Young Emma E-Book

W. H. Davies

• Herausgeber: Parthian Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 227

Beschreibung

At the age of fifty, towards the end of the First World War, W. H. Davies decided that he must marry. Spurning London society and the literary circles where he had been lionised since the publication of his Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, he set about looking for the right partner on the streets of London. Young Emma is a moving and revealing memoir told with disarming honesty and humour. Davies records his life with three women: from his affair with Bella, the wife of a Sergeant Major, to his year-long liaison with the gentle Louise, to the turbulent brushes with a society woman who fears for her own life at his hands. He finally meets Emma, then pregnant, at a bus-stop on the Edgware Road. This is the story of their love affair.

Leseprobe

Contents

About the authorTitle PageForewordIntroductionI. BellaII. The TrickIII. The Gentle LouiseIV. The Silk StockingV. Young EmmaVI. The ComplaintVII. The Break DownVIII. A Night of HorrorIX. The PilgrimageX. The ReturnXI. Future PlansXII. Leaving LondonXIII. The Green CountryXIV. The QuarrelXV. The Fur CoatXVI. The MarriageXVII. Solving the MysteryXVIIIAppendixAbout Cicely Veronica WedgwoodLibrary of WalesCopyright

William HenryDavies was born in a pub in 1871, and learnt early in life to rely on his wits and his fists and to drink. As a young man his restless spirit of adventure led him to set off for America, and he worked around the country taking casual jobs where he could, thieving and begging where he couldn’t. His experiences and adventures were both dramatic and harrowing – he was thrown into prison in Michigan, beaten up in New Orleans, witnessed a lynching in Tennessee, and got drunk pretty well everywhere – and were later documented in his hugely successfulAutobiography of a Super-Tramp, published in 1908. After returning to Britain permanently following an accident which cost him a leg, he lived a frugal existence in London and began to write poetry, producing at his own expense a volume entitledThe Soul’s Destroyer, and Other Poems(1905). Following the acclaim of Super-Tramp, which was championed by George Bernard Shaw and Edward Thomas, he published numerous further collections of verse, includingNature Poems and Others(1908),Farewell to Poesy(1909) andSongs of Joy(1911). Despite his fame within literary circles, he preferred to lead a reclusive life, and did not marry until he was over fifty – a journey documented in the manuscript ofYoung Emma, which he had asked to be destroyed but which was published posthumously in 1980 after being discovered in the safe of the publisher Jonathan Cape. He died in 1940.

YOUNG EMMA

W. H. DAVIES

LIBRARY OF WALES

FOREWORD

BY C. V. WEDGWOOD

In August 1924 the poet W. H. Davies, who first made his mark as a writer with hisAutobiography of a Super­ Tramp, wrote to his publisher Jonathan Cape, ‘I want to discuss a new book I am writing. Another human document; so much so that it will have to be published under the name “Anonymous”.’ Six weeks later he wrote, ‘I am sending youYoung Emma. It frightens me now it is done.’

The book was autobiographical – the story of his recent marriage to a girl he had picked up one evening at a bus stop. She was not yet a prostitute but would probably have ended that way if she had not met him. Emma was a country girl who had come to London, become pregnant by a man whom she could not marry, was without resources and afraid to go back to her people.

Davies knew nothing of her story when he took her home. He was over fifty and looking for a wife. He did not even realise that she was pregnant until she gave birth prematurely to a child which did not survive. His account of the frantic quest for a hospital that would take her through seven long hours of a pitch dark night has the anguish of a nightmare.

Meanwhile he believed he had contracted a venereal disease and thought that young Emma was to blame. But by that time he was in love with her – and no wonder, for she was affectionate, grateful, cheerful, good-natured, pretty and a natural home-maker. They moved to the country and started a new life together. Emma became his wife and all ended well.

The relationship between them, as he describes it, is wholly convincing and the portrait of the girl is extraordinarily vivid and sympathetic. William Plomer wrote, in a later report on the book: ‘It reads as if nothing in it was invented and yet the effect is that of a short novel very skilfully written with a happy ending.’

