A War Romance Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Foreword

  Biographical Note

  Author’s Note

  Preface

  Publisher’s Note

  Part I Childhood

  Part II School Days

  Part III Vocation

  Part IV Temptation

  Part V ‘The Line’

  Part VI Captured

  Part VII Escape

  Copyright

  FOREWORD

  Poet and composer Ivor Gurney was a patient at the City of London Mental Hospital on 20 October 1925, the day he received a visit from Helen Thomas, the widow of another poet of the First World War, Edward Thomas. She was escorted to the hospital by Gurney’s steadfast friend, Marion Scott. Scott had arranged the meeting, perhaps hoping that it might provide him with some momentary relief from the bouts of intolerable mental illness that he suffered from. Gurney was lucid that day, and Helen Thomas had a ‘wonderful time’ speaking with him about their mutual admiration for her late husband’s poems, some of which Gurney hoped soon to set to music. This clearly meant much to the widow, who asked Gurney, ‘Is there anything I can do for you – anything that would give you pleasure?’ Without hesitation, Gurney replied, ‘Don’t do it for me – do it for Harvey. Please get a publisher to publish his novel.’1

  Though suffering from extreme mental illness and the tedium of a life in confinement, Gurney’s compassionate thoughts drifted to the disappointment felt by his best friend, F.W. Harvey, for having failed to find a publisher for his war novel. Gurney would remain in the City of London Mental Hospital until his death in 1937. Harvey was still approaching publishers about the novel until that same year.2 He then seems to have given up, and the novel was forgotten.

  Despite this singular failure, Harvey had many literary successes to be proud of. He had gained national fame with his poetry written during the First World War and he had played a key role in founding the first of the British trench journals, the 5th Gloucester Gazette – the voice of the 1/5th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment. The periodical’s debut came on 12 April 1915 in the front lines of Ploegsteert, Belgium. Harvey provided much of the copy that kept the paper alive in its infancy; he would eventually publish seventy-seven poems there. This led to Harvey’s poetry attracting the attention of national publications: the critic and anthologist E.B. Osborn observed in The Times Literary Supplement that Harvey’s poetry helped to make the 5th Gloucester Gazette ‘the most literary of the British trench journals’.3

  The positive reception of Harvey’s work led the well-known firm Sidgwick & Jackson to publish his first poetry collection, A Gloucestershire Lad at Home and Abroad, in September 1916. The volume was primarily a reprinting of his poems from the 5th Gloucester Gazette. It saw excellent sales, going into six impressions over three years.4 Sales were aided by Harvey’s reputation as a soldier: he had earned the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM)5 during a night-time trench raid in August 1915, and only a month before the collection’s release he was captured by the Germans and made a prisoner during a daring solo reconnaissance mission. September 1917 saw the publication of his second collection, Gloucestershire Friends: Poems from a German Prison Camp. German prison camp authorities had allowed Harvey to mail poetry manuscripts home and to correspond with his de facto literary agent, Bishop George Frodsham, Canon Residentiary of Gloucester Cathedral. Gloucestershire Friends has the distinction of being the only collection of First World War poetry to be published while the author was a prisoner of war.

  Following his release at the end of the war, Harvey returned to his beloved Gloucestershire, and in 1919 published another collection, Ducks, and Other Verses. Many of its poems were also written in prison camps, including his most famous, ‘Ducks’. In 1920 he produced an autobiographical account of his time as a prisoner of war, titled Comrades in Captivity. Both saw disappointing sales, as a war-weary public had lost interest in such works. Still, these were followed by further poetry collections: Farewell in 1921 and September and Other Poems in 1925. Harvey’s poetic output began to decline at this time, due to the demands of a legal career and family life. September would be his last major publication with Sidgwick & Jackson, as the firm began to doubt his commercial viability. Despite this, many of his poems continued to feature in popular anthologies, and do to this day. His In Pillowell Woods (1926) was published by a small, local publisher in Lydney, Gloucestershire, and was largely forgotten. The last volume of Harvey’s poetry that he would live to see printed, simply titled Gloucestershire, was published by Oliver & Boyd in 1946.

