Introduction

Sir Edward (‘Eddie’) Howard Marsh, KCVO, CB, CMG, was a British polymath, translator, arts patron and civil servant. Marsh was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied classics, became a Cambridge Apostle and befriended, amongst others, R.C. Trevelyan, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore and Maurice Baring. His civil service career saw him work as Private Secretary to a number of Britain’s most powerful ministers, including Winston Churchill. He was the main benefactor of the Georgian school of poets and a friend to many more, including Rupert Brooke and Siegfried Sassoon. (Following Brooke’s death in 1915, Marsh became his literary executor, and in 1918 edited his Collected Poems.) Marsh edited five anthologies of Georgian Poetry between 1912 and 1922; the sales of the first three volumes in particular were impressive, selling between 15,000 and 19,000 copies. A discreet homosexual, Marsh was nevertheless a quietly influential figure within Britain’s homosexual community. He was a notable collector and supporter of several avant-garde artists, including Duncan Grant, David Bomberg, Paul Nash and especially Mark Gertler. As David Boyd Haycock notes: ‘Marsh’s keenness for painting was matched only by his passions for poetry and handsome young men.’ Gertler, in fact, lived with him during the period 1914–15.

It was through Rupert Brooke that Marsh came to know JMM and KM, for in the spring of 1912 Brooke had received a letter requesting a contribution for the little magazine Rhythm, edited by JMM. Brooke set up a lunch meeting in Soho, invited Marsh to attend, ‘and in this way Eddie Marsh became Rhythm’s best friend and most generous helper’. D. H. Lawrence wrote a very positive review of the first Georgian Poetry anthology in the March 1913 issue. Marsh provided much-needed financial support by guaranteeing JMM’s overdraft when Rhythm collapsed, paving the way for its successor, the Blue Review, which sadly ran for just three issues from May to July 1913. When JMM and KM fled to Paris in December 1913, Marsh provided further financial support, but nothing could prevent JMM from eventually having to declare himself bankrupt.