Cecil Day-Lewis | |
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| Born | (1904-04-27)27 April 1904 Ballintubbert,County Laois, Ireland |
| Died | 22 May 1972(1972-05-22) (aged 68) Monken Hadley, Greater London, England |
| Resting place | St Michael's Church,Stinsford, Dorset, England |
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| Nationality |
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| Alma mater | Wadham College, Oxford |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4, includingTamasin andDaniel |
| Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom | |
| In office 2 January 1968 – 22 May 1972 | |
| Monarch | Elizabeth II |
| Preceded by | John Masefield |
| Succeeded by | John Betjeman |
Cecil Day-LewisCBE (orDay Lewis; 27 April 1904 – 22 May 1972), often written asC. Day-Lewis, was anAnglo-Irish poet andPoet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1968 until his death in 1972. He also wrote mystery stories under the pseudonymNicholas Blake, most of which feature the fictional detectiveNigel Strangeways.
During World War II, Day-Lewis worked as a publications editor in the UK government'sMinistry of Information and also served in theMusbury branch of theHome Guard.[1] He was the father of actorDaniel Day-Lewis, and documentary filmmaker and television chefTamasin Day-Lewis.
Day-Lewis was born in 1904 in Ballintubbert,Athy/Stradbally border, Queen's County (now known asCounty Laois), Ireland.[2] He was the son of Frank Day-Lewis, aChurch of Ireland rector of that parish, and Kathleen Blake (née Squires; died 1906).[3] Some of his family were from England and the family had originally been fromBerkhamsted, inHertfordshire, and settled in Ireland in the late 1860s. His father took the surname "Day-Lewis" as a combination of his own birth father's ("Day") and adoptive father's ("Lewis") surnames.[4] In his autobiographyThe Buried Day (1960), Day-Lewis wrote: "As a writer I do not use the hyphen in my surname – a piece of inverted snobbery which has produced rather mixed results."[5]
IS IT FAR TO GO?
Is it far to go?
A step — no further.
Is it hard to go?
Ask the melting snow,
The eddying feather.
What can I take there?
Not a hank, not a hair.
What shall I leave behind?
Ask the hastening wind,
The fainting star.
Shall I be gone long?
For ever and a day.
To whom there belong?
Ask the stone to say,
Ask my song.
Who will say farewell?
The beating bell.
Will anyone miss me?
That I dare not tell —
Quick, Rose, and kiss me.(c. 1940)[6]
After the death of his mother in 1906, when he was two years old, Cecil was brought up in London by his father, with the help of an aunt, spending summer holidays with relatives inCounty Wexford. He was educated atSherborne School and atWadham College, Oxford. In Oxford, Day-Lewis became part of the circle gathered aroundW. H. Auden and helped him to editOxford Poetry 1927. His first collection of poems,Beechen Vigil, appeared in 1925.[7]
In 1928, Day-Lewis married Constance Mary King, the daughter of a Sherborne teacher. Day-Lewis worked as a schoolmaster in three schools, including Larchfield School,Helensburgh, Scotland (nowLomond School).[7][8] During the 1940s, he had a long and troubled love affair with the novelistRosamond Lehmann, to whom he dedicated his 1943 poetry collectionWord Over All.[9] In 1948, Day-Lewis met actressJill Balcon, daughter ofMichael Balcon, at the recording of a radio programme and began an affair with her that year. He conducted simultaneous relationships with his wife Constance Mary, who lived with their two sons inDorset, with Lehmann, who lived inOxfordshire, and with Balcon. Finally he broke with his wife and Lehmann, and after his marriage was dissolved in 1951, he married Balcon, but he was no more faithful to her than he had been to his wife or Lehmann. Jill's father was deeply unhappy about the scandalous affair since she was named publicly as co-respondent in Day-Lewis' divorce. He disinherited her and cut off all relationships with her and Day-Lewis.[10][11]
During the Second World War, Day-Lewis worked as a publications editor in theMinistry of Information, an institution satirised byGeorge Orwell in his dystopianNineteen Eighty-Four, but equally based on Orwell's experience of theBBC. During the Second World War, his work was less influenced by Auden and he was developing a more traditional style oflyricism. Some critics believe that he reached his full stature as a poet inWord Over All (1943), when he finally distanced himself from Auden.[12] After the war, he joined the publisher Chatto & Windus as a director and senior editor.
