Arthur Keedwell Harvey James (1875 – 1917) – British actor, soldier poet, Freemason and writer who took the stage/pen name Arthur Scott Craven

I have not been able to find much definite information about Arthur, although there is an interesting account of her early life written by his daughter who was born in 1906 and also became a writer. 

According to my extensive research, Arthur Keedwell Harvey James was born in 1875. His parents were Stephen and Sarah Harvey James.  Arthur was educated at Shrewsbury School in Shropshire, leaving In 1888. Arthur became an actor, adopting the stage name Arthur Scott-Craven, and starring in 'Ivanhoe'.  He wrote a number of books, poems and plays.

He was a Freemason – a member of the Drury Lane Lodge.

Arthur Married Meliora Louisa Harvey-James, née Milner, 1875-1944. – their son Basil Milner Keedwell James was born on 24th December 1904 and a daughter, Olive, was born in 1906. Arthur and Louisa separated at some point in 1912.

Within two days of the start of the First World War in August 1914, by which time he was nearly forty years old, Arthur applied for a commission in the Army. He wrote to all his friends urging them enlist. His application was rejected on health grounds, but he made his way down to the headquarters of The Artists Rifles and stood for the most part of two days in the queue that gathered at its doors, eager to enrol, before he was enlisted.

In November 1914, Arthur was commissioned into the 1st Bn. The Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment). He was speedily promoted to be a Temporary Captain, commanding a company. In spite of being given a series of staff jobs he volunteered for front line service and was killed on 15th April 1917. Mentioned in Despatches, Arthur was buried in ST. PATRICK'S CEMETERY, LOOS Cemetery/memorial – Grave reference: III. A. 6.  He is also remembered on the WW1 memorial in St Just Cornwall and in The Buffs (East Kent) Regiment - First World War Book Of Remembrance (WMR 40979), Canterbury, Kent, UK.

Arthur’s friend, fellow actor, Freemason, WW1 soldier poet and writer Robert  Henderson-Bland (1876 – 1941)  wrote a poem about his friend Arthur after his death in combat in 1917.

https://forgottenpoetsofww1.blogspot.com/2024/01/robert-henderson-bland-1876-1941.html

Works by Arthur Keedwell Harvey James - Arthur Scott Craven:

The Last of the English (1910) A play in four acts

The Fool's Tragedy (1913) A novel

Poetry:

Poems in Divers Keys (1904)

Joe Skinner, or, The man with the sneer (1907)

Alarums and Excursions (1910)

"ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS " BY ARTHUR SCOTT CRAVEN

In memory of the third of August MCMX (LONDON, ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET, W. MCMX)

AUTHOR'S NOTE

As the original editions of " Poems in Divers Keys "and " Joe Skinner " are now exhausted, I have made a selection here of some of those poems which appearedin the first volume. "Joe Skinner " reappears in extenso.

On a previous occasion I expressed my acknowledgments to the proprietors and editors of those papers by whose courtesy I was permitted to re-publish several of the shorter pieces. The present volume contains considerable matter now published for the first time, including " Fudge " and " Mukerji Lal," both in a light vein.

ARTHUR SCOTT CRAVEN. August, 1910.

Some of his poems:

“A Fragment”

IN Life's meridian could we hold

The sun, like Joshua of old -

To keep in check advancing night,

And change our fortune in the fight.

Or could we bid the moon abide

To suit our circumstance and tide -

Had we the power,

Or I, or you

(Who dream away this pregnant hour),

What things we'd do !

Page 31 

"The Call to Arms "

Hodge Loquitur

"TAINT no sort o' use denyin'

There's a summat about dyin'

To the sound o' bugle calls,

An' the thud o' cannon balls ,

An' the whiz o' bullets flyin' ,

An' the rumble o' guns firin'

Wot's consid’rable inspirin'

Tothe man as stays behind.

Yus, it's fine an' fair excitin' ,

An' a thing I takes delight in :

Just the thought o' beggars fightin'

Makes me tingle through and through !

It's the martial instinct brewin',

An' it kinder needs subjuin' ,

So my wery best I'm doin'

All sich feelin's to subjoo.

I'm a chap o' brawn an' muscle,

An' it's 'ard to ' ave to tussle

' Gin these bulldog inclinations

When sich fever fires the blood,

But the thought o' my relations -

(In pertikler dear old mother) -

Makes me wishful fer to smother

All sich feelin's in the bud.

