by
C. W. F. McKenna
Walter
James Redfern Turner (1884-1946), poet and critic, was born on 13 October 1884
in South Melbourne, eldest son of Walter James Turner (1857-1900),
warehouseman, and his wife Alice May, née Watson. Born on 3 July 1857 at
Geelong, Victoria, the father became prominent in Melbourne's musical
activities. Organist at St James's Cathedral and later at St Paul's Church, he
was appointed to teach music at the Working Men's College in 1888; he also
composed ballads and directed the People's Promenade Concerts at the Melbourne
Cricket Ground. He died at Kew on 5 April 1900 and was buried in Box Hill
cemetery.
Educated
at Carlton State School, Scotch College and the Working Men's College before
working as a clerk, Walter junior recalled his Melbourne boyhood in his
fictional autobiography, Blow for Balloons (1935). In 1907 he went to London to
become a writer. Spending ten months in Germany and Austria in 1913-14, he
wrote satirical sketches for the New Age and concert reviews for the Musical
Standard. He returned to England before the outbreak of World War I and,
although he served in the Royal Garrison Artillery in 1916-18, his literary
career flourished. In 1916 he published the first of sixteen volumes of poetry.
His work gained prominence when it appeared in Georgian Poetry in 1917 and
1919. On 5 April 1918, at St Luke's parish church, Chelsea, he had married
Delphine Marguerite Dubuis (d.1951); they remained childless.
Following
the war, Turner's activities introduced him to leading literary and
intellectual figures in Bloomsbury and at Garsington, the home of Lady Ottoline
Morrell. He was music critic for the New Statesman (1915-40), Truth (c.1920-37)
and the Modern Mystic (1937); drama critic for the London Mercury (1919-23) and
the New Statesman (1928-29); literary editor of the Owl (1919) and the Daily
Herald (1920-23); and had plays produced. Although he still admired and was
influenced by Georgian poets such as Walter de la Mare, in 1922 he withdrew in
disillusionment from the last Georgian Poetry anthology and experimented with a
more modern verse in The Seven Days of the Sun (1925). While committed to
rhythm, music, sensibility and imagination, Turner's poetry also pursues his
metaphysical interests and reveals a philosophic idealism that relates closely to
Platonism and the thought of Kierkegaard. Yeats valued Turner's modernity and
philosophic energy, and in the late 1930s they collaborated in British
Broadcasting Commission poetry programmes.
As
music critic, Turner distinguished himself by the independence, originality and
outspokenness of his views. He published studies of Beethoven (1927), Wagner
(1933), Berlioz (1934) and Mozart (1938), but also revered modern composers
such as Stravinsky, and was one of London's most receptive commentators on the new
music of Schönberg, Berg, Webern and Hindemith. He regarded Artur Schnabel as
the greatest pianist of the age and became his close friend. In his late years
Turner continued a prolific and varied literary output, writing poetry, short
stories, criticism and drama. He was literary editor of the Spectator (1941-46)
and general editor of the Britain in Pictures series. He died of
cerebro-vascular disease at his Hammersmith home on 18 November 1946.
Select
Bibliography
A. D. Hope, Native Companions (Syd, 1974)
C. W. F. McKenna, W. J. Turner, Poet and Music Critic
(Gerrards Cross, Eng, 1989)
Times (London), 20, 23 Nov 1946.
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