Denton Welch | |
|---|---|
 Self-Portrait (c.1940–42;National Portrait Gallery, London) | |
| Born | Maurice Denton Welch 29 March 1915 |
| Died | 30 December 1948(1948-12-30) (aged 33) Middle Orchard, Crouch, nearSevenoaks, Kent, England |
| Occupation(s) | Writer, painter |
| Partner | Eric Oliver (6 October 1914 – 1 April 1995) |
Maurice Denton Welch (29 March 1915 – 30 December 1948)[1] was a British writer and painter, admired for his vivid prose and precise descriptions.
Welch was born inShanghai, China, to Arthur Joseph Welch, a wealthy British rubber merchant,[1] and his American wife ofChristian Science faith,[2] Rosalind Bassett[1] fromNew Bedford, Massachusetts.[3] The youngest of four sons, Welch was sent to a boarding school at the age of 11,[4] after his mother died from wastingkidney disease.[2]
After a brief time at prep school in London, Welch was sent toRepton, where he was a contemporary of the writerRoald Dahl and actorGeoffrey Lumsden.[5] By his and others' accounts, his time there was miserable, and he ran away prior to his last term. After leaving Repton, he studied art atGoldsmiths in London with the intention of becoming apainter.[6]
Welch spent part of his pre-school childhood in China, and returned for a longer spell after he left Repton. He recorded this episode in his fictionalised autobiography,Maiden Voyage (1943). It became, with the help and patronage ofEdith Sitwell andJohn Lehmann, a small but lasting success and won him a distinct and individual reputation.[4] He followed it with the novelIn Youth is Pleasure (1944), a study of adolescence published in a limited edition byHerbert Read at the publishersFaber and Faber and then more widely byRoutledge. Read said he was happy to publish the book, and enjoyed it himself, but he warned Welch that many people would find its hero perverse and unpleasant.[7] A collection of short stories entitledBrave and Cruel followed (1948).[8]
The bulk of Welch's output was published posthumously: the unfinished autobiographical novelA Voice Through a Cloud in 1950;[9] another short story collection,A Last Sheaf, in 1951;The Denton Welch Journals in 1952; an unfinished travelogue,I Left My Grandfather's House in 1958; and a poetry collection,Dumb Instrument, in 1976.
At the age of 20,[1] Welch was hit by a car while cycling inSurrey and suffered a fractured spine. He was temporarily paralysed, and suffered severe pain and bladder complications, includingpyelonephritis,[2] andspinal tuberculosis that ultimately led to his early death.[10]
After the accident, Welch spent time at theNational Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and then was relocated to Southcourt Nursing Home inBroadstairs, Kent. In July 1936, Welch rented an apartment with his friend and housekeeper Evelyn Sinclair inTonbridge so that he could be close to his doctor, John Easton. Sinclair travelled with him to various residences until May 1946, when he settled in one of the Noël andBernard Adeney residences in Middle Orchard,Borough Green with his partner, Eric Oliver. Two years later, Sinclair moved in as well, and remained with him until his death on 30 December 1948.[3]
Despite his injuries, he continued to paint, and perhaps because of them,[1] he started to write. In 1940, he began to writepoems, the first one appearing in print in 1941. In August 1942, he wrote an essay on the painterWalter Sickert which, published originally inHorizon, brought him to the notice of Edith Sitwell, in no small part down to his own cultivation of her attentions.[3] Scores of short stories followed, around a dozen being published in various magazines. Many more were left unfinished at the time of his death.
Welch's literary work, intense and introverted, has been described asProustian[11] in its attention to the minutiae of life, in particular that of the English countryside duringWorld War II. A close attention to aesthetics, be it in human behaviour, physical appearance, clothing, art, architecture, jewellery, or antiques, is also a recurring concern in his writings.
