PATCHWORK ON THE SILK ROAD 

Up-Cycling in the Ninth Century 

    In case we thought that making do and mending – currently more trendily known as ‘re-purposing’ or ‘up-cycling’ – was a relatively recent idea, some surviving ancient textiles prove  that it is a concept which has been around for many centuries, although the motivations for it have been, and are, many and various. A silk valance* dating from the C9th/C10th, an example of a Buddhist devotional object, is a case in point. It was found in 1907 by the Hungarian-British explorer and archaeologist, Sir Marc Aurel Stein, in a previously sealed cave, designated Cave 17, connected to the now famous complex known as the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas in Dunhuang, Western China. The carving of Buddhist shrines out of solid rock began in India and was transmitted to China along the Silk Roads. Those at Dunhuang were carved from sandstone cliffs between the fourth and the fourteenth centuries and even by the C7th there were over a thousand caves, lavishly decorated with paintings and sculptures, and attracting thousands of devotees and other travellers. 

Stein found three valances in Cave 17, two of which are in New Delhi, but the most complete of the three is in the Collection of the British Museum (Object MAS.855), where I was able to examine it. There are many examples of textiles salvaged from sites along the trading routes which have come to be known collectively as The Silk Road, but this one has special relevance to the history of patchwork. It demonstrates that the technique of piecing together scraps of fabric is long-established and exemplifies one of the many motivations for the use of that technique – in this case devotional. Valances feature in many of the paintings in the caves, illustrating the ways in which they were used. The size of this one, 281.5cms long and 42cms deep, suggests that it could have had several uses, for example as a hanging in front of an altar or a Buddha statue. It could also have served as part of a canopy, which was a religious object often used to shelter a statue of Buddha or carried as a banner symbolising the victory of Buddha’s teachings.

The valance incorporates sixteen types of silk, three different embroideries and one type of printed silk. Stitches used include satin stitch, split stitch and running stitch. The upper section is a 6” wide border pieced from ten patches, with eight suspension loops either of plain weave or of samite, which is a rich silk fabric interwoven with gold and silver threads. The lower section comprises streamers of damask, twill damask, samite and both printed and embroidered silk of different shapes, all of which are sandwiched between triangular double-sided tabs attached to the lower edge of the border, with tassels attached to the bottom of each tab. 

Some of the streamers are looped and knotted, some are roughly patched together and some also have tassels hanging from them. Surprisingly, close examination reveals that some streamers which look like carefully patterned patchwork are in fact constructed by overlapping rectangles, also double-sided, with mitred ends, secured together with small running stitches down the middle. To twenty-first century eyes they look convincingly like mens’ striped ties. Although shabby and faded today, one can imagine how bright and colourful the valance must have looked when it was made, over 1200 years ago.

As well as the valances, the caves contained other examples of silk patchwork in various states of preservation. Patchwork has historically had an important role in Buddhist practice, stimulated by the Buddha’s precept against waste. As a result, to piece together patches of valuable silk was seen as an act of serious piety. Silk fabrics were given as votive offerings by affluent visitors to the shrines, some perhaps spontaneously torn from their own clothing.

The way in which this valance, and many other artefacts from Dunhuang, ended up in western museum collections is in itself a fascinating story.  Stein was but one of many western explorers and archaeologists who, from the end of the nineteenth century, heard rumours of manuscripts and artefacts being offered for sale in local markets in Western China and set out to acquire whatever treasures they could find. Their activities eventually led the Chinese authorities to clamp down on ‘foreign devils’ simply loading their finds onto camels and horses and transporting them back to the West. But that clamping down didn’t happen until the 1930s, by which time many thousands of items had been acquired by museums both in the UK and in many other countries. Of course, the collection and acquisition of historic artefacts has been the subject of controversy for many years, the Elgin Mables being the most famous example. But it can be argued that the acquisition of such artefacts, including those from Dunhuang, was justified since it ensured their survival and facilitated the scholarly attention they have since received. 

Aside from their significance to contemporary patchworkers, the silk patchworks found at Dunhuang are a valuable contribution to the broader research into the subject of textiles on The Silk Road.. They provide unique insight into the probable uses and religious significance of found objects, as well as proving that certain construction and needlework techniques have been used over many centuries. Study of the fabrics yields information about types of silk, their geographical origins and manufacturing techniques. 

 In 1994 the British Library established the International Dunhuang Project, a collaborative effort to conserve, catalogue and digitize manuscripts, printed texts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from the caves at Dunhuang and various other archaeological sites from the eastern end of The Silk Road.

Further reading and information

Aurel Stein on the Silk Road by Susan Whitfield, The British Museum Press, London, 2004

Foreign Devils on the Silk Road  by Peter Hopkirk, John Murray, London, 1980

The International Dunhuang Project Online: http://idp.bl.uk

Thanks to Dr Luk Yu-ping, Basil Gray Curator: Chinese Paintings, Prints and Central Asian Collection at the British Museum, for facilitating access to Object MAS.855.

© CME 2020

A War Lord's Patchwork Coat

The Coat (Furisode) of Uesugi Kenshin (1530 -1578)

In Japan, as in some other cultures, patchwork garments were given as gifts. In those cases, the garment would be made of the most expensive fabrics the donor could afford, since the gift was a mark of respect. A patchwork coat from around 1560 and illustrated in Japanese Quilts by Jill Liddell and Yuko Watanabe, for instance, is constructed from seventeen different kinds of rare Chinese brocades. The coat dates from the Muromachi Period (1338-1573), a time when, due to the financial burden of civil wars, domestic textile production diminished. As a result, fabrics such as silks and brocades had to be imported from China so were scarce and highly valued, and would have been available for consumption only by the wealthy. This particular coat was presented as a gift to the famous war lord, Usuegi Kenshin (1530 – 1578), who had vowed to become a Zen-Buddhist and devoted to the Buddhist God of War, Bishamonten. Thus, ‘The use of patchwork would seem to be in accordance with the aesthetics of Buddhist monks  but the gorgeousness [would be] appropriate for his status as one for the most important warlords of the time.’ 

