Francis Jekyll

Francis Jekyll (1882-1965)

Francis Jekyll (pronounced 'Jeekyl')[1882-1965] was an associate of the folk song collector George Butterworth in the early twentieth century. He appears in the Penguin Book of Folk Songs as the collector of a Hampshire version of “The Young Girl Cut Down in Her Prime.” 1 The Preface to George Butterworth’s Folk Songs from Sussex (1912) states that Jekyll had noted four of those eleven songs, and he was thanked “for his enthusiastic co-operation.” The Roud electronic database records more than thirty items from printed (i.e. non-manuscript) sources that were wholly or partly collected by Francis Jekyll, most of which were published in the early editions of the Journal of the Folk Song Society.

Michael Dawney’s article on "George Butterworth’s Folk Music Manuscripts" 2 records that Jekyll was born in 1882, that he went to Eton (1895) and to Oxford (1901)3 and that he worked at the British Museum (1906-14). Dawney also tells us that Jekyll joined the Folk-Song Society in 1907 and the English Folk-Dance Society in 1911. He was, Dawney adds, “solely or jointly responsible for the collecting of fifty-seven songs,” as well as folk dances from County Limerick.4 After Butterworth died on the Somme in 1916 Jekyll wrote: “Some of my happiest days were those we spent together, tramping the Sussex Downs and collecting songs.”

The Eton Register for 1893 to 1899 tells us that Jekyll arrived there in September 1895 and left in December 1900. In 1897 he was in Fifth Form Upper Division B3 VIII, and in 1899 in Fifth Form A12 II. He was Newcastle Scholar in 1900. (Butterworth went to Eton in 1899 and left in 1904.)

Jekyll appears in Lucy Broadwood’s manuscript diaries at the Surrey History Centre. He had tea with Lucy Broadwood on 6 September 1899, and again on 30 October 1905. On 11 February 1906 he took supper with her. On 19 October 1906, he “came to tea and [to] play …his Hereford tunes.” On 12 November 1906 he called again. On 28 May 1907, with 52 others, he attended a musical party at Lucy Broadwood’s flat. On 21 November 1907 he “came after tea to show me folk-tunes etc.,” and he was one of 29 guests at a tea party on 14 April 1908. On 12 December 1908, Lucy Broadwood records: “Mr. Francis Jekyll called, had a long F(olk) S(ong) S(ociety) talk, stopped to dinner, and listened to phonograph-songs.”

The Balliol College Register tells us that Jekyll worked for the Ministry of Information from 1917 to 1920.

Sally Festing’s biography of Gertrude Jekyll notes that Francis (known to family and friends as ‘Timmy’) was the nephew of the famous lady gardener, and that he inherited her estate, Munstead Wood, after her death in 1932. (He also wrote a memoir of his aunt,5 but this makes no mention of folk song.) Sally Festing adds that under Timmy’s stewardship the famous garden was not maintained, and that soon supplies to customers from the nursery were fitful. She quotes two local librarians who “remember the elderly Timmy Jekyll as a quiet, self-contained, rather dour man who made evening visits to borrow books and sometimes fell asleep in one of the chairs.”6

In an article, "Francis Jekyll (1882-1965) Forgotten Hero of the First Folk Song Revival," published in English Dance and Song in June 2000, Lewis Jones cites a letter to him from Mrs. Primrose Arnander, Gertrude Jekyll’s great niece.7 After consulting with her father, David McKenna, Mrs. Arnander wrote, on 3 June 1999:

Francis Jekyll …was an Assistant in the Printed Books Department of the British Museum from 1906-1914. He worked under Barclay Squire (1885-1920) in the Printed Music Section, and after two years service was recommended by Fortescue, the then Keeper, to the Trustees as a possible successor to Barclay Squire. In Fortescue’s words he had ‘excellent abilities’ and was ‘a student of musical literature and bibliography.’ He went on to say: ‘It is desirable that there should be at least one Assistant capable, in the course of time, of succeeding Mr. Squire’s duties, and in this respect Mr. Fortescue hopes that Mr. Jekyll may at some future date be of special service to the Library.’ In 1911 Francis Jekyll helped Squire with the removal of the King’s Music from Buckingham Palace, and made a rough catalogue of it which is still extant.

The above information comes from a letter to my father written in March 1978 by Alec Hyatt King who was engaged at that time in writing a history of the Printed Music in the British Museum which he hoped to have published.8 …Mr. Hyatt King also wondered why, after such a promising start, Francis Jekyll should have resigned in 1914 and thereafter sunk into obscurity.

I am sure that there was an initial nervous breakdown which must have led to recurring clinical depression, an illness well understood, accepted and treated nowadays but little understood then…

In 1932 Francis Jekyll inherited his Aunt Gertrude’s house and garden and all the contents. He did not live there for very long, but tried to keep her nursery garden going and was still fulfilling orders up to the war time. …In 1937 his mother Dame Agnes Jekyll died and around 1939 he moved into the Hut, a smaller house in the grounds, and Munstead Wood was let and finally sold. There was a sale of all the contents in 1948, and Timmy lived on in the Hut with a housekeeper until his death in 1965. He was a sad and rather lonely figure at the end and was never really able to shake free of his debilitating depression. He attended concerts and festivals of music, but never returned to an active role in the field. In 1948 he must have sold all his music and books for the contents of the sale included books, scores and periodicals which showed an interest in music that would have been far beyond Gertrude Jekyll.9

Information concerning Francis Jekyll’s death is to be found at the Family Records Centre: Jekyll, F.W., aged 82, died in Surrey S.W. registration district in the first quarter of 1965, ref. SG1155. The death certificate records that Francis Walter Jekyll died on 27 March 1965 at Munstead Wood Hut, Busbridge, in the Sub-District of Haslemere. A number of causes of death were cited, including senile myocordial degeneration.

According to the obituary in the Guildford Times & News10 Francis Jekyll was a “member of a well-known West Surrey family, …the son of the late Sir Herbert and Lady Jekyll, …a bachelor and a scholar” who “had travelled extensively.” The funeral at Busbridge Church, on 1 April 1965, was followed by a cremation at Woking.

1  Williams RV and AL Lloyd (1959): 108.
2  Folk Music Journal Vol 3 No 2 (1976): 99-113. There is a paragraph about Jekyll on p. 100.
3  His college was Balliol. 
4  These folk dances, Dawney tells us, are in the Butterworth manuscripts  held at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.
5  Jekyll, Francis, Gertrude Jekyll: A Memoir (Cape 1934).
6  Festing, Sally Gertrude Jekyll (Penguin Books 1993): 306. The book was first published by Viking in 1991.
7  Mrs. Arnander cites another source of information about Timmy Jekyll and his family. This is:
   Tooley, Michael and Primrose Arnander [eds] (Michaelmas Books 1995) Gertrude Jekyll: Essays on the Life of a Working Amateur.
   This book reproduces a painting of  Timmy as a young boy by the famous artist and family friend Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898).
8  King, Alec Hyatt (1979) Printed Music in the British Museum: An Account of the Collections, The Catalogues and Their
   Formation up to 1920.
9  Mrs. Arnander appended details of some of the Sales Lots. Among these are back copies of the Journal of the Folk Song
    Society (1899-1921)
   and of the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (1932-1947). These and other items indicate that the collection
   that was sold off did,
   indeed, as Mrs. Arnander states, contain Francis Jekyll’s music books.
10 2 April 1965.