Schooldays loom large in the autobiographical writings of John Cowper Powys and Littleton Charles Powys. We know that John hated his schooldays and Littleton loved them. But what did their masters think of them? Thanks to the generous loan to Sherborne School Archives of fifty-eight personal diaries kept by a master at the School[i], we have a unique insight into the interaction of certain members of the Powys family (John, Littleton, Llewelyn, Albert and Gertrude) with Sherborne School, and with one master in particular – Henry Robinson King (1855-1935).
Henry Robinson King, known by his pupils as ‘Crusoe’, was held in particularly high esteem by the Powys brothers. John described Henry in Autobiography as ‘our life-long friend and well-loved master’[ii] and Littleton noted that ‘HRK meant more to him [John] than any other master excepting I think old Wildman’[iii]. In The Joy of It, Littleton declared that Henry ‘made a great impression upon us; he was a real lover of English literature and fully appreciated John’s literary bent’[iv], and in Llewelyn’s account of his schooldays in Confessions of Two Brothers, Henry appeared as ‘Mr R’ in whose classroom Llewelyn ‘read for the first time passages from Homer and Horace and came to understand from punctilious translations the strange magic latent in books.’[v]
Like the Powys brothers, Henry King was a vicar’s son. He was born on 6 July 1855 at Kirkby Stephen Vicarage in Westmorland and educated at Clifton College where he was in T.E. Brown’s house, the Manx schoolmaster-poet whose poem ‘Betsy Lee’ Henry enjoyed reciting throughout his life. In 1875, Henry was awarded a scholarship to Exeter College, Oxford, where he met his lifelong friend Reginald Blomfield, the architect later credited ‘as the man responsible above all others for the aspect of modern Sherborne [School].’[vi] On leaving Oxford in 1879, he was articled to a firm of solicitors in Kendal but after four years decided that the law was not for him and, having spent a few months teaching at Clifton College, in September 1883 he was appointed as an assistant master at Sherborne School where he would remain for the next forty-two years, teaching form IVA and imparting to his pupils his passion for English literature.[vii]
Henry’s connection with the Powys family dated from Lent term 1888 when John and Littleton arrived in form IVA. John remained in Henry’s form for three terms (Lent-Michaelmas 1888) and Littleton for two (Lent-Trinity 1888). They were followed into form IVA by Albert (Michaelmas 1896-Michaelmas 1897) and Llewelyn (Michaelmas 1901-Michaelmas 1902). William never made it beyond form IVB, but John’s son Littleton Alfred, 29 years after his father, spent two terms in Henry’s form (Michaelmas 1917-Lent 1918).
In 1896, Henry founded the Old Shirburnian Society, ‘to keep Old Shirburnians in touch with the School and with each other.’[viii] Littleton was a founder member of the OS Society and in 1936, after Henry’s death, headed the Society’s H.R. King Memorial Fund Appeal to found a scholarship for the education of boys who show a proficiency in English studies and to ‘perpetuate the memory of one whose outstanding characteristic was his profound love of English poetry and of the English countryside.’[ix] Amongst the many subscribers to the memorial fund were Littleton, Llewelyn and William Powys. The Powys boys who attended Sherborne School all became members of the OS Society: Albert in 1899, John in 1901, William in 1906, and Llewelyn and Littleton Alfred in 1920.
In 1898, Henry founded The Duffers, a literary society for selected members of the Sixth Form in the model of Winchester College’s ‘stolidi’[x]. John and Littleton had both left the School before the society was formed and none of their younger brothers reached the Sixth Form. However, Henry must have seen something in Llewelyn because in 1903 (when Llewelyn was in form VB) he invited him to join The Duffers. In later years, John, Littleton and Llewelyn would all return to Sherborne to read papers to The Duffers.
Henry kept a private diary throughout his life. The earliest of his diaries held in the School Archives dates from 1865, when he was 9 years-old, and the last from 1931, four years before his death. In his diaries Henry recorded family events, including his marriage in 1898 to Connie Gray and the births and marriages of their children, school politics, his support for women’s suffrage, the deaths of former pupils in the First World War, as well as the books he read and the number of miles he cycled.
