Now and again, but more frequently than one might suppose, something amazing pops up. That is the case with a twenty-page document which has just been rediscovered in the Shrewsbury Archives – the Diary of a 1901 Cycling-Tour, written by Harry Rope (the brother of Margaret Rope), when he was a young man of twenty-one years old.
It’s an account covering two trips, in which he leaves his Shrewsbury home to cross North Wales, Shropshire and other parts of the Midlands.

Old world

This importance of this early piece of creative writing from Harry lies in the fact that we actually see how his formative influences are shaping his life. In later years, Harry would go on to become a literary figure & polemicist, penning poetry, histories, reviews and more.
As a vehicle for some literary experimentation by Harry it’s a fascinating document. In it, he attempts to write as much as he can using only words from Old English – eschewing post Norman, Frenchifield words.

His title for his notebook (see pic above) is ‘Wheel- and Foot-farings-on markingbook’; and in one of his very first sentences, he uses the word ‘unknowledge’ rather than use the word ignorance.
He also unashamedly invents ‘poetically appropriate’ words where no useful Old English alternative exists; and, now and again, comes up with strongly alliterative phrases and sentences, reminiscent of early English poetry.
For a full list of the archaic words used by Harry, click here.

You might think that this demonstration of literary skill is just a young man pretentiously showing off his education – but actually the work is not just a charming project, it’s also a pointed criticism of the modern age.

Anglish

What’s more Harry is not out of the swim at this time in looking back to early forms of English for authenticity. Another (more famous!) contemporary of his, JR Tolkien, was constructing whole languages out of Old English sources (bits of which appear in his ‘Lord Of The Rings’). Both Harry and Tolkien (see pic right) use the word ‘enta’, which is Old English, and the made-up word elfsheen – though Harry seems to have used this word before Tolkien. One wonders if they met; they both attended Oxford University and then lived in Oxford.

(Harry may also have been pleased to see the birth of a popular movement in the late twentieth century, a few years before he died, which calls itself the ‘Anglish’ Movement. It prefers native to borrowed words).

Discovery

A senior member of staff at the Shrewsbury Archives, Sal Mager, is the one who unearthed this work. When she found it, Sal was particularly struck by one aspect of it. She saw it not just as a literary experiment but also as an account of a young man faced with excesses of destructiveness and brutalism, which he identified with the new Machine Age – reactions that ring a bell with our own fears today. (One word that Harry makes up is ‘petrolatry’, i.e. the idolatry given to petrol-driven machines…)
She felt so inspired by it she gave a public talk about the work in 2024 (see poster below).

Harry can get very gloomy at coming upon modern industrial cities (which he calls ‘townhellworlds’), and he can’t help weighing in against their ugliness. The countryside, as you’d expect, acts as a major solace for him.

The actual document of Harry’s diary is something of a scrawl, interspersed with diagrams, drawings and the like. Fortunately, Sal had it transcribed; and the whole thing is now online for anyone to read in the comfort of their own home. This transcription, with footnotes, was undertaken by Alex Mager and spreads over four web-pages – click here to see them.

Marga

One disappointing aspect of the diary for biographers is that there are virtually no autobiographical references or mentions of Harry’s family – certainly there is no reference to Margaret (‘Marga’), even though she is his favourite sister. There are a couple of names dropped in – ‘Uncle George’ the famous painter, and another uncle, Arthur Burd, who was a master at Repton Public School – but that’s it.

We do though get an understanding of how Harry’s politics were shaping up. He can’t bear imperialism and ‘jingoism’ (excessive & hypocritical nationalism) and this may be because it was the time of the Boer Wars, when the country was infected with an unpleasant war-fever whipped up by the popular papers.

Archives

All in all, it’s an odd, curious and youthful work, but it still provides a great insight into the time in which it was written.
We owe a great debt to Sal who spent so much time analysing it and preparing it for its ‘reissue’. Sal has written a short article about how she worked on the project.

Incidentally, Harry would be very pleased to hear that his diary is being discussed; he was no shrinking violet. This document was not part of some hoard discovered after Harry’s death; it was Harry himself who brought it into the Archives, as a donation!

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Footnotes
# Harry’s politics were never fixed and he never identified with any one movement, moving between radical and right-wing outlooks. His driving feeling though was a sense that true beauty and integrity were only to be found in a nation’s pre-capitalist past, which had to be rediscovered.
# Harry made many donations of personal documents to Shrewsbury Archives, most of which still have to be properly catalogued. However, his published works are more likely to be found in the Rope Archives, including his book describing a walking tour of Shropshire.
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