Maiden Voyage

by Denton Welch

Denton Welch's first novel Maiden Voyage (1946) is - like In Youth Is Pleasure and A Voice Through a Cloud, his other two novels now available from Exact Change - strongly autobiographical in nature. It recounts Welch's adventures as a boy when, after running away from his English public school, he was sent to Shanghai to live with his father for a year. Welch's keen observations - of his tortured relationship with his distant father, and the colonial milieu of pre-war China - dominate this painfully honest narrative. Exact Change's publication of Maiden Voyage marks the bringing back into print of all three of Denton Welch's novels, a cause for celebration among the growing number of fans who have embraced his beautiful and courageous writing.

Genres: Fiction, Queer, China, Classics, British Literature, LGBT, Travel

303 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1943

About the author

Maurice Denton Welch was an English-American writer and painter, admired for his vivid prose and precise descriptions.

Reviews

[Mariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

As he turned over the artistic matt-brown pictures, he said, lovingly and softly, "This lovely book, Pekin Beautiful!" And I was suddenly very touched and wanted to agree with everything he said; although I knew that the book was dull and commercial.

She looked out of the window, away from him, and then at us. Her face wore the yearning, almost lecherous expression that exhibitionists have. I felt very sorry for her, because she had no audience.

I don't know what to read to you. I could read all of it. Have you ever had (I can't believe I'm asking this again. I always hope/afraid to hope someone is going to say "Yes" to this and it never happens) the feeling that people wanted to be around people who made them feel like the themselves they wanted to be? I guess Denton Welch is my version of this. I didn't want to have one because it seems unfair. I tell myself it is unfair, anyway, and wish there was some hidden place I could cry about how unfair it was. I recognize many qualities about myself that I wish were not true and this time I didn't mind. There's a time in his life he describes of a present he buys for a female friend. She puts his gift and Denton down as not at all what she had hoped for. I found it a relief that he vows to never again buy a present for anyone ever again. I think he hit his leg with the bag. It was better than anything I could write because it happened to someone else. He'll forget all about the vow later (knowing that may even be the best part). That doesn't matter. It was cute as hell to me because it was Welch again hugging everything to himself. I do that too. But it feels like something better, something more hopeful, that someone else did it too. It is mortifying to be so easily hurt, usually, but it is different when Welch eavesdrops and gets back at some mean old lady by eating her chocolate (I might have revenged myself on a beverage or two of some coworkers). I could have gone on reading forever about how Welch started writing poetry. It is his secret for himself, something not to be laughed at. I feel like this too, this private/wish it didn't have to be that way and reading him feel like that felt better than if it was just me doing it. I don't know how to describe it. I wish I did. Maybe it would seem like enough if what one saw in life, the people one met, felt like this. He meets this man in China, a drunkard, who is sobbing into his lime-juice that the woman of his dreams is marrying another drunkard. Another man holds him at arm's length and Welch hopes that he'll say something (anything) to the man. Or when an American couple on the voyage over describe stealing a temple for the interior of their yacht. Welch cannot help himself to see how beautiful it must look, floating on the sea, despite the first rise of anger at their theft for themselves (it feels odd to call him "Welch". He's Denton, really). Welch was as likely as I was to hold all of his hurts and slights to himself. He was like me and Rose from The Years. But somehow sweeter, if that makes sense, because there's what he could have. The headache after crying and the surprise in being able to laugh yourself out of it. I loved him from the first when he is running away from school. He has five pounds and there is no way he is going to last longer than a couple of nights on his own. You really had to be there. I wanted to run away with him and feel as if I couldn't possibly survive another day of school. Family betrays you. Please don't make me go back. Hope someone is going to understand. After he's been found out he's sitting in his cousin's parlor and the adults are talking about what to do with him as if he isn't even there. He's looking around for any one to relate to, to be on his side. And then always in spite of this insides holding something happens and I don't know. I just really, really like this guy. I wish I could be friends with him. Maybe the pathetic would feel warmer if he was the one telling me all about it. It would go a lot further than just having same old me.

I had this in the review and then my stupid fingers clicked on some stupid keyboard button and it appeared as a half sentence somewhere it shouldn't be. I'd feel better talking about Denton some more anyway so here it goes.
Much of Maiden Voyage is about the art figures he likes to collect and hold. The feeling of if you could look at it forever and dream about it. There's one piece in particular he really wants. I really loved it that he goes back alone to look at it again, maybe buy it. The Chinese dealers don't take him seriously, of course. But it was that he goes back by himself that was perfect to me. When he sees it again, the art piece, it is ordinary again. It looks like it could be fantastic and it is still ordinary. Denton Welch has this wonderful ability to describe things as how they are capable of being fantastic or ordinary. I think it is one of the things I loved about him the most. Well, that and he's open about trying to be about how they are both to him. I think maybe that's what I find so comforting about him, other than not feeling so bad that I'm prone to being a freaking crybaby about stupid things. So yeah, the let down in seeing the art of his dreams and it is no longer holding him. He will have to find it somewhere else, salvage an ally. I know exactly how he feels. I wish I had his other books to read already. Anyone who can see things like that is someone I wish to be around (rub off on me!).

