By Ted Strange, Special Collections Exhibitions Volunteer
Designed to celebrate the life and work of the great Cornish poet, Jack Clemo, this exhibition spans a portion of literary, visual, and personal materials from the Special Collection’s significant Clemo collection. The exhibition is structured to highlight Clemo’s personality and friendships, his literary work, and his marriage. The intention is thus to offer a glimpse into the more extensive offerings of Jack Clemo’s archive, including unpublished literature, personal correspondence, and physical possessions.
I approached this exhibition as a historian with a lived experience of sensory impairment. Admittedly, my interest in disability history was the initial catalyst for approaching the Clemo archive. However, it would be a mistake to over-emphasise the personal life of Clemo, without recognising the primary importance of his remarkable literary career; in fact, his most notable works were published prior to the onset of his blindness. Clemo possessed an incredible natural gift for describing both natural and industrial landscape: his ‘party trick’ was for friends to describe a place to which they had travelled and he would write a short recollection of their experience, including descriptions of things that even they had forgotten they observed. Clemo used these vivid descriptions of his local Cornish clay pits as the background for his fiercely individualist Calvinist poetry. Many enthusiasts will recall the story in ‘Confessions of a Rebel’ in which an adolescent Clemo is being praised by his headmaster to his mother as a ‘born philosopher’. As such, this archive is of particular interest to those interested in both religious and twentieth century West Country literature.
Female influences loomed large in Clemo’s life and archive. Clemo’s mother, Eveline, raised him alone following the death of his father during the First World War, supporting him throughout his illnesses. Later, he married Ruth Clemo, with whom he shared his happy final years and many Valentine’s cards that can be found in the archive. Marriage was imperative towards Clemo’s vision for God’s plan for his life. It was Clemo’s belief that his marriage had been prescribed as a divine destiny; once he had achieved this goal, his senses would be restored. This did not come to pass, and whilst he sporadically regained some hearing, he spent his adult life being ably supported by Eveline and Ruth (pictured in the top of the exhibition, communicating with Clemo by tracing letters onto his hand).
Some of the most evocative materials in this archive are, naturally, the physical possessions. The conkers from Vallombrosa Woods, shown in the bottom shelf of the exhibition, were stored in a heart-shaped box as a gift to Clemo’s wife. These accompany the numerous love letters between the couple throughout the years of their marriage. The physical possessions in the archive are not limited to Clemo’s romantic relationship; the archive also contains items such as dog fur, which encourages us to consider the value and purpose of retaining such items. Perhaps, in addition to sentimentality, they were stored for their sensory value as someone deprived of major senses.
“It’s odd in a way that you, who are in close and vigorous touch with the everyday world, should rely largely on fancy and imagination for your poetry, while I, who seem cut off from the world, hack out most of my poems with a blunt down-to-earth realism in which there is hardly a trace of fancy – no angels or dragons or daughters of Neptune.” – Letter from Jack Clemo to Charles Causley (9th April 1970)
The archive contains a substantial amount of material that will be of interest to enthusiasts of popular poet Charles Causley, a close friend and advocate for Clemo, who would later serve as his best man. In letters from both the archives of Jack Clemo and Charles Causley – some of which have been included in this exhibition – we can see the extensive efforts that Causley goes to, ensuring Clemo’s voice was heard in an environment which often reduced him to a ‘novelty-act’. Causley and Clemo found common ground in their mutual admiration for literature, Cornish upbringing, and close maternal relationships. Whilst Causley’s life took a very different trajectory, fighting in the Second World War and becoming a school teacher, their roots bound them to one another, and they exchanged letters until Clemo’s death in 1994.
Clemo’s story is one of talent and individualism, rather than affliction. His personal experiences must be considered in the context of exploring his archive and exhibiting his life, but they must not be considered the primary reason for his enduring importance. Clemo wrote fiercely about spirituality within the brutal setting of the clay pits, imbuing mysticism with blunt Cornish realism to create a “clear, fiery vision”. Clemo frequently highlighted in his later life, during a resurgence in his popularity, that his story is of love – in marriage and in faith – rather than pity. As he once said to his friend, the painter Lionel Miskin: “When the gospel invades, tragedy goes out”.
With special thanks to Dr Sarah-Jayne Ainsworth and the Special Collections team for passionately supervising this project, and to Michael Spinks for valuable insights into Clemo’s theology as well as fun facts such as Clemo’s ‘party-trick’.
Archival items featured in the exhibition:
- EUL MS 68/PERS/12/1/3 – Valentine’s cards
- EUL MS 68/PERS/11/1 – Two conkers from Vallombrosa Woods & the poem ‘Fever Zone’
- EUL MS 68/PERS/3/1/8 – Wedding album photos
- EUL MS 68/LIT/2/1 – Confessions of a Rebel’
- EUL MS 68 – Bust
- EUL MS 50a/PERS/1/3/1/19 – Letters between Jack Clemo and Charles Causley
- EUL MS 68/PERS/8/1 – Book cover art ideas by Lionel Miskin
