Lanham: The Life and Times of Dick Ruggles (Sussex Life Story Collection)
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Item Open Access The Life and Times of Dick Ruggles: Lord Sainsbury's Gardener(2005-05) Lanham, NeilDick Ruggles is a natural storyteller with a dialect typical of the North Essex/West Suffolk Border. Walter Benjamin (The Storyteller-Illuminations) described the typical Storyteller as the artisan/farmer who stays at home or the traveller who returned with stories. Dick Ruggles is both. He is a keeper and custodian of the inherited tradition of his area (called Seanachie in Ireland).His stories are as passed on (some from his mother etc and some are folk tales) or from his experience of life – nothing whatsoever taken from Literacy or outside interests. He has a typical local technique of 1. Framing his stories at first from afar (e.g.’ I was sitting having me sandwiches at the time when old so and so….’) 2. Using formula: local sayings, proverbs. 3. Strong use of dialogue to bring forward the players in this play of life. 4. Playing pranks for the sake of relaying it in story. He was recorded close to his face to show every possible gesticulation. (see The Anthropology of Gest. Marcel Jousse). Fourteen hours recorded in total. Having decided to retire from gamekeeping and to give up the tenancy of the Chestnuts, Dick thought that he would like to ‘plough a lighter furrow’ and Lord Sainsbury's offer of a job as gardener-cum-caretaker at ‘Hoses’, his Toppesfield Country Residence, seemed ideal. Dick had always got on well with Lord Sainsbury and Lord Sainsbury had told the man from The Halstead Gazette that he had respected Dick for saying what he thought and treating him the same as anyone else in the village. Both, however, had strong characters and although they had little conflicts and set too’s, Dick tells the tales with a lump in his throat. Lord Sainsbury was very good to the village and sometimes, through Dick as you will hear, would put his hand in his pocket and pay for something for the church or the village in a manner that 'no one was to know about it’—and ’there are not many who will do that', says Dick. To the governor, it is his garden, but it also has to be the gardener’s garden as well. Whilst the governor puts his money into it, a good gardener puts his heart and pride into it and this so often leads to personalities coming to the fore. Whilst there are many tales here of that nature, both parties seemed to have enjoyed their encounters. Dick wishes to point out that these tales of the ups and downs of life while in their employ are meant with absolutely no disrespect to Lord and Lady Sainsbury for whom Dick enjoyed eight years as an employee and always had great respect from both.Item Open Access The Life and Times of Dick Ruggles: Village Life(2005-05) Lanham, NeilDick Ruggles is a natural storyteller with a dialect typical of the North Essex/West Suffolk Border. Walter Benjamin (The Storyteller-Illuminations) described the typical Storyteller as the artisan/farmer who stays at home or the traveller who returned with stories. Dick Ruggles is both. He is a keeper and custodian of the inherited tradition of his area (called Seanachie in Ireland).His stories are as passed on (some from his mother etc and some are folk tales) or from his experience of life – nothing whatsoever taken from Literacy or outside interests. He has a typical local technique of 1. Framing his stories at first from afar (e.g.’ I was sitting having me sandwiches at the time when old so and so….’) 2. Using formula: local sayings, proverbs. 3. Strong use of dialogue to bring forward the players in this play of life. 4. Playing pranks for the sake of relaying it in story. He was recorded close to his face to show every possible gesticulation. (see The Anthropology of Gest. Marcel Jousse). Fourteen hours recorded in total. Apart from two years away on the Atlantic Convoys (Vols. II & III), Dick Ruggles has always been at the centre of life in his home village of Toppesfield, situated in North Essex, but then so have his parents and their parents before them. Dick tells stories from his grandfather and likewise his mother. His mother was involved with the church and many of her tales that Dick passes on are about the Toppesfield Vicars and their odd little ways. When Dick kept The Chestnuts, the pub in the centre of the Village, Dick’s father was a regular and a catalyst for many tales of adventures that were nightly passed on. In addition to this, Dick was Treasurer of the Village Hall Committee for over twenty years, played in and then helped run successfully the local village football team for over fifty years, he also sat on the Parish Council for over thirty years and thus being at the hub of things