Tubby Clayton: A Commission From Tim Godden

In my previous post I mentioned the British artist Tim Godden, who specializes in images of the Great War and of Edwardian sports figures.  His style captives me - there’s a simplicity and a sincerity about it I prefer to the legions of commercial artists out there specializing in military scenes.   Tim excels at capturing the humanity and vulnerability of his subjects, as in his collaboration with Peter Doyle, Percy: A Story of 1918.   

I wanted a portrait of Phillip Clayton, one of the most well-known British chaplains of the Great War.  An Anglican, “Tubby”, as he was widely known, was not one of the front-line chaplains like F.R. Scott or Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy (Woodbine Willie) but his greatest service to the troops was to found and run Talbot House, a sort of hostel not far behind the line in the Ypres Salient, in the town of Poperinge.   Talbot House, or “TocH” as it was known in the phonetic signaller’s alphabet of that war, was mostly a refuge, though it was within reach of enemy artillery.    Clayton wrote that “During the varying fortunes of the Salient shells have crossed and recrossed the roof from three points of the compass at least”.

Here is Godden's depiction of Clayton. I will keep the original, and will donate a print of it to the Chaplain School of the Royal Canadian Chaplain Service before my tour here ends.

What made TocH special was its all ranks nature.  Clayton had a sign prominently displayed, “ALL RANK ABANDON YE WHO ENTER HERE”.  Tim has placed the sign at the top of the painting, and has Tubby framed in the door of his office.    Figures of the soldier guests can be seen in the mirror behind him.

The Talbot House motto allowed an informality and companionship that was otherwise seldom possible in the socially rigid and stratified Army of the day.   Here is an excerpt from Clayton’s book, “Tales of Talbot House”.

Under its aegis unusual meetings lost they awkwardness. I remember, for instance, one afternoon on which the tea-party (there generally was one) comprised a General, a staff captain, a second lieutenant, and a Canadian private.   After all, why not?  They had all knelt together that morning in the Presence.   “Not here, lad, not here”, whispered a great G.O.C. at Aldershot to a man who had stood aside to let him go first to the Communion rails; and to lose that spirit would not have helped to win the war, but would make it less worth winning.   There was, moreover, always a percentage of temporary officers who had friends not commissioned whom they longed to meet.   The padre’s meretricious pips seemed in such a case to provide an excellent chaperonage.  Yet further, who knows what may be behind the private’s uniform?   I mind me of another afternoon when a St. John’s undergraduate, for duration a wireless operator with artillery, sat chatting away.   A knock, and the door opened timidly to admit a middle-aged Royal Field Artillery driver, who looked chiefly like one in search of a five-franc loan.  I asked (I hope courteously) what he wanted, whereupon he replied: “I could only find a small Cambridge manual on paleolithic man in he library.  Have you anything less elementary?”  I glanced sideways at the wireless boy and saw that my astonishment was nothing to his.  “Excuse me, sir,” he broke in, addressing the driver, “but surely I used to come to your lectures at ____ College.”   “Possibly,” replied the driver, but mules are my speciality now.

 You can compare Godden’s likeness to this period photograph of Clayton.   

 

 

Talbot House is now a museum and a hostel, and can be visited by tourists.   I hope to make a pilgrimage there myself in the foreseeable future.   

I have some more excerpts from Tales of Talbot House, now sadly out of print, that I hope to post here as time permits, as they are excellent stories and vignettes of military chaplaincy from the Great War.

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Book Review: Percy, a Story of 1918

 

Percy: A Story of 1918, by Peter Doyle with illustrations by Tim Godden. London: Unicorn Publishing Group, 2018.  ISBN: 978-1-911604-81-5

Percy is a collaboration between a distinguished British historian of the Great War, Peter Doyle, and illustrator Tim Godden to tell the story of a young lad who left his life in a coal mining village in Wales to serve in the infantry in the final year of the War.  It is a true story, told thanks to the discovery of the young man’s letters to his sweetheart Kitty, which turned up years later in a flea market.

While aimed at older children and young adults, I thoroughly enjoyed Percy.   The first chapters make an accessible social history of what life was life in the coal pits of Edwardian Britain.  Suffice to say that the men and boys who went into those mines required just as much courage as they would have needed to face the trenches.   It was a dangerous and dirty life, and Doyle tells the story with realism and sympathy while never sliding into sentiment.

We then follow Percy into the Army as a volunteer, wanting to do his bit like his brother and the other men of his village.   Doyle takes us through the disorientation of his training and deployment to France, all the while comforted by letters to and from his sweetheart Kitty.  The tale is told with great empathy not only through Doyle’s words but through Tim Godden’s wonderfully vivid watercolours.   Godden is a noted artist, specializing in the Great War and in sports figures of the early twentieth century.   there isa wonderful charm and simplicity to his work, and it is perfectly suited to this project.

I won’t tell you how the book ends, except to say that I found it immensely powerful and moving.    Percy Edwards was just one of millions of boys and men caught up in that vast conflict, and in this little book Percy becomes a kind of Everyman, speaking for all of them.

Percy: A Story of 1918, is available on Amazon.  I ordered mine from Amazon UK, and it took a while getting to me in Canada, but it was worth the wait.

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