Remembering Lives of the First World War

Luke Smith, introducing the Imperial War Museum’s “Lives of the First World War” project, comments “The launch of Lives of the First World War really is just the beginning,” which sounds like something of an understatement when you consider they have no less than eight million lives to fill in.  My first acquaintance with the project has been daunting.  Although I know my grandfather’s full name and have seen it on his sign-up papers, the on-line archive has no record of this and records him only by his first initial – at least, I assume it’s him.  You do have to wonder whether the average person is going to be able to find their way through the maze of pages and instructions.  Nevertheless, full marks to the IWM for trying.

With Dan Snow as its “ambassador”, the project has a head start.  One of the most watchable presenters of television history around today, he is bound to attract public interest.  Yet once again the question looms, why do we want to carry out this exercise of remembrance?  Evidently, to paraphrase Siegfried Sassoon, we haven’t forgotten yet – and we don’t particularly want to.

I hark back to a post I made over a year ago, entitled “To commemorate or not to commemorate 1914?”  Well, the media are definitely commemorating it in no uncertain fashion, as are most societies with even a borderline interest in history and/or culture.  Even Dylan Thomas has been represented as a war poet, albeit one of the Second World War.  Although one would imagine that the public would be sick of hearing about already, interest in the subject seems to be enduring and more and more people are looking up their ancestors’ war records on-line.

It seems to me that people today – at least in the UK – feel somewhat guilty about what their ancestors experienced in past conflicts, specifically World War I, and are looking for a way to assuage their consciences by paying their respects, as well as being, quite simply, interested in what made them tick.  A spate of First World War novels and non-fiction books that have come to the fore in recent years are, I think, the key to this.  When the war was only a few decades in the past, it tended to be romanticised; people today, hardened by screen violence, nevertheless feel horror when confronted by the truth about what people went through a hundred years ago, still more so when there are photographs and newsreel films to bring home its full impact.

The swathe of TV programmes such as “Who do you think you are?” (which has spawned no less than 16 international versions, in countries from Australia to Poland) illustrates a growing interest in genealogy in general, as do the many periodicals and books on the subject, and the family history societies that exist throughout the world.  Websites such as ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk have proliferated and make the process simpler for those who are just beginning to take an interest in the subject.

Although you can add your own material to the IWM database free of charge, you have to pay a subscription in order to access official records and link them to the record for the individual you are interested in.  This is bound to be off-putting, particularly for older people who are averse to entering credit card information online.  Naturally I looked up Siegfried Sassoon and found that there are eight people already “remembering” him, so that’s eight people who have managed to follow the instructions so far.  I hope I will be able to figure it out myself in due course.  In the meantime, it would be interesting to hear from people who have already tried and even more interesting to hear whether anyone has found out anything they didn’t already know about the subject of their enquiries.

At the Grave of Henry Vaughan

April was beginning to show signs of bringing some lovely spring weather when I decided to make my third trip up to Llansantffraed, near Talybont-on-Usk, near Brecon, to visit the grave of Henry Vaughan (1621-1695).  Siegfried Sassoon visited the grave in August 1923 and it inspired him to write one of his best-known post-war poems.  I have taken that poem as the basis for a monograph I'm producing for the Cecil Woolf "War Poets Series", and I'm hoping it will be published in time for the paper, on the same subject, that I'll be giving at the British Poetry of the First World War conference at Oxford in September.  As I'm only a panel speaker, it won't be a long lecture - we are only allowed twenty minutes, which will no doubt be a relief to some of the audience - but it is going to be difficult to cram everything I would like to say into the time available.  You can regard this post as a preview.

In the beginning, I had been mystified as to what attracted Sassoon to Vaughan's work at this particular time in his life.  Even allowing for the fact that young men of the early 20th century were not only brought up to be interested in poetry but were familiar with poets that we now regard as old-fashioned and/or obscure, it seemed an odd coupling.  In 1923, Vaughan was far from being a popular poet and it was probably Edmund Blunden who introduced Sassoon to him after they both returned from the First World War and struck up their lifelong friendship.