aided by his stalwart wife Dolly he is able to reel off tale after tale from not just his age but those from the generations before him. All seen through the humorous eye of a countryman.Item Open Access The Life and Times of Dick Ruggles: Gamekeeping Tales(2005-05) Lanham, NeilDick Ruggles is a natural storyteller with a dialect typical of the North Essex/West Suffolk Border. Walter Benjamin (The Storyteller-Illuminations) described the typical Storyteller as the artisan/farmer who stays at home or the traveller who returned with stories. Dick Ruggles is both. He is a keeper and custodian of the inherited tradition of his area (called Seanachie in Ireland).His stories are as passed on (some from his mother etc and some are folk tales) or from his experience of life – nothing whatsoever taken from Literacy or outside interests. He has a typical local technique of 1. Framing his stories at first from afar (e.g.’ I was sitting having me sandwiches at the time when old so and so….’) 2. Using formula: local sayings, proverbs. 3. Strong use of dialogue to bring forward the players in this play of life. 4. Playing pranks for the sake of relaying it in story. He was recorded close to his face to show every possible gesticulation. (see The Anthropology of Gest. Marcel Jousse). Fourteen hours recorded in total. It was after Dick returned from the war time Atlantic Convoys (Vols. II & III) that he settled in once more working for Whitlocks in Great Yeldham. His governor Carlton Whitlock was advertising for a gamekeeper and suggested that Dick should apply. Having secured the job, Dick tells us that there were things with which he needed a hand. Here Joe Miles, the keeper at Spains Hall for Sir Ruggles-Brise, came to the fore and a lasting friendship was formed. Joe was a 'Moonraker' - a man from Wiltshire, a character with a deep knowledge of vermin, game and the etiquette that surrounds shooting parties and he features in many of the stories told here. Dick soon got his shoot round and won the respect of both those cultivating the land, the beaters, fellow gamekeepers for having one of the best shoots around. Also all of the 'guns' who would join the rest of the company in the public bar for a game of darts after the shoot. These are stories then of the outward going Dick enjoying every minute and at the same time establishing a high reputation for both his company and prowess. Dicks governor was at one point going to sack him, however on seeing the funny side of Dick's misdemeanour he telephoned Reg Wooton, the cartoonist of the Sunday Express, for a cartoon of the incident to appear in the paper the following week. When Reg Wooton sent the original artwork to Carlton Whitlock he had it framed, and who should he give it to at the Christmas shoot but his trusty colleague in pursuit of fun and sport, Dick Ruggles.Item Open Access The Life and Times of Dick Ruggles: Gunner on the Atlantic Convoys, Part 2(2005-03) Lanham, NeilDick Ruggles is a natural storyteller with a dialect typical of the North Essex/West Suffolk Border. Walter Benjamin (The Storyteller-Illuminations) described the typical Storyteller as the artisan/farmer who stays at home or the traveller who returned with stories. Dick Ruggles is both. He is a keeper and custodian of the inherited tradition of his area (called Seanachie in Ireland).His stories are as passed on (some from his mother etc and some are folk tales) or from his experience of life – nothing whatsoever taken from Literacy or outside interests. He has a typical local technique of 1. Framing his stories at first from afar (e.g.’ I was sitting having me sandwiches at the time when old so and so….’) 2. Using formula: local sayings, proverbs. 3. Strong use of dialogue to bring forward the players in this play of life. 4. Playing pranks for the sake of relaying it in story. He was recorded close to his face to show every possible gesticulation. (See The Anthropology of Gest. Marcel Jousse). Fourteen hours recorded in total. That wise man of storytelling, Walter Benjamin, in his 1936 essay 'The Storyteller', maintained that 'the archetypal storytellers were seafarers and farmers. The seafarers collected experience on their voyages, and in new and distant places. The farmers collected experiences at home, close to earth, staying put, mining the soil. True storytellers were craftspeople who were employed in their handcraft. Their stories were like their practical lives, they were handcrafted, sculpted, moulded, hammered, forged, carved, sewn, woven with ultimate care and savvy. The storytellers had a practical interest when they told their tales and their stories were filled with counsel and wisdom. Counsel woven into the stuff of lived life is wisdom, the communicability of experience has decreased. The