Julian Maclaren-Ross At 100: July 7, 2012

 1. No memoir of metropolitan literary life in the 1940s and 1950s would be complete without a vivid  supporting part for him, invariably one where he wreaks inadvertent havoc on the memoirist's hitherto orderly existence.  No earnest study of London’s artist demi-monde would be complete without quotations from Memoirs of the Forties, his classic paean to the vanished world of the blackout, “buzz-bombs,” and boozy nights with Dylan Thomas.  And no misty-eyed portrait of mid-century Soho would be complete without an appearance from him.  Tall and aloof, he’s more often than not seen standing at the bar of the Wheatsheaf pub  or some shadowy  dive.  Resplendent in his trademark camelhair coat, worn over an immaculate suit, a fresh carnation in his buttonhole, a malacca cane propped beside him, a cigarette holder clenched between his teeth, mirror-sunglasses lending him a gangsterish demeanour at odds with his otherwise dandified costume, he cuts an incongruous figure.  Around him, a gaggle of fawning cronies provide an attentive audience for a relentless, well-rehearsed monologue, declaimed in a distinctively deadpan drawl.

 

    For Maclaren-Ross, the pubs and clubs offered an atmospherically lit film set on which he could perform.  Immersing himself as thoroughly as any Method actor in the role he’d chosen, he projected an unforgettable persona, part Oscar Wilde, part Hollywood heavy.

2. Back at his flat in Maida Vale, he’d uncap the Hooded Terror, light up the first in a succession of cigarettes, and open one of the notebooks in which he did most of his writing.  The rest of the night would be spent copying out the stories he’d rehearsed earlier in the day, his handwriting as lilliputian and fanatically neat as ever, his faculties apparently unimpaired by the booze he’d consumed.  Only at dawn would he grab a few hours sleep before summoning the taxi that would carry him back to the Wheatsheaf.

 

To ward off fatigue, he began using benzedrine, a stimulant that could be obtained without a prescription . . . . It wasn’t long before he’d graduated to the vastly more potent methedrine capsules, only available on prescription . . . . These, he explained to Dan Davin, ‘had the useful property of simultaneously pepping you up and calming you down.’

From Paul Willetts, Fear & Loathing In Fitzrovia, The Bizarre Life of Writer, Actor, Soho Raconteur Julian Maclaren-Ross, Stockport, Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2005.


For more Julian Maclaren-Ross on ACravan, please see these links:


1.  Of Love And Hunger (Julian Maclaren- Ross)

2.  Crossed Cheque (A Writer's Life)

3.  From "The Metamorphosis of Peter Brook" (Julian Maclaren-Ross)

4.  A Soldier Dresses (Julian Maclaren-Ross)

5.  Foretold -- Easter Monday (Zeppelin Over Ramsgate)

6.  Respirators Will Be Worn; Mercer's Cafe

7.  The Party For Picasso (Excerpt) -- Julian Maclaren-Ross

8.  Major Minor

9. The Monastery of Information

My friend Gerry Howard introduced me to  Julian Maclaren-Ross' work many years ago, an encounter and discovery that have given me a great deal of pleasure as well as the wonderful autograph letter pictured in second position above (click on photo to enlarge and enjoy), written using the trademark gold-nibbed, black-barreled  "Hooded Terror" Parker fountain pen that originally belonged to his father.    


I would like to offer a 100th birthday salute to the author of Of Love And Hunger, A Bit Of A Smash In Madras and Some Time I Shall Sleep Out.

Of Love And Hunger (Julian MacLaren-Ross)

I got out my dem book to look up the old girl’s name.


     Always address the prospect by name:  it pays.  Makes ‘em feel at home, see?  The personal touch.


     This one was called Miss Tuke, 49, The Crescent.  Small house, two storeys, villa-type; small dark drawing-room full of knick-knacks, thick old-fashioned hangings full of dust.  No maid, no cleaner, woman in once a week.  A cert, if I played it right.

