John Steinbeck in Bruton, Somerset; Bruton Town

When I was at school in Bruton, Somerset, I had no idea that John Steinbeck was living nearby, at Discove Cottage, Redlynch. He rented the cottage (found for him by Robert Bolt, the playwright and Millfield schoolteacher) for nine months in 1959, three years before he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. What an inspiration he might have been, had I been a few years older, but I wasn't even 15 then.

One of Steinbeck's typists in Bruton was a Mrs Webb, and another was Sallie Vallins, the wife of John Vallins, an outstanding teacher at King's School, Bruton from 1956-1965. John was to be my English teacher in the Sixth Form (he introduced me to the poetry of Hopkins and Donne, and helped to prepare me for Oxford). He writes, in King's School, Bruton Remembered (edited Basil Wright, Castle Cary Press), p. 126:

"I was teaching English to their fifth-form year and had read in a teacher's manual that "Time spent reading a good book aloud to a class is seldom wasted". I was reading Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Sallie had a part-time job at Discove House, and the Leslies were to let their cottage to an American, who turned out to be John Steinbeck. Sallie typed for him, and we visited him and his wife. I asked him to talk to the class, but he said that public speaking was his last virginity, which he intended to hang onto (I did not know at the time that this was a quotation). He would, however, welcome ones or twos who might go out to the cottage on a Sunday. I think John Mole* and Tim Blanning* went several times. One became a History don and the other a poet, having read English at my own college".

For Steinbeck's correspondence, posted from Bruton Post Office, see the appendix to "The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights" (ed. Chase Horton); pp 329-361, letters dated from March 24, 1959 to September 10, 1959.

March 24, 1959:

"The countryside is turning as lush as a plum. Everything is popping...All in all, this is an ancient place...There's a quality here that I haven't known for very long. The twentieth century seems very remote."

March 30, 1959:

"The peace I have dreamed about is here, a real thing, thick as a stone and feelable and something for your hands...Meanwhile I can't describe the joy. In the mornings I get up early to have a time to listen to the birds. It's a busy time for them. Sometimes for over an hour I do nothing but look and listen and out of this comes a luxury of rest and peace and something I can only describe as in-ness".

April 20, 1959:

"The wife of one of the masters of King's School is a good typist".

May 1, 1959:

"Yesterday something wonderful. It was a golden day and the apple blossoms are out and for the first time I climbed up to Cadbury- Camelot. I don't think I remember an impact like that. Could see from the Bristol Channel to the tops of the Mendip Hills and all the little villages. Glastonbury tor and King Alfred's towers on the other side...I walked all around the upper wall. And I don't know what I felt but it was a lot- like those slow hot bubbles of molten rock in a volcano, a gentle rumbling earthquake of the Spirit. I'll go back at night and in the rain, but this was noble gold even to use Tennyson's phrase- mystic- wonderful. Made the hairs prickle on the back of the neck."

July 3, 1959 (from Elaine Steinbeck):

"Yesterday we drove through Plush Folly, a new addition to our place-name list. It is in Dorset...We drove down to below Dorchester and climbed Maiden Castle, a vast hill-fortress which goes back to 2000 B.C. It's a marvelous and enormous flat-topped hill with 8 ditches, deep and steep-sided. You could sure defend one hell of a lot of people up there...We also went to Cerne Abbas to see the Dorset Giant...I think they put him there to scare the tar out of passing ladies..."

 John and Elaine Steinbeck outside Wells Cathedral 

(rear cover of "The Acts of King Arthur")

Guardian article (Lindesay Irvine)

Bruton School Days- How times have changed...

From the Steinbeck period: Film Review, The Dolphin, Christmas Term 1959: 

* From "The Jazzmen", a poem by John Mole (dedicated to Tim Blanning; John Mole is also a jazz clarinettist) published in Encounter:

"Did we really talk like this

With such absurd self-consciousness,

Deadly earnest, deadly cool

Young gentlemen from Public School

(A minor, country one what's more

And deft at turning out a bore)?

I think we did, and were, perhaps,

As awful as the other chaps.

Honour, though, our little clique

That dinned the Music Room each week."


And, to finish, from a poem called "Bruton" from Ian Kelway's Poet's Light:

"Sweet Somerset, thou should'st be proud to hold
Within thy fond embrace this tender spot;
Something unfocussed, something half forgot-
A glamour- rests upon thee here of old
Mediaeval days........

I should not deem it strange, if passing by

I met a mounted knight, armed cap-à-piè! “

It seems that John Steinbeck had much the same feelings about Bruton,
and also dreamed of meeting noble mounted knights.

Update (23 August): since this posting, I have bought James Crowden's excellent book "Literary Somerset", in which he has entries on Steinbeck in Bruton and on John Mole. He reproduces John Mole's poem "The Other Day- Summer 1959", an account of his visit, with two other boys from King's School, Bruton, to Discove to meet Steinbeck and his wife.

A folk-song collected by Cecil Sharp
Folk Songs from Somerset, First Series, 1904:

The Bramble Briar

Bruton Town (YouTube 1)

Bruton Town (YouTube 2)- with lyrics and chords

The best version is by Martin Carthy