In 1948, Henry’s son-in-law, the Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, discussed how the diaries revealed the private character of this very public figure: ‘his diaries reveal a very shrewd judgment, and a remarkably detached one too, in concise summings-up of the characters of boys in his House, of his own children even. It would be unseemly to quote any of these. But let me give you a more general extract – one which shows that H.R.K. was far from being the gentle, ineffectual dreamer some thought him. In 1900 [Llewelyn’s second year at the School], when the School was at a low ebb, he writes, “Don’t in the least see why boys should be attracted to Sherborne, unless the parents are enamoured of the picturesque. Our boys are not very learned, nor v. gentlemanlike, nor v. well-behaved, nor v. moral, nor particularly manly and self-reliant. Not good at any game.” We may also, I suspect, learn something of H.R.K.’s own values from the order in which he places the virtues so sparsely displayed by the Sherborne boys of 1900.’ Cecil goes on to say that Henry ‘was a devoted lover of literature – a dedicated lover: yet, in spite of this, or perhaps because of it, he did not seem to me to exercise a keen critical sense upon which he read. He got a great deal of enjoyment out of life: but, as his diaries show, he was convinced from quite an early age that the world, and England in particular, was going to the dogs.‘[xi]
Of all the Powys family, Henry probably knew Littleton the best and for this reason he is referred to in the diaries as ‘Powys’, with the other brothers appearing variously as ‘Lecturer Powys’, ‘Architect Powys’ and ‘Lulu’. Henry and Littleton shared a love of Sherborne, the Dorset countryside, and English literature. In September 1905, Littleton returned to Sherborne to take over the headmastership of Sherborne Preparatory School and from 1907 onwards he makes regular appearances in Henry’s diaries, playing an active part in The Duffers – giving papers and hosting meetings at Acreman House – and as a regular supper guest with his first wife Mabel, including attending Henry’s Peace Dinner Party on 16 November 1918 to celebrate the end of the war. The previous year a caricature of Henry as ‘Claremont’ had appeared in Alec Waugh’s novel, The Loom of Youth. Henry was not amused and wrote in his diary on 16 October 1917, ‘Skimmed thro a dull quasi-vigorous story of Alec Waugh which has been widely sold. I am a feeble ass, lover of poetry, with a cribbing form, anaemic house, etc.’ Ironically, it was Alec Waugh’s father Arthur, another Old Shirburnian, who many years later introduced Littleton to Elizabeth Myers who in 1943 became his second wife.
In 1923, Littleton, on the advice of his doctor, retired the headmastership of Sherborne Prep School. After spending six months in in Italy, Littleton and Mabel returned to Sherborne in Autumn 1924 to inspect the house that their brother Albert (‘Bertie’) was building for them in The Avenue. In January 1925 they moved into The Quarry House, living there until 1936 when the garden became too much for them[xii]. Littleton returned to the house in March 1947 with Elizabeth Myers, who died there on 24 May 1947, and Littleton sold the house in June 1950.
Albert makes one solitary appearance in Henry’s diary on 15 May 1910, when ‘Lecturer Powys’ (John) and ‘Architect Powys’ (Albert) spent the evening with him at Abbeylands. Henry’s friend from college days, the architect Reginald Blomfield, was then in the process of building at Sherborne School the Westcott Art School and Carrington Building. Blomfield’s design, which included ‘Wrenaissance’ details such as curved gables, sash windows and swags of fruit, was believed by many to be at odds with the Gothic style of the main School buildings. Henry was evidently incensed by the criticisms and wrote a letter in Blomfield’s defence to the School magazine:
‘Some may honestly think the design ugly; some, that there is no real architecture worth considering except Gothic architecture; some, that, as we have no original architects now, we can but imitate medieval work; some, that as the other new buildings are an imitation of medieval work, all future new buildings ought to be the same… I venture therefore, from an amateur point of view, to offer certain considerations to those who agree with me in admiring the perfect proportion (as it seems to me), the stately strength and distinction of Mr Blomfield’s design.’[xiii]
One of those who agreed with Henry about the design of the new building was Albert, who had by then set up an independent architectural practice in London and would later become Secretary to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB). That evening, Henry recorded Albert’s views in his diary: ‘Architect Powys.. appreciates the new buildings – marvellous in this stupid generation.’
