Exceedingly Good Poems

Were it not for the wonderful Mr Michael Wood (how come he hasn't been knighted yet?) the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rudyard Kipling might have passed me by altogether.  In his column in this month's BBC History magazine, Michael points out that "writers are made by their times", an astute observation from someone whose first occupation is not literature - although who can forget his wonderful documentary series on Shakespeare?

Quite rightly, he points out the dichotomy between Kipling's two sides - as both champion and critic of the British Empire.  Siegfried Sassoon's response to Kipling's work was equally ambivalent.  He certainly admired Kipling as a writer, but became self-conscious about this as he gradually realised how closely associated the latter was becoming with Establishment and Empire.  It was by now recognised that his Just So Stories, which so many of his critics had enjoyed as children, represented the colonial lifestyle that was already not merely out of fashion, but had fallen out of favour with some - though it would be many decades before it died out altogether.

One thing Siegfried Sassoon and Rudyard Kipling had in common was that they lived in the south-east of England at the same time, though Kipling did not move there until 1897, having previously lived in India, South Africa and the United States, as well as other parts of the UK.  Eventually, in 1902, he and his American wife Carrie settled permanently at Bateman’s, a Jacobean house near Burwash, now in East Sussex.  The house and gardens now belong to the National Trust and are open to the public, and come highly recommended (by me).  This was Kipling's home until his death in 1936.

John Kipling

Kipling's son John would have been four or five years old when the family moved into Bateman's.  He was born at their previous home, "The Elms" in Rottingdean (also in Sussex).  John's story is widely known, having been adapted into a play, My Boy Jack.  Kipling's attitude towards Jack is seen by many as having brought about the young man's death, and this outcome is generally regarded as a just punishment for his father.  Severely short-sighted, the boy was turned down at least twice for military service before Kipling senior used his influence to get him a commission in the Irish Guards, aged only seventeen.  He lasted about a month at the Western Front, before going missing in September 1915.

As for Rudyard Kipling, his activities as a government propagandist made him unpopular with liberals and the literary fraternity, even before the war.  When a nervous Sassoon met Rupert Brooke for the first time, he made the mistake of assuming that Brooke would share this opinion, and commented (according to his own account of the occasion) that Kipling's poetry was "terribly tub-thumping stuff".  Brooke disagreed, pointing to "Cities and Thrones and Powers", which Siegfried was forced to admit he had never read.

By a strange coincidence, Kipling died, aged 70, two days before King George V, who was six months his senior.  For some years, Kipling had been writing the King's most important speeches, and his 1922 poem, "The King's Pilgrimage", describes a visit made by George V to the battlefields of Europe to visit the graves of those killed in the service of Empire during the War.  Jack's grave was not, of course, among them, as his body had never been identified.  Kipling was by now a member of the Imperial War Graves Commission, perhaps helping to assuage some of his own paternal grief by writing inscriptions to commemorate other men's sons.  "Known unto God" (on the graves of unidentified soldiers) and "The Glorious Dead" (on the Cenotaph at Whitehall) are just two of the phrases he coined.

I would not dream of passing myself off as a Kipling expert, but my own feelings towards his work were considerably softened by Meg Crane's reading of his wonderful short story, "The Gardener", to the coachload of Sassoonites who travelled to Ypres in 2010.  If you were among them, I know you will remember it too.  If you haven't read it, try to do so and you will understand why I will stop at that. 

A Tank Named Deborah

This summer some of us will once again be enjoying a War Poets' Tour guided by the omniscient Vivien Whelpton and the indefatigable Clive Harris, this time to the Cambrai region of France, forever associated in many people's minds with the first major use of tanks in battle during the First World War.

Siegfried Sassoon does not seem to have been a fan of tanks, if his poem "Blighters" is anything to go by.  What he actually seems to have objected to is the response of the non-combatant British public to the success of the new weapon.  His use of the word "Blighters" is a pun on the term "Blighty" to refer to his home country, where these people sit comfortably ensconced in a cinema, watching a propaganda film that was to cause a sensation.

