Founded 8th May 1999

NEWSLETTER No. 22

22nd July 2006

New Member

Philip Weller is Chairman of The Arthur Conan Doyle Study Group and is the author of more than 500 articles, scores of monographs and several books on ACD and his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes. Philip discovered JMF whilst researching a monographon ACD and Italy, on visiting the two villas on the Posillipo peninsula near Naples where ACD stayed on several occasions around the end of the 19th century, with these being owned by ACD’s brother-in-law, Nelson Foley. One of these villas, then called the Villa Bechi, was that which inspired the descriptions of the ‘Villa de Angelis’. Philip has revisited that villa this year, to enjoy an atmospheric re-reading of The Lost Stradivarius in the grounds, and he is now preparing an illustrated article on it for the JMF Journal.

Membership Arrears

There are only four subs outstanding and I have not enclosed a Journal for these members. The sub is still a mere £5.00 a year. If they send £10, I will not worry them again until January 2008! Please stay aboard.

Huw Edwards: When I was 12

I happened on the CBBC (Children’s BBC) Newsround website recently, and came across a page devoted to the news reader Huw Edwards’s answers to a series of questions put to him by CBBC. His “fave TV shows” aged 12, were Blue Peter, Clapperboard, Scooby Doo and (not surprisingly) Newsround. His “fave book” was “Moonfleet, a smuggling adventure by J. Meade Falkner”. The man showed some taste.

Donkey work at Carisbrooke Castle

The Donkey Wheel at Carisbrooke Castle has become one of the best loved tourist attractions on the Isle of Wight. In recent years creaks and groans coming from the mechanism as the donkeys set to work suggested that repairs were needed. English Heritage, with the advice and expertise of New Forest wheelwright Terry Wood, have carried out successful conservation work. Dave Latham, English Heritage’s technical manager at Carisbrooke, said “The wheel had been tightened many times and, as a result of its construction, was rather out of alignment. It also needed a new braking system”.

I am sure the present turnkey is nothing like the “ill-eyed... coarse dark-haired” man with the ”shifty face” who proved such a fair-weather friend to John Trenchard and Elzevir. One still shivers at the memory of the “dreadful noise like a cocoa-nut being broken on a pavement”, as Master Turnkey made his hasty descent to eternity.

Fleet, Dorset

This will only mean something to those of you who trawl EBay on the Internet. I have a list of “Favourites”, which lets me know when something I might like to bid for comes up on the auction site. One of these is “Fleet, Dorset”. Imagine my excitement when, in mid June, I had an EBay alert. I raced to the web page: “Hants and Dorset Motor Services Limited: Part II 1939-68. 92 pages of fleet history”. A case of “on your bus” rather than “on your bike”!

[addendum: another one has subsequently surfaced - “The Fleet off Weymouth, Dorset” - an old postcard]

Notes and Queries

Recently, I was able to buy two issues of a magazine with a mouthful of a title: “Notes and Queries For readers and writers, collectors and librarians”. Founded in 1849, it may be a trifle erudite for the common reader such as myself, but the issues in question - June 1995 and December 1996 - hold two excellent articles by Edward Wilson, one of our Founder members. They are: Literary Allusions and Sources in John Meade Falkner’s Moonfleet and A Fictional Source for the Falling Tower in John Meade Falkner’s The Nebuly Coat. Both articles are well worth the difficulty of tracking them down.

Durham meeting

So far, Alan Bell, Michael Daniell, George Robson, and Giselle Panero (from Argentina, no less) have expressed an interest in a Durham meeting. A few more, and I will suggest a couple of dates. There is so much to savour in such an irresistible city.

Marlborough’s famous literati

After a hot morning’s perambulation of that lovely Wiltshire town, Marlborough, a few weeks ago, I was struggling back up through College Fields (once open downland behind the public school’s boarding houses) to my sister’s home in Barton Fields.

I began to take notice of the names of the roads - Farrar, Betjeman, Hughes, Morris, Hawkins, Golding - and realised they were all famous literary Old Boys or Masters.

Surely?.....

Yes!.... there it was: Falkner Close.

Thus fortified, I sauntered onwards.

