NIGHT WINDS OF ARABY

 

ARTHUR JOHN EARDLEY DAWSON:

SENSUALIST AND SOLDIER

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

 

 

‘A glance of tenderness from two brown eyes

That carries in its laughing wake

The darling pains of Paradise,

Bruising the heart until it seems ‘twould break.’

[Temptation. Night Winds of Araby. p. 38]

 

The soldier-poet, A. J. E. Dawson is a lost figure, belonging to an age of gentility ruptured by war; he left no memoirs except for his poetry and scenes scattered within his three published novels under the mysterious name – ‘Rajput’. The origins of his poetry go back to the pastoral verse in the age of uncertainty just before the outbreak of war, the juxtaposition of the beauty of nature with the horror and savagery of battle; the gallantry of duty and comradeship which forms between men fighting together. Dawson was exposing his feelings at a time when the manly perception of soldiering and warfare were not altogether acceptable, that sort of thing was left to scholars in dim college halls who waved youth off cheerfully to the Front. Yet, through the passage of time, Dawson’s poetry has the ability to speak to us today as we look upon the past in a different, more understanding light.

Arthur John Eardley Dawson’s father, Arthur John Frederick Dawson, J.P. was born in Ticehurst, Sussex on 3^rd November 1865; the younger son of the Rev. John Dawson (1825-1913), Rector of Holy Trinity Church, Weston-Super-Mare, and Mary Le Mesurier (1825-1912), daughter of the naval Captain Peter Collas of Guernsey, who were married on 27^th December 1848 (1). Arthur J. F. Dawson, who later became a member of the Badminton Club, Piccadilly, was educated at Weymouth College (1880-82) before going up to Edinburgh University. He emigrated to Ceylon in 1886 and became a tea and rubber planter and married Flora Cecilia Eardley Wilmot (1869-1907) in Tunbridge Wells, Kent on Thursday 25^th November 1897. Flora was the daughter of Vice Admiral Arthur Parry Eardley-Wilmot, CB, RN, (1815-1886) and Charlotte Louisa Mackenzie Wright (1837-1870) who were married on 28^th July 1868; Flora is also the niece of the politician, Sir John Eardley Eardley-Wilmot (1810-1892), Bart.

Arthur John Eardley Dawson was born in Kandy, Ceylon, on Tuesday 3^rd January 1899.

 

In April 1911 we can find 12 year old Arthur living with his Aunt Edith Mary Walton Gilbert, nee Dawson (born 1855) and her husband, the Reverend Charles Robert Gilbert (1854-1919) at the Rectory in Seagrove, Loughborough in Leicestershire. (2) Reverend Gilbert, born 12^th July 1851 in Oxford, was educated at Rugby School and went up to Christ’s College, Cambridge in May of 1870 where he studied mathematics and took the Moral Sciences Tripos, (B.A. 1874, M.A. 1877). He was ordained deacon in Lichfield in 1875 and priest the following year; from 1875-78 he was the mathematical master at Derby Grammar School; Headmaster at Weymouth College, Dorset from 1879-1885; senior mathematical master at St. Peter’s School, York from 1885-90 and then Headmaster of King Henry VIII School, Coventry from 1890-1905 when he retired and went to Seagrove where he was Rector from 1906 until his death there on 17^th December 1919. I do not believe that Arthur was merely visiting his Aunt in Seagrove that April and it is perhaps the case that when Arthur’s mother, Flora died in 1907, young Arthur was sent to England to be cared for by his Aunt Edith and Uncle Charles in preparation for entering a good school and perhaps university. It is also very likely that the charged Christian atmosphere at the Rectory may have become quite intolerable to the young sensitive poet and he could have been thinking of his Uncle, Reverend Gilbert when he wrote: ‘Upon a battlefield far far away, / no matter where, so far away was it, / where no one tried to ram God down men’s throats / and make them take Him as a bitter pill.’ [The Difference II, Night Winds of Araby, p. 41]

