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| John Maryon |
The
Political Conversion of John Maryon – Part 1.
Younger Years
John Maryon was born in Highwood, Essex,
in 1897. His father farmed Snails Hall Farm,
Billericay, during the First World War at the time when an enemy Zeppelin was
fired and fell to the ground killing its occupants. This personal account tells of his
experiences on the Western Front, and how those events shaped his
thinking. John Maryon died in 1975. This account was given for publication by his
son, Tim Maryon.
By
John Maryon, at the request of his sister.
[Copied with the permission of his son, Tim Maryon.]
When
I was about 8 years old, my gamekeeper father gave me a book – “The
Autobiography of an English Gamekeeper”, by one John Wilkins of Stansted,
Essex. The estate perambulated is now
incorporated into Stansted airdrome. The
opening sentence of the book astonished me at that time i.e. “I remember 63
years ago, my father, Luke Wilkins, was gamekeeper to Mr Key of Tring Park,
Herts. about the year 1820.” He went on
to relate how he was with his father and another gamekeeper, a survivor from
Waterloo, who intercepted a night poaching gang – on a tip-off. Two of the poachers were detained and were
sentenced to transportation to the Antipodes.
One died on the way out, but the other returned to England, in the
1860s, in fairly affluent circumstances.
But the author’s ability to remember 63 years previously was a
revelation. Time has taken away this
wonderment, and now I can recall incidents of 73 years ago fairly clearly, and
have been urged to record them. In this
connection, I once read a translation of a French book entitled “The Story of a
Simple Man” and I make no pretension than being just that. I was born 1897 down an old Essex driveway in
a house sans water supply, sanitary drainage, or any other “indispensable”
necessities for modern living. Yet it
was one of two “model” cottages – built by the largest Essex landowner, to
house the farm workers of his tenant farmers.
My father, however, was living here as a gamekeeper, and raised 7-800
pheasants in the neighbouring fields and woods, for the sporting syndicate from
London, who were catered for in the other cottage of the pair. After 9 years in their employ, the syndicate
broke up, but recommended my father as gamekeeper to one of the Palmer family,
of Reading biscuit fame. This was on an
estate about 9 miles from Reading, and there we arrived (January 1901), just as
the old queen Victoria was expiring.
Among the many remarks recorded from her, such as “We are not amused”
when her attention was drawn to the puddle of cat’s urine at Windsor by a
tittering maid of honour, and also another priceless gem: on being informed
that her daughter’s baby was being wet-nursed on a railwayman’s wife, she
remarked how much better if a soldier’s wife could have been procured, officers
preferably, I suppose. A
digression. I would like to mention my
father’s background, which has a definite bearing on my mental development.
He
was born of a family, who for generations had lived on the edges of an Essex
common, with certain rights thereon. The
rights were very important to them, in as much as thereby they could graze a
cow, donkey and geese and with garden surpluses to sell, and with occasional
hares and rabbits which used the common, they lived fairly well. This class of people could, if necessary,
supplement this by contract work for farmers – thatching, sheep shearing and
other seasonal work. Small beerhouse
keeping was my father’s family tradition, which suffered with many others the
traumatic shock of common enclosure.
This was brought about with maximum concern for the interests of
enclosing local landowners, with minimum concern for the cottagers on the
common fringes. One of the benefits of
the former class was the divorcing of land rights from a class of the
population, who in future had to work full time for the farmer, more or less on
the latter’s terms. And the taking of
game from what had been common land the year previously, was now a penal
offence. Therefore, it came about that
the best outlook for the rural poor was in service with – “the gentle folk” –
upstairs – downstairs.
This
was the situation of my father for the first 10 years of my life, and my
father, while aware of his family’s history, was convinced that unquestionably
his interests a s a working man were bound up with the interests of the
despoiling “gentle” classes. I remember
a man telling my father how freight trains left Reading loaded with biscuits
from the Palmer factories there en route for the war in S. Africa. When the empire expanded, as Lloyd George
remarked concerning Chamberlain of armament fame: “When the Empire expands,
Chamberlains and the Palmers etc – contract”.
My
father, whose education terminated at 10 years old, has lost the knowledge of
reading and writing because of the necessity to work, being the eldest of a
family which finally numbered 15, by the time he courted my mother. She, being Scottish, re-educated him and he
became literate, and read the “Daily Mail”, which just after the turn of the
century was pushing for rearmament.
About 1905 it ran a serial entitled “The Invasion (German) of England – 1910”
and gave descriptions and plans of German army’s crushing victories over a
heroic but diminutive and unprepared British army. I was fascinated with these instalments, and
joined the Church Lads Brigade. My father
also absorbed this propaganda, and continually prophesised a war against Germany,
and politically backed the same political party as his employer, although my
father had no biscuits to sell to the government – in trainloads.
But,
although he spent many years catering for the sport of his “betters”, deep
down, he hankered to have no master and have land of his own to farm, of which
he had considerable knowledge from 12 years of age. He was a very saving individual, who when he
married my mother, was financially able to assist his father-in-law, a small
farmer, who relied on his family for farm labour. Being himself, the
father-in-law, an execrable farmer, they worked hard for a pittance, and by
1908 had deserted him for a colonial life in Canada and marriage away. In this year the lease of is farm terminated,
and my father, in an ill-judged moment, and to get an outstanding loan of 15
years’ standing back, decided to enter partnership on another farm with
him. It was disastrous, and the
partnership broke after 3 years, and at the ensuing sale, my father got his
money back. He then rented a 120 acre
farm at Billericay of derelict grassland, growing a tenth-rate grass, with
rushes and bushes, hedges overgrown etc. in 1910 on a seven-year lease.
Previously,
in that year, part of the Fleet had paid a visit to Southend-on-Sea, laying in
the Thames estuary off Southend pier. My
father took me down to view this illuminated phenomenon, which gave us all a
patriotic thrill, and we began to look forward to the time when these expensive
leviathans, fulfilled their purpose of “defending our isle” – all over
the world. A connecting memory with me
was the presence of drunken sailors in the town. I have never since seen so many intoxicated
people together at one time.
