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114 pages

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When Robert Keable's First World War novel Simon Called Peter was published, critics called it 'offensive', 'a libel' and reeking of 'drink and lust'. Scott Fitzgerald suggested it was 'utterly immoral' and referenced it in The Great Gatsby. The novel became a huge international best-seller, a Broadway play and the sequel made into a Hollywood movie. And it made its author an international celebrity. What critics did not know was that the novel, about a military chaplain and a young woman having an affair during the war, was autobiographical.Utterly Immoral tells the remarkable true story of Robert Keable. He was an up-and-coming star of his Church. Raised in Croydon by evangelical parents he became increasingly high church while studying at Cambridge and, once ordained, he travelled to Zanzibar as a missionary. Following the outbreak of the First World War, he moved to Basutoland to work as a parish priest. He travelled to France as chaplain to the black labourers of the SANLC. It was during the war that he began to lose his faith, dispirited by the appallingly treatment of his men, the horrors of the war and the implications of his secret affair with the nineteen-year-old lorry driver, Jolie Buck. Having written Simon Called Peter he left the church, and his wife, and fled to Tahiti to live in Paul Gauguin's house. He lived the celebrity life in Tahiti, marrying a Tahitian princess, dubbed the 'Helen of Troy of Tahiti'.The author, Robert Keable's grandson, has used letters, books, articles, interviews and a trip to Tahiti to produce a fascinating account of Robert Keable's life and the story of the success of Simon Called Peter.

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Lettres et linguistique

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 novembre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781803133508
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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Copyright © 2022 Simon Keable-Elliott

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1803133 508

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Front cover image: Robert and Jolie Keable on beach in front of Gauguin’s house, 1923
Back cover image: SANLC labourers in France 1917 {©Imperial War Museum (Q 7827)}

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

To Cathy
with love

Contents
Images
Acknowledgements

Chapter 1
Simon Called Peter in England
Chapter 2
Keable’s religious upbringing
Chapter 3
Simon Called Peter in America
Chapter 4
Keable in Africa
Chapter 5
Simon Called Peter – writer to novelist
Chapter 6
Keable and the war
Chapter 7
Simon Called Peter ’s forerunner – The Child
Chapter 8
Keable’s secret affair
Chapter 9
Simon Called Peter – the sequel
Chapter 10
Keable returns home
Chapter 11
Simon Called Peter on Broadway
Chapter 12
Keable – no longer a priest
Chapter 13
Simon Called Peter in Australia
Chapter 14
Keable in Tahiti
Chapter 15
Simon Called Peter – the sequel in Hollywood
Chapter 16
Keable and the Tahitian princess
Chapter 17
Simon Called Peter from The Great Gatsby to today

A note on sources

Images
Robert Keable at the time of writing Simon Called Peter
Simon Called Peter cover
AC Benson, RH Benson and EF Benson, 1907
New York Evening World article, 19th October 1922
Frank Weston, Bishop of Zanzibar
Portuguese fort in Zanzibar, 1913
Boy scout in Zanzibar, 1913
Robert Keable
Jolie Buck (top) with her sister, Kathleen, brother William and mother
Jolie Buck in the Canadian Forestry Corps
Recompense book cover
Henry Keable
Sybil Keable in 1932
Jolie Buck on her way to Australia in 1922
Sydney Sun , 10th November 1922
Sydney Daily Telegraph , 4th November 1922
Gauguin’s house in Tahiti in 1922
Robert and Jolie Keable on beach in front of Gauguin’s house, 1923
Jolie Keable and friends at Gauguin’s house, 1923
Jolie Keable being rowed around the lagoon, 1923
Jolie Keable at Mauu’s party, 1923
Jolie Keable in 1923
Robert James Malone’s caricature of Robert Keable
Recompense newspaper advertisement
Ina Salmon, portrait by Robert Eskridge, 1927
Ina Salmon, 1927
Cover for Lighten Our Darkness
Robert Keable’s renovated grave