Young Arthur Dawson entered Cheltenham College in January 1913, (3) boarding there at Boyne House; he was a member of the Football XV (1914-15) and he began writing poetry. His first published volume of poetry, ‘Poems by a Cheltonian’ was written whilst at Cheltenham College – it was published in March 1919 with a foreword by the College’s Principle, Reverend Reginald Waterfield (1867-1967) who could not help but praise the young poet under the ‘protecting wing’ of his dear College with lines that spoke of a son’s devotion to a parental institution – ‘content to worship at thy shrine, / for thou to all thy children art the same, / a mother worthy to be loved divine;’ (Cheltenham College I. Poems by a Cheltonian.) The sense of maternal longing is understandable when we realise that Arthur was only eight years old when on Friday 29^th March 1907, his mother, Flora died in Ceylon. The loss must have been great upon the sensitive child and we can only assume that his father, typical for a man of his time and standing, with various administration work to attend to, had great difficulty showing affection and became quite distant towards his son, sent to England to be educated. In fact, it was while young Arthur was at Cheltenham College that his father, Arthur John Frederick Dawson died at Rayigam, Padukka, Ceylon on Friday 10^th July 1914, yet another great blow to an already over-sensitive boy. Young Dawson held Cheltenham College dear to his heart and as an old boy he was a member of the Cheltonian Society. In July 1926 the Cheltonian Society held their Annual Dinner at London’s Trocadero Restaurant and Dawson was in attendance along with the retiring President, Mr. Ernest de S. H. Browne (1855-1946) and President elect, Sir Samuel Guise Guise-Moore (1863-1942), also the Headmaster of Cheltenham College, Mr. Henry Harrison Hardy (1882-1958) and Dawson’s old Principle, the Reverend Reginald Waterfield, now the Dean of Hereford. (4)

Dawson left Cheltenham College in April 1916 and on Tuesday 13^th June he travelled to Bombay, India; he joined the Cadet College at Quetta in Baluchistan, training for a commission in the British and Indian armies. He was commissioned the following year as a 2^nd Lieutenant on Tuesday 30^th January 1917 while in India and he joined the 2^nd Q.V.O. [Queen Victoria’s Own] Rajput Light Infantry of the Indian Army on Friday 9^th February 1917 and took part in various campaigns: Mesopotamia, 1918; Salonika, 1918; he was attached to the Army of the Black Sea, 1918-20; and Waziristan, 1921-22.

Dawson rose through the ranks in the 2^nd Rajputs, becoming a Lieutenant on Wednesday 30^th January 1918, Captain on Sunday 30^th January 1921 in the 7^th D.C.O. [Duke of Connaught’s Own] Rajput Regiment, and a Major on Wednesday 30^th January 1935. He was finally released from the army on Thursday 18^th September 1947, having reached the rank of Temporary Lieutenant Colonel. (5)

But life as a soldier had not diminished his light for writing poetry. His second published volume, ‘Night Winds of Araby’ of 1920 shows much promise in his verse, although I would suggest that there is much which could be considered ‘juvenilia’ and there are glaringly awkward and clumsy lines such as ‘for man is man, and no anaemic cry / will place him weathercock on high church spires’ in the poem ‘Lust’ (p. 25).

 

It is this book Night Winds of Araby, the name alone conjures up mystical desert scenes and tents glowing in the dunes beneath the moonlight that I wish to concentrate my attention on. The book contains thirty-three poems of various lengths, several of which are devotional love-lyrics, mostly drawn from his experiences in India. He describes quite vividly the ‘crowded thoroughfares and narrow streets’, the sounds and smells of the bazaar where we find a ‘fat old steamy merchant’ who ‘squats among / his laid-out foods…/ waving his hand to check the million flies / that puke their guts out on the melted sweets’; he then takes us from the filth of the vendors in their shop to the sordid delights of the wooden balconies above them, where ‘women of pleasure hold their sway and try / with many a wile to lure the passer by.’ [Bazaar Impression, p. 20] And in the poem Baghdad (p. 12) he conjures up the city for us, ‘like some pale lady wrapt in dreams / of subtle issue, magic charms; a stately, yet a ghostly sight.’ Around this most exotic lady, ‘minarets rise, / while all around a thousand palms / gaze in the Tigris as it gleams, / held captive in its snake-like arms.’ Dawson was certainly held captive by the ‘perfumed soul of night’, the city of Baghdad, strange and other-worldly to non-natives. India then, as it does now, had a mystical and magical quality about her, a ‘rugged silent land / of happenings strange, of rumours wild, suppressed.’ [Night on the Indian Frontier, p. 21] The poem, Night in Mesopotamia (p. 15) has some truly beautiful lines:

 

‘A quiver in the hot and breathless air

Like the faint frou-frou of a woman’s dress.

