Joseph Evans, Botanist, in Worsley

St Marks churchyard, Worsley, Salford.

 

'JOSEPH EVANS,
BOTANIST,
BOOTHSTOWN,
BORN JULY 5th 1803,
DIED JUNE 23rd 1874.'

Joseph Evans began work as a handloom weaver but became known as a herbal doctor, people often coming to him from many miles away for treatment, although he too would frequently walk a number of miles to see a patient. He believed absolutely in natural cures. Well over a thousand people attended his funeral, including many botanists.

 

'THIS MEMORIAL WAS ERECTED
BY PUBLIC SUBSCRIPTION
AS A TRIBUTE OF RESPECT
AND ESTEEM.'

 

 'PLANTS I LOVE AND CHERISH. IN
THEM THE WISDOM AND GOODNESS
OF THE CREATOR ARE MANIFEST.'

A quotation from Evans.

St Vincent Beechey in Worsley

 

'IN MEMORIAM
ST. VINCENT BEECHEY, M.A.
SCHOLAR OF CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
BORN AUGUST 7TH 1806, DIED AUGUST 14th 189[9]'

St Vincent Beechey was the vicar of Fleetwood and Thornton-Cleveleys in Lancashire and later the vicar of Worsley, then also in Lancashire but now in Salford. He is the founder of Rossall School, Fleetwood, about which he wrote the 100-page book The Rise and Progress of Rossall School: A Jubilee Sketch (1894). Perhaps surprisingly, the book isn't at all turgid but endeavours to be amusing, although there are far too many exclamation marks. The following sentence, which uses a well-known expression of the time from Uncle Tom's Cabin to describe the school, is fairly typical:

'Under [the Council's] fostering care my child seemed to grow of itself, like Topsy!'

Link to Beechey's book:
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
St Vincent Beechey: The Rise and Progress of Rossall School

The Strange Art of Kevin Duffy, Ashton-in-Makerfield

On Rectory Road in North Ashton – near Ashton-in-Makerfield – is the Rectory Garden Centre, which is unlike any other garden centre. Of course, it sells the usual compost, flowers and plants and so on, but owner Kevin Duffy has also spent over thirty years creating – always using reclaimed or donated materials – the most bizarre objects within these grounds. The sign above is the entrance to a few rooms with an odd assortment of things, and is not actually part of Kevin Duffy's 'village' itself.

Here, though, as in the village, we can find such incongruous – almost surreal – combinations as 'Al's dancing fish' resting on an old radio. As with the rest of this post, often I leave an image without comment, sometimes because it speaks for itself, but more often because I'm (for once) left speechless. Duffy's art has that effect.

And so to the pièce de résistance: the village itself, which at an admission charge of 75 pence must be very difficult to beat for value.

The blue bust of Bill stands at the entrance.

The village local, with paraphernalia from other pubs.

Inside, a rather sinister looking landlord.*

And the clientele.

This building is called 'All Faiths Church', although it began life as a potting shed. Note the 'Peace Tree' covered in post-its.

This was created in memory of Duffy's German shepherd dog (or Alsatian) Shona, who died at eleven years and three months. 

Another sinister looking character lurks inside the entrance on the left.

 'IN

REMEMBRANCE

OF

OULD. BOBY.

THE. DONKEY.

AGED. 54 YEARS.

THE. FAITHFUL.

FRIEND OF.

WILLIAM. STOPFORD.

[18]77'

This is indeed the original gravestone of William Stopford's donkey, which initially stood behind the Alison Arms in Appley Bridge. Stopford lived next to the pub.

The sign in front of this car proclaims that it was proudly owned by Kevin Duffy. It's a 1961 Ford Popular and was his first. Furthermore, that's the original colour and it was running until 2004.

A Chef le Normand L'École de Cuisine de Saint-Aubert clockface.

And a Château Jourdain (Bordeaux) clockface.

The sign in front of the woman here labels her 'Elizabeth Bennett', and I'm pretty certain that this must be a representation of Elizabeth Benet from Pride and Prejudice, because:

At the side of her is Mr Darcy.

The Rectory Garden Centre is a truly remarkable place and well worth going out of the way to visit.

*This model appears to have been sold to Halloween fan Conor Pilkington, from Gateshead (Tyne and Wear), who has spent £5000 this year on the interior and the exterior of his house. (Written 31 October 2020.)

Art brut (Outsider Art) and associated:
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Rémy Callot, Carvin (Nord)
Carine Fol (ed.): L'Art brut en question | Outsider Art in Question
Kevin Duffy, Ashton-in-Makerfield
The Art Brut of Léopold Truc, Cabrières d'Avignon (34)
Le Musée Extraordinaire de Georges Mazoyer, Ansouis (34)
Le Facteur Cheval's Palais Idéal, Hauterives (26)
The Little Chapel, Guernsey
Museum of Appalachia, Norris, Clinton, Tennessee
Ed Leedskalnin in Homestead, Florida
La Fabuloserie, Dicy, Yonne (89)
Street Art City, Lurcy-Lévis, Allier (03)
The Outsider Art of Jean Linard, Neuvy-deux-Clochers (18)
Jean Bertholle, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Jean-Pierre Schetz, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Jules Damloup, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Camille Vidal, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
Pascal Verbena, La Fabuloserie, Yonne (89)
The Art of Theodore Major
Edward Gorey's Yarmouth Port, Cape Cod, MA
Marcel Vinsard in Pontcharra, Isère (38)
Vincent Capt: Écrivainer : La langue morcelée de Samuel Daiber
The Amazing World of Danielle Jacqui, Roquevaire (13)
Alphonse Gurlie, Maisonneuve (07)
Univers du poète ferrailleur, Lizio, Morbihan
Les Rochers sculptés de L'Abbé Fouré, Rothéneuf, Saint-Malo
Robert Tatin in Cossé-le-Vivien, Mayenne
La Demeure du Chaos, Saint-Romain-au-Mont-d'Or, Rhône (69)
René Raoul's Jardin de pierre in Pléhédel, Côtes d'Armor
Emmanuel Arredondo in Varennes Vauzelles, Nièvre (58)
Musée de la Luna Rossa (revisited), Caen, Calvados (14)
La Fontaine de Château-Chinon, Nièvre (58)

Nicolas Fargues: Tu verras (2011)

Tu verras (which translates as 'You'll see') is a highly ironic title as it is pitched in a future that is non-existent for the person concerned. The narrator Colin is a man of about forty who has always told his young son Clément that he'll come to understand all the 'wise' things his father told him about the way he should behave: but he won't because his son falls from a train platform into an oncoming train at the age of twelve.
 

Obviously it's a time of grief for the narrator, reflecting on the past, agonising over good times and bad times, extending the whole to reflections on his life up to present, developing ideas as to who he is and how he got there, making comparisons between his own childhood spent with a sexually promiscuous divorced father and how he has behaved as a father himself, and how Clément has felt about him. Colin incessantly analyses tiny things and big things, examines the process of growing up, the generation gap, the way people pretend to others, the way they deceive themselves, and much more.

The reason Clément walked into the train appears to be because he was concentrating on his mobile phone, and the modern tone is already set right at the beginning when Colin reminisces about Clément downloading a song from an illegal website via Colin's laptop to his iPod. We later learn of Clément's being bullied when Colin discovers what his 'friends' have written on his Facebook wall. New technology is everywhere, and the book ends with Colin being unable to send back a text from Burkina Faso (a primitive contrast) to his possible new girlfriend Ghislaine: his battery is flat.

In some ways, Tu Verras is about the situation of modern man (and woman), not just the technology but the multicultural society, the failed relationships, the series of partners and the possible effect on the children produced; it is also about parents (especially fathers) striving to prolong adolescence even into old age.

