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Overview
Rowse’s books, A Cornish Childhood and Tudor Cornwall, remain in strong demand, essential reading for the general reader and historian alike, and for all those who know and love Cornwall. By shedding new light on this complex character, Payton invites a greater understanding of the broader issues of Cornish identity as well as assessing Rowse’s highly original contribution to the writing of British and Cornish history.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780859897983 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Exeter Press |
| Publication date: | 07/27/2007 |
| Series: | South-West Studies Series |
| Edition description: | Revised ed. |
| Pages: | 336 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.17(h) x 1.30(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
A.L. Rowse and Cornwall
A Paradoxical Patriot
By Philip Payton
University of Exeter Press
Copyright © 2005 Philip PaytonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-85989-798-3
CHAPTER 1
'This Was the Land of My Content'
A Fitting Epitaph?
On a chilly, drizzling, wind-swept morning in October 1997, mourners gathered at the Glynn Valley crematorium, near Bodmin in Cornwall, for the funeral of Alfred Leslie Rowse. Inside, as the congregation gazed silently through a vast plate-glass window to the characteristic Cornish countryside beyond, the organist played the familiar, gentle, reflective music appropriate on such occasions. Then from behind, the coffin entered, quietly and unnoticed at first, draped with the black and white cross of St Piran, the Cornish flag, together with the hood from Rowse's academic gown. And all at once in a sudden change of mood and tempo, shaking the mourners from their inner thoughts, the organist struck-up 'Trelawny', Parson Hawker's stirring 'Song of the Western Men', the coffin processing now in triumph as it passed the rows of pews.
As those present mused on the old refrain, 'And shall Trelawny live? / And shall Trelawny die? / Here's twenty-thousand Cornishmen / Will know the reason why!', there could be no doubt that they were there to say their last farewells not only to A.L. Rowse the scholar but most especially to A.L. Rowse the Cornishman. At the age of 93 Rowse died in the parish in which he was born, having retired years before to his beloved Trenarren, his house near St Austell, and he was now making his final journey to the accompaniment of the Cornish national anthem, as he called it, draped in Cornwall's national flag. The imagery and the message were unmistakable, these powerful icons of Cornish sentiment impressing upon those there gathered that A.L. Rowse wished to be remembered principally as a Cornish patriot, someone who had for the greater part of the twentieth century celebrated Cornish 'difference' in prose and poem, and who had defended that 'difference', and Cornwall's right to be considered a Celtic realm apart from England, in the face of all-comers.
Indeed, in the final years of his retirement at Trenarren, Rowse had expressed—as we shall see later in this book—more than a passing sympathy with the aims of Cornish nationalism, and he had affected a happy picture of relaxation and contentment in which he pottered amongst the rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias of his Cornish garden, or sat at his writing-desk and gazed smilingly at the great Cornish headland beyond his window. But such a portrait was inherently misleading, for it obscured the series of paradoxes that complicated Rowse's long relationship with Cornwall, ensuring that for him that relationship would never be easy or comfortable, and, for the external observer, that it would be ever difficult to comprehend or unravel. That is the task of this book, to examine the nature of Rowse's complex relationship with Cornwall and to lay bare at last 'the paradoxical patriot'. This chapter is the first step, and looks beyond the myth of 'contentment' to try to identify not only some of those paradoxes that acted upon him, confusing as they are, but also something of the mass of assumptions, misapprehensions, prejudices, loyalties and enmities that they have conspired to engender. Specifically, it argues that, just as Rowse's relationship with Cornwall was not straightforward, so those who have sought to offer explanations for Rowse's enigmatic life and career have generally understood neither the significance nor the complexity of that relationship, not least the baffling diversity of devotees and detractors that Rowse managed to acquire in his equally enigmatic homeland.
Hawker's inheritance?
