Dr. Edward Thompson
Author of Poetry, Plays, and Novels
Dr. Edward Thompson, M.C., Ph.D., Spalding Senior Research Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, formerly university lecturer in Bengali and writer of verse, novels, plays, and historical books, died at Bledlow, Buckinghamshire, yesterday.
Edward John Thompson, born in 1886, was educated at Kingswood School, Bath, and at London University. He entered the Methodist ministry and went to India in 1910 as an educational missionary. There he was appointed to Bankura College, Bengal. During the 1914-1915 war he served in Mesopotamia as a chaplain to the forces, was mentioned in dispatches, and for gallant conduct in rescuing and tending the wounded under fire was awarded the M.C. He was transferred in 1918 to Palestine, where he met and married Miss Theodosia Jessup, daughter of an American missionary in the Lebanon, who was a nurse in a Jerusalem hospital. Mrs. Thompson later collaborated with her husband in some of his dramatic works. At the end of the 1914-1918 war he returned to Bankura as principal of the college, but retired in 1922 and came back to England. Shortly after his return he became lecturer in Bengali in the University of Oxford, and in 1925 was admitted to Oriel College, of which he became an M.A. A few years later he was appointed to a Leverhulme Research Fellowship in Indian History, and that, together with special grants made to him by the Rhodes Trustees, enabled him to revisit India three times. In 1936 he was elected a Fellow of Oriel as the first holder of a Research Fellowship in Indian History endowed at that college by Mr. H. N. Spalding.
As an author Thompson made use of various literary forms, publishing volumes of poetry, lyrical and dramatic; history, Indian and English; novels and plays; together with essays and shorter pieces. He also wrote on current political problems, chiefly Indian, and edited for a period the series of 6d. brochures entitled “Augustan Poets,” which dealt with extracts from the works of more than 100 authors. One hundred of his selected poems, published in 1944, showed how genuine and deepseated was his inspiration; and his dramatic verse, and his translations of extracts from the works of his friend the Indian poet the late Sir Rabindranath Tagore, were distinguished for their command of poetical diction.
He was deeply concerned with Indo-British relations and he did much valuable work in explaining to British audiences the sources of Indian nationalism. The chief of his publications were a Life of Raleigh; “The Rise and Development of British Rule in India” (with the late Mr. G. T. Garratt); a Life of Sir Charles Metcalfe; and “The Making of the Indian Princes.” Of his works of fiction “An Indian Day,” “These Were My Friends,”[sic] which dealt with the campaign in Mesopotamia, “Burmese Silver,” and “The Youngest Disciple,” and imaginative description of the wanderings of the Buddha, are perhaps the best known. He also wrote novels of middle class life, such as “Introducing the Arnisons” and “John Arnison,” based on the experiences of his youth. Among his shorter works his “Cithaeron Dialogues,” imaginary Socratic conversations, first published in 1924 attracted attention. Thompson will doubtless be remembered chiefly as a master of English prose. It was his power over that medium of expression, combined with his poetical genius, which made him a literary critic whose judgment could be relied upon whenever the value of contemporary work as literature was in question.
His widow survives him with one son. His elder son, Major W. F. Thompson, R.A., distinguished himself greatly in the 1939-45 war. He volunteered for parachute duties, and was dropped behind enemy lines in Bulgaria to assist the partisans. Captured when leading a party of them, he was given a mock trial and was shot, in spite of the British uniform which he wore. It was reported that his gallant behaviour and his bold defence of himself and his companions, conducted by him in Bulgarian, made a profound impression on all who witnessed the trial.
(The Times. Monday April 29 1946. p. 7.)
Dr. Edward Thompson
An Appreciation
A friend writes:—
Edward Thompson was now and then called “formidable” by those who little knew him, but to his friends (and they were legion) he was the most lovable of men. His spirit of fun abounded—in his joyous family life, in his talk and letters: with incredible speed “Servus Servorum” would tap-tap-tap from his typewriter a sparkling river of gay, witty, irresponsible nonsense—often, however, brimming with his love of “Bulwade” (Oxford). He enlivened the Common Room of the college that he loved, and that loved him. He loved cricket, literally and metaphorically. He fought like a hero in the trenches outside Kut (so vividly described in “These Were My Friends”[sic]), was the father of a hero if ever there was one, and fought the last long painful fight heroically. He was that rather rare combination in an Englishman, a writer and a statesman: a genius, not without a touch of the waywardness of genius, offset by the tact and wisdom of his devoted American wife.
A historian who disinterred truth from the perishing archives of India, a novelist who painted the Indian scene in brilliant colours, he was a master of the unforgettable phrase: “the mist that served him for a mind,” the Maratha confederacy “useful from its very quality of ramshackle elasticity,” India revealed as “something too majestic to be only pillaged.” Above all he was the friend of India, and it is by that title that he will be remembered, if historians know their business. Hindus, Muslims, Untouchables, British—he sought to bring them all together. Most of the members of the working committee of Congress were his friends, some of them close friends, who trusted him as they trusted hardly any other Englishman except the late Lord Lothian. Often himself misunderstood, his aim was always mutual understanding, rapprochement, reconciliation. As he lay dying he hoped and believe that India would now gain her independence and enjoy it within the British Commonwealth. His trust was in God.
(The Times. Saturday May 4 1946. p. 7.)
