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Chapter 9 considers Revivalism quoting Laurence Binyon from 1913 “We cannot discard the past ... we must remould it in the fires of our necessities, we must make it new and our own.” At the beginning of The Romantic, William Boyd asks: “What do we leave behind us when we die?” Posterity – and legacy – are questions that have preoccupied him for decades. There are few writers today as obsessed by the biographical – or faux-biographical – form. Over the course of his career, Boyd has specialised in examining the fictitious lives of his characters with wit and authority. He has now returned to life writing with this account of Cashel Greville Ross, the self-described “bastard son of an Anglo-Irish Protestant aristocrat and a Scottish governess”. Cashel Ross was amongst other things, a soldier, writer and felon who fought at Waterloo. He died in 1882 but left very little evidence of his life, a few autobiographical notes, letters and bills etc. Not having enough information to complete a biography William Boyd has written a fictional account of his life based on that material.
The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars
Being the biography of Cashel Greville Ross, born in Ireland in 1799, buried in Venice over eighty years later, a picaresque, episodic narrative, reminiscent of Barry Lyndon or one of those Victorian novels originally serialised in a magazine. I suspect am also probably comparing it unfairly to the end of Logan Mountstuart in Any Human Heart (which I found really moving and actually left me a bit teary). Two strong women become central to the story; Contessa Raphaella Rezzo; and widow Mrs Frances (Frannie) Broome. Both women are interesting but from their character descriptions, and their actions, it becomes difficult to differentiate between the two, who occupy different parts of the world, and the narrative. Boyd uses the description ‘cavaliere servante’ to describe Raphaella. Frances Spalding is an art historian, critic and leading authority on 20th-century British art. Her books include acclaimed biographies of Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, John Minton, Duncan Grant, Gwen Raverat and John and Myfanwy Piper, as well as a biography of the poet Stevie Smith. She is Emeritus Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal
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The truth behind Eliza’s insistence that she is better off now is clear to see in her music, the proof being very much in the pudding with her new album, A Real Romantic. This is nine songs of smoky R’n’B performed in the basement of a Camden bar, of jazzy beats and blurry vocals, a patchwork collage of living and loving in London, the city where Eliza was born and bred. “I see people come from other places and they’re culturally overwhelmed by London”, she explains, “it’s addictive, it’s a special special city and nothing can replace it.” I’m sitting with Eliza Caird (fka Doolittle, now just Eliza) in the restaurant of the Covent Garden Hotel, as she explains her transition from fresh-faced pop singer to the artist behind one of the rawest, smoothest albums of 2018. “I’m still super proud of the old stuff – I think I tapped into a side of me that I didn’t even know was there, and I’m really glad for it. But I always felt that there was something else I had to be doing. It was like being in a band, and then waking up and actually becoming a solo artist. Even though I kind of was a solo artist. That’s the best way I can put it. Do you want some nuts?” We made our way up to the piano nobile where LB greeted us. He is quite short and, not to put too fine a point on it, very plump. His face is plump, his hands are plump, his fingers are plump. Hair receding, also. He introduced us to his mistress, Contessa Guiccioli, very young, 18–20, I’d say, who matches her paramour in plumpness but, however, is very beautiful with it, speaking hardly a word of English but, looking at her very ample figure, let’s say its noticeable prominences, it is not her anglophony that explains her attraction to LB, I would venture. Wandering through Africa wasn’t that much different, in a sense, from wandering through London, or Paris, or Boston. You thought the road ahead was obvious and well marked but more often than not the destination you had so clearly in mind would never be reached. Never. Things got in the way. There were diversions, problems, changes of mind, changes of heart…
The Real and the Romantic: English Art Between Two World Wars
The second of William Boyd's 'whole life' works I have read, following on from Any Human Heart, which is one of the best books I've read in recent years. She covers movements, revivals, trends and individual artists from Stanley Spencer to Paul Nash, from the shunning of Picasso by the English art scene to Ben Nicholson's move to abstraction. She provides as much as she can on women artists, who were often overlooked; Sybil Andrews, Dora Carrington, Gwen John and Winifred Nicholson feature here. The twenty-first century has seen a surge of interest in English art from the interwar years, and the value of work by artists such as Stanley Spencer and Eric Ravilious has soared in value. New critical attention focuses on other artists, often women, who were previously overlooked, such as Winifred Knights and Evelyn Dunbar, while encouraging a more nuanced understanding of the cultural landscape of the 1920s and ’30s. With these new perspectives in mind, The Real and the Romantic takes a fresh look at this richly diverse period in English art. All biography is fiction, but fiction that has to fit the documented facts.’ - Donald Rayfield, Anton Chekhov: A Life.A wonderful romp through the 19th century, mixing fact and fiction seamlessly. Our hero manages to, amongst other things, get involved in the Battle of Waterloo, mix with Byron and Shelley in Italy, help find the source of the River Nile, become the author of best selling books and have an 60 year love affair. Most of all, this romantic will fall head over heels for a glamorous Contessa named Raphaella, who will never stray far from his mind. Although to this reader, Raphaella came across as vainglorious, manipulative and materialistic as well as (of course) beautiful, this is, after all the romantic era, and Cashel is the ultimate romantic. Veteran biographer Frances Spalding, known for her insightful books on the early British Modernists Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry, turns her penetrating gaze on the interwar years' The fictional biography is my favourite genre. I suppose that's why I somewhat surprisingly enjoyed reading Daniel Defoe. And it's good to see the genre is now getting some popular traction; The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a whole life novel. But the first modern example I read was Boyd's Any Human Heart, a book which must be in my lifetime top ten. If I hadn't been so excited about Boyd writing another, set this time in the 19th century, I wouldn't be so disappointed now.
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