JOHN BELLANY AT WORLDS END

John Bellany at Worlds End.
Oil on canvas

By 1975 I had been living in London for five years but never bumped into John Bellany. That summer my pall John Kirkwood came to stay for a few days and suggested we pay him a visit. He knew John and also where to find him. I have this memory of walking across a huge flat area of crushed red brick, with the twin chimneys of Lots Road power station belching steam in the background. In the Bible it was Lot's wife who looked behind and was turned into a pillar of salt. There were no pillars of salt here but we were at a place called Worlds End that looked like it had been cleared by a nuclear explosion. The demolishers had left part of a row of what were called 'artisan dwellings'. These were two story, red brick buildings with very small rooms. We made a bee line for the very end one which I thought was derelict. The door was open so we shouted and went in. We squeezed past a large canvas covered with slashing brush strokes and climbed the stairs.

John Bellany was talking to a young woman who was just leaving and he welcomed us in. The two Johns did most of the talking. I didn't know much about him except that he'd been a star at Edinburgh College of Art and at the Royal College in London from 1965 - 1968. He had a reputation of being a brilliant painter but as I'd seen little or any of his work I was still to be convinced. He sat slumped in an old armchair wearing a fashionable, but ludicrous patchwork denim suit.

"Well," I thought, "This guy fancies himself as a dandy." Then I looked at all the pictures on the wall behind him. Little portraits, fishing boats and harbours, probably done when he was at college in Edinburgh. They definitely had something, almost a folksy naivety which I liked. These, I knew were not his best or recent work but personal things he'd kept. All this seemed to fit in with the sartorial absurdity of the denim suit - he was a showman.

In the painting I included an accordion lying at the side of his chair. I can't remember if it was there or not but he was a good musician and singer. During his time in Edinburgh he played in a band called the Blue Bonnets. In the film his son made of Bellany's life there is a piece of blurry, black and white film of him moving between the tables in a pub, playing the accordion and singing the 'Road and miles to Dundee.' He was a natural entertainer with a good voice who sang with feeling.

Bellany suggested we went to an Irish pub that had good music. I imagined it would be a raucous bar packed with hairy Irishmen swilling Guinness. Nothing could be further from the truth. This was very much a family bar, everyone sitting at tables and no bad language. At closing time the band played the Irish national anthem and they all stood up. We did not attract attention to ourselves by remaining seated!

Sadly, I thought that Bellany was only half the character I'd expected him to be. He was reputed to be the life and soul of the party but seemed to me quiet, distanced and preoccupied.

Of course, I had no idea of what was going on in his personal life. Earlier that year he had split up from his wife, Helen and their three kids. This provoked a nervous breakdown and he hadn't long returned from Edinburgh where he had fled to recover. When I met him he was still the the depths of a dark depression.

 

THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE FISHWIFE

 

Oil on board, 51cms x 61cms. 2021

 While reading a book about the Scottish Enlightenment I came across an amusing account of an accident that happened to the famous philosopher, David Hume(1711-1776) which he related in a letter to a friend. By this time in his life he was not only a philosopher but a highly regarded historian and his books were read all over Europe. By never marrying and careful budgeting he had managed to amass a modest fortune of one thousand pounds a year, which in those times was enough to keep him in considerable opulence. He was affable, courteous and amusing, so much so that his smiling corpulence was seen as a decoration to all the best dinner tables. The fact that most of Scotland regarded Hume as a shocking atheist was passed over by those that knew and loved him, for if he was an atheist, he wore it lightly.

As a symbol of his affluence he purchased a house in the brand new St. Andrews Square. To get there from the old town, where most of his socialising still took place, was not easy. Edinburgh is a place of crags, ravines and valleys and the great north bridge connecting the black, stinking old town to the new St Andrews Square was yet to be completed. The North Loch had been drained but left a stinking bog polluted by the effluent from tanneries, butchers shambles and the night soil emptied into the numerous closes. Only a narrow path, created by custom and practice, made it's way across this fetid swamp.

The sun had sunk well below the western hills by the time Hume had made his fond good byes and set out carefully across the narrow track. Somewhere along the path he stumbled, or more likely after too much claret, staggered. The stagger became a slide and his body had a hard time keeping up with his legs, which ended thigh deep in the obnoxious mud. He stood there for a moment, swaying and trying to catch his breath. He was glad not to have gone in head first, but every time he tried to move his feet were sucked further into the mud. Night was falling and there was no one about. What was he to do? He needed help to get out of the bog and started shouting "HELP! HELP!" No answer. He had been stranded there for some time when a strange, humped back figure shuffled out of the gloom. As it grew closer he realised with relief that it was a fishwife with her wicker creel on her back.

"Madam! Madam! Oh dear, kind fishwife, please help me out."

Her look of surprise turned to one of contempt.

"I ken you! You're Davy Hume, the infidel. Whit wad I help you for?"

"Madam. Madam, I'm a poor lost soul stuck in the mud. Is it not your Christian duty to help those in distress?

She thought on this.

"Weel, that's true. I'll help ye if you recite the Lords Prayer and the Apostolic Creed."

As it happened, Hume had been brought up in a deeply religious family, which probably initiated  his contempt for religion. He took a deep breath and regurgitated what he  regarded as mumbo-jumbo word perfect and even with commendable feeling. 

He limped and dragged himself up the slope to St Andrews Square. His feet hurt on the sharp, unfinished road as he had lost his shoes to the bog. His fine, silken hose dragged round his ankles encrusted with disgusting filth and his best white breeches were ruined. Fortunately, no one of 'quality' witnessed his passing. Only an old soldier employed as a night watchman on the building site looked up from his blazing fire and touched his bonnet as a sign of respect. 

"A braw nicht for a walk Sur."

Then he turned and stared into the fire. He had seen much stranger and more terrible sights in the shambles of battle.

Etching by John Kay,1742-1826,