Of all the Powys brothers, Henry was probably most in awe of John, who makes his first appearance in the diaries on 29 September 1906 when he returned to Sherborne School to give the first in a series of six lectures on Shakespeare. ‘Lecturer Powys’ was by then a master of his craft and his first lecture in the Big Schoolroom was on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which Henry attended and described in his diary as ‘large audience, good lecture’. This was John’s first public appearance in the Big Schoolroom since the 23 June 1891 when he returned, having fled the School before the end of term, to read his prizewinning poem ‘Corinth’ at the School’s Commemoration Day. The review in the School magazine, The Shirburnian, gives more detail of John’s triumphant return to Sherborne: ‘On Saturday, the 29th of September, Mr J.C. Powys delivered to a crowded audience, in the Big Schoolroom, the first of six lectures on Shakespeare which promise to be extremely interesting. He introduced himself to his hearers in a few amusing sentences, in which he said that he wished to repay a debt which he owed to the masters; he had often been forced to listen to them, now it was his turn, and they should listen to him for an hour.’[xiv]
Henry made no mention in his diary of the second of John’s lectures given on 13 October on the subject of As You Like It, but the review in The Shirburnian noted, ‘He did not delay a moment, but as soon as he had reached the platform, began to explain the Play in hand.’[xv] John’s third lecture took place on 27 October when his subject was The Merchant of Venice, which Henry reviewed in his diary as ‘Rehabilitation of Shylock – interesting and ingenious’, and which The Shirburnian thought ‘was extremely interesting throughout and was delivered splendidly. Mr Powys holding his audience the whole evening and everyone was sorry when it finished.’[xvi]
On 10 November, John gave his fourth lecture, about which Henry wrote ‘Powys lectured on Hamlet: amusing but not convincing’, this was followed on 24 November by a lecture on Macbeth, which John began by congratulating the School’s 1st XV on their victory over Tonbridge (Sherborne had beaten Tonbridge School on their ground for the first time, by 15 points to 6[xvii]), after the applause had died down he remarked ‘that football and Shakespeare were very far apart, so that we had better turn to Shakespeare at once’[xviii].
John gave the last of his six lectures on Shakespeare at the School on 8 December 1906. Unfortunately, Henry does not mention the occasion in his diary, but the reviewer in The Shirburnian noted that, ‘this time he took as his subject Julius Caesar. He had many misgivings, he confessed, in choosing this play: every schoolboy knew the play, if not by heart, at any rate very well, and was full of theories concerning it. But any misdoubts he may have had before reading the play for this lecture were quickly dispelled when he had read the play. He was so struck with its originality. He thought it was a remarkable play in many ways: and perhaps in no other plays which Shakespeare ever wrote did he so drop his mannerism of style and technique.’[xix]
It was two years before John again appeared in Henry’s diary. On 27 September 1908, John gave a paper on Walt Whitman to The Duffers, which Henry describes as ‘a tornado.. most enjoyable this was. Certainly a great man, but his poetry?’ Four years later, on 22 September 1912, John gave ‘one of his amazing lectures in the School room on Edgar Allan Poe to Duffers & many visitors’, and on 11 May 1913 he gave a paper to The Duffers on Milton, which Henry missed but heard ‘It was great’. On 7 July 1918, John gave a talk to the boys at Abbey House, which by then included his own son Littleton Alfred, the subject matter obviously surprised Henry which was ‘in unstinted praise of the Americans.. they are idealists, sensitive, brave, modest etc.’
1929 saw the publication of John’s fourth novel and his first literary success, Wolf Solent. This was the first of John’s four Wessex novels and the only one set in Sherborne (‘Ramsgard’). John later claimed that it was written ‘in all the Trains and many of the Hotels in all the States of the USA except two… This essence is simply and solely Nostalgia a pining and yearning for one’s own homeland in a foreign country.’[xx] Henry decided it was his duty to read his former pupil’s latest novel, though he seems to have found it quite an ordeal. He opened the novel on 21 December 1929, describing its ‘beautiful English, abundant lubricity’, and ploughed on with it through February and March of the following year, recording in his diary on 1 March 1930, ‘half done’, and on 10 March 1930, ‘very long’. On 26 March 1930 he finally reached the end, declaring in his diary, ‘Wolf Solent’ a remarkable book, but probably read for 1st and last time. Read aloud to Con [his wife] – with omissions. NOT to be repeated.’
