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Authors: David Smith
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established in their various situations, most in stable relationships, many married, nearly all with professional jobs. He found it difficult to break into a social circle again, feeling excluded by these mature relationships, frustrated that few listened to his stories of the Wild West with any degree of interest or conviction. Fortunately, he was introduced by his mother to a sweet girl, Lettice Dorothy, or Dottie as she preferred to be known, a cousin of the famous Lygon family. She wrote poetry and read English history – she was later to become the biographer of Endymion Porter and an expert on the Long Parliament. Baxter wasted no time in falling for her and decided almost at once that he wanted to marry her but without a steady job this was deemed impossible by her father.
Baxter was obviously frustrated by this rejection, but set about trying to find work at a publisher to please his prospective father-in-law. He moved to a village near Dottie’s home and then in 1997 settled in rooms at Oxford. Through influential friends he became a member of the Common Room at Wadham where he could sip tea on the emerald lawn and dream of the desert light. He spent many hours in the Pitt Rivers Museum studying old photos and shamans from the Ute reservations. Through this research into the traditions and beliefs of the Indians he began to form and write about his own version of secular humanism; a belief in an ethical life, morality without religion, about coming to terms with the consequences of human decisions while being at ease with nature. Maybe it was the mathematical genes within him but his adversity to religious thought could sometimes boil into stridency. He became interested in the works of E. F. Schumacher: ‘
Any intelligent fool can invent further complications, but it takes a genius to retain, or recapture, simplicity
.’
In 1998, Baxter saw his first novel published. It was a Pueblo Indian story with his own blue-eyed, curly-haired self as an important character complete with a fictional meeting with Billy the Kid. A story told through his eyes that contained a maze of contemporary detail and silvered prose.
A year later, he made a nostalgic return visit to Colorado. Armed with a camera this time, he visited the Great Plains, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado and the pueblo at Jemez. The open-range life he had known for a time in his youth was rapidly giving way to asphalt, casinos and second-home developments. The old friends he sought out no longer possessed the energy and youthful glamour that he remembered, and he returned to Oxford with a portfolio of photography, yet feeling somewhat disillusioned, wondering why these toothless middle-aged rednecks had ever seemed as appealing as compatriots.
Where have all the cowboys gone?
he lamented. The photos were made into a nice coffee-table book.
A lone pine stands in the Northland
On a bald and barren height.
He sleeps, by the snows enfolded
In a mantle of wintry white.
He dreams of a lonely palm-tree,
Afar in the morning-land,
Consumed with unspoken longing
In a waste of burning sand.
(After Heine.)
Richard Baxter Townshend,
Lone Pine
After he returned to England, Dottie and Baxter lived together for a while but never married; for a while they appeared to be slowly drifting apart as sweethearts but still saw each other frequently as friends. She was by necessity increasingly devoted to her elderly father and became his constant nurse during his later years. With Baxter’s literary connections, she was able to get her father’s book of memoirs published. In the manuscript of one diary entry, written shortly before his death, she had recorded his personal annotations consisting of these consoling words:
Life has not been a disappointment, and there is a good deal of truth in the line: ‘And for His chosen, pours His best wine last.’
Released from this constant caring, she had travelled for a while both alone and
Baxter was obviously frustrated by this rejection, but set about trying to find work at a publisher to please his prospective father-in-law. He moved to a village near Dottie’s home and then in 1997 settled in rooms at Oxford. Through influential friends he became a member of the Common Room at Wadham where he could sip tea on the emerald lawn and dream of the desert light. He spent many hours in the Pitt Rivers Museum studying old photos and shamans from the Ute reservations. Through this research into the traditions and beliefs of the Indians he began to form and write about his own version of secular humanism; a belief in an ethical life, morality without religion, about coming to terms with the consequences of human decisions while being at ease with nature. Maybe it was the mathematical genes within him but his adversity to religious thought could sometimes boil into stridency. He became interested in the works of E. F. Schumacher: ‘
Any intelligent fool can invent further complications, but it takes a genius to retain, or recapture, simplicity
.’
In 1998, Baxter saw his first novel published. It was a Pueblo Indian story with his own blue-eyed, curly-haired self as an important character complete with a fictional meeting with Billy the Kid. A story told through his eyes that contained a maze of contemporary detail and silvered prose.
A year later, he made a nostalgic return visit to Colorado. Armed with a camera this time, he visited the Great Plains, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the Grand Canyon of the Colorado and the pueblo at Jemez. The open-range life he had known for a time in his youth was rapidly giving way to asphalt, casinos and second-home developments. The old friends he sought out no longer possessed the energy and youthful glamour that he remembered, and he returned to Oxford with a portfolio of photography, yet feeling somewhat disillusioned, wondering why these toothless middle-aged rednecks had ever seemed as appealing as compatriots.
Where have all the cowboys gone?
he lamented. The photos were made into a nice coffee-table book.
A lone pine stands in the Northland
On a bald and barren height.
He sleeps, by the snows enfolded
In a mantle of wintry white.
He dreams of a lonely palm-tree,
Afar in the morning-land,
Consumed with unspoken longing
In a waste of burning sand.
(After Heine.)
Richard Baxter Townshend,
Lone Pine
After he returned to England, Dottie and Baxter lived together for a while but never married; for a while they appeared to be slowly drifting apart as sweethearts but still saw each other frequently as friends. She was by necessity increasingly devoted to her elderly father and became his constant nurse during his later years. With Baxter’s literary connections, she was able to get her father’s book of memoirs published. In the manuscript of one diary entry, written shortly before his death, she had recorded his personal annotations consisting of these consoling words:
Life has not been a disappointment, and there is a good deal of truth in the line: ‘And for His chosen, pours His best wine last.’
Released from this constant caring, she had travelled for a while both alone and
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