Frederic Moorman came of a stock which, on both sides, had struck deep
roots in the soil of Devon. His father's family, which is believed to
have sprung ultimately from "either Cornwall or Scotland"--a
sufficiently wide choice, it may be thought--had for many generations
been settled in the county.(1) His mother's--her maiden name was Mary
Honywill--had for centuries held land at Widdicombe and the
neighbourhood, in the heart of Dartmoor. He was born on 8th September
1872, at Ashburton, where his father, the Rev. A. C. Moorman, was
Congregational minister; and for the first ten years of his life he was
brought up on the skirts of the moor to which his mother's family
belonged: drinking in from the very first that love of country sights
and sounds which clove to him through life, and laying the foundation of
that close knowledge of birds and flowers which was an endless source of
delight to him in after years, and which made him so welcome a companion
in a country walk with any friend who shared his love of such things but
who, ten to one, could make no pretence whatever to his knowledge.
In 1882, his father was appointed to the ministry of the Congregational
Church at Stonehouse, in Gloucestershire; and Frederic began his formal
schooling at the Wyclif Preparatory School in that place. The country
round Stonehouse--a country of barish slopes and richly wooded
valleys--is perhaps hardly so beautiful as that which he had left and
whose memory he never ceased to cherish. But it has a charm all its own,
and the child of Dartmoor had no great reason to lament his removal to
the grey uplands and "golden valleys" of the Cotswolds.
His next change must have seemed one greatly for the worse. In 1884 he
was sent to the school for the sons of Congregational ministers at
Caterham; and the Cotswolds, with their wide outlook over the Severn
estuary to May Hill and the wooded heights beyond, were exchanged for
the bald sweep and the white chalk-pits of the North Downs. These too
have their unique beauty; but I never remember to have heard Moorman say
anything which showed that he felt it as those who have known such
scenery from boyhood might have expected him to do.
After some five years at Caterham, he began his academical studies at
University College, London; but, on the strength of a scholarship, soon
removed to University College, Aberystwyth (1890), where the
scenery--sea, heron-haunted estuaries, wooded down to the very shore,
and hills here and there rising almost into mountains--offered
surroundings far more congenial to him than the streets and squares of
Bloomsbury.
In these new surroundings, he seems to have been exceptionally happy,
throwing himself into all the interests of the place, athletic as well
as intellectual, and endearing himself both to his teachers and his
fellow-students. His friendship with Professor Herford, then Professor
of English at Aberystwyth, was one of the chief pleasures of his student
days as well as of his after life. Following his natural bent, he
decided to study for Honours in English Language and Literature, and at
the end of his course (1893) was placed in the Second Class by the
examiners for the University of London, to which the Aberystwyth College
was at that time affiliated. Those who believe in the virtue of infant
prodigies--and, in the country which invented Triposes and Class Lists,
it is hard to fix any limit to their number--will be distressed to learn
that, in the opinion of those best qualified to judge of such matters,
he was not at that time reckoned to be of "exceptionally scholarly
calibre." Perhaps this was an omen all the better for his future
prospects as a scholar.
It is a wholesome practice that, when the cares of examinations are once
safely behind him, a student should widen his experience by a taste of
foreign travel. Accordingly, in September, 1893, Moorman betook himself
to Strasbourg, primarily for the sake of continuing his studies under
the skilful guidance of Ten Brinck. The latter, however, was almost at
once called to Berlin and succeeded by Brandl, now himself of the
University of Berlin, who actually presided over Moorman's studies for
the next two years, and who thought, and never ceased to think, very
highly both of his abilities and his acquirements. It was only natural
that Moorman should make a pretty complete surrender to German ideals
and German methods of study. It was equally natural that, in the light
of subsequent experience, his enthusiasms in that line should suffer a
considerable diminution. He was not of the stuff to accept for ever the
somewhat bloodless and barren spirit which has commonly dominated the
pursuit of literature in German universities.
