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A Visit to The National Library of Wales

Supplement to Powys Checklist & Readers’ Guide 2010

TFP The Voice of God by Michael Kowalewski

JCP OWEN GLENDOWER The Seen and the Unseen by P.J. Kavanagh

First Powys Lecture in Ireland

DUCDAME

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

(Reprinted by Faber Finds)

The Brothers Powys

by Richard Powys Graves

W.J. Keith

‘A Glastonbury Romance’ Revisited  

H.W. Fawkner

John Cowper Powys and the Soul

 Contact the Society here  

February 2012 The following additions to Chris Thomas's A Powys Webliography:   University of California at Los Angeles (Henry Miller papers – Finding Aid): http://cdn.calisphere.org/data/13030/z6/tf9t1nb6z6/files/tf9t1nb6z6.pdf Correspondence from JCP to Henry Miller(1950-1959)   University of California at Los Angeles Library: http://www.library.ucla.edu/ Original correspondence between Llewelyn Powys and Louis Wilkinson. plus other updates.   January 2012   JOHN GRAY will present a talk on JOHN COWPER POWYS at this year’s Oxford Literary Festival.   Event: The Sunday Times OXFORD LITERARY FESTIVAL Date:  4:00pm | Saturday 24 March Venue: Christ Church: Blue Boar Duration: one hour   "Political philosopher and author John Gray champions the work of 20th-century novelist, philosopher, lecturer, and poet John Cowper Powys. The literary quarterly Slightly Foxed aims to revive interest in forgotten books and authors and Gray was commissioned to write about John Cowper Powys for the Spring issue. John Gray is emeritus professor of European thought at the London School of Economics. He now writes full time, is the author of Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, The Immortalization Commission: The Strange Quest to Cheat Death and many other books, and is one of Britain’s most talked-about thinkers and philosophers." http://oxfordliteraryfestival.org/events/detail/slightly-foxed-presents-john-gray-on-john-cowper-powys   TWO POWYS DAYS for 2012 ELY, Saturday 31 March Our President, Glen Cavaliero, will lead a discussion of JCP’s novel Owen Glendower focusing on Chapter XII Mathrafal. The meeting will be held at the Old Fire Engine House, 25 St Mary’s Street, a restaurant and art gallery in the centre of Ely near the cathedral. Welcome and coffee, in the upstairs sitting room, is at 10.30am. We will commence our discussion at 11.00am. Lunch will be served downstairs in the restaurant from 12.00pm to 13.00pm. After a short comfort break we will reconvene to continue our discussion in the afternoon. Owen Glendower, written between 1937 and 1939, was first published in the USA in 1941 and in the UK in 1942 and is considered by many commentators to be one of JCP’s most accomplished works especially in his evocation of its physical setting, and the time period of the early fifteenth century. Owen Glendower, however, does not seem to be as widely read as JCP’s other ‘Wessex’ novels. Our discussion will attempt to draw out the key features and achievements of the book including the novel’s genesis, its role in JCP’s life at a key period, its relationship to his attitude to Wales and Welsh culture, his imaginary depiction of the character of the real Owen Glendower, his view of Welsh history and mythology, as well as his handling of the conventions of the historical ‘romance’, narrative and the historical novel. Owen Glendower was most recently reprinted in a modern edition with an introduction by Morine Krissdottir by Overlook Press in 2003. A useful introduction and overview of the novel can be found in Professor Keith’s Aspects of Owen Glendower, published by the Powys Society in 2008.    