57-524: The Mermaid Inn is a historical inn located in Rye, East Sussex. The Mermaid Inn may also refer to: The Mermaid Inn The Mermaid Inn is a Grade II* listed historical inn located on Mermaid Street in the ancient town of Rye, East Sussex , southeastern England. One of the best-known inns in southeast England, it was established in the 12th century and has a long, turbulent history. The current building dates from 1420 and has 16th-century additions in
114-525: A dormer above. This, and the east and west ranges, are 16th- and 18th-century. The tiled roof has one gable end. The chimney is made of Caen stone and embellished with decorations. The secret passages that existed in the inn have now been converted into fireplaces. The Giant's Fireplace Bar features an inglenook fireplace which is supported by a beam that traverses the room. Other low panelled rooms, contain large Tudor fireplaces and dog grates (a freestanding basket grate intended to hold wood for
171-556: A second lieutenant in the Royal Sussex Regiment . He finished the war as a signals officer and temporary captain, being demobilised in February 1919. He likely never fully recovered from the trauma of World War I , writing of his field experiences in the collections Images of War and Images of Desire (1919), which were suffused with a new melancholy. By the end of World War I, he was feeling disconsolate about his own talent as
228-407: A "jazz novel," was his semi-autobiographical response to the war. He started writing it almost immediately after the armistice was declared. The novel condemned Victorian materialism as a cause of the tragedy and waste of the war. Rejectionist, an "Expressionist scream", it was commended by Lawrence Durrell as "the best war novel of the epoch". It was developed mostly while Aldington was living on
285-579: A "particularly important" building of "more than special interest". As of February 2001, it was one of 75 Grade II* listed buildings, and 2,106 listed buildings of all grades, in Rother —the local government district in which Rye is located. The Mermaid Inn is presently owned by Judith Blincow and Robert Pinwill, who bought it in 1993. In late 1982, the exterior of the inn was used in the post Monty Python film Yellowbeard , alongside its neighboring church square and infamous cobbled Mermaid Street leading to
342-527: A Hollywood screenwriter. Aldington's excoriating biography of T. E. Lawrence caused a scandal on its publication in 1955. In the spirit of iconoclasm, he was the first to bring public notice to Lawrence's illegitimacy and asserted that he was a homosexual, a liar, a charlatan, an "impudent mythomaniac", a "self-important egotist", a poor writer and even a bad motorcyclist. The biography dramatically coloured popular opinion of Lawrence. Foreign and War Office files concerning Lawrence's career were released during
399-531: A literary journal, and wrote for The Times Literary Supplement , Vogue , The Criterion , and Poetry . His biography, Wellington (1946), won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize . Aldington was married to the poet Hilda Doolittle , known by her initials H.D., from 1913 to 1938. His contacts included writers T. S. Eliot , D. H. Lawrence , Ezra Pound , W. B. Yeats , Lawrence Durrell , C. P. Snow , and others. He championed H.D. as
456-452: A long poem, Was There a Summer?: A Narrative Poem , in 1943 about their relationship. Aldington went into self-imposed exile in 1928. He lived in Paris for years, living with Brigit Patmore and fascinated by Nancy Cunard , whom he met in 1928. Following his divorce in 1938 he married Netta, née McCullough, previously Brigit's daughter-in-law. Death of a Hero (1929), which Aldington called
513-611: A maid is said to be present in the inn; she was the girlfriend of one of the smugglers of the Hawkhurst Gang and was killed by his fellow gang members as they feared she knew too much and would expose them. Richard Aldington Richard Aldington (born Edward Godfree Aldington ; 8 July 1892 – 27 July 1962) was an English writer and poet. He was an early associate of the Imagist movement. His 50-year writing career covered poetry, novels, criticism and biography. He edited The Egoist ,
570-558: A nose, and a determined mouth." Through her he met American poets Ezra Pound and H.D. , who had previously been engaged to each other. Doolittle and Aldington grew closer and in 1913 travelled together extensively through Italy and France, just before the war. On their return to London in the summer they moved into separate flats in Churchwalk, Kensington , in West London. Doolittle lived at No. 6, Aldington at No. 8, and Pound at No. 10. In
627-463: A poet. Exile and Other Poems (1923) also dealt with the process of trauma. A collection of war stories Roads to Glory , appeared in 1930. After this point he became known as a critic and biographer. Towards the end of the war, H.D. lived with composer Cecil Gray , a friend of D. H. Lawrence's. They had a daughter together in March 1919, the pregnancy much complicated by H.D.'s catching pneumonia towards
