Edward Harry William Meyerstein (11 August 1889 – 12 September 1952) was an English writer and scholar. He wrote poetry and short stories, and a ''Life of Thomas Chatterton''.

Early life and education

Meyerstein was born in Hampstead, London, the only son of Edward William Meyerstein and his wife Jessy Louise Solomon.''Meyerstein, Sir Edward William'', Who Was Who, A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc, 1920–2008; online edn, Oxford University Press, Dec 2012; online edn, Oct 2012, accessed 18 April 2013
/ref> His father was a merchant and stockbroker who was generous benefactor to the Royal Free Hospital became

High Sheriff of Kent The high sheriff is the oldest secular office under the Crown (prior to 1974 the office previously known as sheriff)."Sheriffs appointed for a county or Greater London shall be known as high sheriffs, and any reference in any enactment or instrum ...

and was knighted in 1938. Meyerstein was educated at Holly Hill Hampstead, and then went to board at St Cyprian's School,

Eastbourne Eastbourne () is a town and seaside resort in East Sussex, on the south coast of England, east of Brighton and south of London. Eastbourne is immediately east of Beachy Head, the highest chalk sea cliff in Great Britain and part of the la ...

. At St Cyprian's, he met the future painter

Cedric Morris Sir Cedric Lockwood Morris, 9th Baronet (11 December 1889 – 8 February 1982) was a British artist, art teacher and plantsman. He was born in Swansea in South Wales, but worked mainly in East Anglia. As an artist he is best known for his portra ...

, started collecting manuscripts from local bookshops and won the Harrow History Prize. With this under his belt, his mother then sent him to Harrow. Brought up as a

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

, he was baptised before going to Harrow, with George Adolphus Storey the painter as his godfather. After Harrow, he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he had many friends including Wilfred Rowland Childe and

John Wain John Barrington Wain CBE (14 March 1925 – 24 May 1994) was an English poet, novelist, and critic, associated with the literary group known as " The Movement". He worked for most of his life as a freelance journalist and author, writing and re ...

. His verse was published in ''Oxford Poetry 1910–13'' and later volumes.

Career

After Oxford, Meyerstein spent some time in Germany before starting work in the manuscript room of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

. In the autumn of 1914 he enlisted in the

Royal Dublin Fusiliers The Royal Dublin Fusiliers was an Irish infantry Regiment of the British Army created in 1881, one of eight Irish regiments raised and garrisoned in Ireland, with its home depot in Naas. The Regiment was created by the amalgamation of two Brit ...

, but was discharged as "not likely to become an efficient soldier". He returned to the British Museum where he stayed until Armistice Day 1918. He was becoming increasingly discontented with regular work, but a visit from his mother became the final straw and he resigned. Here he based his short novel ''"Bollond"'', which although written in 1920 remained unpublished until 1958, after his death. It is the story of a young man's misadventures adrift in the West End of London in the last months of the War. Reginald Bollond, the central character, unwittingly attracts the attention of a series of homosexuals, including a cocaine dealer who wants to set him up as a rent boy. Meyerstein decided to develop his writing and his collections and his interests in the arts. He became a Fellow of Magdalen College and considered himself a man of letters thereafter. Apart from occasional holidays in the English countryside and in Europe, he spent most of his life in his rooms at Greys Inn Place. He wrote ''" A Life of Thomas Chatterton"'' – the promising poet who committed suicide at an early age – in 1930 and produced various works of poetry which were published in collections. Occasional music criticism also appeared under his name in the journal ''

Music Survey ''Music Survey'' was a short-lived academic journal covering classical and contemporary music, which flourished in the United Kingdom for a brief period after World War II. Though it was published for only five years and in that time had only a ...

''.

Legacies

He made important bequests to his college and the British Library (including part of a Mozart manuscript). He also made significant bequests to the English Language and Literature Faculty and the Life and Environmental Sciences Faculty at Oxford University. These bequests provide funds to this day. His will also established the ''Chatterton Lectures on Poetry'': an annual lecture to be given by a lecturer, under the age of 40, on the life and works of a deceased English poet (interpreted as 'a deceased poet who wrote in the English language'). An inaugural lecture on Meyerstein himself was delivered in 1955 by the historian

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, husband of

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.Chatterton Lectures published in the Proceedings of the British Academy
He is buried at

St John-at-Hampstead St John-at-Hampstead is a Church of England parish church dedicated to St John the Evangelist (though the original dedication was only refined from St John to this in 1917 by the Bishop of London) in Church Row, Hampstead, London. History H ...

in the churchyard.

Inner life

:''"I suspect – but you mustn't tell anybody – that I was born out of

Jane Austen Jane Austen (; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots of ...

Apuleius Apuleius (; also called Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis; c. 124 – after 170) was a Numidian Latin-language prose writer, Platonist philosopher and rhetorician. He lived in the Roman province of Numidia, in the Berber city of Madauros, modern-day ...

."'' E. H. W. M. The Daily Telegraph commenting on Meyerstein's autobiography ''"Of My Early Life"'' noted ''"Out of this strange obsessed life came strange obsessed novels and poems which could have been written by nobody else"''.

in his own autobiography ''"Sprightly Running"'', recalled of the neurotic poet that he emerged from Oxford with a backward looking, almost Johnsonian determination to dig in and cherish the old values while the tide of modernism swept over him. He described him as a disconcerting friend, with a taste for rather cruel or sinister jokes and recorded some strange miserly habits such as reusing old Christmas cards. Meyerstein himself in his autobiography makes no secret of his taste for

flagellation Flagellation (Latin , 'whip'), flogging or whipping is the act of beating the human body with special implements such as whips, rods, switches, the cat o' nine tails, the sjambok, the knout, etc. Typically, flogging has been imposed on ...

. His editor Rowland Watson quotes a letter recording a beating by an assistant master at his Prep school (a good-looking Bristolian). While the master said his conceit must be whipped out of him, Meyerstein comments "Poor man – he was only whipping it in, had he but known". His passion for collecting extended to an extraordinary collection of whips from many countries, which were discovered under his bed after his death and burned.

Works

*''Symphonies'' (1915) poems *''Grobo'' (1925) *''The Pleasure Lover: Being some account of the early life and fortunes of Terence Duke'' (1925) *''A Life of Thomas Chatterton'' (1930) *''New Symphonies'' (1933) poems *''The Pageant and Other Stories'' (1934) *''Selected Poems'' (1935) * ''Séraphine'' (1936, Richards Press) novel *''A Boy of Clare'' (1937) poems *''Eclogues'' (1941, Richards Press) poems *''Adventures by Sea of Edward Coxere'' (1945) editor *''The Delphic Charioteer'' (1951) poems *''Tom Tallion'' (1952) novel *''Verse Letters to Five Friends'' (1954) *''Of My Early Life'' (1957) autobiography *''Bolland and Other Stories'' (1958) *''Some Poems'' (1960)

References

*''Some Letters of E. H. W. Meyerstein'' (1959) Rowland Leonard Watson *

, ''E. H. W. Meyerstein 1889–1952'' (Chatterton Lecture) *''Poems of Today'', third series (1938), p. xxviii.

External links

Edward Meyerstein portrait at the National Portrait Gallery
{{DEFAULTSORT:Meyerstein, E H W English biographers 1889 births 1952 deaths People educated at Harrow School People educated at St Cyprian's School Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford Fellows of Magdalen College, Oxford English male poets 20th-century English poets 20th-century English male writers English male non-fiction writers Male biographers