Still, there ain't no use denyin'

There's a summat about dyin'

To the rumble o' guns firin'

Wot's pertikler inspirin'.

Pp 33  - 34 

The Eternal Now

To dream of a gilded morrow shall we sleep through the golden day,

And steep for ever our senses in wishes and hopes and fears ?

E'en as we long and repine the hour hath glided away,

And added its wailing note to the dirge of the wasted years!

P. 38

Critique:

" Mr. Craven sings with equal ease in many tones-narrative,

reflective, dialect, the light song, the serious monologue ; the poet's

interest always centering in human joys and sorrows, and his note

clear, polished and musical. ”—The Times.

Sources: Free BMD, Find my Past, various other sites:

https://timenote.info/en/Arthur-Keedwell-Harvey-James

http://www.westwardhohistory.co.uk/memories/memories-by-olive-ordish/

There is also a very brief biographical note in the WW1 anthology “For remembrance: soldier poets who have fallen in the war” (1920) by A. St. John Adcock.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/For_remembrance:_soldier_poets_who_have_fallen_in_the_war/Chapter_3#73

Robert Henderson-Bland (1876 – 1941) – British actor, writer, Freemason and WW1 soldier poet

Born on 10th March 1876 in Croydon, Surrey, UK, Robert’s parents were William Charles Bland (1828 –1890), a clock manufacturer and church bell founder, and his wife, Frances Maria, nee Baker (1838 - 1910).

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.

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:

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

T.B. Clark ( ? - ? ) – WW1 poet

Found by Andrew Mackay who very kindly sent me a copy of T.B. Clark’s collection“Rhymes of Two Regiments: A Souvenir of the Trenches” (William Nicholson & Sons Ltd., London & Wakefield).

T.B. Clark served as a Rifleman with the King’s Royal Rifle Brigade in France and Salonika during the First World War.   I cannot find out anything about him, other than the fact that he was a very prolific poet.  He has a large entry listing his WW1 poems – most of which were printed as broadsides - in Catherine W. Reilly’s “English Poetry of the First World War: A Bibliography” (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1978), pp. 85 – 87.   If anyone can help find more about T.B. Clark, please get in touch

Here is one of T.B. Clark’s poems from his collection “Rhymes of two Regiments: A Souvenir of the Trenches” (William Nicholson & Sons, Ltd., London and Wakefield – 7th impression):

“The K.R.R.E.’s.” by Rifleman T.B. Clark, K.R.R.

(With apologies to Sergt. Burley and Corpl. Lovell.)

(Composed in the Trenches at Armentieres, July 1915.)

THIS is the K.R.R.E. Mob, never hard up for a job,

Working early, working late, never known to put on weight ;

In the trenches every day, you will hear the Sergeant say –

“Bandolier and Rifle quick, get a shovel and a pick.”

Every morning, very early, you’ll discover Sergeant Burley,

While your bit of bacon’s cooking, for a working party looking,

“Get a pick and get a shovel, go along with Corporal Lovell,

Go and pick, and spade, and delve, you will be relieved at twelve.”

When the Germans you have strated, go and do your three hours’ graft,

If you did not know before, you’re the K.R.R.E. Corps,

And you never joined to fight, but to work with all your might ;

With your breakfast still uneaten, you must work till you’re dead beaten,

For they do not stop for trifles in the K.R.R.E. Rifles. 

In an explanatory note included with a poem entitled “The Strafing Section”, the poet explains: “The word “strafe” is used in Tommy’s vocabulary to indicate any form of attack.”

Cap Badge of King's Royal
Rifle Corps

A bandolier is a shoulder belt with loops or pockets for cartridges.

Broadsides were single sheets of paper printed on one side only. They were chiefly textual rather than pictorial and were printed to be read unfolded and posted up in public places. At first they were used for the printing of royal proclamations and official notices. Uses of the word date from the 16th century. In size most broadsides ranged from approximately 13" x 16" ("foolscap" size) to over 5 feet in length. 

According to Reilly, part of the profit of the sale of T.B. Clark’s collection “Poems of a private: a souvenir o f France and Salonika” (William Nicholson & Sons, Ltd., London) was for St. Dunstan’s Hostel for Blinded Soldiers and Sailors (now Blind Veterans UK).  

