Charles Dalmon

Charles William Dalmon (1872-1938)^[1] was a British poet, 1890s decadent, 1920s film designer,^[2] and friend of Noel Coward.^[3]

He was a contributor to The Yellow Book, and was published in The Living Age, in the mid-1890s. His poems subsequently appeared in many anthologies,^[4] but his reputation was never bright.^[5] Jean Moorcroft Wilson^[6] notes that Siegfried Sassoon and Ralph Hodgson planned to publish "small, neglected authors", into which group Dalmon fell with Thomas Ashe and Primovard Dugard.

There are ascriptions to Dalmon of Manx songs and ballads, which may be collector's or editor's rather than author's credits. O what if the fowler my blackbird has taken? is given as by him,^[7] but there is a related old ballad.^[8] The (Red) Fuchsia Tree, set by Roger Quilter^[9] and John Raynor,^[10] is attributed to Dalmon but may be traditional.^[11]

Works

• Minutiae (1892)
• Song Favours (1895)
• Flower And Leaf (1900)
• A Poor Man's Riches (1922)
• Singing As I Go (1927)
• The Last Service (1928)

Notes

1. ^ Date of birth is in John Lane Co. records.[1]
2. ^ Work with Lucky Cat Films in the early 1920s.[2]. Credits for art direction for a 1928 film The Blue Peter[3].
3. ^ Dalmon is supposed to have uttered the outrageous my ambition is to be crushed to death between the thighs of a guardsman.[4].
4. ^ Including his Camelot in the 1929 John Drinkwater Twentieth-Century Poetry.
5. ^ A Daily Telegraph review [5] (25 June 2006) noted that John Betjeman was a fan, classing Dalmon with "dim and half-forgotten poets" such as Theodore Wratislaw, William Renton and Edmund John.
6. ^ In her Siegfried Sassoon, volume II (1918-1967) from 2003, p.257.
7. ^ Index to 'Manx National Songs' by W.H.Gill at www.isle-of-man.com
8. ^ Broadside ballads entitled 'The Blackbird' and 'My Name is Duncan Campbell' at www.nls.uk
9. ^ Roger Quilter at www.btinternet.com
10. ^ British Composers: 20th century English composer John Raynor at www.kcedensor.freeserve.co.uk
11. ^ See the Preface[6] to the 1896 collection of arrangements Manx National Songs, by W. H. Gill, for the context.

Persondata
Name	Dalmon, Charles
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Date of birth	1872
Place of birth
Date of death	1938
Place of death