R. V. C. Bodley

Last updated

R. V. C. Bodley
R. V. C. Bodley restoration.jpg
R. V. C. Bodley, c. 1914
Birth nameRonald Victor Courtenay Bodley
Born(1892-03-03)3 March 1892
Paris, France
Died26 May 1970(1970-05-26) (aged 78)
Bramley, Surrey, England
AllegianceUnited Kingdom
Service/branchUnited Kingdom
Years of service1911–19
1939–43
Rank Major
Battles/wars First World War
Second World War
Awards Military Cross
Legion of Honour (France)
Order of the Black Star (France)
Order of the Crown (Romania)
Order of Wen-Hu (China)
Relations John Edward Courtenay Bodley (father)
Other workAuthor, screenwriter

Ronald Victor Courtenay Bodley, MC (3 March 1892 – 26 May 1970) was a British Army officer, author and journalist. Born to English parents in Paris, he lived in France until he was nine, before attending Eton College and then the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was commissioned in the King's Royal Rifle Corps and served with them during the First World War. After the war he spent seven years in the Sahara desert, and then travelled through Asia. Bodley wrote several books about his travels. He was considered among the most distinguished British writers on the Sahara, as well as one of the main western sources of information on the South Seas Mandate.

Contents

Bodley moved to the United States in 1935, where he worked as a screenwriter. He rejoined the British Army at the outbreak of the Second World War and was sent to Paris to work for the Ministry of Information. He later immigrated to the United States, where he continued to work as a writer and also as an advisor to the United States Office of War Information.

Early life and First World War

Bodley was born in Paris on 3 March 1892 to civil servant and writer John Edward Courtenay Bodley and Evelyn Frances Bodley (née Bell). He was the oldest of three children; his brother Josselin and sister Ava were born in 1893 and 1896 respectively. [1] His parents divorced in 1908. Bodley was a descendant of diplomat and scholar Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library, [2] and was, through his mother, a cousin of Gertrude Bell, [3] a writer and archaeologist who helped establish the Hashemite dynasties. He lived in France with his parents until he was nine. [2] His grandfather owned a Turkish palace in Algiers, which Bodley often visited as a child. [4]

Bodley was educated at a Lycée [5] in Paris before he was sent to Eton College and then to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. Bodley showed interest as a writer; he wrote poetry at Eton and for a cadet magazine at Sandhurst. [1] From Sandhurst he was commissioned in the King's Royal Rifle Corps as a second lieutenant in September 1911. [3] [6] He spent three years serving in a regiment in British India where he began to write and stage plays. His commanding officer once remarked "The plays are amusing. You're a credit to the regiment and all that, but did you join the army to become a soldier or a comedian?" Shortly thereafter the First World War broke out, [7] and Bodley was sent to the Western Front for four years. [8] He was wounded several times, [4] including by poison gas. [1] At the age of 26 he was given the rank of lieutenant colonel and command of a battalion. [5] He was appointed assistant military attaché to Paris [3] on 15 August 1918, [9] and attended the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. What he heard there reportedly made him feel that he and the millions of other soldiers had fought for nothing; [3] he wrote later that "selfish politicians [were] laying the groundwork for the Second World War – each country grabbing all it could for itself, creating national antagonisms, and reviving the intrigues of secret." [10] Disillusioned with the military, Bodley considered a career in politics [3] on the advice of the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. [4]

Gertrude Bell introduced Bodley to T. E. Lawrence. [3] Bodley met Lawrence one day outside the Paris Peace Conference and told him of his intent to move into politics. Lawrence responded furiously, calling him a moron and a traitor. When he replied that he had no other prospects now that the war was over and asked what he should do, Lawrence suggested "Go live with the Arabs." [3] Bodley said his conversation with Lawrence, which lasted "less than 200 seconds", proved to be life-changing. [10] He promptly sorted his affairs, and with a total of £300 and no prospects of further income, [11] went to live in the Sahara. His bemused friends held him a farewell party. They all agreed he would be back in six weeks; he stayed in the Sahara for seven years. [3]

