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	Alan Bennett -- The Lady in the Van.

The extract below is taken from 'The Lady in the Van' written in 1989 by Alan Bennett . This story is autobiographical and does show contact by Alan Bennett (1934 - ) with at least one member of the Primrose League.

Alan Bennett.

Today we moved the old lady's van. An obstruction order has been put under the windscreen wiper, stating that it was stationed outside number 63 and is a danger to public health. This order, Miss S. insists, is a statutory order: 'And statutory means standing in this case, standing outside number 63 so, if the van is moved on, the order will be invalid.' Nobody ventures to argue with this, but she can't decide whether her next pitch should be outside number 61 or further on. Eventually she decides there is 'a nice space' outside 62 and plumps for that. My neighbour Nick Tomalin and I heave away at the back of the van, but while she is gracefully indicating that she is moving off (for all of the fifteen feet) the van doesn't budge. 'Have you let the hand brake off?' Nick Tomalin asks. There is a pause. 'I'm just in the process of taking it off.' As we are poised for the move, another Camden Town eccentric materializes, a tall, elderly figure in long overcoat and homburg hat, with a distinguished gray mustache and in his buttonhole a flag for the Primrose League. He takes off a grubby canary glove and leans a shaking hand against the rear of the van (OLU246), and when we have moved it forward the few statutory feet he puts on his glove again, saying, 'If you should need me I'm just round the corner' (i.e., in Arlington House, the workingmen's hostel). I ask Miss S. how long she has had the van. 'Since 1965,' she says, 'though don't spread that around. I got it to put my things in. I came down from St. Albans in it, and plan to go back there eventually. I'm just pedaling water at the moment. I've always been in the transport line. Chiefly delivery and chauffeuring. You know, 'she says mysteriously' renovated army vehicles. And I've got good topography. I always have had. I knew Kensington in the blackout.' This van (there were to be three others in the course of the next twenty years) was originally brown, but by the time it had reached the Crescent it had been given a coat of yellow. Miss S. was fond of yellow ('It's the papal colour') and was never content to leave her vehicles long in their original trim. Sooner or later she could be seen moving slowly round her immobile home, thoughtfully touching up the rust from a tiny tin of primrose paint, looking, in her long dress and sun hat, much as Vanessa Bell would have looked had she gone in for painting Bedford vans. Miss S. never appreciated the difference between car enamel and ordinary gloss paint, and even this she never bothered to mix. The result was that all her vehicles ended up looking as if they had been given a coat of badly made custard or plastered with scrambled egg. Still, there were few occasions on which one saw Miss Shepherd genuinely happy and one of them was when she was putting paint on. A few years before she died she went in for a Reliant Robin (to put more of her things in). It was actually yellow to start with, but that didn't save it from an additional coat, which she applied as Monet might have done, standing back to judge the effect of each brushstroke. The Reliant stood outside my gate. It was towed away earlier this year, a scatter of yellow drops on the curb all that remains to mark its final parking place.

	G.K.Chesterton -- Manalive.

The extract below is taken from the novel 'Manalive' first published in 1912. What does this prove, well very little, other than Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874 - 1936) was fully aware of the existence of the Primrose League and could the fact that he lived until his death on the 4th June 1936 in Beaconsfield, have anything to do with it?.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton. From Vanity Fair.

Advert found in 'The New Age'. Page 45 Thu, Nov, 12 1908.

Dear Sir,--I can scarcely feel surprise that the incident you mention, private as it was, should have filtered through our omnivorous journals to the mere populace; for the position I have since attained makes me, I conceive, a public character, and this was certainly the most extraordinary incident in a not uneventful and perhaps not an unimportant career. I am by no means without experience in scenes of civil tumult. I have faced many a political crisis in the old Primrose League days at Herne Bay, and, before I broke with the wilder set, have spent many a night at the Christian Social Union. But this other experience was quite inconceivable. I can only describe it as the letting loose of a place which it is not for me, as a clergyman, to mention.

	Agatha Christie -- Accident.

The extract below is taken from 'Accident' one of the short story's to be found in the Agatha Christie's 'The Listerdale Mystery' novel, published in 1934. What does this prove, well very little, other than the fact that Dame Agatha Christie (1890 - 1976) was fully aware of the existence of the Primrose League.

Dame Agatha Christie.

There was a Primrose League Fete that afternoon held in the grounds of the local squire, and he went to it, indulging in the penny dip, guessing the weight of a pig, and shying at coconuts, all with the same look of abstracted concentration on his face. He even indulged in half a crown's worth of Zara the Crystal Gazer, smiling a little to himself as he did so, remembering his own activities against fortune-tellers in his official days. He did not pay very much heed to her singsong, droning voice till the end of a sentence held his attention. '- and you will very shortly - very shortly, indeed - be engaged on a matter of life or death - life or death to one person'. 'Eh - what's that?' he asked abruptly. 'A decision - you have a decision to make. You must be very careful very, very careful. If you were to make a mistake - the smallest mistake' -'Yes?'. The fortune-teller shivered. Inspector Evans knew it was all nonsense, but he was nevertheless impressed. 'I warn you - you must not make a mistake. If you do, I see the result clearly, a death'. 'Odd, damned odd!' A death. Fancy her lighting upon that! 'If I make a mistake a death will result? Is that it?' 'Yes', 'In that case,' said Evans, rising to his feet and handing over half a crown, 'I mustn't make a mistake, eh?'. He spoke lightly enough, as he went out of the tent, his jaw set determinedly. Easy to say - not so easy to be sure of doing. He mustn't make a slip. A life, a valuable human life depended on it.

