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Under a Canvas Sky: Living Outside Gormenghast
Clare Peake, daughter of the celebrated writer and artist Mervyn Peake, tells the story of her parents' romance and her own extraordinary childhood.
Mervyn Peake was born in China, the son of medical missionaries. After returning to England to study at the Royal Academy School, he was offered a teaching post at Westminster School of Art. There, his charismatic and unworldly presence made a huge impression; not least on Maeve Gilmore, a seventeen-year-old sculpture student. The pair fell passionately in love and were soon married, going on to have three children together.
The Peakes surrounded their children with creativity, love and laughter. Clare would often fall asleep to the voices of many of the artists and writers of the day; great friends of Maeve and Mervyn's and frequent visitors at the family home.
Their lives were forever changed when Mervyn developed Parkinson's disease at the age of forty-five. His decline was rapid and he spent time in and out of mental hospitals until his untimely death.
Clare Peake writes movingly of her bohemian childhood and the impact of her father's illness, and of her mother's determination to continue giving her children the happiness she believed all children deserved.
Mervyn Peake was born in China, the son of medical missionaries. After returning to England to study at the Royal Academy School, he was offered a teaching post at Westminster School of Art. There, his charismatic and unworldly presence made a huge impression; not least on Maeve Gilmore, a seventeen-year-old sculpture student. The pair fell passionately in love and were soon married, going on to have three children together.
The Peakes surrounded their children with creativity, love and laughter. Clare would often fall asleep to the voices of many of the artists and writers of the day; great friends of Maeve and Mervyn's and frequent visitors at the family home.
Their lives were forever changed when Mervyn developed Parkinson's disease at the age of forty-five. His decline was rapid and he spent time in and out of mental hospitals until his untimely death.
Clare Peake writes movingly of her bohemian childhood and the impact of her father's illness, and of her mother's determination to continue giving her children the happiness she believed all children deserved.
- GenresNonfiction
243 pages, Hardcover
First published May 26, 2011
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About the author
Clare Peake
1 book1 followerCharmian Clare Peake (Peñate) was born on the island of Sark, but has lived in London all her life. She has worked as a bookseller, flower seller, waitress, childminder, nursery school teacher and maid. She has three children, including singer-songwriter Jack Peñate, and one grand-child. She reads, goes to the cinema, listens to music and hand-makes patchwork quilts.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 14, 2017
The youngest child of Mervyn Peake (author of the Titus Groan/Gormenghast books, as well as being an artist) and Maeve Gilmore describes her bohemian childhood and teenage years in 60s London. Although Clare is always keen to stress how happy and loved she was, the pain of her father's rapid mental decline is, at times, dreadful to read. It throws some light on him and his works, but as she was only seven when he changed, never to recover, she is limited in the insight she can give, having to rely on second-hand reminiscences from long ago to fill in some of the gaps: "Past seven years old, I hardly knew him".
Delight
Although Mervyn had been invalided out of the army after a nervous breakdown in 1942, aged 31 (shortly after Fabian's birth), and was forever haunted by the images he later saw at the liberation of Belsen as a war artist, he largely recovered, and played such an active role in Clare's early years that she "did not distinguish between my parents", randomly choosing which one to go to with a problem. "He was always there... Able to interrupt [his work] at any time, my brothers and I were unaware that we were interrupting." And this was despite the fact that "He took his work, but not himself, seriously" - family came first. Always.
There are delightful examples of artistic quirkiness. For example, Mervyn would often make her costumes for school plays: "At home, my costumes seemed entirely obvious... It wasn't with any sense of one-upmanship that Dad made these things. He just couldn't have made a dreary costume if he'd tried" - hence as one of the Ten Green Bottles, Clare was "an exquisite and elaborately painted absinthe bottle". More alarmingly, he picked her up from school one day, failed to shut the car door properly and not only did she fall out, but he didn't even notice until he arrived home "with the nagging sensation that he'd forgotten something"! She had concussion.
Clare acknowledges that most would describe her slightly odd upbringing as bohemian, but "I saw it only as a munificent and passionate sanctuary, where ideas were everything and love was the key." In fact many aspects of her childhood are exactly what people hold up as the ideal: plenty of books, art, craft, freedom run a little wild, time to make your own games etc, but all within a framework of routine, good manners, fixed meal times and plenty of brushing of teeth. "Everything around me was astonishingly organized and extremely tidy... it was just the laughter and sea of love I was marooned in that was unconventional in its generosity." The family had financial and health worries all along, but she was "wonderfully happy" and when her father became ill, "I was protected from too much pain by a fierce respect for childhood".
Darkness
Money was a constant worry (though this is relative - Clare attended a boarding school), but having been brought up in the war, coupled with their eclectic tastes, Clare's parents were able to cope. In particular, they liked old objects: "What they felt comfortable with" were "things they had built some sort of relationship with... Everything was use until it rotted".