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#1732856059413684-612: A relationship with Florence Fallas, who had also lost a child. Between 1914 and 1916 Aldington was literary editor and a columnist at The Egoist . He was assistant editor with Leonard Compton-Rickett under Dora Marsden . Aldington knew Wyndham Lewis well and reviewed his work in The Egoist . He was also an associate of Ford Madox Ford 's, helping him with a propaganda volume for a government commission in 1914 and taking dictation for The Good Soldier . Aldington joined up in June 1916 and
741-528: A solicitor's clerk and amateur author; his mother was a novelist (as "Mrs A. E. Aldington") and keeper of the Mermaid Inn at Rye. Both his parents wrote and published books, and their home held a large library of European and classical literature. As well as reading, Aldington's interests at this time, all of which continued in later life, included butterfly-collecting, hiking, and learning languages – he went on to master French, Italian, Latin, and ancient Greek. He
798-518: A sports journalist, started publishing poetry in British journals, and gravitated towards literary circles that included poets William Butler Yeats and Walter de la Mare . In 1911, Aldington met society hostess Brigit Patmore , with whom he had a passing affair. At the time he was described as "tall and broad-shouldered, with a fine forehead, thick longish hair of the indefinite colour blond hair turns to in adolescence, very bright blue eyes, too small
855-618: A supporter of Vivienne Eliot in the troubled marriage. Aldington satirised her husband as "Jeremy Cibber" in Stepping Heavenward (1931). He had a relationship with writer Valentine Dobrée and a lengthy and passionate affair with Arabella Yorke, a lover since Mecklenburgh Square days, coming to an end when he went abroad. Aldington helped Irene Rathbone publish her semi-autobiographical novel We That Were Young in 1932. They had an affair that ended in 1937. Rathbone dedicated her 1936 novel They Call it Peace to him, and she wrote
912-505: A way forward for avant-garde literature in English. Pound sent three of Aldington's poems to Harriet Monroe 's magazine Poetry and they appeared in November 1912. She notes "Mr Richard Aldington is a young English poet, one of the "Imagistes", a group of ardent Hellenists who are pursuing interesting experiments in vers libre." She considered the poem "Choricos" to be his finest work, "one of
969-456: Is buried in the local cemetery in Sury. He was survived by a daughter, Catherine, the child of his second marriage, who died in 2010. On 11 November 1985 Aldington was among 16 Great War poets commemorated in stone at Westminster Abbey 's Poet's Corner . The inscription on the stone was taken from Wilfred Owen 's "Preface" to his poems and reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry
1026-598: Is described, by William Holloway writing in the 19th century, as abutting on the south towards that street. The inn is situated on the north side of Mermaid street, and abutted to Middle Street towards the south. Other close by establishments, which were also used by the Hawkhurst Gang, included the London Trader Inn, the Flushing Inn, and the Olde Bell Inn. The cellars of the Mermaid Inn date from 1156, believed to be
1083-404: Is in the pity." Alec Waugh described Aldington as having been embittered by the war, but took it that he worked off his spleen in novels like The Colonel's Daughter (1931) rather than letting it poison his life. Douglas Bush describes his work as "a career of disillusioned bitterness." His novels contained thinly veiled portraits of some of his friends, including Eliot, Lawrence and Pound;
1140-422: Is loosely based on Aldington as an artist (Winterbourne a painter rather than writer), having a mistress before and through the war, and the novel portrays locations strongly resembling those he had travelled to. One of these locations, fictionally named "The Chateau de Fressin," strongly resembled a castle he wrote about in a letter to H.D. Death of a Hero , like many other novels published around this time about
1197-781: The Nobel Prize in Literature , Frédéric Mistral (1956). Aldington died in Sury on 27 July 1962, shortly after being honoured in Moscow on the occasion of his 70th birthday and the translation of some of his novels to Russian . He was honored in the Soviet Union , "even if some of the fêting was probably because he had, in his writings, sometimes suggested that the England he loved could, in certain of its aspects, be less than an earthly paradise." Aldington
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#17328560594131254-469: The 1960s and further biographies continued to analyse the 'British hero'. Robert Graves , a friend of Lawrence, wrote that "instead of a carefully considered portrait of Lawrence, I find the self-portrait of a bitter, bedridden, leering, asthmatic, elderly hangman-of-letters." Robert Irwin , in the London Review of Books, speculated that Aldington's spite was driven by jealousy and a sense of exclusion by
1311-565: The British establishment. Lawrence had attended Oxford and his father was a baronet; Aldington had suffered in the bloodbath of Europe during the First World War while Lawrence had gained a heroic reputation in the Middle Eastern theatre and became an international celebrity and homosexual icon. Irwin observes that he "was industrious and his portrait of Lawrence was fuelled by careful research". Christopher Sykes , in his 1969 introduction to