Travels through the Sahara and Asia

Bodley spent his seven years in the Sahara desert living with a nomad Bedouin tribe. He purchased a herd of sheep and goats and used them as a source of income, hiring 10 shepherds to care for his flock. [4] He wore Arab dress, spoke Arabic, practised the Muslim faith and abstained from alcohol; [4] Bodley continued to be a non-drinker after leaving the Sahara. [7] He left the tribe on the advice of its chief, who told him there was no use in continuing to pretend to be an Arab. [4] In 1927 he wrote Algeria from Within, after being encouraged to do so by publisher Michael Joseph. [1] The book is based on his experiences living in French Algeria. [12] [13] The book's success greatly exceeded his expectations, prompting him to continue writing. [1] His first novel, Yasmina, was published later that year; it sold well and was reprinted. His next novel, Opal Fire, published the following year, was a commercial failure, but this did not discourage him from continuing to write. [1] Bodley regarded his time in the Sahara as "the most peaceful and contented years" of his life. [2] He was considered among the most distinguished British writers on the Sahara. [14]

"One of the strongest impressions I had when I lived with the Arabs, was the 'everyday-ness' of God. He ruled their eating, their travelling, their business, their loving. He was their hourly thought, their closest friend, in a way impossible to people whose God is separated from them by the rites of formal worship."

Ronald Bodley, commenting on life in the Sahara [15]

After leaving the Sahara, Bodley spent three months in Java working on a tea plantation, before travelling to China and Japan. [7] The success of Algeria from Within made it easy for him to obtain work as a journalist in Asia. He became a foreign correspondent for The Sphere in London and The Advertiser in Australia. [1] Bodley was one of several westerners to be granted access to the South Seas Mandate by Japan in the 1930s, [16] and he has been cited as one of the main sources of information on the area at the time. [17] The South Seas Mandate consisted of islands in the north Pacific Ocean that had been within the German colonial empire until occupied by Japan during World War I; Japan governed the islands under a League of Nations mandate. Like other westerners allowed to visit the region, he reported that there was no evidence that Japan was militarising the area. Bodley's movements were "carefully choreographed" by the Japanese Foreign Ministry. [1] He wrote about his experiences and findings in his 1934 book The Drama in the Pacific, saying that "having visited practically every island … I am convinced that nothing has been done to convert any place into a naval base". [17] In his 1998 book Nan'yo: the Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885–1945, Mark Peattie stated that while it is easy to accuse Bodley and the other writers of naivety, the militarisation of the area was complex and occurred in several stages. Bodley was a passenger aboard the ship Shizuoka Maru when it was wrecked on a reef north of Yap in April 1933. The vessel was lost, though there were no injuries. [18] Bodley was offered a job teaching English at Keio University, and did so for nine months; he wrote about the experience in his 1933 book A Japanese Omelette. [1] Bodley and Keio professor Eishiro Hori provided voluminous notes in the 1934 Japanese textbook version of Round the Red Lamp by Arthur Conan Doyle, [1] and in 1935 Bodley published a biography of Tōgō Heihachirō. [7]

Later life

In 1935 Bodley moved to the United States to work as a screenwriter, [7] leaving Japan aboard the Chichibu Maru . [1] In October 1936 Bodley was hired by Charlie Chaplin [19] to adapt the D. L. Murray novel Regency into a feature film. It was the first time Chaplin had hired someone to write a script; he had previously written his own scripts. [19] Bodley had a rough draft ready by January 1937, [20] and completed his work in March, but Chaplin abandoned the script in late May, [21] in favour of another project he was working on. [22] Bodley also worked on the script for the 1938 film A Yank at Oxford . [7] [23] In the United States, Bodley was known to his friends as "Ronnie" and was often referred to in the press as Bodley of Arabia. [1]

