Record Number: 29796
Reading Experience:
Evidence:
'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue 15. I. 35.
Sylvanus Reynolds in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. It was with a great pleasure to the club to welcome back Charles and Katherine Evans, who
with the latter’s brother Samuel Bracher, came to entertain us with their programme of “Bees in
Music and Literature.”
6. Charles Evans opened with an introduction that gave us an outline of the bee’s life.[...]
7. We next listened to a record of Mendelssohn’s “Bee’s Wedding.”
8. Samuel Bracher gave a longish talk on Bees and the Poets. He classified the poems as Idyllic,
Scientific or Philosophical, and Ornamental; by quoting a great variety of works including lines
from Shakespeare, K. Tynan Hickson, Pope, Thompson, Evans, Alexander, Tennyson, & Watson,
he showed an amazing knowledge of the Poets. [...]
9. Charles Evans then spoke on Maeterlinck and Edwardes.
10. Charles Stansfield read Martin Armstrong’s Honey Harvest.
11. Another gramophone record gave us Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee”
12. Katherine Evans read from Vitoria Sackville-West’s “Bees on the Land”. Some of the lines
were of very great beauty, & much enjoyed.
13 H. M Wallis then read an extract from the Testament of Beauty, concerning Bees. But he & all
of us found Robert Bridges, at that hour in a warmish room, too difficult, and he called the
remainder of the reading off.
14. A general discussion was the permitted, and members let themselves go.'
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. It was with a great pleasure to the club to welcome back Charles and Katherine Evans, who
with the latter’s brother Samuel Bracher, came to entertain us with their programme of “Bees
in Music and Literature.”
6. Charles Evans opened with an introduction that gave us an outline of the bee’s life.[...]
7. We next listened to a record of Mendelssohn’s “Bee’s Wedding.”
8. Samuel Bracher gave a longish talk on Bees and the Poets. He classified the poems as
Idyllic, Scientific or Philosophical, and Ornamental; by quoting a great variety of works
including lines from Shakespeare, K. Tynan Hickson, Pope, Thompson, Evans, Alexander,
Tennyson, & Watson, he showed an amazing knowledge of the Poets. [...]
9. Charles Evans then spoke on Maeterlinck and Edwardes.
10. Charles Stansfield read Martin Armstrong’s Honey Harvest.
11. Another gramophone record gave us Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee”
12. Katherine Evans read from Vitoria Sackville-West’s “Bees on the Land”. Some of the lines
were of very great beauty, & much enjoyed.
13 H. M Wallis then read an extract from the Testament of Beauty, concerning Bees.But he &
all of us found Robert Bridges, at that hour in a warmish room, too difficult, and he called the
remainder of the reading off.
14. A general discussion was the permitted, and members let themselves go.
1900-1945
Date:15 Jan 1935
Country:England
Timeevening
Place:city: Reading
county: Berkshire
specific address: Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue
(Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
(Listener):
solitary reactive unknown
single serial unknown
Reader / Listener / Reading Group:
Reader: Age:Unknown
Gender:Unknown
Date of Birth:n/a
Socio-Economic Group:Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation:Journalist, Author
Religion:Quaker
Country of Origin:n/a
Country of Experience:England
Listeners present if any:e.g family, servants, friends
Members of the XII Book Club
Additional Comments:
n/a
Text Being Read:
Author: Title:[Lines of verse concerning bees]
Genre:Poetry, Natural history
Form of Text:Publication Details
n/a
Provenanceunknown
Source Information:
Record ID:29796
Source:Manuscript
Author:Victor Alexander
Title:XII Book Club Minute Book, Vol. 3 (1931-1938)
Location:private collection
Call No:n/a
Page/Folio:121–128
Additional Information:
n/a
Citation:
Victor Alexander, XII Book Club Minute Book, Vol. 3 (1931-1938), private collection, 121–128, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=29796, accessed: 22 November 2024
Additional Comments:
The reader is presumably the Samuel Veale (or Vale) Bracher (fl. 1898–1923), Quaker journalist and author of a number of books, involved with the Whiteway Colony in Stroud, mentioned in Sharon Butler, Bert Bundy and Peggy Bundy, Feminist Review, No. 30 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 25-35; and in R. C. S. Trahair, Utopias and Utopians: an historical dictionary (Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999), p. 46.
Material by kind permission of the XII Book Club. For further information and permission to quote this source, contact the Reading Experience Database (http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/contacts.php).