On further investigation, I found so many parallels between Vaughan and Sassoon that I was quite overwhelmed.  Sassoon himself may not have been aware of some of these, even after he got to know Vaughan's work.  The 200-year gap between Vaughan's death and Sassoon's birth is not the obstacle I thought it was to their fellow-feeling.  Both were, in their way, war poets, though Vaughan in a much less obvious way than Sassoon.  Both came to detest the very idea of war and long for the pastoral idyll of which it had robbed them.  Both lived as country gentlemen, were great horse-lovers, and spent too much money on this favourite pastime.  Each had two brothers, one of whom died as a result of a war, and, although they were two very different wars (in Vaughan's case, a civil war as opposed to a world war), both men were very close to the action and shared some comparable experiences.  Is it any wonder that Sassoon felt drawn to Henry Vaughan?

Add to this that Vaughan was a Welshman (probably Welsh-speaking) and Sassoon had been on active service at the Western Front with the Royal Welch Fusiliers and you see an additional attraction.  Not only that, but Vaughan's grave at Llansantffraed happened to be on the way to Manorbier in Pembrokeshire, where Sassoon was heading to visit another poet friend, Walter de la Mare.  Naturally, he stopped off, in order to try to capture something of Vaughan's spirit, and he obviously succeeded; but the poem was not written during the actual visit.  It is dated around a week later, when Sassoon had taken time to reflect on the experience and refine his immediate response into a polished 14-line sonnet that encapsulated his feelings so successfully that the poem has become one of his most acclaimed.

Sassoon enthusiasts will be pleased to learn that the locals not only recognise Vaughan's reputation as one of Wales's foremost poets, albeit somewhat after the event, but that a reading of Sassoon's poem, "At the Grave of Henry Vaughan", generally forms part of the annual commemoration that takes place close to the anniversary of the older poet's birthday.  For those who wish to investigate further, there is a Vaughan Association with its own Journal and a conference coming up (see http://vaughanassociation.blogspot.co.uk/p/thevaughan-association.html)

What is War Poetry?

I went to the Spring School at Oxford University's English Faculty believing that I had a fairly good idea of the answer to this question.  Despite a general awareness that there are many different interpretations of the term "war poetry", it was not something that seemed to call for a great deal of explanation.

Dr Mark Rawlinson's introductory lecture set the scene for further investigation of the topic remarkably well, and certainly raised some unexpected questions, as well as more familiar ones.  Can a woman or a non-combatant qualify as a war poet?  Is war poetry, as Robert Graves suggested, a form of "higher" journalism?  Can war poetry change anything, whether in the short or long term?  Does war poetry still exist?  Did it, in fact, ever exist?

Wilfred Owen, with his insistence on an essential "disjunction" between war and poetry, would have viewed the description of his work as "war poetry" in a negative light.  Keith Douglas, one of the two best-known poets of World War II, suggested that there was nothing new to be said, so influential had the post-World War I "war poetry boom" (Graves's phrase) been.  Stephen Spender, on the other hand, felt that the "environment" of the second war was so different from that of the first that it made imitation pointless; the conditions were so unprecedented that they were perhaps not conducive to writing poetry at all.

The questions raised at the beginning of the conference were both reinforced by, and partly answered in, the sessions that followed - particularly those on Ivor Gurney, Isaac Rosenberg and David Jones.

Wilfred Owen saw it as the poet's task to "witness", but disputed whether it was possible for the poet to do more than "warn".  It is as though he not only believed (like Siegfried Sassoon) that poetry is a vocation, but that the poet has a God-given duty to write about war from first-hand experience.  Yet Sassoon's most-quoted poems about the war are, to my mind, essentially satirical.  He focused on particular aspects of war, those that concerned him most, and sought to highlight their absurdity.  He did make a practical attempt to oppose the war (or rather, its continuation), but he did not actively seek to do so through his poetry.  As Meg Crane pointed out in her talk, he continued to write "real" poetry alongside his more biting, virulent "anti-war" poems. An example Meg chose of the former type, "The Dragon and the Undying", is in a completely different style and shows another side to the Sassoon we have been tempted to think we know.