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A Study in Turkey Red

A Study in Turkey Red

What links this Turkey Red quilt with Charles Dickens, West Cumbrian history and the history of the dyeing industry in Scotland?

 In 2010, I acquired four quilts from Mrs. Oxtoby, of Wigton, West Cumbria. Mrs. Oxtoby and her family have lived in Wigton for many generations and the quilts had belonged to her mother, Mrs. Smith, née Sharp, who had died earlier that year. The quilts were found in a trunk in the attic when Mrs Oxtoby was clearing her mother’s house to put it on the market. (Reassuring to know that, even in the 21^st century, there are still attics which have not been ransacked for items to sell on Ebay!)

 Although the quilts are in various states of wear and condition, I was delighted to be able to add such excellent examples of quilts with local provenance, displaying all the characteristics of quilts made in this region of the UK, to my collection.

  All four quilts are pieced entirely in cotton and contain cotton wadding. The hand-quilting is competent without being outstanding, and appears to be uniform over the four quilts. There are no labels or identifying marks on any of the quilts, but they are typical of those produced in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century.

 Even if local provenance hadn't been available, I would have felt confident in saying that they had been made locally, for two reasons: the four quilts are quilted in the particular pattern traditionally associated with the quilts of West Cumbria and found also in geographically associated regions, which is to say South-West Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man; the pattern is known as ‘All over Wave pattern’ and takes the form of a series of chevrons covering the entire surface. The second clue is in the use of a particular red fabric, known as Turkey red, in one of the quilts. This fabric is ubiquitous in quilts of our region for reasons connected to the dyeing industry in Scotland.

Mrs. Oxtoby was able to tell me that other members of the family remembered the quilts and believed that they had been made by two sisters, Sara and Mary Eliza McMechan, whose family had a close friendship with Mrs. Oxtoby’s mother’s family, the Sharps. It is believed that the quilts were given to the Sharp family as a gift.

The two sisters, neither of whom married, were the daughters of Thomas McMechan, the founder of the Wigton Advertiser.  He had premises in King Street, where he also ran the printing works. He rose to become one of Wigton’s leading citizens and, among other civic roles, had the distinction of leading the deputation which welcomed Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins on their visit to Wigton during their walking tour of Cumberland in 1857.

 After Thomas’s death in 1914, the Wigton Advertiser was published by his two daughters and, on their retirement, by the Wilson brothers, two long-term employees. It ran until 1941, when the Second World War brought paper shortages and severe restrictions on publishing.

 Evidence of the close friendship between the family of Mrs. Oxtoby’s mother, the Sharps, and the McMechans is in the Will of Mary Eliza McMechan, in which she bequeathed legacies to Mr. Henry Sharp and his two daughters, one of whom was Mrs. Oxtoby’s mother.

All over Wave quilting

 What, one might wonder, were Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins doing in Wigton? On 7th September 1857 they had embarked on a walking tour in the north of England. They left London for Carlisle by train, then travelled another 14 miles to the village of Hesketh Newmarket. Here they stayed at the Queen’s Head Inn, close to Carrock Fell. Despite the adverse weather, Dickens insisted on climbing the mountain; their compass broke and they became hopelessly lost in thick mist. Collins, a reluctant participant in this venture, badly sprained his ankle on the descent so they travelled to nearby Wigton, where he saw a doctor. We must assume that this was when they were met and greeted by the town dignitaries, including Thomas McMechan, the father of the quiltmaking daughters. Wilkie, presumably would have been limping badly!

 Their stay in Wigton was brief, because on 9^th September they travelled on to Allonby. Arriving there in time for lunch, they stopped for two nights at The Ship, described by Dickens as ‘a capital little homely inn looking out upon the sea – a clean, nice place in a rough wild country.’ The landlord was Benjamin Partridge whose ‘immensely fat’ wife was ‘very obliging and comfortable.’ The Ship Inn is still there and a wall-plaque commemorates the famous visit.

  So, there’s the Dickens link - tenuous, I admit! But what links this Turkey red and white quilt to the history of the dyeing industry in Scotland?

  Before the introduction of synthetic dyes, the colour red was mainly derived from the use of the dried roots of the madder plant: Rubia tinctorum. But until the C17th no method had been discovered in Europe whereby cotton fabrics could be dyed red which would be fast to light and water - in other words, they would not fade or bleed. So when vividly-coloured, painted and printed cotton textiles, which would withstand washing and sunlight, began to be imported by the East India Company, European producers were keen to learn the dyeing processes by which they were produced. The existing producers, mainly in parts of  the Turkish Empire like Greece and the Levant, hence the ‘Turkey red’ description, were understandably secretive about their processes, but in the 1740s determined efforts were made by Europeans to discover those secrets. Britain’s efforts to succeed in this C18th version of industrial espionage were a failure and it was a Frenchman who eventually found the method of creating the fabulous red dye. The method, it should be said, was complex and involved many stages, some of them noisome: soaking the fabric in ox blood and then in urine, for example!

