psmv5: Church three

This being proper notice of the third volume of autobiography of Richard Church, whom I have been reading off and on since his chance discovery in the Isle of Wight last summer, with last notice at reference 1. Notice which results from two readings, not having felt that I had got enough from the first. A chap whose first home was in Battersea at the end of the nineteenth century. A chap who probably called himself a writer, who did poetry, novels and a range of other stuff – including quite a lot about Kent, which seems to have, eventually, become his adoptive home. There is a list of his work at the end of reference 7.

This volume starts just after the birth of his first child, in Limpsfield, a little to the east of Oxted in Surrey, between Redhill and Westerham, just to the south of what is now the M25. A place from which, in 1920, he could commute to London Bridge or Whitehall and still have time for his family and some hours of private study.

A volume, written towards the end of his life, which the author describes as fugal, in which tracks backwards and forwards over his life and times. At one point reminding us that it is difficult to do autobiography of one’s middle years, when the people whom one knew or know are still likely to be around, making it awkward to write of them, for good or bad.

In this case, in this volume, we are told a lot about his friends and colleagues, but little or nothing about his first wife, his second wife or his children. Leaving me with the impression of a man who lived for his letters, for his work and for his literary friends – of which there seemed to be a lot. What with that, his uncertain health and his uncertain grasp of money matters, his wives – of which there were three altogether – must have been a forgiving bunch. I believe that he was a church man, although that does not intrude. I imagine also conservative in his politics although that does not intrude either.

Then there is the question of energy: words – both spoken and written – seemed to have poured out of Church for nearly all his life. Words which perhaps contributed to his success in the wining and dining of the literary world. But an energy which seems a bit adrift from said uncertain health. Energy which, in the end, was not up to commuting, family, first job in the Civil Service and second job moonlighting in the literary world. This despite plenty of support from the first of these.

A lot of the stuff about poetry in the early 1920’s is over my head. Not only do I not read poetry, I have little idea what he is on about when he talks of the discussions of poets in upstairs rooms in Soho restaurants. But I do learn that few poets make a living at it, and nearly all of them, certainly when starting out, have day jobs.

We still have the ambivalence about the civil service noticed at reference 1. While it clearly provided him with occupation and support while he found his literary feet and we get a whiff of rose-tinted nostalgia for the Civil Service of old, back in the time of the likes of Trollope, we also get a scattering of remarks about it being safe, a safe haven even, with many of its inhabitants lacking in the skills and enterprise needed to thrive in the real world. He wants it both ways!

The book starts by telling us of the urge that most of us have for having a home and to get back to it after a time away, be that for the day’s work or for some longer period. Of the way that many of us, particularly wives, have a knack for nesting in our temporary homes, for making them homely with little personal touches.

This then broadens out into the need we nearly all have to fund, certainly by our middle years, a comfortable place to be, a place where we are content to rest, to rest content, as it were. In case this meant leaving the Civil Service and becoming a full-time literary man, having a good marriage and a comfortable home – which might be either town or country. This was his vocation, his home.

That said, there is again an ambivalence, a scattering of remarks and how young men on the make should not burden themselves with marriage and children – an attitude which survived in the east London building tradesmen with whom I was working at the time of my own marriage – and for whom, I suppose, early marriage meant cramped quarters and nappies hanging in front of the fire.

Orality and Ong

Not made much progress on the poetry front since posting reference 9. But being in the middle of reading Ong, another church man, at reference 5, I have been wondering about poets and orality.

As far as I can tell, Church and his poet colleagues did not need to read a poem aloud to get the idea, their silent reading of the words – unlike mine – was good enough. Although Church does seem to have done a lot of poetry readings, both at home and abroad.

Maybe for poets, the spoken and the read are more closely related in the brain than is the case for the rest of us. And I understand it to be the case that it is enough for musicians to read the score to get the idea, they don’t need to hear the music performed: Beethoven, after all, was deaf for the last, but still productive, part of his life. Glennie, who became a deaf drummer, is, I think different: she feels the music, feels the vibrations, through the rest of her body somehow. While my late elder brother, musical but not a performer, used to say that he did not need to actually hear music that he knew, on his fancy gramophone or otherwise, because he could hear it perfectly well in his head. Knowing, in his case, included some kind of inner replay capability. In which case, what relation did the time of the replay have to the time of the original? It is also the case that he was keen on Baroque choral music, another link back to Ong.

While this morning I associated to the very aggressive style which I take to be the hallmark of rappers, again linking back to Ong, who talks of the physical, the interpersonal, communicative side of words. Spoken words have a power which written words have largely lost. A power which goes back to our evolutionary past, when language was mainly used for command and control?