When the Second World War commenced, Bodley immediately rejoined the King's Royal Rifle Corps and was given the rank of major. [7] Regarded as too old for active service in the infantry, [8] [1] he was sent to work for the Ministry of Information in Paris. [7] He was in Paris when the German army invaded in May 1940. [4] According to the back cover of his book The Soundless Sahara, after the fall of Paris he went to work behind the German lines until he came under suspicion of the Gestapo, then escaped across the Pyrenees on foot. [5] A 2013 biographical journal article on Bodley by William Snell of Keio University made no mention of this work or escape, instead saying that Bodley stayed with his mother and stepfather near Bayonne after the invasion. According to Snell, after his mother and stepfather refused to leave, Bodley and three other Britons entered Spain via car, with the aid of a friend of Bodley's who worked at the British embassy in Madrid. Snell concluded his article by saying that while Bodley's life was adventurous, he did tend to dramatise it at times. [1] Bodley returned to the United States via Portugal. [4] Upon his return he focused on a career in writing and lecturing. [1] Bodley would go into complete isolation in order to write a book, spending about ten weeks to complete his work. [7] He wrote several of his books in York Harbor, Maine. [24] Bodley frequently gave lectures while travelling the United States, [25] speaking in almost every state and referring to himself as "Colonel" or "Major". [1] Having reached the mandatory age for retirement, he ceased to be a member of the British Army on 3 March 1943. [26] By 1944 he had become a US citizen and was an advisor to the Arabic desk of the US Office of War Information. [7]

In 1944 Bodley published Wind in the Sahara. [27] By 1949 the book was in its seventh edition and had been translated into eight different languages. [28] In 1945 he wrote the satirical novel The Gay Deserters, which was inspired by his flight from the German army. [8] It was not well received; [1] Robert Pick from the Saturday Review wrote "it isn't even humorous at all". [29] Bodley later said that his talents as a writer lay in non-fiction, adding that of "the many novels (...) and several plays [he] had written, four were published and two produced, and all failed to arouse any interest." [30] He wrote an essay entitled I Lived in the Garden of Allah, which was included in Dale Carnegie's 1948 self-help book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living . [2] In 1953 he wrote The Warrior Saint, a biography on Charles de Foucauld. John Cogley from The New York Times said Bodley had "written a clean, poetic and frankly admiring account" of Foucauld's life. [31] In 1955 he wrote the partly-autobiographical [28] self-help book In Search of Serenity. Elsie Robinson from The Index-Journal and Phyllis Battle from the Tipton Tribune gave favourable reviews, with Robinson calling it "a must for every rasped spirit". [32] [33] His next and final book, The Soundless Sahara, was published in 1968; according to the book's back cover he spent part of his years living in Massachusetts, and the rest in either England or France. [5] He provided information for the book The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia, by Phillip Knightley and Colin Simpson, which was published by Thomas Nelson in 1969. [34] He died on 26 May 1970 in a nursing home [1] in Bramley, Surrey. [35]

Personal life

Bodley married Ruth Mary Elizabeth Stapleton-Bretherton on 30 April 1917 [36] while on extended leave. [7] They had one son, Mark Courtenay Bodley, born 22 May 1918. His wife filed for divorce on the grounds that Bodley was adulterous and drank excessively. He did not contest the petition and the divorce was finalised on 8 June 1926. In his 1931 memoir Indiscretions of a Young Man, Bodley said the marriage was an "unfortunate action" which "proved the folly of very young people ignoring the advice of their parents." [1] In 1927 he married Australian Beatrice Claire Lamb, whom he met while travelling in North Africa. She filed for divorce around 1939. Bodley's son, who became a lieutenant in the Royal Armoured Corps, was killed in action in Libya in 1942; Wind in the Sahara is dedicated to him. In November 1949 Bodley married American divorcee Harriet Moseley; [1] according to The Soundless Sahara, published in 1968, they were still married. [5] According to William Snell, there is very little information on his last years, but he believed that Bodley's marriage to Moseley ended in divorce no later than 1969. [1]

