Oliver W F Lodge
Encyclopedia
Oliver William Foster Lodge (born Newcastle-under-Lyme
11 August 1878; died Cirencester
17 April 1955), was a poet and author; he was the eldest son of Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940), the physicist
, and his wife Mary (née Marshall), who had studied painting at the Slade
. His five brothers all qualified as engineers, so that he was the only one of the boys with literary leanings, although their uncle Sir Richard Lodge and their aunt Eleanor Constance Lodge
both became distinguished academic historians. They grew up in Liverpool
, close to Sefton Park
, and frequented the Rathbone family
of Greenbank House
.
, Liverpool University and the University of Paris
. He worked as an architect with Detmar Blow
for some years, but otherwise lived on a private income provided by his father.
O. W. F. Lodge’s published works included What Art Is (1927); Six Englishmen (six tributes in verse, to Marlowe
, Jonson
, Shelley
, Keats
, Swinburne
and William Morris
); Summer Stories (1911), a collection of stories, prose poems and fables; Poems (210pp); Love's Wine Corked; a poem in twenty-four measures (1948); The Betrayer and other poems (1950); and The Things People Do, a collection of short stories published posthumously in 1966. He also wrote The Labyrinth: a tragedy in one act, based on Fair Rosamond by Thomas Miller
(1847), which was first performed by The Pilgrim Players (which later became the Birmingham Repertory Company
) in 1911 .
Lodge married twice and had four children: Oliver (1922-2009) by his first marriage, to Winifred Atkinson, known always as Wynlane; and Belinda (1933-1996), Tom
(1936- ) and Colin (1944-2006) by his marriage, secondly, to the Welsh painter Diana Violet Irene Mabel Uppington (1906-1998).
Marrying after a 12 year courtship, Lodge and his wife Wynlane settled at Upper Holcombe near Painswick
, Gloucestershire, in a farmhouse belonging to Detmar Blow. After Wynlane's death in childbirth in 1922, Lodge lived in Cheyne Walk
, Chelsea
, painting and writing, and frequented the Bloomsbury Group
and the Catholic artists Eric Gill
, David Jones
and Sydney Sheppard.
Ten years later Diana Uppington arrived on his doorstep answering his advertisement for a nude model (she had already modelled for both Eric Gill
and Duncan Grant
, after a short spell on stage with the Tiller Girls
). She asked him if he liked poetry - he replied that poetry was his life. After their marriage in 1932 they moved to a country cottage called Tanleather in Forest Green, Surrey, on the estate of Oliver's friend R. C. Trevelyan
. Belinda and Tom were born there. Belinda's elder son, born in 1951, is the mathematician David Trotman
. Lodge planned to settle in Paris with his young family in 1939 after spending a year in Valmondois
with the anglophile French painter Charles Geoffroy-Dechaume and their families.
After the outbreak of war Lodge returned to England and then took his young family first to Canada, during which period Oliver and Diana got to know well Lynn Chadwick
(later a prominent sculptor) and his first wife the Canadian poet Ann Secord. But very soon they moved to Maryland
and settled in Virginia
in the United States. Here Lodge taught English literature at various institutions including Ursinus College
, Pennsylvania
, Goucher College
in Baltimore, and the College of William and Mary
in Williamsburg
. In Virginia, they first lived at "Bay Cottage", Naxera
, until they moved to "The Little House", Elmington
, Gloucester
, Virginia.
On returning to England in 1946 Lodge settled near Painswick
, Gloucestershire, at Cud Hill House, on the Hilles estate of Detmar Blow's wife Winifred and son Jonathan (Lodge's godson), where the family stayed until 1959.
After Lodge's death in 1955, his widow Diana Lodge changed her name by deed poll to Diana Kohr, taking the name of the Austrian economist and political scientist Leopold Kohr
, who had befriended Oliver and Diana in Virginia during the Second World War. Diana changed her name back to Lodge in 1966 when she and Kohr separated. Lodge's will guaranteed his widow a sizeable income until she remarried, which was thus an obstacle to her eventual marriage with Kohr, as she explained in a 1993 television documentary about her life.
Some 200 letters written by O. W. F. Lodge to his father between 1908-1940 are held in the University of Birmingham
archives, part of the Papers of Sir Oliver Lodge.