[Alwynne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Championed by Edith Sitwell and W. H. Auden, admired by writers as diverse as William Burroughs, Barbara Pym, Anna Kavan, Alan Bennett and Richard Hell, and part of an informal LGBTQ canon, artist and author Denton Welch’s someone whose classic status seems to be forever bubbling under, although his recent addition to the Penguin Classics list suggests a possible change in his literary fortunes. Maiden Voyage his debut novel, was published when he was living in semi-seclusion after a cycling accident left him with catastrophic injuries and permanent disabilities. Partially illustrated by the author, it’s a semi-autobiographical, coming-of-age piece set in the early 1930s, following a teenage boy, also named Denton, who’s desperate to escape an oppressive existence. Denton’s a fascinating character and everything’s presented entirely from his perspective: he’s a sensitive but sharp-edged, rebellious boy more at home in the world of objects than people, someone whose perpetual sense of his outsider status is accompanied by an acute awareness of his surroundings and a highly-developed personal aesthetic. After running away in a brief but abortive bid for freedom, Denton’s returned to his much-loathed boarding-school: Repton’s a place rife with humiliations, casual cruelties and sudden bursts of blatant brutality, its harsh realities underlined by Welch’s understated, almost matter-of-fact account of his character’s everyday experiences as a pupil there. But then Denton’s unexpectedly reprieved by an invitation to join his father who lives and works in Shanghai.

Welch’s narrative is meticulously detailed contributing to the impressive immediacy of the scenes he describes. His writing also has a wonderful lyrical quality but it’s coupled with a keen sense of the grotesque that surfaces throughout, first in the school sections and later more prominent in his representations of life in China. The everyday rituals of the British in China are beautifully rendered, unfortunately so is their ingrained racism and the way, as with colonial India, so many cling to a fantasy past, surrounding themselves with chintz curtains and avoiding “foreign” food, so that at one point Denton wonders if he’s in China or the London suburbs. When characters do deign to venture into the interior and engage with Chinese culture it’s only to plunder it, cooing over their latest finds of fine porcelain or rare statuary - something Denton’s also fascinated by - nobody seems to consider the contradictions involved in celebrating a country’s art while dismissing the people responsible for it. Yet despite what’s happening on the surface I get the feeling that these kinds of social contradictions and incongruities are precisely what Welch is grappling with here. Welch’s style’s been described as Proustian but what came to mind when I was reading this was the early work of Kavan with equal hints of early Woolf and even elements of Arthur Machen’s The Hill of Dreams. So, although ostensibly Welch’s treading fairly familiar ground, what makes this special is the telling, fluid, complex and powerful enough to keep me completely immersed throughout.

[Gretchen Rubin]

An author's account of the year he was sixteen, before World War II: he ran away from boarding school, went back to school, then traveled to China with his father.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

In his first book, Denton Welch offers a fictionalized account of a period in his youth when he briefly absconds from boarding school and—following a brief forced return—is permitted by his father to leave school permanently and travel to China to live with him in Shanghai for a spell. What follows is a fairly straightforward account of Welch’s character’s limited explorations of primarily Shanghai, with a few brief trips to other places. It’s very much a youthful novel, and therefore in some ways predictable in its concerns, but it’s also peppered with Welch’s unique, quirky perceptions and more than a few bizarre accounts of encounters with other foreigners. To be honest, however, this felt like a disappointment. I was very much looking forward to reading it, especially as I’m now nearing the dregs of Welch’s extant works. Perhaps I had too high hopes given my experiences with his other writing. Granted, this was his first book and it’s serviceable for what it is. But there is such a leap in the quality of writing from this to his next book, In Youth Is Pleasure, which oddly enough is also very much a novel of adolescence, though without the exotic travel framework. Furthermore, Orvil in In Youth Is Pleasure seems much more developed, with greater interiority, than Welch's character does in Maiden Voyage. So the book ends up as primarily an overly detailed (for this reader) travelogue replete with racist/colonialist language and observations that—while not surprising for the era—are nonetheless blemishes upon the text. I found the flashes of Welch’s wit and fascination with the grotesque to be too fleeting among the clutter of antiques and collectibles that his character is so enamored with. All that being said, it still gets three stars since I was at least intermittently engaged while reading and any Welch is better than no Welch.

[piperitapitta · Rating 3 out of 5]

«Pensieridisordinati»
(è passato troppo tempo per un commento vero e proprio ma almeno le impressioni voglio scriverle lo stesso)

