obscure poets: laurence hope

by Kristen McHenry

Welcome to Obscure Poets, a regular column in which I will discuss an obscure or lesser-known poet. I hope the series will bring well-deserved attention to some poets who may not be trendy or at the top of academic reading lists, but who nonetheless made substantial contributions to poetry.

This month’s obscure poet is Adela Florence Nicholson, aka Laurence Hope. She was born in Gloucester in 1865 but lived most of her writing life in India. After moving to Lahore at age 16 to join her father, an army colonel, she married Malcolm Nicholson, a commandant in the Bombay Army and an accomplished linguist, who was twice her age. The couple immersed themselves completely in Indian culture and customs and were considered eccentrics by their peers, although little is known about the details of their day-to-day lives.

Hope came from a writing family. Her sister, Annie, wrote romance novels under the pen name “Victoria Cross” and her father was co-editor of the Civil and Military Gazette. It’s unclear when Hope actually began writing, but she published her first book of poetry, Indian Love Lyrics, in 1901, claiming that the poems were translations from traditional Indian songs.

When it was discovered that the poems were actually original work, the ensuing scandal caused such a ruckus that W. Somerset Maugham wrote a popular short story loosely based on the fallout. If you read even a small sampling of Indian Love Lyrics, you will understand what all the fuss is about. It’s sexy stuff, even by today’s standards. Hope’s poetry is passionate, sensually charged and deceptively deep, dealing with themes of illicit sex, death, loss and spiritual transformation.

On the surface, her work is all about the lovely, the lyrical, the romantic and lovelorn. But there’s an edge — an intelligence and an intensity that sets it apart from the mere “pretty” and musical. Edward Marx, in An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers, describes her work best when he says:

Some of her lyrics … have an air of veiled autobiography or confession, while others may be read as oblique reflections on the position of women in the British Empire. In many poems, the exotic offers a site for an often-transgressive exploration of sexual themes: submission and domination, obsession, female desire, and violent sexuality.

Hardly the realm of a proper Edwardian-era poetess! I had never heard about Laurence Hope until I was introduced to her by a poet who thought I might take to writing lyric verse. He sent me Hope’s poem, “The Teak Forest,” and I was entranced by it. It’s an amazing lyric poem, with a surprisingly contemporary feel. Somehow, in spite of its fair share of verbal fluff and curlicues, it delves into the essence of a passionate love affair, expressing the voice of a speaker who has a strong appetite for sexual freedom and an endless capacity for passion. It’s a joyful, sad, purely romantic poem. The moment I read it, I was hooked on Hope’s verse. Just take a look at this passage:

And under your kisses I hardly knew
Whether I loved or hated you.

But your words were flame and your kisses fire,
And who shall resist a strong desire?
Not I, whose life is a broken boat
On a sea of passions, adrift, afloat.
And whether I came in love or hate,
That I came to you was written by Fate.

Did Hope actually carry out passionate love affairs with exotic men, or did she long to, while staying loyal her husband, whom she deeply loved? Was she speaking for someone else in her work? Or was she pouring her deepest passions into her words, unable to act on her impulses? Many of her poems describe love affairs with younger men, and many speak of grief and love lost.

But many also express a philosophical bent and are preoccupied with death, destruction and the loss inherent in women’s aging. Her poem “The Window Overlooking the Harbor” expresses a sort of existential ennui, questioning the wisdom of carrying on with the business of reproducing:

Even if seeking for ourselves, the Race
The only immortality we shall know, –
Even if from the flowers of our embrace
Some spark should kindle, or some fruit should grow

What were the use the gain, to us or it,
That we should cause another You or Me –
Another life, from our light passion lit,
To suffer like ourselves awhile and die.

What aim, what end indeed? Our being runs
In a closed circle. All we know or see
Tends to assure us that a thousand Suns
Teeming perchance with life, have ceased to be.

Her poem “Song of Jasoda,” another one of my favorites, details a sexual encounter that a much older widow has with a younger man on the eve before her suicide. It describes the pleasure she takes in possessing him physically, acting out her desires despite her lack of physical beauty and youth:

Ah, mine no more the glow of dawning beauty,
The fragrance and the dainty gloss of youth,
Worn by long years of solitude and duty,
I have no bloom to offer thee in truth.

Yet, since these eyes of mine have never wandered,
Still may they gleam with long forgotten light.
Since in no wanton way my youth was squandered,
Some sense of youth still clings to me to-night [...]

Thou art so pale, I hardly dare caress thee,
Too brown my fingers show against the white.
Ahi, the glory, that I should possess thee,
Ahi, the grief, but for a single night!

The poem goes on to describe the speaker taking poison and hoping her last memories as she fades into death will be of this final encounter with her young lover.

Many of Hope’s poems express this same sense of being completely immersed in the moment; in love and living only for what the immediate moment brings; as well as the connection between total surrender and death. Part of what I find so fascinating about Hope’s work is the interplay between delicacy and violence; the way that she uses traditional femininity (flowers, breathy declarations of adoration) subversively, to both disguise and magnify taboo themes.

Hope’s volumes Last Poems and The Complete India’s Love Lyrics were published posthumously, as Hope committed suicide by poison in October of 1904, only three years after her first book was published. She was distraught over the passing of her husband, who died during a surgery.

Unfortunately, despite Hope’s popularity during her time thanks to several of her poems being set to music by composer Amy Woodforde-Finden, she has fallen into obscurity. Her books are no longer in print, although some of her verse can be found online. I was very lucky to recently find a 1946 printing of her complete poems with color illustrations at a used bookstore.

If you happen to come across any books by Laurence Hope while haunting your favorite used bookstore, I’d recommend snapping them up — it could be one of your few chances to get your hands on this unique poet’s writing. Some of her work can also be found online here.

*from: Schlueter, Paul, and June Schlueter, eds. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. New York: Garland, 1999.

Kristen McHenry works on poetry by night and health outreach by day. She created and facilitates the Poet’s Cafe, a weekly poetry workshop for homeless teens. She shares poetry and her thoughts on writing at The Good Typist.