Lionel Britton Makes His Appearance

Lionel Britton used to make a habit of cropping up all over the place, but I've no idea how he got in here! Just click on a photo on the extreme right-hand side (maybe twice) and he soon appears:

Lionel Britton – Sketch

David Foster Wallace Again (But I Make No Apologies for It)

I was recently reading 'Grammar and American Usage' in David Foster Wallace's Consider the Lobster when I noticed that he mentions an imaginary 'grammar nazi' objecting to the wording in a supermarket queue: 'Express Checkout: 10 Items or Less'. It took me a full three minutes to realize what was wrong with this sentence: the fact that 'less' refers to mass as opposed to count was not immmediately obvious to me, and I digressively agonized over the other words instead. As someone who taught English grammar for fifteen years, this is a humbling experience. But then: does anyone care? Yeah, in certain ways I care: I particularly care about my vegetables being mis-apostrophized as 'Cauliflower's' or 'Carrot's', about people writing that 'Its a wonderful day, and to prove it the dog is wagging it's tail', or (a real-life example, this) about a college near me in Nottingham – which included four different peoples from different races in its logo – calling itself 'People's College' (now called Castle College, which I think is because someone just realized that it's at the back of Nottingham Castle), where I once told the vice-principal that on the basis of the logo alone this was grammatically incorrect, but she didn't even understand what I was talking about. (1) Anyway, for the record, what I was talking about was that the noun 'people' can be pluralized, so 'Peoples' College' would in this instance have been a more correct apostrophization. But what do you expect from a S.N.O.O.T. like me, or from the vice-principal of a college who obviously isn't interested in grammar?

(1) I've just noticed that the Carlton Road annexe of Castle College now seems to be calling itself 'Peoples College', which I suppose is a kind of neutral compromise. I imagine that they're retained the name because some people complained (the name goes back over a century but who cares about small details like that?)

Tryphena Joan Shaw (1922–90)

The internet can amaze at times: take for instance this link to this photo, which is part of a post in The Serendipity Project here:

OK, it's a woman in front of Oliver Cromwell's house in Ely, Cambridgeshire: what's so strange about that? Only that it's my mother, Tryphena Joan Shaw (née Pembleton) and the photo appears to have come from nowhere. There aren't any missing spaces in my photo album, but here's a similar shot (also taken by my father Jim Shaw (1918–99), who also wrote the caption to the photo below) in front of Kings College Chapel, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: she's wearing the same dress, shoes, and bracelet, so it was presumably taken during the same holiday. Very odd. Fascinating, though.

My grandmother was born Ellen Seymore* Alcock (1893-1982), in Richmond Barracks, Inchicore, Dublin, and married Herbert Noah Pembleton, a postman, in 1914.

This is the house where my mother was born: 40 Rydal Grove, Old Basford, Nottingham. I only discovered that recently, when making my application fo Irish citizenship by descent, my maternal grandmother having been born both British and Irish. My mother didn't even realise that she herself was in effect an Irish citizen as well as a British one.

*This second first name conflicts with the homophone 'Seymour' written on her marriage and her death certificate.

David Foster Wallace (continued)

Another thing Wallace mentions in the article 'Consider the Lobster' which had never occurred to me before is our tendency to use euphemisms for the meat of higher animals: 'pork', 'beef', 'veal', 'venison', etc, which keep carniphiles (a Wallace neologism?) an emotional step away from the fact that an animal is being eaten (1). (1) I wasn't aware of the existence of the word 'dysphemism' until I read the article 'Grammar and American Usage' (also in the book Consider the Lobster), and had to check that it wasn't another neologism. No, it's pre-Wallace: a dysphemism is a kind of exaggeration, like an opposite of a euphemism, as in some of Wallace's examples: 'grammar nazi', 'syntax snob' and 'usage nerd'. But imagine (as he claims, anyway) his family inventing the acronym S.N.O.O.T. to avoid dysphemisms when describing language usage fanatics: depending on whether you were one or not, this stood for 'Sprachgefühl Necessitates Our Ongoing Tendance', or 'Syntax Nudniks Of Our Time'. Who'd of guessed it?* But then Zadie Smith, who was apparently too (intellectually) 'scared' of Wallace to interview him, is quoted on the front cover of Wallace's Oblivion: '[H]e's in a different time-space continuum from the rest of us. Goddamn him.' Jealousy is fruitless now. A final point: when Wallace was an undergraduate, he was so thrilled that a philosophy lecturer had called him a genius that he thought he'd never have to go to the bathroom (he used the American euphemism) any more: he'd transcended it.

*Grammar nazis note: 'of' for 'have' is intended!

David Foster Wallace Digresses, as Was His Wont: We Shall Miss His Vegetarian Leanings

David Foster Wallace's article 'Consider the Lobster', which he was originally commissioned to write about the Maine Lobster Festival for Gourmet magazine, is an amazing piece of writing, although Wallace was obviously the first person to note that a food magazine wouldn't necessarily take too kindly to his obsessive footnotes, and would probably not be too happy at all that about half of his article was a (very scientifically pitched) argument that read in parts like a vegetarian tract. This, of course, was one of David Foster Wallace's hallmarks: he was more digressive than Lionel Britton. The video here was created by a buddhist vegan organization, but let that put no one off: Wallace's words have been heavily simplified, but this still makes for good viewing, in spite of the black and white words without pictures. We can only hope that the publicity surrounding Wallace's suicide will make him more widely known in the UK: he was a major writer in any generation, not just this. But the fact that an intellectual maggot like Gordon Ramsay is (by common definition) also a human being seems to suggest that we are indeed, as Lionel Britton claims, moving in intellectual reverse: don't we need a way of categorizing human beings according to basic brain capacity? (Politicians would never allow this, of course, and for obvious reasons.)