  Pierre Jacques Papillon was first wooed by the Manchester textile producers but, for various reasons, he settled in Glasgow. Long before the advent of Turkey red there were major dyeing and bleaching works in and around Glasgow, many of which were moved out to the Vale of Leven because of its great resource of clean, unpolluted water. The industry grew to be the major source of employment and industrial output in that area, but the production of Turkey red fabric became the dominant industry, turning regional firms into multinationals, owners into millionaires and giving the Vale of Leven a world-wide reputation for production of superior Turkey red goods. Under the auspices of the United Turkey Red Co. Ltd. an alliance of three major companies formed during the 1890s, the production of Turkey red textiles continued there until the 1960s, when advances in dyeing technology and competition from Japan and India led to the decline and ultimate collapse of the textile industry in the Vale of Levens.

  So there’s the link: my Turkey red quilt reflects the fact that proximity to the centre of production of Turkey red fabric meant that it was easily available to fabric retailers in the North of England, hence the ubiquity of its use in quilts made in our region. Not, of course, that Turkey red quilts aren’t found in other parts of the country, but there are an awful lot of them up North!

 The history of Turkey red dyeing is long and complex and the above is a very brief, and far from scholarly, introduction to the subject. There's lots more information available on-line and it's the subject of several books and academic publications.

©CME 2017

THE POST OFFICE GIRL

On reading Stefan Zweig 

Stefan Zweig ( 1818-1942)

‘Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most popular writers in the world.’ (See (Wikipaedia)

 ‘It seems to me a duty to bear witness to our lifetime, which has been fraught with such dramatic events, for we have all .....witnessed these vast transformations – we have been forced to witness them.’ Foreword to his autobigraphy, The World of Yesterday. P.21

A prolific writer of biographies (e.g Marie Antoinette, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Dickens), novellas, short stories and plays, his only two actual novels are Beware of Pity, published in 1939 and The Post Office Girl, the manuscript of which was found among his papers after his suicide in 1942 but which was not published until forty years later, in 1982.

Zweig‘s original title, Rausch der Verwandlung, roughly translated, means The Intoxication of Transformation. It was given its English title, The Post Office Girl, when it was translated from the German by Joel Rotenberg, and in 2009 was shortlisted for The Best Translated Book Award, an American literary award that recognizes the previous year's best original translation into English. The award takes into consideration not only the quality of the translation but the entire package: the work of the original writer, translator, editor, and publisher. The award is "an opportunity to honour and celebrate the translators, editors, publishers, and other literary supporters who help make literature from other cultures available to American readers.”

The question arises: wasThe Post Office Girl completed? In an Afterword to the English translation, William Deresiewitcz says that Zweig ‘nibbled’ at the book for years and suggests that he may never have hammered the book into a shape which satisfied him. But, when I read it for the first time I was unaware of its pre-publication history and accepted the indeterminate ending as the only possible one the author could have offered: Christine and Ferdinand’s fate seems as unknowable as our own and I was content to leave it there.

The significance and interest of this novel, for me, lies in the way in which the narrative of the individual’s life and fate is set in the context of historical events in a way that brings those historical events to life. Of course, in this Zweig is by no means using an original idea: think Tolstoy, for example, or, nearer to our own time, Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate. But in the analysis of Christine’s personality and experiences (and it must be remembered that Zweig was a friend and follower of Freud) we get an insight into the ways in which political and social situation in which she finds herself limit and determine the direction of her life.

Despite his remarkable popularity as a writer during the 30s and 40s, Zweig does have (and did have) his detractors. For example, in a review of Zweigs’ Autobiography,The World of Yesterday, published in 2010 in The London Review of Books, Michael Hofmann was unequivocally disparaging about Zweig’s entire oeuvre, as, it must be noted, were many of his (Zweig’s) contemporaries. On the other hand, readers’ online comments are almost unanimously admiring and appreciative.

One of Hofmann’s criticisms with which I will concur is that Zweig does have a tendency to overwrite: for example,Ferdinand’s long polemic rants toward the end are unnecessarily protracted, with too much repetition of the points he has already made quite clearly enough.

For all that, I value this book for its psychological truth, and, of course, because it’s a compelling read. On second reading, it still gripped me and also inspired me to look more closely into the history of Austria before and after the First World War.The World of Yesterday gives yet more insight into the experiences and fate of Jewish families, like that of Zweig, who lived through those times.

I first came to Zweig through his other novel, Beware of Pity, a psychological masterpiece, in my view. The Post office Girl is another such.

© CME 2016

The Custom of the Country

The Custom of the Country

By  Edith Wharton

One couldn’t really describe Undine Spragg as a ‘heroine’.  But she is certainly the main protagonist of this book. The spoilt only child of a successful businessman and a compliant mother, Undine has grown up to expect her every whim to be satisfied.  The novel follows her attempts to rise above her roots.

What gives Undine distinction is her exceptional beauty, which she believes will enable her to leave behind her modest beginnings in backwater Apex and achieve the heights of New York society by making a favourable marriage.  To this end, her parents remove themselves and Undine to New York for her to begin what she sees as her inevitable progress, through marriage, to the heights of the sophisticated world of mid-Nineteenth century New York

 Everything we need to know about Undine’s family background and attitudes is neatly summarised by Wharton when Ralph Marvell, whom Undine eventually marries, asks her mother to explain how she came to be called ‘Undine’ He says: ‘It’s a wonderful find – how could you tell it would be such a fit?’ Undine’s mother replies easily, ‘’Why, we called her after a hair-waver father put on the market the week she was born.’ Ralph remaining struck and silent, she goes on to explain: It’s from Undoolay’, you know, the French for crimping.’

