Introduction
The letters sent by the English composer Michael Tippett from Wormwood Scrubs Prison, where, a conscientious objector, he spent two months in summer 1943, form a remarkable and important sequence, illuminating not only Tippett's life and compositions but the experience of a gaoled objector to the Second World War. Four prison letters had been thought to survive, documenting in detail his imprisonment, which included turning pages for Benjamin Britten during a recital in the chapel, and conducting the prison orchestra. In 2023 a fifth letter was found, its discovery reported in the national press.Footnote 1 Its publication is intended to complement the previously released documents, completing what is now a series of five until such time as a collected edition of Tippett's letters, of which only a fifth has seen print, can be undertaken.Footnote 2
Tippett (1905–1998) registered as a conscientious objector on 25 November 1940, nine days after being called up to the Second World War. He was summoned to a tribunal on 3 February 1942 and, after support from among others Ralph Vaughan Williams, was ordered to perform non-combatant duties. Such a prospect, which involved being given a military rank and uniform, was incompatible with Tippett's absolutist-pacifist beliefs. He appealed the ruling, which on 5 May 1942 was downgraded to civilian work; he was ordered to become a labourer in Buckinghamshire. His refusal led to his being called to trial, on 21 June 1943, at Oxted Police Court in Surrey. Failing to satisfy the magistrates that he had a reasonable excuse for his failure to comply with the terms of his exemption from military duties, he was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment at Wormwood Scrubs. His sentence reduced to two months for good behaviour, he was released on 21 August.Footnote 3
From prison he was permitted a single correspondent. He chose to write to Evelyn Maude (1891–1971), a friend whose initially passionate feelings for him (they had been neighbours in the Surrey town of Oxted for some 20 years) cooled, on realisation of his homosexuality, into an intimate companionship. Quietly but not publicly sympathetic to Tippett's socialist and pacifist beliefs, Maude made an ideal correspondent, and her connections to the many strands of his life, personal and professional, allowed her to organise a great deal in his absence, more effectively perhaps than many to whom Tippett was close during the Second World War. Friends such as the writer Francesca Allinson or his then lover Douglas Newton were leading peripatetic and troubled existences; Newton, also an objector, had narrowly escaped imprisonment himself, and would have been dismissed as a possible correspondent by the authorities, who subjected each and every letter to censorship.
History of the Prison Letters
Until 2023, four letters sent from Tippett to Maude from Wormwood Scrubs were known to survive, evidently written once every Monday fortnight from the first night of his imprisonment: on 21 June, on 5 July, on 19 July and on 16 August.Footnote 4 Each letter is on a booklet of official prison paper, filled in by Tippett on the first page with his prison number (5832), his name and the date, with ‘Wormwood Scrubs’ officially stamped beneath; there follows a list of regulations ‘as to communications, by Visit or Letter, between prisoners and their friends’. The handwriting, owing to the limited space, is necessarily small.
The documents remained in possession of Evelyn Maude and her daughter, Tippett's god-daughter, Stella Maude. Images of the manuscripts were published in 1977 in a catalogue for the travelling exhibition A Man of Our Time.Footnote 5 Complete transcriptions were then included in Tippett's autobiography, Those Twentieth Century Blues, and reproduced (with minor transcription differences) in his Selected Letters.Footnote 6 In 2004, the manuscripts were donated to the Tippett Collection at the British Library, where they are now catalogued as MS Mus. 1752, ff. 26–32.
