Opens on a Singularly Apologetic Note: "I About the World in Which He Lived
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The Powys Review NUMBER TWENTY * • . The Powys Review Editor Belinda Humfrey Reviews Editor Peter Miles Advisory Board Glen Cavaliero Ben Jones Ned Lukacher Correspondence, contributions, and books for review may be addressed to the Editor, Department of English, Saint David's University College, Lampeter, Dyfed, SA48 7ED. Copyright ©, The Editor The Powys Review is published with the financial support of the Welsh Arts Council. We are grateful to Mr Francis Powys and Laurence Pollinger Ltd., for permission to quote from the writings of John Cowper Powys and T. F. Powys, and to the late Mrs Evelyn Elwin for permission to quote from the writings of Llewelyn Powys. The Powys Review may be obtained from Booksellers for £3.00, or from Gomer Press, Llandysul, Dyfed, for £3.00 plus 75p postage. The Powys Review is printed by J. D. Lewis & Sons Ltd., Gomer Press, Llandysul, Dyfed. Enquiries about advertisment in The Powys Review should be made to James Dawson, 99 Corve Street, Ludlow, Shropshire. Tel. Ludlow (0584) 2274. Cover photo: Glastonbury Tor Photograph by Ian Sumner of Wells. Contents T. F. Powys Reviews This Is Thyself Introduced and annotated by T. J. Diffey J. Lawrence Mitchell 5 The Ecstatic World of John Cowper Powys H. W. FAWKNER Susan Rands 71 Aspects of the Topography of Barbara Dennis A Glastonbury Romance 27 The Art of Autobiography A. O. J. COCKSHUT 74 Margaret Woolf J. C. Powys's Autobiography Jeremy Hooker in the light of The Letters T F. Powys: A Modern to His Brother Llewelyn 41 Allegorist MARIUS BUNING 76 Frederick Davies Recollections of John Cowper Ian Hughes Three Fantasies Powys and Phyllis Playter: JOHN COWPER POWYS 78 Part Two 47 Helen Wilcox Glen Cavaliero, Gordon Wynne, George Herbert and Margaret Woolf Henry Vaughan Lucy Amelia Penny LOUIS L. MARTZ, ed. 81 (nee Powys) 1890-1986 58 Arlene M. Jackson Frank Warren The Expressive Eye: Fiction Winter at Chydyok: and Perception in the Work of A Reverie 70 Thomas Hardy J. B. BULLEN 83 Reviews 71 Paul Bennett Morgan The Landscape of the Welsh Notes on Contributors 94 Marches TREVOR ROWLEY 86 Robert Minhinnick Selected Poems LESLIE NORRIS Bernard Jones Horned Poppies . JOHN COWPER POWYS 90 The Powys Review Number 20 1987 Volume Viv T. F. Powys This Is Thyself Introduced and annotated by J. Lawrence Mitchell. Edited by Belinda Humfrey "The House with the echo" was apparently the 20 December 1915 (Theodore's birthday). The favourite story of Violet Powys. We cannot be text begins with a section that was incorporated sure why she had such affection for this partic- almost in toto into The Soliloquy of a Hermit ular story—which few would rank among (pp. 68-69,1916ed.; pp. 73-75, 1918 ed.; pp. 57- T. F. P.'s best—but it is perhaps no coincidence 58, Village Press ed.); it ends with other shorter that it is the only story in which the narrator is extracts used in the book (see pp. 72-74, 1916; identified as "Theodore", and one of only two pp. 77-80,1918 ed.; pp. 59-62, Village Pressed.). published stories written in the first person. However, the major part of "This Is Thyself" Somehow it seems in character that the self- was not included in the book. Inevitably, it effacing Theodore Powys should eschew the first includes more than a few traces of those ' 'mystic person narrative mode in his fiction. But, in fact, knots" from which Powys was struggling to much of the earlier, largely unpublished, work, extricate himself, and these can make tiresome was written in the first person. "The House with reading. Yet, it is also a remarkably detailed and the echo" and, more importantly here, The Sol- revealing document, no less for the states of iloquy of a Hermit, are the sole survivors in print mind or "moods" it represents than for the of an important stage in T. F. P.'s search for an precious fragments of autobiography it appropriate narrative voice. He had tried the encapsulates. Essay (as in his unpublished piece on John Some caveats are necessary before we Bunyan, originally commissioned by Ralph proceed. We must be cautious about reading a Shirley for The Occult Review), the Dialogue (as document such as this in isolation, without the in An Interpretation of Genesis), poetic prose, counterweight of evidence garnered from other and, in a desultory way, poetry. The results were sources; and, in evaluating even a manifestly rarely satisfactory, because the author could not autobiographical work, we must remember the effectively distance himself from his subject, selectivity of memory. Thus, the preoccupation could not escape the self. Sometimes, in the un- of "This Is Thyself" with outcasts and