     Miss Tuke didn’t seem a bad old girl either.  Bit jumpy:  kept looking up at the ceiling as if expecting it might fall on her any moment.  Couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw what I got out of her carpet.


     ‘But I don’t understand. I had the carpet cleaned.  Two days ago.  I had a woman in.’


   ‘This dirt didn’t accumulate in two days, Miss Tuke,’ I told her.  ‘It’s been in your carpet for years.  The ordinary methods of cleaning won’t remove it.’

 

    ‘Then what can I do?’


     ‘There’s only one thing ,’ I said, pointing to the cleaner.  Miss Tuke looked at it and swallowed.  I wanted to let the idea sink in.  It was too soon to start on her yet, but I felt in my pocket to make sure I’d an order-form ready when the time came.  It was there all right.


     Miss Tuke said: ‘And how much did you say the price . . .’


            ‘A pound down,  a pound a month.’


     ‘Oh, I wouldn’t dream.  I don’t hold with hire-purchase.’

  

    ‘It’s much the best way, Miss Tuke.  We never advise buying one of these machines outright.  Think of the advantages you become eligible for under our instalment-system.  Free service every six months.  A thorough overhaul of your cleaner twice-yearly free of charge.  After all, you wouldn’t pay your maid a year’s wages in advance, would you?’ 


    ‘Of course not.’


           ‘Well we look on this cleaning system as a mechanical maid.  More efficient, naturally, as this dirt goes to show.'

     Always bring ‘em back to the dirt.  I switched on again and pushed the cleaner to-and-fro across the carpet.  I was a No. 1 model, the biggest sort and the one that costs the most money.  Kicks up a terrific row, but you get round that by saying you can only silence the machine at the price of efficiency.




NOTE: 



     Several years ago or more (or more, I think), my friend Gerry Howard introduced me to Julian MacLaren-Ross’s writing.  Gerry had acquired Memoirs of the Forties (I don’t recall why) and liked the book for reasons that would quickly become apparent to any first-time reader.  Gerry’s enthusiasms (any of them) and recommendations (ditto) mean a lot to me, so I bought and read the book. 


     I think Gerry fell in shallow; I fell in deep, but at the right time because the Julian MacLaren-Ross revival -- a series of republications through Black Spring Press, Paul Willets’ remarkable biography Fear  And Loathing In Fitzrovia, internet chatter and other enthusiasms (including the attention paid by many dedicated readers to Anthony Powell's A Dance To The Music Of Time; MacLaren-Ross was the model for the novelist character, X. Trapnel) was afoot and picking up steam.


     I’ve previously posted other examples of this author’s work -- short story and memoir excerpts, as well as a haunting snippet from his autobiographical novel, The Weeping and the Laughter, concerning a World War I zeppelin raid on Ramsgate, MacLaren-Ross's childhood home before his family decamped for a life on the Côte d’Azur, an event that turned out to be a mixed blessing in terms of the author's personal and professional future.  The passage above, taken from the first chapter of Of Love And Hunger, his great novel, is new here.  Set in cusp-of-World War II Brighton, the book is based on MacLaren-Ross’s experiences selling vacuums door-to-door.  As he told Graham Greene, it was Depression-era labor, the best he could find after losing, through no fault of his own, his private, family income, fortune, i.e.,  he wasn’t just collecting material to write about in a novel.  


     Of Love And Hunger is a fully-accomplished, deeply moving work of art, the  summation and apotheosis of J M-R's great work of the 1940s, which included the publication of his best and most popular short stories.   All his subsequent writing (journalism, book and film reviews, radio plays, memoirs, astonishing literary parodies, other novels), whether superb or somewhat less so, never matched this novel’s perfect, sustained emotional pitch and style subsumed, immersed, in every single sentence and scene.