On the death of Stella Maude, in 2022, a hitherto unknown letter, written by Tippett on Wormwood Scrubs paper, was discovered by her executor, Alice Nissen, on, coincidentally, 21 June 2023, 80 years to the day after Tippett's sentence. Nissen, Stella's niece, kindly sent me a photograph: ‘This has probably been known about and photocopied years ago but I'm wanting to know if there's an archive like the British Library where it should go, rather than be lost in a family drawer. Any thoughts?’Footnote 7
My thoughts were that, far from being known about and photocopied, the document was a new discovery, a missing link in what should, given the fortnightly pattern, have been a quintet of letters written in the Scrubs. The ‘missing’ letter runs to 1,410 words and is written into a bifolium of official prison paper comprising three sides of handwriting (f1v; f2r; f2v). f1r is given over, as with the others, to official prison rubric. On the bottom right-hand corner of f1v is a small doodle, made in pencil (as opposed to the ink of the handwriting): a circle with six lines coming from it, perhaps an insect. f1 has for reasons unknown had a centimetre removed (neatly cut, rather than torn), omitting Tippett's name, the date of the letter and roughly three lines of the handwriting verso, although it is hard to think that the letter might have opened with anything incriminating or worthy of deliberate censorship. The document therefore starts in medias res (‘Next visit…’), omitting any greeting to Evelyn Maude, although she is clearly the recipient. The date can almost certainly be pinpointed to 2 August 1943, the ‘missing’ Monday between the already known letters a fortnight either side (on 19 July and on 16 August). This date is further verified by the letter's content, with mentions of a recent concert by Walter Goehr on ‘17th’ (a Wigmore Hall performance of Tippett's Double Concerto, on 17 July 1943) and an imminent Britten–Pears concert on ‘Saturday’ (an outing of Tippett's cantata Boyhood's End, on 5 August).
The Missing Letter
Tippett's letters from prison, written when he was 38, catch him at a time when his reputation was far from established. Much of his early adulthood had been dedicated to community music-making and music education, either in the North of England or with the Co-operative Society, where his work espoused the far-left politics he eventually abandoned. From 1940 he was Director of Music at Morley College, an adult education college in South London, leading the choir in an innovative and important concert series. In the summer of 1943 only eight pieces in his official catalogue (of 75) had been completed, some of which – including his oratorio A Child of Our Time (finished in 1941) – had yet to reach a premiere.
Like Tippett's other letters from prison, the document from 2 August is a pleasing combination of spiritual rumination (‘The inner world is the secret of this strength…’) and prison practicality (‘my other coloured-handle toothbrush’). The colour of a toothbrush handle or an idle doodling can be as valuable in the conveying of history as the most hifalutin psychological meditations. The fine-grained detail of the letter (‘prs of tennis-shoes with toe-holes!’) tells the reader a great deal about the person who wrote it and the times in which he lived, when any confusion over a double room being booked between two men, as seems to have been the case in a mix-up for which the letter apologises, was cause for concern. The cast list – musicians John Amis and Antony Hopkins; conductor Walter Goehr and writer Francesca Allinson; Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears – is star-studded, and mentions of Tippett's innovative programming at Morley College (Weelkes and Warlock) and of his gestating symphony, eventually ‘No. 1’, are illuminating.
Most noteworthy of all is the final paragraph, where, as was typical for Tippett the letter writer, he embarks on honest and acute self-analysis, pondering his relationship with younger objectors in prison (among them the artist Arnold Machin), and concedes, as if for future readers, the value of his correspondence in showing a private rather than public face: ‘The letters show you the Michael that is not shown to my fellows here, or the young friends.’ The prison sentence is newly revealed as a turning point between youth and encroaching middle-age: ‘I do seem to have lost the nostalgia for adolescence I used to have’, a statement that intrigues in the light of Tippett's having recently completed, in May 1943, his cantata Boyhood's End, with a text by W. H. Hudson that, evoking a magical childhood in Argentina, celebrates or even memorialises that very nostalgia (‘I want only to keep what I have’). As Tippett predicts: ‘a new “me” will replace the old, as well as the habitual cottage–work life return’.
