David Austin: Writing with Considered Intent

Asylums, Antiquarians and Anecdotes - and Arthur C Clarke

It’s no secret that my book Delivered Unto Lions, though presented in the form of a novel, is closely based on events that took place at a former mental institution in Somerset called Merrifield. Merrifield Children’s Unit was, if you like, the partially detached young patients’ arm of Tone Vale Hospital, an old asylum-style institution. Both Merrifield and Tone Vale were closed in the mid-1990s following the rise of ‘Care in the Community’.

Within two years of the closure of Tone Vale, editors David Hinton and Fred Clarke compiled a slim volume chronicling some of the hospital’s history. The Tone Vale Story: A Century Of Care is the kind of publication you might expect from a local history society, i.e. competently-researched, slightly antiquarian in flavour, and presented with the keen initiative of local history enthusiasts.

Some readers will be familiar, by association, with co-editor Fred Clarke. His brother was the science fiction author Arthur C Clarke. Indeed, The Tone Vale Story is published by the Clarke family’s own organisation, the Rocket Publishing Company. 

The Tone Vale Story covers the opening of the asylum in 1887, various key figures associated with the development and running of the place, and architectural and topographic observations, many of these being illustrated by vintage photographs.

Of particular interest from my point of view are a few paragraphs dedicated to Merrifield:

Tone Vale and the Somerset Educational Authority combined to provide a children’s unit for autistic and other emotionally disturbed children in the grounds of Tone Vale: the Unit served the whole of the South West of England …

Some of the children, although highly disturbed, were extremely well read and educated. A local author, when invited to lecture to them, found that one or two knew nearly as much about his subject, science fiction, as he did!

(Hinton & Clarke, 1997, p. 43)

It is, perhaps, too easy to take issue with parts of this. Firstly, the phrase ‘autistic and other emotionally disturbed children’ is misleading, as autism is a neurological condition, so it gives entirely the wrong impression to then add ‘and other emotionally disturbed children’. Secondly, labelling all Merrifield patients as ‘highly disturbed’ seems to unjustly brand young people who, in reality, were suffering problems of varying severity covering a broad range of emotional, psychological and neurological conditions.

The local author who made these observations, I happen to know, was actually Fred Clarke himself. I know this because I was there! In the Spring of 1979, when I was 15, he came to address a group of patients and staff about the work of his more famous brother.

Putting my criticisms to one side, I remember Fred Clarke’s visit with fondness – he was a genuinely pleasant man. I particularly remember him showing us the handwritten manuscript for Arthur C Clarke’s first novel, The Sands of Mars. My girlfriend of the time (don’t tell anyone I had a girlfriend – it wasn’t allowed at Merrifield!) commented on the neatness of the handwriting. Fred, however, in an entertaining brotherly way, dismissed Arthur’s handwriting as an untidy scrawl!

As a result of that occasion, I was invited by Fred to meet his highly-renowned brother in the August of ’79. It was a slightly bizarre occasion which took place at the Clarke family house (which was very close to Tone Vale and Merrifield).

The well-known author was in the UK (he was based in Sri Lanka) to promote his new television series Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World, and a Dutch film crew had been at the house to interview him – and I got to enjoy some of the catering! After the film crew had left, I found myself in the peculiar position of sitting with Arthur C Clarke as he watched an edition of the children’s TV programme Blue Peter (he particularly wanted to see a feature on the Egyptian pyramids). I also took the opportunity to take a photograph of Arthur, and he helpfully pointed out that you should always take more than one shot when photographing something important!

It is, however, the less well-known of the two brothers who made the biggest impact on me. I remember Fred Clarke as a gentle, courteous man who shared his brother’s enthusiasm for both science and science fiction. And when I met Fred again, twenty-two years later, at the 2001 Nexus Convention in Bristol, I was surprised to discover that he remembered me.

Against this background I find myself surveying The Tone Vale Story, which Fred co-edited, from a very particular perspective. I knew Fred Clarke to some extent; I knew Tone Vale to some extent; and I knew Merrifield intimately. So what does The Tone Vale Story mean in relation to unpleasant portrayals of Tone Vale and Merrifield (or their novelised counterparts) in books like Joyce Passmore’s mémoire The Light in My Mind and my own novel Delivered Unto Lions?

The Tone Vale Story is very matter-of-fact in its historical/antiquarian tone. The only controversies it comes close to acknowledging are those associated with past attitudes to mental health, such as those encapsulated in the 1890 Lunacy Act. It tells the story of the institution in terms of developments and innovations, coupled with a few folksy recollections, but it does not tell the story of the institution in terms of patients’ experience.

No doubt there are many former patients, both adult and child, who passed through Tone Vale or Merrifield helped rather than harmed by the experience. But there is enough personal testimony around to know that many individuals – who were already experiencing problematic conditions to one extent or another – were damaged further by their unsavoury experiences of these closely linked institutions.

But this reality is not acknowledged in The Tone Vale Story. No doubt this is because the source materials used by the book’s compilers make no reference to such matters. Instead we find in the book an almost celebratory appreciation of achievements and milestones:

• Dr Henry Aveline, the first Medical Superintendent of the asylum, is revered for his multi-lingual ability
• Dr Kenneth Bailey, a later Medical Superintendent, is almost canonised for developing more humane approaches to mental illness
• Ernest George Stephens, Head Gardener, is highly commended for his ‘adventurous’ development of the hospital grounds

This is all well and good; achievements should be celebrated. But what of the darker side? Were editors David Hinton and Fred Clarke even aware that there was a darker side?

Fred Clarke certainly had some interaction with the on-site authorities at Merrifield and with some of the patients (including myself), but it seems to me to be entirely likely that, despite his close proximity to disturbing events, he knew nothing of these things. I wonder how many other visitors to Merrifield – NHS and local government officials, chaplains and other supportive individuals, etc. – remained unaware of some of the damaging things that happened from time-to-time in an institution they knew relatively well.

I’ve always maintained that the phenomenon of Merrifield was one kept hidden from public knowledge. Tone Vale Hospital was less well concealed, but still there was much that was kept hidden. Even for those who might have thought they knew these places – because at some point they had stepped foot inside – the full truth still remained hidden.

This leads me to wonder how many other local histories and modern antiquarian writings unwittingly keep their readers out of the hidden recesses. Perhaps the unpleasant anecdote (as well as the pleasant one) deserves some space alongside the historical or antiquarian record.

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The Tone Vale Story: A Century Of Care, edited by David Hinton & Fred Clarke, is published by the Rocket Publishing Co.

ISBN 978-1-899995-05-9

Delivered Unto Lions by David Austin is published by CheckPoint Press

ISBN 978-1-906628-21-5

For more information visit www.davidaustin.eu