Epistolatory Fiction

As a teenager, I was given Jean Webster’s delightful romance Daddy Long Legs and its sequel, Dear Enemy. It was my first encounter with a novel written entirely as a series of letters and it is a format I have liked ever since. 

The first epistolatory novel, which I don’t suggest anybody try and read, was Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1745). It was the runaway three-volume bestseller of its day, but much too ponderous for the modern reader, even though its soap-opera plot will not be unfamiliar.

Pamela is of interest to me only because the NGV holds four of the twelve illustrations that Joseph Highmore did in 1762 for the second edition of the novel. They are very elegant engravings, depicting the costume of the time in great detail. Have a look at them next time you visit the NGV – they hang right near Highmore’s self-portrait.

We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver consists of letters from Eva, Kevin’s mother, to her husband Franklin. The reason they have to talk about Kevin is that he is in prison, having just shot and killed a number of classmates and teachers at his high school, a scenario that evokes the Columbine killings. This is a chilling novel that grips the reader’s attention right until the startling end.

Ladies of Letters by Carole Hayman gives us the entertaining correspondence between Irene and Vera: they are fiercely competitive and we learn all about their long-suffering families as they strive to outdo each other with their recipes, grandchildren and small-town dramas.

D.E. Stevenson’s four books about Mrs Tim of the Regiment are real Golden Oldies. Set during World War II, they consist of the long letters Hester writes to her husband Tim while he is off fighting the war. Large and small events in the life of her family and the other Regimental wives give a fascinating insight into life on the Home front in the war years.

I'll Be Seeing You by Suzanne Hayes is

another WW2 story, but this time through American eyes. It is 1943 when Rita Vincenzo and Glory Whitehall start to correspond. They seem to have nothing in common except that both of their desperately missed husbands are fighting in a war half a world away from home. Rita is a professor's wife, middle-aged and sensible, Glory a rich, young and impulsive society butterfly. Their developing friendship and how their unwavering support of each other changes their lives, makes this a fascinating book.

WW2 is a rich vein to mine for epistolatory fiction – Joyce Dennys’ Henrietta’s War and its sequel are both charming and funny. Henrietta is a village doctor’s wife and writes regularly to her childhood friend Robert, who is Somewhere in France. As she chronicles the dramas and squabbles of village life, we meet a captivating set of characters and learn how they coped with wartime conditions.

The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer consists of letters written soon after WW2 by different members of the eponymous literary society. They are addressed to Juliet Ashton, a London writer, and gradually an intriguing tale unfolds of life under the recent German occupation of Guernsey, seen through the eyes of Juliet’s various correspondents.

Another Golden Oldie well worth re-reading

is 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff: the letters she wrote over twenty years to Frank Doel, chief buyer of Marks & Co, antiquarian booksellers in London. The book is interesting not only for the insight it gives into wartime conditions in New York and London, but also for the variety of books that Helene orders from the bookshop, and her potted reviews of the ones she read and enjoyed. I was introduced to many enjoyable books through Helene!

Reaching even further into the past than

WW2, I have discovered a delightful epistolatory novel (complete with sequel) by Jane Dawkins. In Letters From Pemberley, Ms Dawkins gives us a glimpse into the married life of Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy, picking up the story where Jane Austen ended it. Elizabeth writes to her favourite sister Jane, now happily married to Mr Bingley and settled down at Netherfield Park. Jane Austen fans will devour these slim volumes at a sitting and wanting more, like Oliver!

Finally, a very slim volume indeed, but one that always makes me laugh out loud during the whole ten minutes it takes to read: The Twelve Days of Christmas by John Julius Norwich, marvellously illustrated by Quentin Blake.  It consists of twelve thank-you letters written by a young woman to her fiancé who is sending her a series of romantic Christmas gifts. From the first enthusiastic thank you for the “charming, romantic little partridge in the lovely pear tree”, to the final solicitor’s letter threatening an injuction if the full percussion section of the London Philharmonic Orchestra is not removed from his client’s lawn forthwith, these letters are hilarious in their escalating indignation.