Although I don't particularly love tanks in themselves, I am looking forward to Cambrai for a particular reason.  A couple of years back, while surfing the web in search of further information about Edward Horner (see Philip Guest’s article in Siegfried's Journal vol 21 for details of the man whose equestrian statue adorns the parish church at Mells where Siegfried Sassoon is buried), I came across a snippet that intrigued me.  

A gentleman named Philippe Gorcynski had, it seemed, excavated a tank that had been abandoned during World War I near the village of Flesquieres, and was hoping to make it the centrepiece of a new museum.  Horner himself was killed in the Battle of Cambrai (20-21 November 1917), aged 28. I have heard him referred to as "the real-life 'Downton Abbey' WWI hero", whatever that may mean.

“Deborah” (or, more prosaically, D51), was excavated in 1998 by a team of archaeologists from Arras, and now resides in a barn awaiting promotion to future glory.  There it stands on a base constructed of granite cobbles from the streets of the old town of Cambrai.  The tank itself - or herself, if you like – has been designated a Historical French Monument.  During the battle, Deborah was attached to No. 12 Section of the 12th Company, commanded by Captain G Nixon.  Three months before the battle, the tank had already been damaged during an action in Flanders and subsequently repaired.  

As the troops entered Flesquieres, they were forced back by sniper and machine-gun fire, and Deborah was put out of action by field guns.  2/Lt Frank Heap of the 4th [D] Btn. Tank Corps, leading the tank crew, received the MC for his efforts on that day; five of his eight-man crew were killed.  The following day, when it was discovered by Scottish infantry, four of the men were buried next to the tank, the other some distance away (the bodies were later interred at Flesquieres Hill British Cemetery).

Some time after the battle, Deborah was pulled 900 yards from her resting-place by other British tanks, and was buried in a hole dug by the Germans before the battle.  The tank was then used as a shelter until the Germans re-took the village in March 1918. For more details of the research behind the discovery and restoration of the tank, it is well worth having a look at the website of the museum project: http://www.tank-cambrai.com/english/association/the-museum-project.php 

My husband has been a great tank enthusiast since his youth, so I felt obliged to appraise him of my findings.  His comment: “How can I fail to go and visit a tank called Deborah?  It combines the two great loves of my life.”

If you would like to join us, you may still be able to get a place on the tour: http://www.battle-honours.eu/WFA-Poets-Tour  Hope to see you there!

The Road to Wrexham

Trying to plan the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship's annual conference is always a challenge.  Unlike most other societies, the SSF does not have a permanent “base”.  This is great from the point of view of attracting new members and giving everyone the opportunity to attend events.   It’s a boon for those who don’t live in London and the South-East of England.  However, it does lead to a certain unpredictability in terms of attendances, which in itself leads to difficulty in setting prices, choosing a venue, ordering catering, finding accommodation, and all the other little things that have to be borne in mind at conference time.  I often have cause to be grateful that our annual conference is essentially only a one-day event (though, over the years, it has grown into a fun weekend for those involved, with plenty of opportunity for social contact and visits to places of interest).

Wrexham, although fairly central in geographical terms, is considered by many to be out in the wilds, simply because it is not located at a motorway junction and the rail journey from London requires a change of train.  Those who think the journey is too much trouble might do well to recall that Siegfried Sassoon loved to travel up there to see his friends Bobbie and Dorothy Hanmer.   Of course, the rail service in the UK was at that time far superior to what it became after Dr Beeching got his hands on it; nevertheless, it would have been a long journey for Siegfried, and not a particularly comfortable one.

Bobbie and Dorothy's family, the Hanmers, are a great name in the history of Wales.  One of them was actually - albeit briefly - Princess of Wales, if you accept that Margaret Hanmer's husband, Owain Glyndwr, had a right to the title he assumed around 1400.   The Hanmers, although English, were well integrated into the border community, as much at home in Flintshire as they were in Shropshire; the village of Hanmer lies within the present County Borough of Wrexham.  A baronetcy was created in 1620 and survives to this day.  That Siegfried knew the area is confirmed by his decision to call his regiment "The Flintshire Fusiliers" in his fictionalised autobiography.

