Recreating a Lost World: Henry Williamson and Folkestone 1919-20: fact into fiction: Henry Williamson Collections, #18

By Henry Williamson

Henry Williamson (1895-1977), nature writer and novelist, is perhaps best remembered today as a 'nature' writer, the author of the much-loved classics 'Tarka the Otter' and 'Salar the Salmon', although he wrote over fifty books during a long life, including the 'Flax of Dream' tetralogy and his major work, the 15-volume novel sequence 'A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight'.

The first three of the novels comprising 'The Flax of Dream' were among his very early works. 'The Dream of Fair Women', the third in the series, was first published in 1924. 'The Dream of Fair Women' is set in Folkestone in the immediate post-First World War period of 1919, where Williamson, then still a soldier, was stationed. It tells the story of the love affair of the hero Willie Maddison (essentially Williamson himself) with the very desirable Eve Fairfax, the young wife of an army officer living in Folkestone. There are vividly written scenes of the town and its inhabitants during the summer of 1919, and in particular the Peace Day celebrations which took place on 19 July, culminating in a grand ball.

This era and place are also captured in two books in the 'Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight' series: 'A Test to Destruction' (1960) and 'The Innocent Moon' (1961).

'Recreating a Lost World' explores the real Folkestone and its personalities at that time, identifying the real-life models for fictional characters and showing how Henry Williamson translated place and people, and his own experiences, into his novels. The text is by Anne Williamson, with quotations from 'The Dream of Fair Women'. It is illustrated with eleven unique photographs from the Henry Williamson Estate's literary archive and other illustrations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Henry Williamson
• Release date: Feb 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781873507698

Henry Williamson

The writer Henry Williamson was born in London in 1895. Naturalist, soldier, journalist, farmer, motor enthusiast and author of over fifty books, his descriptions of nature and the First World War have been highly praised for their accuracy. He is best known as the author of Tarka the Otter, which won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature in 1928 and was filmed in 1977. By one of those extraordinary coincidences, Henry Williamson died while the crew were actually filming the death scene of Tarka. His writing falls into clear groups: 1) Nature writings, of which Tarka the Otter and Salar the Salmon are the most well known, but which also include, amongst many others, The Peregrine's Saga, The Old Stag and The Phasian Bird. 2) Henry Williamson served throughout the First World War.The Wet Flanders Plain, A Patriot's Progress, and no less than five books of the 15-volume Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (How Dear is Life, A Fox Under My Cloak, The Golden Virgin, Love and the Loveless and A Test to Destruction) cover the reality of the years 1914–1918, both in England and on the Western Front. 3) A further grouping concerns the social history aspect of his work in the 'Village' books (The Village Book and The Labouring Life), the four-volume Flax of Dream and the volumes of the Chronicle. But all of these groups can be found in any of his books. Some readers are only interested in a particular aspect of his writing, but to truly understand Henry Williamson's achievement it is necessary to take account of all of his books, for their extent reflects his complex character. The whole of life, the human, animal and plant worlds, can be found within his writings. He was a man of difficult temperament but he had a depth of talent that he used to the full. The Henry Williamson Society was founded in 1980, and has published a number of collections of Williamson's journalism, which are now being published as e-books.

Book preview

Recreating a Lost World

Henry Williamson and Folkestone

1919-20:

fact into fiction

First published 2008

E-book edition 2014

Smashwords edition

The Henry Williamson Society

14 Nether Grove

Longstanton

Cambridge

© Henry Williamson Literary Estate; Henry Williamson Society

Illustrations from the Henry Williamson Literary Estate Archives unless otherwise stated

Text written by Anne Williamson

All quotations are from the revised 1931 edition of

The Dream of Fair Women

Cover photograph: Henry Williamson on the steps of 22 Bouverie Square, Folkestone, 1919

ISBN 978-1-873507-69-8 (EPUB)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holders.

Acknowledgements

I must express my gratitude for the valuable help given in earlier research by the late Brian Dolan, and more recently by Dr M. Maloney, to whom we particularly owe the information about 'Naps' Sturt and his family and friends; also my thanks to the staff at Folkestone library for their help in finding documents.

RECREATING A LOST WORLD

Henry Williamson (1895-1977), author of Tarka the Otter, Salar the Salmon, The Flax of Dream (4 vols), A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (15 vols), and over fifty books in total, was a soldier throughout the First World War and his subsequent writings on that subject are considered among the finest ever written.

Immediately after the end of that war, still a soldier, Henry Williamson was posted to Folkestone. The short time he spent there was to prove of great importance in his life, not least being his romantic love affairs with first one and then another young lady living there, but most importantly his discovery in a bookshop of a copy of Richard Jefferies’ mystical and visionary autobiography, The Story of My Heart, which confirmed him in his own determination to be a writer.

Henry Williamson recreated this now lost world of post-war Folkestone in his early novel The Dream of Fair Women (1924), which relates the story of the love affair of the hero Willie Maddison (basically HW himself) with the very desirable Evelyn (‘Eve’) Fairfax, the young wife of an army officer living in ‘Findlestone’ with vivid scenes of the town and its inhabitants in the summer of 1919. ‘Findlestone’ was so obviously Folkestone that it was changed to the real name in subsequent editions!

This era is also captured in two volumes of the long series A Chronicle of