Friday, 27 September 2024

Church two


I have had much pleasure and interest out of the second volume of the Church autobiography (reference 3), the first volume of which was first noticed at reference 11 and then again at reference 1. A chance find which both BH and I have been very pleased with. 

This second volume which covers the decade 1910-1920, takes Church from the ages of 17 to 27, from the drawn-out death of his mother to the birth of his first daughter by his first wife. A time when, during the day, he was a civil servant, mostly at the Custom House in the City. At other times he was learning to be a poet, with his literary career starting to move by the close of this volume. 

A chap with great sensitivity to the world outside, particularly to nature, to music and to poetry – with this last being his vocation. Also dogged by uncertain health, despite being a keen cyclist, uncertain health which kept him out of the First World War. A chap whom people appeared to have liked: there are lots of anecdotes about all sorts of people taking to him, providing important help and generally being supportive. 

The title of this volume is a reference to an early disaster, losing one of the three sovereigns which were his first month’s pay as a regular civil servant down a Camberwell drain. It is also a reference to the need of young men from ordinary backgrounds to earn their crust. They might be keen on arts or sciences, but these last do not pay the rent. In this case, I feel that his time in the civil service, tedious though it may have been a lot of the time, provided the space he needed to grow into a working writer. A space inhabited, in those days, by plenty of people with a serious interest in one or other – one or more – of the arts and sciences.

I have reminded myself about gold sovereigns, the gold standard and stirrups at references 7, 8 and 9. Stirrups because the chap on the horse – a design from 1816 – seems to have a very short sword for getting at a grounded dragon, given that he does not have any. Useful devices which reference 8 suggests arrived in this country in the tenth century, quite a long time after their central Asian invention. 

I associate first to FIL who came from a similarly humble background, who did not make the rather high bar of his time and was denied access to higher education. His consolation prize was war service which led to a respectable career in mental health. Then to my own father, ten years older, who had the good luck to come from a large rural family who pooled resources to have one of their number – him – properly educated – with several of his sisters going half-way and getting trained as teachers, a common route up at the time. Despite this, he did not make it to Goldsmiths to become a teacher, his first choice, and settled for dentistry instead. A choice of occupation which gave him both the leisure and the income needed to pursue his interests in painting, music and what I might call scientific philosophy. The first two as a consumer, the last as a practitioner, producing a learned book which almost saw the light of day. 

What with one thing and another, Church was driven to learn, using as many of the hours that were not claimed by Customs as was humanly possible. Seen from this distance, it seems terribly undisciplined, but it also involved learning to read in the most unlikely circumstances. So he often spent his bus and tram journeys stood up, jammed against the other passengers, but reading. And when he was tired at home, he stood back to a wall, forcing his head back to stay awake, and carrying on reading like that.

I was impressed by the sense of mission, of vocation and by the amount of work which went into becoming a respectable poet of the mid 20th century. Also by the amount of stuff turned out which never saw the light of day. I dare say this is the story of many arty people: to succeed you have to be driven - which I never was. His drive to learn and, more important, his drive to write poetry and to talk about poetry: words just poured out of him. In the beginning, it seems likely that he wrote and talked a good deal of rubbish. But he persevered and learned, and gradually he started to get stuff published and he started to meet other literary types. He gradually climbed into the literary world, without yet casting off from the security (and relative poverty) of a civil service job. I associate to an old friend who, having made a different choice, was rudely dismissive of relatives who, on his account, were obsessed with job security and a pension. Which one might think fair enough if one came from a background which was both unsettled and poor. 

One of the themes of this book is the idea that the Civil Service around the time of the First World War was something of a haven for those who did not fancy the rough and tumble of the real world, the real world where wealth and money were made. There is also the observation that the civil service of his time included plenty of well-educated people who cultivated outside interests and who were happy to help the present author in his efforts to become a poet. A haven that the present author eventually found the energy to escape from to make his living in the world of letters – if not exactly in the real world. In my own time in the Civil Service, which started more than half a century later, there was still some of this, but rather diminished and the service was working hard to be an up-to-date, professionally run organisation. But a service which still found house room for a decent number of the less able. Probably easier then than now, when so many of the lower grade jobs have been automated away – or outsourced. In Church’s day, a customs service which also found house room for a humorous house magazine, ‘Spirits and Whines’. I believe there was something of the same sort when Scott’s last expedition overwintered in the Antarctic. So perhaps such things were very much in the spirit of the times. I associate to the penchant – in my own time – of Ministry of Defence people for elaborate games in the evenings, charades rather than Monopoly, a penchant perhaps born of being stuck out in far flung places for protracted periods of time. 

As a young man, Church saw a dichotomy between noble things of the mind and the ignoble world of money. The latter was somehow dirty and bound to taint. A view which I recognise, both from my own younger days and some of the writing of the (famous) Tolstoy. It was good if one could grow and make enough for one’s needs without needing to get into the dirty of business of going to market, of buying and selling, of lying and cheating. While Church writes that he gradually grew out of this sort of thing. 

I associate here to a version of the story of the money changers in the Temple, whereby the money changers were needed to change the regular money of the day into the sort of money that was suitable as an offering in the Temple. Not greedy parasites at all. A version which I believe I got from a book from the Hyam Maccoby of reference 6. 