Awards

Bodley was awarded the Military Cross in the 1916 Birthday Honours. [37] He was awarded the Croix de Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur by the President of France in 1919, [38] and appointed Officer of the Ordre de l'Étoile Noire in 1920, [39] Knight Officer of The Order of the Crown by Ferdinand of Romania in 1920, [40] and the Order of Wen-Hu (4th Class) by the Republic of China in 1921. [41]

Publications

Bodley published 18 books during his career: [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Albert Camus</span> French philosopher and writer (1913–1960)

Albert Camus was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall and The Rebel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Aldington</span> English writer and poet (1892–1962)

Richard Aldington was an English writer and poet. He was an early associate of the Imagist movement. His 50-year writing career covered poetry, novels, criticism and biography. He edited The Egoist, a literary journal, and wrote for The Times Literary Supplement, Vogue, The Criterion, and Poetry. His biography, Wellington (1946), won him the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georges Bernanos</span> French writer (1888–1948)

Louis Émile Clément Georges Bernanos was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. A Catholic with monarchist leanings, he was critical of elitist thought and was opposed to what he identified as defeatism. He believed this had led to France's defeat and eventual occupation by Germany in 1940 during World War II. His two best-known novels Sous le soleil de Satan (1926) and the Journal d'un curé de campagne (1936) both revolve around a parish priest who combats evil and despair in the world. Most of his novels have been translated into English and frequently published in both Great Britain and the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shūsaku Endō</span> Japanese writer (1923–1996)

Shūsaku Endō was a Japanese author who wrote from the perspective of a Japanese Catholic. Internationally, he is known for his 1966 historical fiction novel Silence, which was adapted into a 2016 film of the same name by director Martin Scorsese. He was the laureate of several prestigious literary accolades, including the Akutagawa Prize and the Order of Culture, and was inducted into the Roman Catholic Order of St. Sylvester by Pope Paul VI.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lawrence Hill</span> Canadian novelist, essayist, and memoirist (born 1957)

Lawrence Hill is a Canadian novelist, essayist, and memoirist. He is known for his 2007 novel The Book of Negroes, inspired by the Black Loyalists given freedom and resettled in Nova Scotia by the British after the American Revolutionary War, and his 2001 memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. The Book of Negroes was adapted for a TV mini-series produced in 2015. He was selected in 2013 for the Massey Lectures: he drew from his non-fiction book Blood: The Stuff of Life, published that year. His ten books include other non-fiction and fictional works, and some have been translated into other languages and published in numerous other countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Bodley Head</span> British publishing company

The Bodley Head is an English book publishing imprint of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1887 by John Lane and Elkin Mathews, The Bodley Head existed as an independent entity or as part of multiple consortiums until it was acquired by Random House in 1987 alongside sister companies Jonathan Cape and Chatto & Windus. Random House used The Bodley Head as a children's book imprint until April 2008, when it was repositioned as an adult non-fiction imprint within the Vintage Books division.

Donald Culross Peattie was an American botanist, naturalist and author. He was described by Joseph Wood Krutch as "perhaps the most widely read of all contemporary American nature writers" during his heyday. His brother, Roderick Peattie (1891–1955), was a geographer and a noted author in his own right. Some have said that Peattie's views on race may be considered regressive, but that expressions of these views are "mercifully brief and hardly malicious".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kafū Nagai</span> Japanese writer, editor and translator

Kafū Nagai was a Japanese writer, editor and translator. His works like Geisha in Rivalry and A Strange Tale from East of the River are noted for their depictions of life of the demimonde in early 20th-century Tokyo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sherard Vines</span>

