Jacob Flanders, A Potted History II

Jacob at the British Museum, in a compartment, sandwiched between Miss Marchmont and Fraser – a seeker and an atheist – transcribing a passage from Marlowe. At closing time, he returns his books; observes Miss Marchmont wave and mutter to the Elgin Marbles; and joins the line – in the hall – to receive his walking-stick. It's raining.
Jacob sitting at his table with his pipe, his book, reading a dialogue of Plato's. It draws to an end, stowed in Jacob's mind.
Or, Jacob in a room, above a mews, somewhere near the river, between two and three in the morning, watching fifty excited people; then striding home exhilarated to let himself in with his latch-key at his own door; and so bring into his empty room ten or eleven people he had not known before. So to bed.
A new day. Jacob engaged upon a chess problem, the board on a stool between his knees: which to move from their square – the white queen, the white knight, perhaps the bishop?
And now Jacob is in Leicester Square, being casually introduced by Nick Bramham the painter to Fanny Elmer his model. Very awkward was Jacob; said little but the little he said – Fanny thought – was firm. She fell in love.
Here Jacob goes abroad – to Paris. Where in the company of two painter men and a Miss Carslake from Devonshire he has scraps of conversation concerning art, or London's pigeons; and joins them on an outing to Versailles. His letters to Mrs. Flanders, near Scarborough, England, told none of this. Paris, a very gay time.
Now to Italy, a train journey, seen through Jacob's eyes: striped tulips growing; a motor car packed with Italian soldiers; trees laced together with vines – as Virgil described. Here a station, women in high yellow boots and pale boys in ringed socks. There sharp-winged hawks, flying, circling, diving over roofs. Peaks covered with sharp trees; white villages crowded on ledges; a whole hillside ruled with olive trees and red-frilled villas. A scenic landscape; all seen from a damnably hot carriage with the afternoon sun beating full upon it.
In Greece, Jacob got lost in back streets; read advertisements of corsets; and wondered why he wasn't in Rome. Jacob was a picture of boredom, of gloom. He wrote to his mother; to Bonamy; told Betty Flanders nothing she wanted to know, and made Bonamy sigh as he laid aside the thin sheets of notepaper.
On the way to Olympia Jacob sees Greek peasant women among the vines, old Greek men sipping sweet wine; sharp bare hills and between them blue sea. Out of England, on one's own.
An English boy on tour, leaving his hotel at five (in the morning) to climb the mountain; breakfasting early to look at statues; walking up Greek hills at midday. A young man in a grey check suit invited by other hotel guests – the Williamses (Evan, Sandra) – to “come to Corinth, Flanders!” Jacob accepted and went; to be surprised by Mrs. Williams' direct manner and dress: she wore breeches under her short skirts.
The Williamses had been to Athens, Jacob went all the same. It struck him as both suburban and immortal; continental and rustic. The yellow columns of the Parthenon – all silent composure – could be seen at all hours. More statues, more landmarks, pestered by native guides. At sunset – the sky pink feathered – the ships in the Piraeus fire their guns; women and children troop back to homes. Jacob morose; he seldom thought of Plato or Socrates; but was drawn to the architecture; although more consumed with his love for Sandra Wentworth Williams.
He climbed Pentelicus; he went up the Acropolis; he sat overlooking Marathon thinking about politics; he watched French ladies below opening and shutting their umbrellas – rain or fine weather? Damn these women! They spoil everything, Jacob thought.

Picture credit: Poppy, P R Francis

See Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf. 

Written February 2022.

Jacob Flanders, A Potted History I

Once more drawn into Jacob's net, Virginia's web. Scarborough. Widowed Betty Flanders and fatherless Archer, Jacob, Little John, whom Captain Barfoot visits every Wednesday; his wife Ellen, in her bath-chair, left in the care of Mr. Dickens.
Then Cambridge 1906, Jacob aged nineteen, in King's College Chapel, winking at Timmy Durrant; lunching with George Plumer, Professor of Physics, avoiding his cold grey eyes.
Lights later burning in three rooms: Greek, Science, Philosophy. Behind walls young men reading, smoking, sprawling in chairs – legs hooked over chair-arms – or over tables, writing.
Jacob astride a chair, eating dates and laughing. Jacob at the window, smoking his pipe, as the last stroke of the clock sounds: Good Night.
So to the sea – Jacob and Timmy – where the Scilly Isles, like mountain-tops – are sighted; where Shakespeare, knocked overboard, went under.
The mainland then, smelling of violets. White cottages and smoke. To dinner at the Durrants – the bell had dinned: Cutlets! And afterwards deaf old Mr. Clutterbuck, on the terrace, had recited to Miss Eliot, the names of the constellations; she shifted the telescope: “Andromeda.” Mrs. Durrant, bored by stars, in the drawing room, wound a ball of wool.
And so to London – always a man there trying to sell a tortoise to a tailor. There's Jacob! Getting off an omnibus, pausing before he enters St Paul's; reading his essay aloud to a young man with a Wellington nose; throwing rejection letters into a black wooden box – his name in white paint – and shutting the lid.
Jacob awkward, yet distinguished-looking. Jacob at twenty-two, filling his pipe, sipping his whisky.
Jacob holding frightfully unhappy Florinda upon his knee; her face hid in his waistcoat.
Jacob again with Timmy Durrant talking, then shouting, unintelligible Greek at dawn. Again with Florinda listening to her prattle; walking the streets with her on his arm.
But here again is Mrs. Durrant, thinking she is too severe. And her daughter Clara. Miss Eliot too. A party – the piano in tune. So much to look at, so many people talking: Timothy Durrant to Jacob, then Elsbeth Siddons sings. Clapping. Mr. Clutterbuck there; Mr. Carter plays Bach. A musical evening.
Morning, Jacob slams his door, buys his paper, makes his way to the office: a desk, a telephone...signs letters all day. Another in a pale blue envelope waits at home, lays on the hall table, addressed to Jacob Alan Flanders. From Scarborough, his mother's hand.
But Florinda's visit first. A little creak, a sudden stir. Then Jacob reappears in his dressing gown; Florinda arranges her hair as Jacob opens his letter and reads.
Florinda seen that same night with another man. Jacob stood, under an arc lamp, motionless; its light drenched him from head to toe. Cut to Jacob alone in his room.
Cut to Jacob dining with the Countess of Rocksbier, a rude old lady, tearing at the chicken – with Jacob's permission – with her own hands. Cut to Jacob galloping over the fields of Essex, losing the hunt, finding them at the Inn.
Cut to Jacob arguing with Bonamy – the young man with the Wellington nose – as unreliably reported by Mrs. Papworth: she heard words, all long words – book learnt she thought – in a loud overbearing tone; stamp stamp stamp. Mr. Sanders, no Flanders she meant had broken the coffee pot, smashed it was on the hearthrug.
A calmer scene: Jacob 25, the youngest in the room, handing the wrong plates at tea. Miss Perry, a spinster of 66, clasping the kettle holder to her breast: “Home every afternoon – except Thursdays.”
A curious one: Laurette and Jacob, side by side, in two large green plush chairs. An intelligent girl, a respectable room, a reasonable conversation; Madame saw him out.