Plomer’s report was written in 1972 when the tastes of the reading public had greatly altered. When Jonathan Cape first received the book, in 1924, he feared that its publication might damage Davies’s reputation. He consulted Bernard Shaw, who had written the preface toThe Autobiography of a Super-Tramp. In a letter about the book Shaw calledYoung Emmaan ‘amazing document’ but agreed with Jonathan that its publication might do harm to Davies; also, what right had he to give away his wife? ‘If they were both dead it would be another matter: I am always in favour of publishing genuine documents.’*

Davies had by now, belatedly, said something about the book to his wife. ‘She is very much alarmed at it,’ he wrote to Jonathan, ‘As she is only 24 years of age and has every prospect of outliving us allI have come to the conclusion that the MS. must be destroyed and not get into the hands of strangers in about 50 years’ time from now. So will you please return the MS. and let me have a note to say you have destroyed the two type-written copies? There are a few passages in it that I can use in poems and prose sketches. As the matter now stands, my mind can never be at rest. Please don’t try to persuade me to do anything different, as a book that is not fit to be published now can never be fit.’

It may seem strange, to say the least of it, that Davies had waited so long to tell his wife about the book. But it is very clear from his account of ‘young Emma’ that the whole business of writing was a mystery to her which she looked upon with awe as something quite beyond her understanding. We know that, later, he read his poems to her and indeed wrote many of them to her, but this was a different matter from discussing a prose work in progress.

Jonathan Cape answered Davies’s letter a few days later: ‘I am sending you under registered post your original MS. as you request. I have not destroyed the two copies as yet but I will do so next week. I have delayed replying and I have also delayed the destruction of the two copies in case you might on reflection feel that to destroy everything is a little too drastic.’

To this Davies replied a week later: ‘Many thanks for the original MS. I have already begun to make use of some of the material, and you can destroy the two type-written copies as soon as you like.’ He then went on to discuss other publishing business, and does not appear at any later time to have made further enquiry as to the destruction of the two typescripts. They were not in fact destroyed but put carefully away in a safe.

Davies died in 1940. Two years later, when I was working as a reader, Jonathan Cape came into my room one morning with a mysterious air, placed a typescript on my desk and said, ‘Tell me what you think of that.’ He did not tell me who had written it until I had almost finished my reading.

Though I knew and admired the poems of W. H. Davies I had not at that time read theSuper-Trampand his prose style was unfamiliar to me. But I was struck at once by the direct and unconventional manner of the writing and the skill with which the narrative was unfolded. The picture of the streets at night and the atmosphere of London in the immediate aftermath of the First World War made it a lively social document as well as a valuable personal record – and a good short novel too. But Mrs Davies was alive and still in her early forties. While she lived publication was out of the question.

Nothing further happened for many years. Jonathan died in 1960. By then I had left the office, and I have an impression that he and I were the only people who knew about the typescript – and I had almost forgotten it. Then, in 1972, during the rearrangement and sorting of old files, my report onYoung Emmacame to light, aroused interest and led to a search for the typescripts, which were discovered soon after at the back of a safe.

Catherine Storr and William Plomer then read and reported on the book, both in very favourable terms.

‘It can be read with pleasure for its own sake, and is of course valuable as an addition to Davies’s printed accounts of his life and character,’ wrote William Plomer, and went on to discuss the ethics of preserving and publishing it:

The case for preserving it is obvious, but it could be thought that there is a case for destroying it. Why? Because Davies wished it to be destroyed. His main reason was that his wife might still be alive in fifty years’ time – i.e. from 1924. Apparently he was right, and she may still be alive in two years’ time, or long after that.

She presumably has no idea that the book hasnotbeen destroyed. If she knew that it exists still, she would almost certainly wish it to be destroyed.

So to preserve it, as Jonathan Cape did, and as we are doing, is to go against Davies’s wishes and Mrs Davies’s wishes.

