Mervyn Peake
Mervyn Laurence Peake (
July 9,
1911 â€"
November 17,
1968) was a British
modernist writer, artist, poet and illustrator. He is best known for what are usually referred to as the
Gormenghast books, though the
Titus books would be more accurate: the three works that exist were the beginning of what Peake conceived as a lengthy cycle, following his protagonist Titus Groan from cradle to grave, but Peake's untimely death prevented completion of the cycle, which is now commonly but erroneously referred to as a trilogy. They are sometimes compared to the work of his contemporary
J.R.R. Tolkien, but his surreal fiction was influenced by his early love for
Charles Dickens and
Robert Louis Stevenson rather than Tolkien's studies of mythology and philology.
Peake also wrote poetry and nonsense verse, short stories for adults and children ("Letters from a Lost Uncle"), stage and radio plays, and "
Mr Pye", a relatively tightly-structured novel in which
God implicitly mocks the evangelical pretensions and cosy world-view of the eponymous hero.
Peake first made his reputation as a painter and illustrator during the 1930s and 1940s, when he lived in London, and he was commissioned to produce portraits of well-known people. A collection of these drawings is still in the possession of his family. Although he gained little popular success in his lifetime, his work was highly respected by his peers, and his friends included
Dylan Thomas and
Graham Greene. His works are now included in the collections of the
National Portrait Gallery and the
Imperial War Museum.
Mervyn Peake was born in
Kuling in central
China in
1911 of British parents; his father
Ernest Cromwell Peake was a
doctor with the
London Missionary Society (now the
Council for World Mission). Chinese influences can be detected in his work, not least in the castle of Gormenghast itself, which in some respects echoes the closed, walled compunds he grew up in and noted in his 'Notes for a Projected Autobiography' (1950), that of the
London Missionary Society in
Tianjin, and of the
Tientsin Grammar School. It is also likely that his early exposure to the contrasts between the lives of the Europeans, and of the Chinese, and between the poor and the wealthy in China also exerted a strong influence on the Gormenghast books.
Peake attended
Tientsin Grammar School until the family returned to England in 1923. His education continued at
Eltham College,
Mottingham (1923-1929), where his talents were encouraged by his English teacher, Eric Drake. He completed his formal education at
Croydon School of Art and at the
Royal Academy Schools from 1929 to 1933, where he first painted in oils and wrote his first long poems. He first exhibited at the
Royal Academy and with the so-called "
Soho Group" in 1931.
His early career in the 1930s was as a painter in London, although he lived on the Channel Island of
Sark for a time. He first moved to Sark in 1932 after visiting his former teacher Eric Drake, who was setting up an artists' colony. In 1934 he exhibited with the Sark artists both in the Sark Gallery built by Drake and at the Cooling Galleries in London. In 1935 he exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Leger Galleries in London.
In 1936 he returned to London and was commissioned to design the sets and costumes for
Insect Play and his work was acclaimed in
The Sunday Times. He also began teaching
life drawing at
Westminster School of Art where he met painter
Maeve Gilmore, whom he married in 1937. They had three children, Sebastian (b. 1940), Fabian (b. 1942), and Clare (b. 1949).
He had a very successful exhibition of paintings at the Calmann Gallery in London in
1938 and his first book, the self-illustrated children's pirate romance
Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor (based on a story he had written around 1936) was first published in
1939 by Country Life. In December 1939 he was commissioned by
Chatto & Windus to illustrate a children's book,
Ride a Cock Horse and Other Nursery Rhymes, published for the Christmas market in 1940.
At the outbreak of
World War II he applied to become a
war artist for he was keen to put his skills at the service of his country. He imagined
An Exhibition by the Artist, Adolf Hitler, in which horrific images of war with ironic titles were offered as 'artworks' by the Nazi leader. Although the drawings were bought by the British
Ministry of Information his application was turned down and he was
conscripted in the Army, where he served first with the Royal Artillery, then with the Royal Engineers. The Army didn't know what to do with him. He began writing
Titus Groan at this time.