The restless sleepers turn, their bodies bare

To this babe spirit of the wilderness,

Whose frail, yet welcome hands damp brows caress,

Bringer of blessed sleep, dispelling care,

Until the pipings of the dawn express

Another day of blistering heat and glare.

 

There, now, beneath the open starlit dome

Come dreams that bloom and fade like fragile flowers;

To some the simple cries of hearth and home,

To others memories of gilded hours,

Maybe the fragrance of some Beauty’s bowers,

Far out of reach to wandering souls who roam.

 

There are the usual offerings a young poet makes in laying his heart bare in his declaration of love, even at the price of Death:

 

‘I sometimes think that Life would be sweet

If it would only grant me Death,

And let me sob my failing breath

While raining kisses on my lover’s feet;

For the Death’s honeyed pain would seem to me

Of all life’s gifts, the richest ecstasy.’

[Love, p. 11]

 

And depictions of the horrors of war which Dawson would have witnessed, as this scene in The Difference II (p. 41):

 

‘The Sepoy carried in his dusky arms

A mangled something that had once been Man,

A mangled something that had once been loved

And was loved now, as bitter anguish tears

Upon the rescuer’s face full testified.’

 

Dawson, who was only twenty-one when the book was published, sings of the joy of youth and its beauty – ‘Youth laughed aloud, and with his burning kiss / left broken hearts strewn out in wild array, / his longed-for love to mourn, his sweets to miss. / What mattered it? For youth will have its day.’ [Contrast, p. 28] The poem celebrates the care-free and immortal magnificence of being young, indulging his wild passions with death much too far away for concern; but life on the battlefield brought Death very near and ever-present. The poem also shows Dawson’s fascination with those youthful flowers of boyhood; in the poem Araby (p. 37) he sings of his ‘Dear little desert flower’ and remembers the ‘fragrance of a perfect hour’ and although he is a ‘wanderer in a far-off wild,’ he shall remember, and ‘sip once more / the joys that pour / like honey from thy petals, Child.’ In fact, there are undertones of the homoerotic in much of his verse, most of it quite obviously discernible, as in this, The Pathan (p. 17):

 

‘On Afgan’s frontier, once I saw a child

Still in his teens. His clear-cut face

Was beautiful, so were his eyes

That flashed, and seemed to hypnotize

The will and brain whene’er he smiled.

 

Then heard I that this creature of the wild

Belonged to man, his lawful prize.

By man, and man alone, defiled

He lives to ease the passion sighs

And longings of a sensual race.’ (6)

 

Dawson would have been quite familiar with the ‘longings of a sensual race’ and many of the poems show Dawson instinctively displaying a ‘fatherly’ protection towards the young soldiers – ‘Fain would I blend my thoughts with thine, / and join these widely separate fires, / tasting the nature of thy wine, / the secrets of thy youth’s desires.’ [To a Sepoy. p. 13] The next verse begins rather tellingly – ‘Mine is the power to command, / thine is the mission to obey.’ This dominant and submissive nature infused with delirious pain is invoked in the poem ‘Longing’ (p. 24)

 

‘Sweetheart! Link thy youth with mine,

Help me ease this fevered blood

Coursing through the veins like wine,

Bubbling in tumultuous flood.

Hurt me, Lover, with tiny kisses,

Drown me in delirious blisses.

 

See! An Eastern moon is nigh,

Climbing over yonder palms;

Angel! Take me, let me lie

Wildly happy in thine arms;

Dark-eyed Darling of my madness

Drink with me the Cup of Gladness!’