Odds and ends

I also associate to a colleague during my time in the Department of Employment Group, telling me of another poet, one C. H. Sisson, who doubled as a senior civil servant there. I knew of him from pieces in the Times Literary Supplement. 

Church talks of there being various divisions and classes in the Civil Service, of which he was in the lowest. Which rang bells, because my union (by accident of statistical history) was called the First Division Association and I had heard of the Administration Class, that is to say the top class. Also of middle ranks, the various executive officers. Then the other ranks – including here clericals, industrials, hostel wardens, temporaries and scientists – with some of these last being much more highly qualified than I was. I tried asking Google about all this and did not get anywhere. I tried emailing someone in the Cabinet Office whose job title suggested knowledge about these matters but got no reply. So maybe the Sisson effort at reference 15, now winging its way from one of the shops sailing under the Abebooks umbrella, will help. 


There is also much talk of the grim old Custom House (reference 13), right next to the stinks of what was then Billingsgate Market. Both presently more or less unoccupied and awaiting redevelopment. 


The river frontage is rather less grim than the street frontage, with rather more decoration, now rather obscured by trees. 


Against which background, I was interested to read recently in the FT at reference 14 that, before the First World War, customs was most of government revenue, and the Custom House would have been far more important in the scheme of things than it is now, with customs overtaken by income and other taxes – many of them levied by the Board of Inland Revenue – this name now being in its proper perspective. 


For a while, Camberwell Green was an important way-station on his way home from London Bridge, a green snapped above from StreetView and which I, occasionally, used to pass through myself. I learned something of trams, an important part of public transport in the first half of the 20th century, before being swept away by the arrival of motor buses. Church spent a lot of time in their swaying, sweaty, smelly and smoky interiors – while still managing to read. It also seems that tram tracks could have sharp edges, but I have failed to find out what that was about.

There is a lot of talk of the pianos in his life – his brother was an accomplished pianist who became a teacher – and the pianos he comes across. And Church seems to be as sensitive to sound as he is to words, including here the different tones of different pianos. Perhaps in his music conscious age, before the arrival of much radio or television, people discussed pianos – with many people owning at least one – in much the same way as suburban husbands might now discuss cars.


I have managed to score just three of the nine listed above. When I attempted to do something about the red underline, Word started talking French, so I abandoned that one. 

Church writes of the effect of being very close to his dying mother when he was in his teens. It appears to have made him very sensitive to the moods and needs of ladies, but it also made him knowing and old before his time – a taint which hung over the Folkestone romance in the interval between his mother and his first wife. A romance which eventually failed. 

He had a difficult relationship with his father, keen on cycles and the open road, but he shared the cycling. He cycled a lot despite his uncertain health and was a bit obsessive about keeping his cycles in perfect condition. 

An urge, a need to pour out words in poetry seems to have gripped him throughout this period. During which he was, in this way, learning his trade. In which connection, he observes at one point that one needs to practise, in the way of a musician – or a sportsman. A poet should be writing lots of stuff – not necessarily poetry – all the time, to get the machinery well-tuned. A sentiment with which at my own humbler level I can agree: practice might not make perfect, but it does help. 

He also observes that words in poems should carry meaning, not just sound. Which is fair enough, but there is compromise: one might want a word for river, but the needs of rhyme and rhythm might make you settle for some near synonym – say silver stream (I associate here to Homer’s wine-dark sea) – the meaning of which word or phrase was not part of your original meaning. Meaning creeping in through the back door. 

I also associate to the fact that compression can sacrifice legibility. One can, with cunning, get a lot of meaning into a small number of words – except that few readers other than their author are going to notice. A practise which may be encouraged by the need for brevity when reporting upwards, say to ministers or to the board. Or as FIL once observed about a pamphlet which I showed him about mental health: all very fine and good – provided you know it all already. Not so good for the beginner. 

Quotes from famous poems are scattered through the book. Bing obliged and I tried to engage with some of them – but failed. Despite my interest in Church, this did not translate to the poetry that so moved him. I also got the impression that Church was strong on rhythm and its importance in both literary and human affairs, so maybe my own weakness in that department is what causes my failure on the poetry front. 

There are reports of levitations scattered through the book. This seems to be an illusion of more or less flying over the heads of crowds, which Church can call upon when stressed. He sometimes uses it, for example, to get him through the rush hour crush back across London Bridge after work. An illusion first reported in the first volume. 

We are told that one could, on occasion feel the guns of Flanders through the ground – presumably the same chalk underlies both – of Limpsfield in Surrey. Then unspoiled country at the foot of the north downs, now next to the M25 between Redhill and Sevenoaks. 

David Grieg of reference 5 is mentioned just the once, near the beginning of the book. 

Conclusions 

A lucky find indeed. Full marks to the Bugle of Brading. A bugle which gets an outing at reference 12.

PS: some clerical glitch meant that the first edition of this post was in the wrong font. Editing the HTML proved tiresome, more so than simply starting over, which is what I ended up doing. Must be more careful!

References


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 14: Trumponomics: the radical plan that would reshape America’s economy In a bid to boost manufacturing, the Republican candidate is promising sweeping tariffs. Critics warn they would cause huge damage and heighten global tensions – Colby Smith, Claire Jones, James Politi, Financial Times – 2024.

Reference 15: The Spirit of British Administration – C H Sisson – 1959. A copy is to be found at https://archive.org/details/spiritofbritisha0000chsi/page/168/mode/2up. 
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