The one I would have posted on May Day

I wrote this on May Day and intended to post it there and then. But somehow didn't . . .

I've had family guests staying so I gave them my bedroom, which is the largest in the house; meanwhile, I decamped to what we call the summer bedroom. I rather love it, despite the fact that it is the smallest bedroom and north facing; in summer it just about catches the farther reaches of the sunrise, to the east. To the north are hills and grazing sheep and the view is the best from the house.

And there are bookshelves. There are books in every room in the house (and on the stairs) but this room is one of only two that have their own proper, custom-made bookshelves. So I wake looking at books I have yet to read, books I have loved, and books I have almost but not quite forgotten.

This morning I picked up this

a limited edition, published in 1973, the year it was given to me and inscribed three years later, by the person who gave it to me, with the closing lines of the final poem in the collection known as The Passionate Pilgrim (Shakespeare et al). 

On reflection, I could have gone down the maudlin route as I took this book off the shelf on May Day, remembering that poem is set in the month of May and that the person who had inscribed my book all those years ago died on a May Day just 10 years later. And I could, had I allowed myself to do so, have reflected that even things, people, events, love affairs, marriages that somehow go horribly wrong were once - or at least once seemed - wonderfully right. But I decided not to go there and I tried to look at this book, that had once symbolised so much, with fresh eyes and was astonished at what I discovered. I didn't quite fall out of bed but my jaw dropped, visibly.

The book  is The Cry of a Gull, the journals kept by American writer, Alyse Gregory, between 1923 and 1948. It was published by Out of the Ark Press, or 'Out of the ARK PRESS' as it says on the cover.  In 1973, the press was located in Brushford a small village just few miles from here and which I drive past at least once a week on my way to Dulverton. Somehow, I had missed this connection completely since I moved here in 1998.

There is another Ark Press, which was founded in 2009, but I can find no details of what ultimately happened to Out of the Ark Press. It was founded by Michael Adam, known also as Kim Taylor, a self-taught printer who had joined the University of Texas in 1960 as director of its Book Arts Center. 

The journals chart the years of Gregory's life with the English writer, Llewelyn Powys, and after his death in 1939 until 1948. She had met Powys in New York, when she was managing editor of The Dial, then America's foremost literary journal. They married in 1924 and she remained with him for the rest of his life always devoted, immensely supportive of his work, and nursing him through bouts of tuberculosis, despite having to share his affections with his much younger mistress and muse, the poet, Gamel Woolsey.  (So Wild a Thing, also published by Out of the Ark Press, is a collection of Powys's letters to Woolsey and leave the reader in no doubt as to the depth of his passion. Alyse must have been the most unusually tolerant of wives; she and her husband had met Gamel Woolsey in 1927. Alyse, allegedly, encouraged their affair and Powys's last letter to Gamel Woolsey was written just a few days before his death. Hard to imagine the marital and extra-marital tensions, not least because Woolsey's attachment to Powys continued after her marriage to historian, Gerald Brenan, who had once had an affair with Dora Carrington. . .)

But there was something else I had missed too: The Cry of a Gull includes an afterword by Michael Adam, a summary of Alyse's final years. And rereading this earlier today, my jaw dropped again, for these years were spent in Morebath, another village I know well, not least because, like Brushford it is just a few miles from here. I have friends who live there; I went to yoga classes there for years; all those visits and I never knew. It was just like the Rebecca West discovery. Adam records that' 'Apart from Alyse's friends living on at Morebath, nothing remains there to tell of her.'

That was almost 40 years ago; they are probably there no longer but I think the cottage still stands . . .

(If you know what happened to Out of the Ark Press, do tell.)

Comments

[Friend In New Zealand]

Don't you just love it when pieces of our big-picture cosmic jigsaw puzzles come together in such jaw dropping ways?

[Lisa Stowe]

The other day my cat pulled many books off my shelves, and it took forever to pick them all up because as I touched each one, I remembered times connected to them, I had to search for favorite passages, and I discovered new ones. I never tire of spending time with the old friends. Good post.

[Jane Burkinshaw]

Thank you so much for your post on Michael Adam/Kim Taylor and the Ark Press. I have books by Kim, given to me and inscribed by him and by his daughter Shane Maya back in the 1970s. I lost touch with the family many years ago, I left the south west to live in British Columbia, Canada and returned in the late 1980s to live in Devon. I would love to know where any of them may be now. I was close friends with Shane and spent some happy hours in the cottage in Brushford (I have drawings I made of the place, and of Shane, at the time).I still love the books - they've traveled with me by sailboat and airplane all over the world. Great to see your post.
Kind regards,
Jane