The event is free although a charge will be made for lunch which is optional. For details of menu choices for lunch and prices please visit the web site of the venue at: http://www.theoldfireenginehouse.co.uk/ DORCHESTER, Saturday 9 June At the Dorset County Museum, Dorchester, in the library, at 10.30am for 11.00am start. Members are invited to bring their favourite Powys book or books, read selected passages, and discuss the significance or personal relevance of their choices with others at the meeting. After lunch, at 2.00pm, Frank Kibblewhite will present a talk, postponed from last year, on T F Powys and Llewelyn Powys (further details on this talk will be posted very shortly). The Powys Society Collection, housed in the Dorset County Museum, will be open during the meeting. At the close of the meeting we will visit a place of local Powysian interest. Coffee and refreshments will be available during the day. Lunch will be from 13.00pm to 14.00pm at No. 6 restaurant, North Square. The event is free with the exception of optional lunch. Anyone interested is very welcome to join both events. If you wish to attend these meetings please notify Secretary by e-mail at chris.d.thomas@hotmail.co.uk or by post to Flat D, 87 Ledbury Road, London W11 2AG.   November 2011   Descents of Memory The Life of John Cowper Powys by Morine Krissdottir Hardback 480 pages Illustrated  1585679178 | 9781585679171 is currently available at £9.99 instead of the published price of £25.00 from Postscript Books: http://bit.ly/u3vksl (this link will open in a new window). T. F. Powys, an English Tolstoy?  by Michael Caines (Times Literary Supplement: October 21 2011, No. 5664) Read the full article here. New Treasurer October 2011 Anna Pawelko has taken on the role of Hon. Treasurer and we extend a warm and grateful welcome to her.     Florence Hardy ‘Well, I had a perfectly lovely time with Thomas Hardy. Isn’t it amazing? He was 78 last 2 June. I rather like his little wife – about 33 she looks, like a grave ascetic art student or a Chelsea socialist, follower of William Morris, not a society person and not a naughty little girl – grave, my dear, very grave! rather like a hospital nurse – her hair parted Madonna-wise and a very responsible air.’  (John Cowper Powys to Llewelyn Powys, Summer 1918)   Monday, November 7: the publication of FLORENCE Mistress of Max Gate by Society member Peter Tait.     The 2011 Powys Society Conference Friday 19 August to Sunday 21 August Hand Hotel in Llangollen   Speakers include: Patrick Wright, (author of The Village That Died For England and, more recently, Passport to Peking) on Llewelyn Powys; Jeremy Hooker, (author of John Cowper Powys, Writers in a Landscape and Imagining Wales) on Gerard and Mary Casey; Stephen Batty on the work of T F Powys and Jonas Aagaard, from Denmark, on John Cowper Powys. Additionally, a programme of guided walks and visits to places of historical interest with Powysian associations and on Saturday evening there will be a reading of Mr. Weston's Good Wine, adapted for voices by Kate Kavanagh. Registration for the Conference has now closed but if you require further information please contact either Louise de Bruin (01258 817825) or Anna Pawelko (e-mail: anna.pawelko@ntlworld.com). Further details about the venue can be found here: http://www.hand-hotel-llangollen.com.     Saturday, August 13th: The LLEWELYN POWYS Birthday Walk and Dandelion Club annual gathering meeting at The Sailor's Return around noon. All welcome  Tom Bates aka Neil Lee-Atkin writes: 'With Llewelyn's birthday falling on a Saturday this year we anticipate a bumper gathering at East Chaldon on August 13th. Five members of the Dandelion Club are coming down with me, and we've booked into the George Hotel in Weymouth for three nights from Thursday 11th; hoping to spend a couple of days exploring the White Nose, Undercliff, Rat's Barn, and old Llewelyn haunts along the coast.' His new address is 1 Church Hill, Spridlington, Market Rasen, Lincolnshire LN8 2DX, 'phone 01673 860535. For further information, please email: revneildatkin@sky.com     A LETTER CONCERNING THE FUTURE OF THE SWEDISH JOHN COWPER POWYS SOCIETY   I have had the pleasure to function as Chairman for the Swedish John Cowper Powys Society – John Cowper Powyssällskapet – during two periods; from the beginning in 1999 to 2004, and then again from 2005 to 2011. Most of the Swedish members live in the Stockholm area, but even if I myself am located in the South, in Lund, I think I have a fair overview of the society and its members. The task as Chairman has always been facilitated by the fellow members and the Board, and for several years by our Honorary Chairman and Founder, the late Sven