In April 1942, after his requests for commissions as a war artist - or even leave to depict war damage in London - had been consistently refused, he suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to Southport Hospital. That autumn he was taken on as a graphic artist by the
Ministry of Information for a period of six months. The next spring he was invalided out of the Army. In 1943 he was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee to paint
glassblowers at a
Birmingham factory making cathode ray tubes for the early radar sets.
The five years between 1943 and 1948 were some of the most productive of his career. He finished
Titus Groan and
Gormenghast and completed some of his most acclaimed illustrations for books by other authors, including
Lewis Carroll's
Hunting of the Snark and
Alice in Wonderland,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the
Brothers Grimm's
Household Tales,
All This and Bevin Too by
Quentin Crisp and
Robert Louis Stevenson's
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as producing many original poems, drawings, and paintings.
A book of nonsense poems,
Rhymes Without Reason, was published in 1944 and was described by
John Betjeman as "outstanding". Shortly after the war ended in 1945 he was commissioned by a magazine to visit
France and
Germany. With writer
Tom Pocock he was among the first British civilians to witness the horrors of the
Nazi concentration camp at
Belsen, where the remaining prisoners, too sick to be moved, were dying before his very eyes. He made several drawings, but not surprisingly he found the experience profoundly harrowing, and expressed in deeply felt poems the ambiguity of turning their suffering into art.
In
1946 the family moved to
Sark, where Peake continued to write and illustrate, and Maeve painted.
Gormenghast was published in
1950, and the family moved back to England, settling in
Smarden,
Kent. Peake taught part-time at the
Central School of Art, began his comic novel
Mr Pye, and renewed his interest in theatre. His father died that year and left his house in
Wallington,
Surrey to Mervyn.
Mr Pye was published in
1953, and he later adapted it as a radio play. The
BBC broadcast other plays of his in
1954 and
1956.
In
1956 Mervyn and Maeve visited
Spain, financed by a friend who hoped that Peake's health, which was already declining, would be improved by the holiday. That year his novella
Boy in Darkness was published beside stories by
William Golding and
John Wyndham in a volume called
Sometime, Never. On 18 December the
BBC broadcast his radio play
The Eye of the Beholder (later revised as
The Voice of One) in which an avante-garde artist is commissioned to paint a church mural. Peake placed much hope in his play
The Wit To Woo which was finally staged in London's West End in
1957, but it was a critical and commercial failure. This affected him greatly -- his health degenerated rapidly and he was again admitted to hospital with a nervous breakdown.
He was showing unmistakable early symptoms of
Parkinson's Disease, for which he was given
electroconvulsive therapy, to little avail. Over the next few years he gradually lost the ability to draw steadily and quickly, although he still managed to produce some drawings with the help of his wife. Among his last completed works were the illustrations for
Balzac's
Droll Stories (
1961) and for his own poem
The Rhyme Of The Flying Bomb (
1962), which he had written some fifteen years earlier.
Titus Alone was published in
1959 and was revised by
Langdon Jones in 1970 to remove apparent inconsistencies introduced by the publisher's careless editing.
Peake died in November 1968. His work, and the Gormenghast books in particular, became much better known and more widely appreciated after his death, and they have since been translated into many languages.
Four collections of his poems were published during his lifetime;
Shapes & Sounds (
1941),
The Glassblowers (
1950),
Poems & Drawings (
1965), and
A Reverie of Bone (
1967). After his death there were other publications,
Selected Poems - Mervyn Peake (
1972), and
The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb (
1973), plus
The Drawings of Mervyn Peake (
1974) and
Writings and Drawings (
1974), followed by
Peake's Progress in (
1979).
In
1983, the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast eight hour-long episodes for radio dramatising the complete Gormenghast Trilogy. This was the only adaption including the third book
Titus Alone, which has been consistently ignored by the
BBC.