Walter Sherard Vines (1890–1974), known as Sherard Vines, was an English author and academic. He began publishing poetry in the 1910s, then in the 1920s spent five years teaching at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan. While in Japan and after his return to England, where he took up a post at University College Hull, he continued to publish poetry, fiction and criticism. His works include The Course of English Classicism from the Tudor to Victorian Age (1930), a study of classicism in British art; Yofuku, or, Japan in Trousers (1931), a travel book about his experiences in Japan which was critical of aspects of Japanese culture; and A Hundred Years of English Literature (1959), a survey of the literature of Britain, the British Empire and the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isabelle Eberhardt</span> Swiss explorer and writer

Isabelle Wilhelmine Marie Eberhardt was a Swiss explorer and author. As a teenager, Eberhardt, educated in Switzerland by her father, published short stories under a male pseudonym. She became interested in North Africa, and was considered a proficient writer on the subject despite learning about the region only through correspondence. After an invitation from photographer Louis David, Eberhardt moved to Algeria in May 1897. She dressed as a man and converted to Islam, eventually adopting the name Si Mahmoud Saadi. Eberhardt's unorthodox behaviour made her an outcast among European settlers in Algeria and the French administration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marquis de Morès</span> French duelist, frontier ranchman, railroad pioneer and politician

Marquis de Morès et de Montemaggiore was a French duelist, frontier ranchman in the Badlands of Dakota Territory during the final years of the American Old West era, a railroad pioneer in Vietnam, and antisemitic politician in his native France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Mus</span>

Paul Mus (1902–1969) was a French writer and scholar. His studies focused on Vietnam and other Southeast Asian cultures.

Pierre Guyotat was a French literary avant-garde writer who wrote fiction, non-fiction, and plays. He is best known for his 1967 novel Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats, about his experiences in the Algerian War, and his 1970 novel Eden, Eden, Eden, which was banned for its explicit content. Many of his novels are set in imaginary north African war zones. Idiotie won the Prix Medicis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">P. J. Kavanagh</span> English poet, lecturer, actor, broadcaster and columnist (1931 – 2015)

P. J. Kavanagh FRSL was an English poet, lecturer, actor, broadcaster and columnist. His father was the ITMA scriptwriter Ted Kavanagh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Millar (writer)</span>

George Reid Millar DSO MC was a Scottish journalist, soldier, author and farmer. He was awarded the Military Cross (MC) in early 1944 for escaping from Germany while a prisoner of war and making it back to England, which he wrote about in his 1946 book Horned Pigeon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ikuhiko Hata</span> Japanese historian (born 1932)

Ikuhiko Hata is a Japanese historian. He earned his PhD at the University of Tokyo and has taught history at several universities. He is the author of a number of influential and well-received scholarly works, particularly on topics related to Japan's role in the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Edward Courtenay Bodley</span> English civil servant

John Edward Courtenay Bodley was an English civil servant, known for his writings on France.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean-Noël Pancrazi</span> French author (born 1949)

Jean-Noël Pancrazi is a French author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vladimir Pozner (writer)</span> French writer and translator

Vladimir Solomonovich Pozner was a French writer and translator of Russian-Jewish descent. His family fled the pogroms to take up residence in France. Pozner expanded on his inherited cultural socialism to associate both in writing and politics with anti-fascist and communist groups in the inter-war period. His writing was important because he made friends with internationally renowned exponents of hardline communism, while rejecting Soviet oppression.

Norman George Denny, also known under the pseudonyms Norman Dale and Bruce Norman, was an English writer and translator.