1368-492: The British. When Aldington was sent to the front in December 1916, the couple's relationship became epistolary. He wrote that he had managed to complete 12 poems and three essays since joining up and wanted to work on producing a new book, in order to keep his mind on literature, despite his work of digging graves. He found the soldier's life degrading, living with lice , cold, mud and little sanitation. His encounters with gas on
1425-619: The Collins edition (reprinted in Pelican Biographies in 1971), stated that "for the first time, the awkward questions were faced squarely"; Sykes's final assessment of Aldington's book is that it "cleared the ground of rubbish, efficiently and thoroughly". Aldington lived in Sury-en-Vaux , Cher, France , from 1958. His last significant book was a biography of the Provençal poet and winner of
1482-679: The Oak and Ivy Inn in Hawkhurst , but they used the Mermaid Inn as a secondary location. There are a myriad of secret tunnels, including one which ran from the cellars to the Old Bell Inn (built 1390) in The Mint, a street which runs parallel to the north of Mermaid Street. A revolving cupboard at the end of the tunnel in the Olde Bell would then be used by the gang for a quick getaway. A resident of Rye remembered
1539-495: The Town Corporation organised many functions such as the "Sessions Dinner", the "Gentlemens Freeman's Dinner", "Mayoring Day" and the "Herring Feast". Queen Elizabeth I was also a guest at the inn around this time. The inn had a strong connection with the notorious Hawkhurst Gang which used the premises during the 1730s and 1740s. This large group of smugglers controlled territory from Kent to Dorset from their base at
1596-493: The Tudor style, but cellars built in 1156 survive. The inn has a strong connection with the notorious Hawkhurst Gang of smugglers, who used it in the 1730s and 1740s as one of their strongholds: Rye was a thriving port during this period. Some of the smugglers, their mistresses and other characters are reported to haunt the inn. The AA Rosette -winning restaurant serves British and French cuisine and features medieval-style artwork in
1653-575: The United States with his new wife Netta, he began to write biographies, starting with Wellington : The Duke: Being an Account of the Life & Achievements of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1943). It was followed by works on D. H. Lawrence: Portrait of a Genius, But ... (1950), Robert Louis Stevenson : Portrait of a Rebel (1957), and T. E. Lawrence : Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry (1955). Under financial pressure, he also worked as
1710-544: The bank", was supported by Lady Ottoline Morrell , Leonard Woolf and Harry Norton Aldington began publishing in journals such as the Imagist The Chapbook . In reply to Eliot's The Waste Land , Aldington wrote A Fool i' the Forest (1924). Aldington suffered a breakdown in 1925. His interest in poetry waned, and he developed an animosity towards Eliot's celebrity. Aldington grew closer to Eliot but gradually became
1767-486: The couple and put a great strain on the relationship; H.D. was 28 and Aldington 22. The outbreak of war in 1914 deeply disturbed Aldington, though no draft was in place at this time. H.D. felt more distant from the melee, not having a close affinity to the European landscape, geographical or political. This rift also put pressure on the marriage. Unhappy, Aldington dreamed of escape to America and began to have affairs. He began
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1824-515: The couple could make no plans for their future together. He encouraged H.D. to return to America where she could make a safer and more stable home. They both watched news come in of heavy troop losses in France at the Somme and on other battlefields. She could not have information given on her husband's future postings overseas, all held to be secret. Rationing and the forced draft began as the war turned against
1881-426: The editor Bruce Richmond of The Times Literary Supplement . Aldington was on the editorial board of Chaman Lall 's London literary quarterly Coterie (published 1919–1921), accompanied by Conrad Aiken , Eliot, Lewis and Aldous Huxley . Eliot had a job in the international department of Lloyds Bank and well-meaning friends wanted him full-time writing poetry. Ezra Pound, plotting a scheme to "get Eliot out of
1938-539: The end. Neither Gray nor Aldington wanted to accept paternity. By the time of Aldington's return H.D. was involved with the female writer Bryher . H.D. and Aldington formally separated and had relationships with other people, but they didn't divorce until 1938. They remained friends for the rest of their lives. He destroyed all the couple's pre-1918 correspondence. Aldington helped T. S. Eliot by persuading Harriet Shaw Weaver to appoint Eliot as Aldington's successor at The Egoist magazine. In 1919, he introduced Eliot to