Decido di leggere Denton Welch, e di partire da questo suo primo scritto autobiografico, perché Peter Cameron in Un giorno questo dolore ti sarà utile lo cita più volte: in apertura di romanzo, con una splendida frase, che se solo ritrovassi il libro di Cameron trascriverei*, e perché James, il giovane e introverso protagonista, lo legge e lo cita spesso a sua volta.
Ecco, magari a chi parla del protagonista di Cameron, paragonandolo al giovane Holden Cauldfield di Salinger, mi verrebbe da dire che forse il modello dell'autore era più il giovane Welch. Ma vabbè, chiacchiere fuori tema.
E poi, tornando a “Viaggio inaugurale“, decido di leggerlo anche perché ho un'improvviso desiderio (letterario) di Oriente, ma di Oriente visto e vissuto dagli occidentali, meglio ancora se inglesi.
“Viaggio inaugurale“ è tutto questo, ed è anche viaggio di iniziazione del giovanissimo e ribelle Denton, adolescente e orfano di madre, che refrattario a ogni rigore e disciplina arriva con le sue evasioni e le sue fughe a convincere il padre a richiamarlo a sé in Cina, dove negli anni Trenta risiede e lavora.
Peccato che il racconto di sé e della propria esplorazione, geografica e umana, resti per certi versi piuttosto asettica e che al di là di qualche descrizione mirabile e della passione raffinata di Dench per l'Arte e per gli oggetti di antiquariato (prima di un incidente in giovane età che lo ridusse alla paralisi allontanandolo dalla Pittura per avvicinarlo alla scrittura), non sia riuscita a trovare null'altro in grado di coinvolgermi e appassionarmi.
Certo è che la traduzione d'antan ha sicuramente contribuito a rendere la lettura faticosa, noiosa e a tratti persino ridicola: nelle oltre trecento pagine, ad esempio, Welch e i suoi connazionali non fanno altro che bere sugo d'ananas, sugo di pomodoro, sugo d'arancia, sugo di pompelmo…
A fare il paio con la traduzione ci si mette anche l'Einaudi (sempre d'epoca, spero che se mai abbiano deciso per una nuova edizione abbiano provveduto almeno a correggere gli svarioni ortografici) che riesce a scrivere nella stessa pagina valigie e valige e in un'altra braceri.
Orrore.
Penso che in ogni caso, convinta che lo scrivere di sé sia il passaggio e la scelta più difficile per un autore, proverò a leggere uno dei due romanzi tradotti in italiano, confidando in una traduzione più moderna e in un'edizione più accurata.

Qualcosa di bello:

«Il giorno dopo andammo da un negoziante di antichità. Attraversammo un cortile tranquillo e diroccato per giungere a un primo padiglione, in cui fummo accolti dal mercante e dai suoi commessi che si inchinarono, fregando i piedi a ritroso e giungendo le mani in atteggiamento cerimonioso; noi rendemmo il saluto più goffamente. Poi furono portati dei sigari, delle sigarette e del tè. Ogni tazza aveva un coperchio, e quando alzai la mia, vidi delle foglie intiere che galleggiavano nell'acqua, come uno sciame di pesci. erano color verde pallido e alcune non si erano ancora aperte del tutto. Le guardai aprirsi con piacere e pensai che in Inghilterra si perde molto, non lasciando le foglie di tè nelle tazze. Guardarle girare vorticosamente è come guardare il fumo di una sigaretta. E che senso ha fumare nell'oscurità?
dovetti presto imparare a bere il tè attraverso una stretta fessura fra la tazza e il coperchio, in modo che le foglie rimanessero sul fondo in un mucchietto, come un falò umido d'autunno.»

*Grazie a Vale che su Goodreads mi ha copiato e incollato nei commenti** la frase che dicevo:
«Quando desideri con tutto il cuore che qualcuno ti ami, dentro ti si radica una follia che toglie ogni senso agli alberi, all'acqua e alla terra. E per te non esiste più nulla, eccetto quell'insistente, profondo, amaro bisogno. Ed è un sentimento comune a tutti, dalla nascita alla morte.»

[**tutto questo nella prima era (ante 2014) qui su GR, con un account che ora non esiste più rimpiazzato da questo, che ne è il discendente]

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

More a record of a sensibility (detached but sensual) than a novel. There is a boredom quotient in the dry attention to detail and lack of narrative tension, but Welch's probing confident thoroughly independent eye satisfies with a scattering of resolutely unique notes tinged with melancholy, morbidity, phantastical associations from immersion in the natural world and sundry foodstuffs.

"We unpacked our pork pies and began to eat. They were very good but they had a flavour of grease-proof paper, and the water in our bottles was all churned up and warm. It tasted of corks and rust and the dead old smell that lives in thermos flasks."

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Denton Welch has a unique and unforgettable voice: his descriptive language is clear, precise and surprising, and his observations about people are often witty as well as full of emotion. This is Welch's first autobiographical novel, about a young man who runs away from public school at the age of 16, and finally joins his father in the Shanghai of 1930s. Welch captures his impressions of English families, boarding school, boat travel, and the hypocrisy of colonial China, in quick, precise brushstrokes. My edition of "Maiden Voyage" was packaged as travel writing in the 1980s, but this isn't really a novel about travel, though the account of Shanghai is central to the story. Instead it's a meditation on aloneness, how the cruel and rash way humans treat one another exists everywhere, and an exploration of one boy's extreme sensuality, and his struggle to experience his bodily rapture in a repressive society. It also depicts colonial China in the racist and repressive terms of the time, but Welch's refusal to categorize anything means that his descriptions of China and Shanghai feel even-handed, and he seems to lack the overt orientalism of those around him. This makes the book feel less dated than it might otherwise be. Welch's queerness is also an important element of the book - while it is not explicit, it comes across in his relationships with boys and men. Welch's personality is full of dichotomies and is hard to characterize, which adds to the subtlety and maturity of his writing. A compelling book from a very memorable writer.

