About Me
I, Maurice Denton Welch, was born March 29, 1915, in Shanghai, to Arthur Joseph Welch, whose parents were English, and Rosalind Basset, whose family was originally from New Bedford, Massachusetts. I was the youngest of four boys and spent my early childhood in Shanghai, with many visits to England.
In 1924 I was enrolled in a school in Kensington, and then from 1926 to 1929 I attended St. Michael's, a preparatory school in Uckfield, Sussex. While in school, my mother, with whom I was especially close, died in Shanghai during March 1927; this event had a profound effect on me. In 1929 I started attending school at Repton in Derbyshire. I started at the Goldsmith School of Art in New Cross in 1933, where I studied for three years; among my teachers was the printmaker and graphic designer Edward Bawden. At first I lived in a house where my brother Bill was also rooming, and then moved into a house near Greenwich Park where the landlady was Evelyn Sinclair, who became a close lifelong friend.On June 7, 1935, I was traveling by bicycle to go visit my aunt, when I was hit by a car. My spine was fractured, and for a few months I was paralyzed from the chest down. I was able to learn to walk again, but with difficulty. For the rest of my life I had kidney and bladder infections, which would cause frequent severe headaches. After the accident, I first spent time at National Hospital, and then in the Southcourt Nursing Home in Broadstairs, Kent. When I left the nursing home July 1936, I rented an apartment with Evelyn Sinclair in Tonbridge in order that I could be close to my doctor, John Easton. Sinclair remained with me as my housekeeper at my different residences until May 1946, two months after my partner Eric Oliver and I moved to Middle Orchard, the country house of Noël and Bernard Adeney at Crouch, near Borough Green, Kent. Sinclair returned to Middle Orchard in July 1948 to assist me until my death.I continued to paint and draw after the accident. In 1941 the Leicester Galleries in London first exhibited some of my paintings, and continued over the next few years to include my paintings in their exhibits. The Leger Gallery and Redfern Gallery, both in London, also exhibited my works.I began writing in 1940, and some of my poems appeared in minor publications in 1941. In 1942, after the death of the painter Walter Sickert, my article "Sickert at St. Peter's" (an amusing account of his having tea with Sickert was published by Cyril Connolly in the August Horizon. I received a letter of praise from Edith Sitwell. Soon after, Herbert Read, editor at Routledge, accepted my manuscript for Maiden Voyage, and Dame Edith offered to write the foreword; she also wrote a review for the book. With her support, Maiden Voyage sold out before its May 1943 publication. The book received enthusiastic reviews, and I began writing In Youth Is Pleasure, which was published in February 1945. I also wrote several short stories, and in the fall of 1945, as my health was worsening, I resumed work on A Voice Through a Cloud, a novel that I had begun earlier, and that was to remain unfinished at my death. Although I was to consider myself primarily a writer after the success of Maiden Voyage, I kept painting and drawing. Nine of my late paintings, created during a time when my health was failing, were reproduced in A Last Sheaf (published in 1951). I died December 30, 1948, at Middle Orchard Cottage in Crouch, Kent.
(from the bio., Denton Welch collection, HRC University of Texas, Austin, TX)
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