The Société Jersiaise have been presented with a doctoral thesis on the life of George d'la Forge, the American-based Jerseyman whose local tales penned in Jèrriais entertained Islanders for many years.

Annette Torode handed over the culmination of eight years' work entitled George d'la Forge, Guardian of the Jersey Norman Heritage, George Francis Le Feuvre, 1891 to 1984 - at a special reception in the Members' Room on Wednesday.

Mrs Torode does not speak Jèrriais, although as a graduate of French and being fluent in that language she does understand it. She has been fascinated by George Le Feuvre's writings since she paid her first visit to the Island in 1965, soon after marrying Jerseyman Ken Torode.

However, it was not until eight years ago that she began her research in earnest, with the help of the Jersey Evening Post.

'When I first came to Jersey in l965 I had just. graduated in French and several people produced George's articles which they thought would have been of interest to me,' Mrs Torode explained. 'I found I could read them and I became totally fascinated. 'I don't speak the language and I don't ever think I will, but I enjoy reading it and have discovered similarities and differences with French.'

Mr Le Feuvre's articles were published in the paper from 1965 until his death, and his tales of a bygone age in pre-First World War Jersey went worldwide through the pages of the Weekly Post. Prior to his association with the JEP, he wrote for the Chronique newspaper.

Mr Le Feuvre was born and grew up in St Ouen but when his parents emigrated to Canada, taking the family with them, he stayed behind, meeting up again with his brothers only on the battlefields of the First World War. After the war he joined his family and they eventually moved to America, where he rose to a high position with the Ford Motor Company.

He never forgot his home or his native language, however, and when he took early retirement in 1946 he returned for a holiday and in later life spent each year living partly in America, partly in the Island and the remainder travelling the world. In all he wrote about 900 articles for the paper and was a regular contributor to the Société Bulletin.

Mrs Torode researched her thesis on regular visits to Jersey and at home in Leeds, where she works as an administrator at the city's university - which houses a collection of books on the Channel Islands left to the university by a Jerseyman, Professor J Le Paturel.

She also met and became friends with people who had known Mr Le Feuvre, including Frank Le Maistre and Edna Clarke-Halifax.

Many hours were spent pouring over old copies of the JEP stored on microfiche in the Library, assisted by her husband, and eight years of effort resulted in the 125,000-word work which now rests with the Société.

Mrs Torode hopes she can obtain funding to publish it for general consumption, and she also intends to continue her studies. 'I'm going to keep the interest going and we're going to keep coming back,' she said.

JEP 28/7/2001

The man known just as easily on this newspaper as George d'la Forge as by his real name, George Francis Le Feuvre, opened his article last week with the remark: "Well, Sir, the time has come for me to write you my 800th letter."

It's a memorable milestone which deserves recognition. Eight hundred articles, each of about 800 words and delivered regularly from wherever he happens to be (which is usually America, where he has lived for many years) is a remarkable achievement.

One would hardly think, reading his articles, that Mr. Le Feuvre celebrates his 90th birthday this year. The sadness is that few can now understand them. George d'la Forge must have the smallest readership of any writer whose work appears in the JEP, for he writes in his native tongue. Indeed, last week, he recorded that it was only when he went to school at the age of seven that he began to learn English, a state of affairs which was quite common in the country areas in those days.

It is a pity that so few are able to read George d'la Forge, not merely because that is evidence of the near death of Jersey's ancient tongue but also because the articles themselves are readable stuff whose magic is largely lost in the translation.

Time after time, Mr. Le Feuvre goes back to his childhood days, evoking a way of life now quite gone. One can sometimes almost hear him sigh a nostalgic sigh.

They say that as one grows older so the days of one's youth become clearer. If that is the case, Mr. Le Feuvre has a rich and continuing source from which to draw. Along with his other "fans" all of us at the Jersey Evening Post hope his weekly letters will continue for many years and we congratulate him on his eighth centenary.

JEP 13/1/1981

THE Jersey heritage's most remarkable guardian, "George d'La Forge", reaches another landmark in his long career today.

