My Chronology of Leslie Howard's Life

[Leslie Howard with his children, Doodie and Wink,
at their home Stowe Maries, at Dorking in Surrey c. 1939]

I have now been working on my "Chronology of Leslie Howard's Life" for months and have just made it halfway through his professional life—to 1930, where his movie career now begins. This is monumental for me. I cannot tell you how difficult it has been to put the pieces of Howard's life together in a meaningful sequence. I have outlined the reasons this is so arduous in a note which can only be viewed by clicking the link in the Chronology, or by clicking here. I am not going to rehash all those reasons in this post, but I will talk about the most primary among them.

Leslie Howard was a master storyteller. He began writing stories at a very young age and, according to his children, had an excellent imagination—his children being the recipients of his many fantasies in the form of bedtime stories which he seemed to be able to make up on the spot. It is interesting to note, however, that although Doodie, Howard's daughter Leslie Ruth, believed the stories she was hearing were made up just for her, when she compared the stories later in life with those her older brother heard as a child they were the same, word for word. The only difference was in a few characters which Howard created to symbolize himself and his son and which only the two of them knew about and shared in their secret world.

Howard also used his real life events—as I am sure all writers do—as the basis for the stories he told his friends and family and wrote about for newspapers and magazines, which means that his tales were woven together with elements of both truth and fiction. It is not always easy to tell which is which. Also, these stories were sometimes told to interviewers who reported them as fact—something I am sure amused Howard to no end. Dates get confused. Parts of his various life events are blended together to form a more interesting whole. Names are changed to protect the innocent. Howard like to embellish. It is difficult to unravel actual history from his many "stories."

I think the reason that Howard's children loved him so much becomes obvious. Howard didn't merely go through the motions when he was with his children. He existed for them. And Howard didn't just enter their world, he brought them into his. How fortunate for all of them that they had each other for as long as they did.


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