Maiden Voyage

By Denton Wlech

Maiden Voyage is Denton Welch's debut novel, a frankly autobiographical account of a short period in his life when - at the age of 16 - he ran away from his English boarding school, before being sent back to Shanghai to live with his businessman father. "Trembling with sex", is how Alan Bennett wonderfully describes Maiden Voyage; and as well as portraying so acutely the passions and nameless longings of a teenage boy, and the strange quirks and brutalities of public school life, it is also a novel that deals with the agony of childhood bereavement - the suffering of a boy who has only recently lost his mother. When Maiden Voyage was first published in 1943 it was an overnight sensation, and so graphic in its depiction of adolescence and the schooling system that Welch's publisher - Herbert Read - was forced to seek legal advice. Seventy years on, there is little to shock the modern reader - but more than enough to earn a new generation of fans and admirers. William Burroughs said, "If ever there was a writer who was neglected, it was Denton. He makes you aware of the magic that is right beneath your eyes."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Galley Beggar Press
• Release date: Sep 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781910296318

Book preview

DENTON WELCH was born in Shanghai in 1915, the youngest of four boys, to a wealthy British-American family. After leaving his English boarding school (Repton), Welch decided to follow his dream of becoming a painter, and studied art at Goldsmiths in London. The physical injuries sustained in a cycling accident in 1935, however, saw him increasingly turn towards a hitherto secondary interest: writing. When Welch’s debut, Maiden Voyage, was published in 1942, it was an instant literary sensation (‘I have been told that it reeks of homosexuality,’ wrote Winston Churchill’s secretary; ‘I think I must get it’). This was followed by In Youth Is Pleasure in 1945 and, after his premature death from spinal tuberculosis in 1948, the publication of his unfinished masterpiece, A Voice Through A Cloud. ‘If any writer has been neglected it is Denton’, wrote William Burroughs in 1985 – but Welch is also a writer who has attracted a firm coterie of admirers, ranging from W.H. Auden to Alan Bennett, Edith Sitwell to John Waters. Of his short life, Edmund White has noted, ‘He had the power to generate interest out of even the most meagre materials. He had this gift from the beginning but suffering and illness refined it to a white-hot flame.’

‘Denton Welch makes the reader aware of the magic that is right under his eyes… If any writer has been neglected it is Denton’

WILLIAM BURROUGHS

‘Denton Welch is like a British baby Proust in his astounding grasp of his own (usually mundane) experience. Nothing much happens in his books but the most wonderful writing’

RICHARD HELL

‘Are we not all, emotionally, what Mr Welch is in fact – orphans, each traveling alone on a journey which, if it is headed in the direction of unknown dangers, at least is heading away from the fears one knows?’

W.H. AUDEN

So much of what Welch wrote trembled on the brink of sex. His art is full of colour… and more than fifty years later, it is unfaded

ALAN BENNETT

‘Welch’s work is all extraordinary passages: he is an anthologist of his own life’

TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

‘The fact that Welch could, at times, only manage a few sentences a day makes his energy, his beautifully odd way of translating the world, all the more spectacular’

TIFFANY MURRAY

Maiden Voyage © 1942, The University of Texas

Introduction, © 2014, Suzi Feay

This edition published in 2014

by Galley Beggar Press Limited

37 Dover Street,

Norwich, NR2 3LG

Typeset by Galley Beggar Press Ltd

All rights reserved,

The right of Denton Welch to be identified as

the author of this work has been asserted by him

in accordance with the Copyright, Designs

and Patents Act, 1988

This book is sold subject to the condition that

it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be

lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated

without the publisher’s prior consent in any

form of binding or cover than that in

which it is published and without a similar

condition including this condition imposed on

the subsequent purchaser

A CIP record for this book

is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-910296-31-8

MAIDEN VOYAGE

Denton Welch

With a new introduction by Suzi Feay

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INTRODUCTION

I was new to London when I first came across the name of Denton Welch. A combination of curiosity and loneliness in those first months led me on long, exploratory treks through the city; at the far edge of one of them I discovered the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood, then a fascinating jumble of display cases constantly inviting the cry ‘I used to have one of those!’ But then my eye was caught by the doll’s houses, a source of fascination since reading M.R. James’s ‘The Haunted Doll’s House’ and Robert Aickman’s creepy short story ‘The Inner Room’. I kept being drawn back to a handsome miniature of a Georgian mansion with an intriguing label; something to the effect that the house had been restored by the young writer Denton Welch while suffering from the after-effects of a car accident.

