Ernest Bristow Farrar (1885 - 1918) – Scholar of the Royal College of Music. Composer and Organist.

Found by Historian Debbie Cameron while trying to find out more 

about the WW1 poet E.D. Farrer*

Ernest was born in Lewisham, London, UK in July 1885. His parents were the Rev. and Mrs. C. D. Farrar, of Micklefield Vicarage, Leeds, where the family moved in 1887, where his father was a clergyman. The rest of Ernest’s life was very much centred in the North of England, which had a thriving concert and recital tradition, particularly at the turn of the century. 

Ernest became involved in the thriving musical scene in Harrogate. He conducted the Harrogate Orchestral Society and was involved with the Harrogate Municipal Orchestra through his friendship with the flamboyant conductor Julian Clifford, who performed a number of his premieres, including the now-lost Orchestral Rhapsody No.2 ‘Lavengro’ in 1913, the extended orchestral fantasy The Forsaken Merman in 1914 and the Variations on an Old British Sea Song on Ernest's 30th birthday in 1915. 

Commissioned as a Second Lieutenant into the 3rd Battalion Devonshire Regiment on 27th February 1918,Farrar was posted to France on 6th September 1918.   When he arrived in France Ernest had briefly befriended the playwright and later broadcaster J.B. Priestley. He was granted leave in the summer of 1918 and returned to England, where he conducted the premiere of his final opus, the “Heroic Elegy”, at the Royal Hall in Harrogate. This piece was dedicated to his fallen comrades. 

Ernest returned to duty in September and was killed by machine gun-fire at the Battle of Ephey Ronssoy on the Western Front Farrar near Le Cateau in the Somme Valley, south west of Cambrai on 18th September, after just two days back in the Front Lines. Ernest was buried in Ronssoy Communal Cemetery, Grave Reference: B. 27. His grave lies just outside the churchyard wall in Ronssoy Communal Cemetery Extension, in a corner under a few trees.

Ernest’s obituary published in the “Musical Times”: ‘He was a musician of the highest ideals, and was devoted to the art he served so faithfully.’ Stanford, writing in the “Durham University Journal” wrote: “Farrar was one of my most loyal and devoted pupils. He was very shy, but full of poetry, and I always thought very high things of him as a composer, and lamented his loss both personally and artistically.”

Sources: Find my Past

https://www.findmypast.co.uk/t ranscript?id=GBM%2FLIVES%2F1200125

https://www.warcomposers.co.uk/farrarbio

http://www.stwilfrid.org/ww1-memoriam/

Debbie Cameron runs the Facebook Group Remembering British Women in WW1 – The Home Front and Overseas   https://www.facebook.com/groups/1468972083412699/

Here is the poem Debbie found written by E.D. Farrer and published in "Forget=me-Not" Journal in 1914: 

Sarah Marie Worthman asks : “Have you heard about the Canadian Government’s 2SLGBTQ+ persecution campaign during WW1? Presentations in Canada

Sarah Marie Worthman asks : “Have you heard about the Canadian Government’s 2SLGBTQ+ persecution campaign during WW1? Or about the famous queer performer who travelled across the Western Front performing for Canada’s soldiers? Drag artists from the war are discussed in my presentation. Come and learn about this history and much more at one of the presentations we are hosting in St. John's, Ottawa, Toronto, and Halifax.” Sarah has given me permission to share the information about these presentations with you:

John Scott Haldane (1860 – 1936) – British physician and inventor of the gas mask

Educated at Edinburgh Academy, Edinburgh University and the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, John graduated in medicine from Edinburgh University Medical School in 1884, after which he was a Demonstrator at University College, Dundee. From 1907 to 1913 he was a Reader in Physiology at Oxford University where his uncle, John Burdon-Sanderson, was Waynflete Professor of Physiology.

Through his research, John Scott Haldane became an international authority on ether and respiration and was famous for self experimentation – locking himself in sealed chambers breathing potentially lethal cocktails of gases while recording their effect on his mind and body. 

John married Louisa Kathleen Coutts Trotter (1863–1961) in December 1891.  She was the daughter of Coutts Trotter FRGS and Harriet Augusta Keatinge. They had two children – a son  J. B. S. Haldane, who served in WW1 and became a scientist - and Naomi, who became a writer and wrote using her married name of Mitchison. His nephew was the New Zealand doctor and public health administrator Robert Haldane Makgill.

When the Germans used poison gas during the First World War, John travelled to the Western Front at the request of Lord Kitchener to try to identify the gases being used. One outcome of this was his invention of a respirator, known as the black veil - an early gas mask   After being forced out of combatting poison gases in WWI due to alleged German sympathies, he began working with victims of gas warfare and developed oxygen treatment including the oxygen tent.

