The Powys Review NUMBER FIVE 'Seeker & Warburg poets* Anna Akhmatova WAY OF ALL THE EARTH Translated by D. M. Thomas Akhmatova's work is already famous in the West but this sensi- tively translated collection introduces poems not formerly available in English. £3.90 Edwin Brock THE RIVER AND THE TRAIN The self-questioning and pain are still here but images of river and rural life provide a balance. This new book marks Edwin Brock's move to a remote part of East Anglia. £3.50 Pete Morgan THE SPRING COLLECTION Pete Morgan's second full-length book is as entertaining as The Grey Mare Being The Better Steed. "Buzzes with the same vitality and showmanship as his first, as clever and various as before if a little more meditative." Emma Fisher, Spectator £3.50 George Szirtes THE SLANT DOOR A strong visual sense and exact and scrupulous verbal and rhythmical gifts -pictures of life memorably recorded. £3.50 Peter Reading FICTION The fourth collection of poems by the author of For the Munici- pality's Elderly, The Prison Cell & Barrel Mystery and Nothing For Anyone. £3.50 Stanley Kunitz THE POEMS OF STANLEY KUNITZ 1928-1978 The collected works of one of America's greatest living poets, including twenty new poems. £6.50 Secker&> Warburg The Powys Review

Editor Belinda Humfrey

Advisory Board Glen Cavaliero Ben Jones Derrick Stephens

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 Francis Powys and Laurence Pollinger Ltd., for permission to quote from the writings of the Powys family.

The Powys Review may be obtained from Booksellers for £2, or from Gomer Press, Llandysul, Dyfed, for £2 plus 30p postage.

The Powys Review is printed by J. D. Lewis & Sons Ltd., Gomer Press, Llandysul, Dyfed

Enquiries about advertisement in The Powys Review should be made to James Dawson, 34 Rouse Gardens, Alleyn Park, London, SE21 8AF, Tel. 01 670 2824

Contents

Editorial 5 Glen Cavaliero Sylvia Townsend Warner: 6 an appreciation Sylvia Townsend Warner Theodore Powys and Some Friends at East Chaldon, 1922-1927: A Narrative and Some Letters 13 Harry Coombes Mr. Tasker 's Gods 27 Martyn Branford The Starting Point: The Early Fiction of T. F. Powys and Kate Roberts 34 Michel Pouillard T. F. Powys and the Theatre 45 Carole Coates Gerda and Christie 55 Charles Lock "'Multiverse'. . . language which makes language impossible" 63 G. Wilson Knight A Preface Composed for Ichiro Hara's Translation of Mortal Strife 75 T. J. Diffey Poems for John Cowper Powys 78 Anthony Dyer William Powys: an appreciation 81 Reviews 85 Letters to the Editor 91 Notes on Contributors 93

The Powys Review Number Five Summer 1979 Volume II i

Editorial

This is somewhat a Sylvia Townsend the same time, I should like to repeat my Warner number. I am grateful to Susanna editorial observations in the second number Pinney and the other literary executors of and indicate the broad range of subjects Sylvia Townsend Warner for allowing me to admissible within The Powys Review. The publish her writings on T. F. Powys. I am Review, devoted to the works of John also grateful to Glen Cavaliero for contri- Cowper Powys, T. F. Powys, and Llewelyn buting an appreciation of Sylvia Townsend Powys and related literature, is broad Warner, that brilliantly original yet indeed in its potential scope, in view of the generally neglected writer. extent of the brothers' writing life, from the As a supplement to the rather dim and 1890s to the 1960s, and the very wide range stiffly posed two "snapshots" of Sylvia of their literary and other interests. While Townsend Warner in the nineteen twenties providing room for new specialist studies of or thirties which Dr Roger Peers, Curator of the works of the Powyses (of which there the Dorchester County Museum, has taken will obviously be no lack for a long time to the trouble to find for this Review, I should come), the Review has already shown itself like to quote a few sentences from David to be more outward-looking. The editor, Garnett's description of her. David Garnett however, is willing to open many more met Sylvia Townsend Warner in 1922 and windows. he writes about this in the third volume (1962) of his autobiography, The Golden Echo.

Sylvia is dark, lean and eager with rather frizzy hair. She wears spectacles and her face is constantly lighting up with amusement and intelligence and the desire to interrupt what I am saying and to cap it with something much wittier of her own. I sometimes speak slowly, waiting for the right word to come to me and when I am talking to Sylvia it very rarely does come, for she cannot restrain herself from snatching my uncompleted sentence out of my mouth and giving it a much better ending. She quivers with eagerness as though I were really going to say something good and then dashes in and transforms my sentence and my meaning into a brilliance that I should have been the last person to have thought of. In her company I soon come to think I am witty, though vicariously witty, it is true. When The Powys Review was launched, I expected to receive a majority of critical studies of the work of John Cowper Powys. However, as readers will have observed, T. F. Powys has received an increasingly large amount of critical attention. In this number, in which he has the majority of attention, the focus is on his early works. I can only lament the dearth of submissions Sylvia Townsend Warner of studies of Llewelyn Powys's writings. At (Photograph by courtesy of the Dorset County Museum) Glen Cavaliero Sylvia Townsend Warner: An Appreciation

The only preface T. F. Powys ever wrote tioned in polite society somebody or other was sure to remark on how kind he was to his was for a book by someone else, a small 4 collection of tales by his close friend Sylvia sister-in-law. Townsend Warner:1 it may be read in the second number of The Powys Review. From The particular ring of that sentence could so reclusive and discerning a writer this was easily be picked up from a reading of a genuine tribute, albeit a somewhat Theodore's work: so too could the slight ar- gnomic one, and a sign of the affection and chaism of another opening: esteem in which he held her. It may also Mr Thomas Filleul, who lived in the village of have been a return for her dedication to him Bishop's Nancy, and gave away his fruit so of her second novel, Mr Fortune's Maggot; freely, had hanging in his breakfast parlour for "To Theo" (the abbreviation comes as the portrait of a too classically handsome something of a shock) means to T. F. P. gentleman with small side-whiskers.5 himself.2 There was a close affinity between them. Rusticity and quaintness were in vogue in Writing to him on the 24th February 1927 the nineteen-twenties, partly as a result of she tells a most Theodorean tale. Powys's work; and Sylvia Townsend' War- ner's early stories can be read alongside I thought of a retired undertaker, who so such exercises in the genre as David Gar- loved his trade that he made tiny coffins for nett's The Sailor's Return (1925) (the name dead birds, bats and beetles, and arranged of the pub at East Chaldon) and the more funeral pomps for them, all diminished to personal and authentic novels of Mary scale. He taught the black cat to draw the Webb. But her distinctive style begins to hearse. At last, being very old, he wished to emerge unmistakably in a paragraph like become a clergyman, so that he could bury the following. the beasts with Christian rites, and the proper influential words. When he returned from his ordination the first thing he saw was Mrs Molly had worn through two husbands, a dead adder. He took it up, it bit him and he young Frederick Pottleby, and Matthew died.3 Molly. She had worn them in proper order, one after the other, but a flavour of bigamy The turn of mind revealed in the little story hung about her, because, while the younger was clearly expected to be congenial. The folk of Lovebourne Bishop called her Mrs Molly, her contemporaries generally referred author of it had been instrumental in get- to her as Mrs Fred. She was a lean, sallow, ting Theodore's work published, and November-looking woman, with a wall eye, frequently discussed it with him. In this and she wore such an unfailing series of same letter she writes of his proposed "The rather dirty men's caps that one might have Madder Fables", "Are quite sure that is supposed that she had enjoyed as many a wholly discreet title for them, my dear?" husbands as the woman of Samaria.6 A shared sensibility did not rule out critical detachment. The cool relish of this, the odd, Her early stories with their rustic themes illuminating phraseology were to be and mannerisms betray his influence. developed to good purpose in her later books. But the Powysian influence Whenever the name of Mr Pottleby was men- remained: one of them is a collection of Sylvia Townsend Warner: an appreciation fables about human beings supposedly told To shelter from the thunder-drench by cats—not, as it happens, among her A scorched and sorefoot tramping wench more satisfying books, but witness, for all Came to my door and proffered me that, to a continuing indebtedness. Lilac that I had viewed her wrench She was born in 1893, the only child of Out of my neighbour's tree. George Townsend Warner, a house master I bade her in. With glances keen at Harrow School. A historian, he was also She eyed my well-found kitchen, scene the author of a book On the Writing of Of kind domestic arts; English (1915) from which his daughter Like one who curious and serene was to profit: Looks round on foreign parts.

unless you have a clear picture in your mind She talked of winds and wayside fruits, you cannot make anyone else see it. Each Seas, cities, fair-times, landmarks, routes touch of accurate detail makes your reader Of journeys past and gone. see with your eyes, and that is what you want 7 I gave her an old pair of boots him to do. That she might wander on. That advice to a schoolboy composing ("An Afternoon Call") essays was to be precisely followed. Sylvia The influence of Hardy is obvious; but the Townsend Warner is a writer who takes tone is all her own. A balance between sar- complete command of her readers, and her donic realism and just compassion is use of detail, though exact, is never ob- secured by the ambiguity of the last line. fuscating. With the publication of her first, and still Another writer, Arthur Machen, was her most well-known novel, Lolly Willowes uncle by marriage. She was to recall a con- (1926), her reputation was made—and to versation with him about writing and his some extent fixed. Early successes must be words "For once I knew what to write paid for. In her case, however, the success about." She comments that "There is a was earned. This story of a maiden aunt, sharp difference, a difference in kind, bet- who, wearying of dependence, withdraws ween that and knowing what one wants to 8 to the country and becomes a witch, is exac- write". Her awareness of that difference in tly the kind of offbeat theme that makes a part accounts for both her peculiar ex- fashionable talking point. But the charm cellence as a novelist, atid for her neglect. and oddity mask a serious purpose, and in She is not one to be summed up by her sub- the twenties, when there was such a tragic ject matter. residue of unmarried women, the novel She began her career in the realms of could be read as a disguised feminist musical scholarship, editing fifteenth cen- manifesto. The Devil, the "loving hunts- tury church music for the Oxford University man" of the sub-title, is the resort and Press; and all her work is marked by learn- protector of all wild and single beings. ing lightly worn and by a meticulous, scholar's sense of surface detail. Her first One doesn't become a witch to run round book was, however, a collection of poems, being harmful, or to run round being helpful The Espalier (1925), published by Chatto either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It's & Windus, who were to issue all but a hand- to escape all that—to have a life of one's own, ful of her subsequent books, the earlier ones not an existence doled out to you by others, in editions of quite exceptional elegance charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many and beauty. Her prose was to be in ounces of stale bread of life a day . . . Think keeping with them. The poems are rougher of Miss Carloe! She's a typical witch, people in texture; spare in form, angular in would say. Really she's the typical genteel spinster who's spent herself being useful to rhythm, they are surprisingly tart for a people who didn't want her.9 youngish (she was 32) woman's first collec- tion. Lolly Willowes is no mere piece of delicate 8 Sylvia Townsend Warner: an appreciation urban whimsy: it is a novel with bite, and landscape so true and real, that the fable improves with each re-reading. becomes an affirmation of love as a power Mr Fortune's Maggot ("Theo's" book) that overcomes all odds. Imaginative love: came out the following year, and likewise there is no pandering to easy sentiment. lends itself to a whimsical interpretation. Her most optimistic presentation of what Mr Fortune, a middle-aged missionary, she wanted to say, this is the last of her feels called to evangelise the remote South books to tempt one to use the epithet Sea island of Fanua; but once established 'delightful'. there he only makes one convert, a charm- In a short but original study of Jane ing native boy with whom he most Austen, written for the British Council's Christianly falls in love. But time, the Writers and their Work series, she com- climate and an earthquake do their work; ments on Lady Susan that "it is a lion in the his own faith is lost, and he returns discon- path of those persons who would call Jane solate to his superiors. It is the subtlest of Austen charming, soothing, refreshing" and tragedies: the remark might apply to her own novel Summer Will Show (1936). Gone now is because I loved him so for what he was I any touch of the domestic or agreeable. could not spend a day without trying to alter Sophia Willoughby, a hard-headed and him. How dreadful it is that because of our singularly unlovable young married wills we can never love anything without 10 woman, leaves her home in Dorset to set up messing it about! house in the Revolutionary Paris of 1850 with her husband's mistress, a politically The author's tone is compassionate. "My active Russian emigree. The novel, in effect poor Timothy", she writes in the Envoi, "I a feminist protest, is an acrid affair that do not know what will become of you". gives an unsparing portrayal of the hard- She did, however, try to find out—if my ships of being a woman in the nineteenth reading of her novella "The Salutation" is century: the opening section describing the correct. It is surely Mr Fortune who turns death of Sophia's two children from up as the anonymous stranger befriended smallpox is the most powerful piece of by an elderly widowed Englishwoman on a writing the author ever achieved. South American farm. But here too the per- Something of the same acerbic quality is sonal outlook for the lone outsider is a found in After The Death Of Don Juan bleak one. A persistent theme is beginning (1938) in which her Left Wing sympathies to emerge, the tragic pull in human fate in the Spanish Civil War are evident. The between romantic adventurousness that has sequel to Don Juan's "death", (a fabric- nowhere to go, and acceptance of one's lot ation put about by himself to escape his which ends up in stagnation. It is a distinc- creditors) takes place in a benighted village tively post-Christian dilemma, and the in Central Spain, and in his father's author has no ameliorating belief to offer dilapidated castle. The ennui and second save that in "some integral pity that rate stagnation of the life led there by the nourishes the universe". peasants is in itself a piece of revolutionary That pity is the informing spirit of her propaganda by implication. But the anger third and most mellow novel, The True in this book, unlike that in its predecessor, Heart (1929), which re-tells the Cupid and is offset by a good humoured appreciation Psyche story in a nineteenth century Essex of human shifts and frailties. The tone is setting. The tale of the orphan girl Sukey relaxed and, though disenchanted, friendly. who makes her way into Queen Victoria's Sylvia Townsend Warner had by now set- presence on behalf of her true love, the idiot tled down to the life in the country (at East son of a snobbish vicar's wife, sounds Chaldon, in Norfolk, at Frome Vowchurch, bizarre or folksy; but it is neither. The Vic- again in Dorset) which she shared with her torian world is so graphically described, the close friend, the poet Valentine Ackland Sylvia Townsend Warner: an appreciation (1906-1968). They saw much of Theodore tegrity, and who had spread around him a and Llewelyn Powys and their sisters. The desert of mendacity and discomfort.12 two women publishing a joint volume of verse, Whether A Dove Or Seagull (1934). At the end of his life John Barnard is free This title alludes to the fact that the poems from possession by love, and is free to love: are printed without ascription, save in an he dies a penitent sinner, instructing that index at the end. It is an interesting ex- on his tombstone there shall be "Only my periment, and a characteristic one, name, and after that, Lord, have mercy designed, the preface says, "as a protest upon me, a sinner. Do you hear? Nothing against the frame of mind which judges a else." But the novel has begun with an ac- poem by looking to see who wrote it". The count of the effusive tablet which the family poems by Sylvia Townsend Warner are raised, one of the kind which could well notably more passionate and outspoken have been the novel's inception. than her earlier work: it is she, presumably, The most important book of her later who is the seagull. As a collection of love years was the biography of T. H. White poetry the book is intimate without being (1967). It was widely acclaimed on its ap- embarrassing. pearance, and has the rare virtue of com- Although she continued to write poems bining honesty with tact. As a study of and short stories (she contributed regularly White the author, however, it leaves much to The New Yorker for over thirty years) to be desired. There is an absence of en- Sylvia Townsend Warner only published thusiasm which undermines one's con- two more novels, both of them with fidence in her portrait as a whole. But it is a historical settings and both of them fur- remarkably assured and sophisticated thering her scrutiny of human communities book, and led to a dawning realisation on and what it is in them that makes for the literary public's part as to how con- stagnation or for life. The Corner That siderable her achievement in fact had been. Held Them (1948) is a graphic account of Her short stories, lighter in tone than the life in a Lincolnshire nunnery at the time novels, and the work of one who, in her own words, hoped that she possessed "a light of the Black Death; The Flint Anchor 13 (1954) is the story of a conscientious and pastry hand", appeared regularly through misguided pater familias in a nineteenth the sixties and seventies; and her final century Norfolk coastal town. This book collection, Kingdoms of Elfin (1977) was a seems to me to be her masterpiece. The new departure. In it she creates her own study of a father's idolisation of a worthless world of Faerie, one she approaches almost daughter develops into the portrait of an scientifically or, better, sociologically, ex- entire family, and through the family of a ploring it as an inset of the world we know rural community. At the heart of it is a and as an implicit comment upon it. She penetrating study of the nature of human follows here her tried method of historical love that takes one back nearly thirty years parable, this time employing her own in- to Mr Fortune's Maggot. John Barnard is vented world instead of the actual societies an embodiment of an entire way of feeling, of the past. Although she formally and its disastrous consequences are un- eschewed 'involvement' (she remarked in a sparingly analysed. rare interview that "I'm sure I shouldn't know how to comment on society. It's a mystery to me"14—neatly ironic words) her There he lay, the author (under God, as he work is by no means merely diversionary. would be the first to point out) ... of untold Entertaining she may be; frivolous she is mischief, fear and discouragement: a man not. who had meant no harm, who had done his best for his family, who had been faithful to If a controlling theme is to be found in his wife, and obedient to his God, and loyal her work it is that of singleness, not to say to his country, and a model of commercial in- singularity. All her novels focus on people 10 Sylvia Townsend Warner: an appreciation who know themselves to be alone: in this, strued as some kind of statement of intent. though in little else, they show affinities Her imagination is vigilant and business- with those of John Cowper Powys. This ex- like; metaphors from housekeeping and perience can be known as ecstasy (Lolly cookery recur throughout her work, and her Willowes), as melancholy (Mr Fortune's descriptive passages are actualised by Maggot, "The Salutation") or as one to be imagery that if surprising is not far-fetched, repudiated (The True Heart). The two and is usually enlightening. novels of the thirties may seem less con- cerned with the individual,—until we Dame Lilias was the only nun who did not realise how Sophia Willoughby's conversion complain of the heat. The weather that was to Communism (an allegiance her creator like a trance, the enormous unstirring noon- temporarily shared) follows her total tides that lay on the face of the earth as a isolation in the society which has formed snake lies basking in a cart-track, the hot her and against which she has rebelled; breath of wheat that filled the air at dusk as though it came out of a baker's oven had while Don Juan paves the way for the two 17 brought her to a speechless acquiescence. final novels with their bleak portraits of in- dividuals trapped in communities they have Although on occasion her use of domestic little or no power to alter. These last three imagery may be reductive in its effect, her books are merciless portrayals of the peculiar mastery of simile, and her second-rate. The estate of Tenorio Viejo, widespread use of it, provokes that sense of the priory at Oby, Anchor House where the distinctive quiddity in things which John Barnard rules his disaffected family, comes from illuminating juxtapositions. are images of human society in which the And this awareness of disparateness, of od- individual must make his way by such shifts dity, of the impossibility of making con- as he can muster. Her social vision is im- sistent patterns, which is both the stuff of placably pessimistic, yet is made bearable many of her short stories, full of eccentrics by her appreciation both of human oddity and odd happenings as they are, and which and powers of adaptation, and of what she was encouraged by the writing of them, this calls "the comfortable amble of day by 15 awareness of dislocation informs her day". The narrative flow of the later narrative method, frequently to comic ef- books is determined by her appreciative fect. Here is the sanctimonious Simon Ket- sense of continuity, and of how reality keeps tle confronted with the sister-in-law whom, on adjusting itself. on his second marriage, he had banished from his home. Just a shift in a cloud will transform a land- scape, however well you know it. There are Simon had so confidently expected Mutty to details about it you never noticed before, and 16 harbour resentment that her reappearance I think it's so with ordinary daily life. momentarily disconcerted him. But realising that she had come to triumph, he listened Her technique is anything but dramatic, graciously to the large vases, Mr Barnard's her own viewpoint most unobtrusively confidence, Miss Mary's pretty welcome, the present. It is not really surprising that she finest warming-pan she had ever set eyes on, should have been overlooked by those eager Mr Barnard's consideration of her feelings, to chart importance in the academic or hothouse grapes, a wonderful folding wash- stand, beef-tea, and the lions in the Tower; best-selling stakes. for a triumphant Mutty allayed his worst Her neglect by academia may be ac- alarms, she would not be a liability to him. counted for also by the fact that she set out Thomas also it appeared, was chargeable to unashamedly to entertain. Her work is in- Mr Barnard; though he had turned up again nocent of 'message'. She does not report on like a bad penny, he was in another man's experience, she creates it; but she does so pocket. 'Thankful indeed!' he could exclaim with a precision that may in itself be con- with the accents of truth. 'This is truly Sylvia Townsend Warner: an appreciation 11 gratifying'. He was keeping afloat by such with their portraits of wartime England comments, when the torrent of Mutty's have an uncustomary glibness about them. narrative swirled in a backward serpentine to Her own world is rural rather than urban, Thomas at death's door, cats yowling like and her guide book to Somerset contains foghorns, all alone with the cockroaches, the some excellent vignettes of landscape in the damp running down the walls, no one to turn to, an elephant, and Mr Barnard saying, Powys world. Here is her description of 'Scandalous!' After one more 'Thankful in- Brue Level, near Glastonbury. deed!' Simon wriggled uneasily during the remainder of her story, blazing with Mr Bar- Measured in miles it is not much, but its nard. It was an awkward thing to have hap- character is essentially spacious, and time pened, the more so since it found him un- seems to get oddly tangled into space, an prepared, breakfast not finished, and with no hour here is much longer than an hour premeditation on his part. But he did not see elsewhere. All the gestures of the landscape the whole extent of his condemnation till he are slow; grazing cattle move through the happened to look at Sophie. For selfishness, pastures as majestically as barges; the man if perfectly pursued, leads, like any other mending the ditch lifts another spadeful of vocation, to unworldliness. Simon had heard black mud and deposits it on the bank as Mutty's story with only personal qualms. carefully as though it were a poultice; the Sophie had heard it as it would resound in the water-rat gives an infinity of attention to his ears of Terrace society, and was aghast.18 toilet; the tinman's van, with its bowls and saucepan lids reflecting the sun with a steady I have quoted this passage at length for only glare, has been drawn up for half-an-hour at so is it possible to appreciate the texture of the cottage gate. Even the policeman bicycling between the willow-banks is riding her writing, the suppleness and pointed wit. at a moderate speed.19 It is a narrative method whereby the changes and land adaptations of everyday That last touch betrays yet again her af- life are woven into a seamless robe of hap- finity with Theodore Powys; but the union penings and responses. In The Corner That of aesthetic and practical considerations in Held Them and The Flint Anchor this the whole account is quintessentially her method is working at full stretch to convey a own. sense of historical process actually caught Her attitude to writing was detached: she in motion and traced from day to day. In in no way tried to make a literary career for the former the sense of authenticity is quite herself, apart from the steady and regular remarkable, and for giving the illusion of publication of her stories, and that amoun- actually living in the remote past its only ted more to an income than a career. She peers are those haunting and remarkable was not the sort of writer who sits on TV late novels of Oliver Onions, The Story of panel shows. She wrote for the pure Ragged Robyn (1945) and its successors. pleasure of it and because she had Interestingly enough these coincide in date something she wanted to set down. She was, with Sylvia Townsend Warner's similar in short, an artist; and her attitude towards achievement. her art was without solemnity or self- For all her scepticism and moral concern. relativity her narrative technique makes her a novelist who conveys and celebrates a sense As far as I know, there is only one certain of permanence as an underlying motive method of making oneself clear, and that is, in human behaviour—another Powysian to have plainly in mind what one wishes to characteristic. Yet one more, and a less say. When the unequivocal statement mat- happy one, is an uncertain handling of the ches itself to the pre-determined thought and the creative impulse sets fire to them, the contemporary scene. Her attempts to por- quality we call immediacy results. tray it, are fortunately, confined to the short stories; those in A Garland of Straw Immediacy is not by her confused with in- (1942) and The Museum of Cheats (1947) spiration, but 12 Sylvia Townsend Warner: an appreciation immediacy has this in common with in- to provide mental stimulation and delight spiration, that where it is present, the author with each re-reading. Her style is crisp and becomes absent. The writing is no longer clear, every sentence exactly turned; her propelled by the author's anxious hand, the vocabulary is wide, surprising and distinc- reader is no longer conscious of the author's 20 tive. She casts a sage, disenchanted but af- chaperoning presence. fectionate eye upon the world. Ironic without being knowing, she is tonic and The word "chaperoning" transfixes her corrective when read alongside the clumsier meaning, and pages of critical pomposity sophistications of today; and her good are pinned down for good. humour and entire absence of repining Sylvia Townsend Warner died on May nostalgia make her books as accessible as Day, 1978, at the age of 85, her powers un- when they were first written. I can do no diminished. Not a great writer as to themes better by way of conclusion and of in- or ambitions, she belongs to that body of dicating her peculiar quality than to borrow excellent individualists—Thomas Love the verdict of the editor of Samuel Johnson Peacock comes immediately to mind in this and Jane Austen on the work of Peacock, connection—whose work is so distinctive, "It is a dry wine, but well matured; and well-written and intelligent that it continues there are no dregs ".2'

