ROnald Blyth is most acclaimed for his 1969 portrait “Aikenfield,'' which depicts an English village from the late 19th century onwards. After that, the saintly writer, who lived like a hermit in a remote farmhouse, became revered for his poetic and profound writings about rural life. In the millions of words he published, Ronnie, as he was affectionately known, was able to talk about personal things, but he never revealed his relationships or anything sordid. I didn't.
So it's no surprise that this definitive biography covering 100 years of Bryce's life is quite sex-filled. There are early adventures in a haystack. “The best sex ever” with fellow World War II draftees. Seduction by a Bath jeweler in a Cornish field illuminated by glowworms. and casual assignments with everyone from the civil servant's “blonde Adonis” to a notoriously lazy 21-stone clergyman.
Later, as Blyth worked his way from a job in a Colchester library to freedom as a writer, his sexual encounters involved Arthur Rhett Haynes, an artist and partner of the painter Cedric Morris. Ta. Author James Hamilton-Patterson. and an experimental evening with lesbian crime writer Patricia Highsmith. It was revealed that Bryce's letters to Highsmith also included a love affair with a Barbadian poet who was fascinated by Ronnie's physical “perfection”. Even as Bryce lives out his lonely later years at the Bottengoms, the old farmhouse he inherited from his friends John and Christine Nash, unexpected opportunities arise, including a fling with the stand-in postman.
In the hands of others, this orgy could be sensational and provoke sexual judgment, but biographer Ian Collins, who was a close friend (but not a lover), treated it with caution. There is. What emerges is an unusually intimate and loving portrait.
Bryce may have never appeared in public, but although homosexuality was illegal in Britain until he was nearly 45, he “viewed sexuality as a fact of life that should be accepted and enjoyed.” Although he discussed his romance with Collins in later life, he was reluctant to reveal much about his childhood in dire poverty. When he rose to fame after the publication of Aikenfield, he vaguely said – in an aristocratic tone without a trace of Suffolk accent – that he was from an “old farmhouse” family.
In fact, he was the eldest of six surviving children of Tilly, a London nurse, and Albert, a Suffolk laborer who endured Gallipoli and other wartime horrors. Bryce shared a bed with his brother in a small cottage until he left home. The family was so poor that their cousins brought straw for mattresses. Bryce was a strong but frail character who dropped out of school at the age of 14. It was impossible to receive further education.
Collins brilliantly assembles a wealth of information from his epic life and crafts an often boring story about the miracle of Bryce's escape in order to make a living writing. His key step from voracious reader and dreamer to writer was to find a bohemian adoptive 'family' of East Anglia artists through library work. An important friendship arose in the form of the poet James Turner (portrayed in Collins' story as a rather narcissistic homophobe) and the (much more sympathetic) “mother confessor” Christine Nash. .
There’s no suffering – in Bryce’s worldview, were all of these events really free of hurt and heartbreak? His later recollections are well mined by Collins, but often they are all we have, and the recollections have smoothed out with age. Survivors write their own history. So any glimpse of an alternative Ronnie would be most welcome. Stoic Kristin Nash complains that she can't escape Bryce's moans and search for love. Hamilton-Patterson criticizes the depiction of a rural world that is “almost invisible except within the closed confines of the eyes and ears of the famous dead.”
Bryce's kind and loving spirit inspired a battalion of guardian “Dear Ones” who helped him live and die at home. But this warm biography also touches on its subject's inner steeliness. The poor hearts of others were seen as a distraction from the essential task of life: writing. When a grieving Julia Blackburn sought comfort from a friend, Bryce explained “with a kind of determination that he had never loved anyone enough to feel the pain of loss.''
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Blythe Spirit: The Remarkable Life of Ronald Blythe, by Ian Collins, is published by John Murray (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy here: guardianbookshop.com. Shipping charges may apply.
