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.