The 900th "Lettre du Bouanhomme George", latest in the long-running series in which 91-year-old St Ouennais Mr George Le Feuvre recalls in his native Jersey Norman-French the sights, sounds and customs of the Island as it was at the turn of the century, appears on page 34.

His achievement is all the more notable because he plays his major rôle in preserving the Jersey language and culture from thousands of miles across the Atlantic in the USA, which has been his home since 1922, and from where he ends his latest letter with the traditional toast offered to him by his native lsland on his 90th birthday in 1981 and repeated today. "Bouan pid, bouan'yi, bouanne dent - et l'Paradis a la fin d'vouos jours!"

JEP August 1983

Death of George d'la Forge - the exiled Jerseyman who left his heart in St. Ouen

AN exiled Jerseyman who became one of the foremost guardians of his Island's native language, Mr George Francis Le Feuvre, died in America on Saturday at the age of 93.

Widely known as "George d'La Forge", the nom-de-plume under which he wrote over 900 Jersey Norman-French columns for this newspaper, Mr Le Feuvre was made a Membre d'Honneur of the Societe Jersiaise earlier this year.

His ashes are to be flown home to the Island he loved and interred in St Ouen, where he was born on September 29, 1891, at La Forge, Millais, the family home from which he was to draw many of the memories and anecdotes which later enriched his column, "Eune Lettre du Bouanhomme George", the last of which, by coincidence, was published only on Friday. Although he made several trips back to Jersey, the extent of Mr Le Feuvre's achievement in protecting and promoting the language was all the more remarkable in that his work was carried out thousands of miles away in the USA, where he first lived in 1919 and where he had been a naturalised citizen for over 50 years.

He returned to the Island in 1981, when the celebrations to mark his 90th birthday included being received by the Bailiff, who made a presentation on behalf of the States.

Such accolades were a far cry from the harsh realities of Jersey life at the turn of the century which prompted his blacksmith father, also George, to emigrate to Gaspe in 1901 with his wife, formerly Miss Florence Giffard, and their two younger sons.

The eldest son, George, stayed behind and, after being educated at St Ouen's Wesleyan School and La Moye School, went to work when barely 14 in the offices of Hill Street solicitor Mr William Binet, where he stayed until being appointed Commis Vicomte for the Police and Petty Debts Courts in 1914.

He also acted as secretary to the Constable of St Peter, and served in the West Battalion of the Royal Militia of the Island of Jersey from 1908 until 1915.

The future "George d'la Forge" enlisted in the Royal Field Artillery in 1916 and was posted to the Western Front, where he saw action in the battles of the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Messines Ridge and Cambrai and, in a happy moment among the horrors of the trenches, was reunited with his three brothers, one of whom had joined the British Army from Jersey and two of whom were with the Canadian forces.

He was recommended for a commission and sent back to England, but the Armistice was declared before he could complete his training and he was demobilised in 1919, joining his family in Canada later that year, when he entered the Civil Service in Ottawa.

Mr Le Feuvre was by then already a widower. His wife Marguerite, step-daughter of a French Army captain, had died in an influenza epidemic in 1918, two years after their marriage. Much later, the daughter of the marriage, Reine, joined her father in America.

After three years in the Canadian Civil Service, Mr Le Feuvre went to seek his fortune in the United States and, starting as a labourer, began a successful career with the Great Lakes Engineering Works which ended with his retirement as an executive in 1946. He became a naturalised American in 1933. Although he remained in the USA, and one period of 20 years passed between his visits to his native Island, his enthusiasm for its language, affairs and people remained undimmed and his main activities in retirement were writing in and about Jersey Norman-French and recording Jersey history and its way of life and his early days.

One of the most widely-travelled Jerseyman of his day, he also visited Jersey people in many parts of the world and later established a pattern by which he spent part of the year at his retirement home in Texas, and part at his family's St Ouen home, Le Menage ès Feuvres, Les Landes, which he restored to its original style.

