Ithell Colquhoun – She Reads Novels

Earlier this year I enjoyed reading Ithell Colquhoun’s The Crying of the Wind, an account of the author’s travels around Ireland, so I decided to read her other travel book, The Living Stones, published two years later in 1957. This one is inspired by her visits to Cornwall in the late 1940s, where she came in search of escape from post-war London. As an artist, she wanted a suitable property to use as an occasional refuge where she could paint in peace and in 1949 she purchased Vow Cave, a small wooden studio with very basic living facilities.

Vow Cave (Colquhoun tells us that Vow is derived from vugha, the Cornish word for cave) is in the village of Lamorna on the Penwith peninsula a few miles from Penzance. Although she writes about the landscape, the surrounding countryside and some local places of interest, this book isn’t really a travelogue in the same sense as The Crying of the Wind, where the author described trips and excursions to different areas of Ireland. Instead, she explores the culture and history of Cornwall in general, with chapters devoted to separate topics, giving it almost the feel of a collection of short essays.

Lots of Cornish customs and rituals are discussed, ranging from the Gorsedh of Cornwall, or gathering of the bards, and the ‘Obby ‘Oss (hobby horse) festival in Padstow to the Furry Day celebrations which mark the arrival of spring (the name likely has nothing to do with fur and comes from the Cornish word for ‘fair’ or ‘feast’). There’s a chapter on traditional Cornish foods such as potato cakes, Cornish cream and the Cornish pasty, and another on folk medicine and witchcraft – Colquhoun has a particular interest in the occult. Some sections are fascinating, although there were others where I found my attention wandering.

Both books I’ve read by this author feel random and meandering, lacking in focus. I found that the best way to read them was in small doses, a few short chapters at a time alternating with other books, rather than straight through from beginning to end. As a pair, they’re definitely worth reading if you have any interest in Ireland or Cornwall, and I did learn a lot from them. Colquhoun has also written a novel, Goose of Hermogenes, which sounds intriguing!

Thanks to Pushkin Press Classics for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Ithell Colquhoun was a completely new name for me when I spotted this book on NetGalley recently, but I know now that she was a prominent British surrealist painter in the 1930-40s, as well as an occultist, poet and author of both fiction and non-fiction. The Crying of the Wind, originally published in 1955, describes her travels around Ireland and her impressions of the people she meets and places she visits. It’s the first of three travel books she wrote, with a book on Cornwall following in 1957 and then one on Egypt which has never been published.

Colquhoun bases herself near the village of Lucan on the River Liffey, to the west of Dublin. In each chapter, she sets out on a walk or an excursion by car to visit different parts of Ireland, including Glendalough, Connemara and Cashel. The structure seems a bit haphazard, with no real order or pattern to the places she visits, and the book definitely has the feel of a personal journal rather than something you could use to plan out your own travels. It’s an interesting book, though, and I did enjoy reading it. The descriptive writing is beautiful at times, as you would expect from a book written by a painter; here she describes the approach to Connemara’s Twelve Bens mountain range:

Across miles of mulberrydark bogland we drove towards them, the tawny of king ferns lining the ditches that bordered the road. Air of a wonderful transparency arched above us, blue washed with white gold. I did not regret our slow pace, enforced by the pot-holes in the road, since I could watch the mountains from gradually shifting angles.

Although Colquhoun includes some anecdotes about her encounters with Irish people, the way they live and the conversations she has with them, the main focus of her writing is on the beauty of the natural environment and on places of historical interest such as old churches, holy wells and remains of ancient forts and towers. She often laments the rate of progress and its effect on the natural world; when walking in the countryside, she is very aware of the noise of traffic on busy roads nearby and the sights of new housing developments and factory chimneys altering the landscape forever.

With her interest in the occult, Colquhoun spends a lot of time discussing the myths, legends and folklore of each place she visits. She believes in ghosts, spirits and supernatural beings and accepts their existence in a very matter-of-fact way.

Their forms vary; a friend described one she had seen on some downs in Dorsetshire as being ‘the size of a haystack, opaque but fluid at the edges, moving very quickly’; another is sometimes seen like a tower racing over wide sands on the north coast of Cornwall. I have myself seen in Cornwall one like a massive pillar of unknown substance, with filaments stretched from the top seemingly to hold it to the ground like the guy-ropes of a tent.

The Crying of the Wind is an unusual travel book, then, and also a fascinating one. I’ll look forward to reading her Cornwall book, The Living Stones, which is also available in a new edition from Pushkin Press.

Thanks to Pushkin Press Classics for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.