Theodore Herman van Beek

Theodore Herman van Beek (1898 - 1958) was a poet, lyricist and playwright.

Also found as T.H. van Beek, Theodore Hermann van Beek, or Theo van Beek

He used the pseudonym Martin Mayne at one time.

Biography

Van Beek was born in South Africa, and early on began writing poetry, the earliest known published (by himself?) in a volume entitled Poems and a Drama (1907). (Copies are held by various libraries, including NALN.

According to the article The War Office Regrets (posted on the blogspot Behind Their Lines. Poetry of the Great War on Friday, July 31, 2020), he emigrated to Scotland in 1908 to attend the University of Edinburgh. He married Katherine Fairbairn, a young woman from Edinburgh, and by the time war was declared in 1914, the couple had three young sons. Enlisting in the British army, van Beek served first with the Artists Rifles and later with the Royal Field Artillery.

Although van Beek survived the war, his marriage did not. Before the war ended, his wife emigrated to Canada with their two surviving sons. After the war, Van Beek married Isabella Hamilton Kyle in 1920 and began a new family, but suffered bankruptcy in the 1920s.

He adopted the pseudonym Martin Mayne and turned his talents to song writing, composing the lyrics to the Bennie Goodman tune "I Sent You a Kiss in the Night" as well as "I Remember the Cornfields", recorded by both Evelyn Knight and Anne Shelton.

Van Beek died in 1958.

Throughout his life, van Beek continued to write poetry, and in 1986, more of the poems were collected by his son and published in the small volume called The Day of Love.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

He wrote one play, The Two Kingdoms, described as "A Poetical Drama", about two rival kings - Lerus and Dernilus - in ann ancient and unknown land.

The play text was published, along with Van Beek's poetry in the self-published volume entitled Poems and a Drama (1907). A copy of the text held by NALN.

Sources

https://books.google.co.za/books?id=HlQ2AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

The War Office Regrets (posted on the blogspot Behind Their Lines. Poetry of the Great War on Friday, July 31, 2020)[1]

Forgotten Poets of the First World War[2]

https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Poems_and_a_Drama.html?id=HlQ2AQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y

Copy of a catalogue (handwritten by various hands) of the F.C.L. Bosman collection held at the Nasionale Afrikaanse Letterkunde Museum en Navorsingsentrum (NALN) in Bloemfontein.

Gosher, Sydney Paul. 1988. A Historical and Critical Survey of the South African One-act Play Written in English. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Pretoria: University of South Africa.

"Martyn Mayne" in the Catalogue of the National Library of Australia[3]

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