He became probably the most prolific writer of his native, and first language, matched only by the output of its lexicographer, Dr Frank Le Maistre.

A remarkable memory and an intimate knowledge of the Island, coupled with an entertaining style, earned him a faithful readership for "Eune Lettre du Bouanhomme George" the 900th of which appeared in the JEP in August last year.

Some of the columns served as the basis for his two books, the first ever to be published wholly in the Jersey language.

They were "Jèrri Jadis" (1973) and "Histouaithes et Gens d'Jèrri" (1976), published by Le Don Balleine and meticulously in keeping with the standard orthography laid down in Dr Le Maistre's monumental Dictionnaire Jersiais-Francais , in the preparation of which Mr Le Feuvre gave enthusiastic support and encouragement.

He also wrote Jersey language versions of many hymns and contributed often to the quarterly bulletin of L'Assembliée d'Jerriais, a society dedicated to the preservation of the language which he helped found as secretary in 1951.

The importance of Mr Le Feuvre's work was recognised outside Jersey by the award in 1974 of the Prix Litteraire du Cotentin.

A High Church Anglican who delighted in church ritual, he took part in a celebratory Mass in St Ouen's Chapel in 1981, when he returned home for his 90th birthday, an anniversary also marked by a dinner given in his honour by Le Don Balleine. That celebration of the life and work of "Maît' George" included a toast to a fit and active man who took up flying an aeroplane at the age of 45 and, at 89, took to the skies in his grandson's glider.

Some 2 ½ years after becoming a nonagenarian, he was one of the few Jerseymen ever to be made a Membre d'Honneur of La Société Jersiaise, which he joined in 1923.

In the course of his long life, he was also a member of the Jersey Green Room Club, the National Trust for Jersey. La Césarée Lodge of the Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons and several other Masonic lodges, chapters and rites in Jersey and the USA.

His love of the Church extended to the delight he took in taking part in a Gregorian Mass sung to the Coutances rite with his great friend, the Abbé Marcel-Lelégard as celebrant in the Abbaye de la Lucerne in Normandy whenever he visited that part of the world.

A memorial service will be held at St Ouen for Mr Le Feuvre, who died at San Antonio, Texas, leaving a daughter, Mrs Reine Voigt, and two grandchildren, Mr Kenneth Voigt and Mrs Carole Bonny who lives in St Lawrence. To them and other members of the family, the Jersey Evening Post, proud to have been so long associated with such a memorable Jerseyman, offers its sympathy .

JERSEY EVENING POST, Monday, October 29, 1984

He was just 14 months younger than the newspaper whose columns he illuminated for so long with a clear vernacular twinkle and, in more ways than one, George d'la Forge was from another world.

In the purely physical sense, his writing, crammed with childhood souvenirs and simple wisdom, came home to its Jersey roots from the vast, brash world of North America, which he made his home for 65 years.

More importantly by far, it also came from a long-gone, turn-of-the-century world whose values were framed by farm, Church and Militia, and where the good neighbours of a community half the size of today's almost all spoke Jersey's native tongue as fluently as George Le Feuvre, son of a St. Ouen blacksmith, was later to write for us in over 900 Norman-French articles.

The decline of that fully-formed, expressive and unique language in the face of rampant anglicisation is nothing short of a tragedy, but - thanks in large part to the dedication of men like George Le Feuvre and his fellow scholars from the western parishes - it is not yet a disaster. swept almost out of earshot for half a century, it survives against the odds, and there are signs of a revival of interest to encourage those who must now continue the work interrupted by his peaceful death at a venerable age.

It is vital work, for Bouanhomme George's world of hearth and harvest, and the words which he invoked it, are far more than quaintly bucolic irrelevances to anyone who genuinely cares about Jersey's claim to an independent identity.

It is not fanciful to suggest that George d'la Forge gave a voice to the spirit of the land and, in celebrating his fine achievements, it seems fitting to echo the old Jersey toast that wishes "...Et l'Paradis à la fîn d'vos jours."

JEP 30/10/1984