 

Marcus Curtius Saves The Day

“Marcus Curtius” 

Benjamin Robert HAYDON
oil on canvas , 76.5 x 63.5 cm
NGV, purchased 1897

 The modern tourist in Rome will hardly notice a small paved basin in the Forum, next to a modest marble plaque showing a fully-accoutred Roman soldier on horseback. This is all that remains of the mighty chasm that, according to legend, opened on that spot in 360BC, three centuries before all the unpleasantness with the Christians and their new god.

This yawning pit was down to the old gods, who announced, (no doubt through an oracle or spokespriest), their requirement for closing it again: Rome’s most precious possession should be thrown in. The good citizens of Rome panicked, especially those who actually had precious posessions.

 

The Lacus Curtius in the Roman Forum today

Luckily, before any official requisitioning of gold or jewels could take place, Marcus Curtius claimed his fifteen minutes of fame, neatly anticipating  Andy Warhol’s famous pronouncement by two millennia. Announcing that nothing was more precious than a brave Roman, Curtius leaped into the chasm, together with his unfortunate horse, who had no say in the matter but doesn’t look best pleased.

Plaque at the Lacus Curtius

Hero or bloody idiot, take your pick, but either way, the chasm closed as promised. The wealthy citizens of Rome heaved a sigh of relief, named the lake, which appeared on the spot, Lacus Curtius, and resumed business as usual.  Over the centuries, the Forum was drained and paved, leaving only the small basin, which is still called the Lacus Curtius.

The Leap of Marcus Curtius by Veronese

The spectacular feat of Marcus Curtius has been the subject of many pictures, including this circular one by Veronese. It was also a favourite subject depicted on plates and bowls. Indeed, one such very attractive majolica dish, purchased through the Felton Bequest in 1940, can be seen in the NGV’s collection of decorative arts.

Majolica dish in the NGV collection

In 1842 Haydon began a huge painting of Marcus Curtius, over three metres in height, which is now at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter. The painting was indifferently received. Haydon made several smaller copies, which sold to friends. The one in the NGV is one such version. It was bought by Haydon’s patron Richard Twentyman, who, shortly after purchasing it, emigrated to Australia. It was then bought by Robert Allan and sold at auction to the NGV in 1897.

Benjamin Robert Haydon

The painter, Benjamin Robert Haydon, is a bit of a sad case. He yearned to paint grand historical pictures, but he was not successful at selling them. He was determined to force his idea of Heroic Art on a public that had moved on from that style of painting. They must be forced, scolded and lectured to admire it. He was too arrogant to adapt himself to the trend of public taste.

Benjamin Robert Haydon

Haydon was inclined to give the heroes in his pictures his own features, and Curtius is one such self-portrait. When the picture was first exhibited in 1843, it was poorly reviewed and even ridiculed by some. Haydon was indignant. He wrote in his journal: “I had a grey mare, which I kept leaping for two hours, – I sketched as he descended in the leap ...two men held up his legs & corn was put on the ground … I sketched his neck during the eating. After all this careful thought, comes a boyish critic with his black ribbon round his neck, ... and abuses the picture accordingly.”

He was always in financial strife, and on more than one occasion found himself in debtor’s prison. He was reluctantly forced to paint portraits to make ends meet. He was full of scorn and loathing for portraiture, feeling it was unworthy of him and his high ideals.

Marcus Curtius by Eustache de Sueur

He was extremely tactless, if not downright rude, in his dealings with patrons, which did not help his cause at all.  The Royal Academy did not give his work the accolades he thought it deserved. He did himself no favours by his vitriolic criticism of this august body, when a judicious bit of sucking up might have garnered his work a more sympathetic reception.

He was bitterly disillusioned when his proposed murals for the new Houses of Parliament were rejected in 1843. However, he tried to rise above the disappointment.  He would hold an exhibition of the rejected works, together with a few of his huge historical canvases. His masterpieces  would be seen and acclaimed by an appreciative public. He hired a room in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, in which to exhibit them.

General Tom Thumb

Meanwhile, General Tom Thumb, the three-foot tall celebrity midget and circus performer, was holding public “levéés” in another room of the Egyptian Hall. While large numbers of spectators crowded in to see this spectacle, very few looked in on Haydon’s exhibition.

The painter’s vanity was severely wounded. He wrote bitterly in his diary:  "21 April. Tom Thumb had 12,000 people last week. B. R. Haydon 133½ (the ½ a little girl). Exquisite taste of the English people!" To make matters worse, he attracted ridicule by abusing the public in the national press, contrasting his own superior merits with the vulgar crudeness of the people at large. (He would have called them a bunch of bogans had he known the word.)

