Huw Puw Caru

The Caru Foundation exists solely to protect and make available the written works of Huw Puw Caru. It does not seek to promote these works; the readers are capable of doing that themselves and will provide a more objective opinion of them. Neither is it a charity; Caru would have abhorred the idea of his works needing any charitable assistance. Currently Caru’s output is not  widely known. Apart from the Foundation’s own archives, which hold his  original transcripts and notes, you may find his books in private collections, occasionally in specialist bookshops, and ‘below the counter’ at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. If you wish  to inspect the latter you will require written permission from The Caru Foundation and be prepared to wear those white gloves. Please note that a manuscript purporting to be Caru’s autobiography purchased at a car boot sale at Abersoch in 2007 was proved to be an elaborate fake.

Periodically one or more of Caru’s works will appear here for those interested enough, and for them to enjoy or hate or any shade in-between as they  see fit. The works will appear in any of their final forms; some works were edited down by Caru himself, but both the long and short versions are equally valid. There will be little discussion or explanation of the works; only where further explanation is required on the background to the stories. This, the Foundation believes, detracts from the stories themselves. What motivated the author to write a story should remain a  personal opinion of the reader, and thus each reader can have their own  images associated with each story, though some background information will be provided and some footnotes within the story are included when  deemed pertinent. However the Foundation does reserve the right to make comments on opinions, speculations, and interpretations published  elsewhere, where factual information is misrepresented. For this the  Foundation will refer to Caru’s original notes and drafts.

Huw Puw Caru (1873-1967) was a reclusive and idiosyncratic author whose short  stories are generally accepted in the Weird Tales genre of fiction. He himself preferred them to not be classified. Most of his writings were never published in his lifetime, but many more have now been collected  and pieced together from his meticulously dated and annotated records. Some are hand written and some were typed. It is the work of the  Foundation to accurately compile these and release the definitive and therefore final drafts of the stories.

Caru himself declared that novels are “too wordy”, and if a story was entertaining enough it could be condensed into what is generally  considered to be a short story. Despite this, there are some quite longer stories in existence, but whether Caru intended them to be as  long as they are, or whether he intended to reduce the word count at a  redrafting is unknown. His notes were not always that complete or up to  date. However the Foundation believes that absence of any indications of reductions of the text points to these being much longer works of  fiction than was usual for the author. The Foundation may, in the future, make these available. Caru, it should be noted, could say one  thing and do the opposite, and it is significant that he wrote these in his later years when he seldom left his home, and devoted more time to the actual writing.

Caru lived his life in Wales, firstly as a child and young man just north of Merthyr Tydfil. He did not talk much about this part of his life. He may have wished to keep it private or may not have had a particularly happy childhood. It was later, when he moved into the Mid Wales village of [Redacted] that he began to write, using firstly his observations in the local  area and then further a field as inspiration for the starting points of  his stories. The actual village where he lived will not be revealed here. The Foundation does not expect hordes of visitors there, but does respect the villager’s right to privacy and the author’s wish that the  stories themselves tell the tale. In a reversal of the norm, Huw Puw Caru was his real name, but he lived his real life under a pseudonym; a feat not possible today, but then without multitudinous state databases  holding every personal detail it was possible.

Was
Caru influenced by other authors? Certainly most readers of his work will have detected some influences, but the author himself never admitted to  any, and the few visitors to home commented that though he owned a small library, all the books appeared to be text books and reference materials. There was an absence of fiction on his shelves. He was interviewed by a young journalist working for a literary review magazine in 1936, who had already infuriated Caru by demonstrating that he had not done much back ground work. The journalist suggested that perhaps  Caru had adopted his name using the initials H.P. in deference to  Lovecraft. The journalist was lucky to leave the village with a black eye, a few other bruises, and samples of soil from Caru’s garden on his  clothing. You, the reader, can make you own deductions as to the reasons for Caru’s reaction. The journalist tried to press for charges of assault, but this came to nothing. Caru’s life was punctuated with  brushes and close brushes with the law. In 1947 he was arrested when he caused a ruckus in a nearby Elisha Chapel, when he overturned the pews and ranted against the congregation calling them “non-******s”; a  reference to the sect’s proscription of any sexual activity before or after marriage, which goes a long way to explaining why numbers in the church were falling. He was bound over to keep the peace for 12 months  and prohibited from entering any Elisha Chapels. Caru responded by banning any sect member from his property with a large sign in his garden.



Caru often involved some themes in his writings. In his middle age he liked  to write young children’s tales, and some of these are within one of his first publications. However they are not the modern style of fairy story. There would be no happy-ever-after ending. Likewise they were not the moral stories of other authors. Like his adult material they are  open to the reader’s, or more correctly the listener’s, interpretations. You can read more about them and the collector’s stamps they spawned here. He was fascinated by prime numbers. Indeed one pamphlet in his library  was said to list every prime number between 1 and 1 million. He would weave these numbers into stories, with an absence of non-primes, but whether there was any significance in the choice of prime numbers used is often debated.

He was also fascinated by wild plants and their value to man. His well tended garden was quite a mixture of plants that he had collected on his walks. There were various herbs, both culinary and medicinal. There were others that were associated with white witchcraft and the darker arts.  And he grew what many consider to be weeds, but are in fact quite edible and some of which are the wild ancestors of today’s vegetables. He cultivated potatoes, but only the wild form as grown by the Incas; irregular in size, form and colour. Caru, in his later years, could go for an afternoon’s  walk with a basket on his arm most days of the year, and return with an  amazing variety of wild foods picked from the field, hedgerows and  woodlands. Some said he had the recipe for the elixir of life, whilst others contested that his longevity and good health was the result of his dabblings in darker forces. He could be found collecting fruit and other plant material  which he used to make his own wine, spirits and herbal liqueurs. It was  well known that he had a still hidden somewhere in the woods, something  else which he and the law disagreed about.

His death, or rather his disappearance, will always be controversial. His body has never been found, but it is widely accepted that he must have died soon after his last sighting, leaving a public house in Llanrheadr-ym-Mochnant on 17th July 1967. Though miraculously fit for his age, both mentally and physically, few doubt he lived on after this. Conspiracy theorists continue to explore their own pet theories, claiming to have gleaned information from his writings. The Foundation urges you to give these little credence in the absence of any other physical evidence. Perhaps one day the truth will emerge.

Contact details

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