CHARLES HENRY SALTER (1918-2008) AND THE LETTERS FROM FRANCE (Part 1)

Earlier this year I opened a big can of worms. All his life my father kept significant correspondence  which he’d received, letters of special import sent by friends of special closeness. I found them after his death seven years ago, sorted into old brown envelopes and piled up in two drawers of his old pedestal desk. They were carefully labelled – with the names of individual correspondents, or “School”, “Oxford”, “Army”, “Senior colleagues” and so on.

I couldn’t bring myself to read them. For a start there were so many, and in so many different hands. More to the point, we were all but estranged by the time of his death, and I just didn’t want to know. But in the last couple of years I have been writing a book which deals in part with the memory of him. He’s pretty much the pantomime villain of the piece, which has been hard to write – so hard that eventually I became blocked and couldn’t write any more. It was towards the end of this writer’s block that I opened the heavy archive box which now contains all his letters, and started to read.

Charles Henry Salter at his desk, c1938

They are fascinating! They cover his entire adult life and of course show sides of him which a son never sees of his father – the non-parental side, the adult among peers, the friend of friends, the intellectual colleague. What emerges is of course a much more rounded picture of the man than the one-dimensional cartoon I have been sketching in words so far. Will I have to start writing my book all over again? I can’t un-know this new full-colour picture I now have of the man I’ve been painting in black and white.

But I realise that it’s my memory of the parent which I am writing, not a biography of the whole man. The letters provide a welcome counterpoint to my own perception of him, but they don’t negate my own experience as his son. I’m glad to have them. There are, quite apart from the personal insights into his character, many delights amongst them: many characterful correspondents and many gripping stories on their pages.

In the summer of 1939 my father was having the time of his life. He had won an unprecedented two Chancellor’s Prizes in his first year at Oxford University, and he spent the summer with a group of student friends on holiday in Brittany. It was obviously a very vivid time for him, although he never mentioned it even when I twice holidayed in Brittany myself.

Pontivy, where my father and his friends spent the summer of 1939

Dad kept letters from many of those who were there that last summer before the war, the summer he came of age. He joined the party in Brittany after spending a few days east of Paris with a French friend, Jeanne, who was also a fellow student at Oxford; and a letter from her soon afterwards sets the pre-war tone of gaiety, fantasy and youth:

To the gentle knight Charles Salter,

Beautiful sweet friend,

I am happy and reassured that you have received the magic gold ring which I sent you before you left me for Brittany. It reminds me, the arrival of the ring and its messenger (in this case the postman, which is horribly prosaic, I’m afraid) of the ring which sweet Tristan sent from Brittany to Iseult his beloved, and of the queen’s oath, and it makes me give thanks to heaven that you, sweet sire, and I did not exchange similar oaths, although I ponder with despair on the distance which separates us.

Tell Elaine of the White Hands, if she is still near you, that the love which I carry for you is still not so great that I have none left for her, and receive, sweet sire, a tender platonic kiss from

your friend

Jehanne

My father never felt so vigorously alive as he did that summer. He and Elaine were something of an item, and in a later letter Elaine (who was also in Brittany that summer) declares to my father that she “would rather be your mistress once than marry a thousand Bobs.” (Bob was Dad’s rival for her affections.)

In the end she did neither. And other letters from the same circle of friends show that just below the frivolous surface, war was on everyone’s mind.

Next week’s blog is about two letters from the friends’ host in Brittany, written in 1939 and 1946, which illustrate perfectly and harrowingly what happened between the writing of them.

ARTHUR THOMAS MASTERMAN (1869-1941) AND THE FISH IN THE SEA

Arthur Masterman was another of those remarkable Masterman brothers of whom I have written here, Kent cousins of my grandfather. There were six of them altogether, and one sister, Daisy, who gets badly overshadowed by the achievements of the boys. She isn’t included the only family photo I have, and when in the manner of the times the children were nicknamed with Latin numbers, it’s as if she didn’t count at all – Harry, the sixth child, was called Quintus (meaning “fifth”), and Walter, the seventh and youngest, was known as Sextus, the “sixth”.

