Winifred Gerin, working life

Winifred and Eugene were unhappy with being trapped in France, but they finally managed to get away and go back to England, where they were eager to do their bit for the War.  Eugene was cut off from his family in Belgium.  He and Winifred went to work for one of the secret service departments; he was working preparing supportive pro Allied propaganda to broadcast to Belgium, using his local knowledge and linguistic skills.   Winifred got a job as an assistant to one of the other staff, and both were very dedicated to their war work.

But in the later stages of the War, Eugene, who had been working very hard, died suddenly, he was quite a young man.

Winifred was devastated.  He had been the great love and passion of her life.   However, she was a strong woman and did her best to find something to replace her dedication to Eugene.  She found it in her work.  She had been writing before and during her marriage, but had not found her medium as yet.  When the war was over, she visited Belgium and kept in touch with Eugene’s family, especially her godson… but she became absorbed in writing plays.

She wrote a play based on the life of Jane Austen, and also one (called Juniper Hall) on Fanny Burney.  She may have felt some identification with Fanny, she was a writer, and had married a foreigner.  Fanny Burney had married a French refugee, General D’Arblay.. and had spent many years as a widow.  Winifred has some of the plays produced, though there was criticism that they were a bit too wordy…

In the post War years, she was occupied with her work, but in the early 50s, she took a holiday with her sister, in Yorkshire.  She had always loved the Brontes and felt that one needed to see Haworth, to understand them.. the moors and the natural beauty and isolation in which they lived.  During the trip, she met John Locke, a young man with literary ambitions who was about 20 years her junior.  She was in her early 50s and he was in his thirties.  John was a shy man who wanted to write, but had been occupied with the War and with a routine job.  Meeting Winifred, he fell in love and they decided that their mutual passion for the Brontes and Yorkshire would be the basis for their marriage.

 They bought a house in Haworth and both decided to settle into a writing project.  John collaborated with the local clergyman on a biography of Patrick Bronte.. who had been the curate at Haworth.. Winifred started to write a biography of Anne Bronte.  She also wrote an in depth biography of Charlotte, and a play about Charlotte’s love for her “master”, the Belgian teacher, M Heger.