A decision

Saturday, January 1st., Cadogan Square, London.

 

Very feeble this morning after the New Year's Eve carousing, and bed at 2.30. Too late for me nowadays! Towards noon I walked to South Kensington Museum to see the temporary exhibition of commercial printing and illustration. I met D.S. McColl there. He told me that some time since Tonks had been 'very much bitten with the idea' of illustrating "The Old Wives' Tale". I never knew before. Wonder if it might be worth a luxury illustrated edition? I remember that Sickert wanted to illustrate "Clayhanger". I am glad really that nothing came of either scheme because their conceptions of the characters would not be the same as mine, and would confuse my mental images.

Feeling physically better after this afternoon's sleep, but in a reflective mood. I got to thinking about New Years past. Remembered that once, as a youth, I walked up to Mow Cop on New Year's Day. Don't think I had been there before though of course I knew of it and its history. Nobody else there and I recall standing at the top looking out over the vast Cheshire plain. I felt as if I could see forever. Exhilarating. I stood there for ages, with my back to the smoke and gloom of the Potteries, just breathing deep lungfulls of clean air. I think it was then that I decided, though I didn't formulate the thought clearly, that I wouldn't stay in the Potteries, but would seek my fortune elsewhere. And that is what I have been doing since.

On my way back that day I stopped at St. James church in Newchapel to have a look at the grave of James Brindley. Not much to see, but I was told once by Uncle John that the Bennetts were descended illegitimately from 'Schemer' Brindley. When I got home my mother asked me what I had been doing out so long. "Oh, not much", I said.

Grey and gloomy

Wednesday, November 27th., Waterloo Road, Burslem.

Mildish day, but grey and gloomy. Rather suited my mood in fact. I took a long walk, initially for nostalgic reasons, down towards Middleport, onto the canal and along to the Harecastle tunnel entrance. Partly the way I used to go to and from school. Not much has changed. At the bridge where I got onto the towpath there was a barge coming south, loaded with clay, towed by a disconsolate-looking horse. I had to wait for it to pass. The horse was being 'encouraged' by a young girl with a whippy bit of stick. Didn't seem to be making any difference to the horse which is probably inured to all such treatment.

Looking up towards Burslem, chimneys and smoke making the gloom of the day even gloomier, but I liked it. Brooding bottle kilns of course but all sorts of other chimneys as well - tall, short, some round and some square. Once I started to look carefully there was a lot of subtle colour to be seen - grey, blue, black, the browns and reds in the marl hole, the white of the shordruck. One building in the middle distance had its side painted a bright red and it almost glowed in the surrounding gloom. Swirls of smoke in the sky. It could be painted and might be striking. But not by me!

Up at Harecastle the water was pouring out of Brindley's tunnel because of all the rain we have had recently. Bright orange colour due to the iron content in the ridge. I thought about asking one of the boats to give me a ride through the tunnel but I would have had to walk back along Boathorse Lane and my clothes would have been a sight to see. And I'm not sure that I fancied the dark enclosed tunnel. So I walked back through Tunstall, got some oatcakes at the Market, and was more than ready to eat them when I got in.

My boots were in a state, but I enjoyed the walk and was in much better humour as a result. It occurs to me that there is romance of a sort here, looked at aright. I have been reading Conrad lately. Are his jungle river settlements, hemmed in by the great forests, really so different. There are people here striving and often failing, living lives in any case.