![]() LONDON, ONTARIO – I recently gave our reading group a holiday from our usual theological fare and assigned one of my all-time favourite novels, How Green Was My Valley (1939) by Richard Llewellyn (1906 – 83). This was at least my third immersion in this coming-of-age tale which is told from the perspective of the youngest son in a large family at the turn of the last century as their way of life in a Welsh coal-mining village is steadily degraded by economic exploitation and environmental plunder. Though written in English, the narrative is conveyed in a beguiling prose that seems to have been somehow steeped in the characteristic lilt of the Welsh vernacular; ie: “We sat in the sun, on a turf as soft as my mother’s tablecloth and greener, with the wind kept away by the rock, and angry because of it.” How Green Was My Valley was published within weeks of Britain declaring war on Germany and, following an early flurry of ecstatic reviews, the novel started racking up phenomenal sales that no publisher’s marketing department could’ve predicted. Perhaps feeling the need for a refresher course in values that were worth fighting for, an enormous international readership took up Llewellyn’s alternately tender and raucous chronicle of a boisterous family which has its spirited disagreements but never breaks faith with one another. Descriptions and imagery that you can taste and smell and feel, convey a sense of place that is positively incarnational and the story itself constitutes a kind of hymn to the glories which can animate and crown even the humblest, most unadorned lives. I first read How Green Was My Valley as a teenager – maybe eighteen years old – in a bid to gain a little insight into my father’s background. David John Goodden (1914 – 2003) had emigrated from Wales at the age of fifteen; sent on ahead to Canada to work on a farm and make smooth the path for his parents and sister who would follow several months later. (Dig in here if you’d care to learn about my father’s life: Remembering Jack). My initial sense of paternal connection deepened to personal identification as I read on, strongly relating to the temperament and aspirations of the budding writer who narrates the tale: a book-crazy boy (with the good sense to adore Samuel Johnson) who also happened to be, just like me, the youngest of four sons. Though they may still be regarded with indulgent affection, few of the books that thrilled me as a teenager retain (or, rarer yet, increase) their lustre when revisited as an adult. Wuthering Heights, Huckleberry Finn and The Wind in the Willows are three others that have held up for me that way; Catcher in the Rye and A Separate Peace, not so much. I fell in love with How Green Was My Valley all over again at the age of thirty-one. I can be more precise about the timing of that second encounter because Kirtley and I read it aloud to one another while pregnant with our second child. And in a bid to salute our forebears without getting into the tiresome and confusing business of directly recycling familial handles, we bestowed the first name of that narrating character on our resultant son, though forgoing the Welsh spelling of ‘Huw”. How Green Was My Valley was Richard Llewellyn’s first novel but his was hardly a case of beginner’s luck. Llewellyn fitfully worked on his book for twelve long years; first taking it up at the age of twenty-one and setting it aside repeatedly as he worked at a series of sometimes pretty menial jobs and served six years in India and Hong Kong with the British army. While the novel set Llewellyn up for life, it also cast a pall of anticlimax over the rest of his career as he was never able to equal (let alone surpass) its artistic or commercial success. I tried to read one of the novel’s sequels when it turned up on the cart of library rejects being offered to inmates of the old Middlesex County Jail where I was serving a three-day sentence for running a red light on my bicycle. I was pretty desperate for literary diversion in there and was predisposed to give anything by Llewellyn a chance but that sequel, set in a South American community of Welsh expatriates, just didn’t take hold. Perhaps I was too distracted by the appalling novelty of my surroundings. (See here for the inside skinny on my incarceration: My Life of Crime. ) In my subsequent five decades as a reformed ex-con and voracious reader, I haven’t had occasion to give any of Llewellyn’s later books a chance as they never seem to turn up in the used book stores that I haunt. For that matter, How Green Was My Valley doesn’t turn up with much frequency anymore either; though whenever it does, I snap it up and pass it along to a friend. While the book was popular enough to be made into a beautifully shot if greatly truncated film in 1941 (directed by John Ford and starring Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Donald Crisp and Roddy McDowell) that movie is commonly and quite undeservedly dumped on today for the cinematic crime of nudging out Citizen Kane for Best Picture in that year’s Oscar race. As late in the day as 1975 the book still had sufficient resonance to inspire a far more comprehensive, six-part BBC adaptation featuring an almost entirely Welsh cast that included the great Stanley Baker (in his last role) and the always-intriguing Sian Phillips as Huw Morgan’s parents. If you dig around you can probably scare up the series on YouTube though the actors’ accents can be a little challenging without subtitles. Fans of the British Invasion will be amused to note that Jeremy Clyde (of the 1960’s pop duo, Chad and Jeremy) plays the mine owner’s toffee-nosed son whose greedy machinations have much to do with the ruination of village life. And the novel itself is rarely referenced nowadays unless it’s being crapped on by snarky academics like University of Edinburgh lecturer, Wendy Ugolini – a “cultural historian specialising in ethnicities, race and identity formation” – whose bitter denunciations