File spoon-archives/puptcrit.archive/puptcrit_2003/puptcrit.0308, message 209


From: HobgoblinH-AT-aol.com
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2003 12:34:00 EDT
Subject: PUPT: Wlater Wilkinson and P&J


Dear All--
I am appending an excerpt from an e-mail that might be news to a very few of 
you. Obviously not to Ray da Silva, of course:

<<Walter Wilkinson was a Punch and Judy man. More than that, he was a Punch 
and Judy man who wrote about his work. I don't know what it was that attracted 
me to his books, or how I first came across them, but, like many Punch and 
Judy men (were there ever, at any time, 'many'?), presenting his shows involved 
transporting his equipment from venue to venue. In Wilkinson's case, these 
journeys were heroic, and it is perhaps because they are 'walking' books, covering 
areas in England that I know, love and have walked in myself, that attracted 
me in the first place. That, and the fact that a friend of mine who, at the 
time, lived in Warton - a small village in northern Lancashire, quite near to 
the Lake District - could point out the very house that Wilkinson had stayed in 
overnight on one of his 'tours', over 50 years before. (Warton also has links 
with George Washington, but that's another story . . . )

Walter Wilkinson wrote his books in the early 1930's and appears to have been 
a Londoner (there is very little biographical information in any of the 
books). He was, it seems, something of an odd-ball (given that his chosen trade was 
that of a travelling puppeteer). He had - if I remember rightly - children, a 
broken marriage a strange attitude towards his mother, hatred of his father 
and was - at a time when such niceties were definitely not understood - a 
vegetarian.

His first book was The Peep Show, documenting his travels in Somerset and 
Devon. This was followed by Vagabonds and Puppets - of which I have an autograph 
copy - which covered his wanderings in the Southern Counties. Puppets in 
Yorkshire was probably the first of his books I bought, as it covers his trip to 
what is God's own County and the one I came from. Then there were A Sussex Peep 
Show, Puppets into Scotland (which I don't think I've seen), Puppets Through 
Lancashire, which the friend mentioned above brought to my attention and one 
which would probably be of particular interest to you - Puppets Through America. 
I'm pretty sure I haven't seen this either and, if I remember (it must have 
been 20 years ago when I started reading these books) second-hand book dealers 
I spoke to about Wilkinson said that most copies of this particular volume 
had, unsurprisingly, already found their way to America.

Though these books were a 'discovery' of mine, I found that Wilkinson was an 
author familiar to many second-hand book dealers and that, in his time, he was 
not an obscure author writing on an arcane subject, as the accolades for his 
books, apart from reviewers writing in 'higher-class' periodicals and 
newspapers, such as The Tatler, Country Life, Punch, the Times Literary Supplement, 
the Manchester Guardian the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph, came from such 
literary luminaries as D H Lawrence, J B Priestley and Arnold Bennett. His 
books, as travel documents, were compared to those of George Borrow, Hilaire 
Belloc and Robert Louis Stephenson, which even I, as an enthusiast, find a little 
OTT.

Should I need to whet your appetite further, I can do no better than to quote 
from the review of a Mr Richard King, who wrote in The Tatler : "These 
'puppet' books make up a little library of books so delightful to read that they are 
unique among volumes of travel. To read any of them is to be enchanted by 
descriptions of people and places, charmed by meeting country folk who are really 
of the countryside, and to be as interested in the writer's experiences as if 
you were sharing them yourself." The Daily Telegraph wrote of the American 
volume: "Walter Wilkinson's puppets are internationally famous, and when they 
decided to take their creator on an American tour they knew that they would find 
plenty of friends to welcome them. Their adventures make a delectable 
addition to the 'Puppets' series - those charming, gossipy, rambling travel books 
which have endeared their author to thousands of people who have never seen his 
shows . . . "

His books - all of them written over 70 years ago - do not deal so much with 
the mechanics of puppetry, though there is some mention of it and, like you, 
he made all his own puppets>>

All this books can still be bought at very reasonable prices through used 
book sellers. I now hand the microphone over to anyone who already knows all 
about this matter. It made a major blip on my radar.
Cheers,
Alice
Hobgoblin Hill Puppets


  --- Personal replies to: HobgoblinH-AT-aol.com
  --- List replies to:     puptcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
  --- Admin commands to:   majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
  --- Archives at:         http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005