Category Archives: Uncategorized

1:17pm on 17th October 1940

Posted on by
Reply

1.17pm on Monday 18th October 2010 marks the 70th anniversary of the bombing of the Deanery at Canterbury Cathedral, while Hewlett Johnson and his guests were at lunch. In his autobiography, Searching for Light, Johnson recalls the ‘sound of a bomb descending directly above us’, which gave enough warning for them all to take cover in the vaulted pantry. Johnson wrote:

‘There was a terrific crash, the walls rocked like a ship in a rough sea and settled again’

All of the occupants of the Deanery were unhurt, and the cook, Mrs. County, even rescued the pudding which had been left in the oven.

Interior photograph of the Deanery after bomb damage, 1940

Bomb damage to the interior of the Deanery

While Hewlett’s recollection is tinged with humour, Nowell’s letter, dated the 19th October 1940, is saddened by the damage to ‘the poor old Deanery.’ Her letter of 27th October, partially written whilst listening to Myra Hess on the wireless, recalls the Deanery:

Our lovely lovely old Drawing room, the evening light, the soft drawn curtains, the lovely colours, all the exquisite beauty of it. And I can hardly believe it has gone.’

Despite this early damage to the Precincts, the Cathedral building itself was undamaged throughout the war, although the city of Canterbury sustained significant damage. Hewlett Johnson’s precautions of having the stained glass removed from the Cathedral, and a thick layer of earth over the quire to protect the crypt beneath, helped to keep the building fabric from harm. Of the Deanery, with all of its windows blown out,  Hewlett recalled ‘the winter gales and dust and dirt from the rubble blew through the shattered house for month after month’, but he remained in Canterbury throughout the war years.

Latest news

Posted on by
Reply

Well, having promised updates I’m afraid I got carried away with the work. Transcription is never more exciting than when you realise that the ink was drying at a time when Henry VI’s uncles were getting their infant nephew the crown of France, or just a month after Oliver Cromwell had been confirmed Lord Protector in 1657 (three years before the monarchy was restored, in 1660).

However, my transcription of these indentures is now finished, and it only remains to translate and check out the background of the people and places involved. This could be a lengthy process, and will hopefully involve people far more expert than myself, but I hope to be able to share the information we gather through the blog.

Your Canterbury‘s Florence Tennent broke the news this week; her article can be found on page 5 of this week’s issue.

A slight correction is needed to the last post – although we thought that Charles Dickens was writing to Sir Charles Darley, further investigation (and the eagle eyes of Angela Groth-Seary) suggests that the gentleman in question was Sir Charles Pasley. There is a substantial amount of Pasley-Dickens correspondence extant, and the signed note we discovered would tie in to the exchanges between them during 1855, while Dickens was resident at Tavistock House. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, after 1855, Pasley devoted much of his time to re-editing his published works. This may offer a clue to ‘the enclosed’, the subject of the note, which Dickens ‘read…with much pleasure’ but which has been seperated from this note and is now almost impossible to identify.

While the vast majority of these items appear to be of small significance in political or national terms, it appears that there is still plenty to learn from them about life in Kent and Essex over the last 600 years.

This time, updates will follow!

Breaking news…

Posted on by
Reply

It’s not often I get the chance to be up-to-the-minute with Special Collections news, but this last week has seen a very exciting development.

As part of his process of ‘rationalising’ the assorted collections which the newly created Specialist Collections and Academic Archives is responsible for, Steve Holland has been investigating various donations stored in the basement of the Templeman. On Thursday 19th, he made a very exciting discovery in part of the Baldwin collection. A box marked ‘original deeds’ turned out to contain some very original deeds: fifteen indentures, the earliest from 1425, the third regnal year of Henry VI.

Thorough investigation is still underway, but so far we have encountered some documents on paper and others on parchment, some in English and some in Latin (at least one item in both) and some with seals, or parts of seals, still intact. The most impressive in terms of seals is one indenture from the reign of William and Mary, which appears to be the latest of the selection, which has 5 seals attached to the document by parchment tags.

The majority of these indentures appear to be from the Elizabethan period, although so far we have identified one indenture from the reign of Henry VI, one from the reign of Henry VII, one from the reign of Henry VIII, one from the Commonwealth and one from the reign of Charles II. I am still in the process of transcribing and translating (where necessary) these documents, but the majority thus far (including a large indenture dated to 1657) have concerned the transfer of land in Kent. The Baldwin Collection focusses upon local history, so it makes sense that he gathered these documents relating to medieval and early modern Kent.

Also included in this unassuming box were two more recent correspondences. One is from King William IV, signed William R and dated 1825; the other a short note apparently from Charles Dickens to Sir Charles Darley[?], dated 1855. These will also be investigated further.

I will post further updates as they emerge; for the moment, the transcription, identification and appropriate storage of these materials is our priority.

As a taster, here’s one of the more legible documents, in English.

It reads:

Be yt knowne unto all men by theise p[re]sent[es], that we S[ir] Thom[a]s Fane
knight [and] Will[ia]m Lambeard in the country of kent Esq[uires] for avoiding
of all ambiguities doubt[es] or controversies that may hearafter aryse
of one Franncis Shakerley in the p[ar]ishe of Dytton and in the
county of kent gent[leman], that he is at the date hearof in good health
and p[er]fect memory: Wherunto we the fore sayde S[ir] Thomas Fane
knight and Will[ia]m Lambeard in the foresaid county have sett
to our handes to vereafy the truthe thereof : the vth Day of Novemb[er]:
In the yere of our lord. Anno Dom[ini] : 1588.

