Life
De la Mare was born in Kent at 83 Maryon Road, Charlton, now part of the Royal Borough of Greenwich), descended from a family of French Huguenots, and was educated at St Paul's Cathedral School. He was born to James Edward de la Mare, a clerk at the Bank of England, and Lucy Sophia Browning (James' second wife), daughter of Scottish naval surgeon and author Dr Colin Arrott Browning. The assertion that Lucy was related to poet Robert Browning has been found to be incorrect. He had two brothers, Francis Arthur Edward and James Herbert ('Bert'), and four sisters Florence Mary, Constance Eliza, Ethel (who died in infancy), and Ada Mary ('Poppy'). De la Mare was known as Jack by his family and friends as he hated the name Walter.
In 1892, de la Mare joined the Esperanza Amateur Dramatics Club, where he met and fell in love with Elfrida (Elfie) Ingpen, the leading lady, who was ten years older than he. She was pregnant when they were married on 4 August 1899. They went on to have 4 children: Richard Herbert Ingpen ('Dick'), Colin, Florence and Lucy Elfrida ('Jinnie') de la Mare. Their house at Anerley in south London was the scene of many parties, notable for imaginative games of charades.
De la Mare's first book, Songs of Childhood, was published under the name Walter Ramal. He worked in the statistics department of the London office of Standard Oil for eighteen years while struggling to bring up a family, but nevertheless found time to write. In 1908, through the efforts of Sir Henry Newbolt he received a Civil List pension which enabled him to concentrate on writing.
In 1940, Elfie was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and spent the rest of her life as an invalid, eventually dying in 1943. From 1940 until his death, de la Mare lived in South End House, Montpelier Row, Twickenham, the same street where Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson had lived a century earlier. For the Collected Stories for Children (Faber & Faber, 1947), he won the annual Carnegie Medal in Literature from the Library Association, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject. It was the first collection to win the award.
De la Mare suffered from a coronary thrombosis in 1947 and died of another in 1956. His ashes are buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral where he had once been a choirboy.
Read more about this topic: Walter De La Mare
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The richest princes and the poorest beggars are to have one great and just judge at the last day who will not distinguish between them according to their ranks when in life but according to the neglected opportunities afforded to each. How much greater then, as the opportunities were greater, must be the condemnation of the one than of the other?”
—Samuel Richardson (1689–1761)
“... when you make it a moral necessity for the young to dabble in all the subjects that the books on the top shelf are written about, you kill two very large birds with one stone: you satisfy precious curiosities, and you make them believe that they know as much about life as people who really know something. If college boys are solemnly advised to listen to lectures on prostitution, they will listen; and who is to blame if some time, in a less moral moment, they profit by their information?”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“Ecouraging a child means that one or more of the following critical life messages are coming through, either by word or by action: I believe in you, I trust you, I know you can handle this, You are listened to, You are cared for, You are very important to me.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)