 

This ‘madness’ seems to creep over Dawson and arises again in the poem Lust (p. 25) in which he says ‘sometimes a madness breaks beneath the crust / of self respect and we no longer trust / the firmness of the ice about the brink / of human strength; nor is there time to think / of moral codes buried in heirloomed must.’ The poem goes on to say that the ‘fevered blood’ courses in this madness to ‘beat wildly to the honeyed stabs of lust.’ He then goes on to justify such, to others’ eyes, immoral behaviour of the ‘perfumed hour’, saying ‘who dare deny / fulfilment of the ever-smouldering fires; / ready to burst in flame should one apply / combustibles of man’s supreme desires?’ It is hard to believe that Dawson’s ‘supreme desires’ would need much combusting for he seems to fall at the feet of every handsome face he encounters – ‘Come once again / to me my sweet! / Don’t make me plead in vain. / Come, let me kiss those tiny hands and feet, / come, let us sip of love’s delirious pain;’ (Supplication. p. 23). And again in the poem, Jawan Hindoo (p. 43) which begins: ‘Fresh youth was his. No garden rose / E’er bloomed more sweetly. Strength and grace / bred in a country where the lotus grows / glowed in his limbs and handsome face.’ The poem continues in almost sadistic pleasure as he bids farewell to his ‘poor rose’, the young body of the Hindoo, placed upon a bonfire, ‘prone and inert’ in which the ‘flames increasing in desire / licked round his limbs and joined in ghastly play’. 

A similar justification for his desires can be found in the poem Femina (p. 31):

 

‘The world protests, my love, and I am glad,

For you are more than this vain world to me.

Just you and I. I would not have you clad

In shining garments of hypocrisy.

Why should I, when beneath the brink I see

The cool pure springs, and yet withal, so sad;

Condemned, because, some fools who think they’re free

Dare to decide ‘twixt what is good and bad.

 

If when, upon our beds, we weakening lie

Fair Conscience to the soul can give its rest,

What matters, then, the world? If, when we die

We feel that we have lived and done our best,

The soul according to its conscience cry

Will find, or fail to find, its Father’s breast.’

 

In The Price of Genius (pp. 44-46) he feels ‘night’s virgin breath / now fanning softly up against my cheek. / Come on, thou moon! I feel my heart strings beat / beneath the magic of thy master hand.’ (p. 45) surely the moon would have a ‘maiden hand’! In the same poem he equates ‘madness’, whether of the mind or of the body yearning towards an unfulfilled desire, with religious ecstasy – ‘let him live up to his temperament / so near he is to madness. Even I / then cannot hope to bind the bleeding soul / nor help to bear the awful crown of thorns, / brought on because the longings of his soul / are not in talliance with this cultured age.’ (p. 46) This spiritual ecstasy and ache in which nature only dulls and fails to soothe – ‘all is so beautiful, and I alone / am miserable in this bright-coloured world’… ‘my heart is like a wound / that I have borne about from place to place’ (p. 45) seems an echo from the first poem in the volume, The Voice (p. 9) in which the poet, believing he is alone in the brilliance of nature about him, suddenly hears ‘the melancholy of a native’s voice, / uplifted to the skies in wild appeal. / It seemed as if the yearnings of his soul / lay naked in these passionate utterances, / not meant for fellow listeners to hear / save Nature and the sombre-looking palms / who gazed on him, and bent their stately heads / to acquiesce in his barbaric song.’ The sense of intrusion upon something divine, no matter how ‘barbaric’, is something Dawson comes back to.

I find there are certain similarities in Dawson’s poetry with another soldier-poet, the Devonian, Raymond Heywood, who also took part in the Mesopotamia and Salonika campaigns and published two volumes of poetry – Roses, Pearls and Tears (London. Erskine Macdonald. 1918) and The Greater Love (London. Elkin Mathews. 1919). The mysterious Heywood, like Dawson, has a lyrical quality to his verse which resonates with a sense of longing, in Heywood’s case for the beauty of the Devon landscape – ‘tell me – do the roses blow / in the lanes down Devon way…’ (from The Greater Love), and in Dawson’s a desire for love, a desire that also becomes despair but both poets show a great passion in their paternal love for their fellow soldiers, as in this from Heywood:

 

‘O Boy o’ Mine, beneath the rose-hued skies,

Of other days I see your face again;

Life only leaves me tender memories,

And dear dead dreams that fill my heart with pain.

