A World Away: A Memoir of Mervyn Peake

by Maeve Gilmore, Michael Moorcock (Preface)

Book by Maeve Gilmore

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Memoir, Biography, Biography Memoir, Literature

160 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

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 4 out of 5]

Mervyn Peake is best known for the Titus Groan/Gormenghast books, but his works are far more diverse than that. This was written by Maeve Gilmore, Mervyn Peake's widow, shortly after he died. Parts of it are quite raw with the pain (especially the rambling eulogy at the end), but love and passion shine through more strongly. Her writing style veers between poetic and prosaic, giving a very intimate, conversational and engaging feel, and it is peppered with sketches, poems and letters of Mervyn's.

As an artist herself, and to some extent a collaborator on many of his projects (e.g. reading aloud books he was illustrating), she offers great insight into the man and his methods. It is fascinating if you're familiar with Peake's work, but probably of limited interest otherwise.

Mervyn's Childhood

Mervyn's father was a missionary doctor in China until the family came to England when he was 11 - what a culture shock! Even then, their Victorian Gothic home was scattered with many mementos of China, some of which doubtless fed into his world of Gormenghast.

Although the parents were very conventional in comparison with their flamboyant and iconoclastic son, some of his artistic talents were found in his parents: his father was "searching always for the apposite word, and always finding it" and also sketched, while his mother was musical.

First Encounter

Mervyn captured Maeve’s heart, mind, life, and imagination from their first meeting - when she was a naive 17-year old convent girl starting at art school, and he was her tutor. Their first date followed immediately, after which she observed "it couldn't have been the end of an evening, only the beginning of living". He was beautiful, haunting, funny, and unconventional. His lodgings "were not furnished. They were simply alive", a pattern replicated in the many homes they were to share: "such beautiful rooms, bare of comfort".

A year's separation, at the behest of her parents, had little effect: "we met again as though only a flutter of an eyelid had passed". So they married, and settled into artistic and marital bliss. He influenced her art: "Mervyn looked and taught me to look" and often used her (and later, their children) as a model, though "The sale of the first drawing [of me] was to me like selling my body."

WW2

Mervyn and Maeve were on holiday in the Cotswolds – rural delights that "hurt us by their opulence". Having the town crier announce the outbreak of war "seemed less dreadful, couched in the archaic language and setting of what seemed to be an England of ancient custom".

Mervyn was called up: "To be separated after never having been separated is like losing a limb". Maeve also mourns all the things he could have written and painted if had not been called up, although acknowledging, with the benefit of hindsight, "perhaps he made use of everything he saw and lived with... How he survived the world of army discipline is incomprehensible. I think the answer is that he didn't survive it."

Mervyn started the first Gormenghast book, Titus Groan (which I reviewed HERE), in the early days of the war, around the time their first child, Sebastian, was born. He even got permission to write while sitting at the back of an army course about theodolites, that he didn't understand. He didn't get to battle, but even so, he had a nervous breakdown at 31 and spent six months in hospital shortly after their second son, Fabian, was born (two years after Sebastian). That and war changed him; he became "a shadow, a man with a shadow".

Island of Sark

They moved to the tiny island of Sark (near Guernsey), where Mervyn had been happy as a young artist. "The excitement of two small boys let loose on an island with no cars was limpidly pure. To run wildly and inexhaustibly nowhere in particular." This probably partly why Sebastian's memoir is entitled "Child of Bliss" (my review HERE).

Mervyn liked to work surrounded by family life, rather than tucked away in a separate study or studio (just as well, given how tiny some of their homes were). Many of his manuscripts have little sketches of children and pets in the margins.

While on Sark, their third child, Clare, was born, though they left soon after. In the early stages of labour, Maeve "started painting a still life, which under the circumstances doesn't seem quite appropriate"!

Mainland/Suburbia & Theatre

Mervyn and Maeve were terrible with money (and all the children struggled with maths from when they were small), but the fact Mervyn tended to think of each number as either male of female raises the possibility of synaesthesia, though there is no other mention of anything relevant.

The need for money, and hence travel to London (Mervyn still taught part time) necessitated departure from Sark, though suburbia proved lonelier. Mervyn was having moderate success in terms of acclaim as a writer and illustrator, winning the prestigious Nebula (sci-fi) prize for "Boy in Darkness! (my review HERE). But money continued to be tight, and he set his sights on theatrical success which he thought would enable him to buy "exotic and strange presents" for his family and "to feel a success".

Over a period of seven years he struggled to get one of his two plays produced. Many big names looked, and some were interested, but others had (tactful) doubts about viability: "Your characters weave some splendid verbal wreathes for themselves, but seem to be figures in a pageant rather than people in a play."

To add to the stress, the third Titus book, Titus Alone (my review HERE) was going slowly. Maeve observes that it was "more difficult to be outside the world which had been created as a world within a world, than to be in a world which was probably closer to this one, and yet alien." Unbeknown at the time, early stage Parkinson's disease was also a factor.