Notes 1925 The Espalier (verse) lA Moral Ending, and other stories, Furnival 1926 Lolly Willowes (novel) Books, No. 8, 1931. The tales were subsequently 1927 Mr Fortune's Maggot (novel) reprinted in The Salutation, 1932. 1928 Time Importuned (verse) !The name may be said to be East Chaldon usage. 1929 The True Heart (novel) See Kenneth Hopkins, The Powys Brothers, 1967, 1931 Opus 7 (verse) pp. 128-31. 1932 The Salutation (stories) 3I am indebted to Mr Francis Feather for allowing 1934 Whether A Dove Or Seagull (verse) (with me to make use of this letter from his collection. Valentine Ackland) 'TheSalutation, p. 179. 1935 More Joy In Heaven (The Cresset Press) 5Ibid.,p. 193. (stories) 'Ibid., pp. 179-80. 1936 Summer Will Show (novel) 7Op.cit.,p. 101. 1938 After The Death Of Don Juan (novel) '"The Land of Gwent", The Aylesford Review, 1943 A Garland Of Straw (stories) Spring 1963, Vol. V, No. 2, pp. 69-70. 1947 The Museum Of Cheats (stories) "Lolly Willowes, pp. 238-9. 1948 The Corner That Held Them (novel) 10Mr Fortune's Maggot, p. 194. 1949 Somerset (Paul Elek, Vision of England "TheSalutation, p. 113. series) "The Flint Anchor, p. 247. 1951 Jane Austen (Longmans, Green & Co for The "In a letter to the author, 4th November 1972. British Council) (pamphlet) 14In an interview with Simon Blow, The Guardian, 1954 The Flint Anchor (novel) 5th January 1977. 1955 Winter In The Air (stories) "Lolly Willowes, p. 29. 1957 Boxwood (verse) (with illustrations by "Interview with Simon Blow. Reynolds Stone) "The Corner That Held Them, p. 169. 1960 The Cat's Cradle Book (stories) "The Flint Anchor, pp. 115-6. 1962 A Spirit Rises (stories) "Somerset, 1949, p. 64. 1966 A Stranger With A Bag (stories) '""Women as Writers". The Peter Le Neve Foster 1967 T. H. White (biography) Lecture delivered to the Royal Society of Arts, 11th 1971 The Innocent And The Guilty (stories) February 1959: see The Journal of the Royal Society 1977 Kingdoms Of Elfin (stories) of Arts, May 1959, pp. 378-386. Mention may also be made of The Portrait Of A 21R. W. Chapman, Johnsonian and Other Essays Tortoise, 1946, an anthology of writings by Gilbert and Reviews, 1953, p. 103. White, with Introduction; a translation of Proust's # * * By Way Of Sainte-Beuve (1958); and The Nature Of A List of the Principal Writings of The Moment, 1973, a collection of poems by Valen- Sylvia Townsend Warner tine Ackland, with an anonymous memorial tribute Unless stated otherwise, the publishers are Chatto & in which the hand of Sylvia Townsend Warner is un- Windus. mistakable. Sylvia Townsend Warner Theodore Powys and Some Friends at East Chaldon, 1922-1927: A Narrative and Some Letters* In the first moment of meeting Theodore I had know so many of Tommy's Powys I forgot all my preconceived notions swans—indeed I had been one myself—that about him. In speaking of Theo it is natural I was not much impressed. to use the words of the Bible, and the "What does Dostoievsky do?" phrase that comes to my mind when I try to "I believe he writes." recall my impression of him is "in the A little while after this Tommy wrote to fulness of his presence". me from Chaldon asking that I send a play I My preconceived notions were many, ex- had just written, as Mr. Powys would like to cited and unassembled. About six months read it. before, in September 1921, Stephen Tomlin I sent it with the greater readiness had come to London from the lodgings he because I had just read the Soliloquies of a had taken in the village of Chaldon Herring Hermit, and was very curious to know more in Dorset, to pack his sculptures and a of this strange character who mended his second-best suit in a large crate and to buy fence with string and wrote in a manner provisions for the winter. At the close of a which reminded me a little of primitive conversation about soap and candles he Greek sculpture by the way in which the remarked: slow violence of its thought was expressed in "There is a most remarkable man living a gentle and rather uncouth decorativeness, just beyond the village. He is a sort of her- but which was quite unreminiscent of any mit, and he has a very fine head. He reads living writer. Presently I received the Dostoievsky." following letter. It was written upon a sheet torn from a copy-book, with copper-plate *Editor's Note. This text is one section of a sentiments occurring at regular intervals typescript in three sections, about T. F. Powys. It ap- down the ruled page. The effect was pears that Sylvia Townsend Warner made the singularly artless and arresting. When I typescript in about 1930. Towards the time of her knew more of Theo I realised that this was death in 1978, Miss Warner was composing an article largely from one of these sections, apparently the exactly the effect he had intended; and I latest, for a forthcoming book of Recollections of the could be pretty sure that he had spent some Brothers Powys which I have edited for Peter Owen part of a morning in its composition, con- Ltd., and that section, which focuses more closely on ducting the order of his sentences so that the character of T. F. Powys than the other two, will the they should illustrate and counterpoint be published in that book. The present text, entitled by Sylvia Townsend Warner simply "Theodore the sentiments, in the same way that Bach Powys", appears to be her first attempt at capturing constructed his Chorale Preludes. her impressions of her friend, but it is a quite diffuse essay which also presents the artistic comings-and- goings of East Chaldon (also known as Chaldon HABITS ARE GREAT HELPS OR Herring) in the early 1920s, and the character of GREAT HINDRANCES. Miss Warner herself. I hope to publish the second section of the typescript, which deals largely with the My dear Sylvia years after 1927, in a subsequent number of The Powys Review. The letters published here seem to be Please excuse this paper. I fear that at yet a fourth and separate collecting of T. F. Powys by this moment I have no better. It is very Miss Warner, but they are supportive of this piece of charming of you to ask to see "Mr narrative. Tasker's Gods". I hope you won't be 14 Theodore Powys and Some Friends BEAUTY'S TEARS ARE LOVELIER tion that the version of Mr Tasker's Gods THAN HER SMILES. which Theo sent me was a blacker and bit- terer draught than the final published ver- frightfully dissapointed (sic). I enjoyed sion.) your play very much. There is Pathos. And those little ironic touches that you So it was with a rather flustered and are such a mistress of—I enjoy those. I sorrowful mind that I wrote a long letter to don't suppose you have much time or else the man who then seemed to me to be like a it would be a Faust who had accepted the teaching of Mephistopheles; and I remember very well HE MAKES NO FRIEND WHO the black sleek pressure of the night against NEVER MADE A FOE. my windows—for I had no curtains—and how the question—do you ever find the pleasure to your friend S.T. and to me evening dark?—came back to me with a too, if you sent us another play or two— new urgency. The other day Theo produced to beguile these dark evenings. Do you this same letter. It was not as bad as I sup- ever find the evenings dark! From certain posed; but as I re-read it I laughed securely THE PATHS OF GLORY LEAD BUT to think that I had ever written to him with TO THE GRAVE. such doubt and anxiety; for though Theo's mind is like a dark evening, I am not afraid thoughts that you express in your play I in it. should imagine that you do sometimes. It was very nice of you to buy the East Chaldon. Soliloquies. November 23rd. Yours ever 1921. Theodore F. Powys. My dear Sylvia. I am extremely interested in all that you I do not remember how I answered this. say in your letter. It is rather nasty to But my answer must have reassured Theo have to stir up mud—especially when it as to my tears being lovelier than my smiles, smells a little—and it certainly was a because I soon got a parcel, addressed in little hard to force it upon you. But I several places in a cautious and spidery think it does help (this stirring)—not to hand, containing a very sombre typescript break it up—the mud will never be of Mr. Tasker's Gods. broken up, but to make it luminous. I In the first chapter where the lantern daresay the fields will be meek enough to rises over the Five Maries like a star I knew us when we are buried in them. And that a star was risen. But as I read on, sometimes they do make sounds not though I grew more and more enthralled I unhappily. also grew more and more frightened and It is very nice that your Tom—your oppressed by this genius—I knew it was holy Tom—has come down to stay here. genius—which for all its creative power And one day you will come too, I could see in Creation nothing but the expect.. . blackening of an ancient curse, a curse Two rooks have just gone by. They are which dooms all creatures to destroy or to after Farmer Told's worms. One has just be destroyed. I was shocked, too: not by the settled down and is pecking. Did the face grinding insistence upon human lust, of God peep up over the high hill? because in a mind so schooledly and un- because the rook has flown away now. If sentimentally pessimistic it would have we talk about Him—or Her as you wish it been illogical to admit any pathos or beauty to be—I hope he won't listen. One gets a in the sexual act; but I found it hard to headache when one talks too much about stomach the the ruthless hatred with which God when he listens. Do you ever want he pursued the peasant characters. worms like the rooks that pester Farmer (In justice to myself I may perhaps men- Told? There are loveable fields here— Theodore Powys and Some Friends 15 you would like that part, but of course streak of Presbyterian long sermon in it's rather a poor low-lived country side— Tommy; and he must have enjoyed pinning bare and bleached like a worn garment. Theo down. A nice solemn manly- Theo must have been a little conscience- conversation with pipes. stricken by my wails—dignified wails—of In March 1922 I went down to Chaldon protest about Mr Tasker's Gods; and like to see Tommy. From Bournemouth I one who has frightened a child by telling travelled by a slow train, and when we drew too convincing a story about ogres, he was up at the stations I heard the wind blowing. doing his best to reassure me with "look at Just before I got to Wool a few long spikes the pretty rooks!" But he must have of rain crossed the window-pane. Im- thought that there was some hope for me: mediately after an early tea Tommy took that enquiry about wanting worms sprang me for a walk. We followed the track along from a real solicitude about my spiritual the top of the Five Maries ridge, and point- estate, and it was asked with the rising in- ing to the opposite hillside Tommy told me tonation which would lead to Yes for an an- of Nelly Trim, a dairy maid who, it was swer. said, would yield herself to any wanderer A letter from Tommy about this time told who chanced to come to her lonely dwelling. me more about Theo, though, being a Towering wreaths of mist were following woman, I could have wished it to give more each other along the valley, and I thought details about his manner of living, and not how glad the cold traveller would be of a so much about his way of thinking. warm woman. We walked as far as the ". . . All the sex part is what I thought so Weymouth road, and there we turned east extraordinary when I read it and told him again and came back over the downs with so. You see, I was puzzled because he is not the wind behind us to West Chaldon, a in the least Puritanical, in fact just the farm lying close under the shoulder of High reverse. He has a distinct streak of Chaldon, which is a high grassy hill, Rabelaisian lewd laughter and loves to isolated among the encompassing and in- surround himself with all the prettiest girls terlocking downs. It was now raining hard, in the village ... So that the peculiar effect and quite dark. We walked along a road that those passages give is apparently an which had gates crossing it. After the third error and quite unintentional. He accounts gate we passed a rickyard, and on the for it in this way: he dislikes parsons so that hillside, close to the road but set askew to he was tempted to put in things that other it, I saw a black box-like shape. people would think derogatory to them; "That is the Powys's house. We will go in and secondly, he says that when he writes for a little. Theo knows you are coming, about a man having a girld he gets a sort of and he will want to see you." jealousy in imagination, which makes him Tommy had previously seen fit to impart try and imply that the man ought not to a little admonishment and instruction as to have had her. how I should behave on meeting Theo, and Apparently it is his only novel that deals now, remembering this, I began to feel wet with parsons like that and he says it was the and blind. It was Violet who came to open result of a particular mood that will not the door, Violet who I loved at first sight; recur. and while she was helping me off with my As to the country people, I think that is coat Theo came and stood in the parlour his view, and I think it is probably the right doorway, and I heard for the first time that one. . . . The other day he said 'A peasant soft deferring voice. is like a weasel,—a blood-thirsty scavenging "Is this Sylvia? Tommy, how very kind of animal, but it jumps and hops and is you to bring her so soon. But I hope it will graceful, so that you laugh at it and think it not harm her, bringing her out in the rain. pleasant'." Her hands are rather cold. Perhaps you "And secondly." There is a distinct should have let her rest a little longer after 16 Theodore Powys and Some Friends her journey. It would be terrible if you listening while Baucis and Philemon told made her tired on her first evening. She him about the shocking goings-on in the might not come here again." village. He might even have said: "I did not Violet made tea. The room was hot; it like passing those fierce dogs." And then in had a good deal of furniture in it, and a a moment he would put on the ruthless bright lamp stood on a large table in the majesty of the God, and curse the cold- middle of the room. My head swam and I hearted and cunning farmers who, like Mr felt a little like a cat that has been let out of Tasker, had set their dogs upon a Father; a hamper but knows it has come to a good but to Philemon and Baucis he would give home. I talked to Violet and looked, the demi-divinity of gentle trees. sometimes at Theo, sometimes at the over- As these thoughts passed through my mantel. mind Theo was talking to Tommy and They were neither of them in the least Gerald Gardiner. (I forgot to mention what I had expected; indeed, I had not ex- Gerald Gardiner before. He was staying pected the overmantel at all, and to this day with Tommy—a handsome and rather I have never really assimilated it, for it has doleful young man who wore very expensive tiers of small shelves and on these are num- fluffy stockings.) Something was said about bers of objects which have but one quality Swedenborg. Theo turned to me: in common—the quality of not being easily "I expect wise Sylvia has read Sweden- impressed upon the mind. borg. Perhaps she has read Spinoza too." As I have said, the minute I set eyes on "No, Theo. I have not read Spinoza. And Theo I forgot all my pre-conceived notions I have not read Swedenborg since I was nine about him; but I know that I must have ex- years old. My grandfather was dying in a pected him to look like something country rectory. It rained, the trees grew hagiological—a hermit or a prophet con- greener and greener, and I sat in a black sumed with the fire of God's word, because leather armchair in the study reading about the first thing that struck me about him was angels and devils in their orders." that his beauty was of a pagan and classical It is characteristic of Theo that he was kind, and that instead of a hermit or a much better pleased that I should know prophet I was looking at a rather weather- Swedenborg as a teller of fairy-stories to a beaten Zeus. lonely child than that I should have been Long ago I read a story, I think it was by able to speak of him to any useful purpose. Heine, about the Gods who being come It is even more characteristic that on the down in the world were reduced to wan- strength of this answer he should have built dering about in Germany as a company of up a hypothesis of my extreme learning. mountebanks; and in my mind, though I "I daresay you can read Hebrew quite cannot remember if it was part of the story easily, my dear." or something which I had added on in my "I can read no language but English and fancy, was a picture of them standing out- French." side a Christian church whence came light "Violet, do you hear that? Sylvia says and the sound of singing, wondering what that she can read French. And astronomy . was going on inside. Yet Zeus at all times . . I'm sure you must know a great deal had a liking for the company of mortals, about the stars, for you are not afraid of and it pleased him to go among them, walking in the dark." surrounding himself with all the prettiest "I know nothing about the stars. Perhaps girls in the village, and observing with a that is why." twinkle the odd behaviour of men. He "Yes, my dear, I think that is very likely. would go into cottage homes, sit down on But at any rate you can repeat the Kings the bench under the sycamore, wiping the and Queens of England. You would feel sweat from a brow that had been tanned by safer with them. One could feel at home a day spent a-foot under the July sun, and with William Rufus, and with that Honest Theodore Powys and Some Friends 17 fellow Henry the Eighth. He was an honest can overlook the village the wind buffetted fellow." us with the clash of bells ringing-in, and That night the wind changed, and in the there was Theo and Violet walking towards morning patches of rigid snow lay under the the sacred edifice, shutting their white gate hedges, and the turf was crisp with hoar- carefully behind them. We ran down the frost. We walked over Chaldon Down, and field-road in the teeth of a violent hail- went down the cliff to a shingle beach by a storm, while Tommy austerely plucked chain—an exploit which nothing would in- straws off my back, remarking that he had duce me to repeat. The sun blazed on the a reputation to keep up. chalk cliffs, we were out of the wind, and "And I, Tommy?" after the vividly-pale immobile landscape of But I, said he, as a visitor and object of the downs the sea appeared astonishingly interest must necessarily be material for the deep-coloured and supple. I paddled, and worst and most natural conclusions. lost an earring. Tommy's reputation obliged us, as soon The next day was Sunday. as we got on to the road, to stride instead of Chaldon Herring was once a parish by it- running. We entered the church just in time self, but now it is held with the next parish to fling ourselves down and gasp for a of Winfrith, and whoever wishes to attend decent praying-while. I was so agitated that both morning and evening service must visit on entering the church I had only noticed two churches. Theo always read the lessons one person clearly—Mrs Dymond of West in Chaldon church; and as until Tommy Chaldon farm whose vast purple shoulders came he was the only person in the village rose out of a front pew like a prize mangel- who could do so without coming down over wurzel draped with a fur boa; but presently the hard words—for though Mrs Ash- I felt a touch on my back, and glancing burnham was a very important lady and round I saw Theo's hand proffering me a lived in Chaldon Vicarage this could not black-bound volume, which he held in such quite put her into Sunday trousers—his a way that his thumb hid all of the title save monopoly empowered him to do pretty an initial B. It was Tommy's Blake, which much as he liked in the choice of what was, he had taken this opportunity of restoring. in his opinion, Proper to the Day. On the The Psalms were finished and Theo was evening before we had found him searching advancing upon the Bird; stepping the Scriptures for a passage about a young cautiously as though it might fly away. He lady coming down from London: "Perhaps turned over the leaves of the book with I may find you in the Apocrypha,"—and I great gravity; once he paused, as though was much looking forward to hearing what something had caught his eye. The Third disclosures the Third Person of the Trinity Person of the Trinity had confided, I believe had seen fit to make about me; for I to the prophet Micah but as I lent my Bible thought Theo might, on the whole, be to a child of Israel who never returned it I trusted not to repeat mere idle gossip. cannot be sure, that I should come as the Two long walks had made Gerald Gar- latter rain that refresheth the earth; but I diner think that Sunday was a good mor- did not attend very greedily to my own ning to have breakfast in bed; and having crumbs, for there is a quality in Theo's weighed him down with a very well-found reading which dismisses one from one's tray, we washed up in order to have lunch, self, as music does. and went out to spend the afternoon in The second Lesson was from the Thir- Rat's Barn until it was time to start for teenth Chapter of the Gospel according to church. Rat's Barn, a lofty cruciform stone St. John,- which contains the account of the building, was like an ante-room. We sat Last Supper: keeping a careful eye upon the time, but "He then having received the sop went Tommy's watch was slow, and when we immediately out: and it was night." crossed the ridge of down from whence one Theo closed the book. His reading, 18 Theodore Powys and Some Friends grave, dispassionate, a little precise, brought a little nip, or perhaps nibble your ear in a the scene before me with extraordinary loving manner." reality. I felt as though I had been with When we rose up to go Theo said he them in the upper room of the inn. Half in a would come a little way with us. After the dream I looked towards the windows, and first gate by the rickyard the road runs un- saw that they were darkened. fenced and unbanked through a grassy lap. On Tuesday I was to leave Chaldon, Sheep were feeding, and a ewe was lying in walking over the downs to East Lulworth, the middle of the road. At our approach she where I was to join Bea* for the rest of my got up clumsily and went to one side. A holiday; but when I went to take farewell of lamb staggered after her. Theo said: Theo and Violet they begged me to bring "That lamb has just been born." her and myself over for the day, and I awoke suddenly from my mood of knowing how much pleasure it would give fatuous Springtide contentment. There them to meet someone as beautiful and was nothing in the words to alarm me and charming as Bea I promised to do so. While he had scarcely altered the gentle tone of his I had been at Chaldon the weather had been voice; and yet I knew perfectly well that I rough and wintry, but when Bea and I had was being deliberately challenged, passed the farm called Slight's and began to menaced, by the writer of Mr Tasker's descend into the green valley which has an Gods and that the challenger was waiting ash-tree growing in it we saw that the hazels with scorn, with heavy malice and with were putting out their lambs-tails; the old curiosity to see how I should take it. wallflower stock by Theo's doorstop was in Fear sets the quickest match to temper. I bloom and the warm sun fetched wafts of said in a cold sophisticated voice: scent from it. Theo was in the parlour, "If I were going to have a lamb I should writing, but he came out and sat down on not choose the middle of a gritty road for the doorstep between us, while Tommy and it." Hew Anderson lay at our feet, pulling up I suppose that having got a spark from handfuls of grass which the winter had me Theo was satisfied; for he began to talk loosened. We were going up the valley to about the sheep, saying that this ewe must show Bea Rat's Barn, to hope for a sight of have been bought from a strange flock, the white owl who lived there, and to because the custom in that part of Dorset prospect my improbable plan of living in was for the lambs to be born in December. the deserted cottage—Rat's House—which was attached to the farm building. Theo very much approved of this plan, and did East Chaldon all that he could to encourage me in it, April 30th. telling me that though it had stood empty 1922. for many years the people in the village still recounted what a good baking oven it possessed, and that there was actually a tap My dear Sylvia. with water laid on from Lulworth, so that I have been looking all through the should I chance to feel out of the world I bible to see if a rat is mentioned. Jesus in need only turn on my tap to feel myself once one of his states of extreme humility calls more linked to civilisation. True, it was a Herod a fox. It's a good thing he did'nt mile or more from the road but Violet call him a rat. St. Paul must have looked would gladly take in my parcels, and as for a little like a rat but St. Peter does'nt coal I could wheel it up the field path in a seem to have called him one when they second perambulator. quarreled [sic], so I can find no "And you need not feel afraid of the rats, quotation to write over your Rat's House my dear. I'm sure they would only give you door. I suppose there were'nt any rats in *—Beatrice George, a friend. Sodom. The Bible does'nt say there were. Theodore Powys and Some Friends 19 So I fear the habits of that city contami- write to Garnett and say I was bringing it, nated even the vermin. Poor rats. who Theo was, who I was, etc. Everything I am very grateful to you for lending would go off quite easily. Tommy and I those books. I am I waited for the letter to sink in, and then delighted with Donne's sermons, it was went to the bookshop in Taviton Street. very loving of you to remember them. I Since David Garnett sold old books and did wish to see you a little more and I went on to the British Museum after that hope you will come again soon. The lunch I had chosen to think of him as a winds that have left us all naked, are polite old gentleman in a beard. In the dying a little, so we can hear the waggon bookshop I found an extremely young- wheels that go up the fields. Therefore looking man whose hair was long and thick thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will and untidy and whose suit was so blue that I bring a sword upon thee and cut off ... felt he might blow up his horn at any how horrible. I hope he did'nt mean a moment. When I entered he retreated rat's tail. No doubt things like that behind a desk, like some innocent wild happened at Tehaphnehes. animal that has never seen man before but Poor Tommy has'nt been very well this who knows by the promptings of instinct last week or two. I hope he is better in that man is something to be mistrusted. London. He took his medicine with him. Comparing him rather unfavourably with Violet sends much love. We talk about that polite old gentleman in a beard I asked you very often. if I could see Mr. David Garnett. The young man came slowly and Besides his medicine—some large pink noiselessly padding out from his den. boluses bought in Dorchester—Tommy had Staring at me very hard he said after a long brought a bunch of cowslips, the first pur- pause: ple orchises, and a new story by Theo; "I am David Garnett." Hester Dominy. We talked for a long time I introduced myself as coming on behalf about how we should find a publisher for it. of Stephen Tomlin, who no doubt he would But Tommy knew no publisher, and I did remember. not think that mine, The Oxford University More pause; the wild animal's worst Press, would be very likely to accept it, even suspicions were in a way to be justified. if we assured them that it was a treatise on "You had lunch with him one day in the Bimetalism or The Use of the Comma in winter. He told me that you had talked Theoretical Phlebotemy. about Blake." "Of course far the best plan," said Tom- "I remember now. We talked about my, "would be to wait till he has written a general subjects." few more and then publish a Collected I wanted to exclaim: "Oh damn whatever Edition." you talked about!" But Theo was under my I entirely agreed; but even a Collected arm, and one must never do anything sud- Edition has to have a publisher, so we were den with the larger savage fauna; so step- no better off than we were before. ping back from that intent gaze I explained Still, even though we knew no publishers, my errand as shortly as I could. other people might; and Tommy intended This must have been somewhere in the to take the typescript to David Garnett for second week of June; for on Midsummer his advice. He had had lunch with David Eve I suddenly decided to go to Chaldon to Garnett, and though as a rule one lunch see what it was looking like, and I know does not make a summer Tommy has such that when I arrived the tale of my sufferings an engaging address that I thought his plan was hot on my lips. It was looking very might work very nicely. But Tommy had no beautiful. I walked out from Wool through time to take steps, and when he left London the dusk. Long wisps of cloud stayed still in Hester Dominy was left with me. He would the sky, and in Farmer Child's meadows the 20 Theodore Powys and Some Friends hay lay in swathes. That night as I looked come before turnips, the plaything of his out of my bedroom window in Mrs Baggs's leisure; and that by mixing the two Theo's cottage—Mrs Baggs who on my previous letter might seem to him ill-considered, visit had given me a lemonade bottle filled even flippant. with hot water in my bed, such was the kind- I supported Tommy's decision, but ad- ness of her heart and her knowledge of the ded a rider to the effect that Theo might world—I saw a white poaching cat run by send him a love-letter about the turnips a like a white moth; and I felt that she was little later on. not more at home in that moony landscape Theo preened himself. He had been than I. writing for ten years or so, and now he en- "We will go up to Theo's and surprise joyed having a literary adviser, two, since I him," we said. But while I was mending a had arrived so conveniently. But however I rent in my clothes with Mrs Wallace's had arrived I think he would have been needle—she had once had a brace but when pleased to see me, and however I had Lily Wallace went out to service she took arrived, riding on a camel like the Queen of the other with her; but this mattered lit- Sheba or riding in a glass coach like the tle—the needle that remained would serve queen of England, his pleasure would have for all purposes from a bodkin down- been expressed without any tiresome ex- wards—a shadow passed the window and I clamation. Surprise flaws welcome. We do looked up at Theo. He had come to consult not cry out to the first snowdrop: "Fancy Tommy about a postscript. seeing you here." And though it is pleasant The typescript of his story Black Bryony to have a slight fuss made over one, a kettle was with Mr Melrose who had published put on, a bunch of clove carnations the Soliloquies. He did not seem very likely gathered for the dressing-table, the wise to do anything about publishing Black host will respect the painful and inevitable Bryony however, and urged by Tommy self-consciousness of the guest, will do the Theo had now written him a firm letter paw-buttering discreetly, will bear in mind asking that it might be returned. So firm the behaviour of the air to the stars; "which was the letter that on reading it over Theo enter unannounced, as lords that are cer- had felt that a rainbow should be added tainly expected, and yet there is a silent joy against the cloud. The rainbow ran as at their arrival." In short he will model follows: P.S. It would be very nice if you himself as closely as possible upon Richard came here. The young turnips are coming May in The Daisy Chain who is described as up. They are a lovely green, perhaps you "Making tea with a quiet smile". would like to see them. That afternoon Tommy began to read me "Tell me what I should do, Tommy. I The Left Leg, the story which Theo had should not like Mr Melrose to think I bear written next after writing Hester Dominy, him any ill-will. He is a Scotchman. It and on the following morning the reading would interest him to hear about those tur- was completed. Hester Dominy had cast a nips. But if you don't approve, it would be spell over me; yet I was conscious that the easy to copy out the letter again without the spell Was being cast and knew when it was postscript. Please, Tommy, tell me what increasing and when it was weakening its you think I should do. I'm sure that hold. It was not so with The Left Leg. Even whatever you advise would be best." now, knowing all that Theo has written Tommy gave judgement against the post- since, I still think The Left Leg holds an script saying that though it was true that unique position among his works. In the being a Scotchman Mr Melrose would career of every great artist there comes a probably take an interest in turnips, yet as a stage when he comes into his strength and Scotchman he would also have a high idea knows for the first time the joy of using it. of the importance of business; that on the What he does in this hour of taking seizin whole business, being his profession, would he will never quite do again. His subsequent Theodore Powys and Some Friends 21 work may be better, may be more the varieties of English martyrdom. He profound, will almost certainly be tenderer, would very probably have liked the print for out of the strong cometh forth sweet- too: I have known him speak appreciatively ness; but he will never again do anything of prints; but it is their blackness and blunt- quite so commanding, for he will never ness that he likes and not any artistic again feel so purely the excitement of com- quality. He has an unpictorial mind. This is mand. Unless—there is one unless—he is a great asset to him in descriptive passages, able to generate a new incarnation of his he is under no temptation to translate the genius, consume and renew himself like the thing seen into the thing depicted. His phoenix. Of course this process must to a descriptions are impressive because they are certain extent take place in the artist for aimed at the mind and do not waste their every new work that can properly be called force by trying to get at the mind by can- new, for without the stimulus of mastering noning in off the eye. In other words he is a some unexplored potentiality of technique true example of an imagist writer. Almost the artist can feel no joy in creation and no any page of his writing will provide in- incentive to proceed. But the phoenix bonfire stances of how he aims at the mind, and is a different affair, is a casting-off, is a how successfully, but the instance I have in destruction, is a desire to have not more mind as I write is from an early un- abundantly but more intensely. In the light published work. "Two rooks flew by. They of this fire the most ordinary and common flew heavily, as though they were flying over aspects of technique—a simple word, a an open grave." The reader who is refrac- stroke of the brush, a change of key—will tory to imagist prose may object that rooks wear the sharp eternal aspect of leaves and do not alter the manner of their flight when twigs that only the heat of the fire preserves flying over graves open or closed; but from falling into dust and immateriality, for all that he will be a dull dog if he does and from thence the man will be heard not receive the peculiar impression that crying out as Beethoven does in the late the author intended those words to convey. quartets: "Behold, I will make all things Van Gogh's black birds also have a new." menacing and charnel flight; they are Van Gogh is another example of the ar- related to the cormorant in the first of tist in the bonfire: but he is an abortive the three water-colours which Jane Eyre example, for madness tumbled him into the showed to Mr Rochester (Art critics must flames before he was ripe for them. When be an illiterate lot or those three early exam- Theo came to London in 1923—for now ples of late Van Gogh would have been that I am in a parenthesis I may as well identified ere now); and I supposed that it make the most of it—he saw the first Van was the mental realism of the artist which Gogh exhibition, and it was the bonfire attracted him, being akin to his own. But pictures which he liked; the man that walks now I wonder if he was not attracted for under the wind-tormented cypresses who another reason, recognising the bonfire and seems to walk in fear of the moon, and the drawn already to throw himself into it. Four storm-laid harvest-field with the black birds novels have been written since then—In- flying up into the cloud. It is rare for him to nocent Birds, The Market Bell, which he attend to a picture, unless the sub- does not intend to have published, Mockery ject—Columbus discovering America, or a Gap and Mr Weston's Good Wine. With young lady in her nightgown—seems to him the exception of the second, each of these to be one of natural interest; and the one shows decided individual modifications and occasion that I can recall of him listening to the last such a deepening of content and talk about pictures with any real par- treatment as almost sets it apart from the ticipation was when Charles Prentice rest. Yet they are all bound together by described a print of Smithfield which their subject-matter and continuity of exhibited very neatly and comprehensively feeling, so much so that I suppose the only 22 Theodore Powys and Some Friends other author who has achieved the same previous work, and, most exciting sign of diversity in unity is Jane Austen. And all, so unequal in execution, that it does though Theo speaks very rarely of his work seem to be possible that the one unless may and seldom reveals his own view of it, I be applicable to him, and that in a new believe that his novels were consciously manner, when he has mastered it, he may though not deliberately written as a series of repeat the particular command and connected works, and that in Mr Weston's maiestra of the Left Leg. Good Wine he set himself to sum up the im- Tommy's admiration and criticism had port of the whole. been a great stimulus to Theo, who hitherto In January 1926 he wrote to me: I shall had been but leanly supplied with either. try once more—with Mr Weston's Good Not that the Powys family were indifferent Wine, a short novel (But it is one of his to letters: on the contrary John Cowper longest). And then I shall rest. Powys, the eldest brother had published And again, when I asked him if he several novels, some verse, volumes of thought of writing about the Chaldon critical essays, and made his living by lec- people any more or if he had finished his turing to Americans on English literature, Wessex Novels he said that having brought Llewelyn Powys had written a book of Christ to Ringstead in Mockery Gap and stories about Africa, and two more of the God himself to sell His Good Wine to the brothers, Littleton and Albert were respec- people of Chaldon, he considered he had tively a schoolmaster and an architect, and done as much as was feasible for his neigh- therefore presumably bookish. But family bours. "For the Devil would be no novelty criticism is seldom truly effective; for one to them, they are quite familiar with his thing it is bound to be too near-sighted, is tail. They handle it in as friendly a way as misled by family likenesses and cannot see the sexton handles a bell-rope." the wood for the trees; for another, its edge As he had said, after Mr Weston 's Good has usually been blunted by having been Wine he rested. The phoenix, when its time applied too often and too early. When Theo is come flies away into the desert, and to the first commenced writer John Cowper had artist not to be producing is to be in a helped him with counsel, and had recom- desert, even though he may assure his friends mended examples for study and imitation; that it is very restful there. Mr Weston in fact he had done about all that can was finished in 25/26. In February 1927 I usefully be done in the way of guidance; but went to Chaldon and found that Theo had Theo's early works are more remarkable for started to write again. He was writing the individuality of their flounderings than fables. He had not done with the people of for any aptitude to profit by advice, and this Chaldon however, for many of them ap- individuality—and indeed this non- peared in the fables, conversing with ash- aptitude—being as familiar to those who trees, cuckoo clocks, glow-worms and old had known him since childhood as the way hats; and harking back to one of the names his hair grew was bound to be rather taken he had given to Chaldon in his novels, he for granted. And as the flounderings had suggested that if he went on with the fables been going on for some time, and as the and did enough of them to make into a Soliloquies had attracted so little notice book the title might be The Madder Fables. that one might say that they had fallen flat There was an element of truth in such a title if their predecessor—a Commentary on the which made me a trifle doubtful if it were a Book of Genesis, published in 1907 in a for- wholly suitable one. But the madness of the mat, according to Theo, indistinguishable fables was of a kind that made me very from that of a Sunday School hymn-book, anxious that Theo should write more of had not fallen so much flatter, it is not very them. He has done so; and though it is early surprising if the family opinion about Theo times to talk of a renewal, these last was that he was a queer card, but that as a writings of his are so unlike any of his writer he missed fire. Theodore Powys and Some Friends 23 Abraham Men, the third story in the Left (with floral headings or plain) and the Leg volume, belongs to the same spell of exercise books used in the village school. He productivity which followed Tommy's chose exercise-books, and Black Bryony was arrival in Chaldon. It was curious to turn written in twenty-four of these, which were back to Black Bryony, a story which was numbered on their dark covers in such faint hailed by some time-keeping critics as an ink that, as they always slipped on to the advance upon The Left Leg because it was floor and got picked up again out of their published six months after the other. Ac- order, I ricochetted from incident to tually Black Bryony has more in common incident in a very inconsequential way. But with Mr Tasker's Gods than with any of I remembered the copy-book and felt that it Theo's later works. It is more dream-like might well have been worse. and more passionate. It has a glamour, and During the winter Theo and Tommy had is like Mr Tasker's Gods set to music. But collaborated in a one-act play. The subject in both of these stories the essential quality was sin-eating, a Welsh custom Tommy and the residual impression are the same: a had been told of by a Welsh artist called powerful immobility, a creative faculty so Cedric Morris. When any one dies their sins imminent and brooding that its creation are mystically set out upon a plate in the wears the appearance of a landscape under form of cold scraps, potato parings and a thundercloud. In this landscape the locks of hair, strewed with salt. The sin- human figures are not alive. A whirlwind eater is then summoned to dispose of this from the cloud may move them, or the hand mess, and when the plate has been cleared behind it may twitch their strings; but the the dead man's sins are taken away in the breath of life is not in them. stomach of the sin-eater. Tommy's share in As the typescript of Black Bryony was this cheerful piece had been the dramatic with Mr Melrose I read it in what I think mechanism, Theo supplying the dialogue should be described as a First State. At and shades of night. It was not till it was Chaldon there is a shop, kept by Mrs Legg finished that the authors made the the post-mistress which supplies the village discovery that their title had already been with all the necessities of village life, such used by Fiona Macleod. They were much as buttons, candles, liquorice, india-rubber annoyed, but Theo tempered annoyance spouts for broken tea-pots and ointment with casuistry: against lice. It also contains a sprinkling of "I would not like to say anything against superfluities and amongst these are writing- that young lady who has stolen our fine materials: or perhaps it may be that the title, Sylvia. But I can say what I please writing-material are there to afford a raison about that Mr Sharp." d'etre for the stamps. But Mrs Legg did not allow for any protracted literary exploits ©The literary executors of Sylvia Townsend and Theo had to chose between note-paper Warner. 24 Theodore Powys and Some Friends LETTERS FROM T. F. POWYS TO them and sent them back to London. Each SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER* story is dedicated to a person. The first, the God head is you—the second David the February 121923 Dove—the third (Abraham Men) to Tom I so much enjoyed having your letter. Why I the Son of Man. I crossed out the word might be Princess Mary. I wish you would 'dedicated' which I did not think come in at the white gate. It would be lovely necessary—but I hope the printers won't if you did. I am so glad that Tom is more cross out the sacred names too. I do hope happy and more settled, I shall look all is well. How are you getting on with the forward to seeing David's head another book? I want to send mine to Tom when it's day. Well done, my dear, I hoped you finished in a week or two. would start that story and now you have started it. Tom always advised me to write quickly ... let yourself dance and toy and The book got out of control and I left it for Lolly imp it in a rough copy. And then slowly Willowes. revise—slowly day by day as God created the world. I am going along at Mark Only. I don't know in the least if it is good or bad. October 121923 My dear Sylvia and David Never mind about the stories you have of Thank you very much for sending me such a mine. Would you like to send them back long telegram that must have cost you a for- here—though I hate to think of you having tune. The words of the telegram came a lit- the bother of doing them up. Perhaps the tle tumbled, like a litter of baby pigs—but I New Leader will take one a year. read them quite easily. 'Heart-shaped' would be a better Princess Mary—was getting married or something. description of Black Bryony, but I Tom—Stephen Tomlin was a sculptor; the head was couldn't use it because it doesn't sound of David Garnett. nicely. My Black Bryony leaves are vine- shaped. I don't see why I shouldn't create a January 31923 leaf as well as a story. May the gods and fairies bless you for It is a little unfortunate of course that to taking so much trouble about those stories the best of my remembrance I have never of mine. I believe you are powerful enough seen a vine; so I don't know what a vine- to defeat all those stumpy lean demons that shaped leaf looks like. But I can't alter it work to my discomforture. May you be now—for I fear the time has come when the blessed—I will let you know at once when I tares must grow with the wheat. Until the hear from Cape or Chatto. I quite approve critics prick their fingers. of Fisher Unwin. He might consider Tommy is quite well. He is writing a let- perhaps ? a selection of those short stories if ter to his father who is made a judge. your family friend posts them back to you with his fire tongs. I daresay I could get a long telegram: David Garnett had seen proof of together 30 or 35,000 words of these kind of Black Bryony at Chatto and Windus, and was con- short stories. Though for a small book? Or cerned about the botanical inaccuracy, since neither else—but we will wait the running out of Black or White Bryony has a vine-shaped leaf; so we their holes of the other white mice. concocted a telegram that we hoped would seem both respectful and firm. March 101923 I have had the proofs of the Left Leg sent March 151924 down here and I have done my best with I do feel myself to be a vile rascal for not writing before to thank you for your letter *These are taken from S.T.W.'s typescript, apparently for publication, and the notes are hers. and your poems. Your letter cheered me Theodore Powys and Some Friends 25 immensely, and the idea that you even look December 131924 at Mr Tasker with a friendly eye is a real I am sending the Market Bell. Please mark pleasure to me. I think very highly of your it with those mystic signs that you alone un- poems. I see those arms too pointing down derstand. If anything seems a little queer to the ground. But I am most anxious to live make a line beside it. I am paying twice the until your poems are published by Miss fee for registration for the Market Bell—so Nonesuch. I like to read about the young that Mrs Legg and the postman may see lady who undresses. I think a great deal of how important and rich we all are. her. And that Inn in front of the chur- I wish I had a better box for the Market chyard. I like that one too. They say that Bell. It's in so many little pieces I hope it Mrs George is likely to have West Chaldon. won't be a bother to Tommy to keep them together. Perhaps it hadn't better travel in the Christmas rush. Please don't think me the young lady: Nelly Trim. too horridly fussy.