[Matthew Gallaway · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a magical 'coming-of-age' story written in the voice of a sixteen-year-old narrator in the 1930s (I think) who travels to China to visit his father (who works for the British Embassy). Welch (who died very young) is frank about his nonheterosexual interest in men in ways that remain rare today, particularly when matched with his deceptively simple but beautiful prose. In a different world, this book would be as celebrated as something like The Catcher in the Rye.

[Yves S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let us start by an extract from Edith Sitwell’s foreword to the book:

”This is a very moving and remarkable first book, and the author appears to be that very rare being, a born writer […] the writing is extraordinarily touching, real, and true. I feel that Mr Welch may easily prove to be, not only a born writer, but a very considerable one.”

What an introduction, what a reference, to the literary world!

And it is true that in this first novel we already find his extraordinary and unique style, which recounts in a simple and honest, even naive way, the most trivial autobiographical facts.
Welch makes his first escapade when, at the end of a weekend term, he does not return to Repton School, but, instead, decides to go to visit cathedrals (Salisbury among others). He hates the world of public schools, the canning, the discipline, the confinement. The book is a fine testimony to these early 20th century English cruel establishments.

He finally agrees to go back to school for a term with the intention of going to art school afterwards. However, he is called by his father to China, to Shanghai where this one lives.
This earns us some very beautiful “Welchian” descriptions of this country and the lives of British expats, before the novel ends with Welch’s return to England.

There is a sentence towards the end of the book which perhaps explains why Denton Welch only ever wrote autobiographical books. When his friend, Vesta, makes him read the poems she wrote:

« Which do you like the best ? » she asked.
I held a little one up about a woman and her clothes.
“My Lord!” Vesta groaned extravagantly. “Surely you don’t think that that’s the best thing I’ve written! Don’t you like the long one on Angkor?”
“Yes, but have you ever been there?” I asked.”
(page 255 – Exact Change edition).

In other words, if it is not written from direct experience then, in Welch’s views, the literary quality is reduced.

As always with this author, there is this absolute detachment from the things that make everyone else’s seriousness. Welch is only attached to objects, to situations that everyone finds futile, but which have one thing in common between them: beauty linked to simplicity.

When everything around us drives us to speed, to efficiency, to productivity, Welch's hymn to slowness, to the time that passes and let itself be watched and to the intrinsic beauty of all these objects and places that surround us, this hymn, I must say, does me the greatest good.
It is thus I realize, once again, how lucky I am to have this taste for literature, a taste that brought me to Denton Welch and his likes.

[Nate D · Rating 3 out of 5]

As far as personal accounts of Colonialist China from the British perspective, Denton Welsh's avatar here, a gay teen who just wants to paint and experience new things, is about as inoffensive as you could hope for. Still a strange to voyage into this severely patronizing and xenophobic system, but it's good that such a sensorially dense record exists.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

After quite a gap, due to one book getting lost in the mail and arriving late, I’m back to my Backlisted challenge.

I came across Denton Welch’s name in Jeremy Treglown’s biography of Roald Dahl, as he was also a pupil at Repton. Like Dahl, Welch hated the place and although maiden Voyage can be filed as auto-fiction, there are lots of similarities between Repton life described here and the one in Dahl’s autobiography, Boy.

The book opens with Welch running away from school and nearly managing, except that he runs out of cash and has to return to his extended family, who send him back to Repton. After some descriptions of Repton life: the testing of Cadbury bars, the constant beatings and the straw hat/tails uniform, he escapes again only to have have his father take him to China.

The rest of the book details his life over there from the culture shock to his emotional development.

For a book written in the early 40’s , Maiden Voyage has an ultra contemporary feel to it. If I didn’t check the book’s date and mentions of the currency at the time, one would have thought that the book was written in the last five years. Welch’s feelings of hopelessness and artistic confinement can be relatable to any reader. Plus his clipped writing style does not feel dated, rather in tune with how a lot of authors write today. To as an extra dimension, there’s also some illustrations, provided by Denton Welch himself (although he is known as a writer, he was foremost an artist)

At first I was a bit sceptical about Maiden Voyage as I feared that it would fall into repetition but it never does that. Denton Welch is a skilled author and the end result is a pioneering piece of auto-fiction. I guess the closest would be J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun but this is a more cohesive and personal book.

Just one little word, Maiden Voyage is out of print but it is relatively easy to find a copy and it is worth it.

