A jeweller's treasure chest
John de Falbe
Patience Gray was well known 40 years ago as the author of Plats du Jour, a book as influential as Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking in bringing Mediter- ranean culture to the English table. For a few years she edited a Woman's Page for the Observer, under David Astor. Then she took off to Italy, reappearing for the British public only once more, so far as I am aware, in a book called Honey from a Weed — until now. Even now, nobody could say that she is playing for publicity on a grand scale, since the book is, in effect, self-published. It must be said that no publisher could have published it as it is, but I don't suppose Miss Gray cares very much about what publishers think, and so much the better: as a result, she has produced something more personal, marginal and eccentric — and very much grander.
Work Adventures Childhood Dreams is a very satisfying object. It is slightly larger than the normal format and heavier, print- ed well on good paper and properly bound. A great number of black and white pho- tographs and drawings are reproduced in the text. These vary in quality, but the page design is admirable throughout. On the front cover is a gouache of the author by Norman Mommens, who is often men- tioned as artist, mentor, partner. On the back is a photograph of the prow of a small painted boat.
The dismal title is a list of the parts into which the book is divided, but Gray does not really follow her own divisions, perhaps because her life is too coherent to fall into components so neatly. The final section, for example, contains only one passage directly concerning dreams, followed by two superb pieces about the author's adop- tive Apulia: one recounts a visit by her aged mother, who wanted to take back sto- ries to tell her neighbour in Sussex; the other, called 'The Ladies of Lecce', describes the changes wrought by moderni- ty- The last passage is a brilliant and mov- ing tribute to a dead friend whom Gray fancies has returned as a bluebottle. There was 'something definitely out of tune even before emerging from childhood in my response to convention, something fatally dissonant in the observable models,' she writes, and the truth of this is evident. In the section entitled 'Childhood', she more or less sticks to the subject, but the conven- tional title is misleading. The first para- graph is just, 'Why I never married.' The second begins, 'The kneeling upset me.' What follows are three vignettes of an adventurous girl growing up in a well-to-do home with three sisters and an irascible father during the Twenties. Together these comprise one of the most vivid accounts of childhood, and the difficulty of becoming an independent adult, that I have read. A large picture of Buster Keaton appears in the middle, for no obvious reason, but I am glad it is there. 'Adventures' contains a pas- sage called `Marestails', describing a work- trip to interview a jeweller in the hills behind Nice. 'Work' begins with a dream- like tale of making a sculpture for a way- side shrine. Yet for all the apparent disorder, a marvellous sense of purpose and integrity pervades this book. The con- struction, like the title, seems like an afterthought.
Gray has been making jewellery for the last 30 years. She writes about materials she has used, the genesis of shapes, the relationship of the object to the wearer. But when she refers to 'work', as she does often, it is as likely to be that of Norman Mommens as her own. I doubt that it is accident that the title for the very first passage, 'Patron Saint and Patron', faces a picture of a grim, granite-faced man in a leather apron, surrounded by stone and cacti: Mommens. One could read this book as a hymn to him, although he is never properly introduced; and this is touching and surprising because almost everything Gray writes about is so very original and intriguing — the description of a marble workshop in Carrara, the record of a soli- tary walking tour in the Veneto in 1961, a meeting with T. S. Eliot at a cocktail party, holidays with children in Brittany . . . If there are times when Gray's prose is obscure, these are vastly outweighed by the riches. A random example:
We enquired for her spouse and were shown into a thin-lipped room whose photographs, planted like artichokes at decent intervals, and some forbidding chairs proclaimed it to be the salotto.
This is a very special book, which presents the question, what is it that makes one treasure a book? For while Work Adventures Childhood Dreams is remark- able, it is not in every respect a good book; yet, beyond doubt, it is one I shall treasure. It is erratic and wayward, and its episodic nature makes it more suited to dipping into than reading from cover to cover, but it amounts to a magnificent, inspiring testi- mony to a well-lived life. I bet she's a diffi- cult granny.
Previous page
