Camberpete.co.uk - Sailor's Soliloquy - autobiography of Oswald Frewen

Contents

THE elegance of Edwardian society can be dimly seen in the background of Sailor's Soliloquy. Right in the foreground and claiming all attention is Oswald Frewen, an engaging small boy who grows up, goes to Eton, joins the Navy, dashes recklessly about the country on early motor cycles, survives some unlikely escapades, and keeps a diary. It is the diary that is important.

The author belonged to a family renowned for literary accomplishments. He had Sir Winston Churchill and Sir Shane Leslie for first cousins, and Clare Sheridan, sculptor as well as author, for his sister. All these had for their grandfather the American, Leonard Jerome, whose daughters, the famous Jerome Sisters, became Mrs. Moreton Frewen, Lady Randolph Churchill and Mrs. John Leslie. Oswald was the quiet member of this exceptionally energetic and talented family, but he shared their fierce individualism as well as their ability to write. Their liking for society he did not share, being apparently too shy to be much at ease and excusing his reluctance with a kindly contempt for its vanities.

The same kindly contempt for what did not please him gives spice to many pages of his diary, which lie kept with few breaks from fifith January 1897, his tenth birthday, till his death in 1958. Towards the end of his life he began a memoir, using the diary for his raw material. When he died it had progressed as far as fifth May 1910 and now forms the first part of this book. The second part contains a selection of diary entries between this date and the end of 1910.

Both diary and memoir reveal a man of simple wants and pleasures, deeply religious in sometimes unorthodox ways, restless like all his family for adventure, often at odds with the world in general and his naval superiors in particular, but passionately devoted to those who won his admiration and friendship, and apparently happiest when working in the garden of his parents' home at Brede Place in Sussex.

Every page of Sailor's Soliloquy is full of fun or indignation or despair. Few readers will fail to succumb at once and completely to the charm of this independently minded introvert who pursues his own particular whims without regard to ordinary convention. As far as the Navy is concerned he was clearly a square peg in a round hole. Reading between the lines, it is easy to see that there may often have been cause for what seemed to him unreasonable criticism and lack of understanding by senior officers.

It will be difficult for many readers to remember that he was not, in fact, among their oldest friends, so strong is the impression of intimately knowing him—and once known he will not be easily forgotten. It is reassuring to learn that the many. volumes of his diary are safely preserved. Oswald Frewen may yet come to be recognized as one of the outstanding diarists of modern times.

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