SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: One of the foremost British writers of the 20th Century enjoyed his most productive period when living in Croydon.
DAVID MORGAN sets off on an adventure to trace the literary career of HM Tomlinson
Prize-winner: HM Tomlinson was in esteemed company with his award-winning novel
You never know what gems or treasures you might find browsing in second-hand book shops. Old books on the history of Croydon are often the focus of my attention. But I just might be looking out for some first-edition novels in future.
A new dimension to my searches was created when I discovered a prolific author of the 20th century who lived and worked in Croydon HM Tomlinson might not be a writer with whom you are familiar, but his novels and travel books were well crafted and, in their day, very popular.
Born in Wanstead in 1873, Henry Major Tomlinson was raised in a family of dockers. His father was a foreman at West India Docks – now overshadowed by the office towers of Canary Wharf – and young Tomlinson developed an interest in ships and shipping which stayed with him throughout his life. He was fascinated by the forest of masts of ships which had travelled to London across the seven seas.
Tomlinson was forever grateful to his parents for setting him off on a lifelong path of storytelling and listening to music. His father used to read the Bible aloud to them in the evenings and he taught his children to appreciate music. Tomlinson grew to love the classics of Handel and Mozart.
West India Docks c1900: young Tomlinson was fascinated by the forest of tall masts of the sailing ships and barges that dominated the docks where his father worked
He left school at 12 and got a job as a shipping clerk.
He later reflected that he hated the routine of the tasks, although he recognised that he played a small part in history of the clipper ships, including the Cutty Sark. He enjoyed visits to the Guildhall Library and the British Museum because he was curious and wanted to learn more about the aspects of life which most interested him. He went to evening school, where his focus was on topics such as minerology and zoology.
Tomlinson never set out to be an author or journalist, although he was always writing. “It was all so accidental. It just happened in spite of me.”
Tomlinson had begun by submitting articles for publication to various newspapers and magazines, with modest success, until, in 1904, at the age of 31, Tomlinson got a job on the editorial team for the radical London newspaper The Morning Leader.
Pacifist and trades unionist: HM Tomlison was a journalist with principles shaped by his experience in WWI
It was his newspaper which gave Tomlinson his first great adventure in life. His editor, Ernest Peake, sent Tomlinson on a trip up the River Amazon on the tramp steamer Capella, which was captained by his brother-in-law.
Travelling to some parts of South America can still be challenging today, but 120 years ago, this was the time of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, so a real a venture into the unknown. Although he was specialising in articles about ships and travelling, Tomlinson had only ever sailed in British coastal waters or with the North Sea fishing fleet.
Setting out from Swansea, the Capella crossed the Atlantic before reaching deep into the South American rain forest. Tomlinson’s observations and reports provided the basis for his first book, The Sea and the Jungle, published in 1912. It was instantly considered to be a classic travel book.
Tomlinson became a leader writer – penning opinion pieces on the news of the day – for The Daily News and, at the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, he was sent to France. He soon became an official war correspondent, having been recruited by the government.
During his time in Belgium and France, Tomlinson teamed up with two other correspondents, Philip Gibbs and WT Massey. Together they travelled thousands of miles “on foot, in taxis, in buses and on trains, grasping at straws or contemplating defeat”.
Gibbs described Tomlinson as “The Philosopher” and Massey as “The Strategist”. The three of them journeyed with refugees, saw troops travelling to the front in often confusing scenarios. They also viewed the troops retreating to tend their wounds and reorganise. There were only a few glimpses of the real happenings at the front, which were hid behind “a screen of secrecy”.
Writer written about: Tomlinson’s work was widely admired
Gibbs recognised the pain and angst felt by Tomlinson during his time as a war correspondent. He was “too humanitarian” thought Gibbs, and the experience of the conflict “left him with a broken heart”.
Tomlinson was not the usual type of person to be sent overseas as a war correspondent. He described himself as a working class socialist with trade union connections. He agreed with the radical views expressed by George Bernard Shaw in November 1914 that, “Both armies should shoot their officers.”
One “advantage” that Tomlinson had over other war correspondents was that he was deaf, so didn’t hear the loud explosions that punctuated the days and nights. On the day that the town of Bapaume fell into German hands, Tomlinson turned to a colleague and asked, “What bird is that?” In fact, a high velocity shell had just whistled past.
