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Lot 198
JONES (DAVID) Autograph letter signed ("David Jones"), to his fellow Welshman Anthony Powell ("Dear Mr Powell"), discussing, at considerable length, genealogical researches and the ancient history of Wales in general, Northwick Park Road, Harrow, 10-11 July 1967
15 June 2016, 14:00 BST
London, KnightsbridgeSold for £1,250 inc. premium
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JONES (DAVID)
Autograph letter signed ("David Jones"), to his fellow Welshman Anthony Powell ("Dear Mr Powell"), discussing, at considerable length, genealogical researches and the ancient history of Wales in general ("...the most sad & frustrating thing (to me) is the extreme paucity of visual, tangible, concrete, ʻremains' of the genuine Welsh past. Compared with the pretty considerable body of MS redactions of poetry & other written things the ʻvisual' remains are so terribly few. The empty stone sarcophagus, said to be that of Llywelyn Fawr (at Bangor, or that's where it used to be), seems to epitomise the loss of which I am thinking. It seems almost as though the theme of mythos of the ʻpassing of Arthur' was actualised in Welsh history – annoeth, something hidden, a vanished thing of great worth..."); his musings interrupted by a flash-back to the Great War ("...What a long, long time ago that pre-World War II period now seems – World War I seems, to me, much more close – but that may only be because I was ʻin it' & it remains an ʻindelible mark'. It chances that I write on the anniversary of the events of Part 7 of In Parenthesis, July 10th-11th 1916 and the assault on Mametz Wood by the Welsh Division..."); confessing in one of several inserted passages that "I ʻknow' practically no Welsh – I only know a tiny bit about it – that's all..."); the letter written in a characteristic mixture of black, red and green ballpoint ink at several angles across the page, 2 pages, tall folio, Northwick Park Road, Harrow, 10-11 July 1967
Footnotes
ʻI WRITE ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE EVENTS OF PART 7 OF IN PARENTHESIS, JULY 10TH-11TH 1916, AND THE ASSAULT ON MAMETZ WOOD' – David Jones to his fellow Welshman Anthony Powell. Jones was wounded at Mametz Wood, a slaughter which could be said to have entered Welsh national consciousness and at which Jones's division lost 4000 men. He describes the battle itself – ʻsweet sister death has gone debauched today' – at the climax of his great poem In Parenthesis (1937).
Powell was, like Jones, of Welsh descent on his father's side of the family, claiming descent from Rhys ap Gruffydd, ruler of south Wales in the twelfth century. Powell published almost forty papers on Welsh genealogy, a subject that he thought in general underlined 'the vast extent of human oddness' (Infants of the Spring, p.2); a set of mind that could be said to inform the complex web of his Dance sequence, just as Jones's study of Welsh myth and history informs In Parenthesis.