Beware family history! A write up by Ceridwyn Parr
Imagine discovering that your grandfather was considered utterly immoral, very disagreeable, and indeed shocking.
The notorious grandfather was Thomas Keable. He became instantly more famous when his explicit erotic and irresistible novel was part of the scene of a high society murder.
What a way to start a U3A lecture! We were all on the edge of our seats for more salacious and delicious details.
And how fascinating they were, as told by his intrigued grandson, Simon Keable- Elliott.
Thomas Keable was an Anglican Priest, highly educated and well respected as serious and theological writer. But his life took a turn during WW1 when he was sent as a British Army padre to France. He was shocked and traumatised by the conditions, the behaviour of the men, the attitude to the South African Labour Corps, the callousness of the War Office… he lost his faith and found solace, empathy and love with a civilian Canadian woman driver, Jolie.
Subsequently, he wrote a thinly disguised novel about the moral decay of those times, Simon called Peter. This included a very descriptive and explicit final section dubbed‘ the hotel chapters’. There were both highly positive reviews and outraged critical excoriation. I was reminded of the Patricia Bartlett years in New Zealand.
Simon described in dramatic detail the censorship by the Lord Chamberlain in England, the banning of the play, the great success of the sequel called ‘Recompense” which was made into a film, and the huge amount of money which Robert earned.
Controversy followed Thomas Keable wherever he travelled, including to New Zealand, on highly successful lecture tours. A NZ journalist and writer, Hector Bolitho, described him as ‘having the finest mind’, and being ‘beyond humbug’, while in the USA, a librarian was fined 100 pounds for just lending the book.
In trying to find peace in a media frenetic world, he and his beloved de facto wife, Jolie, finally moved to Tahiti.
Their idyllic life there, in Gaugin’s former home, white verandas. palm trees swaying in the oceanic breezes, literary salons- was all too short- the whole U3A audience sighed in sadness when we heard that Jolie died from chloroform poisoning while giving birth to their first child.
We were even more sad to hear that, after finding happiness again, this time with a Tahitian princess – ravishingly beautiful of course- he died only a month after his second child was born.
Just 40 years old, with a life in England, Africa, France and Tahiti, Robert Keable has left a rich and colourful legacy of a young man finding his own truth in a time of huge social change in the first decades of last century.
Simon Keable- Elliott is the latest in a line of biographers and researchers who have worked hard to extract truth from fiction, the known from the secret, and the public from family. Simon told us of the difficulty of doing family research when his father was totally opposed to ‘digging up the past’, and when war records are strangely unavailable.
After the most entertaining and informative lecture, U3A members of memoir groups besieged Simon with questions, as did those with an interest in war, and writing. The rest of departed with so much more knowledge, some great stories and deep compassion for a young man in search of himself.
This short review has not covered everything, but you can read more on Simon Keable-Elliott’s website
