Mervyn Peake: Writings and Drawings

by Maeve Gilmore, Shelagh Johnson

First edition. Biography with 200 illustrations showing the work of this fantasy illustrator. Spine of jacket is faded. 123 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 4to..

Genres: Art

124 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

Maeve Patricia Mary Theresa Gilmore (1917-1983). Painter, sculpter and writer. Wife and biographer of Mervyn Peake, author of the Gormenghast novels, and editor and continuer of her husband's works.

Reviews

[Cecily · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is much overlap between this 1974 book by Maeve Gilmore (Peake's widow) and Peter Winnington's "Mervyn Peake: The Man and His Art" (my review HERE) from 2007. This one is limited to black and white, but in addition to his art, it includes significant excerpts of his writings: poems, novels (including parallel passages of an early and late draft of "Titus Groan"), and apparently, the whole of "The Craft of the Lead Pencil". The layout isn't great, so you have to keep your wits about you, but it's worth it; the former is also true of this review!

The tragic and beautiful cover picture is of Jo, a crossing sweeper, from Bleak House, which was Peake's favourite Dickens. See "Sketches from Bleak House" (my review HERE).

Biography

This book opens with a three-page biography by Maeve Gilmore (his widow), after which it is a sweeping, chronological overview of Peake's works, but linking his works to events in his life, his health etc. I've summarised much of this in my review of Maeve's memoirs, but the key points are that he was born and raised in China until the age of 11, went to boarding school, then art school, did national service but was invalided out after a nervous breakdown aged 31, became a war artist and was traumatised by what he saw at Belsen, died prematurely of a combination of Parkinson's, depression and the treatment thereof (but it took a decade).

Artist First

One key point is that Peake was initially very much an artist (he went to art school and later taught, as well as taking commissions); writing was a private hobby, and most of his writings were illustrated anyway.

Some of his thoughts about art are covered: the fact that the text he wrote is called "The Craft of the Lead Pencil" is significant, as is demonstrated by the content included here. He exhorts students to learn to see and to be expressive - skills that are also evident in his writing.

In addition to "The Craft", Peake explained his theories of drawing in a lengthy introduction to a collection of his drawings, but I don't think he ever wrote about writing in the same way.

Synaesthete?

Peake wrote "Line... is language" and "Rhythm - a quality inherent in all forms of art".

It is possible that Peake was a synaesthete. Certainly, he felt words and pictures were linked, sketching beside his writings to help the words.

In her memoirs ("A World Away", my review HERE), Maeve mentions that he tended to think of each number as either male or female. And writing about his approach to illustrating the books of others, and why his style varied so much, Peake wrote
“One might say that books have different smells… It is for the illustrator to make his drawings have the same smell as the book he is illustrating… He must slay his own ego… He must have the chameleon’s power to take on the colour of the leaf he dwells on.”
(There is a longer quote in Yorke’s biography, which I reviewed HERE.)

Writing

I've reviewed Peake's writings at length in individual reviews (see my Gormenghast-Peake shelf
HERE).

However, I will mention this painful poem, written during a hospital stay:

“Heads float about me, come and go, absorb me;
Terrify me that they deny the nightmare
That they should be, defy me;
And all the secrecy; the horror
Of truth, of this intrinsic truth
Drifting, ah God, along the corridors
Of the world; hearing the metal
Clang; and the rolling wheels,
Heads float about me haunted
By solitary sorrows."

Other Observations

Peake concurrently portrayed contrasting views, such as portraying Swelter (in Titus Groan) as a ship in full sail and a mass of shifting lights and colours.

There is an anecdote about an unpleasant encounter with a camel in China when he was a boy, which is used to explain the number of nasty camels that crop up in his works, and that I hadn't really noticed.

Reference

There is a good bibliography of works by and about Peake.

All My Peake Reviews

All my Peake/Gormenghast reviews (including biographies/memoirs and books about his art) are on a shelf,
HERE.

[Samuel Nakat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of Mervyn Peake's writings and drawings was wonderful. It was full of poetry, illustrations, extracts from his novels and plays, some of his earlier work (an article he wrote when he was 10 was included), a small biography by his wife and fellow artist Maeve Gilmore and newspaper articles he wrote among other things.

His art, as usual, was brilliant, and reflected on many subjects such as his life, work and writings.


The many writings included were poems of all kinds, extracts of his novels and one of his plays.
The book also included an essay on drawing with pencils, The Craft of a Lead Pencil, which was interesting and included useful tips. It was also one of the rare examples of Peake reflecting on his work and art.

If seeing her an hour before her last
Weak cough into all blackness I could yet
Be held by chalk-white walls, and by the great
Ash coloured bed,
And the pillows hardly creased
By the tapping of her little cough-jerked head–
If such can be a painter’s ecstasy,
(Her limbs like pipes, her head a china skull)
Then where is mercy?

Overall, the book showed the incredible range of Mervyn Peake's work, and further proved to me that he is sorely underappreciated talent of the arts.