Erik Täckmark. There are many happy memories that we can share with each other, and there has indeed been a lot of good work done for the promotion of John Cowper Powys and his books. The important outcomes are of course our bilingual newsletter, the Swedish editions of The Meaning of Culture and The Autobiography, and all the conversations we have had, when gathered in Sven Erik’s little flat in Stockholm or at other places, or by telephone and by mail, now mostly electronically delivered. But it is a fact that the activities have diminished lately. It has been hard to arrange meetings and run the ordinary society errands and even to collect the members fee. One of the reasons could be that Sven Erik no longer is the natural epicentre and source of energy for us; in fact the last time the Swedish Powysians were gathered in some numbers was at the funeral service for Sven Erik. Be that as it may, but several of us have discussed how to start anew and find new forms for our interest in John Cowper Powys. That is why the members at the last annual meeting, June 11th in Stockholm, voted and finally confirmed a change, proposed by the Board. What we want to do is to reorganise our society into a more informal one; thus letting go of Board functions as e. g. Treasurer, and also giving up the efforts to fund our activities with members fees. Instead we are working towards what in Swedish is called  ”vänförening”, i. e. ”a union of friends”. If you wish to continue to support the promotion of Powys in Sweden you are hereby invited to join the new Swedish John Cowper Powys Society; we will not change the name of our society, nor the goals of it, but formally it will from now on have the character of an informal network, hopefully with a nexus in our website: http://www.bjorner.com/powys.htm   For  further information, please contact me at: Lars_Gustaf.Andersson@litt.lu.se or by ordinary mail: Lars Gustaf Andersson, Plåtslagarevägen 8, SE-227 30 Lund, Sweden   Best wishes,  Lars Gustaf Andersson July 27th 2011   Two Powys Days for 2011   BRIGHTON, Saturday 14 May The Friends Meeting House, Ship Street, Brighton. 2pm.  Terry Diffey, Emeritus Reader in philosophy at the University of Sussex, in Conversation with Timothy Hyman, distinguished painter, art critic and Chairman of The Powys Society.  Their conversation will discuss current ideas about the aesthetics of the human and natural world, with particular reference to the novels and other works of John Cowper Powys. (Click on the photo to obtain directions.) Followed at 7.30 pm, in association with the Brighton Festival Fringe, 'Powys in Sussex', a programme celebrating John Cowper Powys and his time in Sussex, with readings and new musical compositions by Robert Carrington and the Pastores Ensemble inspired by Powys's works. There is no charge for the afternoon discussion but a small cover charge for the evening event.  Webpage here. Everyone is welcome to both events. Please contact the Secretary if you wish to attend either or both events. E-mail to chris.d.thomas@hotmail.co.uk or write to: Chris Thomas, Flat D, 87 Ledbury Road, London W11 2AG DORCHESTER, Saturday 11 June Dorset County Museum. 10.30 am THE LONG HOT EDWARDIAN SUMMER: LLEWELYN IN 1911 A talk by Peter Foss, the Society's Vice-Chairman and Llewelyn Powys's bibliographer. 2.00 pm  A POWYSIAN BOATING TRIP ON THE THAMES A talk by Stephen Powys Marks. There will be an opportunity for discussion, refreshments and a visit to Wolfeton Housea (a place of local Powysian interest). There is no charge for this event except lunch which is optional.           The aesthetics of the human and natural world with special reference to the novels and other works of John Cowper Powys' Terry Diffey, Emeritus Reader in philosophy at the University of Sussex, in Conversation with Timothy Hyman, distinguished painter, art critic and Chairman of The Powys Society.  Chris Thomas with Terry Diffey & Timothy Hyman at the Friends Meeting House, Brighton, on May 14th 2011. Webpage here.    2010   Nov. 22nd 2010 - First Lecture on John Cowper Powys in Ireland Read more ...   