| Percival Christopher Wren | |
| Birth Name: | Percival Christopher Wren |
| Birth Date: | 1 November 1875 |
| Birth Place: | Deptford, South London, England United Kingdom |
| Occupation: | Author, educator |
| Nationality: | British |
| Alma Mater: | St Catherine's Society (St Catherine's College, Oxford) |
| Notableworks: | Beau Geste (1924) |
Percival Christopher Wren (1 November 1875[1] – 22 November 1941) was an English writer, mostly of adventure fiction. He is remembered best for Beau Geste, a much-filmed book of 1924, involving the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. This was one of 33 novels and short story collections that he wrote,[2] mostly dealing with colonial soldiering in Africa.
Percival Christopher Wren was born in Deptford, South London, England, the son of a schoolmaster. His literary influences included Frederick Marryat, R. M. Ballantyne, G. A. Henty, and H. Rider Haggard. He took a MA from Oxford University's Delegacy for Non-Collegiate Students, in 1931 renamed St Catherine's Society, now St Catherine's College, Oxford but then a non-collegiate institution for poorer students. Wren claimed to have worked as a navvy, deckhand, costermonger and fairground boxer during a three-year period between school and Oxford, as well as enlisting briefly as a cavalry trooper in the Queen's Bays (2nd Dragoon Guards).[3]
Wren worked as a boarding school teacher for a few years, during which he married Alice Shovelier, and had a daughter (Estelle, born 1901). In 1903, he joined the Indian Education Service as headmaster of Karachi High School. Between 1903 and 1907 he also worked with the Educational Inspectorate for Sind and lectured at a teachers' training college.
The only documented record of Wren's military service records his appointment on 1 December 1914 as a reserve officer attached to an Indian infantry regiment – the 101st Grenadiers. This unit served in German East Africa but Captain Wren is recorded as having been on sick leave from 17 February 1915 and leaving the Officers Reserve to return to civil employment in October of that year. Wren's obituaries refer to earlier service with the Poona Volunteer Rifles but this reflects confusion with another officer of the same name.[4]
Wren resigned from the Indian Education Service in November 1917. His wife Alice Lucille died 26 September 1914 in Poona, India; his daughter died of pertussis (whooping cough) in Nottinghamshire on 19 May 1910. From there it is claimed that he joined the French Foreign Legion for a single tour of five years though he would have been 42 years of age on enlistment, somewhat older than the usual recruit and with a record of ill health. He lived out the remainder of his life in Britain concentrating on his literary career. One of the few photographs of Wren known (see above) shows a typical British officer of the Edwardian era with clipped moustache, wearing plain dark blue regimental dress.[5]
Wren was a highly secretive man, and his service in the Legion has never been confirmed. When his novels became famous, there was a mysterious absence of authenticating photographs of him as a legionnaire or of the usual press-articles by old comrades wanting to cash in on their memories of a celebrated figure. It is now thought more likely that he encountered legionnaires during travels in French North Africa, and skillfully blended their stories with his own memories of a short spell as a cavalry trooper in Britain. While his fictional accounts of life in the pre-1914 Foreign Legion are highly romanticised, his details of Legion uniforms, training, equipment and barrack room layout are generally accurate. This may, however, simply reflect careful research on his part. The descriptions of Legion garrison life given in his work The Wages of Virtue, published in 1916,[6] closely match those contained in the autobiographical In the Foreign Legion by ex-legionnaire Edwin Rosen, published by Duckworth London 1910.[7]
Similarly, the episode of the fallen soldiers in Beau Geste, who were propped up by Sergeant Major Lejaune to create the impression that they were still alive, was probably inspired by a story in Frederic Martyn's memoirs, Life in the Legion: from a Soldier's Point of View (1911):
"Our bugler was the first to lose his number: he was shot through the head as he stood in the angle of the parapet and remained standing up as if he were still effective.
This gave us an idea, and as each man fell afterwards we propped him up behind with a bayonet and stood him against the parapet. When the sergeant went out we stuck his pipe in his mouth, and he looked regular life-like, only more determined. Soon there was a row of dead men guarding the blockhouse, and they looked so calm and confident that the Oulad-Seghir evidently thought it would be too risky to come to close quarters with us, and gave up the attempt on the post in disgust, so that when our company came to our rescue at the double there was nothing for them to do."[8]
The Historical and Information Service of the Foreign Legion holds no record of service by anyone of Wren's name and have stated their belief that he obtained his information from a legionnaire discharged in 1922. In a history published in 2010, the military writer Martin Windrow examines in detail the evidence for and against Wren's service with the Foreign Legion before concluding that, in the absence of some further documentary discovery, the question is an insoluble one.[9]
Among the mysteries of Wren's life is the confirmed identity of his first wife. His stepson Alan Graham-Smith was told only that both she and a young daughter "Boodle" died at some date after 1905.[10]
There is a record of the marriage of Percy Wren son of John Wickins Wren and Alice Lucie Shovelier daughter of Crispin Shovelier on 23 Dec 1899 at St James, Hatcham, London.[11] Alice Lucille Shovelier was baptized 18 Mar 1870 the daughter of Crispin Shovelier and Lucy Maria Parker.[12] Alice Lucille Wren died at Poona, India 26 Sep 1914 and was buried 27 Sep 1914.[13] Their daughter Estelle Lenore Wren was born at Greenwich in early 1901.[14] She died at Basford in 1910.[15]
Wren reportedly dedicated an early edition (no date known) of The Snake and the Sword to "my wife Alice Lucille Wren". Another of his early novels, Driftwood Spars, published in 1915, contained a dedication: "To the memory of my beloved wife."
Isabel was his second wife. She had previously been married to Cyril Graham-Smith, a civil engineer employed in the Indian educational service at Poona. In 1927, Graham-Smith filed for divorce, with Wren named as co-respondent. The divorce was granted, and a letter by Isabel to Ronald Colman (who played Beau Geste in the silent film) in 1929 on behalf of her "seriously ill" husband suggests that she and Wren had married at least as early as 1928 (actual date 3 December 1927). "Isobel" was the heroine of Beau Geste.
Wren died in 1941, and was buried in the graveyard of Holy Trinity Church, Amberley, Gloucestershire.
At his death, Wren was also survived by his son Percival Rupert Christopher Wren, born in Karachi in 1904. Percival Wren reportedly did not have a close relationship with his father, and the two ceased to have any contact after the son went to live in the United States during the 1920s.[16] Wren also adopted Isabel's son from her first marriage, Richard Alan Graham-Smith, as his own. After many years in a successful teaching career, Graham-Smith, known to most people simply as Alan, retired to Devon, where he lived in the South Hams coastal village of Torcross until his death on 31 December 2006 at the age of 96. Graham-Smith ended up becoming the sole administrator of Wren's estate for many years and possibly the last living person to have any personal acquaintance with Wren. He strongly maintained that Wren had indeed served in the French Foreign Legion, and was always quick to contradict those who said otherwise.