RICHARD GEOFFREY WORSLEY

 
 

 

THE DEATH OF A DANCING FAUN

RICHARD GEOFFREY WORSLEY 1912-1928

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

 

‘I am sure you are devoted to music, you have the musical physiognomy.’

[The Dancing Faun. Florence Farr. 1894]

 
 
 
Thomas Cuthbert Worsley (1907-1977), schoolmaster and critic, is the son of the eccentric Dean of Llandaff, a man who ‘disliked and distrusted the Welsh’ and a man whose life reads like a series of Pickwickian misadventures. In Thomas Cuthbert’s autobiographical volume, ‘Flannelled Fool: a Slice of Life in the Thirties’, published in 1967, he paints a vivid portrait of his rather strange upbringing as the son of the wayward Dean and describes with psychological precision his time at Cambridge where ‘the years had slipped by under the shadow of a wasteful attachment to a friend’; he also writes about his complete and utter ignorance of sex, knowing nothing of masturbation at the age of nineteen; his own sexual awakenings during his time as a schoolmaster and of his time at Gordonstoun school at the invitation of its founder, Kurt Hahn (1886-1974) where they ending up throwing books at each others’ heads! But most poignant of all is his astonishing remarks as to the death of his younger brother Richard Geoffrey Worsley, whom he names ‘Benjamin’ (‘Bengy’) in the book, by drowning in 1928.
Born in Durham in 1907, Thomas Cuthbert Worsley was the fourth of five children (1) born to Frederick William Worsley (1873-1956) who was born in Singapore and Catherine Ethel Payne (1874-1956), born Calcutta, West Bengal, who were married in 1901; his father, Frederick, D.D. (Durham University), M.A. (Cambridge) a man who thought his children were just a distraction and didn’t even bother to visit Cuthbert at Marlborough College where he was ‘always cold and usually hungry’ for the first four years (although he did write once a year on his birthday) is a peculiar sort of man, easily bored by achievements whose ‘remoteness seemed part of his superiority’.
Cuthbert attended the Cathedral School at Llandaff which was established in 1880 to educate the boy choristers of the Cathedral choir. From there he went to Brightlands Preparatory School, Nenham on Severn in Gloucestershire which opened as a boys’ boarding school in 1908. Here, Cuthbert won his scholarship to Marlborough.
At Cambridge (St John’s College) Cuthbert could ‘pride myself after two years at University that I had never opened a book, apart from the set of books for the Classical Tripos: and even these were shamefully neglected’. (2) His father, Canon Worsley who had spent most of his time playing golf, billiards and drawing pictures of nude women, in fact, anything to distract from the boredom of clerical duties, became Dean of Llandaff. At home, Canon Worsley and his wife had been estranged for several years, they did not speak to each other and the notion of ‘family’ was just pretence. One day, after a silent dinner, the Dean announced – ‘I am leaving here tomorrow. You can all find yourselves somewhere else to live.’ (3) The next day he left without a word. Later we learn, as did Cuthbert himself, that his father came from a long line of country baronets; Canon Worsley’s brother, Frank, won the ‘Sword of Honour’ and ‘seduced his Colonel’s daughter’ before being wounded and decorated in the Great War, marrying his nurse from the hospital and giving her a daughter, all before discharging himself from hospital, abandoning them and going into permanent hiding which seems a common trait of the Worsley men! The Canon himself, Frederick, was born in Singapore, educated at Brighton College, worked in a bank where there was some ‘incident with the till’, tried to enter the acting profession before deciding to study at London University, and take Holy Orders; he was ordained in 1897. Not long after his marriage to Catherine in 1901, the ‘first signs of the fatal pattern began to show’, he was ‘bored by his success; he was unhappy as a mere curate.’ He took a ‘living’ in Lincolnshire, a gift from a cousin and spent all his time shooting and fishing; when the first child ‘John’ (actually Francis Frederick Worsley) was born in 1902, the proud mother, Catherine, was shocked to find her husband, the ‘future Dean in what they call a compromising position with the nursery maid’. (4) A ‘bastard son’ was born to the maid and to prevent scandal she was paid off and dismissed. The church of course took a dim view of this and Frederick was ‘inhibited’ which meant he could not administer the sacrament for two years. Wanting to better himself, the family spent two years in Durham while Reverend Worsley studied for his Doctorate – it was at Durham that Cuthbert was born on 10^th December 1907. Still unhappy, Frederick wanted an ‘Oxbridge’ education so he could get a better teaching job and spent two years post graduate at Clare College, Cambridge – it was at Cambridge while living at Cavendish Avenue in 1912 that the fifth and last child was born: ‘Bengy’ (Richard Geoffrey Worsley). Cuthbert tells us that ‘”Benjamin” was three years younger than I, and from the very first commanded the worship of the women in the family, of mother and Miss Maclaren [the nanny] and of my sister. And even my father had a small corner of his affections for this youngest son. Surrounded by the admiration of the women, Bengy grew up protected and fostered to a degree which couldn’t help exciting in us envy, disguised as contempt.’ So we can see that from the first little ‘Bengy’ caused a lot of jealousy and resentful feelings within the Worsley household among the boys and mother, Catherine was particularly fond of her youngest child. Cuthbert goes on to say that ‘he had evidently inherited a good share of our father’s brilliance. He read, painted and wrote with considerable promise at a very early age. But his special passion was for dancing which became, under my sister’s encouragement, his chief means of self-expression.
Most of his childhood he seemed to spend dancing, dressed up in bright clothes from the acting box, made-up to the eyes, improvising to the music of the old gramophone which the willing women worked for him as they sat in their admitting circle at his feet.
It can be imagined how we other boys of the family, grossly conventional in our outlook, viewed this, as it seemed to us, revolting cissy spectacle. Yet it was this boy-girl with his painted lips and mascara-ed eyes, his interchange between male and female dress, who at last, and just by being that, had succeeded in drawing my mother out of the self-absorption of her private grief, in taming the tough Miss Maclaren and occasionally – wonder of wonders – delaying my father on his way to the golf course.
Was it somehow with this pretty androgynous creature that my own emotions had got stuck? For I wasn’t yet sufficiently emotionally clear of the tragedy which overtook him to analyse the effect of that on myself.’ (5)
Meanwhile, their father, Frederick, failed his examinations and had to take a third year of study becomes Assistant Warden at the Theological College in Llandaff before he surprised the family and took off to war; he was interviewed on 29^th October 1915 and declared medically fit for service and posted to France the following month attached to a Casualty Clearing Station. He served as an Army Chaplain in France and Italy; in August 1916 he was ill with trench fever but returned to duty with the British Red Cross a month later. At the end of the war he was reluctant to hurry back to the family – there was a ‘little widow woman in Genoa’ who kept him busy. She even came to England and set up a house in London to which the Warden retreated much too often. His unorthodox behaviour did not go unnoticed.
As for ‘Benjamin’, Cuthbert tells us that ‘James [Cuthbert’s older brother, William Lister Worsley] and I paid scant attention to Bengy during our growing years. As children we had had him dumped on us all too often when the grown-ups were busy. He was so much younger at that stage that he couldn’t join in our rough nine or ten year old scrambles. Being thoroughly spoiled, though, he wasn’t content to tag along, and would soon be off sneaking to the adults that we weren’t including him in our play.
But as all of us grew up, he learned well enough to amuse himself in his own eccentric way. James and I were mad on golf, and we had also been given a discarded motor-bike by brother John [Francis Frederick Worsley]. These pursuits were all absorbing, and seemed to us, little philistines as we were, altogether more healthy than the dancing and the messing about with a toy theatre which occupied Bengy’s time.’ (6)
The Dean of Llandaff was given an ultimatum and had to remove the ‘little widow woman’ from his life; it was this which caused the great rift between Frederick and Catherine Worsley and they hardly spoke a civil word between them for eleven years after until Warden Worsley was made Dean – ‘now there came into the picture a little masseuse from Tonypandy’ whom he took to resorts and clerical meetings – it was a ‘fatal attraction’, but why did Catherine put up with this disgraceful behaviour? The end was surely in sight, and so it was, the Dean either decided or was forced to resign on ‘ill health’ in October 1929 and gave up the official residence of the Dean; by June the following year he was claiming Clerical Disabilities.
For Cuthbert, who admits to being a ‘social, intellectual and athletic’ snob’ cricket and other games supplied a ‘pretence of virility’, but in fact he was hiding his ‘repression of sexual potency. The excessive value placed on the athlete made my ignorance acceptable both to myself and others. It enabled me to escape noticing what in fact was missing. The generalised homo-eroticism which I discovered in the rituals of the playing fields satisfied my inclinations enough to keep them “pure”.’ (7)