December 91924 The Market Bell: Mothers are said to love their We are both extremely sorry about poor weakling child best. T.F.P. was unusually solicitous Tommy. It is terrible he should be so about this novel; and the verdict was against it. troubled ... I don't wish to worry Tommy about the Market Bell while he is visiting January 71925 this Scotch Gentleman. Unless you are I must own that I feared the worst. There really quite sure he would like it now. Could was something ominous about your silence. you let me know again dearest Sylvia? The I feared that God might speak. He has Market Bell is about the same length of Mr spoken ... I had already begun to think of Tasker—whether Tommy would really like Mockery Gap and The Market Bell as the to be bothered with it? Won't he be going butler and the baker. One to be hanged by away for Christmas ? I wish he were able to the neck, the other to serve the king with come here. Will you be away for Christ- wine. But I knew no more than they which it mas? If Tommy isn't well enough to come would be; and I feared for both. Your cer- here—Yes everything is black and all tainty as to the one made me fear more than people are to be feared—shall I send the ever for the other. The Bolt has fallen; the story to you after Christmas, and then you Baker hanged, and may God have mercy on could take it to Milton House if Tommy is his soul. there and if he does want to read it and Would you mind keeping the body in won't be troubled by reading it. Just let me your house until you come to us. Tell us have a line, I will send the book at once if when that will be, and I will ask Mr Pren- you really feel it won't hurt him. But I tice to send down Innocent Birds. I think in shouldn't like to keep Tommy awake. I a week or two I will send Mockery Gap to don't want that Scotch Gentleman finding Mr Prentice. me out. Tell me what I am to do, dear. You Dicky is well again, that's a comfort to all do say, 'it might be good for him.' If there's of us. Gertrude has just been here. I had a a doubt, hadn't the Market Bell better wait great many wonderful things to say to you a while. It might worry him. Do tell me but I cannot say them now because I have decidedly what I am to do. I could send the forgotten what they were. book to you any time and please put those I don't think John really meant paint me. riggles into it. He asked if he could come over when the days are longer and make a drawing. At Scotch Gentleman: was a psycho-analyst, those least I think he said so. But every one was riggles: marginal corrections in the t.s. talking at the moment. I asked Violet to cross out paint in her letter to you but she 26 Theodore Powys and Some Friends was hurried and forgot. Please tell Tommy I like. I approve of everything you could ever am glad he is better. And I am glad that the say here or here-after. Say what you fancy. Market Bell hasn't turned all I have done A Saint Mark you will be and no Boswell. into ashes in your mind. I shall try once Hester Dominy was the last of the kind that more—with Mr Weston's Good Wine—a began with Mr Tasker's Gods. The play short novel. And then I shall rest. As long about pheasants' eggs was I think The as I get over 1926, Francis's last year at Hawk's Nest, and the man who broke the school, I am very well content. commandments Father Adam. The Left Goodbye, dear. I am glad you were brave Leg and Abraham Men were written the first enough to speak out. I feel you have saved year Tommy Tomlin lived here—was that me. 1922? I don't think you read them till 1922- 23. I sent The Left Leg to Chatto's after David's first visit. He came with Tommy. It John: Augustus John. This letter reads as though I was Tommy's idea to send The Left Leg alone had decided against The Market Bell. This was somewhere. I paid a printer to print the not so. It was provisionally taken by Chatto and Win- dus, and discreetly put by. Genesis. Violet still looks back with horror at his charges. Tasker's Gods was the first novel. March 11 1925 (Extract) Black Bryony came before Hester. Mr Tasker has been given hot to the devils You wont have time to ask any more by most of the reviewers but more copies questions before Midsummer day. have been sold than of any of the others when they first came out. / approve of everything: in fact, we discovered that June 181927 later on he had begun to feel rather self-conscious You have written about Satan so I daresay and uneasy—though he said nothing—so the Eikon to write about Theodore would not be Animae project was put by. By the end of the decade amiss. You won't waste your time, if you his creative flourish and excitement of creativeness was waning. Having two grown up sons had somehow wrote about a swallow's course you would intimidated him. 'Feel like an aging bull with a write well. You have exactly three days and young bull put in the same field,' he once said to me; two hours to do it in before you start your his earlier melancholy, distrust, diffidence came new story. Christ was in the grave three days back, and to be in any way publicised would have so you may well be in your quarry for that been misery to him. space of time. You may say anything you Harry Coombes

Mr Tasker's Gods*

Mr Tasker's Gods was not published until life in the country"; and he says that the 1925, coming after the Left Leg volume style "in the middle of Mr Tasker kicks its (1923), Black Bryony (1923), and Mark legs a little, you will notice. If it annoys you Only (1924). But we know that it was or if you catch a sense of boredom smash being written and re-written during the your fist through it." If Wilkinson had in- early years of the first world war, and Powys deed cut out the frolics of the clergy the states in a letter that he had finished it mainspring of the book would have gone. before he had read John Cowper's Wood Mr Tasker's Gods has for epigraph a sen- and Stone, which came out in 1915. Over tence from Pilgrim's Progress: "Besides, those eleven years or so between inception who could have thought that so near the and publication, Powys displayed sharp king's palace there should have lurked such anxiety about the progress or rather the naughty ones?" Thus we are adverted of a non-progress of the work in publishers' of- certain intention to reveal things which are fices. In February 1917 he wrote to Louis perhaps usually kept hidden. The action Wilkinson: "I would like Mr Tasker to be takes place in some Dorset villages, in quite damned before the next has a try." Maidenbridge (Hardy's Casterbridge, that (That "next" was Amos Lear.) A month or is Dorchester-inspired) and in Portsdown two before, he had expressed fears that "Mr (Portsmouth), and the chief agents are Mr —- [?] may be afraid of Mr Tasker; it is Tasker and his father, the Reverend Hector rather too much out of the ordinary, I fear, Turnbull and his three sons, and Henry to please these publishers." His desperation Neville (also a clergyman). The gods are was such that he was willing for others, in pigs. What power the book has—and it is particular Wilkinson, to meddle with the considerable—derives in the first place manuscript if this would improve its chanc- from the link between the actual pigs wor- es. In December 1916 he asks Wilkinson: shipped as money-bringers by Mr Tasker, and the "swinishness" of the genteel clergy Is Mr Tasker really such a very terrible book? as represented by the Reverend Hector and .. . You know that you have my permission to alter and to leave out whatever you choose. his son John, and by the doctor son George. Shorten it. Shorten it. Cut out the frolics of The link is never explicitly stated; it issues the clergy if you like . . . What didn't the from action and speech and comment. We good man like? I thought the story was ex- do note however that the pig-worshipper Mr tremely modest and decent. Tasker is a churchwarden, and the (loose) plot does rather tenuously bring together And a year before that he had claimed that the people of the vicarage and the people of the book "only wants a little sorting out to the pig-sty. If at this point Animal Farm be made a decent picture of human life, of comes into any reader's head as a com- "This is an extract, the third part, of a paper, parable allegory, it can safely be dismissed. delivered to the Powys Society in 1975, on "The First Mr Tasker's Gods is not dependent on Three Books" of T. F. Powys. The earlier part, on anything resembling the fixed stance im- An Interpretation of the Book of Genesis (1907) and posed by socio-political convictions and Soliloquies of a Hermit (1916) ended with ob- servations on Powys's adverse commentaries on war notions. It has much savage satire, but it is in the Soliloquies. not only satirical; it has "qualities which 28 Mr. Tasker's Gods make it deeper, more complex and richer in longer and the sun behind her life began to interest than Orwell's book. By Powys's go down, she gave up the brandy, and instead own best standards, however, it is im- of special paper, she tied up her jam with cut mature in ways which I shall attempt to pieces of the Standard. show. Mrs Turnbull had very few thoughts of her own. She gave up what she owned in the way Besides possessing an interest by virtue of ideas with her fortune to Mr Turnbull. of having behind it and in it a character and And after his arrival she could hardly call her a sensibility which connect it with the prayers her own; even her religion belonged author of Soliloquies of a Hermit, Mr to her housekeeping, for when she knelt down Tasker's Gods is a truly original work, far she could not prevent herself praying that this removed from "pretty piffle" and "playboy year at least the rhubarb jam might not go stuff"—Lawrence's terms for David Gar- bad. nett's Lady into Fox (1923). I should add Mrs Turnbull was a woman who accepted here that Garnett tried to help Powys to get her daily life just as she accepted her daily a publisher. bread, prayed for, and presented to her by Can we agree with Powys's claim that Mr Mr Turnbull upon the end of a long knife. Tasker's Gods presents "a decent picture of We note there how domestic detail is finely human life, of life in the country"? Without used to suggest the deeper significances of bothering overmuch about the precise the two lives, the two lives together; and significance here of "decent", we can ask, how that knife speaks! is the picture impartial and just? vivid? Henry is the youngest of the three sons; cool and uncontrolled? one-sided? gentle, meek and unambitious, he is bullied by the other males of the family: The tone of his voice was sleek and moist, disclosing the fact, unknown to the doctors, Henry was quick to notice and ready to love that every man has poison glands under his almost everything that he saw. He could note tongue, and when he speaks most gently he is without disgust a rubbish heap with old tins really making up his mind to use them. and broken bottles; he could look with af- fection at pieces of bones that were always to The voice prompting this generalisation is be found in a corner of the churchyard. The the voice of the clergyman-father, the simple and childish manners of men always Reverend Hector Turnbull, he who is to pleased him, he never drove his eyes away meet his death from a heart attack while from common sights. He allowed his mind to chasing a young woman upstairs in a Por- make the best it could of everything it saw, tsdown "lodging-house". It was the same and so far he had seen nothing very gentleman who after rebuking the new disgusting. teacher in "my school, the school of our He was now watching a new phenomenon. church", for her gay blouse—"we expect The thing in question was harnessed to a horse, our assistants to be plain"—left her in tears and it flashed and sparkled in the sun like and walked home to the vicarage, "and his a splendid jewel. The noise it made was not as thoughts were the thoughts of a male pleasing as its colour. There was a sort of hyena". The chief pleasure in life of his slush and gurgle as it moved along at the heels of the horse, sounds that suggested to wife, who was entirely under his the mind the breaking out of foul drains. domination, was jam-making: Henry noted the colour and the noise, and then the appearance coming nearer showed When she married, she gave up her fortune to itself to be the skinned body of a horse. her husband and began to make home-made jam. At first she used to cover the jam-pots Later he sees the horse devoured by Mr with paper bought on purpose and cut into Tasker's gods: rounds and dipped in a saucer of brandy. The rich colour of brandy was one of the delights The pigs, there were over a hundred of them, of Henry's childhood. As the years grew were at it. They covered the carcass and tore Mr. Tasker's Gods 29 away and devoured pieces of flesh; they possessed incomes that no successful covered each other with blood, and fought munition dealer or jam merchant would have like human creatures. The stench of the been ashamed of, were, considering all the medley rose up in clouds, and was received as difficulties of life, very pleased with them- incense into the nostrils of Mr Tasker. At last selves. They followed the right path, the path the horrible and disgusting feast ended, and wherein lies human happiness. They were the the pigs were let out, all bloody, into the blessed ones of the earth, the pleasantly fat meadow, and a few forkfuls of rotting dung kine for whom the world is made. In their were thrown upon the bones of the horse. growth, nature blew them out as the hawker Henry was beginning to learn a little about blows out the little red bladders he sells to the the human beings in whose world he dwelt. children on the sands. He had had hints before. But now there was no getting away from what he had witnessed. Then there is Mrs Fancy, who finds the There had been no actual cruelty in the chief joy of her life in the "downfall" of scene, but he knew quite well where the girls. Young Mr Roude, a clerk in the-town, horror lay. It lay in the fact that the evil conducts amorous exploits with a snobbish spirits of the men, Mr Tasker's in particular, coldness. No wonder Powys could write to had entered into the pigs and had torn and Louis Wilkinson (in 1916): "Amos Lear too devoured the dead horse, and then again en- belongs to the country but the Devil does tered, all bloody and reeking, into the men. not lick his lips so much as in Mr Tasker." Does this contradict his claim for the book At this point of the present account a reader as a decent picture of life? who has not had the opportunity of getting When Mr Tasker's Gods was being writ- acquainted with the novel as a whole may ten, the first world war was being waged. well feel that the author is laying it on too Powys over and over again in his letters sees thickly—I feel myself, for instance, that the Devil, or God, licking his lips over it. those two epithets "horrible" and Sometimes the note is a bitterly mocking "disgusting" could have been omitted, one, sometimes it is weary, sometimes som- leaving "feast" to speak for itself. And such bre and solemn. As early as October 1914, a reader would be justified in suggesting when the war was some two months old, he that disgust and repulsion are hardly the was writing: best motivating forces for the presentation of life in art that makes any claim to It rains tonight great black drops from the breadth of view. He might ask if there are to north, and in the north of France and over be counter-balancing elements, things the plains of Poland a rare manure will dung which will make the vision less starkly one- the peasant fields. A new bread will grow out sided. There are further inhumanities and of the ground. Is God anywhere think you? horrors in store for him. Mr Tasker hitting and what of the dung that He is using now in his little girl in the face with a hayfork, boys the fields? killing birds and stoning Henry, Henry kicked to death by the great boots of Mr This early tragic realisation is followed in Tasker's father, a frog cruelly used for fun. the next two or three years by passage after Can this be "a decent picture of life"? Son passage showing his horror, fear, disgust, John is a clergyman who is wholly worldly, perplexity. To John Cowper in 1916 he and son George is a doctor who lives for writes: amassing money. Yet another clergyman, I live but not always. War makes light of Edward Lester, is a friend of John (who was death, they cry 'heave ho' and just shove quite unmoved by Henry's shock and Hans and Wilfred into the grave together. despair over the horse), and they live in ad- That's what war does. I don't see it so light a joining villages: matter. I am afraid, I fear, I see the devil. The Bishop of London is preaching to the The two aspiring young clergymen, who lived people on Tower Hill about the morals of the so near to each other, and whose wives girls. 30 Mr. Tasker's Gods The devil and the Bishop are very close gone. And Henry faced the Ancient of Days, together in those sentences. A month later the dread, ever-lasting presence that had en- his disgust with something he has seen tered into the tramp. prompts a mockery at the gods' government 'What do you want with me now?' Henry of the world that seems to me more forceful asked. in its contemptuous irony than anything in 'I'll break 'ee's blasted head!' was the response. Hardy: In Henry's eyes the tramp's form grew to a stupendous size. Having taken into his being Do you, my master, who are in every way an the whole brute force of the world, moving artist, do you think that the happiness of your through the eternal ages, he was become as success can reach up to that which is enjoyed God himself. At last Henry knew that the by a little smug clergyman with a motor car monster was from below, the immortal begin- and a hamper of eggs behind that I saw at ning and ending of man's nature, the first Yetminster station last Friday? What and the last, was before him; even the thought must have been required to make everlasting mud, the background of all life, that man? what cunning? To get just the to whom our few days are as nothing, and we, right mixture of smug hypocrisy and religious leaves driven before the wind. fear of sin, the kind of sin that gets one tur- ned out of a living. How the gods must have And the "everlasting mud" in that passage worked at it. To create a world just for that connects with the "moods of God", the ego- type to enjoy. A type that war cannot reach, drives, impulses and inclinations of that evil cannot harm, that even a naughty mankind, the "immortal" being of man servant cannot beguile. Think of it. How and woman, as expounded in Soliloquies of carefully it has been planned—just for that. a Hermit. When Powys asks in a letter of The motor car, the broad black hat, the good face. Fancy making all the stars and the autumn 1916, "Has he a butcher at his waters for that! Think how the plan was elbow by that white throne of his to direct managed and worked out from that little his righteous endeavours?" it is specifically round hairy monkey—not acting very the carnage of trench warfare that he is properly to the other ones in a cage at the moved by, but this slaughterous behaviour zoo—to the towers of Oxford and the proper also serves as confirmation of his life-long knowledge of the Christian religion. feeling of the "mud" and the "moods". The butcher is both Mr Tasker with his pigs and And in July 1917, John Cowper is again the an agent of God. The (newspaper-reported) recipient of a letter where the everyday links German bayonets turned on children in with the general thought and the quietly Belgium is also Mr Tasker's hayfork turned grave feeling: on his little girl. Did the particular horror of 1914-1918 cause Powys to magnify I hope you are fishing under the shady trees human baseness in the "picture" of life of- beside some friendly pond. I always prefer a fered by Mr Tasker's Gods ? pond to a river. I like the way the water in a pond lies so snug and silent. Keep to these Powys never says that human nature is harmless quiet people—the good gardener, only unchanging mud; and the moods do that careful servant, and the steadfast angler not find vicious expression in everybody. In . . . No, my dear, I don't feel like joking, the Mr Tasker's Gods we are given several in- diabolical cunning of the whole plan is so stances of "goodness", and of these Henry deeply set in the mud . . . But it is well not to Turnbull is the most fully drawn; his good- think too much of the cold sea at night. ness consists, broadly speaking, in the ab- sence in him of any kind of selfish We can immediately associate the "mud" worldliness: in that passage with Mr Tasker's Gods: The fields were delightful and cool as Henry Henry tenderly released her hold, and she loitered along them. Summer, full of her like an arrow darted past the tramp and was divinity, lay stretched before him. No heart Mr. Tasker's Gods 31 could move without beating fast; the life of and gaiety. Neville's sister Molly is offered as the sun was lord and king. The sounds that a paragon of serenity: she reads much, and Henry heard were full of summer. The July her self-sufficiency is resented by the heat was in a dog's bark. The colours of the villagers. But there is a minimum of reality clouds were July colours and the stream trem- in Powys's presentment of her; we hear next bled over little stones, gaily singing a summer to nothing of her life. Instead of giving us song. A kingfisher darted down from under the bridge, and Henry could hardly believe he the stuff of vital experiences and showing us had seen it, because it looked so lovely. how the cheerful serenity has been won, Henry's mind had regained its balance, Powys only gestures with cliches towards a and he could now drink of the cup that the virtue transcendent and unreal: summer held out to him. He breathed the sweet air and saw that the sun painted the up- While with Molly, Henry's troubles, that per part of every leaf with shining silver. The clung to him elsewhere, fled. She had about July dust lay thick like a carpet along the her a stilling atmosphere of absolute con- road to the vicarage. tentment . . . Molly's was the contentment of one who saw a shining star to follow, and This responsiveness to Nature, together found within it more and more delight . . . with his fondness for the books of "the old There was about her a clearness of effect like forgotten Church Fathers, who thought like the delicate curve of a snowdrift. The clear angels", makes Henry a reflection of aspects brightness of her pathway made it impossible for her ever to lose the way. If the brute of Powys himself. He has a friend, the passions of men ever crossed her light, she Reverend Henry Neville, and this second looked right through them, and her light Henry is disenchanted and more ex- shone still. perienced and more articulate than Henry Turnbull. It is he who arraigns the Church Even in an allegorical novel, this manner of in these terms: exaltation is not persuasive. In the final chapter, where we are told also of the 'The English Church is humanly organised,' worldly success of the nasty people, he said. 'It has become a very successful business. It took a great work out of loving Molly Neville, in her cushioned chair, read hands and built in the Master's name a jam many books. But her happiness always factory. They boil the stones of the fruit and remained in her own thoughts. call it "Christ's Church". Without Jesus our Church is really splendid. I can easily con- Mr Tasker and the rotten clergyman and ceive of a bishop suddenly waking up and Mrs Fancy retain their energies and pursue crying out, "What fools we have been, all their wonted activities; the good are either listening to a dark man, a fellow little better dead or have rather wearily withdrawn from than a nigger, a fellow nearly as black as Dr participation. The very fact that these five Johnson's servant!"' Mr Lester rose from his chair, stretched, lit 'good' characters—they are unambiguously a cigarette, and said: good—do exist in the novel is evidence that 'Jolly long grass you've got, Neville, out un- Powys is offering some sort of positive der the trees.' value; but as they are all presented either as sadly foredoomed victims or as idealised- Disillusioned, thoughtful, withdrawn, per- unrealities we cannot care very much about secuted, Neville dies young. their fates. A surer reality, in my own Rose Netley, a Salvation Army worker, experience of the book, resides in the treat- and her friend Maiden, a Nature-loving ment of Mrs Turnbull. chess-playing bank-clerk who (im- It could not be said that Powys created probably?) carries an Indian club for Mrs Turnbull with his own mother in corrective use when necessary, have some mind—the Reverend C. F. Powys was very success in combating vice and meanness, different from the Reverend Hector Turn- but they gradually lose their enthusiasm bull—but it is not irrelevant to recall that 32 Mr. Tasker's Gods Mrs C. F. Powys, having borne eleven of living, the soul being set upon the rack so children and brought up ten of them, nearly that the body might have a balance of three all of whom were strongly individual in figures in the bank. character, has been described by Llewelyn as "that strange woman who enjoyed sorrow Jam-pots, clothes baskets, stockings and rather than joy", and even Littleton, the darning needles, trees and the keeper's only conventional-type male of the family, wood, cows and the man who milked speaks of his mother's joy in life being dim- them—out of a jumble of things and med: "All the suffering she had borne, and memories Powys creates the hopelessly seen others bear, caused her to adopt a muddled state of the old woman's life. fatalistic attitude to life—an attitude of Compassion is the moving force. She found resignation." Theodore's own account is a it impossible to adjust, and Powys gives full little subtler and more elusive than those of substantiating detail for this statement that his brothers; in 1908, when he was thirty- three, he was writing to Wilkinson: She could nowhere obtain the strength wherewith to break the spell that those long years with him had cast over her. Lucy says that she fears I do cause my Mother a great deal of unhappiness, far more than Mrs Turnbull stands in the area between any of the others. When she speaks of me it is generally with a sigh. I wish this was not so, the palpably vicious and the ineffective- but my hope is that with increasing age my good or saintly. In this novel the village Mother's natural tenderness of heart may average mass between the extremes is revive and overpower her religious coldness, characterised by gossip-loving and distinc- but age does not always act as a kind peace- tion-hating; there are glimpses of in- maker. dividual kindness, but mostly the "everlasting mud" rules, though in dilution The particular course and quality of her life compared with the Taskers and the Turn- may well have nourished in Theodore the bulls. Powys is always to be riskily subject sympathy he was always to feel for the to the view of humanity as divided sharply defeated, the dominated, the frustrated. into sheep and goats, but even in Mr Mrs Turnbull is among these: in particular Tasker's Gods, if we read it in its entirety the chapter called "The Lost Sound" im- with all its alternations of feelings and at- pressively evokes the final futility of her life titudes, we shall find a much more balan- when she has had to move into her doctor ced vision than if we confined our attention son's home after the Reverend Hector's to the characters only. This will be true of death. In her old home, though her Powys's writings in general; there is much husband had been a tyrant, she had had at more to a novel, as to a Shakespeare play, least her jam-making and the security of a than character-delineation. familiar voice or two. But now, Features of Mr Tasker's Gods which recur over and over in the Powysian world Everything that went on in her son's and vision may be briefly glanced at household was ruled by the totally featureless here—only glanced at because they will be tyrant of convention. Every little detail was more fully discussed later. There are the arranged so that the way of life of the doctor's frequent references to authors and books, family should reflect, as in a glass, the man- to the Bible, with quotations or imitative ners and customs of the middle order of the phrasing; the earthiness juxtaposed or people whom he attended. The maid was taught just the tone to use to the front-door fused with contemplation, standing by the bell ringer, and the right way to speak to a pig-sty wondering at the stars while "the farmer's servant-girl who came to the back to huge black sows lay like monstrous slugs have a tooth out. just inside"; the peculiar "black" humour, It looked as if the art of torture was ironic, unideal, as when Mr Duggs—"he brought very near perfection in this quiet way was the best man in the village at skinning a Mr. Tasker's Gods 33 horse"—being one of the bearers at Mr children, exploited women and ill-treated Turnbull's funeral, "had taken the wives, heartless officialism; patches of flat precaution, since his coat was his own, to reporting alternating with strongly charged run his thumb over the bottom of the coffin narrative. Powys himself probably had its as it rested upon the two hall chairs, so that violences in mind when he called Mr. he might prove to himself that the varnish Tasker (in an undated letter to John did not come off. He had been caught like Cowper) "an ugly book". But the challen- that once and had never forgotten it"; and ges it makes to conventional complacency later, having had a kick on the ankle while and callousness are deeply felt, the bitterness carrying, "Why, they might have upset, so is clearly not an effect of disappointed per- Mr Duggs expressed it at the inn that sonal hopes, and the writing is controlled, evening, 'the whole box of tricks'.": when unexcited, coolly ironic or quietly moving. we recall just who it was inside the box the We have the benefit of hind-sight, but I deflationary phrase takes on a little further believe Mr Tasker's Gods firmly presages point. There is the use of Dorset dialect; "the superb command of life, serene yet and of symbols, such as the Christmas card compassionate, that informs T. F. Powys's of a child and a cross, loved by Henry Turn- writings". Q. D. Leavis's was a fine tribute bull and torn up by him when experience and Powys needed the recognition it ex- and circumstance take him out of his gar- pressed. It must be added that it did den, that is, out of the Garden (the sym- nothing towards making him pick up his bolic hand tends to be heavy at times); pen again. Nothing could do that. humane social criticism about starving Martyn Branford The Starting Point: the Early Fiction of T. F. Powys and Kate Roberts

