Willie Hopkin: D.H. Lawrence’s Socialist Friend

Artefact 5: The Stamp of Willie Hopkin | Article 1 of 4

Willie Hopkin

Willie Hopkin (1862-1951) was a poet, philosopher, social reformer, local historian and humorist who interested himself with every aspect of Eastwood life, serving on the County Council, Eastwood Urban District Council, the Board of the Mechanics Institute and the committee of the Literary Society. He was also Superintendent of the Wesleyan Chapel Sunday School, and he organized evening classes at the British School. Hopkin ran a shop on Eastwood High Street, which sold an array of items including second hand and mended shoes.   

John Pateman

Hopkin was politically influenced by Edward Carpenter and joined the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) which was Britain’s first organized socialist political party. Hopkin and Carpenter remained friends until Carpenter’s death in 1922, by which time Hopkin had migrated from the SDF to the Labour Party, via the Independent Labour Party. Hopkin inaugurated Sunday morning meetings in Eastwood marketplace which were aimed at the miners who, towards midday, began to gather, waiting for ‘opening time’. Gradually these meetings prospered and Hopkin was able to invite speakers like Keir Hardie to address the miners. Energetic and altruistic, he cared little for the barriers created by Eastwood’s petit bourgeoisie. He was equally at ease discussing social questions of the day with miners and landed gentry.

Hopkin was a life-long friend and mentor of D.H. Lawrence and one of the few people in Eastwood with whom Lawrence retained any continuous contact. He wrote to Hopkin between at least 1910 and 1929, which made Willie his longest non-family correspondent. Hopkin helped foster Lawrence’s belief that he could become a writer at a time when it was rare for someone from a working class background to do this (it still is!). Lawrence attended social gatherings at Hopkin’s home in Devonshire Drive, Eastwood – a sort of open forum where all-comers could discuss religion, politics and education – and it was here that he began to find his true voice and learned to understand himself. At these gatherings Lawrence met a wide range of politically progressive people including Philip Snowden, Ramsay Macdonald, Charlotte Despond, Annie Kenney, and Beatrice and Sydney Webb.

Lawrence revolted against the dehumanizing effects of industrialization and shared some utopian socialist ideals with Hopkin, who was a major force in shaping and determining the shift in Lawrence’s politics and ideology from individualism to collectivism. This process began as early as 1905 but became accelerated during the years of the Great War, 1914-18, and beyond. Lawrence was part of a wider progressive circle that included Alice Dax, Louie Burrows and Blanche Jennings, who were ardent socialists and suffragettes. Lawrence was also heavily influenced by the ideas of Edward Carpenter. Although they never met, Lawrence read many of Carpenter’s works, and there are some striking parallels in their world view, as exemplified in Women in Love.

Lawrence’s interest in utopian socialism was diverted into a search for ‘Ranamin’ – an ideal community of like minded progressive people who rejected the values of industrial capitalism – but was resumed and strengthened by his return to Europe in 1925. Hopkin helped Lawrence make another shift in his politics that took place between The Plumed Serpent and the first version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. After his self imposed exile in 1919, Lawrence visited Eastwood in 1926 during the lockout of the miners that followed the General Strike, by which time Hopkin was in the Labour Party and a determined opponent of a return to work. His newspaper articles became very left wing during the lock-out and he mentions Lawrence’s visit in them. Lawrence changed his political stance after that visit which is evident in the first version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, where the semi-literate gamekeeper, Oliver Parkin, is an active Communist.

Lawrence used Hopkin as the basis of several of his fictional characters including the Socialist leader Hudson in The White Peacock, Willy Houghton in ‘Touch and Go’ and Lewie Rollings in John Thomas and Lady Jane. In ‘The Overtone’ Will Renshaw wears the ‘homespun suit’ which was also worn by the Hopkins character – the socialist-vegetarian Lewis Goddard – at the beginning of Mr Noon. Struthers, the Australian Socialist in Kangaroo, and the Socialist President of Mexico in The Plumed Serpent also resemble Hopkin.

Lawrence and Hopkin remained friends until Lawrence’s death. The influence of Hopkin on Lawrence is clear in many of the letters between them which now form part of The Hopkin Collection in Eastwood library. In The Letters of D.H. Lawrence to Sallie and Willie Hopkin Pauline Pollak mentions that these letters were written at important times because Lawrence ‘obviously respected and valued both Sallie and Willie Hopkin as intelligent, warm, sensitive, reliable human beings’. The fact that these letters are spread across all eight volumes of the Cambridge Edition of The Letters of D.H. Lawrence is testament to this life-long friendship.

Willie’s faith in Lawrence’s contribution to English literature never wavered. He wrote, he broadcast, and he lectured about Lawrence until the day he died. Frieda Lawrence, in a letter of condolence after his death in 1951 said: ‘Lawrence would be pleased to know how much Willie did for him, always, from the early days’. The Hopkin Collection provides a unique resource for all those interested in Hopkin and Lawrence to learn more about the two men’s unique friendship and about the social milieu in which they lived. It is an appropriate tribute to both Willie and Olive Hopkin that their devotion to Lawrence should be honoured in this way.

Noel Kader summed up the relationship between Lawrence and Hopkin: ‘Each of these two friends left much for posterity. Each, in his own way, found inspiration and renaissance from the ashes of the setbacks and frustrations. Each followed his own path to self-realization. William in his service to his country; Lawrence in his writing.’

For more information see Pateman, John, Willie Hopkin: D.H. Lawrence’s Socialist Friend, (Five Leaves Press, 2024)

References:
i Pauline Pollak, ‘The Letters of D.H. Lawrence to Sallie and Willie Hopkin’, Journal of Modern Literature, vol 3, no. 1, February 1973), 24
ii Noel Kader, W.E. Hopkin and ‘The Early Life of D.H. Lawrence: Friendship,’ Journal of D.H. Lawrence Studies, Vol. 1, no.3, 1978), 16
iii Ibid