The Hanmers are not, however, the main reason for choosing Wrexham as our next conference venue.  The fact is that Wrexham is the location of the Royal Welch Fusiliers' regimental archive, and this year is the centenary of Sassoon joining the regiment.   Although Siegfried chose the RWF partly because Bobbie Hanmer had already enlisted in it, he did not see much of him afterwards; a Carmarthenshire clergyman's son, David Thomas, quickly took Bobbie's place in his affections, and you can learn more about David's background in an article that will feature in the forthcoming edition of Siegfried's Journal.  The regiment also brought Sassoon into contact with another younger man who would make a significant impact on his life and work - Robert Graves.

Like Sassoon, Graves was English, but he had closer links with Wales, where his family had settled.  Although very different in temperament, Sassoon and Graves were brought together, initially by a love of literature, and compared notes on their approach to writing verse on the subject of war, with the already battle-hardened Graves telling Sassoon he would soon change his mind and abandon his conventional patriotic stance.  It was Sassoon's humility in admitting he had been wrong that eventually enabled him to become a more effective war poet than Graves.

You will have noted that Sassoon did not join the Fusiliers until the spring of 1915.  Those unfamiliar with his life story may be wondering what he was doing in the meantime.  He had spent the period between the outbreak of war the previous year and the receipt of his commission in the RWF as a trooper in the Sussex Yeomanry, a role that had at first appealed to him because of his love of horses and riding.  It turned out to be a bad move because the Yeomanry did not get called to the Front.  While exercising his officer's horse in October 1914, Siegfried fell and broke his arm, and it was while laid up that he made the decision to seek a commission in a regiment that was already actively involved in the war.

It has often been commented on that the Royal Welch Fusiliers could boast among its officers and men a disproportionate number of notable writers, the best-known (apart from Graves and Sassoon) being David Jones, Llewelyn Wyn Griffith, Frank Richards (not the creator of Billy Bunter) and the Welsh-language poet Ellis Humphrey Evans, better known by his bardic name of "Hedd Wyn".  Finally, there was the medical officer J. C. Dunn, whose memoir, The War The Infantry Knew, is considered a minor masterpiece of its kind.

At the time of writing, I cannot say exactly which aspects of Sassoon's career in the RWF are going to be most strongly highlighted at the conference, except that Sassoon's relationship with Graves will definitely be featured, as will the topic of Great War fiction.  For those who are interested in the military side of things, there will certainly be something to learn, and at the same time I can assure those who are not remotely interested in the technicalities of war that there will be plenty of literary talk to keep you awake!

Another London Walk

Many Sassoon enthusiasts will be unaware that, in 1903, while a student at Marlborough, Siegfried was confirmed in the Church of England at St Paul’s Cathedral in London.  He was aged around 17, and the ceremony was carried out by Arthur Winnington-Ingram, Bishop of London from 1901 until 1939.  A strong supporter of the war effort, Winnington-Ingram was even accused by Asquith of xenophobia, and is likely to be the bishop referred to in Sassoon’s poem “They” – which stops short of actively criticising the bishop’s conduct but nevertheless mocks his response to the war.

For those who, like myself, are not Anglicans or Catholics, "confirmation" is the ceremony of initiation into the church.  Only after confirmation is one entitled to take communion, hence the experience is normally reserved until the candidate is old enough to understand what is going on.   Being confirmed into one denomination also tends to remove any need for a further confirmation if the person changes denomination; thus Sassoon was “received” into the Roman Catholic church in 1957, rather than being confirmed a second time.

I cannot think that the ceremony meant a great deal to the teenage Siegfried.  Perhaps he already had doubts about the strength of his Christian faith, as many teenagers do, but he must have gone along with it readily enough.  He was not, at least at that stage, a natural rebel, and probably conformed to peer pressure.  His friend Stephen Gordon Harbord, of Colwood Park, was the son and grandson of Anglican clergyman, but we can tell from the way Sassoon writes about “Stephen Colwood” and his father in Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man that he was not greatly impressed by church services.