Newcastle-under-Lyme
Newcastle-under-Lyme is a market town in Staffordshire, England, and is the principal town of the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme. It is part of The Potteries Urban Area and North Staffordshire. In the 2001 census the town had a population of 73,944...
11 August 1878; died Cirencester
Cirencester
Cirencester is a market town in east Gloucestershire, England, 93 miles west northwest of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in the Cotswold District. It is the home of the Royal Agricultural College, the oldest agricultural...
17 April 1955), was a poet and author; he was the eldest son of Sir Oliver Lodge (1851-1940), the physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
, and his wife Mary (née Marshall), who had studied painting at the Slade
Slade School of Fine Art
The Slade School of Fine Art is a world-renownedart school in London, United Kingdom, and a department of University College London...
. His five brothers all qualified as engineers, so that he was the only one of the boys with literary leanings, although their uncle Sir Richard Lodge and their aunt Eleanor Constance Lodge
Eleanor Constance Lodge
Eleanor Constance Lodge, CBE, was born on 18 September 1869 at Hanley, Staffordshire. She was Vice-Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford from 1890 to 1921 and then Principal of Westfield College, Hampstead, in the University of London from 1921 to 1931...
both became distinguished academic historians. They grew up in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, close to Sefton Park
Sefton Park
Sefton Park is a public park in south Liverpool, England. The park is in a district of the same name within the Liverpool City Council Ward of Mossley Hill, and roughly within the historic bounds of the large area of Toxteth Park...
, and frequented the Rathbone family
Rathbone family
The Rathbone family of Liverpool, England, were a family of non-conformist merchants and shipowners, whose sense of high social consciousness led to a fine tradition of philanthropy and public service....
of Greenbank House
Greenbank House
Greenbank House, is a Grade II listed building, located in Liverpool, England. It stands within the University of Liverpool's Greenbank Halls of Residence site, between Greenbank Road and Greenbank Lane.- Original House :...
.
Life and works
He was educated at Eastbourne CollegeEastbourne College
Eastbourne College is a British co-educational independent school for day and boarding pupils aged 13–18, situated on the south coast of England, included in the Tatler list of top public schools. The College's current headmaster is Simon Davies. The College was founded by the Duke of Devonshire...
, Liverpool University and the University of Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
. He worked as an architect with Detmar Blow
Detmar Blow
Detmar Jellings Blow was a British architect of the early 20th century, who designed principally in the arts and crafts style. His clients belonged chiefly to the British aristocracy, and later he became estates manager to the Duke of Westminster...
for some years, but otherwise lived on a private income provided by his father.
O. W. F. Lodge’s published works included What Art Is (1927); Six Englishmen (six tributes in verse, to Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...
, Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
, Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...
, Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
, Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic. He invented the roundel form, wrote several novels, and contributed to the famous Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica...
and William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
); Summer Stories (1911), a collection of stories, prose poems and fables; Poems (210pp); Love's Wine Corked; a poem in twenty-four measures (1948); The Betrayer and other poems (1950); and The Things People Do, a collection of short stories published posthumously in 1966. He also wrote The Labyrinth: a tragedy in one act, based on Fair Rosamond by Thomas Miller
Thomas Miller (poet)
Thomas Miller , poet and novelist, was born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, the son of George Miller, an unsuccessful wharfinger and ship-owner who deserted his wife and two sons in 1810. Thomas grew up in Sailors Alley, and one of his childhood friends was the future journalist Thomas Cooper...
(1847), which was first performed by The Pilgrim Players (which later became the Birmingham Repertory Company
Old Rep
The Old Rep is a theatre located in Station Street in Birmingham, England, managed by Birmingham City Council.Construction began in October 1912 and it was opened on February 15, 1913 with a performance of Twelfth Night and then a reading by its founder, Barry Jackson, of a poem written by John...
) in 1911 .
Lodge married twice and had four children: Oliver (1922-2009) by his first marriage, to Winifred Atkinson, known always as Wynlane; and Belinda (1933-1996), Tom
Tom Lodge
Tom Lodge is an English author and radio broadcaster.-Early life:Lodge was a figure in British radio of the 1960s. He was a disc jockey on Radio Caroline. Caroline and other pirates forced the government to deregulate radio, hitherto a monopoly of the BBC...
