Two police officers are directing onlookers away from the scene of a car crash and discussing how it had happened. PC Butterman is looking puzzled.
“Why can’t we call it an accident?”
“Because accident implies there’s no one to blame”, comes the grim response from PC Angel.
Whenever I see Denton referring to his “accident”, it reminds me of this scene from Hot Fuzz, and frankly, reader, it gets my dander up a little. It wasn’t an accident, it was gross negligence. On 9 June 1935, Denton Welch was knocked off his bike by a careless driver. It was a quiet stretch of road with no apparent reason for anyone to lose control of a car. However, Annie Huntley did, and Denton’s body was ruined for the rest of his life.
Denton’s description of his experience in hospital is horrific. The nurses were dismissive of his pain; they inflicted casual torture upon him by binding his terribly injured leg cruelly tight before it was put in plaster; they expected men to be stoic in the face of life-changing injuries and death. The social context is relevant, of course; the Great War was still in living memory, and the appalling injuries and suffering of soldiers in the trenches. I do wonder if Denton exaggerated the inhumanity of the nurses for greater effect, but it seems that everyone agreed he was in a particularly awful hospital. However, he couldn’t be moved for a month because of the severity of his injuries.
Eventually ensconced in a Broadstairs nursing home, along comes Dr Jack Easton. There’s a photograph of him in JMC’s biography (hooray!) and Denton’s description did him great justice. Dr Easton is the first person to acknowledge the suffering that Denton had endured for the last few months – no wonder Denton fell for him! Simple gratitude towards a member of the medical profession who at last acknowledges that Denton has more than a slightly grazed knee.
Denton never returned to live in London. Several commentators have suggested that, dreadful though it was, being forced to relocate out of London to recuperate allowed Denton’s genius to flourish as it otherwise may not have done. Alan Bennett, for example, speculates that if Denton had continued at Goldsmiths he would probably have ended up as part of the Soho or Fitzrovia set, indistinguishable from all the other London creatives anxious to make their name. Edmund White wrote that Denton’s gift was refined by suffering and illness into a “white-hot flame”.
Denton, however, doesn’t (yet) strike me as someone who was particularly ambitious to make a name for himself. He does mention in a couple of letters to Eric Oliver that he thinks he might be about to become well-known, but doesn’t seem to be particularly excited by the prospect. On the contrary, he talks glumly about the people who write to him asking if they can visit, and he feels that he needs to say yes to some of them. Does anyone these days write to famous people saying “I’d love to meet you, when can I drop by?”, and expect them to say “Yes of course! See you for afternoon tea on Saturday next!”. Unthinkable now – a matter of courtesy then.
But back to Annie Huntley. Denton doesn’t mention her at all in AVTAC. He vaguely refers to Bill taking care of some legal matters. Maybe he talks about it more in his journals, but the further I read into AVTAC, the more I wanted to know what had happened to the driver who had been the cause of so much suffering and a life changing course. I know that there was a court case, and Denton was awarded £4,000 in damages (approximately £280,000 today) which allowed him to live independently, but what happened to Annie? Did she go to jail? Was her driving licence revoked? Did she express remorse? Did she apologise? It’s commendable that Denton didn’t allow himself to dwell on it (again, the journals may contradict this perception when I read them) but how could he have not thought more about it? He seems to have just accepted that this was his life now, and not thought with resentment of the person who caused it.
Next up – the convalescent stalker.