Ford Madox Ford and the artists

[shewhomust]

1. His grandfather, Ford Madox Brown

Madox Brown was the most benevolent of men, the most helpful and the kindest. His manifestations, however, were apt at times to be a little thorny. I remember an anecdote which Madox Brown's housemaid of that day was in the habit of relating to me when she used to put me to bed. Said she - and the exact words remain upon my mind:
'I was down in the kitchen waiting to carry up the meat, when a cabman comes down the area steps and says: "I've got your master in my cab. He's very drunk." I says to him' - and an immense intonation of pride would come into Charlotte's voice-' "My master's a-sitting at the head of his table entertaining his guests. That's Mr [Swin­burne]. Carry him upstairs and lay him in the bath."'
Madox Brown, whose laudable desire it was at many stages of his career to redeem poets and others from dipsomania, was in the habit of providing several of them with labels upon which were inscribed his own name and address. Thus, when any of these geniuses were found incapable in the neighbourhood they would be brought by cabmen or others to Fitzroy Square.

2. Walter Crane's Gloves

I moved back to the Pent which I had let to an artist then of some fame. His name being Crane he had painted a bird of that species on the front door which gave on to the stockyard beyond a narrow strip of terrace and lawn. He had also painted numbers on all the room-doors. There were thirteen. His family used to take baths on the lawn which worried and astonished the stockmen and shepherds in the yards below. When they left there remained behind them an extraordinary number of gloves. In every drawer of the bedrooms there were old, soiled and crumpled gloves. I have remained wondering to this day what they can have been wanting with so many. Is there a maladie de gants as there is said to be of boots? At any rate we used them all to manure the roots of a vine that covered the front of the house. Leather is the best of all manures for vines and also for figs. Indeed if you want to plant a fig tree you should plant it with its roots in an old leather portmanteau. You will have wonderful figs.

(From the 'Selected Memories' in the Bodley Head Ford Madox Ford, edited by Graham Greene)

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Lovely.

Madox Brown and Madox Ford were great men- both of them- and should be better known than they are.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Here, here!

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

The vision of drunken writers wearing 'return to sender' labels will now be with me forever!

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I love the practicality of 'take him upstairs and put him in the bath.'

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

Me too.

[sovay]

That is awesome. Thank you.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

That first story is one I've been telling ever since I first read it, twenty or thirty years ago, but without provenance, since I'd completely misremembered where I found it. It was a joy to track it down again (at the Lit & Phil, of course) and the Walter Crane piece was a bonus.

[sovay]

It was a joy to track it down again (at the Lit & Phil, of course) and the Walter Crane piece was a bonus.

I'm going to have to look the book up.

(And now I have this image of Swinburne, heroically painted—like Marat—in Ford Madox Brown's bath.)