smokingboot (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
smokingboot) wrote2006-12-29 07:29 pm
smokingboot) wrote2006-12-29 07:29 pm
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Unquiet slumbers
This holiday hasn't felt magical at all; it felt like the collapse of two ill and exhausted people who like each other enough to relax totally in mutual dressinggowndom. The presents have been wonderful, the company gentle, the food fantastic, the champagne all too abundant, but something has been missing, and not all the cgi wonders of Narnia and a valleyfull of talking beavers could inspire me.
Then today, we decided to take our hacking cold racked bodies out onto the moors. We ended up at Haworth parsonage, one time home to the Bronte family and now a museum dedicated to the three authoresses, their father, and their brother, Branwell, a man unlucky enough to be merely adequate in a house bursting with genius.
It could have been a nasty attack of Salieri syndrome, made even more tragic by the family's belief in the only son, the special one; they doted on him, encouraged, believed in him, centred all their hopes on him.
Maybe there's a kind of genius that needs harsh confines to force it into shape. His were the opportunities, theirs the results. To him the art career that failed and the tutoring work that failed and the relationship with his employer's wife that failed, and the poetry that was occasionally approaching his sister's in intensity: to him the alcohol and an appetite for self destruction perhaps echoed in Emily's depiction of Hindley, or fueling Anne's Wesleyan diatribes against the demon drink in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. They expected so much of him, the jewel, the shining star of the family. But he was not the one. It was the plain girls with no life and no expectation, theirs was the gift after all that.
So what becomes of the mediocre? Easy enough when all the world around one is mediocre or worse, easy enough when all the world is Haworth. Unless one lived in Haworth Parsonage, and then it was not so easy. To be not only ordinary, but the only ordinary one. They tried to keep their successes quiet from him for they felt such knowledge would crush him. But it was a small house, and the rooms were close. How could he not guess?
I found myself awestruck at the drawing room where Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights were written, where the three discussed their projects, where Emily eventually laid herself down on the sofa to die, having refused to get treatment for the TB that took them all. Upstairs we saw Charlotte's clothes and letters, her teeny shoes revealing her to have ickle dainty feet, and a photo of the ferociously mutton-chopped curate she eventually married, no Rochester by any stretch of the imagination.
Outside, the long slab gravestones form a carpet up to the door; old photos and snippets of the Babbage report show how appalling conditions were in the town, open sewage and offal channels, rubbish putrifying in the streets till rain washed it away, people living at cellar level, beneath all this filth; the wealthy of the town did not want to pay for improvements; disease and dirty water were the reward all shared for their parsimony.
And in this narrow world, the girls thought and dreamed, their creations more a part of my past than the places in which I grew up. We did not go into the crypt in the church where two of the three lie. It was that drawing room I wanted to see, where Heathcliff tumbled into life, falling out of Mr Earnshaw's saddle, where Edward Rochester's horse stumbled at the sight of an elf woman in the moonlight; Not far away I could feel the knockings at the door of the red room, the lights seen over at Gimmerton chapel. Even as I write it I feel a tingling; for a while I wondered if they followed us down the paved slope through churchyard to teahouse, but no. No unquiet slumbers here, for they were good women, doubtless in some methodist heaven. Haworth is so pretty now, but who comes to Haworth for its present or future? Only the dreams born in that shabby past make it special.
Today, in 1812, their father married the woman who would give birth to them all. We didn't know that before we got there, and quite why this resonates with me so much I don't know. But it has made the day meaningful in a quiet, hard to describe way.
Then today, we decided to take our hacking cold racked bodies out onto the moors. We ended up at Haworth parsonage, one time home to the Bronte family and now a museum dedicated to the three authoresses, their father, and their brother, Branwell, a man unlucky enough to be merely adequate in a house bursting with genius.
It could have been a nasty attack of Salieri syndrome, made even more tragic by the family's belief in the only son, the special one; they doted on him, encouraged, believed in him, centred all their hopes on him.
Maybe there's a kind of genius that needs harsh confines to force it into shape. His were the opportunities, theirs the results. To him the art career that failed and the tutoring work that failed and the relationship with his employer's wife that failed, and the poetry that was occasionally approaching his sister's in intensity: to him the alcohol and an appetite for self destruction perhaps echoed in Emily's depiction of Hindley, or fueling Anne's Wesleyan diatribes against the demon drink in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. They expected so much of him, the jewel, the shining star of the family. But he was not the one. It was the plain girls with no life and no expectation, theirs was the gift after all that.
