Country Scenes

 Walking in Monsal Dale (one of the glorious dales of Derbyshire) on a sunny day a couple of weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see large numbers of undoubtedly brown-skinned people walking the trails, frolicking in the water, and clearly having a high old time. At Monsal Head there was a group of decidedly Salafist appearance – heavily bearded man in grey jellabiya with a bevy of covered women – and even they were giving every appearance of enjoying the view, like everyone else. This is surely a good thing, people from other cultures and backgrounds tasting the traditional pleasures of English life. Ah yes, but do these people not know that the countryside is 'overwhelmingly white' and that hostility, cold shoulders and covert racism await any brown-skinned person who braves a country outing? Have they not read the latest report from the University of Leicester's Centre for Hate Studies (yes, there is such a thing)? It would seem not – but then these reports are not intended to be read by such 'minoritised communities' but to wring the withers of bien-pensant liberals. A funny old world. 

Diana

A melancholy anniversary today – that of the death, in 1997, of Diana, Princess of Wales. I remember lying in bed that night, dozing and following the barely believable story as it unfolded on the BBC World Service. It was clear from the start that the BBC had got their response wrong and had hugely underestimated the impact of this death on so many 'ordinary people'. Travelling in to work that morning, hours after the death had been confirmed, I could tell that something very big and strange was already under way – spontaneous, unrestrained public mourning on a scale we hadn't seen in our lifetimes. People were already making their way to Kensington Palace with sheaves of flowers, at the beginning of what was to become an ever more febrile, ever more extravagant round-the-clock display of grief, one result of which was a mountain of festering flowers, many of them rotting away in their cellophane sheaths. But that was all to come. When I arrived at work that morning – yes, at the Daily Mail – the shock and grief were palpable, and there were ashen faces (something you rarely see in real life) all around. Diana had been 'one of theirs' and they (unlike the BBC) knew just how big this death was, how hard it was going to hit, and what an extraordinary outpouring of grief it was going to provoke. 
   Diana, alas, has no fitting memorial – and her posthumous fate reflects a general decline to somewhere near rock bottom in the art of memorialising the dead. When the popular Queen Mary II, who shared the throne with William III, died, her death was marked by Purcell's sublimely beautiful funeral music. Diana's musical memorial was Elton John's mawkish update of 'Candle in the Wind' – 'Goodbye England's Rose'. When, in 1817, the much loved Princess Charlotte died, shortly after giving birth to a stillborn son, the nation was plunged into Diana-scale grief, and that feeling found artistic form in a grand, heaven-aspiring monument by M.C Wyatt – 

Diana's best memorial is probably the much derided water feature in Kensington Gardens – at least it has some life, unlike her sculptural memorial. When this was eventually unveiled, 24 years after her death, it turned out to be an absolute horror. Who is this creepy transvestite social worker rounding up waifs and strays? Diana? What? Really?!

Perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised. An age that routinely denies death, sweeps it away out of sight, and increasingly rejects even the very idea of a funeral is not going to be much good at producing memorials, especially as the art of figurative sculpture is also in decline. Just another sign of a culture that has lost its bearings and is withering on the vine.   
   
  

An Arty Jaunt

 I'm back from a two-day, two-gallery London jaunt, taking in two lunches, visits to Tate Britain and the National Gallery and, between them, an overnight stay with an old friend. At Tate Britain (still 'the Tate' to me) there are two concurrent exhibitions: one devoted to Edward Burra, which I was keen to see, and one to Ithell Colquhoun, which my friend wanted to see. I dutifully trailed around the latter, finding little to enjoy in the works of an artist who pursued every modish dead end available – notably surrealism and occultism – with results that are rarely very interesting or attractive. She seem to have had some talent for composition and a good colour sense, but that is hardly enough to carry a full-scale retrospective. Burra, on the other hand, had more than enough going on to sustain a big retrospective – the first in forty-odd years. There was plenty to enjoy here,  especially in his lively jazzy scenes of Paris and Harlem low life, and the pleasure only flagged when his darker, more monumental work from the war years (Spanish and World) took over. For me, the best of this exhibition, by far, came towards the end, with Burra's wonderful watercolour landscapes from the 1970s, towards the end of his life. I've written before about Burra and these extraordinary late watercolours, which I only learned about from Christopher Neve's classic Unquiet Landscape.  Among those on display at the Tate are Valley and River, Northumberland –