Nov. 2010 - THE BEST FIVE BOOKS ON EVERYTHING Steven Amsterdam author of Things We Didn’t See Coming has recommended one of John Cowper Powys’ books, WOLF SOLENT, as one of the best five on his subject – Worry.   “Powys was one of 11, several of whom also published, and was an extremely sensitive soul. He was born in the 1870s, which meant he suffered the shocks of a new noisy century when he was old enough to worry properly. His medium was more existential angst and self-doubt, offering an antithesis to Whitman’s universe-embracing enthusiasm.” To read the full article visit the FIVE BOOKS website here   ~ * ~ In A Hotel Writing-Room – John Cowper Powys’ finest poem? A nomination here      Hampstead meeting - Saturday 23rd October 2010  Autumn Meeting of the Powys Society Saturday 23 October 2010 at 2pm Friends Meeting House. 120 Heath Street, Hampstead, London NW3 1DR   A discussion of John Cowper Powys’s novel DUCDAME    Ducdame, first published in 1925, is usually discussed alongside Powys’s other early fiction. But Ducdame is also a novel that can confidently stand on its own. It includes some of Powys’s best and most exuberant descriptions of the natural world as well as some of his most luminous prose. Glen Cavaliero describes Ducdame as “...an undeservedly neglected elegy for the romantic spirit”. Wilson Knight thought Ducdame notable for its remarkable evocations of transfigured and “etherealised” landscapes. It is also notable for Powys’s evocations of earth-nature as well as for Powys’s use of striking images and symbols. There is a much greater sense in Ducdame, perhaps, than in any of Powys’s other novels, of the fecundity of nature. “We have here”, said Wilson Knight, “an unusually varied .... assortment of .... all that Richard Jeffries meant by ‘wood magic’.” Powys exhibits in Ducdame an intense Wordsworthian sensitivity to location, and history, “rarest of rarities of our race consciousness”. The inspiration for the novel no doubt came from a deeply felt longing to return to familiar places in England at this time: “I hate San Francisco”, he wrote in a letter shortly before starting the book, “there’s nowhere to walk into the country. I long for real Spring flowers.” Although the plot of Ducdame is thin the human drama and the characters are vividly realised and Powys employs his unerring psychological acuity to great effect especially in his delineation of the dilemma of the leading character Rook Ashover. There are fewer characters than in Powys’s other novels. It is a work conceived on a small scale. Powys may have been aided in this by Llewelyn to whom he read the book “chapter by chapter” and who persuaded him to make many changes including perhaps references to Rook’s brother Lexie, “the life amorist, the worshipper of the sun and the sweet air”. Other members of the Powys family make an appearance: Powys’s mother, Theodore, Marian, Margaret, Phyllis and Powys’s son are all present. The extraordinary meeting between Rook and the ghostly youth on horseback, his unborn child, near the end of the novel seems to hint at something Powys wanted to say about his feelings for his own son: “He’s beautiful like an angel...I think he is very like Alyosha”. We will look especially at Chapter XIX of Ducdame which Glen Cavaliero calls “one of the finest things in all of Powys’s fiction” and examine the means Powys uses to achieve a sustained meditation on the unity of Man and Nature. The intense concentrated focus in this chapter on the physical act of walking, the detailed interrelationship between character and landscape and the fluctuating consciousness of Rook absorbed in “earth obsessed intuitions”, suggests a possible “green” or eco-critical reading of Powys’s descriptions of “mystic ecstasies”. We will try to elucidate the mysterious meaning of Powys’s Shakespearean riddle - Is it nonsense, word-play, a charm or a spell, or does it hide a deeper meaning? We will explore Powys’s use of mythological themes, his Pyrhonnic scepticism, the existence of a mystic fourth dimension, “beyond the difference between space and time”, and philosophical ideas about the twin forces of creation and destruction in the process of “cosmic unravelling” announced by Rook’s nemesis , William Hastings. We will discuss whether the ending of