art of storytelling is moving towards its end because the narrative side of truth, which is wisdom, is perishing.' It is rare therefore to nowadays find people like Dick, with the natural ability to share the 'experience in story' that Benjamin talks of. Dick nevertheless answers all of Benjamin's criteria, both in tales from his experience as a gamekeeper in this farming community but also here as the seafarer returning with his tales of his 'practical interest' in his voyages on the high seas and the 'distant lands' of India, New York, Argentina, Wales, Scotland, Manchester Ship Canal, Casa Blanca, Cornwall etc. Dick, as you will learn, volunteered at 18 for the Royal Navy becoming a Naval Gunner on DEMS (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships) and here he tells of his experiences not just hopping round the coastline but risking life and limb. It was his duty to cross the Atlantic sailing via Iceland and Greenland to avoid the German U-boats in 90-ship convoys when this country was almost out of oil, taking coal to Argentina where they were so short that they were burning grain on the steam trains and then bringing back the much needed wheat for bread that this country so badly needed. But these are not nostalgic reminiscences that go nowhere. These are all brought out as a story with a conflict, a purpose and point that passes 'wisdom'. The sad story of the nurses that Dick's ship had conveyed to South Africa only for every one of them to be lost at sea when torpedoed, carries a message that even today Dick says brings a lump to his throat. When Dick was entertained in Buenos Aires by an English home there was a purpose - a reason for his host parading him up and down the back garden. It seems his neighbour, a German, had similarly paraded sailors from the sunken Graf Speey in his garden the previous weekend. Yes, Dick is the archetypal storyteller which can be seen here from his wartime naval experiences and likewise in the series of six others that follow on his village life, as gamekeeper to Carlton Whitlock, a job in which he took great pride, and similarly as gardener to Lord Sainsbury who was always going to be one ahead but Dick would see him coming!Item Open Access The Life and Times of Dick Ruggles: Gunner on the Atlantic Convoys(2005-03) Lanham, NeilDick Ruggles is a natural storyteller with a dialect typical of the North Essex/West Suffolk Border. Walter Benjamin (The Storyteller-Illuminations) described the typical Storyteller as the artisan/farmer who stays at home or the traveller who returned with stories. Dick Ruggles is both. He is a keeper and custodian of the inherited tradition of his area (called Seanachie in Ireland).His stories are as passed on (some from his mother etc and some are folk tales) or from his experience of life – nothing whatsoever taken from Literacy or outside interests. He has a typical local technique of 1. Framing his stories at first from afar (e.g.’ I was sitting having me sandwiches at the time when old so and so….’) 2. Using formula: local sayings, proverbs. 3. Strong use of dialogue to bring forward the players in this play of life. 4. Playing pranks for the sake of relaying it in story. He was recorded close to his face to show every possible gesticulation. (See The Anthropology of Gest. Marcel Jousse). Fourteen hours recorded in total. That wise man of storytelling, Walter Benjamin, in his 1936 essay 'The Storyteller', maintained that 'the archetypal storytellers were seafarers and farmers. The seafarers collected experience on their voyages, and in new and distant places. The farmers collected experiences at home, close to earth, staying put, mining the soil. True storytellers were craftspeople who were employed in their handcraft. Their stories were like their practical lives, they were handcrafted, sculpted, moulded, hammered, forged, carved, sewn, woven with ultimate care and savvy. The storytellers had a practical interest when they told their tales and their stories were filled with counsel and wisdom. Counsel woven into the stuff of lived life is wisdom, the communicability of experience has decreased. The art of storytelling is moving towards its end because the narrative side of truth, which is wisdom, is perishing.' It is rare therefore to nowadays find people like Dick, with the natural ability to share the 'experience in story' that Benjamin talks of. Dick nevertheless answers all of Benjamin's criteria, both in tales from his experience as a gamekeeper in this farming community but also here as the seafarer returning with his tales of his 'practical interest' in his voyages on the high seas and the 'distant lands' of India, New York, Argentina, Wales, Scotland, Manchester Ship Canal, Casa Blanca, Cornwall etc. Dick, as you will