Near Whitby – 

And Landscape, Dartmoor – 

As Neve says, these paintings really have to be seen in the original, and I was delighted to have the opportunity.
   The next day's visit to the National Gallery, with an even older friend, was a joy. Seeing more of the great rehang only confirmed my initial impression that this has been extraordinarily effective in bringing a great collection alive, and making a great gallery even greater. I'll be back. 

'When summer's end is nighing'

 Another warm and sunny day today – on a Bank Holiday, for a wonder – but there is no mistaking the end of summer feeling in the air. It's been a (mostly) glorious season, and, for a butterfly lover, one that has gone on giving and giving. I thought that Clouded Yellow in Worthing was going to be the last surprise of my butterfly year – but no, this morning, wandering in one of my Lichfield haunts, I was delighted to spot a late (second brood) Brown Argus, a lovely little butterfly that I thought I'd missed, not having seen one in the spring. What a summer it has been... There is a certain melancholy about its ending, but at least it has been a proper summer with proper summer weather – and the beauties of autumn are still to come. 
    The element of melancholy was inevitably very much to the fore when A.E. Housman turned his mind to the end of summer in this beautiful poem. Its five-line stanzas lend it a different energy from the more usual quatrains – and (spoiler alert) the last line is a killer. 

XXXIX (from Last Poems)

When summer's end is nighing
  And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
  And all the feats I vowed
  When I was young and proud.

The weathercock at sunset
  Would lose the slanted ray,
And I would climb the beacon
  That looked to Wales away
  And saw the last of day.

From hill and cloud and heaven
  The hues of evening died;
Night welled through lane and hollow
  And hushed the countryside,
  But I had youth and pride.

And I with earth and nightfall
  In converse high would stand,
Late, till the west was ashen
  And darkness hard at hand,
  And the eye lost the land.

The year might age, and cloudy
  The lessening day might close,
But air of other summers
  Breathed from beyond the snows,
  And I had hope of those.

They came and were and are not
  And come no more anew;
And all the years and seasons
  That ever can ensue
  Must now be worse and few.

So here's an end of roaming
  On eves when autumn nighs:
The ear too fondly listens
  For summer's parting sighs,
  And then the heart replies.

'A perfect association of splendour and intimacy'

 I've been staying the weekend with my Derbyshire cousin, and on Friday we crossed the border back into Staffordshire to check out a building I'd been meaning to visit for some while – the Church of the Holy Angels at Hoar Cross. I knew of its reputation as one of the great Victorian churches of England, the masterpiece of its architect G.F. Bodley – but the impact of the building, especially the interior, was still stunning (my photograph does it no justice). Built on an almost cathedral-like scale and in Bodley's favourite medieval style, Decorated, this tall cruciform church with an almost too massive central tower, has a powerful presence, and it is obvious even from the exterior that no expense has been spared. Inside, that impression is only strengthened, especially towards the liturgical East end (actually South, ensuring a blaze of noonday light through the great East window). The nave is relatively plain, and the whole building is quite dark, having virtually no clear glass – but a coin in the slot (shades of Venice!) bathes it all in light. Everything in this richly detailed church is of the highest quality, and as you wander round you notice more and more, and marvel more and more at the skill and verve of those who made it. It is a deeply satisfying aesthetic experience, and Hoar Cross is certainly one of the finest, most memorable Victorian churches I have ever seen. 
   The Church of the Holy Angels is set in a small village, amid gentle rolling countryside, and a little way from the church is Hoar Cross Hall (now a hotel, with a health spa attached), which was the home of the lady who commissioned Bodley and his partner Garner to build the church – the Hon. Emily Charlotte Meynell Ingram, who intended it to be a memorial to her late husband (whose fine medieval-style monument stands in the chantry). No budget was set for the work, and no effort or expense was spared in achieving exactly what Mrs Meynell Ingram and her architects intended. The church was commissioned in 1871, and building continued until 1876, with further additions being made at the West End after Bodley's work was done. It is no wonder that Bodley wrote afterwards (somewhat ungrammatically) 'Oh that one had more opportunities as was granted at Hoar Cross'. I'll leave the last word to John Betjeman, who wrote of Hoar Cross: 'The stalwart pink sandstone tower dominates the leafy hilltop. The tall nave, choir and transepts, so chaste and regular outside, make the stately interior all the more imposing because of its rich contrast with the exterior. It is ... a perfect association of splendour and intimacy architecturally expressed. This is because the green, blue and gold stained glass, the carved oak benches and screens, paved floors and sandstone walls blend into a perfect church interior of late Victorian vigour and hope.' 

