The Bröntes did similar. Lots of budding authors, though they may not have known they were budding then, seemed to have made up lands in their youth, often with the help of siblings, cousins or companions, for it takes at least two to make-up and people an entire town or village. I can't say I ever did that with mine, but we made furniture camps and put on plays and built castles of sand and of air, and got scared at stories our elders told of trolls and pirates.
Alone, I convinced myself I had a imaginary friend called Katy, who was really just an excuse to talk to myself as this I already did. Even I struggled to believe in her and gave her up pretty quickly. I think I must have read somewhere it was something girls did or I was copying a child in a book whose friend couldn't be seen and yet accompanied her everywhere. My Katy was abandoned as most imaginary children eventually are, as I found animating toys that much easier. And frankly the dog made a better psychoanalyst.
That's the trouble with imagination: it takes you off the beaten track. The track you thought you were going down is easily diverted from and not always returned to, or not, at least, without some difficulty. I did not I assure you plan to build or keep you, the reader, in suspense as I'm sure you've been asking the question and want it answered: Who is this artist?
Albrecht Dürer is his name, was his name. And he was in my opinion a great artist, not only for the engravings Isherwood and Chalmers were greatly excited by, but for his studies of just about anything else: the proportions of the human body, studies of heads, portraits of his father who, to my mind, has a look of Thomas Cromwell, and couples like The Cook and his Wife that might have come out of The Canterbury Tales, along with a few fowl and some beasts. I particularly like The Young Hare and The Little Owl. You can view over 800 of his artworks on WikiArt, but, for some reason whenever I visit I'm drawn to his self-portraits. I say 'some reason' but I know the reason very well. I see a likeness. To myself.
How narcissistic of me! Yes! And to one in particular, of him at twenty-eight. Though I think I bore a resemblance more when I was that age myself; now the resemblance is fainter. I've never owned a moustache and beard, and his eyebrows were at twenty-eight much better than my own, but growing a beard wouldn't have been out of the realms of possibility, though if I did so now the hairs would be a wiry white gold and not a rich copper brown. Just as Dürer has faded from people's minds, I, too, am beginning to fade.
And so, if I want to recall how I looked at twenty-eight (and for some time into my thirties) I will call up this image, because I'd rather see myself in him than see a photograph of myself. Very few beyond a certain age exist of me anyway, and of those that I like there are even less.
Dürer was attractive as a man. Perhaps I was then, too? I've never really considered it. I wouldn't have seen it if I was, nor made the most of it. Perhaps twenty-eight is a golden age? Though I certainly don't remember it having a golden tone; maybe just in looks alone...definitely in maturity. I think I was more mature then than I am now, in every way. I'm fading and regressing. And according to my mother also resembling more when the hair's not up and is instead in tendrils around my face a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. This I can't explain, she could, but I refuse to allow her a voice on this ridiculous matter. So it could be that vanity also prompted me to write of Dürer, because I'd rather my mother when she thinks of me thinks of this famous artist.
Picture credit: Self portrait at the age of twenty-eight, 1500, Albrecht Dürer (source:WikiArt).
For Mortmere, see Lions and Shadows, Christopher Isherwood.
Written February 2020.
