Thomas Sturge Moore in Steep, Hampshire

'The Poet

THOMAS

STURGE

MOORE

lived here

1922–1932'

This April I completely forgot to include a post on Thomas Sturge Moore (1870–1944), but I came upon this plaque by chance when I was investigating Edward Thomas's Steep: it's just a few houses from where Thomas had lived a few years before him. The dates given here are at variance with those given by Frederick Landis Gwynn in Sturge Moore and the Life of Art (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1951), who states that Moore's stay was 1919–1927.

Moore moved from Hampstead, London, to 'Hillcroft' in Steep with his wife Marie (née Appia, whom he married in 1903) and his children Dan and Riette. None of the family was in the peak of health, and doctors had advised they move to a quieter environment. Moore chose Steep because he wanted his children to attend Bedales, England's first co-educational boarding school.

Moore gained a Civil List pension in 1919 or 1920, but failed to follow Robert Bridges as Poet Laureate in 1930. His brother was the philosopher G. E. Moore.

Flora Thompson in Alton, Hampshire, UK

The photo of Flora Thompson below (which I've slightly cropped) was taken in 1921 by Walter C. Corin of Haslemere.

I parked the car in Alton to view a few buildings associated with Jane Austen, but quite by chance we came upon The Allen Gallery in Church Street. Here was an exhibition of wood engravings by Sue Scullard inspired by Flora Thompson's partly autobiographical Lark Rise to Candleford trilogy: Lark Rise (1939), Over to Candleford (1941) and Candleford Green (1943). There were also relevant photos, and both engravings and photos usually had a quotation from one of Thompson's works added. I have sometimes slightly cropped the other photos.

'The Garden Well'

'In dry summers, when the hamlet wells failed, the water had to be fetched from a pump at some farm building half a mile distant. Those who had wells in their garden would not give away a spot, as they feared if they did, theirs, too, would run dry.'

'The Family Pig'

'The family pig was everybody's pride and everybody's business [...]. The children, on their way home from school, would fill their arms with sow thistle, dandelion, and choice long grass, or roam along the hedgerows on wet evenings collecting snails in a pail for the pig's supper [...]. When the pig was fattened [...] the date of execution had to be decided upon. It had to take place sometime during the first two quarters of the moon: for, if the pig was killed when the moon was waning the bacon would shrink in cooking, and they wanted it to "plimp up".'

As a vegetarian I find this horrific, and even the gallery note under the quotation mentions 'the apparently ambiguous connection between the country cottager and their "pet" pig'.

'Spring'

'"Ah! I thought so!" he said as he plunged his arm into the hedge at a spot from which he has seen a bird flutter out, and he came out with two bright blue eggs in his palm, and let them all feel and stroke them before putting them back in the nest. They were warm and as soft as satin.'

'Laura in the Woods'

'Cottisford School c. 1902'

'Fordlow [i.e. Cottisford] National School was a small grey one-storied building, standing at the cross roads to the entrance to the village. The one large classroom which served all purposes was well lighted with several windows'.

'Queenie Massey, bee keeper and lace-maker'

'Queenie represented another form of life which had also ended and been forgotten by most people [...] her lace-making was a constant attraction to the children [...]. Every fine day, throughout the summer, she sat there "watching the bees".'

'Bett's Cake Shop'

'Candleford was but a small town [but] to Laura it was both town and country and in that lay part of its charm. It was thrilling, after being used to walking miles to buy a reel of cotton or a packet of tea, to be able to dash out without a hat to fetch something from a shop for her aunt.'

A note under this quotation suggests that Candleford is an amalgam of four nearby towns – Buckingham, Brackley, Bicester, and Banbury – and states that Bett's Cake Shop in Banbury is where the female protagonist in Thompson's Still Glides the Stream journeyed to have tea before going shopping in the town.

'The Fringford Forge'

'On the farther, less populated side of the green a white horse stood under a tree outside the smithy waiting its turn to be shod and, from within, as the spring-cart drew up, the ring of the anvil and the roar of the bellows could be heard [...]. Their arrival has not been unobserved, however, for, as the cart drew up, a young smith darted from the forge and, seizing Laura's trunk, bore it away on his shoulder as if it weighed no more than a feather. "Ma'am! The new miss has come," they heard him call.'

This is a photo of the Fringford (or Candleford Green) forge taken in the 1890s, when, the note points out, Laura would have arrived as the 'post mistress's "learner".

