Italian letters
1989
‘One of the Italians forced us to meet the Archdeacon in full rig-out, looking like
Old Mother Riley’
30/01
Bristol art school asked me to fix up their students’ Italian trip this year. Have booked them into an incredibly luxurious YHA in Siena where it costs something like £2.75p a night, with meals at £3! Have also sent a heap of background material and hope to be handsomely rewarded, but perhaps not. Anyway I refused to do guided tours; merely a bit of administration. Don’t think I shall do it again as it was a real chore.
06/03
[from Madeleine] Michael…has been doing a lot of work recently, and has had three paintings reproduced in a rather esoteric but serious black and white magazine called “Constructivist Forum”. Exhibiting in Italy seems to be fraught with problems, and getting work back to England also presents difficulties – Michael Parkin is supposed to be coming out this year, so we’ll see, but it’s difficult to know what to do at the moment. I think a visit to Milan is indicated, as all the modern galleries are there, or at Turin, but I can’t say I look forward to it…
06/04
My friend Ben Jones (sculptor at Bristol) has been and taken the “Honda” and will send me some money for it, so we’ve got over that problem. Our Fiat “Panda” (new model) should be arriving in two weeks so we shall then be mobile again. Ben came with 12 students from the art school, who are working in the sculpture yards at Pietresanta (plus one technician), so we had quite a visitation. Joe Tilson and his wife Jos have also been, and the Feilers (just gone).
Have had a letter from [father in law], wanting to know, in querulous tone, whether John Miller had an Equity card! He’d been checking the cast list of that film about the Newlyn School, for which I wrote the script, and in which John appeared as Frank Bramley. The film has just been shown on TSW. As a matter of interest, John has always had an Equity card, ever since “Kind Hearts and Coronets”. “And what part did Michael Truscott play in ‘production’ – why was his name there?” etc. etc. etc….. Oh dear!
Now I’m hoping to get down to some work. Will write again when there is more news about [buying] the apartment [next door].
27/05
N– … comes out to Chiantishire (to paint) on Monday next, plus “F–” and the children. We shall be meeting. Rather important to keep that contact, and anyway, he’s a nice chap. [note from Madeleine: N– brought the excellent news that four of Michael’s pictures sold in Chicago, more than anyone else].
M– is apparently coming to the house that N– is staying in, in July, for the Palio. His partner, called W–… is a multi-multi-millionaire and is “renting a house on the Campo for the Palio”. If this is true, he will be set back some £100,000 for the day! Will we be invited??? W– has also bought some vast palazzo in Genova, “where he will be installing his art collection, the rest of it being in Florida”. I am quoting from M–’s last letter. All sorts of fantasies now begin to obsess us.
Our endless telephone calls and letters to a variety of kitchen manufacturers and stockists have at last born fruit, or so we think and hope. ‘Mr. Dream Home, a certain Chas. Pollington, and wife (the latter about to open a furniture emporium in central London in collaboration with her two daughters), are flying out here to see our little factory, with a view to placing an order, or orders, if the price is right. We hope for a few free meals on the strength of this business arrangement, but we have to go to Pisa airport to meet him, complete with one of those signs that expectant firms hold up at the arrivals’ gateway, saying “I PROFILI – KITCHEN CABINET DOORS”. We shall really enjoy that! I won’t go on about this rather appalling affair that we seem to have got into, but it will help the village if we can pull off a contract, and is good public relations as far as we are concerned. “Have you heard that the English……..”
The journey south and to my old camp-sites, or some of them, was interesting, but perhaps not to be repeated, although it did have certain benefits. The Panda went, like a rather noisy bird, but it got there and back without incident. We got to the Greek Temples at Paestum in a day, with ease, and stopped right next to the ruins, in a kind of “Holiday Inn” beach hotel (piano bar etc,) but there was nobody in it apart from us…
The proprietor, who was called Sig. MAFFIA (not a joke), was an enthusiast for the Monastery of Padula, and by chance, I had my plan that I did of Padula, and my few drawings of the building, in the car. I had surveyed this, the second largest monastery in Italy I think, after Monte Cassino, in February 1944 (or so the plan says). The intention was for us to turn it into a PoW camp for Germans, and an internment camp for bad Fascists. We had to wait before we left the next day, for the proprietor to take these historic and priceless documents to the nearest photocopier, so that he could have copies made and have them signed by me. I think they were to be framed. Nothing was knocked off the bill, but we were given a rather bad book on Paestum by way of exchange…
Journeying on…we eventually reached Padula [see Certosa of Padula]. Perhaps, more interesting than the experience of seeing the place again, was finding how inaccurate the memory is, of things that one thought one knew so well. A man called George Millar…has written a book about his escape from Padula (called “Road to Resistance”) and is currently writing another, so I have sent a few photocopies off to him, and my own recollections. From the number of books that he has written he seems to be dining off the war indefinitely.
We went on to Eboli (I had tried to find my camp on the way down south, but failed), and after much pacing around, found the site, more or less. It was once a very large area, devoted to the Royal Artillery, but we (the R.E.s) had built it. I spoke to a peasant about the camp, and he said, “They do say as how there were a military camp here squire, but I were three at the time” – so that was that. Everything had changed, changed so much in fact, that quarries and roads and shops, and churches, and cattle markets had totally swamped the original area, which was a kind of deserted patch with a nearby olive grove on the hills. It was a very odd experience and made one wonder if anything is remotely like what it used to be.