Thompson, Edward John (1886–1946), teacher and writer, was born on 9 April 1886 at Hazel Grove, Stockport, the eldest son of John Moses Thompson (1854–1894), from near Penrith, and his wife, Elizabeth Penney (1851–1928), both Wesleyan missionaries to south India. Mission compounds and Madras beaches were Edward’s earliest memories. In 1892 his father’s failing health forced them home, with five children and a sixth born at their Colwyn Bay parish. After she was widowed, Elizabeth raised them in near poverty at Stockport. From the Wesleyan school there Edward went to the Methodist Kingswood School, Bath, from 1888 to 1902. His record promised an Oxford or Cambridge scholarship and he early saw poetry as his vocation, but poverty forced him into several years of clerking in a Bethnal Green bank. All his life he bitterly regretted that lost educational opportunity; in many respects he was self-educated, although in 1909 he earned an external London University BA. In 1908 he entered Richmond Theological College; after ordination in 1910, he went to Bankura Wesleyan college, Bengal, to teach English literature, ever his absorbing interest.
Thompson’s first period there, to 1916, coincided with Lord Hardinge’s term as viceroy and the crucial changes in Bengal’s politics after annulment in 1911 of Lord Curzon’s 1905 Bengal partition. Thompson viewed those changes in relation to the controversial advance and growing unrest of the educated middle classes. Contrary to government policy, he agreed with his friend Percy Comyn Lyon, Bengal’s education secretary, that more education, not more policing, was the solution. He came to share also Lyon’s view that dominion status, not independence, was India’s best future hope.
Thompson as teacher was a signal success, but Bankura was isolated and its Wesleyan atmosphere oppressive; colleagues looked askance at his poetic aspirations. He found satisfaction in association, from 1913, with the poet Rabindranath Tagore, and in study and translation of Bengali poetry and short fiction, at a time when most Western readers were unaware of the existence of serious, artistic literature in Indian vernaculars. Tagore’s friendship and Nobel prize were inspiring but also exemplified early difficulties in East–West literary exchange. Although Thompson saw poetry as his own vocation, friends such as William Canton, the poet and historian of the British and Foreign Bible Society, had to convince him that he excelled also in prose.
Thompson served as chaplain in Mesopotamia from 1916 to 1918, with the 2nd Royal Leicestershires. Although he doubted that he had a chaplain’s qualifications, he did well in this post, and a Military Cross recognized his conspicuous service to the wounded under fire. His powerful memoir, The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad (1919), testifies to his skill as prose writer, his success as battlefield padre, and his everlasting convictions about the wasteful cruelty of war. In 1918 he was posted to Jerusalem, where he met and married, in 1919, Theodosia Jessup (1892–1970), daughter of the American Presbyterian missionary William Jessup. He returned to Bankura College as acting principal, and found changed educational requirements and colleagues who underestimated the power of Gandhi’s non-co-operation and of student protests. Under those circumstances Thompson saw little hope for progress and in 1923 moved to Oxford as lecturer in Bengali. He resigned Wesleyan ordination and began a writing career. He became a Leverhulme research fellow (1934–6), and honorary fellow and research fellow in Indian history at Oriel College (1936–40). He preserved Indian contacts, and Congress Party leaders trusted him sufficiently that, in 1939, while there on a cultural mission for the Rhodes trustees, he accompanied Nehru to the secret debate on India’s role in the Second World War. As a freelance journalist, he endeavoured to interpret India for the West and the West for India, as in his coverage of the 1930–32 round-table conference.
Thompson followed Indian politics and literature closely. The Amritsar massacre of 1919 so angered him that with other missionaries he joined a minority protest that attracted much animosity. He examined Indian history and culture in works such as A History of India (1927), Suttee (1928), and The Life of Charles, Lord Metcalfe (1937). The Other Side of the Medal (1925) analyses the Indian perspective on the 1857 mutiny, and The Reconstruction of India (1930) pleads for new beginnings in British-Indian relations. From Indian literature, he translated medieval devotional lyrics, and stories from Tagore. Rabindranath Tagore: his Life and Work (1921) and Rabindranath Tagore: Poet and Dramatist (1926) were the first significant Western assessments of Tagore’s work. The latter earned Thompson a PhD from London University, and some sharp criticism in India because it was not exclusively laudatory. Throughout, Thompson wrote poetry, and his later volumes, such as New Recessional (1942) and 100 Poems (1944), were superior to his earlier work in intensity and precision. His novels, Introducing the Arnisons (1935) and John Arnison (1939), encapsulate his experience of growing up Wesleyan, while six novels with Indian settings use Bankura and other Indian experiences; verisimilitude, striking personalities, and loving descriptions of flora, fauna, and countryside distinguish them.
Thompson attacked mindless prejudice in the strongest terms, but also with wit that could disarm his critics. If he left formal Wesleyanism he kept an evangelistic passion for causes he espoused. High on that list were justice for India and the end of wars.
The Thompsons settled on Boars Hill, Oxford, neighbours of the poet laureate, of whom Edward wrote a biography, Robert Bridges (1944). They had two sons: (William) Frank Thompson (1920–1944), who died in Bulgaria in a secret intelligence unit; and the historian Edward Palmer Thompson (1924–1993). Edward John Thompson died of stomach cancer on 28 April 1946 at his residence at Saunders Close, Bledlow, Buckinghamshire and was buried in Bledlow church.
Wealth at Death: £1875 1s. 2d.: probate, 6 Dec 1946.
(Oxford Dictionary of National Biography)