THE MAN WHO WROTE "HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 161, 24 July 1942, Page 8

THE MAN WHO WROTE "HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY"

Miner, Boxer, Soldier, Actor, And Transport Worker

(By the Editor of

John o' London's Weekly

E asked a question in a recent issue about the identity of the author of "How Green Was My Valley." In reply a reader in Christchurch, Samuel H. Head, has sent us an early copy of "John o’ London’s Weekly," containing this pen portrait of Richard Llewellyn.

ICHARD LLEWELLYN, the author of How Green Was My Valley, is a man of medium height, with small hands and feet, a complexion like old ivory, and eyes and hair as black and shining as a lump of Welsh coal. The bridge of his Roman nose is a little out of line. The reason for this is that at one stage of his extraordinary career he was a boxer. It cannot have been easy to hold his own with such small-even delicate — hands, but one has only to feel his firm grip, to observe his steady eye, his alert step, and the jaunty tilt of his head to realise that he is well able to look after himself. He is careful about his clothes, and likes a dash of colour, a button-hole, hat at an angle. If he suffers from any morbid feeling of self-distrust (to quote the late Lord Birkenhead) he conceals it very well. Ize looks as if he never felt a moment’s doubt or indecision, as if he could command anything from a platoon to an army corps, as if he enjoyed every minute of his life. And what a life he has had! Years in the Army "Richard Llewellyn" is only part of his name. His full name is Richard David Vivian Llewellyn Lloyd: his parents, you gather, were not only Welsh but proud of it, and so.is he. He dedicates his book "To My Father and the Land of My Fathers." He looks about thirty-five, but when he begins to talk about what he has done and seen you feel he must be more. This is the barest summary of it all: Schooldays in St. David’s, Cardiff, and London — even then he seems to have been often on the move; a spell in a coal mine, another in Italy learning hotel management, dabbling in printing, sculpture, and film-making, five years in the Army, partly spent in India; some boxing, a little reporting, more film workthis time the whole business from acting to production; anxious months with no work at all. Such was the record up to two years ago. At that point he decided to finish How Green Was My Valley. He had written the first draft of it in India. Now he started all over again, as a man without a job on the benches of St. James’s Park. And here, if you believe in chance, is something for your fancy to play with, In the Photographer’s Chair It so happened that while Mr. Llewellyn was stubbing his reluctant pencil under the trees of St. James’s, Michael Joseph, the publisher, was persuaded to have his photograph taken. Having first awed his subject as only photographers and dentists can, the photographer —

Howard Coster-said to him. " You're a publisher, and you ought to be interested in the discovery of an unknown genius. I know a young man ." At that familiar preamble Mr. Joseph’s heart sank as only a publisher’s can. Nevertheless, holding his pleasant expression as well as he could-for he was still in the chair-he replied, "All right. Send him along." Mr. Llewellyn came, with a few thousand words of manuscript, and it did not take Mr. Joseph long to make up his mind about it. He confesses that, hardened reader though he is, it more than once brought a lump to his throat, An agreement was signed, and Mr, Llewellyn went off to Wales to work in earnest. For 18 months he wrapped himself in silence, until Mr. Joseph began to wonder whether he was alive or dead. One day last summer he turned up again with the completed story. The book was published in October and was an immediate best-seller. In the United States it sold 40,000 copies in a fortnight. The Story A word may perhaps be added about the story itself. It must, of course, be read as fiction, but I have Mr. Llewellyn’s authority for saying that there is not a character or an incident in it that has not some basis in fact. Readers who know the Welsh valleys will inevitably try to identify points in the story, but they will only waste their time. For every scene and character is a composite creation. Mr. Llewellyn has used the (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) novelist’s licence to rearrange Nature. His Valley is not one valley but a dozen. There are fifty Gwilym Morgans and Reverend Mr. Gruffydds. The conflict between God and Mammon still goes on, exactly as he describes it, in any one of a hundred communities. On reading over what I have written about him I feel that I have perhaps stressed his man-of-the-world manner too much. Well, anyone who has read his book will understand why. It still astonishes me that a man who has led the life he has led, who has roughed it as he has roughed it, should have come out of the blue as a finished literary artist, with every resource of tenderness, pity, humour, and realism at his fingers’ end. I expected to meet a dreamer, and I met a man who at this moment, as Chief Transport Officer for E.N.S.A., is directing the movements of nearly 500 concert parties which are going about entertaining the troops.

Finally, I cannot illustrate his literary shrewdness better than by a reference to the curious Welsh idiom in which the book is written. Some readers are attracted by it, others dislike it. Mr. Llewellyn adopted it deliberately in order to foster a sense of intimacy with his characters, and I myself think he succeeds in doing so. But he knows perfectly well that a device like this hag its limitations, and cannot be repeated without risk to his reputation, In his second novel, on which he is now working, there is therefore a complete change of style and scene. The chief characters are a young couple; the scene is London, I have said nothing about his plays. Poison Pen has already been produced in London. Two others are awaiting production. E.N.S.A., two plays and a novel, all going at the same time-there, as his own Mrs. Morgan would say, is hustle! ("G.M?s" review of the film version of " How Green Was My Valley" appears on page 16.)