Modern American marriage customs and divorce in the upper eschelons of American society are the two main themes of the novel. The phrase: ‘the custom of the country’ is used early on in the narrative by Charles Bowen, a character who serves as a social analyst, and who observes that ‘it is the custom of the country’ for a man to slave away to pay for his wife's extravagances without ever telling her anything about the work he does. The consequence is that there is little if any shared life in many American marriages. The centre of the man's life, the world of business, remains a mystery to his wife. The centre of her life, a social world of opulent display, becomes an expensive drain on his resources when business is not going well. Undine early on gives her view of the purpose of American marriages when she observes that her friend Mabel Lipscomb will probably soon be getting a divorce since her husband has ‘been a disappointment to her.’

However, to me, ‘the custom of the country’ must also refer to Undine’s chronic, and ultimately disastrous, inability to understand any social world but the one she grew up in. Despite her meteoric rise through the social strata, her values remain basically Apex values.  Her attempts to ‘learn’ ways of sounding well-informed and intelligent are doomed. Marrying, first, into a family who, as well as their aristocratic connections, are educated and embrace all aspects of cultural life, Undine is out of her depths; worse than that, Ralph Marvell turns out to be a man whose creative bent is the main focus of his life. Being forced to take on uncongenial work to support Undine in the manner to which she is accustomed, he bravely soldiers on. When  eventually, she divorces him, leaving young Paul with his father, Ralph focuses all his affection on his son. Later, after divorce and re-marriage,  Undine decides that having the son she had previously rejected to live with her will create the best impression in her new, aristocratic family, which is the final humiliation for Ralph and he shoots himself.

In her marrying into the aristocratic de Chelles  family and becoming a Marquise, Undine believes that has finally achieved her highest ambition and reached the pinnacle of  French society. But she very soon discovers that the customs of that particular country are completely alien to her. Instead of the dazzling social life in Paris she anticipated, she is forced to live in her husband’s decaying chateau in the depths of the country and to join the other women of his family in quiet pursuits like housekeeping and needlework.

Undine’s story reminds me of the story of the Little Old Woman who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle: a kind fairy hears her sighing that she wished she could get out of her vinegar bottle and live in a nice cottage. The wish is granted. But the little old lady is never satisfied; from the cottage she moves into a house, then into a mansion, then into a palace. Finally she asks for a castle. The next day she wakes up and she’s back in her vinegar bottle! So Undine  gets her richly-deserved come-uppance, although in a rather unexpected way and one which shows Wharton deploying her well-developed sense of irony at its best. The only way in which she can enjoy the level of wealth she deems necessary to achieve recognition in ‘the best society’ is to re-marry the man whom she’d first known, married, then rejected, in her far-off youth in Apex. He has now become fabulously wealthy – but the social life Undine aspires to eludes the reach of the couple who are very slightly scorned as ‘nouveau riche.’ Her marriage is a hollow sham and she’s left with a deep sense of somehow having failed in life.

Something's Wrong by Sam Smith

Something’s Wrong

By Sam Smith

‘Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.’

 R.D. Laing

This book is written from the wealth of its author’s own experience as a worker in the UK’s mental health care system, although in the end we’re left wondering if ‘care’ is the right word. There is a polemical underpinning to the work, which is expressed forcefully in an Afterword to the narrative, in which the shortcomings and anomalies of the mental health care system are laid bare and a plea made for urgent reform.

The narrative takes the form of a transcription of tape recordings made by Robert, aged around 50 when he begins them. What the tapes contain is, of course, always and entirely his narrative, his thoughts, his perspective. The reader is drawn so tightly into Robert’s thoughtscape that at times one could almost feel worn down by it, and yearn for relief from its sheer intensity.

            Since being diagnosed, at nineteen, as a paranoid schizophrenic, Robert has been through all the labyrinthine highways and byways of ‘The System’, including at times being Sectioned as being a danger to himself and others, at others being given limited freedom under so-called ‘supervision.’ He has experienced every known treatment and therapy, from drugs to electrotherapy. He is, indeed, a walking encyclopaedia on everything ‘The System’ has to offer those diagnosed mentally ill.

When the narrative begins, Robert is living in a care facility where he is permitted a degree of freedom. As the recorded tapes show, he observes and understands everything around him, especially his fellow inmates and the ‘carers’ who are employed to supervise them. It becomes painfully clear that ‘caring’, in any meaningful sense of that word, is not mostly what happens; the inadequacies of an extensive cast of ‘carers ‘ is detailed, from the down-right callous to the well-meaning, but ineffectual, social worker.

From the beginning, Robert is telling himself that something is wrong but is unable to quite put his finger on what that is. In making his tape recordings, he is determinendly, and ultimately successfully, thinking his way back to some form of normality. What we gradually learn is that what is wrong is the whole system to which he has been subjected  and within which he has been ensnared. The regime of drugs and other therapies, far from ‘curing’ him, have served only to confirm the first diagnosis of the professionals: that he is mentally ill, suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. As the narrative proceeds we are invited to question and meditate on our own perceptions of ‘insanity’ and ‘normality.’