learn, volunteered at 18 for the Royal Navy becoming a Naval Gunner on DEMS (Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships) and here he tells of his experiences not just hopping round the coastline but risking life and limb. It was his duty to cross the Atlantic sailing via Iceland and Greenland to avoid the German U-boats in 90-ship convoys when this country was almost out of oil, taking coal to Argentina where they were so short that they were burning grain on the steam trains and then bringing back the much needed wheat for bread that this country so badly needed. But these are not nostalgic reminiscences that go nowhere. These are all brought out as a story with a conflict, a purpose and point that passes 'wisdom'. The sad story of the nurses that Dick's ship had conveyed to South Africa only for every one of them to be lost at sea when torpedoed, carries a message that even today Dick says brings a lump to his throat. When Dick was entertained in Buenos Aires by an English home there was a purpose - a reason for his host parading him up and down the back garden. It seems his neighbour, a German, had similarly paraded sailors from the sunken Graf Speey in his garden the previous weekend. Yes, Dick is the archetypal storyteller which can be seen here from his wartime naval experiences and likewise in the series of six others that follow on his village life, as gamekeeper to Carlton Whitlock, a job in which he took great pride, and similarly as gardener to Lord Sainsbury who was always going to be one ahead but Dick would see him coming!Item Open Access The Life and Times of Dick Ruggles: The Disappearance of the Squire's Ham and Other Village Stories(2004-12) Lanham, NeilDick and Dolly Ruggles live in a thatched cottage in the centre of the Essex village of Toppesfield. The cottage belonged to Dick's grandfather and it was here that Dick's mother was born and it was here that she died 72 years later. Dick was born on 2 February 1923 and started work at the age of 14 as an apprentice carpenter at Whitlocks, just down the road at Gt. Yeldham. At the age of 17, in the early years of the war, he went to help install Searchlight Sites on farms in East Suffolk where Whitlocks held the contract. On becoming eligible for war service at 18 he joined up as a Naval Gunner on DEMS - Defensively Equipped Merchant Ships to go on the Atlantic Convoys. In civi-street once more, Carlton Whitlock said “poacher’s make good gamekeepers so I’ve got a job for you”, and gamekeeping then became the lifestyle that Dick revelled in for many years until the death of his governor. He then went to work as gardener for the ‘wiley’ Lord Sainsbury. Dick has always been at the heart of village life. He was Parish Councillor, Treasurer of the Village Hall and Church Warden for many years. He played for and then helped run the village football team. As a stalwart member of the choir, on becoming landlord of The Chestnuts Public House he combined his duties by seeing that the choir practices were held in the bar instead of the unheated church. ‘A sensible thing to do’ says Dick. It is hardly surprising therefore with such a deep rooted background that Dick continues the traditions of the past as a natural part of life. Storytelling is a gift and Dick has the gift to see the jest in the ‘thousand opportunities that occur every day for humour and simile’, to quote Adrian Bell. I find his natural ability to turn the smallest adventure into a drama quite fascinating. He will subconsciously convert everything possible into a dialogue so that the parts of all of the performers are brought forward, and then to slowly drop in information as the plot is revealed. But his stories are not reminiscences that go nowhere. They all have a conflict, a punchline, a point to be made, a principle of understanding that passes ‘hilarious wisdom’. As a professional storyteller said, ‘it encapsulates the wisdom of generations’. This in a technological age where speech now carries little more than information. Dick’s mother’s story about the disappearance of the Squire’s Ham could equally have come out of Katherine Brigg's Dictionary of English Folk Tales, but who needs books and ’staged’ performances—this is real time from real life—the life of Dick Ruggles. This, however, is just the introduction. Future volumes will feature: Sailors Yarns and Pranks, aboard ship and in bars from Buenos Aires to Karachi where Dick would play the bar piano, his gamekeeping exploits including when loading he potted his governor’s pheasant after Royalty down the line had missed it and he still had enough guile to retain his job. Whose garden is it? The gardener’s or the governor’s? Lord Sainsbury, a man who Dick had respect for, was always going to be one ahead - if he could!