suicides published materials, we see evidence of the (Holy Tom, the tramp, the errant clergyman) author's struggle. For example, chapter one of probably reveals as much about the state of Elijah (a product of Powys's long "Biblical" Powys's mind when he was writing as it does phase) opens on a singularly apologetic note: "I about the world in which he lived. Moreover, he am no human being that narrates the following sees himself as one of their kind, specifically matter (and therefore dear comrade I beg you to calling himself "an outcast". Yet there are forgive me, if I leave out certain customs in internal indicators in the text that life was not writing that an Author doth generally use.)" altogether bleak. Powys writes of the past at However, by the time he was putting the finish- times with more than a hint of nostalgia: "I miss ing touches to The Soliloquy of a Hermit (late those old days, the odd stumbling humans that I 1915), Powys had come to recognize one aspect knew then, I miss the rain that fell, I miss the of his problem: "In the old days I used to tie barn . How glad I would be to go back". And myself up in a mystic knot, that I never could Powys reveals his own awareness of the way in undo; neither could I ever explain what it which his melancholy disposition affected his meant." (p. 36, Village Press ed.). view of the world; in his move from Suffolk to "This Is Thyself" is intimately related to The Dorset, he observes: "I found that the same grey Soliloquy of a Hermit, though the connection colour was around me, / had not moved away may not be obvious upon casual scrutiny. From from myself" (my italics). internal evidence alone (the reference to being It should also be noted that this piece is forty years old), the terminus a quo (at least for fictionalized, not straight autobiography at all— this section of the composition) may be taken as rather in the manner of Louis Wilkinson's 6 This Is Thyself Swan's Milk. My search of the public records early (pre-1910) work, evidently influenced by (including the electoral rolls) reveals no "Mr Bunyan. In this early version, "Devastator" has Elsley", for example; Arthur McDougall was been written over "Destroyer", and there are the "gentleman", a substantial landowner in occasional phrases of interest that have been Rendham, to whom the young Theodore went to excised in the final version—for instance in the learn farming. Other names also appear to have description of Theodore setting up at White been changed; and there are sometimes minor House Farm, Sweffling. In the original, after the details in "This Is Thyself" that do not entirely reference to crawling under the wood as a child, accord with the record. We are told that "I took Powys writes movingly: "In this house I will live, my first lesson in farming on the Monday /I said/, and work in the fields and think as I morning after my arrival... the first of March.'' choose to think and do as I choose to do . ." But Powys's diary for 1892 shows that in fact he That part of "This Is Thyself" has been arrived in Rendham on Tuesday, 2 March and utilised in the production of The Soliloquy of a began work on the Wednesday. Trivial details Hermit points to the fact that the book is by no these may be, but they are also salutary means a homogeneous work, but an amalgam of reminders of the need for caution. originally separate autobiographical pieces. As There are points of contact between "This Is far as I can reconstruct, it had its genesis in "Mr Thyself' and other Powys writings too. It shows Thomas", a fictive projection of Theodore him- affinities in tone and content with Mr Tasker's self, written in 1912-13, and later cleverly incor- Gods, an almost contemporary work, especially porated into the second half of The Soliloquy of in the "blood" passages about the injured cow a Hermit. In order to make the original story fit, and the pig being driven to slaughter. The "Holy Powys was forced to invent a young man from Tom" herein described appears to be the source whose point of view "Mr Thomas" could be for "Mad Tom Button" in "The Left Leg", as described. Necessity being as ever the mother of well as for "Holy Tom" in The Sin-Eaters, that invention (he was by this time hastily trying to odd, and still unpublished, play by Powys and patch something together which would serve as Stephen Tomlin. Charlie Downton, who his contribution to the "Confessions" project), "longed above all things to be a postman" Powys thereby also solved for himself the prob- would seem to be the prototype of the hero of the lem of narrative distance: "I hope to get at the unpublished story, "Charley" (a spelling which other side of myself, that I could not very well also occurs in "This is Thyself").