References

Citations

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Snell, William (2013). "R. V. C. Bodley ("Bodley of Arabia") at Keio University, 1933" (PDF). The Hiyoshi Review of English Studies (63). Keio University: 17–49. Retrieved 3 February 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Carnegie 1981, p. 280.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Englishman in the Garden of Allah". The Sydney Morning Herald . 9 August 1947. Retrieved 18 July 2010.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Flanner, Janet; Maloney, Russell; Kinkead, Eugene (27 February 1943). "Bodley of Arabia". The New Yorker . Retrieved 2 February 2015.(subscription required)
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Bodley 1968.
  6. ↑ "No. 28532". The London Gazette . 19 September 1911. pp. 6882–6882.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 McCollough, Trudy (23 July 1944). "Writer Bodley Loves His Quietude". Abilene Reporter-News . p. 50.
  8. 1 2 3 Bodley 1945.
  9. ↑ Dutton 2001, p. 164.
  10. 1 2 Carnegie 1981, p. 281.
  11. ↑ Bodley 1955, p. 149.
  12. ↑ Pond, Alonzo (March 1928). "Algeria from Within. by R. V. C. Bodley". American Journal of Sociology . 33 (5): 844–845. doi:10.1086/214565.
  13. ↑ p., W. C.; Bodley, R. C. (October 1927). "Algeria from within – R.C. Bodley". The Geographical Journal . 70 (4). The Royal Geographical Society: 398–399. doi:10.2307/1782074. JSTOR   1782074.
  14. ↑ Speake 2003, p. 886.
  15. ↑ Cranston 1949, p. 171.
  16. ↑ Peattie 1992, p. 245.
  17. 1 2 Peattie 1992, p. 246.
  18. ↑ Peattie 1992, pp. 333–334.
  19. 1 2 "News and Comment of Stage and Screen". Fitchburg Sentinel . 26 September 1936. p. 10.
  20. ↑ Graham, Shiela (26 January 1937). "Nothing to Harlow, Taylor Romancing". Lincoln Evening Journal .(subscription required)
  21. ↑ Flom 1997, p. 118.
  22. ↑ Robinson 1992, pp. 482–483.
  23. ↑ Glancy 1999, p. 220.
  24. ↑ Nickerson, Row. W (15 February 1948). "World Traveler, Author to Speak Tonight at Bowdoin College". Portland Sunday Telegram. Portland, Maine. p. 52.
  25. ↑ "News of the Yorks". Portland Sunday Telegram. Portland, Maine. 5 December 1948. p. 38.
  26. ↑ "No. 35926". The London Gazette (Supplement). 2 March 1943. p. 1065.
  27. ↑ Bailey 1963, p. 326.
  28. 1 2 "Nomad Contracts to Publish Book About Serenity". Kingsport Times-News . 24 April 1949. p. 27.
  29. ↑ Pick, Robert (24 November 1945). "'Tempest Tost' Guests of U.S.A.: The Gay Deserters by R. V. C. Bodley". Saturday Review . p. 32.
  30. ↑ Bodley 1955, p. 66.
  31. ↑ Cogley, John (10 May 1953). "The Saint of the Sahara". The New York Times .(subscription required)
  32. ↑ Robinson, Elsie (21 June 1955). "Listen, World!". The Index-Journal. Greenwood, South Carolina. p. 2.
  33. ↑ Battalle, Phyllis (15 April 1955). "Assignment America". Tipton Tribune. Tipton, Indiana. p. 2.
  34. ↑ Knightley 1969, p. vii.
  35. ↑ "No. 45238". The London Gazette . 26 November 1970. p. 13034.
  36. ↑ "Marriages". The Tablet . 5 May 1917. p. 24. Archived from the original on 19 February 2015. Retrieved 19 February 2015.
  37. ↑ "No. 29608". The London Gazette (Supplement). 2 June 1916. pp. 5570–5571.
  38. ↑ "No. 31222". The London Gazette (Supplement). 7 March 1919. pp. 3279–3280.
  39. ↑ "No. 31812". The London Gazette (Supplement). 5 March 1920. p. 2868.
  40. ↑ "No. 31812". The London Gazette (Supplement). 5 March 1920. p. 2874.
  41. ↑ "No. 32268". The London Gazette (Supplement). 22 March 1921. p. 2388.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.