Hilary Spume FRSL: a biographical essay by Marjorie Daggers.

This article first appeared in the Winter 2002 edition of ‘Power Tree - a Radical Poetic Quarterly’, and is reproduced here by kind permission)

The Spume family have owned land in the area between Presteigne and Ludlow, on the borders of Herefordshire, Shropshire and Radnorshire, since at least 1526 when Toby Spume started farming at Phuckwhitt Manor, near Clun. He seems to have been useful to the Crown in some regard, as in 1539 he was made baronet. Over the centuries the family have acquired more and more acreage, and the fifteenth and current baronet, Sir Leslie Spume, is now the largest landowner in the area, and Phuckwhitt House a compact but fine gentleman’s residence, since its restructuring in the late 17th century.

The fourteenth baronet, Sir Bufton Spume, married late in life, after a youth and early middle age spent in somewhat rackety company. Sir Bufton had been close to The Prince of Wales in the period immediately after the first war, and the locals around Phuckwhitt whispered that he was spending too much time in Le Touquet. But to the surprise of all, in 1927, when he was forty six, he married Dorothea Chambers, the daughter of a local sheep dealer, who was then just 19. Sir Bufton Spume retreated to Phuckwhitt with his new wife to raise a family. Sir Bufton quickly devised his own method of childraising, to which his three sons were subject. Sir Leslie (b. 1929), Carol (b. 1931) and Hilary (b. 1933) were largely brought up outdoors. Sir Bufton believed that, as boys were essentially savages, their savagery should be given free rein. He also believed in boys growing up ‘close to the bones of England.’ The boys therefore lived in three bell tents in the woods around Phuckwhitt, largely foraging for themselves, until they were seven, when they were sent to progressive boarding schools. Leslie and Carol both attended Gordonstoun, while young Hilary attended Bedales. Unfortunately for the family, Sir Bufton was also an enthusiastic supporter of the British Union of Fascists, and he was detained for the duration of the Second World War. Hilary Spume did not see his father between the ages of six and twelve, and, when they were reunited, each took an instant dislike to the other. While Leslie was groomed to take over the Phuckwhitt estate, and Carol had begun his flirtation with Roman Catholicism, which was to lead to his ordination as priest, (he is currently Dean of Pancester Cathedral, where he has made it his business to acquaint himself with the affairs of young people, with whom he has always cultivated an intimate closeness), Hilary found it difficult to establish his identity.

He left school at sixteen, equipped for very little, and so his father helped him find work with the BBC. This necessitated a move to London, where he arrived in 1950, ostensibly to work as a production assistant on The Third Programme. His parents arranged a room with an old school friend of his Mothers, Bunty Haynes, who was now married to a dentist in Wimbledon.

London at that time was like Shangri-La to an impressionable youth, and Hilary quickly found his way to Soho, where he fell into the company of a new breed of poet. He met Dylan Thomas shortly before his death, and was approached by Auden and Spender. It was in The Coach and Horses pub where Spume felt most at home, listening to the merry literary gossip from the bibulous poetasters who congregated there. He cut a dashing figure, even at the start of his career, with his trademark pink shirts and loose ties. There is some evidence, mostly from his early poem ‘Bunty’s Room’, that he had formed his first amorous attachment with his landlady; certainly, he was not inexperienced in matters of love when he met Noreen Henderson in 1953 at ‘Daddios’, a jazz and poetry cafe in a bookshop basement on the Charing Cross Road. Spume was finishing his early collection ‘A Light Wind’ (1954), where the influence of Housman is perhaps a little too all-pervasive. The discovery of Daddios, and his meeting with Noreen, changed his poetic style forever.

