My last post bar one commented on the stunning BBC television programme when Alan Yentob profiled Henry Perkins the young male dancer currently studying at Moscow’s prestigious Bolshoi Academy.
I was delighted today to have word back from Henry’s mother. And I draw attention to this as her comments are well worth reading.
See comment to my first piece below…
We will be somewhere else shortly. From Axminster [carpets, tools and that TV storyteller River Cottage entrepreneur] to Crosscombe, by Wells.
I walked our dying garden this afternoon to find leaves expiring. Numerous country priests with contemplative time on their hands have done finer before, observing each loving detail to record.
Yet look, see, as Hopkins might have beckoned. Here a dying leaf, one of a multitude. It falls, crumpled, dead to all concerned. And yet it has given life to so many.
One of a billion leaves within one small wood. Offering shade, protection, food and life. Now falling, the word Colleridge would have used and now taken into the great and hesitant America…
The leaf falls. I pick it into my palm. Leaf dead, never to be part of living ever again. Yet its stain of faded living is printed here for all to see. A fading, yes, shrinking: what was once the entire kingdom of leaf, bright, beautiful and green has now retreated. A strange vestigial stain is all the remains.
Like us. Bodies, robust, confident yet diffident. We too must fade. And weep to wonder why. Hopkins caught it, master that he is:
Spring and Fall:
Margaret are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie
And yet you will weep and know why
Now no matter, child, the name
Sorrow’s springs are the same
Nor mouth had, no nor mind expressed,
What heart heard of, ghost guessed
It is the blight man was born for
It is Margaret you mourn for
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Last night’s account of Henry Perkins, the young English boy now studying at the Bolshoi Ballet School in Moscow was profoundly moving. To uproot from Fleet, Hampshire, for schooling 1500 miles away, to submit to a truly rigorous regime, however distinguished, to learn Russian: what determination and courage from a fifteen-year-old boy.
Henry’s dance master at the Bolshoi, Iya Kuznetsov, came across as an exacting mentor who demands his charges put their all into every step. As a layman, I should have guessed that bar work and practice routines were merely physical exercises: leave emotional energy and spiritual presence for the performance. Not so, Bolshoi boys have to be fully present and awake all their working time.
We often think of precocious gifts, such as Henry’s dancing genius, as something to invite envy. But last night’s programme showed all too clearly that the gifted also carry a huge work load in fulfilling their potential and living out their talent.
We pilgrimaged to Oxfordshire on Thursday to bid our farewells to a very dear friend whom we consider one of the founder members of Hear our Silence. Eileen came to one of our first weekend workshops held in the former home of Stafford-Cripps perched on the Chilterns at Stokenchurch. She is ending her days not far away in a wonderful NHS nursing home in Watlington.
It was at Stokenchurch 10 years ago that I saw my first red kite. They are a truly magnificent bird; I can quite see why someone decided to reintroduce them into England from the Welsh uplands, selecting the Chiltern escarpment as a likely habitat. They cruise across the sky in a lazy parody of flight, lolling in circles as they scan their territory for carrion. And they are not shy of civilisation: I caught one a few feet up over the rooftops of Watlington.
As we cut across the Oxfordshire farmland from Didcot’s great steaming power station, I was astonished to see more than one buzzard. Now this surprised me no end because living in and around Oxford for fifteen years, I never saw a single bird. We had to wait until our Cornish annual holiday for the pleasure.
So I assume that the species has colonised from the South West. I wonder where else they have spread.
A visit to Wells last Thursday: brilliant sun, the last of our Indian summer.
Sandwiches on a bench in the Close and then a wander through the cathedral. Eventually, we mounted the well-worn steps leading up to the chapter house. And there we found a unique collection. Nothing is unique: that was one of the forbidden words when I was on The Times long ago.
Per favore, je vous assure: this sighting WAS unique.
Spaced around the chapter seats was an array of seventy diptychs. That is to say left-hand and right-hand images announcing the same story. The Gospel story, from Annunciation to Ascension.
Entitled One Man’s Journey to Heaven, these amazing tableaux tell the story of Christ’s passage through life. The left is our script, the King James text marvellously wrought in a manner that would have caused envy to any medieval monk. Facing is an illustration of that same Gospel scene - the marriage feast, Christ walking on the water. These done in patchwork miniature chased through with the most delicate stitchwork, reverently achieved in the abstract. Thus, Christ appears always as a white satin circle, colours portray the mood and theme of each separate scene.
As we worked our way, slowly, across this awesome landscape, we fell wordless. Finally as we left, I happened upon a shy lady seated at the entrance. Absurdly she was intent upon a battered paperback, its cover a violent red. I dared. ‘Excuse me, are you perhaps the artist?’ She stood up and confessed. All I could do was to hold out my hand and mutter ‘words fail me’.
This extraordinary and timeless exhibition now returns home to Bath Abbey. Modestly, Sue Symons explained how she had wished to donate it outright. But the Dean declined. Instead, with amazing grace he identified a rich woman donor who agreed to purchase the set of seventy from her and then hand it back to the Abbey.
The diptychs will now be used throughout the liturgical year, separate items displayed according to their appropriate season.
What a treasure, what a creation.
We asked: ‘how long did all this take you?’ The answer came: ‘fifteen years in their planning, just one year in their making.’
A lifetime well spent?
www.bathabbey.org/diptychs.htm