JOAN BARTON

 

JOAN BARTON
POET AND BOOKSELLER
By
BARRY VAN-ASTEN

‘Ghost dogs in the vanishing gardens’

[Lot 304: Various Books]

 

 

Having recently discovered the poetry of Joan Barton, I have become captivated by her work and find it inconceivable that she is not more widely known*. Her poems, like that other great poet, John Betjeman, seem to capture the fading essence of middle class sensibilities, the grandeur and decline of the once great mansions; there is a real sense of melancholy for that old world which following the First World War was eroding away and all but disappeared after the second war; the romance and mystery that existed before the swallowing-up of small villages and the strangling effects of the motor car; the abundance of concrete tower blocks devoid of character and architectural beauty…nature tamed and eventually despoiled and polluted. Barton’s world is that of Betjeman’s suburban sprawl and Larkin’s commonplace book-lined sanctuary, and that place that calls to us seemingly from afar – the cemetery, where we encounter the ‘unloved unvisited dead’. But Barton was not born into a wealthy middle-class family; life for the Barton’s was hard, although they were certainly not poor. Joan tells us in Women Writers Talking (1983) interviewed by Janet Todd (p. 197) that her ‘parents never had a bean, but people were so stupid then – they tried to keep up a face. I was the eldest of three children and was terribly jealous of my brother who was only about fourteen months younger and important because he was a boy. I’ve been very influenced by this jealousy. My sister was nearly five years younger than I was and very pretty; I was always the plain, difficult one. I don’t think Joan will ever get married, was my mother’s attitude. I was fairly, though not extremely, close to my sister – she died when she was fifty-one. There’s no one left.’

Joan Barton was born on 6^th February 1908, at Melville Road, Redland, Bristol. She was the first-born child of her parents, Francis Henry Barton (1871-1951) and Eleanor Rose Padmore (1877-1951) who were married at St. Saviours Church in Bristol on 24^th May 1904 (1). Her father, Francis or ‘Frank’ as he liked to be known, was the son of Henry Francis Barton (1840-1914) and Elizabeth Lyon (1834-1914) who were married in Clifton on 31^st October 1861 (2); Frank was a picture-frame maker, as can be seen in the 1901 census and at the time of his marriage four years later, his occupation is given as ‘picture dealer’ living at 12, Collingwood Road, Bristol.

Joan’s mother, Eleanor Rose Padmore was born in Clifton in 1877 (she was Christened at Tyndall’s Park, St. Mary’s, Gloucestershire on 7^th January that year) and she is the daughter of John Padmore (1839-1923) who was born in Eyton, Shropshire, and Julia Powell (1840-1920), born Albrighton, Shropshire (and Christened there on 31^st May 1840); John Padmore, who was a Station Master at Clifton Down Railway Station from 1874-1899, and Julia were married in Kings Norton in 1863 (3)

The following year after Joan’s birth, on 17^th April 1909, Joan’s brother, Gerald Francis Barton was born (4) and the last child, Joan’s sister, Olive Sylvia Barton, was born in Bristol in 1912 (5).

Joan’s father, Frank, seems to have been a successful art dealer and picture-frame maker, and was the Managing Director of the firm, Barton & Long, Ltd. which had their premises at 84, Whiteladies Road, Redland, Bristol. On the ground floor was the little gallery which exhibited pictures – in March-April 1916 they exhibited the war cartoons of Dutch artist Louis Raemaekers (1869-1956). I have found business advertisements from 1906 relating to the gallery and 1916 for Barton & Long, art dealers who specialised in picture framing and making, prints, stencilling, gilding, restoring and artist’s colourmen. The ads continued up until the premises at 84, Whiteladies Road became The Clifton Bookshop on 14^th June 1965; the bookshop was originally the book department of Harold Hockey, Ltd. of 170-174 Whiteladies Road which moved to the new address; the old address continued to supply stationary.

‘I went to a little dame school and then a council school which was terrifying.’ [Women Writers Talking. p. 197] In 1919, aged 11, Joan won a scholarship to the distinguished Colston’s Girls’ School, Cheltenham Road, Montpelier, Bristol, where she had a ‘marvellous English teacher’ and became ‘Head Girl’; the school was governed by the Scottish Headmistress, Miss Beatrice Margaret Sparks (1877-1953) of St. Hugh’s College, Oxford (1894-97) who had been Headmistress of Wisbech High School from 1905-1913, and then Colsten’s from 1914 to September 1922 when she became Principle of Cheltenham Ladies’ College until retiring in 1936. Colsten’s was then governed by Headmistress, Miss Helen Drew of Oxford High School and Newnham College, Oxford who had been the Head of Newark High School for girls in Nottingham. In the nineteen-twenties Joan had already begun to write poetry, some of which would be printed in the school magazine (6). Joan was offered a place at St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, to read English but she was unable to find a scholarship so she began a degree course at Bristol University, which she loathed. During her second year, Joan became ill, suffering with her thyroid and was admitted to hospital; time away with illness meant she had to abandon her course and any idea about becoming a teacher. She had to pay back the £12 grant when she gave up her University place so she had to find work. In 1929, aged 21, she began working as an assistant at George’s Bookshop, 89, Park Street, Bristol; one of her colleagues who also worked as an assistant there was Frederick James Catley who also had poetic aspirations (7). Working at the bookshop did not pay very well so Joan had to take on a second job as a registry clerk at BBC Bristol, where she remained for almost five years. While working at George’s, Joan began to correspond with the poet and short story writer, Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) who took an interest in her work and encouraged her. The following year, in 1930, aged 22, Joan’s first poem was published – ‘One Sharp Delight’:

 

Quiet in the frowsy air, it yields
Its fan of boughs darkly towards the sky,
Hurt by the shame, filth and indignity
Of this harsh land of stones, not fields;
 
This patient ash-tree growing here
In burning suns, dense fogs, and sooty rains,
Hemmed in by walls and houses, yet remains
Lovely, inscrutable, austere.
 
Yet the long night no comfort brings,
With darkness comes no sweet and secret scent
Of flowers or frostbound field, no echoes lent
By the clear notes the linnet sings.
 
But, when stars fade, and from the sea
The moon draws in her beams and braids her hair,
And over the dim roofs to this blank square
The dayspring comes reluctantly –
 
Ah, then one sharp delight it knows,
One perfect hour, incomparable and rare:
It sees the thin mists rise and all the air
Put on the colour of a rose. (8)

 

Barton seems to have not just been attracted to poetry as she also started writing short stories and a novel; as to the novel, she says to Janet Todd – ‘when I wrote a novel, I sent him [Walter de la Mare] the beginning and he sent it to Faber for me, which was the greatest mistake because they criticised it rather harshly and I never wrote another word of it. I went on with poetry…’ [Women Writers Talking, p. 198] (9)

Another early poem from 1930, ‘Great House on View Day’ captures the decline of the country house with its ‘attics, through whose high windows / swathes of light pour in’ and the ‘low-roofed warrens-servant’s rooms’ with their old iron bed frames beneath which is the ‘flowered po’. Outside, the parkland where the lawns are ‘roofed with the cedars’ that ‘stretch away to private woods’, a ‘greenness reaching to infinity’. She brings to life the sounds of the pheasants with their ‘kok-kok’ and quietly contemplates that ‘someone should be here / contentedly alone / writing their masterpieces / testing their verses on this private air.’ (10)

There was always a sense of secrecy about Joan which comes through in her poems; she hardly ever told her parents anything about herself and this reserved nature, something I believe her father also harboured, continues right through her work. It is as if she only reveals anything through the mask of a character, such as Miss Prideaux or the Major; she steered clear of anything that could ‘divulge me to anyone else – no one must know me, I thought – I wrote through a male person or I made a mask.’ She then tells us that she had ‘no strong family feeling. My father hadn’t got it either. I’ve got a thousand nephews and nieces but my brother and sister are dead. I’ve loved people but I can’t bring myself to talk about it.’ [Women Writers Talking, p. 201] It was only late in her poetic career that she was able to drop the mask and produce more personal poems.

Although her poems are not overly religious, Joan does say that religion meant a ‘great deal’ to her during her adolescence as can be seen by the following early poem:

 

AT CANDLEMAS
 
O Mary, ringed with endless light,
I give thee now this taper bright.
 
O Mary, see, I pray, ‘midst all
Thy host of stars, my candle small;
 
That when alone in winter night,
My little child shall wake in fright,
 
O, then, dear Mary, grant I pray
One gift her childish fears to stay.
 
Give but one flame whose little light
Shall all her dragons put to flight,
 
Spare but one light whose slender flame
Shall her small room from darkness claim.
 
And build for her a shallow ark
Against the terrors of the dark.
 
O Blessed Maid, give back from all
Thy host of stars one candle small. (11)
 

Around 1935, Joan moved away from the traditional rhyming form of poetry, as in her poem ‘At Candlemas’ which she considered outdated and began experimenting with a more free style, sometimes dropping the standard capital letter at the beginning of the line and playing around with punctuation. In the poem, ‘Rain in a Summer Night’ we can see Barton’s confidence as she uses repetition and inter-changeable words such as ‘summer night’ and ‘separate’ (‘separate petal’/’separate crystal’), ‘nightmare room’… ‘summer dark’, ‘summer rain’, ‘nightmare hour’ and the repetition of ‘sliding soaking seeping’.

During the early 1930’s Joan reviewed for The New Statesman and The Weekend Review. Throughout the nineteen-thirties Joan worked for the BBC in Bristol which she left in August 1940, the Somerset County Council Treasurer’s Department, as County Secretary in Hampshire for the Women’s Land Army, and for the British Council, where she was the director of the periodicals department; the British Council was evacuated to Oxfordshire and moved to Blenheim Palace where the poet John Betjeman was in charge of another department. Betjeman took a keen interest in Joan’s poetry and encouraged her to publish her work. Joan worked at the British Council until 1947 when she decided, with her deputy, Barbara Watson, to run a bookshop together. Joan explained her relationship with Barbara in an interview with Janet Todd [Women Writers Talking, p. 199] saying that she had ‘been living with her for thirty-five years as companions’ adding that there was ‘no emotional thing but we get on awfully well.’

At the outbreak of war, Joan declared in her poem ‘First News Reel: September 1939’, that ‘It was my war, though it ended / when I was ten’, thinking of course of the first Great War which she lived through. The third verse evokes an almost romantic view of the destructive power of war in the landscape, where ‘a self removed and null / doubting the eye that sees / the gun in its green bower, / yet meticulously records / at each load, discharge, recoil…’; she sees how the engine of war, the gun, makes lives fall away, like leaves that ‘spin from the trees / in an untimely shower / over the sunlit fields and are whirled away / to the edge of the sky.’ (12)

The cemetery and the churchyard feature in many of Barton’s work, such as in The Mistress, where the ‘short cut home lay / through the cemetery’ with its ‘iron palings tipped with rusted fleur-de-lys’ where one can become ‘lost’ in their ‘laurel groves / eaten up by moss…’ In the same poem she seems to echo Stevie Smith when she says ‘too far, too far: always’ and one resonates with the claustrophobic feeling of being ‘under the smothering boughs in airless dark’. In another poem, Rest Eternal from November 1931, nature consumes the traces of our existence where ‘there was nothing there / but nettles and rain and grass, / so tangled you could not tell / where the churchyard was.’ In A Country Funeral, she imagines the scene ‘with a thin and steady flame like faith; / over their heads the marble words flow on.’ which is a beautiful description of the tragedy of a death and the handing over of the body back to nature or to God if you prefer.

Smell is also a major part of Barton’s poetry, as in the ‘cypress smell’ of The Mistress and the ‘scent of briar and garlic from lush inland lanes’ found in Thoughts on Happisburgh, where there is also ‘trampled cliff paths sweet with gorse…’ and in the poem A Landscape, the ‘hot smell of the earth / oppresses the nostrils’. Sounds also feature heavily in her work too as in The Timber Wharf where there is the ‘ticking in the ears / with beetle noises, rat feet in the corners, / bat wing in the rafters, / And that sigh in the ears / As though the sap were still weeping / in dying trees.’