PS: Sir Harold Acton, a charming old queen is…a not-so-far-distant neighbour, having a nice place near Firenze, of which city he is an honorary citizen. A friend of the Royals, especially Carlo, who likes a bit of culture, he speaks good Italian but with an English accent. Strange, the refusal of the British to alter their vocal characteristics – some kind of hangover from the days of the Raj I suppose.
Recently we were invited to the Castello di Vicciomaggio at the British Consul’s behest, for a wine and salami afternoon, to raise money for the “unfortunate in Tuscany” – (“dare I suggest 10,000 lire each?” collected at the door). The above in aid of the Anglican church in Firenze, actually. The castello is a hard building, with good views on three sides and a giant quarry on the last. A serf played Continental-type music on a “musette” accordion (very French, actually) and it was quite charming. Nobody spoke to us, except the consul (10ft tall, gangling, very thin and goofy, probably Eton) and two Italians, married to unhappy English ladies. One of the Italians had been a director of the World Health Organisation at United Nations – a geriatric specialist. His wife forced us to meet the Archdeacon of Italy and of Florence, complete in full rig-out… looking like Old Mother Riley. He was a terrible and highly dangerous gossip, who according to the Sunday Times, “dispenses shorts to the congregation after morning service”. Full of good cheer he said, “DO come to tea! I live in Machiavelli’s old place, fantastic – and the church isn’t bad, decorated by POSTraphaelites and all that” – obviously isn’t hot on the art history!! Forgot to say that the consul was about to take his CARAVAN and the family to Calabria. The Foreign Office obviously doesn’t pay too well. Caravan???? or was it, tent!
28/07
R– came, as I think I told you, and confided in us that he was a schizo-paranoid-manic-depressive, which is just what we needed around the village. At the “cena” for the Palio he had a “turn”, after taking his nine pills which were supposed to stop “turns’, and had to be led away by Nigel. He also developed an immediate passion for an unattractive girl who is heir to Bentall’s, of course – (everyone R– knows is the heir to something, or is related to the Queen). The girl must have seen at once that a delightful but raving loony was after her. He is still drooling about her, poor chap, and there is not a hope. Anyway, he did take my pictures back to Parkin, for the current show there, and says that one of my masterpieces puts an Adrian Heath next door very much in the shade. That is good news, although I like Adrian and some of his art.
M–, our investment man, has had a heart attack and a heart by-pass, but phoned me today from his hospital bed to say that our account is fine, and not to worry. “Everybody has these operations now”, he said! Perhaps they do in the City. Just to be on the safe side, I have put money from the pictures sales in Barclay’s Higher Rate deposit account and not into Mr M–’s quavering hands.
Cin-cin [a stray Siamese cat adopted by the Canneys] is proving dramatically destructive, being an incredibly powerful animal, and our bedroom chairs (which were buttoned and upholstered) are now bearded. Fortunately, he doesn’t like the leather furniture, but occasional airborne attacks around the room do leave their traces, as his claws scratch everything. He is a very nice cat, but like R–, he has “turns”.
The Siena Palio has been the usual riot, with a riderless horse winning the race, which just goes to show what bizarre rules they have. Our own Palio degenerated into quite a row, as our horse, for which large bribes had been paid, was beaten by the horse from the other end of the village, whose rider fouled our jockey. Now there is terrible feeling between the respective contradas. Perhaps it is time we moved on.
P– has sent me his final script in his series on the rolling-back of the wilderness in America, the film being on California, about which I gave him a lot of help a year or two ago. I have duly blue-pencilled it and told him to re-write the opening! Don’t get paid for any of this of course. I think the film will be quite good and a stimulating end to this block-buster series, but he always seems to fill these epics with giant salamanders, long tailed frogs, and hideous spiders – a kind of horror film for anyone with “delirium tremens”. (Bristol’s usual speciality is copulating rhinos!)
06/08
…You may wonder why we want to move, but the stairs, bar-noise, the legal case, and slight boredom with the village suggest that now is the time, rather than waiting for 1992, which everyone says is going to be hell – and probably will be. The changes here are pretty amazing and the place really has more foreigners milling around than Italians now. With our experience of the rape of Cornwall by the Midlanders, back in the 1950s and ‘60s, we can see exactly what is going to happen here.
Cin-cin has taken to tearing up kitchen-rolls, so the place looks like a snowstorm. He gets into my studio and has a great time. The chairs in our bedroom now appear to have beards as he is demolishing those as well.
18/09
[from Madeleine] We have had quite an exciting year on the art front… A dealer from the Cotswolds came out in May to see Michael’s work of the 50s and 60s, and because we didn’t know what he might like we had to get out of store and frame about 80 paintings – something that should have been done years ago. In fact he bought 18, paid cash, and was quite happy to take them back through the customs. He returned in June with his associate, Irving Grose of the Belgrave Gallery, to buy 24 more, with the intention of putting on an exhibition in two years’ time. They fact that they were prepared to drive out, take the paintings back with them and pay cash was absolutely marvellous from our point of view, as the problem of exhibiting in England is getting the work there and, if unsold, back again. Then an ex-student of Michael’s who is also Michael Parkin’s brother-in-law came to Casole on holiday and took three paintings back for the Summer Exhibition at the Parkin Gallery, and finally, a collector who was here on holiday a couple of weeks ago and is keen on Cornish painting came to see our collection and bought nine of Michael’s paintings. It has been tremendously encouraging, not only because working here in isolation is quite difficult, but because Michael has been left out of so many things over the years through the dreaded Cornish “art politics”.
