and the better papers online run postscripts sent in by others adding to the first obit.
M
touched to read about R Sumner
On Feb 13, 2015, at 9:02, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> oh good. thanks
> it's funny - I thought of her only last week, thinking "won't be long now"
> or something similarly upbeat.
> I sent it to Goldsmiths and they think they might send it to Higher Ed Supp.
> Nothing while you're alive; but die and you get a strip of newsprint
>
> heh ho
>
> ta for the post
>
> L
>
>
>
> On 13 February 2015 at 16:20, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Thank you, Lawrence.
>>
>> I didn't know her, but you bring her to life, & sow us why she matters...
>>
>> Doug
>> On Feb 13, 2015, at 7:03 AM, Lawrence Upton <[log in to unmask]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Few will know of whom I speak.; but it is a moment I wis to mark..
>>>
>>> Dr Rosemary Sumner has died.
>>>
>>> Rosemary was a senior lecturer at Goldsmiths until her retirement in
>> 1989.
>>> I believe she first joined the staff of Goldsmiths in the late 50s.
>>>
>>> I met her first in the early 90s when he son's VOICES FOR 9 was presented
>>> at Royal Court in London
>>>
>>> She wrote on Hardy, Golding, Beckett, Lawrence and others; and was for
>> many
>>> years, I believe, a stalwart of the Hardy Soc
>>>
>>> She wore her learning lightly; but she had been adept in many languages;
>>> and told that, on leaving school, she was recruited to Bletchley Park
>> where
>>> they gave her three months intense tuition in Japanese before letting her
>>> loose on Japanese signals.
>>>
>>> I asked her how many she decoded or how may discoveries she made - it was
>>> never clear what she did and it may have been quite humdrum -- and she
>> said
>>> none; but she would have said that whatever the truth.
>>>
>>> After the war, she married and emigrated to South Africa; but, after the
>>> birth of her only child, Stephen known to the world by his fifth name,
>>> Alaric, she separated from her husband - he left her when the baby
>> arrived
>>> - and returned to UK.
>>>
>>> She taught for a while at Neill's Summerhill. She described teaching with
>>> the baby in a pram beside her.
>>>
>>> At some point she spent some months in Sweden on an educational project.
>>>
>>> She was mother, as I say, to Alaric Sumner, artist and writer (remembered
>>> now mainly for Waves on Porthmeor Beach with the late Sandra Blow R A)
>> who
>>> died in March 2000 aged 52, a loss from which Rosemary never really
>>> recovered.
>>>
>>> Alaric bought a house with her in St Ives in Cornwall and she moved there
>>> in 1990. Then, within a few years, he spent a year away in Leeds studying
>>> at the university; and a few years later he had taken accommodation in
>>> Totnes, Devon while he taught at Dartington College, some years before
>> its
>>> move to Falmouth; and he tended to spend much of his time in Devon
>>> returning for weekends and holidays.
>>>
>>> Throughout the 1990s, Rosemary punctuated her days and weeks by walks,
>>> especially along the cliffs to Zennor.
>>>
>>> Her last years were quite sad and probably lonely. She was increasingly
>>> unwell from the early years of this century; and her last professional
>> work
>>> was a book review in 2004.
>>>
>>> I am not sure that she had adjusted to her move from London, seeming
>> quite
>>> isolated; it had been Alaric's idea. She read much of the time until the
>>> concentration was beyond her; and then she relied upon Radio 3. Put in
>> care
>>> by those to whom she entrusted her well-being, she was often left to
>>> Classics FM or silence. Few visited.
>>> She died in her sleep on Monday 9 February 2015. A date has yet to be
>> fixed
>>> for her funeral.
>>>
>>> L
>>>
>>
>> Douglas Barbour
>> [log in to unmask]
>>
>> Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuation 2
>> (UofAPress).
>> Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
>>
>> that we are only
>> as we find out we are
>>
>> Charles Olson
>>
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