Picture credit: Poppy, P R Francis

See Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf. 

Written February 2022.

Memory Lane

Reading the first of Leo Tolstoy's trilogy Childhood has led me once again down my own memory lane.
It started with games: rowing on a summer lawn, with oars, in an inflatable dingy; making with chairs, cushions and blankets, outside or in, tents, even a car, with a circular tea tray as a steering wheel; playing schools on the wooden staircase – one stair a seat, another a desk; building on the school playing fields a plan of a house – rooms, doors, windows – in mown grass and pretending to be grown-ups, like those on Eastenders, with fake cigarettes hanging from lips which gave out talcum powder smoke.
The praying of the Holy Fool Grisha brought to the fore my holiday attendance of Latin Mass, with its repetitious kneel, sit, stand to the united utterance of the congregation; as well as that of my own bedside prayers, kneeling on a sheepskin rug in what used to be my uncle's room in a house near the sea.
And the selfless love of Natalya Savishna made me think of Nan, my mother's mother, the inventor of games, the teacher of imagination.
His sketch Parting the hardest to read for here I relived too all that I felt in such instances: the goodbye hugs, two figures standing on the drive waving, or one with a handkerchief window-framed, the lump pressing 'so hard in my throat' as we pull, then speed away, turn the corner, gone.

Picture credit: A lane near Arles, 1881, Vincent van Gogh.

See Childhood, Boyhood, Youth by Leo Tolstoy (Penguin Classics 2012, translated by Judson Rosengrant). 

Written February 2022

War-loom

From eye to ear, to Heaney, to his translation of Beowulf. To historical similarities, to modern pictures of warfare. To conquest and colony; to behaviour admired is the path to power among people everywhere, until behaviour despised leads to a fall. To politics being played as the Russians massing on the borders (of Ukraine) threaten to attack, and there's no united effort to rally the defence. The watchman sees no-one new approaching; the few British soldiers already there flourished at him on arrival training and equipment, not direct involvement. There is no hero, no Beowulf to take on Putin.
Is the Lord weaving on his war-loom peace and safety for the Ukrainians? (Man failed the Afghans.) But perhaps people do not think Putin has the will, though he has the might, to invade? Dialogue, they say, by which they mean giving in, will take the threat away. They forget Hitler. And Stalin. And Mussolini. They forget all the wars, the fights of old. They don't know their kings and queens, their presidents and prime ministers, their political and revolutionary leaders, their military commanders etcetera. It is all propaganda: truth and lies; fear and diplomacy. Russia claim they are not a threat – so why have they massed force there?; Ukraine say they are not threatened – because if war is declared who will help them fight it? Both state the media is portraying – to its NATO-joined peoples – an exaggerated story.
If the Lord, like the people, has no appetite for war, and worries more about the economy, he may yet weave on his war-loom the price for freedom: Putin will move his borders.
Endure your troubles Ukraine; bear up. Prodded, cornered, beaten; caught in a brutal grip – an iron fist, crushed. Elected rule toppled, the Wolf elated.
A too liberal hand weaves the outcome of non-combat; applies, too easily, the poetry, the spirit of Beowulf to the situation.

Picture credit: Lydia at the tapestry loom, 1881, Mary Cassatt (source: WikiArt).

See Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney.

 Written January 2022.

Fry

Roger Fry refuses to be pigeon-holed as do I. Roger Fry is not a man of the world, just as I am not a woman of it. Roger Fry holds something in reserve, detaches momentarily from conversation; again I see the similarity in myself. The impulse to be more forthcoming is checked; the mind wanders someplace else.
But Roger Fry, unlike myself, has a reputation – as lecturer, as art critic – to live up to. His Word, sometimes dictatorial, often ridiculed, was read, was listened to, and whilst it divided rather than united opinion in 1910 it was firm in the conviction that Post-Impressionism was, would be, a thing. And so it proved, for attitudes shifted, though the growth was perhaps more gradual than Roger Fry anticipated. The pictures stayed the same, the public changed, although too late for some of the artists concerned. But still, the appreciation we now feel runs deep.
Roger Fry was indeed the Father of British modern painting.

Picture credit: Roger Fry, self-portrait, 1928 (source: WikiArt)

See Roger Fry by Virginia Woolf. For a more contemporary, up-to-date perspective read Frances Spalding. 

Written January 2022.