Through the transcription of the tapes we begin to get a picture of Robert’s early life and the reasons for his being diagnosed as mentally ill. We discover that he was the only child of his parents: father a sensible, responsible man who, as Robert eventually realizes, loved his son very much, albeit in an undemonstrative way. His mother, on the other hand, is revealed as over-doting, indulging him to the extent of tolerating, indeed encouraging, him in uninhibited horse-play. It becomes clear that she is, in part at least, the reason for Robert’s later behaviour and his failure to recognize limits. (The fact that she later hangs herself, unable to face up to Robert’s offence and its consequences, indicates that she was always unstable.) So when, at nineteen, he is involved in a fight outside a pub with another lad, he doesn’t know when to stop. As he puts it: how do you know when the other one isn’t going to get up and hit you again? As a result his opponent is badly injured, to the extent that he will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Retribution is inevitable, but Robert has a history of other incidents of abnormal behaviour – the most serious being the occasion when he tied his mother up to a chair and sat by her until his father came home to release her. As a result, instead of being sent to prison for inflicting grievous bodily harm (in which case, he bitterly reflects, he would by the time he is recording these tapes have served his sentence and been a free man) he is diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic and sent to a secure unit. As the tapes proceed, we gain the impression that he really is manic in his obsessive attention to detail, and he also refers to episodes of past manic behaviour. The question, always, is to what extent the treatment he has been receiving is the cause of his behaviour rather than the other way round.

In his observations of his life and times Robert comes across as eminently sane; he observes and comments on many features of contemporary life which, looked at objectively, are pretty strange: the ways people dress, the ways they behave. As well as the mental health system, property developers, lawyers, the state of our towns and homelessness are all critically examine – and mostly found wanting. I particularly enjoyed his critique of The Saturday Guardian, which he describes as ‘heavy’, with all its supplements and sections, but in which: ‘Every week the same. Like an empty bowl that has to be filled, week after week, but with words. Like a nervous chatterbox filling time with nonsense talk. No, not nonsense; but chirping away about things of little importance. Saying for the sake of saying.’ Amen to that!

So, how does Robert’s story end? It is not an easy resolution. He finally understands that the only way to escape the clutches of the system is to become entirely invisible; to disappear; to live outside any possibility of discovery. Since his whole journey through the mental health care system has been a series of encounters with the mentally ill, the addicted, the rejected, through them he has learnt the lessons which enable him to slip out of sight and to live outside any conceivable system. In other words, he learns how to efface himself completely.

Anyone who lived, and read, through the 1960s will remember people like R.D. Laing and Thomas Szasz, both of whom became gurus of alternative thinking about what was termed ‘mental illness.’ Laing stressed the role of society, and particularly the family, in the development of "madness" - his term. His rejection of the medicalisation of mental illness almost certainly went too far in denying the influence of  biological or chemical causes of what was termed ‘madness’; in any case, Laing was largely discredited in his life-time, both for his ideas and because of his alcoholism and his drug-taking. Never the less, his ideas do still have resonance and there are those who adhere to them. In 2004 The International R.D. Laing Institute was established in Switzerland as ‘a meeting place for all those interested in the psychotherapeutic approach of and its theoretical reflections by R.D.Laing.’ Laing defined insanity as ‘a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.’ Robert could be seen as a case in point, with his confusing childhood experiences, followed by a regime of treatment which not only didn’t ‘cure’ him, but arguably made him worse. Laing also claimed that ‘There is no such condition as “schizophrenia,” but the label is a social fact and the social fact a political event.’

When Thomas Szasz wrote: "If you talk to God, you are praying; If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; If you talk to the dead, you are a schizophrenic" he summed up what he saw as society’s ambivalent and illogical attitude to mental illness. Although he strongly opposed Laing’s ‘counter-cultural’ stand and the whole anti-psychiatry movement, he also rejected the ‘medicalisation’ of mental illness. No doubt many, if not most, contemporary mental health practitioners would take issue with the notion that mental illness is entirely a response to one’s environment, which seems too simplistic;  more recent research indicates that chemical and hormonal influences on the brain may have greater influence than people like Laing or Szasz would ever have considered.

Nonetheless, the question remains: was Robert mad or was he driven mad?

Sam Smith's books here: http://samsmithbooks.weebly.com/

The Ogier family in Guernsey County, Ohio

In 1806, the first party of immigrants, mainly members of the Sarchet family, from Guernsey in the British Channel Islands arrived in the then newly-settled area of North America which later became Guernsey County, Ohio. They were followed, in 1807, by members of another Guernsey family, the Ogiers. A fascinating, and possibly apocryphal, story surrounds the arrival, probably in 1808, of another member of the Ogier family named Thomas. This story has become part of Ogier family lore.

In 1938, Alfred S. Campbell, an American cattle-breeder and journalist, visited Guernsey in the Channel Islands and was entertained by Thomas Ogier at their family home, Les Duvaux, where Mr. Ogier related the story of his ancestor, also called Thomas, who had been forced to leave Guernsey as a wanted man. An account of his visit to the Ogiers, including this story, appears in Campbell’s book, Golden Guernsey, which was published in 1938. This is how the story goes:

At the end of the eighteenth century, the Napoleonic wars were being waged in Europe and Guernsey became a base for allies of the English, including Russians. This caused difficulty and disruption on the island as food became scarce and the poorly-disciplined soldiers took to pillaging and theft. Thomas, an affluent farmer, returning to his home from a hunting expedition, found a Russian soldier on his land and shot at him, intending only to wound him. The soldier made it back to his base but, having identified his attacker, died of his injuries, Thomas Ogier therefore became a wanted man and fled from his home before he could be arrested. He first went to France and later took ship to America and, after some wanderings, joined other family members in Cambridge, Ohio. Relating this story to Alfred Campbell, Mr. Ogier told him that ‘…in all his wanderings Thomas Ogier carried with him one relic of his home – the family cradle!’ One might doubt the practicality of a fugitive from the law choosing to burden himself with a wooden cradle, carrying it to France, then over the Atlantic to America; but the cradle is real enough and is in the possession of the Guernsey County Historical Society!

