I have always greatly admired the fiction of John Cowper Powys, while finding the length and spread of his novels rather formidable. I like the beginnings of them, which settle the reader into interesting surroundings, with enjoyably eccentric characters, and I usually set off with high hopes. But at some point I almost invariably break off, and do not then resume. It is not that the plot is complex or tedious, but simply that it does require stamina, and other things are calling.
One possible way in, therefore, is with his earlier novels, which are a bit shorter: these, however, are not so rich in theme or engaging in the telling. A compromise might be found with the fourth of them (though the third published), Ducdame (1925).
John Cowper Powys wrote to Dorothy Richardson, author of the Pilgrimage sequence of autobiographical novels, about his first three published novels (another, After My Fashion, though written in 1919, was not published until 1980):
‘The truth is in Wood & Stone & Rodmoor I exploited most wickedly a certain sadistic vein in my disposition. Then I became more virtuous; & resolved that it was wrong to do this – unless the thing was ‘spiritualized’ as in Dostoevsky – for fear of actually spreading the ‘aura’ of it around. And in Ducdame my third novel I left it out altogether and tried to make an objective work of art using none of my own secretest feelings (except my love of Nature and of simple Romantic sensuality & of an exciting weird plot & of abnormal characters).’
Ducdame, which was published at the end of July one hundred years ago, may be seen as signalling the deep interest in landscape and its influence on contemporary lives, which dominates his noted set of four ‘Wessex’ novels, starting with Wolf Solent (1929), and continuing with A Glastonbury Romance (1933), Weymouth Sands (1934) and Maiden Castle (1936). In many respects it is a sort of prologue to these major works, with the advantage for the rather daunted reader of being not quite so extensive. It has not had the same attention as these four. There was a Village Press paperback edition in 1974 alongside other Powys reprints, and a Faber and Farber reissue in their Classics series in 2008.
What did Powys mean by Ducdame’s ‘weird plot’? In the opening chapter we are introduced to the brothers Rook and Lexie Ashover, of Ashover, scions of a line of squires going back to Norman times. Their indomitable mother is conspiring to ensure this centuried lineage continues, despite certain awkward circumstances. As well as her, there are three other leading women characters: Rooks’s lover Netta, who lives with him at the Manor, in defiance of convention; his cousin Lady Ann, invited as a guest by his mother, with matchmaking in mind; and Nell Hastings, the vicar’s wife, for whom both brothers have a passion. This family lineage theme and the emotional complications are not in the least “weird”.
However, the novel also picks up two of the themes Powys mentioned to Richardson. The Romantic love of nature finds expression in poetic evocations of the countryside. In the opening chapter, he conjures up the eerie effect of bright moonlight on the local landscape and wonders if certain places have a particular affinity to the moon, and in the second chapter he conveys well how rain changes the light, the sound and the atmosphere of rooms, and how a drenched terrain may have a grey magic. This sense of a country steeped in a deep, elemental magic recalls the lyrical work of de la Mare, Blackwood or Machen.
Secondly, Powys’ mystical idea that sinister writing might spread its “aura” is also presented in his novel. There are hints of an ominous mystery concerning a book being written by the vicar, William Hastings. The vicar’s library includes volumes of “Philo, Iamblicus, Plotinus, Paracelsus”, three ancient Neoplatonists and a Renaissance alchemist, suggesting he is delving in arcane matters. His scratching away at the book in his study affects his wife’s nerves with “an almost supernatural terror”. Powys ponders, “Is there, perhaps, a power of destruction in human thought capable of projecting its magnetism beyond its own realm of immaterial ideas?” (pg, 45). The vicar’s wife thinks so: “he’s—thinking something—that destroys—you know?—that destroys everything!” (pg. 54).
The novel’s landscape mysticism and idea of the uncanny power of certain writing do offer some of the “weird” elements Powys claimed for the book. But they are not its main thrust, which remains a concern with the fate of the family’s ancient line, and the way this might be resolved by various permutations of relationships. That is by no means an original plot, but a common device in Victorian inheritance melodramas, and it cannot be said Powys much surpasses this origin, however idiosyncratic and unusual his style and way of thinking. We might prefer the sense of place and the Vicar’s book to come more to the fore. If Ducdame is weird, as Powys said, the reader of fantastic literature might wish it were weirder still. Even so, the evocation of the elements, the pantheism, the full-flavoured characters, and the hints of bibliomancy are certainly compelling enough.
(Mark Valentine)
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