Finally, the play was put on, though first night nerves proved worse than those familiar for private viewings and book launches, "a soul-baring experience... where you can see and hear and be infiltrated by the comment and the mood." The reviews were "neither good nor bad, but mostly condescending and ungenerous... It cannot be laid at any door, but disappointment built up by hope for too long, can damage a brain already too prolific."

The End

That was the beginning of the end. Mervyn descended into depression, Parkinson's, encephalitis, "electric treatment", surgery and "premature senility" at the age of 46, dying just over a decade later. Maeve doesn't go into any details, but notes "the mist was descending, but with the frailty of a gauze curtain between the audience and the player".

The final section is her calling out to her beloved, but now absent, husband: reminiscing about the past, and longing to be with him again.

Daughter's Memoirs

It is interesting to compare this memoir with that of their youngest child, Clare, "Under a Canvas Sky" (my review HERE). Clare was only 7 when Mervyn began his terminal decline, so much of her book focuses on that, whereas most of her mother's one is about the years before that. Clare also pins more of the blame for her father's health on poor theatre reviews. If planning to read the two, read Maeve's memoirs first.

Life Related To Works

This is a very personal biography (one of its strengths), but for analysis of how his life is reflected in his works, I recommend Winnington's "Vast Alchemies", which I reviewed HERE.

All My Peake Reviews

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

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most powerful artist's biography I've read to date. Written by Peake's wife, Maeve Gilmore - an accomplished artist and writer in her own right - the writing has an unusual layout of short chapters with snatches of moments of their life together. The language is quirky, conversational and deeply personal. An extraordinary talent reflected with a crystal clear mercury glass mirror.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Maeve's voice in this memoir: the aching of a grieving heart is evident throughout, even when speaking with fondness of her life with Mervyn and their children. Despite her obvious bias (I wouldn't have it otherwise, though) Maeve isn't entirely starry-eyed and oblivious to Mervyn's shortcomings, which are by way of being otherworldliness and impracticality, as on a personal level I've only read of him as being a warm and generous person.

Maeve provides much insight into the life experiences which influenced Mervyn's work, from his childhood in China, his various residences upon the Channel Island of Sark, and his war service, both as a sapper in the army, in which role his talents were wasted and his emotional resources were ravaged, and as a war artist, in which his talents were well used, and his emotional resources were ravaged, again.

The end of Mervyn's life is tragic, as his Parkinson's disease and dementia were brutally treated by electro-convulsive 'therapy', forced admission to a psychiatric ward and radical brain surgery. Maeve finds that she can't really bring herself to describe this part of Mervyn's life, but the last few pages distill the years of grief she felt at losing the great love of her life to the living death of late stage dementia.

[Oscar Cremmen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read light and quick on the train. Doubled over by the end

[David]

Interesting to see this perspective on Peake after reading the novels.

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a memoir of the author's life with her husband, Mervyn Peake. Maeve Gilmore's writing is succinct where her husband's is detailed and dense, light and airy where Peake's was dark and poignant. It was really fun reading this memoir and seeing this play. She leaves a lot of the emotional depth of her and Peake's lives together out, instead focusing on the more superficial and logistical details. It thus gives a great overview of the trajectory of their lives, without much insight into who Mervyn was as a person, unless one looks very closely. Still, it is fun to see the things taken for granted. Maeve and Mervyn never seemed to question their artistic lives, despite the financial issues which plagued them throughout. They both seem to have this naïveté about practical matters as they continue to explore their creative worlds.

Their interactions are sparse, but also evident in Gilmore's clever style. She doesn't describe what kind of father Peake was, but does mention offhandedly, like it was part of the weather, how he would stop in the middle of something to sketch one of his children. She writes their lives as if it is the memoir of one rather than two, and it is evident that the couple were very devoted to each other.

This is the cadence of the memoir. It appears to stay on the surface, but Gilmore's writing is clever and insightful when one reads between the lines a bit. I wish Maeve had given herself more support of her creative own life, as I would love to read more of her work, but she often (as she self-describes) threw herself into domesticity while also trying to support her painting work. She turned down the one big opportunity she was offered due to Peake's illness.

In contrast to the airy descriptions of their lives together, the last few pages, written in second person, are a gut-punch.

[hvsams · Rating 5 out of 5]

A better ending to the Gormenghast saga than Titus Awakes, hands down -- although that one should've never been published in the first place. I guess, with their type of person, not all art that is created, is created for the public -- and it's very clear that for Peake, just like for Gilmore, doing art was some kind of a property, rather than an activity, like burning for fire. I personally was never able to make sketching a habit -- but then again, maybe broadcasting your whole life and psyche into creative work isn't as beneficial when its being criticized afterwards literally kills you because of how much you've invested into all of this. Even if Gilmore is one of the loveliest narrators I've met (genuine to the last letter and not one shred of malice towards absolutely anyone -- a practically non-existent type of a biographer), and Peake's poems here were probably the only ones, aside from Blake's, to make me gasp. Generally, I don't understand why verse exists and think it'd be more convenient to read things if it did not exist, thank you very much. Only Rimbaud and Baudelaire matter, because Rimbaud wrote about the ulcer on her anus and Baudelaire about that superb cadaver blossoming like a flower -- and then there are also Blake, Vvedensky (but he's practically untranslateable so never mind) and, apparently, Peake.

