Gregory, Alyse, 1884-1967

Alyse Gregory was a British political campaigner, editor of THE DIAL, suffragette, novelist, and wife of novelist and essayist Llewelyn Powys (1884-1939).

Alyse Gregory, 1884-1967, social reformer and writer; managing editor of the literary magazine The Dial, 1924-1926; married to English author Llewelyn Powys and close associate of the Powys family.

Gregory's writings include three novels: She Shall Have Music (1926), King Log and Lady Lea (1929), and Hester Craddock (1931); a collection of essays: Wheels on Gravel (1938); and an autobiography of her early life: The Day is Gone (1948). The Cry of a Gull, edited by Michael Adam from diary excerpts prepared by Gregory, was published in 1973.

Alyse Gregory, 1884-1967, social reformer and writer; managing editor of the literary magazine The Dial, 1924-1926; married to English author Llewelyn Powys and close associate of the Powys family.

Gregory's writings include three novels: She Shall Have Music (1926), King Log and Lady Lea (1929), and Hester Craddock (1931); a collection of essays: Wheels on Gravel (1938); and an autobiography of her early life: The Day is Gone (1948). The Cry of a Gull, edited by Michael Adam from diary excerpts prepared by Gregory, was published in 1973.

Alyse Gregory was born in Norwalk, Connecticut, on July 19, 1884. Her father, James G. Gregory (Yale 1865), was a prominent citizen in Norwalk, where he practiced medicine, was a founder of the city hospital and library, and served as a bank officer. Her mother, Jean L. Pinneo, was a granddaughter of Bezaleel Pinneo, pastor of the First Congregationalist Church in Milford, Connecticut, and a daughter of Timothy Stone Pinneo (Yale 1824), an editor of the McGuffey reader series and author of school textbooks. Alyse Gregory attended schools in Norwalk and was encouraged by her family to study singing. At age fifteen, she went to Paris to study with opera singer Marie Hippolyte Ponsin Rôze. Supported by a succession of patrons and teachers, she continued to pursue training as an opera singer in New York and during a second sojourn in Paris with singer Katherine Fiske. In addition to travel in France, Gregory made extended trips to England and Italy, visiting her sister Jean and brother-in-law Homer Byington, who served as American Consul in Naples.

By 1910, Gregory had decided against a career as a singer. Returning to Norwalk, she read philosophy, observed local politics and factory working conditions, and discovered passionate interests in social justice for the poor and women's right to vote. Gregory was active in suffrage organizations during the years before the First World War, organizing and participating in demonstrations in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. In 1914, she visited Jean and Homer Byington in England, observing working conditions in the mining industry and unsuccessfully seeking war work. Returning to the United States, Gregory settled in New York, where she worked as a writer and speaker in labor and education reform. During this period she was drawn into a social circle centering on social work, suffrage, and pacifism. Gregory discusses many of her relationships with these friends and lovers in her autobiography The Day is Gone, sometimes employing pseudonyms. Friendships established during this period include those with literary critic Randolph Bourne and social reformers Maurice Robertson ("Maurice Stevens"), Agnes de Lima, and Florida Scott-Maxwell. Gregory spent part of 1916 with her mother and her brother Ward, a doctor, in Colorado Springs, where Ward was seeking treatment for recurring tuberculosis. Ward Gregory died in Colorado Springs in 1917.

Around 1918, Gregory briefly operated a tea and flower shop in New York, attracting a literary clientele that included William Rose Benét, Stephen Vincent Benét, Henry Hoyt, Scofield Thayer, and James Sibley Watson, Jr. Through friendships with these customers, she was introduced to a larger literary circle and became acquainted with The Dial, a magazine of literature and art acquired and reorganized by Thayer and Watson in 1919. Disillusioned with social work, and finding her business financially unprofitable, Gregory soon closed the shop and found work in statistics and copywriting at the J. Walter Thompson advertising company. She left advertising after two years, deciding to earn her living as a writer. With encouragement from editors such as William Rose Bénet and Van Wyck Brooks, Gregory published book reviews and essays. During this period, she became more closely associated with The Dial, and in 1924 she succeeded Gilbert Seldes as managing editor. In this position, Gregory worked with Scofield Thayer and became acquainted with writers associated with the magazine, including Amy Lowell and Marianne Moore.