T. F. Powys began his novel-writing career In "Y Lon Wen" ("The White Lane"), a as the Great War entered its third bitter fragment of autobiography published in year—it is believed that Mr Tasker's Gods 1960, Kate Roberts states: "Everything was written between the winter of 1916 and important, everything of deep impression, the summer of 1917.' In Soliloquies of a happened to me before 1917".2 In 1917 her Hermit, published in 1916, Chapter 21, en- youngest brother, David, was killed titled "Black Smoke", comes near the end fighting in a war, which, it is clear from her of the book: writings, Kate Roberts believed was not The hatred and malice, the ungovernable Wales's war, nor a war to end war, but a rage of man,—the rage of getting more than war waged by vested interests, by the same his neighbour,—that no painted lying class as controlled the quarries in her native civilization can assuage; the rage of a sup- Arfon, in North-West Wales. She talks of pressed country, being denied a proper 1921 as the year that the need to write was proportion of the earth's surface; the rage of inwardly stressed to her: "I had to say another country that the first should want something or sink". any more; the immortal greed shut up under Perhaps the classic statement of post-war the supposed tameness of man; all the black ennui, of the disillusion and even what he terrible moods have a way of bursting their chains at times; of getting loose with a sound calls the "moderate Satanism" which and a horrible cry of bloody rage. The gradually enmeshed the English—perhaps prophets delighted in it; they wallowed up to the Welsh had no illusions in the first their necks in the black waters and enjoyed it. place—is C. E. Montague's Disen- The people did not listen; do the people ever chantment, published in 1922. This has listen until it is too late? And then their been called a classic of war literature but it mangled bodies strew the earth, in the day is surely, rather, a rallying-call to the post- when the black waters rush out with a war generation, an heroic attempt to come horrible sound, and over all the earth there is to terms with the prevailing mood of sour- black smoke and death and an evil stench. ness and quarrelsomeness. One passage A few lines further on, in Chapter 22, Powys may suffice to give an idea of this prevailing writes that "today the black waters have mood: burst out again amongst men". This must Most of us, on the whole, find that effort is be one of the few, if not the only, overt ref- less fun than it was, and many things erences to the Great War to be found in his somewhat dull that used to sparkle with work, summing up the profound causes and interest; the salt has lost, not all, but some of terrible effects of that conflict with succinct its savour; the grasshopper is a bit of a images of horror. By 1933 Powys's writing burden; old hobbies of politics, social causes, career was over; he had drained himself of liberal comradeships, the loves and wars of letters and art, which used to excite, look at all he wished to say on his great times as if the might only have been at the metaphysical concerns, and, as if to best, rather a much ado about nothing; reinforce the appropriateness of his failure buzzing about our heads there come impor- to come to a resolution of hope or tunate suspicions that much of what we used positiveness for humanity, another world to do so keenly was hardly worth doing and war was only six years off. that the dim, far goals we used to struggle The Starting Point 35 towards were only possibly worth trying for by the numerous sudden switches of tone. and are, anyhow, out of reach now. That is In Chapter XVIII, for instance, "Higher the somewhat sick spirit's condition. The Fees", there is satire at the expense of the limp apathy that we see at elections, the hypocritical, infatuated Rev. Hector Turn- curious indifference in presence of public bull; following immediately comes the wrongs and horrors, the epidemic of sneaking pilferage, the slackening of sexual self-control chapter entitled "The Dying Man", with —all these are symptomatic like the furred the sombre, unironical, pained tongue, subnormal heat, and muddy eye. philosophising of Henry Neville. There is also a frequent anger which overloads its It is to a British nation sunk in this kind of perceptible objects on the page: the moral torpor, assuaged as we all know by daughters of the Maidenbridge coroner, the furious frivolity of the smart, who are not individually described or made sophisticated set and the show-business real to us, are visualised as greedily world, that these two writers, each in their welcoming news of infanticide, suicide and own rural seclusion—how misleading a murder as a means of buying a "king's box phrase that can be—each in their own of milk chocolates or a motor veil" from the inherited tongue, were addressing them- proceeds of the inquest fees. Yet their selves. childish vision of their father as a "black I think that it is in the light of this social beetle killer" and their need to open the crisis, with its many complex ramifications windows when he comes into the dining- affecting both rural Southern England and room after attending an inquest is a subtle the proto-industrial communities of North- Dickensian touch with a much more power- West Wales, that the early works of both ful effect. Likewise, the pathos attending writers should be considered. When we look Mrs Hector Turnbull's widowhood is not at the social world of Mr Tasker's Gods, for overdone: instance, though the Great War, raging in its consuming stalemate while the novel was Mrs Turnbull had a place by her son at being written, is nowhere mentioned, the meals. At other times she sat in her little resonances of that conflict make themselves room with her darning on her lap. She missed something. She could not exactly tell what it felt. Horrible incidents recur throughout was. Something of her old life, something the novel: there is the drover's dog, pur- that was nearly connected with 'the sound' chased by Mr Tasker, who savages his that had so strangely died away, taking with daughter; the snarling dog in the ditch, it her home. Always she sat still and looked at waiting to be put down; the servant-girl, the strange view from her window. What were Alice, being thrust out into the street after those great beech trees doing there? Where being raped; and of course the various were the round, clipped laurels that she had grisly deaths, of Henry Neville, Hector always seen? Where was the keeper's wood? Turnbull, Henry Turnbull and Mr Tasker What had happened to those homely Senior. The natural world is rarely seen at noises—'Funeral's' voice heard in the kit- any moment of peace or beauty: this chen over a cup of tea that Edith—kind, ever kind Edith—had given him? And the man passage is characteristic: "dark, scraggy who milked the cows by the hedge? Where clouds followed each other rat-like over the were the cows gone?6 sky; and gusty, dissatisfied rushes of wind brought, even so far inland, the smell of 5 The vacancy and alienation of the seaweed". The novel is pervaded by this frightened Mrs Turnbull, installed like a abject horror at what man is capable of piece of furniture in her son's house, is well doing to man. In artistic terms this horror conveyed by the short sentences and hurried is too much for the novel, with its pains- repeated questions. When Powys is dealing taking superstructure of realism, to bear. with an individual, not railing at a class or a Powys's highly-charged authorial presence herd, his touch is sure. His rage at the state leads to a lack of control which is betrayed to which the world had been brought by 36 The Starting Point what he sees as a frightful complicity bet- form with questions to answer. They must ween the ruling class and the ruled, both think we own a thousand acre farm.' bereft of wonder, united by greed and a But when she opened it, she saw that it was hatred for the unconventional, anyone who not one of the usual forms. There were sheets contravenes the established pattern of of paper, written in English. She saw Twm's cringing servitude and surfeited authority, name, and his army number, and there was another sheet of thick white paper with only a prevents his becoming anything like a few words on it in English. success at writing the novel of social She ran with the letter to the shop. criticism based on a meticulous, epic 'Some old letter in English has come here, realism, which I believe describes the Richard Hughes. Will you tell me what it is? fictional work of Kate Roberts. Something to do with Twm, anyhow.>s Kate Roberts's earliest full-length novel now available in English is Traed mewn The sad news is soon broken; Jane Gruf- Cyffion (Feet in Chains), published by fydd is fetched a glass of water in the shop Gwasg Gomer in Aberystwyth in 1936 and kitchen; and the author adds, laconically, in English by John Jones, Cardiff, in "Later she was taken back to Ffridd 1977. (Full-length is perhaps a misleading Felen". The irony of this incident is allowed term, as the English version is only 133 to speak for itself: Kate Roberts, although pages long.) It is sparingly written with lit- possessed of firm political convictions tle concession to the reader's desire, par- which emerge in her journalistic work, ticularly strong in response to what might nowhere in her fiction crudely hammers loosely be described as a family saga form home an overtly political message. of novel, for fully documented details of With the benefit of hindsight, Kate characters' lives such as one would expect Roberts is able to look back in this novel to from good historical biography. Kate Roberts a pre-war world where her older characters is not that kind of novelist: she makes use of are stalled in a geographic and linguistic telling detail but never overburdens the isolation; where change is threatened but events in her work with a significance which has not yet effected its revolution. She sees cannot be gathered from a few short sen- the ironies of the situation: the parents, tences or a brief conversation. An example is Jane and Ifan Gruffydd, are bound, the arrival at the smallholding, Ffridd through lack of education and opportunity, Felen, the home of the Gruffydd family and to the quarrymaster and smallholding: the the heart of the novel, of the news of the children, especially the boys, can take their death in the Great War of Twm, the most own paths out from this servitude, but in so lively and reckless of the boys of the family: doing undergo separation and longing. That morning, at the beginning of July, 1916, Sioned, one of the girls, suffers a broken Jane Gruffydd was expecting a letter from marriage with a toffee-nosed shop assistant Twm. She had not received one for six days. from the town, who, criminally, apes She was worried, but not too much because English ways; Wiliam, the eldest boy, can- once before there had been a delay and then not settle to the quarry with its declining two letters arrived together. These days she wages and weak-kneed unionism and tears could manage to do nothing but milk the himself away to the coal mines of South cows and see Eric off to school before the Wales where things are a little better; Twm, postman came, and sometimes he would be who trains as a teacher but cannot find an late. He was late today, or he had already opening to teach his specialist subject, gone past. Yet she remained in her chair in- Welsh, enlists and is killed in the Great stead of going about her work. No, there was his whistle by the yard gate, and she ran out War, as we have heard; and Owen, on excitedly. But it was not a letter from Twm, whom the brightest focus falls, whose nor was it from any other children. It was a brilliance as a boy at the local eisteddfod long envelope with an official stamp on it. also leads him through school and college 'Drat it,' she said to herself, 'another old to a teaching career, is the most thoughtful The Starting Point 37 and clinging. The book ends on a down- a feature of Mr Tasker's Gods, it would be beat as Owen, with time on his hands—a wrong to suggest that Powys has turned his characteristically modern luxury his father face away from the contemporary world to never enjoys—is unable to enjoy it because what Raymond Williams has summarised of the drift of his thoughts on the war, on as "a deliberately imagined abstraction far- his people "courageous in their capacity to ther back in time than Hardy's Dorset".8 endure pain, but (who) would do nothing to For Farmer Mew is the epitome of modern get rid of what caused the pain", and par- man, whose evil tendencies were depicted ticularly on his mother, to whom he through what can be seen as a monotonous remains drawn in a close bond. As Wolf range of cardboard characters in Mr Solent ends with Wolf deciding to have a Tasker 's Gods. Farmer Mew is deliberately cup of tea, so Feet in Chains ends with constructed as a representative figure. Owen settling to his first pipe of the day. Early in the tale we are told: "William Mew In this novel Kate Roberts sums up a was the giant of Madder. And he intended society at a point of change, where T. F. one day to be carved, a monstrous shape, Powys in Mr Tasker's Gods never upon the chalk hills." At the same time he acknowledges the possibility of change. is a convincing figure in the context of an Although his Dorset is not timeless, it is isolated rural community in the 1920s: an static; although not sealed-off, the only avaricious, merciless, capitalist farmer on social influences to which it is open are the make in a period of severe agricultural meanness and impoverishment. Its depression. His sexual rapacity is fright- topography is structured much like Hardy's fully real, given the terms in which it is Wessex with a hierarchy of settlements— described: "He felt her with his hands as Portstown, the city; Maidenbridge, the though she were a young heifer that he had town; Shelton ,the village—attached to one bought in the market". One can also see another by contrasting levels of transport: behind Farmer Mew that impetus of greed railway train and carrier's van. The and land-lust which drove the colonial frequent railway journeys put one in mind powers in the "scramble for Africa" in the of Jude the Obscure, with this important late 19th century and sharpened those in- difference, which is a difference too from tense rivalries which can be seen as the Feet in Chains: that there is no social jour- profound cause of the Great War; although neying, no learning about the self for any of its immediate causes were more trivial. the characters, and the novel does not open That Powys saw both Farmer Mew and up perspectives which reveal the individual Madder village in these symbolic terms can belonging to a wider history. be deduced from this sentence: "For God's In the next Powys work I wish to Madder, when it has a mind to be truthful, study—it is significant that tale is now an can tell the whole story." apter word for it than novel—The Left Leg, Powys is the master of his material in this the social focus narrows to the third and tale. Written in 1921,9 it demonstrates a last element in that hierarchy, the remote mature authority in the writing which is of- village, here called Madder. At the same ten lacking in the passages of threshing time we see extraordinary developments in rage not quite nailing their target which are the approach to the subject, the way the so numerous in Mr Tasker's Gods, written story is told and the degree of social realism four years earlier. An example of this with which Powys imbues the narrative. maturity can be seen in the difference in the There remains the furious criticism at the satire meted out to clergymen in the two heart of the tale, a crusading criticism books. In Mr Tasker's Gods Powys spilt which is perhaps the only common much ink in venomous portrayals of denominator of the two fictions. Although outrageously venal types—the two Turn- the social focus is narrowed, and there are bulls, Edward Lester and a whole bevy of no denunciations of social classes which are the tribe at Maidenbridge for the Bishop's 38 The Starting Point Visitation. There they are described in became too tiresome, Mr Summerbee would categories: a sign that Powys is scoring easy call in Tom Button, who was for some reason points at the expense of faceless, defen- or other willing to work in the Rectory garden celess men: for an hour or two, and give him some money for weeding the plot that had outgrown his Mr Turnbull entered the place of worship. rule. The scene inside was curious. The front seats The hints of a terrible moving force that were filled with the clergy,—there were old raged in Madder he regarded not." dull Low-Church faces, young sharp Anglican, sickly priests dreaming of Rome, That final brief paragraph is typical of the and hail-fellow-well-met Broad-Church beef- conciseness Powys brings into this work, a devourers of the middle school. It was a ser- quality we have already seen used to good vice that began with prayer. After that was effect in Kate Roberts's fiction. There is no over, the Archdeacon, an ancient fox-hunting need for Powys to spell out the lesson here: ruffian, half-brother to Lord Bullman, began 10 that Mr Summerbee, albeit through a third his address. party, checks the weeds in his rectory gar- den, while turning a blind eye to the gross The only antidote to this branding of a class moral weed rampaging through the village. of men is the portrayal of the Rev. Henry Powys has pruned his style in comparison Neville: an impractical, fugitive priest, tur- with Mr Tusker's Gods to produce shorter, ned out of his East End mission because he highly-charged sentences, often echoing kissed an unknown girl in the street, with Biblical cadences. An example taken ostracized by his parishioners, on whom, of from near the end of the tale is where course, his saintliness is quite wasted. He Tinker Jar confronts Farmer Mew: dies half-way through the book without making the impact which could redress the They reached Mr Mew's door. Mr Jar balance in this heavily-loaded charac- knocked. terisation of clergymen. In The Left Leg the While they waited for the door to be opened, Madder clergyman is Mr Summerbee: a Mr Jar walked round his stone three times. mild, ineffectual, apparently harmless The visitors entered Mr Mew's house. man, he is of the devil's party by default. Farmer Mew had expected Mrs Cuddy. He His acquiescence in Farmer Mew's gradual had drawn the sofa up to the fire and had domination of Madder by murder at one placed a bottle of wine and glasses upon the remove, rape and virtual buying of the table. Minnie Cuddy looked at these Squibb family into slavery is demonstrated preparations with approval. After all, Farmer to be criminal negligence. But this time the Mew was a man. point is made subtly, without inflation or 'I am come too', said Father Jar. 'What do you want here?' Mr Mew asked. verbosity: 'Have you come to steal?' 'Yes, I am the thief,' said Mr Jar, 'the thief He sighed as he entered the Rectory gate. that comes in the night.'12 Oh! it was a pleasant thing to walk under those Madder elms with the summer flowers Here Powys even allows a note of sympathy and the blades of grass to look upon. The for Mew to emerge momentarily before the apron would be changed into a white frock direct parabolic reference of Mr Jar—here for the evening, and later of course that in its turn would be taken off. It was all so pleasant also referred to as Father Jar—to the "thief at Madder, that Mr Summerbee could find that comes in the night" comes with chilling nothing wrong or out of place. He had his finality. calm and peaceful work to do. Furthermore, Powys seems able to in- There was the preaching and reading in the tegrate his own presence as narrator Church, the words in the prayer book that naturally into the fabric of the tale, like an lent their aid to the happy utterance of his unobtrusive senior citizen of Madder, as life. There was his garden. If the weeds when he tells the reader: "Madder life went The Starting Point 39 on in ways that I will tell you of". There is he cannot admit to himself that the neigh- sophistication, too, in the sardonic com- bouring farmer, Mr Pye, has an even larger ments occasionally addressed to the reader, and more prosperous farm than he; and he perhaps an imagined urban reader with an is tormented, not healed by the sight of indolent view of life in a country village: meadow flowers and butterflies in summer "And who indeed could believe any evil of because they can't be acknowledged as his the place when the summer scents were in property. (It is this which drives him in fury the Madder lanes?" This mirage of blissful to transport Jar's stone, though this too rural seclusion is dangled before the reader ends in frustration: "Jar's stone remained in order to be destroyed. The structure of silent".) This kind of imposition of an the tale is carefully planned. Jar, by turns illuminating or at least retributive moral or called "Tinker", "Father", "Uncle" or spiritual order, an order with which a few plain "Mister"—the imprecision speaks for characters such as Mad Tom Button the man's legendary quality—is introduced already have a psychic empathy, is to be a at the very start as a kind of folk-memory, a feature of Powys's work. It is a feature ab- tramp-messiah who has gone from his hut sent from both the novels and short stories on the Madder hills, Jar's stone, but whose of Kate Roberts where, it may be thought, return is not ruled out. Then the other for the most part nothing much happens. characters are introduced, including Far- Kate Roberts herself wrote in 1931, in a survey mer Mew whom "every one in Madder of the Welsh short story, of the story "in which knew that Mr Jar had set up in business". nothing much happened and which had no Subsequently, Jar virtually disappears as an development of character", adding that active presence, while his stone is "it's one thing to write (such a story) but desecrated by Farmer Mew and he himself quite another to invest it all with a deep is relied on by Mad Tom Button as a source mystical meaning as Chekhov and of information through signs in the sky. Katherine Mansfield could do".13 It may be When he returns to confront the monster he thought that Kate Roberts's fictional work has empowered, Farmer Mew, it is at the does lack a spiritual dimension. In many of rectory that he first knocks the door—home her stories characters are fixed in the of the inadequate Mr Summerbee who grooves of a working life which blocks out should have performed this mission of the light of illumination, or even the chance correction in his stead. The atmosphere of to stand back from life to observe a pattern brooding menace is apparent throughout, or purpose. But this is indeed the whole yet there is humour too, as in the ner- point: a turning-point may arrive, for vousness which fatally afflicts two of the example a fatal illness, retirement or widow Minnie Cuddy's three married ad- bankruptcy, and this has a jolting effect mirers. In this tale Powys has strengthened which suddenly, fleetingly highlights the dramatically his artistic hold on his power- lack of awareness hitherto. To use that ful imagination, and the writer of the more phrase which Belinda Humfrey has picked generally acknowledged and studied out as standing for a theme in the poetry of masterpiece Mr Weston 's Good Wine can R. S. Thomas, there is "a gap in the hedge" be recognised as having come to sudden and awareness of the gap is the farthest maturity here. point of illumination to which Kate Roberts's In this tale Powys is clearly throwing off characters reach. Only Lora Ffennig in the realism of Mr Tasker's Gods and em- the much later, post-Second World War bracing allegory. Tinker Jar is a God-the- novel, YByw sy'n Cysgu (The Living Sleep) Father figure who is obliged to return to goes through a prolonged period of self- confront the evil which has swollen in his examination, stimulated by the crisis of her absence. Illumination, if one can call it husband leaving her, during which she can that, is imposed on Farmer Mew because he explore that gap and make out what it was refuses to heed lessons from man or nature: that made her blind to it before. In her own 40 The Starting Point words (the novel ends with one of Lora's virtually chosen for them, most families live many diary entries): in scattered homesteads on the hillsides on which they practise a little subsistence far- after trying and trying to understand him, ming, by working at weekends and in and the relations between us, I think I've got evenings after a day at the quarry. It may be to understand myself better, that in har- seen even from this brief account that the dening myself I've grown in stature, that in- community has a rich identity in these side me there is a spring, a force that will keep driving me on through life. I'll never stories—it is the "knowable community" to come to the end of understanding Iolo or use Raymond Williams's phrase—and I myself, though I've delved into the unseen have not mentioned the cultural cum and the unconscious. It's on the borders of religious elements which serve to bind it these that dissatisfaction arises, and out of together. On top of this is the linguistic that comes this spring.14 isolation connected with a fairly healthy distaste for English ways. All in all, the The message of this is not crystal clear, but evidence of men working and women I think sufficient to show that in this novel keeping house, and the tensions, Kate Roberts is struggling to deal with a dissatisfied longing and sense of unfulfilled contemporary consciousness, a woman of potential to which these everyday conditions the modern world in which a material af- can give rise, are entirely absent from T. F. fluence and stability has been achieved Powys's work. One must add that Kate bringing concomitant problems of identity Roberts was writing as one brought up in and value. I would prefer to turn back to this close-knit environment—she was born the short stories, mostly written in the 1920s in 1891 at Rhosgadfan, Caernarfonshire, a and 1930s, a selection of which were quarryman's daughter—and also as one published, in an English translation by exiled from it. A graduate in Welsh of the various hands, by the Penmark Press of University College of North Wales, Bangor, Cardiff in 1946, under the titled Summer's in 1915 she obtained a teaching post in Day and other stories. South wales where she lived until her These stories can be talked of as a canon marriage in 1928 to the Welsh publisher, in the same way as can T. F. Powys's work, Morris Williams, who bought Gwasg Gee. because they deal with an identifiable They moved to Denbigh, also in North geographical entity, the Arfon district of Wales, but an area much more open to what was Caernarvonshire, now Gwynedd. anglicizing influences, a long way culturally Characters do not recur in different stories, if not geographically from Arfon. Therefore but they are all recognisably part of the I think Kate Roberts is able to write ob- same society—a working community. jectively and also with an exile's passion Nearly all the male characters are employed and accuracy of her people, aware as she in the slate quarries, an industry in private was that their isolation was a source of hands of course and a declining one, in strength but also ultimately doomed. T. F. which wages are falling. The wives in the Powys's understanding of and feeling for community, on whom Kate Roberts's focus his Dorsetshire folk is not of the same is more intense, hold the family purse- passionate yet unsentimental quality, but strings but are hard pressed to do so suc- partakes far more of a deep awareness of cessfully. Having goods on 'tick' while their vulnerability on a cosmic scale. Any brighter children are sent through school sense of the sacramental in Kate Roberts's and university is commonplace. Once work is firmly anchored to the com- qualified, only a few of the graduates can monplace. The scene which is evoked in find work in the community. Internal The Final Payment, a story of five pages, migration is the norm. The community is may serve as an example. not a fully industrialized one because, In this story, the retirement of her although the men's work is regimented and husband from the quarry and their move The Starting Point 41 from smallholding to little house is made tributes to the apparent anti-climax, yet the real and solemn to Ffanni Roberts when hush is appropriate to this act, a kind of rite with the help of the proceeds from the sale sealing off a whole portion of life endured, of their farm stock, she can make her last seen through. payment to the local shopkeeper. (She will In other stories, for instance the cycle en- henceforth be using a different shop.) She titled Tea in the Heather, which shares has been going to this shop all her married the Arfon background although written life and it is only now that she can clear her later than those published in A Summer's account. Her husband, as is characteristic Day, a narrative can be predominately in Kate Roberts's work, is phlegmatic, made up of reported speech. All the stories while she is in a turbulence of emotion. in this little collection are about three con- Here are a few excerpts. trasting young girls: Begw, from a hard- working family; Mair, the rather superior 'I'm going now,' she said to her husband, minister's daughter, and the older Winni, folding her string bag and tucking it under wild and wilful, who has no respect for her her arm beneath her cape. slatternish step-mother. Long, solemn con- 'Right,' he answered, without lifting his versations between the three are conveyed head from his book. with perfect ease and naturalness, par- Strange that he could be so unconcerned, ticularly in the title-story of the collection. so unaware of the significance of the oc- casion. She doubted whether life had ever Here Begw and Mair go up the hillside for a brought him a significant moment, whether picnic tea one summer afternoon, only to be he had ever known the extremes of joy and confronted by Winni, who demands a sorrow. share:

Then, the scene inside the shop: Like a mad thing, she snatched the glass of jelly and spoon and gulped it all down, then As usual on pay-Fridays, the shop was full; she swallowed the bread and butter. Begw sat mostly women, silent and unresponsive, as if transfixed, tears in her eyes. Mair smiled they were strangers to each other in the coldly. evenings. So different from the mornings 'And now,' said Winni, getting up and when they ran into the shop to buy something throwing the glass into the basket, 'I'm tasty for themselves. going to give you a good whipping.' The whole scene, with its silence and its sense of awe, took on the aspect of a And the idyllic afternoon on the hillside ends sacrament. . . with Mair and Begw scattering in alarm, ... 'I don't suppose I shall be coming down only to get hopelessly lost. They are rescued here again,' she said. He nodded to show by Begw's elder brother, Robin. The collec- that he understood, and she walked out of the tion ends with an inevitable maturity being shop, fumbling for the latch, and then thrust on the reckless Winni as, with Mair's closing the door carefully behind her. She mother's well-meant help, she obtains a looked in through the grey window and saw post in service in town, the prospect of the shopkeeper bending down over someone else's book. which thoroughly sobers her down. The effect on Begw is quite profound: this is the final paragraph of the cycle: In these excerpts I have quoted is all the reported speech in the story: it is all that And so a feeling of dread came over her as Kate Roberts here needs. The focus, in the she thought that she would only see Winnie parts I haven't quoted, is on the inanimate on an occasional Saturday afternoon and if objects in the village shop, normally so she went further away, she'd never see her, taken for granted, which, in these emotion- and she had been so fond of her. And what charged moments, take on an unnatural had her mother said? That she herself would significance; the lack of conversation con- have to stand on her own feet one day. She 42 The Starting Point felt cold and lonely, and she moved her chair After they return home news is at once nearer to her mother to draw up to the fire. broken to Ted of an amazing turn of events at that afternoon's Sunday School Thus even in this apparently light collection Teachers' Meeting—Lloyd, his great rival, of stories (which, not inappropriately, are has been mortified and quite silenced in evidently thought suitable for children's debate by an un-rated, shy young man. The reading) Kate Roberts is reiterating the story ends thus: theme I mentioned earlier in the context of Feet in Chains—the harsh conjunction of Presently her husband came in. There was a growing up with growing away, the different look on him somehow, thought An- loneliness inextricable from the onset of nie. While he ate he said nothing, but just maturity. looked down at his plate of meat. Annie In the married state, too, Kate Roberts looked at hers, but her thoughts were far detects an undertone of disappointment. In away. She was going over and over every small happening, every word and every look "The Loss", a short story from ,4 Summer's that Ted had given her that afternoon. She Day and other stories, Annie Williams was happy, happy! Ted was "Ted" after all. takes Ted, her husband of eighteen mon- Then, later, Williams looked up and said, ths, on a bus trip to the lake in the moun- "I would give the round world to have been in tains. Rarely does a woman act without a the Teachers' meeting this afternoon." scheme in Kate Roberts's work—although She all but choked. Great tears flowed into I should add that the scheming is often her eyes. But she did not cry. In a few seconds selfless, even noble. Annie's idea is to revisit she was laughing uncontrollably, peal after a spot they frequented during their court- peal resounding through the house. ship because she finds her marriage Her husband stared at her in mute sur- becoming too much a matter of mechanical prise. routine. Ted has on his mind the Sunday School Teachers' Meeting he is missing, Even from such a brief acquaintance we feel and particularly a regular anatagonist of we know the stolid Ted Williams—cun- past meetings, Lloyd. At the beauty-spot ningly referred to by the author as Annie and Ted do indeed seem to revive the "Williams" or "her husband" because no- forgotten romance, so much so that the lady one, not even Annie, really thinks of him as serving them tea at a cottage still takes Ted—well enough to appreciate that his them for sweethearts. For Annie, nostalgia phrase "I would give the round world" is in- sharpens the taste of this happiness, when deed an expressive one, for him; and we un- the sight of the congregation—"a mere derstand Annie's feelings well enough to handful"—coming out of the mountain know that the peals of laughter are a chapel stimulates her imagination: harmless, indeed a helpful release of tension and humour at her own small She followed them in her imagination, and duping. amused herself by wondering what they Other stories treat the sense of something would have for tea. Apple tart or current missing in marriage in a more sombre con- cake, certain. And the moment she thought text. In "The Condemned", for instance, of this she could smell all the scents of a Dafydd Parry, a quarryman, has a farmhouse kitchen on a Sunday afternoon—a diagnosed cancer which confines him to bed mixture of farmyard, dairy, potatoes baking in the oven, and apple tart. And a longing and hearth: he becomes aware of a ten- came over her for her old home, as it used to derness and love towards his wife which has be when she worked in the Post Office at gone unexpressed down the years. A final Colwyn Bay, and she went home over the resolve to tell her of his passionate Sunday. memories of their courtship is defeated by She took a deep breath of happiness. 'Isn't the increasing pain and stress he feels: only it wonderful here?' she said to her husband. his tears can tell her, as he clings to her. The Starting Point 43 The sense of working life being carried on missing—in fact town chapels and country without him is a significant element in the chapels are distinct entities in his mind, so artistic unity of the story. Dafydd hears his she needn't have worried—and as a release mates walking past: for the stream of feeling which overwhelms her when she watches the "mere handful" He found it hard to have to stay in bed and of congregation leaving it. In this respect hear his friends going to the quarry. He could she and the T. F. Powys I have described as hear them climbing the hill past the pine-end coming to maturity as a writer of fiction in of the house, with their heavy slow tread and The Left Leg share a selectivity in choice of quiet muttering in the early morning. He detail which causes this reader's attention could hear them again in the evening, with to be held unwaveringly. Storm Jameson their quick, measured tread and loud, happy voices. In his quarrying days, the discussion has said of Kate Roberts, in the foreword to was often unfinished when he turned aside A Summer's Day and other stories: from his mates at the gate, but it was hard to be left out of the discussion entirely. He In the sharp clarity of her descriptive prose longed for a chat with the boys in the cabin at she reminds an English reader of the fiction dinner-time. Little Jack would be talking of Walter de la Mare, but she is not a poet about his dogs, and Dafydd Bengwar about writing prose ... In these stories not only the his canaries. But Dafydd liked best to hear things seen, but things heard, touched, Wil Ellis, who was a bit of a drover, telling tasted, are evoked with an energy and purity such tales that you could bet half of them which succeed because they are loyal first of were lies. But no matter, some people's lies all to the thing itself: the emotion springs were more interesting than other people's from it, is not merely thrown round it. truth. And it was at the quarry that he heard all the news, truth and lies, about people. T. F. Powys's prose shares this stripped- There was more gossip to be had at the down quality: we see things in bare outline quarry than in the house. as we do the chalk downs, sometimes gleaming fiercely, rarely in blurred colours. How subtly this is expressed: the men's con- In one brief episode in The Left Leg, for in- versation is not idealised—there will be as stance, Mary Gillet sees a songbird seized many lies as truths spoken—but what is by an owl as she passes Jar's stone; she con- evoked is the continuum of work and little tinues her stick-gathering; far off in the rec- but valued leisure—hence the dogs and the tory garden she sees a patch of white, which canaries—in which this story, as all in the she identifies as Mrs Summerbee picking collection, are set. strawberries. After she has been seized by Stylistically, Kate Roberts's stories are Mew, carried to Jar's stone and has fainted, difficult to judge from translations alone, Powys tell us: "In the Madder rectory but it is interesting, in the light of T. F. garden a spot of white that was Susan Powys's sure use of the Dorset dialect, to Summerbee, still stopped and picked straw- note that Welsh critics have praised her berries". Thus a small detail of this kind mastery of language and in particular the provides a kind of frame within which we Arfon dialect and its wealth of idiom.15 can observe all too clearly the immensity of Qualities which are unmistakeable are the Mew's moral transgression. Neither writer confidence and authority which Kate can be easily faulted for writing pretentious Roberts demonstrates in her handling of or pseudo-poetic prose, yet both possess an the short story, and the masterly control of artistry which in its ability to choose the detail. The tiny mountain chapel I men- right word and the right detail tioned when discussing "The Loss", for in- demonstrates a poetic imagination. stance, is used both as a source of initial In treatment of subject, of course, Powys tension, as Annie wonders if it will promote risked more than Kate Roberts by the use of painful feelings in Ted, whose thoughts allegory, with the restrictions, even if may return to the chapel meeting he is perhaps welcome ones, which were thus im- 44 The Starting Point posed on development of character and certainly present in the philosophical historical perspectives. We have seen how essays, Soliliquies of a Hermit, and as I the social focus of his work narrowed, and have suggested comes near to vitiating Mr this development was to be a lasting one: Tasker's Gods. With rapid maturity as an period and region become insignificant in artist came a greater control and confidence themselves, although I would reiterate that in his art to speak for him, muting the rage there is no suggestion that Powys was and exploring the position of man in seeking a refuge from the twentieth century relation to God and the cosmos with greater world, any more than is Samuel Beckett. sympathy for man's weaknesses and The action and the dialectic of his later vulnerability. All through his work runs the short stories is even reduced sometimes to a theme of God's relentless questioning of single room and two inanimate objects. man, and Father Jar is the first of those Kate Roberts's one venture into the non- agents of God who perform this task of realistic, her story "The Wind", has the retribution, and, later, redemption. elevated pathos of a fairy-tale sliding into Kate Roberts's mainspring, by contrast, bathos, in contrast to Powys's sure touch in was first of all a personal grief which drew the medium. out of her the need to discharge a "sacred In conclusion, I would like to return to debt", in the phrase Kathleen Mansfield my starting-point to see again how both applied to her own art, a debt to her writers came to their maturity as novelists homeland and people which she repaid in the 1920s and early 1930s, and to the sen- with an authentic issue of passionate sym- se of the importance which the First World pathy, a clear-sighted record of what Storm War and resultant social change had, in Jameson calls "the buried lives". The markedly different ways, as a catalyst for questioning in her books is not of man by both. For T. F. Powys it produced first of God but by man of his condition, for an un- all a rage which tended to belittle man and derstanding and a hope for the future from his achievements, allied to a mistrust of men and women whose lives are con- man's creativity and a tendency to be ab- ditioned by but also given meaning and sorbed by the destructive element which is energy by their common history.

Notes 'Raymond Williams, The Country and the City, 'Harry Coombes, T. F. Powys, 1960, p. 169, and 1973, p. 253. Peter Riley, A Bibliography ofT. F. Powys, Hastings, 'Peter Riley, op. cit., p. 17. 1967, p. 20. "Mr Tasker's Gods, p. 134. 2Quoted in Derec Llwyd Morgan, Kate Roberts "The Left Leg, 1923, p. 45. (Writers of Wales), U.W.P., 1974, p. 2. 12Ibid.,p.82. 'See especially Feet in Chains. "Quoted in Derec Llwyd Morgan, op. cit., p. 35. "C. E. Montague, Disenchantment, (1922), 1968, uThe Living Sleep, 1976, p. 195. pp. 149-150. 15Cited in Pennar Davies, "The short stories of "Mr Tasker's Gods (1925), 1977, p. 237. Kate Roberts" Triskel One, ed. Sam Adams and 'Ibid., p. 256. Gvvilym Rees Hughes, Swansea, 1971. 'Feet in Chains, 1977, pp. 121-122. Michel Pouillard

T. F. Powys and the Theatre

The theatrical quality of T. F. Powys's To my knowledge Powys wrote three works has already been noticed and pointed plays, The Wood, first entitled The Hawk's out: "To open one of Theodore's books is Nest, Father Adam2 and Blind Bartimeus. like taking a seat in a theatre at the rise of In letters from Theodore to John Cowper the curtain".1 After underlining the im- there are indications that these plays were portance of action in Powys's novels and the written between 1918 and 1920,3 when he excellence of their opening scenes Kenneth had completed only a very few of the novels Hopkins then goes on to suggest that the that were to be eventually published. In a writer was conscious of the affinity between letter dated November 11th, 1920, he says his stories and the theatre, and quotes the that he is working at the third play in the very first lines of Innocent Birds (1926): series, Blind Bartimeus, and on November 24th he is copying it out in order to send it A village is like a stage that retains the to their sister Marian, in New York since same scenery throughout all the acts of the 1912. Theodore probably hoped that play. The actors come and go, and walk to Marian might find a publisher for his plays and fro, with gestures that their passions fair since in another letter to John of the same and foul use them to. period (November 16th), he writes: "I have to copy out one more short country play. True enough, though perhaps not mainly The three together I suppose would make a because of the action in them, several of short book". But I cannot bring myself to Powys's novels can be compared to plays believe he actually hoped to have them ac- and his is often the dramatist's technique. ted on a stage, which seems practically im- Besides, T. F. Powys did write plays at one possible for reasons we shall see. time. They belong to the very numerous un- 4 The version of The Wood I have read is published works he wrote during his long certainly an early one. It is only a one-act prentice years. Those unpublished play with two scenes and the University of manuscripts and typescripts are a precious Texas has a four-act version of it in its source of information; they tell us a lot collection. The action takes place "in time about the gradual emergence of Powys's of the great war". The first scene is in a vision of the world and also reflect his wood, at the foot of "a tall dead tree, bent hesitations in choosing the most suitable and twisted in shape . . . with a raven's nest medium to convey this vision on the printed at the top". The two characters on the stage page. That he should have written several are Charley Owlsworth, the gamekeeper's plays shows beyond doubt that Powys was son, and Mary Keyne, his adoptive sister. once attracted by the theatre. I will first The young man is to go away to the bat- briefly analyse two of those plays, and will tlefields on the continent but asks Mary not then show that the influence of a traditional to let their father know where he really is. dramatic technique can be traced in several He then comforts her and promises to of Powys's novels, especially when we con- marry her when he comes back. Scene two, sider their structure and the characters in six months later, takes place in the them. gamekeeper's kitchen; there are three plates on the table and while getting their 46 T. F. Powys and the Theatre tea ready Mary assures the old man that the young couple and concludes with a ser- Charley will soon be back. The play ends mon extolling the virtues of the simple rural with the keeper telling her that all the trees life and human love. in the wood have been felled except the old The main weakness of the play lies in its one with the raven's nest at the top. There is structure. The only attempt to link the two no plot at all in fact and the very slight sub- plots is the family relationship between the ject could at best have been the occasion for four main characters and this is not suf- a short story. Of this Powys was surely con- ficient to make us feel the play forms a scious; one cannot help noticing that he whole. The two plots are merely juxtaposed devotes at least as much space to the stage- and Powys did not even really try to fuse directions as he does to the dialogues which them into a whole. This lack of unity is are sadly naive and commonplace. Un- made worse as the first plot reaches its con- fortunately the very stage-directions are clusion at the end of act two, and Tanner what would make a performance of the play never reappears afterwards, the last two rather difficult; I will only quote the two acts dealing exclusively with the love story. sentences at the end of the very long Besides, the characters in both plots are ex- description of the wood: tremely superficial caricatures; the reader, or spectator, can hardly accept the stupidity Under the tree a pheasant is walking. A and credulousness of Tanner for instance, rabbit runs by and nibbles the- grass and hops or his conversion which is as sudden as it is merrily away. unjustified by anything in his character or in the situation. Finally, Father Adam was The same objection can be raised with intended to be a comedy but, because the regard to Father Adam; here is one of the comic relies so heavily on improbable or stage-directions at the beginning of the stupid situations, it misses its aim. If we are play: made to laugh or smile at all, it is only due to some of the rejoinders in the dialogues A half-grown pig runs over the grass and between the priest and his gardener, Old up to the wall, it then runs to the right hand Martin; here is a short example: and goes off the stage through the furze bushes. F.A.—We must forget (sic) our enemies, Father Adam is a four-act play with no Martin. scene-divisions; it has a double plot or O.M.—Yes, after we've beaten them . . . You rather two separate plots. First there is the have the pigs'sty to clean and the cabbage contest opposing Father Adam, "the parish plant to water. F.A.—And my sermon to finish. priest of Tinclebury", and Mr Tanner, "a trades union official and agitator" come Should Blind Bartimeus become down to the village to start a general strike. available I have no doubt it would not suc- Obviously the two men stand one for the ceed in convincing us of Powys's gifts as a country, the other for the town, and their playwright or of the literary value of his struggle actually reflects the opposition bet- plays as such. They are interesting though, ween two conceptions of life. Eventually because they show that, at a time when he Tanner is converted by the vicar, gives up could find no publisher for his fiction, his scheme, and becomes clerk of the Powys tried his hand at another form of parish. The second plot relates the courtship literary expression, and it may be suggested of Harry, the priest's nephew, and Bessie, that his experiments in this field partly ac- Tanner's daughter; they are confronted count for some aspects of the novels. with a number of obstacles which they suc- cessfully overcome. The last scene brings » # * together on the stage all the characters in Though Mr Weston 's Good Wine is not the play but Tanner. Father Adam blesses the novel whose structure is most clearly

