavours. For instance, he frequently attended the College Literary Society, reading papers on various authors and engaging in discussions afterwards. His student R. W. Chambers commented that while Housman didn’t hold back from ‘flatten[ing] out’ students who were confident speakers, he was kind to amateurs. Housman also attended the College Debating Society, where he chaired a debate in place of someone who withdrew last minute and gave a wise and witty speech at one of its annual dinners.

Caricature of Housman produced by a student, Mortimer Wheeler, before Housman gave a Foundation Oration.

Ultimately, the positive impacts that Housman had on his students probably spoke for themselves when his students organised a lavish dinner for him before he left UCL. Both his past and present students turned up and gifted him a silver loving cup. It was also on this occasion that Housman made peace with his students whose names he often forgot.

How did Housman contribute to UCL life more broadly?

Housman took an active part in the administrative life of the College from the start. For example, he attended more college meetings than most of his colleagues from 1892/3 to 1895/6. Also, working alongside his colleague Arthur Platt, Housman helped elevate the status of Classics at UCL through his passion for Latin, intellectual rigour, a sense of responsibility and nurturing quality. Apart from these contributions, Housman campaigned to extend the Easter Holidays of the College from four weeks to five. As Housman’s former student R. W. Chambers recalls, this seemed to be an achievement he was quite proud of and wanted to be remembered for.

Reflections on the silencing of Housman’s homosexuality and its implications.

Despite being well-known among his students and containing coded references to homosexuality, discovering whether and to what extent ASL helped UCL students explore their non-normative sexualities remains a challenge. There are several reasons for this.

For one reason, very few people knew about Housman’s homosexuality during his lifetime due to his reticence. For another reason, it wasn’t until recent decades that ASL started to be discussed through the lens of homosexuality. Therefore, it is unlikely that many readers of ASL understood its coded references during Housman’s time at UCL.

Even if some readers sensed the theme, they would probably be discouraged from discussing it in any visible way (written or spoken). Which is not surprising considering that homophobia was deepening in British society, as represented by Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment for sodomy. Therefore, it is not likely to find relevant accounts in historical documents.

Nor is it likely to create them by conducting oral history interviews with these students today, as these students wouldn’t be alive to make this possible. This is frustrating as non-normative sexualities are much more speakable now.

Nevertheless, although Housman had to minimise the visibility of his homosexuality throughout his life – for understandable reasons – his legacy lives on. Poems which more explicitly discuss themes of homosexuality were published after his death by his brother Laurance. This includes a poignant poem that empathises with Oscar Wilde at the time of his conviction, and multiple poems which meditate on his lifelong unrequited love. As Housman indicates in the opening poem of his posthumously published poetry collection More Poems, ‘This is for all ill-treated fellows/ Unborn and unbegot/ For them to read when they’re in trouble/ And I am not’.

Conclusion

There has been some effort in honouring Housman and his time at UCL. He has been remembered through historicalwriting and re-telling, through dramatic representation and through the naming of lectures. Notably, a room on UCL’s main campus has been named after him. The fact that its name remained even through the 1980s, when homophobia deepened in the country in response to the HIV/AIDs crisis, suggests an institutional stance that celebrates queerness.

But more needs to be done. Particularly, the link between the naming of Housman Room and celebration of diverse sexualities deserves to be more explicitly and widely known. This matters as it helps validate the humanity of individuals who might resonate with stigmatised sexualities, particularly, UCL students and staff members who will spend years here.

Further reading

Claude J. Summers, Gay And Lesbian Literary HeritageRoutledge eBooks, 2014,https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203951149.

Housman, Laurence, A. E. (Alfred Edward) Housman, and John Carter. A.E. Housman’s “De Amicitia” / Annotated by John Carter. London: [s.n., 1967.

BLOCKSIDGE, MARTIN. “‘Out of the Gutter.’” In A. E. Housman: A Single Life, 95–139. Liverpool University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv3029rr4.9.

Chambers, R. W, and Elsie Vaughan Hitchcock. Man’s Unconquerable Mind : Studies of English Writers, from Bede to A. E. Housman and W. P. Ker / by R. W. Chambers. London: Cape, 1939.

Naiditch, P. G. A. E. Housman at University College, London : The Election of 1892 / by P.G. Naiditch. Leiden: Brill, 1988.