The burden of his debts and his mortified vanity finally drove him to suicide.  Sadly, he got that wrong as well: after a botched attempt at shooting himself, he had to finish the job by cutting his throat. 

Marcus Curtius by Simon de Vos

 

The World of L.S. Lowry

Caroline went to Salford: this is what she saw there.

L.S.Lowry: Self-portrait

Think of Manchester, and you think of football, and factories. In fact, there is a thriving arts and cultural scene in Manchester, and echoing a global trend in docklands redevelopment there has been the recent construction of a major arts and entertainment complex in Salford Quays.

The complex, located in an area long considered one of the bleakest in Manchester, has been named the Lowry Centre, after one of Salford’s favourite sons, the artist Laurence Stephen (LS) Lowry. As well as theatres, concert halls and restaurants, the Lowry Centre Art Gallery is home to an excellent collection of local and contemporary art including a comprehensive permanent collection of paintings by LS Lowry.

To be honest, I hadn’t heard of Lowry until moving to Manchester, where he is very well known as one of their most famous local artists. My friend Gordon had been a fan of his work for some time, and when he came up north to visit me, he insisted we take a trip to the Lowry Gallery.

 

“Matchstick men!” Gordon kept singing from the back of the minicab all the way to Salford Quays, “...and matchstick cats and dogs!”  – this had been a hit song by the duo Brian Burke and Michael Colman, commemorating the style of LS Lowry after his death in the late 1970s.

Life in Salford: football and factories 

Lowry was born in 1887 and was a prolific painter of life in Salford all his adult life.  Lowry’s interest in the urban and industrial landscape captured something quite unique. His signature “matchstick men” (marching to work in the factory, or gathered at the football ground) are indeed simplistic but in their sheer numbers make up a crowd heaving with life and movement.

One of his most famous paintings, Going to The Match, sold for 1.9 million pounds.

Going To The Match

What I found quite amazing was the way in which Lowry’s paintings of crowds or busy streets appear to give you a distance and vantage point that Lowry could never have had except for in his imagination.

Lowry’s father had emigrated from Ireland, and as a young man, Lowry worked as a clerk with a firm of accountants while attending the Municipal College of Art. He lived with his parents, and was to continue doing so for nearly forty years until the death of his mother.

 

Despite painting in Manchester almost exclusively, Lowry was a much celebrated British artist during his lifetime and received numerous honours (including election to the Royal Academy) for his contribution to recording of life in the industrial northwest of England. 

Lowry’s work is incredibly evocative of working class life in the industrial northwest, and the Lowry Centre Gallery strives to show this, with big windows all through the complex that look out onto chimneystacks and grey brick buildings that inevitably mirror an equally grey sky. All around you is Lowryland.

Although best known for Salford scenes of life and labour under dreary skies, I was also impressed by Lowry’s portraiture. He painted his subjects with a warmth that is obvious. There are many portraits that feature the recognisable face of a certain woman. As Lowry was never married, her identity is something of mystery – some suggest she was his mother (there have also been suggestions of an Oedipal obsession). Others suggest she was Carol-Ann Lowry, a girl who had written to him, excited when she found out she shared a name with a famous artist. They remained friends for years, and when Lowry died, he left his estate to her.

 

One of the paintings I liked the most was one called “The Bedroom”, painted at the his parents’ house where Lowry lived almost all his life, and for much of that with his bed ridden mother. The painting reminds me so much of that famous painting of Van Gogh’s bedroom in Arles. The surroundings are simple, functional, sufficient – the unadorned surroundings of a man who lived alone after his mother’s death and dedicated himself to his art.

In retrospect, the work of LS Lowry is a record of the end of the industrial revolution in Britain, as well as a record of the living spirit of Manchester: factories, and football and a rich cultural life.

The Lowry Centre is well worth a visit, and you can read more about it as well as more about the life of LS Lowry here http://www.thelowry.com/  

 

Miss Charlotte, In the Bathroom, With a Knife.