(1936- ) and Colin (1944-2006) by his marriage, secondly, to the Welsh painter Diana Violet Irene Mabel Uppington (1906-1998).
Marrying after a 12 year courtship, Lodge and his wife Wynlane settled at Upper Holcombe near Painswick
Painswick
Painswick is a small town in Gloucestershire, England. Originally the town grew on the wool trade, but it is now best known for its parish church's yew trees and the local Rococo Garden. The town is mainly constructed of locally quarried Cotswold stone...
, Gloucestershire, in a farmhouse belonging to Detmar Blow. After Wynlane's death in childbirth in 1922, Lodge lived in Cheyne Walk
Cheyne Walk
Cheyne Walk , is a historic street in Chelsea, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. It takes its name from William Lord Cheyne who owned the manor of Chelsea until 1712. Most of the houses were built in the early 18th century. Before the construction in the 19th century of the busy...
, Chelsea
Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an area of West London, England, bounded to the south by the River Thames, where its frontage runs from Chelsea Bridge along the Chelsea Embankment, Cheyne Walk, Lots Road and Chelsea Harbour. Its eastern boundary was once defined by the River Westbourne, which is now in a pipe above...
, painting and writing, and frequented the Bloomsbury Group
Bloomsbury Group
The Bloomsbury Group or Bloomsbury Set was a group of writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists who held informal discussions in Bloomsbury throughout the 20th century. This English collective of friends and relatives lived, worked or studied near Bloomsbury in London during the first half...
and the Catholic artists Eric Gill
Eric Gill
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement...
, David Jones
David Jones (poet)
David Jones CH was both a painter and one of the first generation British modernist poets. As a painter he worked chiefly in watercolor, painting portraits and animal, landscape, legendary and religious subjects. He was also a wood-engraver and designer of inscriptions. As a writer he was...
and Sydney Sheppard.
Ten years later Diana Uppington arrived on his doorstep answering his advertisement for a nude model (she had already modelled for both Eric Gill
Eric Gill
Arthur Eric Rowton Gill was a British sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement...
and Duncan Grant
Duncan Grant
Duncan James Corrowr Grant was a British painter and designer of textiles, potterty and theatre sets and costumes...
, after a short spell on stage with the Tiller Girls
Tiller Girls
The Tiller Girls were among the most popular dance troupes of the 1900s, first formed by John Tiller in Manchester, England, in 1890. Whilst on visits to the theatre, Tiller had noticed the overall effect of a chorus of dancers was often spoiled by lack of discipline. Tiller found that by linking...
). She asked him if he liked poetry - he replied that poetry was his life. After their marriage in 1932 they moved to a country cottage called Tanleather in Forest Green, Surrey, on the estate of Oliver's friend R. C. Trevelyan
R. C. Trevelyan
Robert Calverly Trevelyan was an English poet and translator, of a traditionalist sort, and a follower of the lapidary style of Logan Pearsall Smith.-Life:...
. Belinda and Tom were born there. Belinda's elder son, born in 1951, is the mathematician David Trotman
David Trotman
David John Angelo Trotman is a mathematician, with dual British and French nationality. He was born on September 27, 1951 in Plymouth, Devon, England, a grandson of the poet and author Oliver W F Lodge and a great-grandson of the physicist Sir Oliver Lodge...
. Lodge planned to settle in Paris with his young family in 1939 after spending a year in Valmondois
Valmondois
Valmondois is a commune in the Val-d'Oise department in Île-de-France in northern France.-Local attractions:*Musée des tramways à vapeur et des chemins de fer secondaires français* Musée de la Meunerie-References:** -External links:* * *...
with the anglophile French painter Charles Geoffroy-Dechaume and their families.
After the outbreak of war Lodge returned to England and then took his young family first to Canada, during which period Oliver and Diana got to know well Lynn Chadwick
Lynn Chadwick
Lynn Russell Chadwick CBE was an English artist and sculptor trained as an architectural draughtsman,but began producing metal mobile sculpture during the 1940s. Chadwick was born in London and went to Merchant Taylor's School.Chadwick was commissioned to produce 3 works for the 1951 Festival of...
