18
Penn, Buckinghamshire 1949–1976
The retirement years, ‘coming-out’, and remarkable
benevolence.
Forget your personal tragedy.
We are all bitched from the start ….
but when you get the damned hurt, use it - don’t cheat with it.
Ernest Hemingway, (adapted) from a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 28 May 1934.
Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters, 1917–1961.
18.1 Penn, Buckinghamshire
Robert and Emily’s move to their new home between Beaconsfield and the
village of Penn, represented a move to an entirely different way of life. Like
Berlin and Karlsruhe, St John’s Road Harrow had meant ‘big city living’.
Here, an eclectic population had easy access to central London; shops, services
and transport were all ‘on the doorstep’. Not so Penn Road. The pace of life
here was much slower, and more traditional values prevailed. This was an area
populated by the wealthy, the famous, those from the old landed families, the
farmers, the clergy and—because of its proximity to London—the well-heeled
city commuters and those with their hands on the levers of power. There were
contrasts either side of St Helier however. If one required some semblance of
city life, then just to the south lay Beaconsfield. Nudging the old town with
its coaching inns, small shops, red brick houses and a provenance stretching
back to the 1100 s, the larger ‘new’ town of Beaconsfield arose at the turn of
the 20th century when the railway arrived. A busy little place today, things
would have been more subdued when Robert and Emily came; the second
world war had not long ended, the Korean war had just begun, and for most
people there was still the austerity of rationing. A little further away too lay
Amersham with its convenient underground connection to central London,
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
D. Sheppard, Robert Le Rossignol, Springer Biographies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29714-5_18
453
Penn, Buckinghamshire 1949–1976
The retirement years, ‘coming-out’, and remarkable
benevolence.
Forget your personal tragedy.
We are all bitched from the start ….
but when you get the damned hurt, use it - don’t cheat with it.
Ernest Hemingway, (adapted) from a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 28 May 1934.
Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters, 1917–1961.
18.1 Penn, Buckinghamshire
Robert and Emily’s move to their new home between Beaconsfield and the
village of Penn, represented a move to an entirely different way of life. Like
Berlin and Karlsruhe, St John’s Road Harrow had meant ‘big city living’.
Here, an eclectic population had easy access to central London; shops, services
and transport were all ‘on the doorstep’. Not so Penn Road. The pace of life
here was much slower, and more traditional values prevailed. This was an area
populated by the wealthy, the famous, those from the old landed families, the
farmers, the clergy and—because of its proximity to London—the well-heeled
city commuters and those with their hands on the levers of power. There were
contrasts either side of St Helier however. If one required some semblance of
city life, then just to the south lay Beaconsfield. Nudging the old town with
its coaching inns, small shops, red brick houses and a provenance stretching
back to the 1100 s, the larger ‘new’ town of Beaconsfield arose at the turn of
the 20th century when the railway arrived. A busy little place today, things
would have been more subdued when Robert and Emily came; the second
world war had not long ended, the Korean war had just begun, and for most
people there was still the austerity of rationing. A little further away too lay
Amersham with its convenient underground connection to central London,
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
D. Sheppard, Robert Le Rossignol, Springer Biographies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29714-5_18
453