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DENTON WELCH - 'DELICATE BOY' HAD TOUGH TIMES AT REPTON SCHOOL

A number of the subjects in our 'Famous Residents' category claim their place by virtue of having spent at least part of their schooldays in Derbyshire. Here Peter Seddon adds the writer and artist Denton Welch, whose time at Repton School in the early 1930s proved a formative experience but not an altogether happy one.

Denton Welch as a teenager at about the time he entered Repton School

An accomplished but tellingly introspective and rather gloomy self-portrait from the 1930s - Denton Welch would then have been in his twenties

The writer and artist Denton Welch - born in 1915 Maurice Denton Welch - is far from a household name today. Perhaps someone we have 'vaguely heard of' but know precious little about. Or - let's not fudge the issue - some of us haven't heard of him at all!

Yet according to one critical appreciation of his work and legacy Denton Welch is 'the least known English literary genius of the 20th century'. And the writer goes on to say - 'What makes the existence of a writer of Welch's genius so remarkable is that the events of his early life might so easily have squashed his literary talent.'

That statement alone entices one towards further investigation - but when supplemented by the fact that his 'early life' included his education at Repton School, it surely 'demands' investigation.

Denton Welch was born in Shanghai on 27 March 1915 into a family whose lifestyle was typical of the English ruling class in that period. He spent his early childhood in China, where his upbringing was secure in terms of wealth but deprived in the arguably more important matter of genuine affection.

As such he grew up a rather delicate and insecure boy who lived to a great extent in social isolation - and as a result created his own intimate world as a coping mechanism. This was all to prove formative in terms of what he later brought to his writing, for his preferred approach in his short stories and novels was to write on a very intimate scale about a cloistered world.

It has been written that his bohemian interests in art, writing and antiques grew from two events in his early life. Firstly the barren ground of his mother's death when he was aged only 11, and secondly - and I quote verbatim here - 'a rigorous and punitive education at the exclusive 'public' school of Repton in Derbyshire'.

Like many of his 'Englishman born abroad' ilk he was sent to school in England 'whether he liked it or not'. And in his case Denton Welch later made it very clear that his time at school was an unhappy one.

He was first given an insight into Repton when he visited his older brother there in 1924. Denton was then only 11 and recalled being particularly impressed by the art room which was then housed in the old tithe barn.

Then in 1929, at the age of 14 he was bidden to form a more permanent acquaintance with Repton School when he entered Brook House there, the third Welch brother to follow that same track.

In all his subsequent writings about that time, and in the reminiscences of his contemporaries, one overridiing impression is given - that Denton Welch was one very unhappy Derbyshire schoolboy.

A classmate wrote along the following lines: 'Denton was thin and awkward and not at all sporty - with his round spectacles and delicate features he was the antithesis of what an 'ideal' Repton boy of that time was expected to be. Nor was he particularly academic. It was obvious to me that he was entirely unsuited to the rumbustious nature of public school life at Repton - and of course the other boys soon realised this too. As a result he was sometimes bullied mercilessly.'

Such was his unhappiness that in 1931 he failed to return to school at the start of a new term. He had been travelling with his older brother from London up to Repton but was so overwhelmed with apprehension about returning there that he gave his brother the slip at St. Pancras Station. Entirely on a whim he made his 'escape' by boarding a train to Salisbury, where on arrival he spent a blissful time visiting the cathedral.

Of course his impulsive flight to freedom was soon discovered and he returned to Repton with trepidation. Although initially he became the object of some 'grudging admiration' for his daring act, school life soon resumed much as he had known it.

That being the case, his one real refuge at Repton School became the art room - and in that sense Repton moulded his life, for he graduated towards 'the arts' with increasing committment. His art master at that time was the ex-Slade School pupil Arthur 'Arty' Norris, with whom Welch struck up a good rapport.

When the blessed time came for Denton Welch to leave Repton School in 1933 'Arty' Norris gave him some advice - 'stick to your drawing and painting and you'll be all right'.

Welch later wrote of it being 'the moment I decided to become a painter'.

He left Repton School to study art in London, and he did paint some accomplished works. But it was not as a painter - but as a writer - that he ultimately achieved the greater and more enduring success. His output was by no means prolific, but some of it at least was ciritically acclaimed.

And his time at Repton School was documented in thinly-veiled disguise in some of his works. His art master Mr. Norris is 'Mr. Williams' in his autobiographical Maiden Voyage (1935) - and in the same work his House Master Harold 'Bulldog' Snape is given the name 'Mr. Bird'. Also Welch's short story John Trevor is faithfully based on an outing to Chatsworth undertaken by the Repton boys in 1931.

So - his self-confessed unhappy school days behind him - it would be heartening to conclude this piece by reporting that Denton Welch had a long and happy writer's life ahead of him.

Alas it was not to be. Released from one period of suffering, he entered another.

In 1935 at the age of only twenty - barely two years after leaving Repton behind - he was hit by a car while cycling in Surrey and suffered a fractured spine. Although he was not paralysed, he suffered severe pain and complications, including the spinal tuberculosis that ultimately led to his early death.

So what is his legacy to literature and art? Here is what one critic said:

 'His literary work,  intense and introverted, includes insightful portraits of his friends, and minutely observed portraits   
  of the English countryside during World War II.  A close attention to aesthetics, be it in human behaviour, physical 
  appearance, clothing, art, architecture, jewellery, or antiques, is also a recurring concern in his writings. Shorter  
  works include the essay on the painter Walter Sickert which, published originally in The London Magazine brought 
  him to the notice of artistic society. He continued occasionally to paint - there is a fine self-portrait in the National 
  Portrait Gallery and some of his own line illustrations in the first editions of his books.'

Perhaps his most-enduring book is Maiden Voyage (1935), the fictionalised autobiography of his early years. This was followed by his novel Youth is Pleasure (1943) - a story of adolescence - and a further novel Brave and Cruel (1949). His final work was his unfinished novel A Voice Through a Cloud, published posthumously in 1950.

Denton Welch - Old Reptonian, writer and artist - died on 30 December 1948 at the age of 33.

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