[Andrew Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This so-called novel (it's labelled as such, but is clearly intensely autobiographical) is much more than it at first appears. To all intents and purposes it seems like the straightforward story of a privileged but hapless teenage boy living between the two World Wars who, having run away from his public school, is shipped off to spend some months with a father he barely knows in British colonial China. Speaking in the first person and even named Denton, the protagonist's keen observations of people and places — relatives, strangers, sevants, rooms, gardens, streets — seem merely descriptive of appearance, but the reader soon realizes these details are artfully chosen to impart character and atmosphere, usually unpleasant and often oppressive. Occasionally Welch allows his protagonist to burst through this veneer of faux gentility to overtly impart some deeply felt emotion, invariably negative and sometimes hateful. Also, several encounters of Denton with various men are described with a thinly veiled undercurrent of homoeroticism, which only adds to the general repressive sensation of the novel. As unpleasant as all this may sound, it makes for a fascinating character and an entertaining book, not unlike, and easily as good as, Patricia Highsmith's writing

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the early 1930s, effeminate teenager Denton Welch decided to take a train to an English cathedral city instead of going back to the school he hated. He was eventually persuaded to go to school for one last term, and was then allowed to leave to join his father and older brother in Shanghai, where he enthused over the artworks and the fit bodies of soldiers and sailors.

A charming and often caustically witty book, this was written some years later when Welch had been disabled by a road accident that eventually caused his early death. Other men might have been bitter but there's no sense of that in this book. For the reader who knows, however, it adds to the bittersweet nostalgia for the lost world of between-the-wars.

It makes an interesting contrast with Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton: An Autobiography in which J.G. Ballard describes much the same expat Shanghai society, but from the point of view of a much younger boy.

[Nathalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Burroughs made me reach for this book. It is lovely writing by a young man who looked hard at his life and found the words to say what he saw. His descriptions are beautiful.

This bit from the blurb on goodreads is funny:

'The book was Welch's first and created a sensation on publication in 1943; its frank description of public schoolboy life forced publisher Herbert Read to initially seek advice from libel lawyers. Even Winston Churchill's private secretary gossiped in a letter that, "the book was reeking with homosexuality? I think I must get it." '

[Sphinx · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’d recommend this book to anyone jaded by run-of-the-mill reading fare.
It started as a three-star read but got better and better so that by the end I was promising myself to read it again, at least the second part set in China. I became captivated by how this teenager grabbed his chance to escape from England and discover new people. He never refers to his gayness but no doubt all those meetings with soldiers, the dressing-up running around the streets in a frock and the occasional obvious crush meant freedom to be himself also. So, I was entranced by this solitary boy who made his own fun and was determined to enjoy himself, painting, searching for antiques or just daring to have new experiences. I admired also the fact that he even bothered to write this memoir because in between these adventures in his youth (early 1930s) and the writing of this book (1943) Welch had a serious road accident (1935) that left him in pain and was to result in his early death (1948).
He has to struggle against the school system and a fairly uncommunicative father. There are many hilarious scenes though and these I ended up enjoying the most as Welch’s mind jumped about from image to image. In one Chapter alone (XXXIII) he has fun comparing roof-tops sticking out through snow to “bones of big rotting fishes covered in salt,” the wicked but beautiful expression of a cat “as if all her appetites had been satisfied,” his friend Vesta’s long eyelashes “were mysterious, like the feathery legs of a spider,” her smile reminding him of “a string with a weight on the end of it.” There are many examples of this kind of description (his visit to the opera is another, where he imagines the audience without their clothes!), the beautiful and the macabre, the contrary and the unusual. (Incredibly, his friend Vesta at one stage accuses him of being literal-minded!)
Welch should be more well-known. His unusual talent I hope will ensure he becomes more popular.
This is part of my goal to read Welch’s complete works.

Some jottings on Welch: unpretentious, fun-loving, unconventional, curious, adventurous, intelligent, devilish, direct, creative, humorous, sensual, determined, a huge appetite for living, strong personality, independent spirit, solitary disposition.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a cliche, but the worst thing about the works of Denton Welch is they eventually end. It’s so delightful to spend several hours inside his peculiar head, luxuriating in his exquisite, microscopic observations and roller-coaster emotions. It’s amazing what he could make out of so little—a visit to a neighbor’s house for tea becomes a hugely important event. Furthermore, it’s difficult not to chuckle and shake your head when he engages in yet another activity that is singularly “Dentonesque.”

There’s a scene here where Denton finds a nineteenth-century book in his father’s library and discovers a recipe for something called “sweet jars,” which sound to be like potpourri. He goes to the park to gather all the flowers he’ll need, then brings them back to the family penthouse and spreads the flowers out to dry in the sun. His father comes in from work, asks “What are these things?,” to which Denton replies, “I’m making sweet jars.” I can just imagine the father rolling his eyes, letting out a groan, and calling the servant to bring him a very strong drink.

Welch always wrote about himself, and this book he doesn’t even bother disguising as a novel. In Part I, he runs away prior to the start of another term at his hated school. He spends a few days visiting cathedrals and staying in small inns and hotels, until his money runs out and he has to return to his disapproving and emotionally distant relatives, and from there back to school. During the term his father, a successful Shanghai-based businessman, writes and suggests that Denton come out to China. Part II covers the sea voyage from Britain, and Part III Denton’s experiences in China.

I’ve told a few people about Welch and suggested they read him, but I don’t think any of them have taken me up on it yet. He’s definitely not for everyone, but he is a rare find for those who appreciate his quirky, artistic, and emotional sensitivities.