Henry’s relationship with Llewelyn (‘Lulu’) was one of mutual admiration. Having left Sherborne School in April 1903, Llewelyn renewed his acquaintance with Henry in May 1909, when he joined the teaching staff at Sherborne Prep School. On 29 May 1909, Henry spent the day watching Sherborne’s 1st XI being beaten by King’s Bruton (where Littleton had taught from 1896 to 1901) and that evening he invited Llewelyn and Geoffrey O’Hanlon, a new master at Sherborne School, to dine at Abbeylands. However, Llewelyn’s time in Sherborne was cut short when six months later, on 3 November 1909, he was taken ill with ‘a churchyard cough’[xxi]. On 9 November 1909, just six days after Llewelyn had been diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis, the illness that according to Louis Wilkinson heightened his ‘awareness of life, and his is zest for it’[xxii], Henry visited ‘Lulu Powys (who has suddenly developed phthisis) in bed’. Perhaps Henry was one of the schoolmasters who Theodore greeted with ‘exaggerated deference’ when he too visited Llewelyn’s sickbed that November?[xxiii]
It would be fifteen years before Llewelyn and Henry met again. Having married in America in September 1924, Llewelyn and Alyse Gregory returned to England in May 1925 and set up home in one of the coastguard cottages at White Nose on the Dorset coast. On 20 July 1926, the 78th day of the General Strike, Henry recorded in his diary that he had been visited by Lulu Powys ‘one of my admirers’ and Alyse – ‘Enthusiasm’. The following day Henry visited Llewelyn who must have presented him with one of his books which Henry began reading that evening, describing it as ‘a dirty book’ that recommended ‘free love ‘esp to the young’. One wonders which of his books Llewelyn had presented to his former teacher? Undeterred by his first encounter with Llewelyn’s literary output, during the following February and March, Henry undertook a comprehensive study of Llewelyn’s published works, reading Skin for Skin, Black Laughter, Ebony and Ivory, and The Verdict of Bridlegoose.
On 17 May 1927, Llewelyn visited Henry and arranged for him to spend the night at White Nose on 15 June. However, in the intervening month, tragedy struck when Walter Franzen, an American research student who was staying at White Nose with Llewelyn and Alyse, died on 26 May 1927 when he accidentally fell over the cliff near Fountain Rock[xxiv]. Walter’s funeral, which was held at Chaldon Herring on 30 May 1927, was later described by Llewelyn in ‘A Grave in Dorset’.[xxv] Henry records in detail his journey to White Nose on Wednesday 15 June, leaving Pen Mill station in Yeovil at 10 am he took the train to Dorchester from where he cycled to White Nose, arriving in time for a late lunch, After tea they went for a stroll followed by ‘any amount of talk till bedtime, reading aloud etc.’ Henry obviously appreciated White Nose as much as Llewelyn and the following day wrote in his diary, ‘Fine. Wonderful air at this 600 ft place above waves. Stroll with Powys morning. Left about 1 pm.’
On 11 November 1927, Henry received from Llewelyn (then in New York) a copy of his latest book, Henry Hudson, the preface to which he had written at White Nose on May Day, 1927. Although Llewelyn was disappointed by the book’s reception[xxvi], Henry was evidently impressed by it, writing in his diary on 16 November, ‘Read L. Powys’ ‘Henry Hudson’. He is a good writer’, and on finishing it on 22 November he described it as ‘Full of pain, heroism, failure, undying hope’. Presumably at Henry’s instigation, Llewelyn gave a paper to The Duffers on 19 May 1929 about Henry Hudson ‘the naturalist’ [Llewelyn’s paper was actually about Henry Hudson the explorer and navigator, who was the subject of his book Henry Hudson published in 1927 by John Lane The Bodley Head].
The following year saw the publication of Llewelyn’s one and only novel, Apples be Ripe, which he dedicated to his friend the lawyer, photographer and film maker[xxvii], Hamilton Rivers Pollock, who was then replanting the woodland on his estate at Urchfont manor in Pewsey which had been cut down during the First World War. Llewelyn’s dedication describes Hamilton as ‘an Englishman of a generous, idiosyncratic, and philosophic humour, and with a mind sufficiently confident to plant oak-trees in the soil he loves.’[xxviii] On 22 October 1930, Henry wrote in his diary, ‘Lulu has written a novel and I have bought it. Quality book (I think).’ However, on 29 October he wrote of the novel, ‘How good and how bad!’, and on 31 October, ‘Reading Luloo’s skittish novel’. However, he presumably did not convey these views to Llewelyn when he wrote to him on 5 November, and on 28 November received a ‘letter of ardent thanks and compliments from Lulu Powys in America on my letter about Apples be Ripe’. During his remaining years, Henry continued to read and re-read Llewelyn’s books and in his last diary, written in 1931 when he was 75 years old, he records re-reading Skin for Skin and Ebony and Ivory.
