Testimonies. Patrick O’Brian
unhappy. The over-civilized man condemns civilization and the beautiful, spontaneous woman defends it, both of them unknowingly and passionately evaluating civilization as they do because they are in love with each other, the man condemning civilization because it is the great obstacle between him and another man’s wife, the woman praising it because the man is entirely a product of it. The reader, drawn forward by lyric eloquence and the story’s fascination, discovers in the end that he has encountered in a new way the sphinx and riddle of existence itself. What O’Brian has accomplished is literally and exactly the equivalent of some of the lyrics in Yeats’ The Tower and The Winding Stair where within the colloquial and formal framework of the folk poem or story the greatest sophistication, consciousness and meaning become articulate. In O’Brian, as in Yeats, the most studied literary cultivation and knowledge bring into being works which read as if they were prior to literature and conscious literary technique.
– DELMORE SCHWARTZ, in the Partisan Review, August 1952
‘Mr Pugh, I came to ask you some questions about your life in Cwm Bugail and about Mrs Vaughan of Gelli, Bronwen Vaughan. But now I think it would be better if you were to let me have a written account.’
Pugh had been expecting this: he had been prepared for it ever since he had come to that place, but still it was a blow on his heart, and he could scarcely reply. He said, Yes, he would do his best.
‘I am sure it would be less painful than being questioned, and it would be better from my point of view, I think. What I should like is a roughly chronological narrative, as full and discursive as possible – nothing elaborate, of course; nothing in the way of a formal, scholarly exposition: it is for my eye alone. You need not be afraid of being irrelevant; there is hardly anything you can write on this subject that will not be useful to me. There is no hurry, so do not press yourself; but please remember that it should be comprehensive. I will come in from time to time to see how you are getting on.’
When he had gone, Pugh sat down again. He wondered why he was so moved; he had hardened himself for this – he had even prepared some of his answers in advance. The things they wanted to know about had been continually in his mind or on the edge of it; but now it was as if the idea were new, and the memories broken open for the first time.
He began. At the top of the clean page he wrote The Testimony of Joseph Aubrey Pugh, and underlined it twice. Then he paused; he leaned back in his chair and let his mind slip into a reverie: for a long, long silent wait he sat motionless.
He wrote –
It was September when I first came into the valley: the top of it was hidden in fine rain, and the enclosing ridges on either side merged into a grey, formless cloud. There was no hint of the two peaks that were shown on the map, high and steep on each side of the valley’s head. This I saw from the windows of the station cab as it brought me up the mountainous road from the plains, a road so narrow that in places the car could barely run between the stone walls. All the way I had been leaning forward in my seat, excited and eager to be impressed: at another time the precipices that appeared so frequently on the left hand would have made me uneasy, but now they were proofs of a strange and wilder land, and I was exhilarated.
I did not expect my cottage when the car stopped; indeed, I thought that the driver had pulled up again to open a cattle-gate. We had been climbing steadily the whole length of the road and now as I got out of the car the cloud blew cold and damp in wisps on my face. The cottage stood on the mountain-side, square on a little dug-in plateau that almost undermined the road. It was the smallest habitation I had ever seen; a white front with a green door between two windows, and a grey roof the size of a sheet.
The driver, a bull of a man and silent, gave me a grunt for my money, recognized the tip with ‘Ta’ in a more civil tone, and backed rapidly away in the thickening mist. I stared about for a minute and then with a curious flutter of anticipation I walked up the path and in at the green door. My things had arrived: they were standing in the doorway of the little room on the right of the door and I kicked over them before I found a match and the lamp.
The golden light spreading as the lamp warmed showed beams and a wooden ceiling a few inches above my head; the floor was made of huge slate flags, and the moisture stood on them in tiny drops that flattened to wet footprints as I walked. Still with the same odd excitement I took the lamp and explored my dwelling: I found a much better room on the left of the front door – two windows and a boarded floor, a comfortable chair and a Turkey rug by the stove. The house was built with stone walls of great thickness and this gave the windowsills a depth and a value in a small room that I would not have expected. The far window looked straight out over the valley: I leaned on the sill and peered out down the slope. The last grey light and a parting in the mist showed a huddle of buildings down there; I supposed them to be the farm, and while I stared a light appeared, travelled steadily along to a door and vanished; a faint ghostliness filled the windows of the building and then the mist blotted it out.
Up the ladder-like stairs – I had to hold the treads with one hand while I went up – up the nine flat rungs of this staircase were two A-shaped lofts, made by the sloping sides of the roof and the top of the ceilings below. One had a bed and a window. A lean-to at the back, a coal-hole and a dreary little lavatory tacked on behind completed the house. It appeared to me incredible that so much could have been packed into that toy box of a house.
I had taken Hafod by letter, sight unseen. At that time any small furnished place was difficult to find, and as this one promised tranquillity, remoteness and a certain degree of comfort, I had taken it without spending much time in reflection.
A retreat of this kind had become quite necessary for me: for the last few years my health had been declining, and my work had grown increasingly arduous. It was not that my duties in the university took up so many days in the term, nor that my research carried me along at an exhausting pace; it was my tutoring that wore me down. The young men who came to me did not seem to do very well, and my responsibility for their lack of improvement worried me more and more. It had come to the pitch where I was spending more time over their essays than ever they had spent; and with indifferent health I found that this frustrating, ungrateful task had become an almost intolerable burden. Many people supposed, I believe, that I should throw up my fellowship, and although it was wretchedly paid there were plenty of unfortunate devils who would have been glad of it: but that I could not do. With no private means and a name unknown outside my college and the small circle of palaeographers who had read my articles, it was impossible.
By finding this refuge, I hoped to make so complete a break with my established habits and discontents that I should return to them and to the writing of my book (The Bestiary before Isidore of Seville) with enough zeal to carry me through the term and the next few chapters. My idea was to do nothing very much, to read books unrelated to my trade, and to walk in the mountains when I felt like it, and to lie long in bed.
The place had another attraction: it lay in the very heart of North Wales, and for many years I had wished to know something of the country and the people. My great-grandfather (from whom I have my name of Pugh) had come from Wales before he had established himself as a draper in Liverpool, and I believe there was quite a strong Welsh tradition in our family as late as my father’s time. He, poor man, had been left a genteel competence by his draper grandfather; it had descended to him through his un-draper father, who had married a lady of very good family and dealt in large mercantile transactions, far from the counter. My father, a sociable man, living in a time of acute social distinctions, felt the Liverpool-Welsh side of his ancestry keenly. He dropped all Welsh contacts and added his mother’s name, Aubrey, to ours. He had never cared for me to ask him about it, and he was not pleased when I took to studying the language – it was a fit of enthusiasm caused by my friendship with Annwyl, and it lasted several terms in my undergraduate days.
By the time I had sorted my belongings into some degree of order it was quite dark, and I was hungry. The lighting of the fire had taken me longer than I supposed it would, and now I was faced with a plunge down the