Lost in Modernity a book review of Eric Gill, by Fiona MacCarthy

LIFE in the twenty first century is a complete enigma to me. I feel lost and displaced and nothing has values I can relate to. I share the sentiments of George Mackay Brown (1921-1996) and Edwin Muir (1887-1959), two Orcadian poets and writers who resented the progress, urbanisation and industrialisation of their age which they deemed to have a negative impact on traditional values and customs. They saw it as a ‘sickening of society’.

Apart from several years of study as a mature adult at Newbattle Abbey in Dalkeith and at Edinburgh University Brown rarely left his native Islands where, thankfully, the influences of modernity were somewhat slower to take hold than in the larger towns and cities on the British mainland. Poverty and circumstances meant that Muir was less fortunate. As a tenant farmer on the tiny Island of Wyre and, later, in Deerness on the Orkney Mainland, life became increasingly untenable. Eventually, he was forced to relocate his family to Glasgow. For the young fourteen-year-old the move represented the Fall after the Eden of an idyllic Orcadian childhood. Muir felt utterly displaced and would, forever more, refer to himself as an ‘Orkneyman’ and to Scotland as his ‘second country’ (McCulloch, 1993 : ix).

If Brown and Muir felt the way they did about life in the twentieth century I can’t even begin to imagine the distaste with which they would have viewed conditions in the following millennium. They were, however, by no means the only men who regarded themselves out of step with the era in which they lived. I am currently rereading Fiona MacCarthy’s excellent, if controversial, biography of the engraver, sculptor and typographer, Eric Gill (1882 - 1940). Born in Brighton and later moving to Chichester with his family he, too, idolised his formative years of growing up in the simple, yet warm and loving environment of a large traditional family circle. Gill felt frustrated by the ‘creep’ of superficiality not only in contemporary daily life, but also within the artistic society of his period.

Best known, artistically, for his fifteen foot stone panels depicting the Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral and his sculpture of Prospero’s spirit, Ariel, on the front of the old Broadcasting House in London, he also designed several typefaces and lettering systems which are still in evidence today in the print, advertising and marketing industries. As a person, he was a highly complex, eccentric and contentious figure with an unusually ferocious and bizarre sexual appetite which, with age, became ever more lurid. What interests me about Eric Gill, though, are not his idiosyncrasies or disturbing sexual habits, but the man as artist and individualist, along with his unyielding quest to create an environment in which to practice and preserve artistic life as it had  been for centuries previous.

Gill studied at Chichester Technical and Art School before moving to London. Living in the same street in Hammersmith as a number of other artists the years 1905 to 1907 saw the embryonic formation of what later became known as the Arts and Crafts movement – a community of like-minded creatives with similar desires to make art the root of their lives’ endeavours and to extricate themselves from anything that threatened to interfere with this idyll. At Ditchling, in Sussex, Gill and his family, together with apprentices, friends and fellow artists found the land, space and freedom they needed to establish studios, workshop and a working environment in which to give free reign to their creativity whilst still being close enough to London to access business opportunities.

Fifteen years later the reputation of the Ditchling artists community had grown to such an extent that it was frequently sought out by curious  journalists and other interested parties. Gill, who at once craved the attention and possessed an intrinsic need to be the lynchpin of the community also yearned to isolate himself from the chaos of modern life. When he heard about a disused chapel at Capel-Y-Ffin in south Wales he saw it as an opportunity to begin a new chapter in his life and work. Having adopted the Catholic faith during the early years at Ditchling Gill had become a member of the Dominican Order. Religious practices and rituals became an increasingly significant part of the daily routine for him and the other members of the Ditchling community and their families. Relocating his tribe to a remote part of Wales, away from the beaten track, was inevitably a challenge and while the appeal of the location was certainly in keeping with his ethos of wishing to ‘retreat from the squalor of the cities’ (MacCarthy, 1990 : 84) as he saw it, in practical terms it was simply too far from London where the majority of his commissions still originated from.