The Masterman boys, without their sister: back L-R Harry, Charlie and Walter; front L-R John, Ernest and Arthur

I hope to write more fully about Daisy (real name Margaret) in the future. For now, my subject is Arthur. Arthur was a scientist, a zoologist who immersed himself for almost his entire career in the coastal waters of the British Isles – almost literally, because his greatest enthusiasm was reserved for fish.

After studying zoology at Cambridge he was appointed Assistant Professor of Natural History at St Andrews University in 1893. His researches there were devoted to the life cycles of various North Sea fish, in collaboration with his professor William Carmichael McIntosh. In 1896 McIntosh became director of the new Gatty Marine Laboratory in the town. It is reasonable to assume that both men were involved in setting up the Gatty, which emerged from the government-funded St Andress Fisheries Laboratory. A year later the two men jointly published The Life-Histories of the British Marine Food-Fishes, a pioneering work in its contribution to understanding and managing fish stocks and fishing quotas.

William Carmichael McIntosh (1838-1931)
Professor of Natural History at St Andrews University

In 1900 he moved to Edinburgh to teach biology and zoology. Within a year he had written an Elementary Text-Book of Zoology to accompany his lectures. By coincidence I am writing this on 1^st May 2015, while reading his Zoology preface dated 1^st May 1901. Publishing his own course material no doubt boosted the income of a struggling extra-mural lecturer in the capital city. But in 1903 he moved back to England to take up a post with the newly formed Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries as Superintendent Inspector Director of Fisheries Investigation.

The dead hand of government now overshadowed his working life and he spent much of the rest of it bogged down in administrative duties, with little or no time for the research which had driven him until his ministry appointment. His civil servant superiors there were deeply suspicious of the appliance of science to their millennia-old activities. There was rivalry and jealousy between different local fishery committees around Britain, and between competing scientific bodies, for the limited government funding. Masterman’s job was oversee them all with a critical scientific eye; but his notes and comments carried little weight in the stormy political seas in which he was now launched.

Herbert Asquith (1852-1928) 

Chancellor of the Exchequer 1905-1908, 

before becoming Prime Minister on the death of his predecessor 

Henry Campbell-Bannerman in 1908

In 1907 and 1908 Masterman acted as Secretary to a Committee appointed by Herbert Asquith (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) to report on “present scientific activities  in fisheries and to make recommendations as to the future of such work.” It was a sprawling report, by a committee of which (in typical parliamentary fashion) only two out of the committee’s ten members had any knowledge of such matters and of the technical language involved. To Masterman fell the task of making the presented evidence comprehensible to the unscientific members, and his early teaching experience must have proved invaluable. It was all to no avail however: the resulting report (which he edited) was largely futile because of regional bickering about its findings.

Masterman did manage to find some time for research in the midst of all this and published three reports on flat-fish, which had been one of his particular enthusiasms back in St Andrews. He retired in 1920, but retained [says his obituary] his interest in all fishery questions up to his death – but he kept well out of the politics.

His was not a very visible life, unlike his brother Charlie. Charlie was a prominent Liberal politician who served under Lloyd George (Asquith’s successor as both Chancellor and Prime Minister). Perhaps Arthur should have stayed in academia; perhaps he thought a job at the Ministry of Fisheries would take him closer to his passion. But by his research he played his part in increasing the sum of human knowledge. And for that, we must all thank him.

Dissection of a skate, 

from Elementary Text-Book of Zoology (2^nd Edition)

by Arthur Thomas Masterman

HELEN WOOLLGAR DE GAUDRION VERRALL (1883-1959) AND THE EVIDENCE FOR TELEPATHY

Helen Verrall, my great aunt, was, like her mother Margaret, a psychic medium, active in the Society for Psychic Research. The Society was formed in 1882 with the intention of applying scientific methods to the study of that great Victorian fascination, the paranormal.