Young and naïve enough to think that as I was already pretty bookish, every British writer of note was already known to me, I was puzzled. Who was this interesting and somewhat tragic-sounding person, and why had I never heard of him? This simple question sent me on an old-school literary quest; in other words, the laborious, pre-Google kind. Now that every passing intellectual whim can be instantly satisfied with a quick internet search, it’s hard to remember just how enjoyable and protracted such a quest used to be. My allies were librarians and the owners of second-hand bookshops on the Charing Cross Road.

By now rather unhappily ensconced in a job at a women’s magazine, I escaped a stressful working environment at lunchtimes by taking refuge in local libraries, especially within the Victorian grandeur of the Holborn library in Shaftesbury Avenue. Among its shadowy cases I supped my fill; shelves were better stocked then, since there was no obligation to provide DVD rentals, computers or games. One day, a local eccentric in pinstriped suit and bowler hat marched in and announced in a loud voice that there were too many books. ‘There’s only one book you need,’ he bawled at the lunchtime browsers, ‘and that’s the Good Book.’ Whereupon a quiet voice observed, ‘There’d be an awfully long queue to take it out.’

Soon I had tracked down all the Welchiana I required: the novel In Youth is Pleasure, the unfinished I Left My Grandfather’s House and Maiden Voyage, together with the poignant biography by Michael De-La-Noy. I read all about the accident which not only truncated Welch’s life but ensured that the last 13 years of it were spent in constant pain, relieved by such projects as the doll’s house and his writing. He lived for a while in Croom’s Hill in Greenwich and studied art at Goldsmith’s College. He moved in the Sitwell circle, and died aged just 33.

Welch came firmly to occupy a room in my literary Memory Palace; a small one (Shelley has a whole wing, for example), perhaps not one I visit all that often, but one that is his alone. And it’s wonderful to try that ornately carved door again and enter Welch’s exquisite world.

Some writers are like a sea; the reader will never get across or to the bottom of; others resemble a lake, navigable, manageable but with no less mysterious depths. Welch is the latter kind, a sort of Nick Drake of letters: tragic, short-lived but specially gifted, charming and unforgettable.

Maiden Voyage, although presented as a novel, is a close account of Welch’s last unhappy schooldays at Repton, from which he scandalously ran away aged 16, and his subsequent trip to China, where his father was a wealthy businessman. His mother had already died when he was 11. All Welch’s literary work (he was also a gifted artist) is heavily autobiographical, and its appeal resides in the brilliance of his youthful voice and the rendering of his quirky personality.

Maiden Voyage is written with extraordinary freshness, as a torrent of new impressions, one after the other, underlaid with the sense of the deep undercurrents of a complicated, still developing personality. I had forgotten how funny Welch can be. In a conversation with his Repton friend Geoffrey, Denton declares that he could only countenance marriage to ‘a very old woman with plenty of money’, whom he would meet only at mealtimes or when other people were present. But he would have to go to bed with her, Geoffrey objects, otherwise ‘… what do you think she’d marry you for?’ ‘She might like to have young life about the place,’ is the hesitant riposte. The episode in which the same school-friend loses his own mother shows the delicacy of Welch’s writing, as we grasp implicitly how little comfort the already bereaved boy can give.

Discarded titles for the novel were Young Journey and I Had No Razor, but Maiden Voyage is pitch-perfect, Denton being something of a maiden himself: delicate, artistic, sensitive, prone to bullying. ‘There’s a pretty boy for you!’ a schoolboy jeers on a train. ‘You little sissy, you can’t think of anything other than yourself,’ cries Geoffrey, exasperated at his friend’s self-absorption. Denton is always going into raptures about knick-knacks and bric-a-brac: silver, carvings and ornaments are his delight. But he also suffers the fierce rages of the habitually misunderstood.