(later a prominent sculptor) and his first wife the Canadian poet Ann Secord. But very soon they moved to Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
and settled in Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
in the United States. Here Lodge taught English literature at various institutions including Ursinus College
Ursinus College
Ursinus College is a liberal arts college in Collegeville, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.-History:1867Members of the German Reformed Church begin plans to establish a college where "young men could be liberally educated under the benign influence of Christianity." These founders were hoping to...
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, Goucher College
Goucher College
Goucher College is a private, co-educational, liberal arts college located in the northern Baltimore suburb of Towson in unincorporated Baltimore County, Maryland, on a 287 acre campus. The school has approximately 1,475 undergraduate students studying in 31 majors and six interdisciplinary...
in Baltimore, and the College of William and Mary
College of William and Mary
The College of William & Mary in Virginia is a public research university located in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States...
in Williamsburg
Williamsburg
Williamsburg may refer to:*Williamsburg, former name of Kernville , California*Williamsburg, Colorado*Williamsburg, Florida*Williamsburg, Dunwoody, Georgia*Williamsburg, Indiana*Williamsburg, Iowa*Williamsburg, Kansas*Williamsburg, Kentucky...
. In Virginia, they first lived at "Bay Cottage", Naxera
Naxera, Virginia
Naxera is an unincorporated community in Gloucester County, in the U. S. state of Virginia.-References:...
, until they moved to "The Little House", Elmington
Elmington, Virginia
Elmington is an unincorporated community in Gloucester County, in the U. S. state of Virginia.-References:...
, Gloucester
Gloucester Courthouse, Virginia
Gloucester Courthouse is a census-designated place in and the county seat of Gloucester County, Virginia, United States. The population was 2,269 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Gloucester Courthouse is located at ....
, Virginia.
On returning to England in 1946 Lodge settled near Painswick
Painswick
Painswick is a small town in Gloucestershire, England. Originally the town grew on the wool trade, but it is now best known for its parish church's yew trees and the local Rococo Garden. The town is mainly constructed of locally quarried Cotswold stone...
, Gloucestershire, at Cud Hill House, on the Hilles estate of Detmar Blow's wife Winifred and son Jonathan (Lodge's godson), where the family stayed until 1959.
After Lodge's death in 1955, his widow Diana Lodge changed her name by deed poll to Diana Kohr, taking the name of the Austrian economist and political scientist Leopold Kohr
Leopold Kohr
Leopold Kohr was an economist, jurist and political scientist known both for his opposition to the "cult of bigness" in social organization and as one of those who inspired the small is beautiful movement...
, who had befriended Oliver and Diana in Virginia during the Second World War. Diana changed her name back to Lodge in 1966 when she and Kohr separated. Lodge's will guaranteed his widow a sizeable income until she remarried, which was thus an obstacle to her eventual marriage with Kohr, as she explained in a 1993 television documentary about her life.
Some 200 letters written by O. W. F. Lodge to his father between 1908-1940 are held in the University of Birmingham
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...
archives, part of the Papers of Sir Oliver Lodge.
Publications
- ‘A Song of Working Men’, Cornish Brothers, Birmingham, 1897
- ‘Summer Stories’, Cornish Brothers, Birmingham, 1911
- ‘The Labyrinth: a tragedy in one act’, David Nutt, 1911
- ‘The End of an Age’, Cornish Brothers, Birmingham, 1912
- ‘Spurgeon Arrives’, 1912 (a one-act comedy)
- ‘Poems’, Cornish Brothers, Birmingham, 1915
- ‘Six Englishmen’, Cornish Brothers, Birmingham, 1915
- ‘The Schooling of Trimalchio’, 1920 (a tragi-comedy in three acts)
- ‘Love in the Mist’, E. F. Millard, Painswick, 1921 (a book of verse)
- ‘The Pindar of Wakefield’, 1921 (one-act play)
- ‘The Case is Altered’, 1921 (one-act comedy)
- ‘What Art Is', Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1927
- ‘The Candle’, 1938
- ‘Love's Wine Corked; a poem in twenty-four measures’, Gloucester, 1948
- ‘The Betrayer and other poems’, Gloucester, 1950
- ‘The Things People Do’, published privately, London, 1966