48 T. F. Powys and the Theatre theatrical it was twice adapted for the stage. tery; for Mrs Dibben claims that Dottery is The first adaptation, by a Mr Jaeger, is hiding a girl in the cupboard in his study mentioned in letters from Charles Prentice and urges her husband to find out the truth to T. F. Powys written in December 1933 and get the vicar of Tadnol condemned and and February 1934. Prentice's comments sent away. on this dramatic version of the novel were The bulk of the book falls into three parts not very enthusiastic and he did not think it or acts of unequal length, corresponding to likely it should ever be acted on a stage. The Dibben's three attempts and three failures. second adaptation, with no date on it, was In Act I—chapters 3 to 17—Dottery's the work of an American, a Mr McKee. It major problem is to find a way not to go to consists of a prologue and twelve scenes Portstown where he has been summoned by divided into three parts and contains some the bishop whose support Dibben has alterations that cannot be regarded as im- managed to secure. Truggin provides a provements on the original. I don't know solution and Lottie easily persuades the that this version of Mr Weston was ever ac- bishop of Dottery's kindness and tually performed on a stage either but what honorability. Canon Dibben, egged on by matters is that it was possible for the adap- his wife, must now entirely rely upon him- ter to retain the sequence of events and the self. Act II—chapters 18 to 24—describes general movement of the dramatic tension his second attempt; he assaults Lottie on as found in the novel itself. the heath, hoping she will tell him the truth This would be easier still with some of the about the cupboard, but Lottie is saved by novels whose construction exactly follows Dottery's unexpected intervention. Dibben the traditional pattern to be found in many accepts an invitation to the vicarage of plays. The exposition introduces the Tadnol and Act III—chapters 25 to 38—is characters, acquaints the spectator with the then centred on his last attempt, just before situation, and states the causes for the con- Christmas. Eventually Dottery frees Dibben flict. The bulk of the play, or book, is from the cupboard inside which Truggin devoted to the development and vicissitudes has locked him and forgives him. of the conflict and generally describes a The theatrical construction of the novel is series of crises each leading up to the the more obvious as each of the three acts is climax. The final section deals with the divided into a series of scenes or tableaux resolution of the conflict which, in the case taking the spectator from the vicarage to of a tragedy, issues in a catastrophe. the village inn and from Tadnol to Dodder, The ending of Kindness in a Corner is not and in which the number of actors on the catastrophic for in spite of its serious and stage at the same time is always small grave undertones, in spite of the story of the enough for the audience not to get con- Turtles which enabled Powys to assert once fused. The fantastic, both dreamlike and more the perfection of God's gift, death, farcical, last act and ending are quite in Kindness in a Corner is to a large extent a keeping with the general tone of the farcical comedy. The first two chapters of comedy, a rare instance in Powys's fiction the novel constitute the exposition; they in- in which "good" characters are not troduce the protagonists, the Rev. Silas defeated by evil. Dottery, Truggin and his grand-daughter In the short novel In Good Earth evil is Lottie on the one hand, Bishop Ashbourne, not victorious either but the only issue left to Cannon Dibben and his wife on the other the central character at the end of the story hand. The incident related to this expository is death, and that means, in typically part—Dottery has forgotten it is Con- Theodorian fashion, suicide. In Good firmation Day—is the starting-point of Dot- Earth seems to me the most carefully and tery's troubles. Chapter III opens two mon- skilfully built of Powys's novels; it is cer- ths later and from now on we shall witness tainly the one in which he has achieved a the struggle opposing the Dibbens and Dot- nearly perfect balance between the various T. F. Powys and the Theatre 49 parts or acts. It can be analysed as a four- Powys's "good" characters are generally act tragedy the subject of which is John too passive to be really tragic, at best they Gidden's longing to find and possess the are pathetic. Not so John Gidden because "good earth". The first act—three chap- he is neither essentially good nor essentially ters—presents us with the hero and his wish evil, because he pits himself against life and to find better fields than those of his farm, really fights to achieve his purpose. In the the poorest in the parish. Act II—five chap- two central acts, when he goes and asks first ters—deals with Gidden's attempt to for Church Farm, then for Nancy Pillar, the acquire a richer farm; his hopes suddenly contrast between his hubris as he walks grow when the tenant of Church Farm dies, down from his farm to the village and his and the climax of the act is reached when following disappointment is truly tragic. Gidden goes to the Squire's to ask for Gidden appears as a man of uncommon Church Farm. Unfortunately he gets there too value and strength, both physical and late and hears from James Cupper that the spiritual, and is defeated by a cruel farm has just been let to Farmer Pillar; the unrelenting Fate over which he has no con- last chapter in this act is an anticlimax and trol. Owing to his presence as hero and to shows Gidden resuming work on his barren the balance and symmetry in the con- fields and apparently resigned to the drab- struction of the play, In Good Earth, ness of life. The pattern of Act III—six technically speaking, seems the most suc- chapters—is exactly similar, only the "good cessful of Powys's tragedies and is no doubt earth" is now represented by Nancy Pillar, one of his best stories. the wealthy farmer's daughter, whom Gid- Mark Only is much too lacking in intelli- den wishes to marry for "he only longed gence and energy—though not in sensibility now to sow the good seed from his own —to be a true tragic hero. Yet the novel to s loins" (54). Again it seems that Gidden which he gives his name is, according to will reach his ends and the second climax in Powys himself, "one of the best of (his) the play occurs when he hears that Nancy is books, that like all good things has been going to marry James Cupper—Cupper sadly neglected", and it has been aptly thus appears as Fate's instrument in described as "the most 'Shakespearean' of thwarting Gidden's plans. After another the novels".6 I wholly agree with both anticlimactic chapter, the fourth and last statements and would now like to suggest in act—three chapters again like Act I—deals what way the structure of the novel and with the resolution of the young man's Powys's treatment of the subject contribute problem. Mully, the grave-digger, reveals to the impression we have on closing the to him where the "good earth" is really to book that we have just read a great tragedy be found, and that is in the grave. Gidden whose central theme is man's inhumanity to returns to his farm, feeling peaceful and man. happy at long last; after dinner he goes out The opening chapter of Mark Only to shoot a rabbit, he says, and actually (1924)7 serves as a prologue to the play. The shoots himself. very first line indicates what the colouration The novel is obviously allegorical and and atmosphere of the whole drama will be: Gidden's longing for the "good earth" "Heavy clouds darkened the Dodderdown stands for man's never-to-be-satisfied church one Sunday in December" (1). The search for happiness. The village is sym- reader-spectator also gets an immediate bolically named Adams Folly and Gidden is feeling that nothing will ever go right for the described as "one who seeks what he cannot child who is being baptized and will owe his find" (85). So Gidden can be considered as queer name to the presence of a centipede Man Eternal and the story gives Powys's an- in the font—Fate already taking the form of swer to man's quest for happiness in this an animal: world. But Gidden is also the most truly tragic hero in the whole of Powys's fiction. 'What name?' (the vicar) asked crossly. 50 T. F. Powys and the Theatre 'Mark,' replied Mr Andrews, and then a natural element in the tragedy, they also little louder, 'Mark only.' appear as the messengers of Fate since Mr Hayball looked into the font. By put- Mark will hear them at every crucial ting his finger to the bottom discreetly and moment in his life. Their dramatic function warily, he might by good luck avoid the cen- is thus greatly similar to that of the witches tipede. in Macbeth. At the end of chapter 6 'Mark Only, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy everything is ready for the tragedy to ex- Ghost.' (3) plode. The tension suddenly rises when Charlie Tulk provokes the death of Old Chapter 2 carries us forward twenty years Peter Andrews and steals the will both he later, in January; as the christening took and James believe to be in favour of Mark. place in December we thus get an im- The scene in which Mark gropingly sear- pression of continuity in time. The tragedy ches the farm-kitchen for his father's will is proper is made up of three acts of nearly a very pathetic conclusion to the first act. equal length, inside each of which the Following this climax the tension is dramatic tension gradually rises to a climax allowed to slacken slightly and there even marked by the unnatural death of a charac- seems to be a gleam of hope for Mark as he ter, the last one being Mark's. Each crisis marries Nellie. But during the ceremony at and its climax means a new step in the church and again in their cottage on the material and moral degradation of Mark wedding-night Mark hears the scamper of whose death will be the fatal issue of a per- the dogs and the spectator is thus reminded fectly logical process. that the hero cannot escape his fate. After The eight chapters of the first act are this short lull in the action the tension is chiefly expository. They acquaint us with worked up again towards the second the protagonists of the drama and the basic climax, namely the death of old Mrs An- elements of the plot. Mark who is now* par- drews. The old woman's mind, like King tly blind—he fell off a horse and thus an Lear's, has given way and she revives a animal again has been the instrument of rather dark past in her mumbled Fate—is to marry Nellie Holland. Because soliloquies. After James has forged a will he will inherit the farm and because Nellie with the complicity of a lawyer, Tulk will be his as well Mark rouses the jealousy provides a mixture which kills Mrs An- of his younger brother, James, who wishes drews. After the reading of the bill, in the to rob him of both the farm and his wife. To kitchen again, Mark is entirely at his achieve his purpose James will be helped by brother's mercy. Charlie Tulk, one of the most horrible and In the third and last act the tension prac- repulsive villains on the Powysian stage. tically never relaxes. James first forbids Together with the characters and their Mark to come to the farm, and thus reduces relationships Powys introduces the symbolic him to extreme poverty. Following a themes and the animal imagery that will devilish plot imagined by Tulk, Nellie aban- run throughout the book, particularly the dons her husband, submits to James's lust legendary and ghostly dogs of Sir Silas Bad- and becomes both his servant and his bury: mistress. With nothing left to him Mark can now do nothing but die and chooses to Dying folks were always sure to hear the do so on the hill, reconciled as he is with the scamper of their feet in the lanes . . . and the dogs he has feared for such a long time: healthy even, and especially those who had more than an ordinary fear of death, were A wild rush of wind passed, and near by troubled at certain times by the sound of there was a crash. This was the lonely tree these dogs running. (64) blown down. Mark spoke again. "Twas a kind maid to Not only do the dogs represent the super- lead I to they quiet dogs,' he murmured. 'In T. F. Powys and the Theatre 51 olden times I used to fear they death's dogs, and then only emphasize the pervading but now they be all around a-licking of I. gloom characteristic of this tragic world. They dogs be kinder than warm stable, they Finally there is unity of tone in this book dogs be, an' there bain't nor wife nor maid from which humour is practically absent ex- that be so loving kind as they good dogs.' cept for an almost farcical humour in some Mark Only said no more. The wind blew of the dialogues between the two "clowns", his coat and shirt open, and his neck and chest were laid bare. The lonely tree was Mark's brothers-in-law. There is irony in fallen, and Mark was fallen too like the lonely Mark Only but it is tragic irony. Having tree. The dogs had him, the good dogs. (267) celebrated his success Charlie Tulk ac- cidentally hangs himself with the very rope This ultimate climax is felt by the reader as he used to thrash Emmie Paine with, while the logical and inevitable issue. Owing to contemplating the will stolen at the begin- the careful composition of the book and his ning^wnich he is unable to read. The irony use of symbolic themes and imagery Powys culminates when James Andrews realizes succeeds in making us feel that Mark is the this will was exactly the same as the one he victim of a relentless Fate and this already forged and gave nothing to Mark, so that makes Mark Only a great tragedy. all the hate and cruelty, all those schemes Moreover Powys has also endowed his were in fact pointless and useless. Nellie's novel with a unity which the sub-plot does weariness and resignation in the closing not mar for the story of Emmie Paine and scene of the book, after this last joke played Mr Thomas is perfectly integrated into the by Fate on men who fret and scheme but all whole. On the one hand Emmie plays a in vain, also recall the tone of some of the major part in the scheme leading to the ruin darkest among Shakespeare's tragedies. of Mark's and Nellie's marriage and to the young man's final destruction. On the other hand her relationship with Mr Thomas is Other features to be found in Mark Only something like an inverted counterpoint to also contribute to the dramatic quality of that of Nellie and Mark. Nellie is first the book, especially the major role devoted relatively happy but because her love for to Charlie Tulk, a villain worthy of any Mark is not strong enough she is unable to Elizabethan or Jacobean drama, and the help him and eventually abandons him for a presence of a chorus, here represented by pretty miserable life with James. Emmie on Mark's brothers-in-law and nephews. Ac- the contrary is a poor wretch to begin with, tually there are few of Powys's novels in beaten and made pregnant by Charlie Tulk, which we do not meet a villain and do not but she will eventually be saved by the listen to a chorus. steadfast love of Mr Thomas who offers her It has become a commonplace of a peaceful and happy life. Powysian criticism to say that the charac- However the unity of the book is chiefly ters in the novels are theatrical figures due to a number of elements that show the reminding us of the masks in medieval care taken by the author in the construction morality and/or of Jonsonian humours. of the tragedy. There is unity of place first, Such kinship is an obvious consequence of as all the action takes place in the village the allegoric mode of Powys's stories. His and on the hills overlooking it. There is men and women are intended to represent a unity of time too in a way, for everything oc- vice or a virtue and what they stand for is curs in autumn and winter; the choice of sometimes even suggested by their very the seasons is an essential element in the names. Because of the function their creation of the atmosphere which, very creator ascribes them the actors on the much like that of Macbeth, is dark and op- Powysian stage are sharply divided into pressive; the sun never shines in the very good ones and bad ones and are often over- few scenes that don't take place at dusk or simplified. Most of them are undoubtedly at night, and the few lights gleaming now types and are not endowed with 52 T. F. Powys and the Theatre psychological complexities and subtleties. At no moment will the villain deceive our A very few exceptions to this can be cited expectations and we shall never be sur- though, Mark Only himself who is not such prised at his behaviour. The only question a simpleton as may seem at first sight, we can ask ourselves is not "will he act Mary Crowle in Black Bryony who is torn wickedly?" because he is sure to do so, but between her mysticism and her fleshy ap- "what way will he find to serve evil?" petites, Silas Dottery in Kindness in a Cor- Another convention is that the villain being ner, one of the very few clergymen in perfectly amoral there is no limit whatever Powysland to entertain doubts about his to his villainy. Actually he often regards own life and ask himself questions. But evil-doing as one of the fine arts and his Farmer Mew in The Left Leg is Greed in- pleasure is never so great as when he is carnate, Bugby in Innocent Birds is nothing given the possibility to gloat over the results but cruel Lust, Mrs Vosper in Mr Weston 's and consequences of his cruelty. Mr Bugby Good Wine is both Lust and Jealousy, pays a daily visit to Maud Chick, grown Charlie Tulk and George Douse in The Two mad after he has raped her; George Douse Thieves personify Evil. is a happy spectator when the monster Moreover from the very moment when whose services he has hired beats and they first appear on the stage Powys's possesses his wife. For the Powysian villain characters are defined as good or evil and is not content with mere physical suffering, will not alter till the end of the story. Most he also wants his victim to suffer morally. of them are caricatures too; good ones are For instance Mrs Vosper wishes the girls very often on the verge of idiocy so great are she supplies the Mumbys with to be in- their innocence and passivity, bad ones are telligent and sensitive enough to realize genuine monsters and villains. The latter their downfall. Finally the villain must be certainly form the bulk of the population in punished—in the tradition of seventeenth- Powys's villages and on the whole Theodore century drama and of Victorian novels as seems far more successful in creating and well—but the punishment always occurs too giving life to his villains than when he deals late. Bugby eventually dies but Maud Chick with a Fred Pirn or a Joseph Bridle. No is hopelessly mad, Fred and Polly are doubt the casual reader of Powys will drowned; Tulk also dies but Mark is mostly remember his evil creatures, who destroyed. Those are only a few examples have much in common with traditional among a long list showing that Powys's Elizabethan and Jacobean villains and are villains conform to an old tradition that drawn according to the same conventions. flourished on the English stage. The first of those conventions is that the spectator must have no doubt as to their The idea of having a chorus in his stories true nature as soon as they enter the stage. T. F. Powys probably borrowed from Greek Powys always gives a brief introductory tragedies, which he read in translations, portrait of his characters, and a few lines and from Hardy's novels as well. In each of only are quite enough for us to realize the the two plays mentioned at the beginning, sort of person being introduced to us. This the chorus is divided into two sets of people. is our first meeting with George Douse: In Father Adam seven young men and seven girls alternate on the stage until the To George Douse the world was worth very last scene, when they are all merged looking at, not for the beauty of it, but rather together. In The Wood the chorus is com- for the pleasure that might be had from posed of four old men and four old women viewing its mischief. His thoughts were som- who illustrate Powys's characteristic dislike bre, the heart in his body was sour mud . . . of old women; whereas the old men's com- He could name the pleasure he desired. His wishes were simple. He only wanted to see ments reflect the traditional wisdom of the others suffer without suffering himself... He benevolent but helpless chorus, those of the wished to be angry and to sin.8 old women sound like an incantation in •T. F. Powys and the Theatre 53 celebration of evil and endow them with a the chorus in Powys's novels are the witch-like quality: traditional ones of information and com- ment upon the action. Its members bring Mother Spokes: We do live by talk. the reader supplementary and com- Mother Hinds: 'Tis well there be badness in plementary information concerning the the world. state of affairs in the village and the major Mother Hinks: 'Tis well there be sin. characters. Besides, they are often able to Mother Punchin: 'Tis well there be death. understand and make clear to us—if Mother Hinds: Sin be good. Mother Punchin: If we listened to Parson necessary—the real meaning of what we see there would be no pleasure in life. happening on the stage. Solly and Tucker in Innocent Birds have a similar role to that In the novels the choruses are never of Tom Button and they will be the only mixed and the choric characters are seldom people in Madder to realize the nature of women. There is a female chorus in God's gift, that is the gift of death to Fred Abraham Men, meeting in the village-shop; and Polly. But of course, like all choric Mrs Meek and Mrs Grunter in Mr Weston, characters, however conscious they may be Mrs Pottle and Mrs Pring in Mockery Gap of the dangers and evil threatening the cen- exchange a few choric remarks now and tral characters, they take no active part in then, but generally speaking the Powysian the action and are mere witnesses of events chorus is male. It is never very numerous, they can in no way influence. Powys's most never more than five people, but there are successful choric characters thus conform only two instances of a single choric charac- to a long-established dramatic tradition ter: Mr Caddy in Mockery Gap, and chiefly and appear as possessing knowledge and Mad Tom Button in The Left Leg. Tom wisdom, but a wisdom that can have no Button is the first true and successful choric effect and is of no avail to the protagonists character in Powys's stories; he is not direc- of the drama. tly involved in the action but—because he is an innocent, "a wise fool"—he is the only one to understand its real meaning and to be aware of Old Jar's true nature. The No one can seriously claim that T. F. favourite meeting-place of the chorus is the Powys was a born novelist. The un- village-inn of course as in Mr Weston, or published works and even some of the early Black Bryony, or Unclay. But when no inn novels are proof enough of the long training is available the chorus quickly finds another he had to go through before he reached full place, the old pond in Hester Dominy, the mastery of his medium and was able to stable in Mark Only, or the spot near the produce those books for which he is gate of Farmer Barefoot's field in Innocent generally praised. A study of the various Birds. manuscripts of the novels also shows how The Powysian chorus occasionally sup- conscious and conscientious a craftsman he plies a source of humour or irony as John was and what care he brought to the writing Cowper noticed as early as 1925: "The ram- of his stories which are the result of long bling choruses of old men and old women and strenuous efforts. Of course I do not relieve the gloom of the plot by an elfish mean to belittle the influences of the Bible, humour".9 True as it is the statement must of Bunyan, of Jane Austen. However one be qualified though and it must be quite should not forget that Powys was very clear that the humour springs from Powys's widely-read and knew Elizabethan and presentation and treatment of the choric Jacobean drama perfectly well, and Greek characters only, for they are generally in- tragedy too. One should also keep in mind capable of humour themselves and when that he was sufficiently interested in they make us smile they are perfectly theatrical techniques and devices to try his unaware of it. The two main functions of hand at play-writing repeatedly. I think this 54 T. F. Powys and the Theatre taste for the theatre and his own ex- dramatic qualities as I have tried to suggest periments must be taken into account in an are a fundamental aspect of his technique assessment of T. F. Powys's fictional and a major contribution to the success of achievement, and I believe that such several of his best novels as works of art.

Notes Sin-Eater are in the possession of Mr E. E. Bissell whom I wish to thank for his unfailing helpfulness. 'Kenneth Hopkins, The Powys Brothers, 1967, p. iIn Good Earth is published in The Two Thieves, 106. (1932). The relevant page numbers in parentheses in 2This play should not be confused with a short un- my text refer to this first edition. published novel written earlier and also entitled 6K. Hopkins, op. cit., p. 110. Father Adam. I gave a detailed account of this story 7My subsequent page references in my text are to in Etudes Anglaises, Paris, XXV, 3,1972. this first edition. 3A few years later Powys collaborated with Stephen "The Two Thieves, pp. 207-208. Tomlin in another play, The Sin-Eater, a very 'J. C. Powys, "Four Brothers—A Family Con- gruesome thing which, I am told, is to be published fession", Century Magazine, New York, September soon. 1925. "The mss of The Wood, Father Adam, and The Carole Coates

Gerda and Christie

A recurring early theme of John Cowper lighting stoves and stirring porridge, which Powys is that of mistaken sexual choice. give him extraordinary satisfaction. The male protagonist is shown between two women: one beautiful, competent, sane and He was vividly aware of the momentary "ordinary"; the other, unworldly with a sensations in relation to other feelings of the spiritual pathos which is also strength. This same kind lived some long past and some an- alternative is sketched crudely in Gladys ticipated in his imagination. (211) and Lacrima in Wood and Stone, while in This awareness makes his simplest action Rodmoor, Sorio loves both Nance and into a kind of ritual. Seemingly a child-like Phillipa, and in Ducdame, Rook Ashover is mythopoeic world, Wolf's "fetish-worship" forced to marry Ann instead of Netta. and the corresponding idea of himself as a The antithesis of the two types of women chamption of good against evil (his lends itself to symbolic purposes. But in "mythology"), is the result of Wolf Solent, the women are fully developed characters as well as psychic, psychological a detachment so remote and far away as to or even geographical symbols. Girls, and seem almost outside both the flowing of time not avatars, they are arguably among the and the compactness of personality. best-drawn women in twentieth-century fic- tion. It is unfashionable to speak of charac- This initial emphasis on detachment is im- terization. Nevertheless, it does seem that portant as a reminder and a suggestion of women in modern fiction from Ursula what is to follow. It recalls the time when he Brangwen to Martha Quest sink under the feels that there is "something queer and weight of the representative problems they inhuman in him" (170) because the have to cart away from the ideological memory of Christie's grey feather bookmark supermarket. Gerda and Christie do not. recurs, assuming such a "curious im- Although seen by Wolf, and never shown as portance" that the events of the day, love- seeing, they live beyond his view of them. making and tavern-brawling "fall away Powys enables us to see beyond the from his consciousness". narrator. Wolf's "inhumanity" is not very obvious Wolf first meets Gerda and Christie on as he wakes Gerda, "lovely and sulky as a his first visit to Blacksod, on business with young animal" (212) and hugs her with their respective fathers. Although Gerda's "animal ecstasy". As he leaves the house to beauty throws Wolf into an erotic trance, it enjoy the morning air, he becomes aware is with the "funny little thing",1 Christie, that at Blacksod he is between two "auras", that he feels so completely at home that he of the Dorset uplands and of the Somerset discusses his infatuation. Later, after plains. The reader is aware that he is bet- seducing Gerda in the yellow bracken of a ween two women associated with these barn, he marries her. areas. Gerda, as well as being a classical In Chapter 10, Wolf begins to discover divinity, repeatedly described in the stilted something of the two personalities he is terms of Greek mythology by Wolf (58, 72, bound up with. Wolf is first shown per- 88, 89, 97, 100), is also a local one, ex- forming the simple, primitive actions, plicitly connected with the Dorset hills 56 Gerda and Christie among which they walk. (87-88) Her Much more significant is Gerda's peevish whistling "was like the voice of the very despair at the idea of Wolf's mother coming spirit of Poll's Camp". (90) In Wolf's mind to tea. She is afraid of falling short of the she evoked the brave sweetness of an old proprieties. Wolf had never fully realised ballad. (149) Gerda does not share this their importance to her. Her "life-illusion" image of herself; a literary and aesthetic is not pagan or classical, but bound up creature of myth, legend and folk song. She with, to Wolf, completely alien is ignorant of the importance that the image conventions; the correct thinness of bread of "yellow bracken" has for Wolf. and butter, the importance of an afternoon Powys makes clear, after their first love- gown. For Christie, like Wolf, these are making, that Gerda does not share Wolf's meaningless. vision, that of an encounter with an earth- She'll give us tea, though, late as we are. goddess. Her personality remains "solitary She won't have noticed the time at all, very and unapproachable" (150), and the likely. She never does, when her father's reader's suspicions are deliberately aroused away, and she's reading. (156) by the overdone heavy language staggering under the load of classical allusions. After a momentary lapse into grey unreality: Wolf recovers from this "jolt Thus and not otherwise, had stood in the to his happiness", but his realization of green dews of some umbrageous Thessalian Gerda's different "reality" marks the Valley, at the very dawn of time, Orion and close of a period in their relationship. Merope. . . (151) (Although she rushes upstairs "like a young maenad" to dress, it is because Wolf wishes This affected style is in marked contrast to her to extend the conventions, so important Powys's description of Gerda's whistling: to her dealings with his mother, to her relations with Blacksod tradesmen with It seemed to hold, in the sphere of sound, whom she was as unconventional "as if she what amber-paved pools surrounded by had drifted into Blacksod from the hart's-tongue ferns contain in the sphere of substance. (89) primeval woods of Arcady". (218) It is Wolf's inconsistency, as well as Gerda's On the day of their sexual union, Wolf con- that is noted here.) jures up a stilted rural idyll of an "en- As he comforts the tearful Gerda, kissing chanted hovel where he would live with this her head, unparalleled being free from all care". a queer feeling came over him as if she and he (152) This, like the classical allusions, were acting a part in some fantastic dream- suggests not only the ponderous world. (217) schoolmaster he later feels he has become, but the "literary" nature of Wolf's attitude He felt that something like this had to Gerda. happened before "in another country", and As he stands before his workman's cot- if he made a big enough effort he would tage waiting for Gerda to get up, he is full find "he had destroyed for both of them the of physical satisfaction and mental self- whole shadow-scenery of their life". congratulation. Suddenly a heart-stopping After Gerda's departure, Wolf gazes at a volley of shrieks from the neighbouring stunted little laburnam tree, whose forlorn pigsty interrupts him. The pigs are being appealing branch reminds him in some way fed. In the kitchen, Gerda is enjoying her of Christie, crouched desolately in the castle porridge, licking her cream-clogged spoon, lane. He feels a "deep, sickening craving" "a greedy child". (215) It is impossible to (219)and avoid the gentle hind. Gerda is the quint- a sense of being hemmed in, burdened, essence of a natural beauty which includes besieged, while some vague, indistinct appeal the greed of pigs. hard to define was calling on him for aid. Gerda and Christie 57 The meagre, bare tree reminded him of Wolf on his journey to Dorset dreams of Christie because the fit of unreality had making love to a girl "white as a peeled prepared him for this. He had comforted willow wand". (9) On his way to King's Christie in just this way on the day of the Barton he resolves not to give up his "life- Horse Fair, touching "the top of her head illusion" even "for the sake of the slen- with his lips". (206) derest peeled willow-wand in Dorset". (25) Powys had already prepared for this After Wolf has made love to Gerda, he development by subtly sketching emotional recalls casual little things he has seen that currents in Wolf of which he himself is day, one of them significantly a "torn-off unaware. At the Horse Fair, the day after willow-branch". (149) After Wolf and his seduction of Gerda, and resolving now Christie have quarrelled later, in Chapter to marry her, he succumbs to a "loathing of 10, he feels that unless they are reconciled, the whole spectacle of life". (176) His the afternoon "as perfect as a green bough" attempt to conjure up his psychic strength (237) would be remembered as torn, "the fails. His lethargy and depression vanish as sap all running out, its leaves drooping". he searches for Christie, brooding restlessly These hints are like musical phrases, on "that grey feather which he had found in which, scarcely noticeable at first, return that book of Christie's". (197) The feather and build up until they burst above the sur- has become an enigmatic and troubling face of a piece of music. Half-remembered image to him. Although Wolf is conscious and carefully placed, they seem in of his treachery to Gerda in the internal retrospect like an inevitable movement. whisper, "Why didn't I meet Christie first", Wolf has thought of these glimpses of he tells himself that his feeling for her, as he certain, not particularly aesthetically comforts her, is pity, as he feels she is "so pleasing objects before. On the day of their pitifully devoid of all physical magnetism". first love-making in the "yellow bracken" (209) It is this pity "that had a quivering he returns to Blacksod with Gerda. sweetness in it" which is aroused by the sight of the stunted little laburnam. The 'Whom long Thomas has taken for his constrasting lilac tree recalls Gerda and the leman', he repeated in his heart; and it first glance she gave him "heavy with rain seemed to him as if the lights of the town, and sweetness". (60) which now began to welcome them, were the The "enormous effort" that would lights of a certain imaginary city which from destroy the "whole shadow scenery" of the his early childhood had appeared and disap- marriage of Gerda and Wolf would be the peared on the margin of his mind. It was wont to appear in strange places, this city of forcing to the surface of his mind his his fancy ... at the bottom of tea-cups ... or unacknowledged love for Christie, the the window-panes of privies ... in the soapy recognition that she was part of himself. water of baths ... in dirty marks on The bare, pathetic branch which so wallpapers ... in the bleak coals of dead disturbs Wolf fits into Wolf's characteristic summer-grates . . . between the rusty railings mode of perception. of deserted burying grounds . . . above the miserable patterns of faded carpets . . . These glimpses of certain fixed objects, among the nameless litter of pavement- seen dimly, yet always differently, through gutters . . . But whenever he had seen it it was bedroom windows, scullery windows, privy always associated with the first lighting up of windows, had from his childhood, possessed lamps, and with the existence, but not a curious interest for him. It was as if he got necessarily the presence, of some-one . . . from them a sort of runic handwriting, the some girl. . . some boy . . . some unknown . . 'little language' of chance itself, commenting . whose place in his life would resemble that on what was, and is, and is to come. (219) first lighting of lamps . . . that sense of arriving out of the cold darkness of empty This "little language" linking past, present fields and lost ways into the rich, warm and future is a feature of Powys's style. glowing security of that mysterious town . . . 58 Gerda and Christie 'Whom Long Thomas has taken for his These suggestions are not only the "little leman', he repeated once more. (157) language" of Chance, but a means of suggesting to the reader, disquiets of which This passage gives an extraordinary sense Wolf is not yet aware. They suggest the of the way in which trivial details connect reason for his feeling "hemmed in" (219) with the ineffable. Recollections of odd, when he sees the laburnum, and reaching miscellaneous scrappy bits of memory are further still into the future ("some vague in- connected with what Professor G. Wilson 2 distinct appeal" 219) to the point where the Knight has called a "soul city", some now desolate Wolf touches the laburnum warm, rich town glowing among cold fields, tree and hears as if the trunk were a giving Wolf the sensation of home-coming. "telegraphic receiver" (569) the desperate This implies "the existence" of "someone . voice of Christie crying his name. The . . some girl . . . some boy . . . some images of Christie, conveyed by earlier unknown", a casually introduced phrase, suggestions, having broken the surface of which alters the meaning of the whole Wolf's mind, now float off into the passage. Gerda, with whom he has just numinous. made love, does not suggest a boy: It is in Chapter 10 that Wolf realizes that Gerda certainly couldn't be called a although "Gerda's warmth gave him a 'peeled-willow wand' for her limbs were voluptuous thrill of honest and natural rounded and voluptuous. (63) desire", he felt that it was Christie who was Christie had struck Wolf at their first the "platonic idea" of all young girls. (224) meeting as sexless, like the androgynous Wolf recognises what was suggested at their forms in early Italian art (71), while at the first meeting when he felt his mind en- Horse Fair, he had suddenly expressed the counter hers "like two bodiless shadows in a wish that Christie was a boy. (207) flowing river" (72). She is part of his men- Wolf's touch of sexual ambivalence is not tal life. "Platonic idea" is a phrase of some the only incongruity. Another is the con- importance in the novel (see the end of trast between the lines of Wolf's Shaf- Chapter 16). He also connects Christie with tesbury ballad which "frame" the passage, the word "mediaeval" and the phrase "im- and the content of the passage. The world mortal souls". (293) This phrase is par- of his ballad "where the wind blew shrill ticularly significant. Wolf, ruminating on and the river ran" (149) is very far from the the actual composition of his "sensations", odd sweepings and toe-nail parings of wonders whether he is psychically sensitive memories which tumble about his mind; enough to enter some "continuous stream things grubby and dusty and desolate. of human awareness" which retained the What have these to do with the atmosphere frail essences of the ballad, where a single, clear, cool, understated emotion expands to com- from plants and trees, roadsides and gar- prehend a static world? The reader is con- dens, as if such things actually possessed im- scious of this incongruity. Wolf is not. The mortal souls? (293) current of his sensations and "life-illusion" is running against his conscious literature- Wolf places Christie in the actual ethereal quoting mind. In a sense, normal sex, Ger- essence of his sensiitivity to these da's natural if outstanding beauty, has emanations. trapped and betrayed him. The mysterious city "on the margin of the mind" is perhaps Wolf visits Christie, recognizing the dif- again implied when Wolf is with Christie ference between his feelings for Gerda, and he sees "playful lust directed at some beautiful statue" (232) and his experience of over the little town the sort of glamour that Christie. His idea of a girl had been a cities wear in old fantastic prints. (209) precious but empty flower-bed. Gerda and Christie 59 But here, in the centre of that bed was a and the fantastic idea came into his head living, breathing plant, making everything that by making this gesture he was in some around it enchanted and transparent by the occult way invading the very soul of the girl diffused loveliness of its presence. (232) who had arranged them there. (235)