When it comes to realistic writing about the war, however, you cannot do much better than the work of Ivor Gurney, as Dr Philip Lancaster clearly demonstrated.  Where Rosenberg and David Jones brought an artist's eye to the war, Gurney brought a musician's; but his love of landscape (he had taken up walking to provide relief from his "neurasthenia") led him to see many parallels between his home county of Gloucestershire and parts of France.  Gurney's poems take in all aspects of the war, not just the horror of the shell bombardments, the squalor of the trenches and the psychological effects on the combatants.  He writes also of some of the war's more positive aspects, often with an unexpected humour.

This spectacularly good conference did not end with an answer to the question posed at the beginning, but it did explore so many facets of the English-language poetry of the First World War that I believe even the most learned of delegates will have taken away something fresh from the experience.  In September, we have another opportunity to hear speakers of a similar calibre at the British Poetry of the First World War Conference being run by the English Association.  Details here: http://englishassociation.ac.uk/conference

Don't miss out!

Controversy and Camaraderie

If there is one thing every member of the SSF is agreed on, it is this: the First World War should never have happened.  Whether one believes it could have been avoided, or that Britain could/should have stayed out of it, or that the outcome made little practical difference, one cannot but regret the loss of life and the atrocious conditions endured by soldiers and civilians alike in the course of those four horrible years.

Of course, the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship probably would not exist if the war hadn't happened.  Sassoon would not have been the man he was without his war experience.  Wilfred Owen might have remained undiscovered and lived to be ninety.  National borders would be substantially different, and perhaps the world would not be as comfortable as it is today (at least for most Europeans).  For all that, everyone wishes it could have been avoided.  The recent public debates as to whether it was a "necessary" war have aroused strong emotions, some of which came to the fore in the discussions that arose out of two excellent talks at Saturday's London meeting of SSF and Wilfred Owen Association members.

That was not the only controversy, either.  Following Guy Cuthbertson's interesting take on the dilemmas facing a biographer (as experienced in the creation of his new biography of Owen), a spirited discussion arose as to whether Wilfred was gay and, if so, whether it matters to our appreciation of either his personality or his poetry.  Vivien Whelpton, in her fascinating comparison of the lives and writings of Sassoon and his contemporary Richard Aldington (the latter being the subject of her new biography), looked in depth at the responses of the two poets to their war experiences.    

It is of course a shame that the room we use for our annual joint meeting at The Lamb is small and numbers have to be limited.  However, it would not be possible to run a "cheap and cheerful" event like this at a bigger venue (we have considered this from every angle, believe me) and I hope we will be able to continue to do so for many years to come.  This year will be the last time that Vanessa Davis, stalwart Secretary of the WOA, masterminds this event, and sadly Vanessa was ill and unable to attend in person.  Let us hope a successor will come forward who can equal her quiet competence and creativity in the 25 years she has served the WOA.  At least next year Vanessa will be able to relax and enjoy her lunch like the rest of the audience.

A pleasant moment during the proceedings was when Meg Crane rose to announce that a long-serving and loyal member of both societies, Phil Carne, has been unanimously selected by the SSF committee to receive the honour of SSF life membership.  This is quite different from being a "patron" of the Fellowship, a title reserved for those who have a strong personal or academic connection with Siegfried Sassoon.  Life membership is a status we invented as a way of recognising an outstanding contribution to the work of the SSF.  Though it does carry with it the small material benefit of not being obliged to pay an annual subscription, all four of our existing life members have put far more into the SSF than they could ever hope to recover in purely material terms.

