William Bolitho Ryall (1891–1930) was a South African journalist, writer and biographer who was a valued friend of prominent writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Noël Coward, Walter Lippmann and Walter Duranty. He wrote under the name ‘William Bolitho’ but was known to his friends as ‘Bill Ryall’. He died on 2 June 1930 at the age of 39 just as his reputation was being established.
Life
Ryall was born as Charles William Ryall in Droitwich, in January 1891. His father was a Baptist minister, born in South Africa and he was taken there as an infant. He changed his name to 'William Bolitho Ryall' which was his uncle's name who died in South Africa and who wrote the book Pensam: His Mysterious Tribulation published in 1883. Before enlisting in the British Army he had gone to seminary in Gordonstown South African and become a deacon in the Anglican Church. In 1916 he was buried alive with fifteen other men in a mine explosion on the Somme. He was the only survivor and was initially thought to be dead, but was unconscious with a broken neck and other injuries. He spent a year convalescing in a Scottish military hospital but never fully recovered his health.
Journalism
After the war he became the Paris correspondent of the Manchester Guardian, for which he covered the 1919 Peace Conference at Versailles. In 1920 he reported on the communist rebellion in the Ruhr valley in Germany. This incident later became the subject of his play entitled Overture. In 1923 he was appointed correspondent with the New York World to which he contributed many notable dispatches. In 1924 he reported on the housing conditions in Glasgow and these dispatches were published in the World and in the book, The Cancer of Empire. In 1925 he travelled throughout Italy interviewing people about Mussolini's regime and this resulted in the book Italy under Mussolini which brought to public notice the abuses of Mussolini's power. Ryall arrived in New York on 26 September 1928, having sailed from Southampton on the S.S. Homerio. He then had a thrice weekly column with the New York World.
Twelve Against the Gods
This book was published in 1929 and was an instant bestseller, being written in a racy, journalistic style. It covers the lives of twelve individuals in the following order: Alexander the Great, Casanova, Christopher Columbus, Mahomet, Lola Montez, Cagliostro (and Seraphina), Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon I, Lucius Sergius Catiline, Napoleon III, Isadora Duncan, and Woodrow Wilson. Adventure is the theme that unites this unlikely assemblage. Bolitho argues that they were all adventurers who battled convention and conformity to achieve fame or notoriety. He sees human endeavour as a duality between conformity and non-conformity. "We are born adventurers, and the love of adventures never leaves us till we are very old; old, timid men, in whose interest it is that adventure should quite die out. This is why all the poets are on one side, and all the laws on the other; for laws are made by, and usually for, old men." He points out that their lives show the difficulties involved, and the scant reward to be expected from such adventuring.
Last Days
Bolitho left New York City in April 1929 and travelled to London where a production of his play Overture was being organized. But by May he was not well and he travelled to his small château called La Préfète at Montfavet near Avignon, France, to recuperate. He had bought La Préfète while he lived in Paris and he planned to use his substantial income from writing to develop the garden with exotic African fruits and flowers. He had told Duranty that it would be a "place of wonder and beauty, no matter what it costs" but Duranty adds: "Poor Bolitho! He did not know that it would cost his life. An attack of acute appendicitis wrongly diagnosed by a local doctor, then a last minute rush in a local ambulance to the operating-table in Avignon, where he arrived too late; and death from peritonitis after thirty-six hours of agony." His play, Overture, was later performed at the Longacre Theatre, New York from 5 Dec 1930 to Jan 1931 with 41 performances. This is its only known performance.