Some Connections between Items in the John Meade Falkner Society’s Newsletter No 20
I recently discovered that a certain Alfred Henry John Cochrane (1865-1948) was a very distant relation of mine. The Cochranes were Ulster Protestants, originally lowland Scots who settled in Ireland in the seventeenth century. Alfred was born in Mauritius on 26 January 1865, but grew up in Derbyshire, where his father was a clergyman. Alfred was a cricketer at his public school, Repton, and then from 1884 to 1888 played first-class cricket for Oxford University and Derbyshire, mainly as a left-arm medium-pace bowler. He took 103 wickets at the respectable average of 18.99. On 25 July 1895 he married Ethel Isobel Virginia Noble (1869-1961) in the Cathedral, Newcastle upon Tyne. He died at Batheaston, Somerset, on 14 December 1948.

After a not very distinguished degree at Oxford (3rd class in classics, 1888), no doubt partly explained by his devotion to cricket, Alfred joined the administrative staff of the Armstrong engineering works at Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, eventually becoming assistant company secretary. Having myself once lived in Newcastle I was interested enough to obtain a copy of Alfred’s little book, The Early History of Elswick, published in Newcastle in 1909 by Mawson Swan and Morgan. (This firm’s bookshop still existed when I lived there in the 1960s.)

Looking for further information on Alfred, I came across a reference to his Elswick book in Newsletter 20. The copy mentioned was donated by Ethel Cochrane, Alfred’s wife. She was the daughter of Sir Andrew Noble, who is also mentioned in Newsletter 20. He lived in Jesmond Dene House, Newcastle, where JMF also lived as tutor to Sir Andrew’s children. Andrew Noble (1831-1915) was an artillery captain and expert on ordnance who joined the staff at Armstrongs in 1860. Later a director and chairman of the board, he was knighted for having developed the guns that equipped the British army and navy.
As well as being on the staff at Armstrongs, Alfred Cochrane was a poet. I also obtained a copy of his Later Verses (Longman, 1918). I was delighted to discover (for it had not been mentioned in the bookseller’s catalogue) that the book was a presentation copy from Alfred, and that there was an accompanying letter.
The inscription reads “May Carington with the author’s kindest remembrances. Feb. 1919. A.C.” I had no idea who May Carington could be, but there were further clues in the letter, which was from Jesmond Dene House and dated 16 February 1919:

My dear May

Will you accept the enclosed in memory of the happy old days when we used to talk about books at Grangethorpe? I hope you will like it, and it comes with all good wishes. I trust that your mother and you are both well. I send this to Ashby Folville where I expect you are.
Yours very truly

Alfred Cochrane

Then by another coincidence Newsletter 20 introduced me to the Smith-Caringtons of Ashby Folville, Leicestershire. May Carington, recipient of Alfred’s book, must be Mary Morton Smith-Carington. Since the Smith-Caringtons were also associated with Manchester, I assume that Grangethorpe was the large Victorian house in the suburbs that later became part of Manchester High School for Girls.
One conclusion seems clear. There was a considerable social and literary circle centred on the senior staff at Armstrongs - the Nobles, JMF, Alfred Cochrane, the Smith-Caringtons, Alfred Whitworth. It was more than social; there were at least two marriages. More research is indicated.
Andrew Belsey (June 2006)

Hero worship?

One hundred years ago, during July and August of 1906, JMF was in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on one of his many trips abroad for Armstrong’s. He found time to pen this brief letter to Thomas Hardy:

Rio de Janeiro August 20. 1906

Dear Mr Hardy,

You will, of course, have seen the article on Thomas Hardy, in the July Revue des deux Mondes. It is on the whole, I think, a good and lucid analysis: however far short it falls of my own hero-worship of your style and manner.

I have been here a few weeks on business; and hope to be leaving on the 29th of this month for England, to get down to Weymouth early in October. Perhaps - if fortune and kindness serve - we might get a ride through the Dorset hedge-rows, before the autumn colours are quite gone. Yours cordially,

J. Meade Falkner

Journal No. 8- July 2007

Although this seems long time ahead, I am reminding you all that I need articles for future Journals. I have already been promised ones from our newest member, Philip Weller, and from a foundation member, Christopher Hawtree. I am sure others are also ready with their pen! Any topic linked to JMF and his times is suitable. If you come across relevant articlesout of copyright, which have not already appeared in previous Journals, then I would be grateful for the information.

I am most grateful to Royd Whitlock for his article, and for George Robson and Ian Jackson for the part they played in two other articles., and to Andrew Belsey for the above article I will be compiling the next Newsletter in early December, so please send me any JMF related material you come across for inclusion .

Best Wishes

Kenneth Hillier

Greenmantle, Main Street, Kings Newton, Melbourne

Derbyshire. DE73 8BX

kenjmfsoc@moonfleet69.freeserve.co.uk