The ever-modest Phil then drew the winning ticket in the prize draw; the prize, a book donated by Napier University, went to Jane Potter.  Coming away from the Empire Room, I felt that this was one of the most stimulating meetings we've had at The Lamb.  In terms of attracting and keeping new members, it also pays dividends.  Attend this (or any other event organised by either the SSF or WOA) and I can almost guarantee that you will be "hooked" - or so I'm told by members.

My expectations have been raised by something that happened as I was walking through the downstairs bar just before the meeting.  I was accosted by a couple who wanted to know what was going on upstairs.

"A meeting of the Wilfred Owen Association and the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship," said I.

As anticipated, they looked blank.

"First World War poetry," I added.

"Oh!" they replied.  "Sassoon!  Of course!  Sorry, we misheard."

A warm glow came over me.

The Faceless Ones

This blog doesn’t go in for TV and book reviews as such.  However, I do hope that anyone who is able to receive BBC2 or use iPlayer saw the 3-part drama 37 Days which focused on the diplomatic efforts to avoid (or in some cases ensure) war in the period between the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the start of the First World War.  This well-written and superbly-acted series is, to my mind, one of the best things the BBC has produced in years.

My first thought was that audience interest could not possibly be sustained through the gloomy dialogues and machinations of a few dark-suited men in wing collars and oak-panelled offices, discussing in hushed voices the complex relationships between European nations that no longer exist.  No doubt it will all have been too slow for many viewers.  It was the personalities that drew me in.  The events of the thirty-seven days leading up to war are certainly intriguing.  Most people, even at the time, will have had no idea what was going on behind the closed doors of Whitehall, and even the occupants of Whitehall could only make an educated guess at what was going on in Berlin.  Putting together a drama like this must have entailed an enormous amount of research, and much of the material must have been gleaned from memoirs as well as from official papers that were not released until many years later.  That the actions of the few affect the lives of millions is a truism, but that is what happened here.

Most people are familiar with the Churchills, Lloyd Georges and Asquiths who were at the forefront of British government activity, but these characters took a comparative back seat to Sir Edward Grey, on whose shoulders the burden of trying to avert war fell.  Grey, Britain’s longest-serving Foreign Secretary, was in his fifties at the time, a Liberal politician from an aristocratic family, educated at Winchester and Balliol (where he gained only a third-class degree).  In 1885, aged only 23, he became the youngest MP at Westminster.  His first wife died in 1906 (in a riding accident); his second, whom he would not marry until 1922, was the socialite and writer, Pamela, Lady Glenconner, mother of the war poet Edward Wyndham “Bim” Tennant and – of course – of Stephen Tennant.  Grey thus became Stephen’s stepfather; Bim was killed on the Somme in 1916.  Siegfried Sassoon met Grey after the war, through Stephen, and remarked on his "perfect simplicity and kindness".  However, if the portrayal of him in 37 Days is at all correct, Gray surely must have felt a burden of guilt left over from his misjudgements of the situation on the European continent in 1914.

Another, more obscure, personality brought to life in the TV drama was the trade unionist John Burns, a native of Battersea and one of the first working-class men to become a member of the government.  Burns, despite his history of involvement in militant industrial actions during the 1880s, was the only member of the Cabinet to resign in protest at Britain’s decision to participate in the Great War.  At the time, I am sure, most of the public would not have been in sympathy with his action, principled though it was.

Almost more interesting than the British politicians were their opposite numbers in Berlin.  Enough has been written and said about Kaiser Wilhelm II’s troubled personality to save me having to say anything about it here; but the portrayal of the emperor by German actor Rainer Sellien was riveting as well as scary.  Equally accomplished were the performances of Ludger Pistor as the sophisticated German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, and of Bernhard Schutz as fiery General Helmuth von Moltke; these two contrasting personalities, almost guaranteed never to be friends, worked together to ensure that German pride was maintained in the face of a somewhat tricky political situation.

