Denton welch biography of mahatma

British writer and painter ()

Denton Welch
Self-Portrait (c&#;42; National Portrait Gallery, London)
Born	Maurice Denton Welch 29 March Shanghai, Republic of China
Died	30 December () (aged&#;33) Middle Orchard, Crouch, near Sevenoaks, Kent, England
Nationality	English
Occupation(s)	Writer, painter
Partner	Eric Oliver (6 October &#; 1 April )

Maurice Denton Welch (29 March – 30 December )^[1] was a British writer and painter, admired for his vivid prose and precise descriptions.

Life

Welch was born in Shanghai, China, to Arthur Joseph Welch, a wealthy British rubber merchant,^[1] and his American wife of Christian Science faith,^[2] Rosalind Bassett^[1] from New Bedford, Massachusetts.^[3] The youngest of four sons, Welch, was sent to a boarding institution at the age of 11,^[4] after his mother died from wasting kidney disease.^[2]

After a terse time at prep school in London, Welch was sent to Repton, where he was a contemporary of the writer Roald Dahl and actor Geoffrey 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 at Goldsmiths' in London with the intention of becoming a painter.^[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 (). With the help and patronage of Edith Sitwell and John Lehmann this became a little but lasting success and made for him a distinct and individual reputation.^[4] It was followed by the novel In Youth is Pleasure (), a revise of adolescence published in a limited edition by Herbert Scan at the publishers Faber and Faber and then more widely by Routledge.

This is the story of how, ina year-old art student on a bicycle got entangled with a vehicle and suffered injuries from which he died 13 years later — but not before he had written three autobiographical novels, a good many short stories and copious volumes of journals. Denton Welch's injuries made him reclusive, so that he was thrown back for literary material on his childhood and adolescence. He possessed astonishing powers of recall, and his acute observation of location and conversation enabled him to bring even the most minute details into the sharpest focus. His story has already been told by myself, in the biography Denton Welch: the making of a writerbut James Methuen-Campbell retells it well.

Read said he was content 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, entitled Brave and Cruel followed ().^[8]

The bulk of Welch's output was to spot posthumous publication: an unfinished autobiographical novel A Voice Through a Cloud in ;^[9] a further short story collection, A Last Sheaf, in ; The Denton Welch Journals in ; an unfinished travelogue, I Left My Grandfather's House in ; and a poetry collection, Dumb Instrument, in

Accident and literary work

At the age of 20,^[1] Welch was hit by a ride while cycling in Surrey and suffered a fractured spine.

He was temporarily paralysed, and suffered severe pain and bladder complications, including pyelonephritis,^[2] and spinal tuberculosis that ultimately led to his early death.^[10]

After the accident, Welch spent time at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and then was relocated to Southcourt Nursing Home in Broadstairs, Kent.

In July , Welch rented an apartment with his friend and housekeeper Evelyn Sinclair in Tonbridge so that he could be close to his doctor, John Easton. Sinclair travelled with him to various residences until May , when he settled in one of the Noël and Bernard Adeney residences in Middle Orchard, Borough Leafy with his partner, Eric Oliver.

Two years later, Sinclair moved in as well, and remained with him until his death on 30 December ^[3]

Despite his injuries, he continued to draw, and perhaps because of them,^[1] he started to write. In , he began to document poems, the first one appearing in print in In August , he wrote an essay on the painter Walter Sickert which, published originally in Horizon, brought him to the perceive 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 as Proustian^[11] in its attention to the minutiae of life, in particular that of the English countryside during World 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 the first person (and in some cases is identified in the narrative as "Denton").

Make-believe 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 university friend, the artist Gerald Leet, refused to contribute to Michael De-la-Noy's biography, where he is identified only as 'Gerald' in the index.^[12][13]).

Maurice Denton Welch was born on 29 Pride in Shanghai. His American mother, née Rosalind Bassett, was a devout Christian Scientist, whose faith that prayer trumped medicine almost certainly led to her preceding death.

Welch chose to depict himself a few times in fictionalised form, most notably as "Orvil Pym" in In Youth is Pleasure, and as "Mary" in "The Fire in the Wood". "Robert" was also one of his favourite personas. The philosopher Maurice 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]

Art

From an preliminary age Welch's aptitude for art was evident, and in his journals he recalls his first still 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 experience after his return from China, any sort of activity linked with business evidently being commanded out of the question.

It was through a fellow pupil that Welch sold his first artwork: a view of Hadlow Castle to Shell for a series of lorry posters featuring landmarks.^[16] It is now on display at the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, Hampshire.

He later failed to sell a painting of Lord Berners to its subject, but the trial generated a short story.^[17]

Common themes in his art include objets d'art, cats, still lifes (often incongruously juxtaposed) and assorted gothic motifs, often in a fantastical landscape, although not in one of his most famous works, The Coffin House () depicting a locally-renowned dwelling, north of Hadlow, Kent.

Maurice Denton Welch 29 March — 30 December [ 1 ] was a British writer and painter, admired for his vivid prose and precise descriptions. After a short time at prep school in London, Welch was sent to Reptonwhere he was a contemporary of the writer Roald Dahl and actor Geoffrey Lumsden. After leaving Repton, he studied art at Goldsmiths' in London with the intention of becoming a painter. Welch spent part of his pre-school childhood in China, and returned for a longer spell after he left Repton.