  Harvey died in 1957 aged 68, at which point his property, including his house of Highview at Yorkley, passed to his son, Patrick. The legacy included his personal papers, which contained the manuscript of this novel. Patrick was highly protective and kept the papers largely sequestered away from the public eye.

  When Patrick died in 2007 ownership of Highview passed to F.W. Harvey’s daughter, Eileen Griffiths, and her daughter, Elaine Jackson. They discovered Harvey’s papers there, including the manuscript of this novel, tucked away in a chest. They appointed Roger Deeks and Teresa Davies, both leading members of the F.W. Harvey Society, as trustees of the collection to see that the papers were preserved at the Gloucestershire Archives. Through their work, and that of archives directors, the papers were brought to the attention of Professor Tim Kendall, Head of English at the University of Exeter. He secured funding to support a doctoral researcher to work at Gloucestershire Archives to catalogue, preserve and study the papers, and to complete a dissertation on F.W. Harvey’s work. Appointed to this role, I was given the opportunity to be the first academic researcher to have access to a cornucopia of literary and historical treasures.

  The novel was the most surprising find among the papers. It was thought that Comrades in Captivity was Harvey’s only serious venture into prose. Yet here was a full novel, as well as dozens of short stories, essays and notes for lectures, ranging across a variety of topics and genres. From the hundreds of letters found with the papers – including the letter from Marion Scott mentioned earlier in this foreword – we can begin to piece together the history of this novel. Letters from Sidgewick & Jackson, and from Gurney, indicate that Harvey began work on it as early as 1920. Gurney’s comments above indicate that the novel had been finished and rejected by publishers by 1925. In 1935 Harvey contracted a former wartime comrade, N.F. Nicholas, to act as his agent in a new attempt to find a publisher.6 It seems that Nicholas was responsible for the creation of the surviving typescript that is presented here. In 1937 Nicholas returned the typescript, writing that no publishers were interested.7 Harvey shelved the novel at that point and never mentioned it again in correspondence. Surely this disappointment was compounded when Harvey’s great friend, Ivor Gurney, died in the asylum that same year. (A letter from Scott informing Harvey of Gurney’s death was also found among these papers – it was torn in half.)8 The novel then lay unread among Harvey’s papers until their rediscovery.

  Harvey’s Author’s Note states that the novel is fictional, but semi-autobiographical. The novel’s value comes from analysis of which characters and events are based on reality, and which were purely the author’s invention.

  The Author’s Note also states that none of the characters in the story were based on still-living people at the time of writing. This is not entirely true. The character ‘Will’ or ‘Willie’ was clearly based on Harvey himself, who was known as Will to family and friends. There is also his mother, who is a significant character in the book. Contemporary accounts of her align very closely to the character as described in the novel. Her death in the novel is an invention, as Cecilia Matilda Harvey did not die until 1942. Ivor Gurney fleetingly appears twice in the novel, thoug
h otherwise remains absent.

  The most prominent character aside from Will is his brother Eric. In reality, Eric served with distinction in the Gloucestershire Regiment, earning a Military Cross and Bar,9 but was killed in the final offensive on the Western Front in October 1918. That same month Harvey, still a prisoner of war in Germany, was preparing for movement to neutral Holland through a prisoner-exchange programme. His papers show that he received the letter informing him of Eric’s death either just as he was leaving Germany or immediately after arriving in Holland.10 In Comrades in Captivity, Harvey stated that ‘the whole sting of [the prisoner’s] position, that which makes it so intolerable, is … his friends and brothers are “out there” killing and being killed. He cannot help them. He is futile … There is no more terrible reflection for a man.’11 This guilt was compounded in the case of his brothers (his youngest living brother, Roy, was also fighting). In this novel, Harvey does not go so far as to save Eric from his fate, but he does at least save himself from the guilt of being a powerless non-combatant during his brother’s death. He places himself right beside his brother at this fatal moment. In this novel he states that Eric had ‘taken the bullet meant for his brother’, demonstrating Harvey’s deep sense of survivor’s guilt. Eric’s real death is not mentioned at all in Comrades in Captivity, but described in vividly imagined detail here. It seems this event was something that Harvey could only approach through fiction. In reality it was too painful.

  Other characters seem to be purely from Harvey’s imagination. There is no known basis in reality for the gypsy girl – known only as ‘Gypsy’ – or any of the characters associated with her. Mrs. Bransbury-Stuart, the married woman his character has an affair with, also seems to have been an invention.