In 1946, Day-Lewis was a lecturer atCambridge University, publishing his lectures inThe Poetic Image (1947). Day-Lewis became aCommander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the1950 Birthday Honours.[13] He later taught poetry atOxford, where he wasProfessor of Poetry from 1951 to 1956.[7] During 1962–1963, he was the Norton Professor atHarvard University. Day-Lewis was appointed Poet Laureate in 1968, in succession toJohn Masefield.[14] His appointment came after appointments secretary John Hewitt consulted withDame Helen Gardner, theMerton Professor of English at theUniversity of Oxford (who stated that Day-Lewis "produced run of the mill poetry but nothing particularly outstanding") and Geoffrey Handley-Taylor, chair of thePoetry Society (who stated that Day-Lewis was "a good administrative poet" and "a safe bet").[15]
Day-Lewis was chairman of theArts Council Literature Panel, vice-president of theRoyal Society of Literature, an Honorary Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters, a Member of the Irish Academy of Letters and aProfessor of Rhetoric atGresham College, London.
Cecil Day-Lewis died frompancreatic cancer on 22 May 1972, aged 68, atLemmons, the Hertfordshire home ofKingsley Amis andElizabeth Jane Howard, where he and his family were staying. As a great admirer ofThomas Hardy, he arranged to be buried near the author's grave at St Michael's Church inStinsford,Dorset.[7]
Day-Lewis was the father of four children.[16] His first two children, with Constance Mary King, were Sean Day-Lewis (3 August 1931–9 June 2022), a TV critic and writer, and Nicholas Day-Lewis, who became an engineer. His children with Balcon wereTamasin Day-Lewis, a television chef and food critic, andDaniel Day-Lewis, who became an award-winning actor.[17] Sean Day-Lewis wrote a biography of his father,C. Day-Lewis: An English Literary Life (1980).[18]
Daniel Day-Lewis donated his father's archive of poetry to theBodleian Library.[19][20]
In 1935, Day-Lewis decided to increase his income from poetry by writing a detective novel,A Question of Proof, under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake. He createdNigel Strangeways, an amateur investigator andgentleman detective who, as the nephew of an Assistant Commissioner atScotland Yard, has access to official crime investigations.[21] He published nineteen further crime novels. (In the first Nigel Strangeways novel, the detective is modelled onW. H. Auden, but Day-Lewis developed the character as a far less extravagant and more serious figure in later novels.)[7] From the mid-1930s, Day-Lewis was able to earn his living by writing.[7] Four of the Blake novels –A Tangled Web,A Penknife in My Heart,The Deadly Joker,The Private Wound – do not feature Strangeways.
Minute for Murder is set against the background of Day-Lewis's Second World War experiences in the Ministry of Information.Head of a Traveller features as a principal character a well-known poet, frustrated and suffering writer's block, whose best poetic days are long behind him. Readers and critics have speculated whether the author is describing himself or one of his colleagues or has entirely invented the character.[citation needed]
In his youth and during the disruption and suffering of theGreat Depression, Day-Lewis adopted communist views, becoming a member of theCommunist Party of Great Britain from 1935 to 1938. His early poetry was marked by didacticism and a preoccupation with social themes.[22] In 1937, he editedThe Mind in Chains: Socialism and the Cultural Revolution. In the introduction, he supported a popular front against a "Capitalism that has no further use for culture". He explains that the title refers toPrometheus bound by his chains, quotesShelley's preface toPrometheus Unbound and says the contributors believe that "the Promethean fire of enlightenment, which should be given for the benefit of mankind at large, is being used at present to stoke up the furnaces of private profit". The contributors were:Rex Warner,Edward Upward,Arthur Calder-Marshall, Barbara Nixon,Anthony Blunt,Alan Bush,Charles Madge, Alistair Brown,J.D. Bernal,T.A. Jackson andEdgell Rickword.
After the late 1930s, which were marked by the widespread purges, repression, and executions underJoseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, Day-Lewis gradually became disillusioned with communism.[7] In his autobiography,The Buried Day (1960), he renounces former communist views.[23] His detective novel,The Sad Variety (1964), contains a scathing portrayal of doctrinaire communists, the Soviet Union's repression of the1956 Hungarian uprising, and the ruthless tactics of Soviet intelligence agents.[citation needed]
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