A WORSHIP OF WRITERS

Apparently it was as long ago as the fifteenth century that collective nouns emerged as being all the rage.   We are all familiar with a Gaggle of Geese, a School of Fish and a Pride of Lions but many equally colourful terms have been lost over the superseding centuries.     Few of us would be equally familiar with a Smack of Jellyfish, a Business of Ferrets or an Impatience of Wives.   I found myself particularly taken with a Rascal of Boys and could almost see the exasperating bunch of them – I certainly could hardly wait to resurrect a Worship of Writers!   Along with a Gang of Labourers and a Sentence of Judges it does seem an inordinately apt piece of jargon.  

Writers, would-be-writers and once-were-writers are everywhere of course but from time to time over the years it is those of Kent I find myself to be particularly drawn to.   The county has spawned a great many outstanding wordsmiths over the centuries.   Despite Mr Jingle’s observation in The Pickwick Papers, that Kent was primarily known for its apples, cherries, hops and women, that is not altogether accurate. 

Dickens was the first local writer of note that I became familiar with and this was precisely because so much of his work was set in the countryside around me, the towns and villages I already knew well and his characters reliably could be found favouring the very same taverns and ale houses supported by members of my own family.   This admiration of all things to do with Dickens was fostered by local schools so that there were few North Kent children who were not completely comfortable with the early life of Dickens by the time they were eight or nine years old even if they were not yet mature enough to read him for themselves.   Primary school excursions in the final term of the school year had already ensured that most of us knew about the little row of infant graves in the churchyard of St James Church, Cooling that we thereafter identified as Pip’s Graves, giving us relatively painless access into Great Expectations and we certainly became more and more familiar with A Christmas Carol each year at the appropriate time.  So firmly was Charles Dickens linked with the local area that I was surprised as I grew older to find him also inextricably connected to London and even more startled to learn he had actually completed David Copperfield in Broadstairs which to me at the time seemed a great distance from the Thames Estuary.

Eventually I discovered John Buchan also favoured Broadstairs as a writing environment and produced The Thirty-Nine Steps whilst convalescing there.  In fact the steps down to the sea from North Foreland provided inspiration for the title.   Considering all that maybe it wasn’t too bad a place despite all the unpleasant things my mother had to say about it but it was never going to be listed among my favourites.  I was always much more comfortable in Ramsgate and Margate so when I found that well known writer, Frank Muir who I greatly admired, was actually born in Ramsgate I of course immediately read his autobiography – A Kentish Lad.   Later I learned that he was in error with the title and it should have been A Lad of Kent since Ramsgate is definitely east of the Medway.   Perhaps that simply didn’t matter.

Another Man of Kent, Arthur Thorndike, lesser-known brother of the famous actress Sybil hailed from Rochester and used the Romney Marsh as the setting for his Doctor Syn books.   I have never read these books but apparently Dr Syn was the vicar of of Dymchurch parish by day and the leader of a gang of smugglers by night, and known as The Scarecrow.   I’m told that in Dymchurch there is still a Day of Syn festival during each August of even numbered years where locals in costume re-enact scenes from the books.   They sound worth reading don’t they?

Over time I have become increasingly fond of the great Romney Marsh and delighted that it is really and truly part of Kent, if somewhat distant from Northfleet and Gravesend.   I fully expected to find that one of my favourite childhood writers, Monica Edwards was actually from one of the little marshland villages and disappointed to learn that she was in fact born in Belper which is near Derby.   She certainly wrote very convincingly of the area so I refuse to believe that she had no connection with the marsh at all. 

With Monica still lingering in mind it was reassuring to learn that Dymchurch was a favoured holiday destination for E (Edith) Nesbit and that she lived for several years at Halstead where she first devised the idea for The Railway Children.   The local station was originally called Halstead for Knockholt and became Knockholt in 1900.  Although her writing for children is Edwardian in nature for the majority of young readers then and now it is more than stimulating, Edith herself caused a great deal of comment and gossip whilst living on the Marsh.   Her domestic situation would be considered scandalous even by today’s standards but in the early nineteen hundreds must have caused endless comment across the marshland villages.   It is said that some time passed before St Mary’s parishioners would allow her grave to be indicated in any way.   This was a pity because by the time she died the more disreputable aspects were well and truly in the past and she was contentedly married to a decent, doting man, Thomas Terry Tucker, who gave her his total love and attention.  His enduring love must have felt quite unfamiliar after years of marriage to Hubert Bland who demanded a great deal and gave very little to the relationship other than the children of his various mistresses some of whom were dutifully brought up by the ever-faithful Edith.

Noel Coward also lived on the marsh at one time but when his house was requisitioned by the army during WW2 he moved on to St Margaret’s Bay, Dover having purchased a house aptly named White Cliffs.  He eventually sold White Cliffs to Ian Fleming who used it as a weekend cottage and did a fair amount of writing there.   Various references to Kent appear in his books including the local golf club in Goldfinger, although renamed. 

I very much wanted to find writers with more direct links to Gravesend and I spent a lot of time searching for them, largely without success.  Strangely I even failed to find any writing groups, get togethers for those interested in writing although there were plenty of people who will help you with your writing if that’s what you want, ever helpful and checking spelling and sentence structure.   Do the residents of Gravesend and its environs not encourage writers?   It was almost discouraging enough to turn me back in the direction of Dickens.  But casting him firmly aside because he gets altogether too much mentioning without really trying, I found that Joseph Konrad meandered in and around the town when he was busy producing Heart of Darkness and seemed in fact quite familiar with the place.  The town is given more than a casual mention in the book.   That was immediately heartening of course and I can’t think why I wasn’t aware of it when I first read the book as a teenager, possibly I thought he was referring to another more exotic Gravesend perhaps the one closer to New York.  

Eventually I came across Angela Young’s Hollow Victory which I rather enjoyed, particularly her descriptive passages about the town and the river.   I also enjoyed J.J. Irwin’s Once a Boy which is a memoir about growing up in a house in Waterdales in the 1950s and full of reminiscences that are immediately familiar to any of us growing up nearby at the same time.   Then I found all the detailed booklets by Alex Pavitt concerning his own memories of the local area of his childhood including fascinating history of the various streets and shops.  His photos and the illustrations within add a great deal of extra interest to these jam-packed volumes.   Lynda Smith’s book on Rosherville Gardens, The Place to Spend a Happy Day is also an informative read.  

Try as I might though I could find little or no fiction other than Hollow Victory mentioned above, which was disappointing.   However, before I turned somewhat reluctantly back towards Dickens, I was somewhat comforted by the fact that Jennifer Barraclough, who grew up in one of what I most definitely regarded as the very grand houses on The Overcliff is still writing.  She is most definitely from Gravesend and what’s more her last book was set on the marshes close to Gravesend and called You Yet Shall Die.  I’m not completely sure what she is writing at the moment but it’s certain to be worth reading!