Cavendish Morton.
THE VIEW FROM HEREWHEN a man living in 2012 has a direct link to a man who was born in 1874, that is interesting. When the present is represented by Bembridge doyen Cavendish Morton and the past by his father, that is remarkable.
Blithely heading towards his 101st birthday next month, Cavendish Morton is as sharp with his memories as ever and has clear recollections of his father, whose photographic work is on show as a case display at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
It is no surprise Cavendish, widely known as "Cavy", is a human treasure trove of delight and talent. His life has brought him renown as an artist and designer, a yachtsman, an illustrator, a constant source of energy and enterprise.
He may be no longer physically active but he retains that rare gift of being both interested and interesting, who still finds life fascinating and remembers vividly what it was to be the child of exceptional parents.
His father, also called Cavendish, was a photographer, actor and art director. In the year of his birth, 1874, the first impressionist exhibition, including exciting new works by Renoir, Monet and Degas, was shown in Paris. (Cavy’s own birth year, 1911, coincided with the sensational theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, so art and painting may have been predestined in the family).
As he never went to school, but was educated at home, Cavy, with his twin brother, Concord, saw at close hand many of the fascinating aspects of their parents’ lives.
Their father might be on stage, playing such parts as Sir Thomas More (one photograph in the National Portrait Gallery shows just how effective he was in this role.)
He might be perfecting a new technique of theatrical make-up. Or he could be busy with his camera, taking pictures of stage and society personalities. Lady Ottoline Morrell, for instance, the literary hostess and chum to such cultural lions as Lytton Strachey and Augustus John.
"I was a child, so it all seemed perfectly normal," says Cavy.
His mother, meanwhile, would be busy writing books. As Concordia Merrell, she was the author of numerous light novels, which look quite tempting on Amazon’s website today. Julia Takes Her Chance and Married for Money sound particularly good, though one hopes The Man Without Mercy wasn’t founded on anybody the Mortons might have met during their family holidays in Bembridge.
One of Cavy’s special memories is seeing the Southern Syncopated Orchestra, whose appearance in this country in 1921 as an all-black band was revolutionary. His father photographed them, while his ten-year-old son was transfixed by the band’s drummer, Buddie Gilmore.
"I tried to play the drums myself but I wasn’t very good," he said.
Cavy is rightly proud of his father, who had an astonishing gift for stage transformation, and whose book, The Art of Theatrical Make-Up, is still regarded as a seminal guide.
Cavy remembers the book, remembers who published it, remembers the year of publication.
Not bad for a man who will be 101 in a few weeks’ time.
His father’s photographic works survives in a collection of platinum prints, which Cavy donated to the National Portrait Gallery in 1994 and which form the basis of the current display, on show until July.
Go and see it in London if you possibly can. It’s not just a fascinating record of the times but it represents, for the Island, a unique span of years dating back to 1874 and one that is still alive in the phenomenal mind and spirit of Cavy Morton.
Forget great expectations of slimness and send for the beadle
SO Mr Newbery, who occupies the penthouse suite on this page, is busy transforming himself into a sylph.It would be churlish not to support his endeavours, though I am not at all sure his new image will accord with his grand surroundings. Surely the occupier of this enviable property should be a person of imposing stature, a Falstaff of a man striding around on the opulent carpets of his lovely apartment?
Down here in the basement, I am also on a post-Christmas fast and hope the oncoming weeks will see me dwindle into a frail little scarecrow figure, very much in keeping with the wretched sparseness of my pitiful billet.
And with this year marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, I am even more convinced Mr Newbery should abandon his diet.
Should I be successful in my own regime, we could mount a Dickens special on this page, with me as Little Dorrit, pathetically mouldering away in my miserable dungeon, while Mr Bumble stalks aloft, cramming himself with meat pies, swilling jugs of ale and talking of cricket.