Chrysalis 1892–1911

Abstract

When, in his 40s, Richard Aldington first saw the façade of a typical brownstone house in New York City he experienced ‘that tenderness we feel at the unexpected revival of childish memories’.¹ He was confronted by a house ‘near cousin’ to the yellow brick one where he had lived in Dover as a youth. From this English sea-coast dwelling he had emerged, passing the ‘sad housemaids’ whitening the area steps, on his way to the small private school where as a young child he learnt his first French and Latin. In this town he ‘was being manufactured into the sort of human product a not too intelligent provincial society thought I should be’; but fortunately much of his growing up was done in the country, which in retrospect he felt enabled him to develop ‘into something on my own’.