Thursday, October 08, 2020
A Passion for Perfection
G.B.A. Fletcher, quoted in Grant Richards, Housman, 1897-1936 (New York: Oxford University Press,
1942), p. 385:
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He was shy by nature and he had a passion for perfection—for perfection in scholarship, food, personal relationships and everything else. Anything imperfect was torture to him. Conversation that fell short of what he felt to be worth while he instinctively avoided. Taciturn he often was, but it was not more often than in other people the taciturnity of moroseness. He was often silent because he preferred not to speak inaccurately or shoddily. He was often solitary because any substitute for perfect intimacy seemed to him too poor a thing.