It is perhaps ironic that the Powys family’s lasting memorial to Henry was not created by the Powys brothers, but by their sister Gertrude. On 23 October 1926, a ‘fine, cold winter day’, Littleton called on Henry to say he wanted Gertrude to paint him ‘as an interesting object!’ The first sitting took place on 26 October 1926, which as Henry noted was the 175th day of the coal miners’ strike. Between that date and 6 November 1926, Henry sat seven times for Gertrude’s ‘approximately life-like’ portrait. Henry was then aged 71, having retired the previous year from teaching at Sherborne School. Gertrude was 49. On 8 November, Henry went to see the portrait and was told that the Powys brothers wanted to present it to him, and on 22 November he took his daughter Mary (who in 1928 married Cecil Day-Lewis) to see the portrait which he says was ‘Praised’.
Henry died nine years later, aged 80. His funeral, which took place in the School chapel on 1 October 1935, was attended by Littleton & Mabel Powys. Three days later, on 4 October 1935, Gertrude’s portrait of Henry was displayed at the annual exhibition of the Sherborne Art Club, with whom Gertrude regularly exhibited her work until 1950[xxix]. This previously unknown portrait by Gertrude Powys remains in the possession of the King family and I am extremely grateful for their assistance in tracking it down and for providing the photograph of the portrait which is reproduced with this article.
Rachel Hassall
Archivist, Sherborne School.
April 2020
Footnotes
[i] In 2013, the King family generously loaned to Sherborne School Archives, 58 personal diaries kept between 1865 and 1931 by Henry Robinson King (1855-1935) who taught at Sherborne School for 42 years between 1883 and 1925.
[ii] J.C. Powys, Autobiography (1967), 97.
[iii] Sherborne School Archives: R.S. Thompson correspondence – letter from Littleton Charles Powys to R.S. Thompson, 10 December 1950.
[iv] L.C. Powys, The Joy of It (1937), 70.
[v] J.C. Powys & L. Powys, Confessions of Two Brothers (1982), 186-187.
[vi] A.B. Gourlay, A History of Sherborne School (1971), 300n.
[vii] C. Day-Lewis, The Buried Day (1960), 108.
[viii] ‘Old Shirburnian Society’, The Sherborne Register 1550-1950 (1950), 573.
[ix] ‘H.R. King Memorial Fund’, Old Shirburnian Society Annual Report, October 1936.
[x] A.B. Gourlay, A History of Sherborne School (1971), 190.
[xi] C. Day-Lewis, ‘H.R.K. Sherborne and the Duffers’, in R.S. Thompson (ed.), Duffers Jubilee 1898-1948 (1949), 23-34.
[xii] L.C. Powys, The Joy of It (1937), 213-214.
[xiii] The Shirburnian, June 1910, 330-331.
[xiv] ‘Lectures on Shakespeare’, The Shirburnian, November 1906, 347-348.
[xv] The Shirburnian, November 1906, 348.
[xvi] The Shirburnian, December 1906, 384.
[xvii] ‘School v. Tonbridge’, The Shirburnian, December 1906, 377.
[xviii] ‘Lectures on Shakespeare’, The Shirburnian, March 1907, 16.
[xix] The Shirburnian, March 1907, 18.
[xx] A. Head (ed.), The Letters of John Cowper Powys to Ichiro Hara, (1990), 107.
[xxi] Llewelyn Powys, Skin for Skin (1948). 13.
[xxii] Llewelyn Powys, Ebony and Ivory (1960), with an introduction by Louis Wilkinson, 17.
[xxiii] Llewelyn Powys, Skin for Skin, 13.
[xxiv] Certified copy of the death certificate of Walter Franzen. Copy obtained from the General Register Office, 2 March 2020.
[xxv] Llewelyn Powys, ‘A Grave in Dorset’, Earth Memories (1983), 60-64.
[xxvi] M. Elwin, The Life of Llewelyn Powys (1946), 183.
[xxvii] Hamilton Rivers Pollock’s 1936 film, ‘Scenes and Characters in the Village of Erchfont’ is held at the BFI.
[xxviii] Llewelyn Powys, Apples be Ripe (1930).
[xxix] Western Gazette, 4 October 1935. Reviews in the Western Gazette of Sherborne Art Club’s annual exhibitions record Gertrude Powys as an exhibitor in October 1934 (portrait of W.E. Powys), October 1935 (portrait in oils of a study of the late Rev. H.R. King), October 1937 (a delicate chalk head and a still life of ‘Jasper‘), October 1948 (A fresh landscape of Dorset cliffs), and October 1950.
See also:
The Powys Family and Sherborne School
Henry Robinson King (1855-1935)
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