The Tardebigge Myth

The only known photograph of Robert Aickman and Tom Rolt together (Yorkshire Post, 31st August 1948)

Foundation stories matter because they give organisations of any kind not just a sense of origin, but of purpose. By retelling the inspiration for the setting-up of an organisation, and giving accounts of early challenges overcome, shared intentions are established which can continue to give direction into the future. By making something almost mythic out of the foundation and the founders themselves, people who may still continue in their roles, an emotional connection is created for all who are involved. It becomes personal and that, in turn, can give an organisation its strength.

For several years, the Inland Waterways Association in Great Britain felt a need to tell such a foundation story. Or, at least, Robert Aickman did. He knew it would help inspire loyalty, credibility, and assure long-term support. It also put him in a position of authority.

In the story Aickman told, he accepted L.T.C. Rolt as his co-founder, although he was at pains to suggest that he himself had been the prime mover behind the organisation, and that he undertook by far the largest share of the work, for which he was never properly paid. (It should be noted that Aickman’s financial claims were often slightly opaque.)

There is a great deal to be said for Aickman’s version of events, although such a campaigning organisation may well have been created without him, because pressure was already building in opposition to the wanton dereliction of the country’s canal system. It should also be pointed out that many other people also put in valuable and often little-acknowledged work over many, many decades of the IWA’s campaigning. There have always been those who argue that Aickman’s role was sometimes so divisive he may have actually held back the IWA, but after years of hard work, the IWA was the victor in the various battles against authority, and Aickman could reasonably claim a great deal of the credit. He also had battles with self-created enemies within the IWA, but as he won most of those, he felt able to write the history in The River Runs Uphill (1968). From the perspective of most observers, whatever they thought of Aickman, the IWA’s activities can be judged to have been a success, which makes it all the more baffling that Aickman, himself, would claim that its achievements actually constituted a failure.

At the time he helped set up the IWA, Aickman was looking for direction in his life. Although he and his wife, Ray, were running a literary agency together, he had already tried to set up a Borley Rectory Trust, because he seems to have wanted to run an organisation that might give him both a purpose and perhaps a public profile. As he had a small private income, money was not an important factor in the early days. In The River Runs Uphill he gave an explanation for the founding of the IWA that would have surprised many of its members, especially in its earliest days. He claimed it had always been his intention to kick-start an artistic and cultural revolution via the restoration of the waterways. There is little evidence of this until, perhaps, the Market Harborough Festival of Boats and Arts in 1950. Somewhat retrospectively, Aickman seems to have wanted to become a Gabriel D’Annunzio of the British waterways. (In 1919-1920, D’Annunzio set up the short-lived Italian Regency of Carnaro in Fiume, now Rijeka in Croatia, entering the city with only a handful of soldiers and proclaimed himself Duce.) Aickman’s failure to inspire a revolution was the reason he gave for considering the whole IWA venture a failure.

With hindsight, if anyone had reason to believe the IWA had been something of a failure it should have been Rolt, who hoped from the beginning to restore the waterways for their original purpose of effecting the movement of goods around the country. But, however either men felt about the IWA, it was instrumental in saving many miles of waterways which are now enjoyed annually by thousands of people.

 

 

Cressy at Tardebigge (Photo by Hugh McKnight)

 

When I wrote my Biography of Aickman, I made a point of questioning his account of his important first meeting with L.T.C. Rolt at Tardebigge, on Rolt’s boat, Cressy, in August 1945. Aickman’s version of events seemed to me indicative of not just how Aickman told the story of the IWA, but of his whole life. Most autobiographers are, understandably, centre stage in their work, and they have every right to choose how they present their material. We know we are reading of events from their personal point of view, and with potential bias, but we like to hope they can be trusted over basic matters of fact.

A rare photo of Angela Rolt, with Tom behind her.

In The River Runs Uphill, and elsewhere, Aickman states that the IWA was founded by himself and Rolt on Cressy, and clearly implies that only he and Rolt were present, although Rolt’s wife Angela was in a supporting, mainly decorative role. It was presented by Aickman as the meeting of two great men who, though they came from different backgrounds, identified a similar problem, and found common ground in a cause that was close to both their hearts.

