An original post today: I did a deal with an accountant.
Who also happens to be a close friend: he was very poorly and would insist on going into work on Monday…I said, if you don’t go in, I’ll put up a new post. He complied , and so must I.
And it’s his birthday. Happy birthday, MIff x
There’s a middle English word: gloumen.
It has two meanings: to look miserable or glum; and to darken, to immerse in indistinct murkiness.
When I hear it I am transported immediately to the work of an artist who is not generally known for his gloumen, but rather for his exuberant and vivid impressionisic scenes: for paintbrush-pixelled good-time impeccable Gallic taste. I refer to the most feted of those French impressionists, Monet.
Monet knew things about light and its subtle gradients that make me marvel. Take his garden paintings: they are not lit in the manner of Van Gogh’s slightly crazed brilliance. Rather, the colours have a vivid French earthy warmth which is to the eyes like a chance French meal, taken after a stroll through the French Alps, is to the palate. That third partner to sweet and sour, umami, finds its visual expression here. His paintings are dripping with a decadent experience. They embrace life with a fountain of the lusty, the calculatingly unihibited.
But observe his London paintings. Those of us who live here know he captured the light quite perfectly. And it is a sobering contrast.
Because while he occasionally daubs the sky around Big Ben a warmer red, most of his London paintings are gloomy.
There it is; that light, demanding that we retrace our linguistic steps back through the language, past gloom, to gloumen: a grudging percolation of light which dulls the foot-thud and turns the visage towards the London pavements to watch each tread until, after a metropolitan eternity, one reaches one’s destination.
In London we have always needed illumination. As far back as 1417, the City’s mayor was making arrangements for “lanterns with lights to be hanged out on the winter evenings between Hallowtide and Candlemasse.”
It would be centuries before someone made a link between light and that miner’s bane, fire-damp, or coal gas, which lurked in pockets underground in mines throughout the land.
Scottish engineer William Murdoch noted the properties of fire-damp as he worked, tin mining in Cornwall. His Redruth house was the first ever to be lit by gaslight, back in 1792. By 1806 he was standing in front of The Royal Society, lecturing on “the Application of Gas from Coal to Economical Purposes”.
It was but a flicker of a will-o-the-wisp to the first street to be lit by gaslight, Pall Mall, in January 1807: and where one signature street led, the rest of London followed.
About a year ago I stumbled upon an extraordinary interview with one of my favourite authors for young adults, Sally Gardener. What Monet paints, she writes: gloumen, rich and mysterious and burgeoning with story.
She lived in London as a child, in Gray’s Inn. It was the last area of London to be lit by gaslight.
Even in the seventies, when everywhere else was uncompromisingly electric, a lamplighter would travel from light to light, igniting that evocative fuel and bathing the streets in illumination with a character all its own: soft, unintrusive, casting light just so far, leaving something of the world to shadow, and thus, to mystery: to risk, to danger, to the unknown.
Sally Gardner says the gaslight at her home in Theobald’s Road preserved something the rest of London had lost: a veil, perhaps. A quality of history, a long-lost light. She said: “London then was completely different. We would even run to the gates to watch a car go past. You could almost feel, you could almost see Dickens walk past.”
When Edward Heath was Prime Minister and London was hit by strikes which compromised the electric lighting across the metropolis, Gray’s Inn was the only area of London to be lit. The Lamplighter went round, same as always: no strikes for him. His job, Gardner says, had been handed down through the family: and his father had lit the lamps for Charles Dickens. The past was ever-present in that little gaslit oasis.
And it appears the past is still present: on our British railway lines.
Saturday’s Times disclosed that Victorian technology is still alive and well on our railways.
Not gaslight, this time, but oil lamps: the old style semaphore signals keep an oil lamp burning, and cover it with green or red film to let drivers know the state of play on the track ahead.
There are more than 500 of these still in use here, it seems: occasionally the oil light goes out in the wind, and railway workers must get on a ladder and relight them by hand.
It is, railway bosses tell us, the end of an era. By the end of the year, those dim oil lights on the railways will be a thing of the past.
Who knows what the future may hold. But in this country, which has a special quality of light named gloumen, the last two centuries here have been lit by lanterns and gaslight, and it’s hard to bid it goodbye.
Our light begs for a soft touch: and these harsh electric lights seem brash and, frankly, simply not British.
But energy is becoming scarce: what light, I wonder, will illuminate the 21st century?
Kate Shrewsday 
“What light, through yonder gloumen breaks?”
Wonderful post, Kate. Happy Birthday to your friend the accountant.
Thank you Nancy 🙂
Hi Kate
Wow, what a great birthday present!
Thanks very much
Miff xx
You’re welcome, birthday boy. Have a great day, all of you…
Lovely, makes me want to go and revel in the gloumen, so different from the sometimes exhausting brilliance of sunlight here.
Happy Birthday to Miff, may his day be glowing not gloumen
NExt – solar and wind generated LED lights
Yeeeees (Think Jeremy Paxman here) love the solar and wind: Cornwall is filled with the most beautiful wind farms: but LED lights…..where is the warmth…..
I sometimes look at Monet’s pictures and wonder if he was short-sighted, detail not visible at a distance.