What he saw in those years as war correspondent affected Tomlison for the rest of his life.
He became a pacifist, determining the cruelty and futility of conflict should not be part of a human being’s existence. In his novella Illusion, published in 1915 by Heineman, he described an incident in the grounds of a chateau. Entering the grounds through a gateway, he saw in the gardens that nature had been torn apart by “man’s destructive genius”. He saw wounded men, bloodied and broken. He journeyed into an advanced dressing station, accompanied by the “earthquaking shudders of enemy shells”.
His description of conditions there “tore to ribbons any notion as to the glamour of war”.
His recollections and experiences of his time during World War I were later crafted into a book entitled All Our Yesterdays, which came out in 1930.
Back in February 1917, Tomlinson first came across Henry Massingham, the then editor of The Nation, a weekly newspaper. Tomlinson was in Rollencourt, France, when a rather pinched figure in a blue serge suit came up and introduced himself. Seven months later, when Tomlinson had been recalled from France because of his views on the war, Massingham wrote to him offering him the job of assistant editor at The Nation with a wage of £10 per week. Tomlinson readily accepted and stayed in that post for six years.
Massingham and Tomlinson shared similar views about the war. Both of them resigned their posts in 1923 when Joseph Rowntree – the Quaker chocolate philanthropist and businessman – sold the publication to a group headed by John Maynard Keynes.
During his time at The Nation, Tomlinson was credited with giving many young writers the opportunity to get their names known to a wider audience. These included Edmund Blunden, John Middleton Murry and Aldous Huxley. The Nation also published war poet Seigfried Sassoon, whose poetry opened a door for many about the horrors of the conflict. Sassoon and Tomlinson shared a friendship for the rest of their lives.
Tomlinson was most prolific as a writer in the 1920s and ’30s. This was the time when he was living in Croydon.
Teller of tales: Tomlinson’s work was still popular into the second half of the 20th Century, a period when he lived ‘near London’
On Boxing Day in 1899, at St Stephen’s, Poplar, he had married Florence Hammond, the daughter of a sailmaker. They had three children together, two daughters and a son. They later moved to Croydon, first living in a house in Wandle Road before moving to Ridgewood in Croham Manor Road.
Tomlinson’s first novel, Gallion’s Reach, won the Femina Vie Heureuse prize in 1927. Other winners of this prestigious award for English writers included EM Forster in 1925 with Passage to India and later in 1934, Stella Gibbons with Cold Comfort Farm. Tomlinson was in exalted company.
Gallion’s Reach takes its name from another stretch of the old working Thames, on the south side of the river, at Woolwich. It is a crime novel, initially set in London, before the action moved to Malaya where the protagonist Jimmy Cholet took refuge. Universally liked by literary critics, Arnold Bennett described Tomlinson as “an English Conrad”.
Tomlinson’s background as a travel writer and someone who loved all things to do with the sea could be seen in his 1921 book, London River, in Tidemarks (1924), which recorded a sea voyage in the Far East and in The Face of the Earth (1950), which told of a trip to Spain with some friends in a small vessel.
Tomlinson’s final novel, published in 1957, The Trumpet Shall Sound, was about the Gale family facing the horrors of the buzz bombs in London in World War II.
Tomlinson died a year later and was buried in the churchyard at Abbotsbury, Dorset, where he and Florence had moved in their later years.
Tomlinson was able to conjure up some magnificent passages of description in his writing. This extract is from The Sea and the Jungle:
“I turned up the dull and stinking oil lamp and tried to read; but that fulginous glim haunted the pages. That black-edged light too much resembled my own thoughts made manifest.”
A telling quote from his book Out of Soundings (1928) is one to muse upon: “We see things not as they are but as we are ourselves.”
Next time you are book browsing, look out for HM Tomlinson. You may have found a gem of an adventure.
Second-hand book shop enthusiast David Morgan, pictured, is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster, who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- From Brooke Bond vans to Bubblecars, Trojan was in top gear
- Spackman was at the heart of Croydon’s art scene for 30 years
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
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Fascinating. I am a big “fan” of Phillip Gibbs and his depictions of a world now gone. I hadn’t till now thought of his companion war reporters but just ordered at bargain prices a couple of his books. Thank you for these interesting articles!