Enquiries are in train and if I can get a pic of the famous cradle (and permission to use it, of course) I’ll post it here.

A Maryport Quilt goes National!

A very fine quilt, made in Maryport in Cumbria about 130 years ago, has been accepted into the Collection of the Quilt Museum and Gallery in York. It’s a particularly good example of what is known as the ‘Sawtooth Medallion’ Style, made in red and white fabrics. The red fabric is Turkey red printed in a rich and complex paisley pattern. Only quilts of exceptional interest and condition are accepted into the collection so it is an honour that this one has been accessioned.

The quilt, which belonged to an established Maryport family, was given to me on long loan a few years ago. It is in perfect condition because, as I was told: ‘Grandma always kept it on the best bed, covered with a sheet.’ The owner and I finally decided that it needed to be offered to the Museum and Gallery so that it could be kept and preserved to museum standards. I’m delighted to say that it is now on display at the Museum as part of its current exhibition titled Quilts Then and Now. Full details of the Museum and opening times can be seen here: http://www.quiltersguild.org.uk/index.php?page=71

A Victorian Surivival

Flat shot of table cover

Embroidery has outlasted silk

This Victorian table cover from a house in Cockermouth , measuring 56" square, was brought to me for advice on repair and conservation.  It has a square centre medallion organised round embroidered rectangles which are enclosed in velvet borders. The rest of the patchwork is 'crazy', i.e. randomly shaped  patches stitched together. Each patch is outlined in feather stitching, a very popular needlework tradition in this type of  crazy patchwork. The whole textile is surrounded with yellow cording, suggesting that its likely use was as a table cover or, possibly, a decorative throw.

 The fabrics are predominantly silks and velvets. The embroidery is of a good standard of workmanship and, in many case, the embroidery has outlasted the silks, which have worn away around them.

Unfortunately, it had deteriorated so far as to make any work on it impossible. On the other hand, it is clearly too interesting to simply be thrown away. One possible option would be to conserve it under glass, in which case it could be viewed but wouldn't suffer any further degradation of the fabrics. This, however, would be an expensive undertaking but enquiries are being made to see if it would be viable.

Proust (re-visited) via Hesperus Press

If, for entirely understandable reasons, (it apparently goes on for ever; style is labyrinthine; plot, in so far as there is one, slow to virtually stationary….) you are reluctant to read even a page by Marcel Proust, but at the same time have a slightly guilty feeling that somehow as a serious reader you ought to do so, I'd like to suggest a possible way in. Hesperus Press (http://www.hesperuspress.com/catalogue/default.asp), whose motto is ‘Et remotissima prope (to bring near what is far), publishes "works by illustrious authors, often unjustly neglected or simply little known in the English-speaking world.” The books are beautifully-designed little paper-backs and Proust’s Pleasures and Days, originally published in 1896 as Les Plaisirs et Les Jours, and here translated by Andrew Brown, is one of them. It is a series of sketches and short stories depicting the lives, loves, manners and motivations of an eclectic variety of characters; their amorous entanglements, idle vanities, feigned morality and, above all, their snobbery – Proust is very strong on snobbery.

The cover blurb reads: “A stunning volume of philosophical reflections, short narratives and poems", offering us “ an early glimpse into Proust’s literary genius, and revealing him as both a remarkable chronicler of metropolitan life and a compassionate recorder of the most poignant sensations and recollections.”

There is an excellent Forward by A.N. Wilson, where we learn that Proust completed these stories, poems and fragments before he was 23 years old. (One can only be awed by the knowingness, the psychological perspicacity displayed by one so young.) "What will immediately strike any reader of this volume of short stories is how surely, from the first, Proust knew his theme." And Wilson helps us to understand the literary import of Proust’s style: “The complex syntax, those long sentences with their coiling clauses that he was already practising in the Pleasures, is deployed in The Search (i.e. In Search of Lost Time ) to make us slowdown and take the time to notice the world and the richness of its interconnections.”

Of course, if you have never even dipped your toe into A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, whether in French or in translation, that last remark won’t mean much to you, but Pleasures and and Days will give you an authentic introduction to the Proustian style and themes so that, who knows?- you may be tempted to launch forth on the great work itself!

From Pleasures and Days:

Here is the 23-year old Proust describing the bleak and lonely last days of the young Baldassare Silvande,Viscount of Sylvania:

‘ He turned his head away from the happy image of the pleasures that he had passionately loved and would never enjoy again. He looked at the harbour: a three-master was setting sail.

"It's the ship leaving for India" said Jean Galeas.

Baldassare could not make out the people standing on the deck waving their handkerchiefs, but he could guess at the thirst for the unknown that filled their eyes with longing; they still had so much to experience, to know, and to feel. The anchor was weighed, a cry went up, and the boat moved out over the sombre sea to the West, where, in a golden haze, the light mingled the small boats together with clouds and murmured irresistible and vague promises to the travellers.'

As I read those words, I was haunted by echoes of Theophile Gautiere’s poem, L’Isle Inconnu, memorably set to music by Berlioz:

Dites, la jeune belle,
Où voulez-vous aller?
La voile enfle son aile,
La brise va souffler.

L’aviron est d’ivoire,
Le pavillon de moire,
Le gouvernail d’or fin.
J’ai pour lest une orange,
Pour voile une aile d’ange,
Pour mousse un séraphin.

Dites, la jeune belle,
Où voulez-vous aller?
La voile enfle son aile,
La brise va souffler.

Est-ce dans la Baltique?
Dans la mer Pacifique?
Dans l’île de Java?
Ou bien est-ce en Norvège,
Cueillir la fleur de neige,
Ou la fleur d’Angsoka?

