F. W. Harvey

Frederick William Harvey DCM (26 March 1888 – 13 February 1957), often known as Will Harvey, and dubbed "the Laureate of Gloucestershire", was an English poet, broadcaster and solicitor whose poetry became popular during and after World War I.

Early life
Harvey was born in 1888 in Hartpury, Gloucestershire, and grew up in Minsterworth. He was educated at the King's School, Gloucester, where he formed a close friendship with Ivor Gurney, and then at Rossall School. Gurney and Herbert Howells, another local composer, would set a number of his poems to music.

He started on a legal career, which would always be somewhat tentative; and began to consider conversion to Roman Catholicism.

World War I
On 8 August 1914, only four days after the United Kingdom had declared war on Germany, Harvey joined the 5th battalion of the Gloucestershire Regiment as a private. Shortly afterwards, in November, he became a Roman Catholic. He was an adherent of the distributism movement, described as a "third way", in opposition to both socialism and capitalism; and he was influenced by the work of G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc.

His battalion was posted to France in March 1915, where he was promoted to lance corporal and awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal. His citation for the DCM reads:

"2371 Lance-Corpl. F.W. Harvey, 1/5th Gloucestershire R[egiment]. (T.F.)

For conspicuous gallantry on the night of Aug. 3-4, 1915, near Hebuterne, when, with a patrol, he and another non-commissioned officer went out to reconnoiter in the direction of a suspected listening-post. In advancing they encountered the hostile post, evidently covering a working party in the rear. Corporal Knight at once shot one of the enemy, and, with Lance-Corporal Harvey, rushed the post, shooting two others, and, assistance arriving, the enemy fled. Lance-Corporal Harvey pursued, felling one of the retreating Germans with a bludgeon. He seized him, but, finding his revolver empty and the enemy having opened fire, he was called back by Corporal Knight, and the prisoner escaped. Three Germans were killed, and their rifles and a Mauser pistol were brought in. The patrol had no loss."

He returned to England for officer training, but after being commissioned and returning to France he was captured on 17 August 1916 in the German front-line trench while carrying out a reconnaissance patrol. He spent the remainder of the war in prisoner-of-war camps, including those at Gütersloh, Crefeld, Schwarmstedt, Holzminden, Bad Colberg, and Stralsund.

Writing
Soon after his arrival in France, Harvey had begun to contribute to a trench newspaper, the Fifth Gloucester Gazette. His first volume of poems, A Gloucestershire Lad At Home and Abroad, was published in 1916, shortly before his capture. He began to write more intensively in captivity, and poems were sent back to England for publication: his second collection, Gloucestershire Friends, appeared in 1917. His time in the camps is held to be his most productive period of writing. On returning from a spell of solitary confinement at Holzminden after a failed escape attempt, he saw that a fellow prisoner had drawn a picture of ducks in a pool of water over his bed in chalk. This inspired his most celebrated poem (and the title poem of his third collection, published in 1919), "Ducks".

Post-war life
Harvey returned home in 1919, married in 1921, and returned to legal practice. He became a respected and loved figure in the Forest of Dean. He worked largely as a defence solicitor (his own captivity convincing him that incarceration was destructive and pointless), and became known as the "poor man’s solicitor". His work was not financially successful, and in the 1930s he sold his practice.

In 1920 he published a memoir of his prison-camp experiences, Comrades in Captivity; and in 1921 Farewell, the title an acknowledgement of his intention to remove himself from the literary world. He had a brief creative union with his great friend and collaborator, Ivor Gurney, which was cut short by Gurney’s mental breakdown.

His gift for oration, versatile voice and scripting led him to become a popular broadcaster at the BBC, Bristol, where he used his popularity to promote the Forest of Dean, its people and traditions. He promoted local choirs, musicians and young authors such as Leonard Clark. He was friends with Rutland Boughton and the local MP, Morgan Philips Price, who worked with him to promote the arts and the interests of Foresters.

Later years
In later life Harvey craved the comradeship he had found in the trenches and was disappointed that the new social order he had anticipated never happened. His later poetry of remembrance captured those feelings, but retained the essential humour of his early work and included verse in the local dialect.

In 1956, in failing health, he attended the Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester Cathedral to hear Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, a work that had inspired his ideas about creativity and beauty some fifty years earlier. He died the following year and was buried at Minsterworth.

Personal life
In 1921 Harvey married Anne Kane, an Irish nurse. They had two children, Eileen Anne (born 1922) and Patrick (born 1925).

He led a bohemian lifestyle, rejecting material values, and often recklessly gave away his professional services and income.

Reputation and legacy
Harvey's poems published during and immediately after World War I were highly acclaimed, and his status was acknowledged when a collection was published in 1926 in the Augustan Books of Modern Poetry series, edited by Edward Thompson.

The lyricism of his poetry led to it being set to music by his friends Ivor Gurney, Herbert Howells and Sir Herbert Brewer, among others. It continues to be used by contemporary composers including Johnny Coppin. His work is particularly noted for its appreciation of the natural world and the landscape and traditions of West Gloucestershire.

Harvey was commemorated in 1980 by a slate memorial tablet in the south transept of Gloucester Cathedral.

"Ducks", Harvey's best known work, was voted one of the nation's 100 favourite poems in 1996 in a nationwide poll conducted by the BBC.