A B B
Deborah Henry remembers the life and poetry of Alfred Barratt Brown
Alfred Barratt Brown, my father, was born in 1887 to a family with long Quaker roots. ‘ABB’, as he was known, was immersed in the life of Friends from birth. His faith took practical expression and made him active in many causes: the No-Conscription Fellowship, the League of Nations, the Fabian Society, the National Adult School Union, the Cooperative Movement and the Independent Labour Party. He was a Christian Socialist and in his younger years an absolute pacifist, refusing any work connected directly or indirectly with war.
During the first world war, he was imprisoned three times, in Pentonville, Canterbury and Wormwood Scrubs. He was a man of self-discipline and Spartan habits, asking the warders to throw a bucket of cold water over him every morning. In prison when his first child Michael was born, he was grieved that he was not able to support his wife, my mother Eileen.
I was born in 1921 at Woodbrooke, where he was a tutor. I have a copy of a letter from Woodbrooke, written in 1919, that asks the army to release him so that he could continue in his role on the staff. Although the war was over, while he was technically ‘in the army’ he could be given orders, which he, of course, refused to obey, and this led to another stretch in prison. During these difficult times he asked for Bibles and books of prayers in Aramaic and many other languages to be sent to him. Other reading matter was forbidden.
He wrote throughout his life. Many of his most moving poems date from his time in prison, which he called ‘The Songs of a Gaol-bird’. They were penned in minute handwriting on any paper that was allowed into a prisoner’s hands. In these poems simple joys and the love of God transcend the pain and the loneliness. I am proud of him, and believe that future generations of our family will be awed that he was imprisoned for so long for being faithful to his beliefs.
In 1923 he became acting principal and later principal of Ruskin College, Oxford. He took a keen interest in the work of his students, past and present. Mohandas Gandhi visited the college in 1931 and I remember that he sat on the floor so that we were at eye level. I would have been ten years old.
In 1938 ABB delivered the Swarthmore lecture. It was entitled ‘Democratic Leadership’. A year later, at the start of world war two, he began working for the Ministry of Labour. Some of his Quaker friends, who continued in their absolute pacifism, did not approve. However, his concern was for the welfare of the workers, and this time he felt it wrong not to contribute in some way.
In 1990 his family collected some of his poetry and prose extracts into a book called simply ABB. In his review of the book Charles Kohler wrote: ‘I leaf through the book and glimpse the man. An idealist, an enthusiast, a person of “buoyant and triumphant certainty”. He influenced his generation and we, today, enjoy some of the fruits for which he suffered and laboured: in particular, the right to register as a conscientious objector.’
The Pilgrim Way
Knight and Squire and Parson, Pardoner and Friar,
They’re a motley crowd of pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer’s tale,
In the Tabard Inn at Southwark you will find them by the fire.
With a shout for good St. Thomas and a toast of Kentish ale.
O the Pilgrim Way is a merry way and it winds across the Down,
And we are bound on pilgrimage to Canterbury Town.
Socialist and Anarchist, Catholic and Quaker,
We’re a motley crowd of pilgrims when you come to write the tale,
But we’ve vowed to Lady Peace, and we never will forsake her,
So here’s to good St. Thomas and the Canterbury Gaol!
O the Pilgrim Way is a merry way and it winds across the Down,
And we are bound on pilgrimage to Canterbury Town.
Canterbury – June 1919
Spring – In Prison
MORNING Out on the Kentish Weald
Winds from the west are calling
Larks rise up from the field,
Singing aloft and falling.
MORNING Sing O thrush, in thy freedom,
A song of the dawning age,
Sing O thrush, in thy freedom
To me in my silent cage.
NIGHT Over the orchards of Kent
The young May moon is shining,
Blossom and shadows and scent
And old trees intertwining.
NIGHT I watch at the close of the daytime
For the moon with her train of stars
O moonlight of the May-time
Shine through my prison bars.
RESURGAM Nature is newly risen
Spring comes with faery tread,
Here in the Kentish prison
O God, awaken the dead.
Canterbury – May 1919
Father of Lights
Here in my prison cell the Sun has been
A kindly visitor to cheer my mind.
Quietly he creeps the window-bars between
And slowly steals along the wall to find
My face, and finding, gently touches me
With a warm sense of joy; then passes on
To other cells, and leaving silently
With a consolatory kiss – is gone.
Father of lights! in this I see thy love
But Thou art ever here. No prison bars
Can hinder Thee, and Thou dost not remove
Thy presence like the Sun and the other stars.
Thou dost abide. We are not bound but free
And strange new liberty we here have won,
Who know the Light that comes to all from Thee,
In solitude our great companion.
Pentonville – August 1916
Comments
Pleased for this background - in relation to the passage in Quaker Faith and Practice 27.43
By Colin Whatmuff on 19th November 2022 - 21:10
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