True romance
MICHAEL BORRIE
Gothic Europe Sacheverell Sitwell (Weiden- feld and Nicolson 70s)
This book is not really art history or archi- tectural history or any other sort of history. The reader is not drowned in dates or-stifled with pedantic scholarship. He is spared fussy definitions and claustrophobic cate- gories. And it certainly cannot be called a travel book, or a companion guide to the treasures of mediaeval Europe. In fact it can be sublimely indifferent to their precise whereabouts. There is, for example, a lyrical description of the beauties and icono- graphical significance of the Dunstable Swan Brooch, but we are not told that the brooch is in the British Museum. The book has one hundred and sixty very splendid plates, but it would be most offended, and rightly, to be classed as a picture book.
Yet in a way it is all these things in part, with none dominant. Perhaps it is best placed on the library shelf under Romance, for it is nothing so much as another instal- ment of the author's dreamy love affair with the storied past. It will certainly delight his admirers as much as any of his previous works.
The book is in two parts. The first, and most substantial, deals with England, whose Spires and Towers, Cloisters and Chapter Houses, Timber Roofs and Chantry Chap- els, Flush Work and Fan Vaults, are cele- brated, rather than described, in stately Ruskinian periods. The illustrations to this section are particularly fine, but it would have been nice to be told in the text when an illustration has been supplied. There is also a chapter on Opus Anglicanunz, the sumptuous English embroidery so highly prized in mediaeval Europe. The second part of the book deals, more summarily, with the Continent. Spain, France, Germany, Italy and Portugal have a chapter apiece, and there are also chapters entitled. char- acteristically, 'Fantasia on the Gothic' and `Charivari of the Gothic'.
Sir Sacheverell's approach to the build- ings and objects of his affection is a pot- pourri of description, comparison, analogy and personal reminiscence, interspersed with hearty swipes at the modern world and en- gaging flights of fancy. Some of the last are, perhaps, just a little whimsicaL On Notre Dame, for example: 'And probably the citizens of Paris, young and old, men and women alike, went to sleep on winter nights of wind and rain wondering more than once in a lifetime how the monsters were faring along the roofline of Notre Dame. Whether they left their posts when all the lights of the city went out and crawled to a dark corner out of the rains or snow?' But there are many felicities: on Notre Dame again, for instance, whose flying buttresses are likened to 'the claws, whiskers, antennae, of some crustacean animal com- ing towards us slowly, purposefully, but with uncoordinated walk along the seabed'; which is exactly true. And sometimes a whole townscape is marvellously illuminated in a single phrase: the 'magpie houses' of Dinkelsbuhl, for example, could not be bettered.
The range of Sir Sacheverell's visual ex- perience is truly vast, and his enthusiasm and affection for his subject are unbounded. Everything he sees conjures up a host of other images, memories and associations, the harvest of a long lifetime's looking, which pour from his pen in an almost Joy- cean flood. As with all his books, the result is as much a revelation of himself as of the past he brings to life with such imagination. It is a welcome addition to the long, and, one hopes, still lengthening list of his works that have given pleasure to so many.
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