Many of us have been sceptical about the content of some of the centenary programmes so far offered by the BBC.  Up to now, however, they have delivered several worthwhile documentaries as well as this excellent drama.  Let's just hope they can keep it up.

Craiglockhart - Past and Present

I was very fortunate, recently, to be invited to attend a dinner at the Rivers Suite on Napier University's Craiglockhart Campus, hosted by the Vice-Chancellor.  It was the first opportunity I have had to view the War Poets Collection since it was set up in late 2005, and indeed my first visit to Craiglockhart.  Approaching after dark, it occurred to me that the facade of the "Craiglockhart Hydropathic" (just about all that is left of the original building) would have looked somewhat forbidding, had it not been for the well-lit footpath.  My instinct, naturally, was to try to enter by the front door, but this is now in use only as a fire exit, and official visitors gain access by going around what appears to be the side of the building, where a more modern but equally impressive entrance is to be found - the famous "egg".

Craiglockhart came into the possession of Napier University (then a technical college) in 1984, and the later conversion of the building to house the university's Business School was somewhat controversial.  The War Poets Collection, located in the original entrance hall, was launched shortly after Professor Alistair McCleery had been a guest speaker at a joint annual meeting of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship and the Wilfred Owen Association, giving an inspiring lecture entitled "The Doctors, the Poets and the Gardener".  Those who were present will, I'm sure, recall the occasion; for those who missed it, there may be a future opportunity.  More of that later.  Suffice it to say that the SSF played a major role in supporting the exhibition, something of which we are very proud.

Archivist Catherine Walker, though now semi-retired, is devoted to the collection, which she continues to manage on a part-time basis, and was on hand to explain the exhibits to guests and to ensure they all signed the visitors' book.  Because of the limited space available for the exhibition, it is not possible to have all 600 accessioned items on display simultaneously, and the contents of the display cases is regularly rotated.  So, if you are planning to visit and want to see something in particular, do check beforehand.  You can find contact details here: http://www2.napier.ac.uk/warpoets/contact.htm 

I wrote recently about The Hydra, the internal publication briefly edited by Wilfred Owen.  Catherine tells me that only one issue of the magazine now remains unrecovered.  If any of my readers should happen to be hiding issue no 6 of the "New Series", she wants it!  In the meantime, donations of appropriate items are welcomed by the curators and will be treated lovingly and made available to those with an interest in the work and experiences of Sassoon, Owen, and other war poets.

The dinner which followed our tour of the exhibition was given by Professor Andrea Nolan, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Napier, who discussed a range of challenges and opportunities currently facing the university.  It is clear that the governing body sees the war poets' connection with Craiglockhart as a major "plus" in its attempts to raise the profile of the university and it seems to me that this building and its history are regarded with particular affection and respect.  Following Professor Nolan's introductory talk, Professor McCleery (who had "risen from his sickbed" especially to be present) gave a concise exposition of the importance of the War Poets Collection before we dined on a meal that showed off the expertise of the university's catering department to great advantage.  I was seated between Dr Graham Forbes, Chair of the University Court, and Mr Iain McIntosh, a university dean, both of whom expressed great interest in the work of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship and showed considerable knowledge of the subject of war poetry. Following the meal, Lady Balfour of Burleigh (better known as historian and biographer Janet Morgan) described her own vision of how the war poets fitted into Napier's future as well as its past.

The SSF and the WOA have made a joint bid to host the 2017 annual conference of the Alliance of Literary Societies at Craiglockhart, as part of our recognition of the centenary of the meeting between our two poets. The intention is to use part of the Rivers Suite and adjacent lecture theatres as a venue for this conference, and there are plans for a coach to travel up to Edinburgh from London, stopping en route at Sassoon- and Owen-related occasions.  If you have four nights to spare, this could be a memorable little holiday, on a par with our unforgettable visit to Ieper in 2010.