Bearing these sentiments in mind it is difficult to understand his feelings towards his younger brother, ‘Benjamin’, for he says that ‘we didn’t dislike him: indeed we both [Cuthbert and William] grew fond of him as we grew older. But we were – or I was at least – a good deal ashamed of, and embarrassed by, all that dressing up in girl’s clothes and that shameless painting of the lips.’ He continues, saying that, ‘our parents were even more divided and incompetent over what should be done about their bizarre offspring than they were about us. What sort of education should he have? Was dancing really a career possible for a boy? (it must be remembered that in those days there was no Royal Ballet nor anything like it.) He was taken up for an audition with one of the better known ballet teachers of the time, Espinoza, (8) who pronounced him a budding genius, and took him for a time into his classes.
Quite why this arrangement was abandoned I didn’t bother to discover. Probably it was the parental situation. Mother was incapable of making decisions: father was too pre-occupied with himself to do so. As a result Bengy was taken away from the ballet school and sent back to the Cathedral School from which he had earlier been withdrawn. This school had very much gone down since our day, and some hint of his getting into sexual trouble there reached us. It wouldn’t have been surprising.’ (9) Cuthbert, of course, being just as much a sneak as his younger brother, yet old enough that he should know better, informs his father, the Dean, who is in charge of the Cathedral School, of his little brother’s indiscretions. Nevertheless, it does not stop Bengy from winning a scholarship to St Edward’s College, Oxford, even though ‘he was so obviously quite unfitted for public school life.’ (10)
 Another factor, which probably played a major part in the Dean’s decision to break-up the family and in Cuthbert’s development, was the death of the youngest son, Bengy, who had won a scholarship to St Edward’s College, Oxford, by drowning. It occurred on Sunday 15^th July 1928 while Cuthbert and ‘Bengy’, both non-swimmers, were in the sea bathing at Dunraven Bay, Southerndown, Glamorgan. Cuthbert says in Flannelled Fool that ‘it was during a hot summer spell that we went bathing one Sunday at the nearest strip of coast. Had we all abandoned any pretence of being connected with the Deanery? Yet mother was most improbably there too, and it was a Sunday. The newspapers were to make much of that and there were any number of anonymous ill-wishers who wrote afterwards proclaiming the accident a judgement on us.
John, I and Bengy were the bathing party and John was not in the water when it happened. James was unfortunately not with us, and he was the only member of the family who could swim.’ (11) Cuthbert goes on to say that ‘on this summer’s day, then, I couldn’t swim nor could Bengy. We were playing together, chest deep in the water, in a small cove formed by two rocky points. It wasn’t rough but there were the kind of waves which it is fun for non-swimmers to play in. Suddenly without either of us realising it was happening, we were out of our depth. Swiftly, before we could recover, some current or other had carried us out further to sea in the direction of one of the points. We clung together, went down and came up, spluttering, gurgling, choking, out of control.
Now we were down fighting the green water, now we had a glimpse of sky, a mouthful of air and salt mixed: now it was only mouthful after mouthful of water. I suppose it didn’t take long, it seemed an eternity. Soon we were simply fighting for life and fighting not only for life, but fighting each other. I was the older and stronger. I got free. I wasn’t any longer at that point a non-swimmer. I made for the head of the point, and got there. And I lay there fighting to get back my breath, to get the water out of my lungs.
Bengy was carried right round the point. Our struggles had been observed. Swimmers had gone in and they brought him to shore in the next bay. He was dead. Artificial respiration went on for an hour. But there was no reviving him.
It was particularly appalling that mother was there on the beach to see the calamity. I revived pretty quickly.’ Cuthbert had to telephone his father, the Dean (‘why me?’ he asks), – ‘”You bloody fool, you!” was his comment.’ (12)
Cuthbert goes on to say that ‘however gentle everyone was with me, I had the facts to face. I was alive and he was dead. He, the specially beloved of them all, the little genius, the most precious of any of us, hadn’t survived. I had. And how could I forget that in the final climax of that deadly crisis, I had cast him off? I had torn myself free. If I hadn’t, there would, of course, have been two deaths instead of one. True. But I had, I had actually, physically, deliberately, wilfully torn his clutching hands away from my thighs.’ (13)
Two days later, an article in the Western Mail reported on the incident and the inquest:
 
