The writing desk of Jack Clemo is a humble piece of
furniture, less impressive than the desks of St Austell cohabitants Sir Arthur
Quiller Couch and Daphne du Maurier. It is a small bureau with three simple
drawers underneath. No room for clutter, no need for ornament. It is plain and
cramped, as it had to be. Clemo did not have his own study, but sat squashed in
the corner of the living room, writing while village children, evacuees and
visitors drifted in and out. Jack would hand the children old drafts of
manuscripts to draw on or to practise their homework. It was a rented
four-roomed, two-bedroomed clay workers’ cottage, which housed not only Jack
and his mother, but also her sister Bertha and usually two or three children
through the 1940s and 50s. When they first moved in, during the First World
War, the Clemos fetched their water from a pump down the road at Goonamarris,
or from the spring when the pump ran dry. It was not until the 1930s that a tap
was fitted to the outside of the garden wall, and not until 1968, when Jack was
52 and due to marry, that he and his mother thought about getting a toilet
attached to the house.
It was at this desk that Clemo wrote Wilding Graft, his award-winning clayscape romance, as well as his
striking autobiography, Confession of a Rebel,
and the poetry for which he is now best remembered, including The Map of Clay, Cactus on Carmel, The Echoing
Tip and Broad Autumn. His
volatile emotional history all played out here, with the photographs of
romantic attachments and lost loves propped up on its top, beneath the portraits
of Browning and Powys. He would write his emotionally charged diaries here, as
well as long, intense and argumentative religious love letters to potential partners,
such as those sent to Eileen in 1949. Clemo’s correspondence was extensive and
important to him, his only connection with the life outside of the villages. He
was already deaf and unable to join in normal conversation, and by the time he
was writing to Eileen, the view out of the window over the road, field and
works, was blurring palely as his eyesight was beginning to fail. In later years, when
he was blind, Clemo’s mother would sit beside him, much as Ruth sits beside him
here in the photograph, writing out correspondence in capital letters into the
palm of his hand.
It was also at this desk that Jack greeted the Beat poet Kenneth
Rexroth, as well as Charles Causley, George MacBeth and Lionel Miskin, who
painted Clemo several times in front of it, slouching lugubriously. Most people
who visited Clemo recall their first impression of him, small, silent and
hunched at his bureau.
The top photograph, taken by Paul Broadhurst for the Cornwall Courier, shows Ruth and Jack
Clemo in 1980. You can see the modern electric fire covering the old coal and
wood fireplace, for which Jack used to go out gathering smutties on the Slip as
a young man. Over the fire is a 1979 painting, made by a friend of Jack’s
foster-sister, Betty Penver, and over the desk to the right is a photograph of
Billy Graham, whose missions had so impressed Clemo in the 1950s. On the top of
the desk is a newspaper article with a headline about the BBC film
recently written and directed by Norman Stone, dramatizing Clemo’s early life.
It was made at the end of 1979 and shown on Good Friday, 1980. Just out of
sight, behind Jack’s shoulder, is a miniature of the 1957 clay bust of Clemo that is
now kept in the Royal Cornwall Museum.
The Clemos were splitting their years at this time between
the cottage at Vinegar Point and the Peaty house at Weymouth, and Ruth had constructed a similar
space and desk at which Clemo could work in their suburban seaside retreat.
When they finally moved, in 1984, they left the little bureau behind, with a
good deal of other unneeded furniture. For the past twelve years, the desk has
been kept in the Jack Clemo Memorial Room at Trethosa Chapel, a lovingly
constructed and maintained space that has disappeared with the chapel’s closure.
Wheal Martyn Museum and Park at Carthew, near St Austell, have taken the bureau
now, though years of being stored in the cold and damp mean it requires some
sensitive conservation work. The second image above, taken by Matt Shepherd of the BBC, shows the bureau's current condition. The lid is tied shut because one hinge is missing while the other is damaged and weak. The left lid-support, which pulls out, has a pin working as a handle, and the damage to the top drawer is evident. There are similar details of wear and damage all around the piece, inside and out, and as this year marks the twentieth anniversary of
Clemo’s death – on 25th July – we thought it would be a good idea to
get it restored and out on permanent display. It has been estimated that
£300 will do the job and we’re appealing for donations. Feel free to get in
touch with me or with Wheal Martyn if you might like to contribute.
Clemo remains overlooked and undervalued, and the display of
his writing space might be a good way for many new people to engage with him
and his work. It is an evocative piece of literary and Cornish history and
seems to reflect the poverty of his upbringing and the unusualness of his
story. It could also be considered a neat symbol of that juxtaposition between the
tininess of his worldly experience, the reduced landscape and his sensual
enclosure, and the immense personal vision and talent with which he wrote.
Update: Following our brief media campaign, the £300 target has been reached and surpassed. Any further donations will go towards the accompanying bookcase, which is also in the photograph (top) and held by Wheal Martyn.
Top photograph courtesy of
Paul Broadhurst and the Special Collections Library, University of Exeter. Bottom photograph courtesy of Matthew Shepherd/BBC Online.