 

O boy o’ mine, how could I let you go,-

All that I held so dear: Nothing can tell

Of all you were to me – I only know

That when you went the evening shadows fell.

 

O boy o’ mine, the joy was only lent,

And you have nobly played a hero’s part,

Thro’ the dark night to your dear grave is sent

A Mother’s love, from my poor aching heart.’

 

[My Boy. Roses, Pearls and Tears. p. 36]

 

 

And this poem, ‘Selfishness’ (p. 26) of Dawson’s:

 

‘Yes, let me die. I ask no more than this,

While swooning mad with pleasure on thy breast.

Come, Death, and strike. The darling hour of bliss

Atones for any wrong in my behest.

 

An Eastern night of stars, of lofty palms;

Forgotten are the worries of to-day.

My youthful lover! Fold me in thine arms,

Dear heart-sick hours. Alas! Too sweet to stay.

 

Yes, let me die. I ask no more than this.

For as my soul wings upwards into space,

Enshrined will live the petals of a kiss,

The burning imprint of my Dream Child’s face.’

 

There is a darker element within Dawson’s poems which remain below the surface, a secret that he wishes to keep hidden – ‘If, one day longing trips me, and I tell / all that is in my heart, the growing fire / of Love consuming in unquenched desire, / would Life be then to me, a Heaven, or Hell?’ [Query, p. 29] whereas Heywood wears his romantic sentiments quite freely – ‘I scarce can think ‘twas yesterday / those laughing lads could laugh and sing, / for now their dead boy lips are grey, / and Devon has made her offering.’ An offering that will ‘make a music in my brain, / and haunt my heart for evermore.’ [Before Battle, The Greater Love] Both poets seem to have the same fascination with death and regret – ‘Perhaps the night wind in its gentle wake / leaves kisses on that rudely heaped-up mound.’ [The Enemy, p. 14, Dawson] and ‘The moonlight softly fell upon your bed, / (O God, I scarce can think that you are dead!) / And all my heart, and all the dreams I knew / I dreamed I saw a little cross of white, / a little lonely mound, so still and grey - / I only heard the sighing poplars sway.’ [By Sanctuary Wood. Roses, Pearls and Tears. p. 27] and again in Heywood’s ‘A Man’s Man’ from Roses, Pearls and Tears (p. 14) –

 

‘He was a man… I linger where his cross

Shines white among the shadows, and I know

My very soul is strengthened by my loss.

My comrade still in death – I loved him so.’

 

In Dawson’s Night March in Mesopotamia, (p. 10) we get a sense of that bond of comradeship as the soldiers march in an early morning mystical silence and the poet implores: ‘Let us live this hour, / wrapped up in loveliness. Just you and I / who understand, and marching, feel the boon / of Nature’s sweetness, hear her quivering sigh / ere we attack at dawn, and brave men die.’

 

When not writing poetry or pursuing the pleasures of the East, Dawson enjoyed the sport of lawn tennis and became quite an accomplished player, taking part in Army championships – in February 1927 he took part in the singles and doubles Army Lawn Tennis Championship held in Lahore, Pakistan. He was also quite prominent in civilian tennis tournaments too: in August-September 1922 ‘Captain A. J. E. Dawson and Miss F. Player beat L. A. Roper and Mrs. D. S. F. Jones, 6-1, 7-5,’ in the third round of the Open Mixed Doubles lawn tennis at Hastings (7). Also in September that year he partook in the Bexhill Lawn Tennis Club’s ninth Tournament in the Gentlemen’s Open Doubles, the Men’s Open Singles and the Open Mixed Doubles (8). He also played in the Felixstowe Autumn Lawn Tennis Tournament which began on Monday 27^th September 1926 in the singles and doubles rounds (9). A few years later, in the 18^th Annual Hastings and St. Leonard’s Lawn Tennis Tournament, held at the Central Cricket Ground, in August 1929, ‘Captain A. J. E. Dawson, who recently returned from India, had a hard fight with D. H. Raebura, winning in three sets, 6-2, 2-6, 2-6.’ in the first round of the Gentlemen’s Singles. (10)