Denton gets rather irritated by women, especially the bossy, older sort, but it’s the encounters of this upper-middle-class boy with men of the lower orders that hold a strange fascination. We’ll never know just how much of this artful book is fictionalised, but the most stirring moments come through the voyeurism and passivity with which he treats passing workmen, soldiers and pugilists. Welch almost, not quite, overplays his hand in a scene in the swimming baths where Denton is too terrified to swim between the legs of his female companion, then gets dressed up in women’s clothes and sashays round Shanghai before attracting male attention that terrifies him even more.

Scenes such as this, and his uncomfortable position as a gay writer of the early twentieth century, mean that Welch will always occupy a niche in the gay pantheon (his celebrity endorsers include John Waters and Alan Bennett) – but he’s also a writer for all time and everyone. He was the best form of alchemist, one who transforms suffering into art, and deserves to be better known.

A recent trip to my local library yielded not a single book by Denton Welch, but the elegant doll’s house he restored so faithfully can still be at the Museum of Childhood, its door temptingly set half open to give a glimpse of the hall within. But today the information card doesn’t even acknowledge that he was a writer, reading simply that it is named after ‘the man who found and restored this doll’s house in the 1930s’.

It seems another sign of the times that museums should offer less educational information than they did previously. Those with an interest in gay history will probably always find and cherish Denton Welch; everyone else will just have to try harder. But you, reader, have Maiden Voyage already in your hands. Don’t waste a moment – embark.

Suzi Feay

For

Miss Edith Sitwell

1

After I had run away from school, no one knew what to do with me. I sat in my cousin’s London drawing-room, listening to my relations as they talked. I did not know what was going to happen to me.

The week before, instead of catching the train to Derbyshire, where I was at school, I had taken a bus in the opposite direction.

Sitting upstairs on the bus I felt light, as if I were hollow and empty. Something was churning inside me too, like sea-sickness.

I stared down at the crowds and the traffic but I did not really see them. Only half of me seemed to be on top of the bus.

When the conductor called out ‘Waterloo’ I ran down the steps and stood for a moment in the road. A carthorse was pouring out a golden jet of water. I watched it bubbling and hissing into the gutter, then I began to climb the stone stairs between the fat statues.

The trains inside the station were lying close together like big worms. I saw that one was going to Salisbury. I thought, I’ll go there. I had seen it once with my mother; we had been to look at the cathedral. She was dead now. I ran to buy my ticket.

I was small, so I took off my hat, ruffled my hair and asked for a half-fare. The clerk’s glasses glistened and his mouth snapped, ‘How old are you?’ I lied very firmly, and at last he pushed the green ticket through the little window.

I walked past the barrier and up the platform. It was a corridor train, and as it pulled out I went to the lavatory and locked myself in. I knew that nobody could be looking for me yet, but I felt safer there.

I thought of my brother Paul waiting at St Pancras, then going without me at last.

We had come to London in the morning, from our grandfather’s house in Sussex. We always spent the holidays there. We had both wanted to do different things, so we parted, arranging to meet again at the station in the afternoon.

He was eighteen, two years older than I was. I wondered what he would think if he knew that I was in a train going the opposite way.

I suddenly felt terribly glad. I looked at my face in the glass. I was so anxious and happy that I thought I looked mad. I pulled my hat this way and that, wondering how to disguise myself. I thought I might dress up as a woman if I could get any clothes. I knocked the dent out of my hat, making it look like a girl’s riding-hat. I was so excited that my face was red, with sweat on it.

I sat on the commode lid and began to count my money. I had about five pounds, which was to have been for pocket money and house subscription. I felt rich, but I knew that it wouldn’t last long.

My thoughts got mixed up with the jogging of the train. They hammered along the rails and my head felt hot and seething and cut off from my body.

