Perverse and Florid
Memoirs of a Tattooist: From the Notes, Diaries and Letters of the late 'King of Tattooists' George Burchett. Compiled and edited by Peter Leighton. (Oldbourne, 15s.) THERE is something boyish and macabre about this book, yet the Prof. (it was a courtesy title) had his head screwed firmly on and could be sardonic. George Burchett was the King of Tattooists and during his tattooing life of fifty- three years (he died in 1953) he tattooed kings and princes, and princesses too, as well as the tars, tarts, criminals and plain ordinary sort who lined up for his needles. His workshop in the Waterloo Road was hung with photographs of famous anatomies scrawled by his hand. He could do a Rubens canvas on a man's back, he did not con- fine himself to dragons and ships and butterflies, there was nothing he could not copy or design; he was, in his perverse art, supreme. And how perverse this art does seem. Surely only the boyish can look without disgust on these tormented skins, as only the boyish could wish to have them . . . the boyish or the sick? 'I remember' (he says) 'one peculiarly florid job for a Frenchman; the murder .of Marat in his bath. . . Burchett was a gay, shrewd creature and one may guess he never read Kafka's The Penal Settlement or he might have dropped his needles for good.
Nervy and sensitive the Prof. was not. To him the human body was a canvas and though he did a good deal of cosmetic work later, in high-priced salons, he did not have much heart for colouring the lips of ladies, and their cheeks 'with a per- manent rosy blush,' or giving 'sunburn' to the skins of city magnates and blue chin-shadows to hairless men. He wished always to get back to his pictures. King Alfonso came back often CI re- freshed some of his older ornaments . . .'), while the Russian royal family were a special problem, because of hzemophilia. A good tattooist does not scratch much, but one scratch here might be enough—in fact, Rasputin is supposed to have urged the Czarina to have the heir tattooed so that he might die by bleeding to death. Prof. Burchett had a strict sense of honour and only once, at the request of a deceiving lady, blackened her poodle's offending pink nose so that it took first prize. This book runs all the time on the edge of nightmare. Either you can bear the punctured skin, or you
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