Ferguson versus Gove versus Portillo

Niall Ferguson is not very popular with serious historians these days.  His recent comments on the possible alternative outcomes of the First World War have resulted in a flurry of indignation, not to mention derision (a Linkedin group discussion on the subject is entitled “...And now for the comedy turn”).  It is not, in itself, Ferguson’s statement that the war was the “biggest error in modern history” that has caused such outrage, but his sheer arrogance in thinking he could have done any better in the context of contemporary political and military thinking.

“Britain could have lived with a German victory, “ said Ferguson in a TV documentary  based on his own book The Pity of War (you would think titles borrowed from the best-known lines of Wilfred Owen’s work might be starting to appear somewhat hackneyed by now, but Professor Ferguson’s publishers must have thought it was a really snappy title).  The basis of his argument is the economic situation in which the UK found itself after the war.  It wasn’t in the “national interest” for Britain to join the war when it did, he says; by this he seems to mean our financial interests: “you can pay too high a price for upholding the notion of honour,” he adds.

The book was actually written as long ago as 1999, and an Amazon reviewer comments that, had it not been written by an Oxford academic, “you could be forgiven for thinking the book was out for a few cheap headlines by contradicting almost every accepted orthodoxy about the First World War”.  The author's views have not, however, changed in the meantime.  At first sight, Ferguson’s arguments appear to cut right across the much-criticised comments of his good friend, Education Secretary Michael Gove, who has been accused of wanting schools to present the war to their pupils as an “old-fashioned tale of goodies and baddies”.

It is perhaps typical of Niall Ferguson that he openly condemns the views of other Oxbridge historians on the teaching of the subject as being somehow not in touch with the real world.  He dismisses Richard Evans and David Priestland as "authors of rather dry works on, respectively, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia".  His own status as a presenter of "popular" history programmes on television means, apparently, that he is both a superior historian and a better teacher.  If only Michael Gove had taken "the advice I gave him", says Ferguson, the changes to the National Curriculum would have been much more effective. 

I am under no illusions about my own status in this debate.  I came late to understanding, or even being very interested in, the First World War, and my appreciation of the military and political considerations remains limited.  However, my personal impression of Professor Ferguson is that he sees pretty much everything in highly materialistic terms, regarding economic success as the benchmark of a civilised society, and that words like “pity” are not part of his everyday vocabulary.   On the contrary, the Protestant work ethic is his touchstone.  It is interesting to see this apparent clash between one conservative thinker and another, but when you throw a third into the equation, the result is more interesting still.  Whilst Ferguson makes his appeal to the masses, former Tory Cabinet minister Michael Portillo has been widely praised for his radio series analysing the causes of the First World War.

Portillo, a fascinating character whose style of presentation always seems to me to be imbued with a great humanity, used the opportunity given him by Radio 4 to explode many myths about the outbreak of war. Taking a copy of The Times from mid-1913, he examines contemporary news stories in such a way as to challenge received wisdom on the context of the war.  A reviewer - without once mentioning Niall Ferguson's name - points out that Portillo's attractiveness as a presenter is partly that he is never "assertive"; he is aware of alternative theses and does not try to present himself as omniscient just because he has a first in History from Oxford and has presented popular television documentaries. Perhaps, in spite of his own political record, his family background (in case there is still anyone who doesn't know, his father was a Spanish Republican who opted out of military service because his brothers were all fighting for the Nationalists) gives him more right than most to comment on the political context of the wars of the twentieth century. You can still catch this series as a podcast by going to the BBC's website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r41913

We have not heard the last of these arguments, I'm sure, but an interesting little column in The Guardian points out that German society does not share Britain's obsession with the war and its causes, but simply recognises the events of 1914-1918 as a disaster that had lasting repercussions.

Read what I mean here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/13/tories-first-world-war-michael-gove-germany

And if I don't get some comments on this post, I shall be very disappointed!