 

Dawson’s third and final volume of poetry, ‘Children of Circumstance’ appeared in 1921 which contains a lyrical expression to soldierly feelings of English patriotism and love much on the same lines as Araby dating from Anatolia, Constantinople and India in 1920; Dawson reflects on the various common features of East and West religions and draws upon his own experiences in Persia and Mesopotamia in the form of lullabies and love songs. The Bookman of October 1921 (p. 40) said that Dawson was a ‘poet grafted on to a man of facts, who is candid about himself’. The article goes on to say that ‘cruelty, just, disease, filth, the sorcery of the East, the whips of starving sensuality, impassion him as spectator or experiencer. He does not minutely describe, but one feels that there is a cave in his memory, which is a museum of horrors, while there is another cave too delightful for words.’ The review is rather mixed though perhaps fairly accurate and ends with the strangely vague – ‘his book tingles with emotional life and creates a kind of remorse if one lingers long at its weak passages.’ Surely these are the defects we encounter in a minor poet and in many instances can be forgiven. Whether or not the poor reviews had their effect, ‘Children of Circumstance’ was Dawson’s final volume of poetry and he turned his hand to novel writing under the pseudonym, ‘Rajput’; his first novel, ‘Khyber Calling!’ (1938) was published seventeen years after the disappointing appearance of Children of Circumstance, and it tells the intimate story of an Indian Frontier soldier, a Company Commander who had served for many years in India, and the political conditions and adventures of the British Army in the region of the Khyber Pass. Lt-Colonel Dawson – ‘Rajput’ had been stationed at Banna, Waziristan at the time of publication and he drew on his experiences of the perimeter camps with their stone walls and barbed wire fences; the many night alarms and the building of roads through hostile territory, the ambushes and the monotonous boredom of these inter-war camps. The story opens with the murder of an unarmed Ghurkha mule-driver killed by pathans and the column of men sent out to deal with it. Dawson depicts his characters well, such as the Colonel of the battalion and Suleiman Khan, his Subadar [Indian officer], and Firoze Din, his orderly and he brings to life the feelings and conversations of those soldiers serving in the North-West Frontier. Dawson’s next novel was ‘Indian River’ the following year in 1939 while Dawson was at Bexhill-on-Sea; the novel tells of the struggle against the Caste system and its importance to the people of India. His final novel was ‘The Advancing Years’ in 1941 which is the story of an Indian Regiment interwoven by romance. They were hardly ever going to be his lasting legacy and there is no doubt that there are some significant passages within them which would appeal to a certain readership. After the novels, Dawson simply fades away, there is very little information concerning the poet – there is a record of him travelling with Thomas Cook & Sons on the S.S. Lurline to Los Angeles, California from San Pedro for a short time to visit a cousin in April 1936 when he was 37 years old; the record gives his last address as Secunderabad, India and his nearest relative or friend as Bryan Phillips, 7^th Rajput, Secunderabad (11) and then he leaves the Indian Army on Thursday 18^th September 1947 and then silence.

Arthur John Eardley Dawson died in Hastings, East Sussex, in the spring of 1981, and although he is almost now forgotten, belonging to a bygone age, permit me to cast a small stone into the still water and see if the ripples touch anyone gently enough to pursue his minor, yet sensitive, poetic gift.

 

‘Let me walk

Tip-toe adown the paths of long ago

To where, now faded in the curtained gloom

Lies a fair picture that was once so bright

Of Love and Youth transfigured in their Hopes:

Now, Love is dead, and as we take a flower

Of curious mien, and place it in a book,

So I have carried it against my heart

Up the long staircase of the winding years.

And youth is dying as the ripening bud

Bursts forth in flower in the waiting world.

All that remains is Hope’s young flame, and she

Grows stranger as the weakening days grow old,

For Life is Hope, and when Hope fails, we die.

 

Play on, great Bard! Nor check thy passion yet;

Like scorched fields browned by summer’s blazing heat

We ope our stalks to thy refreshing dews

And drink their sweetness with out thankful hearts.’

