CHARLES HENRY SALTER (1918-2008) AND THE SPARKLERS

I have mentioned my “difficult” relationship with my father here before. He made himself a hard man to love. In a letter to an old flame in 1973 he wrote “My children by my first marriage are doing alright, and this combined with large inheritances from my father and aunt has freed me from anxiety. Not being anxious about the children does mean I am less interested in them.”

We sensed this loss of interest at the time. I was fifteen; the youngest of us was nine. He became dismissive, then critical, then vindictive, as he convinced himself that our lives were being guided by our mother’s values and not his (as if we could be expected to choose only one or the other).

Charles Henry Salter (1918-2008), c2007 aged 89

Since his death seven years ago I have tried again and again to forgive him for the cruelties inflicted on his wives and children. Much of this blog has been an attempt to bypass him and look for the good in my ancestors of earlier generations. But in every moment when I thought I might have tried harder during his life to connect with him, a memory popped up of the times when I did and was rebuffed. Every good memory was countered by a bad one.

Until two weeks ago.

Bruntsfield Links, Edinburgh

It was bonfire night, and in the early gloom of a November evening I was walking my dog on Bruntsfield Links, a large grassy space in Edinburgh’s Southside. Later in the night reckless student fireworks parties would colonise the place, setting off bangs to wake the dead and the elderly and terrify their pets. For now however, at six o’clock, small family groups were huddled in corners of the Links, lighting sparklers in the dark while Dad set off the threepenny flares, sixpenny rockets and shilling roman candles I remember from my childhood.

Fireworks parties were an annual highlight in our back garden in Glasgow. They were somehow more carefree and relaxed than Christmas and birthdays. My father strung a rope halfway across to keep us out of danger, although in those days a box set of Brock’s fireworks always came with some extraordinarily dangerous handheld flares, for which Dad distributed gloves. He set off smaller rockets from milk bottles, but sunk a long hollow curtain rod into the ground for the larger missiles – rockets the size of a packet of digestive biscuits rather than a sherbet fountain.

There were showers of sparks in every colour, Catherine wheels the size of steering wheels, always a huge bonfire of garden waste, and indoor fireworks too – floating ferns, uncurling snakes, smoking cowboys, Bengal matches. My father loved to organise these parties, and he had a particular look of unaffected glee which he wore for such childlike fun: head cocked to one side, eyes sparkling, the tip of his tongue popping in and out as if in two minds about whether to blow a raspberry.

By the end of his life we were more or less estranged. I visited him once in hospital, where he was taken after collapsing in his home. He had lost the power of speech, and babbled like a baby while nurses and doctors fussed about him. It seemed to me that, like a birthday boy delighted to be the centre of attention, he wore the same gleeful expression. He died that night.

Charles Henry Salter (1918-2008), c1921 aged 3
 

As I watched the sparklers and rockets fizz and whoosh on Bruntsfield Links the other week, the memories of childhood parties and of my father’s gleeful expression then and at his death welled up, unopposed by the usual counter-memories of hurts and disappointments. Somewhere a firework exploded and crackled, and to my surprise I started to cry. For the first time not just since his death but in forty years, I found myself thinking, “I miss my dad.”

WILLIAM AUGUSTUS SALTER (1812-1879) AND THE USUAL QUESTIONS

I am indebted to a fellow researcher of Baptist history for not only finding but allowing me to see a publication which had become something of a Holy Grail for me. I have been digging into the life of my great great grandfather, the Baptist minister William Augustus Salter, for around five years now. He served the congregations of a number of churches in the course of his life, from his first appointment at the Henrietta Street chapel in London’s Covent Garden to his last, the church in Clarendon Street, Leamington Spa, which he not only led but founded and built.

Rev William Augustus Salter (1812-1879) c1870 as pastor of Clarendon Street chapel, Leamington Spa

I have known for some time that the speeches and sermons made on 5^th October 1836, the day of his ordination at Henrietta Street, had been published. I learned of a copy held by the Angus Library at Regent’s Park College, Oxford; but could not afford the time or train fare to make a speculative trip.

The Angus Library is Britain’s best collection of Baptist publications, founded on the personal collection of Joseph Angus (1816-1902), William Augustus’ brother-in-law. William Augustus and Joseph trained for the ministry together at Stepney Baptist College, and it was when Angus was in 1849 appointed as Principal of that institution that it thrived. Outgrowing its Stepney premises the college moved in 1855 to larger ones overlooking Regent’s Park. Then in 1927, twenty five years after Angus’ death Regent’s moved lock, stock and library to the more studious environment of Oxford.