Charlotte Corday




The Death of Marat: Jean Louis David

I am a bit of a Jean Louis David fan, so I was excited to read that two of his greatest works would be on display at the NGV during the Napoleon exhibition: Napoleon Crossing the Alps and The Death of Marat. The life-size Napoleon on his white charger was everything I expected, but I was sadly disappointed to discover that The Death Of Marat was a copy, and quite a small one at that. The real McCoy is six feet by four and lives in the Fine Arts Museum in Brussels.

It is a powerful painting, with a high emotional impact, as David indeed intended it to be. David might be the first political spin doctor - he certainly pulled off a tour de force of manipulating public opinion with this one. Here's how he came to paint it:

The French Revolution was in full swing: guillotine operators doing double shifts, Madame Defarge busily knitting culottes for the Sans-Culottes, the Scarlet Pimpernel flat out smuggling aristos to safety, Marie Antoinette promoting her Cake Diet.

In the legislative assembly, the deputies belonged to different political parties, just as they do in our very own Parliament today. On the one hand you had your extreme radical, off-with-their-heads republicans, known as the Jacobins.  And in the opposite corner, the Girondists: a more moderate faction who, while still backing the Republic, tried to apply the brakes to the frenzy and wholesale slaughter of the Reign of Terror.

Jean-Paul Marat, a deputy to the Convention and a firebrand journalist, was one of the most radical voices of the Jacobins and directly responsible for the denunciation and execution of many people, prominent Girondists among them.

Twenty-five-year-old Charlotte Corday, member of a minor aristocratic family and ardent Girondist sympathiser, decided that if Marat were not there to incite the mobs to more violence, the Girondist policy of moderation might prevail. It seemed like a good idea to travel to Paris and save her country by killing Marat.  She could see the headlines already: "Brave Damsel Slays Wicked Tyrant - Saves France!"

Like Baldrick in Blackadder, Charlotte devised a Cunning Plan. She would approach Marat in the guise of an admirer who wanted to give him a list of Girondist plotters, fodder for the guillotine. Stopping only to pack a spare set of undies and the cook's best filleting knife, she set off for Paris.

Marat was not at the Chamber of Deputies, where she went first. He was working from home (so that's not a new concept, either!) so that he could immerse himself in a bath of medicinal herbs to soothe the nasty, itchy, suppurating skin disease that covered his body from scalp to toes. Not a pretty sight, and smelly to boot. He had tied a grubby wet rag round his head and was using a plank across the bath as a desk.

Charlotte's plan worked - after being turned away once, she was allowed in to see him on her second try. She told her story, handed over her list of names, and as he took it, she whipped  out the knife and stabbed him in the heart. She made no attempt to flee, but waited to be arrested. All part of the plan: she would be seen as the lovely young martyr, sacrificing herself to rid France of the tyrant.

It all backfired big-time. 150 years before Goebbels even invented the word propaganda, the Jacobins pulled off the biggest propaganda event of the Revolution. It was Marat, not Charlotte, who was the martyr, he who received a hero's funeral while she was ignominiously guillotined four days later. 

She was jeered all the way to the scaffold.  Her thick chestnut curls were roughly cut off close to her head because the only thing capable of slowing the guillotine blade was human hair. As her head fell into the basket, a young assistant (I imagine an overexcited teenager doing work experience) grabbed it by the hair, brandished it to the crowd and slapped both cheeks. This was considered going a bit too far: he was reprimanded and dismissed. Charlotte Corday's remains were unceremoniously tossed into an open, pestilent, public grave, among those of the other guillotine victims.

Marat was buried in the Pantheon

Jean-Paul Marat, hero/martyr, was buried at the Pantheon, after his coffin was paraded through streets lined by weeping citizens, throwing flowers. (Sadly, Elton John would not be born for two centuries.)

The very day after the murder, David, himself a friend of Marat and a committed Jacobin,  was commissioned by the Convention to paint Marat's portrait. He accepted with enthusiasm, and set about the creation of this idealised image.

The Death of Marat: Jean Louis David

Due to the unsightly skin disease and rapid decomposition, there was no question of painting the actual scene. He painted Marat dying: eyelids drooping, his head leaning on his shoulder, his right arm hanging down. This instant between the last breath and death had an immense impact at the time, and is still effective today.

Marat's flawless body is that of a young, healthy man. The knife is not where Charlotte left it, gruesomely sticking out of his chest, but lying next to the bath. The grubby rag has been transformed into a pristine turban.