Into the social life of his new surroundings he threw himself with all
the zest that might have been expected from his essentially sociable
nature: making many friendships--that of Brandl was the one he most
valued--and joining--in some respects, leading--his fellow-students in
their sports and other amusements. His first published work, in fact,
was a translation of the Rules of Association Football into German; and
he may fairly be regarded as the godfather of that game on German soil.
Nor was this the end of his activities. During the two years he spent at
Strasbourg he acted as Lektor in English to the University, so
gaining--and gaining, it is said, with much success--his first
experience in what was to be his life's work as a teacher.
On the completion of his course at Strasbourg, where he obtained the
degree of Ph.D. in June 1895,(2) he returned to Aberystwyth, now no
longer as student but as Lecturer in the English Language and Literature
under his friend and former teacher, Professor Herford. There he
remained for a little over two years (September, 1895, to January,
1898), gradually increasing his stores of knowledge and strengthening
the foundations of the skill which was afterwards to serve him in good
stead as a teacher. During that time he also became engaged to the
sister of one of his colleagues, Miss Frances Humpidge, whom he had
known for some years and whose love was to be the chief joy and support
of his after life.
As a matter of prudence, the marriage was postponed until his prospects
should be better assured. The opportunity came sooner than could have
been expected. In January, 1898, he was appointed to the lectureship in
his subject--a subject, such is our respect for literature, then first
handed over to an independent department--in the Yorkshire College at
Leeds; and in August of the same year he was married. Four children,
three of whom survived and the youngest of whom was twelve at the time
of his death, were born during the earlier years of the marriage.
The life of a teacher offers little excitement to the onlooker; and all
that can be done here is to give a slight sketch of the various
directions in which Moorman's energies went out. The first task that lay
before him was to organise the new department which had been put into
his hands, to make English studies a reality in the college to which he
had been called, to give them the place which they deserve to hold in
the life of any institution devoted to higher education. Into this task
he threw himself with a zeal which can seldom, if ever, have been
surpassed. Within six years he had not only put the teaching of his
subject to Pass Students upon a satisfactory basis; he had also laid the
foundations of an Honours School able to compete on equal terms with
those of the other colleges which were federated in the then Victoria
University of the north. It was a really surprising feat for so young a
man--he was little over twenty-five when appointed--to have accomplished
in so short a time; the more so as he was working single-handed: in
other words, was doing unaided the work, both literary and linguistic,
which in other colleges was commonly distributed between two or three.
And I speak with intimate knowledge when I say that the Leeds students
who presented themselves for their Honours Degree at the end of that
time bore every mark of having been most thoroughly and efficiently
prepared.
In 1904, six years after Moorman's appointment to the lectureship, the
Yorkshire College was reconstituted as a separate and independent
university, the University of Leeds; and in the rearrangement which
followed, an older man was invited to come in as official chief of the
department for which Moorman had hitherto been solely responsible. This
invitation was not accepted until Moorman had generously made it clear
that the proposed appointment would not be personally unwelcome to him.
Nevertheless, it was clearly an invidious position for the new-comer:
and a position which, but for the exceptional generosity and loyalty of
the former chief of the department, would manifestly have been
untenable. In fact, no proof of Moorman's unselfishness could be more
conclusive than that, for the nine years during which the two men worked
together, the harmony between them remained unbroken, untroubled by even
the most passing cloud. Near the close of this time, in recognition of
his distinction as a scholar and of his great services to the
University, a separate post, as Professor of the English Language, was
created for him.