St Dunstan’s charity was founded in 1915 by publisher and newspaper owner Sir Arthur Pearson. Sir Arthur - who was blind -  in order to help the large number of veterans who lost their sight during the First World War.

Originally called the Blinded Soldiers and Sailors Care Committee, the charity soon became known as St Dunstan’s, which was the name of the first headquarters in Regent’s Park, central London.

https://www.blindveterans.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are/our-history/

Peter Baum (1869 – 1916) – German poet and writer

With thanks to AC Benus* for his fantastic work and research, for finding this poet for us and for finding and translating the poem featured.        

Peter Baum was born in Elberfeld, Wuppertal, Germany, on 30th September 1869.  He volunteered at the beginning of the First World War and was killed on 5th June 1916 at the age of 46 in Keckau, near Riga in Latvia.

Peter Baum’s collection of "trench verses" was published posthumously. They have been made available in VERSENSPORN No. 15 for the first time in almost a hundred years.

Wir sitzen da mit wenig Haaren,

Als seien eben wir geboren,

Und Sind doch lange schon bei Jahren.

 Gesichte immer Sich enthüllen,

Als wären wir noch junge Füllen

Mit Zukunftsrauschen in den Ohren.

AC Benus has kindly translated the poem for us:

We sit here with thinning hair in truth,

As if a tribe of newborns in years,

Though we're one already long of tooth.

But our faces unbosom our roles,

As if we were a herd of young foals

With futurity rushing our ears.

from “Schützengrabenverse” (Verlag der Sturm (Tr. Trench Verses)  , Berlin, 1916)

Sources:

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2073822

https://digital.ub.uni-duesseldorf.de/ihd/content/pageview/1069606

AC Benus is the author of "The Thousandth Regiment: A Translation of and Commentary on Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele’s War Poems” by AC Benus (AC Benus, San Francisco, 2020). Along with Hans's story, the book includes original poems as well as translations into English.    ISBN: 978-1657220584 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1657220583

Book details: ISBN: 978-1657220584

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1657220583

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1657220583

https://www.amazon.de/dp/1657220583

Cover photo: Mark Basarab

Ambrose Vickers (1875 - 1956) – poet and Blacksmith

With grateful thanks to Andrew Mackay for finding this poem for us and to Dave Cole via Twitter - who found me the information I needed enabling me to research Private Vickers.   Andrew Mackay also sent me information about “Little Kitchener”.

Ambrose Vickers was born on 12th January 1875 in Bunbury, Chechire, UK.  His parents were Samuel Vickers, a Journeyman bricklayer, and his wife, Mary Vickers, nee Large.  

By the time of the 1891 Census, Ambrose was apprenticed to a local Blacksmith.  The 1901 Census records him as boarding in Benedi Court Street, Bootle cum Linacre, West Derby, Lancashire, with his occupation being Coachsmith. He was still registered at the address in West Derby in 1911.

As far as I can ascertain, Ambrose was in the Army Service Corps during the First World War, serving as a driver.  A further message from Dave Cole via Twitter (@MrCheapSeats) confirms my discovery.

Ambrose survived the war and in 1921 was registered as living in Slack Road, Barnston, Barnston, Wirral, Cheshire, working as a Blacksmith for Liverpool Corporation Electric Tramways Building & Maintanence.

In 1939 he was registered as a retired Blacksmith living in Benedict Street, Bootle, Bootle C.B., Lancashire.

Ambrose died in Liverpool in 1956. 

Unfortunately I can’t find a photograph of Ambrose - if anyone has one please get in touch. The image above the poem on the postcard is of "Little Kitchener" - little Jennie Jackson from Lancashire.  Jennie was known as "Young Kitchener" for the work she did during the First World War, collecting money to fund parcels for the fighting men. Jennie's mother, Kate, dressed Jennie as young Kitchener and they collected enough money to buy a field ambulance too. WW1 poet Thomas Napoleon Smith wrote a poem about Jennie - https://forgottenpoetsofww1.blogspot.com/2018/07/thomas-napoleon-smith-pen-name-tonosa.html

"The postcard shown above was written by Pte. A Vickers in appreciation of a parcel he had received from "Little Kitchener"

Private Ambrose Vickers was not a Burnley man, born in Bunbury in Cheshire, he was a Blacksmith by trade. At the start of the war he was almost 40 years old, and not eligible for front line service."

Bunbury is a village in Cheshire, UK, south of Tarporley and north west of Nantwich on the Shropshire Union Canal.