Regent's Park College quadrangle today (photograph by Tomsett, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikipedia)

A few weeks ago, my colleague mentioned that he was going to be doing some research in the Angus Library and kindly offered to look for the Henrietta Street sermons, which included the Charge to the Minister delivered by Angus’ and Salter’s old teacher Rev W.H. Murch, then Principal of Stepney College. Surely Joseph was in the congregation that day witnessing his friend’s entry into the ministry?

What I hadn’t anticipated was that the Henrietta Street speeches would include one from Salter himself. My great great grandfather’s words! His voice on the page! William Augustus spoke in response to the previous speaker, Rev J.J. Davies, who (according to the Order of Service) “delivered the Introductory Address and asked the usual questions.”

Unfortunately the published speeches do not include the questions themselves! But we are told of their nature. Before asking the “usual questions” of William Augustus, Rev Davies “put the usual question to the church, respecting the circumstances which had led to the present service [of ordination].” A church elder Mr Dawson responded with a history of Henrietta Street chapel, founded in 1817 and suddenly and unexpectedly deprived of its sitting pastor Rev T. Thomas in May 1836. Thomas (with that initial, could he have been Thomas Thomas?!) had effectively been headhunted by Abergavenny Baptist College. My great great grandfather had been filling Thomas’s shoes as a supply-preacher at Henrietta Street for the past three months.

Henrietta Street in 1837 – note the early layout of Covent Garden market (from Cary’s New Plan of London and its Vicinity)

Salter’s own “usual questions” were on the matters of his personal journey to God, his decision to enter the ministry, and his views on Christian doctrine. He replied with admirable piety and brevity on all three counts (occupying four pages of the published version compared to seventeen from Rev Davies). In the first matter, he was drawn to God, and eventually baptised at Camberwell Baptist Church, after starting as a volunteer teacher at the church Sunday school. In the second, he knew from the moment of his baptism that he wanted to be more than merely a member of a congregation: that he wanted to be of public service to God.

In the third, his Confession of Faith shows that he believed in the Holy Trinity, and in the fundamental wickedness of mankind from Adam and Eve onwards. Sin, at the core of our being, was however more to be pitied and repented of than cursed with fire and brimstone. Salvation was possible for all sinners thanks to the sacrifice of the Son of God. It’s a speech full of love for all sinners and for the glory of God.

We can be fairly sure of the names of two others present at William Augustus' ordination: William Brodie Gurney and his daughter Emma. Emma and William Augustus were married less than a fortnight after this service. Joseph Angus married Emma's sister Amelia a little under four years later. And the flyleaf signature of the original owner of the Angus Library copy of the Henrietta Street speeches is none other than Salter's and Angus's father-in-law, W.B. Gurney.

Signature in the flyleaf of the Angus LIbrary copy of his son-in-law's ordination speeches: W.B. Gurney, Denmark Hill

It’s fascinating to read the clear and convinced statements of William Augustus' understanding of doctrine at the age of twenty-five, because they are entirely consistent with the sermons which he preached more than forty years later in Clarendon Street, and which were published posthumously. That loving belief in the possibility of salvation for his fellow men and women made William Augustus Salter a gentle shepherd to all the flocks he tended.

CHARLES HENRY SALTER (1918-2008) AND THE REFUGEE

After my father’s death I found two drawers in his writing desk stuffed full of large envelopes into which he had carefully sorted a lifetime’s correspondence from friends, colleagues and lovers. They span seventy years, and the letters from around the time of the Second World War are among the more poignant ones. 

One envelope is labelled “German”. Before the war my father and his father had many friends in Germany, and the advent of hostilities put many of those friendships under strain one way or another. Besides their names, I don’t know who any of the correspondents were and can only guess at the context of the letters and the reasons why my father kept them for so long. 

 Charles Henry Salter (1918-2008), right, 

with Peter Wright and Pat Duncan. Photograph taken by Steve Hallett in the Dolomites late in 1938

The following letter from Venice, for example, hints at many events. My father received it soon after he had returned from a ski-ing holiday nearby in northern Italy. The author Marianne writes, in German, from an inn in the city. She is reluctantly leaving Europe. Is she a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany or Austria, which had welcomed the Nazis' Anschluss (annexation) in March 1938? Had my father offered to find her safe refuge in England? When she makes offers to my father “in the name of her parents”, is she travelling with them? Are they family friends? Have they even survived whatever Marianne is fleeing? Did she, after all, escape? I’ll never know.