The extent to which Welch's work is autobiography or fiction has been much discussed, apart from his frequent use of thefirst person (and in some cases is identified in the narrative as "Denton"). Fictional content aside, the point of origin of virtually all of his stories is biographical: they are often set in places he knew or had visited, and feature thinly disguised, often deeply unflattering, depictions of friends, family and acquaintances (to the extent that over thirty years after Welch's death, his art school friend, the artist Gerald Leet, refused to contribute toMichael De-la-Noy's biography, where he is identified only as 'Gerald' in the index.[12][13]). Welch chose to depict himself a few times in fictionalised form, most notably as "Orvil Pym" inIn Youth is Pleasure, and as "Mary" in "The Fire in the Wood". "Robert" was also one of his favourite personas. The philosopherMaurice Cranston, who had known him since his teens (and who featured in at least one story) observed that Welch was as unforgiving in depictions of himself as he was of others.[14]
From an early age Welch's aptitude for art was evident, and in his journals he recalls his firststill life (holly and beech leaves), completed when he was nine.[15] However, his enrolment at Goldsmith's came initially out of his family's desire that he do something with his life after his return from China, any sort of activity associated with business evidently being ruled out of the question. It was through a fellow student that Welch sold his first artwork: a view ofHadlow Castle toShell for a series of lorry posters featuring landmarks.[16] It is now on display at theNational Motor Museum atBeaulieu, Hampshire. He later failed to sell a painting ofLord Berners to its subject, but the experience generated a short story.[17]
Common themes in his art includeobjets d'art, cats, still lifes (often incongruously juxtaposed) and assortedgothic motifs, often in a fantastical landscape, although not in one of his most famous works,The Coffin House (1946) depicting a locally renowned dwelling, north ofHadlow,Kent. Welch exhibited his artwork at theLeicester Galleries. Other exhibitions followed, inThe Redfern Gallery and the Leger Gallery.
In May 1945, Welch restored an 18th-century Georgiandoll's house from 1783, which was given to him by his friend Mildred Bosanquet. The doll's house is on display at theV&A Museum of Childhood, department of theVictoria and Albert Museum.[18]
Opinions on Welch's artworks have varied widely: amongst his biographers, Michael De-la-Noy and James Methuen-Campbell consider him to be underrated; in Robert Phillips' view his paintings are "lightweight" and his drawings "fussy and shallow".[19] ForJocelyn Brooke, had he been a painter merely, and not also a writer, "it is doubtful ... whether he would be remembered at all."[20]
In a perceptive review of the reproductions inA Last Sheaf, the un-namedTimes art critic remarked on the "whimsically sinister" qualities of Welch's depictions. The writer noted that Welch's specific skill—that of the detached but perceptive observer—which is so evident in his writings, is lost in his art, where he inadvertently (and falsely) appears to present "himself [as] clever to like what most people would think preposterous."[21] A painting such asNow I have only my dog,
... is easy to remember and evidently the work of a man of unusual and definite character, but for all that it is painfully smart, and leaves precisely the impression of frivolity that the writings always manage to avoid.[21]
Following the reissue of theJournals, writerAlan Hollinghurst found in Welch's self-portraiture (of which there are several examples; one is in theNational Portrait Gallery) a tendency to "amplify the over-riding concern of his writing to fix his youth forever while he accelerates towards death."[22]
The playwright and diaristAlan Bennett stated that he shared many similar preoccupations when he first encountered Welch's work.[23]
William S. Burroughs cited Welch as the writer who most influenced his own work[24] and dedicated his 1983 novelThe Place of Dead Roads to him.[25] In 1951 the English composerHoward Ferguson set five of Welch's poems (included inA Last Sheaf) as asong-cycle for voice and piano, entitledDiscovery.[26] Others who have named Welch as an influence have included the film-makerJohn Waters,[27] the artistBarbara Hanrahan,[28] and the writersBeryl Bainbridge[29] andBarbara Pym.[30]
Welch appears as "Merton Hughes" in the 1956 novelNo Coward Soul, written by his friend, the painterNoël Adeney,[31] and as "Kim Carsons" in William S. Burroughs'The Place of Dead Roads.[32]
Many commentators who wrote about Denton Welch after his death had their views clouded by largely non-aesthetic concerns: by their perception of his sexuality,[33] or of his treatment of them personally in his writing, or of the "hateful winsomeness"[34] of his personality. The appropriateness of Welch's alleged solipsism, at a time when the world was in turmoil, appears as a factor[35] in some reviews; the poetRandall Swingler went so far as to remark on the comparatively commonplace fact of Welch's early death, being, as it was, only one of many at the time.[36] However, Welch's friends observed that close focus on his sexuality was to miss the point of his writing. Fellow student at Goldsmiths, Helen Roeder, called him 'Ariel',[37] and Maurice Cranston highlighted the complexity of Welch's character, at least in part influenced by his health. Simply labelling him "'a homosexual' is to use a bright, pat word which will make foolish people think they have learned the secret of something they have not begun to understand".[38]
Cranston also offered what might be considered a more balanced assessment[39] of Welch's shortcomings and gifts:[14]
He had no trust. This in turn connects with his greatest limitation as an artist. He built too many barricades and enclosed the range of his understanding. If he could have seen the wider human comedy with his miraculously penetrating eye, and described the world as he described his own, he would surely have been among the greater writers in our language. As it is he will survive as a minor genius, one of very few from an uncreative age.