[Effect of Music, Night Winds of Araby. pp. 34-35]

 

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

 

Poems By A Cheltonian. [poems] Written whilst at Cheltenham College, with a foreword by the Rev. R. Waterfield. London. C. W. Daniel. March 1919. pp. 43.

 

Night Winds Of Araby. [poems] London. Grant Richards. April 1920. Printed by William Brendon and Son, Ltd. Plymouth. 8vo. pp. 46.

 

Children Of Circumstance. [poems] London. Grant Richards. August 1921. 8vo. pp. 93.

 

Khyber Calling! An Account of Military Life on the North-West Frontier of India. [novel] by Rajput [pseudonym of A. J. E. Dawson]. London. Hurst & Blackett. September 1938. 8vo. pp. 268.

 

Indian River. [novel] by Rajput [pseudonym of A. J. E. Dawson]. London. Hurst & Blackett. October 1939. C8. pp. 288.

 

The Advancing Years. [novel] by Rajput [pseudonym of A. J. E. Dawson]. London. Hurst & Blackett. May 1941. 8vo. pp. 256.

 

 

NOTES:

 

1. John and Mary Dawson had the following children: (a) Rev. Canon Edwin Collas Dawson, M.A. born 28^th November 1849 in Esher, Surrey and educated at Tonbridge School and St Mary’s Hall, Oxford in 1868, B.A. 1871, M.A. 1876; he was ordained in Newport, Isle of Wight in 1873 and went to Edinburgh in 1878. He was the author of several books, including a Life of Hannington (1887) and Rector of St. Thomas’s Church, Edinburgh in 1883; Rector of St. Peter’s Church, Lutton, Northamptonshire and later Canon of St. Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh. He married Lucy Mackinley Munro Wyllie (1854-1917) in Elham, Kent on 17^th March 1877 and they had two children: Reverend Robert (Roy) Basil Dawson 1877-1940, and the celebrated Scottish artist, Mabel Dawson 1878-1965 who studied at the Edinburgh College of Art and was a member of the Society of Scottish Artists (1907) and the Royal Scottish Water Colour Society (1917). Canon Edwin Collas Dawson died in Edinburgh on 17^th March 1925, aged 75. (b) Julia Neville Dawson, born in Hertfordshire on 3^rd July 1851; she married French-born Reverend Ludovic Charles Andre Mouton (1846-1895) of Wadham College, Oxford (1868) who was Rector of Bonchurch, Isle of Wight. They had seven children and Julia died in St. Leonard’s on 14^th October 1899. (c) Edith Mary Walton Dawson, born in Surrey in 1855; she married Reverend Charles Robert Gilbert (1854-1919) who was the mathematical master at Derby Grammar School at the time, at St Peter’s Church, Clifton by her brother, Reverend E. C. Dawson and her brother-in-law, Reverend L. C. Manton. They had several children (Marion Edith Gilbert 1879, Ethel C. Gilbert 1880, Muriel A. B. Gilbert 1881) and Edith died in Battle, Sussex in 1936 aged 80. (d) Alice Emma Dawson, born in Ticehurst, Sussex in 1859; Alice never married and she was the author of several articles on art – ‘Meditations in National Gallery’ in the Illustrated Berwick Journal (Thursday 12^th, 19^th and 26^th June 1924, p. 2) and she died in Battle, Sussex, in 1945 aged 86. (e) Harriette Anne de Venoix Dawson born in Sussex in 1862, she married the widow Reverend William Henry Wayne (1832-1920) in Axbridge, Somerset in 1893; William’s previous marriage to Eliza Foskett occurred in November 1856 (before his bride, Harriette, was born) and several of his children were older and of similar age to Harriette Dawson. Reverend Wayne was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge (1852-56) and ordained in 1856; he had an interest in art and collected old silver, china (English) and pictures and died at Willey Rectory on 17^th July 1920 [A Shropshire Vicar, Memoir of Rev. W. H. Wayne. Shrewsbury Chronicle. Friday 30^th July 1920. p. 5]. Harriette wrote books for children under the name Aimee de V Dawson: The Happy Childhood of Two Little Girls (1888), Dorothy’s Clock (1888), A Peep into Cat-Land (1890), How Daisy Became a Sunbeam (1893), Grandmother’s Forget-Me-Nots: A Story for Girls (1893), Nobody’s Pet: A Story of Brother and Sister (1894) and He, She, and It: A Story for Young Children (1894). Harriette died on 12^th January 1949 in Sussex aged 87. (f) Then of course, Arthur John Frederick Dawson was born in 1865.