In the poem, My Grandfather in the Park, Barton reminisces and draws a charming picture of her grandfather with his ‘Homburg hat set square’ and his ‘hands knotted on his stick’. She tells how he was a ‘station-master endless years retired / still timing trains / as they came slowly slowly pounding past / beyond the tarry fence / at Redland station,’ which is a delightful evocation of her grandfather, John Padmore, who worked for GWR and was station master at Clifton Down station for 25 years from 1874-1899. In fact, there are several connections to the railway in the Padmore family, as if steam and not blood, coursed through their veins. John Padmore, who was appointed station master in September 1874 at Clifton Down on the opening of the Clifton Extension Railway, was a well-known and much respected employee of GWR, as can be seen from the following article in the Clifton and Redland Free Press (Friday 28^th July 1899, p. 2) which says that there was ‘a small gathering at the Imperial Hotel [Clifton] on Saturday night [22^nd July], when Mr. J. Padmore, late stationmaster at Clifton Down, was presented by a number of his friends with a revolving chair of polished elm, a handsomely carved oak barometer, and a cheque.’ The article goes on to say that, ‘the chair was occupied by the Rev. Canon Prideaux, who mentioned that Mr. Padmore had been at Clifton Down since its opening 25 years ago, when it was merely a country station.’ John Padmore’s son, (Joan Barton’s Uncle) George Lycett Padmore, born 24^th September 1865 in Montgomeryshire, Wales, carried on the railway tradition, and entered GWR’s service as a boy clerk in 1880 at the office of the Divisional Superintendant in Bristol; he was promoted in 1890 and placed in charge of the time-table for the Bristol Division. George retired in 1926 after working as Traffic Manager for the Exeter Division and died two years later (13).

Towards the end of the poem (My Grandfather in the Park), she once again conjures the ‘image of old age, / solid not frail’ when she says that the park-keeper is cruel not to let the children play on the grass, but grandfather ‘only shook his head, smiled / his slow smile, tapping at his ear: / ‘The 11.20’s due’ he said.’ Joan then says that there were ‘three daughters and six sons / gone on their way’ referring to her Aunts and Uncles, namely: Alice Padmore (1864-1946), George Lycett Padmore (1865-1928), Harry Powell Padmore (1867-1935) who was a schoolmaster and Headmaster of Swanage Council School; he married Elizabeth Frances Barton (born 1865) in Barton Regis, Gloucestershire in 1890 and died in Abbotsford on 16^th January 1935; Ernest Alfred Padmore (1869-1919) who was organist and choirmaster at St. Peter’s Church, Padgate; a member of the Cheshire Railway Committee, he married Jane Farrington (1863-1939) on 26^th March 1894 at Padgate, Lancashire and died at home at 111, Padgate Lane on 2^nd September 1919 and was buried four days later at Warrington Cemetery, Lancashire. Rev. John Pritchard Padmore (1871-1946), ordained in 1928, he was vicar of Coaley in Gloucestershire from 1936-1944; he also worked as a Railway Book stall Manager and he married Florence Nightingale Tyler (born 1863) on 17^th June 1896 in Carmarthenshire, Wales. Rev. Padmore died on 3^rd August 1946, his funeral taking place a few days later on 7^th August at Clevedon parish church. Arthur Padmore, born in Aberystwyth, Wales in 1873; Walter Richard Padmore (1875-1964), the first child born to the Padmore family in Redland, Bristol, on 20^th January 1875 (he was christened at St. John the Evangelist, Clifton on 5^th March 1875); he married Effie Louise Mcgregor (born 1877) in Bristol in 1904 and died in Gloucestershire in 1964. Eleanor Rose Padmore, Joan’s mother, born in 1877, followed by Edith Mary Padmore, known as ‘Teedie’, born in 1878 and christened at St. Mary’s Church, Tyndall’s Park, on 14^th July 1878. Edith never married and died in Bristol at the family home, 7, Warwick Road, on 15^th February 1945.

Likewise, in the Barton family, her grandfather was Henry Francis Barton, born in Westbury-on-Trym, Gloucestershire in 1840; Henry was a carpenter who lived at 7, Highland Vale in Clifton (1881 and 1891 census) and later in 1901 can be found at 84, Whiteladies Road, Redland, Clifton. In 1911 he is living at Queen’s Road, Craythorne, Swanage in Dorsetshire, a ‘retired carpenter’. He died on 11^th July 1914 and was buried three days later. Henry and his wife Elizabeth Lyon, whom he married on 31^st October 1861 in Clifton, had (in 1911) ‘eight children, five living’; the first child was William Lyon Barton, born in 1864 in Clifton, who was like his father, also a carpenter. In fact, he succeeded his father and became head of the firm of Messrs. H. Barton and Son, builders of Abbotsford Road. He married Phoebe Elizabeth Herbert in Bristol in April 1886 (she died on 19^th December 1943 at 3, Queen’s Avenue, Tyndall’s Park, aged 81; funeral at St. Paul’s Church, Clifton on Wednesday 22^nd December). William was formerly a volunteer attached to the Gloucesters (Bristol Rifles) and won the long service medal – during the First World War he joined the ‘University Volunteers’ in 1917 and was a member of the Guard of Honour when the King visited Bristol. He died in September 1932 (his address at the time was 39, Aberdeen Road, Cotham, Bristol) and his funeral took place on Friday 23^rd September 1932 at Canford Cemetery. Other members of the family included: Elizabeth Frances Barton, born in Clifton in 1865 who was a dressmaker and later married Harry Powell Padmore (1867-1935) [Eleanor Rose Padmore’s brother, the schoolmaster]; Priscilla Barton born Clifton in 1867, Alice Barton born Clifton in 1868, Francis Henry Barton, Joan’s father, born in Clifton in 1872, and Amy Barton, born in Clifton in 1873 who was a Stationer’s Assistant.

In 1947 Joan and her partner, Barbara Watson, established The White Horse Bookshop at 14, The Parade, Marlborough, which moved in September 1949 to 136, the High Street, Marlborough – ‘we didn’t make any money but it was a great success and we had lots of fun.’ [Women Writers Talking, p. 199] The two ladies worked extremely hard at the business of bookselling and usually took a short holiday together; closing the bookshop (14) A few years later in 1951 Joan lost both her parents at the beginning and end of that year. Her father, Francis Henry Barton ‘beloved husband of Eleanor’ and ‘managing director Barton and Long Ltd.’ died on Monday 8^th January that year at 7, Warwick Road, Bristol (15) and her mother, Eleanor, died tragically at the same address following a house fire. The Bristol Evening World for Thursday 13^th December 1951 said that, ‘Mrs. Eleanor Rose Barton aged 75 of 7 Warwick Road, Redland who tried to beat out the flames with her hands when her house caught fire on Tuesday [11^th December], died from burns in BRI [Bristol Royal Infirmary] last night.’ The article states that Mrs. Barton was hosting a bridge party on Tuesday evening and after it ended she began to tidy up and as she was going to bed the fire broke out. In the same newspaper, dated Tuesday 11^th (p. 7) it said that ‘a woman companion’ Miss E. Hearn who lives at the garden flat at 7, Warwick Road, ‘heard the screams’ and rushed to the bedroom ‘smothered the flames with a rug’. Mrs. Barton suffered ‘burns on her legs, face and body’. Miss Hearn was ‘already in another room when Mrs. Barton began undressing near an electric fire.’ She found Mrs. Barton ‘with her clothes on fire. Miss Hearn wrapped a rug round her and phoned for help to Mr. M. A. Webb, Mrs. Barton’s son-in-law who lives in the flat at the same house.’ Eleanor Rose Barton died at Bristol Royal Infirmary on Wednesday 12^th December 1951 and her funeral took place a few days later at Clifton on Monday 17^th December. (16)

In 1956, Joan and Barbara’s religious convictions grew stronger and they both returned to the church. Joan was producing very little poetry at this time because the bookshop took up a lot of her time and then in 1961 she began editing the parish magazine (16 pages).

Towards the end of the nineteen-fifties, John Betjeman suggested that Joan contact the Listen Press and send them some of her poems, which she did and her poems ‘The Mistress’ and ‘Thoughts on Happisburg’ were both published in their pages.

In May 1966 Joan and Barbara retired and sold The White Horse Bookshop to Mr. and Mrs. A. H. Evans which they ran under the same name (17). Joan and Barbara moved to Salisbury, in Wiltshire and continued to trade in old and rare books from their home at 10, Mill Road. Joan began to write poetry again. About this time, the musician, artist and publisher, Edwin ‘Ted’ Tarling (1938-2004) who founded the quarterly poetry magazine Wave and the Sonus Press, took an interest in Joan Barton having seen some of her poems in Listen. The result of his interest in her was several poems published in Wave during 1970-73 (‘Mission Priest’, ‘Lot 304: Various Books’, ‘A Passion for Knowledge in North Wiltshire’, A House Under Old Sarum’ and ‘The Major: An Epitaph’); and in 1972 Tarling published her first collection of poems – ‘The Mistress and Other Poems’. There are some beautiful and tender pieces in the collection, such as It Was Only A Dream and The Wet Summer, where ‘hair is not less fine, eyes grow no dimmer / In the dusk, and the rain’s a private house / To those who have no other.’

Barton’s later poetry is influenced by her professional life as a bookseller, attending various sales and ‘lots’, mostly following a death and perhaps a loved library has been dismantled – ‘some of my poetry has grown out of bookselling – I’m not inventive’ she told Janet Todd [Women Writers Talking, p. 200] The books that we own are a very personal thing; they contain something of the essence of the reader who has cared for them and in some instances, contain various personal items tipped into the pages, between the covers; old photographs, pressed flowers or perhaps a letter all tell a story and reach into the past of someone’s memory; an intrusion into a life or the revelation of something which should not be brought to light. In the poem, ‘Lot 304: Various Books’ we get a sense of this discovery and tender intrusion upon the ‘fading ephemera of non-events’; the ‘seed lists and hints on puddings’ and the ‘ghost dogs in the vanishing gardens’. Barton is receptive to the energy that such items contain – ‘always as I touch a current flows, / the poles connect, the wards latch into place, /a life extends me’. The emotions bottled-up within a book, the ‘love-hate; grief; faith; wonder;’ but above all, the ‘Tenderness.’ That same gentle perception of a life through the loved and well-worn book is found in the poem, ‘The Major – An Epitaph’ where we find Barton, seated at the desk of the dead Major, drinking sherry brought by the ‘deaf housekeeper’ as she sorts through the bachelor gentleman’s things. She finds nothing remarkable, ‘no secret sex’ just ‘all clean and decent stuff’. The Major’s regimental life, always ‘on parade’, is ordered and there is little in his diaries to show a full and active social life, mostly blank pages, ‘deserts of non-involvement…’ But something is always irresistible in the search for one’s self in others and no matter how little we leave of ourselves, we recognise the futile struggle of existence and its termination, when ‘loneliness comes sifting silting down / and men are buried in it still alive.’

There is an absence of human love and affection in Barton’s poems and if it appears at all it is a brief reference to the past, such as Christopher, in ‘Gay News’, who was ‘so idiotic yet so beautiful / in his Anglican fig, / (ashamed of his people but he married well).’ She walks a line between the playful Betjeman and the morose and melancholy Larkin – how delightfully she brings to life the remnants of a marriage consumed by books in the poem A Passion for Knowledge in North Wiltshire, where a widow wants them ‘all cleared out!’ Barton draws upon her own book buying and selling and the many private collections broken down and sold off she attended for to many book lovers it really is an all consuming passion, and Barton says it beautifully with the phrase, an ‘unstemmable tide of books’. In other poems she delights in the fading Edwardiana and Victorian bric-a-brac that tell a story all of their own, such as Miss Prideaux’s ferns and the ‘Waterford glass’, the ‘Spode dishes’ and the ‘Coalport cups’…, or the ‘Elizabethan beds’, ‘corner cupboards’, and ‘presses crammed with linen’ found in The Contents of the Mansion. There is something in these old fragments of a life with their own seemingly real and intensifying presence, the ‘yellowing pillow-lace’ and the ‘tapestries the cobwebs knit together’; the ‘volumes of pictured fish and brilliant birds’, ‘rosewood desks and Chinese cabinets / stuffed with old letters, diaries, photographs’. Barton pays particular attention to these details for in her hands these old and worn accessories play an equal part and importance to the characters that inhabit the poem – the ‘Worcester service for three-dozen places, / gilt candelabra, coasters, Irish crystal, China on pantry shelves…’ we all have memories of such items from our childhood, familiar loved objects that become lost with time… ‘the table-silver in its velvet cases’, the ‘copper saucepans dulled with verdigris’… ‘old scoops and mortars, leaking jelly moulds.’ Barton also leads us into some dark places where there is a sense of loss and loneliness, of growing older and the ultimate separation – death:

 

‘Only the ghosts presentient to each one

make entry here, gyrate

between the eyes and sleep,

breed the authentic chill

of spectral air;

the fly-by-nights that ride the elderly,

phantoms of love not given, not received,

the lonely apparitions of regret,

extinct once violent selves, the lives unlived,

and spiral loss that forms

the narrowing circle;

And that last fear – not death but how it comes.’ 

