[Frederic Vanson, Essex poet, journalist and lecturer.] 19 letters (12 in autograph and 7 typed), to the playwright Christopher Fry, with draft introduction by Fry to a proposed poetry collection by Vanson, and typescript of three of Vanson's poems.

An interesting and sprightly correspondence, mainly concerned with the practicalities of the vocation of a minor provincial poet. See David Gaskin’s obituary of Vanson, Independent, 27 July 1993, and Fry’s entry in the Oxford DNB. A second slice of Vanson material from the Christopher Fry papers (the other collection is offered separately). The collection consists of twenty-one items: nineteen letters from Vanson to Fry, a one-page typescript of three of Vanson’s poems, and a draft of an introduction by Fry to a proposed collection of poems by Vanson. A few items have wear and creasing to edges, and one has a closed tear caused by clumsy cutting open of an envelope, but the overall condition is good. With the usual folds for postage. The nineteen letters total 30pp, and comprise twelve autograph letters, totalling 19pp (8pp in foolscap 8vo, 3pp in 4to, and 8pp in 12mo); and seven typed letters (two of them undated), totalling 11pp (5pp in 8vo and 6pp in 12mo). All are addressed to ‘Dear Christopher’ and thirteen are signed ‘Frederick’, three ‘Frederick Vanson’ and one ‘Frederick (Vanson)’; one is unsigned (annotated by Fry with Vanson’s name), and one appears (22 December 1983) to be lacking the final leaf, with signature. The first letter, typed and undated, but dated by Fry to 18 April 1971, is clearly written after a hiatus, and begins: ‘Dear Christopher, / I hear from Derek Stanford whom we visited recently at Seaford where he is now living that you are back in England and living in Chichester.’ He asks Fry to contribute to an ‘anthology of poetry of the second world war period’: ‘I do not, of course, mean “war” poetry in the George McBeth sense, but anything of the period which you would not mind reappearing.’ In discussing the early closure of Fry’s play ‘A Yard of Sun’, which he was not able to see, he writes: ‘Sometimes I feel we forties boys have lived too long (in a literary sense only of course). The present clime in poetry seems to me a rather strange and probably very ephemeral one.’ He turns to personal news, including the death, ‘after much distress’, of his first wife Winifred, the fact that his son ‘doesn’t appear to need me’, and his ‘quarrels with the teaching profession’. He introduces his second wife, Olive Bentley. He has ‘many projects in hand’: ‘In poetry I appear fairly often in The Tablet, but most of my work goes to the USA’. In the second letter, 8 May 1971, he discusses his move to Essex, after London ceased to be ‘tenable as a place to live’: ‘I can’t pretend any great enthusiasm for new towns as such but at least the air is unpolluted and the countryside is near. From our windows we look across the Stort valley into Hertfordshire.’ He praises Fry’s work: ‘There is a whole generation of people growing up, it seems to me, who need reminding that language can be a thing of beauty and that poetry is not necessarily concerned with coprophilia.’ Regarding the projected anthology he writes: ‘I really don’t see how one could justify a collection of Second World War poetry without something of yours in it.’ He ends with news of his other writing plans. An undated and ‘rather cheeky epistle’ fits in here, in which Vanson asks Fry to write an introduction to a poetry collection he is proposing to Oxford University Press, feeling ‘like a minor composer approaching Mozart for a few kind words’: ‘I had a near-success with them with an earlier collection. At that time they suggested that I came back in a year or two when my style had finally matured. In practice my style has become several styles but I certainly feel my work has more maturity.’ With the present collection he has ‘made the form subservient to what I want to say’. He gives further information on the proposed war anthology, before ending with news of his wife’s painting. A copy of Fry’s typed proposed introduction (1p, foolscap 8vo) is present, with his autograph annotation: ‘Of Frederic Vanson’. Containing quotations from two of Vanson’s poems (‘The Essential Problem’ and ‘The Stour below Flatford’), it begins: ‘So easily memories vanish, often even quite important ones, such as first meetings with friends. I have no recollection now of when Frederic’s path and mine first crossed, only that it was when we were both serving in the non-combatant section of the Pioneer Corps, and that he had a grave kindness, already promising to be the poet.’ He praises Vernon as ‘a questioner’, quotes from his ‘first letter’ of 1971, before referring to the ‘light which permeated so much of his poetry’. The fourth Vanson letter, and the last to be discussed here in detail, is dated to 20 July 1971. Vanson thanks Fry for his ‘kind observations on my poems’, and is enclosing copies ‘of the ones you specially liked and wanted to have by you’. He is ‘sometimes surprised [...] at the sheer quantity of verse I have produced in recent years.’ Fry’s comments have helped Vanson approach ‘true objectivity’ about his work, but he is annoyed at ‘the way in which so many young writers of dubious talent manage to get published by virtue of various gimmicks and fashionable attitudes. But then it has always been so. In general the state of English poetry seems to me to be a healthy one and we have certainly a number of really first class poets today.’ He himself does not ‘do so badly’ with editors: ‘At all events if the larger publishers will not play I could almost certainly persuade Howard Sergeant to bring out a selection in his Outposts pamphlet series.’ He is pleased that Fry liked his ‘Welsh sequence poems’: ‘The BBC talks man at Bangor liked them too and wanted to arrange a broadcast but he was overruled by the Welsh language fanatics in the end. What a silly business this is.’ Also present is a typescript (1p, 8vo) of three poems: ‘God shown forth’, ‘The sun indoors’ and ‘Wind in Snowdonia’. In the correspondence that follows: Vanson puts Fry’s name forward ‘as a referee in connection with a full-time lectureship I am after, at Ware College, Herts’ (‘Please omit any reference to my chequered career as a school teacher! / What I need, as a non-graduate, is to establish myself as a respectable intelligence!’, his ‘latest collection of poems’, ‘our Friends of Essex Poetry’ (‘which Olive runs with such devotion and drive’), the possibility that Fry ‘should at some time come to read in Harlow’, Fry’s ‘need of a sabbatical year’, Vanson having ‘nine poems accepted in nine months by COUNTRY LIFE’, his appearance on Radio London (‘fame at last!’), ‘further poetry being broadcast’ (‘At last a producer who likes my work!’), ‘women poets of importance’ (‘Ruth Pitter, Kathleen Raine, Elizabeth Jennings and Anna Adams. And our splendid Essex discovery Margaret Toms’), a radio lecture by Fry, and a pamphlet by him with ‘a most moving & perceptive essay’, the possibility that Fry might sponsor Vanson for a fellowship of the Royal Society of Literature, the success of Fry’s family memoir ‘You can find me’, poltergeist (‘In our flat we have a POLT which (who?) hides things with astonishing cunning - and puts them back as a rule. We christened him Fred Polt long since.’), Fry’s opinion of Vanson’s ‘Byron piece’ (‘people either love it or hate it on sight! I don’t take it too seriously but I enjoyed the romp’), his collection ‘Dementia of Days’ (‘There is of course a risk in using so fixed a form [as the sonnet] of allowing the form to override [...] It reads aloud far better than on the page’), his ‘longish free verse sequence HELIOS and my HIGH BEECH CANTOS (I. M. Alfred Tennyson)’, his lack of sympathy for modern poetry apart form ‘Larkin toddling down Cemetery Road, Hughes’ brilliant but repulsive Crow, some poems by Seamus Heaney and Thom Gunn’ (‘my favourite modern British poet remains Louis Macniece whom I constantly read though I admire Auden. O and George Barker sometimes. Perhaps it’s age creeping on? So much of the poetry sent to me for review or for radio is absolutely terrible!’), ‘the death of Mike Hewlett’s wife’, a ‘holiday break’ in Cornwall, his ‘series of nostalgic poems on steam railways’, Fry’s ‘radio choice’ (‘I hope I missed nothing important. A case of a person from Porlock I’m afraid. I thought it came over well.’). There are references to: Robin Gregory (‘a good, sound chap’), ‘Trevor Kneale who runs Rondo Publications’, the de Merc Chamber Choir (‘the best choir in Essex’), the composer Michael Frith (the second movement of whose ‘new Sinfonia’ is an arrangement of Vanson’s pome ‘An Architecture of Joy’), James Kirkup, Mike Gough, the poet Ondra Lysokorsky, Peter Hardiman Scott, ‘my friend John Graham (who runs John Graham Fine Arts here in Harlow)’, Robert Gittings. On 2 June 1984 he writes that he was ‘saddened by the death of Betjeman. Did you ever meet him? Over the years I had a desultory correspondence with him & he was kind & generous with me. Not a major poet of course but a very individual one & worthy of a place in the 2nd eleven. I read his verses often - a good test - though I read Macneice most of all & some have said it shows! Why has no one suggested Fry for Laureate I wonder? Or is verse drama not poetry ? ! !’