In the very choice of Hawker's 'Trelawny' there was a hint of the complexity that hid beneath the apparently straightforward surface. Rowse had admired Robert Stephen Hawker, vicar of Morwenstow in North Cornwall from 1835 until 1875, as 'the patron-saint of the endearing community of eccentric Cornish clerics, with their good lives and their good deeds', and in 1975 he had written that '[i]t is good that Hawker of Morwenstow should be remembered by centenary celebrations—"I would not be forgotten in this land", he wrote. And, in fact, he has never been forgotten in Cornwall.'
But, as Rowse also observed, Hawker 'is no less interesting to study as a figure in complete reaction to all the dominant trends of the nineteenth century'. Indeed, in his own time Hawker was misunderstood and liable to be passed over, his literary work unappreciated, full recognition not achieved until after his death, while 'Trelawny' itself was popularly supposed—even by Macaulay in his The History of England—to be a seventeenth-century Cornish folk-ballad and not the work of Hawker's pen. Rowse sympathized with Hawker: 'the history of the ballad and its reception was suggestive of his whole life: his sense of neglect in later years was summed up by what had happened over it ... its author remained "unnoted and unknown"'.
It would be going too far to suggest that Rowse saw himself as a latter-day Hawker, fiercely attached to his patch of Cornwall but out of sympathy with the norms and mores of the modern world, his work as yet unrewarded (though he had, belatedly, been appointed Companion of Honour in the New Year's Honours for 1997), its significance not yet understood. But Rowse in his later years was cut-off on his Cornish headland as assuredly as Hawker was in his remote cliff-top rectory, his isolation coloured by a shrill academic hostility that (in the words of one commentator) saw him as '[o]utrageous and wounding in controversy, he finished up being regarded as an eccentric'. Like Hawker, Rowse was insistent that he 'would not be forgotten in this land', and just as Hawker eyed with ambivalent suspicion the Bible Christians and Wesleyans who farmed and laboured in the countryside roundabout in Morwenstow parish, so Rowse viewed with disdain those 'idiot people' (not least the Nonconformists) who lived, worked and took holidays around him in St Austell Bay. 'Bugger them!', he would explode, even in the last months of his life.
So when the organ thundered out the strains of 'Trelawny', as Rowse had directed, it was in part expressing Rowse's perceived affinity with Hawker and his predicament, the choice of the 'Cornish national anthem' symbolic not only of a deep patriotic commitment to the land of Cornwall but also of a paradoxical ambiguity shared by both men in which their relationships with Cornwall and its people brought uncertainty, angst and sometimes pain. To that extent, 'Trelawny', the defiant cry of a Cornish rebellion that (paradoxically) had never actually happened, was also emblematic of Rowse's life—or at least of the complex relationship with his native Cornwall that underpinned, and for us explains, so much of his behaviour. In those final moments before Rowse was consumed by flame, his mourners at Glynn Valley paused to consider his life. For some 'Trelawny' was as poignant as it was apt as a choice for his funeral day, an unashamedly nationalistic anthem, fitting for the strident and unbending Cornish pride that Rowse could sometimes express, but tempered by an understanding of the insecurities, frustrations and even loneliness that Rowse shared with Parson Hawker in their sometimes uncomprehending, unsupportive Cornwall.
Holy Trinity and Black Head
Barely two months had passed after the funeral before there was a memorial service for Rowse, held in Holy Trinity, the parish church of St Austell, where as a boy during the Great War Rowse had sung soprano in the choir. The date was 4 December, Rowse's birthday, and in contrast to his very private cremation in October this was a public, indeed civic event. An affectionate Appreciation by his old friend, Raleigh Trevelyan, and Prayers led by the Bishop of Truro, set the tone for this remembrance. But it was Rowse's own poem, simply entitled 'Home' and read by Margaret Wolfit, that most affected the congregation, revealing not the impossible and irascible Rowse of popular fancy but a humbler, quieter man deep in serene contemplation in the closing years of his life. It was, in effect, a prayer, a fervent hope that when he was gone from this world, his Cornwall would endure:
Christ keep the cliffs and coves,
The land that gave me birth,
And let no harm come to them
When I am gone to earth.
