illustration & frontispiece by the author, 1923, 19.5 x 12.5 cm
Orthodox Jews, Christians and Mohammedans learn that the universe is a book written by God in which people are good or bad characters. Books taught me that repulsive things and ideas could be made manageable in stories and pictures, though for years I could not re-read Alice Through the Looking Glass without trying not to see the picture of the Jabberwock. Its buck teeth, antennae, feathery claws and three-button waistcoat seemed as horrid as an engraving in Pouchet’s The Universe of a caterpillar being eaten from inside by ichneumon grubs.
The Scene of Our History is Laid Upon A Little Planet; The Medieval World, Hendrick Wilhelm van Loon, 1946, 21 x 13.5 cm
The Scene of Our History is Laid Upon A Little Planet; The Medieval World, Hendrick Wilhelm van Loon, 1946, 21 x 13.5 cm
The Scene of Our History is Laid Upon A Little Planet; A Tower of Babel; Hendrick Wilhelm van Loon, 1946, 21 x 13.5 cm
The Scene of Our History is Laid Upon A Little Planet; Nineveh , Hendrick Wilhelm van Loon, 1946, 21 x 13.5 cm
How Japan Was Made; The Pacific, from The Home of Mankind , Hendrick Wilhelm van Loon, 1949, 21 x 13.5 cm
How Japan Was Made; The Atlantic; from The Home of Mankind , Hendrick Wilhelm van Loon, 1949, 21 x 13.5 cm
How Japan Was Made; The Pacific, from The Home of Mankind , Hendrick Wilhelm van Loon, 1949, 21 x 13.5 cm
Rupert the Bear, circa 1930, Alfred Bestall, 21 x 13.5 cm
Rupert the Bear, circa 1930, Alfred Bestall, 21 x 13.5 cm
I enjoyed escapist fantasies well into my teens, when Dad’s Collected Plays of Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells’ early science fantasies prepared me for more adult reading. Dad subscribed to a book club, The Readers’ Union, so every month a volume arrived by post that I never foresaw or expected but eventually read – Orwell’s 1984, Denton Welsh’s A Voice Through a Cloud, Bowen’s The Death of the Heart, The Best of Hemingway, The Best of James Joyce, Waley’s translations of Classical Chinese poems and that comic epic, Monkey. But the most potent influence was The Horse’s Mouth by Joyce Carey. He drew this frontispiece for the Penguin paperback edition – it was not in the first copy I read in the late 1940s. It is shown below because the novel’s atmosphere is in this pub interior – in the sardonic resignation of the hero among his mockers – in the full-bodied barmaid almost lazily lifting a bottle to strike one of them down – and in the moon reflected in the Thames beyond the window.
The Horse’s Mouth , Joyce Cary, author’s frontispiece, 1944, 18 x 11 cm
Set in 1938 it describes the last weeks in the life of an old artist who cares for nothing much but the great painting he tries to make while pennilessly surviving by sponging on friends or robbing a former mistress. Years earlier he had been a successful painter of oil colours, but discovering the work of William Blake moved him to paint big murals of a kind Blake regretted never being commissioned to paint. Gulley Jimson cannot get commissions either since the only folk with faith in his art are a cobbler and postman who think it right to respect outcast intellectuals, and an ugly stammering boy who wants to be an artist. This very funny, high-spirited story persuaded me that making a fine work of art for people who did not want it was the greatest thing I could do. The Horse’s Mouth quoted so much of Blake’s exciting verse that I found in Riddrie Public Library a book containing Songs of Innocence and Experience and the minor prophetic books. In a cheap Everyman edition I found his illustrated Gates of Paradise. In the great Mitchell Public Library by Charing Cross (mostly built with money Andrew Carnegie donated circa 1900) I found facsimiles of his hand-coloured books, with the illustrations and commentary on the Book of Job.
The Gates of Paradise, William Blake, three emblems, 1793, 17 x 10 cm
WHAT IS MAN? The Sun’s Light when he unfolds it Depends on the Organ that beholds it.
At length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell
AGED IGNORANCE Perceptive Organs closed, their Objects close
These were huge boosts to mature free thinking. Blake’s verses and drawings do not amount to a system because he thinks all big systems are political or religious traps used by the rich and powerful to manage others – for their own good of course! Blake’s pictures and writing deal with good and beautiful things while condemning governments and churches that promote mere obedience as a virtue, while using warfare, poverty and hunger to compel those who disagree. Blake, like Robert Burns, never doubted what babies and the wisest people know: what naturally feels good and bad is good and bad, before suppression of these natural feelings perverts them.
The Gates of Paradise , William Blake, four emblems, 1793, 17 x 10 cm
WATER Thou Waterest him with Tears
EARTH He struggles into Life
AIR On Cloudy Doubts & Reasoning Cares
FIRE That ends in endless Strife
I was well aware of my own perversity. Like many children I was obsessed with torture fantasies. American comics (being sold for the first time in Britain) showed a lot of these