In 1921 Gregory met and fell in love with the English author Llewelyn Powys, who had recently settled in New York to pursue his writing career. By 1922 Llewelyn had moved into Gregory's home on Patchin Place, in Greenwich Village, and Gregory was soon drawn into the large and closely-knit Powys family, establishing friendships with Llewelyn's brother, author John Cowper Powys, and his companion Phyllis Playter, who settled nearby on Patchin Place; his sister Marian, who operated a lacemaking business in New York; and his sister Philippa, a writer, who made an extended visit from England in 1923. Llewelyn Powys had been treated for tuberculosis in 1909, and in the summer of 1924 he suffered a recurrence during a trip to the Rocky Mountains with James Sibley Watson, Jr. Seeking a healthful climate, Gregory and Powys moved to Montoma, New York, in September, 1924. In October they were married, a decision that simplified their shared lives, in spite of Gregory's reservations about marriage.

By 1926, Powys wished to return to his homeland, and Gregory decided to resign her position at The Dial in order to settle with him in England. In May, 1926, they moved to a cottage on the Dorset coast at White Nose, living in close contact with Llewelyn's brother, author Theodore Francis Powys and his family, and their sisters Gertrude, a painter, and Philippa. Gregory also came to know the other Powys siblings and their families: Littleton, a schoolmaster, Albert Reginald, an architect, William, a rancher in Kenya, and Lucy, married to Hounsell Penny. In 1926, Gregory published her first novel, She Shall Have Music ; the same year Powys published The Verdict of Bridlegoose, a book describing his experiences in the United States, including his early relationship with Gregory. In January, 1926, they traveled to Vienna to visit Scofield Thayer, who was mentally ill and seeking treatment from Sigmund Freud. Gregory met with Thayer and Freud but was unable to help, and Thayer did not recover. Although her correspondence with Thayer ceased in 1926, Gregory remained in contact with Marianne Moore, who succeeded him as editor of The Dial .

In 1927 Powys was invited to write book reviews for the New York Herald Tribune, and he and Gregory returned to New York, again living on Patchin Place. Powys began a love affair with the poet Gamel Woolsey, which continued for several years, with Gregory's consent. Although she confided pain and fear of losing Llewelyn in her diaries, Gregory did not interfere with the affair and maintained lifelong friendships with both Woolsey and Gerald Brenan, who were married in 1931. After returning to England in 1928, Gregory and Powys traveled through France and Italy to Palestine. They spent part of 1930-31 in upstate New York with Edna St. Vincent Millay, her husband Eugene Boissevain, and John Cowper Powys and Phyllis Playter, and in early 1931 they traveled in the West Indies.

In October, 1931, they moved from White Nose to East Chaldon, Dorset, settling at Chydyok, a remote farmhouse, joining Gertrude and Philippa Powys, who had lived at Chydyok since 1924. Powys's life continued to be endangered by tuberculosis, and in 1936 he and Gregory went to Clavadel, a sanatorium near Davos, Switzerland, where he had been treated in 1909. Powys continued to write at Chydyok and Clavadel, producing works including Love and Death, an autobiographical novel drawing on his affair with Gamel Woolsey, and many of his best-regarded collections of essays. In 1938 Gregory published a collection of essays, Wheels on Gravel, with an introduction by John Cowper Powys. Gregory and Llewelyn remained in Switzerland for three years, but Powys never fully regained his health. He died at Clavadel on December 1, 1939.

After Powys's death, Gregory returned to England under difficult wartime conditions, reaching Chydyok in late December and resuming residence with Gertrude and Philippa Powys. She was unable to repatriate Llewelyn Powys's ashes until after the war ended. In her diaries, Gregory confided her inner life of grief and reconciliation, philosophic inquiry, and intense introspection. At the same time, she devoted herself to a growing volume of correspondence centering on the Powys circle and other literary friends, including John Cowper Powys, Phyllis Playter, Gamel Woolsey, Gerald Brenan, Louis Wilkinson ("Louis Marlow"), Joan Lambert Wilkinson, Marianne Moore, Claude Colleer Abbott, Valentine Ackland, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and John Redwood Anderson. Many correspondents visited Chydyok, and Gregory made trips to the United States in 1951 and 1955. She continued to publish essays and contributed an introduction to a collection of Llewelyn Powys's letters, edited by Louis Wilkinson in 1943. In 1948 she published The Day is Gone, an autobiography covering her early life up to her appointment as managing editor of The Dial in 1924.