Tho[mas] Fane Sen[io]r
William Lambarde

The Red Dean – another milestone

Posted on by
Reply

The pamphlets from the Hewlett Johnson Collection have now been fully catalogued. The items can be searched via the main library catalogue.

Hewlett Johnson was Dean of Canterbury from 1931 to 1963 and became infamous for his outspoken support of socialism. His life (1874-1966) saw turbulent times, experiencing the end of the Victorian era, two world wars and the heightening of tensions in the Cold War. Controversy dogged his public and private life, but unlike many of his contemporaries, Johnson never became disilussioned with Communism as the twentieth century progressed. Dean of Manchester, then Canterbury, he worked for social change in Britain as well as writing books and pamphlets to support the cause of a global socialism. He saw his deeply held Christian beliefs as complimentary to the Communist cause, rather than at odds with it. With critics and supporters in equal numbers, Johnson saw Canterbury through the Second World War, although his wife, Nowell, and children were evacuated to Harlech in North Wales.

Fidel Castro talking to Hewlett Johnson

Fidel Castro talking to Hewlett Johnson

During his lifetime, Hewlett Johnson became a global star for Communism, travelling to Russia and China several times and publishing books and articles about his journeys. The material for his later visits was largely drawn from his wife’s diaries. At the age of 90, he visited Cuba for the first time: one spur-of-the-moment photograph in the collection shows Johnson talking to Fidel Castro. In 1951, Johnson became the second person to be awarded the Stalin Peace Prize and, despite the hostility from the Canterbury Cathedral Chapter, continued to advocate socialism throughout his tenure.

Some of the pamphlets were written by Johnson, for example I Appeal, which Nowell illustrated, about germ warfare allegedly carried out on China by America during the Second World War. There is also an obituary for Joseph Stalin, in the form of a memorial address to the British Soviet Friendship Society in 1953. Other topics related to socialism include social credit and the distribution of food during the Second World War. There are numerous pamphlets from and about Johnson’s tours to Communist countries. It is also clear that Johnson’s unsuccessful attempts to become a missionary did not stop his interest in the global development of Christianity; there is a pamphlet about Ugandan Christians, a copy of a sermon in support of the observance of the Sabbath, a short article on Christian fellowship and an exhaustive pamphlet supporting the theory of divinecreation, rather than evolution.

While these pamphlets are only a small part of the Hewlett Johnson Collection, they do display the wide variety of interests and influences of the extraordinary man who became known as the Red Dean of Canterbury.

For more information about Hewlett Johnson, and the collection, please visit the Special Collections Website.

Coming up next, the continuing cataloguing of the Bigwood wartime cinema and theatre programmes, and more entries on Archives Hub. Watch this space!

Boucic-who?

Posted on by
Reply

It’s funny how quickly things get forgotten by fashion. As I’ve been told, the reaction to any mention of Dion Boucicault today is likely to be “Boucic-who?”. But at the end of the nineteenth century, Dionysius Lardner Boucicault was an international star, bad at managing his money, his personal life attracting audiences as much as his plays. Only recently have his plays begun to come back into vogue; a recent production of London Assurance at the National Theatre was broadcast live around the UK and in the US.

While editing entries for Archives Hub, part of an effort to get Special Collections ‘out there’, I’ve been lucky to have a lot of biographical material to work with, particularly for the two Boucicault Collections. (We generally refer to them as one collection, but technically, they’re the Fawkes Boucicault Collection and Calthrop Boucicault Collection). Editing down a three-thousand word essay to something more manageable hasn’t been easy, but I’ve learnt a lot of fascinating things along the way.

When I started in Special Collections, I admit that my reaction was “Boucic-who?” as well. Other, better informed, people tried to explain the importance of the Irish-born playwright, but it’s only really by looking at the items in the collection(s) that I’ve been able to get a real idea of Boucicault’s importance. It seems as if he kept lawyers in business, with the amount of litigation he became embroiled in, yet he was influential in establishing the copyright and royalty systems in the US and UK. His personal life was the subject of some controversy; he claimed never to have been married to his second wife, Agnes, while having an affair with an actress called Katherine Rogers, then married a 21-year-old member of his company when he was 65 and still married to Agnes.

But beyond the scandals of the celebrity lifestyle, some of Boucicault’s melodramas, both original and ‘adapted’ (or plagiarised) were hugely popular; Queen Victoria noted some of the performances she attended in her diaries. Boucicault managed, directed and wrote for the stage, displaying a mixture of talents unusual for his time. While he experienced many failures and frequently squandered his earnings, his successes were hugely successful and he often pushed at the boundaries of professional expectation. Added to this, he is also, bizarrely, credited with inventing fireproofing for scenery, to create increasingly lavish (melo)dramatic productions. This elaborate staging was one of his difficulties; a production of Babil and Bijou, for example, made losses despite a hugely popular six month run.

So far, I have only created entries for the Fawkes Boucicault collection, the smaller of the two. Next, I’m moving on to the entries for the Calthrop Boucicault collection which, I have to admit, I prefer because it contains more original material, including images of many productions. When they’re both complete, they will be sent to the Archives Hub team to be put onto their database. Hopefully the University of Kent’s entries will start going live early next week; I hope that putting these collections out in the public eye will encourage the renaissance that Boucicault’s work recently seems to have enjoyed.

There are currently some items on display in the Reading Room from the Bouciault and Melville Collections which relate to The Flying Scud.

If you’re interested in Victorian and Edwardian Theatre, why not take a look at some of the University’s other Theatre Collections?

Another major and complimentary Boucicault Collection is held at the University of South Florida, Tampa.