[A House Under Old Sarum]

 

In 1975, BBC Radio 3 aired a programme on Joan Barton and he poetry. Philip Larkin had given some of Barton’s poems to Cecil Day-Lewis and the poet, Anne Stevenson had suggested that the BBC produce a programme on her. An interview took place and was recorded on 24^th June 1974. The programme was called The Living Poet and it was transmitted on Thursday 24^th July 1975 at 9.30 p.m. Joan introduced her own poems which were read by Jill Balcon, the wife of Cecil Day-Lewis, and Penelope Lee. It was produced and presented by Susanna Capon [Radio Times, issue 2697. Saturday 19^th July 1975].

A few years later at the beginning of 1978, a young writer named Mary Michaels took an interest in Barton and began writing her essay, ‘The Poetry of Joan Barton’ [Hull University Archives] which included an edited transcript of an interview Michaels had with Barton on Monday 16^th January 1978 which Michaels later submitted to Janet M. Todd at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, for publication in Todd’s ‘Women and Literature’, titled ‘An Introduction to the Poetry of Joan Barton’, published in the United States the following year. Also during 1978, having seen an advertisement, Joan applied for a Literary bursary from Southern Arts Association and was successful and she began to produce more poems – ‘I made a study in a spare bedroom, sat down, and suddenly found I’d written three poems in no time.’ [Women Writers Talking, p. 201]

Her next collection was published the following year – ‘Ten Poems’ (1979) by the Perdix Press. One of the poems, ‘Old School’ is dedicated ‘in memoriam M.C.’ It is possible that M.C. was the initials of a favourite teacher, perhaps of English, but the notion of the ‘Old Girl’ in the poem is strong and I would suggest it was a former pupil of Colston’s, perhaps connected to the school magazine – ‘In that old school, M.C., you built for us / a house of words, a house of infinite rooms, / from which we could look out / the better to enjoy or to endure. / I still inhabit it. / Did I thank you then? I wish I could be sure.’ I have found an ‘old girl’ by the name of Muriel Cox who attended Colston’s Girls’ school and lived in Redland, Bristol. She was actually born Florence Muriel Cox in Redland on 6^th December 1905, daughter of Sidney Charles Cox (1866-1931) who was the proprietor of the Western Daily Press and allied papers in Bristol, and Florence May Tricker, born in Portsmouth in 1882 (they were married at Westbury-on-Trym, Gloucestershire on 6^th October 1903). Muriel probably used her middle name to distinguish her from her mother also named Florence. Muriel, ‘passed with distinction her matriculation’ at the examination held in London University and was awarded a £100 scholarship, as ‘the most promising worker in Sydenham High School of 400 students’ in 1922 (18). Whether or not Muriel is the ‘M.C.’ of the poem, I cannot confirm, but I put her forward as a candidate.

Joan Barton had an amazing poetic voice which was truly her own – ‘I’ve always been isolated in my work except for Walter de la Mare and John Betjeman’; for Joan, poetry and ordinary life were two different things to be kept separate. As for her poetic influences she says it was ‘mostly by older poets whose books we sell. Tennyson, Browning, and the seventeenth-century poets mean far more to me than the moderns though I like Joy Scovell, some of Anne Stevenson’ and she has a close affinity to Alice Meynell, whom I also consider a marvellous poet. She goes on to say that she also likes T. S. Eliot and Robert Frost but doesn’t like Robert Lowell or John Berryman – ‘Masculine thinking can be so different from women’s and I can’t cope with it.’ [Women Writers Talking, pp. 199-200]

Her next collection, A House Under Old Sarum, a collection of new and selected poems, was published by Peterloo Poets in 1981 and two years later, her final collection, Night Journey on the Plain was self-published in Salisbury.

During her final years Joan’s eyesight began failing, particularly after 1983 and Joan Barton died in Salisbury, Wiltshire probably sometime between July and September 1986 aged 78 years old. Her partner, Barbara Watson acted as the executor of her will.

 

‘the straightened sheet
plain as a linen shroud
beneath the chin,
then you will know
for sure what hour it is:
how soon must come
the stripped and empty bed,
her folded clothes
put ready to take home.’ 

[Last Days]

 

 

PUBLISHED COLLECTIONS:

 

The Mistress and Other Poems. Hull, Yorkshire. The Sonus Press. 1972. Hand set and printed by Edwin Tarling at 3, Berwick Grove, Hull, Yorkshire. Red cloth. pp. 64.

Ten Poems. (privately printed)The Perdix Press, Sutton, Mandeville, Wiltshire, (hand-printed, limited signed edition). 1979.

A House Under Old Sarum: New and Selected Poems. Liskeard, Cornwall. Harry Chambers/Peterloo Poets. 1981. pp. 79.

Night Journey on the Plain: 16 New Poems. Salisbury, Salisbury Printing. 1983. pp. 28 [iv, 24]

 

A PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF POEMS IN PERIODICALS:

 

One Sharp Delight: The New Statesman, volume xxxiv, number 877, Saturday 15^th February 1930, p. 602.

At Candlemas: The Saturday Review of Literature, 27^th December 1930, p. 490, also Time and Tide, volume xii, number 6, edited by Wyndham Lewis, Saturday 7^th February 1931, p. 17.

Fallen Snow: The Best Poems of 1935. Thomas Moult, London, Jonathon Cape, 1935. p. 63.

A Landscape: New Writing (Penguin), issue 16, 1943, p. 100. [also Poems From New Writing, 1936-1946, edited by John Lehmann, (Penguin) 1946, pp. 92-93]

The Mistress: Listen, volume 3, number 3-4, spring 1960, p. 6. [also included in The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse, edited by Philip Larkin, London, Book Club Associates, 1978, poem number 395, pp. 431-432]

Thoughts on Happisburgh: Listen, volume 4, number 1, autumn 1962, p. 14.

Mission Priest: Wave: New Poetry, number 1, autumn 1970, The Sonus Press, Hull, Yorkshire.

Lot 304: Various Books: Wave: New Poetry, number 3, spring 1971, The Sonus Press, Hull, Yorkshire.

A Passion for Knowledge in North Wiltshire: Wave: New Poetry, number 5, autumn 1971, The Sonus Press, Hull, Yorkshire.

A House Under Old Sarum: Wave: New Poetry, number 6, spring 1973, The Sonus Press, Hull, Yorkshire.

The Major: An Epitaph: Wave: New Poetry, number 7, summer 1973, The Sonus Press, Hull, Yorkshire; also in New Poetry 1: An Anthology, edited by Peter Porter and Charles Osborne. Arts Council of Great Britain, 1975, p. 38.

Great House on View Day: Poetry Book Society Christmas Supplement 1974, edited by Philips Larkin; Thirty Years of the Poetry Book Society, 1956-1986. London. Hutchinson. 1988. p. 111; also About Larkin, issue 1, the Philip Larkin Society, Hull, Yorkshire, 1996 (600 copies), p. 16. (includes letter from Joan Barton to Philip Larkin, p. 17)

First News Reel: September 1939: New Poetry 3: An Anthology, edited by Alan Brownjohn and Maureen Duffy. Arts Council of Great Britain, 1977, p. 55.

Contents of the Mansion: New Poetry 5: An Anthology, edited by Peter Redgrove and Jon Silkin. Arts Council of Great Britain, 1979, p. 11.

Children of the Night: Agenda, volume 21-22. 1983, p. 59.

Night Journey on the Plain: PN Review, 30, volume 9, number 4, March-April 1983. p. 51.

Gay News: Poetry Matters: Journal of Harry Chambers/Peterloo Poets, number 1, Autumn 1983.

Easter, A Night Piece, The Timber Wharf, The Wet Summer [from The Mistress and Other Poems]: The Rialto, number 8, Spring 1987.

 

A SELECTION OF ARTICLES AND RELATIVE BOOKS:

 

An Introduction to the Poetry of Joan Barton, by Mary Michaels. Women and Literature, volume 7, number 2, Rutgers University, spring 1979, edited by Janet M. Todd.

Joan Barton: A Poet Rediscovered, by Mary Michaels. Bristol Review of Books, number 5, spring 2008. [published on the 100^th anniversary of Barton’s birth]

Women Writers Talking, edited by Janet M. Todd. Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc. New York. 1983. [Joan Barton interview] pp. 197-207. Includes the poems: ‘The Mistress’ pp. 201-202, ‘Lot 304: Various Books’ p. 202, ‘Gay News’ p. 203, ‘The Major – An Epitaph’ pp. 203-205, ‘Last Days’ pp. 205-206, ‘Lord Let Me Know My End’ pp. 206-207.

Philip Larkin, the Marvel Press and Me. Jean Hartley. Manchester, Carcanet. 1989.

Poems From the Second World War. Gaby Morgan. Pan Macmillan. 2015. [contains Barton’s poems: ‘Newgale Sands 1940’ and ‘First News Reel: September 1939’]

 

NOTES:

 

* I must mention the writer and Barton advocate, Mary Michaels who has researched and written much on the poet; and fellow admirer and passionate enthusiast of her work, Stephen Pentz, whose excellent ‘First Known When Lost’ site (blogspot.com) has several articles on Barton.

 

1. Marriages. Barton-Padmore – May 24^th, at St. Saviour’s, Redland, by the Rev. H. R. Wilkins, assisted by the Rev. W. S. Michell, Francis Henry, younger son of H. F. Barton, Collingwood Road, Redland to Eleanor Rose, second daughter of J. Padmore, Cotham. [Western Daily Press. Thursday 26^th May 1904. p. 10]

2. Henry and Elizabeth died in 1914 within months of each other (a similar fate which was to befall Joan’s parents later in 1951). Elizabeth Barton, died in May at Queen’s Road, Swanage, ‘beloved wife of Henry Francis Barton (formerly of Redland) aged 80 years’. [Western Daily Press. Tuesday 12^th May 1914. p. 19] Francis Henry Barton, died 11^th July 1914 at Craythorne, Swanage, (suddenly) age 74, formerly of Abbotsford Road, Cotham. [Western Daily Press. Monday 13^th July 1914. p. 12]

3. Joan’s maternal grandparents, John Padmore, son of Richard and Margaret, and Julia Powell, daughter of John Thomas and Sarah Maria, had nine children. The first-born was Alice Padmore (1864-1946) followed by George Lycett Padmore (1865-1928); Eleanor was the eighth child born in 1877. Eleanor’s mother, Julia Padmore, died in Bristol aged 79 in 1920 and her father, John Padmore, died at 19, Montrose Avenue, Redlands, Bristol on Wednesday 11^th July 1923, aged 84; his funeral took place on Saturday 14^th July at St. Saviour’s Church.

4. Gerald Francis (‘Frank’) Barton married Helen Mary O’Brien (born Bristol 1909) in Bristol in 1929. They had the following children: Michael Francis Barton, born in Bristol in 1929; Brian O’Brien Barton born in Bristol in 1932, and Helen B. Barton born in Bristol in 1936. Gerald died in February 1980 in Penzance, Cornwall.

5. Olive married Bristol-born, Mortimer Ann Webb (1908-1961) in Bristol in 1937 and their son Andrew R. Webb was born there in 1942. Olive died in Bristol in 1964 aged 51 years old.

6. For more on the school magazine see ‘Colston’s Girls’ School: The First Hundred Years’ by Sarah Dunn, Redcliffe Press, Bristol, 1991.

6. Frederick James Catley, born in Bristol on 14^th June 1911. His poem, ‘The Hawk in Winter’ appeared in ‘Penguin Parade’, number 7, 1940, p. 42. F. J. Catley worked at George’s Bookshop from 1928 and seems to have had a long career there. He died on 21^st July 2004.