Most of what I know about Siegfried’s confirmation originates from our Vice-Chair, Christian Major.  Christian, a dyed-in-the-wool Sassoon admirer, has taken the trouble to research numerous London locations associated with our hero, even going to the lengths of getting himself elected to that worthy institution, the Reform Club.  As luck would have it, Christian's office is close to St Paul's, and, as host of our recent SSF committee meeting, he volunteered to take us on a little excursion around the surrounding streets to try to locate the spot where the Daily Herald offices stood, in John Carpenter Street (named after a 15th-century Town Clerk of London, not the better-known director of horror films).

The offices where Siegfried worked in 1919 seem to have disappeared now, and I've had no success in finding an image of them.  He would have travelled up to town twice a week from Weirleigh in Kent, where he had returned to live with his mother after his brief period of "independent study" in post-war Oxford.  In Siegfried's Journey, he describes his time at the Herald in his usual self-deprecating style.  The paper, at that time, was run by George Lansbury, later leader of the Labour Party.  (For those of you who like celebrity-spotting, Lansbury was the grandfather of both Angela Lansbury and Oliver Postgate.)  Not all Sassoon's friends approved of the appointment, and his mother was certainly no admirer of the Herald.  

Nevertheless, Siegfried was paid £5 a week for his job as literary editor, and the sense of liberation he enjoyed at becoming self-supporting (probably the opposite of what most of us feel after holding down a job for a few years) led him to write his most famous poem, "Everyone Sang".  Among the budding writers he would encourage during his brief tenure were W J Turner (with whom he would share a house at Tufton Street) and Edmund Blunden, who was to become a lifelong friend.  The reviewers he employed included Robert Graves, Robert Nichols and, famously, E M Forster.  Another new acquaintance was H M Tomlinson, a friend of Thomas Hardy; Tomlinson would remain within Sassoon's social and professional circle for many years to come.

We rounded off our walk with a visit to the Cheshire Cheese, a historic public house with which Siegfried would certainly have been familiar.  Rebuilt following the Great Fire of London, the pub has been frequented in its time by Goldsmith, Johnson and Dickens, and was the home of the "Rhymers' Club", where W B Yeats met up with such worthies as Oscar Wilde.  Sadly, the club was already defunct by Sassoon's time.  Nevertheless, it seemed an appropriate spot to conclude our walk.

The Gate of the Year

"And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: “Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.”

And he replied:

“Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.”

The correct name of the poem is "God Knows", and it was written by a British teacher called Minnie Louise Haskins in 1908.  The reason it is so well-known is that it was the text selected by King George VI for his Christmas radio broadcast, towards the end of 1939.  It is generally felt that it gave heart to the nation at a time of great fear and uncertainty.

The King's Christmas broadcast was a relatively new thing.  His father, King George V, had begun it in 1932; George V himself had been resisting the idea of speaking to his people through the wireless for nine years before finally giving in to the BBC's repeated requests.  Like many of his speeches, the 1932 address was written by none other than Rudyard Kipling.  The King had been nervous about the occasion, but was persuaded to continue in later years by the positive response from his audience, especially when he came to see it as a way of communicating with the furthest reaches of his Empire, an Empire in which political cracks had already begun to appear.  

"It may be that the future will lay upon us more than one stern test," said George V, prophetically.  Many in his kingdom believed that a second war with Germany was inevitable, sooner or later, but few foresaw that it was his second son, Prince Albert, then merely the Duke of York, who would be the one to make the first royal Christmas broadcast of that war.  Albert, as most people were aware, suffered from a speech impediment that made it difficult for him to perform in public, and no one could have imagined that he would be the one to make the most memorable such broadcast of the twentieth century.  

King George VI, as Albert became in 1936, was not a natural leader or a man of great intellectual gifts.  He did, however, have several things his charming older brother (the former Prince of Wales who briefly reigned as King Edward VIII) had lacked; one of these was a family.  The words were first suggested to him by his wife Elizabeth, and the poem was a favourite of hers and of her elder daughter's.  It was not written with a particular occasion in mind, and made no reference to war, yet it captured the imagination of the public, making the poem known to a global audience as well as being a morale-booster for Britain.  The King, who had given his support to Neville Chamberlain's peacemaking attempts, must have clutched gratefully at the ready-made pep talk, with Kipling having died in 1936 and no longer being available to provide such memorable lines for his use.