As Gregory grew older, Chydyok's isolated location became impractical. Following Gertrude Powys's death in 1952, both Philippa Powys and Gregory left Chydyok, Gregory leaving in 1957 to live at Velthams Cottage, near Tiverton, Devon, with her friend Rosamond Rose. After Rose's death in 1958, another friend, Oliver Stoner, occupied part of Rose's vacated house with his family. Gregory continued her diaries and maintained her extensive correspondence, now including an expanded literary circle, Dorset friends, and a younger generation of Powys nieces and nephews. Since Llewelyn's death, Gregory had worked on transcription of his papers, and in her later years she edited many of her own diaries and letters. In the course of this work, she requested the return of original letters from some of her longtime correspondents.

Gregory's health and independence declined in her eighties. Her strong belief in euthanasia was well known to her friends, and after making careful preparations for death, she took an overdose of barbiturates on August 27, 1967, at the age of eighty-three. Recognizing the value of Gregory's autobiographical writings, Rosemary Manning, who served as her literary executor, continued to solicit letters from correspondents. Until her death in 1988, Manning intermittently investigated prospects for publishing extracts from Gregory's papers. The Cry of a Gull, edited by Michael Adam from diary transcripts prepared by Gregory, was published in 1973.

Works by Alyse Gregory: She Shall Have Music . novel. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1926). King Log and Lady Lea . novel. (London: Constable, 1929). Hester Craddock . novel. (London: Longmans, Green, 1931). Wheels on Gravel . collection of essays. (London: John Lane, 1938). The Day is Gone . autobiography. (New York: Dutton, 1948).

Biographical Sources: Byington, H. M. The sum of perishable things : an Ahnentafels : the ancestors of Homer Morrison Byington III (Foster, R.I. : H.M. Byington, 2010). Graves, Richard Perceval. The Brothers Powys (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983). Gregory, Alyse. The Cry of a Gull: Journals, 1923-1948, with a preface by Evelyn Hardy (Somerset: The Ark Press, 1973). Gregory, Alyse. The Day is Gone (New York: Dutton, 1948). Hopkins, Kenneth. The Powys Brothers (London: Phoenix House, 1967). Powys, Llewelyn. So Wild a Thing: Letters to Gamel Woolsey, edited as a narrative by Malcolm Elwin (Somerset: The Ark Press, 1973). Powys, Llewelyn. The Verdict of Bridlegoose (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1926). Sims, George. "Alyse Gregory (Mrs. Llewelyn Powys)," Antiquarian Book Monthly Review (November, 1987).

Llewelyn Powys was one of eleven children of Mary Cowper Powys (1840-1914) and Charles Powys (1843-1923), vicar of Montacute, Somerset. Several of Llewelyn's siblings were writers, most notably including novelists John Cowper Powys and Theodore Francis Powys. The following list includes all of the Powys siblings and many of their spouses and children represented in the Alyse Gregory Papers.

John Cowper ("Jack") (1872-1963), author ------married Margaret Alice Lyon (d. 1947) ------son Littleton Alfred (1902-1953) ------companion Phyllis Playter (d. 1982)

Littleton Charles ("Tom") (1874-1955), schoolmaster ------married Mabel (d. 1942) ------married Elizabeth Myers, author (1912-1947)

Theodore Francis (1875-1953), author ------married Violet Dodds (d. 1966) ------son Charles ("Dicky") (1906-1931) ------son Francis (b. 1909) ------------married Sally ("Minnie") ------daughter Theodora Gay ("Susan") (b. 1932)

Gertrude Mary (1877-1952), painter

Eleanor ("Nelly") (1879-1893)

Albert Reginald ("Bertie") (1882-1936), architect ------married Dorothy ------daughter Isobel Powys Marks ------married Faith Oliver

Marian ("May") (1882-1972), lacemaker ------son Peter Grey (b. 1922) ------------married Tyler

Llewelyn ("Lulu") (1884-1939), author ------married Alyse Gregory (1884-1967)

Philippa ("Katie") (1886-1962), author

William ("Willie") (1888-1978), rancher in Kenya ------married Elizabeth ------son Gilfrid ------son Charles

Lucy (b. 1890) ------married Hounsell Penny ------daughter Mary (d. 1980), author ------------married Gerard Casey