In October 1928 Gill moved his family and assorted hangers-on one last time. Pigotts, near High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire, was, arguably, closest to Gill's ideal of an artists community. It was where he spent the final twelve years of his life. Just an hour's train ride away from London Pigotts' setting, in the heart of the Chilterns, meant it had a very rural feel and was blessed with splendid views of the surrounding countryside. Set in sixteen acres of rolling fields the accommodation comprised a group of one-and- two-storey buildings situated around a central area of lawn. Eric and his wife, Mary Ethel, occupied the main farmhouse while his grown up children and their families resided in cottages which had once been stables, but had already been turned into living quarters by the previous owners. The numerous outbuildings were converted into workshops by Gill and his apprentices. One of the buildings, situated between the farmhouse and the row of cottages, was deemed perfect to be converted into a small chapel. In this way Gill's vision of the traditional Catholic workers commune which lay at the heart of the Arts and Crafts doctrine was upheld.

The years at Pigotts saw some of Gill’s most important commissions, such as Prospero’s Ariel on Broadcasting House in London and his huge panel sculpture Creations for the League of Nations in Geneva (MacCarthy, 1990 : 275-276). The latter and several others involved significant travel which he grudgingly undertook as long as he was able too. It was always a relief to return to Pigotts. From 1936 onwards his failing health dictated how much work he could undertake. He suffered from repeated bouts of bronchitis and congestion of the lungs, some even serious enough to require periods of hospitalisation (ibid : 276). He became accident prone, on one occasion breaking a rib during a fall from a trestle (ibid : 278).

A minor lung operation was to hasten his death and Eric Gill died in the middle of an air raid on 17 November 1940, aged 58. He had built on the artistic traditions established by the likes of William Morris (1834 –1896) and John Ruskin (1819 –1900) and left behind a legacy of work that was to influence generations of artists, sculptors and architects to come.

In her biography of Gill Fiona MacCarthy manages to maintain a fine balance between the different strands which made up the artist’s complex psyche. She discusses with equal confidence and candour his eccentric personality, (describing his looks, outlandish dress-sense and behaviour), his relations with family, friends and fellow artists, his attitude to traditional art practices and to modernity. Although she touches on his works in passing, mentioning them more to provide a rounded picture of Gill’s life, she does not analyse them in any great depth. For that the reader is advised to seek out earlier studies of the artist, such as The Life of Eric Gill by Robert Speaight (1966) or Donald Attwater’s Eric Gill : Workman (1945)and Cell of Good Living (1969).

For me MacCarthy’s portrait of Eric Gill is a reminder that although personal circumstances were no less fraught during his time than they are today, there still existed in former decades the possibility to recreate, after a fashion, the life of previous centuries in which tradition, custom and personal strive were valued and creativity brought with it a sense of satisfaction and pleasure that is all but lost to us in the rollercoaster, gadget-driven life of the twenty first century.

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REFERENCES

Attwood, D.    (1969) Cell of Good Living. London: Geoffrey Chapman (an imprint of Cassell)

Attwood, D.    (1945)  Eric Gill : Workman. Cambridge:  James Clarke & Co.

Brown, G.M.   (1997)  For the Islands I Sing. London: John Murray (Publishers)

Brown, G.M.   (accessed 12.05.2013)   http://www.georgemackaybrown.co.uk/siteindex.htm

Fergusson, M.  (2007)  George Mackay Brown: The Life. London: John Murray (Publishers)

Laity, P.             (2011)  A Life in Writing : Fiona MacCarthy. London: The Guardian   http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/sep/02/fiona-maccarthy- life-writing  (accessed 12.05.2013)

MacCarthy, F.   (1990)  Eric Gill. London: Faber and Faber

MacCarthy, F.   (2006)  Written in Stone. London:  The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2006/jul/22/art.art  (accessed 12.05.2013)

McCulloch, M.  (1993)  Edwin Muir: Poet, Critic and Novelist (Modern Scottish  Writers Series). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd

Muir, E.             (2008)  An Autobiography. Edinburgh: Canongate Classics

Speaight, R.     (1966)  The Life of Eric Gill. York (UK): Methuen Books