But the poem was also confessional, or tried to be, for while it drew a veil over earlier trials and traumas, including those dreadful days in the Second World War and after when (as we shall see at length in this book) he had felt rejected and betrayed by Cornwall, forcing him to turn his back on his homeland and its people, it now depicted—unequivocally and without question—Rowse finally at peace with the land of his birth:
This was the land of my content,
Blue sea and feathered sky,
Where, after years away, at last
I came home to die.
The first line of this stanza, 'This was the land of my content', was engraved on his granite memorial stone erected in July 1999 at Black Head, St Austell Bay, close to Trenarren. There it remains, its large, bold words unambiguously driving home its simple message for those passers-by who care to stop and read. But while it would be unfair to doubt the sincerity of Rowse's poem, there is a sense that, even from the grave, as it were, Rowse is protesting too much, that the simple message of peace and contentment in his native land obscures the reality of a turbulent relationship that, even in old age, was never quite subdued or resolved. To be sure, while the poem's sentiment might evidence the quiet reflection of later years, it is not an epitaph that begins to capture all the subtleties and contradictions of A.L. Rowse and Cornwall.
Earlier compositions tell a different story, revealing torment and equivocation. In the 'Road to Roche', for example, Rowse offers an alternative epitaph, in many respects more apt: 'Here is the hard-bitten country of my birth', he writes.7 A third, 'Approaching Cornwall: Easter, 1948', penned in that fateful decade, provides another, equally applicable and as deeply felt: 'O country of my humiliation', he cries.
A fourth poem, 'Leaving Cornwall: Autumn 1944', tells us even more, a revelation that borders on the shocking:
And I have come
Out of Cornwall, out of the kingdom of cliché,
Out of the region of misunderstanding, out
Of the dark realm of suspicion and misapprehension,
The nerves held taut as if for a blow, from the eyes
That watch for an opportunity, away,
From it all into the broad Devon day,
And I am free.
But even as Rowse celebrates this sweet release and sudden sense of freedom, as he crosses the Tamar bridge that physically and metaphorically 'divides me from my people', so he voices the paradox that underscores his life—this is his country, to which he is wedded irrevocably, for all time, despite everything:
Yet each step that takes me away
I see these evidences that I am bound,
Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, eye
Of my eye, one with the land that has denied me:
I am the stone the builders have rejected,
I am the son the people would not have.
Yet the roots of the tree are rooted in my heart,
The little declivities and streams that run,
Run in my veins and in my blood. This earth
I breathe in my nostrils and that gave me birth
Will one day stop my ears and mouth, the stones
With their vivid orange stains are my very bones,
The wires along the loved familiar roads
The fibres of my body, the nerves of my eye.
At Glynn Valley, with 'Trelawny' and its intimations of comparisons with the troubled Parson Hawker, there was room for contemplation of this darker, more contrary, more self-revelatory Rowse, but not so at Holy Trinity and certainly not on Black Head. Indeed, the contrasting experiences of Glynn Valley, Holy Trinity and Black Head somehow exemplified the many paradoxes of Rowse and Cornwall, inviting those present at these profound acts of remembrance to ponder them afresh and to try to grasp their extent and their meaning. This was not, of course, the first time that the complexity of Rowse's relationship with Cornwall and the Cornish had been raised as an issue or considered by commentators. But for many it was the first time that such a powerful combination of circumstances had prompted them to confront head-on the real depth and the enduring consequences—for Rowse and for so many others—of this complexity, encouraging them to look back over Rowse's long life, now that it was at an end, with a completeness of vision that had inevitably eluded earlier, more partial observers.
'Rowse is made up of many paradoxes ... but then so are the Cornish'
Amongst these earlier observers, Denys Val Baker (whose own relationship with Rowse was never easy) stands out. Already established as an author and editor of note in the Cornish literary scene, he was keen to probe the relationship between Cornwall the place and the creative impulse of those who lived and worked there. As early as December 1953, in his article 'Writers of Cornwall' in the Publishers' Circular and Booksellers' Record (a book-trade magazine), he had begun to tackle what he saw as the especially complex relationship between Cornwall and Rowse. He noted, correctly, that 'Rowse has written very critically of his native county on many occasions—and his life as a don at Oxford has taken him away from home ... Yet he loves Cornwall dearly and ... expresses his feeling tenderly.' But more than this:
A working-class child who now admires the aristocracy, a one-time Labour candidate who has recently out-Toried the Tories, an emotional Celt who set out to suppress his emotions in favour of intellectual rationalism—Rowse is made up of many paradoxes. But then so are the Cornish, about whom he has written so penetratingly.