Bog-myrtle and Peat (1921) was Flora Thompson's first published book, containing poems.

John Goodyer and John Worlidge in Petersfield, Hampshire: Petersfield Plaques #4 & #5

Worcester House, Dragon Street. The adjoining wall (a part of which can be seen to the right) is the original garden wall.

'Birthplace and

residence of John Worlidge

(1633–1693), whose books on

progressive agriculture and

horticulture formed the basis of the

English agricultural revolution.

His Systema Agriculturae of 1669

was based on his experiments

in the adjoining garden.'

28 The Spain, whose most famous occupant introduced the Jerusalem artichoke to this country.

'JOHN GOODYER

Botanist & Royalist

1592–1664

Lived Here'

The two men, one noted in horticulture and the other botany, were also linked by blood: Goodyer was Worlidge's great-uncle. Much more recently, another link between the two men has been made.

In 1988 Major John Bowen gave his garden in the town to the Hampshire Garden Trust, which – with an eye to the town's two 17th century sons – took the 17th century as a theme and strove to recreate a town garden of that era. So 'Petersfield Physic Garden' was born.

Samuel Pepys in Petersfield, Hampshire: Petersfield Plaques #3

Winton House in the High Street. Once an inn, in the 17th century this had Petersfield's only bowling alley. It declined in importance when Dragon Street was built, creating a by-pass.

'c. 1580

This building

formed part of The White Hart,

Petersfield's leading coaching inn

until the 18th century, with stabling

for over 100 horses. Charles II,

Samuel Pepys and Peter the Great

all stayed here.'

Flora Twort in Petersfield, Hampshire: Petersfield Plaques #2

This building is at 1–2 The Square, diagonally opposite the statue of William III which occupies a central position in the town.

'1534

This former farmhouse

was occupied by Thomas Osbourne

(16th C) and Thomas Walker (17th C),

both Mayors of Petersfield. Dr. Harry

Roberts bought it in 1918 as a

bookshop and workshops run by

Flora Twort and other

local artists.'

The name Flora Twort (1893–1995) is all over Petersfield. The building above is a museum that also houses the Flora Twort Gallery, which along with some of her paintings also contains general information about the artist. Twort moved to Petersfield after World War II and kept the studio above the shop until 1948, when she moved to Church Path above.

On her death she bequeathed her studio gallery on Church Walk (where she is shown in the photo above), along with her artwork, to Hampshire County Council.

Twort's palette on display in the gallery, with reflections of some of her paintings.

Detail of a mosaic representation of Petersfield on a wall in Dragon Street, made by Kate Ford in 1994, showing (among other things) Twort's name approximately where her gallery is located.

Hampshire County Council have put many of Flora Twort's paintings and sketches online, including a large number of Petersfield and several of the old windmill at Langstone, which was owned by Twort, and is where her friend Nevil Shute (who once unsuccessfully proposed to her) briefly stayed in 1939.

The link to Twort's art is below.
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The Flora Twort Collection

Charles Dickens in Portsmouth, Hampshire

Charles John Huffam Dickens was born on 7 February 1812 at 393 Old Portsmouth Road (formerly Mile End Terrace, and the 1871 sketch above shows remarkably little change) to John and Elizabeth Dickens. His parents had married in 1809, his father being a clerk with the Naval Pay Office, where he had been posted from London. The house cost £35 a year to rent. Francis (or Fanny) was born in 1810, and Charles was the second child. In summer 1812 the family moved to 16 Hawke Street, Portsea, a house that has since been demolished.

'CHARLES DICKENS

WAS BORN IN THIS

HOUSE ON

7TH FEBRUARY 1812

This plaque was placed here

by the Portsmouth Branch

of the Dickens Fellowship

in May 1978'

A reconstruction of an early 19th century middle-class parlour, where guests would have been greeted. The wallpaper is a reproduction made by printing from rollers of the period. The curtains and carpet are also reproductions, and the sofa dates from about 1800.

The fabric on the panels of the firescreen shielded women from the perceived coarseness of a woman's reddened face.

The chiffonier in the same room. The porcelain tea set was made in about 1780 at Caughley, Shropshire.

The dining room reconstructed, again with reproduction wallpaper. The dining suite dates from about the time of Dickens's birth.

A reconstruction of the main bedroom, where Dickens was born. The four-poster bed and dressing mirror are early 19th century.