the novel is a failure for Rook or “the ultimate sensation he craved”, a “token” or “signpost in the night”. The dedication of the novel to, “Kwang-Tse or Khi-Yuan”, reminds us of the dominant influence of Taoism on Ducdame and many of Powys’s other works: “ I am sure I would have made a receptive disciple to that fussy ritualist....A Taoist is what I really am.” Ducdame is in print and currently available from Faber in their Faber Finds Series of books. If you wish to attend this meeting please contact Hon Secretary: chris.d.thomas@hotmail.co.uk Or write to Chris Thomas, Flat D, 87 Ledbury Road, London W11 2AG Download the Ducdame flyer PDF (will open in a new window or tab)   To view a little known oil & acrylic portrait of John Cowper Powys (1984) please click here   T.H. LYON, architect and benefactor  Ilsington Old School Room, 1910-2010 St Michael’s Church, Ilsington, Devon is celebrating the centenary of the west lychgate, commonly known as the old school room which was designed and built by T.H. Lyon of Middlecott, Ilsington. There have been three buildings on the site of the west lychgate, and the first achieved notoriety in 1639 when in it collapsed whilst a school lesson was taking place. The second lychgate dwelling fell into disrepair sometime after 1871 when church vestry meetings ceased to take place there, and it was not until 1910 that it was restored under the benefice of Thomas Henry Lyon, a local architect. Prior to the creation of the present Ilsington Church of England School, various ‘Dame School’ had flourished in the parish thanks to the generous funding from the Jane Ford Charity. Alfred Lyon, Thomas’ father, was one of the major contributors to the village school along with the Duke of Somerset (Lord of Ilsington), Baroness de Virte of Bagtor, Captain Charles J.H. Monro of Ingsdon, George Wills of Narracombe, John Divett of Bovey Tracey, James Woodley of Halshanger Manor, Rev. Robert Lovett, vicar of Ilsington and Rev. Samuel Norsworthy. The school opened in 1873 with 102 pupils on the roll. The west lychgate is a remarkable building being a rare example of a two-storey lychgate. Other such buildings are known from the neighbouring parish of Bickington, Long Compton in Warwickshire,  Painswick in Gloucestershire, Bray in Berkshire and  and St Wendronas in Cornwall. The St Michael’s Parish Council are keen to find out if Thomas Lyons based his design on the original dwellings. Following its restoration, the old school room was used for vestry meetings, confirmation classes and Sunday school. Today, the west lychgate also houses the memorial to both world wars. Thomas H. Lyon was a generous benefactor. In 1909 he funded a crucifix which hangs above the 15th century rood screen and he designed the elaborate reredos which was erected in memory of his sister, Caroline, by her husband Canon Percy Charlton Wise. Thomas Lyon’s father, Alfred Lyon, wrote a number of diaries which were subsequently discovered by Mrs Y. Ware-Owen in the attic of Middlecott house. These, along with other biographical details, will form a part of the celebration of Thomas Lyon’s remarkable association with IIsington which is taking place on Saturday November 13th, 2010 in the old school room and the nearby village hall between 1-5pm. This event has drawn our attention to a remarkable story of literary and theological associations formed by Thomas H. Lyon and we hope to learn more about his life and begin a restoration of the old school room which continues to be used for children’s church and occasional meetings of the PCC. We would be delighted to hear from readers with an interest in Thomas Henry Lyons, and we are grateful to members of the John Cowper Powys Society who have enriched our understanding of a local hero.   CONTACT: Anne Parkinson, 9 Town Meadow, Ilsington TQ13 9RY (e-mail: rjparkinson@tiscali.co.uk)
EARLIER THIS YEAR
New Conference DVD now available	THE POWYS SOCIETY CONFERENCE 2010  “Grail Visions” Wessex Hotel, Street Friday 20th August - Sunday 22nd August This year's Conference was held in Street in Somerset, two miles from Glastonbury and within view of Glastonbury Tor. For more Conference photos Visit the CONFERENCE Webpage

