Robert’s siblings were: Rosetta (b.1861 d.1942), Clara Elizabeth (b.1864 d.1935), Charles Edward Evans (b.1866 d.1938), Spencer William (b.1872 d.1945), Percy Richard (b.1874 d.1917) and Leopold Grosvenor Bland (b.1877 d.1947).
Robert became an actor and worked with Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree during the great days of Her Majesty's Theatre in London. He accompanied Lily Langtry on her tour of South Africa, and acted with American actress Mrs. Brown Potter.
In 1910, Robert married Maud Hyde in St. George’s, Hannover Square, London, UK.
Away acting in America when the First World War broke out, Robert, who was a Freemason, returned to England and enlisted in the Gloucester Regiment, serving as a Captain. Posted to the Western Front in July 1916, Robert was wounded in April 1918.
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| Robert Henderson-Bland, WW1 portrait in oil by Robert Hampton |
Robert wrote the following poem after the death of his friend and fellow soldier, poet, writer, actor and Freemason, Arthur Scott-Craven - stage and pen name of Arthur Keedwell Harvey James (1875 – 1917) - to whom Robert dedicated a volume of his poetry published in June 1917:
‘O all my youth came singing back to me
When first I learnt that you were dead, my friend.
What of the years when you and I did see
In life a splendour daily spilt to mend
Our souls grown tired of trivial delights?
Not lost to you the glimpses of the heights,
For you went gladly where the worst is surely best.’
Robert acted in films between 1912 and 1921. He was killed during the Blitz in August 1941.
The Blitz was a German bombing campaign against the United Kingdom, in 1940 and 1941, during the Second World War. The term was first used by the British press and originated from the term Blitzkrieg - the German word meaning 'lightning war'.
Films in which Robert acted:
From the Manger to the Cross (1912)
Mr. Gilfil's Love Story (1920)
General Post (1920)
A Cigarette-Maker's Romance (1920)
The Wife whom God Forgot (1920)
Gwyneth of the Welsh Hills (1921)
Another of Robert’s poems:
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| Ramparts Cemetery Lille Gate, Ypres CWGC |
THE RAMPARTS CEMETRY (LILLE GATE) YPRES
(Night of June 4th, 1933)
Calm and lovely is the night,
And the graves are lovely too:
The moon rides high as if it rode
With deep intent to strew
Its beams upon the water
Where peace is born anew.
It is well with you, my brothers, it is well
Sleeping in the shadows of this immortal place
That saw your comrades pass, and pass again,
And was the silent witness of their grace,
And all their holy pain.
(Printed in "The Ypres Times")
Sources: Wikipedia, Find my Past, Free BMD, CWGC website,
https://www.delahyde.com/joan/index.html?https://www.delahyde.com/joan/pagesj/cross.html
Information supplied by Antony R. Crofts - Professor of Biophysics & Computational Biology at the University of Illinois, a grandson of Spencer William Bland - and Richard Bland, who runs a company selling farm machinery in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England and is a grandson of Percy Richard Bland, who was killed in WW1 in the Battle of the Somme.
“Actor-sioldier-poet: (autobiography) with an appreciation by General Sir Herbert Gough. (Heath, Cranton, 1939). Includes “A Sheaf of poems” - Catherine W. Reilly “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978) p. 166
