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Talk:William Matthew Scott

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Further information required

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Further information (preferably with references) is required about the following items so that we can either eliminate them from research, or add them to the article:

  • Book: The Man by Will Scott (1930) (reference copy held by British Library). Brief information about plot and setting of this novel would helpful.

Thank you.--Storye book (talk) 13:42, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Location: I strongly suspect that Will Scott used a small cottage at Hampton to write in. It is now demolished and replaced by lawn, and the site is at the south-east corner of Swalecliffe Avenue. It appears in the children's book Half Term Trail as Matchbox Cottage, both in the story and as an illustration on the end papers. Any confirmation of this usage of the cottage by the writer, or photographs of the original cottage, would be appreciated.

Storye book (talk) 15:16, 16 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Own research

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As you can see from the history, I created this article, and from the citations you can see that all the research as of March 2013 was done from his published works and from public records. The article had to be created according to WP rules. The March 2013 book about Will Scott by Steventon and Ford (see bibliography) contains a lot of additional and important information, and is worth a look by anyone wanting to research the subject further.

However there remains further material which would be defined by WP as original research, and as such it cannot be included in the article until there are third party citations available. I am not getting any younger and don't want this material to be lost, so I'm going to write it here in the hope that corroboration and proper citations may one day be found for some of it.

Between 1959 and 1965 I lived as a child in High View Avenue, Herne Bay, next door to Will Scott and his wife Lily. I can confirm that he was indeed a recluse, and during that time I never saw him knowingly. Although he is said to have frequented The George pub nearby, my father was a regular customer, and did not mention seeing him there. One day his wife Lily brought a set of his Cherry books to our front door as a gift for my sisters and me. Later, Will Scott brought an extra book, The Great Expedition, to our front door, handed it politely to my mother, said a few words of explanation, and disappeared. I heard his voice - quiet and elegant - and that is my only experience of the man.

Words heard from Scott's garden: His study faced onto his garden and ours, and I'm sure he did listen to my sisters and me playing in the garden, because elements of the things we said appear in his last books. For example the title of one of the chapters in the 10th Cherry book, "At it again", was a phrase we used to shout very loudly in the garden. Our parents would regularly have big arguments and then make up and kiss in the kitchen. We could see them through the window, and used to shout, "At it again!". Later as we grew up we realised that the neighbours must have mistakenly thought that we were seeing more than just kissing - and maybe this would have amused Will Scott who then used it to a different purpose in his book. On one occasion my sisters and I had a long discussion about whether Scott was standing behind the thick privet hedge which divided his garden from ours. A similar discussion by the Cherry children appears in one of the books.

When my parents visited the Scotts: Neither the Scotts nor my parents socialised much outside the family, but on one brief occasion my parents were invited to visit next door for drinks and a chat. When they returned, they repeated some of the conversation to me and my sisters. They said that Scott had lived as a child in the north of England next to a factory which stank distressingly, and where houses were currently being pulled down in slum clearances, and they contrasted this with the Cherrys' comfortable lives. Scott had told them that he called Herne Bay "a little paradise" by comparison. My parents asked him whether the Cherry name was inspired by Apsley Garrard, and he said that it was. When asked whether he identified with Mr Cherry in the books, he said that he didn't, and that if he identified with anyone it was Mr Wilks the neighbour, as he saw himself as an observer.

Scott's funeral: On the day of his funeral, funeral cars appeared outside his house, and my parents spoke to a close female relative, probably one of Scott's daughters. She mentioned to them that Scott had asked for his ashes to be scattered, and that he should have no memorial. The relative added that this was because he was a very modest man.

--Storye book (talk) 09:53, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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