     Re-telling Julian MacLaren-Ross anecdotes (they are as outlandish and improbable as any stories about intense, esoteric literary or artistic eccentrics maintaining  24-hour schedules until inevitably checking out too early) all night is an entertaining thing to do to delight old friends and new companions.  One can still do so today, standing in J M-R's usual spot at the Wheatsheaf bar in Rathbone Place, Fitzrovia.  What I find really difficult to fathom, however, is the degree to which my life has come to resemble aspects of Richard Fanshawe’s life in Of Love And Hunger.

“She Really Digs The Frans Hals”: Elizabeth Taylor-owned Dutch master Frans Hals Painting Coming to New York Auction

 

The early 1630s painting by Dutch master Frans Hals titled, "Portrait of a Man." The portrait that once hung over the fireplace of Elizabeth Taylor's Bel Air home - and only recently reattributed to Hals - is expected to fetch up to $1 million at auction Wednesday, Jan 25, 2012, at Christie's in New York. AP Photo/Christie's.

 

By: Ula Ilnytzky, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP).-

A 17th century portrait that once hung over the fireplace of Elizabeth Taylor's Bel Air home — and only recently reattributed to the Dutch master Frans Hals — is expected to fetch up to $1 million at auction.

    "Portrait of a Man," painted in the early 1630s, is being offered at Christie's sale of Old Masters on Wednesday.

    A Hals scholar, Seymour Slive, had listed the painting as a "doubtful" Hals in a 1974 catalog, based on a black and white photo of the work.

    After Taylor hung it in her home in the 1950s, "It academically fell off the radar," said Nicholas Hall, head of Christie's Old Master paintings.

    But last summer, Christie's and Pieter Biesboer, the retired curator of Old Master paintings at the Frans Hals Museum in Holland, confirmed the work was by Hals.

    "From 20 yards away one could tell that it was an utterly authentic Hals, a totally characteristic picture with all the bravura, brushwork ... the very expressive face," Hall said in telephone interview.

    "On top of everything, there's a signature — 'FH' just to the right of the figure itself," he added.

    Biesboer "absolutely had no hesitation in attributing it to Hals," Hall said.

    Before its renewed reattribution, the painting had been estimated to sell for $70,000 to $100,000 on Wednesday. Its current estimate is $700,000 to $1 million.

    The painting, showing a gentleman in a black coat and white collar with his hands folded, came into Taylor's possession in the 1950s, soon after her art dealer father, Francis Taylor, acquired and gave it to her.

    She hung it over the fireplace in the living room of her California home, near an iconic lithograph portrait of herself by Andy Warhol that sold at Christie's in December for $662,500.

    "Portrait of a Man" was the only Old Master she owned, said Hall.

    She was very fond of it. In 1956, while recuperating from back surgery at New York Presbyterian Medical Center, she had her hospital room decorated with "Portrait of a Man" and several other paintings, including a Renoir and Monet.

    "She really digs the Frans Hals," her husband, Mike Todd, told reporters at the time.

    Other paintings from Taylor's collection will be sold by Christie's in London on Feb. 7-8.

    In December, the auction house sold her collection of jewelry, fashion and memorabilia. Among the highlights was a pearl necklace that sold for $11.8 million.

    The screen and stage icon died in March at age 79. 

 

Elizabeth Taylor, left, with her art dealer father Francis Taylor and mother Sara

NOTE:  Happening upon this item this morning was a happy surprise.  The Frans Hals painting is really terrific and the re-attribution story is surprising and splendid.  It's rather nice to think about Elizabeth Taylor loving the painting for itself, even when its connection with Hals was considered doubtful.  Some other impressive works in her collection are pictured Here (link).  

I enjoyed learning of Francis Taylor's friendship with the Welsh artist and Fitzrovian legend Augustus John and reading:  "In a missive marked 25 June 1943,  Francis Taylor wrote to Augustus John: 'We have settled down to living in California and our young daughter is by way of being a movie star, if you see a picture of Lassie Come Home which will be released in September, she is in that.  'Also she may get the lead part in National Velvet. Even if you are not a movie fan see the Lassie picture it is in colour and is beautiful.'"