	Rudyard Kipling -- Under the Deopars.

The extract below is taken from 'Under the Deopars' one of a number of 'Kipling' short story's published in 1888. Is this a reference to the Primrose League by Rudyard Kipling (1865 - 1936) as we know it, or just a coincidental use of the name?.

Rudyard Kipling. From Vanity Fair.

'What did Dawlishe say about Tommy Rot? Think a moment, old man. You and I were brought up together; taught by the same tutors, read the same books, lived the same life, and new languages, and work among new races; while you, more fortunate, remain at home. Why should I change my mind our mind - because I change my sky? Why should I and the few hundred Englishmen in my service become unreasonable, prejudiced fossils, while you and your newer friends alone remain bright and open-minded? You surely don't fancy civilians are members of a Primrose League?'

	Rudyard Kipling -- The Story of the Gadsby.

	Dorothy L Sayers -- Lord Peter Views the Body.

Dorothy Leigh Sayers.

	George Bernard Shaw -- Major Barbara .

The extract below is taken from 'Major Barbara' published in 1905. This play was written by Irishman George Bernard Shaw (Born in Dublin on 26th July, 1856 and died at Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire on 2nd November, 1950).

George Bernard Shaw. From Vanity Fair.

UNDERSHAFT. The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonours are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty. Pah! (turning on Barbara) you talk of your half-saved ruffian in Westham: you accuse me of dragging his soul back to perdition. Well, bring him to me here; and I will drag his soul back again to salvation for you. Not by words and dreams; but by thirtyeight shillings a week, a sound house in a handsome street, and a permanent job. In three weeks he will have a fancy waistcoat; in there months a tall hat and a chapel sitting; before the end of the year he will shake hands with a duchess at a Primrose League meeting and join the Conservative Party.

	Edward Phillips Oppenheim -- The Yellow Crayon.

Edward Phillips Oppenheim.

She nodded sympathetically.
'I am sure,' she said, 'that you will not find it difficult. Tell me, cannot I help you in any way? I know the Duchess very well indeed - well enough to take you to call quite informally if you please. She is a great supporter of what they call the Primrose League here. I do not understand what it is all about, but it seems that I may not join because my husband is a Radical.'
Mr. Sabin looked for a moment over his clasped hands through the faint blue cloud of cigarette smoke, and sundry possibilities flashed through his mind to be at once rejected. He shook his head.

	Jerome Klapka Jerome --- Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green.

Jerome K. Jerome.

rhetoric impressed her. But I flatter myself I've put MY spoke in Mr. Jocelyn's wheel. Why, damme, sir, she's consented to stand for Grand Dame of the Bermondsey Branch of the Primrose League next year. What's Jocelyn to say to that, the scoundrel!

What Jocelyn said was:-

'I know the woman is weak. But I do not blame her; I pity her. When the time comes, as soon it will, when woman is no longer a puppet, dancing to the threads held by some brainless man--when a woman is not threatened with social ostracism for daring to follow her own conscience instead of that of her nearest male relative-- then will be the time to judge her. It is not for me to betray the confidence reposed in me by a suffering woman, but you can tell that interesting old fossil, Colonel Maxim, that he and the other old women of the Bermondsey Branch of the Primrose League may elect Mrs. Clifton Courtenay for their President, and make the most of it; they have only got the outside of the woman. Her heart is beating time to the tramp of an onward-marching people; her soul's eyes are straining for the glory of a coming dawn.'

But they all agreed she was a charming woman.

	LAZY THOUGHTS OF A LAZY GIRL --- JENNY WREN.

	H.G.WELLS --- Men Like Gods.

Herbert George Wells.

		Primrose Day, 1885. The artist, Ralph Todd (1852-1932) studied art in Belgium, Holland and Paris and Brittany in 1882. He later lived at Newlyn, Saint Keverne and Helston. Todd also painted under the name of Rupert Meneage. His primary medium was watercolours. His best known work in oils is Primrose Day and this painting resides at the Penlee House museum, Cornwall.
Primrose Day, 1885. The artist, Frank Bramley (1857-1915) attended Lincoln School of Art from 1873 to 1878. He studied from 1879 to 1882 with Charles Verlat at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp, as did other future Newlyn school painters. After a period in Venice (1882-4) Bramley joined the artists' colony in Newlyn, Cornwall, where he stayed until 1895. Bramley regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1884 to 1912. He was made an ARA in 1894 and an RA in 1911. He settled in Grasmere, Westmorland (now Cumbria), in 1900. Note Disraeli's portrait on the wall in this picture.

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