8. One Sharp Delight. The New Statesman, volume xxxiv, number 877, Saturday 15^th February 1930, p. 602, also The Best Poems of 1930, edited by Thomas Moult. London. Jonathon Cape. 1930. Also from ‘Advocate’, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Thursday 3^rd July 1930. p. 7. Joan’s poem ‘Fallen Snow’, which almost evokes Yeats’ ‘Wild Swans at Coole’, begins: ‘It falls still in my childhood – far away / On iron-hooded forests whence the swans / Have long since flown with clattering wild cries, / Where the round winter sun of level ray / The white and windswept fields with scarlet dyes.’ appeared in ‘The Best Poems of 1935’ [Thomas Moult. London. Jonathon Cape. 1935. p. 63]

9. Short stories (1936) at the Hull Archives: The Younger Daughter (pp. 11), Miss Horse (pp. 10), Vie de Provence (pp. 25), News from a Foreign Country (pp. 25) and Laura (pp. 19). Also at the archive is Joan Barton’s article for The Journal of the National Book League, Jan-Feb 1956: ‘Bristol and its Bookshopos’.

10. Great House on View Day. Poetry Book Society Christmas Supplement 1974, edited by Philips Larkin; Thirty Years of the Poetry Book Society, 1956-1986. London. Hutchinson. 1988. p. 111, also, A House Under Old Sarum (1981).

11. At Candlemas. The Saturday Review of Literature. 27^th December 1930. p. 490. Also Time and Tide, volume xii, number 6, Saturday 7^th February 1931. p. 17.

12. First News Reel: September 1939. A House Under Old Sarum (1981), also Shadows of War – British Women’s Poetry of the Second World War, edited and introduced by Anne Powell. Sutton Publishing (Gloucestershire). 1999. p. 10 [also includes Newgale Sands 1940, pp. 55-56]

13. George Lycett Padmore, born 24^th September 1865 in Montgomeryshire, Wales, attended Highbury School, Redland and won a scholarship to Colston’s School in 1877. In 1880 he began work with GWR as a boy clerk for the Divisional Superintendant, Bristol. Promoted in 1890 and placed in charge of the time-table (Bristol Division); 1893-1911, responsible to the Divisional Superintendant for the whole of the train workings (Bristol Division). July 1911, promoted to Chief Clerk; 1914, became Assistant Divisional Superintendant of GWR Bristol. January 1921, became Divisional Superintendant of Pontypool Road area (Monday 25^th April 1921, he received a gold watch as a gift from GWR for his hard work and commitment). 1922 became Traffic Manager at Exeter Division. He retired in 1926. George married on Emmeline Agnes Read (1867-1962) at St. Saviours Church, Woolcott Park, Bristol, on 2^nd April 1888 (Emmeline died in Bristol on 11^th February 1962), they had a son named Bertram Read Padmore (1890-1969) who was educated at Colston’s School. George Lycett Padmore died on 24^th February 1928 aged 63 at Bathesda Hospital, Richmond, Melbourne, Australia. Apart from his railway work G. L. Padmore was well-known in Bristol as a keen Churchman, and in musical and Masonic circles. He had a long association with Holy Nativity where he was sidesman (usher or warden) from 1904-07, he then joined the choir and was a member for over 13 years. First Honorary Treasurer of the Knowle Church Society, Master of the Men’s Guild, and he represented the church on the Diocesan Conference; member of the new Parochial Church Council; member of the first Diocesan Board of Finance. Many years a singing member and member of the committee of the Bristol Musical Society and member of the Society of Bristol Gleemen of which he was Honorary Treasurer. He was also a member of the St. Augustine’s Lodge (Bristol Province) of Freemasons and one of the oldest members of the Knowle Constitutional Club (1904) being on the committee for many years. [much of the information is taken from the Bristol Times and Mirror. Friday 31^st December 1920. p. 2] George’s son, Bertram Read Padmore, born 27^th January 1890 in Bristol, was a Captain in the Railway Signals Engineers and the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War. He married Ethelwyn Mary Bird on 31^st October 1914 at Holy Trinity Church, Liverpool, Queens, Nova Scotia, Canada and settled in Halifax, Canada in 1918. He worked in the City Engineers Department and his work took him to similar posts in America and Australia; after he retired he resided in Falmouth, Cornwall, dying there on 13^th March 1969, aged 79.

14. It is perhaps of no consequence to the casual reader but Joan and Barbara closed the bookshop for their holiday together on the following days, as given in The Bookseller: 11^th – 19^th April, 1950, 4^th – 21^st May, 1953, 17^th May – 5^th June 1954, 22^nd May – 12^th June 1956, 11^th June – 2^nd July 1957, 27^th May – 17^th June 1958, 31^st May – 3^rd June 1960, 14^th May – 9^th June 1962, 10^th June – 3^rd July 1963, 15^th April – 6^th May 1964.

15. Bristol Evening World. Wednesday 10^th January 1951. p. 9.

16. Bristol Evening World. Tuesday 11^th December 1951. p. 7, and Thursday 13^th December 1951. p. 6. Also Bristol Evening Post. Thursday 13^th December 1951. p. 6.

17. The White Horse Bookshop was later acquired by Mr. James Glover, former sales director of Hamish Hamilton, on 1^st February 1974; after 1984 it was under the management of Michael Pooley. The shop under the same name is still in existence.

18. Clifton and Redland Free Press. Thursday 23^rd November 1922, p. 3. Muriel had two siblings: Sidney Ivan Cox, born Redland in 1904 and dying in Battle, Sussex in 1972, and Valda Irene Cox (1915-1986). Muriel married the Argentina-born, Andres Delport Gordon Cheyne (1910-1984) in Surrey on 13^th May 1938 and she died in Islington, London on 29^th August 1986.

REGINALD FRANCIS FOSTER

 

REGINALD FRANCIS FOSTER

(1896-1975)

A TURBULENT MAN

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

 

 

‘I have lived fully, making and destroying, killing and procreating,

idealising and realising futility. I have been journalist, soldier, author, priest.’

 

[Separate Star. p. 317]

 

Reginald Francis Foster’s autobiography, Separate Star, tells us very little about his life and he seems to appear, as if from nowhere, at his London school, editing a school magazine ‘The Removian’; he does not even mention the name of the school. Foster continues in the same vein giving his parents only a passing mention and there is no word of his sister or his wife, the fact that he was married at all only gets a brief line; even the fact that he wrote and published successful novels gets similar treatment. The volume concerns itself mainly with his exploits as a soldier in the First World War and his spiritual search during and after the war. But who was this mysterious author?

He was born Reginald Frank Foster in Alverstoke, Hampshire on 13^th April 1896 and Christened there at St. Mary’s Church on 6^th August that year. His parents, Benjamin and Alice were residing at 5, Cottage Grove in Alverstoke. His father, Benjamin Harry Foster was born in Buxted, Sussex in 1867 (he was Christened there on 21^st July 1867) and his occupation was butcher; in the 1901 and 1911 census’s the family are living in Chelsea, London (1) – from the 1911 census we can see Benjamin, who is 43 years old and Alice, 42 and born in Haywards Heath, Sussex in 1869, have been married 20 years. Reginald is 14 years old and his sister, Edith is 12. Edith was born Edith Beatrice Charlotte Mary Foster in Alverstoke, Hampshire in 1898 and Christened at Christ Church, Chelsea on 3^rd July 1901 (2).

A little detective work on my part discovered which school Reginald attended as in his autobiography, although not mentioning the school’s name; he does mention the mathematics master, Mr. Balchin. I found this to be George Henry Balchin (1873-1944), the ‘man who made Euclid amusing to 5,000 boys’ who retired in 1937 after 41 years service (1896-1937) as a master at Sloane School, Chelsea. He notes (p. 17) that ‘my father was finding it extremely difficult to pay my school fees, and so one day I sent a copy of the school magazine to the editor of the local paper – The West London Press – and asked for a job. I got it.’ He worked as a junior reporter for two years before being convinced that he should train for Holy Orders and so he went to St. Benedict’s Hostel, an Anglican monastic order in Westcote, near Chipping Norton. Although he could bare the harsh conditions he found the spiritual commitment lacking and left to return to London; he once again joined the staff of the West London Press in 1914. Reginald was 18 when war broke out and the news came while he was on holiday in Pullborough in Sussex (he enjoyed playing cricket in the Pullborough village team). On Bank Holiday Monday 3^rd August 1914 he had walked from Pullborough to Bignor and Byworth then to Billinghurst, a total of 20 miles before he rested at an Inn to learn that Britain had declared war with Germany. He cut his holiday short (he had another week left) and returned to London and in November worked with the Relief of Belgian Refugees. In January the following year, when not working, he would regularly walk 30 miles daily in meditative thought and torn between his convictions, he enlisted in the 2^nd Battalion of the Artist’s Rifles at London’s Officer Training Corps. Training continued at Camp, High Beech, Epping Forest before being transferred to the Depot at Duke’s Road, Euston in London. He worked as a journalist promoting the Artist’s Rifles encouraging men to enlist before being selected for commission into the 2/5^th Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, Crowborough, Sussex; further training continued at the temporary barracks in Colchester. He attended three courses of instruction: the Bombing School in Clapham, London; the Musketry School in Bisley and the Young Officers’ School in Cannock Chase. Soon after this he was sent from Dover to France, spending several days at Boulogne at the Hotel Meurice, awaiting orders, before taking the train to Bethune. He was stationed at the village of Gorre which was several miles from the front line and posted to a Warwickshire Battalion, along with three other officers, to the support line. After two weeks with the Warwicks, he was sent to the town of Aire to await the arrival of the East Lancs; he was in the line near La Bassee canal – ‘Death of Glory Sap’, at the ‘Red Dragon crater’ before going on to the brickworks at Guinchy.

On his 21^st birthday, Friday 13^th April 1917, he received a slab of chocolate from home as a present; unfortunately the rats ate most of it! During this month, he tells us, he shot a man ‘in cold blood’. He took part in a raid near Givenchy on Saturday 14^th May 1917 (midnight) having taken a week to train for it while unknowingly suffering from trench fever. The following day, Sunday, he was very ill and back at the chateau in Gorre where he celebrated Holy Communion at 11 a.m. Then that night he was out on a raid with ‘blacked faces’ and ‘fifteen bombs’ in his pocket and wielding a club of barbed wire; they went up the line to Givenchy with two engineers in the patrol to ignite a ‘Bangalore Torpedo’ bomb and blow-up the barbed wire. Having crawled over no-man’s land, they met a German patrol and Foster used his barbed wire club on one of them while a shot from a pistol just missed him. Then the blast from the explosion of the bomb struck his face and although still standing he was unable to see – the Bangalore Torpedo had failed to detonate at the correct time and Foster was wounded in the right arm and blinded.

He was sent back to Boulogne and operated on at Wimereux; the doctor’s left some shrapnel in his head which remained there. He regained his sight (his left eye was weak and twitching) but still suffered from the trench fever. Back in England at the 3^rd London General Hospital in Wandsworth he seemed to recover after a few weeks during the summer of 1917 and in August he joined the reserve Battalion at Whitby (part of the Yorkshire Coast Defence). Having been pronounced fit for service in September and having fallen in love with a friend’s wife, in early 1918, he returned home on leave.

In February (1918) he arrived at Southampton and took the Cannel boat to Cherbourg and a train journey to Italy which took about one week, stopping at Lyons, Marseilles, Nice… At Taranto he boarded a troop ship to Alexandria which crashed into another vessel and the ship limped on to Crete, slowly sinking all the time; having finally made it to Alexandria he went on to Bombay where he suffered much illness.

 

ANANDA THE HOLY MAN

 

While recovering at Colaba Hospital in Bombay, Foster encountered a Buddhist seer named Ananda who was no ordinary ‘fortune-teller’; Ananda seemed to know all about Foster’s past and his future and although Foster was sceptical at first, he came to recognise that Ananda had special powers. In Bombay he became an Acting-Captain and joined the 70^th Burma Rifles at Secunderabad. On his return to Egypt, at Kantara, he witnessed a Burman sepoy blow his brains out in front of him in his tent, the bullet just missing Foster too – the sepoy died in Foster’s arms. It was supposed that the sepoys, being Buddhist, could not take another man’s life so preferred to take their own. He saw another Burman commit suicide at Rafa in mid 1918, he was first in the tent to find the man shot in the head – ‘I had become inured to death and dying and horrors, and I managed to bottle up my feelings – maybe to suffer the worse, as a consequence, in later years.’ (p. 133) soon afterwards having recovered from dysentery at Ras-el-tin Hospital, Alexandria, he was back at Rafa where he suffered ‘Spanish Influenza’ and returned to the hospital in Alexandria. On Monday 11^th November 1918, while in Alexandria, at the Majestic Hotel for lunch, scarcely able to walk and weighing just 7 stone, he heard the news of the Armistice! But for Foster, his army career was not over yet – he went to Cairo to join the 38^th Dogras (Indian Army) at Mena to guard prisoners of war, surviving on horse flesh and the following year went to India, almost being thrown overboard ship by a drunken vet with a pistol who disobeyed Foster’s order not to shoot a horse. But the mystical figure of Ananda had never been far away from him and so in Bombay, he found him once more, as if by a miracle in itself, and Ananda enlightened Foster on the ‘illusion of matter’ and the philosophy of the atom, say that the ultimate particle is ‘invisible’.