*

It was evening when the train arrived at Salisbury. The September light was melting and heavy, making everything look a little blurred.

I found my way to the cathedral and stood staring at it. When I had seen it with my mother she had worn some woollen flowers on her tweed coat and they had got mixed up in my mind with the black marble pillars and the arches.

I tried to go in, but the doors were locked, so I wandered along a narrow path, under the brown trees, and thought of Repton: the calling and the shouting and the feet moving over the scrubbed boards in the passages. Those boards were so worn that they had a soft, dull fur on them, like suede leather. The red blankets in the dormitories and the white chambers gleaming underneath. Every morning when I woke up and remembered where I was, I felt something draining out of me, leaving me weak.

A rush of gladness ran through me at the thought of what I had escaped. I sat down under a tree and looked at the spire of the cathedral. The sun had gone down and the air was getting cold. I thought of the people who wrapped themselves up in newspaper and slept on benches. I lay down on the bench to see what it was like, but some people passed, so I quickly sat up again. I knew that I could not stay there.

When my mother was with me we had stayed at the George. I got up to go in search of it. I wondered if I would dare go in even if I did find it.

I stood outside for a long time looking at the curtained windows. I wished that my mother was there again so that we could go in together.

At last I swung the door open and walked up to the little lighted office. There was a quiet woman there with soft, mousy hair. I asked her quickly for a room for one night. My cheeks were going red and I saw her eyes begin to look curious.

‘Have you any luggage, sir?’ she asked.

‘No, it hasn’t come yet,’ I lied quickly.

‘Then perhaps you’ll pay now. Bed and breakfast twelve and six, and dinner tonight five shillings.’

I pulled out my new pocket-book. It was warm and smelt very leathery. I gave her a pound note and then she led me upstairs to my room.

There was a small sprigged paper, and furniture made out of imitation linen-fold panels. When she left me, it was so still that I ran the water in the basin to make a noise. I combed my hair with my fingers and washed my face. It was still very hot and red.

Excitement and fear had taken away my appetite, but I went down to dinner when I heard the gong ring, and sat at a little table by the door.

There were some husbands and wives sitting together and a larger party who I thought were American. I drank the thick soup, ate the white fish and the roast meat, and when I had finished, went into the hotel lounge and sat in a deep corner of the sofa.

I tried to look at Country Life, and the waiter brought me coffee. As I sipped it I wondered what I would do when my money ran out. I noticed that an old lady was looking at me. When I raised my eyes she smiled and said, ‘Salisbury is a charming place, isn’t it? Are you staying here long?’

I felt very confused but managed to say, ‘I think I shall be going tomorrow.’

‘Are you all alone, then?’ she asked, looking interested.

‘Yes, but my mother’s picking me up here and we’re going on to Devonshire.’ I was suddenly able to lie very easily. It made itself up almost as I talked.

The old lady was still smiling very sweetly and I thought for a moment that I would tell her what had happened, but the next moment I knew that I could not, so, after looking about the old room for some time, I got up and said good-night.

I climbed the dark stairs and switched the light on in my bedroom; its pink shade was warm and depressing. As I undressed I wondered what I should sleep in. My shirt seemed the only thing, but I did not know when I would have a clean one. I remembered that my nurse had once told me to clean my teeth with soap if I had nothing else. I tried it now and spat out quickly, hating the taste.

Then I got into the white bed and lay down to sleep. It was a horrible night. I kept on waking up so that my dreams were mixed up with the wallpaper, and somehow the Virgin Mary appeared and disappeared, dressed all in Reckitt’s blue.

*

I was glad when the morning came, even though it brought the shock of knowing what I had done. I dressed quickly and went down to breakfast. I ate almost joyfully, and then began to wonder about the tips. When at last I had decided, I ran from the hotel towards the cathedral.

It was light and vast inside, and the organ was playing and people were walking about. I felt the black marble pillars and looked at the broken bits of stained glass framed in the windows.

