White

 

One of the handsome Prezzo windows in
the lower part of Abbeygate.

Approaching one end of the six-sided
18th century West
Front house. Built into, and out of,
the ancient Abbey ruins.

Before I start to think “White”, here are several images of Windows in Bury which I didn’t feel were Quite Right for last week’s encomium on Windows in Art. I started to notice some delightful examples of windows here, around me, and began to take photos until I felt the beginnings of an obsession taking root. I do have to watch my obsessive tendencies and curb them accordingly, in the interests of sanity. So here are just a few of a pictorial post script!

Ancient ruins with door and window

arches in the Abbey Gardens

And so to White which is, frankly, also a post script to last week’s blog on Windows. [See pictures by Hammershoi.] I was sensitised to this subject by Hammershoi initially and the idea for White was further prompted because I watched the last, justly celebrated, interview given by Dennis Potter [to Melvyn Bragg 1994]. It is a lovely encounter during which Potter tries to explain the sharp and

Dennis Potter

vivid images he sees around him as he knows he is dying. He accepts that these are among the last viewing opportunities for him, but he rhapsodises on how the world and the passing of time become unbearably beautiful. He speaks of how the imminence of death gives his experience of the living world a heightened intensity. Although Potter writes fulsomely of white blossom, he is actually rhapsodising about savouring the here and now. Carpe diem.

"At this season, the blossom is out in full now … and instead of saying 'Oh that's nice blossom' … last week looking at it through the window when I'm writing, I see it is the whitest, frothiest, blossomest blossom that there ever could be, and I can see it. The now-ness of everything is absolutely wondrous, and if people could see that, you know. There's no way of telling you; you have to experience it, but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance. Not that I'm interested in reassuring people – bugger that. The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it." The interview was subsequently entitled, Seeing The Blossom.

Carolina Bells

The subject of White was further strengthened when I came across the following passage in Immortal Thoughts: Late Style in a Time of Plague, an enchanting book by Christopher Neve in which he writes about great artists nearing the end of their lives and suggests ways in which their late works have something remarkable in common. Christopher Neve is a painter who sees with a painter’s eye but writes with a rare beauty and grace as a poet.

“After this came a celebration of white. May trees, and the double may, flowered in great profusion, lit by bright sunlight. Chestnut trees carried ever broader towers of white bloom. The white of chequer trees began. Cow parsley, Queen Anne’s lace, grew tall and flowered white with great exuberance in fields and ditches. And, above white plants, the gigantic rounded heads and full sails of sun-bright cumulus swelled up as white as laundry.”

Almond blossom

I notice that I wrote a May 2023 blog on Cow Parsley Rampant in testimony to the almost endless white effervescent parsley heads smothering the ancient gravestones in the Great Churchyard here. It was the untrammeled beauty of the expanse of white blooms which moved me as I walked past each day. I was also touched by the fresh, energetic growth of the thrusting young blossoms looping round and over the old stones in a natural display which suggested the real connection of youth with death, in spite of the long, long lives we may lead between the two stages. So, in one way, white can remind of ageing and death while, at the same time, creating an aesthetically pleasing display. I am repeating here the haiku [5;7;5 syllables in lines 1;2;3.] I wrote it in May when I first saw the white cow parsley spreading like a beautiful gossamer curtain. over the gravestones.

Cow blossom dances;

Ancient graves recall echoes

Of faded voices.

Field of cow parsley blossom

Cow parsley delicately embellishing gravestones in May.