Dites, la jeune belle,

Où voulez-vous aller?

'Menez-moi', dit la belle,

'A la rive fidèle

Où l’on aime toujours'.
Cette rive, ma chère,
On ne la connaît guère
Au pays des amours.

Où voulez-vous aller?

La brise va souffler.

The Cracked Bell. America and the Afflictions of Liberty

The Cracked Bell

America and the Afflictions of Liberty
by Tristram Riley-Smith

In an engrossing, eminently readable book, Tristram Riley-Smith examines all the contradictions and complexities inherent in the concept of 'liberty' and describes the ways in which America’s notion of itself as the ‘Land of the Free’ has become mythologised to such an extent that it has become 'inflated and unstable.' His background as a social anthropologist is reflected in his method of arguing from practical examples, which not only enlivens the text but provides persuasive evidence for the points he makes. He pin-points the many hypocrisies and contradictions in modern American, and no aspects of social or political attitudes and customs are left unexamined.

Riley-Smith’s book ends on an optimistic note. His final opinion is that all is not lost, that there are ‘sources of illumination’ whereby the ‘cracked bell’ can be re-cast. But I had a problem understanding how these sources of illumination can be translated into actual policies.

He says that, as an anthropologist, he is ‘sceptical about the ability of one individual to change culture.’

Yes, I’d agree there. But then, while I was reading, something from Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was hovering at the back of my mind:

 “Programs of a political nature are important end products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there. ”

This is the dilemma: if one accepts Pirsig’s thesis, cultural change has got to begin with individuals but that takes us into the realms of education – and imagination. It’s in those areas that it seems so difficult to effect meaningful changes that would lead to social and cultural change on anything like the grand scale which our current malaise demands.  I don’t have much idea of how well, or not, the American public educational system educates the majority of pupils to be critical, imaginative and informed thinkers. But I do know that the UK system as exemplified in the majority of our state-run schools is, largely, a failure in that respect. Two articles in the current issue of the London Review of Books have direct bearing on this point. They set out clearly the decline of our universities from centres of learning for its own sake into factories designed to turn out people skilled and knowledgeable only in specific areas, those areas solely validated by their practical, monetary value. This educational system is not designed to produce the sort of people likely to effect radical change in social culture.

Riley-Smith clearly sees Barack Obama as a man with the understanding and vision to help to re-cast the Cracked Bell. David Hackett Fischer, in his book, Champlain’s Dream, about the life of Samuel de Champlain, French navigator, cartographer, draughtsman, soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnologist, diplomat, and chronicler, founder of New France and Quebec City, describes the qualities which made Champlain a great leader. On his death in 1635, although his achievements were celebrated, he was mostly remembered for the manner in which he treated others and that he served purposes that were larger than himself. Champlain was a man of his time whose thinking was far removed from ours today; as Fischer says: ‘He lacked the sense of individualism and individual autonomy which is so strong in North American culture to day.’ Fischer concludes the chapter in which he describes Champlain’s final days, and explains why he was honored as a great leader, as follows:

There was nothing of equality, democracy or republicanism in Champlain’s thinking. Champlain was raised in a European world where everyone had a rank and station. Like most of his European contemporaries, he was a confirmed monarchist. More than that, he firmly believed hierarchy and hegemony were fundamental to order, which he valued in an era of violence and deep disorder.

Champlain’s ideals were distant from ours in many ways, but some of our most cherished values have grown from his. We share his belief in principled action, even if our principles are not the same. Most of us are raised to his ideal of responsibility and leadership in a large cause. We have inherited his idea of humanity even as we have transformed it in many ways. And we are dreamers too, nearly all of us.

 Obama is certainly a man or principle and his writings show that he has the imagination to dream of a better way forward. But what must he do to translate principles and dreams into the policies which could begin the re-casting of the Cracked Bell?

Robert PIRSIG Zen and and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values William Morrow and Co 1984

David Hackett Fischer Champlain’s Dream Random House 2008

http://www.thecrackedbell.com/

An American Quilt in Guernsey

     It may be that only dyed-in-the-wool quilt anoraks will not be surprised when I tell you that last week I made a visit to the Channel Island of Guernsey, a not inconsiderable distance from Cumbria, just to see a quilt. Add to that the fact that I’m notoriously averse from leaving home and you’ll appreciate that there must have been a very special reason indeed for me to make the trip.

    That’s how special The Ogier Wedding Quilt, which occasioned my visit, is. The quilt, dated 1842, is now in the collections of The Guernsey Museums and Galleries, and I was privileged to have it taken out of storage so that I could examine it. The accompanying ‘flat shot’ will give some idea of the over-all effect. Some more detailed shots show the outstanding needlework skills which created it. But this quilt is just one of many outstandingly beautiful quilts which were made in Ohio County in the early to mid C19th, some of which are documented in Ricky Clark’s book: Quilted Gardens, Floral Quilts of the Nineteenth Century. (Published in 1994 by Rutledge Hill Press) The style combines pieced blocks and trapunto, in this case alternate blocks and borders being trapunto. Infill is very finely worked stippling.

    What is extraordinary about the Ogier Wedding Quilt is that, although it was made in Ohio, it is now in Guernsey. The objects of my enquiries are, precisely, to establish for whom was it made and how and when  it arrived in Guernsey? I began this research in 1997 when a friend of a friend, hearing that I was interested in old quilts, told me about it. The reason it has taken me so long to get round to pursuing my research begins with the fact that between 2002 and 2006 I was working on books continuously, then on other research projects, then gardening etc. etc. Poor excuses, I know. When I know more, I’ll share it.