Digression: last year I spent several weeks in Carbondale, IL (Wallace used to delight in the two-letter abbreviations of states, among acronyms and other abbreviations that would make you flip back pages to find out if you could see what he was talking about), and as well as driving out to surrounding states such as Missouri (MO) and Kentucky (KY), I visited nearby Murphysboro, IL, for its apple festival (Wallace is quick to point out in 'Consider the Lobster' that some of the other festivities in the U.S. include the Kansas beer Festival, the Tidewater crab festivals, the Midwest corn festivals and the Texas chili festivals, for instance), although this was only on the way to Chester, IL, a small town tucked right up against the Mississippi River, where there's a tiny Popeye Museum dedicated to the work of the creator of that cartoon figure, Elzie Segar, born in Chester in 1874.

Boris Vian – Le Déserteur

It is sad that English people tend to know little of French singer-songwriters (or chanteurs à paroles.) Nevertheless, Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens, Georges Moustaki and a few more are known by many in anglophone countries. Boris Vian is a different case: I'd only known him as a writer, and was delighted to discover this song in particular, which is written in very simple French to express a simple message: we won't accept your [i.e. the government's] demands that we should kill others, and we shall walk away from your insane dictates.

I'm trying to think of an English person who might have sung this, but am completely unsuccessful: perhaps unsurprisingly, Renaud recorded a slang version of Le Déserteur, and Joan Baez sang a cover version, but apart from other French singers, this lovely song has perhaps not been covered by any other anglophone singers. England has never had a Phil Ochs, or a(n early) Dylan, or a Baez.

By extension, of course, the song is a plea to all sane people to refuse to participate in any war. If the spirit of Vian's song had been heeded by just a few of the sycophants of Britain's New Labour government before the obscene war on Iraq, for instance, Tony Blair would have been forced to resign, Gordon Brown would have disappeared into the black hole where he belongs, and the world would perhaps look a far less forbidding – certainly a far less racist – place. As it is though, New Labour neo-liberal politics continue to influence European countries: the very right-wing Sarkozy, for instance, is a thoroughgoing Blairite. As is Gordon Brown: only the newspapers fabricate differences to sell copy:

Boris Vian: Le Déserteur

Significantly, someone has posted a comment on YouTube pointing out that the end of this song is 'censored', which is true, because it now reads:

'Prévenez vos gendarmes

Que je n'aurai pas d'armes

Et qu'ils pourront tirer.'

Apparently the original last two lines read:

'Que je tiendrai une arme

Et que je sais tirer.'

This is wildly different from the version sung here, but according to http://fr.lyrics-copy.com 'Boris Vian a accepté la modification de son ami Mouloudji pour pour conserver le côté pacifiste de la chanson !' (1).

OK, but as a pacifist I ironically prefer the original version because I detest authorial compromise, and the altered lyric compromises the force of the song. As the person who posted the comment says: 'Je préfère l'original, la fin est beaucoup plus Boris Vian.'

(1) However, another site is perhaps more exact in this matter: Vian was forced to change the words because the government had banned the song as it stood.

An Obscure Bookstore

In fact, an extremely obscure bookstore, part of which was recycled from a manure tank.

Lionel Britton, the Secondhand Book Market, and Fun

Lionel Britton spent some years working in the secondhand book trade, but he'd probably never have guessed that one of his own books would command such a price as this one, advertised by an American seller:

'Britton, Lionel. Spacetime Inn. London/New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons. 1932. Proof copy. 103 pages. Lionel Britton (1887-1971), wrote the proletarian novel Hunger and Love [1931] which George Orwell called a "failed masterpiece." Bernard Shaw wrote a short introduction to the novel, and referred to Britton as a "wild young man." Herbert Marshall, who met him at Unity, the left-wing theatre which began in the 1930s, insisted that he was a genius to be held in awe. Britton today is regarded as a cult figure of fantastic literature, his play Brain [1930] concerns a giant brain that is formed in the Sahara Desert and untimately controls the world. Spacetime Inn is an apocalyptic play in which two working-class lottery winners are trapped in a pub in spacetime with Eve, the Queen of Sheba, Queen Victoria, Karl Marx and Bernard Shaw. This is a presentation copy to O.G.S. Crawford [Osbert Guy Stanhope Crawford, the noted English Archeologist. The presentation note states: "To O.G.S. Crawford, who also edits antiquity." [Note: Crawford founded the "Antiquity Trust" in 1927]. In addition, there is signed letter laid in to Crawford exhibiting Britton's exquisite penmanship and calligraphic signature which states: "Dear Mr. Crawford, I never heard whether you ultimately managed to digest "Hunger and Love"-or whether like some people I've heard about, you perished by the way! I'm sending you my latest venture. This is a bit rough, as it's only in proof and not perfect at that, but it may have some sentimental interest to keep as a curiosity of literary history, as a pre-first edition." Condition: Interior fine, wraps faded and discolored, with front wrap detached but present. Outer spine chipped but binding tight. Britton signed the front wrap at the top, wrote the title and also "proof" on the bottom. Note: I have not been able to locate any other proof copies, and letters from Britton are understandably scarce. Further note: this is such a fun item, that we have gone a little crazy cataloging it. If you've read this far, you'll be amazed the price is only... $200.'