                                                                      2009 EVENTS                                                                            

The Society Conference 2009 

The Hand Hotel, Llangollen

Friday 21st August to Sunday 23rd August

“Ravishing Limbo”

The last Conference double DVD, Llangollen 2009, is available.

[Discussing the stage adaptation of Dostoievsky’s “The Idiot” at Llangollen]  

2009 Conference webpage

CONFERENCE WALKS TO VALLE CRUCIS AND MYNYDD Y GAER

VALLE CRUCIS

“Twas in this Chapter-House I wrote the first sentences of my own Owen Glendower and left it uncorrected because the spirits of those Cistercian monks were inspiring it....”

On Saturday afternoon a group of Conference-goers followed the towpath, a short distance, beside the still waters of the Llangollen canal as far as Pontefrelin and then by field paths with fine views of Bryn Hyfryd and glimpses of the buttresses and arches of the Abbey seen through the trees, to reach the well preserved remains of JCP‘s “scholastic sanctuary in the mountains.”

Links with JCP are very strong here. He visited the Abbey in 1935 with Phyllis and wrote in his diary that he wished to be buried here, beside Glendower’s bard, Iolo Goch. He came here again in 1945 on a holiday with his son, Littleton, who had just been ordained in the Roman Catholic faith. JCP loved the cool interior of the chapter house, and must have found the tranquil riverside location, and the historical connections of the place, as well as its associations with the mother church of St Mael and St Sulien in Corwen very appealing. It was thus here on 24 April 1937 that he began to write Owen Glendower.

The Vale of Llangollen, and the area around Valle Crucis, with its local traditions, myths and stories about King Arthur, and a Grail castle on top of Dinas Bran reminded JCP of Avalon and the Glastonbury legends, just as the monk’s fishpond in the Abbey grounds, the beautiful west front, circular window and rib vaulting of the Chapter House also reminded him of Glastonbury Abbey and the remains of a once prosperous Cistercian abbey in Montacute,

On the way to Valle Crucis green fields and flower filled meadows could be seen reaching down to the edges of the canal leaving space for sheep and cattle to roam freely along its muddy banks. On the other side, the towpath follows the route of the steam railway and the river Dee, connecting, at a point beyond the motor museum, with the Horseshoe Falls and the Chainbridge Hotel, where the river plunges dramatically and noisily over fallen trees and massive boulders. Gaily painted leisure barges, some drawn by horses, now occupy part of the route to Valle Crucis which was once crowded with vessels carrying raw materials to the industrial centres of England.

The views of Dinas Bran, with its foundations “sunk in the mysterious underworld of beyond reality” seen from the two path, or, more prominently, from Coed Hyrddin, the hill on the other side of the road opposite the entrance to the Abbey, leave the visitor with no doubt why JCP thought that this was a very special place. In an essay in Obstinate Cymric, Wales and America, JCP recalled  that: “...never...not even in Glastonbury – have I felt the spirit of what Spengler would call the Spring time of our Faustian culture as powerfully as in this holy ground.”

MYNYDD Y GAER

A small fleet of cars transported other conference-goers further afield to Corwen where our ‘ael’ and goal was the summit of Caer Drewyn -- the impressive Iron Age fortress called by Powys Mynyd Y Gaer – a name which you can also see on a local sign post pointing the way to the hill.

Our route to Corwen took us through a landscape made familiar by repeated readings of Owen Glendower and Porius. Leaving Llangollen we went past the tiny community of Berwyn where the gaunt peaks of the Llantysillio mountain range could be seen in the distance, till we reached the picturesque villages of Glyndyfrdwy and Carrog, passing the heather and bracken filled hilltops of Coed Pen Y Garth, Craig Y Rhos and Coed Bwlch Coch.  Entering Corwen, which JCP in Porius frequently refers to under its other names of “The White Choir” or “The White Circle” we easily found good parking in the middle of town in the rather grandly named Corwen Interchange (a car park with facilities and a bus stop!). We crossed the Dee by a modern bridge. At this point the river is broad and deep. Willows bend low over the surface of the Dee creating shady spots, like the “pools of Cybele”, where lamprey, Atlantic salmon, brown trout and grayling can sometimes be seen. On the clay banks we looked for green woodpeckers and kingfishers that are frequent visitors here. Perhaps further down stream where the river is shallower there might be found a possible location for JCP’s “Ford of Mithras” which Porius uses to get to St Julian’s fountain on the other side.

Ahead the great round mass of Caer Drewyn confronted us. Early fruiting blackberries in the hedgerows suggested Autumn was on its way. The ever-changing late summer light and muted chiaroscuro effect of the variegated colours of yellow, green and purple that covered the surface of the hill refreshed our eyes. The colour schemes of JCP’s Welsh novels devised by Wilson Knight came to mind -- red and gold for Owen Glendower, and silver, grey and dark brown earth colours for Porius.