I find it difficult to imagine that any intelligent person with literary knowledge or discrimination could, after reading this book, be so high-minded as to destroy it or to recommend it to be destroyed. It would seem a form of vandalism.

The truth is that if authors of repute wish their unpublished writings to be destroyed, they should destroy them themselves.

He concluded that the book must be preserved but must await publication until after the death of its heroine.

His verdict, that writers who wish their books to be destroyed must do it themselves, recalled a suspicion which had crossed my mind when I first saw the correspondence between Davies and Jonathan. Very few authors truly wish to see their work destroyed. Did Davies deceive himself? Did he half-consciously hope that a copy might survive? There is something about the wording of his last request to Jonathan – ‘You can destroy [the typescripts] as soon as you like’ – which is noticeably weaker than his first request, and even that is a little ambiguous – ‘Let me have a note to say that you have destroyed the two type-written copies.’ I am not ascribing insincerity to Davies, only an unspoken, unadmitted desire to reprieve his work. There is indeed a depth of meaning in William Plomer’s dictum that authors who wish to do away with their unpublished writings should destroy them themselves.

The book was preserved, but publication was postponed while Mrs Davies lived. On both counts I feel that this was the right decision: right to plan publication and right to wait until after the death of Mrs Davies. She died in 1979.

I felt this all the more when I re-read the book early in 1980. With greater understanding and experience than I had had nearly forty years before, I found it even more vivid, interesting and moving.

Why should English literature be deprived of so delightful a character as young Emma? And how could anyone wish to cause distress to the old lady who in her youth had been young Emma?

* The letter from George Bernard Shaw to Jonathan Cape, dated November 1924, is published as an appendix to this book.

INTRODUCTION

THIS BOOK is a human document, and I will take it as a kindness if it is allowed to remain anonymous, and no one seeks to know the name of its author. Not that I have any concern about my own self; but when I bring others into the story of this strange life, where I have not shrunk from self-revelation, it is a different matter. The name I have made for myself as a writer – which I have always taken less seriously than others have taken it – will look after me in the end. If my work lives, it will be strong enough to look after my character; and if it dies when my body dies, farewell to them both – both work and character must be forgotten, and that’s the end of me and all my belongings.

Although the work may be praised for its style and language, I would not like anyone to think or say that the matter itself is foul; and that the force of a natural genius has made common ditchwater sing like a pure spring. For had I not been convinced that the book was pure, in spite of the matter it deals with, it would never have been written or published.

As the early part of my life is already known, I begin this new one in my fiftieth year. It is not usual for a man to begin writing a second life, after he has lived for more than half a century, but the matter in this book will justify it, I think. For even though this new life is still no more than two years old, it seems to be much greater than the longer life that is past, because of its greater intensity. Let us judge it then, not by its number of breaths, but by the number of times that breath is held or lost, either under a deep emotion caused by love, or when we stand before an object of interest or beauty.

We will now come to the great matter in hand; how I decided, about two years ago, to change my way of living, and how it was done. At that time I was living in a small room, poorly furnished, in the West End of London. But my position was not to be judged by that for, although I was far from being rich, I was still rich enough to live in a better place and with more comfort. One reason for living in that squalid place was the great difficulty of getting another, owing to the shortage of houses, being the result of the Great War. But even if this were not the case, it is hardly likely that I would have taken the trouble to move. For I had made up my mind to find a woman to share my life; one who would leave London altogether, and go with me into the green country, and be satisfied. I was beginning to find Society a pest, and common friendship unsatisfactory. I began to see that, although people liked me personally, their interest in me would only last as long as my power to keep my name before the public. So, to save future trouble and inconvenience, I decided to give them up, before their time came to sacrifice me. It was with bitter feeling that I used to think, when sitting alone at night, that I had scores of people to follow me in the sun, but not one to follow me into the shade – unless Fame had brought me Fortune too, which it certainly had not.