Helen Verrall and Willy Salter on their wedding day, 
28^th September 1915

After her marriage in 1915 she introduced her husband William Henry Salter to the work of the Society, which he joined in 1916 and served at various times as Treasurer, Secretary and – in 1947-48 – as President. He was a historian at Cambridge; but as far as I can tell, all his published work after his marriage was concerned with psychic phenomena, including Ghosts and Apparitions and Zoar, his review of the evidence of psychical research concerning survival after death, dedicated to Helen “and all who are working to complete Man’s knowledge of his Nature.”

As Mrs W.H. Salter, Helen also wrote, and gave talks. Among her publications is the Frederic Myers Memorial Lecture which she gave in 1945, Psychic Research: Where Do We Stand?; and Evidence for Telepathy: The Response to a Broadcast Request for Cases, which followed a talk she gave on the BBC on 16th February 1934 with a round-up of some of the four hundred letters she subsequently received. “A few of these,” she notes in her introduction, “were from persons not entirely sane.”

Evidence for Telepathy, by Mrs WH Salter (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1934)

The book examines fifty eight of the more credible ones, and she concludes, “These are the kind of things that happen from time to time to ordinary people, leading ordinary lives.” There’s a lovely matter-of-factness about that remark that I like.

Many of her correspondents describe telepathic intimations of the death or illness of a loved one which were later confirmed by more conventional communication. It is shiver-up-the-spine stuff, and I wonder idly where Willy was when Helen died, and whether he sensed her parting.

Here are two of the cases she reports. The first

… was sent by Mr JR Johnstone, who wrote as follows:

My Battalion was stationed at Ballykinlar Camp, County Down, Ireland, in April 1917. On 5^th April I was “Captain of the Day.” Part of my “duties” was the turning out of the various Guards, once after 10pm and once after midnight. Between these times I was sitting alone on a deck-chair in my cubicle reading a book.

In the middle of a chapter, I stood up and exclaimed aloud, “Arthur is killed.”

On April 7 Mr Johnstone received an official telegram informing him of his brother Arthur’s death in action on April 5^th, and subsequently he learnt in a letter from a brother-officer that Lieutenant Johnstone had been killed at about 11pm.

The death of 2^nd Lieutenant Arthur James Johnstone, 6/7 Bn The Royal Scots Fusiliers, is officially recorded [notes Aunt Helen] as having occurred on April 5, 1917.

Ballykinlar Camp became an internment centre during the Irish War of Independence in 1920-21

For the second, her informant

… was Mrs Bradburn, who wrote thus:

In the year 1893 my husband’s brother was out in South Africa at the time of the rising of the Matabele War, and all had to take part in it to protect their farms. One night my husband woke me up, and was terribly upset. He dreamt he saw his brother in the midst of fighting, and all at once he saw a lot of smoke and his brother fall into it, at the same time calling my husband by name.

That was on December 3, and we got a letter from him on January 1, saying they were going to fight Lobengula, the King of the Matabeles. The letter was dated on the eve of the battle and it coincided with my husband’s dream. My brother-in-law was one of the twenty-four brave men in Major Wilson’s last stand.

Major Wilson’s Last Stand was a celebrated act of British Imperial heroism. The entire party (actually thirty-four men) were cut off and massacred by 3000 warriors in the British equivalent of Custer’s Last Stand. A Sgt Bradburn is known to have been a member of Major Wilson’s party.

Major Wilson’s Last Stand, as depicted on a cigarette card

CHARLES FREDERICK GURNEY MASTERMAN (1873-1927) AND THE SPECIAL CONSTABLES

Charles Masterman, a cousin of my grandfather, is regarded by many as one of the last great old-school Liberals. But his political potential was frustrated by his inability to find a safe seat. He lost as many parliamentary elections as he won, and his party was eclipsed by the emergence of the new Labour Party before he could shine in office. He died a disappointed man in 1927 at the age of only 56.

