Kathleen Raine (1908-2003) was born in London and spent most of her childhood in Ilford, Essex. For a few years from the outbreak of World War I, she stayed with an aunt in Northumberland, where she loved the simple, strict village life. Kathleen's mother was Scottish and taught her Scotland's songs and ballads. Her father taught English in a local high school, encouraging Kathleen's interest in language and literature.
Although passionate about poetry, she went to Cambridge to read natural sciences. Far from her parents' protective eyes, she flung herself into the student life, somewhere between bohemian and nihilistic.
Kathleen was a beautiful woman and made two early marriages, having two children with her second husband, Charles Madge.
Her first book of poetry, Stone and Flower, was published by Tambimuttu in 1943. The title marries her early attachment to the Northumberland country to her studies in natural science.
Tambimuttu
Tambimuttu was a Tamil poet, editor of Poetry London from 1939 until dismissed in 1949. Kathleen Raine did not forget the man who first published her work. After his hasty, unannounced departure from London Poetry, she defended him in a letter to the New Statesman and National, published on 21st January 1950.
"Many frightened young poets were grateful for Tambi's generous enthusiasm after the policy of stern editorial discouragement of the Criterion and the strictness of New Verse," she wrote.
It was through Tambimuttu that Kathleen Raine met Gavin Maxwell.
Kathleen Raine and Gavin Maxwell
When they met in 1949, neither was particularly famous. Both were unconventional, both loved nature and wild places. Friendship grew and ìn Kathleen's case, became ill-controlled passion. Their story had no happy ending. Maxwell was a homosexual aristocrat; Kathleen was a passionate and intelligent woman, daughter of a school-teacher and granddaughter of a miner.
Kathleen Raine became a regular visitor to Maxwell's house at Sandaig, usually during his frequent absences. Their contacts were often limited to letters and telegrams concerning Sandaig and the pet otter, Mijbil. It was a strange ménage. Friends tried to convince Kathleen that this was no kind of relationship, that Gavin Maxwell was not interested in her and perhaps did not even like her. This failed to keep her away from the man she described as her "Silver Stag".
The friendship broke down when the otter Mijbil (a tame otter accustomed to roaming free, much as country cats do) escaped while Kathleen was staying at Sandaig. The otter was killed brutally by a roadman in a village some miles away. Although Maxwell employed young men as otter-keepers, he chose to blame Kathleen for Mijbil's death, and banished her from his house.
In The River, Kathleen relives that moment, no longer furious but nostalgic, and evidently piqued by the lack of Highland hospitality ("an expected guest").
"In my first sleep
I came to the river.........
A house was there
Beside the river
And I, arrived,
An expected guest
About to explore
Old gardens and libraries -
But the car was waiting
To drive me away."
Kathleen is barely mentioned in Gavin Maxwell's famous otter trilogy: Ring of Bright Water, The Rocks Remain, Raven Seek Thy Brother.
Yet the title of Gavin's most famous book is taken from one of her poems:
"He married me with a ring, a ring of bright water
Whose ripples travel from the heart of the sea"
from The Marriage of Psyche, included in her collection The Year One, 1952.
The Curse of the Rowan Tree
The curse of the rowan tree is almost the only part of the relationship acknowledged by Maxwell in his writings, apart from a photograph or two of Kathleen with Mijbil.
In Raven Seek Thy Brother, Maxwell describes his dismay on reading the typescript of the unpublished biography of "a poetess".
"She had always believed that she possessed great and terrible occult powers, and in that moment of hatred, she had not doubted her ability to blight the years ahead of me." - She had gone to his home secretly by night, placed her hands on the rowan tree, and cursed: "Let him (Gavin) suffer here as I am suffering!"
Why the rowan tree? Many Scottish country homes have a rowan tree or two at the front gate and the back door, as a protection against evil spirits.
He goes on:
"I bore her no ill-will now, whether or not her curse could have influenced events. I just did not understand how such love and hatred could coexist."
Maxwell here betrays the infantile side of his personality, trying to blame this woman friend for problems under his own sphere of responsibility. After all, why should Kathleen not hate the man who, having repulsed her for years on the grounds of his homosexuality, later proceeded to marriage with Lavinia Renton née Lascelles, of suitable aristocratic stock? Why blame the rowan-tree curse if that marriage was short-lived? Or if his tame otters had a wild side and did not always behave like teddy-bears? Or if his neglected house burned down? Or if he was diagnosed with terminal cancer?
Temenos Academy
After Gavin's death, Kathleen returned to poetry and scholarship, as an expert on William Blake and William Butler Yeats, among others.
In the latter years of her long life, she co-founded a journal called Temenos, a space for encouragment of young writers, which sparked the interest and support of the Prince of Wales.
From a journal, Temenos became an Academy, which continues after her death.
Although Kathleen could be scathing in her criticism and can deservedly be described as an intellectual snob, she was also warm-hearted and generous in her encouragement of young poets.
Sources:
Ring of Bright Water Trilogy by Gavin Maxwell, edited by Austin Chinn, Penguin Books, 2000
Tambimuttu and the Poetry London Papers at the British Library
No End to Snowdrops by Philippa Bernard (Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers Ltd, London 2009
Valerie Wilson - Valerie Wilson has lived, studied and worked in Scotland, Germany and Italy; mainly employed in multi-national companies in shipping ...
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