May Morris 1862-1938 by Adèle Geras

This is May Morris, daughter of William Morris. You can see, I think, that she is a woman of considerable character and intelligence. The exhibition that's just finished at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow shows her to be also extremely gifted as an artist and embroiderer. A mere glance at Wikipedia will show you  that she was also a business woman, running her father's company with enormous competence, all the while careful of the conditions of the people (mostly women) who worked under her eye. She campaigned. She worked. She made beautiful things. She had friends. She married Henry Halliday Sparling, secretary of the Socialist League. She had a romance with George Bernard Shaw. Because the Art Workers' Guild didn't admit women, she founded  the Women's Guild of Arts. And to judge by the quotation below, this was what was expected of you if you were born a Morris. To say that William expected great things was an understatement. I have to admit I laughed out loud when I read the quote below and I'll reproduce it here for those with poor eyesight: If a chap can't compose an epic poem while weaving a tapestry, he'd better shut up, he'll never do any good at all." All I could think was: lucky for May that she could easily live up to such standards.

And to prove that she knew her worth, here's a quotation which I'll also reproduce: I'm a remarkable woman - always was, though none of you seemed to think so. This remark makes me wonder whether her father took her a little for granted.

But now she's appreciated in her own right. This exhibition showed off her many talents to the full. As well as the embroideries and  drawings, such as the one....

....shown below, which is part of a pattern that would later become a hanging, all  her gifts are amply demonstrated.  Everyone knows the famous quotation from William Morris about having nothing in your house that isn't beautiful or useful, and clearly May was brought up with this belief and made very many beautiful things, both in her own right and also supervising the work of the wallpaper business that changed the decorating habits of the nation. She lived in Kelmscott Manor in the Cotswolds, and from 1917 her companion was a woman called Mary Lobb. 

After walking through the exhibition, I was all ready to buy LOTS of postcards to remind me of May Morris's achievements. I had even hoped for a fridge magnet to add to my collection. This image, below and the photograph of May which I've used above were some of the very few images available. It was most frustrating, particularly because William's designs are more than ubiquitous. They are overpoweringly everywhere in every imaginable incarnation: notebooks, cushion covers, mirrors...you name it.

And yes, I understand that they can't produce a great deal of stuff  for an exhibition that's small and temporary, but still, I thought it ironic that the daughter was in the shadow of her father, at least as far as merchandising is concerned! A small quibble after such a wonderful show of a particular woman's talents.  May Morris fought to have embroidery brought out of the purely domestic sphere into the world of art and here it was, on display to hundreds of admiring people. I loved seeing these works and learning more about the woman who made them.  

The George Bernard Shaw Cookbook - Michelle Lovric

 

 

Yes, it really is a thing.

I used to consult The George Bernard Shaw Vegetarian Cookbook in the British Library but I have just acquired a battered second-hand copy of my own.

You probably know already that Shaw was a vociferous vegetarian, providing proof that you don’t have to eat flesh to maintain a vigorous presence in the world.

He converted to vegetarianism at the age of twenty-five, attributing the change to a line from Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Revolt of Islam:

‘Never again may blood of bird or beast
Stain with its venomous stream a human feast!’

Shaw claimed that these lines ‘opened my eyes to the savagery of my diet.’

He was the author of such memorable quotes as

 ‘A mind of the calibre of mine cannot derive its nutriment from cows.’

 ‘Animals are my friends ... and I don't eat my friends.’
‘While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?’

He also pointed out the health benefits of a vegetarian diet, insisting that ‘the strongest animals, such as the bull, are vegetarians.’

He asked his readers to ‘Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground and it explodes into a giant oak! Bury a sheep and nothing happens but decay.’
He regularly argued that his own longevity and good looks could be put down to his eating habits. At sixty-eight, Shaw is said to have told his biographer Archibald Henderson: ‘I look my age; and I am my age. It is the other people who look older than they are. What can you expect from people who eat corpses and drink spirits?’

 

 

‘The average age,’ Shaw argued, ‘of a meat eater is 63. I am on the verge of 85 and still work as hard as ever. I have lived quite long enough and am trying to die; but I simply cannot do it. A single beef-steak would finish me; but I cannot bring myself to swallow it. I am oppressed with a dread of living forever. That is the only disadvantage of vegetarianism.’

And indeed Shaw himself lived to nearly ninety-five. He imagined that his funeral hearse would be drawn by herds of oxen, sheep, pigs, chickens ‘and a small travelling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarves in honour of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures.’

Despite all this, it has been suggested that Shaw’s initial move away from meat might have simply been because he could not afford it as a jobless young man living with (and on an allowance from) a poor mother who supported them both by giving singing lessons. While spending his days at the British Library writing books that no-one initially wanted, Shaw found his pocket would stretch only to meals in a few Bloomsbury establishments that served vegetarian food.

Also, unfortunately, Shaw did not love vegetarianism enough to actual go into the kitchen and deal with vegetables. For the first seventeen years of his regime, it was his mother’s maid who prepared all his specialist meals.

Then, from 1898, his wife Charlotte supervised the kitchen that provided his food. Also a teetotaller, Shaw insisted that his no meat fat or wine were used in the making of his food. For forty-five years Charlotte made sure this was so in spite of the regular lavish entertaining of carnivores at their home. She also indulged his obsessive calorie-counting, for Shaw was always keen to preserve his lean figure.