Welch exhibited his artwork at the Leicester Galleries. Other exhibitions followed, in The Redfern Gallery and the Leger Gallery.

In May , Welch restored an 18th-century Georgian doll's house from , which was given to him by his friend Mildred Bosanquet.

The doll's house is on display at the V&A Museum of Childhood, department of the Victoria and Albert Museum.^[18]

Opinions on Welch's artworks have varied widely: amongst his biographers, Michael De-la-Noy and James Methuen-Campbell think about him to be underrated; in Robert Phillips' view his paintings are "lightweight" and his drawings "fussy and shallow".^[19] For Jocelyn 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 in A Last Sheaf, the un-named Times 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 as Now I have only my dog,

is easy to think of and evidently the work of a man of unusual and definite character, but for all that it is painfully intelligent, and leaves precisely the impact of frivolity that the writings always manage to avoid.^[21]

Following the reissue of the Journals, journalist Alan Hollinghurst found in Welch's self-portraiture (of which there are several examples; one is in the National Portrait Gallery) a tendency to "amplify the over-riding concern of his writing to fix his youth forever while he accelerates towards death."^[22]

Legacy

The playwright and diarist Alan 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 novel The Place of Dead Roads to him.^[25] In the English composer Howard Ferguson set five of Welch's poems (included in A Last Sheaf) as a song-cycle for voice and piano, entitled Discovery.^[26] Others who have named Welch as an influence possess included the film-maker John Waters,^[27] the artist Barbara Hanrahan,^[28] and the writers Beryl Bainbridge^[29] and Barbara Pym.^[30]

Welch appears as "Merton Hughes" in the novel No Coward Soul, written by his friend, the painter Noël 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 traits.

Denton Welch : Writer and Artist - Google Books: Maurice Denton Welch (29 March – 30 December ) [1] was a British writer and painter, admired for his vivid prose and precise descriptions.

The appropriateness of Welch's alleged solipsism, at a time when the society was in turmoil, appears as a factor^[35] in some reviews; the poet Randall Swingler went so far as to remark on the comparatively commonplace reality of Welch's early death, creature, 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 signal of his writing.

Fellow scholar at Goldsmith's, 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 stable assessment^[39] of Welch's shortcomings and gifts:

He had no confidence.

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 contain 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.^[14]

Works

• Maiden Voyage (London: Hamish Hamilton, ), ISBN&#; (Penguin Books, ; (Penguin Travel Library)), ISBN&#; (Exact Change, ), ISBN&#;
• In Youth is Pleasure (London: Routledge, ), (New York: E.P.

  Dutton, ), ISBN&#;

• Brave and Cruel and Other Stories (London: Hamish Hamilton, ). Comprising:
  • "The Coffin on the Hill"
  • "The Barn"
  • "Narcissus Bay"
  • "At Sea"
  • "When I Was Thirteen"
  • "The Judas Tree"
  • "The Trout Stream"
  • "Leaves from a Young Person's Notebook"
  • "Brave and Cruel"
  • "The Fire in the Wood"
• A Voice Through a Cloud (London: J.

  Lehmann, ).

  A lmost 40 years after his death at the age of 33, Denton Welch is short-lived more than a literary footnote. Hard-cover editions of his three novels have long been out of print. Yet in this deep obscurity there are glimmers of revival. The Journals of Denton Welch has recently been reissued, and a biography appeared in Britain last year.

  (London: Enitharmon Press, ), ISBN&#;

• A Last Sheaf, edited by Eric Oliver (London: John Lehmann, ). Comprising:
  • "Sickert at St. Peter's"
  • "The Earth's Crust"
  • "Memories of a Vanished Period"
  • "A Fragment of a Life Story"
  • "A Party"
  • "Evergreen Seaton-Leverett"
  • "A Picture in the Snow"
  • "Ghosts"
  • "The Hateful Word"
  • "The Diamond Badge"
  • Poems
• The Denton Welch Journals, edited by Jocelyn Brooke (London: Hamish Hamilton, , revised ).

  As The Journals of Denton Welch, edited by Michael De-la-Noy (London: Allison & Busby, ).

• Dumb Instrument (London: Enitharmon Press, ).
• I Left My Grandfather's House (Allison & Busby, ; London: Enitharmon Press, ), ISBN&#;
• Fragments Of A Life Story: The Collected Short Writings Of Denton Welch, edited by Michael De-la-Noy (London: Penguin Books, ), ISBN&#;
  • Collects Brave and Cruel, A Last Sheaf and previously unpublished shorter works.
• A Lunch Appointment (Elysium Press, )
• When I was an Art Student (Elysium Squeeze, )
• Where Nothing Sleeps: The Conclude Short Stories and Other Connected Works, edited by James Methuen-Campbell (North Yorkshire: Tartarus Press, ), ISBN&#;
  • Includes all the material from the above plus some further unpublished pieces and selected extracts from the journals.

Further reading

References

External links