The letter is a significant addition to our knowledge of Michael Tippett's life and of the experience of conscientious objectors imprisoned during the Second World War. In August 2023 the document was donated to the British Library, and is now catalogued as MS Mus. 1943.Footnote 8
Editorial Methods
In an effort to convey the atmosphere of the letter I have included all of Tippett's misspellings, punctuation, shorthand and abbreviations, annotating where necessary; underlinings are his. His corrections are also retained, indicated in the text by superscript following a caret: ^. The letter uses various symbol abbreviations for ‘and’, which I have unified to an ampersand, and alternates between square and round brackets, which I have unified to round, using square solely for any editorial annotation. I have retained Tippett's paragraph breaks, which he indicated not by starting a new line and wasting space, but by a vertical bar: |. Varying usage of double and single quotation marks are Tippett's own. When corrections led him to strike through text so thickly as to render it illegible, I have given xxx.
The Letter
Next visit: I think I shld like to see BergmannFootnote 9 [illegible] visit a week ahead it will be Wed: in next week, if that isn't granted then Wed in my last week. AmisFootnote 10 can bring him. I want to talk music & Morley for the autumn etc. I'll send you a letter as usual. You might warn Bergmann of this & p'raps ring up John [Amis] & see if O.K. | Now for clothes: my other coloured-handle toothbrush, toothpaste, shaving-brush, razor-blade, hairbrush, scissors from the 2nd draw [sic] down of the music-shelves under the phone: (& at the same time, from that draw, my P.O. [Post Office] Savings Book 2394 – not the 5185 wh has Income Tax money etc!) mackintosh, & prs of tennis-shoes with toe-holes! (not the brand-new pr.) 2 white shirts with unfrayed cl collar, 2 do [ditto] with frayed collar for hike etc (4 in all); bathing-slip if there or on loan ^from someone; 2 woollen socks (green, grey), 2 cotton socks; plenty of hanks [handkerchiefs]; my ordinary black shoes, rubber-soled, for walking (only v. best here with me); my grey with zip-faster [sic] & ^my green pullovers; the 2nd best grey tweed jacket that wants a ^ lowest button (please sew one on!), a pr of flannel trousers (have only my best suit here); my 2 maps of CornwallFootnote 11 (behind the sofa); ^& blue & green shorts corduroy (2), all to go in all there in the big ruck-sack from my clothes cupboard. And the sack to John at LPO [London Philharmonic Orchestra] or to Ben's,Footnote 12 where I will change from my suit after the concert, & where I hope p'raps to have supper, & with Den,Footnote 13 if B.B. [Britten] agrees. And now for the day: will you bring my music-case for the books, mack if you think necessary & if rucksack not at Bens one of the clean, good shirts ^& clean hank. We'll breakfast & bath at Bens: then I want hair-cut etc – eventually FrescaFootnote 14 & John & any others at the NewFootnote 15 for lunch: then concert: & then as the night train leaves at 9.50 & there is fear of a huge crowd we ought to be at Padd [Paddington Station]: by 8-30. So I ought to go straight back to Ben's for a last meal & change etc. | Wld you ask Bergmann to let John have for me for Cornwall copies of the chosen WeelkesFootnote 16 stuff for Morley, as I must look at it in that week (I believe I remember a piano). Also ask TonyFootnote 17 or John to obtain a copy of Warlock:Footnote 18 1o Corpus Christi: sop:bar:str 4tet (Curwen 1932) 2o Corpus Christi : contralto, tenor, chorus (Curwen 1919); 3o Cornish Christmas Carol (Boosey 1918). | Wld you write GoehrFootnote 19 for me & thank him heartily for the 17th – say I'm quite sure that eventually he will do the recording (any chance does he think thro Walter xxx Legge?);Footnote 20 shall want to see him as soon as maybe to talk over what he thought of it. | Will you see if John has got the Morley autumn concert bills out & RoseFootnote 21 has some for mailing: the first is only 5 weeks off! (Sept 11th). | TolworthFootnote 22 claim form: every time I went you must claim for fares: write once on the back of the form “Return Oxted – Clapham Junction 4/5, do Clapham-Tolworth 1/7 –, then on the front in the proper places “so many journeys at 6/– = so much”. Will add up to a few pounds. | I