Mabel Dearmer

It has long been a conviction of mine that Mabel Jesse Pritchard White, or as she became in 1892, Mabel Dearmer, ought to be better known than she is. A Christian, an artist, a pacifist, a playwright, a housewife, a socialist, and ultimately a victim of the waste of World War I she is a strong personality in her own right in the evolving artistic scene of Edwardian London. Born in Caernarvon in North Wales on the 22nd March 1872, her childhood had been a lonely one. Her father Major Gen. William White had died when she was still a child, and her mother had remarried - a solicitor named Beamish. Percy and Mabel had moved in the same circles and had been firm friends for several years before, in November 1891, Percy reports to a friend that that was all "utterly gone" and that they had fallen in love.

At this point the parents on both sides swept in to make sure that course of young love did not run smoothly. Mr. Beamish, Mabel's step-father was the main opponent, though it cannot be said that Percy's mother was overly happy about the arrangement, but Charles Gore able to talk her around. In the end, they had to go to court in order to get married (Mabel was 19 at the time) again with Charles Gore (later Bishop of Oxford) and Harold Anson (later Master of the Temple) speaking up for the couple. The pair tied the knot May 26th, 1892 at St. John's, Richmond, and the early days of their marriage were characterized a certain Bohemianism. Early visitors noted that although the walls and windows of the house were covered in William Morris wallpapers and chintzes, there was a definite lack of furniture, the Dearmers having overspent on decoration!

Both of them were involved in the London artistic scene of the 1890s. Mabel worked as an illustrator and artist accepting commissions from, among others, Aubrey Beardsley of Yellow Book fame. They were also blessed with two sons, Geoffrey (1893-1996) and Christopher (1894-1915). Their circle reads like a who's who of the 'advanced' opinion in London at the time as they were acquainted with the likes of Gertrude Tuckwell the social reformer, Laurence Houseman, Max Beerbohm, Evelyn Sharp and others. On the clerical side, Percy struck up a friendship with Conrad Noel, later to be the red vicar of Thaxted.

After a decade as a somewhat peripatetic curate, including stints at the Berkeley Chapel, and St Mark's, Marylebone Road, Percy Dearmer received his first, and as it turned out, only parish, St Mary-the-Virgin, Primrose Hill. The church itself is a sound, if not particularly imaginative example of mid-Victorian Gothic revival, and Percy, encouraged and enabled by Mabel set about putting many of their ideas into action. Neither of them had much use for the narrowly focused 'save my miserable soul' Protestantism common in their parents' generation. Instead they shared a vision of Christianity making the individual and society happy, healthy, and holy. This meant that Christianity was not just to be confined to the Church, but permeate every aspect of life. Her work as an illustrator seems to have dried up about 1900, along with the children's books she had written in the late 1890s which abandoned the heavy moralism of so many Victorian works, and strove to entertain as well as educate. Between 1902 and 1909 Mabel wrote a series of six novels which cannot be described as remarkable, but over which she laboured mightily.

Whilst at Primrose Hill, Mabel had become increasingly involved with the theatre. Initially, these were parochial efforts mainly Netta Syrett's fairy plays, but she soon turned her mind and her talents to morality plays. The early-1900s were the era of the problem play, about which, Mabel Dearmer was scathing referring to them as 'these despairing plays' preferring instead a genre of the art which, 'very quietly, without any preaching or fuss, shows the way out of that muddle." She produced, on an increasingly professional basis plays by W. B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Laurence Housman, as well as a couple of her own The Playmate, and The Soul of the World: A Mystery Play of the Nativity and Passion. Working with Martin Shaw, the organist and composer, she also produced The Cockyolly Bird, and Brer Rabbit in connection with Gertrude Kingston's Holiday Theatre, a venture aimed at children. Some of these productions were large scale ventures involving seventy or eighty people, but Mabel Dearmer and her fellow workers, which included her longstanding friend Stephen Gwynne, the Irish nationalist and poet, managed to promote a good, cooperative atmosphere. However, the work was extremely demanding, and there are times when it is evident that her many commitments outside of the parish left Percy feeling a somewhat at sea.

The outbreak of War in 1914 produced a crisis of conscience for Mabel Dearmer. As a pacifist, she was deeply opposed to the war, but as a humanitarian she could not stand to see suffering unrelieved. She suffered the pain of seeing both her sons volunteer for service, a road that ultimately led to the younger dying in the disastrous Gallipoli campaign. Percy himself felt the need to do something, and signed up for a short term engagement as chaplain to the British forces in Serbia, whilst Mabel volunteered to join Mrs Stoddart's Nursing Unit. Percy returned from signing up to be met by Mabel who promptly announced that she was going to Serbia too.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to detect that the Serbian adventure was ill-fated from the beginning. She travelled with an inflamed knee which she concealed for several days to avoid being sent home. Conditions on the Serbian front were primitive in the extreme, and nurses who had been trained in the treatment of battle injuries found themselves nursing cases of typhoid, typhus, cholera, and enteric fever. Mabel Dearmer fell victim to the last named. Initially deemed likely to recover, she suddenly worsened on the night of July 13th, 1915, and died in a Serbia field hospital at the age of 42 on the 15th. Mabel Dearmer was laid to rest at Kragujevatz her funeral being hosted by the local Orthodox Church. She would have appreciated the beauty and solemnity of their customs blended with those of her own Anglican Church as she was laid in her 'long home.' Her husband was devastated, and was to be devasted again a few months later when their younger son was killed at Sulva Bay.

It is really very difficult to assess the influence of someone like Mabel Dearmer, but she does represent a very happy moment when Christianity crawled out of the pews and into everyday life, and when art, politics, and many other fields of human endeavor were seen as tools to be used under the overarching embrace of Christianity to help humanity become happy, healthy, and holy. +PDR 3/22/2025.