George Orwell and Lionel Britton

In the April 1931 issue of The Adelphi George Orwell (who at the time was writing under his real name Eric Blair) reviewed Lionel Britton’s first (and only published) novel Hunger and Love at some length. He calls the book ‘entirely sound’ as a ‘social document’, but fails to recognize it as a novel as such: it is more of ‘a kind of monologue on poverty’.(1) Although (among other things) Orwell found the repetitions annoying, the novel made a lasting impression on him.(2)

In a Home Service radio broadcast in 1940, Orwell specifically singles out Hunger and Love — with some reservations — as ‘an outstanding book’ of the sub-genre. It is remarkable that he remembers the book so vividly from when he reviewed it almost ten years previously. Unfortunately, Loraine Saunders's new book mentions nothing of this, citing almost entirely negative things that Orwell says about Hunger and Love, (although she at least acknowledges that it's significant that Britton's 'uniquely modernist style' didn't appeal to Orwell).(3)

There is a strong case for arguing that Lionel Britton had an influence of Orwell’s work; Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) has a number of moments which could easily have been inspired by Britton, and the example below from Coming Up for Air (1939) seems to bear the distinct hallmark of Britton’s writing: the enumeration, the conspiracy theory and the sense of urgency all suggest a pastiche of Britton’s Hunger and Love:

‘And all the soul-savers and Nosey Parkers, the people whom you’ve never seen but who rule your destiny all the same, the Home Secretary, Scotland Yard, the Temperance League, the Bank of England, Lord Beaverbrook, Hitler and Stalin on a tandem bicycle, the bench of Bishops, Mussolini, the Pope — they were all of them after me. I could almost hear them shouting:

There’s a chap who thinks he’s going to escape! There’s a chap who says he won’t be streamlined! He’s going back to Lower Binfield! After him! Stop him!’.(4)

(1) The Complete Works of George Orwell, ed. by Peter Davison, 20 vols (London: Secker & Warburg, 1986–1998; rev. and updated 2000), A Patriot After All: 1940–1941, pp. 203–05. (Originally published as ‘Poverty — Plain and Coloured’ by ‘Eric Blair’, Adelphi, April 1931, pp. 80–82.)

(2) Orwell was, of course, soon to publish the non-fictional Down and Out in Paris and London, and would have been particularly interested in Britton‘s account of poverty in the capital.

(3) Loraine Saunders, The Unsung Artistry of George Orwell: The Novels from "Burmese Days" to "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 10–11.

(4) George Orwell, Coming up for Air (London: Gollancz, 1939; repr. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962), pp. 173–74.

Jean MacGibbon and Lionel Britton

Jean MacGibbon was the wife of the publisher James MacGibbon of MacGibbon and Kee, and she gives an account of their encounter with Lionel Britton (whom she rather confusingly calls one of the earliest significant working-class writers: there were several significant working-class writers in the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries) in her autobiography I Meant to Marry Him¹.

Both of them had been invited to a play-reading² in a flat near Wormwood Scrubs, which Jean describes as being full of mainly elderly women. She remembers the play as being about animals fighting and having sex, punctuated by Britton's grunts and animated by his wild gestures.

Walking home with her husband after the performance, she is haunted by what she has seen, and puts her hand in James's greatcoat to protect her.

¹Jean Macgibbon, I Meant to Marry Him: A Personal Memoir (London: Gollancz, 1984).

²Although she doesn't say so, the play was Animal Ideas, which was Britton's last (published) and most unsuccessful assault on the theatre. It was never performed in any theatre and Britton was reduced to performing it on his own and where he could.

John Britton (1771–1857): Father of John James Britton (1832–1913)?

The image above gives a rough profile sketch of the antiquary John Britton, who may well have been the father of the poet John James Britton and the paternal great-grandfather of the working-class writer Lionel Britton. The link in this sentence is to three rather more substantial sketches of John Britton from the National Portrait Gallery (NPG).

The NPG gives a passing mention to John Britton's apparently prominent role in the 'neo-Gothic revival' (surely a tautology?), and to his collaboration with Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin 'on several books', although the names of them are not given.

As ever, my sincere thanks to the restless Robert Hughes, a great-nephew of Lionel Britton, for this information.

Robert Hughes on Just a Few Things to Be Done Brittonwise: Is Anyone Out There?

I can't think of any more things to add to Robert Hughes's list here:

'Loose ends that I want to follow up, and where you would have thought the internet would help, include:

Newton Thomas, youngest known child of Samuel and Marie–Antoinette Thomas; b. 1883, and died presumably in New Zealand in his eighties or later, but when and where exactly?

Samuel Thomas, b. 1900, elder child of Frank and Gertrude Thomas (née Morris). Said to have married the daughter of a pig farmer, presumably in Canada. Were there any children?