Back in Egypt as Transport Officer, he took care of the horses and ‘made a garden in the desert’ and one day rode to the foothills of Mokattan, utterly alone, and came upon a tomb where he encountered a man wearing a robe who spoke perfect English. The man was a holy man, an Englishman and a ‘Coptic monk’ who had become a hermit. On the ride back meditating on the inner torment of existence, he fell from his horse and broke a finger. He was invited by his Urdu teacher to witness a ceremony and was ‘baptised’ into the Hindu faith to become an honorary Hindu. Two horse accidents in early 1920 caused him much injury, firstly having a horse fall back on him and secondly being thrown from a ‘vicious brute’ of a horse named ‘Satan’ who then kicked him in the head and he was unable to move for several days. His war was coming to an end, and having escorted prisoners of war for repatriation in July 1920, at Port Said in Egypt, he found his way on a cargo ship, sleeping on a sofa, bound for England, and back home to his parents in Chelsea. He was 24 years old and suddenly he felt out of place in the world of cocktails, hedonistic pleasure, fast cars and night clubs. Foster had not yet resigned his commission, and so he decided to go back to India; in Egypt he was promoted to Captain and in December 1920, receiving order to go, he left Suez for Karachi. In the Punjab he saw the Himalayas and joined the 38^th Dogra Regiment before being transferred to the 91^st Punjabs in Poona. There, a fortune-teller predicted three misfortunes occurring successively over three months which did in fact take place – first, a reed from a thatched roof penetrated his ear and punctured his ear drum; secondly a month later, he came off a bike on gravel and lacerated his hand (tetanus germs) and a week later suffered ‘lockjaw’; and thirdly, the following month, a dog leapt on him and punctured his arm in two places and he got rabies and had to go to hospital for injections. The man who went with him was the man who shot the dog and Foster made him promise to help him ‘commit suicide with my pistol’, the man ‘promised solemnly’. (p. 214) At the Pasteur Institute in Coonoor he had to have two injections in the stomach daily for two weeks (total of 28 injections) – he came down with fever and a swollen head and contracted Urticaria due to being over-inoculated – dysentery followed in early November 1921 (colitis and tympanites). Upon his recovery he was sent to the fortified mountain frontier post at Kotkai in Waziristan where he experienced excruciating toothache during Christmas before the tooth was extracted by a drunken dentist; then followed a septic wound on his heel and malaria, but even this did not stop his thoughts turning towards the spiritual path – wanting to see Ananda again, he had a dream-vision in which that most holy man was pointing westwards and there were six candles and a crucifix… He met a Catholic priest, Father Albert onboard ship and Foster had been thinking for several months about Catholicism. Back in England, in his cottage on Romney Marsh, he took care of the foot problem by performing surgery upon himself, taking a ‘cut-throat razor’, he cut the bad flesh away, exposing the shrapnel in the process and then followed the agony of the carbolic acid! But it was successful. He finally resigned his commission and finding Father Albert in a London monastery, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church.

 

AND SO – THE NOVELS

 

Reginald Foster took to using his middle name as Francis (he was Christened Reginald Frank Foster) just as Ananda had prophesied in that hospital in Bombay and he remained a Roman Catholic for six years from 1924-1930. In that time he had joined the Third Order of the Franciscans (autumn 1928), visiting the Friary at Chilworth every month (3) but he did not find what he was searching for. Also during those six years he wrote, as he says simply in ‘Separate Star, ‘about fifteen novels, volumes of essays, a technical book, and many articles, short stories and serials’ – he was also a Reviewer and Assistant Director of the Regent Institute, and the London School of Journalism. Many of his articles and short stories feature aspects of the Far East and recount several adventures Foster experienced, such as his article in The Evening News (London) of 19^th March 1928 (p. 13) in which he describes seeing an Indian conjuror performing the ‘Indian Rice Trick’. Foster, and his Regiment are in Poona and are being entertained by the conjuror, who hands around a saucepan for inspection by Foster and the English soldiers; Foster held the saucepan while the conjuror poured cold water into it – ‘I satisfied myself that it was cold water,’ Foster writes, ‘and I satisfied myself, too, that the rice he next poured in was raw.’ The conjuror then placed the saucepan with the cold water and rice upon the head of an Indian soldier named Hari Singh, and within moments the water began to boil and the rice was cooked – ‘we had certainly’ Foster says, ‘not been hypnotised into believing we had witnessed a phenomenon.’

He does not say quite why the crime novel appealed to him so much but it may have been some kind of therapy for him, having witnessed such horrific sights during the war. He draws upon his own adventures and accounts in the novels, his characters such as Captain Hawkesbridge and Colonel Merrow, were probably sketches of military officers he would have encountered and he enjoys such themes as the Indian aspect with its notions of Thugs and Kali worship. Journalism, of course enters the novels through his crime-solving protagonist, Anthony Ravenhill who is quite an accomplished detective-reporter using Sherlockian logic.

 

ENTER ANTHONY RAVENHILL

 

Foster had decided to earn his living by writing and his first novel appeared in 1924 – ‘The Lift Murder’, a monthly mystery novel published by Jarrolds, in which a game hunter named Marston Champneys is found hanged in a lift shaft and all the evidence points to suicide. Foster introduces the reader to the young reporter of The Planet, Anthony Ravenhill who uses his deductive skills to solve murders – was the man’s fiancée, Claudia, implicated in the crime and who was the sinister mad man who endeavoured to thwart Ravenhill? The same year, Foster’s second novel appeared, ‘The Missing Gates’ which tells the story of a woman’s corpse being stolen from a Pimlico morgue, while at the same time, twelve pairs of iron gates disappear mysteriously from different parts of London. Once again the protagonist, Anthony Ravenhill, is on hand to solve the crime and connect the two incidents. In the novel we also encounter a gang of international crooks, and Anglo Catholic rector and his parish magazine, a Foreign Secretary who is in danger of being murdered; the Secret Service and a mysterious document from the Foreign Office. Both novels received favourable reviews and the character of Anthony Ravenhill was swiftly becoming firmly set in the detective genre. Several short stories featuring Anthony Ravenhill appeared in various publications throughout 1924-25, and a volume of short stories featuring the reporter detective titled ‘Anthony Ravenhill, Crime Merchant’ was published in 1926 by Jarrolds; in the first story we find young Ravenhill at a fashionable dinner party when the fascinating subject of murder is introduced into the conversation; Ravenhill then discusses the importance of the disposal of the body. Ravenhill continues his crime-solving through The Music Gallery Murder of 1929 and the ‘Moat House Mystery’ of 1928, in which a police constable named Lumley finds an empty roadster and a corpse, not yet cold, and a crazed butler by the name of Worrall, babbling and holding a spade preparing to bury the body. The lady of the house, Mrs. Norton, says that the murdered man was an intruder whom the butler shot in self defence – can Ravenhill discover the truth and solve the mystery? Two more Ravenhill novels appeared in 1930, in the first, ‘The Dark Night’ we meet Roger Unicume, a weak man filled with doubts and fears who dreams of being an artist. We first encounter him as a very discontented insurance clerk returning home at night to the humdrum, dreary respectability of the suburban villa, called somewhat ironically – ‘Mon Repos’. With the assistance of a friend named Tom, he breaks away from this uninteresting existence and sets out to become an artist. Roger is easily distracted by his emotions and his senses to conform to society; marriage with the wrong woman while he has fallen in love with Tom’s wife fails to improve matters for him. And so he seeks some comfort in the life of a monk, which he appears not to be suited to either. The novel is filled with a gloomy atmosphere but there is light at the end of the novel.

Foster introduces the supernatural element in ‘Murder from Beyond’ (1930) which sees Ravenhill investigating and attempting to solve three cases of murder. In the novel, Tom Manning, a fellow reporter at The Planet recovering from pneumonia, is staying with his uncle, the Rector Hilary Starmer, at Stanmead Rectory. There is a murder at nearby Redlands, the home of the Wharton family (Mr. Wharton is a friend of the Rector, who is in love with Mr. Wharton’s daughter, Margery) – Mrs. Isobel Wharton has been found strangled in her bed. Tom suspects his uncle as he has been acting strange and calls in his friend and fellow reporter – Anthony Ravenhill. The Rector suffers a stroke and a second crime is committed when Mr. Vivian Winter, Margery Wharton’s fiancé, is shot in the back and later dies. Before long, a third murder is committed and like Mrs. Wharton, the Rector is found strangled to death in his bed. It is all very enjoyable and Foster weaves a vibrant tangled web of deception and intrigue. Ravenhill appears once more in his last case – ‘Something Wrong at Chillery’ (1931) in which we find three different sets of footprints in the dew leading across the lawn, and Captain Trevor Hawkesbridge of the Indian Army (retired), with a premonition that ‘something is very wrong.’ Hawkesbridge has been invited to Chillery Court for a week in August by his Commanding Officer, Colonel Merrow and one of the tracks is made by Merrow’s writer daughter, Osyth and it seemed she had been followed when she left the house. A young Brighton girl named Myrtle Ferribee is audaciously murdered, strangled in a 3^rd class train compartment of the 10.35 Shoreham to Brighton line, and discovered at Shoreham (her Aunt whom she was visiting was so shocked by the news she also dies of shock); the following day at Chillery Court, we are deep in the intrigue of murder, mysterious disappearances and brutal crimes: who killed the poacher, Peter Joyce? Who attempted to murder Tom Bentham and who killed Carlin, the butler and why was his body found in the swamp? Ravenhill, who works as a reporter for ‘The Planet’ along with Scotland Yard set to work to solve the diabolical murders which lead from India to Chillery and there to London when a second victim, a man, is strangled in a country cottage. Foster lines up the suspects and creates a delightful puzzle for the reader.

 

LONGSHANKS

 

Foster introduces the reader to another of his characters, Longshanks, Foster’s walking companion. We encounter Longshanks in several of Foster’s works which begin with the serialised ‘Secret Places’ in the Evening News (London) from August 1928-October 1929. Many of the published articles were printed in Foster’s volume of 1929, ‘Secret Places, Being a Chronicle of Vagabondage’. Longshanks appears again in 1930 in ‘Joyous Pilgrimage’ which again uses some of the articles and illustrations from the serialised ‘Secret Places’ in the Evening News.

Longshanks again makes an appearance in the 1939 published volume, ‘Longshanks and I’ which recounts a strange adventure which befell Father Francis and his devoted companion, Longshanks, a Lay Brother. The two men wander through England in search of a person who is worthy of the bequest of one, Mr. Isaac Musson and his eccentric will. Longshanks and Francis are themselves a loveable and eccentric pair of wanderers much like Falstaff or Don Quixote, offering to lend a hand where it is needed as they tramp along the lanes and enjoy themselves at village Inns; meeting interesting and peculiar people along the way, as they hope to find someone who can fulfil the strange conditions of the will.

Foster gives no mention of his wife except to say at the beginning of chapter XX that ‘a few weeks later I was married.’ (p. 274) His wife was Jess Mary Mardon Ducat, born 12^th February 1902 and she was a fellow writer who wrote under the pseudonym, Heather White (4); they were married in Chelsea in 1931. Their first child, Julian Francis Foster was born in Fulham, London on 20^th September 1931 (5) and the following year they both collaborated and published their volume – ‘The Wayside Book’ before the birth of their second son, Benjamin in Chertsey, Surrey, on 15^th November 1932.