Different painting styles, I wonder did they begin because of someone’s physical differences in vision?
There’s a thought, Sidey. I wonder. It goes back to that old debate, do we all see the same green, the same blue…
I bet an investigation of this theory would render some profound revelations. In my own case diminished vision and arthritic fingers have altered the things I make and do art wise. The ancient masters had to have been plagued by cataracts and vision and things of that nature. I understand the brilliant Sir Thomas Moore had glaucoma and was blind at an early age. That would have limited his continuing education so he sure learned a great deal at a very young age.
Rembrandt and light the master. Illuminate 21st Century?How about seeing the light wherein the megabanks and megacorps have more power than most sovereign nations. Wealth is continuing to be concentrated into an ever “getting tinier” tip of the social pyramid. There is too little left to fund creativity, investment, and funding to advance civilization. Ain’t too many people seeing the light.
Rembrandt: ain’t that the truth 🙂 And let us hope someone in the 21st century sees the light. It does occur to me that all civilisations are cyclical: Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, they rise, they become decadent, they make mistakes, they fall. Wonder what happens when a global civilisation falls? Who will inherit the earth?
A Wise Accountant you are Miff!
End of an era indeed! No more oil lamps for British Rail.
I do wonder sometimes if our generation has fallen in so far with the ‘throw away’ society that often the baby is thrown out with the bathwater?
Change for changes sake, or change for goodness sake?
Clockwork: where have all the clockwork things gone?
Energy stored in a spring: simple and efficient. But hardly used these days. Instead we rely on batteries and electricity.
And clockwork stuff is so beautiful…..filled with romance. However it is disastrous for people like me, whose exuberance can be too much for those sophisticated little mechanisms, and who let their watches stop because they are simply undisciplined. Quartz means I know what time it is, and am well equipped to arrive my customary five minutes late wherever I go.
Happy birthday to Miff.
As a child, I lived in a street that had gas lamps and I remember them being lit each night, too. Then they were replaced with the yellow sodium lamps that gave off just as little light, so I could never really see that they were any improvement!
Monet had cataracts so, apart from his skill with brush and colours, he probably painted exactly what he saw. I love his work. I also love this post. Glad you’re back, even if it’s only for a brief moment! When I have more energy and time I shall work my way through your archives!
🙂
Amazing to paint one’s impressions of the world around us, Val 🙂 And you experienced gas light first hand too!
I’ll carry on reposting most days, but will slip in the odd new one when I have time. I find it impossible not to write..sure you feel the same way….I loved that bird post. We adore our garden visitors, but we don’t know them as well as you!
Yay – what a wonderful post, Kate! I always learn from what you write, and you do it with such style. Gosh.
London is grey and gloomy today – in much need of light. I was so interested to learn, when we went to the Museum of London in the Docklands, that it was whale oil that was used as an illuminant for street lamps in the 18th century. Amazing that British Railways still use oil lamps …
Sunshine xx
Isn’t it? I had no idea whale oil was used – poor creatures, they have kept the world going in so many ways and I feel sure they are like minds in this universe.
I shall be trying to spot the lamps before they are phased out once and for all…I’ll keep you posted if I see one locally…
Roamin’ in the gloamin’ on the bonnie banks o’ Clyde,
Roamin’ in the gloamin’ wi’ ma lassie by ma side,
When the sun has gone to rest, that’s the time that I like best,
O, it’s lovely roamin’ in the gloamin’!
…
I’m singing along with you over here, Cindy 😀
Miff’s birthday gift became ours as well with a compelling post, here, Kate. Having just been diagnosed with cataracts myself, your post brings forth the different views of the world to me this day, particularly Monet’s. How interesting to have grown up under the gaslights of Gray’s Inn (love the name) and the shadows of Dicken’s lamp lit world. Oh, I loved this post and do hope you will sent out more words from time-to-time.
-2 F as I write this comment, but the sun is shining, the heat is on, the larders filled, and great posts to read.
Gracious! That’s cold! Do the deer run to ground? If the sun is shining, though, Penny, it makes everything rather stunning. Thanks for those lovely words, and very glad the post struck a chord: and Monet and his cataracts show us such a beautiful view of life. Everywhere we look there are blessings. 🙂
What a lush, gorgeous post. You’re so right about Monet. His technique was truly unique, and I don’t think it can ever be replicated.
I really enjoy your writing style. You make creativity and perspective look easy.
As do you. I’ve just come away from reading the perfumed chocolates story. It made me howl with laughter: because back then, that was me too. Fabulous storytelling 🙂
May I say how thrilled I am that you two have found each other? I’ve been dying for that to happen. You are kindred spirits: storytellers par excellence, you both weave stories like no-one else I know, and keep me enthralled through every word. You are both my writing heroes!
Yay!
Sunshine xx
Thankyou Sunshine!
You are right on the Monet with this one (did that make you Monet and Groanet?) and the world of Dickens and Conan Doyle are conjured up in my imagination. I hope the rest of Miff’s birthday matched the enjoyment he must have received from this – Miff he may be, but certainly not miffed!
Ouch! Puns worthy of the bard, there, small meercat 🙂 Glad to have brought a little gloomy London to your fresh, Sunshiney day …