Frederic Manning

ONE OF THE GREATEST books to come out of the Great War was written by an Australian who liked this town so much that he called his hero Private Bourne. The novel, Her Privates We, was described by critics as the true voice of the trenches and is still available today.

The author was the novelist and poet Frederic Manning who was born at Sydney on 22nd July 1882, the fourth son of Sir William Manning, financier and politician and four times Lord Mayor of Sydney, and his wife Honora, both of Irish descent. He was a lifelong asthmatic and at the age of fifteen he came to England with his tutor the Rev Arthur Galton who had gone to Australia as private secretary to the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Robert Duff.

Galton was appointed Vicar of Edenham, near Bourne, in 1904, and Manning, who had decided to pursue a literary career, went to live with him at the vicarage. He remained there until Galton died in office in 1910 when he moved in as a lodger with the village schoolmaster and his family at their home in School Lane. He lead a retiring, leisured and scholarly life, steeping himself in the classics, although he made occasional visits to London where all of his works were published and he was also principal book reviewer for the London Spectator from 1909 to 1914 which still has records of fees paid for book reviews that were sent to him at Edenham.

On the outbreak of the First World War, Manning enlisted in 1915 as a private in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry, serving in France. He was promoted second lieutenant on 30th May 1917 in the Royal Irish Regiment of Foot but resigned his commission although it was his experiences during the Battle of the Somme in 1916 that were to provide the material for Her Privates We, dealing with the horrors of life in the trenches. The book had such an impact on the public conscience that it has never been out of print since it was first published in 1929 when it was highly praised by the literary figures of the day, including T E Lawrence, who had won fame as Lawrence of Arabia after leading the Arab revolt in the Middle East, and they soon became friends.

Manning had a deep affection for Bourne and returned to the town for long periods. His physical condition, however, was deteriorating and he was in need of constant treatment for chronic respiratory problems and Dr John (Alistair) Galletly(1899-1993), who had become a friend as well as medical adviser, later recalled attending him in his bedroom at the Bull where, with oxygen cylinders within reach, he would be inscribing yet another blank page with his meticulous but diminutive handwriting.

Eventually, Manning became so unwell that Dr Galletly suggested a prolonged spell of sunshine and so he returned to Australia in 1934, a visit which was to be his last. During his time at the Bull, he had also become firm friends with the landlord and his wife, Fred and Eliza Scott, and their daughter Gladys and in later years she remembered seeing Lawrence arrive one afternoon, a slight figure in his Royal Air Force uniform, on a motor cycle on his way south, asking after Manning but after hearing that he was in Australia, he resumed his journey.

It was during this period that the Scotts gave up the tenancy of the Bull after 12 years while Gladys, who had married Jack Gelsthorpe, had moved to a house in Burghley Street. Manning, however, had become such a part of the family that he wrote an affectionate letter from Sydney to Gladys on 25th March 1934 saying that as they had all left the Bull, he had less inclination to return to Bourne but still wanted to know whether the inn had changed much. "You might let me know what the Bull is like now in case I should want to go down later", he wrote, "you know the sort of thing, what the people are like and whether I could get the same rooms?" Then as an afterthought he added: "I don't suppose you and Jack want a boarder?"

The couple took him at his word and agreed to have him and when he arrived in May that year, he was given the front room as a bed sitter. In the ensuing months, Dr Galletly became increasingly concerned about his state of health and as his condition worsened, persuaded him to move to a nursing home at Hampstead in London and actually took him there in his own motor car. Manning died there on 22nd February 1935 at the age of 52 and he was buried in Kensal Green cemetery beside his lifelong friend and literary hostess Mrs Alfred Fowler.

Lawrence, who was then stationed at the Royal Air Force base at Bridlington in Yorkshire, had intended to visit him on his motor cycle around this time but on February 28th, he wrote to his publisher, Peter Davies: "On Tuesday, I took my discharge from the RAF and started southward by road, meaning to call at Bourne and see Manning. But today I turned eastward instead, hearing that he was dead. How I wish, for my own sake, that he hadn't slipped away in this fashion but how like him. He was too shy to let anyone tell him how good he was."

Sadly, Lawrence himself was to die in a motor cycle accident near his home in Dorset just over two months later.

The poet T S Eliot wrote that Manning lacked the prerequisites for a reputation in his own time because of his ill health and lack of ambition but his humanism and aesthetic perfectionism has earned him the posthumous fame that eluded him during his lifetime. He remains little known in Bourne yet it was here that the writer found time to put his experiences into words and produce one of the most important books to emerge from the First World War. His picture by Sir William Rothenstein hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

NOTE: This article was also published by The Local newspaper on Friday 19th January 2007.