Misleading Accounts of Aldington and H.D.

48 MISLEADING ACCOUNTS OF ALDINGTON AND H.D. By Fred D. Crawford University of Oregon Separating fact from fabrication in the relationship of Richard Aldington (1892-1962) and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) is a biographer's nightmare. Instead of reliable information, we have wildly divergent accounts of the Aldington/ H.D. relationship. These appear in letters, memoirs, novels, short stories, and interviews by the people directly involved in the events that destroyed Aldington and H.D.'s marriage. D. H. Lawrence, Brigit Patmore, Robert McAlmon, Louis Wilkinson, Bryher (Winifred EUerman), John Coumos, and several others, including Aldington and H.D. themselves, did not hesitate to exploit the bizarre circumstances of the Aldingtons' marriage and separation in their work. It is not surprising that writers of fiction would incorporate aspects of the Aldingtons' admittedly byzantine affairs in their novels and short stories. However, these writers, for self-serving ends, did so with almost cavalier disregard for the truth. As a result, instead of fictional treatments which add to an understanding of the general truth, we have a confusing welter of contradictory accounts replete with unmitigated lies. In the case of Aldington and H.D., self-serving fictional treatments have misled biographers. Some matters of fact remain clear. We know that Aldington and H.D. met in London in 1912, married in 1913, separated in 1919, and went their different ways, rarely meeting after their separation but communicating regularly by letter until H.D.'s death in 1961. At this point, reliable fictional portraits of Aldington and H.D. and plausible reconstructions of important events by the writers involved would complement what we know. However, instead of focusing on the truth or leaving matters obscured by a reticence of decency, various fictional works actually distort the Aldingtons' personalities and their actions, offering ostensible evidence for virtually any interpretation, as one can find in the insupportable conclusions drawn by Janice S. Robinson. The extent to which various novels about the Aldingtons prevaricate becomes clear when one compares what seems to be the truth with the contradictory fictional renditions of the Aldingtons' relationship.1 After H.D. dropped out of Bryn Mawr in 1906, Ezra Pound became a frequent visitor to the Doolittle home. In 1907, however, Pound was dismissed from his instructorship at Wabash College after the administration found his explanation for keeping a woman in his room overnight singularly unconvincing. H.D.'s father, noted astronomer Charles Doolittle, also took a skeptical view of Pound's explanation and forbade H.D. from seeing Pound. No doubt inspired by this interdiction, H.D. and Pound became unofficially engaged and met secretly. There is some uncertainty about how many times the two became engaged, who 49 Crawford: Aldington and H.D. broke the engagement(s), or whether Pound was simultaneously involved with other women. However, by the time Pound left for his first trip to Europe, H.D. was considerably influenced by him. By the time Pound returned from Europe, H.D. had developed a strong friendship with a young woman named Frances Gregg and found herself torn between her feelings for Frances and those for Pound. Apparently H.D.'s mother was sufficiently dismayed to ally herself with Pound against the "unwholesome" influence of Frances. Pound returned to Europe, however, and in 1911 H.D. followed in the company of Frances and Mrs. Gregg, first to Paris and then to London. In London Pound introduced H.D. to Brigit Patmore. She in tum introduced H.D. and Pound to Aldington. H.D. was twenty-six, and Aldington was twenty. As H.D.'s biographer Barbara Guest reports, She showed him her poetry; he formed an opinion, which was to remain with him, of this early, very early work that she was one of the finest poets of their era. He acknowledged her superiority over the other Imagists, and mostly over himself. Further, he was entirely sympathetic with the relationship she had had with Frances.2 Aldington and H.D. soon took separate rooms at 6 Church WaUc, with Pound living across from them, and the three engaged in discussions which resulted in the Imagist movement. Both Aldington and H.D., however...