During the whole of his time at Leeds, his knowledge of his subject,
both on its literary and linguistic side, was constantly deepening and
his efficiency, as teacher of it, constantly increasing. With so keen a
mind as his, this was only to be expected. It was equally natural that,
as his knowledge expanded and his advice came to be more and more sought
by those engaged in the study of such matters, he should make the
results of his researches known to a wider public. After several smaller
enterprises of this kind,(3) he broke entirely fresh ground with two
books, which at once established his right to be heard in both the
fields for which he was professionally responsible: _Yorkshire Place
Names_, published for and by the Thoresby Society in 1911; and a study
of the life and poetry of Robert Herrick, two years later. The former,
if here and there perhaps not quite rigorous enough in the tests applied
to the slippery evidence available, is in all essentials a most solid
piece of work: based on a wide and sound knowledge of the linguistic
principles which, though often grossly neglected, form the corner-stone,
and something more, of all such inquiries; and lit up with a keen eye
for the historical issues--issues reaching far back into national
origins which, often in the most unexpected places, they may be made to
open out. The latter, to which he turned with the more zest because it
led him back to the familiar setting of his native county--to its moors
and rills and flowers, and the fairy figures that haunted them--is a
delightful study of one of the most unique of English poets(4); a study,
however, which could only have been written by one who, among many other
things, was a thorough-paced scholar. Many qualities--knowledge,
scholarship, love of nature, a discerning eye for poetic beauty--go to
the making of such a book. Their union in this _Study_ serves to show
that, great as was Moorman's authority in the field of language, it was
always to literature, above all to poetry, that his heart went naturally
out. The closing years of his life were to set this beyond doubt.
It would be absurd to close this sketch of Moorman's professional
activities without a reference, however slight, to what was, after all,
one of the most significant things about them. No man can, in the full
sense, be a teacher unless, in some way or other, he throws himself into
the life and interests of his students. And it was among the
secrets--perhaps the chief secret--of Moorman's influence as a teacher
that, so far from being mere names in a register, his students were to
him always young people of flesh and blood, in whose interests he could
share, whose companion he delighted to be, and who felt that they could
turn to him for advice and sympathy as often as they were in need. No
doubt his own youthfulness of temper, the almost boyish spirits which
seldom or never flagged in him, helped greatly to this result; but the
true fountain of it all lay in his ingrained unselfishness. The same
power was to make itself felt among the classes for older students which
he held in the last years of his life.
To fulfil all these academical duties in the liberal spirit, which was
the only spirit possible to Moorman, might well have been expected to
exhaust the energies of any man. Yet, amidst them all, he found time to
take part, both as lecturer and as trusted adviser, in the activities of
the Workers' Educational Association, attending summer meetings and,
during the last five or six winters of his life, delivering weekly
lectures and taking part in the ensuing discussions, at Crossgates, one
of the outlying suburbs of Leeds. To the students who there, year by
year, gathered round him he greatly endeared himself by his power of
understanding their difficulties and of presenting great poetry in a way
that came home to their experience and imagination. His growing sympathy
with the life of homestead and cottage made this a work increasingly
congenial to him; and, as a lecturer, he was perhaps never so happy, in
all senses of the word, as when, released from the "idols of the
lecture-room," he was seeking to awake, or keep alive, in others that
love of imaginative beauty which counted for so much in his own life and
in his discharge of the daily tasks that fell upon him: speaking freely
and from his heart to men and women more or less of his own age and his
own aspirations; "mingling leadership and _camaraderie_ in the happy
union so characteristic of him," and "drawing out the best endeavours of
his pupils by his modest, quietly effective methods of teaching and,
above all, by his great, quiet, human love for each and all."(5)
It is clear that such work, however delightful to him, meant a
considerable call upon his time and strength: the more so as it went
hand in hand with constant labours on behalf of the Yorkshire Dialect
Society, for which he was the most indefatigable of travellers--cycling
his way into dale after dale in search of "records"--and of which, on
the death of his friend, Mr Philip Unwin, he eventually became
president. Nor was this all. During the last seven years or so of his
life the creative impulse, the need of embodying his own life and the
lives of those around him in imaginative form was constantly growing
upon him, and a wholly new horizon was opening before him.