  These two women are possibly allegories for different aspects of England itself. Mrs Bransbury-Stuart is the materialistic wife of an industrialist, and uses men for her own means and then discards them, seeming to personify the industrial England that Harvey calls a ‘fretful, profiteering, foolish, feverish place’. Conversely, the gypsy girl represents his ideal ‘England of quiet lives, and misty orchards’ in her purity, and with her knowledge of and love for the countryside. He claims that his idealised vision of England is the only England worth fighting for, and thus this brave woman who represents it overcomes the obstacles of her gender to do just that. Harvey saw the war as an opportunity for a rebirth of English society, what he called ‘a New England’, free from social and economic inequalities.12 Believing that the war would bring about social revolution was what carried him through its hardships, just as the gypsy girl struggles through in the novel.

  The setting for the affair with Mrs Bransbury-Stuart is based in reality. Following his certification as a solicitor, Harvey began working and living in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. At the time, Chesterfield had become a coal-mining town, and it is represented here by the fictional ‘Eccleton’. His correspondence shows that he fell into depression there and hated his work so much that he quit unexpectedly in April 1914, leaving so suddenly that he abandoned his coat in the office.13 He seems to have gone on a walking tour subsequently.14 He found a new vocation in August when he joined the army.

  Throughout the novel, Will and Eric remain privates in the Gloucestershire Regiment. In reality, both enlisted initially in the ranks and eventually received commissions (as did their brother, Roy, while their sister Gladys worked as a nurse). Eric initially joined the army with his brothers in August 1914. As in the novel, he was temporarily discharged due to family hardship reasons. In reality, this was so he could to return to look after the estate of the family farm following the death their youngest brother, Bernard, in a motorcycle accident. During this time he also completed his studies at Oxford, and thus received a commission on his return to the army, eventually reaching the rank of captain.15 F.W. Harvey deployed with 1/5th Gloucesters to France in April 1915, earning a reputation as a scout, just as he does in the novel. In reality, he was promoted to lance corporal in recognition of this. As in the novel, he received the DCM following a night patrol that saw the destruction of an enemy listening post. The patrol was led by Lance Sergeant Raymond Knight, who is mentioned briefly in the novel. Knight and Harvey both received DCMs, and both were sent to England to receive commissions. The newly commissioned second lieutenants returned to the front in mid-1916; Knight would be killed on 22 July and Harvey captured on 16 August.

  The final adventure of the novel concerns Will Harvey’s escape from Germany to Holland. The character is used as a forced labourer, as was the accepted practice for prisoners from the other ranks. Aside from the obvious economic benefits for the captors, the long work days also gave the men little time to plan for escape. Conversely, officers were exempt from this forced labour, and were instead held in all-officer prison camps. Largely left alone by their guards, they had ample time to plan a getaway. This was Harvey’s condition in real life. Though he did attempt escape, he was unsuccessful, and was only able to return home at the war’s end. He is kinder to his character in allowing him to make it across the border.

  As he suggests in his Author’s Note, this novel was Harvey’s attempt to explore themes of youth and war through the eyes of a fictional character. This allowed him to move freely between reality and fiction while telling his story – not to tell the facts of his experience, but in a way to present his truth.

  James Grant Repshire

  F.W. Harvey Doctoral Researcher

  University of Exeter

  Notes

  1 Letter from Marion Scott to F.W. Harvey, 20 October 1925, Gloucestershire Archives (henceforth GA), F.W. Harvey Collection (henceforth FWH) D12912/1/2/89.

  2 Letter from N.F. Nicholas to F.W. Harvey, 19 July 1937, GA, FWH, D12912/1/4/149.

  3 E.B. Osborn, ‘Trench Journals’, The Times Literary Supplement, 12 October 1916, 769, The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive online (accessed 5 April 2013).