[elderfoil...the whatever champion · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I'm reading the actual book that I randomly purchased from Daedalus Books' mail order when I was...I don't know...maybe 14 years old...1984-5. (a 1968 University of Texas Publication) I didn't think I ended up ever reading the book, but the photograph of Mr. Welch on the back cover sure made an impression.

And now I know for sure that I could have never read this book when I was 14 years old. Or even 24. Probably not even 34. And now 44? I was always pretty much the polar opposite of Mr. Welch in one regard: Whereas he digs into the colors of blackberries lying on Spode china, the cuffs of dry octogenarians, etc., I ran from all that. I was always looking for things as far away from domestic life as possible. These days I quite love the English "flare," even down to the tedious things...but back then, no way. (I have Lovejoy Mysteries and an old "Rhodie" who first introduced me to the word "ablutions block" to thank for that....)

But still, 300 pages of this, Denton, is kind of tough. A Voice Through A Cloud has a lot more going with it to pep things up. That said, if you're looking for some monologue to detail an English boyhood, this might be be a magical card. However, it's not the place to start an exploration of Welch---at least I'm glad I didn't.

3.5 stars.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Denton Welch's first novel is good, although certainly not quite as strong as In Youth is Pleasure, his signature work. Nonetheless, Maiden Voyage has plenty of snark, snobbery, selfishness, and all the other quirky characteristics that make Welch's autobiographical narrators so unique, yet so utterly believable.

More to the point, this book already demonstrates Welch's remarkable ability to convey a large amount of information with a small number of words. Where other writers might bathe the reader in florid descriptions and long conversations, Welch achieves the same effect with small doses of each, and yet manages to construct a complete picture for the reader. It's a rare ability, and really shines in his short stories, but is on display even here in his first novel.

This isn't quite the place to start for a reader that is new to Denton Welch, but once you get the bug for his magical fiction, this volume will certainly provide the fix that you'll be needing.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awkward and anxious, beauty-obsessed. The word treacle trebly deployed. There’s a lot to pick up here. Witness the prodigious descriptive power put to use somehow humbly without fail. I’ve not read many things whose artistry (and I use this word very intentionally) can measure up to the scene in which Welch attends a Halloween dinner party in Shanghai.

[Val · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you've ever wanted to be taken on a tour of pre-WWII China by a 15-year old British sissy with a keen eye for antiques the the foibles of human nature, this is the book for you. Strange and wonderful.

[Benjamin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denton Welch, artist and author, writes in part memoir, part novel, of the year at the age of fifteen he ran away from school, and subsequently left for China to join his father. He begins as he is due to set off for his return to Repton, his Derbyshire public school where his brothers also attend or attended. But instead of catching the train going north from London he buys a ticket for Salisbury. As his money runs out he is forced to make arrangements to return, with the outcome that he can eventually join his father in China.

Welch describes his escape, his brief return to Repton, and then his time in China. The account is filled with little adventures and encounters in which Welch reveals as much about himself as the people he meets and the places he visits. He writes with an artist's eye, his powers of observation creating strong images and bringing to life both people and places. Welch is an unusual youth, sensitive, something of a loner, with a great interest in the antique and especially small objects, and a sense of adventure. The honesty of his writing cannot but endear one to this young man who is clearly set apart from most, and who occasionally and subtly reveals through his writings his gay tendencies.

[Leonie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharply observed growing up (ish) tale of a youth who runs away from boarding school and, as a reward (ish) gets sent to China where his father works. Denton is 16 and the year is 1936 (ish) and we see his path from the hideousness of school to the mysterious and vividness of China. I loved his language and his description, but I could not warm to his mannered and self-centred self.

[Raül De Tena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Considerando que “En La Juventud Está El Placer” narraba parte de la infancia de Denton Welch y que “Primer Viaje” parece proseguir con sus propias vivencias en una época adolescente, cualquiera podría dejarse llevar por un seductor canto de sirena que induzca a pensar que lo de este autor es pura autobiografía. Y sería un error. Porque lo cierto es que estos dos títulos han sido publicados en este orden en España de mano de la editorial Alpha Decay (dentro de una Bilblioteca Denton Welch que nos augura futuros placeres lectores), pero fueron escritos y editados originalmente en orden inverso. Así que leerlos en este orden natural puede provocar la falsa apariencia de que este es otro de los autores confesionales que hizo (y que siguen haciendo) de su propia vida la principal inspiración de su obra. Aquí llega el segundo agravante: “Primer Viaje” se publicó originalmente en 1943, varios años después de que Welch fuera arrollado por un coche mientras paseaba en su bicicleta. El autor no quedó paralizado, pero sí que sufrió dolores crónicos y diversas complicaciones (como una tuberculosis espinal) que acabarían conduciéndole a una muerte prematura en 1948. Esto deja sólo cinco años de escritura que no es difícil intuir frenética y que culminarían con la (verdadera) autobiografía inconclusa del escritor: “A Voice Through A Cloud“.

