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A Living Education
My phone rang and a voice said "Are you Jane?"
Somebody who met me at a dinner had passed on my telephone number to a
seriously entertaining octogenarian. "They told me you were a good
sort", the voice continued. 80 years old, John Mansfield proved a
riotous and fascinating lunch companion. His sentences began with things
like: "Now when I sailed up the Yangtze...", "Yes there
was a riot in Bombay when I was there...." "I remember being
in Singapore and the Ghurkha's being ordered to draw swords...."
"When I arrived in Mexico with my second wife and all our children
there was no house organised. We had been at a leaving party for a full
bloody week before we left and neither of us had arranged anything."
As we were saying goodbye after the lunch, this man who has lived a pure
Boys Own adventure story of a life turned to me and said "It's always
lovely to meet someone who is an optimist, sees the joke. That's all too
rare nowadays. How do you do it?" Full of ego with a capital E, I
began to ponder. How do I look at life? Well, I am a believer in the glass
being half full, as opposed to half empty. I also tend to see life as
a bit of a joke. I even did a bit of research among friends and I seem
to be one of a few who hasn't been in some sort of counselling over the
years. I pondered further on some of the crazy things that have happened,
and some of the terrible things happened and why I never turned to a professional
fee charging person to listen to me talk for a few hours. By no means
could it be said that I have lead an easy or wildly frivolous life. Interesting
at times, hilarious at others, dangerous on occasions even, but not easy.
Well am I not just terrific, roared the ego, having developed into this
amazing person?
And then I woke up one morning, feeling like I had been slapped on the
wrist, to the clear knowledge that another octogenarian with an army background,
had of course, and perhaps without realising it, played more than a little
part in my way of approaching life. He certainly showed me how to appreciate
the good things; the free things, and to deal with the awful bits quickly.
When I was tiny, we lived in the top part of a very large old house. Gracious,
spacious and all that, but still basically two huge rooms. Opera was played
loudly with no regard for a sleeping child. Which is why to this day I
can sing whole Italian Arias without understanding what they mean, and
can sleep with lights on and noise. We also had Mozart and Beethoven,
Schubert and Wagner. Chopin and Listz, both of whom I came to like in
my late teens; (romance, romance), were deemed 'light music'. I was given
the impression that music could solve things. I knew as a child that when
certain music was played, you were supposed to be quiet. This has stuck
with me.
When I about three years old, I was taught to read and by the time I went
to school, only one month after reaching my fourth birthday, (which seems
incredible now), I could read all the little words we started to learn
in the class. I loved early school, because in those days, when you moved
on to the eight or nine years old junior school, although it wasn't a
rule or anything, everyone was expected to be reading something else at
home - a full book, as well as school books. This suited me down to the
ground, as by now I loved reading more than anything. Ballet stories were
favourites. It never occurred to me to ask about learning to dance. I
already knew we didn't have money for that. But the books were great.
Then I saw a Degas painting of ballet dancers. The third thing entered
my life. I already had music and reading.
A few lucky things came together to produce a life long interest, not
to mention filling many a wet Sunday afternoon! Living so near central
Dublin, in the house of a man whose admiration for George Bernard Shaw
knew no bounds, I was regularly taken to the National Gallery to see what
the great man had left the nation. I was encouraged to wander about as
if I was visiting some family paintings on loan. The art Gallery and some
of the paintings in it became best friends of mine. I walked in one day
only a few years ago and Landseer's mighty Monarch of the Glen was gone;
the lady told me it had, after all these years, been reclaimed and gone
back to London. No doubt it now hangs in some gloomy merchant bank over
the heads of people doing dodgy deals.
I was a child of about twelve, who already had a love of books and an
appreciation of music and now here were the painters. Let's get the music
one right for the moment. I had developed ludicrously serious crushes
on two little men, one called Davy Jones and the other who rejoiced in
the named of Herman. He was the lead singer with a group called Herman's
Hermits and wore a polo necked sweater and a buttoned up overcoat while
singing. This foolishness, however, would be shot to bits within a few
years when a very thin and unusual chap, (one eye blue, one eye brown,)
released a song that began with 'Ground control to Major Tom'. This produced
a life long adoration of a genius, which continues to this day.
Back to our young teenager, who one day announces everything is totally
wrong and she just doesn't know why. And what's going to happen, and what
will she do with her life, and all those big important questions which
nowadays I hear they call family conferences to discuss. Well, no conference
was called in this child's life. The answer remains in my head as if it
was said yesterday. "You think you have problems, with all that you
have in life? It's about time you read some Dostoevsky. Try the brothers
Karamazov. Find out how to survive. And cut out some of those blasted
trashy comics. You fill your head with rubbish!" There was also a
ridiculous tendency to thrust Shakespeare, the complete works, into your
hands if things were not going too well and you complained. I felt this
to be cruel behaviour at the time and, in the natural course of life,
Father and Daughter saw things from opposite sides of the pitch for a
few very healthy years, civil behaviour of course always carried on in
public.
Even though I was aware that financially we were not well off, we were
still taken to the see the Spanish Dancers and other spectacles whenever
they came to the Olympia. As the eldest, I was taken to Gate theatre regularly,
once sitting through The Seagull and hardly understanding it, having been
told at the beginning, pick up as much as you can, that'll do for now.
I enjoyed going over to Grooms hotel though in the interval and looking
at the women's' clothes and listening to grown ups talking. He was never
overbearing, but always encouraging me to gather information and form
opinions, be they rubbish or great, but for heaven's sake form one, and
say something.
It simply didn't occur to me after a while to think about the financial
differences in peoples lives, the answer had merely taken root in my subconscious
and stayed there. It was that everything that was important was out there,
available free of charge, and they were our old friends books, music and
art. Yes, but while that was fine most times, but being a human teenager,
what about Captain America's? Well, I did manage to get there almost as
often as some of the gang as I was working now, and anyway I had by now
joined a three-year art course in the evening. Going to art college full
time was not going to happen. But there was always Professor Gombrich
and the Story of Art - my Desert Island book.
Then, in no time at all it seemed, at just twenty years old, I volunteered
for a job which saw me travelling around the stately homes and palaces
of England, Scotland and Wales to begin with, in the company of bored
youngsters whose teachers and parents thought they should see some treasures
while visiting Stratford for a play, London or Edinburgh for culture.
I was the one getting steeped in culture, and I knew it. And the great
thing was I had been given an appreciation of all this treasure without
realising it. The time came when I was taking more coaches of more bored
teenagers to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, and there myself and Rembrandt
continued our friendship. A friendship that had started with the tiny
'Rest on the Flight into Egypt' in Merrion Square a very long time ago
indeed. A friendship that would reach its zenith when I looked into the
face of the Masters self-portrait in the Frick collection in New York
City years later.
Well done Joe for all that. And what of Breda all those years? Well, she
gets a whole novel to herself, someday.
by
Jane
Shortall
1st December 2003
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