A friend (thanks Kay) reminds me of Joni Mitchell's lyrics on Both Sides, Now (love that comma) and just what a great song it is. The lyrics on their own may raise Simon Armitage's hackles about whether they constitute poetry, but the song as a whole is definitely poetic. Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Kate Bush and Nick Cave all have their own anthologies, and Joni has hers too.
Curiously, in this Patch of Sky, Both Sides, Now offers a neat trigger for a post where many different topics and themes meet, flip and interconnect.
Dreams
This week's post is a little late as I was away over the weekend seeing my daughter and her family in Preston, Lancashire. We drove out to the Trough of Bowland for a pony ride. It’s a wonderful stretch of country that I have always loved since I was first introduced to it when a student at Lancaster University. The fine days over the last weekend, with trees luminescent green and a calmness in the sunlit landscape, were identical to the weather I enjoyed 50 years ago in 1974, when I broke my ankle down a rabbit hole while flying a kite. My eyes were so focussed on its patch of sky that I never saw the danger on the ground. (I’ve been sucked down rabbit holes ever since, as the following illustrates.)
I had a part-time job for my last two years at university, working as a child-care assistant at a dark Victorian pile called Crookhey Hall School, at Cockerham in Lancashire. It was a Liverpool Education Authority residential school for what were then called (!!) 'Educationally Sub-normal Children' (!!) This was a catch all for a group of Liverpudlian boys aged between 4 and 15 who ranged from born naturalists who had played truant too often hunting birds nests or field mice, to expert car thieves; from youngsters with autism and learning difficulties, to teens with mental health problems. With such a diverse group, the staff, both teachers and care workers, did an amazing job. Mine was simply to be around two or three evenings a week to make sure they got to bed and settled down. And didn't abscond. Most of the boys thought they were imprisoned at Stalag Luft III and felt it their moral duty to escape. Some did, only to be brought back to the school by the local plods, who found them wet and cold, sheltering on the moss.
Schemes
I was reminded of the school (in a stark contrast - both sides, now) when I read last week that a painting by Leonora Carrington has been sold for a record price of $28.5 million. That dark Victorian pile, Crookhey Hall, was the house where Leonora Carrington grew up.
The painting which Sotheby's sold for the record price was Les Distractions de Dagobert, painted by Carrington in 1945. As a lyrical, non-narrative painting, an episodic patchwork, I think the picture fits in with the ideas about non-narrative discussed by Galen Strawson. Like a life, you can read a narrative into it, but the choice of that narrative will be arbitrary.
Although Carrington painted Les Distractions de Dagobert soon after moving to Mexico City, for me it, and much of her other work, is full of echoes of Lancashire legends, beings and motifs, boggarts and will o' the wisps, ghosts and shape-shifters, fairies and witches. 'It’s a chaotic yet beautiful painting, bursting with imagery on every inch of the canvas,' writes Aimee Ferrier.
In a curious flip (both sides, now) I see that the NYRB edition of Carrington's Down Below, has an introduction by my dissertation supervisor at Birkbeck, Marina Warner, who also wrote the introduction to the earlier version The House of Fear: Notes from Down Below. I could well imagine that Crookhey Hall with its echoing corridors and dark tower could be a house of fear. The image on the cover depicts the hall.
The book project I'm working on is a creative non-fiction project developed from my MA dissertation. It’s about Rowena Cade, the woman who built The Minack Theatre at Porthcurno in Cornwall, and her family.
Currently I'm exploring Rowena's work at a 'remount' stables during the First World War, retraining horses for work on the Western front, the famed war horses of Michael Morpurgo's book and the stage and film adaptations.
And circus crowds…
There's a picture of Rowena sitting on the steps of a horse-drawn caravan. It set me thinking as a close friend of Rowena's, Ruth Manning-Sanders lived in a horse-drawn caravan with her husband and they spent some time travelling with the Rosaire Touring Circus1. Ruth was a prolific writer and in later life wrote about her life with the circus as well as numerous books on English folk tales and mythology, wonderfully illustrated by Robin Jaques, brother of actress Hattie Jacques.
The interesting thing is that Ruth called Rowena Dofferty. Only her closest and oldest friends were allowed to call her Dofferty. It’s an endearing diminutive of Dorothy, which was Rowena's first name, although one she didn't like.2
Another friend, the composer, Inglis Gundry remembers 'sitting quietly in the theatre with Miss Cade next to me and an elderly lady beyond who kept on calling her "Dofferty". It was obvious that "Dofferty" was a childish version of "Dorothy" and that this lady, whom I was never to meet again, was an old family friend, but when I ventured to call Miss Cade "Dofferty" I was firmly rebuked and told that her name was "Rowena".'
As every fairy tale comes real?
Given that I’m very much involved in imagining Rowena’s work with horses and the character and spirit of the horses themselves, another refraction (rabbit hole) is that according to Elisa Wouk Almino, Leonora Carrington ‘absorbed stories about animals that had telepathic powers, especially the horse, which in both her art and writing appears as her sort of alter-ego — such as in her famous self-portrait from 1937–38, where she portrays herself with mane-like hair, beside a rocking horse, while a real horse runs in the distance.’
And working on my project about a Dorothy (Rowena Cade), I was delighted to note that The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington is published by The Dorothy Project.
Wishing you clear skies and sunshine, till next time. For now, here’s a draft poem about a horse…
Life's illusions The horse’s beauty is a solid thing, vast, outward, the rosin of his greasy flank his memory on my heel. Does he remember me? I wish he did but I am just a wash of being burdened, the scented hand lazy on the flat, soft nose, the weight forgotten in the downward curve head to water, feed. He lifts his shaggy feet and does not watch. His pointed ears telegraph a complex code of nervousness and obstinacy, to put up with me, with us, as long as it takes his dream of wildness to birth.
Descendants of the Rosaire family, the Rosaire sisters were featured in an article in SRQ Magazine in 2022
'I like to be called Rowena, because when I was at school and the teacher called out Dorothy, nearly everybody in the class got up.'
John- Thanks for sharing this, especially the way you tied different topics, including clouds, into a singular thought. Hope you're well this week. Cheers, -Thalia
Loved Jacques (with or without the c) when I was a kid. Robin for figures and Norman for landscape. I have one story book with illustrations by both of them. I did not know Robin was Hattie's brother although Norman seems to be no relation.