The Novels of Henry Williamson: Henry Williamson Collections, #17

By John Middleton Murry

Although Henry Williamson (1895–1977), nature writer and novelist, remains best known for his nature stories set in North Devon and the much-loved classics Tarka the Otter and Salar the Salmon, he wrote many other highly regarded novels. There has been a tendency for critics of his work to attempt to analyse the man rather than the writing that he produced in a career lasting over fifty years. The exception was John Middleton Murry (1889–1957), and this brilliant, long essay considering Williamson's novels first appeared in the posthumous collection Katherine Mansfield and other Literary Studies (1959). Murry had a distinguished career as a literary critic, and his essay remains essential reading for those who want to understand better Williamson's writings. It is written in a clear, elegant style, while the literary analyses of the works give to the essay its greatest distinction.

The novels that Murry considers include the four that make up the tetralogy The Flax of Dream (The Beautiful Years; Dandelion Days; The Dream of Fair Women; The Pathway); The Star-born; The Gold Falcon; The Phasian Bird; and the first four volumes of Williamson's magnum opus, the fifteen-volume A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight (The Dark Lantern; Donkey Boy; Young Phillip Maddison; How Dear is Life). He thought highly of the books making up the Chronicle, and recognised them as major novels in the great and central tradition of English fiction. Of How Dear is Life he wrote, 'I do not know of any picture of the 1914–1918 war which can be compared with it for sheer power of enduring in the reader's memory. In a queer way it is not terrible; it does not haunt so much as satisfy the imagination. It is human, it is humorous, it is pathetic, it is noble – and, above all else, it is beautiful. It is the work of a truly gifted artist, come at last, after much inward travail, to a mastery of his own self-disturbing powers, and working on the grand scale.'

• Language: English
• Publisher: Henry Williamson
• Release date: Nov 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781873507599

Book preview

First published in this edition 1986

E-book edition 2013

Smashwords edition

The Henry Williamson Society

14 Nether Grove

Longstanton

Cambridge

Text by John Middleton Murry copyright © The Estate of John Middleton Murry

Published by permission of the Society of Authors as the literary representative of the Estate of John Middleton Murry

Quotations from Henry Williamson’s works © The Henry Williamson Literary Estate

Introduction © J. W. Blench

Cover image of Henry Williamson courtesy of the Henry Williamson Literary Estate

ISBN 978-1-873507-59-9 (EPUB)

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holders.

Contents

Foreword

Introduction, by J. W. Blench

The Novels of Henry Williamson

Foreword

It has often been remarked that until the recent past there has been a tendency for critics of Henry Williamson’s work to attempt to analyse the man rather than the writing which he produced in a career lasting for over fifty years.

One notable exception among the older critics was John Middleton Murry (1889-1957) who founded and edited the literary magazine The Adelphi from 1923 to 1948 when Williamson succeeded him as editor for three numbers. Like Williamson, Murry farmed for some years in East Anglia; Williamson at Old Hall Farm, Stiffkey (1937-45) and Murry at Lodge Farm, Thelnetham (1942-57). In Katherine Mansfield and other Literary Studies, published posthumously by Constable in 1959, is to be found one of Murry’s most brilliant and discerning essays, ‘The Novels of Henry Williamson’. The book has long been out of print and is difficult to obtain. For this reason the essay ‘The Novels of Henry Williamson’ is here reprinted by the Henry Williamson Society, which gratefully acknowledges the permission granted by the Society of Authors acting on behalf of the Literary Estate of John Middleton Murry. Thanks are also due to the Trustees of the Henry Williamson Literary Estate for the permission granted to reprint the quotations from Williamson’s works which Murry makes in the course of his essay.

For quotations in the Introduction, further thanks are due to Methuen & Co Ltd for those made from F. A. Lea: The Life of John Middleton Murry and to Victor Gollancz Ltd for those made from Colin Middleton Murry: Shadows on the Grass.