 ‘Death Trap to Bathers. The Danger Spot at Southerndown. Coroner’s Comments. Tribute to Plucky Policeman. – The lack of notices warning bathers against the dangerous spots on the coast at Southerndown and Ogmore-by-Sea, where two tragedies occurred on Sunday, was commented upon by a doctor and the coroner (Mr. S. H. Stockwood) at the inquest at Bridgend on Monday on Richard Geoffrey Worsley, the fifteen year old son of Dr. F. W. Worsley, Dean of Llandaff, who was drowned whilst bathing at Southerndown on Sunday. The coroner said that the only notice was that erected by the forbears of the Earl of Dunraven, which had been posted on the Dunraven Castle wall ever since he (the coroner) was a boy, and which was hidden when there were a few cars parked there. The Coroner said he had been hoping that the commoners and the Lord of the manor might do something in the matter, but he intended in any event to write to the council in whose district the bathing beach was situated.
The story of the drama was told by Mr. Thomas Cuthbert Worsley, an undergraduate of St. John’s College, Cambridge, who is home on vacation. He said he was at Southerndown with his mother and brother on Sunday. “We were down on the beach at Dunraven Bay and my brother, Richard Geoffrey, and myself went in to bathe. We entered the water on the Witches Point side. I could swim a few strokes, but my brother could not swim at all. My mother and brother Francis were on the beach. The tide was just on the turn.” Witness said they had been in about five or six minutes when Richard looked as if he had been knocked over by a wave. “I walked over and found there was a pool there, and I went down. My brother’s head went back. He was about five yards from me. When my feet gave way I tried to swim, and he clutched hold of me, and I fell. We both went under and I lost him. When I came up again I heard him cry out, and another wave came and I went under again. I then remembered that the rock known as Witches Point was a few yards away and I got to the rock and lay there.”
Thought Brother was Saved.
The Coroner: Were you conscious that you had drifted towards that point? – No; but I realise now that we must have been carried to the east.
Can you say whether you were conscious on the rock? – I think I was.
You went to your mother thinking your brother had been got out? – Yes.
Can you tell me what were you conscious of all the time you were slipping about – were you conscious of currents? – No, but I knew that whereas I had been in my depth I was suddenly out of it.
Francis Frederick Worsley said he saw his brothers go in the water and kept them more or less in view. “The first indication I had of something unusual was when I noticed they were getting near Witches Point; so I walked to the edge of the water by the point and shouted to them, but they did not appear to hear.”
“Bobbing Up and Down.”
“I did not really worry much until I saw that Richard, the younger one, was bobbing up and down in a curious way,” added witness. “I thought my other brother was also fighting a bit. As I am unable to swim I ran across to the nearest party, in which was Dr. Cook, of Cardiff, and then ran back and crossed Witches Point. I went into the water the other side of the point and then I saw Richard floating with his head down and got hold of him and started to pull him in. I was joined by two other men. We got him onto the sand, and artificial respiration was resorted to without success.”
Doctor’s Experience.
Dr. Herbert George Graham Cook said Mr. Worsley came up and asked him whether he could swim. “I am not a strong swimmer, and not very young,” said the doctor; “so I shouted to my son up the beach, who is a strong swimmer, and I went off myself. I went into the water, and near Witches Point I went into a deep pool, which I got through, and scrambled out the sand the other side of the point. Then I saw Mr. Worsley and another man wading out, and they got hold of the boy.” Dr. Ralph Downing and Dr. Leigh helped in the work of artificial respiration with Major Budd. The doctor added that it was very dangerous at this spot. The holes there were very steep – nothing to a strong swimmer, but rather terrifying for a poor one.
The Coroner: I am afraid the currents are there even at the lowest tide, and the most dangerous time is when the tide is full up.
Police-Constable Joseph Sansom said it was quite easy to see several currents working. They would be extremely dangerous to anyone who was not a strong swimmer. It was notorious that Witches Point was dangerous.
Dr. Cook referring to the coroner’s remarks, said that if a warning notice was put up in a prominent place, where it could not fail to be seen by visitors, lives might be saved. A verdict of “Accidental death” was returned.
Requiem for Son of Dean of Llandaff.
In connection with the funeral of Richard Geoffrey Worsley, son of the Dean of Llandaff, we are asked to state that a requiem will be sang in the Cathedral to-day (Tuesday) at 10.15 a.m., and the Burial will follow immediately. (14)
 
