Ian Handford: 'Remembering Wilfred Owen and beautiful bathing in Torquay'

Wilfred Owen was born on March 18, 1893 in Oswestry the eldest of four children of Tom and Susan Owen. From an early age, having read the works of Shelley and Keats, he would write poetry.
John, his uncle, and aunt Annie Taylor came to live in Torquay in 1906 above 264-266 Union Street after starting a stationery and bookshop business, and later, even Wilfred's grandparents William and Martha moved here.
With all the Owen family in Torquay in 1909, they celebrated William and Martha’s Golden Wedding and a year later saw warships at anchor to welcome the Royal Yacht carrying the King and Queen on July 27, 1910 aboard to review the fleet.
Wilfred watched a plane take off from Torre Abbey meadow piloted by Grahame-White, who was to demonstrate to the Navy their guns were incapable of picking out his small target above.
Accompanied by brother Harold, both were so thrilled at the spectacle it inspired them to wish to ‘become aviators’ themselves. Harold, during World War One did just that, but Wilfred, having volunteered for the Army, had his request to transfer to the Royal Flying Corps turned down, with the Army stating ‘they could ill afford to lose an officer who showed great expertise with a rifle and who was already a capable instructor in its use’.
Later, the brothers came back, as a letter to their mother confirms saying: August 1910 Torquay – ‘Dearest Mother, is it fixed we leave Torquay on Tuesday? Really, I am by no means ‘fed up’ with it! The whole day to Harold and me centres round the bathing. The most enjoyable we have ever had, I think. It is one of those rare cases where the actuality exceeds, does not short fall of, the expectation’.
Wilfred, having discovered Samuel Taylor Coleridge's granddaughter lived at Cheyne, Bridge Road, a mere walk from his uncle’s home on Higher Union Street, soon found Christabel’s house and had a copy of her grandfather’s poems signed - a keepsake.
Wilfred’s letter to his mother confirms this, continuing: ‘since yesterday afternoon, my senses have been considerably fluttered. For I had discovered that a few furlongs away lives a descendent of Coleridge – Miss Christabel Coleridge. I promptly discovered the house by means of a directory, and a few minutes later my heart (liver and cerebellum included)’.
In 1913, Wilfred, with youngest brother Colin, came to Torbay to visit their grandparents, although stayed at Aunt Annies, now a widow living at 48 Sherwell Lane. To speculate, it is most likely Wilfred would have visited Torquay cemetery to pay his respects to John, as he had been alive on Wilfred's last visit. Later, all grandparents would be buried nearby and by a twist of fate (which would have pleased Wilfred had he lived) they lay in graves just a few feet away from Christabel Coleridge.
Wilfred's final visit came on September 15, 1913, after which he left to take up a teaching post at Berlitz. With war declared, Wilfred apparently ‘pondered whether he ought to join the French Army’ but returned to England and a Commission in the Artists’ Rifles of a Manchester Regiment. Subsequently, Lt Wilfred Edward Salter Owen MC would be killed in action on November 4, 1918 at the age of 25.
The telegram announcing his death would not reach his parents until November 11, 1918, the very day church bells rang out across Britain celebrating the Armistice. A final letter to his mother written weeks before on the Hindenburg Line dated October 4, 1918, stated: ‘I came out in order to help these boys – directly by leading them as well as an officer can; indirectly, by watching their sufferings that I may speak of them as well as a pleader can. I have done the first’. Time later proved he certainly fulfilled the second.
IAN'S COMMENT. The incredible wordsmith twice achieved a Professorship of Poetry. I must thank Linda Lear for sponsoring his Blue Plaque at Torre and for supplying most of my text.
NEXT WEEK - Gordon J King