The room opposite is called the 'Education Room', which among other things contains the couch on which Dickens died on 9 June 1870 of 'apoplexy', or a stroke as we would term it today, at his home in Gad's Hill, Kent, the day after falling ill at dinner. A different story, though, is that he fell ill while visiting Ellen Ternan at Peckham, so Ternan took him back to Gad's Hill in a carriage, and he died the day after being put on the couch. Dickens's sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth, his housekeeper, gave the couch to the Charles Dickens Birthplace Museum. Unfortunately, no photography is allowed in this room.

In one of the two attic rooms, a cabinet containing memorabilia of Dickens throughout the ages.

 This is right opposite Charles Dickens's birthplace.

'THESE TREES

ARE THE GIFT OF

THE WORLDWIDE

DICKENS

FELLOWSHIP

MAY 1978'

Edward Thomas in Steep, Hampshire

Edward Thomas (1878–1917) moved from Kent to Steep, Hampshire, with his family in 1906, and this is where he became a poet.

The Red House on Cockshott Lane was the Thomas family's second home in Steep, and as the above plaque on the house records, he lived here from 1909 to 1913.

2 Yew Tree Cottages, which is set back a little from Church Road and reached by a short passage, was Thomas's last home in Steep, and from this building he enlisted in The Artists' Rifles in 1915.

A similar plaque to the one in Cockshott Lane is also fixed to the wall here.

Thomas frequently took walks around the countryside, and Shoulder of Mutton Hill was one of his preferred spots.

This view gives another indication of the hilly countryside around the village, and shows the rear of Thomas's memorial stone, made in 1937, in the foreground.

'THIS HILLSIDE

IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF

EDWARD THOMAS

P O E T

Born in Lambeth 3rd March 1878.

Killed in the Battle of Arras 9th April 1917.

AND  I ROSE  UP  AND KNEW

THAT  I  WAS  TIRED

AND  CONTINUED  MY  JOURNEY'

In 1978, to commemorate the centenary of Edward Thomas's birth, Laurence Whistler designed and engraved two windows for the south wall of the Church of All Saints, Steep. Seven years previously, Whistler had engraved a window remembering the lives of Edward and Helen Thomas in Eastbury, Wiltshire, where Thomas's widow moved to and where she lived until her death in 1966. She had written two books, As It Was and World without End, about her life with her husband. Helen's friend, the artist Joy Finzi, assisted in the commissioning and installation of the Eastbury window.

The left window at Steep (shown above) shows a road across hills, with Thomas's jacket (taken from an original) in the foreground, along with his pipe and stick.

The above image shows a copy of the right window: the window itself was smashed by vandals in 1910. It showed Thomas's poem 'The New House':

The New House

Now first, as I shut the door,
I was alone
In the new house; and the wind
Began to moan.

Old at once was the house,
And I was old;
My ears were teased with the dread
Of what was foretold,

Nights of storm, days of mist, without end;
Sad days when the sun
Shone in vain: old griefs and griefs
Not yet begun.

All was foretold me; naught
Could I foresee;
But I learnt how the wind would sound
After these things should be.

At the top of the engraving, behind the title, the house is depicted enshrouded in mist. Below it are a series of doors opening and shutting, the final one opening out onto a battlefield in Flanders. The explanatory notes 'Memorial Windows to Edward Thomas' conclude by saying that from the final door 'something rises that turns into the sun, and then the door-latch he has just closed behind him, in the poem'.

Many thanks to the churchwarden for bringing this picture out to show us.

On the opposite wall is this monument to the war dead in the parish.

And Edward Thomas's name is of course among them.

A very short distance away, on the corner of Mill Lane and Church Road, is another war monument.

It's the kind of thing you may sometimes miss if you don't occasionally step out from the car.

I give three links below, all concerning Matthew Hollis's Edward Thomas simply because Hollis is the most recent of Thomas's biographers. All come from the Guardian, the first two being video clips and the last an article on Thomas's relationship with Robert Frost and Hollis's (possibly none too original) take on the vexed reasons for Thomas's enlisting.

Unfortunately the White Horse Inn eluded me.
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Matthew Hollis showing Sarah Crown Edward Thomas landmarks in Steep (10-minute video)

Matthew Hollis reading from his book Now All Roads Lead to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas (4-minute video)

Edward Thomas, Robert Frost and the road to war, by Matthew Hollis