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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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RALPH HODGSON (1871 - 1962) Hodgson was born at 2 Garden Street, Darlington, the son of a coal merchant. He ran away from school, working in travelling fairs and later as a cartoonist in London in the 1890s. He drew for Funny Cuts produced in Fleet Street by the Dalziel Brothers (q.v.) and by 1893 was the lead cartoonist on Harmsworth's pioneering Evening News. Hodgson eventually turned to poetry, though he distrusted literary cliques and preferred the society of Fleet street colleagues and dog-breeders. Hodgson even judged bull terriers at Cruft's. He also spent many years in Japan as visiting lecturer in English. Hodgson was a friend of T.S. Eliot, but declined the offer to illustrate Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. He was inclined to be loquacious in company, and, when staying with Siegfried Sassoon at Heytesbury in Wiltshire in August 1938, he grated on his host. According to T.H. White (v. DAVID GARNETT), Sassoon said: 'Ralph is a darling, and I would do anything for him because of his poems, but... It would be a great blessing for me if you would take him off my hands just for this afternoon, as I don't want to talk any more.'Hodgson loved animals, especially birds, and the recurring theme of his poetry is man's abuse of nature. His work was published in Georgian Poetry and in three short collections, of which Poems (1917) made his name. A much-anthologised work is 'Time, You Old Gipsy Man', but Hodgson is best noted for his nature poems. These include 'The Bells of Heaven', 'Stupidity Street' and, perhaps most notably, 'To Deck a Woman'
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