The trigger for the breakdown that destroyed Mervyn and opened the door to Parkinson's was the bad reviews his first play received. "My father crumpled, metaphorically and physically... the husband and father we knew gone like a puff of smoke, to be replaced by someone who had partly retreated into another world, somewhere we couldn't join him." Clare was seven, her brothers (seven and nine years older) almost adult, leaving her as the only child of a single mother much of the time. Mervyn came home for brief spells, but never recovered and died twelve years later.
This is, obviously, awful, yet Clare points out that Mervyn had "managed effortlessly to make sure his daughter felt adored and appreciated, pretty and funny... Those feelings had matured and he had done his job." And despite her own worries, interspersed with frequent hospital visits, Maeve "made my life happy... jam-packed with fun and gently anarchy". "Dad coming back and forth from hospital became so familiar it was almost as if he was in the navy." "Well or unwell, everything was enhanced by his presence." If that is truly how they reacted at the time, I find it extraordinary (and admirable).
So life went on. Boarding school was "colourless" compared with home, and Clare, though a great bibliophile, was not academically inclined or very good at anything, though she never felt disappointment from Maeve.
Mervyn had a lobotomy, which made matters worse and his speech became incomprehensible, even to his family (what a loss for a wordsmith!), although "his inherent playfulness was impossible to extinguish". By the time Clare was sixteen, "I searched for a sign of recognition... I was just a stranger who held him too tight and kissed him too hard." I wanted to cry at times, even if Clare did not.
Gormenghast
Clare didn't read the Gormenghast books till her late teens. She mentions that Fuchsia was based on Maeve as a girl, but the most poignant aspect of this whole story is her pointing out the prescience of the descriptions of Fuchsia having to watch her father's descent into madness, though it was written years before Clare was born: "it was as though my father had written it with me in mind, some self-fulfilling prophesy."
Overall
As a non-fiction book, this could do with an index, especially given all the great names that are dropped (artists, poets, writers, actors). Inevitably, the prose does not match her father’s, but it did help me understand Peake a little better, and I could not bear to give it only 3*.
The most unexpected element was learning that Mervyn's favourite book was "The Diary of a Nobody".
All My Peake Reviews
All my Peake/Gormenghast reviews (including biographies/memoirs and books about his art) are on a shelf,
HERE.
Delight
Although Mervyn had been invalided out of the army after a nervous breakdown in 1942, aged 31 (shortly after Fabian's birth), and was forever haunted by the images he later saw at the liberation of Belsen as a war artist, he largely recovered, and played such an active role in Clare's early years that she "did not distinguish between my parents", randomly choosing which one to go to with a problem. "He was always there... Able to interrupt [his work] at any time, my brothers and I were unaware that we were interrupting." And this was despite the fact that "He took his work, but not himself, seriously" - family came first. Always.
There are delightful examples of artistic quirkiness. For example, Mervyn would often make her costumes for school plays: "At home, my costumes seemed entirely obvious... It wasn't with any sense of one-upmanship that Dad made these things. He just couldn't have made a dreary costume if he'd tried" - hence as one of the Ten Green Bottles, Clare was "an exquisite and elaborately painted absinthe bottle". More alarmingly, he picked her up from school one day, failed to shut the car door properly and not only did she fall out, but he didn't even notice until he arrived home "with the nagging sensation that he'd forgotten something"! She had concussion.
Clare acknowledges that most would describe her slightly odd upbringing as bohemian, but "I saw it only as a munificent and passionate sanctuary, where ideas were everything and love was the key." In fact many aspects of her childhood are exactly what people hold up as the ideal: plenty of books, art, craft, freedom run a little wild, time to make your own games etc, but all within a framework of routine, good manners, fixed meal times and plenty of brushing of teeth. "Everything around me was astonishingly organized and extremely tidy... it was just the laughter and sea of love I was marooned in that was unconventional in its generosity." The family had financial and health worries all along, but she was "wonderfully happy" and when her father became ill, "I was protected from too much pain by a fierce respect for childhood".
Darkness
Money was a constant worry (though this is relative - Clare attended a boarding school), but having been brought up in the war, coupled with their eclectic tastes, Clare's parents were able to cope. In particular, they liked old objects: "What they felt comfortable with" were "things they had built some sort of relationship with... Everything was use until it rotted".
The trigger for the breakdown that destroyed Mervyn and opened the door to Parkinson's was the bad reviews his first play received. "My father crumpled, metaphorically and physically... the husband and father we knew gone like a puff of smoke, to be replaced by someone who had partly retreated into another world, somewhere we couldn't join him." Clare was seven, her brothers (seven and nine years older) almost adult, leaving her as the only child of a single mother much of the time. Mervyn came home for brief spells, but never recovered and died twelve years later.