Samuel Thomas, b. Billancourt, Paris, c. 1872: later known by the family as George, he married Ethel May Morris in 1906 and emigrated to Canada, said to have been Saskatoon. May, as she was known, made several visits to England, but George seems not to have done. They appear to have had no children, but is this correct? When and where did he die?

The Thomas Millions: a huge fortune is said to be tied up in Chancery because someone lost a birth certificate. Great-great-aunt Flossie had her chauffeur drive her around Wales looking at tombstones in the hope that she could unlock the Millions. Any truth in this family legend? (A five-pound Wrapit voucher for anyone who gives us the answer, and we'll add interest from today's date!)

Mary Quarterly, b. Devonport 1808: this family is heavily concentrated in the Devon and Exmoor area, but otherwise it is not a very common name. Does anyone have a Quarterly family tree which would give us a clue about Mary?

Thomas Nimmo, apothecary of Greenock: he was born at some time in the mid-Eighteenth Century, and is almost certainly the father of Elizabeth Nimmo, the [maternal] great-grandmother of Lionel Britton. Is there any way to access records about his medical training, and can he be the link to the Earls of Mar which the family later claimed to have?

Elizabeth Harding, wife to the above: where did this family come from? As no record can be found in Scotland or England for the marriage of Thomas and Elizabeth, there is a strong possibility that they were at some point in the colonies or in Ireland.

When and where did Elizabeth Smith die, and similarly her husband James Smith, for whom I can find no record?

A note about the Britton family tree was found written on the back of a picture by John Britton, in Nova Scotia, who tragically has been incapacited by a stroke for some years and cannot communicate.
This note refers to "Sherry Hales" 1665, and "Chusburne".

While "Chusburne" is totally cryptic, it is reasonable to suppose that 'Sherry Hales' was a corruption of Sheriffhales, a village near Shifnal in Staffordshire. Does the Britton family have an origin there?

John James Britton went to live at Vire in Normandy, shortly after Catherine his first wife died in 1879. He may have been there for less than two years, but we know that his younger son by Catherine was enrolled in a college there.

When he remarried in April 1882, one of the witnesses was Thomas Perkins, (1842–1907), who wrote numerous books about church architecture, especially that of Normandy. Did the acquaintanceship with Thomas arise from the sojourn in Normandy or predate it?

Thomas Perkins married John James's eldest daughter Ethel Alice in 1891, and the officiating minister was J. Townroe Coward, "Vicar of St Leonards", of whom I can find no trace on census or any other records. There is much mystery surrounding the Coward family, but it would be useful to discover more about them in order to shed light on how John James came to marry Maud May Coward, (c. 1857–1946), a girl young enough to be his daughter.

The remarkable John Britton, (1771–1857), was not only a notable writer about church architecture in Normandy and elsewhere, but also about a variety of other topics, including many works of topography (illustrated by himself), and commentary on the political and philosophical scene of the day.

John Britton of Nova Scotia thought it highly likely that the grandfather of John James was called John. Is it possible that this was John Britton the writer himself?'

Robert

Herbert Eyres Britton and Diane

Herbert Eyres Britton's Diane [1920] was his third collection of poems after The Visions of a Dreamer (1912) and War Poems – date and publisher unknown (1). He dedicated it to his mother Maud May Britton, and a six-sonnet sequence in the collection concerns his recently deceased wife Elsie.

Also of note is 'In Memoriam', a poem written on the death of the working-class poet Noah Cooke, a weaver from Kidderminster who appears to have been a friend of Herbert's. The following link is to Sonya O. Rose's criticism of Cooke (2).

(1) Herbert E. Britton, Diane: And Other Poems (London: Arthur H. Stockwell, [1922]).

(2) Sonya O. Rose, Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth Century England (London: Routledge, 1992).

Now What's John James Britton Doing with That Baby's Head?

The splendid photo below contains a great deal of detail, the most remarkable of course being a stern John James Britton's futile attempts to hold the baby's head in the long exposure. It's very unlikely that a professional photographer would have allowed this error to see the light of day, so we can only speculate about the identity of the person behind the camera.

More certain, though, are the names of the characters in the photo, and I leave Robert Hughes – who, along with Sandie Coomber, I thank for making possible the publication of this picture – to give the details:

'The house was almost certainly 2 Drayton Terrace, Melton Rd, Belgrave, [Leicester]; or alternatively 12 Melton Rd (according to the 1891 census).

I have found that street numbering sometimes followed small groups of properties such as terraces, and sometimes followed a larger scheme such as a whole street, but there is no reason to suppose that these addresses were anything other than one and the same.

On the left is Herbert Eyres Britton (1883–1940), later a published writer and poet.

Seated is Maud May Britton, formerly Coward (c.1858–1946), said to be the daughter of James Eyres Coward, ship's surgeon. She was John James Britton's second wife.

On her lap is Elizabeth Hilda Dorothy Britton (1889–1966), later Dorothy Viner or Dension-Viner or some variation of this spelling.

The child with the spinning head has to be Reginald Ernest James Britton (1887–1981), later to be a canon in Canada after service in the Navy.

Below right is Ruth Elise May Britton (1885–1925), who became a health visitor in Birmingham.

Right is Ethel Alice Britton (1860–1936), the elder daughter from John James Britton's first marriage (to Catherine Erskine Smith). She married Thomas Perkins (1893–1907), vicar of Turnworth, Dorset, and friend of Thomas Hardy.

To the rear, of course, is the man himself: John James Britton (c. 1832–1913), Solicitor of the Supreme Court and self-proclaimed "literary man" (1891 census).

John James was the father of Richard Britton, who died tragically young, and the (paternal) grandfather of Lionel Britton the playwright and novelist, whom family tradition held to have spoken 22 languages.

The date of this photograph is almost undoubtedly 1890.'

The photo below was taken in July 2009, showing the facade of 12 Melton Road, Leicester.

Reginald Ernest James Britton, Maud May Britton and Herbert Eyres Britton

The photo below, from left to right, shows Maud May Britton – the second wife of solicitor and poet John James Britton – between her sons Reginald Ernest James Britton and Herbert Eyres Britton.

Many thanks to Sandie Coomber and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

Literary New York City (Mainly)

I may have taken all of these images of New York City, although I'd have been unaware of the existence of most of them without Kevin Walsh's Forgotten New York, a real mine of information on many of the more obscure aspects of New York City's history. One of the most interesting things about this book is that it doesn't just cover what many people – North Americans included – often refer to as New York City: Manhattan tout court: Manhattan, of course, is only one New York's five boroughs: all too often, we forget that Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are also a part of New York City.

Many thanks, too, to my partner Penny Atkinson, who assisted me in finding many of these places.

'We were very tired, we were very merry—

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry'

Edna St Vincent Millay's famous words, from her poem 'Recuerdo', evoke the hedonism of the 1920s. She is speaking, of course, of the Staten Island ferry, still one of the greatest free rides in the world.</> This is a view of Manhattan financial district from the ferry.

It is worth exploring Staten Island itself, and a frequent train service will take you to the bottom of the island in about forty-five minutes.

In the early part of the previous century, the land on which these structures now stand in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, near the town of Flushing in Queens, was an ash disposal heap. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald describes it as 'a fantastic form where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens'. That quotation is my excuse for showing these three weird images. New York's two World Fair's were in 1939 and 1964, and the remains of these occasions still, gloriously, litter the park.

The above structure was part of New York State Pavilion. This was the Tent of Tomorrow, showing the sixteen 100-foot columns which supported the roof. Sky Streak capsule lifts took people to the top.

Rocket Thrower, showing a giant hurling a rocket through a constellation.

Above is Theodore Roszak's Forms in Transit, one of the most difficult exhibits to find.

The bust above is of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and is one of a number of writers, politicians, etc, in the Hall of Fame at the Bronx Community College.

This statue is in a prominent position, in the Literary Walk in Central Park, Manhattan. Here, Shakespeare, Robert Burns and Walter Scott stand: all very famous men. Above, though, is a forgotten man of American poetry: Fitz–Greene Halleck (1790–1867). Rather than paraphrase someone else's description of Halleck's work and life, the reader is best directed to The Fitz–Greene Halleck Society web pages.

A rather odd thing for a person from Nottingham, England, to find a plaque dedicated to fellow Nottinghamian William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, in Battery Park, Lower Manhattan.

This blog supports Barack Obama in his battle to become President of the United States: at least he didn't vote for the war on Iraq, and he represents hope to so many in a deeply divided country. But he has a fine juggling act to perform, and he also supports the neo-liberal ethos which causes poverty: even if he wins two terms, how much will he have achieved in that time?

The photo above and the one below were taken in Alphabet City, Manhattan.

Poe Cottage in the Bronx is the farmhouse where Edgar Allan Poe lived between 1846 and 1849. Now a museum, the building was closed for general renovations when visited in June 2008.

Almost impossible to read because situated so high up the wall, this plaque in the Upper West Side at Broadway and 84th Street marks the site where Poe spent the summer of 1844 on a farm. The building is a café.

Patchin Place, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, once home to several literary figures, among them E. E. Cummings and Djuna Barnes.

Coney Island, Brooklyn, is now a shadow of its former self (and still under threat), but many New Yorkers continue to flock to the beaches. The occasion here was the Mermaid Parade, 21 June 2008. Literary references? How about Styron's Sophie's Choice?

Inevitably, Brooklyn Bridge evokes thoughts of Whitman's ferry crossing and Hart Crane's poem, but also, of course, the wonderful Marianne Moore.

The entrance to New York Public Library, home of, among many others, manuscripts by such diverse writers as Shelley and Kerouac.

Netherwood, Hastings: Lionel Britton Rants

The postcard above shows a drawing of Netherwood in Hastings by ‘Barbara’, and has been posted to a blog entitled ‘Old Postcard Art’. It represents how the house looked after it was restored in the second half of the 1930s. It was then owned by the forgotten actor and playwright E. C. Vernon Symonds and his wife ‘Johnnie’, and their intention was to convert it into a left-wing guesthouse, a place for socialist meetings and trade union conferences. The writer Lionel Britton was one of the people who worked on it for many months, receiving free board and lodging in return for manual work. Britton’s letters to friends express his suspicion that the Symonds are really members of the bourgeoisie posing as socialists, although in the letter extract below he finds an excuse to plunge into a wholehearted assault on the class-based design of the original house itself, and by extension the bourgeoisie as a whole. It is fourteen pages long and addressed to 'Bertski', Britton's nickname for Herbert Marshall, who was working with the film director Eisenstein in the Soviet Union (and which explains the reference to 'no bloody revolution'):

