Powys Society Newsletter 88

Maiden Castle at Ely meeting
23rd April 2016
Another excellent meeting organised by Sonia Lewis. We were about a dozen, including
Glen Cavaliero and a newly-attending member, Kevin Taylor from Cambridge
University Press.
Sonia introduced us to ‘The Scummy Pond’, her chosen chapter from this sometimes
baffling book.
— Why this chapter? It comes in a convenient position in the novel, it contains
almost all the characters, and crucial elements, and most of all it has the best title.
It begins by Dud changing his favourite month from September to May – due to the
Dorchester effect. In the Friary bedroom he is awake and preparing for his morning
walk, stumbles into a quarrel with Wizzie but it tells us that the main problem of the
day is the pending dinner party at the Antelope. He sets off on his walk, encounters
Claudius in the coal yard — the Airplane here is counterbalanced by the two ducks. He
offers to help by intervening between Jenny and Claudius — another mistake.
Now the essence: the ‘interior substance of things’ ‘the emanation of things’.
We turn to this winnowed reality — for Dud this means ‘fusing himself with the whole
weight of essential elements’. The cuckoo flowers [almost all cut in the first published
version] become the ‘talisman that lifted the sluice gates of these intimations’. These
are symbolic flowers; and at that moment Mr Droit the ‘drowner’ with his spade and
his enigmatic smile passes by. These are keys to the inner life of Dud, and he goes on
to question ‘what was it I felt, a glimpse of a reality just beyond our reality?’
He then slips into criticism of Thuella and contemplates how he will deal with her.
He arrives back at his rooms, prepares breakfast and writes, feeling that he becomes
the Medium for what he puts down.
Remembering his letters, after opening Thuella’s he has to rush off to meet her at
Scummy Pond.
Everything is turned on its head — she comes up the lane not down, she is not
wearing anything that he expected — looks rather lovely in a faded suit and frayed belt
and with an oversized hat — to put it simply, he is floored! After explaining that she
wants him to intervene on behalf of Urien with Mr Cumber, he realises that ‘he is to be
rewarded as men have been rewarded by women from time immemorial’.
There is a delay as Dud has to go back to the gate to get Thuella’s hat (a woman’s
ploy?) and encounters the three men and their wretched dog, who delay him. However,
he and Thuella do enjoy together ‘such linked sweetness’ in a kind of cerebral erotic
way. It seems such an ambivalent passage, I think it is only the Ash tree that really
understands what went on!
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