Aimez-Vous Brahms?

This question was the title of a 1959 novel by Françoise Sagan – but don't worry, I haven't become a late-life Sagan fan.
There was a time, in the latter part of the 19th century, when, in an early outbreak of identitarianism, the musical world divided into lovers of Brahms, and therefore of the established Romantic tradition, or  lovers of Wagner, and therefore of 'new music' and new musical directions. So how you answered the question mattered. For myself, I've had problems with both men, but recently I have definitely been coming round to Brahms, mostly by way of his chamber music, but also with a new appreciation of his symphonies – a CD of the great Carlos Kleiber conducting the Fourth opened my eyes. And then I discovered, to my surprise, that Glenn Gould was fascinated by Brahms's late intermezzos, and rated his own recording of them among his best: 'It's the sexiest interpretation of Brahms's intermezzi you've ever heard – and I really think it's perhaps the best piano playing I have done.'
   In his (best) collection, The Cost of Seriousness, Peter Porter has a short, enigmatic poem titled 'A Brahms Intermezzo' –

                         The heart is a minor artist
                         hiding behind a beard.
                         In middle age
                         the bloodstream becomes a hammock
                         slowing down for silence – 
                         till then, this lullaby,
                         arpeggiated thunder
                         and the streams running
                         through Arcadia. I, too,
                         says the black-browed creature,
                         am in this vale of sweetness,
                         my notes are added to eternity. 

I wonder if this beautiful, melancholy piece was the intermezzo Porter had in mind?

A Joyful Rehang

 Yesterday I was in London, having a long lunch with an old friend. Before lunch, having a little time to kill, I retreated from the London hubbub into St Martin's In The Fields – surely the least numinous church in England, more like a Georgian assembly room, but at least it's quiet and peaceful. After lunch, having a little more time to kill before my train back, I went to have a look at the rehung National Gallery and, well... suffice to say, I staggered out half an hour or so later dazed with aesthetic bliss – this rehang is wonderful! It's a radical rehang too, affecting virtually every room, and bringing large numbers of paintings out of storage and into the galleries. Although the gallery as a whole can still be clearly read as a chronological history of western art, paintings from different periods have been placed together to brilliant effect, and, best of all, the great masterpieces have been given the space to work their unique magic, rather than being embedded in the 'context' of a time-bound narrative. My brief visit wasn't nearly long enough, but I spent the whole of it reeling from space to space in a kind of ecstasy – the great gallery has never looked better, or delivered more sheer delight. This rehang has been given the title The Wonder Of Art, but it might better be called (but for some unfortunate associations) The Joy Of Art. 'It must give pleasure,' Wallace Stevens wrote of his 'Supreme Fiction'. The rehung National Gallery does, and it gives it abundantly.