Flecker, Herman James Elroy

(1884-1915)

   Born at Lewisham, London, he was educated at Dean Close School, Cheltenham, where his father, the Rev. William Herman Flecker, D.D., was headmaster, then at Uppingham, Rutland. He studied classics at Trinity College, Oxford, and Oriental languages at Caius College, Cambridge. In 1910 he was appointed vice consul to Istanbul, where he contracted tuberculosis, thereafter spending much of his short life in and out of hospitals in England and Switzerland. He died in a sanatorium in Switzerland and was buried at Cheltenham. He claimed to be a disciple of the French Parnassian school-the desire to create something of beauty. Some of his publications: The Bridge of Fire, 1907. Thirty-six Poems, 1910. Forty-two Poems, 1911. The Golden Journey to Samarkand, 1913. The Old Ships, 1915. Collected Prose, 1920. Hassan, 1922 (a play). Don Juan, 1925 (a play). Some of his poems: "Ballad of the Londoner," "Gates of Damascus," "God Save the King" (see Carey, Henry), "Ode to the Glory of Greece," "Pavlova in London," "To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence," "The Welsh Sea."

   Sources: Dance in Poetry: An International Anthology of Poems on Dance. Alkis Raftis, ed. Princeton Book Company, 1991. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Home Book of Modern Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. Henry Holt, 1953. The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse. Philip Larkin, ed. Oxford University Press, 1973. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.