'Love-Epigrams', part two: widened horizons

Woodward will surely have met Greek epigram at Harrow, through one of the standard selections compiled for use in classrooms. These books were both teaching tools and paradigms for emulation -- boys not only read but wrote Greek epigrams, and Harrow gave an annual prize for the best such composition. Unsurprisingly, the school selections were carefully winnowed to avoid what we would now term adult content. Published translations into English from the Anthology in the nineteenth century often centred on these poems as familiar mementos of shared upper-class schooldays.

Love-Epigrams knows no such limits, and convinces me that Woodward was choosing his poems from Paton's Loeb, which was still fairly new (1916-18) and was the first and so far the only complete translation of the Anthology into (mostly) English, face-to-face with an affordable and up-to-date edition of its original Greek. Paton's five volumes were a stupendous labour and have been a fundamental resource ever since; an update is under way but has so far only got as far as volume 1.

With Paton to browse in, Woodward ranges widely. The home of heterosexual erotic epigrams is Book 5 of the Anthology, but his selection of 133 poems draws also on Books 6 (votives, x4); 7 (funerary, x2); 9 (epideictic, x7), 10 (protreptic, x1); so-called Book 15 (the Planuedean Appendix, x1); and allegedly also Book 4, though this must be a typo, since Book 4 contains only the prefaces of the anthologists who preceded Cephalas.

By far the largest share of epigrams from outside Book 5, though, comes from Book 12 -- the Anthology's treasure-trove of paederastic epigrams, built around the Mousa Paidikē or 'Boyish Muse' of the notorious Strato of Sardis. One might not expect this from a retired vicar. Woodward's way with the Boyish Muse deserves its own blog post, or posts. Indeed, the very first poem of his selection is one of Strato's.

Woodward's first foray into epigram, part the first

GREEK ANTHOLOGY

133

Love-Epigrams

in

English Verse

Woodward published his first translation from the Greek Anthology in 1934. John Barnes' biography (1996: 114-5) tells me he had by now been printing little books at West Hill for two years, beginning with carol lyrics that he illustrated with woodcuts. In one of those little carol-books were published for the first time the lyrics to 'Past Three A Clock' and 'Ding Dong! Merrily on High'.

Here as in later volumes, Woodward, a lover of old things, uses the archai 'long' form of the letter 's'. Peering closely one can distinguish it from an 'f' but for many readers the extra workload will really fuck. Furely hif friendf muft have fuggefted otherwife? I won't be reproducing thefe -- sorry, these -- in anything I quote in these blog poftf.

Love-Epigrams is to the usual dimensions (discussed in a previous post) but much fatter than anything that followed; the cover is glued onto the stitched spine. The title-page proudly announces its author as 'Formerly Scholar of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge', where he had read classics.

Barnes' focus is primarily on his subject's religious life but he passes on some curious information on this point: Woodward was admitted as a Sayer Scholar and graduated in 1872, after a three-year ride, with only a third-class degree. A casual search suggests the Sayer Scholarships were reserved for Harrow boys, but competition was surely fierce and Woodward's late-in-life translations show him to have remained a highly capable and widely read classical linguist. I suppose we are unlikely ever to know what went wrong, if 'wrong' should turn out even to be a relevant term to apply.

To be continued.

A little about Woodward

Born in Birkenhead, George Ratcliffe Woodward (1848-1934) attended Elstree and Harrow Schools and won a Scholarship to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He read classics, not perhaps very attentively, coming away with a third-class degree and a vocation to the Anglican Church. His long career was spent at various churches in London, Norfolk, and Suffolk. In his country livings he was a keen bellringer and beekeeper. He retired a widower in 1906 and moved to 48 West Hill, Highgate, a distinguished old rental property, in 1916.

In the last years of his life he became a prolific self-publisher of, among other things, tiny books of translations of Greek epigrams into rhyming verse. He made them all at home in Highgate, where he installed a printing press. The books seem to me unusually sized: each page measures five by three-and-three-quarter inches, half the size of a duodecimo. The sheets are hand-cut, and typically joined by a simple double stitch. Covers are of brown card, of thinner stock than the pages they contain. The print-runs (120 or 136 copies) were almost as tiny as the books themselves, each copy being hand-numbered. There seems no indication that he offered them for sale.

If I have it right, the thickest of these pamphlets (Greek Anthology: 133 Love Epigrams in English Verse) is also the earliest (1924). Woodward had been in Highgate for eight years and was well into his seventies. The greatest concentration of his epigram volumes appeared hot on each others' heels in 1931, when he would have been 83 or thereabouts. I wonder if he was working the press by himself, or had help: I expect he had domestic staff. [update: he had two presses there, and in his last years his housekeeper operated them. He left one of the presses to her in his will] His papers are held at UCLA but it does not immediately sound as if they will shed much light. In the meantime I've ordered the biography by John Barnes. [update: it's a lovely book]

I've begun a list of Woodward's possible or (emboldened) definite epigram books, which I'll add to if I find more. I don't know the order in which volumes appeared in years when he issued more than one; I don't yet even have a sense of whether it can be known.

1924    Greek Anthology: 133 Love-Epigrams in English Verse

1925    Domestica: Being Greek Epigrams Turned into English Verse

1926    Greek Anthology: Beauty-Epigrams (I wonder if this is code for AP12?)

1928    Tart and Homely Gibes of Greek Epigrammatists

1928    Gleanings from Ancient Olive-Yards, Greek and Roman (mixed poets, non-Anthology)

1928    ? Spring-Time Songs Translated from the Greek (unclear if includes epigrams; not yet seen)

1929    Greek Epigrams on and by Famous Poets and Musicians

1929    Greek Anthology: Epigrammata Heroica

1929    ? A Bunch of Grapes from Ancient Greek Vineyards Crushed into English Measures (unclear if includes epigrams; not yet seen)

1929 ?  Greek Witticisms told in the English Verse (unlikely to include epigrams, but not yet seen)

1931    Epigrams on Sappho and Other Famous Greek Lyric Poetesses

1931    Greek Epigrams: Religious and Dedicatory, Part I

1931    Greek Epigrams: Religious and Dedicatory, Part II

1931    Greek Epigrams on Timon, Diogenes & Others

1931    Five and Forty Examples of the Epigram Sepulchral

1931    Tales of Sea-Sorrow from the Greek Anthology

1931    ? A Garland of Spiritual Flowers (unlikely to include epigrams, but not yet seen)

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