But this suggests the language used to An obvious sexual symbol, one might think, describe Wolf's reaction to the lesbian Bess and yet it is her "soul" that he is invading. Round. (387) This adds to the effect of the In the novel the pool is generally the image ambiguity of Wolf's feeling for Christie, of his own soul, another suggestion of their while Gerda has already noted (99-100) affinity. that Christie was "for no man, as the game Later, Wolf has the opportunity to spend says.. ." the night with Christie. He waits in her little Wolf is occupied with the question "will walled garden where the sight of a projec- she let me make love to her". He knows he ting mossy stone vividly recalls to him cer- is incapable of "any great surge of what is tain old pier-posts at Weymouth covered called 'passion'" (235) and his feelings with sea-weed. He meets Christie and the tremble between physical attraction for "indescribable enchantment" (399) of his Christie and a desire for the "unexplored memory of Weymouth links itself with the regions of her soul". "delicious peace" which comes from her presence. He "began to abandon himself to His feeling was like a brimming stream his mythology". One is reminded of "the between ready banks, where a wooden moss- existence . . . but not necessarily the presen- covered dam prevents any Spring-flood, but ce ... of someone . . . some girl . . . some where the water, making its way round the boy". (157) Christie is a process enabling edge of the obstacle, bends the long, sub- his mythology to work better than a person merged grasses before it, as it sweeps for- whose whole personality he wishes to ward. (235) engage. When she tells him that her father will be away overnight, the implied in- At first sight this is explicable only by in- vitation throws him into emotional discord. ferring that the obstacle to the free play of his feelings is Gerda, as the next paragraph "That green moss . . . That green sea-weed would superficially bear out. Apparently . . . was happiness; but this is something else. this offers a mixed metaphor. The "skiff of There is something that will kill my his thought" on the "brimming stream of 'mythology' if I let it." (401) his feelings" steers away from the two reefs of Gerda and the tragic Waterloo steps The happiness of his vision is greater face. What then is the "moss-covered because of Christie, but is threatened by the dam"? It recalls the "beautiful green prospect of making love to her. Seducing mound covered with plantains" of Wolf's Gerda had not troubled his conscience. But reverie on his first night in Dorset. (40) Is it his "mythology" depended upon the belief his "life-illusion" which prevents the "great that he was taking "the side of Good against surge of what is called 'passion'"? Evil" (411), and this, to Wolf, was in- Perhaps it is unwise to follow images too compatible with finishing Urquhart's por- far, but this one, set in a period of intensity, nographic book and sleeping with Christie. seems to embody such a specialized, par- Perhaps he does not want to sleep with ticularized feeling of the unusual, the unac- Christie because she is so important to his customed, that it seems to imply more than "life-illusion", too ideal. But the effect of an isolated feeling. The water and moss Christie's invitation on Wolf is similar to imagery connects up with Wolf's mystical, that of one of Urquhart's pornographic watery landscape of the mind, as does books (from the Malakite bookship).3 Christie's bowl of flowers into which he After supper, obsessed with the idea of thrusts his fingers; making love to her, he picks up her feather. 60 Gerda and Christie There was a moment, as he replaced the but his understanding with Christie points, feather, when a featherweight decided it. almost fearfully, towards something beyond What he fancied made him pause was a sud- even his "mythology". How fearful is shown den memory of the confiding repose of Ger- when, realizing his mistaken choice, "the da's expression as she bent so closely over very floor of his mind" seems to crack. Theodoric the Icelander, but when he While Gerda is connected in Wolf's mind recalled all this later, the conclusion he came to was that the touch of the feather had with the heathen hill of Poll's Camp; restrained him. (437) Christie has affinities with Glastonbury, that "mysterious plain", that "chess-board The grey feather had come to be such a of King Arthur", which had the quality of powerful symbol in his life that it was "old mediaeval pictures" (314). While he enough to break up his erotic thought- finds Poll's Camp threatening, Glastonbury stream. It became a symbol for him very soothes him, early, when he first heard Gerda's whistling which summed up all the magic of the like some immense, sad-coloured flower world. When she finishes, floating upon hidden water . . . (315)

silence seemed to fall down upon that place This strange flower is echoed in the reflec- like large grey feathers from some inac- tion of Christie's lamp in the old looking cessible height. (93) glass of her Welsh mother, receding green depths "lit up by the lamp as if by the Gerda was the music, but Christie was the swollen green bud of a luminous water lily". silence. The grey feather, symbol of (442) Full of a strange, rising fear, he con- something beyond the natural, the ap- nects the reflection with "the mysterious prehensible, inhibited Wolf's natural depths of Lenty Pond". His desire for sexual approach to Christie. Christie is held back by an "unspeakable As Christie showed him her bedroom, her awe". "apparent complete freedom from any self- The crisis culminates in a vision of the consciousness" (439) also inhibited him. face on the Waterloo steps, which, ex- This freedom from the conventional, this pressing all the misery in the world, looks at inability of Christie's to be shocked by him from the mirror. His reaction to this, "even the most amazing perversities" . . . away from Christie, as if his indecision was one of the things that drew Wolf to her somehow caused the face's agony, resulted at the beginning of their relationship. in the very core of his personality splitting Christie lights her lamp. •up. He "sinks into nothingness",

It's not an ordinary green. It's a peculiar and then it was as if a will within him, that kind of green. (440) was beyond thought, gathered itself together in that frozen chaos and rose upwards—rose As Wolf sits on her bed "the green light upwards like a shining scaled fish, electric, slowly awakening into being", he becomes vibrant, taut and leapt into the greenish- intensely aware of that moment. It becomes coloured vapour that filled the room. (444) a trance. "He dared not move lest he should break the spell". The sight of Christie Connected with Wolf throughout the novel, the fish image, unlike his "mythology" is enthralled him with a feeling he had never not willed. It comes from "beyond thought" anticipated, with a.sense of the possibilities of after he has "become nothing". Much more new feelings beyond anything he had known. than his "mythology", the experience bears the four marks of genuine mystical ex- Wolf's encounter with Gerda had perience enumerated by William James in touched only the external part of his nature, Varieties of Religious Experience, a book expressed in mere literary reminiscence, which greatly influenced Powys. Describing Gerda and Christie 61 an experience of J. A. Symonds (which "mythology", however, dies; his aqueous, resembles Wolf's) James mentions inef- imaginative life ebbs away, fability, insight, transiency and passivity as essential hall-marks.4 It is also much more and a furious contempt for both man and intense than Wolf's earlier "escape into the woman lay revealed, like a sullen, evil- peace of his own soul" (367). looking, drained-outpond! (453) Christie, Glastonbury, and Wolf's "sen- When he is trying to explain his loss to sations", "mythology" or "life-illusion" are Christie, she laughs but adds "Mother all connected. His failure to make love to would have understood what troubles you". her is, essentially, a failure of nerve, a (531) shrinking from an approach to something This hint of the Welsh woman who beyond anything he had yet experienced, claims descent from Merlin points forward which would alter his "mythology" perhaps to/4 Glastonbury Romance, as does the an- forever. But it is suggested, by the glimpse drogynous Christie. Perhaps one of the of his own green underwater world in the reasons behind Wolf's inability or refusal to mirror that Christie would enhance his ex- make love to her is contained in the nature perience. It is her presence as well as the of her attraction to him. There is none of vision of the face which causes the fish to the "equivocal male pursuer" (144) in leap forth in Wolf's mind-landscape and Wolf's attitude to her. Powys is getting the ambiguous Lenty Pond to become, in away from normal sexuality in his depiction the looking glass, his imagined Vale of of the Christie/Wolf attraction. (Wilson Glastonbury, magical and transfigured. Knight has written illuminatingly on But he refuses to take the chance. He is Powys's interest in "the sylphic quest".5 convinced that his mythology depends on Certainly, Powys's "female women", Mrs taking the side of "Good" in a struggle with Solent, Mattie, Gladys, (Wood and Stone) "Evil". His "diseased conscience" (208) Ann, Nell (Ducdame) and even Gerda when puts forward arbitrary ideas of good and obsessed with the ritual of the tea table, evil. As Christie says, they exist only in his weigh the Powys persona down.) mind. She points out that events are "out- side any one person's mind" and that Perhaps Autobiography sheds some light despite Wolf's "self-accusations" there is on the Christie-figure. Powys relates an something he has "never been aware of", a episode which must have occurred in 1912, "blindness" to what he is really doing. when he, his brother Llewelyn and Louis (450) Wilkinson visited Venice in company with a beautiful girl, Wilkinson's wife, who "in- Although there is no "touchstone" in 6 sisted on dressing as a boy". All three were Wolf Solent, Christie here has clearly in love with "the ambiguous beauty of our isolated two traits in Wolf. The first, boy-girl companion". The effect on Powys already known to the reader, that his habit was to endow him with "some sort of super- of thinking events need only be re-arranged natural power". This "almost formidable in his mind to be acceptable, leads, ef- power" was fectively, to gross selfishness. The second, less easily apparent, that there is something . . . the very thing I had been obscurely in Wolf of which he is unaware. This is also fumbling my way towards through all my suggested by Mrs Solent, Gerda, Jason lusts and my obsessions.6 Otter and Urquhart. Christie hints that if he were like other people he "wouldn't be The "boy-girl" had a magical effect on having it both ways". (450) Perhaps this is Powys, similar to the effect Christie had on the choice he was never really ready to make Wolf. between Gerda and Christie, and perhaps it Powys's interest in the "boy-girl" should is a truth about the psychic areas in him also be seen against the whole late nineteen- which these women represent. But his th-century attempt to move away from the 62 Gerda and Christie Victorian concept of women. This can be Autobiography), or by snippets of seen in the paintings of the Pre- biography. Christie "works" both as a Raphaelites, and later, the Decadents. In character, a component in the novel, and a Rossetti's paintings a slim pale Elizabeth disturbing symbol. Her atmosphere, Siddall looked beautiful and sad. From this "mediaeval", "platonic", androgynous, model came many replicas, often heavily amoral, Celtic, points beyond the natural, symbolic. Phillipe Jullian interestingly and beyond the naive dualism of Wolf's traces the course of "Romantic feminine home-made "mythology". The suggestion beauty" in the art of the late nineteenth of Glastonbury that Wolf sees in Christie century.7 The ambiguous androgynous refers to a much older and more potent qualities of Christie can be seen in the work mythology. Wolf's personification of of Klimt and Beardsley. "immortal souls" as Christie, the actual While a full-scale biography of Powys significance of his sensations, places her would be very helpful, it is not really centrally as the Grail-bearer of his quest. illuminating to explain the Christie/Wolf His refusal to avail himself of this new relationship by "Jungian depth-psychology" experience causes the vision to be (as J. B. Priestley does in his Introduction to withdrawn.

Notes 'See pp. 403 and 411. 'Varieties of Religious Experience, Collins 1 WolfSolent, Macdonald, 1961, p. 70. Subsequent (Fontana), 1971, p. 371. numberals in parentheses in my text refer to pages in 5The Saturnian Quest, pp. 59-60. this edition. '•Autobiography, 1967, p. 406; p. 408. *TheSaturnian Quest, 1964, p. 33. 7P. Jullian, Dreamers of Decadence, 1971, p. 39. Charles Lock "'Multiverse' . . . language which makes language impossible"

My title is taken from Confessions of Two my scepticism is genuine scepticism, not . . . Brothers, those of John Cowper and a mere synonym for dogmatic agnosticism . . . Llewelyn, published in New York in 1916. I doubt even the validity of doubt. (43) The full context, from which I have adapted so clumsily, reads: This degree of scepticism—which is in fact far from active in Confessions itself—is to become one of Powys's great achievements The universe must remain a universe while our mind remains our mind. To call it a as a novelist. There are other things in 'multiverse' is to use language which makes Confessions which are recognisable from language impossible. (48)' the later work—a panegyric in praise of the existence of a jelly-fish, a bison, lizards, There are three elements in these suggestive "lichen upon an apple-tree, or the moss sentences which I wish to examine: the upon the roots of an elm" (66-7); to read unadventurous state of Powys's mind in that "my instincts are all polytheistic" is at 1916, his concern with language, and the least a point of recognition. For can it really idea of the multiverse. be John Cowper complaining that poetry The above quotation has a most and philosophy conventional and dogmatic insistence, seemingly uncharacteristic of the author. would make me believe that the The entire autobiographical sketch, of commonplace itself is wonderful and 175 pages, is uncharacteristic, lacking charming—if only one looks at it from a almost all the familiar qualities of tolerance certain angle. I confess I have never been able and generosity and philosophical irres- to find this angle. But it is a relief to be told ponsibility. It is dry reading, and it does that it is there. (79) not enhance Powys's standing. But it is valuable to look at some of the things which The arrogantly hard-headed, wilful lack of Powys wrote in this book, for they help to imagination, and the sneering, cynical define the starting-point, the position from tone, is simply irreconcilable with the which he set out as a novelist; Wood and enthusiasm expressed for poetry and Stone, his first novel, had been published philosophy in Visions and Revisions, three months earlier. The best parts of published a few months earlier, and in Confessions seem to have been lifted from Suspended Judgments of a few months that far superior book (though how a writer later. borrows from his fiction to write his Wood and Stone is undoubtedly the most autobiography is an entangling thought). deliberately structured and organised of all At the end of the novel Taxater says to Luke the novels, and this may be partly explained Andersen: when we learn that Powys had once believed that nature was "chaotic", but that he has You're a dogmatic materialist. You doubt now changed his mind: everything in the world except doubt. I doubt doubt.' (716) I must have been betrayed into this treachery to my own disposition ... by an unconscious In Confessions Powys writes: following of literary fashions. (51) 64 'Multiverse' . . . language impossible" The belief that all is chaos has now been It is about these outlying farms and replaced by an opposing belief in hamlets—in this strange region of sluices and "Fatality". He contrasts the two beliefs: weirs and dams and rhynes—that so many curious Celtic syllables still cling, like the ap- pellative Gore, for instance, syllables full of I cannot think that in this matter of my 3 consciousness of Fatality, I am being fooled old mythological associations. by my love of words, as I was when I used to protest my devotion to Chaos and Chance. It was "treachery to his own disposition" (148-9) for Powys ever to think that words should be divested of their associations, or that The crucial realisation, yet to come, was language should be used without its full that a love of words has nothing to do with imaginative possibilities. fooling or deception. In struggling towards It is not sufficiently realised just how this we find other comments illuminating hesitant Powys was about the possibilities of Powys's concern with words: language, how conventionally he had con- sidered the question 'must we mean what What does trouble me is the thought that, we say?' Another quotation from Con- even in what I have said, there may remain an fessions shows Powys coming close to un- element of word-mongering. It is so difficult derstanding the centre of his genius, and to divest oneself of the associations of words, then shying away: and to use them freshly and spontaneously as real symbols. What one would like to do, would be to use words not so much as the A certain power of rapid and logical vehicle of thought, as of direct physical assimilation tempts me to pass off as my own sensation; but this is an enterprise that conclusions views and visions which are really requires more genius than I possess. (145) quite alien to myself. My scepticism en- courages this fault by constantly reminding me that anything may be true, and that I may That woolly, contradictory intention— as well select one view of things as any other. words can hardly be both "real symbols" (147) and "direct physical sensations"—is a following of most available literary fashions If anything may be true one wonders why and theories. We look forward to all those this should be so categorically a fault. great passages in his fiction, where the When he became truly sceptical—and quality lies precisely in the associations ceased to boast about it—he learnt that it which he allows words to carry. This is the was no fault to think that anything may be flood at Glastonbury: true, or false. That realisation enabled him to write novels that were uncertain and Yes, even before the fifteenth of March these doubting to the very core. Timothy Hyman terrific ocean waves had disturbed the has written very aptly of a Glastonbury cormorants at St. Audrie's Bay and scattered Romance, "the novel doubts itself".4 the gulls at Black Rock, at Blue Ben, and at But I wish to dwell a little longer with the Quantock's Head. The dwellers at Kilve Chantry had grown uneasy; and from unsympathetic Confessions, for that book is Penhole to Wick Moor, and from Stert Flats of considerable biographical interest. Powys to the mouth of the River Parrett, and over does not attribute Taxater's exact words to Bridgewater Bar to Gore Sand there were himself; "I doubt doubt" becomes "I doubt wild gusts of ragged wings and shrieking sea even the validity of doubt", which exposes cries and vague sobbings and lappings and the ambiguity present in Taxater's utter- murmurs in the night.2 ance, but irrelevant. For doubting the validity of doubt is really the same as saying Powys's mastery in this chapter is such that that scepticism encourages the fault of not he has no need to make his art explicit, but knowing one's own mind—knowledge of he tells us all the same: which Taxater is blissfully and unrepen-

66 'Multiverse' . . . language impossible" tantly free. At one time Powys had of those novels. By contrast, in 1916, definitely been looking for a specific and Powys's individualism, his belief that rigid faith; he refers obliquely in Con- literature should express and present a fessions, as he was always to refer obliquely, coherent, consistent view of the world, ex- to his involvement with Catholicism in the plains the dry dogmatism of his comment early 1900s. All the evidence suggests that on the multiverse—"to use language which this was a most unhappy episode, and one makes language impossible". Lady Rachel of which Powys always remained ashamed. seems to be almost deliberately rebutting The oblique reference comes when he is that assertion when she argues with Ned writing about his lack of faith or the Athling, himself a poet, about the nature of "religious sense": poetry:

however deeply I search my heart and soul, I 'What's poetry got to do with taking sides? do not find the remotest trace of these in- Poetry is an art.' teresting gifts ... I can remember certain 'Oh, don't use that word, Ned! If you'd heard disgustingly hypocritical attempts I made at what I've heard—the affectations—the various times to pretend to myself that they boredom—' were there. (58) 'But isn't it an art?' Her reply was almost screamed at him. The vocabulary here as elsewhere in Con- 'No! It isn't! It's Poetry. Poetry's something fessions is astonishingly conventional, and entirely different. Oh, I know I'm right, Ned! steeped in individualism. We have already If you go and get hold of this horrible modern heard "treachery to my own disposition", idea that poetry is an art, I don't know "views and visions quite alien to myself", what—'. . . and here we find hypocrisy and "pretending 'Well, anyway, Lady Rachel,' he said, 'It has to myself", all notions meaningless in the nothing to do with this Glastonbury quarrel context of Powys's later work. It is very far between Geard and Crow.' from Whitman's "I contain multitudes", 'It has. It has everything to do with it! Can't you feel, Ned, as we stand here that this place which Powys so often celebrated, and so is magical? What's Poetry if it isn't successfully and modestly imitated, and something that has to fight for the unseen with such sensitive reservations as well. (See against the seen, for the dead against the In Defence of Sensuality, 126.) It is living, for the mysterious against the ob- probably concerning this period of his life, vious? Poetry always takes sides. It's the only when his thinking was rooted in in- Lost Cause we've got left! It fights for the . . . dividualistic assumptions and when he was for the ... for the Impossible!'5 still striving for a consistent philosophical position, that he wrote in the When Poetry is merely an art one might Autobiography : say, echoing that proverbial dictum of cynical expediency, that it is the art of the my guardian angels have helped me in this by possible language. "Multiverse" is a word saving me from all shame over the matter of that makes language impossible, and that, inconsistency. This acceptance of in- Powys came to realise, was of the essence of consistency—a most essential thing in literature. No longer was he to be "fooled anyone's experience—has been made easy for by my love of words", for his love of words me because of my habit of living out my life from the basis of what might be called a was no longer to be subjected to strict pluralistic world, like the world of Homer, philosophical constraints. He can write of where everything around you, air, water, guardian angels, the First Cause, cosmic in- earth, fire, is the living body of a living spirit. telligences, speaking trees, what a tomb (424) says to a candle. An intrinsic truth seems to be revealed in every word, irrespective of its This is the view of the author of the major meaning. Powys defended his habit of novels, and it is expressed in the language praying by arguing that human beings had 'Multiverse' . . . language impossible" 67 prayed for twenty thousand years, and why from the consciousnesses of intellectuals should they now stop? The question pre- and literary people it left behind a residue tends to be rhetorical, but of course the ob- of semantically redundant vocabulary, of jection lies with the faith in some object that "impossible language". Lord Chandos ex- is an essential part of traditional concepts presses this well: of prayer. He might have said the same about language, that if a word has been What was it that made me want to break into used before for hundreds of years there is words which, I know, were I to find them, would force to their knees those cherubim in no reason why he should not continue to use 8 it. The meaning of a word, like the object of whom I do not believe? prayer, is secondary, even incidental, to the practice of writing or the practice of prayer. In 1916, in the Confessions, Powys is con- Wolf seems to be expressing Powys's ideas cerned, although at an explicitly far less when he tells Christie: profound level, with the same problems the solutions to which, by Hofmannsthal, 'I suppose I'm more of a slave to Kafka, Valery or Eliot, have long been philosophical phrases than anyone in the recognised as the masterpieces of modern- whole of England! I love the sound of them. ism. In The Complex Vision, a dull book They have something ... a sort of magic . . . published in 1920, with a slow and tedious I don't know what . . . that makes life rich development going back to 1916, Powys in- and exciting to me . ..' dulges in all the cliches of this side of the 'Oh, I know what you mean, Wolf,' cried problem: Christie. 'That's why I've loved reading those books in our shop . . . especially Leibniz and Hegel. I've never been able to follow their Words themselves tend in the process to har- real meaning, I suppose; but all the same it's den and petrify, and in their hardening to been a great satisfaction to me to read them.' form, as it were, solid blocks of accretion which resist and materially distort the subtle . . . Wolf continued. 'I think we're thrilled and evasive play of the human psychology by the weight of history that lies behind each behind them . . . Words tend all too quickly one of these phrases. It isn't just the word it- to become symbolic; and it is often the chief self, or just its immediate meaning. It's a importance of what we call 'genius' that it long trailing margin of human sensations, life takes these inflexible symbols into its hands by life, century by century, that gives us this 6 and breaks them up into pieces and dips peculiar thrill.' them in the wavering waters of experience and sensation ... He should avoid as far as he can such metaphors and images as already carry with them the accumulated associations One strand in the history of literature of traditional usage and he should select his during the twentieth century can be seen as expressions so that they shall give the reader a conflict between those who strive "to the definite impact and vivid shock of purify the dialect of the tribe", to cleanse thoughts that leap up from immediate con- words of their historical and metaphysical tact with sensation, like fish from the surface accretions, and those writers who aim to of a river. (4-5) restore to words their etymological and historical resonances. One of the crucial These recommendations are actually ad- writings of the 'purifying' side is the "Letter dressed to philosophers, and it is a measure of Lord Chandos" by Hofmannsthal, of of the development in Powys's thought to 1902, in which Chandos writes of his search compare this with the conversations about "for the language in which I might be able philosophy between Wolf and Christie. not only to write but to think".7 Crudely Wolf and Christie stand for the alternative simplified, the problem for writers at the to 'purifying', and so by that time does beginning of this century could be stated Powys. The alternative is to celebrate the like this: when religious belief withdrew divorce between the language of writing and 68 'Multiverse' . . . language impossible the language of thinking, to use language as Thick and rich and complicated was a means of liberating the imagination from Powys's own apprehension of life, and that the confines of rational and materialist which he conveys to his reader. The con- discourse. Compare Lord Chandos's terror trast between this and the timid of single words with Powys's celebration of unoriginality of Confessions shows how a particular word. Chandos: reluctant Powys had been to abandon the self-expressing, self-referring attitude to Single words floated round me; they language, to say only what he means, not to congealed into eyes which stared at me and be what he then called a "word-monger". into which I was forced to stare "Word-mongering" is the negative, dam- back—whirlpools which gave me vertigo and, reeling incessantly, led into the void.' ning phrase for what Lady Rachel chooses to describe as Poetry—"Poetry fights for Now Powys: the Impossible". It is word-mongering because the writer doesn't mean it—it is As all Merlin's disciples well know, there is a poetry because the writer cannot mean it, it mysterious word used in one of the Grail is "impossible", beyond the narrow bounds books about his final disappearance. This is the word 'Esplumeoir'. It is inevitable from of thought. the context to interpret this as some 'Great Powys's awareness of language is far Good Place' ... As he sought for one of his more acute than is usually accepted—or, favourite passages . . . [Mr. Evans] kept indeed, than the style often warrants. His murmuring that particular invocation under power to evoke deeply within the reader's his breath, pondering intently on the occult imagination, by particular words, is enor- excape offered by this runic clue from all the mous, and not unintentional. h\A Glaston- pain of the world, an escape so strangely bury Romance, Red's cockney accent may handed down from far-off centuries in these 10 not be very convincingly rendered, but only thaumaturgic syllables. a writer of considerable verbal sensitivity, There is genius in Powys's use of the word and linguistic speculation, would draw "thaumaturgic", for these are themselves gratuitous attention to it by this digression: syllables whose meaning is inseparable from a distant historical context. The There can be no doubt that when in his reader's sensation echoes that of Mr. cockney fashion he used the word 'ate' in- Evans. stead of 'hate', this curious difference bet- Single words like "esplumeoir" or ween two monosyllabic sounds was not "thaumaturgic" or "Gore" do not lead without its own faint psychic repercussion upon his nervous organism. Between the Powys into the void, at least not a human feeling expressed by the word 'hate' frightening void, but, to quote Wolf's words and the feeling expressed by the same word which must find an echo in every without the aspirate there may be little dif- appreciative reader, into "a sort of magic . . . ference; and yet there probably was some in- I don't know what . . . that makes life rich finistesimal difference, which a new scien- and exciting to me". Wolf continues ce—halfway between philology and sharing his thoughts with Christie: psychology—may one day elucidate. (481)

'I know they're absurd . . . these phrases . . . The reader is brought up sharply to notice Words like "pluralism" and "dualism" and the shape and sound, the physical sen- "monism". But what they make me think of sation, of the word. Later Powys speculates is just a particular class of vague, delicious, on the difference between Red's pronun- physical sensations. And it's the idea of there having been feelings like these, in far-off, ciation and his correct orthography: long-buried human nerves, that pleases us both so much. It makes life seem so thick Did the passionate Red . . . feel any sense of a and rich and complicated, if you know what I psychic-philological shock when he mur- mean?'11 mured to himself, pen in hand, "haffairs of 'Multiverse' . . . language impossible 69 himportance" and then wrote down the The Biblical attitude is that creation implies unaspirated words? (650) the 'miraculous'; and when one thinks of the fantastic shifts to which science has been put The first quotation connects philology with to get life going without the miraculous ever psychology—a marriage perhaps ap- since Democritus had to supply his atoms with fish-hooks it seems that the Biblical at- proximately realised today in psycho- titude still holds good. (50) linguistics. The second quotation is dif- ferent; the "psychic-philological" suggests At the end of A Glastonbury Romance that there is a connection between words Powys introduces a modern psychologist to and the psychic similar to that between give her explanation of Geard's death. The words and history. As words evoke the past sarcasm is rather laboured, especially as they also evoke that indefinable whatever the psychologist is actually remarkably parallel to mundane existence. Here words broad-minded, and not very far from definitively fail. As Powys himself is willing Powys's customary terms of explanation: to acknowledge: The amazing—but surely not im- The psychic history of a place like Glaston- possible—explanation offered by this bury is not an easy thing to write down in set penetrating woman is that a violent psychic terms, for not only does chance play an enor- radiation from all the minds of the twenty- mous part in it, but there are many forces at seven people, including children, who were work for which human language has at 12 actually drowned during those few ghastly present no fit terms. hours riddled Mr. Geard's hyper-sensitised and super-porous sympathy with what might "Not an easy thing", and yet it is what be called the drowning-spasm . . . This Powys achieves. From conventional dreary brilliant writer points out further . . . that his doubts about "impossible" language Powys growing preoccupation with the Grail Fount came to use any word available, however lit- on Chalice Hill was itself a hydro-philiastic tle relevance it may have had to himself. He obsession ... It was this woman's far-fetched pamphlet that with its use of pathological can explain events by reference to guardian technical terms had such a large share in turn- angels, the First Cause, direct intervention ning the attention of intellectual people away from Christ, and virtually every other ex- from the religious aspect of the problem. planation which humanity has ever offered (1104-5) itself in defiant justification and heroic denial of contingent chaos. (Dare one Powys condemns most effectively not by suggest that a full concordance of Powys's sarcasm but by the vocabulary that he at- writings would be extremely interesting? It tributes to the psychologist. It is a poet who is not a coincidence that the English poet juxtaposes "the Grail Fount on Chalice with the largest vocabulary, Browning, Hill", each solid word loaded with wrote most of his poetry in the form of suggestive, echoing magic, and "a hydro- dramatic monologues, spoken by charac- philiastic obsession", a phrase that almost ters of many centuries, many countries, and disintegrates with triviality. But the same of many kinds of experience. Browning psychologist who produces that tediously used 38,000 words, Shakespeare and Ten- reductive explanation also talks about nyson are next with a mere 19,000 each. I "psychic radiation", and must have been suspect that Powys's vocabulary might rival one of the few psychologists ever to have Browning's.) Powys can not only write an done so. This, surely, does not avoid the "impossible" language with conviction, but religious aspect of the problem. Powys then he can also be wonderfully contemptuous of condescends, as if himself speaking from a the sensible, rational explanation. In the more rigidly orthodox psychological essay on the Bible, in The Pleasures of position, to defend her explanation as Literature, Powys wrote: "amazing—but surely not impossible"; he 70 'Multiverse . . . language impossible" describes the pamphlet as "far-fetched". difference,—a moral multiverse, as one Yet on the next page Powys offers 'his own' might call it, and not a moral universe. explanation in these terms: 1904 Daily News 11 October, 3, [Reporting Sir O. Lodge]. The only possible alternative was to regard the universe as a result of ran- The mass and volume of his being was com- dom chance and capricious disorder, not a posed of a weight of cold phlegmatic sub- cosmos or universe at all, but rather a stance that was always sinking down, by a 'multiverse'. weird gravitational pull, to a species of pre- 1920 Chesterton, New Jerusalem viii 163 organic cosmic inertia. His great moments When I told a distinguished psychologist. . . came when this heavy inertness, pulling him that I differed from his view of the universe, down into the silt and slime of the chemical he answered 'Why universe? Why should it basis of life, was roused to activity by his not be a multiverse?' erotic mysticism. For the truth is that 1957 T.L.S. 11 October 602/1. It is precisely psychic-sensual life-lust in Mr. Geard . . . Mr. Powys's ever-present contact with the (1106, my italics) vital, or spiritual, principles within the universe which enables him to explore with so One is not asked to decide between alter- uncanny a penetration the deeper problems native explanations, but rather to wonder of that comparatively small section of the about the whole concept and nature of 'ex- universe—or as he would say multiverse— planation', philosophical, psychological, which constitutes man. scientific or poetic. It is Powys's novels, with their use of impossible language, of Powys is not to be quoted directly, but only words whose ancient meanings remind us of through the respectable columns of the our narrowed intellects and impoverished T.L.S., over forty years after his first imaginations, remind and partially repair, published use of the word. that can have a share in turning the at- Powys was absolutely right in 1916 to say tention of intellectual people away from the that the word made language impossible obvious, the trivial, above all the single ex- "while our mind remains our mind". For planation. the human mind seems incapable of Powys was full of doubts in 1916 about defining the concept of 'everything' except the linguistic enterprise on which he was as a totality that is somehow unified like it- eventually to embark, doubts which were self. Language assumes a universe; entirely characteristic of his generation of although so richly and so variously steeped writers in Europe and the United States. in the religious and the metaphysical, We have seen how these doubts were over- language is always based on monistic and come in his great novels by his "thick and universalist assumptions. Powys makes this rich and complicated" celebration that Lord point himself, in The Complex Vision: Chandos's problem was not his own; if the language of writing is not the same as the Human language . . . seems very reluctant to language of thinking so much the worse for use any but monistic terms. We say 'the the language of thinking. system of things', not 'the systems of things' . The third aspect of those suggestive sen- . . We say 'the universe'; yet may it not be tences of 1916 is the multiverse itself. that there are as many 'universes' as there are conscious personalities in this unfathomable Those of us who are often tempted to hold a world? (87) theory of deliberate conspiracy concerning Powys's reputation will find confirmation of Powys at this date (1916-20) goes on to say this—like all paranoids—wherever they that he still remains happy with the idea of look. This is the entry on the word the universe, for he claims that as long as 'multiverse' in the O.E.D. Supplement: all things are

