For Theodore Francis Powys, I would guess, Christmas wasn't quite the unique moment in the year that it has become for many people – that moment when they might just, among other things, consider going to church for a bit of a sing-song. Apart from anything else, Christianity was a constant presence in his life as a writer. He claimed that the only book he knew was the Bible (not true). A family anecdote has him stop on a walk through countryside as one of his brothers hid behind a bush and called out "Theodore!" Theodore replied: "Yes, God ...?"
Powys produced an extraordinary, unique body of novels, novellas and short stories, mainly in the 1920s and early 30s – disquieting parables set in a village or two (Powys lived in Dorset for most of his adult life), many of which, like "A Christmas Gift", combine an odd humour with relatively simple language and some (often wryly subverted) piece of Christianity. In Powys's most celebrated novel, for example, Mr Weston's Good Wine, God is the wine merchant of the title, the archangel Michael his assistant; they sell a light wine (love) and a dark wine (death), mortality being presented here as a the gift of a fallible yet merciful creator. It seems to me that "A Christmas Gift" pulls off a comparable trick with great economy, leaving it to the reader to grasp what those last three words really mean.
I like the story a great deal, but like the gentleman who's made it available online (see below), I can't say exactly why I admire it so much. Mr Balliboy has cameos in other Powys stories, so perhaps it's something to do with the pleasure of seeing him take centre stage for once. As a non-believer, I suppose I'm never going to understand absolutely everything that Powys wrote (and I have read everything that's in print and much that only exists in various research libraries and archives), with all its allusions and quasi-heretical twists on Bible stories. But maybe this story for Christmas is one that even a sorry secularite like me can appreciate in full.
You can read "A Christmas Gift" at this link: http://tonymusings.blogspot.co.uk/2006/12/christmas-gift.html
About the Author:
Michael Caines
works for the Times Literary Supplement. He has edited anthologies of plays by eighteenth-century women and contemporary works about the actor David Garrick, and co-edited books about Shakespeare and the Romantic poets. In 2007 he held a short-term fellowship at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles, and his reviews have appeared in the TLS, the Church Times and the Book Collector. He has also blogged for the Guardian. His adaptation of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen was performed at Jackson's Lane, Highgate, in 2002.
works for the Times Literary Supplement. He has edited anthologies of plays by eighteenth-century women and contemporary works about the actor David Garrick, and co-edited books about Shakespeare and the Romantic poets. In 2007 he held a short-term fellowship at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles, and his reviews have appeared in the TLS, the Church Times and the Book Collector. He has also blogged for the Guardian. His adaptation of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen was performed at Jackson's Lane, Highgate, in 2002.
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