American Women


The two most important women in his life, apart from his mother and his sisters, were two American women, Frances Gregg, his first love (the 'boy-girl' evoked in Autobiography), and Phyllis Playter, his 'elemental' who was his companion from 1923 till the end of his life.

Powys had many women friends, in different circles, and had ample time to watch and analyse these fascinating beings during his thirty years in America. It led him to these startling remarks about the 'psychological atmosphere in this country being destructive to friendship' among men, because of the direct influence of American women:
      It is not exactly that American women wage a continuous war against friendship among men.
      The thing is more subtle. It is that, by reason of the fact that women in this country are much less preoccupied with their feminity than are the women in Europe, much less, in plain words, absorbed and dominated by their sex, they are able to supply to a very considerable extent the role played in the life of a man by his friendship with other men.
      It is that they are so malleable and flexible in their souls, so adaptable and receptive in their intelligences, that they are able to play the mental role of friends, while they are not friends, but sweethearts and wives! (John Cowper Powys, 'Friendship in America' in Elusive America)
Although he made a rule of not evoking the women he knew in Autobiography, he could not refrain from mentioning Isadora Duncan or Edna St Vincent Millay.
      I have the wildest, oddest, most fantastical ideas about my Autobiography, but I really am going to begin it after a brief quiescence, reading and walking and writing answers to a terrible pile of neglected letters. I am so going to handle it that no one's feelings living or dead could possibly be hurt....it will be experimental to start with. I shall feel my way. Once (oh what will Alyse say?) I even decided to leave out all mention of all feminine persons, but since such Beings have played such a role in my existence, I don't think this exclusion wd. exactly be conducive to that Spiritual Sincerity which you (like Father Zosima talking to Father Karamazov) have, ere now, so strongly insisted upon!(John Cowper Powys,Letters to His Brother Llewelyn (24 July 1933)
In Autobiography, after quoting Henry James, ('American women are the aristocracy of America!'), he proclaims:
      American women... are as sensitive to the mystical-sensual aspects of life as women in the old world, and in mental restlessness and general intellectual acquisitiveness I think they have a passionate curiosity beyond that of the old world.