Introduction

I

This brilliant essay by John Middleton Murry (1889-1957) first appeared in the posthumous collection Katherine Mansfield and other Literary Studies (1959). A shorter version had already appeared in the famous ‘Henry Williamson Number’ of The Aylesford Review (vol. ii, no. 2; Winter, 1957-8), but in this version Murry develops and illustrates his points with a fuller richness. According to F. A. Lea, who wrote the standard Life of John Middleton Murry (1959), the history of these pieces is as follows. Although Galsworthy had drawn Murry’s attention to Williamson’s work as early as 1920, the two men had only become friendly since finding themselves farming quite close to each other in East Anglia during the Second World War. Nevertheless, Murry was attracted to Williamson ‘as he had not been towards any man since D. H. Lawrence himself’; and:

indignant at what he thought an unjust depreciation of his novels - for ‘it is much harder to feel a friend misprised than to have bricks thrown at oneself’ - laid himself out to win them a wider public: composing not only the long critical study which the publisher excluded from Unprofessional Essays, but a shorter one which the Third Programme rejected. (p. 338)

The longer piece referred to is that now reprinted from Katherine Mansfield and Other Literary Studies, while the shorter piece is that which appeared in The Aylesford Review. It is pleasant to learn further from Lea that Murry encouraged Williamson to send him his manuscripts for criticism, ‘a thing he very seldom did’; and that he wrote to Williamson expressing the constancy of his friendly interest in him: ‘I’ve told you before I have always felt my function in regard to H.W. is to be sort of stand-by — a mooring that is after all always there.’

John Middleton Murry’s son Colin, in his autobiographical Shadows on the Grass (1977) gives a delightful narration of a visit which Williamson made to the Murrys at their farmhouse at Thelnetham, near Diss, in May 1944 (pp. 80-1). He describes vividly the impression which Williamson made on his adolescent sensibility: ‘In spite of his vaguely military appearance — short hair, close clipped moustache — Henry struck me as being a rather shy, nervous sort of man, who covered up his shyness by telling wildly exaggerated anecdotes against himself. He never seemed to stop talking at all.’ Having ‘gathered that he had matrimonial problems and two teen-aged sons whom he found it difficult to get on with’, Colin reflects: ‘No doubt these common difficulties helped to draw him and my father closer together.’ He goes on to tell that during the visit he finished a verse play he was writing and typed it out in his bedroom, which was above Williamson’s, not completing the task until the small hours of the morning. This resulted in a characteristic example of Williamson’s humour:

At lunch the next day Henry fixed me with a mild brown eye and remarked to no one in particular: ‘It’s either woodpeckers or death-watch beetle. Must be one or the other.’

‘What’s that, Henry?’ enquired my father.

‘All night long,’ said Henry. ‘Tap-tap, tappity tap-tap. Couldn’t sleep a wink. I should get the Rentokil people in if I were you, Jack.’

Deeply embarrassed by Williamson’s teasing, Colin confessed that it was something he was doing for school. With natural modesty, he had of course wanted to keep the matter secret from his famous father; but ‘there, mercifully, Henry let it drop.’ However the happy sequel was that Colin’s father visited him in his room and took a kindly interest in this example of his son’s budding creative talent.

As a result of his friendship with Murry, Williamson agreed in 1948 to take over from him the editorship of his magazine The Adelphi which had been running since 1923. In fact Williamson edited only three numbers (volume 25, numbers 1, 2 and 3; October–December 1948, January–March 1949 and April–June 1949). However some of his most interesting short pieces had already appeared in The Adelphi, such as ‘The Tragic Spirit’ (volume 20, number 1, October–December 1943) and ‘The Sun that Shines on the Dead’, parts I and II (volume 22, numbers 3 and 4; January–March 1946, and April June 1946). During and shortly after his brief period of editorship he continued to write fascinating articles for it, such as ‘Notes of a ’Prentice Hand’ (Volume 25, number 3, January–March 1949) and the various ‘Words on the West Wind’ features (volume 25, number 3, April–June 1949; volume 26, numbers 1 and 2, Autumn 1949 and January–March 1950).

II

When John Middleton Murry wrote ‘The Novels of Henry Williamson’ he had behind him an extremely distinguished career as a literary critic. His books may still be read with great pleasure and profit, and most have attained classic status; as Fyodor Dostoievsky (1916), Aspects of Literature (1920), The Problem of Style (1922),