Y digo que no es difícil intuir el frenetismo en las letras de Welch porque sus dolencias y la sombra de una posible muerte prematura debieron ser la principal espoleta a la hora de conducir al escritor hacia un estilo personalísimo, repleto de imágenes, metáforas y descripciones minuciosas con las que parecía querer atrapar la vida minuto a minuto, palmo a palmo, color a color, emoción a emoción. Esto ya quedó suficientemente patente en “En La Juventud Está El Placer“, un libro en el que las vívidas descripciones de Welch convertían la lectura en una experiencia puramente sensorial y frecuentemente (homo)erótica. La primera sorpresa al destapar “Primer Viaje“, sin embargo, es una prosa menos enredada, menos pausada, con un ritmo mucho más fluído que, sin necesidad de sacrificar la profunda sensorialidad de las descripciones, sí que consigue que el tiempo circule con mayor brío. Desde la primera página, donde el meado de un caballo es descrito utilizando la pompa de la alta poesía, Welch se distingue como un artesano de la palabra justa como pieza de un puzzle puesto al servicio del fresco de colores brillantes: aquí ya hacen acto de presencia las descripciones certeras de vestimentas (sobre todo, femeninas) y objetos de lujo que más tarde seguirán presentes en la prosa del escritor.

De una forma similar, en “Primer Viaje” también se desvela un sentido del erotismo que se convertirá en marca de la casa de Welch: a medio camino entre lo recatado (en la forma) y lo perverso (en el fondo), en este libro ya hay escenas de alto voltaje como los placenteros azotes del profesor en el internado. Por lo común, sin embargo, el placer está en el detalle (más que en la juventud): en la mirada furtiva del cuerpo semidesnudo del soldado que se afeita o en el gesto de ese mismo personaje cuando, enseñando a fumar al joven protagonista, le coge la mano y la pone sobre su estómago. De hecho, es curioso observar cómo en “Primer Viaje” las dos caras de la sexualidad empiezan a definirse en su propia polaridad… Por un lado, Welch siente un gran apego hacia lo femenino, ya sea en sus amistades o en ese pasaje semi-delirante en el que Denton viste las ropas de su amiga y se lanza a la calle haciéndose pasar por una chica. Y, por el otro, el universo masculino (rozando lo macho) se erige como un faro fascinante para su sexualidad, como ese baile de cabaret a las órdenes de un marine borracho en el que se palpa una dulce ambigüedad tan identificable con la confusión adolescente.

Sin embargo, lo que acaba convirtiendo “Primer Viaje” en uno de los libros de viaje más interesante de la historia de este sub-género literario es, precisamente, lo poco que tiene de libro de viaje. Es cierto que el leit motif es el viaje del autor a China (e incluso la ruta por el interior que realiza a la búsqueda de reliquias de coleccionista), pero precisamente por eso resulta tan sumamente fascinante cómo Denton se mantiene bien lejos de la cultura autóctona. Él mismo lo exclama hacia el final del tomo: “Me encanta ver cosas que no son chinas cuando estoy en China“. Esta declaración de intenciones vendría a explicar la impermeabilidad del escritor hacia su entorno: una vez en el país de destino, sus relaciones se focalizan en otros occidentales de la misma manera que los ojos a través de los que mira son los mismos con los que contempla en las primeras páginas la catedral de Salisbury. “Primer Viaje” no fascina por decubrirnos un nuevo mundo externo, sino más bien porque sigue profundizando en un mundo interno, el de Denton Welch, que es un pozo sin fondo de intensidad emocional.

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

(FROM MY BLOG) The [Salisbury Cathedral] Lady Chapel was dark and glittering; the brown and yellow Victorian tiles shone like a wet bathroom floor. I sat down on one of the oak chairs and started to pray. I grew more and more unhappy; there was nothing that I could do. I could not go back and I could not stay away for long; my money would run out. I felt hopeless and very lonely; I longed for someone to talk to me but nobody did; they were all too busy looking at the sights or praying.

Denton was sixteen -- but small enough and immature enough in appearance to still travel half fare -- when he decided he couldn't bear another year at Repton, a prestigious "public" school in Derbyshire. He stood up his older brother (and fellow Repton student) who was waiting to join him at London's St. Pancras station, where they were to catch the train back to school. With five pounds in his pocket, he instead departed from Waterloo station for the cathedral city of Salisbury.

It was 1931, and the painfully introverted (but grimly determined) Denton had flown the coop.

His money and his nerve lasted several days. Negotiations with his family finally resulted in his agreement to return to Repton -- for the current term, at least.

Denton's adventures "on the road" and his ensuing term at Repton make up only the first quarter of Denton Welch's highly autobiographical novel Maiden Voyage, published in 1943. The rest of the novel relates to his subsequent voyage to Shanghai to visit his loving but remote father, and his adventures in pre-war China. But that first section of the book, set in England, establishes the young man's persona in the reader's mind.

He leaves London for Salisbury because he loves architecture, and has happy memories of visiting the cathedral with his deceased mother. He stays at hotels, avoiding embarrassing questions from skeptical desk clerks. He eats in restaurants, self-consciously solitary among the diners. He is paranoid in his fear that every police officer is looking for him. Growing short of money, he stays at a hotel he finds disgusting and dirty. He gathers up his courage, enters a pawnshop and pawns his watch for a fraction of its value. He finally spends a night in a jail cell, offered him by a sympathetic cop.