Acknowledgements
This book could not have been written without the research on Robert Keable by three authors to whom I owe a huge debt of thanks. Dr James Douglas (1922–2003), editor or writer of twenty books including the New Bible Dictionary , carried out his research in the 1950s and 1960s, corresponding with many of Keable’s friends and associates. Before he died, he generously passed all his research on to my father and me. Dr Hugh Cecil (1941–2020), author and military historian, wrote a chapter on Keable in his book The Flower of Battle and was looking to expand this into a full biography working with Tim Couzens (1944–2016), the South African author and literary historian. Cecil and Couzens researched Keable’s life, travelling together to Tahiti, Basutoland and elsewhere before Couzens died suddenly and Cecil became ill. Before he died, Cecil kindly gave me all his research papers on Keable, along with his blessing for my endeavours. Couzens’s widow, Diana, also generously offered me her husband’s papers and encouraged me to write this book.
I have been researching Keable’s life for a number of years and have been helped by so many. I would like to thank the archivists at Dulwich College, Whitgift School, the Royal School, Bath, and Magdalene College, who answered my enquiries with such patience; Pam Buck for her father William Buck’s letter about his early life; Brian Willan, Bob Edgar and Peter Limb for their help and suggestions about Keable’s time in Basutoland and with the SANLC; Roger, Juliet and Lee Moy Gowen for making me feel so welcome in Tahiti, for allowing me to stay in Robert Keable’s house and for so kindly renovating Keable’s grave in Uranie Cemetery in Tahiti; Nancy Hall Rutgers, Homer Morgan, Vivienne Millet and Jimmy Nordhoff for allowing me to interview them in Tahiti.
I would like to thank everyone at my publishers, too many to mention by name, for all their help and advice. I would also like to thank my family: my father, who patiently answered my many questions about the parents he never had the chance to get to know; my children, India, Jessie and Jack, who allowed me to indulge in my Robbie obsession for so long, and Jessie for designing the book cover; but most of all to my wife, Cathy, for all her support, guidance and patience while I did my research, and her invaluable help in turning my rough draft into this final book.
If anyone, having read this book, is interested in finding out more about Robert Keable then please visit my website www.robertkeable.co.uk .

Chapter 1
Simon Called Peter in England
In 1919, Robert Keable, a London-born Anglican priest working in Basutoland, took a three-week holiday, staying in an isolated hut up on the veld overlooked by the Drakensberg – the dragon’s mountains. He spent the days writing his first novel – Simon Called Peter – unaware of the storm he would later unleash.
The novel was, in its day, as notorious as books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover , Lolita and Fifty Shades of Grey . It became a bestseller in America and across the English-speaking world. When published, it was seen by some as pornographic; by others as besmirching the role of military chaplains and ordinary soldiers who valiantly fought in the First World War. Others, still, argued it was a brave book that shone a light on life behind the lines and showed the torment of a chaplain unable to console his troops. And some saw it as a glorious love story. F Scott Fitzgerald considered it a ‘piece of trash’ and ‘utterly immoral’ and had Nick Carraway read and mock it in The Great Gatsby .
Few readers today would be offended by Simon Called Peter ’s plot, but it is not hard to see why, when it was published, many claimed to be shocked and scandalised. The book was written within a year of the ending of the First World War – a war in which 8.5 million soldiers died, including 750,000 British and 100,000 American. Although set in France, there is no fighting, there are no cases of heroism, no scenes showing the horrors of war. Instead, there are detailed descriptions of parties, heavy drinking, visits to brothels and time spent by an unmarried couple in a hotel suite. The novel was written plainly, in the third person, with no attempt to criticise or justify the behaviour of any of the characters, and no obvious consequence for what, in those days, was seen as improper behaviour.

Robert Keable at the time of writing Simon Called Peter
At first, one can hardly imagine a man less likely to write a scandalous novel than Robert Keable: a studious, young Christian man with a first-class honour’s degree from Cambridge; a successful priest and missionary serving in Africa; a chaplain working in France during the war. But there is far more to Keable’s life than the writing of Simon Called Peter , and he surprised, shocked and scandalised people throughout his life – at Cambridge, in Zanzibar, in Basutoland, during the war, back home in England and finally in Tahiti. There is so much more to the life of Keable than the scandal that followed the publication of Simon Called Peter ; but that is how he became, briefly, famous, so that is where I shall begin.
*
In October 1918, Robert Keable returned to Basutoland – then a British protectorate and now known as Lesotho – having served in France with the South African Native Labour Corps (SANLC). He returned to the parish he had been appointed to back in January 1915 and was soon busy supporting the men who had travelled with him to France, visiting