This is by no means a strictly linear narrative and mental digressions are frequent, often interrupting the story. The following rambling remarks – no doubt never spoken to the narrator's ex-wife Hélène although written with speech marks and ostensibly addressed to her – comes in one rush at the end of a typically long paragraph, and represents Colin's temporary preoccupation with Hélène while Ghislaine is talking to him in a café:

'"Go dancing? What for? Aren't we better off quietly reading in the house?" "Bring you flowers? Why, after six years of marriage, should you want me to carry on giving you flowers?" "Note: I was being ironic, OK. I could very well act the part of the romantic, loving type I was at the beginning, sure, that's not difficult. But don't you think it's better for me to be myself rather than struggle to pass myself off as someone I'm not? Do you really need all that to understand that I love you?"' (My translation.)

The narrator apologises for not listening to Ghislaine, doesn't give any excuse but criticises himself – and then gets praised by Ghislaine for being more honest than most other people.

This is a very moving book in part about our modern condition, but in the end mainly about the universal coping process, how the brain wrestles with unbearable loss.

Frank Kingdon-Ward in Withington, Manchester

'FRANK KINGDON-WARD
(1885–1958)
PLANT EXPLORER, BOTANIST
AND AUTHOR. BORN AT
NO. 14 HEATON ROAD
WITHINGTON, WHICH
STOOD ON TIS
SITE'

Frank Kingdon-Ward is the pen-name of Francis Kingdon Ward, and the titles of some of his many books give an idea of the many places he visited, several of which led him into life-threatening situations. Some of those book titles: On the Road to Tibet (1910), Land of the Blue Poppy (1913), In Farthest Burma (1921), Mystery Rivers of Tibet (1923), Riddle of the Tsangpo Gorges (1926), Plant Hunting on the Edge of the World (1930), Burma's Icy Mountains (1949), Berried Treasure (1954), etc.

Patrick Modiano: L'Horizon (2010)

I've missed the obvious again. Several years ago I read two of Patrick Modiano's novels consecutively, and while I understood that the author writes a form of detective story, the point that this is essentially existential detective work escaped me. Kafka vaguely looms over this novel like a hazy godfather, paranoia is the guiding sensation, and a surrealistic atmosphere is enhanced by dreams, different times often merging seamlessly from section to section.

L'Horizon has two main characters: Jean Bosmans, a writer in search of a woman he knew forty years before, when he was in continual flight from a menacing couple, one perhaps his mother and the other a defrocked priest; and Margaret De Coz, the woman Bosmans knew and who is also shown at different times in the past and is also in continual flight, but from the menacing Boyaval, a man she scarcely knows.

Bosmans feels guilty but doesn't know why, he can't relate, can't make contact, he bearly exists, even sits with only one buttock on a seat as if undecided between stasis or movement.

The relationship between Margaret and Bosmans was brief, but seems very important to Bosmans at least, although here – until the end at least – we are only aware of Margaret's life before and when she knew Bosmans: she meets Boyaval in Annecy, but he follows her to Switzerland, from which she escapes from him to the relative anonymity of Paris, where she meets the fellow outsider Bosmans.

Having looked online Bosmans goes to Berlin to find Margaret, although the book ends before he goes into her bookshop.

My other posts on Patrick Modiano:
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Patrick Modiano: La Petite Bijou
Patrick Modiano: Rue des boutiques obscures | Missing Person
Patrick Modiano: Les Boulevards de ceinture | Ring Roads

Patrick Modiano: Chien de printemps | Afterimage

Adolphe Valette in Manchester

'ADOLPHE VALLETTE
(1876–1942)
FRENCH PAINTER AND TEACHER
IN THE SCHOOL OF ART
(1907–1920)'

Valette was born in Saint-Étienne and studied in Bordeaux. He came to England in 1904 and left in 1928. He is noted for his impressionistic urban paintings of Manchester and taught L. S. Lowry, whose paintings to some extent suggest Valette's influence.

This blanched plaque is in Grosvenor Street, Manchester, on the wall of what was the School of Art, but is now part of Manchester Metropolitan University.