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Letter
We have had an especially hectic couple of
weeks at Persephone Books, the result (we think)
both of Mother's Day and the wonderful picture
on the front of the new Persephone Quarterly.
This is by Harold Knight who, 'if he was not
the English Vermeer, he brought many of the fine
qualities of the Dutch old master into his work.
Some critics wondered why he had not attained
a higher eminence. Perhaps there is something
in the remark that [his wife] Laura (Knight)
made more than once. "I stood in his way." She
never tried to explain how.'
It is interesting that these words are from the ODNB (Oxford Dictionary of
Biography) entry for Laura Knight ie Harold’s life is written up jointly
with his wife’s. If anyone can think of another couple who have a joint
entry, and where the husband’s achievement is rather subsumed by that of
his wife, do let us know. Most people have heard of Dame
Laura Knight but how many people have heard of Harold?
Almost always it is the opposite situation. For example, last weekend I was in
Birmingham, and at the top of the stairs in the Art Gallery discovered a wonderful
wall painting by Joseph Southall called Corporation Street, Birmingham, painted
in March 1914. Another picture by Southall, 'Along the Shore' (1914), shows the
same three women and a child who are to be seen in the wall painting; it will
appear on the front of the June Quarterly, and it is a Persephone card. But what
of Mrs Southall? Maybe Joseph met her at art school but she gave up her painting
in order to have the child in the picture... One thing is certain - it is almost
inconceivable that Dame Laura Knight could have achieved the eminence she did
if she and Harold had had children.
A practical detail: many of the paintings we use on the front of the quarterly
or on the Persephone cards are to be found at www.bridgeman.co.uk ie
the Bridgeman Art Library. It is free to search the website, so, for example,
anyone can search for paintings by Harold or Laura Knight or Joseph Southall;
but obviously there is a fee if one wishes to reproduce them. (And a quick search
revealed that the Birmingham wall painting is not on the Bridgeman list of Southall
paintings.)
Emily is on holiday in California; while she is away I will have been at the
Oxford Literary Festival twice - once to talk about Leonard and Virginia
Woolf with David Bradshaw, an Oxford academic who specialises in early twentieth
century English literature; and with Lyndall Gordon, the biographer of Virginia
Woolf (among her many books) who wrote the wonderful preface to our edition of
Leonard’s second (and last) novel The
Wise Virgins (1914). Lyndall very convincingly explained that the view
of Virginia Woolf as a doomed woman is in her view a caricature, as is the view
that Leonard suppressed her; on the contrary, he looked after her by actively
encouraging her – they stimulated each other, were physically close, and
in fact enjoyed a creative partnership rather
like Harold and Laura Knight’s.
The second Festival occasion will be an event celebrating the ODNB at
which the three panelists have been asked to talk about someone they would like
the audience to know more about; we then have to choose a person we would like
to encounter
if marooned on a desert island. For the former I have chosen Dorothy
Whipple;
for the latter I have chosen Rex Whistler (Miss
Ranskill, alas, not being in the ODNB!). Before the Festival event there
is a Persephone lunch at which Lyndall Gordon, Charlie Lee-Potter and myself
will discuss the Oxford novel with special
reference to Princes in the
Land. I shall write about this here in a fortnight.
Nicola Beauman
30 March 2006
Lamb’s Conduit Street |