2. 1911 Census for England and Wales taken on Sunday 2^nd April 1911. RG14, Schedule Type: 17, Piece/Folio: 33, Page 1.

3. Cheltenham College Register, 1841-1927, edited by Edward Scot Skirving. 1928. p. 658.

4. The Cheltonian Society Annual Dinner took place on Tuesday 6^th July 1926. Cheltenham Chronicle. Saturday 10^th July 1926. p. 2.

5. British Library: Asian and African Studies, 1918-47. Dawson, Arthur John Eardley, Indian Army Number: I.A. 959. Reference: 10R/L/MIL/14/94.

6. Also found in Love in Earnest (London. Routledge & K. Paul. 1970) by Timothy D’Arch Smith. p. 143.

7. Westminster Gazette. Friday 1^st September 1922. p. 10.

8. The 9^th Bexhill Lawn Tennis Tournament commenced on Monday 4^th September 1922 and in the first round of the Gentlemen’s Open Doubles, Captain A. J. E. Dawson and C. W. Moore beat M. K. Jackson and W. D. Jackson, 6-0, 6-1. In the second round Dawson and Moore beat P. W. B. Butcher and C. Simmons, 6-2, 6-3; in the 3^rd round A. T. Hill and F. H. Jarvis beat Dawson and Moore, 5-7, 6-4, 6-0. In the Men’s Open Singles in the 2^nd round, A. T. Hill beat Captain Dawson, 6-0, 6-2. In the Open Mixed Doubles, 1^st round, C. G. Jenner and Mrs. Bates beat Captain Dawson and Miss R. Taunton, 6-3, 2-6, 6-4. Dawson also took part in the Gentlemen’s Singles Handicap (class A), 1^st round: Captain A. J. E. Dawson beat Captain E. S. R. Milton, 6-4, 8-6; in the 2^nd round Captain  W. M. Sherring beat Captain Dawson, 6-2, 6-4. Bexhill-on-Sea Chronicle. Saturday 9^th September 1922. p. 7.

9. Felixstowe Autumn Lawn Tennis Tournament, beginning Monday 27^th September 1926. In the 1^st round of the Men’s Level Singles played on Monday 27^th, Captain A. J. E. Dawson beat R. Pretty, 6-4, 6-3. In the 2^nd round the following day, G. Thompson beat Captain Dawson, 6-4, 6-3. In the 1^st round of the Men’s Level Doubles (Wednesday 29^th), Captain A. J. E. Dawson and W. R. B. Cuthbertson beat F. Lt. H. M. Massey and H. A. C. Williams, 6-3, 2-6, 6-3. In the 2^nd round, Captain Dawson and Cuthbertson beat A. B. Learmouth and E. B. Greenwall, 6-0, 6-0. In the 3^rd round, L. A. Godfrey and E. A. Dearman beat Captain Dawson and Cuthbertson, 6-1, 6-3. he also took part in the Ladies Mixed Doubles and in the 2^nd round, G. R. O. Crole-Rees and Mrs. M. Watson beat Captain Dawson and Miss E. M. Aitken, 6-1, 6-3. Felixstowe Times. Saturday 2^nd October 1926. p. 7.

10. The 18^th Annual Hastings and St. Leonard’s Lawn Tennis Tournament began on Monday 26^th August 1929 at midday. Hastings and St. Leonard’s Observer. Saturday 31^st August 1929. p. 11.

11. Passenger Lists, 1907-1948. Index to passenger lists of vessels arriving at San Pedro/Wilmington/Los Angeles, California. Affiliate Film Number: Roll 2; Affiliate Publication Number: M1763; Digital Folder Number: 007721657; Image Number: 7599.

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 Bookshops’.

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.