‘Worked terrible hard down here, building up [this socialist utopia]. Not from the raw and virgin forest, you know; merely the bourgeoisie giving place. Big house in 4 acres of ground, built for two people with about twelve servants. Damned interesting to see a house like that, sort of bare [...] inside. Usually you only see it in its separated aspect, as bourgeois or proletarian, and it’s most illuminating to see it with its inside all brought to light dissected and laid out to view like an anatomical specimen. You have the house separated into two portions, with the biggest half [sic] and its spacious rooms shut off for the use of the “quality” with their two ineffectual useless lives, the rest of it being divided into grades among the proletarians, butler and housekeeper being partitioned off from contact with lower mortals, just as they themselves were shut out from contaminating the Great. Then among these lower lower lower orders there were better and best and bloody awful bedrooms for them to crawl up to exhausted and creep out of refreshed as best they might, to take up the labour again of keeping Greatness alive for its fatuous existence. Two baths for Quality to keep their cocks clean, and two W.’s, but not a bath for the whole bloody dozen, and no W. either unless you went outside in the wet. And a cottage in the grounds with an earth-closet! Think of that! Bugger me, we aint particular, we bloody dirty stinking bourgeoisie, we aint. Dirty lot o’ bastards.

'If they did get diseases serve the buggers right. Ought to be executed, dirty rotten sods.

'No place to wash in, no light, no fire, bit o’ candle and a pisspot p’raps, and work your bloody guts out to keep these stinking lumps of fat alive. And no bloody revolution, either: now what d’you think of that? There’s a bloody world to live in’ (1).

Netherwood is today perhaps best remembered as the last home of 'The Great Beast' Aleister Crowley, who was looked after by Johnny and Vernon Symonds. The building has since been demolished.

(1) Lionel Britton, letter to Herbert Marshall, 20 May 1936, the Lionel Britton Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Southern Illinois University, pp. 12–13.

Cyril, Mary, and Ivy Britton and Children

This photo shows Cyril and Mary (née Hunt) Britton at an unknown outing in 1924, with Cyril's sister (Kathleen Ethel) Ivy below Ida. I now more or less copy from the comment below by Cyril's oldest granddaughter, Valerie Ruth Britton:

'In the picture the centre girl is Mildred (my aunt Milly), their eldest surviving daughter, and the chap bottom left their eldest surviving son, Douglas, my own father. The lad in Cyril's arms is Herbert (uncle Bert) and bottom right is Leslie, I guess, still a baby.'

Cyril was a younger brother, and Irza the mother, of the working-class writer Lionel Britton.

Many thanks once again to Helen Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image, and to Valerie Morris for filling in the pictures and doing a little correcting.

British Mills, Redditch

British Mills in Redditch was a large needle and fishing tackle factory on Prospect Hill founded by Samuel Thomas senior – the great-grandfather of Lionel Britton – who used to live with his family in a self-contained house (part of which is visible to the left of this photo) attached to the facade. Of note is the painted 'S. THOMAS & SONS LTD' towards the top of the building. Today, virtually all that remains of the factory is this facade.

Many thanks once more to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

St Stephens School, Redditch, and 6 Hewell Road, Redditch

St Stephens School in Redditch was where working-class writer Lionel Britton was educated. He stayed there until he was about twelve, later saying that the headteacher told him that he had learned all they could teach him. He later found a job sandpapering fishing rods, although didn't do this for long: he went to Birmingham for several days before finding various poorly paid jobs in London, where he would briefly make his name as a writer.
6 Hewell Road was the home of Samuel Thomas junior and his wife Marie Antoinette. It was where Lionel, Ivy, Percy (or Bob) and Cyril Britton lived for several years after the death of their father, Richard Britton.

Many thanks to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

John James Britton (Probably)

The above photo is probably the poet and solicitor John James Britton, although it is by no means clear.

Many thanks to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

Cyril Britton

Cyril Britton was born in Bournemouth and died in London. He was the son of Richard and Irza Britton and the brother of Lionel Britton.

Many thanks to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

Ivy Britton

Ivy Britton was born at Astwood Bank, near Redditch, and died in Islington. She was the daughter of Richard and Irza Britton and the sister of Lionel Britton.

Many thanks to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

Irza Britton and Companion (detail)

Irza Vivian Geraldine Britton was Lionel Britton's mother and the daughter of Samuel Thomas junior of Redditch, Worcestershire.

The date of this photo is unknown.

Many thanks to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image, a copy of which is also in the Lionel Britton Collection, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois.

Lionel Britton: Portrait of the Writer as a Young Man

This is the earliest known photo of the working-class writer Lionel Britton, when he was in his twenties. The bizarre thing is that he is wearing a tie and what appears to be a three-piece suit: Britton later shunned formal wear for an open-neck shirt, shorts, plimsolls, and an uncombed mop of hair.