1995-415: The fireplace). Monogram, names and dates are carved on the stone fireplaces, including "1643", "1646", and "Loffelholtz". Some of the chairs are elaborately carved and were made from ships' timbers. There are 31 rooms, each of different design, spread over several floors. Eight bedrooms have 4-poster beds. The bathrooms are fitted with modern amenities. The ceiling has thick and dark teak wood beams while
2052-531: The friendship not always surviving. Lyndall Gordon characterises the sketch of Eliot in Aldington's memoirs Life for Life's Sake (1941) as "snide." As a young man, he was cutting about Yeats, but they remained on good terms. Aldington's obituary in The Times of London in 1962 described him as "[a]n angry young man of the generation before they became fashionable ... who remained something of an angry old man to
2109-462: The front would affect him for the rest of his life. He was given leave in July 1917 and the couple enjoyed a reunion during this brief reprieve. He felt distant from old Imagist friends like Pound who had not undergone the torturous life of the soldiers on the front and could not imagine the living conditions. In November 1917, Aldington joined up in the 11th Leicestershires and was later commissioned as
2166-640: The inn functioned as a garrison for Canadian officers. It was later purchased by Mr L. Wilson, a Canadian, who had been garrisoned there. The Mermaid Inn had the honour of hosting a luncheon to Her Majesty the Queen Mother when she was named as the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports during her visit to Rye in 1982. Under the name Mermaid House and The Mermaid Hotel , the Mermaid Inn was listed at Grade II* by English Heritage on 12 October 1951. This defines it as
2223-468: The inn. The film turned out to be Marty Feldman 's last ever project, after he died in Mexico during production. The black and white timber-framed and tiled building, with dark oak and carved stone chimney pieces, was constructed in the mid-15th century; the author of Old Sussex Inns identifies 1426 as the date. Some of the timber was taken from ships that had been broken up. The south-facing elevation,
2280-514: The interior by the Slade School of Fine Art . It has been owned by Judith Blincow since 1993. The Mermaid Inn is located on Mermaid Street, which was once the town's main road. Mermaid street of present day, must have been the Middle street of 1670. Middle Street used to include the present Mermaid and Middle streets; in fact, the original Middle street was the present Mermaid street, as the Mermaid Inn
2337-540: The island of Port-Cros in Provence, building on the manuscript from a decade before. Opening with a letter to the playwright Halcott Glover, the book takes a satirical, cynical, and critical stance on Victorian and Edwardian cant . Published in September 1929, by Christmas it had sold more than 10,000 copies in England alone, part of a wave of war remembrances from writers such as Remarque , Sassoon , and Hemingway . The book
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2394-535: The major poetic voice of the Imagist movement and helped her work gain international notice. Edward Godfree (known from an early age as "Richard") Aldington was born in Portsmouth , the eldest of four children of Albert Edward Aldington (1864–1921) and Jessie May (1872–1954), née Godfree. His father failed to establish himself as a solicitor, going into business as a bookseller and stationer on Portsmouth High Street, later
2451-522: The most beautiful death songs in the language", "a poem of studied and affected gravity". H.D. became pregnant in August 1914, and in 1915 Aldington and H.D. relocated from their home in Holland Park near Ezra Pound to Hampstead close to D. H. Lawrence and Frieda . They felt calmer out of the bustle of the city, with more space and green. The pregnancy ended in a stillborn daughter, which traumatised
2508-402: The nearby rooms, one of the men was killed, dragged into the adjacent room and thrown through a trapdoor into the dungeon below. Many unexplained light anomalies have been recorded in the middle of the night. On one occasion an employee was tending to the fireplace when all of the bottles on the bottle shelf at the other end of the room fell off; the experience caused him to resign. The ghost of
2565-477: The oldest section apart from the cellars, has a five-window range to the upper storey and attic space above. The upper storey is jettied , and the section to the west extends over the entrance to the inner courtyard and former stable area. This overhang is supported on wooden columns with brackets and cross-beams. The north-facing section, beyond courtyard, is also timber-framed but with brick facing and infilling. It rises to two storeys with two windows on each and
2622-565: The port also provided ships for the Cinque Ports Fleet . In the 1420s, the inn was rebuilt but retained its cellars. It underwent further renovation in the 16th century, much of which remains today. Catholic priests who had fled from Continental Europe escaping from the Reformation during 1530 stayed in the inn, which is testified by j.h.s. ( Jesus Hominum Salvator ) inscribed in the oak-panelled "Syn's Lounge". Between 1550 and 1570,