When Cuthbert left Cambridge he was at a loss as to his future prospects and so he fell into what all apathetic undergraduates fall into – teaching; he became an assistant master at Wellington College (simply known as ‘College’ in ‘Flannelled Fool’) and having failed to keep control of the History class had to resort to the administering of a ‘beating’ with the cane; five trouble-makers were ‘massacred’ in this way and the discipline problem was solved! ‘Cuthie’ reveals some frank sexual feelings and activities such as his first memorable erection as a schoolboy at Brightlands School when he was in Mr. Donavon’s side-car with his chosen ‘little friend’ on his knee, or his ten days in Munich with a boy named Heinz who showed him what to do with his erection, or his seduction of Mr. Leith, one of the masters at Wellington, all rather quaint now but in the thirties really quite dangerous behaviour (though not uncommon). There’s the usual disagreements and fights between the younger, more ‘left-wing’ members of staff, and the unmovable, traditional, ‘old-guard’, masters such as ‘Talboys’ (Rollo St. Clare Tallboys, 1877-1953) and ‘Hoffman, the Hun’, differences which figure prominently among schoolmasters and the Headmaster, Malim (Frederick Blagden Malim, Master of Wellington College from 1921-37) who walks a line between the two factions.
Later, we hear that his father, four years after walking out on the family is asking for £500 or he will be in jail – apparently he tried to set himself up as an Estate Agent in Portsmouth and his partner went off with the deposits – the money was sent to him, ‘twice’; eventually he was ‘pensioned off’ if he ‘promised to stay put in Bath and not attempt any more business ventures’. (15) And here he remained, taking up bowls (during the war he became a clerk in the Admiralty Administrative Branch, in Bath, and some years after the war in 1956 he ‘died at his desk’, aged 83. His obituary appeared in the Western Mail: ‘Former Dean of Llandaff
 
