Lessons from a mediaeval genius who drew as well as he wrote
PAUL JOHNSON
Ino longer use a typewriter, as spare parts for the ones that I like are unobtainable. Computers inhibit me, as I like to see what I have written spread out. So I write by hand again, as I used to do when composing verse plays at school or doing Oxford essays for A.J.P. Taylor. As a result my handwriting has become clear and elegant again. I come from a family of notable scriptures. My father was good, albeit eccentric; my mother better, and orthodox. Her favourite brother, James. had the best handwriting I have ever come across.
For all these reasons I take note of the 800th anniversary of Matthew Paris (1202-59), assuming he was 15 when he took the habit at St Alban's abbey in 1217. For, in addition to his many other claims to be remembered — as historian, artist, robust patriot, confidant and adviser of kings, and nature-lover — he wrote a superb script. This was important. Indeed, I think we tend to underestimate the centrality of writing as the supreme utilitarian art (the Chinese make no such mistake). Few, even among art scholars, know much about its history. For a lucid summary I recommend the essay in Lane-Poole's Medieval England, vol. 2, 541-58, by my old Oxford professor Vivian Galbraith, Briefly, the foundation of all writing and printing in the West is the Roman square capital, which we find in many lapidary inscriptions. It is of impeccable clarity and beauty, which explains why it has survived for more than two millennia and is still in universal use for capital letters. Even computers have failed to replace it. But it is slow in all-capital form; so the Romans developed a cursive script, and this running-hand degenerated in the Dark Ages. But forms of fine-writing — rustic capitals, uncial and half-uncial, minuscule and majusde — were developed in monasteries (the Book of Kells is written in half-uncial).
Then, in the 9th century, as a result of the revival of learning under Charlemagne, French monks, more specifically those of Tours (whence modern French pronunciation also comes), produced a supremely elegant, fast and readable script that we call Caroline minuscule. This became standard in Europe for 400 years and, revived by Renaissance scholars in the 15th century, was adopted by Italian printers to become the Roman typeface of the new printing industry. But, at the end of the 12th century, in one of those backward steps which civilisation occasionally takes, a new, difficult and angular script, not without its own dark beauty, suddenly took over. We call it Gothic. It was the script in which the great mediaeval universities worked, and in which Chaucer wrote, and would have perpetuated itself — for the Gutenberg printers used it — had not the Roman alternative won the Battle of the Books and ousted blackletter printing. (It survives in Germany, and is a burden to that obstinate people.) During the first triumphant flush of Gothic script, Matthew Paris, who worked at St Alban's, which had the largest scriptorium in England, stood out against the full rigour or barbarism of the innovation. He developed his own modification, which is much clearer and more legible. We can detect his hand when he makes additions to biblical passages written by junior scribes in full-blooded Gothic. So he found many imitators in England, and that is why [treat him as the patron saint of English handwriting. Yes, I know that he has not been canonised, but why? He has all the qualifications.
Paris's work on his Great Chronicle, the Chronica Majora, and his outspokenness at the abbot's table, which entertained all the great and the good as they passed north from London, made him a literary celebrity. He was notable for accuracy and truthfulness, and revised his chronicle to eliminate expressions of opinion which, on reflection and in the light of further experience, he thought unjust. Henry III, his brother the Earl of Cornwall and his brother-in-law Simon de Montfort, all courted his favour. The first two went out of their way to supply Paris with the latest news and to show him documents for copying. Popes were also anxious that he should see their point of view, It is remarkable that none of this attention to the great went to his head. He remained modest, though a forthright critic of state, Church and society, adumbrating Carlyle.
He epitomised himself in a remarkable drawing, which occupies a full page in his shortened version of the Great Chronicle (British Museum Ms. Royal 14C. VII, f.6). This shows the Virgin and Child, drawn with majestic skill rivalling that of any Italian painter of the age, with Matthew kneeling humbly at the Virgin's feet. He is heavily tonsured; his round, monkish face mimes wonder; his black slippers peep out from his Benedictine's habit. There is another self-portrait, on his death-bed (or so I think). In his text Paris describes many splendid and tragic royal occasions, sometimes quoting direct speech, as reported to him by those involved. He puts
in natural catastrophes such as floods, famines and plagues — good harvests, too, and celestial events like comets. He tells of the first buffaloes to reach England, describes a leopard and a camel, and draws an elephant presented to Henry III. He says that a tremendous armada of crossbills invaded England and wrought havoc in the orchards. He did a drawing of a cannibal feast by Tartars, of Saracen girls performing acrobatic tricks, and battles by land and sea. His method was to use lead pencil for an underdrawing, ink it over carefully, then put in washes of blue, green, red and ochre. In the copy of his Great Chronicle, kept in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, there is a magnificently bellicose drawing of the battle of Damietta, in which crusaders and Saracen cavalry lance and unhorse each other in dreadful close combat, and the earth is littered with severed heads, helmets and broken swords and scimitars. The leading authority on Paris's art, Suzanne Lewis, thinks he was an amateur who taught himself both to draw and to write a formal script. If so, he was an amateur of genius, as well as the most professional of all the mediaeval historians.
I have a soft spot for those who both write and draw, being that way inclined myself. I revere the memory of Edward Lear, so good at both. Thackeray's drawings are particularly sharp, and it is a pity that he did not persist in illustrating his fiction. G.K. Chesterton also neglected his drawing in a busy writing career. A curious case is George Du Maurier, who combined a career as a top-class artist on Punch, specialising in high-society jokes, with writing one of the outstanding bestsellers of the 19th century, Trilby. Henry James found this incomprehensible, though it seems clear to me: an artist creates striking images, and the plot of Trilby, its entire point, is an image, of the delicious Trilby, wearing her soft felt hat with its indented crown, and her mastermanipulator, Svengali. Trilby's hat itself is an image, one reason it is still worn, and called after her. Du Maurier was always 'into' fashion, and what intrigues me about these artistwriters is the way in which their lines and drawings reinforce each other: Hugo's sulphurous, Gothic pen-and-wash sketches spring naturally from his prose. and James Thurber's seemingly artless scrawls ram home his ferocious family fantasies. Where are the writer-illustrators of today, the successors of Beatrix Potter et al.? They ought to be encouraged. Why not an annual award, the Matthew Paris Prize?
Previous page