(Photographs courtesy of Guernsey Museums and Galleries and Robin Le Feuvre.)

The Greystoke Coverlet - a curious textile survival

Recently an interesting-looking coverlet came up for auction at Penrith in Cumbria. The expected price range was given as between £200 and £450. Photographs in the catalogue showed it to be closely covered

in appliqué figures and a great deal of embroidered lettering. The most striking feature was a folded-down panel on which was commemorated Wellington’s victory at the Battle of Vittoria (sic. But it should be 'Vitoria!), 1813. (These panels, often commemorating significant events, were manufactured specifically for use in quilts and other textiles and were widely available. An identical panel is illustrated in two of Averil Colby’s books, Patchwork and Patchwork Quilts, in colour in the latter.) Under the panel, which had been left loose so that it could be lifted, the applique and embroidery are much brighter and in better condition than the rest of the coverlet. It shows a strange scene in which angel’s heads with wings appear above figures showing two couples, apparently flying, as they have wings attached. The men are in what may be military uniforms. On the left is a woman carrying what could be a single rose or a small bouquet followed by a row of three women with arms raised as if towards the flying couples.

Elsewhere on the coverlet other figures have embroidered captions, one of which reads Mary Queen of Scotland, although it was difficult to relate the accompanying illustration to any historical episodes concerning her. This may well be because the fabric in the figures is in many cases worn away almost completely so it’s impossible to decipher what was there originally.

At the bottom of the textile, some female figures have words embroidered under them, for example, ‘Patient woman’ and ‘Hypocrite!’ The embroidered lettering has in places also almost vanished, although it might be possible to read the words using a magnifying glass. The over-all impression somewhat suggests a page of cartoons,with quotes and comments. The embroidered lettering and the appliqué look quite crude and as if done in haste.

Altogether, this is a most intriguing and puzzling textile survival. I learned that it had come from Bushy House in Greystoke, the contents of which were being sold after the death of Adele le Bourgeois Aspel, the widow of a member of the Howard family. The Howards are a long-established Greystoke family whose seat is Greystoke Castle. It seems that many of the items to be auctioned had been found in barns and outbuildings and it could well be that the coverlet had suffered the same fate. Certainly, it is very dirty and clearly hadn’t been stored with a view to its preservation.

I went to view the textile the day before the auction and found it suitably protected by barriers and notices warning of its fragile condition. The Quilters’ Guild of the British Isle would have considered bidding for it but for the fact that the local Museum and Art Gallery, Tullie House in Carlisle, was also interested in it. In such situations, a protocol is observed between museums which means that the local museum has precedence and other museums won’t bid against them. Also, the coverlet was in need of extensive conservation work which would have been very expensive.

Of course, everyone concerned was hoping that Tullie House would win the bidding – they had set a maximum bid higher than the amount the Guild would have gone to. In that case, we would at least have known where it was, that it was being conserved and stored appropriately and, in future, the Guild might even have been able to borrow it.

But I’m sorry to have to report the dénouement to this story: the coverlet went to a private bidder for the stunning sum of £3,500! We shall probably never see it again.

Hot Chocolate!

Alice got cold and wet when out walking the dogs! Photo taken last Spring when she was staying here.

Lewis Mumford

Lewis Mumford

'Internationally renowned for his writing on cities, architecture, technology, literature, and modern life, Lewis Mumford was called by Malcolm Cowley "the last of the great humanists." His conributions to literary criticism, archtectural criticism, American studies, the history of cities, civilisation and technology, as well as to regional planning, environmentalism, and public life in America, mark him as oneof the most original voices of the twentieth century.' (Eugene Halton)

Sketches from Life The Autobiography of Lewis Mumford: The Early Years

This was another book just sitting quietly and unnoticed on my book-shelves. As soon as I picked it up I began remembering the books by Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) which I'd read in the 60s: Technics and Civilisation (1934) and The Culture of Cities (1938). He was, in his time, one of the most influential architects, designers and thinkers about ways in which people could live in cities and how urban planning could influence societies. In the dear, dead 60s, Mumford was embraced as one of the gurus of many far left Utopian thinkers, but his ideas and writings far exceeded what most of those sincere but often confused dreamers ever understood.

I don't think, on reflection, that I made much of those books at the time, but re-visiting Mumford now I'm struck by the fact that many of his ideas were so prescient but yet seem, now, to have sunk without trace.

From Values for Survival. 1964:

“If we are to create balanced human beings, capable of entering into world-wide co-operation with all other men of good will--and that is the supreme task of our generation, and the foundation of all its other potential achievements--we must give as much weight to the arousal of the emotions and to the expression of moral and esthetic values as we now give to science, to invention, to practical organization. One without the other is impotent. And values do not come ready-made: they are achieved by a resolute attempt to square the facts of one's own experience with the historic patterns formed in the past by those who devoted their whole lives to achieving and expressing values. If we are to express the love in our own hearts, we must also understand what love meant to Socrates and Saint Francis, to Dante and Shakespeare, to Emily Dickinson and Christina Rossetti, to the explorer Shackleton and to the intrepid physicians who deliberately exposed themselves to yellow fever. These historic manifestations of love are not recorded in the day's newspaper or the current radio program: they are hidden to people who possess only fashionable minds. Virtue is not a chemical product, as Taine once described it: it is a historic product, like language and literature; and this means that if we cease to care about it, cease to cultivate it, cease to transmit its funded values, a large part of it will become meaningless, like a dead language to which we have lost the key. That, I submit, is what has happened in our own lifetime.”