Deluge

Introduction

I N T R O D U C T I O N Sydney Fowler Wright was born on 6 January 1874in the Midlands town of Smethwick. He was the son of Stephen Wright (1841-1936), an accountant, and Emily Gertrude Fowler (1843-82). He was sent to King Edward'sSchool in Birmingham,but he left in January 1885, having completed only two terms, shortly after his eleventh birthday. Later in life Fowler Wright1 offered various flippant explanations for his early removal from formal schooling, all of them excuses arising from a keenly felt obligation to avoid mentioning the fact that his father had run into severe financial difficulties —an embarrassment that eventually caused Stephen Wright to emigrate to the United States in 1895. The same strict code of etiquette made Fowler Wright equallyreluctant to mention or discuss the financial hardships that he experienced more than once in the course of his own career, although the spur provided by financial necessity was certainlya powerful force in shaping his literarywork. The main consequence of Fowler Wright's removal from school was that he had to take responsibilityfor his own education, and he did so with an altogether typical determination. He was exceptionallymethodical as well as highlyintelligent, and he applied himself assiduously to his own idiosyncraticcurriculum,developing his language skills by means of the intensivestudy of literarytexts. The central figure in his studies of his own language was SirWalter Scott; meanwhile, he studied Italian by making his way through Dante's Divine Comedy and French by reading Alexandre Dumas, preferringdirect engagement with literary exemplifications of the languages in question to more orthodox forms of "secondhand" learning. This was typical of his attitude to life and knowledge; he was alwaysa determinedlyindependent thinker,ever ready to form and trust his own judgments, with scant regard for common opinion. Although the members of his immediate family were devout Baptists—his father was a lay preacher and one of his sisters became a missionary—he became a resolute freethinker.2 His defection from dogmatic faith did not prevent his retaining a strong sense of xi moral conviction, based in a sincere admiration of Christ's principles, or adopting a sternlyascetic lifestyle cast in a puritanical mold. He did not smoke or eat meat, very rarely drank alcohol, and exercised with rare determination, taking a great delight in walking and in the countryside . He was also a keen cyclist(a hobbyhe shared with H. G.Wells); during the 1890s he undertook several extensive cycling tours, including expeditions through Franceand Belgium. Although he had no formal qualifications,Fowler Wright followed his father into the profession of accountancy. He married Nellie (Julia Ellen) Ashbarry in 1895; she was a well-educated woman of considerable social status, with a strong interest in literature, and the marriage must have increased his fervor for self-education as well as fostering his ambition to write. Nellie was to bear him six children before her death in 1918: Islaine (1900-1936), Gilbert (1902-36), Esther (1905-90), Roger (1906-82), Alan (1907-99) and Katherine (1908-2001). He subsequently married Truda (Anastasia Gertrude) Hancock in 1920; she was the mother of four further children: Valerie (b. 1924), Yolande (1926-95), Diana (b. 1928), and Nigel (1932-87).3 Although he and Nellie had not much money to start with, Fowler Wright made a considerable success of his first career. They lived in various rural locations in the Midlands before settling in 1910 in Storrage House, Beoley,near Alvechurch,although Nellie's poor health required her to spend the winters in the Welsh seaside town of Barmouth (she was eventually buried in Beoley). During his first marriage Fowler Wright developed a keen interest in all things natural; he kept numerous domestic animals and became an enthusiastic gardener—attempting, among other projects, to produce a green carnation.4 The interests that were later to manifest themselves in Fowler Wright's literary work, and the opinions that were to be robustly dramatized therein, were crystallized while he was still working as an accountant . He became a fervent libertarian, deeply antipathetic to what he saw as a continuing erosion of individual freedom and responsibility by legislation and bureaucracy. He had a profound dislike of the police and other agents of the law, on account of their increasing intrusion into matters that ought to have been none of their concern. He was a passionate believer in natural justice and felt that the "justice" promoted bycontemporary English courts was a crude...