Mervyn Peake’s Vast Alchemies:
corrections and additions

Corrections

Page 13, last line of the first paragraph: ‘Mervyn Peake Review’ should be in italics.

Page 25, lines 7 and 8: for ‘the London Missionary Society, founded by the Congregationalists in 1807’ read ‘the predominantly Congregationalist London Missionary Society, founded in 1795.’ It was the LMS’s mission to China that began in 1807. About 10% of the missionaries that the LMS appointed came from churches outside the Congregational movement.

Comments/Additions

Page 30: It is not surprising that there was but one Protestant mission in Henchow in 1902. During the Boxer Rebellion it was the scene of a Catholic martyrdom: Cesidio Giacomantonio (b. 1873) was caught on 4 July 1900 trying to consume the Blessed Sacrament to prevent its desecration; he was beaten, then wrapped in cloth soaked in oil, and set alight. Hardly an attractive prospect for missionaries of any persuasion (except for Pearl Buck’s father, who seems to have courted – and narrowly escaped – such a fate on numerous occasions – see Hilary Spurling’s biography of Pearl Buck, Burying the Bones (2010). Pearl and her parents regularly summered in Kuling, where Peake was born; although there is no record of the paths of the two families ever having crossed, it must have been a near thing).

Page 115: the portrait of Maeve is in fact signed, but way down to the right and not visible in this reproduction.

Page 132: Two of the drawings for the illustrated book of ‘Kings from A to Z’ (The King of I, and the King of Y) were shown in MP’s exhibition in the Calman Gallery, eighteen months before Clark’s visit.

Page 173: Discussing ‘A Reverie of Bone’ I should have mentioned that, since the publication of Peake’s Collected Poems (2008, edited by Rob Maslen), it now makes more sense: Rob included several key stanzas which had previously been omitted.

Page 174: According to John Brown (whose memories are recorded on the BBC’s ‘World War II Memories’ site), the mill was also used as a vast dormitory. He ‘joined up [as a Sapper] in 1942 and reported to Clitheroe, Lancashire in Low Moor Mill – an old stone cotton mill where we slept 200 to a room.’

Page 203: I think there should be an endnote identifying John Grome, whose complete account of his memories of Mervyn Peake was published in PS 11:iii (October 2009):

John Grome was just four months older than Peake. He was born in London and educated at a public school for clergymen’s sons. He went on to study at Goldsmiths School of Art under Clive Gardiner. Then he taught English in India for nearly five years. A conscientious objector he was an ambulance driver in London during the war. In 1945 he returned to painting, renting a studio beside Peake’s in Manresa Road. Two years later he visited Italy, met the neo-realist painter Renato Guttuso and was bowled over by the postwar Italian figurative movement. Soon he made Italy his home; the Mediterranean light and landscape were a major source of inspiration. He married Mave Beadle in Rome in 1950 and remained in Italy for the rest of his life, apart from the years 1965–8 which they spent in England for the sake of their children’s education. Grome’s last public exhibition was a retrospective in Rome in 1986. He died in 2004.

Page 210: When I wrote that Caroline Lucas, née Norton, was Peake’s model for Alice (of Wonderland fame), I was unaware that she was the daughter of Mary Norton, author of The Borrowers. It is so characteristic of Peake’s world that, quite unknowlingly, he should bring these two underground fantasies together, and have a Borrower daughter sit for the girl who fell down a rabbit-hole!

Page 221: Arne Keller (whose translations of the Titus books into Danish are much admired) has spent years tracking down the 1946 Danish translation of Titus Groan. It was apparently completed by someone from Aalborg, but it was rejected by the publisher Klim – they were not prepared to take the financial risk – and so it just disappeared.

Page 268 (bottom): at Brighton, Mervyn was accommodated (ca. April 1962) at the Convalescent Home for Officers.

Page 271 (middle): the memorial service was held at St James’s Church in Piccadilly.

That’s all for the moment.

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