I believe another feature of rapping is the stringing of words together in a way that talks to the unconscious, but does not make a lot of sense taken literally. I wonder if this relates to the ‘runs’ of traditional Irish storytelling, of references 10 and 11, also turned up in connection with Ong.

Lastly, I wonder about the extent to which poetry is a rather closed world, with poets largely writing for each other: they are the ones who understand what they are at. The rest of us have to make do.

More work in progress.

Some other odds and ends

The searing and scarring death of his mother (of TB) having come just before the start of the first volume, we are told here something of the decline and deaths of both his brother (again of TB) and his father (of old age), with both of whom he had close ties, of affection if not proximity. His brother was a gifted pianist, while the present author, despite being strongly affected by music, stopped playing altogether shortly after his brother’s death. Perhaps his urge to write was too strong to allow room to play.

I have heard that the worlds of professional musicians and of artists are quite small, with a lot of them living within reach of London and knowing each other. The same seemed to be true of Church’s literary world, with a lot of the people that Church knew being people of whom I have heard. Perhaps, being a commissioning editor for Dent made knowing people part of the job, helped along by wannabee authors beating a path to your door. But I don’t think that this is the whole story: Church seems to have had a gift for knowing people.

One of whom, for example, is the Edward Garnett of reference 8 – a book which was interesting enough at the time, six or seven years ago now, but looking at it again the other day, not sure that I shall be reading it again. As it happens, Church’s remarks about Garnett close (on page 167) with some remarks about how his sense of home generalises the narrower sense in which a child understands the matter.

And then there were all the marginals he came across in the Civil Service, servants by day but with literary aspirations and connections. He was well served by such people.

At another place, he tells us of being rather startled to be described in a review of one of his books by Cyril Connolly, a friend, as being a bit of a schizophrenic. Startled and disturbed, as his perception was that schizophrenics do not find their home, they are condemned to a sort of life-long purgatory, in limbo perhaps. Which may well be true, but I have not yet assimilated this perception, this thought, to what little I know of them. It also occurred to me that as a tricky creative, he might have had more sensitivity about such matters than the rest of us.

He certainly had the odd habit, from childhood until middle age, at times of sickness (sometimes tubercular), stress or excessive emotion, of hallucinating that he was levitating, gliding along a few feet above the ground. Perhaps as he hurried across London Bridge on the way home. Something he seemed to have just grown out of as he began to see his way home.

Lots more material about the life-long difficulties, issues and scarring of people who have climbed up into the respectable world from the gutter, from the slums of somewhere or other. With he himself, not starting in a slum, but in a decidedly lower-middle class sort of life, the sort of life that Orwell poked so hard at, sometimes rather unkindly. Church himself seems to have known plenty of such people, but as he recognises and applauds, a much rarer breed now, with education and opportunities there for a much larger proportion of us. Those that want them, that is.

Church writes of the great divide for the men of his generation between those who had served in the forces, particularly in the army in the trenches of France or Belgium, from those who hadn’t, for one reason or another. With many of those who had being marked for life by the experience.

Intrigued by his mentioning Sir John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, said to be both a Renaissance scholar and capable of great savagery on and after battles, reference 12 is on its way.

Conclusions

An interesting read, full of all kinds of insights. I dare say I shall read all three volumes again at some point. Presently stuck into his much earlier novel, ‘The Porch’, reference 6, which covers some of the same ground as the first volume of autobiography. From Dent, for whom he worked for many years, rather than from Heinemann, who did the present volumes.

Nevertheless, I still feel that Church lived in a rather different sort of world to mine: he saw things and felt things in a way that I do not. He was almost overwhelmed by the power of words; a quantitatively different reaction to my own. This despite there being plenty of touch points – not least the Department of Employment where we both did time – a brand new institution in his day.

And I am not sure what younger readers, much further away from the first half of the twentieth century than I am, would make of it all. Perhaps these three volumes are, in that sense, something of a period piece.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/09/church-two.html.

Reference 2: Over the bridge – Richard Church – 1955.

Reference 3: The golden sovereign – Richard Church – 1957.

Reference 4: The voyage home – Richard Church – 1964.

Reference 5: Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word – Walter J. Ong, S.J. – 1982.

Reference 6: The Porch – Richard Church – 1937. My copy a cheap reprint from the same year, complete with dust jacket.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Church_(poet).

Reference 8: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/01/midwife.html.

Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/02/an-experiment.html.

Reference 10: Orality – John D. Niles – 2020.

Reference 11: Oral storytelling and Irish identity – Margaret Caroline McGlothlin – 2017. A thesis from Waco.