Many thanks to Jane Matthews and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

John James Britton (1832–1913) at Halford, 1912, and a Back View of the House by Elizabeth Hilda Dorothy Britton (1889–1966)

The photo above is a rare picture of the poet, journalist and solicitor John James Britton, the father of Richard Britton and the paternal grandfather of the working-class writer Lionel Britton. In various posts below, I have mentioned more things about John James Britton and his family, so I leave a comment on the above from a recent email I received from Robert Hughes, a great-nephew of Lionel's:

'I don't know whether this shot was actually taken by Cyril [Britton, Lionel's brother], although it was in his collection. I could hardly make out the figure of J[ohn] J[ames] at all in the original, but scanned by Jane [Matthews, Dorothy Goodbun's daughter] it has come up extremely well [...]. [T]he house is clearly the same house as in the postcard from the Stratford records office, showing the front elevation rather than the rear elevation. The chimneys and roof line are distinctive, and the beads in the windows are clearly the same, as is the shape of the windows themselves.'

Many thanks to those mentioned above for making possible the publication of this photo.


The above sketch is a representation of the back garden of The Yews (or Maryland), Halford, Warwickshire, drawn in 1913 by Elizabeth Hilda Dorothy Britton, the year of John James Britton's death. The Longfellow poem is form 'The Open Window'.

Many thanks to Paul Eyres Britton and Robert Hughes for making possible the publication of this image.

Flora Hughes (née Britton), 25 October 1919 – 13 May 2008

Last night, Robert Hughes told me that his mother, Flora Hughes (née Britton), died yesterday morning. She was the daughter of Reginald Percy Leopold Britton (a.k.a. Bob to his family but usually Keebah to Robert) and Maisie Britton. This is Robert's comment:

'She was a wonderful mother to us and she will be sorely missed.

The attachment I am sending is a cutting from the Daily Sketch of April 1937.

My mother fell ill shortly after eating a bite from a packet of nuts and raisins which she bought at the cinema. Realising there was something wrong with the taste, she had a close look at the contents and saw that there was evidence of gnawing by a mouse.

Within a few hours she had lapsed into fever and delirium.

However, she vividly recounted to us how she had fought for life for the sake of her parents who had earlier lost Rob her little brother: she could not bear the thought of them losing her as well.

The illness was subsequently diagnosed as Mouse Meningitis.

She defied death that time and lived for seventy more years, giving us life, and despite many hardships, leading a very fulfilled life herself.

But she never forgot Rob.

As her mind progressively failed over the last few years, many things slipped away from her, but she would point to his photograph on the wall opposite her sofa and ask "Do you know who that is?"

"I do," I would reply, "but do you?"

The withering look she gave me was pure RADA, pure her; transcending amnesia, laughing to scorn the passage of eighty years since this searing event.

The bombing to smithereens of the family home in 1941, the loss of Granny, Keebah, my father; her own struggles with the debilitating condition Polymyalgia, which struck overnight just as she was trying to make a living selling windows in her sixties, (she conquered it and went on to be a prize-winning member of the sales team); her motor accident in 1998 where she came within one inch of death: none compared with the heart-rending loss of her little brother and playmate.’

The following paragraphs are from Flora Hughes’s website, where several more of her poems are published:

'Born in England and trained at RADA as Flora Britton, Flora abandoned a promising career as a classical actress on the West End stage for her husband and, in time, her two sons. Her dramatic instincts have remained with her. These and her love of people, animals and the natural world shine through these entertaining collections, written over many years.

Flora enjoys painting, gardening and verse speaking. "I started writing poetry as soon as I had discovered it because I love words and rhythm," she remarked. "My work is influenced by my observations and my style is varied between classic and humorous. I would like to be remembered as someone who was kindly, entertaining, understanding and sympathetic.

Flora is a widow with two sons, Robert and David. "My biggest fantasy is to be transported by magic to visit fabled places and people," she said. "I have written over 100 poems and had many published but I am most proud of these two books". Flora now lives near Ross-on-Wye, entertaining family and friends whenever the opportunity arises, and tending her beautiful garden teeming with flowers and wildlife.'

Flora's father was a younger brother of working-class writer Lionel Britton. From time to time, Robert would feed me snippets about Lionel which he'd gleaned from Flora – mainly concerning his craziness or his scruffiness. I shall miss these. Robert and his family, of course, will miss much, much more.

Lionel Britton's Distinctive Signature

Lionel Britton inscribed the above on the f.e.p. of his Spacetime Inn (1932) to his niece, Flora Britton (later Hughes), when she was 13 years old. She is the first daughter of Reginald Percy Leopold Britton, a younger brother of Lionel's. As a science fiction play, Spacetime Inn is highly unusual. And as this is a space where Eve (of Adam and Eve), the Queen of Sheba, Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, Napoleon, Karl Marx, Bernard Shaw, and two interchangeable members of the working classes of the 1930s all converse with each other, the content is also a little out of the ordinary.

The quotation is from page 96 of Spacetime Inn. After learning that Bill and Jim have lost their money, Eve says ‘Is it so wonderful? What can be more than the delight which breathes through all the world? There is a thrill which quickens every limb, there is a yearning answered through the eyes watching the light of other eyes wake softly like a happy day as we come near them, there is a music underneath a word which kisses the ear of one who listens for it coming from those we love. These things make life wonderful, as sun and moon colour the day and night. Let me give you these!’