Beside Corwen Leisure Centre we followed the course of a disused railway path where oak and elms grow thickly and the sound of blackcaps and warblers fill the air with their song, then skirted the edge of Caer Drewyn untill we began to climb steadily up the north side of the hill to a spot near the summit surrounded by the stone walls of the Gaer. Standing on a carpet of bracken, fern and gorse, we surveyed the spreading valley below trying to identify some of the locations in JCP’s novel Porius, in the panoramic view spread out before us. The Dee itself could easily be identified twisting round the town.  We spotted Cae Coed, which JCP explained means “the clearing in the forest” and the meadow he refers to in his abandoned novel Edeyrnion, known locally as “Dol-pur-gresyn” or “the field of unbearable pity” situated beside the original Pont Corwen, constructed in the eighteenth century, and perhaps  another possible location for the “Ford of Mithras”. Could the gap between the trees in the “greenish black” ancient forest opposite us be the Path of the Dead leading to Y Grug, or “The Mound” - the burial place of Iscovan in Porius? Turning north we could see the “Swamp of the Gwyddyl Ffichti”, the village of Gwyddylwern,  and looking down again at Corwen, on the other side of the river, its buildings seemed more like JCP’s “Brythonic dwellings” than modern houses, we could  pick out  Coed Pen Y Pigyn, the hill behind Corwen church, and a favourite destination for JCP on his daily “round” and walk amidst the thick oak woodland above the town.

We debated the location of Snowdon but dark purple edged clouds had suddenly descended and the tops of the mountains were no longer visible, so we could only discern its general direction.  

As we spoke our voices were lost in the vast open space of the Gaer. Approaching the very top of the hill the cry of a buzzard startled me. A raven flapped its wings nearby.  I thought of the croaking raven of Llangar, of Sycarth, Mithrafael and the descent of the Kings of Powys Fadog. I thought of Powys himself, for whom Caer Drewyn never lost its fascination, the omphalos of his imagination. I thought of Powys newly arrived in Corwen, “ a wayfarer from Dorset”, ascending the “purgatorial mount”, situated high above the Dee Valley, and making his way to the ruins of an abandoned shooting lodge, called Liberty Hall, built in the early twentieth century by a local landowner, Lord Northborough. Here JCP erected stone “stele” – memorials for family and friends  - “a regular burying ground of my Dead Heroes and Glory Ground of my Living Ones!” he told Katie.  From here JCP looked back across the river at the Gaer. In his mind he had already filled “the absolute blank” of Dark Age history with his own self-created stories and invented characters.

The Gaer, empty now, felt however preternaturally alive. The buzzard and the raven had fallen silent. The sound of the wind in the thorn trees and bracken was all that accompanied our descent to the car park. Somehow I felt that the past and the present were not so far apart. The image of the Mithraic Sun God, the lion headed figure encircled by a serpent, the deos leontocephalus, the god of time and eternity worshipped in the Hellenic mystery religions, whose statue Porius glimpses in the Cave of Mithras, but which left his “religious sensibility” quite cold, rose up, fleetingly, in my mind, then disappeared, and I thought I understood what Powys had meant: “As the old gods were departing then so the old gods are departing now.”

Chris Thomas

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POWYS DAY

Saturday 9 May, Dorset County Museum, 11.00am

“HARDY, POWYS AND WEYMOUTH”. 

All members of both The Powys Society and The Hardy Society were welcome to join this event and participated in a day of literary discussion combined with an easy ramble beside the Frome and the Cerne.

John Cowper Powys was intimately associated with many of the places mentioned by Hardy in his novels, especially the landscape of the Dorset and Somerset borders, and the hills and valleys and chalk downs around Weymouth and Dorchester.  Powys shared with Hardy similar obsessions about Fate, Destiny and Chance as well as the invisible powers of an unseen First Cause. He took from Hardy his understanding of the interpenetration of character and landscape and especially admired his pessimism, his “imaginitive grandeur”, and ability to render in prose the physical quality of things.

We began our day with a talk by Tony Fincham, Chairman of The Hardy Society, who explored the links between Hardy and Weymouth, the surrounding locations and their representation in Hardy’s work.

Before lunch there was an opportunity to visit the Writer’s Gallery and also the Powys Society Collection in the Dorset County Museum.