dominated my recent interweb search for commentary. Ugolini dismisses the novel as “a typical product of those who wrote about Wales for a market.” (What? Writers aren’t supposed to try to earn money?) And she issues further demerit points for historical and topographical distortions, appropriation of voice and misrepresentation of Welsh life. (Oh man, I am so glad that I never had my love of books bent out of shape by attending university.) Ugolini is outraged that ‘Llewellyn’ was a pen name for an author who was in fact English-born. That the name “Llewellyn” was in his family’s background, and that he’d spent every childhood summer with his mother’s relatives in Wales and wanted to pay tribute to people and a place that he loved . . . all of that stands for nothing in the eyes of Ugolini who regards such open-hearted inspiration as a form of theft. Over the years I’ve encountered a few fellow devotees who discovered the book for themselves – always older people – and only twice have I come across recommendations from big name writers. Recently the Dante scholar Anthony Esolen penned a charming Substack essay about the 1941 movie. And about twenty years ago I was floored to hear (or did I read?) an interview which I’ve never been able to subsequently track down with the Catholic-bashing Christopher Hitchens where he credited Llewellyn’s most celebrated novel as a formative experience in his own life as a reader and writer. All of which goes to show that even the meanest curmudgeons can secretly harbour a glimmer or two of human generosity. Look, I know Llewellyn ain’t Tolstoy or Dickens. And in the wake of my most recent reading, I might even concede that How Green Was My Valley exhibits a few infelicities that commonly turn up in first novels. There is perhaps some unevenness in conception and apportioning of emphasis; an occasional crudeness in stitching certain sections together. But these imperfections scarcely matter as so much of this book’s appeal derives from the uncalculating sense of youthful élan that drives this story along. In addition to his peerless eye for the dynamics of family life, Llewellyn beautifully captures the sense of sanctuary and renewal that a loving home provides to all of its members; most particularly young children as they make their first tentative forays out into an intimidating and bewildering world. We watch the sting of a long day’s tutelage with an arrogant schoolmaster evaporate when Huw gets home and his mom does nothing more than greet him as a beloved human being and pass him a well-buttered bun and a warm cup of tea. In such moments both the stomach and the heart are refortified. When bullies start to become a problem on the schoolyard, Huw’s father and his brothers arm him with practical lessons in self-defense. Quite early on there’s a scene where the older brothers and the father come to loggerheads about whether or not the time has come to form a miners’ union. While they're all racked with uncertainty and fear about how best to avoid financial peril, that particular discomfort pales next to the misery each one of them feels to suddenly find themselves at odds with their kin. In perhaps the novel's most powerful sequence, Huw has accidentally witnessed a poor woman giving birth in desperate circumstances and is so shattered and shamed by the experience that he can scarcely meet the face of anyone when he gets home. No one gives him a hard time about it but their demeanors are so awkward and regretful that he elects to retire early to bed to await what he thinks might be punishment from his father:
“I cannot tell how long I had been asleep when I woke up and found my father looking down at me with the lamp. “‘I am sorry I woke you, my son,’ he said. ‘I hear you had a bit of trouble tonight?’ “‘Yes, Dada,’ I said. ‘Will I take off my shirt?’ “‘Stay where you are, boy,’ my father said, with a smile well on the way. ‘Not strapping you, I am. Only talking. Are you awake and clear?’ “‘Yes, Dada,’ I said. “‘Right, then,’ my father said. ‘Listen to me. Forget all you saw. Leave it. Take your mind from it. It has nothing to do with you. But use it for experience. Now you know what hurt it brings to women when men come into the world. Remember, and make it up to your Mama and to all women.’ “‘Yes, Dada,’ I said. “‘And another thing let it do,’ my father said. ‘There is no room for pride in any man. There is no room for unkindness. There is no room for wit at the expense of others. All men are born the same, and equal. As you saw today, so come the Captains and the Kings and the Tinkers and the Tailors. Let the memory direct your dealings with men and women. And be sure to take good care of Mama. Is it?’ “‘Yes, Dada,’ I said. “‘God bless you, my son,’ he said. ‘Sleep in peace.’ “I did, indeed.” Throughout this gem of a novel, Llewellyn portrays moments of epiphany, simple and profound, when a burgeoning consciousness starts to really take form and develop. And he perfectly sketches out the earnestly imitative way in which a young boy models himself on the older men in his life, steering himself towards the fulfillment of certain attributes and skills that, for now, he only perceives in the most nominal way. We come to appreciate how very much the entire enterprise of growing up hinges on trust in the steady guidance of people who can see further and deeper than the child can, who have his best interests at heart and will be there to help pick up the pieces if something in that approach goes wrong. And finally I must note a new and disturbing undertone that burbles away during a 2024 reading of How Green Was My Valley. That broad and timeless approach to child-rearing that is celebrated in this book is completely at odds with the kind of faddish dictates that prevail today when parents’ best instincts are commonly challenged by educational and governmental apparatchiks of stupefying shallowness who prioritize the conditioning of social units above the proper cultivation of souls.
