Rev Awdry 80th Anniversary

Rev W. Awdry 1911-97

(Jottings made from a reading of The Thomas the Tank Engine Man Brian Sibley

The Story of the Reverend W. Awdry and his Really Useful Engines 1995)

In the Beginning was the Word,

But there was also a tunnel at Box,

Where a young child christened Wilbert

Lay awake in his bedroom, dreaming

Of steam-coal railway conversations

Between sleek express and workaday tank engines.

Twenty-odd years later, in wartime,

Wilbert reprised this conceit

With stories to Christopher,

His measles-stricken son, in 1943;

Stories jotted down on odd bits of paper,

With a devoted father’s drawings too –

A format that Margaret thought worthy

Of seeking some sort of publication,

But relentless wartime austerity,

And a national shortage of paper,

Resulted in a series of rejections,

Until a new format was decided upon:

Four tales per book with the Reverend

Also providing draft illustrations

As a guide for the eventual artist:

“We should require eight illustrations, oblong in shape,

with appropriate text matter of about 80-90 words for each of the drawings.”

And so, Edward, Gordon and Henry were born:

The book sold well and then along came Thomas,

Not just in text and illustration,

But also at home in the Awdry household:

A bit of a broomstick and metal tube,

A paper-fastener, too, of course,

Finished off with some carpet pins and screws:

Lo and behold!

Thomas the Tank Engine!

Meanwhile, over in the real world,

The Railway Gazette proved invaluable –

Providing inspiration for further stories,

A branch line to Wilbert’s imagination;

But relationships with the artist,

Clarence Reginald Dalby

Finally hit the buffers in 1957,

On seen as a slightly fastidious pedant,

And one seen as slightly cavalier;

But Wilbert’s brother, George, was a God-send:

Fellow cartographer and historian

Of the mythopoeic Island of Sodor

(Sodor’s original provenance lay

In Wilbert’s mapping of the race between

Bertie the Bus and Thomas the Tank,

To show Christopher it was fair and square),

But what of devoted wife and mother, Margaret?

A busy life as a ‘railway widow …’

For Wilbert had his parish duties,

His time-consuming model railway,

His commitments to preserved railway lines,

His research for further railway stories,

And yet …

“If I hadn’t had the books to write, I should have gone crackers”

Although …

“I had no sooner finished the manuscript for one volume … than I had to start thinking about possible stories and looking for new characters for the next book. There was a gap in parish life, between the end of July and Harvest Festival, and it was then that I would start getting things down on paper.”

John Kenney took over as artist in 1957

(Dalby: “I was sorry to give up … but …my patience became exhausted”;

Awdry on Kenney: “We got on splendidly. He was as different from Dalby as chalk from cheese. He was interested in the work and used to go down to his station and draw railway engines from life.”)

And back in those still Imperial days

The books and associated merchandise –

Including an LP with the Rev’s voice –

‘Precise’ and ‘slightly singalong’ according to Sibley -

Made their way across five continents;

But, just like Steam, Empire was ending too,

And despite the famous City of Truro

Appearing in the illustrations,

With ‘The Thin Clergyman’ alongside,

So did Diesels …

“I keep thinking about the Dreadful State of the World, Sir. Is it true, Sir, what the diesels say?” “What do they say?” “They boast that they’ve abolished Steam, Sir.” “Yes, Gordon. It is true.” “What, Sir! All my Doncaster brothers, drawn the same time as me.” “All gone, except one.”

With this dystopian melancholy,

Was industry as much as imagination

Now driving the Reverend’s writing?

There was no Christopher now to test a tale upon,

But Margaret and a tape recorder helped,

But declining eyesight sadly meant

That Gallant Old Engine was Kenney’s swansong;

But the Reverend liked the new artist:

Peter Edward’s depictions of engines,

People and landscape were just the ticket,

As was an appearance on Desert Island Discs;

Choosing two records of steam trains and Johnny Morris

Recounting the Edward and Gordon story

Blew Roy Plumley’s mind in 1964.

1964 and 1965 were signal years:

First of all, retirement and then the decision

To move across the country to Stroud.

The Move to Rodborough Avenue

Stroud was ideal: on the railway line

To ageing parents in London and Worcester,

With a house big enough for a model railway;

So, with the gift of a front gate from Emneth,

A determination to clear the back garden

(“You couldn’t see out the back windows”),

The addition of LMS bridge plate number 30,

The renaming of the house as ‘Sodor’,

All meant that Rodborough Avenue became home,

And with joint involvement with Margaret

In the busy life of the local community,

And with a joint definition in text and picture

Of The Tin and The Fat Clergyman,

All was sweetness and light in Stroud …

But, alas, nothing lasts forever …

‘I felt I was getting rather stale … it was uphill work’ …

And in 1972 came the last of that wonderful series –

But we’ll now jump on a decade again,

To the era of Britt Allcroft’s drive and funding:

Here she is, speaking about a new medium:

“Television … could offer children and their grown-ups an experience that is similar to that which they have when they sit down to read a book together”,

And then, of course, along comes Ringo Starr

With that half-mythologised visit

To the Rev Awdry and Margaret in Rodborough Avenue:

Ringo and the Rev in Rodborough

http://radicalstroud.co.uk/ringo-and-the-rev-in-rodborough/

or at

https://sootallures.wixsite.com/topographersarms/post/ringo-and-the-rev-in-rodborough

But we jump on another decade:

What did Wilbert care for his entry in Who’s Who,

Grieving for Margaret who had died the year before,

‘I and our children are still in something of a daze at the suddenness of it’,

‘Margaret was a wonderful wife for a diffident author to have. It was entirely due to her, when The Three Railway Engines existed only in pencil on the back of old circular letters, that they ever got off the ground at all…’

Wilbert took flowers weekly to Margaret’s grave,

But Wilbert had to use a taxi,

But then fell and fractured a hip –

It was obviously a difficult time

Both for him and the wider family,

But he recovered to visit Didcot

For a ‘45th Thomas Anniversary’

And then the National Railway Museum,

Where his work was acknowledged as having

‘Played an enormous part in arousing children’s interest in railways’;

1994 was a watershed year,

With Wilbert President of the Dean Forest Railway,

And an engine named after him as well,

Christopher writing Wilbert the Forest Engine,

Where Thomas the Tank Engine and Wilbert meet:

So, a watershed year but also one

Effecting a certain circularity.

But then, in October, George died.

The final paragraph in the book

Concludes with an interview with Wilbert:

‘How would you like to be remembered?”

‘I would like my epitaph to say,

“He helped people to see God in the ordinary things of life,

and he made children laugh.”’

I’m so glad I got the book out of the library rather than off Amazon. A previous reader had written in neat pencil beneath the above ‘Amen 23/3/97

I thought the epitaph was almost William Blake-like:

‘To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.’