At New Year, I always think of those words from the 1939 speech (though of course it was long before I was born) and remember my parents and grandparents telling me how they found them an inspiration at the beginning of a long and terrible war that would cause even a military veteran like Sassoon to despair of humanity.  I have no doubt that Siegfried, traditionalist that he was, listened to the broadcast, and I cannot imagine how he felt, seeing Europe once again split apart by armed conflict. Yet I cannot help thinking that he would have been impressed by the way a few lines from a minor poet could move millions.  

Looking forward

For many people around the world, 2014 has been a year they would rather forget.  That is true in my own case, and I know it is the same for some members of the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship.  I am getting to an age where attendance at funerals has become a regular event.  In my immediate circle of friends, illness, infirmity and death are a frequent topic of conversation, and I have lost several friends and acquaintances this year.  For others, even the young, there are different problems - getting and keeping a job, establishing personal relationships, looking after children, and simply finding time to do things.

Before this turns into "Thought for the Day", I thought I would use this post to remind our members and friends that they are not alone.  So many friendships have been forged through the Fellowship over the years that I feel its very existence has been an active force for good as well as a way of giving enjoyment to others.  Siegfried Sassoon was a man who had many friends.  He wasn't always lovable (and he knew it), but he was, nevertheless, at the centre of a network of friendships that extended around the world even in those days when writing letters was the normal method of contact between friends; few people had access to motor cars, and international telephone calls were almost impossible.

As with other kinds of social group - sports clubs, reading groups, universities, you name it - a literary society can provide a support network for people with similar interests.  In our case, the age range, gender distribution and geographical spread may mean that the bond is less obvious to an outsider, but it is no less strong for this.  I know that many of our members have undergone personal crises in the last few years, and that several have found a route back to normality by participating in SSF events, where they are able to be themselves without the pressures of work or study and do not have to worry about being judged or compared with other individuals.  When I find myself in personal difficulty, the other members of the SSF committee are often the first I turn to outside my immediate family.

Although this is true, to an extent, of other literary societies, it makes particular sense when you consider what Siegfried himself went through in the course of his life.  As a young man, he found himself catapulted into a military environment and thence to one of the bleakest, most horrifying landscapes anyone can possibly imagine.  No one could have been prepared for entering a war zone. our knowledge of what participants in the First World War endured is not just an eye-opener for people today; it shocks and terrifies us.  This is undoubtedly one of the reasons the war is being commemorated so vigorously.

A few years after the war, Sassoon went through a period of terrible depression (as did many of his fellow soldiers, such as Richard Aldington), unable to shake off the memory of lost comrades and what he now felt had been a pointless conflict.   He was also suffering from writer’s block, a subject Neil Brand has dealt with so effectively in his play Between the Lines.  Romantic and/or physical relationships with other men failed to bring emotional fulfilment, making it difficult for him even to take pleasure in his eventual success as a prose writer.  The legacy that enabled him to purchase Heytesbury House also enabled him to afford the lifestyle he relished, but his marriage, though it brought great happiness and the son he had longed for, did not last.

In his later years, Siegfried Sassoon seems to have found what he was looking for in the Roman Catholic faith, and he certainly met his end with equanimity, if Dom Philip Jebb’s account of their last conversation is anything to go by.  Philip and his fellow monk Dom Sebastian (both of whom have been lost to us this year) bore witness that Sassoon’s conversion to Catholicism was more than a whim, and Sebastian insisted that it was the result of a mystical experience.  Perhaps it is only through such an experience that any of us can hope to achieve the belief in an after-life that makes the last years of one’s life tolerable.  We can, however, find considerable fulfilment in other activities.

It is medically proven that exercise can reduce the effects of depression, and this, I think, is where Siegfried’s early interest in sport paid dividends later in his life.   It is no accident that Wilfred Owen found him preparing for a round of golf when he went to his room to introduce himself.  Professor Alistair McCleery recounted to us, some years ago, the story of the doctors, the poets and the gardener, as evidence of how physical activity can help in this respect.  Another “natural remedy” for depression is involvement in group activities that take one’s mind off one’s troubles, and this certainly works for me when I attend literary events, forgetting myself entirely as I chat to people with similar interests.

