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F W Harvey (1888 - 1957)
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Frederick William Harvey (known as Will) was born March 26, 1888 at Murrel's End, Hartpury (which was within sight of Gloucester Cathedral's tower). Will Harvey was the eldest of five children of Howard (a prosperous farmer) and Cecilia Harvey. When Will was two his family moved into a Georgian House called 'The Redlands' at Minsterworth, and it was there, alongside the Severn that Will spent his childhood and youth.
Will's mother employed a governess for him, and it was Miss Whitehead who taught him poetry and to memorise the psalms. By the time he was seven Will could recite Shelley's Skylark and by the age of eight, he knew the whole of The Pied Piper. Around the same time Will was writing poetry in Longfellow's style.
In 1897, when he was nine, Will was sent to the King's School, Gloucester, where, he later claimed, he learned to love music and how to learn. He grew to love the Cathedral, which could clearly be seen from Minsterworth, and was known in the surrounding area as "The Sentinel of the Vale".
Will, however, was never happier than when he was out in the orchards and fields, wandering dreamily on his own or in company with others. His companions soon became aware that he needed to withdraw himself from them at times, in order to take in the surrounding beauty of nature and the countryside, to meditate on these things and so refresh his spirits.
In 1902 Will was fourteen and was sent to Rossall School, near Fleetwood, Lancashire. This was at least a year after most boys go to public school, and when Will entered the school he went in May instead of at the beginning of the school year. It may be that his parents hoped that the discipline of a boarding school, combined with a total change of environment, would encourage to apply himself properly to his studies.
Certainly a greater contrast between the school's surroundings and his home surroundings would be harder to imagine. Rossall School stands on a very bleak, exposed part of the Lancashire coastline, under a sea wall, and it is often battered by the winds coming inland from the Irish sea.
Will maintained in later life that it was only his facility at sports which prevented him from being bullied at school. He played both hockey and football for the school, for which games he won his colours. Will was also musically gifted, developing a fine tenor or light baritone voice. He gave a number of solo performances at school, both in competitions and in concerts, leading his mother to hope that he would develop his talent for music and go on to make a career in music. In Spring 1905 (the year Will left Rossall) he was awarded the special prize for Broken Voices.
Although Will excelled in Divinity, his progress in other subjects tended to be erratic according to how much he applied himself to his work. Will had entered the Modern side of the school, rather than the classical side. At the end of 1902 he gained 2nd class honours in Latin, Divinity, English, History and Geography, and in 1903 he gained 2nd class honours for German. In 1904 he won a German prize and at the end of the year he gained 1st class honours for Divinity and English, and 2nd class honours for German.
However, when Harvey left Rossall at the age of 17 1/2 in 1905, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his life, despite being listed in the school records as going on to be a vet. In despair his mother took him to see a phrenologist, who decided Harvey should study law, so he was articled to one Mr Treasure in St. John's Lane, Gloucester. Since Harvey was not paid for his work, he frequently absented himself from the office without arousing any comment from his superiors, spending hours in the fields and woods instead.
Harvey's upbringing and education had aroused in him an interest in the arts - particularly literature and music - and as he grew older his circle of friends included several people who would become well known in their field. Amongst Harvey's friends during the pre-war years, his closest was the Gloucester musician, poet and composer, Ivor Gurney. The two had met first at King's School, where they became friends. They had much in common, besides their personal appearance - bespectacled and untidy - they shared an intense love of the English countryside.
'The Redlands' almost became Gurney's second home, as it offered a more educated and artistic background than his own home. Also Gurney had an open invitation to play the grand piano in the Redlands drawing-room. It was not uncommon for Gurney to arrive to play it in the early hours - oblivious both of the time or Harvey's aunt in the room above !
Harvey and Gurney later became friends with Herbert Howells, who was a pupil of Sir Herbert Brewer (the Gloucester organist). Howells came from Lydney in the Forest of Dean. Many of Harvey's poems were set to music by various composers, including Gurney, Howells and Brewer. Musical evenings were a feature at The Redlands and it is likely that this musical background influenced Harvey's style of writing since much of it has a lyrical quality.
Harvey, together with Gurney and Howells, also became friends with a local solicitor and literary savant, J. W. Haines. However, apart from this small group of friends, Harvey never showed any disposition to join a literary circle. Although he belonged to the same generation as the Georgian poets (who were sponsored by Edward Marsh), being the same age as Rupert Brooke, and he was writing traditional verse still, he was a provincial and never became a recognised member of the Georgians.
Inevitably Harvey's truancy from work became obvious when at the age of 19 he took, and failed, his first law exam. His mother pointed out to him that his father had spent a lot of money on him, and this reproach had the required effect. Although he was bored by his work, Harvey made a greater effort in it and when he retook his exam the following year, he passed it.
