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Abercrombie left Malvern in 1900 to read chemistry at Manchester University. Literature, however, continued to play an important role in his life and it was during this period that he annonomously published his first poetry in a periodical known as The Trawl.
On leaving university Abercrombie found work as a quantity surveyor in Liverpool but the lure of the literary life, and the desire to live in the country remained undimed. By 1907 he had left his job and was attempting to make a living through publishing poems and writing for newspapers. Luckily this precarious existence was improved through the financial support of his sister, Ursula and through a friend, Leila Reynolds, wife of the President of the Liverpool Cotton Association.
In 1908 he acquired a full-time post with the Liverpool Courier, this gave him sufficient financial stability to marry Catherine Gwatikin, the artist and designer he had first met in 1906. Both Lascelles and Catherine still longed to live and work in the country and in 1910 he and his wife moved to Monks Walk Cottage near Hellens. Though small, the Cottage at last fulfilled Abercrombie's rural dream and provided the perfect base for his freelance writing. In September 1910 Mary and the Bramble was published to critical acclaim.
By the spring of 1911 the Abercrombies had moved to an old thatched cottage in the village of Ryton, next to Dymock on the Gloucestershire / Herefordshire border. The Gallows was to be their home until March 1916. It was the presence of Abercrombie, by then a poet and writer of considerable reputation and the arrival of fellow poet, WW Gibson to Dymock which helped attract the distinguished circle of poets during that fateful summer of 1914.
Like Gibson, Abercrombie was not considered fit enough for active service, but in 1916 moved to Liverpool to work in a munitions factory which left little time for writing. Although he returned to Dymock in 1919 this was to be only a brief interlude before securing a post as Lecturer in Poetry at Liverpool University. The remainder of his life was spent in academia, away from the country life he craved, first in Liverpool, then Leeds and finally Oxford. However, he continued to write poetry throughout this time, most notably the remaining five acts of The Sale of St Thomas, the first act of which he had published himself from the Gallows in 1911.
Lacselles Abercombie died in October 1938 following a haemorrhage brought on by diabetes.
(Biography extracted and abridged from J. Cooper, 'Lascelles Abercrombie and the Origin of the Poets' Colony at Dymock', Occasional Papers Series No. 3 (CGCHE, 1997)
Around about the wondrous days of yore,
They came across a sort of box
Bound up with chains and locked with locks
And labeled "Kindly do not touch; it's war."
A decree was issued round
about, and all with a flourish and a shout
And a gaily colored mascot
tripping lightly on before.
Don't fiddle with this deadly
box,
Or break the chains, or
pick the locks.
And please don't ever play
about with war.
The children understood.
Children happen to be good
And they were just as good
around the time of yore.
They didn't try to pick
the locks
Or break into that deadly
box.
They never tried to play
about with war.
Mommies didn't either; sisters,
aunts, grannies neither
'Cause they were quiet,
and sweet, and pretty
In those wondrous days of
yore.
Well, very much the same
as now,
And not the ones to blame
somehow
For opening up that deadly
box of war.
But someone did. Someone
battered in the lid
And spilled the insides
out across the floor.
A kind of bouncy, bumpy
ball made up of guns and flags
And all the tears, and horror,
and death that comes with war.
It bounced right out and
went bashing all about,
Bumping into everything
in store.
And what was sad and most
unfair
Was that it didn't really
seem to care
Much who it bumped, or why,
or what, or for.
It bumped the children mainly.
And I'll tell you this quite plainly,
It bumps them every day
and more, and more,
And leaves them dead, and
burned, and dying
Thousands of them sick and
crying.
'Cause when it bumps, it's
really very sore.
Now there's a way to stop
the ball. It isn't difficult at all.
All it takes is wisdom,
and I'm absolutely sure
That we can get it back
into the box,
And bind the chains, and
lock the locks.
But no one seems to want
to save the children anymore.
Well, that's the way it all
appears, 'cause it's been bouncing round for years and years
In spite of all the wisdom
wizzed since those wondrous days of yore
And the time they came across
the box,
Bound up with chains and
locked with locks,
And labeled, "Kindly do
not touch; it's war."