At first he may have thought of nothing more than to produce plays
suitable for performance either by the students of the University or by
young people in those Yorkshire dales with which his affections were
becoming year by year increasingly bound up. But, whatever the occasion,
it soon proved to be no more than an occasion. He swiftly found that
imaginative expression not only came naturally to him, but was a deep
necessity of his nature; that it gave a needed outlet to powers and
promptings which had hitherto lain dormant and whose very existence was
unsuspected by his friends, perhaps even by himself. _The May King_,
_Potter Thompson_, the adaptation of the _Second Shepherds' Play_ from
the fifteenth-century _Towneley Mysteries_ followed each other in swift
succession; and the two first have, or will shortly have, been performed
either by University students or by school children of "the Ridings."(6)
This is not the place to attempt any critical account of them. But there
are few readers who will not have been struck by the simplicity with
which the themes--now pathetic, now humorous, now romantic--are handled,
and by the easy unconsciousness with which the Professor wears his
"singing robes."
The same qualities, perhaps in a yet higher degree, appear in the
dialect poems, written during the last three years of his life: _Songs
of the Ridings_. The inspiration of these was less literary; they sprang
straight from the soil and from his own heart. It was, no doubt, a
scholarly instinct which first turned his mind in this direction: the
desire of one who had studied the principles of the language and knew
every winding of its historical origins to trace their working in the
daily speech of the present. He has told us so himself, and we may
readily believe it. But, if he first came to the dales as learner and
scholar, he soon found his way back as welcome visitor and friend. The
more he saw of the dalesmen, the more his heart went out to them: the
more readily, as if by an inborn instinct, did he enter into their
manner of life, their mood and temper, their way of meeting the joys and
sorrows brought by each day as it passed. And so it was that the
scholar's curiosity, which had first carried him thither, rapidly gave
way to a feeling far deeper and more human. His interest in forms of
speech and fine shades of vowelling fell into the background; a simple
craving for friendly intercourse, inspired by a deep sense of human
brotherhood, took its place. And _Songs of the Ridings_(7) is the
spontaneous outgrowth of the fresh experience and the ever-widening
sympathies which had come to him as a man. The same is true of _Tales of
the Ridings_, published for the first time in the following pages.
The last five years of his life (1914-1919) had, to him as to others,
been years of unusual stress. Disqualified for active service, he had
readily undertaken the extra work entailed by the departure of his
younger colleagues for the war. He had also discharged the semi-military
duties, such as acting on guard against enemy aircraft, which fell
within his powers; and, both on the outskirts of Leeds and round his
Lytton Dale cottage, he had devoted all the time he could spare to
allotment work, so as to take his share--it was, in truth, much more
than his share--in increasing the yield of the soil. All this, with a
host of miscellaneous duties which he voluntarily shouldered, had put an
undue strain upon his strength. Yet, with his usual buoyancy, he had
seemed to stand it all without flagging; and even when warned by the
army medical authorities that his heart showed some weakness, he had
paid little heed to the warning, had certainly in no way allowed it
either to interfere with his various undertakings or to prey upon his
spirits.
The Armistice naturally brought some relief. Among other things, it
opened the prospect of the return of his colleagues and a considerable
lightening both of his professional and of his manifold civic duties. He
was, moreover, much encouraged--as a man of his modest, almost
diffident, nature was bound to be--by the recognition which _Songs of
the Ridings_ had brought from every side: not least from the dalesmen,
for whom and under whose inspiration they were written. And all his
friends rejoiced to think that a new and brighter horizon seemed opening
before him. Those who saw him during these last months thought that he
had never been so buoyant. They felt that a new hope and a new
confidence had entered into his life.
