I closed Denton’s “what I did on my holidays” photograph album, looked at the time and squeaked in alarm. I’d spent so much time poring over his account of the summer of 1930 that I’d drastically limited the time available for the rest of the archive.
I was sitting in blissful solitude in the reading room of Exeter University, reviewing the only significant Denton archive that I can find in the UK. Having immersed myself in the summer of 1930, I turned to a small photograph album.
It was bound in soft, dog-eared, greenish grey card. Written in the corner in silvery fountain pen was ‘W.A. Welch Oct [unreadable year]’. Bill Welch, Denton’s brother. One photograph to a page, it’s a memoir of the family home in Shanghai. It starts with three exterior pictures of the house from different elevations, all covered in a rich, dense creeper.
Three pictures of the formally laid-out garden from different perspectives follow, with industrial-looking buildings directly behind the house, which was a surprise. I had imagined acres of land around such a large and lovely house, but the buildings seem quite densely packed. The garden shows a swing boat next to a gazebo smothered with climbing plants, comfy-looking benches just visible inside. I could imagine little Denton playing in the garden, racing between the swing and his beloved mother whilst she chatted with visitors over tea in the gazebo. To my sorrow, there was no sign of the little play house that he loved so much.
Inside the house, there are two pictures of the drawing room from opposite perspectives, one picture titled “Dining room not looking its best, matting on the floor” (it looked delightful to me!), and two taken on the verandah. One of the pictures, titled “Tiffin on the verandah”, appears in James Methuen-Campbell’s biography of Denton. It shows a relaxed and happy-looking eight year-old (ish) Denton cuddling his dog at the table, having just taken tiffin with his parents. Oddly, there’s a second picture of exactly the same scene, but another woman beams at the camera from Denton’s seat (and half-finished food), and Denton has moved into another chair. There’s no clue who the woman is – she seems to be about the same age as Denton’s mother. I don’t think Wooly, Denton’s nanny, was with the family in 1923, so perhaps it’s a friend or family visitor.
The rooms are all crammed with highly-polished, heavy wood furniture; tables, sideboards, butteries, dressers, chairs and sofas. I wonder what happened to it all – whether any of it is now a much-loved antique in a modern Shanghai home, shipped elsewhere in the world, or simply broken up and tossed onto a bonfire.
I amused myself for a few minutes working out how all the rooms related to the exterior of the house, then looked at the few remaining pictures. There’s a picture of “Daddy, self and Denton at the Races 1925 Nov”, but, confusingly, the picture is of Denton with both his parents and nobody who could be Bill. Presumably Bill took the picture. There’s a picture of “2nd cook, Coolie, Cook” showing three stiffly unsmiling young men standing in a line, all dressed in white with black slip-on shoes. Then there’s a picture of Nanking Road, showing very ornate buildings that look to be crumbling away. The photograph album ends with a picture of a large boat with quilted-looking sails, navigating imperiously across a bay.
I closed the photograph album with regret. It’s a beautiful Denton treasure, but I wish there had been more interior pictures of the house.
I turned to Denton’s 1938 notebook. It was a hardback, dark rose notebook, quarterbound in dark rose leather. Across the two front pages, Denton has drawn his name in what we would recognise as Times New Roman font, four lines high, and carefully coloured in with pencil. His name, quite literally writ large. The book is mainly written in pencil, with a great deal of crossing and scribbling out. There are no dates on any of the pages except one: on Christmas Day, 1938, Denton wrote this poem:
The silver sided birch believes That beauty only lives in leaves
The book is chiefly poetry, with many sketches and doodles. Denton occasionally switches to a purple pencil or a black fountain pen. There are floor plans of houses, and a list of authors inside the back cover. Here and there, pages have been carefully cut out – I would love to know why, and by whom. It’s a messy scrawl of a book, and it was utterly thrilling to browse it!
Then there were a few modern photographs of Denton locations, a picture of Denton apparently sketching on the balcony of Middle Orchard – it’s from the same reel as the photographs of Denton with his angels and with Eric – and a few letters between correspondents talking about Denton’s will and copyright.
With 20 minutes remaining of my time in the reading room, the kind librarian brought me the final item – a bright pink, hardcover box, embossed with gold lettering that proclaimed itself to hold the final chapters of Maiden Voyage. Reader, I have no idea why anyone would want to store Denton’s work in this gilded bubblegum monstrosity. Is this a Thing that publishers did? Produce luridly-coloured boxes to hold original MSS? And how on earth did it get separated from the rest of the originals to escape transportation to Texas?
Inside the box, there were two soft-backed school exercise books. I wondered if Denton minded writing in these, or whether austerity limited his options on what to write in. I could easily imagine the aesthetic Denton appreciating and luxuriating in a Moleskine notebook.
Turning the pages gently, all that went through my head was “DentonwrotethisDentonwrotethisdDentonwrotethis”. This is Denton writing his first novel. His original words, with all their crossings out and spelling mistakes and misplaced apostrophes. I longed to compare them to the published version, but I’d been allowed nothing but a pencil and a notebook in the reading room. I read, in Denton’s writing, the final words of Maiden Voyage – the lingering taste of Cointreau, and Vesta’s tearful farewell. Then, as if nothing of import had happened, Denton launches into normal journaling, doodling, poems, and – adorably – endlessly practising his signature. D Welch, D. Welch, Denton Welch. Practising for fame. Signing and signing and signing until the book was full.
My time was up. Regretfully, I took the pink box back to the librarian, thanked him for his help, and headed back to the train station. All the way back to London, I wished and wished that I could have something connected to Denton. I wanted to hold on to the teenage excitement and awe that I’d experienced by seeing and holding items that he had seen and held.
Then, quite unexpectedly, I got my chance. I’ll tell you about it next time…