After John’s death in March 1936, the poet Sir Henry Newbolt wrote this poem:

"For J. S. Haldane"

SILENT Moon and silent morning air,

Silver frost on green and silver lawn,

Shimmering mist in downland hollows bare,

Magical night dying in timeless dawn—

O Earth, Earth, Earth! what needs this loveliness

To quiet a graveyard of unnumbered clods?

Is thy bread truth, or we that break and bless?

Shall we not live at last, when we are Gods?

Sir Henry Newbolt 1937, published in Newbolt’s collection “A Perpetual Memory and other Poems” With brief memoirs by Walter de la Mare and Ralph Furse (Murray, 1939).

http://martingoodman.com/soyouwanttobeawriter/2008/02/poetry-of-mourning.html

https://www.bionity.com/en/encyclopedia/John_Scott_Haldane.html

Paul Michel Lintier (1893 – 1916) – French Lawyer, Journalist and Writer who served and was killed in WW1

 

With thanks to Alan Hewer whose post on Facebook Group Great War Reads inspired me to research Paul Linter.

Paul was born in Mayenne, France.  His father – also called Paul Lintier - was a wine merchant and former Mayor of Mayenne being in office from 1898 – 1910.  Paul studied at the school in Laval, gaining his baccalauréat in 1910.  He then went to study law at the University of Lyon, where his uncle - Édouard Lambert – was a professor.  Paul worked as a lawyer and wrote books until war broke out, publishing a pamphlet about his friend the artist Adrien Bas in 1914.   

Paul volunteered at the start of hostilities, joining the French Army and was sent to the 44th Regiment – 11th Battery – of the Artillery, who were based in Le Mans.  Paul was at the forefront of the war from the start and was wounded in the hand on 22nd September 1914 fighting near Fresnières.  The doctors in the Dressing Station he was taken to wanted to amputate his thumb, so he fled to another Field Ambulance where they managed to save his thumb.  He was sent to recuperate at the Hospital in Mayenne, where he met fellow llawyer, journalist and writer Marcel Audibert (1883 – 1967), who was fighting with the 102nd Regiment of Infantry when he was also wounded. 

 While convalescing, Paul replaced Victor Bridoux, Director of the newspaper Mayenne-Journal, and published articles about the war.  Promoted to the rank of Non Commissioned Officer on 1st April 1915 Paul was sent to the front to serve in Munitions, in spite of his hand wound.  He began keeping a notebook of his impressions of the war.   Paul was killed on 15th March 1916 at Jeandelaincourt (Meurthe-et-Moselle).  His body was buried in the Cemetery at Faulx.   However, after the war his family retrieved his body and it was placed in the family vault in Mayenne in 1921.  

Paul Lintier’s wartime notebook was taken from his body on the field of battle by his comrades in arms and published as “Avec une batterie de 75 / le tube 1233: souvenirs d'un chef de pièce” (The translation of Chef de Pièce is detachment commander, gun captain, gun commander).  

The obituary in the local newspaper states that Paul’s mother was President of the local association that helped war wounded and his uncle, Louis Lintier, was Mayor of Mayenne. 

Mayenne is a department in northwest France named after the river Mayenne. Mayenne is part of the administrative region of Pays de la Loire and is surrounded by the departments of Manche, Orne, Sarthe, Maine-et-Loire, and Ille-et-Vilaine.  

For anyone who is interested, Paul Lintier’s book about his wartime experiences is available to read in French on Archive:

https://archive.org/details/avecunebatterie00lint/page/n15/mode/1up?view=theater

English translataions of the book

You can find Alan Hewer’s post to the Facebook Group Great War Reads here:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/1841512742771711

Dennis Yeats Wheatley (1897 – 1977) – British writer

Born in Brixton, London on 9th January 1897, Dennis’s parents were Albert David Wheatley, a wine merchant, and his wife, Florence Elizabeth Harriet Wheatley, nee Baker. Dennis was the eldest of three children in the family, which owned the wine company, Wheatley & Son of Mayfair. Educated at Dulwich College after preparatory school, Dennis was expelled – apparently for forming a ‘secret society’. 

Dennis then went to train at nautical school planning to join the British Merchant Navy.  He trained aboard the sail training ship HMS Worcester, which was moored off Greenhythe in Kent.  The Thames Nautical Training College, as it is now called, was, for over a hundred years, situated aboard ships named HMS Worcester. 

Painting of the First boat race on the Mersey between cadets of HMS Conway, which was moored on the River Mersey, and HMS Worcester, 11th June 1891 by Charles William Wyllie (1853 – 1923).  The race became an annual event. 

During the First World War, Dennis was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant into the Royal Field Artillery, receiving his basic training at Biscot Camp in Luton. He was then assigned to the City of London Brigade and the 36th (Ulster) Division and served in Flanders on the Ypres Salient and in France at Cambrai and St. Quentin. Gassed in a chlorine attack during Passchendaele, Dennis was invalided out of the Army.   