gather Tony is taking Tolworth next term on request: however this has come about am v. pleased to be released. | Wld you like to ring or write Gerald CooperFootnote 23 & say that I hope I haven't alarmed him by my conduct, that I wish him all success for his series, that I hope to be at the 21st, & to make it a rendez-vous for reappearance, & can I have 2 nice seats on the gang-way not too near (Fresca, I) – & if he feels like it one or two more nearby for friends.Footnote 24 | Please ring Ben & PeterFootnote 25 & wish them everything herzlich [heartfelt] for Saturday – my blessings on them & it. | The Rose problem worries me. She has written already 9 letters to Fletcher who sensibly hasn't let on till he heard from mother.Footnote 26 John & Tony told me she was so possessive of the choir it threatened to make everything impossible. I never of course asked her to meet me; what a thought! & as for “spending the day”, I never have nor will do any such thing. If you can prepare the ground for a serious set-to when I get out, I wish you would. Its got to be made clear to her that I do not give her a thought, nor do I feel my life in any way bound up with hers. So it is really not my doing this time abt the 21st, but Rose really excelling herself. Please be as frank as you can be, & let mother be so too. I shall find out from Tony & John & Bergmann what the choir business amounted to & will act according [sic], later. | The symphony doesn't move overtly very much & I don't force it.Footnote 27 Life “in association” is more communal & gayer thereby & more natural, if less privacy. Also I am much stronger again. I don't think I shall be so v. done-up on release; & I gather the boys have decided on a car from Truro to Portloe.Footnote 28 I fancy the period of the other plane is fairly over in here – & quite definitely I am unlikely to go ascetic outside by voluntary effort. But I dare say the enforced stoppage will have been a v. real gain. And I take yr remarks on emotional susceptibility with common-sense. Actually one is emotional only en masse or for some sudden contact with the authorities, or news – but not at all with the individual fellow, or hardly at all - & never with the young. I seem quite safe there. I have a gay & young self & an older; & another inner & so on. I think it will be alright in Cornwall, except that they will all wish to mother & father me! But I'm sorry to have been so inept over my domestic affairs at Portloe. I didn't see it at the time in that light. Its really only Tony & AlisonFootnote 29 for whom it's a more serious matter. I merely meant to have left in the holiday plans the very sensible ordering when booking the rooms to say “2 double, & one single”. Actually it may come out like this anyhow as I think it will suit them easier. DavidFootnote 30 & I had a double room I remember. I merely thought it wld save bother to specify: but I forgot in the hurry & flurry of getting ready for prison. So there we are. Actually I'm astonishingly neutral here & able to contact anyone. The young conchies take me for 26 or so & only v. few older men come forward with appeals to one's maturer experiences.Footnote 31 It's a v. happy temperament, because I do seem to have lost the nostalgia for adolescence I used to have, & am perfectly ready to be with them, of them, or not at all as circumstances or predilection dictate. The inner world is the secret of this strength I realise: & the result of all the xxx ^chaotic struggles of the earlier days.Footnote 32 Also you yrself must take in account that the letters show you the Michael that is not shown to my fellows here, or the young friends. I am instinctively careful not to impose maturer emotions on them, but to let them set the pace. I think you need have no fear. Yet I need this youthful gaiety as well as the other; from you, from David, Fresca & books & one's own communion. Like you I value regularity, as this compulsory upheaval assures me. In here I have the illusion I shall never (!) be in the cottage again.Footnote 33 I suppose to some extent a new ‘me’ will replace the old, as well as the habitual cottage–work life return. Time moves gradually if laboriously. Am reading a life of Wilfred Scawen Blunt;Footnote 34 v. good. I shall get terribly impatient as we near the end. Love to everyone – & in our own way to you.
Michael
