Joseph Anthony’s Reviews > The Cemetery in Barnes > Status Update

From a distance he watched the door open and then close again. He became aware of the silence lying upon the street.

Sometimes, in the early morning, in the summer, the light shown most gently on the earthenware teapot and, seeing it, he would feel tears come into his eyes. I could never have experienced that light if I had not been alone, he would say. I could never have felt as I did then that I wanted to bless the world and be blessed by it in turn.

Amidst the cruel wolves I wander lost,
And feel the winter come, whose icy frost
With trembling horror makes my skin to crawl.

He would tell of his fantasies of drowning, vivid images he experienced at the time he was living in Paris after the death of his first wife. As I sank I would feel quite relieved, he would say. I would think: There goes another life - and know I had not finished with this one.

… The pre-Raphaelite artist had put all his effort into making Ophelia pathetic while Bonnard had put his into catching the light of the bathroom, forcing us to recognize that we are all temporal creatures, emerging into the light for a few brief seconds, before we disappear again…

He had a good collection of early music and his one indulgence was occasionally adding to it - Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus of Vienna he particularly admired, and he would often put on their superb recording of Monteverdi‘s Orfeo with the dazzling Jeanne Deroubaix as the Messenger:

I come to you, Orpheus,
an ill- fated bearer of tidings
Still more ill-fated and more tragic:
Your lovely Eurydice…