But in searching for a wife, I found it no easy matter to get one to my liking. One woman, whom I thought would make a good wife refused me on account of blood-relationship. Another, who had a great admiration for my work, and liked me personally, could not make up her mind to trust her life with mine: for, said she – ‘your joy is self-contained, and I am very much afraid you would be none the happier for being a married man.’

Strange to say, there were two other women of a different opinion, whom I could have married at any time, but whom I did not like well enough. If they had not shown their liking for me so plainly, most likely I would have liked them better; for I had never yet met a woman that I really disliked. One of these two women was an actress, but I knew that there could be no union between the footlights and a quiet study. The other was rich, and that would not do either; for I wanted a woman who was worth working for, and would be dependent on my own loving kindness.

Perhaps it would interest my readers to know, at this part of my narrative, what the author of it looks like personally. I have already said that I am over fifty years of age, but I have not said that I could pass for a much younger man. Judged by my fellow men, I am small and insignificant, but even the biggest men have been impressed by my strong face; a good, straightforward eye, and, for a small man, an unusual breadth of shoulder. ‘You are ugly enough to please any woman,’ said one of my lady friends – ‘no matter how particular she might be.’

My moral courage is not very great, but my physical courage has been tested on several occasions. For instance, if I heard anyone breaking into my house at night, I would certainly not make a noise to drive him away; but would dress quietly, with the intention of seeing what kind of man he was, and coming into personal contact with his body. At one time I was disturbed at night by several young fellows, who had taken rooms above my own. The first night I did not know what to do, for did not know whether they were trying to rob me of my sleep, with intention, or were only naturally noisy with youth. When I put the matter before them, the next morning, they, with the oily tongues of well-bred gentlemen, assured me that they meant no harm, and made no noise at all. ‘Perhaps you heard mice,’ said one of them. ‘Well,’ I answered – ‘if the mice in this house are big enough to shake the walls and floors, I must certainly kill one or two of them.’ The second night the noises were worse, as I had expected; for there are no people more daring than cowards, when they are in numbers. But when they began their devildom, on the third night, a strange happiness came over me, for I knew that the time had come for action. I never felt so calm in all my life; and, while I was dressing, I was actually humming a tune. But they must have heard me coming, for, when I got upstairs on their landing, and knocked at their door, they made no answer, and pretended to be asleep. However, I knocked again, and then heard a voice – ‘Who’s there?’

‘Open the door,’ I answered, quietly.

‘What do you want?’ asked the same voice.

‘I will let you know when the door is opened,’ I said; ‘I don’t know how many of you are here, neither do I care.’

However, they would not open the door, but said they would see me the next morning.

‘Nothing is more certain than our meeting in the morning,’ I said.

When the morning came, I waited for them, with my door wide open, so that I might hear them coming down the stairs. As they had not come downstairs by nine o’clock, I decided to go out and fetch some milk, which would take me no more than two minutes. But it was in that short time that they all came down, four of them, I believe, and disappeared, and I have never seen or heard of them since. I have always been sorry that those young cowards escaped punishment, and yet it was probably well for me that they did. For that same morning, I had gone into a back room to split a log. The log was so hard and knotty that I had had it for a long time, thinking that the noise of splitting it would disturb my neighbours. But that morning, when I raised the chopper above my shoulders, and struck it, the result frightened me – for that large chunk of knotty wood made no more resistance than a turnip. The strength in my arm seemed to be superhuman – and I was waiting for my enemies too! Perhaps it is well for all of us that they left in the way they did. I only mention this case to show that I have enough courage, when I am certain of my enemies. But, unfortunately, a man’s enemies mostly pose as his friends, and it is often hard to know one from the other.

Let me mention, in dealing with my own personal looks, how much my face has inspired others with trust and confidence. In walking the streets of London, so many strangers stop me to ask questions, that I often ask myself – ‘Do they take me for a professional guide?’ And when I mention that a number of these strangers are young girls just come up from the country, it can be said – ‘How fortunate it is that a criminal mind is not at work behind that open face.’