 

THE BALLROOM BISHOP AND THE BEAST

 

Following his marriage to Jessie in 1931, Reginald became acquainted with a friend of hers – Bishop Frederick James. In Separate Star (p. 274) he says that Bishop James’s ‘Orders are derived from the Old Catholic Church (church of the Netherlands)… He had – and still has – a church in Basil Street, Knightsbridge, London.’ This ‘church’ was actually the old Hans Crescent Hotel at 23 Basil Street near the back of Harrods which Bishop James called the ‘Sanctuary’; its ballroom became its temple. Foster goes on to say that he ‘must not attempt to put his [Bishop James’s] teaching on paper – for he himself has steadfastly refused to do so. At first I thought that he was merely iconoclastic, a toppler-over of the ideas of superstition. Well, I thought, such a mission is well worth while, though his attitude chilled me. But despite his repudiation of the whole Christian position – I began to realise that he was by no means without a well-thought-out scheme of things, vague though orthodox people would say it was. Necessarily he believed in God – I use the past tense only because I am reproducing the impressions of eight years ago. He also believed in Christ. But Christ, to him, was not to be identified with any particular man. There were many Christs, he would say. This seemed Theosophic, but it was not. He patently believed in progressive revelation, which is the idea of all real thinkers – an inescapable one, in fact – and is, indeed, to be found amongst the Modernist clergy of the Anglican Church.’ Bishop James seems to be a very charismatic personality and Foster is completely under his spell, as is shown when he continues on page 275: ‘The only services Bishop James conducted at his Basil Street church were an abbreviated form of the Mass, Benediction and silent meditation. He defended his Mass on the grounds that it antedates Christianity which of course is in a sense true for it is found in some form or another in almost every enlightened cult of the pre-Christian era.’ But the love-affair does not end there – ‘There are few men who are so well read as Bishop James, and he has the advantage of having read – even Christian apologetics – with a completely open mind. His knowledge is therefore vast, and his experience of life in many capacities is such that he is able to apply his knowledge in the most useful way. And wisely he does not attempt to cast pearls before swine. Often destructive in his church – because of his mixed congregation – he is constructive in his study.’ Foster seems to have become deeply affected by the Bishop and his Christian mysticism for he states clearly that ‘Bishop James and I became friends. As often as I could manage it I visited him, and we would open our minds to each other in his study. He is the only man to whom I have been able to talk in halting sentences – for I am no speaker, and for many years I was too uncertain of myself to be coherent – and still be completely understood.’ Quite what this profound ‘relationship’ with Bishop James had on his marriage he does not say, but I would suggest it caused some sort of fractures. But who was this so-called Bishop Frederick James? We know from that distinguished author, Peter Anson, in his ‘Bishops at Large’ (1964), that Frederick James, a priest was ‘raised to the episcopate’ and consecrated as a Bishop at the Theosophical Temple, Blomfield Road, Maida Vale, London, on 5^th November 1916 by the Right Rev. Frederick Samuel Willoughby (6), the ‘Bishop of St Pancras’ (p. 368). Frederick James, who like Bishop Willoughby, was homosexual, and ‘earned his living as a music teacher, a professor of elocution, and an actor’ and liked to be known as Monsignor James, he ‘opened a public oratory at St John’s Wood and held services in other parts London for the spiritual benefit of a handful of like-minded Theosophists.’ During the war Bishop James went to the Far East, serving with the Y.M.C.A. as a chaplain with the Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry. Following the war he resumed his Episcopal duties and formed The Church Catholic, holding meetings and worship at a hall in Princess Street, Cavendish Square, London. In 1927 he moved his church to Basil Street and lived in a flat above the ‘church’ (the Bishop’s palace). The Sanctuary held services every Sunday morning and evening and including a service of healing every Wednesday evening; the service consists of ‘highly ornate ritual, representing the consecration portions of the Mass as celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church. The wording of the Lord’s Prayer is slightly different from that of ordinary use. Sacrament of Communion concludes the service, and is given to all without question, the confirmation of any church being accepted. Vestments of a beautiful design, incense, and candles are used; there is a statue of Buddha on one side facing one of Christ, below which is a spirit picture in faint colours, said to have been painted “under influence”.’ (7)

In 1932 the Bishop’s ‘Sanctuary’ was attracting some undesirable headlines in the press and ‘John Bull’ (Saturday 2^nd April, p. 15) declared that the police ‘should devote some attention to’ the ‘strange Temple in the heart of Knightsbridge’ in which Bishop Frederick James leads a congregation of those ‘who have taken an oath of allegiance to the Bishop and who have agreed to contribute to the support of the establishment.’ The article goes on to say that Bishop James ‘chants and croons about love and sex to a low musical accompaniment. The atmosphere is always heavy with incense; and sometimes, making mystic obeisance before the god, the Bishop pours forth a torrent of gibberish.’ It calls him a ‘humbug of the most dangerous type. His impudent pretensions alone stamp him as a rogue, for he claims to be the last dedicated Bishop of the Old Roman Catholic Church, which is traced to the nomination by Louis XIV, of France of a person named Count Cardinal Antonio Barberini.’ Other seemed to take offence at the statue of a naked boy used during the ceremonies; the Manchester Evening News of Wednesday 24^th February 1932 (p. 1) sent a reporter to the Sanctuary to speak with Bishop James who said that ‘”I don not want this fine place to be filled with busybodies and those who come merely inspired to come here in the weekday or Sunday services by curiosity. It is true that I am not orthodox and that there are certain images here other than those of the Christ belonging to the Christian Church”’. He stated that the naked praying boy statue is an image of Apollo which stands at the altar along with a ‘small beautiful golden Buddha’ in the shrine; he went on to say a small lie concerning his ordination, that he was ‘ordained years ago by the late Archbishop Mathew of the Ancient Church of the Netherlands (the old Catholic faith)’ and not by Bishop Willoughby who resigned under accusations of homosexual abuse.

But there was more than the whiff of occultism about Bishop James and ‘rumours that “fully initiated members of the little flock”, “indulged in occult ceremonies behind locked doors.”’ (Bishops at Large. p. 370) Members of both sexes stressed the importance of ‘polarity’ in the ‘public services’ and Monsignor James was ‘assisted by male and female acolytes, which symbolise the positive and negative as expressed in sex.’ Another volume, the ‘Episcopi Vagantes and the Anglican Church’ [London. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. 1947] by Henry R. T. Brandreth also says that ‘the services used to be held behind locked doors and a certain part of the cult appeared to centre in a figure of the god Apollo.’ It continues, saying ‘the Sanctuary was closed during the war and did not re-open. James has since died.’ (2^nd edition, 1961. p. 36) In ‘Some Fruits of Theosophy’ (1919), by Stanley Morison, [London. Harding & More, Ltd.] (p. 32) it says that Frederick James who was ‘ordained as priest’ by Archbishop Mathew and ‘consecrated as Bishop’ by Mr. Willoughby in 1915, is an ‘occultist of Hampstead (N.W.3), successively a teacher of Music, Professor of Elocution, and Actor.’ The Brisbane Courier of Monday 13^th March 1933 (p. 8) with its headline of ‘From Ballroom to Church’, ‘Crimson-robed Priest’ and ‘Weird Rites in London’, paints an evocative, even lurid picture of the Bishop and the Sanctuary, saying that a ‘black, carved, centuries-old shrine to Buddha, a tall white statue of a naked Greek boy sunworshipping a Shrine to the Virgin Mary, and a high altar of gold lit by red and gold flood-lights’ met one’s gaze on entering the Sanctuary. It goes on to say that ‘every Sunday cars and taxicabs draw up beneath the electric sign that is the only outside indication of the strange temple in the centre of a block of West-end flats. And from the cars and taxicabs comes the congregation of well-dressed women, girls, and smart, intellectual-looking youths whom the strange ritual and creeds of this little church has fascinated and drawn into its fold.’ The article goes on to describe the church as ‘oak panelled, the floor is highly polished, for it was meant for dance bands and crooning tenors. During the service the “bishop” was the only figure on the stage. He wore a cloak of shimmering crimson silk over a black gown and a crimson biretta. After a prayer and a lesson, read by a young man in a blue shirt, the bishop walked to the pulpit, a black crooked pillar of ancient Indian carvings lit by a single floodlight. For nearly three-quarters of an hour the congregation sat unmoving, a mass of shadows, while in the floodlit pulpit, his dark eyes flashing fire, his red cloak flying with his gestures, this amazing bishop preached a religion that embraced nearly every creed from Hinduism to Protestantism. It was a sermon that compared the moral teaching of the Church of England unfavourably with the teaching of “Yoga”, one of the six orthodox systems of Hindu philosophy. Yet it reverenced St. Paul and Christ. After the sermon, the bishop, followed by two altar boys, walked round the church bowing to the Virgin and bowing to a figure of Christ. Near the Buddha hung a Russian ikon, behind the Virgin hung a spiritualist picture.’ The whole service was explained in a pamphlet issued to the congregation upon entering, which read – ‘A church that is catholic must include all sects, creeds, races, and religions. It should be a universal brotherhood, for the link joining all men is divine love.’

Even the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley seems to have befriended Bishop James ‘an irregularly ordained wandering Bishop’ known as the ‘Bishop of Harrods’, during the second half of 1937 in which Crowley ‘attended a number of times’. Crowley was familiar with Catholic practices and Freemasonry, particularly the sexual symbolic aspects as divulged in the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) and he saw certain similarities between Bishop James’s services and sermons and his own Thelemic teachings and no doubt considered the idea of utilising the Bishop or a complete take over of the ‘Sanctuary’ to ‘preach’ his own doctrine of Do What Thou Wilt (8). After some correspondence, Crowley had visited the Sanctuary on Sunday 8^th August 1937 to find it closed, returning again on Sunday 19^th September 1937 and meeting Bishop James who no doubt impressed Crowley, the former talking in his Midlands accent and the latter, being a Warwickshire man, having shaken off such verbal idiosyncrasies at public schools and Trinity College, Cambridge, perhaps chuckling to himself. (9).

It is not too difficult to see the attraction of such an unconventional man as the Bishop (10) but Foster, who was not a man to suffer fools gladly (and neither was Crowley) must have seen some glimmer of genius about the Bishop for he found him an excellent companion. And so, perhaps because of Bishop James’s influence on him, he was ordained as a priest by a Nestorian Church Bishop in 1933 (11). He wanted desperately to found a brotherhood and ‘made a vow never to accept money for any priestly service that I might perform. I earn my living by literary work.’ (p. 314)

The following year after his ordination, a short story titled ‘The Pact’ appeared in The Recorder [Eastern Counties Times] (Thursday 16^th August 1934. p. 3) which seemed to continue Foster’s fascination with suicide and perhaps held prophetic meaning. The story has the sub-heading: ‘would you change places with a rich man for six months only and then return to poverty again?’ It is an intriguing little tale and sees poor man, Anthony Milford beside a river, in desperation about to take his own life when John Merriweather appears. John is obviously rich and quite drunk but he also decides to end his own life because he is ‘rich and bored’. John suggests they end their lives together before he has the idea to change places with each other for six months. And so they do. Milford takes a long sea cruise and three weeks before the end of the six months is up, he is debating the idea of returning to his old life; to make matters worse, he has fallen in love with the daughter of Colonel Dellow, his new friend, a girl named Myrtle who returns the same affection. He then learns by letter that John Merriweather died of pneumonia and Milford is the sole benefactor in Merriweather’s will. A delightful story, but perhaps the notion of love was not as sweet in Foster’s own life.

I can only assume that Reginald and his wife Jess divorced sometime between 1941 when their last child was born and 1951 when Reginald married once more and as Jess did not die until 1979 (late of Alma Road, Clifton, Bristol) it seems the only explanation, and so, Major Reginald Francis Foster of the Indian Army (retired) married for a second time on 22^nd December 1951 in Hampstead, London, to Miss Joan Elizabeth Bibby (1926-2007), daughter of Major Sir Arthur Harold Bibby (1889-1986), DSO, 1^st Baronet of Tarporley, and Marjorie Guthrie Williamson. Joan, who was born on 5^th January 1926 (thirty years younger than Reginald), gave birth to a daughter, Rachel Frances Foster, born in Worthing on 25^th August 1955 (12). Unfortunately, Reginald and Joan divorced the following year in 1956.

 

THE FINAL CHAPTER

 

I can find very little about Foster during the intervening years before his death. His volume, ‘The Perennial Religion’ seems to be the last published work in 1970 and I must presume that ill health forced him into a solitary existence in Romiley, in the borough of Stockport, Greater Manchester. He had been married twice and divorced twice and whether or not he played much part in the lives of his children is not known. Perhaps it was loneliness and the inability to find certain peace through spirituality that caused him to consider, like the Burman sepoys during the war, and the two men in his short story, The Pact, to end his life.