Once again, I’m not suggesting that the SSF should be seen as some kind of self-help group, but I recognise that for many of us it is a factor in fending off the kind of negative state of mind that Sassoon so often found himself in.  The fact that we relate to him so strongly indicates that we are individuals with certain sensibilities – not better or worse than, for example, fans of Jane Austen, but with a style and character of our own, one that responds to “our” author, “our” poet, “our” Siegfried Sassoon.

Anniversaryitis

In between blogging, I came across another blog - ironically belonging to Charles Mundye, one of the speakers we've booked for next year's AGM - that more or less summarised what I had been thinking. Charles picks up on a phrase used by Patrick McGuinness, "this past business" .  He was referring to the "anniversary culture" with which we seem to be currently beset, and you can read his views on the Dylan Thomas centenary here: https://theconversation.com/remembering-dylan-thomas-our-frenzied-anniversary-culture-26081

Anniversaries are going to be the in thing for the next few years.  Perhaps people will be so glad to see the back of the First World War centenary that they will really get stuck in; alternatively, they may not want anything to do with such commemorations.  What does it actually mean, when you come to think of it?  The First World War is still what it is or was, regardless of how many years have passed since it began.

I think the reason we celebrate – or at least commemorate - centenaries is simply that a nice round number like 100 focuses our minds on the amount of time that has passed since a certain event and helps us to see it in historical perspective.  Members of my local history society have pointed out that next year, 2015, will bring opportunities to mark several significant historical events – the 800^th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta, for example, and the 200^thanniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.  In some cases, these events had little long-term impact.  The Battle of Agincourt, for instance, which took place 600 years ago next October, was a major event in the context of the Hundred Years’ War, but it only served to stave off the inevitable outcome for a few years.  We are interested in it mainly because an army of English and Welsh men defeated the French when the odds were against them; we don’t celebrate the battle of Formigny, an equally decisive victory for the French in the same war.

Centenaries and multi-centenaries are cropping up so often these days that it is easy to miss them.  Did anyone do anything to mark the 100^th anniversary of the death of French one-hit-wonder novelist Alain-Fournier in September, for example?  If so, I missed out, which is a pity, as I am a great admirer of Le Grand Meaulnes (I can’t describe it to you, you’d have to read it for yourself).  What about the 200^th anniversary of the death of another, rather different, Frenchman, the Marquis de Sade?  I don’t recall hearing anything about it.  Is that also because foreigners' anniversaries are considered to be less deserving of recognition than those with direct relevance for British history?  I think it probably is.

Many of next year’s celebrations and commemorations will be of literary interest – Alun Lewis will be among those not present to see his 100^th birthday celebrated, and Anthony Trollope would be 200 years old if he had not died in 1882.  The Trollope Society will of course be hosting the annual conference of the Alliance of Literary Societies in York next year.   The following year, it will be the turn of the Brontë Society to host the conference, in recognition of the bicentenary of the birth of the family's most illustrious member, Charlotte.

Other forthcoming literary centenaries, not surprisingly, have to do with the First World War.  We could note the 100^th anniversary of the deaths of the poet Julian Grenfell and his brother Gerald.  Rupert Brooke, Charles Sorley also died in 1915.  At least the lesser poet Roland Leighton, best known as the fiancé of Vera Brittain, will have the centenary of his death noticed, thanks to the new film adaptation of Testament of Youth which is to go on general release in January.

We don’t have to limit ourselves to commemorating death, though.  We could perhaps give a nod to the founding of the Welsh Guards; and our annual conference in September will be primarily concerned with Siegfried Sassoon’s career in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, which he joined in 1915. It was also in May 1915 that Canadian medic John McCrae wrote his timeless poem, “In Flanders Fields”, and I think we can be certain that the museum in Ypres that bears the poem’s name will be doing something to celebrate that event - even though it's run by Belgians.