Harvey's 21st birthday was celebrated with a picnic on nearby May Hill, one of his favourite spots. In December of that year (1909) Harvey's father died suddenly at the age of 54. He had been ordered to bed for rest as he was suffering from a thrombosis. However, it was market day and he wanted to make sure the horses had been properly groomed before they went to the market. As he stood in the yard, having assured himself they were presentable, he dropped dead. His premature death meant he did not see his son qualify successfully as a solicitor, which Harvey did in 1912.
After qualifying, Harvey went to Chesterfield to work as a solicitor's assistant. He had to live in digs, which after his mother's loving care, was something of a hardship. It was whilst in Chesterfield that Harvey began considering the possibility of joining the Roman Catholic Church, in spite of his Church of England upbringing. He felt that Catholicism would give him the discipline his life lacked. In 1914 he took the final steps, being received into the Roman Catholic Church at Chelmsford, just after he joined the 1st/5th Glosters, and prior to being sent to France with many of his Gloucestershire friends.
Harvey joined the 1st/5th Battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment at the age of 26. He could not know that he was about to enter on a period of his life that would have a far-reaching effect on him.
He enlisted as a private in "C" company, and on March 29, 1915, the 1st/5th left Folkestone for Boulogne. Almost immediately on arrival in France the Church of England Chaplain, Rev. G. F. Helm, instituted a trench newspaper - the 5th Glo'ster Gazette, to which Harvey was a regular and untiring contributor.
Owing to his ability to raise the men's spirits, his unquenchable patriotism and his ability to get his own way, Harvey did not remain in the ranks long. On August 1, 1915, Harvey gained his first promotion, becoming an unpaid Lance corporal. Shortly afterwards he was involved in a night-time reconnaissance which earned him the D.C.M. and a commission.
The citation reads :
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After his decoration Harvey returned to England for a course of officer training on Hayling Island. He returned to France, to the 2nd Battalion. After his return, Harvey would walk around carrying a large revolver and laying odds on the probability of his coming out of the war alive or getting wounded. What he did not anticipate was that he would be taken prisoner. But in August 1916, a year after winning his D.C.M. Harvey was captured alone, in a German Front Line trench which he had entered in broad daylight (shades of Siegfried Sassoon !)
It was Harvey's unorthodox habit, when engaged in company patrolling, to personally examine the ground over which he was to take his patrol. On this particular afternoon he got as far as the enemy trench and then decided to enter it, to acquire a souvenir to take back to show the men new to patrolling how easy it was . . .
Unfortunately Harvey heard footsteps behind him and scuttling down the trench, found there were no holes through the parados, as there were in the British trenches. Harvey was seized by two burly Germans, one of whom, Harvey claimed, "looked so ridiculously like a certain labourer on my father's farm in England that I simply burst out laughing, which possibly saved my life." (2)
News of his disappearance shocked Harvey's family and friends. For several days after his capture, his sergeant had searched No Man's Land in vain for him or his body. Eventually, however, he was reported "Missing, believed killed".
After being captured Harvey was kept in solitary confinement for ten days. He spent the time in a small, louse-ridden, dirty room in Douai, and it was during this time he began to realise what captivity would mean. On the fly-leaf of an old French book he found, Harvey wrote a poem called Solitary Confinement. At the end of the ten days he was moved to a disused lunatic asylum at Guterslöh. It was to be the first of seven prison camps he would experience in two years of captivity.
Thus, paradoxically, a time in Harvey's life began, which was to stimulate and inspire him as nothing else had. Able to study, at close quarters, his fellows, their loyalty and camaraderie, their escape attempts, their determination to keep their spirits up, and above all, the respect and affection they held for him, gave him a purpose in life which he had lacked before.
Although the days in the camp were tedious in several respects, they nevertheless gave Harvey a framework and the pattern he needed. Every prisoner was expected to contribute something to the camp life, and as Harvey could play games, sing and write he quickly came to be in demand. He wrote poems and essays, lectured and soon gained the title of "The Poet".
As a prisoner of war Harvey continued to fight - not in the bloody battle against a discernible foe - but against cowardice, selfishness, self-pity and what he called the "green mould of the mind". He built a private world in his mind, to sustain him through his ordeal. To someone so attached to his own country, prison life in a foreign land must have been especially painful.
Whilst he was a prisoner, Harvey was less concerned with the bloodiness and futility of war than were some of the other poets, such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. The futility Harvey felt was in his inability to share the fighting with those still engaged in the battle.
The news that Harvey was a prisoner, rather than dead, and enduring solitary confinement eventually filtered through to his family and friends, and he received letters and parcels from friends and family.
Throughout his time in captivity Harvey continued to write and his poems were sent home. Eventually they were published in two small volumes. A Gloucestershire Lad at Home and Abroad was published in September 1916 by Sidgwick and Jackson. It was dedicated to "All comrades of mine who lie dead in foreign lands for love of England or who live to prosecute the war for another England." The preface was by Harvey's commanding officer, Colonel Collet. Gloucestershire Friends was dedicated to "The best of all Gloucestershire Friends, my Mother" and was published in 1917 by Sidgwick and Jackson.
