REVIEW # 25: GEORGE – THE BURDEN OF GIFTEDNESS

George
By Emlyn Williams
Richard Clay and Co. 1961

I doubt whether anyone could find this book today, but no book I have read could be more worthy of a review than this. It was Writing 101, The Coming of Age 101, Love of Learning 101, How to Recognize and Nurture those who are Special 101 . . . and a whole lot more. Besides his extraordinary memory, the writer’s craft has embroidered reality with the essence of his character and shown us the world through his eyes with startling original imagery and powerful prose.

IS BEING GIFTED ENOUGH?

What moved me most was the loneliness of George Williams, as he moved from poverty of circumstances through the generosity of ambitious benefactors who helped him to find his place in institutions of great learning where he could build on the riches of his intellectual faculties and enthusiasm for learning. Even if your family takes pride in your achievements, as Williams’s did, it is terribly sad to be unable to share your experience and knowledge with your family members. It is one thing to know your father is proudly showing your scholarship certificates and news of your academic successes to his workmates, as George’s father did, but another thing entirely to sit and talk about politics and literature and French and Italian and Greek around the kitchen table. His mother has little to say, yet nothing squeezed my heart more than George seeing his mother standing on the back step waving to him as he choofed by on his way to France for two months. And there were so many occasions involving his mother where the words were blurred with my tears. When George unpacked the food she had prepared for him to eat on the train, he was moved. Yet there was the ache in him that she didn’t hug him when he arrived home from France which cut him more deeply because all his ‘aunts,’ those strangers who had taken him into their lives and hearts, had hugged him when he had left France. This woman was fearful of the world beyond hers, but did not let that fear stifle her son’s need to keep moving inexorably towards the unknown, a threshold she knew she would never cross. That took great love and great courage. When her son arrived home from winning a scholarship to Oxford, he described the tea she had made for him ‘that was a loving one, boiled eggs and Rolly Polly,’ his favourite dessert. I know that love; it is a practical one. It is not found in words and affectionate hugs and kisses because it is too deep for mere words and surface actions. And I know what it is to have a mother willing to wave me off into the world beyond the one she knows, not knowing what the future holds for her daughter who was born in the bush with her feet facing the highway.

Emlyn Williams owed all his breaks to wise and caring spinster teachers who were willing to be his benefactors and allow him to fulfil the enormous potential they saw in him. Throughout his journey to adulthood, Williams was able to capture those deep, dumb emotions that swell inside us like giant waves, when we are trying to understand how we feel about our companions and our circumstances and negotiating our way into an unfamiliar world outside of the limited experiences of our small towns. I lived in a state of empathetic tense emotion throughout the book, devouring it as quickly as possible, whilst hoping it would never end, as I travelled his life’s journey with him, in awe of the mountains he climbed, the disappointments he had to swallow, and the terrible isolation of travelling with so few kindred spirits, especially during his early years. And yet, when he set out for Oxford, he was fearless. He wrote, ‘The engine-driver could not have been more confident of his destination than I was of mine.’ I envied him his strong sense of self-worth and destiny, as he left Connah’s Quay to embark on an academic career at Oxford and all the unknowns of the future. Whilst I was in awe of his cool confidence in crossing borders of all kinds into completely unfamiliar territory, I was also reassured that this heroic young man was actually another vulnerable human, when he confessed to feeling absolutely overwhelmed at the end of his first day, ‘longing, with every atavistic bone in [his] body, for the kitchen of 314a, for the eternity of the fire and [his] family at [his] elbow.’ A great reminder that our well-being depends on far more than our intellect.

For all my admiration and empathy for his journey, I felt Williams’ autobiography raised many troubling questions. (Just to be clear, my empathy is not with his intellectual brilliance, but with the experience of leaving my country town to discover the unknown world beyond, without the protection and guidance of my familly to help pave the way!) Here are a short list of some of those questions. To what extent should parents and family sacrifice for the sake of a gifted child?  At what stage, and in what ways, should the sacrifice of others be acknowledged? How much pressure should be applied to someone who is gifted? To what extent are institutions of learning responsible for the spiritual and emotional welfare of their students, not just their practical and intellectual needs? In what practical ways could they support their students’ growth in maturity and their capacity to take responsibility for their choices? Is it better for you to be a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond? What are the consequences of both these choices? If everyone treats a gifted child with such reverence, will they merely learn that the world owes them every opportunity to do exactly as they please? At what point should you begin to pay it forward, when you have received financial support and encouragement from others? Should we expect something in return for our investment in others? Sadly, I don’t think George Williams spent a lot of time reflecting on the sacrifice of others, especially his family. He remained absorbed in his own ambitions and in curating a character of mythical magnificence that would step out of his writing genius as a fully-fledged legend like Athena emerged, spectacularly, fully-grown from Zeus’s forehead. Much as I empathized, and sympathized, with his challenges, and was in awe of his skills as a writer, I felt terribly disappointed at his lack of emotional growth. It seemed to me that he remained self-absorbed till the last word, seeking only the adulation he craved, oblivious to the self-sacrifice of his family, or his benefactors, seeing everyone around him as a means to achieving his own ends.

This is not a book for the faint-hearted. There are long passages of Welsh (thankfully translated) and a great deal of French (not translated). If you enjoy languages, and want to be reminded of the true art of writing, I highly commend this book to you . . . should there still be copies available. To be honest, I found the first couple of chapters tedious, but couldn’t put it down after that. I felt swamped by melancholy emotion for a lost time and a lost art and for all those who are full of potential and the zest for life, but who have no one to share it with, or − unlike Williams – no one to reach down and haul them up out of their circumstances to a life that would be more thrilling and fulfilling. Yet this competed with a sense of joy in the beauty of language and the resilience and goodwill of human beings. I truly cannot convey the complexity of all the thoughts and feelings that were aroused, whilst reading this