Letters - September 2008

Not just another depressive

Dear Editor,
Barcroft Boake has suddenly become trendy, with a fictionalised (shudder) account of his life (Where the Dead Men Lie, by Hugh Capel) just published, as well as a Collected Works, Edited, With a Life, the review of which by Patrick Buckridge (July–August 2008) suggests that the old misconceptions about the poet, based on a biased account by A.G. Stephens, on which Clement Semmler based his biography, are in danger of achieving the status of fact.

Boake had a lot to be sad about. His much-loved mother died when he was thirteen; he had been apprenticed to a bankrupt who conned him out of a large inheritance; an employer neglected to pay him; and a couple of love affairs went bust. But to write him off as a depressive, with death his ‘single theme’, is to fly in the face of the reality I discovered when researching the biography that won the Walter Stone Award in 1986.

As well as masterful if morbid ballads, Bartie Boake also wrote light, humorous verse. He produced lyrical pieces as well as lampoons savaging pompous Establishment figures of the time, and was fêted for them. He sang and recited at public gatherings. One performance in Adaminaby, reported one newspaper, ‘had the audience in roars of laughter’. He smoked and drank and played the fool, one stunt nearly resulting in his (accidental) death.