What some reviewers have called descriptions of behavior that is odd, perhaps mentally unbalanced, I would describe as honest self-revelations by a shy, young boy. As a young-looking 21-year-old myself, traveling alone about Europe, I recall many of the same worries, nervousness, and repeated need to screw up my courage. The first time walking alone into a hotel and asking for a room, walking into a restaurant and dining alone under the gaze of curious eyes, wandering around an unfamiliar city, short of money, and buying the cheapest train fares I could get to the next. Everything, perhaps, but Denton's paranoia about the police.

Denton Welch, in real life, also quit school at Repton, and studied to become a painter. After a severe cycling accident at the age of 20, he began writing instead. He had been born in Shanghai in 1915, the son of a mixed English-American marriage. His autobiographical novels and other writings enjoyed a certain vogue in the 1940s; they now seem to be in the public eye once more. I had never heard of the writer until Sunday, when classical scholar and writer Daniel Mendelsohn, in an interview published in the New York Times Book Review, mentioned that he was currently reading Denton Welch's journals, and was a long-time fan of his novels.

Don't read Maiden Voyage expecting an exciting plot and superb characterization. The novel is more a fictionalized memoir, based very closely on the author's own life. In many ways, Maiden Voyage is a more readable Proustian novel than those of Proust himself (although Proust's lovers would probably sneer!). After I became bogged down forty percent of the way through the narrator's protracted ponderings over the minutiae of life in a small French village, as found in Swann's Way, Denton Welch's obsessions and thoughts, in a more global context, came as a welcome relief.

Like Marcel in Swann's Way, young Denton has keen eyes for the small details of the world about him, and especially architecture, home furnishings, art works, and nature. He also -- like Marcel and like many other introverted teenagers -- has an obsessive concern with the reactions (real or imagined) of those about him. He overthinks almost every social interaction. The slightest criticism or frivolous remark from others is the occasion for hours of brooding, and often by Denton's explosive admission that he has "now begun to hate" the offender. These hatreds sometimes blow over; other times, the relationship has been poisoned forever.

He seems to have been liked by most adults and peers, if in a somewhat patronizing fashion. They recognized a boy who was overly intense, idiosyncratic in his interests, and a bit of an odd duck. But many obviously enjoyed his company.

If for no other reason, the novel can be read for its honest and exacting picture of England between the world wars, and especially the "public" school life of the upper classes. Even more, the book offers a devastating picture of China -- at least as viewed by Denton -- as a cruel, dirty, and barbaric country, and of Shanghai as a European colony where the European "masters" rule with contempt over the Chinese masses, and are despised in return.

Welch's best-known novel, I understand, is the similarly autobiographical In Youth is Pleasure, written from the perspective of a 15-year-old. Sooner or later, I plan to read it.

Denton Welch died in 1948, at the age of 33, from spinal tuberculosis, the result of injuries from the cycling accident thirteen years earlier.

[Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Denton Welch's semi-autobiographic memoir is a very funny rush through a childhood to adulthood, as Denton (the main character) runs away from school, then drifts to China to live with his father, before commencing with his adult life. The novel is filled with the frisson of gay sexuality, told in a vaguely oblique way, that becomes increasingly prevalent and obvious as the novel progresses, while the sarcastic asides about class and colonialism is rife throughout the novel. Maiden Voyage, at times plays like an early Catcher in the Rye, with Welch's eye-trained on a variety of men passing through the narrators consciousness. Often brilliant, with a desperately interesting amount of detail. A novel of the quotidian.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

although I'm reading a first edition (1943) one - one of those soft hardbacks with cheap paper due to economic restrictions of the war. Loevely illustrations on the inside covers and between book parts. £2 from amazon marketplace. And the novel - so far so good, really enjoying the posh boy running away from his private school and ending up visiting cathedrals.

Read it now - yes enjoyable, but for me too many antiques and sweaty sailors/boys. Read more like a memoir than a novel. Probably three and a half stars..

[Alvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just reread this extraordinary book, which is a must read for anyone who appreciates highly idiosyncratic prose stylists. Nothing of great import happens to the narrator, an upper-crust English teenager with a love of beautiful things, but his voice is so fresh and weird and wild it's a page-turner anyway. Trying to parse out what makes Welch so riveting to read is hard. One might say it's his unexpected analogies, emotional rawness, or detailed descriptions of the everyday physical world so sensuous as to be almost erotic, but it's really all of those and a bit of je ne sais quoi. Love it!

[Nicolas Chinardet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a disagreeable read but one that feels it has very little point. The expression: "stuff happens" could be used to summarise the book which seems little more than a collection of small, mostly unrelated incidents without any apparent significance. Other than that he likes or dislikes things (usually very suddenly and for little apparent reason), we know very little of the "hero"'s inner life and motivations, which seems surprising considering the books is written in the first person.

[aya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Less visceral and more story driven than In Youth There is Pleasure, but no less beautiful. Stunningly insightful of human nature and individual character, Welch allows us to delight in the grotesque and divine.

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did like how he spent most of his time being bored hanging out with other English people