The picture is dramatic and poignant; the viewer feels compassion and outrage. David deliberately referenced classic religious art, depicting Marat as a secular martyr. The bloody gash echoes Christ's stigmata and the hanging arm and inclined head has often been compared to Michelangelo's Pieta.

Indeed, the whole pose resonates with the many depictions of Christ's Descent from the Cross: Rembrandt, Rubens, Van der Weyden … Marat recalls them all. David uses Caravaggio's "cinematic" lighting for dramatic effect: spotlight on the body against a dark background.

Winston Churchill was an admirer of Charlotte Corday and kept a reproduction of her portrait on his wall. He said it was a great help when dealing with Charles de Gaulle: he could point out what happened to arrogant Frenchmen who did not mend their ways.

 

Séraphine de Senlis

Perhaps Séraphine Louis' parents had a premonition when they named her after the first rank of angels in the Heavenly Choir, the Seraphim. The paintings of this remarkable artist were inspired by an almost medieval religious passion that wavered between between ecstasy and psychosis.

Her extraordinary and tragic life is movingly portrayed in the film Séraphine, which won seven Césars, (the French version of Oscar) in 2009, including Best Film, and Best Actress for Yolande Moreau who played Séraphine . It is available on DVD at your local library: see it!

Orphaned as a toddler, Séraphine  was brought up by her older sister Victorine, who did domestic work and field labour on a farm. She was a solitary child and preferred walking alone in the woods to playing with the other girls. She was fascinated by nature's beauty and spent a lot of time studying the plants, bird life and insects in the woods and fields.

At 13, Séraphine  started full-time domestic work. She worked for 20 years at the convent of the Sisters of Charity in Clermont, becoming more and more enraptured by the colours of the stained glass, the smell of wax and incense, the singing and the praying. She believed she saw an angel, commanding her in the name of the Virgin to paint pictures for the Glory of God.

She left the convent to work as a char in the village of Senlis. The townsfolk regaded her as the Village Eccentric: talking to herself, muttering prayers and fossicking about in the fields for the plants and natural substances which she mixed with Ripolin housepaint for her artwork. Her mystic "secret recipe" contained earth, moss, blood, holy oil, and who knew what else: she would never disclose what went into it or what prayers and incantations were involved.

At the end of her arduous day of drudge work, she would paint by candelight in her garret: minutely detailed compositions of fruit, plants and flowers, in glowing colours reminiscent of the illuminations  by medieval monks. From time to time she would give a painting to one of her employers, and this is how her work was discovered in 1912 by the German art collector, critic and dealer Wilhelm Uhde.

Uhde, who had rented a weekend apartment in Senlis for a bit of respite from the rat race in Paris, saw an exquisite small picture of apples in the dining room at a neighbour's house, and was amazed when told that his own charwoman had painted it.

Uhde helped Séraphine  with advice and money, and she was able to start using larger canvases instead of the small wooden boards she had been scrounging. His support had barely begun to expand her horizons, when the outbreak of WW1 in 1918 forced him to return to Germany, leaving Séraphine  rudderless.

She survived the war in wretched poverty. Her eccentricities became worse, nobody would employ her and she was reduced to begging, helped a bit by selling the occasional painting. Her mental deterioration was reflected in her work, tentacles and eyes sprouting from the fruit and flowers.

In 1927 Uhde, now back in France, saw three of her paintings in a local art exhibition in Senlis. He described them in his diary: "three large canvasses of startling power: a bouquet of lilacs in a black vase, a cherry tree, two laden vinestocks, of black grapes and white."

Uhde bought all of them and sent them to Paris, where she was recognised as the naïve painter of the day and her work much sought after. For the first time in her life she had money to spend on canvases, stretchers, paints and varnishes. Tragically, her paranoia became worse, she barricaded herself into her home and painted frantically.

In 1930, when the art market collapsed in the wake of the Great Depression. Uhde withdrew his support and Séraphine, unable to sell anything, descended once again into abject poverty. Tragically, her mystical visions and voices became an unbearable cacophony and her mental health deteriorated to a point where she had  to be committed to the Clermont Lunatic Asylum where she died, ravaged by breast cancer. 

There is no monument to this tragic and talented woman: Séraphine  de Senlis is buried in a common grave.