Housman, A.E

15 Autograph letters signed ("A. E. Housman"), 38 pages (7 x 4 1/2 in.; 178 x 114mm), Trinity College, Cambridge, 19 May 1927—6 July 1931, to his godson Gerald Jackson, in North Rhodesia and later London; vertical had horizontal creases, occasional foxing, though condition generally good.  14 autograph envelopes.

From the descendants of Moses and Gerald Jackson

condition as described in catalogue entry.
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"Your affectionate though inefficient godfather": A. E. Housman's letters to his godson, Gerald Jackson. Gerald Jackson, the son of Housman's close friend and muse Moses Jackson, was stationed in Africa when these letters begin in 1927.  By the middle of 1929, he is back in Britain, studying geology at the Royal College of Mines in London and later at Cambridge University. 

In these letters, Housman dispenses his both serious and humorous advice to his geologist godson.  He writes on 19 May 1927 to Jackson in Northern Rhodesia, "I hope you will keep well, and not fall out of your aeroplane onto geological objects, however attractive.… My godfather is now 88, so it is not an unhealthy profession."  From 2 May 1929, "The times has been printing snapshots of lions in the jungle.  In one of them they were eating something, and I feared it might be you, but it was more like a zebra." 6 November 1929: "I have just had a request from the Colonial Office to tell them all your bad qualities (refusal to learn Catechism, etc.), so I want to know what you are up to now, and whether you have abandoned your studies in London , and are off to Africa again.  At any rate I hope the malaria is put right."

Housman writes on 15 October 1930, "Advice from a godfather.  Don't add 'M. A.' in addressing a letter: I don't know why, but it is not the custom.  Don't say 'I will have to work' when you mean 'I shall'. But I never could teach you your catechism." Anticipating Gerald's acfceptance as a student at Cambridge, Housman writes on 7 November 1930, "When once you are admitted it will not be possible for me to ask you to the High Table, so will you come and dine with me in Hall on Monday, the first day I have free; and I will ask Winstanley to put off your fall in the social scale till afterwards." Housman encloses clippings on the situation in Rhodesia in his letter of 10 February 1931, saying "I hope you are not one of the people who have been caused much distress by the closing down of the Bwana N'Kubwa mine."

An important group of unpublished letters by A. E. Housman to the son of Moses Jackson.