Arthur
Ransome (18th January 1884 to 3rd
June 1967)
We used to live above a shop an
on Saturday morning me and my sister watched television upstairs in front of
the gas fire on a fluffy rug. We had sweets and comics (I had the Beano,
Tiger & Scorcher and
sometimes Victor.) On the television
there’d be Zorro and White Horses and sometimes black and
white films like the Ealing comedies or the St Trinians
films. I can certainly remember the Swallows
and Amazons series filmed in black and white (1963) about the holiday
adventures of children. Sometimes the children were on holiday on the Norfolk
Broad but mostly in the Lake District. They were written by Arthur Ransome who was an English author and journalist. Though he
wrote about 35 novels the Swallows and
Amazons series is what he’ll be remembered for. Here I am at his grave in
the Lake District he wrote about.
You might think he was born in the lush Lake
District but he was born in industrial Leeds. The family often went on holiday
at Nibthwaite in the Lake District and once Arthur
was carried up to the top of Coniston Old Man as an infant. The area must have
slipped under his skin somehow and he developed a fascination for it and its
inhabitants. Above all, he grew to love Coniston Water and it became a private
rite for him on arrival to run down to the water and dip his hand in.
He was educated first in Windermere and then at
Rugby School but his eyesight was poor, he was hopeless at athletics and wasn’t
bright. He went to Yorkshire College (now Leeds University) studying chemistry
but felt he was a writer and abandoned his studies. He set off for London to
become a writer, taking low-paying jobs while writing at night and becoming
enmeshed in the literary scene. I won’t mention his distinguished career as a
journalist here as you may fall asleep.
He married twice, first aged 25 to Ivy Walker in
1909 and they had a daughter. It didn’t last though as Ivy demanded he spent
more time with her and their daughter than at his typewriter. Later he went to Russia where he met his
future wife Evgenia Shelepina
(who had been Trotsky’s secretary.) He sought a bitter divorce from Ivy,
married Evgenia and came back to The Lake District in
February 1925. They set up home in Cumbria within convenient distance from the
offices of the Manchester Guardian for which Arthur continued to write regular
articles. Apart from two periods when they went South they lived in Cumbria for
the rest of their lives, finding inspiration and settings for the Swallows and Amazons books. His last
house was Hill Top at Haverthwaite. He became
seriously ill in 1967 and was moved to the Cheadle Royal Hospital in Cheshire
where he died aged 83.
The cemetery being small I soon found Arthur’s grave.
He’s buried here with his wife who lived for another eight years. I stayed for
about twenty minutes and walkers were passing by intermittently. Some wide-eyed
nosey geeks like me went to look at the grave and take photos. With everyone
gone I wandered into the church and its vacancy and commodious size lent it a
superb echo. I did a few barks, shouts and resounding cheek pops. I went down
to the headstone did one final hearty salute and left.
Some other visitors…
The church from another angle…
Arthur died at the Cheadle Royal
Hospital not far from my place…