The Lady Chapel was dark and glittering; the brown and yellow Victorian tiles shone like a wet bathroom floor. I sat down on one of the oak chairs and started to pray. I grew more and more unhappy; there was nothing that I could do. I could not go back and I could not stay away for long, my money would run out. I felt hopeless and very lonely; I longed for someone to talk to me but nobody did, they were all too busy looking at the sights or praying.

I suddenly decided to go. I jumped up and walked down the nave and out of the west door. I looked back once and saw the pinnacles and saints for the last time, then I found my way to the station and bought a ticket for Exeter.

When I got on the train I discovered that it was full of boys going back to Sherborne. There were so many that some had to stand in the corridors. I made my way between them, feeling very self-conscious. As I passed a group of three one called out to the others in a mocking voice, ‘There’s a pretty boy for you!’ I almost ran so that I should not hear any more, then I locked myself into the lavatory, and although the door was tried many times I would not come out till the end of the journey.

2

I sat on a low wall in the Close. The sun was full on the burnt-gold cathedral and it warmed my through my clothes. I was writing a postcard to my aunt.

‘I hope you have not been worrying about me. I am quite all right but I will never go back to school. I have a very nice room here with hot and cold water. The cathedral is lovely, I have been wandering all over it.’

DENTON

On the other side of the postcard was a picture of the Royal Clarence Hotel, where I had taken a room. I had found the asking a little easier this time. The housekeeper had seen me as I came in and had stopped to talk to me. She was a thin woman with small bones and tight grey hair. She seemed amused by me and I was able to lie easily.

‘But what about your luggage?’ she suddenly asked.

‘Oh, my mother’s bringing that in the car tomorrow.’

‘Then what are you going to sleep in tonight?’ Her eyes lighted up. She watched my face turning red, then said with relish:

‘I don’t suppose it’ll hurt you to sleep in your skin!’

I grinned, feeling ashamed, and she led me to my bedroom. It was called Abbotsford. The name was in white Gothic letters on the shiny brown door. She left me there. I was pleased when she had gone. I was flattered but revolted by her.

I sat down on the bed to count my money; it was dwindling rapidly. I had had to leave seventeen and six at the office downstairs. I knew that I ought to have found cheaper lodgings, but the dread of squalor was too strong. I did not even go in search of them.

When I had posted the card I stood by the box, wondering if I had been foolish, but then I decided that sooner or later my aunt and grandfather would have to know where I was.

I went into a chemist’s shop to buy a toothbrush and some paste, then I looked into the windows in the High Street. I found the antique-shops I had first seen with my mother. In the window of one, the same cracked Worcester salmon-scale plate was still there. The Dartmoor Pixies stared out at me drearily from the souvenir shop, so I turned and walked slowly back to the hotel.

In the high dining-room upstairs the chandelier was already lighted. I sat down in the warm yellow room and began to eat. It was a long meal, and with each mouthful I kept asking, ‘What am I going to do tomorrow? What am I going to do tomorrow?’

*

I slept again that night in my shirt. It was getting tousled and dirty now. I felt old and dirty too, as if I had never been young and fresh. When at last the morning came, I got up and bathed, and then rubbed the cuffs and collar of my shirt with a wet corner of the towel. It was lucky that I did not need to shave yet; there was only a little golden hair on my upper lip. The hair on my head was matted, for two days it had only been combed with my fingers.

I wanted to leave the hotel as quickly as possible in case my aunt should ring up when she got my postcard. I decided to go for a long walk, and made my way out of the town until at last I came to the green fields. I sat down under some trees near a pond. It was a damp, misty day and I felt I wanted to die. Nobody else was about, I was all alone in the fields.

A bit of newspaper was lying on the ground in front of me, so I took it up and began to read. There was a recipe for red cabbage pickle. I thought of it tasting cold and acid on my tongue, and it made me feel sick. I wondered if I would feel better if I had something hot to drink. I got up and walked wearily up the steep hill into the town again.