Daddios at that time was run by the legendary Rob Nobbing, and was a stronghold of bongo playing goatee beard and sandal wearing beats. Noreen worked as a stripper at The Windmill, but she was a regular at Daddios where she performed exotic dances to the sound of a tape loop, bongos, and vers libre. After meeting her, and hearing Nobbing perform ‘SkreeeeeeeeW’ (1954), Hilary Spume abandoned lyric verse for the raw excitement of concrete poetry, and his next three collections ‘Splurge’ (1958) ‘Phtung’ (1963) and his masterpiece ‘Centre Point’ (1971) are all firmly rooted in the concrete tradition.

Spume and Noreen were married in 1957, the same year that Spume left the BBC to live off his wives immoral earnings, and their tempestuous relationship was legendary throughout Soho. Their two hour fist fight over lunch at The French House in 1964 is still remembered with great affection, as is the time that Noreen threw Hilary down the stairs at The Colony Club at the launch party for ‘Centre Point’, a fight that saw them both barred for a week. But theirs was, as well as a blood soaked gladiatorial contest, one of the great literary love affairs of the twentieth century. Their tiny flat in Berwick Street, although a cockpit for the worst kind of domestic horror, was also a warm and comfortable nest for the Spumes, and a refuge and asylum for their many friends from the pub. Phtung, the title poem of Spumes third collection is both an urgent celebration and a bloodstained map of their passionate relationship.

By the time of the critically acclaimed issue of ‘Centre Point’ the Spumes were living hand to mouth. Noreen, approaching forty, was in less demand as an exotic dancer, and Spume’s poetry brought in virtually nothing. But, in 1973, a stroke of good fortune came their way when Sir Bufton Spume died at the age of 92. Although his will went out of its way to ensure that Hilary received nothing, the new baronet, Sir Leslie, had always had both a soft spot for his errant younger brother and an intimate and loving relationship with Noreen. He saw to it that they could live in comfort, and he granted Hilary a monthly allowance. All seemed set fair for the Spume menage when, in 1974, during a first foreign holiday in Gozo, Noreen was killed in a bizarre water-skiing accident.

Spume’s grief knew no bounds, and he considered not going to the pub on his return to London, but felt that this would be disloyal to Noreen’s memory. He took his accustomed place at the bar, and announced that he was renouncing concrete poetry, as it smacked of bourgeois individualism. He had become a Marxist. He described his ideological position as  ‘a pinch of Stalin, a spoonful of Lenin, and a bushel of Mao.’ He was offered his old job at the BBC, but declined, as the money wasn’t right. His collection of Marxist poetry, ‘On The Opening of The Scunthorpe Power Station’ (1977) is still his best known and best loved work. The Morning Star said of the collection that it represented ‘a smack in the mouth for Trotskyite re-entrism.’ He was appointed poet-in-residence of The Coach and Horses in 1980, and FRSL in 1983.

Spume continued his work at the bar until 1996, when his brother Sir Leslie was left widowered, and asked that Hilary should return to Phuckwhitt to keep him company. Hilary was torn between career and family, but Sir Leslie threatened the cessation of Hilary’s allowance, and so Hilary Spume returned to the place of his birth, and the home of his forbears. Regulars at The Coach and Horses feared that Spume’s muse had finally abandoned him.

But in 2001 he re-emerged, and is to celebrate his seventieth birthday in 2003 with the release of a new collection, entitled ‘Mumbles.’ Several of the poems, such as ‘Small Blue Fish’ have already appeared in small press magazines, and show yet another side of Spume; Spume the nature poet, Spume the miniaturist, who, with a haikuesque flick of the wrist, captures sheep in mid gambol and probes them mercilessly. Spume’s nature is cruel, mechanical, but redeemed by hope.

We are pleased that over the next few months, Hilary Spume is allowing us to feature a few extracts from ‘On The Art of Writing’. Spume now spends much of his morning in the library at Phuckwhitt, working on what he sees as his valediction, before cycling into the village for a pick me up. ‘On The Art of Writing’ promises to do for criticism what ‘On The Opening Of The Scunthorpe Power Station’ did for the poetry of the extreme left in 1977. If it wasn’t for the fact that he has never been away, one might be tempted to say that Spume is back.