As I explain in my new book Utterly Immoral Robert Keable came to novel writing late. Having already written and published ten or more books of varying genre, he was over thirty when he wrote his first novel, and already three quarters of the way through his life. What is confusing is how autobiographical his novels are, and the problem for a biographer is to pick through what is fiction and what is reality. The first half of Peradventure is almost 100% autobiography, both he and the hero of the novel were bought up in Croydon, went to Cambridge, struggled with their low-church father about becoming Anglo-Catholic, and became a missionary. Lighten our Darkness begins with a priest giving up the church and his parish in Basutoland. Recompense has the hero shot in the thigh in the middle of nowhere in Africa and carried to safety by a team of locals down a treacherous mountain path. I could go on.

Simon Called Peter is about a priest with a parish in Chelsea, London, becoming a military chaplain and going to France where he has an affair with a nurse called Julie. The truth was that Robert Keable was a priest in Basutoland, became a chaplain with the South African Native Corps, and went to France, where he had an affair with a lorry driver called Jolie.

What has intrigued me is why Robert Keable chose a parish in Chelsea for his hero. Hugh Cecil in his chapter on Robert Keable in his excellent book The Flower of Battle suggested that Robert ‘briefly worked in a fashionable Kensington parish before going out to work on the lines of communication in the Rouen sector.’ For once, Hugh Cecil was mistaken about this. The truth was that it was Robert Keable’s father, Robert Henry Keable, who worked in the Kensington parish.

Rev Robert Henry Keable

Robert Henry Keable came to the priesthood late. Born in 1852 he left school early and worked as a tallow-melter in Battersea – then the main candle manufacturing area of London. Robert Henry did well but perhaps seeing the lighting on the wall, (sorry!), retired from the business and trained to become a priest. He moved to Croydon and was briefly curate of St. Matthew's Church before moving on to Chelsea. When he left, the Croydon Guardian of 9^th February 1907, mourned his loss to the parish.

It is impossible to speak too highly of the work Mr. Keable has done in the parish, and especially at the Mission Church, first as an honorary lay worker and then as an ordained Minister. The work was never in a more flourishing condition and his loss will be a serious one for the district.

The paper went on to praise Robert Henry’s wife for her work with the Mothers’ Meeting, Robert Keable ‘now of Magdalene College, Cambridge’ for helping ‘in many ways’ and Henry Keable in his post as Sunday School Librarian. The gratitude of the parish was clear by the presents. Robert Henry received form the parish, a revolving bookcase, two drawing-room chairs and an afternoon tea stand, an illuminated address and a cheque for £100. His wife was given a brass flower stand and another drawing room chair.

Park Chapel, Chelsea

The same local Croydon paper described the move to Chelsea as a prestigious appointment:

Rev. R.H. Keable has been appointed incumbent of Park Chapel, Chelsea. The sphere is an important one. Park Chapel has been associated in the past with great names in Evangelical Churchmanship, and although the neighbourhood is not what it was, there is a great field of possibilities amongst the 5,000 inhabitants entrusted to Mr. Keable’s care.

The Park Chapel was located on Park Walk between what are now two very fashionable roads, the Fulham Road and King’s Road. Although it had been refurbished just before Robert Henry arrived, it was clearly not in a good way and the congregation decided to seek funds for a replacement only three years later. Major Cyril Sloane Stanley provided the freehold and a solicitor called Charles Bannister provided the bulk of the money to rebuild the Church, which was renamed St. Andrew’s.

Simon Called Peter

I suspect Robert chose his father’s parish as the parish for Peter Graham in Simon Called Peter. He wrote the novel while he was still in Basutoland, where he returned after the war. The book only took three weeks to write and was barely changed in the edit. It would have been very simple therefore to choose St. Andrew’s Church as the location of the parish.   

At the beginning of the novel Peter Graham walks from his parish to preach as St. John’s. His parish is described as running down to the river, and including slums:

in which some of the ladies of St John’s (whose congregation had seen to it that in their immediate neighbourhood there were no such things) were interested.

At the end of the first chapter Peter walks from his parish to the Houses of Parliament. From St Andrew’s Church the walk would take just under an hour but, depending, where he lived in the parish, could have been shorter.

Peter Graham’s soon to be fiancé Hilda Lessing goes to St John’s Church, where her father is church warden. There was a St John’s Church in the next-door parish to St. Andrew’s, in Ashburnham Road. That church was bombed in 1940 and the new church built in the 1970s has joined the St. Andrew’s parish. It seems unlikely that this was the church Hilda’s father worshipped in as the area was well-known for its slums. More likely Robert was talking about St John’s in Smith Square, which was also bombed during the second world war, and then rebuilt as a concert hall.

If he was talking about St. John’s – and he mentions the wooden gallery which the old church had – then he was being slightly indiscreet by referencing the rector, and saying he announced the hymn ‘pompously as usual’ and later ‘laid a patronising hand on [Peter’s] shoulder’.  The rector of St. John’s at the beginning of the war was Basil Wilberforce, a strong supporter of the temperance movement and chaplain to the House of Commons Speaker.

St Barnabas, Pimlico

Robert returned from Zanzibar at the end of 1913 and spent almost a year back in England before he set off for his new parish in Basutoland. For much of that time he would have stayed with his parents, so he is likely to have preached in many of the local churches. A sermon he preached at St. Barnabas, Pimlico in October 1914, was written out in full in the Church Times. (see blog on The Church Times posted Oct 6^th)

Hilda’s father

What I have not been able to find out is the inspiration for Hilda’s father in Simon Called Peter. Hilda was based on Sybil Armitage who Robert married in 1915. Her father was also a merchant, in Bradford, and Robert would have met him when he was a curate there in 1911 (although he died before the war). Mr Lessing is described as a 'rich city merchant, churchwarden at St John’s, important in his party, and a person of distinction when at his club'. Once the war began, he started to wear his old corporal uniform and looked at the war effort as providing possible investment potential.

I did wonder if Robert used one of the wealthy members of his father’s church, perhaps Major Cyril Sloane Stanley or Charles Bannister, as an inspiration for Hilda’s father, but I really have no evidence for this!

St Andrew’s Church

St Andrew’s Church was designed by Arthur Bloomfield and took three years to build. It was consecrated in November 1913 just before Robert Keable returned to London. His father Robert Henry was therefore the first vicar. By all accounts he did a great job but when he left the parish, for Pavenham in Bedfordshire, the congregation shrunk and eventually the parish was merged with St John’s. Now however it is a very active church again.