1895 W. James Will to Believe (1897) 43, connected, in space and in time, by the Visible nature in all plasticity and in- medium . . . which fills the gulfs between the 'Multiverse'. . . language impossible" 71 planets and the stars ... so long will it be Although Powys is cautious about his use of legitimate to use these monistic expressions the word, and keeps it out of most of the with which human language is, so to speak, novels, it is legitimate to suggest that so deeply stained. (87-8) "multiverse" is a good description of the world as depicted in his fiction. I do not say The word "multiverse" which challenges "the real world", for Powys has shown how these assumptions was only coined in 1895 that phrase is as conditioned and relative as and therefore has no historical accretions, any other, whether "hydro-philiastic ob- and a very uncertain relation to the denoted session" or "First Cause". concept. Did William James actually organise his life and his thinking as if he Scientific philosophy makes the tedious lived in a multiverse? To what extent is his mistake of assuming that there is such a thing understanding of the concept limited to his as a universally palpable 'real world'. There coinage of the word? As "thaumaturgic" has is no such 'real world'. What is called 'the to be accepted with an imaginative leap of real world' is an illusion created by those faith as having once been directly self-destructive negative moments of sinking into the social ant-heap when as lonely in- meaningful to "far-off, long-buried human dividuals we cease to live—in other words, nerves", so I think we must accept when we cease to re-create our particular "multiverse" as a word which may be universes according to our imaginative will- meaningful to far-off future human nerves. power.14 It may be helpful to remember that such words as 'relativism' and 'syncretism' were "The real world" is absent from Powys's coined only in the late seventeenth century. major novels; in this he was influenced by At that time, from within a unified world- Dostoievsky, and the above quotation can picture largely confined to Europe and be usefully applied to his novels, and may Christianity, the concepts were hard to be a conscious echo of Dostoievsky's insis- grasp; we have immediate access. tent claim, "I am the only realist". Having said that, it is interesting to note The characteristic nineteenth century that although Powys uses the word frequen- novel is an image of the universe, in which tly in his non-fiction, and in his letters, all parts are related and the same laws "multiverse" is seldom to be found in his operate throughout, and where there is a novels; it is not used at all, I think, in Wolf single scale of moral values by which ac- Solent or A Glastonbury Romance (again, a tions and characters can be judged. The concordance would be useful). The use of narrator is omniscient and the reader is the word is never declamatory, but usually enabled to see life whole. The contigency of rather perfunctory; his objections of 1916 experience is transformed into the order and remained valid even after he had got rid of comprehensibility of art. The traditional his conventional notions about language. novel is based on an act of faith in the struc- The word seemed appropriate for his view ture and ultimate purpose of the world. The of things, and yet he realised that it lacked shape of a novel was not a fiction; it showed authority, both conceptually and that experience only appeared to be con- historically. As late as 1951 he wrote to tingent, but that deep down, as only the ar- Henry Miller: tist could see, all was organised according to a providential design. Once that fun- damental faith has been lost the whole idea Only in one single thing your old John cannot follow you. Because the Devil in him makes of telling a story undergoes a radical him hate The One and makes him a follower change. There is no characteristic twen- of William James' Pluralism. I know a tieth-century novel because every major 'Multiverse' is too chaotic to be logical or novel of this century has created within it- perhaps even possible but my God—Hatred self the criteria by which it should be makes me hold to it!13 judged, and the idea of a story by which it 72 'Multiverse' . . . language impossible" should be read. Criticism of Powys has not much of a life-illusion, as that of Geard or argued strongly enough against the com- Sam. Powys refuses to organise the psychic mon assumption that he is a vestigial Vic- history of Glastonbury into a coherent torian novelist born out of his time. In whole, a model of the universe. His un- asserting Powys's importance there is no derstanding of the psychic history is need to reject most of the criteria by which necessarily limited and he tries to prevent early twentieth-century literature has come the form from implying assumptions which to be judged. Powys does conform to the ex- his knowledge does not warrant. pectations of linguistic and formal in- Powys often does his best not to inspire trospection and innovation; as Belinda the reader's confidence in the narrator. I Humfrey has pointed out he is "an out- apologise for quoting again what is standing writer of what have become probably, alas, the best-known passage in recognised from a recent perspective as all Powys's work: 'anti-novels'".15 And like every other great writer he goes far beyond such expectations At the striking of noon on a certain fifth of and classifications. March, there occurred within a causal radius What Powys learnt from Dostoievsky was of Brandon railway station and yet beyond the deepest pools of emptiness between the that "real reality" is composed of each in- uttermost stellar systems one of those in- dividual creating his particular universe ac- finitesimal ripples in the creative silence of cording to his imaginative will-power. the First Cause which always occur when an What, in his own art, Powys rejects in exceptional stir of heightened consciousness Dostoievsky is the belief that one of those agitates any living organism in this particular universes is better than the astronomical universe. Something passed at others, and possibly ideal. "Hurrah for that moment, a wave, a motion, a vibration, Alyosha" cries Kolya at the end of The too tenuous to be called magnetic, too Brothers Karamazov; there is never a con- subliminal to be called spiritual, between the clusive cheer for one of Powys's characters. soul of a particular human being who was The reason is that there is nobody to or- emerging from a third-class carriage of the chestrate the cheering. For a Powys novel is twelve-nineteen train from London and the divine-diabolic soul of the First Cause of all a multiverse which contains the universes of life. each of the characters and that of the author himself. Everything that the author Powys is not quite so inept as some of those says is as much a product of his imaginative denigrators who cite this paragraph would will-power as any direct speech is clearly the like to think. He is here playing at being a product of a character's imaginative will- narrator omniscient far beyond all power. A Glastonbury Romance is an un- reasonable bounds. He is not merely focussed unbalanced work, and in that is speculatively absurd but factually non- the heart of its originality and greatness. sensical. Noon does not usually strike at The reader's attention is totally absorbed 12.19; maybe the train was early or the first in John Crow, then in Geard, then in clock was slow, but the point is that the Sam, then Geard again, in a most un- reader is being told not to trust the authorial settling way. The novel could only be struc- voice. We are soon to be told that trees say tured as the reader 'requires'—we are "wuther-quotle-glug" and have a sense of irritated by never knowing quite enough something corresponding to irony in about John Crow, and by the arbitrary humans. The mortal reader (let us not disappearance of Sam from the novel's cen- forget the possibility of others) is bemused tre—if the author accepted the prerogative rather than belittled by being told that: of the traditional novelist. Powys rejects that because he recognises that in the What mortals call Sex is only a manifestation pluralistic multiverse of his creation his in human life, and in animal and vegetable own view is as limited and as partial, as life, of a certain spasm, a certain delicious 'Multiverse' . . . language impossible" 73 shudder, a certain orgasm of a purely psychic prose (which cannot be said of the opening nature, which belongs to the Personality of of A Glastonbury Romance): the First Cause.16 The sea lost nothing of the swallowing iden- We are shown William Crow's corpse tity of its great outer mass of waters in the listening with great curiosity to his own emphatic, individual character of each par- burial-service. After his murder Tom Bar- ticular wave. Each wave, as it rolled in upon ter's consciousness "shot up into the air like the high-pebbled beach, was an epitome of a released fountain-jet"—having told us the whole body of the sea, and carried with it this the author then condescends to deny all the vast mysterious quality of the earth's any further knowledge of Barter's ancient antagonist. posthumous existence. But the next sentence qualifies and un- Whether [his consciousness] passed, with its dercuts the imaginative authority of this, personal identity intact, into that invisible en- almost telling the reader not to pay so much velope of rarefied matter which surrounds attention to it: our astronomic sphere or whether it perished irrecoverably, the present chronicler knows Such at any rate was the impression that not.17 Magnus Muir—tutor in Latin to backward boys—received from the waves on Weymouth And after Geard's death we are told that Beach . . . (my italics) the fate of his consciousness is also "unknown to the writer of this book".18 The author then supplies the factual details If Powys was 'really' like this he would in a factual style. The rest of the novel not be worth reading. But by this kind of shows the emphasis subtly changing, so stylistic and linguistic irresponsibility he is that the narrator becomes more imaginative achieving something very deliberate. He and Magnus becomes more prosaic. This makes the texture of the novel more con- is not, I think, an integral part of the plot sistent so that there is not too much of a but a way of conveying to the reader that contrast between the narrator and the weird nobody can be relied upon to tell the truth. and fascinating people that he depicts. Af- As is suggested by the authorial ter that opening paragraph we are prepared qualification—"Such at any rate"—the to read about Geard and Mr. Evans; if the best language can be the least opening paragraph had been written in the true—'cherubim' is a beautiful word. And manner of Henry James the reader would it should be axiomatic in the appreciation probably reject the characters. The con- of Powys that 'truth' was not his concern, at sistency in Wolf Solent is achieved by a least not after the early 1920s. In an essay supremely accomplished balancing-act; it is on the Odyssey, Powys wrote: a controlled struggle between the con- Come, let the word be said! It does not mat- sciousness of Wolf and the consciousness of ter much what set of ultimate life-values we the narrator, between Wolf's image of him- select, the Homeric, the Medieval, the self and projection of his future, and the Shakespearian, the Christian. What is im- narrator's image of Wolf and projection of portant is that our consciousness should be a future for him. The power of the novel lies continually absorbing the magnetic ether of in the equal unreliability of Wolf and the our race's subtler inspirations; and if they narrator; according to the narrator's clash and contradict one another it matters theories about Wolf's life-illusion one must nothing . . . The richer our own nature is, deduce that the act of writing about Wolf is and the stronger our imagination, the deeper we can go in fathoming the diverse secrets of part of the narrator's own life-illusion. The these opposing ways of life, all of which have reader's attitude to the author of their own magic, their own mystery, their Weymouth Sands is determined in another own illumination and their own eternal way. The opening is a wonderful piece of values." 74 'Multiverse'. . . language impossible" That is what Powys means when he tells us, 'Any lie,' [Geard] shouted, 'I tell you, any oddly, that A Glastonbury Romance has a lie as long as a multitude of souls believes it message: and presses that belief to the cracking point, creates new life, while the slavery of what is Its heroine is the Grail. Its hero is the life called truth drags us down to death and to poured into the Grail. Its message is that no the dead! Lies, magic, illusion—these are one Receptacle of Life and no one Fountain names we give to the ripples on the water of our experience when the Spirit of Life blows of Life poured into that Receptacle can con- 21 tain or explain what the world offers us.20 upon it.'

That language is necessarily conveyed One condemns language as "impossible" through the "impossible" language deman- from the standpoint and the measurement ded and assumed by the multiverse. of reality. By Powys's writing these great Language that belongs to different novels, that language has been rendered religions, different philosophies, different possible according to other standpoints. ages and different societies is subtly woven 'Real life' belongs to the language of the together into a confusing pattern that slavery of truth. In accepting the multiverse makes the reader lose all his bearings. Powys transforms the impossible language Language is not a vehicle for truth but a into the possible. His trust in the inherent most valuable escape from truth as Powys validity of language makes 'real life' im- and some of his characters understand it. possible.

Notes 'Numerals in parentheses throughout my text '"A Glastonbury Romance, p. 179. refer to the first English editions of Powys's works, "WolfSolent, pp. 340, 341. except for the following: Wolf Solent (1961), A nA Glastonbury Romance, p. 747. Glastonbury Romance (1955, repr. 1966). "Letters to Henry Miller, Village Press, 1975, 'A Glastonbury Romance, p. 1066. p. 50. 'Ibid., p. 1065. "In Defence of Sensuality, p. 158. 4"Powys's World Book", a paper read to the Powys 15Essays on John Cowper Powys, U.W.P., Cardiff, Society, 1970. 1972, p. 18. 5A Glastonbury Romance, p. 529. '"J Glastonbury Romance, p. 666. "Wolf Solent, p. 340. "Ibid., p. 1051. ^Selected Prose of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, "Ibid., p. 1118. Routledge, 1952, p. 140. "The Pleasures of Literature, p. 75. 'Ibid., p. 137. 2"A Glastonbury Romance, p. xiii. 'Ibid., pp. 134-135. 21Ibid.,p.891. G. Wilson Knight A Preface Composed for Ichiro Hara's Japanese Translation of Mortal Strife

I applaud Professor Ichiro Hara's courage is simple enough, and what I would in translating Powys's Mortal Strife into especially point to is the colloquial: "get in Japanese. The Japanese language is the way". It might be used for someone, unknown to me, except for a phrase, which say, shopping, and irritated by another I have always remembered, spoken by the who 'gets in the way' when he or she wants actor Laurence Irving in a Japanese role, attention. It is redolent of everyday talk. As Dr. Takeramo, of a tragic play entitled for homely, cliche phrases, the reiterated Typhoon by the Hungarian dramatist reference in Mortal Strife to "common or Melchior Lengyl, in 1913; it was 'Coebe-en garden" people like himself and his Yana, Hilene' (Poor little Helene). I don't readers—what a strange phrase it is!—may know why the phrase burned itself on my be rather irritating, but it is utterly charac- mind, though the play was certainly a high- teristic. True, he can on other occasions, as light in my theatre-going youth.1 It does not in A Glastonbury Romance and other great tell me much about style, except that I un- narratives, write very differently, letting his derstand that Japanese regularly favours rolling periods carry a wide, and literary, short, stabbing, sentences. Now Powys in- vocabulary and phrases of great power, but dulges, sometimes to excess, in long wind- this is not his manner in Mortal Strife, nor ing sentences. His rambling syntax in any of his more personal discussions. derives, I suppose, from his classical In them his manner is that of a literary training at Sherborne. But his writing in man, perhaps we can say a highly soph- Mortal Strife is not all scholarly; indeed his isticated man, deliberately countering his choice of words and phrases is often almost sophistication with an almost too obtrusive childishly simple, with a free play of con- humility; he is trying to be, as Wordsworth ventional idiom, cliche phraseology and puts it in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, colloquialism. It is a strange enough mix- "a man speaking to men"; but to quite or- ture! dinary, almost uneducated, men. Though Here is an example of learned thoughts he is saturated in the great books of the simply expressed and ending with a West, and points continually to them in remarkable and characteristic surprise. He reference and quotation, Powys opposes is discussing the most appalling of learning; theology, philosophy and science. metaphysical problems: That this dislike is genuine may be sup- posed from his life-long and obsessive When we are dead, life and death, according horror of vivisection in medical research. to this present dimension, cease; and Religious doctrine of the Inquisitorial kind something else substitutes itself for them. Of he repudiates utterly; and yet he knows a the nature of this something else it is not only vast amount about it; about Catholic now impossible to obtain the faintest clue; it theology, Buddhism and the rest. must of necessity always be impossible, sim- ply because Time and Space get in the way. The truth is, that he is so saturated in (113)1 reading, or learning, that he has—to use a phrase in his homely style—come out on the That may seem rather too un- other side. He is beyond learning and so can compromising. However, the language here engage us with a childlike simplicity. This 76 A Preface Composed: Translation oi Mortal Strife is, indeed, the drive of his whole life's work forms too, including the inanimate. There which, after a succession of great is no need for the object concentrated on to narratives, ends with a series of books of be beautiful, nor even of nature; human ar- fairy-tale sort which nevertheless are also tefacts, things of city life, may serve. Just to concerned with the ultimate mysteries of contemplate some object in the material our existence: again, simplicity joined to universe, and contemplating to enjoy it: profundity. this is the simple secret. By deliberately In Mortal Strife he writes of the War and willing this enjoyment, man can make the British; and he delivers a gospel that bearable the agonies of his existence. He is goes beyond present circumstance into in this way calling on help from his own problems of universal import. He opposes soul. The soul belongs to two worlds and by religious doctrine and science; both, like concentrating on such material objects we the dictators in Europe, are ways of putting touch the barrier that separates us "from the human soul in a strait-jacket. He speaks what lies beyond; matter dissolves into" the out in sympathy with the ordinary, humble, world's "primordial chemistry"; it is as individual man as against totalitarian though "we were sailing along the cliffs of regimenting. We begin to see the reason for the last promontory of matter", and from it his homely style; he wants, on every level, to "a divine sensation" emanates (204-5). By touch the hearts of humble, unlearned, the mere fact of recognising the division, we men. What he has to say owes nothing to know that "we are, and have always been established authority, except for his on both sides of the barrier" (231); and recognition of Jesus as supporter of the assuagement comes from the further side. lowly and humble. Powys rejects Jesus' The act does not involve other people; it is parables, which so often presuppose a an act of the lonely, individual self. I won- Divine Being of authoritarian quality, like der if there is any relation in Powys's doc- the dictators. Apart from such reservations, trine to Yoga, or to Zen Buddhism? Jesus delivered the one all-important Such is the way to mastery of the terrors; gospel. but not all terrors, since there are among Powys contends that, at times of pressure them sufferings we cannot face. Here we see such as the world was going through during the extent of Powys's realism. He is able to the War, we can see how and why the comfort us the better in that he recognises, British are standing up under their trials, what we all know in our hearts, that there which are the ubiquitous trials of human are things too awful to explain or even con- existence multiplied and raised to template; especially the torments in every staggering proportions. Against these, the age devised by man to inflict on man. What British stand for trust in the individual, then, are we to do about these? The answer is, humility, and a sense of humour. Religion to follow nature's way, and forget. Could at a crisis does not, in fact, help; but there anything be more simple? or anything more is help, nevertheless, arising from the lonely true? We must spend a great part of our individual self, or soul, in each one of us, lives in forgetting. No honour can be too however humble; and this self or soul is am- great to accord those who have given their phibious, living already, in part, in another lives to lessen human, or animal, suffering, dimension, beyond space and time. From but even they could not serve efficiently this source help is available. were their minds concentrating on the What is perhaps not so easy to accept is worst. his further insistence on how it happens. Now, whatever we think of all this, we Here he lays stress on what he calls "sen- can, I believe, accept much of it. We can all sation", by which he means the enjoyment agree that, in face of hardship and suf- of simple responses to the most ordinary fering, we are normally not as put out as we things of the external universe; to the might logically expect to be. We know, elements especially, but to other natural what Wordsworth calls {Michael, 11), and A Preface Composed: Translation of Mortal Strife 77 Powys often quotes, "the pleasure that always fall back on works of imaginative there is in life itself"; and that pleasure can power. Among these I like to record be trained. That it comes from some other another high-light of my boyhood: Sir Her- dimension, may be questioned, and yet, to bert Beerbohm Tree's production, before enjoy our life, as we do, even when it is the first World War, of The Darling of the bitter, seems to predicate a reality from Gods, a drama of old Japan by David beyond. Belasco and John Luther Long. The hero Such then are the powers Powys would Kara, leader of the Samurai, is separated enlist against all repressive regimes that from his love Yo-San. Their tragic story is would, by discipline, cut out the in- played out. After a thousand years of suf- dividual's soul-activities at the root. In op- fering Yo-San is saved from the lower cir- position , we are to rely on the more per- cles and moves up to meet Kara in The First sonal, and British, qualities, nearer to the Celestial Heaven. I can still visualise that thought of Jesus and to the humour of exquisite conclusion, and hear her voice Chaucer, Rabelais and Shakespeare; and crying "Kara! Kara!" as she ascends to Charlie Chaplin. The gospel claims to be a meet her lover. I have a souvenir of the wisdom supported by the great ones of our production with coloured pictures by race; for, despite his rejection of in- Yoshimo Mar kino. What with this play and tellectual superiority and support of the Typhoon, it would seem that Japan has humble, Powys's respect for genius is played a striking part in my early theatre- dominant; he sees it as speaking for all going experience. men, as individuals; and he might, and I In return, I now have the honour of in- think would, add, it speaks to what in them troducing Professor Hara's Japanese trans- is simple, ordinary, and even child-like. lation of Powys's Mortal Strife. I hope and These are, certainly, mysteries. Though expect that it will be a great success. It the truth of life beyond death, even when should be, since Powys is one of our very being reported by a Spirit speaking through greatest writers, and, in our time of trance-mediumship, has necessarily to be questing thought, his combination of creative couched for our understanding in terms ap- assurance and sceptical doubt has an plicable to this dimension and is to that ex- inexhaustible fascination and appeal. tent, we may suppose, falsified, yet we can

Notes

'The performance is discussed by Austin Brereton, 2Page numbers in parentheses in my text refer to 'H.B.' and Laurence Irving, London, 1922, pp. 192, the English edition of Mortal Strife, 1942. 200-1. T. J. Diffey

Poems for John Cowper Powys

i II The sea invades the littoral. And when they flung his ashes in the sea In comes the tide. from that high bank of shifting stones My father sees the thought occurred to me my scooped-out eyes, now he is severed from wife and child. doesn't understand Wrong. He travelled light. He travelled. distress that you Yes, he had a wife and child. can see and ease, We learn of them little, and far less great walker than of that very shingle say and being that watched his dust most free along go down in the sinking sea. esplanades and lanes. From him we learn You comprehend what it is to be a pebble sense and nonsense on a treacherous shore because you release or a green dock in a dry field, into hard stone fancies what every leaf and weed none too daft to weave. in hedgerow thinks. Let them laugh who can When he has taught for none shall stop the multiversal all your laughter how can death be noticed echoing on more than just tumultuous seas. a significant wave Can giants care of that daunting sea? if they look fools? They shake the mind of facts and open up this gardened universe to torrents tearing Ill that change the view of things. I look from tired eyes on the Gwynedd tree, and draw my strength from your eternal walking on hills, from your sermons generous to the weak sons of men. The future is not closed. The dark tree on the snow line in the movement of these words from spirit moving in the wind still has grown and is living still. You have widened out the bounds of thought, of life and of death. Poems for John Cowper Powys 79 IV harmlessness. Motionless they surround the hill Upon Deganwy Castle's levelled rocks whatever they are. lambs' cries Forget them now and flow wobble from precarious ledges over the rusting trees, where peace picks still-born April not telling green down in this sudden sun to come. from grey mist below. The flatness of the fields down there I fancy is parted by white roads. That is said for you, After Reading Powys on Hardy for all the roads have been We who presume to know macadamised long since. so much about poets, But the tracks to the sea who bandy 'Hardy thought this' are still mud stone white. with'Keatsfelt that', If reality is one, I think, and 'Browning did another thing', a nonsense that you are put to shame by your tact. in your multiverse Did he come by that falcon's glance had always fought against, strenuously, or was it his then the crows in motion natively endowed? I mean just above the ridge was the steadiness of his seeing could be regarded as deflected ever not by the emotions accidents in the same substance. we may too readily think were his, You'd prefer some other thought, say some local Merlin men of reason but by passions more private, did not know had stirred these birds, actions more secret ? hurled them, fired them This would be impudent to ask into the blazing but that the person he built aftermath of the sun. excludes all trace of palpable self. So that for this too we must admire him. A falcon is not much concerned VII with himself. In a man this is remarkable. A Visit to Burpham Along the road to Burpham VI I in excitement walked with my son to your village. Return to Wolstonbury Today this valley is wrung dry (a hill on the Sussex downs it is virtually by the unrelenting draining sun. certain that J. C. P. would have known) Clock bells upon the trying afternoon signal the movement of beasts I look with your eyes now. driven slow in the heat Last year I climbed this hill across dying pasture. I used my friend's. You join When we reached the place, us now friend who has passed forgive me this, I dared this way on the planet before us. to climb those banks To see what you have seen to see your house. is a need discovered. Confusion on the chalky top The hill top is ringed. rewarded me, for which was yours? They may be people at ease; Outbuildings, yards and parked cars people exploring; bushes were below. The house must have gone in the late light; in the intervening years. harmless monsters browsing, Yet from the tangled top sinister out of sheer of weeds unsurviving in the heat 80 Poems for John Cowper Powys there were some houses visible the language you'd prefer to hear. in the cooler plots beneath. "Hullo, fly! Don't hurt the grass." Which was yours I did not stay He knows the lessons there to find. I needed years to learn from you. Along the road to Burpham This knowledge he must forget my son chatters at my side and only maybe learn again.

G. M. Powys: Illustration to Llewelyn Powys, Rats in the Sacristry, 1937. Anthony Dyer*

William Powys: an appreciation

Will Powys was born in Montacute on the As a boy in Montacute he had always 3rd March 1888. He was the last of the chosen the same place for the family Powys brothers and his life was very dif- prayers. This was beside the book shelves ferent from the lives of any of the others. where Livingstone's Missionary Travels The reason for this lay deep in his character and Researches in South Africa stood in the and temperament, re-inforced by his glory of its fine red binding. Seventy years childhood at Montacute. Montacute was a later he gave me this book and told me that country village the centre of a farming and it was his daily peeping at that title that quarrying community where there was little decided him to go to Africa. In 1913 he sold conflict between academic and practical all the little he had at Witcombe and went matters. This set the course of his life. to Africa, because, he said, the temptation When he left school at Sherborne, after a to hunt with the Blackmoor Vale removed period at the Abbey Farm, he went to a him too much from his farm. I suspect that small farm at Witcombe, not far north of he craved a wider field and a greater Montacute and farmed there in those won- challenge to his adventurous nature. derful years of the last real peace between In Africa Will Powys found fulfilment in 1908 and 1913. a life that suited his temperament, and in a His time at Witcombe was idyllic. He was country that had a special need for a man a young giant in perfect health and living like him. For he was a pioneer in the com- the life of his own choice. His sister Lucy plete sense of the word. Although he could often came to keep house for him and his enjoy and savour his comforts as well, or eldest brother John was fascinated by the better than any man, he. could also do simple happiness that filled that farm cot- without those comforts and be completely tage. Will enjoyed each day with the intense content with conditions that would dismay love of everything that had come from his many people. He built up a fine farm in the father. No father could have given a son a wilderness and filled it with a magnificent finer inheritance, for Will Powys was never flock of Merino sheep that he bred up from bored for a moment in his life. Even within native stock. the drabness of a station platform or the For the years before the first World War bleakness of a hospital room he found and he worked as a farm manager. On the 5th saw and enjoyed details that are missed by of February 1915 he joined the East African less fortunate people. This interest in Mounted Rifles, but was soon detached everything from the shape of a pebble, the from them to go off to find cattle to feed the grain of the wood, the song of a blackbird, troops. This involved trekking right through the workings of a man's mind: kept his own Tanganyika and in to the Belgian Congo. mind constantly active. Just as some of the Seven hundred adventurous miles each greatest warriors did not know fear: so did way. One night while fishing for his supper Will Powys not know boredom. When this he was nearly swept into the dark river by rare nature was exposed to the beauties of the tail of a hungry crocodile. He was the country life the enjoyment was as decorated for these services by the Belgians, passionate as any of the passions given to man. *Anthony Dyer is the son-in-law of W. E. Powys. 82 William Powys: an appreciation and one day his diaries will tell us a fuller maids tumbling in the bracken of the Fairy story than his modesty has allowed us so Glade at that time of the year when the white far. flowers of the privet had turned rusty red, In one of his Dorset Essays, "Lyme and the lower bells of the fox-gloves were Regis", Llewelyn gives us a glimpse of Will already lost, and late summer flies were everywhere murmuring in the patched sun- during this period of his life. He writes, shine. Then with their heads full of old Dor- At one time during the Great War it was the set memories they would lie side by side until occupation of my brother Willie to collect waked by the punctual crowing of my cattle in the Congo and trek them down to brother's farmyard cock, his heart's delight, depots of the British troops then serving in which he carried along with him on all his German East Africa. Besides the natives he journeys through forest and plain, and which had one white man with him, a Dorset man on fine nights would invariably settle itself to whose employment it had been in the fat days roost on the spear of the tent-pole as though of peace to drive 'holiday fools' to and fro trying to simulate the brass vane on the top of between Axminster and Lyme Regis. During St. Catherine's Church at Montacute. the long equatorial nights my brother would While he was away in the war his elder often read out of his copy of William Barnes's brother Llewelyn looked after his job and poems, so that both he and his companion might be reminded of their homes; and when Will came back he found that the job sometimes this 'jolly postboy' would while' had changed to a more interesting one in away the time by describing to my brother the ranch management on an exciting scale. exact habits of a great grey gelding which Although Llewelyn did not share Wills's throughout the 'nineties had munched oats, love of Africa and was happy to be relieved damp and dry, in the stables of the Black of his farm work, he wrote about it and left Dog; or sometimes by recounting to him us Black Laughter as a memory of his stories of afternoons spent with buxom nurse- time there. In a foreword to this book his

(Photograph: W. E. Powys, 1977, by Anthony Dyer) William Powys: an appreciation 83 brother John wrote of Llewelyn: "And he technique is clear and consistent. His sister undoubtedly had the same penetrating eyes Gertrude set him on a course and she would for far and near landscapes, for birds and have been proud of his paintings of the last animals and natives, as is possessed by our ten years. African sheep farming brother William." His serious works are large landscapes of In 1925 Will Powys drew by ballot a the grand Kenya scenery and are a won- Soldier Settler farm, it was a lucky draw for derful combination of strength and sen- it was the perfect centre of what was to grow sitivity. There are also arresting portraits of into a wonderful mixed farm. This farm his brothers and sisters and of old African called Kisima is still farmed by his family, friends. and is a monument to his patient and con- The last years of his life were tempered by stant work. It is perhaps fortunate that he suffering and the frustration of being con- did not live to see the inevitable breaking up fined to a wheel chair. These years were of his life's work. It has not been divided yet long because he fitted so much into them into many small peasant farms, but is now and created more in that time than some almost surrounded by such plots, where people do in a life time. A description of a cabbages have replaced the grand flocks of normal day for him is a fitting tribute to sheep. those years. There was a wonderful lady in the life of He would be woken up well before dawn by Will Powys. She was born Elizabeth Cross the crowing of one of his farmyard cocks, then and after being decorated for her courage in he would blow one of a selection of whistles action in France she went to Kenya and also that sounded like bird calls to summon a drew a Soldier Settler farm. After ten years good and gentle servant to help him into trading and transporting with ox wagons his wheel chair. While he shaved, a kettle and developing several small farms she for tea would be brewing on a gas stove and came into a perfect marriage with Will he then drank tea and ate brown bread and Powys. There can have been few part- honey as he gazed through the window at nerships as happy as theirs. Wheresoever he the first of the dawn showing pink on his went: she went also. She gave him a beloved Mount Kenya. His dog Joey beside daughter Rose, and two sons, Charles and him and the smell of a horse coming Gilfrid. Their lives have been shared by through the window with the cold mountain their elder half-sister: Delia, whose father, breeze. Then off around the farm in a Land Alec Douglas, was Elizabeth's first Rover. He had a driver who was strong husband. Elizabeth did not live to suffer the enough to lift him in and out of the car and tragic death of Charles in an accident in who had absolute patience to stop while the 1964. Gilfrid farms in Kenya in the sketch book was rilled with whatever took tradition of his father and Rose still lives in Will's fancy. Will Powys was a farmer first the house where she and her brothers were and foremost. He could not understand born. how people could go away from their farms Will Powys was an artist. While at Wit- at weekends. Happiness for him was a combe he painted lively watercolours of leisurely Sunday spent going around his anything that interested him. A dozen small cattle and sheep; and it was a day wasted if paintings show us the very essence of the he did not look at his beloved stock. Blackmoor Vale hunts as seen through the The farm roads were rough and rocky, and fresh young eyes of an enthusiastic par- although the Land Rover carried a load of ticipant. In all his painting he worked to ballast to soften the ride, it was still a bone- record and share a personal memory. He shaking business and Will Powys was sure never painted to conform, or as an exercise. that this daily constitutional kept him fit The vivid imagination of much of his family and well. They would come in for breakfast was put onto canvas. As sixty years of pain- at nine or later and then the work of the day ting went by, the improvement in his would begin. He was a great letter writer 84 William Powys: an appreciation and his diary was seldom neglected. When easel. If he was too weak to do a his paper work was done he moved to his background, or his hand too shaky to paint easel and was very prolific. Apart from the a detail, he would call for Rose or one of his big landscapes he painted pictures of every men to take the brush and do the job. size: presents for his family and friends and Death is a major step in the career of an ar- little paintings the size of postcards which tist. While he lives his paintings are of would be posted to anyone he was writing to today, like a newspaper or a contemporary at the time. After lunch it was time to catch book. When the painter dies his work has a up with the news of the world and he new magic. It can never be repeated. Each scrupulously read the Daily Telegraph, the one is a triumph over time and decay. local Kenya paper, the Wool Record, The When his remains are dust the paintings Western Gazette and any Dorset magazines live on. For material things as they grow that came to him. He also found time to older have their own magic. His eldest read historical novels, the works of African brother wrote: "old walls, old water mills, explorers, and his brothers' books. Soon af- old farmsteads and bridges, old burying ter sundown he liked to have supped and grounds give to the contemplative gone to bed. imagination that poetic sense of human When he was 85 a ranch manager was on continuity, of generations following each leave and marauding lions killed some cat- other in slow religious succession, which is tle. He spent several nights sitting up all what the mind pines for, if it is to feel the night in his Land Rover guarding a gun full sense of its mortal inheritance." trap that he had set for the lions. And he did so with success for the first night one lion Will Powys was drawn to and treasured payed the penalty of eating cattle in the old things. He kept a roughly made little constant care of Will Powys. wooden cask, called an "Owl" that carried In the last years of his life Will Powys the mid-day cider of a farm labourer a cen- gave more and more of his huge love of all tury and a half ago. He saw magic in this that he saw to his painting. His paintings and through his eyes we saw it too. became gentler and showed less of the Will died peacefully in his own bed on the original primitive and impatient work of his 4th of October 1978. A few days before he earlier years. He painted to within a month had been out and around the farm and he of the end and whenever there was a frac- had held to his courage and humour until tion of energy to spare he would be at his the end. Reviews