An article in the Manchester Evening News (Tuesday 1^st April 1975. p. 6) seemed a very sad termination of an adventurous and interesting life – ‘Found dead. Police in Stockport are still trying to establish more about the background of a man found shot in his home on Good Friday [28^th March]. The shotgun was taken after Mr. Reginald Foster aged 78 was found dead in his Help the Aged flat at Pembroke Court, Highfield Avenue, Romiley.’ The article concludes that ‘Mr. Foster was an author and retired Major, apparently some time in his career was also ordained priest but little else is known about him. He has a wife whom we understand is living in the Wincanton area and we are trying to trace her.’ (13)

And with his death we close the final chapter on the life of a very turbulent man.

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 

The Lift Murder (Novel). London. Jarrolds Ltd. 8vo. pp.313. 1924. [Monthly Mystery Novel. Foster’s first novel and first volume to feature his Reporter Detective – Anthony Ravenhill] First U. S. edition: The Body in the Shaft. New York. Siebel Publishing Corporation. 1925. Dust jacket: Shadowed male figure on red, white and green background; title and author’s name, black lettering with red outline. Abridged edition: Mellifont Press. London; Dublin printed. 8vo. pp. 160. 1940.

The Missing Gates (Novel). London. Jarrolds Ltd. 8vo. pp. 311. 8vo. pp. 311. [March] 1924. [The second of Jarrolds Monthly Mystery Novels and the second to feature Anthony Ravenhill] Black cloth, titles in red lettering. Dust jacket: (front) two men holding revolvers standing over a body. First U. S. edition: New York. Siebel Publishing Corporation. 1926. 8vo. pp. 310. (6 pp. of ads), tan coloured cloth, black lettering (front panel and spine). Dust jacket: Black with title and author’s name in green lettering on front cover which depicts a face and a hand; in green lettering below: ‘Another Ravenhill story by the author of “The Body in the Shaft”’. Abridged edition: Mellifont Press. London; Dublin printed. 8vo. pp. 160. 1938.

The Tube Mystery (short story, featuring Anthony Ravenhill). The Strand Magazine, volume 68, number 407. November 1924. [illustrations by Conrad Leigh]

For the Honour of Egypt (short story). Chums, volume 33, number 1704. 10^th May 1925.

The Edge of the Bridge (short story, by Captain R. F. Foster). The Smart Set (British magazine), volume LXXV, number 6. May 1925.

The Marked Program (short story featuring Anthony Ravenhill). Flynn’s (weekly detective magazine), volume 6, number 6. 23^rd May 1925.

The Gallows Guarantee (short story featuring Anthony Ravenhill). Flynn’s (weekly detective magazine), volume 7, number 1. 30^th May 1925.

The Missing Gates (featuring Anthony Ravenhill). Complete Novel Magazine, volume 1, number 2. June 1925.

Ravenhill’s First Case (short story featuring Anthony Ravenhill). Flynn’s (weekly detective magazine), volume 8, number 1. 11^th July 1925.

The Case of the Easy Victim (short story featuring Anthony Ravenhill). Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine, volume 5, number 30. July 1925.

The Easy Victim (short story, same as The Case of the Easy Victim). Flynn’s (weekly detective magazine), volume 8, number 6. 15^th August 1925.

A Long Shot (short story featuring Anthony Ravenhil). Flynn’s (weekly detective magazine), volume 10, number 1. 3^rd October 1925.

When the Moon is Full (short story). Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine, volume 6, number 36. January 1926.

The White Circle (short story). Hutchinson’s Adventure Story Magazine, volume 7, number 41. January 1926.

By the Candle Flame (short story). Mystery Magazine, volume VIII, number 2. 1^st February 1926.

The Shaft Mystery (featuring Anthony Ravenhill). Complete Novel Magazine, volume 1, number 10. February 1926.

The Captive King (serial short story). Boys’ Cinema Weekly, volume 13, number 329, 27^th March 1926, and volume 13, number 330, 3^rd April 1926.

How to Write and Sell Short Stories. London. George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 8vo. pp. 91. 1926. Cloth.

Making the Best of Your Mind (article). Everybody’s, volume 54, number 5. May 1926.

Anthony Ravenhill, Crime Merchant (short stories). London. Jarrolds Ltd. 8vo. pp. 279. [July] 1926. [Jarrolds Monthly Mystery Novels] Cloth boards, cover purple with orange decorative border; title and author’s name in orange lettering; orange and purple emblem right front corner; spine, purple, orange lettering.

Are You Observing? (article). Everybody’s, volume 55, number 1. July 1926.

Confession (Novel). London. E. Nash & Grayson. 8vo. pp. 320. 1927.

The Music Gallery Murder (Novel). London. T. Fisher Unwin. 8vo. pp. 280. [October] 1927. [Featuring Anthony Ravenhill]. Reprint: Ernest Benn. 8vo pp. 288 [May] 1929. Further edition: London. George Newness. 8vo. pp. 1931. Cover depicts a man in a grey hat and brown raincoat holding a revolver, green background and orange border; white title lettering on black and author’s name in black letters on yellow background. Abridged edition: Mellifont Press. London; Dublin printed. 8vo. pp. 128. 1939.

Cooking by Magic – The Indian Rice Trick (article). The Evening News (London), Monday 19^th March 1928. p. 13.

The Moat House Mystery (Novel). London. E. Nash & Grayson. 8vo. pp. 320. [October] 1928. [featuring Anthony Ravenhill]. First U. S. edition: New York. Macaulay Comp. 1930. Dust jacket: purple, yellow and black front and spine, depicting arched windows and beams with silhouetted figures; a shadowed head wearing a hat and a hand holding a smoking gun; gold lettering, title and author. 27 Chapters: I. Out of the Past, II. A Body Too Many, III. The Graveyard, IV. The Open Grave, V. Interlude, VI. Ravenhill is Wounded, VII. Who is Sybil? VIII. The Convict’s Sister, IX. The Owl by the Moat, X. I Turn Detective, XI. The Cellar, XII. Gas, XIII, Footsteps in the Fog, XIV, Ravenhill is Wounded Again, XV. “Owls Don’t Hoot in the Day-Time”, XVI. “But the Face was Clean-Shaven”, XVII. The Unknown, XVIII. The Test of Love, XIX. The Deaf Mute, XX. The Irrelevant Tragedy, XXI. Ravenhill Raises the Defences, XXII. The Mystery of the Owl, XXIII. Ravenhill Moves at Last, XXIV. The Second Inquest, XXV. The Second Murder, XXVI. The Lash, XXVII. The Two Personalitles.

The Secret Places, being a Chronicle of Vagabondage (Topography, local history and folklore). London. Elkin Mathews & Marrot. 8vo. pp. 128. (March) 1929. Illustrations: 35 line drawings. Blue cloth. Dust jacket: (front) brown tan cover depicting an etching of a woodland scene, a pathway between the trees and two dear; title and author’s name in black, gothic style lettering, and on the spine. Foster, a ‘tramping follower of St Francis of Assisi’ and his friend, Longshanks, journey ‘off the beaten-track’ through remote parts of South-East England. Chapters: 1. The Pilgrim’s Way. 2. The Devil at Burford Bridge. 3. The Lost Canal. 4. A Zebra in Sussex. 5. Adventurers’ Inn. 6. The Home Valley. 7. The Wood of Mystery. 8. The Forgotten Gibbet. 9. My Lady of the Mist. 10. Nocturne and Interlude. 11. The Friary in the Hills. 12. The Cave of Silence. 13. The Hermit. 14. The Making of a Knight. 15. The Witch of Walland. 16. A Dene-Hole in Kent. 17. A Fantasy in Thanet. 18. Pilgrim’s Rest. 19. Old Crackpot. 20. Ugly Angel. 21. Beer and a Bishop. 22. The Last March. [The Secret Places was first serialised in The Evening News (London) from 1^st August 1928 – 29^th October 1929]

The Moat House Murders (a ‘Mystery Novelette serial story in 5 parts), Detective Fiction Weekly Magazine (formerly Flynn’s), part 1: volume XXXIX, number 6, 9^th March 1929; part 2: volume XL, number 1, 16^th March 1929; part 3: volume XL, number 2, 23^rd March 1929; part 4: volume XL, number 3, 30^th March 1929; part 5: volume XL, number 4, 6^th April 1929.

The Secret of the White Thug (uncredited). The Sexton Blake Library, number 189. May 1929.

The Dark Night (Novel). London. E. Nash & Grayson. 8vo. pp. 287. [October] 1930. [Featuring Anthony Ravenhill]. Dust jacket: A man wearing a blue suit standing by a door attempting to either open it or prevent from opening; title and author in red lettering, spine in blue lettering. Printed by Ebenezer Baylis and Sons, Ltd. The Trinity Press, Worcester.

Murder from Beyond (Novel). London. E. Nash & Grayson. 8vo. pp. 317. [May] 1930. [Featuring Anthony Ravenhill. 21 Chapters] Red cloth boards, gilt lettering on spine. Dust jacket: artwork by C. Buchel, depicting a dark suited man on one knee looking through a key hole; title and author’s name in black lettering and on spine. First U. S. edition: New York. Macaulay Comp. 1931. Dust jacket: a woman tied to a chair and a man restraining another man on the floor who is holding a syringe; purple, orange and white, title in white lettering on purple background and author’s name in purple lettering on orange background, and spine. 29 Chapters: I. Murder in the Night, II. Margery Disappears, III. Enter Ravenhill, IV. The Second Crime, V. The Watchers of the Night, VI. The Hypodermic Syringe, VII. The Mysterious Visitor, VIII. Skeletons, IX. The Death of Vivian Winter, X. The Secret Fear, XI. Interlude, XII. The Watchers in the Garden, XIII. A New Horror, XIV. Hammet Sees a Ghost, XV. The Spy, XVI. The Third Murder, XVII. Tom Loses His Shoes, XVIII. The Missing Valve, XIX. The Necromancers, XX. Tom Sees the Ghost, XXI. Gerald Martin Goes Mad, XXII. Margery Decides to Speak, XXIII. At the Humped Bridge, XXIV. The Clue of the Altered Clock, XXV. Ravenhill Reconstructs, XXVI. Old Thompson Talks, XXVII. Prelude to Adventure, XXVIII. The Ghostly Killer, XXIX. Revelation.

Joyous Pilgrimage: Being the Chronicle of Strange Journey. London. Elkin Mathews & Marrot. 8vo. pp. 254. [May] 1930. Blue cloth and Black & white illustrations. The author and his friend journey on foot through remote parts of South-East England. 36 chapters: I. Give a Day a Bad Name, II. We Discover Essex, III. Devil’s Herb, IV. Poor Man’s Heaven, V. A Warrior’s View, VI. The Moated Farm, VII. Of a Pedlar of Poems, VIII. The County of Marvellous Names, IX. We Put To Sea and Become – Vikings For a Day, X. A Tale of a Top Hat and of a Man Who Loved a Policewoman, XI. Of a Man Who Was Blind and How He Solved His Problem, XII. The Necromancer – With Whom We Touch the Unseen, XIII. We Visit the Monks, XIV. The Devil’s Well, XV. Of a Man Who Was Dead, XVI. The Great Bed of Ware, XVII. Where the Devil Dug, XVIII. We Ride in a Tumbril, XIX. A Slayer of Dragons, XX. The Man with a Swelling, XXI. Interlude, XXII. We Hear Strange Tales in Buckinghamshire, XXIII. The Soothsayer of St. Albans, XXIV. The Strange Tale of a Baboon, XXV. The Masked Man with an Axe, XXVI. The Man Who Banned Beer, XXVII. Of a Hangman on Furlough, XXVIII. We Sup with a Hermit, XXIX. On Gallowstree Common, XXX. The Tale of an Umbrella, XXXI. The Grim Story of the Sin Eater, XXXII. We Help a Burglar, XXXIII. Lionel Augustus, XXXIV. The Gipsy’s Gift, XXXV. We Discuss Women, XXXVI. Of the End of the Wandering.