From Punch in July 1914, Charles Masterman (right), absent from parliamentary debate, visits in spirit his harshest critic, Conservative MP Lamington Worthington-Evans

He wrote throughout his life. But it was through his friendships with other writers, forged in the years before the First World War, that he had his greatest literary influence. When Britain entered the war in 1914, Chancellor of the Exchequer Lloyd George put Masterman in charge of the newly created War Propaganda Bureau.

Books shape minds. Their very presence by a bedside encourages you to read them. The words within challenge your ideas and form your dreams. If nonconformists like the Gurneys understood this, so too did the propagandists. On 2nd September 1914 Masterman summoned a Who’s Who of British authors to his offices in Wellington House on Buckingham Gate in London. Twenty five literary giants of the day were present at the meeting, among them J.M. Barrie, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, my grandfather’s friend G.K. Chesterton, Cambridge Apostle G.M. Trevelyan, H.G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle. Rudyard Kipling sent fulsome apologies and his full support.

What an extraordinary gathering! It took place that September afternoon, and I imagine our authors, all male, arriving one by one as dusk is falling. It’s raining and their capes and overcoats drip as some civil servant removes them from their shoulders before ushering them into a long-tabled meeting room. Full-length portraits of forgotten politicians look down on green leather chairs and the backs of those writerly heads. On the table before them, writerly hands hover over the pens and notebooks of each author’s choice or beside crystal tumblers filled from nearby jugs of water or decanters of brandy and whisky. The heads are wreathed in tobacco smoke as they wrestle with what Conan Doyle might have described as a three-pipe problem: how to counter the newly discovered German propaganda machine.

The approach which they agreed that evening was a subtle one. Rather than pump out propaganda through some patently biased organ of state, Masterman encouraged his authors to write in their own terms about the outbreak of war and about British values. Their output was printed, by secret arrangement, by mainstream publishing houses rather than the government’s own stationery offices. Consequently, none of the output of the War Propaganda Bureau was identified as state propaganda by the British public, but simply as patriotism.

Members of the Junior Debating Club at St Paul’s, London – among them Edward Fordham (tallest, at rear) and G.K. Chesterton (seated, front centre)

Masterman’s authors recruited other authors to the cause. For example, after that first meeting G.K. Chesterton roped in his and my grandfather's old school friend E.W. Fordham. Fordham, like my grandfather, was too old for recruitment into the army, but older men such as he were urged to serve in other capacities, releasing younger men for military service. Fordham (a poet by inclination but, like my grandfather, a lawyer by profession) volunteered to be a Special Constable.

A large force of Specials was recruited during the war years to replace the younger officers who had gone to fight overseas. They were unpaid, and served mainly as a visible reminder of the need for law and order in unstable times. They were also of practical use, chiefly in guarding the nation’s water supply against sabotage by enemy agents. Fordham seems to have been placed on such duty. In 1916 he published Songs of the Specials, describing in his preface the melancholy tedium of “keeping relentless watch on a brick wall.” The first song in the collection, Who?, begins

Who dashes, careless of his skin,

To meet the love-bird of Berlin,

The chuck-and-chance-it Zeppelin?

The Special.

Who watches by the water-works,

Where privily the Teuton lurks,

Besides Bulgarians and Turks?

The Special.

Hugh Riviere’s illustration for E.W. Fordham’s verse Who? In Songs of the Specials

Songs of the Specials was one of millions of books and pamphlets published at arm's length by Masterman's Propaganda Bureau. That first meeting, exactly two hundred years and two months ago tomorrow, launched one of the biggest and most successful propaganda efforts the world has ever seen. Thanks to it, and the Special Constables which it encouraged, the nation's water supply was kept safe from sabotage. Well might Edward Fordham sing!