Death of Monro's father Edward William Monro
Poet involved
What happened
Edward William Monro, a civil engineer, died in 1889, leaving Harold, then a child of Scottish parentage, to be raised with his sister Mary by their widowed mother, Arabel Sophia. The family connection to Brussels, where Harold had been born at 137 Chaussée de Charleroi in Saint-Gilles, and to England, where he was brought up after early childhood, framed this loss. The household thereafter centred on the mother who later remarried.
Literary impact
Early bereavement helped fix the elegiac and haunted domestic note that runs through Monro's interiors. Absence, uneasy rooms, and the sense that a household can survive while remaining incomplete became lasting subjects rather than passing moods.
Source: Wikipedia