Flora's son Robert Hughes comments: 'The full quotation makes a deal of sense in the context of my mother's life, for most of which she either had no regular income at all, or had to work damn hard to produce one. The philosophy behind those few lines helped her through it all and she was certainly a light to us.'


The image on the right shows Harry Peter Smolka's stamp on the first prelim, with another inscription by Lionel Britton (1). Lionel Britton's first play, Brain (1930), concerns the building of a giant brain in the Sahara Desert. This too is a science fiction play, and frequently cited as one of the first plays in which a computer is represented. From Smolka, this book passed to Flora Hughes.

(1) Harry Peter Smolka was born in Austria in 1912 but educated in England. He later became a British citizen and changed his name to Smollet. In 1937 (still as Smolka) he published Forty Thousand Men against the Arctic: Russia's Polar Empire (London: Hutchinson).

Again, many thanks to Robert Hughes for providing me with these images.

The Art of Karl Salsbury Wood

Karl Salsbury Wood was born at Kings Newton, Derbyshire, in 1888. He later moved to Nottingham for several years, where he worked as a packer in a warehouse at Short Hill in the Lace Market; his boss was Louis Oram Trivett, an enthusiastic boy scout leader from West Bridgford. By the time Wood left service in World War I, he was a self-taught artist, and spent most of his adult life at his studio at Gainsborough, England. He is best known for his many paintings of windmills of the British Isles, and for some years spoke about writing a book called 'The Twilight of the Mills'; unfortunately, the book was never published, although he wrote many articles in the Gainsborough Standard which bore this title. Soon, I shall be publishing these in a re-write of my Windmill Wood: A Biography of Midlands Artist Karl Salsbury Wood.

Many thanks to Karl Wood's cousin Ann Hatton for sending me these images of his artwork. The dates are unknown.

Abbey Farm, Renhold, Bedford. This was Ann Hatton's home, where she and her three siblings were brought up. Watercolour.

Manaccan, Cornwall. Tinted linocut.

Cley next the Sea, Norfolk. The lettering showing through the image on occasions is because Wood did this on the back of an advertisement for an optician. Tinted linocut.

Alveston, Derby.

Unknown location.

Unknown location. Watercolour.

Unknown location. Watercolour.

Dadaism, Lionel Britton, and Anarchism

May 2008 of course marks the fortieth anniversary of les événements, the often violent protests which spread across France in reaction against the consumer society, the perceived bankrupcy of capitalism, stultifying conformity, the segregation of the sexes, and numerous other things. The protests also spread to many other countries in the western world, picking up many other causes in their wake, and the media have – inevitably – eagerly sought opportunities to indulge in an inkfest of nostalgia and revisionism: many living journalists, French or not, are soixante–huitards in memory if nothing else. The latest hors–série issue of Le Magazine littéraire re-publishes several pages from the May 1968 issue, four of which are from an interview the magazine had with Daniel Cohn–Bendit, a German with no belief in nationalities who was a major spokesperson for the movement which began at Nanterre University (1).

In the interview, one of the questions put to Cohn–Bendit concerns the interest of contemporary student protesters in the surrealist movement of the 1920s. He says, 'The student movement is certainly not a revolution, but a rebellion. We are in agreement. About surrealism, especially about Dada. Because Dadaism was more radical and it is influencing a part of the movement' (2).

Of obvious note here is the association of revolt with Dadaism or surrealism, as is the fact that the anarchist Cohn–Bendit (who, unlike many anarchists, did call himself that) saw the link as a positive thing. I have already noted Lionel Britton's interest in surrealism, although I have not previously mentioned anything of Britton's anarchism: it is normal, and some might argue obligatory (of which more in a later post to this blog), that the literature of the working class align itself to left-wing causes; but with the exception of the Scottish working-class writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon (a.k.a. Leslie Mitchell for his 'English' novels) who is best known for his trilogy A Scots Quair, Lionel Britton is almost certainly the only other British working-class anarchist writer of this period (3).

Cohn–Bendit's ideas seem to have mellowed somewhat in the last forty years, although by no means as much as those of some politicians who once belonged to Britain's now almost non-existent left wing.

(1) 'Quand on critique radicalement on construit', Le Magazine littéraire, 18, May 1968, pp. 20–24; repr. Le Magazine littéraire collections, Hors–Série 13, pp. 42–45.

(2) pp. 44–45. (The translation from the French is by me.)

(3) Grassic Gibbon refers to 'Saint Bakunin', and sent his son to A. S. Neill's radical Summerhill School (which continues today, in spite of the many efforts which New Labour has made to close it).

Mary Thomas and Irza Britton

The photo above shows Mary Ann Elizabeth Thomas, née Quartly (1866–1943) on the left, and Irza Vivian Geraldine Britton, née Thomas (1866–1959) on the right. It was taken in about 1890, and the photo below obviously dates from the same period. The daughter of Samuel Thomas junior of Redditch (son of Samuel Thomas the needle and fish-hook manufacturer), Irza was born in Paris, France, and in her later life lived at 38 Saville Street (later to become 11 Hanson Street), Marylebone, and 66 Tufnell Park Road in the Borough of Islington. She was the mother of the working-class writer Lionel Britton (1887–1971).

(Many thanks to Janet Adcock for providing these images via Robert Hughes, who doesn't provide a photo of himself, perhaps because he says that he was once described as a cross between David Essex and an armadillo.)