However, surviving letters in the National Archives suggest that Aickman mythologised his account of their first meeting when he described it twenty-three years after the event. The most obvious deviation from the facts is the omission of his wife, Ray, from the account. She was certainly on board Cressy when the two men met for the first time. Admittedly, Aickman may have excised Ray from history because he had a lifelong detestation of the institution of marriage and he did not like admitting that he had wife. He was also horrified, later, when Ray divorced him, leaving their marriage to become a nun (which he might have expected people to consider a judgement on his own failings as a husband, rather than to the attractions of the religious life).

Robert and Ray Aickman

Angela and Ray would not be the first women to be ignored because their role was secondary, enabling the men to get on with their great work. But Ray would come to be the backbone of the IWA, organising its office for many years and effectively running the organisation. Others involved would credit her importance in the organisation, even if her husband refused to.

But Aickman also left out of the account of the foundational Cressy meeting his friends Howard and Joan Coster. The couple wanted to meet Tom Rolt because they were planning on buying a narrow boat themselves, and were seeking his advice. I was careful how I put this in my Aickman biography because there had been a last-minute change of date for the meeting between the six of them, and I didn’t know for sure if Howard and Joan Coster had been available for the rearranged rendezvous at Tardebigge.

   However, the newly published The Life of L.T.C. Rolt by Victoria Owens states categorically that the Costers were present at the Tardebigge meeting. When I asked Rolt’s biographer for clarification, Victoria was able to quote from an exchange of letters between Joan Coster and Ray Aickman in the National Archives I had not seen. Writing to Ray on 13th August 1945, Joan thanked her for arranging a pleasant weekend. In her reply dated 17th August 1945, Ray wrote:

'I am glad you enjoyed seeing Cressy.'

This would appear to be conclusive evidence.

Joan and Howard Coster

But am I making too much of Aickman’s downplaying of Angela Rolt’s presence on that day, and the omission of Ray Aickman, and Howard and Joan Coster? After all, Aickman is correct in the essentials that he and Rolt met for the first time and they discussed the formation of a campaign organisation. Aickman’s account was endorsed by Rolt himself, even after the two men had become bitter enemies, and neither Ray, Howard or Joan later complained at being written out of the story.

I believe the omissions are important because all six people on Cressy that day were there because of a shared interest in the inland waterways, and all would have a vested interest in seeing the canals maintained and hopefully restored. It seems highly likely that the formation of a pressure group would have been discussed by all six, and that everyone would have had some input into the discussion.

In his defence, I should point out that Aickman was a great believer in rhetoric, arguing that causing trouble was more effective than engaging in reasoned debate. He also believed in the idea that strong men had the right to act, if anything of value was to be achieved. The creation of the myth of Tardebigge was useful, not just as a shorthand explanation of what took place on Cressy at Tardebigge, but because he believed (at least in the early days) that he and Rolt would achieve much more by standing shoulder to shoulder at the helm of the organisation. No doubt, he was also aware that it sidelined those who might have otherwise been proud to have attended the first official IWA meeting on the evening of 15th January 1946 at the Aickmans’ Gower Street flat in London, only six months later.

History, however, has a habit of not always remembering what we are at pains to preserve. Because Aickman’s role was considered so divisive by some who outlived him, for a number of years his pivotal role in the IWA would be ignored by the Association. More recently, he has been somewhat rehabilitated, and the magazines of the organisation have finally recounted fair and even-handed histories of the early days of the IWA. It is a cautionary tale for anybody with an ego who seeks long-term recognition for their work, let alone self-aggrandisement, that the majority of the users of the canals of Britain today are not even aware that a preservation campaign was ever required. Because the existence of the remaining canals is usually taken for granted, why should anyone be interested in who deserves credit for the IWA?

 

Robert Aickman: A Biography, by R.B. Russell, Tartarus Press, 2023

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Heather Smith, and Artellus, Ltd.

All photos, unless otherwise stated, are copyright Estate of Robert Aickman/British Library/R.B. Russell, and are not to be reproduced without permission and acknowledgement.

Correspondence between Robert Aickman and Edith Tyler, March 1937 to August 1940

One of the great loves of Robert Aickman’s life was Edith Tyler, whom he called ‘Eve’ in The Attempted Rescue, presumably to hide her identity. When his autobiography was published in 1966 she may have been still alive, and perhaps had a family. Recently discovered love letters exchanged by Robert and Edith corroborate many of the details he gave in The Attempted Rescue, but Aickman appears to have re-written their history in a few respects.

Robert and Edith met in 1937, at a time when both were living bohemian existences in London. It is not surprising he omitted to mention that when they became lovers she was a married woman. It is unclear whether Edith was estranged from her husband, but she and Aickman were at pains to keep their relationship out of the public eye, and especially unnoticed by her family. She was 29 and he was 23.