But my face has passed a severer test than any of those – it is when I meet beggars, who never let me pass by without making an appeal for charity. This is the best thing to say in my favour, for beggars are, without doubt – if we make an exception of gipsies – the best judges in the world of a human face. However, I set no price myself on having this honest-looking face; for when I am out walking in search of green trees, I would rather not have my thoughts disturbed by strangers, with their minds set on things of stone, such as St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey.

Again, having this open and honest-looking face is not altogether to my credit, after all; for some of our greatest criminals must have had this same face, otherwise they would have been less successful in pursuing their evil ways. I am reminded now of a little fat man with a round, smiling face, like a cherub’s, whom I have often seen at street corners, watching the coming and going of certain people into certain houses. Who would have suspected that commonly dressed, lethargic little lump of being connected with a most athletic detective, to whom his information would be of great value? We would sooner connect him with some raspberry-faced old loafer, who would rather pay for that man’s drinks than drink alone in selfishness.

After my ill-success with the two women I have mentioned – my blood-relation and the other – I made up my mind to trouble no more about respectable women, but to find a wife in the common streets. In fact, I could not see how I could do otherwise; for most marriages come from meeting at church or chapel, or a social gathering of some kind or other. But as I did not go to any of these places, I stood very little chance in that way. It is true that I occasionally went to a gathering of artists or literary people: but the women I met there were mostly married already; and when they were not, they bored me with their long, lifeless talk on books and art. It must be remembered that although I am now a well-known author, I was not brought up among bookmen or lovers of art. When I first met a literary man, I was over thirty years of age, so that it cannot be said that I was born to the life of literary people. Indeed, I seemed so far away from it that it appeared much more natural for me to seek a wife among the kind of people I knew before I was thirty years of age than the ones I knew later.

I will now come to my first experience – in which I tried to keep a woman long enough as my mistress to make her my wife at last. But this was no easy matter, as the next two or three chapters will prove.

CHAPTER I

Bella

IT WAS NOW THE time of the Great War, and the sexual relationship between a man and a woman had undergone a change. Prostitutes, who in times of peace would not look or speak to a common soldier, because of his small pay, were now the first to give him some attention. It was not love of country that made them do this, but safety in plying their trade. The only law in the country was a military law, and a soldier could do what he liked. It was not unusual to see a drunken soldier catch hold of a girl who was a mere child, and kiss her and frighten her too. But it was all for the country’s good; half a dozen English maidenheads would be a cheap price to pay for one dead German. Very few women would have anything to do with a civilian, unless they knew him personally. The soldiers had to be served first, and I was not a soldier, for more reasons than one. Let me say here that I did not hide myself or shirk the war in any way. It will be seen from this that I did not choose a very good time in trying to find a mistress, especially in the common streets.

Under these war conditions nothing could have surprised me more than to be greeted by a woman’s voice, and without giving her one look of encouragement. At that time I was passing Charing Cross, at a late hour, and the woman I have mentioned was standing in front of King Charles’s statue. For the moment I thought she must be too old or too unattractive to deceive even the most drunken soldier; and that was why she, knowing a civilian’s difficulty in getting a woman, thought to have more success with me. But when I looked more closely, I saw, to my surprise, that she was a fine buxom creature of about twenty-six, and the healthy colour of her face was certainly from the country.

‘What are you doing here at this hour of the night?’ I asked. ‘You are not waiting for anyone, are you – or you would have not spoken to me.’

‘No,’ she answered, at once. ‘I am all alone now. I have just seen my husband off to the war, five minutes ago.’

‘And what are you going to do now?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ she answered. ‘Have you any place you can take me to?’

‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘Come along.’

As we walked on we passed several soldiers, who were looking for women; and they did not like to see a civilian walking away with so fine a prize. However, nothing happened to make either one of us feel uncomfortable. But I was very glad to leave the open street, and enter my own doorway.