A former Dean of Llandaff, the Very Rev. Frederick William Worsley aged 83, has died at Bath. Although he was an Englishman he spoke Welsh well and conducted a weekly service in Welsh at Llandaff Cathedral. Canon Worsley was educated at King’s College, London, Durham University and Clare College, Cambridge. He came to Cardiff in 1914 as sub-warden of St Michael’s College and was collated in the Canonry of Farewell in Llandaff Cathedral in the same year. In 1923 he became Chancellor of Llandaff Cathedral and in 1926 Dean. A son, Francis Worsley, who died some years ago, wrote the scripts for the Tommy Handley radio show, ITMA.’ (16)
 
Cuthbert, like his father, feels the boredom of his profession and wants adventure and time to write (he had several poems and articles published in various periodicals and papers), and so, aged 26 and feeling alone, he left Wellington College and became a private tutor. With the beginnings of a novel he is enticed to Gordonstoun school for a term by its Headmaster (and founder in 1934), Kurt Hahn to give a report on conditions and teaching practices there while working on his novel and playing a little cricket which sounds idyllic – the report is not favourable to Hahn and the comic scene of books being thrown at each others heads ensues. The novel is abandoned and discarded and through his friendship with the poet Stephen Spender they go to Spain in 1937 and during the Civil War works as part of an ambulance unit; in the second World War he joins the RAF and finds it all ‘drill and bull’ before suffering a nervous breakdown and being discharged; he eventually finds his place among the staff of the New Statesman. He knew some fascinating people during his lifetime: Cyril Connolly, who introduced Cuthbert to Enid Bagnold (Cuthbert and his partner, John Anthony Luscombe, lived four years at Bagnold’s 19^th century ‘ravishing little cottage’ in Rottingdean; John and Cuthy used to visit Sir Laurence Olivier in Brighton), John Lehmann, W. H. Auden (they published ‘Education Today and Tomorrow’ together in 1939) and poet Gavin Ewart, who was a pupil of his. Cuthbert wrote several works under the name T. C. Worsley, such as ‘Behind the Battle’ (1939), ‘The Fugitive Art: Dramatic Commentaries 1947-1951’ (1952), ‘Television: The Ephemeral Art’ (1970) and ‘Fellow Travellers’ (1971). He became ill with emphysema in 1964 and had to retire due to ill health in 1972; in increasing pain, he too an overdose at his home in Brighton on 23^rd February 1977. He lived a very varied and interesting life, yet Cuthbert seems to have been haunted by the ghost of his younger brother, Richard, who died before the promise of a successful life was fulfilled; perhaps Cuthbert left this life with the image of young ‘Bengy’, the dancing faun, still clinging to him just before he tore himself away and left him to the waves!
 
 
 
NOTES:
 
1. Francis Frederick Worsley, born 2^nd June 1902, Kensington, London. He was educated at Brighton College and Balliol College, Oxford. A fine cricket player he played for Cardiff Cricket Club; he married Alice D. Eaves in Cardiff in 1930 and he was a well-known radio producer for the BBC, joining the BBC in Cardiff in 1928. He is much remembered for his ‘ITMA’ (It’s That Man Again) radio show which ran from 1939-49. Francis died on Thursday 15^th September 1949 at Mile End Hospital, London, he was 47 years old and was survived by a wife and son. Mary Elizabeth Worsley, born 1904, Kensington, London. Mary, known as ‘Betty’, taught ballroom and ballet and was secretary (with Miss Christine Wheatley) of the Llandaff School of Dancing in Cardiff, circa 1927-1935. On Friday 22^nd February 1935 the BBC aired a ‘Programme of Old Fashioned Dances’ at 8.15 p.m. given by The Llandaff School of Dancing arranged by Betty Worsley and Christine Wheatley with the Western Studio Orchestra, leader Frank Thomas. The programme devised and produced by John N. Lampson. William Lister Worsley, born 18^th July 1906, Lincolnshire. Attended Brighton College. Married Olwen Stuart, 30^th April 1934 (daughter Priscilla born Greenwich, 1939). Olwen died in Amersham in1947 aged 45. William married for a second time on 1^st October 1949 in Kensington, London to actress Beryl Reid (1919-1996) [the wedding was postponed for two weeks due to the death of Francis in September 1949] The marriage broke up in 1953. William, ‘Bill’, worked as a radio producer for the BBC and is best known for ‘Workers’ Playtime’ which ran from 1941-1964. Bill Worsley died in London in 1976. Thomas Cuthbert Worsley (1907-1977) and Richard Geoffrey Worsley, born  20^th August 1912, died 15^th July 1928.
2. Flannelled Fool: A Slice of Life in the Thirties. 1967 (1985 ed.).  T. C. Worsley. p. 41.
3. ibid. p. 56.
4. ibid. p. 141.
5. ibid. p75-76.
6. ibid. p. 108.
7. ibid. p. 89.
8. Edouard Espinosa (1871-1950). British ballet dancer and teacher.
9. Flannelled Fool.  p. 108.
10. ibid. p. 109.
11. ibid. p. 108.
12. ibid. p. 110.
13. ibid. p. 111.
14. Western Mail. Tuesday 17^th July 1928. p. 10.
15. Flannelled Fool. p. 138-9.
16. The Western Mail and South Wales News. Thursday 1^st March 1956. p. 5.