Edward Marsh

This article deals with the UK civil servant. Edward Marsh (rower) informs about the Olympic rowing champion .

Sir Edward 'Eddie' Howard Marsh (born November 18, 1872 in London ; † January 13, 1953 ; pseudonym Edward Moore) was a British civil servant, translator, editor, writer and art patron.

Life and work

Marsh (standing) with Churchill in Africa (1907).

Marsh was born in London in 1872 to Frederick Howard Marsh and his wife Jane Marsh (née Perceval). His father was a renowned surgeon and lecturer at Cambridge and a Masters at Downing College, his mother, a granddaughter of Spencer Perceval , British Prime Minister assassinated in 1812, was a nurse and the founder of the Alexander Hospital for Children with Hip Disease Disease). Two of Marsh's older sisters, one of whom died in infancy, while the other married Sir Frederick Maurice.

Marsh attended Westminster School and then studied at Trinity College, Cambridge University, where he befriended Bertrand Russell and GE Moore and through Maurice Baring came into contact with Edmund Gosse , who accepted him into his London literary circle. In Oswald Sickert's Cambridge Observer , Marsh also distinguished himself publicly for the first time through his critical essays on the literary events of his time. In particular, his passionate advocacy of Ibsen’s works, first published in Britain in the 1890s, drew considerable professional attention long before his civil service career began.

After graduating from Cambridge, Marsh entered civil service. In 1896 he took over the post of civil servant (2nd Class Clerk) in the Australian Department of the Colonial Ministry, where he was assistant private secretary to Joseph Chamberlain and later, from 1903 to 1905, from Alfred Lyttelton . By 1905 he reached the rank of "1st Class Clerk" and last worked in the Ministry's "West Africa Department".

In the last few weeks of the same year, the young MP Winston Churchill - who after the resignation of Arthur James Balfour's government and the transfer of government responsibility to the Liberal Party under Henry Campbell-Bannerman - invited the prospective Prime Minister Bannerman to the post of Undersecretary of State for the Colonies had been designated - Marsh a to become his private secretary. As Marsh was known for his homosexual tendencies, many people close to Churchill, such as his mother Jennie Churchill , were critical of this decision.

Marsh seconded Churchill, with interruptions (1915–1917 and 1922–1924), from 1905/06 to 1929 over a period of almost twenty-three years as his private secretary whenever he held a government office: So he supported Churchill during his activity as Undersecretary for the Colonies (1906–1908), as Minister of Commerce (1908–1910), Minister of the Interior (1910–1911), Minister of the Navy (1911–1915), Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (1915) and later as Minister of Munitions (1917–1919), Minister of War and Aviation (1919–1921) and Colonial Minister (1922), and - after a second break - as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1924–1929).

In the years in which Churchill held no official state offices and it was therefore impossible for the civil servant Marsh to work for him, Marsh took on other posts within the state apparatus: from 1915 to 1916 he acted as auxiliary private secretary to Prime Minister Asquith and later, from 1922 to 1924, as Churchill's private secretary, successor to Colonial Secretary, the Duke of Devonshire (1922–1924). After Churchill's second fall in 1929, Marsh spent the last eight years of his career, 1929 to 1937, as secretary to James Henry Thomas , then Minister for the Dominons (1929–1936) and Thomas's successor Malcolm MacDonald (1936–1937). In terms of content, the work of the civil servant Marsh mainly comprised traditional administrative tasks: he kept his boss's appointment calendar, accompanied him on trips, coordinated his immediate staff, sifted through and excerpted files and newspaper articles, etc.

After his retirement, Marsh held the positions of curator of the Tate Gallery (1937-1944), the vice-president of the "Royal Literary Society" (1943; Royal Society of Literature ) and the chairman of the "Gesellschaft für Zeitgenössische Kunst" (1937-1952; Chairman of the Contemporary Art Society). Marsh died on January 13, 1953.

Marsh as a translator, editor, editor, and writer

As a translator, Marsh published, among other things, English translations of the fables of Jean de Lafontaine (1933; from the French), the Odes of Horace (1941; from the Latin). As a writer he wrote his personal memories of "Rupert Brooke" (1918) as well as the memoir volume "A Number of People" (1938), in which he reports memorabilia about noteworthy people in the political and literary spheres, with whom he toured during his life had to do.

Between 1912 and 1922 Marsh, who is considered to be an important sponsor of the Georgian School of Poets , edited five influential anthology volumes with contemporary lyric poetry under the simple and self-evocative title of " Georgian Poetry ", including the Works by his close friend Rupert Brooke, who initiated the project. Other contributors to this work were Harold Monro , James Flecker , Walter de la Mare and DH Lawrence . In 1917 they were succeeded by Siegfried Sassoon , Robert Graves and Robert Nichols . In addition, Marsh managed, after his death in World War I, Brooke's literary estate and also published his "Collective Poems", the collected works (1918). Marsh also took care of the proofreading of the proofs of their literary products for his superior and friend Churchill and several other authors, which he checked with regard to grammar, spelling, punctuation, style, duplications, and the like. Ä. Looked through, whereby his attention to detail was particularly noticeable. Marsh also passed down many of Churchill's famous bon mots and puns.