This is, obviously, awful, yet Clare points out that Mervyn had "managed effortlessly to make sure his daughter felt adored and appreciated, pretty and funny... Those feelings had matured and he had done his job." And despite her own worries, interspersed with frequent hospital visits, Maeve "made my life happy... jam-packed with fun and gently anarchy". "Dad coming back and forth from hospital became so familiar it was almost as if he was in the navy." "Well or unwell, everything was enhanced by his presence." If that is truly how they reacted at the time, I find it extraordinary (and admirable).
So life went on. Boarding school was "colourless" compared with home, and Clare, though a great bibliophile, was not academically inclined or very good at anything, though she never felt disappointment from Maeve.
Mervyn had a lobotomy, which made matters worse and his speech became incomprehensible, even to his family (what a loss for a wordsmith!), although "his inherent playfulness was impossible to extinguish". By the time Clare was sixteen, "I searched for a sign of recognition... I was just a stranger who held him too tight and kissed him too hard." I wanted to cry at times, even if Clare did not.
Gormenghast
Clare didn't read the Gormenghast books till her late teens. She mentions that Fuchsia was based on Maeve as a girl, but the most poignant aspect of this whole story is her pointing out the prescience of the descriptions of Fuchsia having to watch her father's descent into madness, though it was written years before Clare was born: "it was as though my father had written it with me in mind, some self-fulfilling prophesy."
Overall
As a non-fiction book, this could do with an index, especially given all the great names that are dropped (artists, poets, writers, actors). Inevitably, the prose does not match her father’s, but it did help me understand Peake a little better, and I could not bear to give it only 3*.
The most unexpected element was learning that Mervyn's favourite book was "The Diary of a Nobody".
All My Peake Reviews
All my Peake/Gormenghast reviews (including biographies/memoirs and books about his art) are on a shelf,
HERE.
May 30, 2012
I don't know if those who haven't read Mervyn Peake will like this or not, but for fans of Peake's work, this is a fascinating memoir of Peake the family man and Parkinson's sufferer. But the real star of the book is his wife/widow, Maeve Gilmore, who survived him by 15 years.
February 10, 2019
This is a plainly written memoir, reminiscences and anecdotes, but the sense of intimacy with the Peakes, and the beautiful, loving, and richly creative family life that you are welcomed into makes it powerfully affecting. I don’t mind admitting I shed a tear or two at several times while reading this.
Clare unfolds the terribly sad decline of her dad, the brilliant Mervyn. That he created as much and as uniquely as he did, in a life cut tragically short, is celebrated joyously even while she mourns his loss. And then there is the wonderful, idiosyncratic, and always elegant figure of her mother Maeve, also an accomplished artist. Their relationship shines through warmly.
The book made me nostalgic for a time and place I never knew, sixties LONDON. A place where Quentin Crisp pops round for tea. Where John and Paul pull up at the kerb and invite you to party. Where Oscar Wilde’s son is a regular at the pub across the street, and your boyfriend is having guitar lessons from Eric Clapton.
I felt enveloped in all of it, not as some sort of celebrity tell-all, but as a life of simplicity, love, friendship, books, films, art, and abiding creative joy.
Clare unfolds the terribly sad decline of her dad, the brilliant Mervyn. That he created as much and as uniquely as he did, in a life cut tragically short, is celebrated joyously even while she mourns his loss. And then there is the wonderful, idiosyncratic, and always elegant figure of her mother Maeve, also an accomplished artist. Their relationship shines through warmly.
The book made me nostalgic for a time and place I never knew, sixties LONDON. A place where Quentin Crisp pops round for tea. Where John and Paul pull up at the kerb and invite you to party. Where Oscar Wilde’s son is a regular at the pub across the street, and your boyfriend is having guitar lessons from Eric Clapton.
I felt enveloped in all of it, not as some sort of celebrity tell-all, but as a life of simplicity, love, friendship, books, films, art, and abiding creative joy.
April 13, 2019
I don't know when I have enjoyed a book so much. It helps that I am a fan of Mervyn Peake and his works. His daughter Clare writes a wonderful biography/autobiography of her father and her childhood, full of fun, love, joy and pathos. I really felt I knew the whole family. They met many wonderful and interesting people, artists, writers and actors - all beautifully described by Clare. A joy to read.
June 2, 2025
What a lovely book! Put that blockbuster down and read this.
March 30, 2012
Beautifully nostalgigic and tragic, this is the autobiography of Mervyn Peake's (author of the Gormanghast trilogy) youngest child. However, Peake features increasingly less in the story as he drifts from the family due to his illness. Clare was still young when he died and so the story slides into Clare's young adult life, until an all most jolted ending. A brilliant insight into the Peake family life, but don't expect Mervyn to take centre stage.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews