Bertram Lloyd, Humanitarian and Pioneer
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BERTRAM LLOYD Humanitarian and Pioneer by SAMUEL ]. LOOKER 1uith a Portrait r rontispiecc. " Detested Sport, that 0 \\·e~ i ~-s pleasu res to another's pain." JV/1/inm Co7tljJcr. "\Vild animals never kill for sporl. .\bn is the onh· one to whom the torture and death of his fell ow -c re ature~-; is amusing- in itself. '' I A. Froudl'. BERTRAM LLOYD (1881- 1944). Prin ted by G. C. l\1. Printing Service L:d., ~5, I I umberstone Road Leicester, for Samuel J. Looke•·, 48, lng:11·sby Drive, Evington, Leicester, and 1\Irs. Sylvia Lloyd. Rickview, Bucklands \\'harf, Aylesbury, R uck~. 3 One of Bertram's most valuable achievements was his BERTRAM LLOYD. work in the Humanitarian Movement, often in conjunction Humanitarian and Pioneer (1881-1944) with his friend, Henry Stephens Salt, who had been a master at Eton for twelve years until he resigned to write and work by for the Humanitarian Cause. Like Salt, Bertram was a SAMUEL J. LOOKER. vegetarian from early years. Their crusade against cruelty and wrong to man and animals- Salt wrote powerfully against the Editor of Richard Jefferies. 'Flogging Craze ',- led to the founding of the National Society for the Abolition of Cmel Sports, in which Bertram I. Lloyd was associated with Henry Salt, Charles Oldham, Jessy Wade, and W. A. Sibley, Headmaster of Wycliffe It was one of the pleasures of English life in the past to College. As its dedicated and energetic Honorary Secretary know many brave, independent men and women, some the Society meant constant work and effort until the end of slightly eccentric in character, but none the worse for that. I Bertram's life. think of Auberon Herbert, Edward Carpenter, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Cunninghame Graham, Edward Thomas, As well as depth and agility of mind Bertram possessed Margaret McMillan. Keir Hardie, Mrs. Despard. George intense physical activity ; he was an athlete in his youth, and Lansbury, Havelock Ell is, Bernard Shaw. Eva Gore Booth. later, an enthusiastic and skilled mountaineer and traveller in A. R. Orage, Hilaire Belloc, Arthur Lynch, Henry Salt, Norway, the Alps of Austria and Switzerland, the Dolomites Richard Jefferies, W. H. Hudson, and Bertram Lloyd. They and Yugoslavia. On many of these expeditions his wife were of a distinction of mind and thought and chose their climbed with him. In earlier years he did some rock climbing own path. They strove to leave the world, "this busy and scrambling in Wales and the Lake District and later in contentious covetous world", as Richard Baxter called it. a life, the wild beauty and isolation of much of Pembroke little the better. They fought always against cruelty and became very dear to him. wrong either to man or beast. The beauty of the world which surrounded Bertram he Bertram Lloyd had many absorbing interests : it is by loved to the uttermost ; he had felt since childhood the no means easy to describe them all. His life was "a benediction of sun, sea and sky, the appeal and the loneliness pilgrimage of grace··, not of narrow or conventional living. of the great hills. Before many years had touched his brow. On the one side a brooding, introspective but powerful mind : he became conscious of the poverty and suffering which was on the other. the quick awareness of the world's woe. a desire the lot of many. Nor could he seek in supernatural to fight in the van for liberty and happiness. consolations for an answer to the enigmas of life and the sufferings of mankind ! H e knew only too well what the Bertram was a research worker and observer of great great Spanish philosopher Unanuno call ed 'the Tragic Sense skill in the study of birds and dragon flies, and a keen field of Life '. naturalist. In scholarship he knew German Literature and German music. In youth, soon after leaving Merchant Bertram was impressively modest and simple and dis Taylor's school, he spent two years in Germany. He arming in his sincerity. He valued men and women for what translated German poetry with felicity. He knew several other they were without any sense of class. and would meet with languages too, and translated verse from them. kindness and understanding all conditions of folk. He From 1935 onwards, Bertram edited the Hertfordshire preferred the simplicity of the uncomplicated mind to that of Natural History Transactions. He was a Fellow of the the 'fussy intellectual '. Linnean Society and continued his studies in natural history Bertram was a socialist of the school of William Morris, and bird watching until the close. From the Naturalist point Edward Carpenter and Henry Salt. He had nothing in of view " the county of Hertfordshire is the Tring reservoirs common with the small-minded, angry, envious men of our and some 630 square miles of other country." Many birds own generation who profess Politics. He hated cruelty flourish there : some species scarce elsewhere : for parts of wherever he found it, especially the unnecessary cruelty and Hertfordshire of late years have been greatly urbanized. stupidity of Blood Sports, what J. M. Robertson called ' the Urbanization in fact, has increased from ten per cent in 1934 religion of the Brutalitarian ' ; the infliction of pain for to 25 per cent in I 954. personal pleasure in the ' sacred ' name of ' Sport'. An 4 5 excessive addiction to Field Sports or a lost for killing as his chosen and so fitting companion, has been able to carry animals or birds is related to the fact that ·• Nature abhors a on at least part of his work, and has edited since his death, Vacuum". I have noticed the same phenomenon stamped hitherto unpublished selections of both his prose and verse. upon some of the faces in pictures of boxing or wrestling Mrs. Lloyd is herself a fine and most accomplished musician matches. rn a world capable of such cruel and senseless at the piano, and has composed songs of rare quality, some ,. amusements ' the Atom Bomb and the general waste on of which have been broadcast, and some performed in Berlin Armaments need not surprise us too much ! .. Against (East and West). 1 write this tribute to a much loved friend at stupidity even the Gods fight in vain ! " her request. Con amore. Bertram was a Wordsworthian in the sense that he Bertram was a passionate music lover. He was not only shared that poet's sympathy with '" the sorrow of the meanest fortunate in his wife's musical ability, but two of her sisters thing that feels ". were talented in thls regard. Irma, one of his sisters-in-Jaw He disliked all the bogus evil paraphernalia. blooding had a fine contralto voice, while all three sisters were and the rest, of Hunting, and thought its ·jargon' ridiculous. accomplished musicians. On his many visits to the family He loathed too, War and its follies, lies and brutality, its Race home, they would play as a trio on the pianoforte, violin and Hatreds, the manufacture of atrocities in whkh Truth was the 'cello. Music as one of the greatest of the arts was very close first casualty. During the progress of war and its aftermath. to his heart. He was not only an ardent listener, but his he specially disli ked the glorification, the exploitation of comments on music were wonderfully penetrating and innocence for • patriotism ', the hypocrisy of the ' Hollow intelligent. Bertram and Sylvia went constantly to concerts Men'. He refused to bear arms 1914- 191 8. but worked for and recitals whllst in London, not so often to Ballet or the Friends Emergency Committee in its humane task. Opera, although Bertram was partial to the great operas of Bertram's attitude was tersely expressed in the title of one of Wagner. Among the great composers Beethoven came first. his anti-war anthologies, The Paths of Glory. He thought that Sylvia would play the Sonatas and it would be difficult to slaughter and high explosives are not good international describe Bertram's enjoyment in either the Moonlight Sonata arguments, or true substitutes for sweet reason or mercy. He or the Sonata Appassionta of this eloquent argosy of beautiful scarcely believed them, strange to say, Christian in fact! The sound. Other composers dear to him were Schubert, wanton destruction of beauty, innocent an imals and birds, the Tchaikovsky, and Mozart, of whom he said: "His music is so despoiling of the English countryside for gain. linked up in natural and spontaneous that it merely seemed to be waiting his mind with ·· man·s inhumanity to man". to be written down". Sibelius, especially the songs, and also Bertram desired a Society in which men should be free those of Richard Strauss were loved. As for Chopin. Bertram in body and mind ; in which the love of Power, Power which called him ·'the Shelley of the piano", a most apt description corrupts, ignoble ambition, personal greed, cruelty, war and of his delicate and evocative gen ius. To Liszt's immortal the preparations for war. should be subordinated in the Fa11st Symphony with its glittering elegance Bertram wrote a Commonweal to the Good Life ; in which Art and Culture poem. But at all times music meant much to him. should be valued far above mere money-making and social striving. As his unique animal anthology the Great Kinship 11. showed so clearly, he believed that all life was one. that the I first met Bertram Lloyd at the turn of the century, infliction of pain in the name of Sport in Hunting or the when he taught English Literature at Toynbee Hall as part of shooting of birds for personal pleasure was mean and vile, a his passion for social service.