I apologise for my faltering translation of the letter, but I hope that my words convey some of the intensity of the original.

The white marble facade of the Church of San Zaccaria, viewed from a balcony of the Pension Casa Fontana

Pension Casa Fontana,

S. Provolo 4701,

Venice

7-2-1939

My dear Charles,

A few days ago I received your so very lovely letter, for which I most heartily thank you. How kind of you to concern yourself with us so readily. You are a true friend. However your trouble has been for nothing because we have found something at last and we are actually going to Mexico. Before that we may have to stay another month in France; but as long as we leave Italy before the 12^th March, our life is safe. 

Now that I know when we will be leaving the sunny South, I am sorry and sad; how many dear friends am I losing, and when will I return to Europe?

But we must thank god that at least he is saving us from certain death.

Venice today looks like something out of a fairy tale, like a beautiful colour postcard. The sun lights up the beautiful buildings and the white marble shines even whiter than before. A few warships lie off the Salute church, watching over the town.

The Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni in Venice in the 1940s, viewed from the dome of the Salute church

I wish I had come to England, and I wish I had seen you again; but it is not in God’s plan, and in my parents’ name you have an open invitation to visit us. I hope that you will always write to me, and that in your next letter you won’t forget to include your picture. I’m afraid I have no pictures left of me, but I will have some photographs taken in the next few day and then send you one immediately.

We were in Genova to get the visa for Mexico; it’s a beautiful town. On the way back I spent a few hours in Milan with my friend. Milan Cathedral is very beautiful and I liked Milan itself very much; it’s certainly a real city.

Now, dear Charles, I must finish because I have to rush off and will post this letter so that I don’t keep you waiting any longer. 

With all my heart, thank you again in the name of my parents for your efforts. Send me your photograph and write to me soon and often.

With fondest greetings,

Marianne

The Pension Casa Fontana, now the Hotel Fontana, still stands in the Campo San Provolo in Venice. Perhaps it still has its old guest registers!

FREDERICK GURNEY SALTER (1874-1969) AND THE DEAD WAR POETS SOCIETY

I am not one to glorify war or the injuries of war. I don’t think it’s clever of nations to send their finest young men and women to death or disfigurement: “the old Lie,” as Wilfred Owen put it with a capital L, “Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori.” It is sweet and right to die for your country. Did you know Owen’s middle name was Salter? No relation.
 

Frederick Gurney Salter (1874-1969)

Try as I may, I cannot understand the attitude of men like my grandfather Fred Salter (1874-1969) who, too old to enlist at the start of the First World War, persisted in trying until he found an enlisting officer willing to turn a blind eye to his age; and who was determined to return to active frontline duty even after his leg was amputated, having been hit by a German sniper in January 1916 while he was on a barbed wire patrol beyond the trenches.

He got a Certificate of Gratitude from the king and a wooden leg from the hospital, an actually wooden prosthesis, on which he walked painfully for the last 54 years of his life. Without complaint, my father always said.

Lieutenant F.G. Salter

5th Battalion The Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort’s Own)

Served with honour and was disabled in the Great War

Invalided from the Service 12^th February 1919

George R[ex] I[mperator]

At least, my grandfather may have felt, he survived. A great friend of Fred’s, Tudor Castle, died later the same year that Fred was injured, when a shell struck his trench at Arras in August 1916. Tudor was a poet: I still have the first edition copy of Rupert Brooke’s first volume of poetry which Tudor gave Fred in 1914, and the first edition copy of Brooke’s posthumous collection which Tudor gave his sister May in 1915. Fred and May were married three months before Tudor was killed.

Tudor Castle (1882-1916) and Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

When Fred enlisted, it was with his best friend Robert (the poet R.E. Vernède) who was also too old to sign up. Once he was hors de combat, Fred sent Robert knitwear, food and magazines in the trenches and Robert wrote Fred a poem which began

Peaks that you dreamed of, hills your heart has climbed on,

Never your feet shall climb, your eyes shall see:

All your life long you must tread lowly places,

Limping for England, well – so let it be.

Robert’s publisher rejected the poem for being too unsupportive of the war effort. But Robert too lost his life, on Easter Monday 1917, when his platoon stumbled on a German machine gun position. And Robert’s poem about Fred was included in the posthumous collection of his work published the following September.

Wilfred Edward Salter Owen was killed in action in France on 4^th November 1918, a week before the end of the war.

R.E. Vernede (1875-1917) and Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)