Something Wrong at Chillery. London. E. Nash & Grayson. 8vo. pp. 288. [October] 1931. [Featuring Anthony Ravenhill in his last case. 31 Chapters] First U. S edition: The Mystery at Chillery. New York. The Fiction League. 8vo. pp. 308. 1931. Black cloth boards, lime green lettering (title and author) on front cover and spine. Dust jacket: silhouetted man entering a bedchamber where a woman lies asleep or lifeless; green and black with white highlights; title and author in black lettering. Abridged edition: The Chillery Court Mystery. Mellifont Press. London; Dublin printed. 8vo. pp. 160. 1936. Reprint: Something Wrong at Chillery. Big Ben Books (number 5 series). 8vo. pp. 249. 1940. Cover: orange, depicting black silhouette of ‘Big Ben’ clock tower with the title in black letters within a white box at the top and the author’s name in black letters in a white strip below. The bottom of the cover has: ‘Big Ben Books’ in white letters on black background. Also published: Something Wrong at Chillery. London. R. Hale & Co. 8vo. pp. 287. [July] 1937, and: Something Wrong at Chillery. Wells Gardner & Co. 1940. 31 Chapters: I. Only One Returned, II. The Body in the Train, III. Osyth Refuses to Speak, IV. What the Poacher Saw, V. The Frustrated Meeting, VI. The Butler Disappears, VII. Is Osyth Guilty? VIII. Or Mrs. Merrow? IX. Who Killed the Poacher? X. The Finding of Mrs. Merrow, XI. The Mysterious Letter, XII. The Colonel’s Collapse, XIII. Who is Mrs. Killick? XIV. Out of the Past, XV. The Face that Horrified, XVI. The Mysterious Detective, XVII. A New Factor, XVIII. Verging on the Truth, XIX. Mrs. Killick Again, XX. The Strangler Again, XXI. In the Middle of the Night, XXII. The Body in the Swamp, XXIII. “The Murderer is Still Alive”, XXIV. How Carlin was Killed, XXV. Ravenhill’s Revelation, XXVI. The Automatic, XXVII. The Meeting in the Wood, XXVIII. Prelude to Tragedy, XXIX. Murder in the Night, XXX. Ravenhill Reconstructs, XXXI. The Strangler in the Flesh.

Famous Short Stories Analysed. (Foreword and Commentaries by R. Francis Foster). London. Fleet Publications [The Writer’s Library]. 8vo. pp. 119. [July] 1932. Green cloth boards, gilt lettering spine. Dust jacket: Blue with black lettering, title and author. Second impression: London. Fleet Publications. 8vo. pp. 119. 1935. Green boards, gilt lettering. Stories analysed are: The Cask of Amontillado (Edgar Allan Poe), Markheim (R. L. Stevenson), The Stolen Bacillus (H. G. Wells), Sands of Time (John Galsworthy), The Devil in the Churchyard (A. E. Coppard), Bachelors (Hugh Walpole) and Miss Bracegirdle Does Her Duty (Stacy Aumonier).

The Wayside Book: A Book for Ramblers, Campers, and all Way Farers. Edited by R. Francis Foster and Heather White (Foster’s wife under her pen-name). London. C. Arthur Pearson Ltd. 8vo. pp. 158. [July] 1932. Illustrations by Margot Folliot. Green cloth, black lettering, front and spine. Front cover depicts a framed image of a track through a landscape with trees.

The Pact (short story). The Recorder [Eastern Counties Times], Thursday 16^th August 1934. p. 3.

Separate Star: An Autobiography. London. Victor Gollancz Ltd. 8vo. pp. 320. [September] 1938.

Longshanks and I. London. Hodder and Stoughton. 8vo. pp. 288. [April] 1939. Dark red cloth, gilt lettering spine. Dust jacket: (front) black and orange with white highlights depicting two bearded men (Father Francis and Laybrother Longshanks), one wearing a hat and smoking a pipe (Foster), behind them is the silhouette of a wagon in the distance; title in white letters and author’s name in orange letters. Spine depicts the two men seated on the wagon being pulled by a horse, orange, black and white with black lettering.

Modern Punctuation Handbook. London. Fleet Publications. 8vo. pp. 63. [May] 1947. Reprint: 1950. pp. 63.

The Perennial Religion. London. Regency Press. 23 cm. pp. 238. [February] 1970. Brown boards with gilt title on the spine. Dust jacket: (front) Pale blue with central vertical white stripe, title and author’s name in black lettering, and spine.

 

THE SECRET PLACES – serialised in the Evening News (London) 1928-1929:

 

1. The Wood of Mystery. Wednesday 1^st August 1928. p. 11.
2. Two Pilgrim’s Paths in Surrey. Tuesday 7^th August 1928. p. 9.
3. A Grove of Ghosts. Wednesday 22^nd August 1928. p. 11.
4. Where Satan Took Leave of Us. Friday 31^st August 1928. p. 11.
5. Adventurers’ Inn. Monday 17^th September 1928. p. 11.
6. A Cart-Track to a Paradise. Wednesday 26^th September 1928. p. 11.
7. A Lost Surrey Canal. Wednesday 3^rd October 1928. p. 10.
8. A Forgotten Gibbet. Wednesday 10^th October 1928. p. 11.
9. My Lady of the Mist. Tuesday 16^th October 1928. p. 11.
10. Brown Friars of the Hills. Tuesday 30^th October 1928. p. 11.
11. A Cave of Silence. Friday 9^th November 1928. p. 11.
12. A Hermit’s Home – In a Tree. Thursday 22^nd November 1928. p. 11.
13. A Home in the Valley. Wednesday 28^th November 1928. p. 11.
14. A Witch in Walland. Wednesday 5^th December 1928. p. 11.
15. A Dene-Hole in Kent. Wednesday 12^th December 1928. p. 11.
16. A Fantasy in Thanet. Saturday 22^nd December 1928. p. 9.
17. A River that Vanishes. Monday 31^st December 1928. p. 11.
18. No Alms for Poor Travellers. Monday 14^th January 1929. p. 11.
19. His Lordship Drives in State. Monday 21^st January 1929. p. 11.
20. Ugly Angel. Monday 28^th January 1929. p. 11.
21. A Zebra in Sussex. Monday 4^th February 1929. p. 11.
22. The Inspector of Beer. Monday 11^th February 1929. p. 11.
23. Legend of Little Cars. Thursday 28^th February 1929. p. 11.
24. Lagoons of Essex. Wednesday 6^th March 1929. p. 11.
25. The Wandering Jew’s Herb. Wednesday 13^th March 1929. p. 11.
26. Poor Man’s Heaven. Wednesday 20^th March 1929. p. 11.
27. A Warrior’s View. Wednesday 27^th March 1929. p. 11.
28. The Moated Farm. Wednesday 3^rd April 1929. p. 10.
29. The Pedlar of Poems. Wednesday 10^th April 1929. p. 11.
30. The County of Marvellous Names. Friday 26^th April 1929. p. 11.
31. Vikings for a Day. Wednesday 1^st May 1929. p. 11.
32. A Tale of a Top Hat. Wednesday 8^th May 1929. p. 11.
33. A Man Who Was Blind. Saturday 25^th May 1929. p. 9.
34. Demons in Herts. Saturday 1^st June 1929. p. 9.
35. We Visit the Monks. Friday 7^th June 1929. p. 11.
36. By Satan’s Well. Wednesday 12^th June 1929. p. 11.
37. A Man Who Was Dead. Thursday 20^th June 1929. p. 11.
38. Great Bed of Ware. Monday 1^st July 1929. p. 11.
39. The Evil One Goes Digging. Monday 8^th July 1929. p. 11.
40. A Strange Ride in a Tumbril. Tuesday 16^th July 1929. p. 11.
41. A Slayer of Dragons. Tuesday 23^rd July 1929. p. 11.
42. Strange Tales They Told Us in Buckinghamshire. Wednesday 7^th August 1929. p. 9.
43. A Soothsayer of St Albans. Saturday 17^th August 1929. p. 9.
44. *
45. The Strange Tale of a Baboon in Bucks. Tuesday 27^th August 1929. p. 9.
46. She Took My Picture. Monday 2^nd September 1929. p. 11.
47. The Fate of a Man Who Banned Beer. Tuesday 17^th September 1929. p. 4.
48. The Late Wilson Burrott. Friday 27^th September 1929. p. 11.
49. We Sup with a Hermit. Friday 4^th October 1929. p. 11.
50. Being the Gruesome Adventure of Gallowstree Common. Monday 14^th October 1929. p. 11.
51. Umbrella. Tuesday 29^th October 1929. p. 11.

 

*I have been unable to find number 44 in the series and it is possible there was a mistake in the numbering which would account for the series ending with number 51 and not 50.

 

 

NOTES:

 

1. 1901 Census: RG13, schedule: 51, piece/folio: 126, household identifier: 141466, p. 5. 1911 Census: RG14, schedule 388, piece/folio: 979, household identifier: 4020797, p. 1.
2. Edith Beatrice C. M. Foster married Harold Desbrow in Kensington, London in 1933. A son, John A. Desbrow was born in 1934 and she died aged 48, in Willesden, London in 1950. Reginald’s father, Benjamin Harry Foster, died of pneumonia, aged 55 in Chelsea, London in 1923.
3. A Visit in Secret. Evening News (London). Wednesday 13^th February 1929. p. 8.
4. Published works by Heather White (Jessie Ducat): The Extravagant Year (1929), Shirley’s Patrol (1930), Meet McGlusky (1930), Kerry Blue (1930), The Golden Road (1931), The Wayside Book (with Foster, 1932), Daffodil Row (1937), New Broom at Prior’s Rigg (1938), Ally’s Silver Spoon (1938), The Two B’s (1939), Becky (1939) Watersmeet (1940), Rowan in Search of a Name (1941) and Holiday in Rome (1955).  She died aged 77 in Bristol on 2^nd January 1979.
5. Julian Francis Foster died in Norwich, Norfolk on 2^nd December 2001. Benjamin C. Foster was born in Chertsey, Surrey on 15^th November 1932 and a daughter, Catherine H. R. Foster was born in Surrey in 1941. Catherine married in Bristol in 1967, Simon W. Roberts.
6. Frederick Samuel Willoughby (1862-1928), was ordained priest 1888 and had to resign in 1914 due to accusations of misconduct of a homosexual nature. Due to the scandal that surrounded Willoughby, Bishop James frequently said he was ordained Bishop by Bishop Arnold Mathew (1852-1919).
7. Chelsea News and General Advertiser. Friday 15^th April 1927. p. 5.
8. see Crowley’s Gnostic Mass (Liber XV), a ritual involving the eucharist, the consumption of the wine and the ‘Cake of Light’, which Crowley wrote while in Moscow in 1913 [The Equinox, volume III, number I (1919) and Magick in Theory and Practice (1929)]
9. The Crowley Biography: Spiritual Revolutionary, Romantic Explorer, Occult Master and Spy. Tobias Churton. London. Watkins Publishing. 2011. p. 371. see also: Aleister Crowley in England – The Return of the Great Beast. Tobias Churton. London. Simon & Schuster. 2021; City of the Beast: The London of Aleister Crowley. Phil Baker (Foreword by Timothy D’Arch Smith). London. Strange Attractor Press. 2022.
10. Bishop James stood beside an old friend, the Archdeacon of Stow, John Wakeford (1861-1930) who in 1921 was accused and convicted of adultery on two occasions (March and April 1920) at the Bull Hotel in Peterborough. Following bankruptcy in 1924 and a mental breakdown he was sent to Barming Heath Asylum in March 1928. He died there on 13^th February 1930. The Nottingham Evening Post of 12^th March 1928 (p. 1) said this: ‘A remarkable outburst against the Church of England was made by Bishop Frederick James, preaching yesterday at The Sanctuary, Knightsbridge, “The prayers and charity of the church are asked for John Wakeford, late Archdeacon of the Church of England,” said the Bishop before beginning his sermon. “Four years ago”, he continued, “I met Mr. Wakeford. I found him a great scholar and a great priest. Whether or not he was guilty of the charge brought against him is not my concern, sufficient to say that it is not proven. Even if he were guilty his sin was as nothing in comparison to the sin of the Church who has hounded him to disgrace, pain, madness and I hope, the liberation of death.” Mr. Wakeford was last week admitted to an asylum. The congregation, made up for the greater part of women – numbered about 50.’
11. The Inverness Courier, Tuesday 28^th June 1938, p. 3, under ‘Literary Notes’ (notification of ‘Separate Star’) says that Foster ‘who has been a journalist, was received into the Roman Church, entered the Third Franciscan Order, and later, coming under the influence of Bishop Frederick James, of the Old Catholic Church, was ordained a Nestorian priest.’ It also says that Mr. Foster had a ‘following in a country village without label or church’.
12. It seems that Rachel followed in her mother’s footsteps for in 1977 she married Group Captain Ian Thomas Nicoll (RAF) and they divorced in 1990.
13. Reginald Francis Foster died in Cheshire in 1975. Volume: 39, Affiliate Line Number: 75, p. 149.