2679-587: The presence of Pound and the Doolittle family, over from America for the summer, the couple married. They moved to 5 Holland Place Chambers into a flat of their own, although Pound soon moved in across the hall. The poets were caught up in the literary ferment before the war, where new politics and ideas were passionately discussed and created in Soho tearooms and society salons. The couple bonded over their visions of new forms of poetry, feminism, and philosophy, emerging from
2736-477: The smugglers as; "when the Hawkhurst Gang were at the height of their pride and insolence having seen them (after successfully running a cargo of goods on the seashore), seated at the windows of this house (the Mermaid) carousing and smoking their pipes, with their loaded pistols lying on the table before them; no magistrate daring to interfere with them". By 1770, the building ceased functioning as an inn. By 1847, it
2793-404: The wake of staid Victorian mores. The couple were fed by a sense of peership and mutualism between them, rejecting hierarchies, beginning to view Pound as an intruder and interloper rather than a literary igniter. The couple met influential American poet Amy Lowell and she introduced them to writer D. H. Lawrence in 1914, who would become a close friend and mentor to both. Aldington's poetry
2850-407: The war, suffered greatly from censorship. Instead of changing or cutting parts of his novel, he replaced objectionable words with asterisks. Although they looked awkward on the page, Aldington, among others, wanted to call attention to censoring by publishers. In 1930 Aldington published a translation of The Decameron and then the romance All Men are Enemies (1933). In 1942, having relocated to
2907-537: The windows are made of lead frames. Diamond-paned windows are situated at the back. The floors creak. The Mermaid Inn is well known for its hauntings and has been subject to an investigation by Most Haunted . The events in one room have been described as "one of the most well-organised ghostly scenarios anywhere". Room 16 (Elizabethan) was said to be the scene of a duel involving two men "of unknown date and origin" (although they have also been described as wearing "16th-century clothing"). After fighting through some of
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#17328560594132964-418: The year that the original inn was built, or shortly afterwards: Nikolaus Pevsner and English Heritage identified them as 13th-century. In its original form, the building was constructed of wattle and daub , lath and plaster . It was a notable alehouse during medieval times, brewing its own ale and charging a penny a night for lodging. The inn became popular with sailors who came to the port of Rye, and
3021-610: Was associated with the Imagist group, championing minimalist free verse with stark images, seeking to banish Victorian moralism. The group was key in the emerging Modernist movement . Ezra Pound coined the term imagistes for H.D. and Aldington (1912). Aldington's poetry forms almost one third of the Imagists' inaugural anthology Des Imagistes (1914). The movement was heavily inspired by Japanese and classical European art. Aldington shared T. E. Hulme 's conviction that experimentation with traditional Japanese verse forms could provide
3078-484: Was educated at Mr. Sweetman's Seminary for Young Gentlemen, St Margaret's Bay , near Dover. His father died of heart problems at age 56. Aldington attended Dover College , followed by the University of London . He was unable to complete his degree because of the financial circumstances of his family caused by his father's failed speculations and ensuing debt. Supported by a small allowance from his parents, he worked as
3135-551: Was in use as a house and was owned by Charles Poile; the yard at the back, through which there was a footway leading to High Street, was called the Mermaid Yard. The inn functioned as a club in 1913, after it came under the ownership of May Aldington, mother of the novelist Richard Aldington . It was then a popular locale for many artists like Dame Ellen Terry , Lord Alfred Douglas ( Oscar Wilde 's "Bosie"), A.C. and E.F. Benson and Rupert Brooke . In 1945, during World War II ,
3192-539: Was quickly translated into German and other European languages. In Russia the book was taken to be a wholesale attack on bourgeois politics, "the inevitable result of the life which had preceded it", as Aldington wrote. "The next one will be much worse". It was praised by Gorky as revolutionary, and the book, along with Aldington's later fiction, received huge Russian distribution. Aldington was, however, fiercely non-partisan in his politics, despite his passion for iconoclasm and feminism. The character of George Winterbourne
3249-534: Was sent for training at Wareham in Dorset. H.D. moved to be closer to her husband. He was then sent to a camp near Manchester . They found the duality of their lives harsh, and the gruelling, regimented nature of the training felt hard for the sensitive professional poet. He felt fundamentally different from the other men, more given to intellectual pursuits than unending physical labour that left him little time to write. Their sporadic meetings were emotionally wrenching and
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