After release from one of his spells of solitary confinement Harvey found one of his room mates had drawn a picture of a pool of water, on which floated some white ducks, over his bed. This picture inspired him to write his much-anthologised poem, Ducks.
The war had two tragic blows left for Harvey, the deaths of his two brothers. Bernard's military service had been deferred so that he could run the farm. He was killed in a motorcycle accident on Over bridge at the age of 19. Eric, his brother with whom Harvey had always had a close relationship, was killed in France.
Harvey did not return to England until the Spring of 1919. For some time following his return Harvey was convalescing at the family home in Minsterworth. Mentally and physically he was at a low ebb. All who knew him found he had been changed greatly by his experiences, haunted as he was by his experiences in the trenches, and feeling that he was indebted to those who had been killed, many of whom were boyhood friends. Whatever he wrote seemed utterly inadequate to express the suffering he had witnessed.
In May 1919 Harvey's old friend, Ivor Gurney, came to stay. Already displaying signs of the mental instability which later overcame him completely, he was nevertheless happy to share his friend's joy at being home in Gloucestershire.
Harvey's main task on his return home was to write an account of his experiences in seven German prison camps. Entitled Comrades in Captivity, the book was published by Sidgwick and Jackson in 1920. Unfortunately the book was published at a time, soon after the war, when people were trying to forget the war. The book was not a success owing to the reaction against anything that might remind people of the war.
Harvey married Anne Kane, an Irish nurse, at the church of the Holy Rood, Swindon on April 30, 1921. Harvey's family were deeply unhappy, feeling that the two came from such different backgrounds that the marriage would not succeed. However, Anne Kane shared Harvey's disregard for material things, she was a Roman Catholic as he was, and he had fallen in love with her Irish voice and her gentleness.
In 1921 Sidgwick and Jackson published another of collection of Harvey's poems, called Farewell. Harvey and his wife lived in Swindon until he obtained a position with John Haines and he was able to return "home" to Gloucestershire. He and Anne lived in a cottage in the middle of the woods at Cranham.
In 1922 Harvey learned that his old friend, Ivor Gurney, had finally succumbed to the insanity which had threatened him for so many years. Gurney was sent to Barnwood House on the edge of Gloucester. However, Harvey's spirits were lifted from the sadness caused by Gurney's incarceration, by the birth of his daughter Eileen.
When John Haines opened an office in the picturesque village of Newnham-on-Severn, Harvey was offered the post of Managing Clerk and he was able to get out of the city again.
In 1925 Harvey's second child, his son Patrick, was born, and his most important book of poetry, September and Other Poems, was published by Sidgwick and Jackson. It was entered for the Hawthorden Prize and Harvey was greatly disappointed when it failed to win.
In 1926 Harvey's In Pillowell Woods was published by Frank Harris of Lydney. Although Harvey's talent was not recognised enough to allow inclusion in the Georgian anthologies, it was recognised by Humbert Wolfe, editor of The Augustan Book of Modern Poetry. This series included every major poet, living or dead (Siegfried Sassoon featured in the First Series, as Harvey did, when it was published in 1925-26). Harvey's collection of 31 poems was published in 1926.
Finding that the routine work of a solicitor's office still irked him, Harvey decided in 1925 to set up in practice on his own in Lydney. The clerk at Haines and Sumner at Newnham-on-Severn was persuaded to join Harvey's practice. Unfortunately Harvey, despite his brilliance as an advocate was a hopeless businessman. He tried to avoid the bread-and-butter mundane cases, taking on only those cases that interested him. His preference was for defence rather than prosecution, and frequently he either retreated into his inner office to dream, or he went out to seek fellowship utterly oblivious to either routine or the clock. He was generous with money to the point of folly, parting with it as soon as he had it.
Unsurprisingly, Harvey's unbusinesslike approach to practice resulted in his practice declining and in the mid-1930s he sold out to a Chepstow firm, and began working from home instead. After the Second World War began, Harvey withdrew more and more into himself, unable to talk about the war, which was a subject too painful for him. However, he did join the Home Guard in the Forest of Dean.
In 1943 Harvey's mother died, which profoundly affected her son. She had a stroke and Harvey could not bear going to see her, preferring to remember her as she had been. His family had great difficulty even persuading him to go to her funeral.
In 1947 Harvey's poems were collected for an anthology published by Oliver and Boyd; the collection was entitled Gloucestershire. However, poor sales of the book disappointed Harvey and lost the publishers money.
Harvey died after a final painful illness on February 13, 1957. He was buried in the family grave at Minsterworth. In March 1980, 23 years after his death Harvey's worth was recognised finally with the placing of a slate memorial tablet on the South Transept wall of Gloucester Cathedral. The inscription reads:
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© Michèle Fry, 1998.
http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/harvey.htm
Will Harvey