Richard Church (1893-1972) was a literary gent from slightly before my parents’ time, but one whose life and times they would have recognised from their own backgrounds. I dare say they knew of him. I came across him by chance, as related at reference 1.
The back of the present book, reference 2, from towards the end of his career, lists 16 books of poetry, 12 of fiction and 12 of non-fiction. Including, it seems, a fictional trilogy based on his time in the Civil Service, which I might well find interesting.
He, by his own account, came from a lower middle class background and spent the first two thirds of his childhood in Battersea, probably in one of the streets still there, bounded by Surrey Lane to the north and the railway to the south.
Poking around these old maps, I was also struck by the large amount of land taken up by the railway, with this area seeming to run to lots of engineering shops, goods yards, marshalling yards and coal depots, in addition to the tracks proper.
His first school may well be that snapped above from Street View, then in Surrey Lane South, now called Bridge Lane. The yellow plaque at the end probably carries the logo of the London School Board – BH remembers something similar from the school she once taught at in Kentish Town. Some of the houses around look very much older.
A very mixed area, rough enough to include gangs of children roaming the streets at odd hours looking for trouble, but also including the poor relatives of a surprisingly large number of famous people, including, for example, the brother of the historian Froude. Which just about fits, but he must have been very old. I may even have once owned a book by the historian.
His father was content to be a sorter at the Post Office, but had, in effect, a second life which revolved around bicycles and the open road. One of his ideas of fun, much indulged, was family outings on a pair of tandems; one for the parents and the other for the boys. His mother was a teacher, seemingly a good one, at a board school next to what used to be the Battersea Polytechnic in Battersea Park Road. There was, as was common in those days, a lot of music in the family, and his brother was a talented pianist. Less common, the family ran to two pianos, the father not liking one and the brother not liking the other.
He was a short-sighted child, with this being corrected by spectacles at the turn of the century when he was seven. He was also subject to mysterious and serious stomach pains which took him out of school a good deal, and to a convalescent home in Broadstairs for a few months. It seems that these pains – reliably triggered, inter alia, by a north wind – continued into adult life, although there was never a satisfactory explanation, either medical or psychiatric. His father had no interest in things of the mind, but he formed a very close – and reciprocal – relationship with his mother. Which extended to intimate care during her last illness. She suffered from asthma, exacerbated by overwork and the fogs of low-lying Battersea.
As soon as his eyes were fixed, he lived very much in a world of books. A small number of more or less mystic experiences, including discovering Jesus, with whom he appears to have had another close relationship. The second such in as many weeks, with the first being noticed at reference 14. He also learned to fly, another virtual ability which he maintained for some years.
A sharp observer of life, with one such (from page 120) being about the strange mix of adversarial, aggressive and cooperative play in the (single sex) playground. From where I associate to the closing of ranks in the presence of children from another school. Or sailors from another ship with the temerity to come into your bar.
And then there was the water melon (from page 176), something that a post office sorter could afford in 1904. Taken for consumption as the men of the family cycled down to Hampshire. With father making a hat out of his share of the rind to keep off the sun, tied on with a handkerchief. Not something brought to us by the Cypriots more than fifty years later. The catch being that the helmet is described as being golden, which is not water melon, at least not from the outside.
Various remarks along the way about the interfering ways of the state and its bureaucracy, which suggested to me that he became solidly conservative as an adult, living in the Kent countryside and hobnobbing with what was left of the gentry. Socialism, I imagine, was even worse.
In 1905, they somehow raised the funds to move from Battersea to Herne Hill, to a much bigger house, a house which is still there and which I ran down to the snap above, complete with blue plaque.
A house rather grander than our own, running to five bedrooms and a cellar, sold in 2013 for £1.3m. So this modest couple could then afford such a house, which would be well beyond their means now. Rather, I suppose, as FIL once owned a house in East Sheen which he could never have aspired to on his nurse tutor’s salary now. Not unless his wife inherited half of it, as was in fact the case.
Some evidence of the once grand interior still visible in the estate agent’s snap above.
The area, at the time, was still being developed and there was still a fair bit of open space. I think the house in question is the grey square, on the slant, immediately above the orange spot. While what he knew as Ruskin’s Walk, then about to be developed, was, at the time this map was prepared, known as Simpson’s Valley. Lined with aspen trees of which he and his mother were fond, chopped down by the council as she lay dying.
It was also the line of something called the Union & Parliamentary boundary, which puzzled me until I got the right search key and landed at reference 11, from which I learned that the Unions in question were the Poor Law Unions, then the organ of local government responsible for the needy. These unions were abolished in 1929 or so and their functions taken on by local government.
One of the author’s mystical experiences was reading the Keat’s poem of 1817 or so, part of which is reproduced above from Project Gutenburg. Not much of a poetry man myself, and reading it the other day for the first time did not result in much experience, mystical or otherwise.
The book ends in something of a muddle. The author has put in some good years at a school in Dulwich. Then, rather against his will, he has joined the Civil service, following his father, rather than going to Camberwell Art College. His father is to remarry. He sets up in rooms with his brother, then at Goldsmith’s and set to be a teacher – with a wife. Rooms which contain no less than two pianos, one a concert grand. Luckily, they have indulgent landlords – the couple below. I await the second volume, reference 3, with interest.
In the meantime, a little digging around, turning up references 5 thru 11 – from which I have not learned how he avoided service in the first war. Eyes, stomach or reserved occupation? But I have learned that one’s end as a minor celebrity might be a stout brown box of papers in the library of a university somewhere in the middle of the United States.
PS 1: did his father work at or out of this building, 220 Wandsworth Road, which I used to pass regularly in the days when I used to walk or cycle from Clapham Junction, up Lavender Hill and along Wandsworth Road to Vauxhall? Possibly not as his beat was the bit of Chelsea opposite Battersea Park. Turned up on this occasion both at reference 13 and on Street View. I was always intrigued by the name of the building, then and now, seemingly, something called a delivery office.
PS 2: at one point, the author visits the Shakespeare Theatre, then right next to Battersea Town Hall, getting there via Pig Hill, which last appears to have vanished under the Shaftesbury Estate, although the steep run up to Lavender Hill can be clearly seen from the railway line to Waterloo. I was interested to find that while there were no public houses shown in the residential streets to the north of Lavender Hill, the Hill itself was lined with them, with one to be found every other block or so. Running lower left to upper right. With Lavender Sweep, where I sometimes park Bullingdons, to be found off snap to the left.
PS 3: maps, as ever, from the fine collection at the Scottish National Library.
References
Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/07/raynes-park-on-sea.html.
Reference 2: Over the bridge – Richard Church – 1955.
Reference 3: The golden sovereign – Richard Church – 1957.
Reference 4: The voyage home – Richard Church – 1964.
Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Church_(poet).
Reference 6: https://www.goudhurstlocalhistorysociety.org/richard-church-cbe-1893-1972-author-and-poet/.
Reference 7: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/vita-sackville-west-and-richard-church-neighbours-gardeners-and-poets/.
Reference 8: https://winstongraham.yolasite.com/resources/Church.pdf.
Reference 9: https://search.library.wisc.edu/catalog/999774408902121. Born at about the same time as Aldous Huxley – who came, however, from a rather different background. But connected, at least to this extent
Reference 10: https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00882.
Reference 12: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_law_union.
Reference 13: https://britishpostofficearchitects.weebly.com/south-lambeth1.html.
Reference 14: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/08/crossroads.html.
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