Village Characters

Powys mentions several of the villagers in the Autobiography and is particularly appreciative of the writer, bee-keeper and later Vicar of Burpham, Tickner Edwardes.

Tickner Edwardes
(courtesy West Sussex Record Office)

' I always liked Mr Edwardes uncommonly well. I liked the tough-wood texture of his bodily presence!...His long nose, his opaque, ivory-parchment skin, his tree-root neck, his shy, nervous, wild-animal brown eyes, all these manifestations of his personality were revelations to me of the essential goodness and soundness of his solitary soul. He possessed that grave, solid, imperturbable reserve, that stiff pride, mixed with disarming spasms of humility, that have characterized so many of the old-fashioned interpreters of English piety.'

Mr Edwardes is pictured with the actress Alma Taylor, who played the shepherdess Tansy in a film of that name, made in 1921 and based on a novel of his. JCP appears to have acted as tutor to Mr Edwardes' daughter, to judge from a passing reference in his diaries.

Powys also mentions Mr Goodyear, the wheelwright, seen here on the left outside his workshop.

' Mr. Goodyear was always a good friend of mine, though I vaguely mixed up his name with a terrifying passage in King Lear. I astonished him, when we first met, by my quick recognition of the magnetic quality in his jovial countenance.'

Mr Goodyear
(courtesy The Garland Collection)

The passage JCP refers to is Lear's defiant, if premature, assertion in the final scene that nothing save violence on the part of the gods shall separate him from Cordelia now nor spoil their happiness, 'good-years' meaning devils or evil spirits:

He that parts us shall bring a brand from heaven,
And fire us hence like foxes. Wipe thine eyes;
The good-years shall devour them, flesh and fell,
Ere they shall make us weep: we'll see 'em starve first.