Sources: Find my Past, FreeBMD, and http://www.burnleyinthegreatwar.info/burnleypicturesandpostcards2.htm

Alain-Fournier - pen name of Henri-Alban Fournier (1886 – 1914) - French author, poet and soldier.

Born Henri-Alban Fournier on 3rd October 1886 in La Chapelle-d'Angillon, in the Cher département in central France, Fournier’s father was a school teacher. 

He studied at the Lycée Lakanal in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris, where he prepared for the entrance examination to the École Normale Supérieure, but without success. At the Lycée Lakanal, he met Jacques Rivière, and the two became close friends. 

Fournier went on to study at the merchant marine school in Brest. In 1909, Jacques Rivière married Fournier's younger sister Isabelle.

Abandoning his studies in 1907, from 1908 to 1909 Fournier did his military service. Around that time, he published some essays, poems and stories which were later collected and re-published under the title “Miracles”.  

In early 1914, Fournier started work on a second novel – “Colombe Blanchet” - but it remained unfinished when he joined the Army as a Lieutenant in August 1914.  Fournier was killed fighting near Vaux-lès-Palameix (Meuse) one month later, on 22nd September 1914. His body remained unidentified until 1991.

Alain-Fournier wrote the novel  “Le Grand Meaulnes”, published in 1913, which I read at school.   The book has been made into a film twice and is considered a classic of French literature. The story is partly based on his childhood unfolding in an atmosphere of mystical unreality beyond which the world of adulthood is perceived.

I remember when Alain-Fournier’s body was discovered and re-burried in the cemetery of Saint-Remy-la-Calonne, Meuse, Lorraine, France.

http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/2019/03/alain-fournier-in-la-tranchee-de.html

You can read some of Fournier's poems here:

https://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2014/02/poems-alain-fournier/

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896 – 1940) – American poet, novelist, essayist, and short story writer.

According to a very kind friend who proof read this post for me, he never used the name "Francis," but was known all his life as "Scott."

Born Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald on 24th September 1896, into a middle-class family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States of America, Scott initially lived with his family in New York State. He went to Princeton University where he became friends with future literary critic Edmund Wilson. 

Scott dropped out of university in 1917 and enlisted in the United States Army, receiving a commission as a Second Lieutenant. 

While  in training and waiting for deployment to the Western Front, Scott was stationed in a training camp at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, under the command of Captain Dwight Eisenhower - future general of the Army and United States President. He didn’t like Eisenhower's authority and apparently disliked him intensely.

Hoping to have his work published, Scott wrote a 120,000-word manuscript entitled “The Romantic Egotist” completing it in three months. When he submitted the manuscript to Scribner's publishers however, they rejected it. The reviewer, Max Perkins, was impressed, praised his writing and encouraged Scott to resubmit it after revision.

In June 1918, Scott was garrisoned with the 45th and 67th Infantry Regiments at Camp Sheridan near Montgomery, Alabama. At a country club there, he met Zelda Sayre, a 17-year-old Southern belle and the grand-daughter of a wealthy Confederate senator, whose extended family owned the first White House of the Confederacy.

Before he wrote his first novel, Scott had hoped to publish a collection of his poems and may even have considered writing a novel in verse. For the rest of his life Scott wrote poetry, much of it humorous, which allowed him to indulge his love of rhyme.

After a long and industrious life, Scott died on 21st December 1940.

“WE LEAVE TO-NIGHT” by: F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)

We leave to-night . . .

Silent, we filled the still, deserted street,

A column of dim gray,

And ghosts rose startled at the muffled beat

Along the moonless way;

The shadowy shipyards echoed to the feet

That turned from night and day.

 

And so we linger on the windless decks,

See on the spectre shore

Shades of a thousand days, poor gray-ribbed wrecks . . .

Oh, shall we then deplore

Those futile years!

 

See how the sea is white!

The clouds have broken and the heavens burn

To hollow highways, paved with gravelled light

The churning of the waves about the stern

Rises to one voluminous nocturne,

…  We leave to-night.

"We Leave To-night" is reprinted from “This Side of Paradise” F. Scott Fitzgerald  (Scribners, New York,1920).

Sources:  BBC television’s Mastermind, Wikipedia and

https://www.poetry-archive.com/f/fitzgerald_f_scott.html

https://www.thoughtco.com/f-scott-fitzgerald-biography-4706514