Paul Potts (writer)

Paul Hugh Howard Potts (19 July 1911 – 26 August 1990), a British-born poet who lived in British Columbia in his youth,^[1]^[2] was the author of Dante Called You Beatrice (1960), a memoir of unrequited love. One of the women treated in the memoir was Jean Hore, who married the writer Philip O'Connor but ended up confined as a schizophrenic for over fifty years until her death.^[3]^[4]^[5]

Family

Potts was born in Datchet, Berkshire^[6] to (Arthur George) Howard Potts (1869-1918), who had emigrated to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, where he was a partner in a bakery and confectionery business,^[7] and his Irish wife Julia Helen Kavanagh (also recorded as Cavanagh).^[8] Arthur Potts's father, Dr Walter Jeffery Potts (1837-1898),^[9] had married Julia, daughter of Sir Thomas Branthwaite Beevor, 3rd Baronet;^[10] many descendants with the name 'Beevor-Potts' live in Canada.^[11]^[12]^[13]

Education

He was educated in Canada, England (at Stonyhurst until the age of sixteen^[14]) and Italy (at a Jesuit college in Florence),^[15] but from the early 1930s he lived in London. He frequented the Soho-Fitzrovia area where he would sell broadsheet copies of his poetry in the streets and pubs.^[16]^[17]

Literary career

Among Potts's literary friends were George Orwell and the English poet George Barker.^[18]^[19]^[20] Potts's memoir of Orwell, "Don Quixote on a Bicycle", appeared in The London Magazine in 1957^[21]^[22] and became a chapter of Dante Called You Beatrice. His 1948 essay “The World of George Barker” appeared in Poetry Quarterly.^[23]

Later life

In late middle-age, Potts was '...balding' with 'a stutter that he mixed with rapid blinking and an amused chuckle as he started a sentence', eventually becoming a dissolute figure 'barred from Soho pubs'.^[24]

Accidental death

Potts died in 1990 of smoke inhalation from a fire in his bedroom; he had been house-bound for some years.^[25]

Bibliography

(1940) A Poet's Testament, with drawings by Cliff Bayliss and Scott MacGregor, foreword by Hugh MacDiarmid
(1944) Instead of a Sonnet (enlarged 1978)
(1960) Dante Called You Beatrice
(1970) To Keep A Promise
(1973) Invitation to a Sacrament
(2006) Ronald Caplan (ed.), George Orwell's Friend: Selected Writings by Paul Potts

Notes and references

^ Paul Potts, Dante Called You Beatrice, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960
^ Potts is often called a Canadian, for example by Ronald Caplan in George Orwell's Friend which has him "born in British Columbia", but other sources - including the Times obituary - give his birthplace as Datchet in the UK.
^ Paul Potts, Dante Called You Beatrice, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960
^ "- Happily Never After, or, the Rubbish Tower - New Partisan - New Partisan".
^ Quentin and Philip: A Double Portrait, Andrew Barrow, Pan Books
^ Datchet was at that time in Buckinghamshire
^ British Columbia Gazette, 1909, pg 3070
^ Paul Potts, Dante Called You Beatrice, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960
^ Imperial Vancouver Island: Who Was Who, 1850-1950, J. F. Bosher, 2010, pg 134
^ A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire, Sir Bernard Burke, 31st Edition, volume 1, 1869, pg 88
^ Imperial Vancouver Island: Who Was Who, 1850-1950, J. F. Bosher, 2010, pg 135
^ Dante Called You Beatrice, Paul Potts, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960, pg 28
^ The Tormented Prince, J. Leigh Hirst, Brimstone Press, 2012, pg 1
^ Dante Called You Beatrice, Paul Potts, Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1960, pg 25
^ The Visva-bharati Quarterly, volume 31, issue 2, 1965, pg 131
^ "Paul Potts - Obituary", The Times, London, 29 August 1990
^ Peter Stothard, "Soho, ring-marked and a little soiled", TLS blog, 2 March 2008, retrieved 7 February 2013
^ Taylor, D. J., Orwell: The Life, Henry Holt and Company, 2003, passim
^ Meyers, Jeffrey (ed.), Introduction to George Orwell, Routledge, 1975, p.20
^ Crick, Bernard. George Orwell: A Life, Penguin, 1982, passim
^ Rodden, John, George Orwell: The Politics of Literary Reputation, Oxford University Press, 1989, rev. 2002, pp 128-129
^ Rodden, John, The Unexamined Orwell, University of Texas Press, 2011, p.222
^ Warren, Richard, "Paul Potts on ‘The World of George Barker’", nd, blog post; retrieved 12 February 2013
^ The Arms of the Infinite: Elizabeth Smart and George Barker, Christopher Barker, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010, pg 181
^ The Arms of the Infinite: Elizabeth Smart and George Barker, Christopher Barker, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010, pg 181