5 Comments
19/5/2024 07:38:39 pm
Another wonderful prolegomenon of a book I have yet to read. I have greatly enjoyed the movie, though aware that the story must have been greatly trimmed and condensed. I shall start a search for a copy of my own, with every expectation of finding its content as advertised. One small note regarding your characterization of Christopher Hitchens as "Catholic-bashing". In truth, Hitchens had no special animosity towards that faith and was in fact quite 'catholic' in his disdain for all organized religions.
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SUE CASSAN
20/5/2024 06:39:10 am
Thank you for reminding me of a glorious book which I loved and am now inspired to open again. Coming from a mining town, though one very different, I’m reminded of the way a community was united by a shared dependence on a hard and dangerous way to make a living, feed a family, and launch another generation. The men coming home in How Green Was My Valley to wash off the black coal had an echo in my house as my mom dealt with the bulky, muddy coveralls in a wringer washing machine. The sound of the mine klaxon blowing at the wrong time froze everyone in place, as everyone calculated who was underground at that time. The movie is charming, but the book is so wonderful that it is really worth reading to experience the rich evocation of a time that is gone.
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Max Lucchesi
20/5/2024 11:33:14 am
As usual, Herman, a beautifully written piece. I tried to read it after my first visit to Wales in the early 60s, but tossed it away because it bore no relation to the poverty, hardship and control the Methodist Chapel had over their communities even though the coal industry was unionised and been nationalised since 1946. If a family did not work down the mine, it lived on the dole, or the work house or left. There was no other work in those green valleys. As the book had been written 50 years before, times then would have been 50 times harder, as the woman giving birth in the street testifies. Not to be churlish Herman, the book was read by the middle class to assuage their guilt over the frequent accidents and deaths caused by non-existent safety in the unregulated privately owned mines. To a country dependent on coal, it depicted what they wanted to believe about "the salt of the earth" the British working class, Mr. Doolittle's the "deserving poor". I went to Wales twice more, the second time in the 70s. The last time with the family during the first decade of this century. The difference that 35 years of European Union subsidies made to the Welsh economy was palpable. I saw John Ford's movie as I saw his The Quiet Man, they had one thing in common they bore no relation to the Wales or rural Ireland that I knew in the early 60s, but good movies nonetheless. I agree, not for the first time with Jim Chapman, Christopher Hitchens shot at everyone's god. If Catholics feel he picked them out it's only because Catholicism has a longer history of sinning than the other religions. But to me a man who can include G.K. Chesterton, Victor Serge and Arthur Koestler in the same critical essay must be worth a read. Nice to have you back.
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Fr. Mike Prieur
21/5/2024 06:21:50 am
Herman's usual colourful, smashing prose brought me back to the movie version I saw years ago, when I was often moved to tears. I thought the music was equally beautiful. I hope Herman will loan me his copy of the book to read on my holidays during the last two weeks of June.
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Mark Richardson
26/5/2024 03:24:04 pm
Thanks, Herman for another winning column. My Welsh mother introduced me to the 1941 film version when I was a lad and proud of it she was. A few years ago, I read how the Welsh reaction to the movie was ecstatic, especially in the valleys where they had never before seen their own kind on the big screen. If I can find out the source, I will pass it along.
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