Tag: life

My Namesake Clive

Dedication page from The Cornish Fox by CHB Kitchin

You know me, if you know me at all, as Jim Preen or more fully Jim Charles Preen. But it didn’t start out that way. My parents called me, in fact Christened me, Charles Harvey Clive Preen.

I was welcomed into the arms of the Lord by a family friend; a Canon in the Church of England. Apparently, a Canon is a member of the clergy attached to the local cathedral. My not very religious parents used to refer to him as Canon Bang.

For reasons best known to them (Dad John and mum Peggy, long since deceased) they immediately dispensed with the names they’d given me and started calling me Jim. I’ve been known as Jim ever since.

During the 1990s I put in a ten-year stint with ABC News and used to travel the world on their dime. Inevitably we visited places that required visas to the extent we used to have two passports. One in use, the other on the news desk which harvested visas for the next destination. The cry would then go up: Who the hell is Charles Preen? At some point I thought this is ridiculous, I’ve been called Jim forever let’s take the plunge and change my name – so I went from Charles Harvey Clive to Jim Charles.

Sorry it’s been a bit long-winded but as you’ll see I needed to make this clear. In my mouthful of names, the one I want you to concentrate on is Clive.

My dad served throughout World War 2 in the army, progressing from 2nd Lieutenant to Lieutenant-Colonel. For obvious reasons promotion can be rapid during a war and he saw some of the worst of it in Egypt and then fighting his way up through Italy. He was injured and remained for the rest of his life with shrapnel in his body that couldn’t be removed.

Once demobbed and having pocketed some money from his time at the front he and a friend set up a business, a lumber yard. It went bust and in short order he lost all his money. At which point and I don’t know the details, his Uncle Clive, a relatively wealthy accountant stepped in and bailed him out. My dad was eternally grateful to his uncle and added his name to mine as a token of respect.

I have since discovered Clive led an interesting life. But before we get to that I need to introduce another character to this story: CHB Kitchin. He was a novelist whose first five novels were published by Virginia Woolf’s company the Hogarth Press. His first book Streamers Waving appeared in 1925. He was a glamorous, young novelist of his day and caused something of a splash even if the books didn’t sell very well.

Lack of sales eventually prompted him to write a detective story called Death of my Aunt, which sold rather better. He went on to write four crime novels and thereafter struggled to get huge interest in his other books.

He too was a somewhat distant family friend, and we had various of his books on the shelf when I was growing up. One of which, I remember my mum telling me, was thought to poke fun at the Preen family. It was called Olive E; I’ve read it and can’t see what all the fuss was about. If you get hold of that book, and it’s by no means easy these days, you’ll see it’s dedicated to Clive Preen, as indeed are many of his other novels.

As I subsequently discovered Clive Preen was gay and he and Clifford Kitchin were lovers for many years. Kitchin might not have made much money from his books, but he was a wealthy stockbroker and as already mentioned Preen was far from poor. A degree of wealth meant they were able to conduct a discreet gay relationship for fourteen years. This ended in tragedy at the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool in 1944 when Preen had a major heart attack and died. Kitchin had to pretend they were merely friends but in truth he was heartbroken.

In 1993 I went with ABC News to Liverpool to cover the burgeoning drug scene in the city. We stayed at the Adelphi Hotel. I had no idea my great uncle and namesake Clive Preen had died in the same place almost fifty years before.

If you like a novel you might want to dig out Kitchin’s best book The Auction Sale or perhaps Ten Pollitt Place. They are dated but perhaps because of the family connection I’ve become very fond of his work.

Anyway, here’s to Clive Preen my namesake, a decent man who lived a gay life when it was by no means easy to do so.

Things move pretty fast

You can send a text message and get an almost instant reply. You can send an email loaded with documents and similarly get a lightning-fast response. To which you’re all thinking, yes Jim, we know this. Don’t you have something fresh to say? To which the answer is no I don’t really, as this is more of a mini history lesson.

Although communication is now powered by grease lightning, whatever the hell that is, it wasn’t quite so slow in the past as today’s younger generation may think.

In the mid part of the last century there were five collections and deliveries of mail every day. If you sent a letter in the morning, you could receive a reply by the afternoon. People conducted love affairs by post.

Once Alexander Graham Bell had figured out the telephone you could chat. Initially people might have been ear wigging your most intimate conversations thanks to the unsecure nature of the party line. This is where you had to share a telephone number and wait your turn. Of course, as soon as people realised you could listen to what your neighbour was saying the fun began. The phone hacking of the 1990s was nothing new, but you did run the risk of hearing something wildly uncomplimentary about yourself.

And what about telegrams? I’m old enough to remember my parents taking me to weddings where aside from making a bright and witty speech insulting the groom the best man’s other duty was to assemble and read the telegrams sending congratulations from friends and family who couldn’t attend. These early forms of text messages were sent by wire and then sent on their way by motorbike. And they were expensive. During the early part of the 20th century telegrams cost 6 pence for 12 words; any extra words cost a halfpenny each. A letter posted at the same time would cost a penny. Grams were therefore six times as expensive so unless you were wealthy, they were rarely used.

During World War 1 they acquired much darker associations. Official telegrams were the way families learnt somebody had been wounded, was missing or had been killed. Telegram messengers were said to deliver messages from heaven and hell. An unexpected telegram messenger appearing at your door during wartime could be terrifying.

But of course, anything that involves human communication soon finds people wanting to be funny. American humourist Dorthy Parker sent a telegram to a friend who had just had a baby saying: I knew you had it in you.

Robert Benchley, a writer on the New Yorker telegrammed his editor on arriving in Venice saying: Streets full of water. Please advise.

The playwright George Berhard Shaw is supposed to have telegrammed Winston Churchill with the message: I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play. Bring a friend — if you have one.

To which Churchill shot back: Cannot possibly attend first night. Will attend second — if there is one.

Trouble with that story is it may never have happened as there is no proof but why let facts get in the way of a good story? It’s too good not to be true.

In conclusion we weren’t so slow out of the blocks in days gone by and we weren’t constantly staring at our phones.

You may be wondering why there is a picture of a spotty Trabant at the top of this article. They never moved very fast, but I like the picture and I didn’t have anything suitable for this post.