Yorkshire Days in Edwardian England: E. I. Watkin’s Diary and his Friendship with Christopher Dawson

Abstract

E. I. Watkin (1888–1981), writer and translator, was the grandson of Herbert Ingram, founder of The Illustrated London News. Watkin was also the friend of the historian of culture Christopher Dawson (1889–1970). Watkin’s diary reveals the thoughts, conversations, and events in the life of an eccentric young man of wealthy background in Edwardian England. The selection published is a travel account of Watkin’s visit to the Dawson family in rural Yorkshire at Hartlington Hall, near Burnsall. It reveals that the nineteenth century chivalric revival still had a hold on the minds of the educated classes in the Edwardian period. The selection affords glimpses into the family life of the Dawsons and their love of books. It also records Watkin’s voracious reading habits, his impressions of the Yorkshire countryside, and his precise observations of the harmony of natural and human landscapes that he found there.

Keywords:

• Yorkshire
• Edwardian
• Hartlington Hall
• E. I. Watkin
• Chivalric Revival
• Christopher Dawson
• Burnsall

I am grateful to Magdalen Goffin for her hospitality, her permission to publish this selection, and for drawing attention to Dawson’s dedication to Watkin on the flyleaf of The Age of the Gods, which I was not able to find on my own. I am also grateful to the anonymous referee for the YAJ who made very helpful suggestions on this article, and to Maureen Fraser and her husband for their hospitality while I stayed with them at Hartlington Hall in December 2009.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph T Stuart

Joseph T. Stuart completed his PhD in modern intellectual history at the University of Edinburgh in 2010. He is currently Assistant Professor of History and Catholic Studies at the University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, USA. He has published ‘The Question of Human Progress in Britain after the Great War’ in British Scholar, 1 (September 2008); and ‘Christopher Dawson and the Idea of Progress’ in Logos, 14 (Fall 2011).