So what becomes of the mediocre? Easy enough when all the world around one is mediocre or worse, easy enough when all the world is Haworth. Unless one lived in Haworth Parsonage, and then it was not so easy. To be not only ordinary, but the only ordinary one. They tried to keep their successes quiet from him for they felt such knowledge would crush him. But it was a small house, and the rooms were close. How could he not guess?
I found myself awestruck at the drawing room where Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights were written, where the three discussed their projects, where Emily eventually laid herself down on the sofa to die, having refused to get treatment for the TB that took them all. Upstairs we saw Charlotte's clothes and letters, her teeny shoes revealing her to have ickle dainty feet, and a photo of the ferociously mutton-chopped curate she eventually married, no Rochester by any stretch of the imagination.
Outside, the long slab gravestones form a carpet up to the door; old photos and snippets of the Babbage report show how appalling conditions were in the town, open sewage and offal channels, rubbish putrifying in the streets till rain washed it away, people living at cellar level, beneath all this filth; the wealthy of the town did not want to pay for improvements; disease and dirty water were the reward all shared for their parsimony.
And in this narrow world, the girls thought and dreamed, their creations more a part of my past than the places in which I grew up. We did not go into the crypt in the church where two of the three lie. It was that drawing room I wanted to see, where Heathcliff tumbled into life, falling out of Mr Earnshaw's saddle, where Edward Rochester's horse stumbled at the sight of an elf woman in the moonlight; Not far away I could feel the knockings at the door of the red room, the lights seen over at Gimmerton chapel. Even as I write it I feel a tingling; for a while I wondered if they followed us down the paved slope through churchyard to teahouse, but no. No unquiet slumbers here, for they were good women, doubtless in some methodist heaven. Haworth is so pretty now, but who comes to Haworth for its present or future? Only the dreams born in that shabby past make it special.
Today, in 1812, their father married the woman who would give birth to them all. We didn't know that before we got there, and quite why this resonates with me so much I don't know. But it has made the day meaningful in a quiet, hard to describe way.
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Good to hear you got something of substance that stirred you mind and soul this winter though-your trip Haworth sounds compelling. A lot I didn't know in your post btw-many thanks for that. I shall mull over the relationship between the favoured but mediocre son and his sisters. Fascinating! As an artist transcending the mediocre is always a big issue and a challenge-we hope to express something beyond it naturally, but of course it is often as much about the intersection of our art with particular points and places in our culture as about the art itself. Maybe his problem was simply that he was male and encouraged into establishment creativity? His sisters meanwhile could speak with the voice of relevent outsiders.
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Outsiders are integral to the world of Bronte literature, and what you say about Branwell makes a lot of sense; his paintings have nothing memorable about them, but the same could be said of many portrait painters at the time. He seems to have had little sense of application, or the urgency of passion unable to be expressed, that typified his sisters - such feelings for him took what we could consider more everyday avenues, affairs and booze... the only pressure upon him was his family's insistence on treating him like a genius. That in itself might have strangled his talent, but I'm not convinced.
So does art require the artist to be the outsider? Can the beloved insider be more than a sparkling reporter? Is that art in its own way?
Fine questions for the end of the year!
In other thoughts, I am glad you two had a comfy Christmas. Sometimes that is exactly what's needed:-)
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Genius is even more elusive. Knowing that your artwork is unlikely to ever stir any great movement in art, or to inspire internal revolutions of thought or feeling is a little depressing at times. We end up being content with being acceptable and paying the bills (or at least some of them). And thats when it gets dangerous-because becoming complacent means that as an artist you loose the edge that pushes you on.
The problem at its heart is that it is not just about being an outsider-but about being an outsider at that precise time in history when your particular outsider characteristics speak to everyone else powerfully enough to make a difference.
The balance between having your voice heard (or seen) widely, recognition and financial reward against survival and integrity-all these things are a constant background to many artists. I suspect that most creatives and entertainers are in one way or another seeking validation of their craft because it also validates them-so perhaps the outsiders seek it even harder?
Quite a thought-jumble there. Perhaps the questions are a little to big and far-reaching. Which makes them excellent ones to ponder over 2007.
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Hope to meet you and Suzette again in the new year. Here's to our creative sparks - may the flames rise in 2007!
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