Trivial Fond Records

[Leslie Howard with his son Ronald
on one of their many crossings]

I have recently been reading transcripts of Leslie Howard's WWII radio broadcasts transmitted from England to the United States asking the U.S. to enter the war in support of the Allies. I will be sharing his thoughts this week.

But first I would like to give you this poem Howard's son, Ronald, wrote to his father on the occasion of his father's death. Ronald Howard was
serving in the Royal Navy and was aboard a cruiser in the Indian Ocean at the time he heard the news that his father's civilian plane had been shot down by German Luftwaffe over the Bay of Biscay. Ronald could picture in his mind the effect eight maritime fighter planes would have on the small DC3.(1) Knowing that his father was fascinated with Hamlet, Ronald Howard penned a message to his father in a style he thought his father would understand.

Hamlet:  You that look pale and tremble at this chance,

              That are but mutes or audience to this act,

              Had I but time, as this fell sergeant Death

              Is strict in his arrest, O, I could tell you...

These could have been your words, last broken speech
Within the tumbling air; the rest was silence.
Paradigm of love this paradox you teach,
Your death may not be reconciled with violence.
Not war but quiet ways you loved the best,
Who had so much to tell, so much to give,
(Before the bullets made their strict arrest)
Had you but time, and peace, in which to live.

Regrets in life crowd in too late when death
Divides us. Yet I regret I was too young
To understand you well when you had breath,
And life had breadth before the war begun.
Now, I'll not find you in this photo face,
This likeness, framed, of eyes and mouth and brow,
Smiling a camera smile that will not speak
Love's language more though once it made hearts race :
(Even as Yorick's quite chop-fallen now).

O, tell me, then, what journey must I take,
What frontiers cross to find the you I seek,
And know your true reflection in my heart?
A journey of such mind is far, you say,
And bodied thus in bonds of time and space
No traveller goes for there the frontier chart
Of life stops short. I but reflect the day
I lived, the shadow of a man that was,
Which must content you till a riper time.

[From Trivial Fond Records by Leslie Howard, edited by Ronald Howard, William Kimber • London, 1982, ISBN 0-7183-0418-7]

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