In the afternoon we focused on a single chapter of JCP’s novel Weymouth Sands. We studied Chapter 13, Punch and Judy, and examined Powys’s vision of the “Platonic essence” of Weymouth. Written in 1932-1933 when Powys was living in up-state New York, the novel evokes with great intensity the scenes of Powys’s childhood.  The selected chapter also evokes the darker side of Powys’s vision: there is the looming fear of madness, incarceration, and of the sinister scientific experiments that take place in “Hell’s Museum” somewhere on the margins of the town and the chalk downs.  

Our day concludes with a walk in Powys’s footsteps through the water meadows of Dorchester,

In reading Weymouth Sands with its accumulation of animate and inanimate detail we are reminded that, as George Wilson Knight once observed, “to read Powys is to explore creation”.  

Key texts: Weymouth Sands (see elsewhere on this web site for the republication of the novel by Duckworth on 30 April 2009), John Cowper Powys on Thomas Hardy (Powys Society publications).  There are also essays by Powys on Hardy in Visions and Revisions and The Pleasures of Literature.  The April 2009 Powys Society Newsletter includes a further essay by Powys on Hardy, “Thomas Hardy and his Times” reprinted for the first time since its original publication in Current History in 1928.

Powys Day, Saturday 9 May

A Walk to the Blue Bridge

John Cowper Powys dedicated his first novel, Wood and Stone, to Thomas Hardy: “the greatest poet and novelist of our age”. In fact the connections with Hardy seem to have been pivotal to JCP.  He later told Louis Wilkinson that he took from Hardy the ability to see all human feelings and actions against the inanimate background of nature. These interconnected themes provided the focus for a lively discussion of Hardy, Weymouth and Powys at this year’s Powys Day in Dorchester.

Tony Fincham, Chairman of the Hardy Society, introduced us to Hardy’s association with Weymouth and the town that JCP called “the centre of the circumference of my life” while Judith Stinton, author of books about Dorset and its literary connections, led us on a journey deep into the world of the commedia dell arte tradition and the symbolism of Mr Punch in Powys’s Weymouth Sands .

For both men Weymouth was a place of glamour, and happy childhood memories. For Powys, especially, Weymouth was an enchanted place, associated with sensations of ecstasy, and which always seemed to him to be rising magically out of the wide encircling bay - Deadman’s Bay to Hardy.

In the warm afternoon sunlight we later followed in the footsteps of JCP and his dog, The Old, on a gentle ramble beside the clear, swift moving waters of the Frome, bordered on one side by sloping gardens and on the other by a secluded woodland walk and cheery little allotments.

The route passed between Hangman’s Cottage, possibly once the habitation of the town’s public executioner, an abandoned mill stream,  a pair of dilapidated wooden sluice gates, a celandine ditch, and “John’s Pond”, mentioned in Powys’s novel Maiden Castle, and still overgrown with weeds and wild plants.

We paused at the Blue Bridge and gazed, as Powys did, at the willows bent low over the muddy banks of the river Cerne, observed the smooth surface of the pebbles and stones glisten amidst the wavering underwater weeds, saw the thin silver strips of telegraph wires in the next field sparkle in the sun, and stared intently at the spires and towers of St Peters and All Saints silhouetted against the pale blue sky.

From here the lush pastures and verduous green water meadows, filled with yellow cowslips, spread out in all directions. Further on where the path narrows to allow progress to be made only in single file little clumps of hog weed and saxifrage mingled with harebell, and bluebells.

This tranquil and pastoral scene, well known to JCP, evoked a deep sense of timelessness and intense pleasure. This must be one of the most beautiful spots in all of Dorchester. Only the bell like sound of a solitary song bird and the sudden disturbance of the water’s surface by an occasional fish rising up from the sandy bottom of the river broke the perfect stillness of this sleepy little hollow.

The sun had not yet set when we began to retrace our steps and returned to Dorchester via Hennings Gate, amidst the lengthening shadows cast by the chestnut trees, to enjoy a pint of real Dorset ale and reflect on more Powysian subjects.     

Chris Thomas

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