Photograph of Dennis in WW1 from http://www.denniswheatley.info/denniswheatley.htm

Book Review: “Cricket in the First World War: Play up! Play the Game” by John Broom (Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2022)

 

“Cricket in the First World War: Play up! Play the Game” is by John Broom and has a fantastic Foreword written by former England International cricketer Mike Atherton, who was described in 2001 as a ‘determined defensive opener who made "batting look like trench warfare”’. Mike Atherton is now chief cricket correspondent of “The Times” newspaper.  (Pen & Sword, Barnsley, 2022)

The cover design is by Paul Wilkinson.

This wonderful book is the perfect gift for a cricket fan who is also interested in the First World War.  

Although I knew, through seeing the map of Australia drawn in the chalk downs by Australian soldiers who camped at Hurdcott Camp in Wiltshire while waiting to deploy or recuperating during WW1 when I was in my late teens, I did not know there was a magazine called the “Hurdcott Herald” in WW1. Nor did I know there was a baseball game played at Lord’s in London between Canadian and American teams in aid of the Canadian Soldiers’ Widows and Orphas Fund in 1917. (p. 163).

As I am also interested in the lesser-known artists and poets of the First World War, I was interested to discover both a poet and an artist I had not come across before.  And there is a mention of the poet and writer Siegfried Sassoon MC, whose work I admire greatly.  He loved to play cricket and the Siegfried Sassoon Fellowship organise a special commemorative game every year.

I found so many fascinating facts that I could go on and on but I am planning to write briefly about some of them in my various weblogs AND I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment of the book and the discoveries you will make.  With copious photographs, a detailed Index, interesting source list and excellent Bibliography, if, like me, you are a cricket fan, this is a book you will definitely want to refer to again and again.

“Cricket in the First World War: Play up! Play the Game” begins and ends with mention of the famous 1892 cricketing poem by Sir Henry Newbold -   Vitaï Lampada ("They Pass On The Torch of Life").  

Lifelong cricket fan John Broom, now a history teacher, has written seven books which have been published by Pen & Sword. To find out more about this book and others published by Pen & Sword, please visit their website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk

Lucy London, October 2022 

Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884 - 1941) - British writer

Walpole, c. 1915

The writer Sir Hugh Walpole, CBE (13 March 1884 – 1 June 1941) had a very interesting First World War. Poor eyesight meant he could not join the British Armed forces or the Police, so he accepted an appointment with “The Saturday Review” and “The Daily Mail” to travel to Russia to report on their WW1 Fronts. Walpole was appointed an officer in the Russian Sanitar, which is part of the Red Cross and deals with the evacuation of wounded from the trenches, as well as assisting at Base Hospitals.

While in training for that, Walpole learnt Russian. In the summer of 1915 he served on the Austrian-Russian Front, assisting at operations in Field Hospitals and collecting the wounded and dead from areas of combat. As Walpole wrote to his friend Arnold Bennett: "A battle is an amazing mixture of hell and a family picnic – not as frightening as the dentist, but absorbing, sometimes thrilling like football, sometimes dull like church, and sometimes simply physically sickening like bad fish. Burying dead afterwards is worst of all." (Walpole was friends with writers Henry James and Arnold Bennett, who encouraged the young Walpole with his writing.)

During a battle in June 1915 Walpole single-handedly rescued a wounded soldier who his Russian comrades had refused to help. Alone, he carried one end of the stretcher and dragged the man to safety. For this action Walpole was awarded the Russian Cross of Saint George.

Russian Cross of
St. George

In late 1917 it became clear to Walpole and to the British authorities that he was no longer much use in Russia. His departure on 7th November 1917 meant that he missed the start of the Revolution. In London, Walpole was appointed to a post at the Foreign Office in its Department of Information, headed by John Buchan. Soon after returning, he volunteered for the British Army but failed the medical examination due to poor eyesight. Walpole continued to work in the British Propaganda Department when it was reconstituted under Lord Beaverbrook in April 1918, and remained there for the rest of the war, resigning in February 1919. He was awarded a CBE for his services during WW1.

Walpole received a knighthood in 1937.

The Cross of Saint George is a state decoration of the Russian Federation. Initially established by Imperial Russia and officially known as the Decoration of the Military Order of Saint George between 1807 and 1913, the Cross of Saint George was reinstated into the Russian awards system in 1992.

The British CBE

The CBE - The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire - is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established on 4th June 1917 by King George V and comprises five classes across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a Knight if male or a Dame if female.

Photos: Walpole c. 1915, the Russian Cross of St. George and the British CBE

Sources: Wikipedia

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