In addition, from 1918 Edward Marsh was a member of the jury on the committee for the award of the Hawthornden Prize , the oldest literary prize in Great Britain.

Marsh as an art collector and sponsor

At the suggestion of his friend Neville Bulwer-Lytton, 3rd Earl of Lytton , whom he met in 1896, Marsh developed a keen interest in modern art. In 1904, with the help of Robert Ross, owner of the Carfax Gallery, he acquired the Horne Collection , a collection of pencil drawings that became the basis of his collection and made him one of Britain's most important private art collectors almost overnight.

In his early years as a collector, Marsh initially specialized in British watercolor painters such as Thomas Girtin , Paul Sandby , John Sell Cotman and Alexander and John Robert Cozens . He became increasingly interested in contemporary British art after purchasing a modern painting by the painter Duncan Grant in 1911 . Since then he has also acted as a sponsor of artists such as Mark Gertler , Paul Nash and Stanley Spencer . By 1914 he had compiled the core "of what became one of the most valuable collections of modern work in private hands".

Churchill later touted Marsh as "a deeply instructed champion of the arts" in his obituary in the Times .

Relationship with Brooke, Churchill, Novello and Sassoon

In the course of his work as an editor of literary works Marsh came into close contact with various important poets of the Edwardian, but especially the Georgian era, such as the "British Apollo" Rupert Brooke and the English writer Siegfried Sassoon . He had met Brooke, with whom he had been closely associated ever since, in Cambridge in 1906. Marsh was one of the earliest promoters of Sassoon's literary advancement. In addition to his contacts to the literary world of post-Victorian England, the music lover Marsh also maintained close relationships with various artists on the music scene in London's West End, such as Lily Elsie , Godfrey Winn (whom he introduced to professional play from the amateur stage) and Ivor Novello , to whom he after their acquaintance in 1915 in "His Majesty's Theater" made his premises available for his work as a composer. For Novello Marsh also wrote - under the pseudonym Edward Moore - the lyrics for his song "The Land of Might Have Been" (1924). March was extremely close to his boss Winston Churchill, not only professionally but also privately, so that even after their professional separation he remained a frequent guest at his country estate Chartwell and with the future Prime Minister in intimate (but platonic) friendship until his death.

character

Marsh is described almost consensually in letters and memoirs in which reference is made to him as a spirited, charming, intelligent, well-educated and witty, but also sensitive man. His squeaky voice is noted as his most prominent physical feature.

Awards and honors

On the occasion of his retirement from the civil service, March was beaten in recognition of his services to Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO). In the years following his retirement, Marsh distinguished himself as a translator of various Greek and Roman classics as well as works by important French authors.

literature

estate

• Title: The Papers of Sir Edward Marsh (aka 'Marsh Papers')
• Location (since 1972): Churchill Archives Center / Churchill Archives Center / Churchill College / Cambridge / CB3 0DS / United Kingdom
• Documentary identifier: GBR / 0014 / EMAR
• Scope : An archive box.
• Contents : Photocopic reproductions of letters and documents that are mainly related to Winston Churchill.
• Period : The documents mainly deal with the years 1900–1962.

Works (chronological)

• Rupert Brooke , 1918. (Memoirs).
• The Fables of Jean de la Fontaine , 1933. (Translation of the Fables of Jean de la Fontaine into English).
• A Number of People , 1938. (Memoirs).
• The Odes of Horace , 1941. (translation after Horace)
• Minima , 1947. (translation)
• Dominique , 1948. (translation)

Correspondence

• Hassall, Christopher (ed.): Ambrosia and Small Beer: The Record of Correspondence between Edward Marsh and Christopher Hassall, 373 pp., London 1964 (Longmans).

Bibliographies

• C. Hassall: Edward Marsh. Patron of the Arts , 1959.

literature

• Various authors: Eddie Marsh - Sketches for a Composite Literary Portrait, 1953.
• Hassall, Christopher: Edward Marsh , 1959.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ With Churchill he traveled to British East Africa, Uganda and Egypt around 1907-1098.
2. ↑ Henry Seidel Canby (Ed.): Saturday Review. Volume 6. Saturday Review Associates, 1929, p. 1161.
3. ^ JC Squire, Rolfe Arnold Scott-James: The London Mercury. Volume 33. Field Press Limited, 1936, p. 102.
4. ↑ ODoNB, p. 793. Allegedly, "every patch of wall" in Marsh Apartments in the "5 Raymond Buildings", Gray's Inn, London, was bricked up with pictures.