I did guess the role of Gormenghast in their life, though. Generally, she makes just so many things about Gormenghast clearer here. It feels like an imaginary home, impossible to truly exist outside of, doesn't it? Because it was exactly that to them during WWII and afterwards, duh. And no wonder the BBC series looks like something in between Kwaidan and The Color of Pomegranates, only with Christopher Lee and Bri'ish twinks -- Peake's impressions from his childhood in the East were probably quite important if his lifelong wife and soulmate guesses so.

(Happening to have binged this during another period of tanatophobia felt just as therapeutic as if one had a girlfriend and watched Irreversible while she was delaying after work.)

[Octavia Cade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written memoir of Maeve Gilmore's time with her husband Mervyn Peake, before his early death from Parkinson's disease. Peake is one of my absolute favourite writers, but his wife - an accomplished artist in her own right - is certainly no slouch with words either. And this memoir, which seems constructed more as a series of loose memories strung together (often with months or years between them) than a typical narrative, is deeply affecting. It gives the picture of a somewhat nomadic family - money was never very plentiful, as might be expected with two artists trying to scrape a living together with three kids in tow - but the moves between Sark and London, between suburbia and army camps, seem in a way less present than the image of home as a place filled with paintings and paper, endless drafts and sketches everywhere.

Most affecting, I think, is the telling of the failure of Peake's play The Wit To Woo, which was, after a period of many years, first staged while he was in the early period of his disease. Gilmore presents the play as a symbol of hope, almost, that Peake was clinging to at the time, and its disastrous outcome both mirrors and shadows his descent into premature senility. It's just so awful to read, knowing as I did the outcome in advance... and, to be honest, having read the play recently I can't bring myself to blame the critics. It's just not very good, but that a mind and talent like Peake's was doomed to end in disappointment and incapacity is like a small and terrible tragedy in itself - and this memoir, short and perfectly shaped as it is, relays this all too clearly.

[Dave Appleby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gilmore was the widow of Peake, the author of Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and other books, who was also a poet, a painter and a very talented illustrator.

As a biography, this doesn't really work. I was trying to use it as a source to write a potted biography of Peake's life and the lack of dates made this book difficult to use; we don't even know when he was born; it starts with Gilmore's first sight of him when they were together at Art School, she as pupil, he as teacher.

But if we don't get the facts we get a lot of the feelings. Their life together was one of artistic poverty in London flats (in those days it was cheap to rent in London!) and remote rural cottages (and on Sark). They were financially impoverished but they knew Dylan Thomas and Graham Greene and Laurence Olivier and Anthony Quinn. They brought up their family and created.

And then Mervyn starts suffering from a brain disease, perhaps Parkinson's, perhaps early-onset dementia (aged 46). Treatment includes a spell in a mental hospital, with ECT, and brain surgery. Clearly, an illustrator can't have shaking hands. Clearly, a writer needs to be able to remember things. And so, in desperate sadness, the author records the slow decline of her brilliant husband.

[Bruce Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poignant love story- achingly pure, utterly honest. Told with such purity of heart it is almost painful to read. The story of a wildly creative man who loses his memory and thus: his world. Told by the woman who loved him more than anything in the world.

"It seemed so that each day was a leprechaun- humorous and fanciful, adventurous and mystical." Maeve Gilmore, A World Away: A Memoir of Mervyn Peake, (London: New English Library, 1971), 58

[Steve Shilstone · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pair of artists marry and produce art and three children, but not much money. One falls victim to early onset dementia at age 46 and breathes for another 11 years. The art lives on.

[Tutti · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not too familiar with the work of Mervyn Peake- yet- apart from a little dabble in Letters from a Lost Uncle. i think that if i were I would have enjoyed this book far more. As a piece on its own I didn't find it terribly insighful or spectacular- of interest in terms of viewing into lives of a busy working artist life. I would have liked to hear more of Maeve's own process and work- although to be fair- it was really the memoir of her husband. Of interest how to juggle two creative practices and family. The ending so sad- so much work to create such opportunities for his success.
But was certainly good introduction fr Mervyn Peake.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking. A must for Peake readers, but so much more. It's a fragile tale of love, apparent madness and premature death of a multiply talented and very human man.

Peake so loved his family (MG was his wife) and was loved by them. He died a victim of Psychiatric brutality after surviving the second world war, unable to even recognise the first imprint of the third of his Gormenghast novels, so confused was he by electric treatments and drugs.

[Aran · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will break your heart.

[Chiefdonkey Bradey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful lament for a dark prince

[Cooper Renner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat impressionistic memoir of Peake by his widow. Lovely and moving.