But when Charlotte died, Shaw – then 87 – persuaded his wife’s nurse to stay on as his cook-housekeeper. Alice Laden, a widow from Aberdeen, had been married to a strict vegetarian. She had trained in the art of vegetarian cooking under the celebrated German chef Mrs Gompertz. Mrs Laden took some persuading to settle in the rather isolated Shaw residence at Ayot St Lawrence, but eventually the writer succeeded.

In times of rationing, it was difficult to track down the provender he required, so his Rolls Royce and his chauffeur were put at her disposal. She even went as far as London to find good fruit and vegetables for her employer, for diet was far from plain. Among the recipes in the book are Sweetcorn soufflé, Cheese and celery pie, Tomatoes à la Bengal.

Shaw had a greedy sweet tooth. His cook reported finding him many evenings with a jar of sugar, which he ate greedily by the spoonful. If it wasn’t sugar, it was honey. He also loved cake and chocolate biscuits.

 

Mrs Laden’s menus and recipes were gathered together and published in 1972 by R.J. Minney at the Garnstone Press. It is the Pan Books paperback edition that I own now, which is illustrated with charming cartoons of Shaw and his housekeeper.

The artist is not credited, sadly, as his work is fine and witty. My favourite shows Shaw sitting on a large mushroom writing in a notebook. In another, the writer absent-mindedly dips his pen in his glass of water, to the disgust of his housekeeper. He and Mrs Laden compete in a crawled egg and spoon race. Shaw monocycles on top of a giant whisk, takes a brisk country walk past a colony of garden gnomes that look very much like himself, dashes for an ice-cream van, shaves himself with a cheese grater – and helps himself to the whole cake, leaving Mrs Laden with only the slice she has offered him.



Michelle Lovric

 
Michelle Lovric's website
 

A DIP IN THE SEA – Dianne Hofmeyr

Muizenburg Beach, South Africa 1950

My father was a lifesaver, a surfer and an amateur early photographer. In an old shoebox I discovered heaps of negatives and sepia photographs some still in their buff Kodak envelope sleeves from the 20’s and 30’s. His surfboard was the thin wooden type with an upturned nose, sometimes called a belly-board – the kind where the surfer lies down as he catches a breaker. I found this wonderful photograph of him from the late 30’s with a girlfriend. The board is clearly visible leaning up against the back of the car. 

Photographs of his friends at a place called The Strand show a gang of them making pyramids and fooling around like teenagers. They weren’t teenagers but rather youths and young women. The term ‘teenager’ hadn’t yet been invented. There was nothing as indulgent as being a teenager. Boys and girls were expected to grow up and behave like grown ups. That’s why it was particularly special to find these photographs of people his age really having fun. He’s the one second from the front in glasses. (look at those cars and de rigueur sprigged beach dresses and sunshades)

When I started researching the history of surfing and swimsuits, I came across this photograph of George Bernard Shaw holidaying in South Africa in 1931. At Muizenburg, which is the next beach up from The Strand, at age 75, he had his first go at board surfing (see below). And apparently enjoyed the waters of South Africa so much that he extended his holiday by more than two months and went up the coast to Knysna to swim as well. I also discovered that Samuel Langhome Clemens (aka Mark Twain) as well as Jack London were all keen surfers.

For further photographs and a report of George Bernard Shaw in the South African Travel News, click here.

I went looking for more authors in swimsuits – didn’t find any History Girls – but I found this beautiful photograph of Sylvia Plath in a white two piece. 

For more writers in swimsuits click here.

Neither my father nor Bernard Shaw were the first to trying surfing at the Cape. In 1919 two United States Marines returning to the US after the war, arrived with their Hawaiian style longboards and Cape Town witnessed the first ‘stand up’ surfing ever done on its shores. They befriended a lady, Heather Price, (seen here in the photograph wearing a spotted cloth scarf... also de rigeuer beach headgear of the time with one of the marines ) She attempted to surf on the Hawaiian longboards. Surely South Africa's first woman surfer? But the marines took their boards back home with them when their ship sailed. 

An earlier picture of Cape Town with Lion’s Head and Signal Hill in the background shows bathing ‘machines’ drawn onto the beaches by horses so ladies could swim. These were replaced by the palisades of colourful bathing boxes that still stand at Muizenburg and St James and throughout England. By the 20’s women were beginning to show their bodies and fashions changed rapidly from the black stretchy knitted unisex suits to more glamorous swimsuits of printed cotton and even bikinis. I found this photograph of my mother (the ever present cigarette in her hand) in a skirted polka dot bikini, from the early 40’s, while my sister stands behind her in one of those stretchy bubbly swimsuits.

Again my mum in same swimsuit her surfboard and rubber bathing cap

From the 50’s there’s this one of my very curvy 15 year old sister. But those were the days of Marilyn Monroe, so curves were okay. 

A further search of the 50’s took me to three girls on leaning up against longboards on Bondi Beach, Australia and a stylish woman in black and white two piece swimsuit (look at the wonderful straw hats). 

My own photographs from the 60’s (not in the same shoebox) show me wearing a bikini on the famous 2nd Beach at Clifton where I had a white cat who used to join me on sand that was whiter than any beach I’ve ever been on.

Hope you all have a great summer holiday… beach or not!
www.diannehofmeyr.com

 THE MAGIC BOJABI TREE

'immensely satisfying' 
from Children's Summer Reading in THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY last week – 21 July 2013