The Harp in the South Trilogy

 Like most readers, I wasn't very impressed with the first book of the trilogy "Missus", and it doesn't fit with the second and third in style or content. By content I mean the treatment of the characters. In the first book they are treated seriously and examined minutely and in the second Hughie has changed so much for the worse that it's difficult to find the person he was. The same with the young woman who has changed dramatically into "Missus". 

In "The Harp in the South" and "Poor Man's Orange" the focus is on their daughters and their chances of escaping the Sydney slums they live in. We feel for them as Ruth Park takes us to the most intimate details of their experience.

Ruth Park never lets up with her descriptions of the living conditions which are dirty, because there are factories nearby and smoke belches out ceaselessly so there is not much point in cleaning. The personal washing conditions are difficult too. She describes the effect of bed bugs, the constant presence of cockroaches and most horrible of all, rats. And as the story goes on you feel how wrong it is that any people have to live this way. She describes the price of rental property going up and up until the aged have nowhere to live but flophouses which are no better than tents. Food is cheap enough and plentiful, so the people survive and at least Sydney is not very cold in winter. She describes endless pungent smells. 

Warning: the language used to describe people of ethnicities other than Irish is very racist and there is no getting away from the fact that people used to say abusive things about native Australians, Jews and Chinese. (It isn't as though the other nations never said the Irish were dirty, drunken, and lazy.)

I think this book is intended to be an eye-opener. Ruth Park doesn't pull her punches about what Hughie resorts to to get out of his mind, how the baby's clothes are black from the street, and the nappy smells, what the young people do for entertainment, and how it all seems to Dolour who is strong and disapproving due to the influence of Catholic teaching about the significance to God of all we do and the wonderful Sister Theophilus.

Although Dolour missed out on her exams due to the sheer bad luck of getting infections in her eyes (the family is either not given medical care or it is always botched), one feels that there is always hope that she will find happiness and fulfillment. Ruth Park has quite a repetitive style in that she warns you about the beginnings of people's feelings and then revisits them repeatedly to tell you they are growing. 

I really want to give this 5 stars because giving us a good read about these circumstances is such an amazing achievement but I can't because it leaves such a bitter taste - the taste of the poor man's orange.

Recovering from the end of term - The Sonia Delaunay exhibition at the Tate

I met Rosalind on Friday at Waterloo station and after a lengthy coffee discussing her party, we walked to the Tate, and she was the ideal person to see the exhibition with, because she is an artist with a great feeling for colour and she is also interested in textiles. We had very different ideas about what we liked so that was interesting.

First of all, there were these pictures which Sonia D painted in or around 1907. Roz noted the Kelim carpet background.

I find the green - tinted flesh very off-putting. These are like German expressionist colours and don't the German expressionists use them to show feelings of tension and even hysteria? 

She painted her dressmaker over and over again, and so she did with a Finnish friend. Clearly, the finnish friend had a typically Finnish snub-nosed wide-cheeked face which Sonia D found fun to put into colours.

This one is much more likeable; even the yellow eyelids, and she could probably show it at the Portait awards this year and it wouldn't look out of date.

Here is her dressmaker.

Again, I have seen a portrait like this at the BP Portrait show - the patterned background, the bright colour. But it is also right in the avant garde of its time (Picasso and Matisse).

And this one is very like a Matisse sketch - but this is my favourite - it's very calm, the structure is simple and the gold colour is arresting and subtle.

Ahhhh.

I've just realised that there are two circles in this pic, and I think at this point Sonia goes into circle mode. She paints in another style, very abstract, which involves as many circles as possible, and they are OK.... But first there is an in between stage of the semi-abstract, which is interesting to look at; trying to see the figures that are hidden in the colours.

this one isn't in the Tate, but I couldn't resist it - so pretty!

This is some kind of ball or dance - 

More abstract ones.

Circle mode 

Delaunay could have carried on painting all this abstract stuff forever but she had always liked putting ideas into clothing and when her money from Russia dried up she just had to make a living, so she went into fashion. Think Laura Ashley, Cath Kidston - only more upmarket.

This is Delaunay's first go at dressmaking with her own ideas, and I have to say it's ghastly and looks mad. But Roz liked it. There's a great mix of textures - she particularly liked mixing material with a "nap" like fur and velvet with smooth and shiny fabrics, and she intentionally added a baggy bit on one side of the part that covers the bottom. The whole thing is extremely badly stitched.

Luckily in the 1920's SD's aesthetic matched the Art Deco aesthetic to a T and the union of shapes, colour, design and workmanship was a very strong one.

Peculiar padded swimsuit with no "bottoms".

Amazing coat which Roz loved, all longstitch,  but the colours are now very dull (after all these years)

These shoes are so lovely - made in long stitch.

The original designs are so beautiful

And finally we get onto my favourite bit - fabric design. Sonia Delaunay had an endless fountain of ideas for fabrics, and they are all cheerful and wearable and desirable. She was FANTASTIC at design.

and here is a piece of her work in progress:

More designs:

What a lot one can do with small strokes of the pen and judicious use of colour!

They just make you want to make things. for all creative people, what an inspiration!! amazing and wonderful. 

Then we went to Pizza Express at the Globe, then to Borough Market (all poshed up for the tourists and not at all the old market of a few years ago, now that tourists are taking photos of cheeses and things with that determined look on their faces as though they know they  must find the experience in some way enjoyable), but Roz bought some nectarines at 5  for £1 and they were excellent. What an eye for a bargain. We had an enjoyable conversation with a fishmonger. We then went out to the rest of Southwark and walked about rather randomly until we found the Menier Chocolate Factory, where we went to see more pictures, and then walked some more and found a very poor Catholic church - the walls of painted brick, the windows minimally decorated, the pews of pine. I loved it and lit some candles for S and F and J and R; all my clever darlings, of whom only S would see the point in lighting a candle.


I had a very happy day with Roz even though I felt emotionally exhausted after all those goodbyes - art helps me to balance myself.