I saw a small cafe called the Blue Bird. It was steamy inside, with a smell of vegetables. The waitresses were dressed in flowered pinafores and there were sticky cakes on wire trays. I went upstairs and sat underneath a copper warming-pan. One of the waitresses came up to me and I ordered hot chocolate. I turned my blue plate over and saw that it had ‘Old Spode’ written on the bottom. The people outside were walking up and down the narrow passage that led into the Close. I felt very miserable and the chocolate seemed to weigh me down inside instead of comforting me.

I began to hate Exeter so much that I decided to leave. Standing outside the cafe I tried to remember the way to Budleigh Salterton where we had once spent a summer.

I would walk to save money. My thoughts were more peaceful when I walked too.

I dodged down the High Street, crossing the road whenever I saw a policeman; I thought that they were all probably searching for me by now.

As I walked I felt the money in my pocket banging against my leg. I had less than a pound now. If only I could get a job! But I felt that I was not good for anything.

Passing a farmyard I tried to go in and ask for work, but knew that I could not. A young labourer came out sitting high up on a cartload of steaming manure. The sun just caught him and I thought how splendid he looked. I wanted to help him fork the stinking manure out of the cart, but instead I just walked on.

*

I was so tired when I at last reached Budleigh Salterton that I went into the first inn I saw. I waited under the gaslight in the hall until a maid led me up narrow stairs and down a long corridor to a little room. It was high-ceilinged and the wallpaper was old, with a big green pattern of scrolls on it.

I pulled off my clothes and got into bed. The feel of the dirty rug on my bare feet was horrible. I had eaten nothing since lunchtime, but I was not hungry.

Soon I realized that my room was over the bar. The sound of talking and of glasses being knocked came up through the floor. It maddened me, I could not go to sleep. I lay awake long after the noises had stopped, watching the faint square of light from the window and listening to the sea rustling the stones on the beach.

*

The next morning I hurried through my breakfast, leaving the thick rashers and the remains of the egg on my plate.

Outside the sun was strong, and I walked along trying to decide what to do.

As I thought, I turned down a narrow lane and found myself in front of a comfortable thatched house. There swam into my mind the words of some people I had known in Switzerland:

‘We live in the thatched house at Budleigh Salterton.’

A car was waiting outside the gate and I suddenly felt bold. I walked up the stone path between the neat flowerbeds and rang the bell. Mrs Brandon herself came to the door. She recognized me and shouted, ‘Denton, what are you doing here?’

I lied very quickly, and she led me into the shiny chintz drawing-room.

I was staying with an aunt in Exeter

Reviews for Maiden Voyage

[dramman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A memoir of the author's first visit to China in the 1930s, while still a teenager (a troubled one as he had just run away from his boarding school, Repton). Written in a simple, unaffected style, it is a beguiling read.

[presto_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Denton Welch, artist and author, writes in part memoir, part novel, of the year at the age of fifteen he ran away from school, and subsequently left for China to join his father. He begins as he is due to set off for his return to Repton, his Derbyshire public school where his brothers also attend or attended. But instead of catching the train going north from London he buys a ticket for Salisbury. As his money runs out he is forced to make arrangements to return, with the outcome that he can eventually join his father in China.Welch describes his escape, his brief return to Repton, and then his time in China. The account is filled with little adventures and encounters in which Welch reveals as much about himself as the people he meets and the places he visits. He writes with an artist's eye, his powers of observation creating strong images and bringing to life both people and places. Welch is an unusual youth, sensitive, something of a loner, with a great interest in the antique and especially small objects, and a sense of adventure. The honesty of his writing cannot but endear one to this young man who is clearly set apart from most, and who occasionally and subtly reveals through his writings his gay tendencies.

[cliffburns · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Denton Welch's first book, an account of his flight from his horrid English school and trip abroad to visit his father in Shanghai. As with everything Welch wrote, the detail is exquisite, beautifully remembered and rendered. The man's eye and aesthetic sensibilities appear to have been faultless. After you read this one, make sure to seek out his JOURNALS, which are just as perfectly made, the artist ever evident.

[piemouth · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's hard to say why I liked this so much. It has almost no plot, events simply unfold. But his descriptions of people and places and his joy in beautiful things and new things are so charming and endearing.