These hopes were suddenly cut off. He had passed most of August and the
first week of September (1919) at his cottage in Lytton Dale, keeping
the morning of his birthday (8th September), as he always delighted to
do, with his wife and children. In the afternoon he went down to bathe
in the river, being himself an excellent swimmer, and wishing to teach
his two younger children an art in which he had always found health and
keen enjoyment. He swam across the pool and called on his daughter to
follow him. Noticing that she was in some difficulty, he jumped in again
to help her, but suddenly sank to the bottom, and was never seen alive
again. An angler ran up to help from a lower reach of the stream, and
brought the girl safely to land. Then, for the first time learning that
her father had sunk, he dived and dived again in the hope of finding him
before it was too late. But the intense cold of the water baffled all
his efforts, and the body was not recovered until some hours later. It
is probable that the chill of the pool had caused a sudden failure of
Moorman's heart--a heart already weakened by the excessive strain of the
last few years--and it is little likely that, after he had once sunk, he
could ever have been saved.
The death of Moorman called forth expressions of grief and of grateful
affection, so strong and so manifestly sincere as to bring something of
surprise even to his closest friends. Much more surprising would they
have been to himself. They came from every side, from lettered and
unlettered, from loom and dale, from school and university. Nothing
could prove more clearly how strong was the hold he had won upon all who
knew him, how large the place he filled in the heart of his colleagues
and the county of his adoption. It was a fitting tribute to a literary
achievement of very distinctive originality. It was also, and above all,
a tribute, heartfelt and irrepressible, to the charm of a singularly
bright and winning spirit: to a life which had spent itself, without
stint and without one thought of self, in the service of others.
Endnotes (were footnotes):
(1) To this family is believed to have belonged John Moreman, Canon and
eventually Dean of Exeter (though he died, October, 1554, "before he was
presented to the Deanery"), of whom an account will be found in Prince's
_Worthies of Devon_ (ed. 1701, pp. 452-453), as well as in Wood's
_Athenoe_ and _Fasti Oxonienses_ and Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_. He was
"the first in those days to teach his parishioners to say the Lord's
Prayer, the Belief and the Commandments in the English tongue" (whether
the contrast is with Latin or Cornish, for he was then Vicar of
Menynhed, in East Cornwall, does not appear). He was imprisoned, as a
determined Catholic, in Edward VI.'s reign, but "enlarged under Queen
Mary, with whom he grew into very great favour," and was chosen to
defend the doctrine of Transubstantiation before the Convocation of
1553.
(2) His thesis for this degree, on _The Interpretation of Nature in
English Poetry from Beowulf to Shakespeare_, was published in 1905.
(3) He published editions of _The Faithful Shepherdess_, _The Knight of
the Burning Pestle_ and _The Two Noble Kinsmen_ in 1897, and an
elaborately critical edition of Herrick's _Poems_, in completion of his
_Study_, in 1915. He also contributed the chapter on "Shakespeare's
Apocrypha" to the _Cambridge History of English Literature_; and for
many years acted as English editor of the _Shakespeare Jahrbuch_.
(4) Dean Bourne, the parish to which Herrick was not very willingly
wedded, is within five miles of Ashburton, Moorman's birthplace.
(5) The words in inverted commas are quoted from the records of the
Class, kindly communicated by the secretary, Mr Hind. It is difficult to
imagine anything stronger than the expressions of affectionate respect
which recur again and again in them. I add one more, from the pen which
wrote the second quotation: "So quiet, yet so pervading, was his love
that each felt the individual tie; and our class, so diverse in spirit,
thought and training, has never heard or uttered an angry word. We felt
it would be acting disloyally to hurt anyone whom he loved."
(6) _The May King_, written in 1913, has been twice acted by school
children, once in the open air, once in the large hall of the
University. _Potter Thompson_, written in 1911-1912, was acted by
students of the University in 1913 and is at present in rehearsal for
acting by pupils of the Secondary School of Halifax. The Towneley
_Shepherds' Play_ was acted with slight modifications by University
students, under Moorman's guidance, in 1907. His adaptation of it,
written in 1919, has not yet been acted, but was written in the hope
that some day it might be. It may be added that he was largely
responsible for a very successful performance of Fletcher's _Elder
Brother_ by the University students in 1908.
(7) First published serially in _The Yorkshire Weekly Post_ of
1917-1918.