As Val Baker intimated, with an insight that remains central to an understanding of Rowse and Cornwall, if Rowse was an enigma, difficult to categorize and dissect, then so too was Cornwall itself. Often overlooked by those seeking easier explanations located within the complexity of his own personality and psychological make-up, the changing nature of twentieth-century Cornwall was in fact a powerful determinant of Rowse's behaviour, and indeed of his fortunes. Put another way, to begin to understand Rowse we must first try to understand Cornwall, not least the profound changes that overtook it during Rowse's lifetime.
To this day, Cornwall remains enigmatic. Ostensibly 'in' England it is plainly not 'of' England, a contradiction that has engendered perpetual confusion, debate, even conflict. As Michael Williams once put it, 'Cornwall is different things to different people ... [it] defies neat easy classification'. Competing cultural constructions of Cornwall are likely to defeat even the most shrewd of commentators, and caused Ella Westland to conclude in her own study of the subject that 'Cornwall ... turns out to be many places'. Even in Rowse's childhood the tourist stereotypes of sunny coves and majestic headlands (to which even he was exposed) contrasted with the sterile mining landscapes and industrial dereliction that for many Cornish typified their homeland, and into which Rowse himself was born. Moreover, after a century and more at the forefront of technological advance, Cornwall was by the time of Rowse's birth in 1903 already slipping into the 'great paralysis' that was to characterize much of the twentieth century, a hitherto assertive Cornish identity built on industrial prowess giving way to an introspective culture of 'making do'.
At the same time, a newly emergent Celtic Revivalism was determined to look back over the debris of the industrial period to an earlier, pre-Reformation, Cornish-speaking, 'Celtic-Catholic' Cornwall. Indeed, Henry Jenner's all-important Revivalist manifesto A Handbook of the Cornish Language had appeared in 1904, less than a year after Rowse's birth, testament to this intent and evidence of the commitment that lay behind it. Meanwhile, Cornwall's transformation into England's playground, the 'Cornish Riviera' as the Great Western Railway dubbed it in 1904 (again, just after Rowse's birth), was by now well advanced. The tourist industry was keen to adopt the longstanding stereotypical depiction of the Cornish as 'other' but was quick to invest it with a languid picturesque rusticity that saw the Cornish (as one travelogue writer put it in 1898) as a harmless, likeable peasant folk who were 'very excitable and very kind-hearted' and whose carefree Cornish lives exhibited a 'happy laziness truly Irish'. Although the tourists thus enticed might not have noticed, this romantic picture contrasted strongly with the reality of hardworking, highly-skilled mining families (including Rowse's) who, through a century of sustained emigration, had created the international Cornish identity that was so important to Cornish estimations of who they were, yet was recognized only dimly east of the Tamar.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from A.L. Rowse and Cornwall by Philip Payton. Copyright © 2005 Philip Payton. Excerpted by permission of University of Exeter Press.
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Table of Contents
Introduction1. ‘No wonder I preferred life at All Souls’: Escaping a Cornish Childhood
2. ‘A political Wesley’: The Politics of Paralysis
3. ‘I am haunted by Cornwall’: Defeat and Rejection
4. ‘Not being English alas . . . but hopelessly Cornish’: Embracing Shakespeare’s England
5. ‘. . . the biggest and most significant of Cornish themes’: The Great Emigration
6. ‘I am the real thing, 100 per cent Cornish’: Reclaiming Cornwall
7. ‘. . . a synthesis of local and national history’: Towards a New British History
8. ‘. . . the great awakening of all island peoples’: Anticipating the Archipelago
Conclusion
Index