The Second Mrs. Hardy, attached the highest value to genuine ROBERT GITTINGS AND JO friendship and loyalty. Too much is made M ANTON. of Florence Hardy's disenchantment with the literary life, and too little of her Heinemann, 1979, £5.50. competence as a writer and of her deep Others besides readers of Hardy will be interest in everything connected with Hardy grateful to the authors of The Second Mrs and his work. The account of her social Hardy, for it is the product of extensive work in Dorchester after his death is research, and is full of interest from first to especially valuable, and it affords excellent last. The second Mrs Hardy was the testimony to the assiduity which was typical daughter of an Enfield schoolmaster; she of all she undertook. worked hard and successfully as a pupil- The task confronting interpreters of teacher in his school, and her literary Florence's letters is unusually great. She aspirations were encouraged by an enter- can be informative to the point of indis- prising local journalist, A. H. Hyatt, whose cretion, and she is often subject to later publications included The Pocket emotional excesses. Subject most of her life Thomas Hardy, perhaps her first intro- to ill-health and depression, she probably duction to Hardy's works. Hyatt died in had less vitality than Hardy; she was unduly 1911, and it seems that if Florence was ever jealous and suspicious, and so alarmist in deeply in love it was with him. One of the temperament that she could lose all sense of most rewarding periods of her life of service proportion (as her reaction to Cakes and may have been her engagement in Dublin to Ale shows). Even so, Florence's personality the surgeon Sir Thornley Stoker, officially is judiciously and sympathetically assessed. as his secretary-receptionist, actually as a The Second Mrs. Hardy is compact, well companion to his mentally failing wife. For organized, attractively presented, and very her care and devotion she was generously readable; it tells the fascinating story of one rewarded in his will. Precisely how she first who had reason to write retrospectively of met Hardy and gave him secretarial "strange complications" and "unreal situ- assistance in London is not yet clear ("I ations" in her life. have known her for several years", he wrote F. B. PINION in 1909), but there now seems little doubt that she first visited Max Gate in 1910, on the invitation of Mrs Hardy, who met her at The Hollowed-Out Elder Stalk. John the Lyceum Club. Cowper Powys as Poet, Some interesting details are omitted from ROLAND MATHIAS. Florence's life with Hardy, who is not Enitharmon Press, 1969, £4.65 (hard always sympathetically presented. Rather back), £2.85 (paper back). too much is made of the extent to which Cakes and Ale refers to them. Somerset John Cowper Powys's publishing career as a Maugham's knowledge of Hardy was poet exactly coincides with that of limited, and most of it was second-hand Housman. The very late appearance of and well known. A quotation from the Lucifer in 1956 was a freak made possible novel is given as if it applies to Hardy, by a publisher of genius and integrity.1 though it appears inconsistent with all that Odes and Other Poems was published in we know from his life and works; having the same year as A Shropshire Lad (1896) known little affection in the later years of and Samphire in the same year as his life with the first Mrs Hardy, he Housman's Last Poems (1922). Powys, 86 Reviews therefore, began essentially as a poet of the verses was published. Like everyone else at 90s, of the so called "tragic generation". In the time, he could not escape the music of the Autobiography (1934) he referred Tennyson, even when he was reacting specifically to Dowson and Beardsley. His against it, and the influence is plain in Odes first book of poems appeared before Hardy and Other Poems and in Poems (1899). A offered to subsidize his own Wessex Poems rather more daring influence, which was to (1898), and his last in the year of Hardy's show in his writings to the end of his life, "Apology" for writing poetry "in this cen- was Wilde.5 The many references to tury of free verse",2 and when Hardy still pomegranates come from Wilde had two substantial volumes of his own (ultimately, one suspects, from "The Song kind of poetry to follow.3 In the same year, of Songs") and this fruit was a favourite 1922, The Waste Land was at last among poets of the 90s, as were lutes, flutes published in final and book form, and and viols.6 Another influence on J.C.P.'s Bridges had long been at work on the "Neo- early poems is of course the tradition of Miltonic Syllables" that, he said, offered English school verse. It never occurred to "their true desideratum to the advocates of J.C.P. that he should deliberately free him- Free Verse".4 Whether or not he knew it at self from such influences, for he had too the time, J.C.P. had put together his last much respect and affection for them. And collection of poems to be published before looking back we should probably be right in the strenuous theorizing about poetics got adding to them, ultimately, Barnes and under way, although it should not be Hardy of course, and also Watson and de la assumed that thereafter he immediately or Mare. In the 1950s and 1960s he was scan- ever gave up his interest in and impulses dalized when I told him that it was no towards verse composition. longer possible to talk about de la Mare's poetry in academic circles. De la Mare's first Mr Roland Mathias has painstakingly at- 7 tended to the hundreds of pages composed collection appeared in 1902, and J.C.P. in this period, and in addition has afforded regarded the poet as the natural inheritor of glimpses before and after. The history of Poe's mastery of word music. this output enables the reader to see it in its It will not be imagined that the eager em- time, and only when it has been looked at in braces of so many Muses did not at times this way does it become possible to reflect restrict J.C.P.'s poetry. On the whole, on the intrinsic value of the poems. This however, it is surprising how little harm was history is amusingly at odds with the record done, and even in his first volume one finds in J.C.P.'s Autobiography, in which he was materials that were to last him to the end of intent on heightening the Gothic and his days. grotesque aspects of life. His poetic begin- The first two volumes were indeed nings, in fact, were as orthodox as those of liberally sprinkled with personal and any of the offspring of a Victorian literary allegiances. Hardy, Yeats, Keats, vicarage—Scott, Milton, Longfellow, Lamb, Swinburne, Cowper, Shelley, Bunyan, Defoe, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Rabelais, Pater and the Bible are among Macaulay and the rest of the usual fare for the latter. Significantly, it was Yeats the such readers. "Keltic . . . Druid" who continued to count At Cambridge, on the other hand, J.C.P. for J.C.P., rather than the political "Yeats revelled in a freedom that allowed him to our contemporary".8 After these early explore more widely the poetry of lyrical outbursts, J.C.P. settled down to a predecessors and contemporaries. If one more sustained poem, Lucifer, which he names Keats and Poe, one quickly remem- completed in 1905. By that time, the Ten- bers that it was difficult to name a poet nysonian blank verse epic was no longer whose works he did not know. He respon- wanted and blank verse for the stage was ded enthusiastically to Jude the Obscure, coming to a sorry—if not quite deser- but that was before Hardy's first volume of ved—end in the hands of Stephen Phillips. Reviews 87 It was the wise Galsworthy who pointed out whether the irregularities were the outcome to Drinkwater that Shakespeare had made of intention or incompetence. A poet who the task impossible. took pains to achieve formal—sometimes For all that, Lucifer is a powerful poem. even mechanical—regularity in his twenties It is obviously Miltonic and, equally, a com- cannot seriously be suspected of in- pensation for J.C.P.'s work on Keats that competence in his forties. That old kind of was to come to nothing. In later life J.C.P. formalism had simply ceased to be a prime turned against Meredith, but here can be objective in his versification, and indeed we found find an interesting tension between the claims of his old "clever"15 self and his wish rank on rank, to be more flexible. The general impression The army of unalterable law.9 conveyed by the second of the war-time collections is that the affection for the old The point of the epic is that for the rhymes and metres was reasserting itself. salvation of the world this law simply has to The range of reference is just as be altered. Mr Mathias speculates that this multitudinous, but the torment about "Luciferousness"10 must have been hard for Dichtung und Wahrheit, appearance and J.C.P.'s father, the Vicar of Montacute, to reality, was in many ways settling into a concentrated and Hardyan concern with swallow. Yet, although J.C.P. reacted 16 emotionally against his father's "homely 'country matters'." It should not evangelicalism, going even as far as to iden- be forgotten, however, that J.C.P. belonged tify himself with Newman," he inherited to a generation for whom Nietzsche's from his father an instinctive sympathy with thinking had not been tarnished by the other side as surely as he inherited from association with fascism (nationalized his mother the will to endure. His father socialism), and that the preoccupation with may have been surprised by the inevitable "the little things" derives from a common consequences drawn from the position by European culture. Hardy, who wrote of his his eldest son, but in the Powysian context own works as a series of seemings and those consequences are as orthodox as unadjusted impressions, none the less com- J.C.P.'s thoughts on verse. posed The Dynasts. He also said that he In volume form, Powys's activities as a would not have ended that epic-drama on a writer of shorter poems were not revived un- hopeful note if it had been written after til ten years after the completion of Lucifer. 1914. The one poet who seems to have taken the measure of the disaster of that In the meantime, two great changes had 17 come about. Georgian poetry had year immediately was Masefield. J.C.P. established itself foursquare on the pillars continued crossing and re-crossing the of Hardy, Bridges, Yeats and Housman,12 Atlantic, but war reduced the demand for and war had broken out in 1914. J.C.P. his lecturing services so that he had more published in America two volumes of verse time for writing. Wolf's Bane came out in during the war, Wolf's Bane (1916)13 and March 1916 and Mandragora, a volume of Mandragora (1917), and one volume after 140 pages of verse, in September 1917. the war, Samphire (1922). As might be ex- Allowing for the inclusion of pieces com- pected, J.C.P. was not a man to disown his posed earlier, this still constitutes a steady past, and he remained the Dowson- output. Beardsley figure of the American lecture J.C.P. made one more poetic bid after halls that he described in the 14 the war with Samphire (1922). Again, these Autobiography. But the poems in these poems were not published in England until later volumes do none the less shift into the Kenneth Hopkins included all of them in mid-stream of the second decade of the his excellently chosen and introduced John twentieth century. The pieces become less Cowper Powys. A Selection From His formally regular, and Mr Mathias wonders Poems (1964). On the whole one inclines to 88 Reviews agree with Mr Hopkins that this, of all the employed, and not in Mr Mathias's han- volumes, should be represented in its com- dling of them. There is of course room for pleteness, although Mr Hopkins's belief wondering if a different emphasis here and that it is "the most satisfying of the three there would have been better. J.C.P., for in- [American] collections" may arise from his stance, like others, wrote stress verse before decision to include the volume uncut rather the publication of the first fullish collection than from the presence of new possibilities of Gerard Manley Hopkins's poems.23 He for the future in it. It should not be certainly treasured his copy of those poems, assumed, however, that after 1922 J.C.P. and he could have been aware of attempts did not "answer . . . impulses of verse".18 to put them forward as early as the 1890s. Such impulses remained his most direct Again, Mr Mathias speculates on the mode of expression and later poems are possibility of the influence of Masters's scattered in periodicals.19 It is a disap- Spoon River Anthology on J.C.P.'s poetry pointment to the present writer still that and finds it hard to discover evidence.24 We when he was working on J.C.P.'s papers in can be sure, however, that the effect of order to prepare an edition of The Collected masterpieces on J.C.P., as on Hopkins, was Poems of John Cowper Powys, it was to make him admire and imitate—and do discovered that Mr Hopkins was already otherwise. Still, Masters certainly accounts contracted to produce his Selection, so that for J.C.P.'s affectionate acceptance of the papers had to be returned. J.C.P. had Dylan Thomas. He had Thomas's poems, been pleased by some words written for the and Under Milk Wood runs very close to Society of Dorset Men.20 These were recast the Spoon River form. Perhaps too Mr as follows for a 90th birthday tribute: Mathias might have considered how com- patible J.C.P.'s poetry is with his prose. When the present writer composed "The for the truest understanding of the life and 25 work that went into the making of the roman- Style and the Man", he believed that ces the reader should go ... to his poetry . . . J.C.P. deserved rescuing from those who the poems bear the unmistakable sound of wrote of him as "one of the great sprawlers his poetic voice in the easy stride of their of literature"—J.C.P. was always eager to music ... he writes: "I rejoice to think how agree with anybody who uttered such an much I owe to [Horace's] use of that splendid 21 opinion—and left the matter there. It will word 'impavidum'". be clear from what has already been said that the present writer also believes that Those remarks would have to go into the J.C.P. should be rescued from those who past tense now, but having read J.C.P.'s would write him off as a "minor" poet. poetry over many years, having re-read it in J.C.P. was never a "minor" anything, and the light of Mr Mathias's book, and having, his poetry has the uniqueness and of course, had the benefit of studying that copiousness that go with greatness in book, I am more than ever anxious to literary affairs. Had he never written a resume work on the edition and only hope romance, critics would now be 'placing' that arrangements can now be made. him along the leading poets of his time. Mr Mathias pleads that "only in- That he should be shrugged off as an "ec- 26 termittent attention could be given" to his centric" who took no pains over com- task. Had he not said so no one would have position is an indictment of the society in known. The book is both perceptive and un- which we live rather than of J.C.P. Mr pretentious. The best work shows in Mathias's book, however, is a timely remin- detailed analyses of particular poems, and der that Powys's work is not only not ec- the excellence of these is such that there is centric, but is central to an experience of little to be said about them. Any short- the mainstream of our literary and cultural comings that may be found in these prac- traditions. tical criticisms are inherent in the methods BERNARD JONES Reviews 89

l6 Notes "Your Porphyries, Your Tapestries", Wolf's Bane, 1916. 'Eric Harvey. "See "August 1914", Philip the King and Other 2Late Lyrics and Earlier. Hardy subsequently drop- Poems, 1914. ped the words, "of free verse". "The words have been stolen from Edmund 'Human Shows, 1925, and Winter Words, Blunden, Poems of Many Years, 1957, and come published posthumously in 1928. from E.B.'s 'Preface', dated 1956. 'New Verse Written in 1921, 1925. "Some will be found in Norman Jeffares, ed. A 5Bernard Jones, ed. Letters from John Cowper Review of English Literature, 1963; Derek Powys to Glyn Hughes, 1971. Langridge: John Cowper Powys. A Record of 'The instruments derive ultimately from Poe, Achievement 1966; and Belinda Humfrey, ed. Essays although they were abundant in the poetry of the 90s. on J.C.Powys, 1972. 1Songs of Childhood. "Langridge, A Record of Achievement, p. 203. "Letters to Glyn Hughes. "Wolf Solent, J.C.P.'s 1960 "Preface", 1961. He '"Lucifer in Starlight" (1883). used the word in my hearing. The 90th birthday '"Letters to Glyn Hughes. tribute was, Bernard Jones, John Cowper Powys, "But note at the same time Newman's evangelical 1962. background. "None the less, he made the time—or had the 12None of these contributed to Marsh's anthologies luck—to give his book a witty, if over-cautious, title. of Georgian Poetry, which were meant to display the "Robert Bridges, ed., Poems of Gerard Manley work of younger writers. Hopkins, 1918. "The title page shows that the collection "See, however, J.C.P.'s 1953 "Preface" to A deliberately echoed Keats's "Ode on Melancholy". Glastonbury Romance. '"For a summary of J.C.P.'s pre-war lecturing "Belinda Humfrey, ed., Essays on J.C.P., 1972. career see Bernard Jones, ed., Romer Mowl and "Bernard Jones, ed., The Poems of William Other Stories by John Cowper Powys, 1974. Barnes, 1962. lsBelinda Humfrey, ed., Essays on John Cowper Powys, 1972, p. 320.

John Cowper Powys and David Jones: A material, but Powys had no direct acquain- Comparative Study, JEREMY HOOKER. tance with David Jones's work at all. The Enitharmon Press, 1979, £3.75 (hardback), comparison of the two authors, then, is not £2.25 (paperback). concerned with literary influences, but focusses mainly on themes that were of I must confess at the outset that my common interest to them. Jeremy Hooker acquaintance with John Cowper Powys is approaches these two very different writers embarrassingly slight. A friend generously with sympathetic honesty and personal gave me a copy of Porius some years back, engagement with their work, seeking to but I'm afraid its slow-moving ex- open each of them up rather than to score pansiveness prevented me from ever points. At the end of the book he notes with finishing it. Perhaps, however, ignorance surprise that many of his sensitive and does not wholly disqualify me from com- judicious comments have "suggested an ad- menting on Jeremy Hooker's short, but versely critical evaluation" of Powys and stimulating new book, since few potential cautions us against taking these as anything readers can be expected to have a full other than judgements conditioned by this knowledge of both J. C. Powys and David particular context. It is important to realize Jones, and since one function of such a that no assessment of a truly creative writer study is to encourage people to read things can ever be final or complete. Humility they do not know. rather than Olympian condescension is David Jones actually read Porius and what is required of the critic. It is apparent, Owen Glendower and responded ap- however, that some of the adverse criticism preciatively to Powys's knowledge of Welsh of Powys results from the traditionalism of 90 Reviews his writing and the fact that he "virtually within the timeless order of the Mass. But ignored the relationship between the rich period detail of Owen Glendower imagination and form", whereas David merely adorns a novel which succeeds, on a Jones was a bold experimenter and deeply massive scale, in projecting Powysian 'life- concerned with the structure, shape and illusions' onto mediaeval Wales". What we verbal texture of everything he wrote. have here is the difference between one man Within a fairly limited space Jeremy who draws the world into his own Hooker manages to look briefly at several fascinating subjectivity and ideas and themes shared by the two writers—the idea another who tries to exclude all purely per- of a geographical borderland, the im- sonal details. "... the critic's relationship portance of the female principle, the to Powys is a curiously intimate one, partly recurrent use of water imagery, the because it exposes, appeals to, and question of order, the approach to assuages what is equally vulnerable in the mythology, the reaction against the critic. But he is kept at a distance by David dehumanizing forces of technology. In this Jones's work; there, it is the objective review it is impossible for me to take up the existence of a world of signs which he con- many suggestive comments that he makes templates, not a reflection or portion of the on various aspects of the two writers' work. author's autobiography". My copy of the book has several passages Despite the critical judgements Powys's marked for their crisp formulation of con- novels do come over as richly orchestrated trasts between them. Clearly of major in- works, drawing deeply on mythological and terest is the exploration of Welsh material symbolic categories, but it seems possible by two men of genius who were both that Powys's world, through the author's comparative outsiders to Wales (and who assimilation of history and myth into him- are both still regarded as outsiders by self, may stand or fall with the reader's ac- the English literary establishment). ceptance or rejection of his own philosophy Here Jeremy Hooker very cogently works rather than with the nature of his literary out the differences between them, Powys art. Nevertheless, there is enough of using Welsh history and tradition as a positive and varied enjoyment in Jeremy means of expressing his own powerful con- Hooker's analysis of Powys for me to believe ceptions, David Jones being painstakingly that I should go back to Porius and have careful to recapture the past as something another go at it. objectively real and different from the Readers of both J. C. Powys and David present. "The historical details of The Jones will find sensitive and illuminating Anathemata retain the integrity of their criticism in this book. proper cultural and temporal contexts DAVID BLAMIRES Letters to the Editor

Mappowder. not a work by T. F. Powys I didn't give it 12th July 1979 a full description in the bibliography of The Editor, my thesis on T.F.P., but only listed it The Powys Review among works about T.F.P. The entry "Conversations with Theodore"? Powys, Llewelyn, "Convers- Dear Belinda Humfrey, ations between Llewelyn and Theodore kept in a notebook by I feel rather like Wordsworth writing to Llewelyn in the Summer of 1931" the Editor on the subject of the mutiny on Unpublished typescript, copied by the Bounty (Mary Moorman's Life, Vol. I, Alyse Gregory. page 299). But may I put in a question mark and enter a caveat? The copy in Dorset County Library was I think serious students of Theodore made by me from this original typescript, Powys should treat the "Conversations with which was, I think, among the mass of Theodore" (Powys Review 4) with reserve. T. F. Powys manuscripts owned by Francis The writing has an air of concoction—of Powys, and therefore now at the Library pastiche—based no doubt on some of the University of Texas. (I'm pretty "sayings" of Theodore jotted down on sure of this, though I didn't record the occasion by Llewelyn with a certain amount provenance of the typescript.) Probably of lacing from another source. I have this is the only format in which the text examined the typescript at the Dorchester survives; if there is a holograph Library. It is unsigned and carries no manuscript (the "notebook") it should indication of its source or acknowledgement be among Llewelyn's manuscripts where- of who is responsible for the selection and ever they are. "editing". One would like to see a facsimile It is difficult to remember so far back in Llewelyn's own handwriting. (to c. 1965), but I think that the information that the Ts was copied by Gerard Casey Alyse Gregory was given to me by Francis Powys, and was not indicated on the Ts Editor's Comment itself. I don't anyway think I would have In response to a telephone call from included the fact in the thesis bibli- Gerard Casey preliminary to the above ography if I weren't convinced it came letter, I wrote to the bibliographer of T. F. from a reliable source. Powys, Peter Riley, who had placed the To my knowledge the text was read typescript entitled "Llewelyn Powys, apart from myself, by Francis & Sally Conversations with Theodore, 1931" in the Powys, and Drs M. Buning of Dorset County Library. With his Amsterdam University in the mid-60s, permission, I will quote from Peter Riley's and no one at that time thought to reply to me. (A copy of Peter Riley's letter suspect it. I haven't got a copy and don't was sent to Gerard Casey before he sent me remember its contents very well, but I his "caveat" above.) know it didn't clash noticeably with any other T.F.P. material I came across while I was writing my thesis, and I saw Thank you for your letter. Unfortun- no reason to think it spurious at that ately I can't give you much information time. about Llewelyn's Conversations with * * * Theodore, for the reason that, since it is Some previously unpublished Powys 92 Letters to the Editor writing has been presented in each Powys fascinating variety of his character. In her Review since the first, and it is hoped that privately recorded view, at this time he this practice will be maintained for as long could be "at one moment as deep sunk in as worthwhile material is available. The his penetrating and inspired pessimism as placing of the "Conversations with any Schopenhauer, the next prophetic as Theodore" was not entirely casual. It made Christ, and again as malicious and prejud- the text available following a reference to it iced as any back door village woman". She in Peter Riley's article, "T. F. Powys at continued (in this recording of September Mappowder" in the previous Review, 1932), "He and L. always have a glass of Number 3. Moreover, the text was printed rum and milk after tea and his forebodings next to T. F. Powys's story "No Wine", in and torments melt away and he becomes order to give perhaps a more balanced the most charming and responsive of impression of a certainly complex man and companions." (When Alyse Gregory first writer. I published the "Conversations", met Theodore Powys in 1926 he appeared to while indicating that the text came from a her alienated by his "life-long prejudice "typescript" rather than a manuscript, against women": which was not, it appears, because it reads to me as a genuine record, the first impression received by Sylvia though it is rough and probably was not Townsend Warner.) Whether Alyse intended for publication as it stood. The Gregory's or Llewelyn's recordings of "Conversations" is more roguish, but it has conversations with Theodore would be the something of the flavour of Llewelyn's more truly revealing or the more accurate recordings of Theodore in Skin for Skin may only be speculated. They should only (1926) which were edited by Llewelyn be considered as part of a total portrait. himself from journals kept during some Alyse Gregory's remark about Llewelyn in months spent with Theodore at East 1946 (when Malcolm Elwin's Life of Chaldon late in 1911. Llewelyn, of course, Llewelyn Powys was published) might also in recording conversations after the event, be said of Theodore: "Everyone that writes might have slanted them according to his of him presents him refracted through his own views which were in many ways largely own temperament". different from Theodore's. Also, with his The "Conversations" are between two journalist's eye of 1931-2, he may have brothers. It appears that Theodore was enjoyed dramatising, even sensationalising, capable of conversing with one of his his jotted memories. brothers in a way which he believed would If Alyse Gregory typed up Llewelyn's please that brother; apparently he played a work, she may have done some "editing" part to other visitors too, while, no doubt, herself, though the faulty punctuation of preserving his own integrity. In addition to the piece suggests an attempt at hasty this, the years 1931-2 appear, at least preservation rather than a leisurely to an outsider, to have been years of trans- polishing of the original. Alyse Gregory did ition for Theodore Powys which might have edit her own journals when typing them, affected his conversation. He had but this usually involved slight recently given up writing, suffered the abbreviation, a tidying, rather than any shock of a son's death in Africa, and was to falsification or sensationalising. (I am adopt a baby daughter. I still incline to grateful to Rosemary Manning for allowing regard the "Conversations" as the work of me to see large portions of the variant Llewelyn Powys alone. Yet, as one who versions of the Gregory journals.) If Alyse knows the Powyses by word only and is Gregory did type up Llewelyn's "Convers- grateful for information, opinion and ations" in 1932, she did so in the year in advice from those who knew them in person which she had discovered her own deep very well, I am glad of the warning from affection and reverence for Theodore Powys Mappowder and I acknowledge that it and was writing in her journals about the should be taken as valuable. NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

DAVID BLAMIRES is a lecturer in German at the Other Stories by John Cowper Powys, 1974, and he University of Manchester. He is the author of David has published numerous articles on nineteenth and Jones: Artist and Writer, Manchester U.P., 1971, twentieth century writers. and editor of the David Jones Society Newsletter. G. WILSON KNIGHT, Professor Emeritus of Leeds MARTYN BRANFORD is the Chief Cataloguer, University, was previously Chancellor's Professor of Mid Glamorgan County Library. He has published English, Trinity College, University of Toronto poems and articles on John Clare and Gary Snyder in (1931-41) and Professor of English Literature, Leeds Samphire magazine. University, 1946-62. His publications include auto- biography (Atlantic Crossing, 1936), biography GLEN CAVALIERO, a member of the Faculty of (Jackson Knight, 1975), poems (Gold-Dust, 1968) English at the University of Cambridge, is the author and a play (The Last of the Incas, 1954). His many of John Cowper Powys, Novelist, O.U.P., 1973, The critical works, from 1930 to the present, include the Rural Tradition in the English Novel, 1900—1939, following: The Wheel of Fire; The Imperial Theme; Macmillan, 1977, and A Reading of E. M. Foster, The Christian Renaissance; The Starlit Dome; Macmillan, 1979. Laureate of Peace; The Golden Labyrinth; Lord CAROLE COATES obtained a Ph.D. for a thesis on Byron s Marriage; The Sovereign Flower; The John Cowper Powys at the University of Exeter in Saturnian Quest; Shakespearean Production; 1976. She teaches part-time for the Open University. Shakespeare and Religion; Byron and Shakespeare; HARRY COOMBES is the author of Literature and Neglected Powers; Vergil and Shakespeare; Criticism, Chatto and Penguin, 1953 et seq., Edward Shakespeare's Dramatic Challenge. Thomas, Chatto, 1956 & 1973, T. F. Powys, Barrie & CHARLES LOCK is doing postgraduate research on Rockliff, 1960, Critical Anthology: D. H. Lawrence, John Cowper Powys at the University of Oxford. Penguin, 1973, and English Literature Made Simple, F. B. PINION is the author of A Hardy Companion, W. H. Allen, 1977. A Commentary on the Poems of Thomas Hardy, T. J. DIFFEY is a lecturer in Philosophy at the Thomas Hardy: Art and Thought, A Jane Austen University of Sussex. Since 1977 he has been the Companion, A Bronte Companion, and A. D. H. editor of The British Journal of Aesthetics and since Lawrence Companion (all published by Macmillan). 1967 he has published articles on aesthetics regularly He is the editor of The Thomas Hardy Society in the British Journal, the Journal of Aesthetics and Review. Art Criticism and Ratio. MICHEL POUILLARD is a lecturer in English at the ANTHONY DYER married W. E. Powys's daughter University of Aix-en-Provence. He obtained his Rose in 1958. He managed "Kisima", the home farm doctorate at the University of Grenoble in 1978 with a in Kenya for many years. From 1966 to 1977 he was thesis entitled "T. F. Powys (1875—1953). La President of the East African Professional Hunter solitude, le doute, l'art". Association, of which he has recently published a SYLVIA TOWNSEND WARNER (1893—1978) is History. He has also written a work on Classic best known for her early novel, Lolly Willowes, 1926, African Animals and is at present working on but for over fifty years she was the author of a steady biographies of four pioneers in East Africa. stream of highly wrought, remarkable novels and BERNARD JONES is the editor of The Poems of short stories, accompanied by some poetry, criticism William Barnes, Centaur and Southern Illinois and biography. A list of her principal works is given University Press, 1962, The Letters of John Cowper at the end of Glen Cavaliero's "appreciation" of her Powys to Glyn Hughes, 1970, and Romer Mowl and achievement. PETER EATON

LILIES, WEEDON, Large stock of antiquarian and second-hand AYLESBURY, BUCKS books in 35 rooms. By appointment: 10 a.m.—5 p.m. Monday—Saturday Telephone: Whitchurch 393 or 01-727 5211 and

80 HOLLAND PARK AVENUE Antiquarian and second-hand books in LONDON. W.ll beautiful custom-built premises. 10 a.m.—5 p.m. Monday—Saturday Holland Park Tube Station 01-727-5211 TWO LIMITED FIRST EDITIONS ENGLISH LITERATURE

ALYSE GREGORY: The Cry of a Gull, Journals 1923—1948, edited by Michael Adam, with a tribute by Evelyn Hardy, and illustrations by Alan Richards: £6.30 + 50p postage.

LLEWELYN POWYStSo Wild a Thing, Letters to Gamel Woolsey edited as a narrative by Malcolm Elwin, with illustrations by Peter Reddick: £6.30 + 50p postage. \ ERIC SC JOAN STEVENS Send two 9p stamps for profusely illustrated brochure of these, and other books by D. H. Lawrence & others. 74 Fortune Green Road, West Hampstead, London NW6 1DS THE ARK PRESS: 01-4357545 Mousehole, Cornwall. after 6 p.m. 01-794 5013

BRIDGE CONACHAR Antiquarian & Modern Booksellers

For Bell, Booh SRadmall XEPowys MODERN FIRST EDITIONS always try 80 Long Acre, London WC2E9NG BRIDGE

Tel: 01.2402161 CONACHAR 01-836 5888 StDavid's Bridge A large selection of books by the Cranbrook,KentTN173HJ Powys brothers always in stock. Tel:Cranbrook3683 Write for our latest free catalogues: Literature Modern Poetry heffers Heffers Booksellers

20 Trinity Street Cambridge England CB2 3NG

Gomer Press Llandysul, Dyfed,

SA44 4BQ REBEL'S PROGRESS Tel. (055932) 2371 Tom Earley Poems worth a place on anyone's bookshelf. Although SNIPE'S CASTLE the author has lived in Bloomsbury London for many Roland Mathias years, the successful poet never forgets his origins, The fifth collection of verse by an author with and some of his best work harks back to his boyhood genuine talent and an individual voice. He treats in South Wales He is a sensitive and accomplished his own experience most readily when he can place poet. them quite firmly in the remembered past. A sensitive Case bound E2.25 82pp. artist who handles words like a craftsman of genius ISBN 0 85088 521 3 Case bound C2.00 87pp. ISBN 0 85088 741 0 LIFE FUND Anthony Conran LOOK CHRIST Life Fund is the poet's fourth collection of poems. Philip Owens It is in three sections. The first is devoted to This volume, a selection of poems written in the Performance Poems' designed for quasi dramatic period 1974 1978, derives its unity from the poet's production at mixed media events, and dating from professional activity as a priest and is concerned the sixties The second and third sections are centrally with the theology of Suffering. A genuine devoted to new poems, written since 1971 and poet, with something significant to say, which is both many of them develop the use of poems as gifts for personal and urgent. specific individuals on specific public occasions. Limp-cover £1.00 47pp. Case bound C2.75 120pp. ISBN 0 85088 601 5 ISBN 0 85088 651 1 "When it is a matter of enduring those various discomforts that the Janus-faced First Cause inflicts upon all the children of men it would seem that Rabelais and Cervantes and Shakespeare and Dickens are in complete accord with 'our common and garden' individual as to the most effective human weapon wherewith to ward off the darts of the evil one. This weapon is the comedy-spirit in him. his incorrigible awareness of the humorous aspect of people and things."

John Cowper Powys, Mortal Strife, p. 12.

VILLAGE PRESS First Floor 110 Kings Road Chelsea, SW 3 ISSN 0309-1619

AREADINGOF E.M.PORSTER GLENC/MVLIERO

Since the death of E.M. Forster in 1970 his books have been of increasing interest to a wide reading public. A Reading of E.M. Forster by Glen Cavaliero is a major new critical work which investigates the richness of Forster s achievement justifying this popular acclaim. The author considers Forster's novels and tales in the light of what is known about his life and background, and traces his development from the young Edwardian novelist to the influential humanist writer and spokesman he became in later years. Dr Cavaliero, poet and critic, is the author of John Cowper Pov/ys: Novelist and The Rural Tradition in the English Novel. August 1979. £ 10-00, about 224pp, 216x138,0333 23755 2 For further information on this book and/or a copy of our catalogue please write to Macmillan Press, 4 Little Essex Street, London WC2R 3LF MACMILLAN ! PRESS

Gomer Press