FEATURE
Master of Camelot Charles A. Coulombe remembers Arthurian historian Geoffrey Ashe
F
rom his own apparent time in the 500s AD, no single character has occupied as great a place in the British – indeed, the European – imagination, as King Arthur. Of all those who tried to make sense of the various versions of the Arthurian legend, few achieved as much acceptance of their theories and personal renown doing so as Geoffrey Ashe (1923-2022). Unlike most of the great figures I’ve had the pleasure of describing in these pages, I actually met Mr Ashe, and the manner of that meeting will serve as a fine introduction to the man himself as not only an historian but a Catholic writer. In May of 2020, an article of mine appeared in the Catholic Herald entitled Past and Present. It was a brief summary of Glastonbury’s spiritual history, from the old legends of St. Joseph of Arimathea, the Holy Grail, and King Arthur, to the Medieval Abbey and its suppression, Glastonbury’s long post-Protestant sleep, and then its revival as a religious centre in the late 19th and early 20th centuries thanks to the proto-New Age Avalonians. I concluded with the return of the Benedictines, who at the time had recently taken charge of the Catholic Shrine in the centre of the town, and were offering the Tridentine Mass. I pointed out that despite the Avalonians’ many differences from one another, this eclectic collection of mystics, occultists, and visionaries were responsible for lifting the town from obscurity and placing it in its current position. In the number of this tribe I placed Geoffrey Ashe, not least because his biography inevitably mentioned he lived at the foot of Glastonbury Tor. He responded to the article in a letter published by the Herald the following October: “Congratulations to Charles Coulombe on his fine article on Glastonbury, and especially for his
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Geoffrey Ashe: ‘Among other activities, he studied the Shroud of Turin’ update on recent developments such as the new Benedictine community. My first book, King Arthur’s Avalon, concluded with a quote from Austin Ringwode, the last surviving monk of Glastonbury Abbey: ‘The Abbey will one day be restored and rebuilt for the like worship which has ceased, and peace and plenty will for a long time abound.’ I believe that the new community is beginning to fulfil this prophecy. “I am glad Mr Coulombe included a few words about the neo-mystics, who have caused confusion over the years. But I must make a humble protest at being included among them myself. “I never was. My Avalonian writings have been before the public for a long time. The original inspiration came from a passage in the works of GK Chesterton, a very great Catholic. I was, and remain, within the fold.”
My letter in response expressed my glee at being so very wrong about his state. It elicited an invitation to visit him and his wife, which the exigencies of Covid prevented me from accepting for two years. By the time I arrived there on a visit, the Benedictines had been driven out. This was a terrible blow to the elderly writer and his American wife, Patricia. We commiserated on this loss, and on the liturgical state of the Church in general. But we spoke about much more in history and literature, and the original single hour scheduled passed quickly into two. I took my leave, with assurances from the couple that I was welcome back any time. Alas, Geoffrey died a few months later, and Patricia left a couple months after that for her native land. But those two hours fixed forever in my mind the picture of a deep and thoroughly Catholic thinker. This was not an obvious future for the young child born on 29 March 1923 in London to Arthur William and Thelma Ashe. Arthur was general manager of Poly Tours, and took his family with him frequently to Europe and around the British Isles visiting hotels used by the agency. Geoffrey was educated at St Paul’s School in London, G.K. Chesterton’s alma mater. Attending years after GKC, Ashe then knew nothing about him, but noticed his name on a plaque in the entrance hall, listing famous alumni. His mother introduced him to Gilbert and Sullivan’s Operettas, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and finally Chesterton’s Father Brown series – and revealed that she had once seen the author himself in a restaurant. When he was 16, Geoffrey’s parents took him to Canada. He graduated with a degree in English and Classics at the University of British Columbia in 1943. He returned to England in 1946 with his Canadian wife, Dorothy
SPRING 2025