 
The letters are full of their love for each other, which is obviously sincere, although Aickman is by far the more conscientious and assiduous letter-writer. He makes a point of asking Tyler to preserve the letters, and she writes, ‘I know you like to keep track of your literary efforts’. At one point he says the letters may one day be published, and when their relationship ended she returned them all to him. Most of Aickman’s letters to Tyler contained an extra sheet of notepaper on which he quoted from his favourite writers, including Oscar Wilde, Gabrielle D’Anunzio and Oliver Onions.

It is clear that Aickman preserved their love letters for posterity, and he would have been able to consult them when writing The Attempted Rescue. Nevertheless, he knowingly altered the facts beyond what was required to simply preserve Edith’s privacy. For example, he wrote that they ‘moved into’ a disused windmill at Baldslow just before the start of the Second World War. It is offered as an important moment—the last period of true happiness he would ever experience in his life. He wrote to Audrey Linley in April 1940 that during the summer of 1939, he spent ‘three weeks in a windmill which I leased with some friends,’ which is a different story already. But the letters clearly show that it was Edith’s family who rented the Windmill, briefly, and that Aickman visited them on only a couple of occasions. (He left at one point because it was important for him to go to the first night of the Proms.)

He also wrote that when war broke out, Edith was sent to Liverpool ‘for a few weeks’ to be trained before departing for the West Indies. These details may have been made up so that she could not be identified, but when she moved to Liverpool she was to stay there for the rest of the war, and beyond. She went to work for the Postal Censorship (which greatly annoyed Robert), and while in Liverpool she met John Mallinson, whom she married. There may have been a very good reason for Aickman altering some of the facts, but it is strange that he felt the need to show her in a bad light by saying she thought he resented her for going to somewhere as nice as the (fictional) West Indies.

The correspondence between Aickman and Tyler is fascinating, not least for what it tells us about Aickman’s view of life when he was in his early/mid twenties. His interests and obsessions, his loves and fears, are all those that he appears to have carried into maturity. They reveal that an ordinary, conventional life of work and family was anathema to him; only the arts were of any importance to him. The arts . . . and love.

 
While protesting his love for Tyler, Aickman devotes an equal amount of time in his letters to the organisation of visits to the theatre and to concerts. He refers to himself as an artist, but it is not clear what creative work he may be doing, and no writing projects are mentioned. His ambitious philosophical work, Panacea, seems to have already been completed. He complains of having very little money, but he is unwilling to find employment. There is brief mention of him attempting to help set straight his father’s business affairs, but this is only in passing. Aickman’s claim that he and ‘Eve’ dreamed of living together in a studio is corroborated by the letters, and he may have been correct to say that to afford such accommodation would have meant finding employment to pay the rent. He implies they were both equally unrealistic, but during their relationship Eve was always employed, first in the Staff Training Department at Harrods department store in London, and later for the Censorship in Liverpool. It was Robert who was unwilling to find a job that would have meant they could have rented their studio and lived together. Aickman is dreaming of an ideal that he is unwilling to try and realise. 

Aickman also explains how they must not make onerous demands on each other and tie the other down. For him, their great love exists because they are free of commitment, and he makes it very clear that he does not believe in marriage. Their free and easy relationship seems to have appealed to Tyler as much as to Aickman, at least to begin with. He also discusses the fact that he is at ease with her seeing other men, as long as he is still considered the most important man in her life. Again, he dreams of an ideal, but must know it is unworkable. It seems he thinks the ‘miracle’ he failed to perform was to offer her marriage.

 

One can’t help thinking that in those worrying and uncertain times, as war loomed, Aickman found solace in romance, while Tyler enjoyed the attentions of a fervent young lover. She then met somebody who not only offered her love, but the development of a long-term, workable relationship. Aickman would spend the rest of his life looking for other women who would not spoil his dreams by engaging with the conventional, everyday world.

 

Edith is not quite honest with Robert as to when she was married, and she returns his letters stating that he has reminded her often enough how important his writing is to him. He would thus be able to keep both sides of the correspondence for posterity.

 

Robert Aickman: A Biography, by R.B. Russell, Tartarus Press, 2023

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Heather Smith, and Artellus, Ltd.

All photos, unless otherwise stated, are copyright Estate of Robert Aickman/British Library/R.B. Russell, and are not to be reproduced without permission and acknowledgement.