  4 F.W. Harvey, Ducks, and Other Verse (London: Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd, 1919) pp. 73–5.

  5 The DCM was an award for valour for members of the other ranks, second only to the Victoria Cross.

  6 Letter from N.F. Nicholas to F.W. Harvey, February–September 1935, GA, FWH, D12912/1/4/140.

  7 Nicholas to Harvey, 19 July 1937, GA, FWH, D12912/1/4/149.

  8 Letter from Marion Scott to F.W. Harvey, 26 December 1937, GA, FWH, D12912/1/2/90.

  9 The Military Cross was, at the time, a third-level award for valour, awarded only to officers holding the rank of captain or below. The Bar represented a second award of the same medal.

  10 Letter from Matilda Harvey to F.W. Harvey, 17 October 1918, GA, FWH, D12912/1/1/70.

  11 F.W. Harvey, Comrades in Captivity: A Record of Life in Seven German Prison Camps (Coleford: Douglas McLean Publishing, 2010; originally Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd, 1920) p. 51.

  12 Harvey, Ducks, pp. 73–5.

  13 Letter from John Rawcliffe to F.W. Harvey, 6 May 1914, GA, FWH, D12912/1/5/10.

  14 Rawcliffe to Harvey, 6 May 1914, GA, FWH, D12912/1/5/10.

  15 Anthony Boden, F.W. Harvey: Soldier, Poet (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1998) pp. 52–3.

  BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

  Frederick William Harvey, known as ‘Will’ to family and friends, was born in Hartpury, Gloucestershire, on 26 March 1888. His parents were Howard Harvey, a successful horse trader, and Cecelia Matilda Harvey (née Waters). Shortly after Will’s birth his father purchased an estate in Minsterworth, which he named The Redlands. It was at The Redlands that Will spent his formative years learning to love the Gloucestershire countryside. Will was followed by three brothers, Eric, Roy and Bernard, and a sister, Gladys. He was educated as a ‘day boy’ at the King’s School, Gloucester, and then attended the Rossall School in Lancashire as a boarder. Following this, he was articled as a solicitor’s clerk to Frank Treasure Esq of Gloucester, to begin qualifications as a lawyer. However, his heart was not in the law, but rather in the love of poetry, and he there
fore did not apply himself to his studies and thus failed his exams in 1911. His family then sent him to an intensive law course at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, where he qualified as a solicitor in 1912. He then began to practise law, though he never fully embraced the vocation.

  At the outbreak of the First World War, he enlisted in Gloucester’s Territorial Force battalion, 1/5th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment. He arrived in France with the battalion in April 1915. In the 1/5th he became a founder of the first of the famous British trench journals, the 5th Gloucester Gazette, which eventually brought his poetry to national attention. Serving in the infantry, he often volunteered for night patrols into no-man’s-land, earning a reputation as a scout and promotion to lance corporal. In August 1915, he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, after a night patrol that saw the destruction of an enemy listening post. He was recommended for a commission, which he received. Now a second lieutenant, he returned to England for several months of officer training. During this time he arranged publication of his first poetry collection, A Gloucestershire Lad at Home and Abroad, published in September 1916.

  He returned to the front with the 2/5th Battalion, Gloucestershire Regiment, in July 1916, but was captured during a solo reconnaissance of the German front line on 17 August. He spent the rest of the war in various German prisoner-of-war (POW) camps, despite attempts to escape. He continued to write poetry in confinement, and was allowed to mail home manuscripts of what would be published in September 1917 as Gloucestershire Friends: Poems from a German Prison Camp. He returned home from the war in February 1919, and later that year published a poetry collection titled Ducks, and Other Verses. In 1920 he published memoirs of his POW years titled Comrade in Captivity.

  In 1921 he married an Irish nurse, Sarah Anne Kane, and returned to practising the law. His collection, Farewell, of 1921 announced his intention to leave the literary world to focus on his career in law; however, he could not contain his desire to create poetry, and in 1925 published September and Other Poems, followed in 1926 by In Pillowell Woods. As early as 1928 he began writing and performing in BBC radio programmes, and would continue to do so for the rest of his life. He also saw many successful settings of his poetry to music by his accomplished musician friends Ivor Gurney, Herbert Howells and Herbert Brewer. During the Second World War, he served in the Home Guard and worked with veterans’ organisations to support local men and women serving in the military. As a solicitor, he was known primarily as a defender of the poor and downtrodden. He would rarely act for the prosecution – in part due to his disdain for the prison system – and was well known for his willingness to waive fees for those who could not afford them.