In
1984,
BBC Radio 4 broadcast two 90-minute plays based on
Titus Groan and
Gormenghast, adapted by
Brian Sibley and starring
Sting as
Steerpike and
Freddie Jones as the Artist (narrator). A slightly abridged compilation of the two, running to 160 minutes, and entitled
Titus Groan of Gormenghast, was broadcast on
Christmas Day,
1992.
BBC 7 repeated the original versions on
21 and
28 September,
2003.
In
1986 Mr Pye was adapted as a four-part Channel 4 miniseries starring
Derek Jacobi.
In
2000, the
BBC and
WGBH Boston co-produced a lavish miniseries, titled
Gormenghast, based on the first two books of the series. It starred
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as Steerpike,
Neve McIntosh as Fuchsia,
June Brown as Nannie Slagg,
Ian Richardson as Lord Groan,
Christopher Lee as Flay,
Richard Griffiths as Swelter,
Warren Mitchell as Barquentine,
Celia Imrie as Countess Gertrude,
Lynsey Baxter and
Zoe Wanamaker as the twins, Cora and Clarice, and
John Sessions as Dr Prunesquallor. The supporting cast included
Olga Sosnovska,
Stephen Fry and
Eric Sykes and the series is also notable as the last screen performance by comedy legend
Spike Milligan (as the Headmaster).
The 30-minute TV short film
A Boy In Darkness (also made in
2000 and adapted from Peake's short story) was the first production from the BBC Drama Lab. It was set in a 'virtual' computer-generated world created by young computer game designers, and starred
Jack Ryder (from
EastEnders) as Titus, with
Terry Jones (
Monty Python's Flying Circus) narrating.
Irmin Schmidt, founder of seminal German '
Krautrock' group
Can wrote an opera called
Gormenghast, based on the novels; it was first performed in Wuppertal, Germany, in November 1998. A number of early songs by New Zealand rock group
Split Enz were inspired by Peake's work. The song "
The Drowning Man," by British band
The Cure, is inspired by events in
Gormenghast, and the song "Lady Fuschia" by another British band, the Strawbs, is also based on events in the novels.
*
Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor (1939)
*
Shapes and Sounds (1941)
*
Rhymes without Reason (1944)
*
Titus Groan (1946)
*
The Craft of the Lead Pencil (1946)
*
Letters from a Lost Uncle (from Polar Regions) (1948)
*
Drawings by Mervyn Peake (1949)
*
Gormenghast (1950)
*
The Glassblowers (1950)
*
Mr Pye (1953)
*
Figures of Speech (1954)
*
Titus Alone (1959)
*
The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb (1962)
*
Poems and Drawings (1965)
*
A Reverie of Bone and other Poems (1967)
*
Selected Poems (1972)
*
A Book of Nonsense (1972)
*
The Drawings of Mervyn Peake (1974)
*
Mervyn Peake: Writings and Drawings (1974)
*
Twelve Poems (1975)
*
Boy in Darkness (first separate edition, 1976)
*
Peake's Progress (1978)
*
Ten Poems (1993)
*
Eleven Poems (1995)
*
The Cave (1996)
*
Mervyn Peake, the official site
*
Peake Studies, the periodical dedicated to Peake's life and work
*
the Peake entry in the Literary Encyclopedia*
The Scriptorium: Mervyn Peake*
"An Excellence of Peake", by
Michael Moorcock*
Gormenghast Castle*
Mervyn Peake, an introduction to his prose works
*
Self-portrait from the National Portrait Gallery collection*
Interview with Sebastian Peake, Mervyn Peake's son, on wotmania.com*Gilmore, M. & Johnson (1974) Mervyn Peake: Writings and Drawings. (London: Academy Editions)
*Winnington, G. Peter (2000) Vast Alchemies: the life and work of Mervyn Peake. (London: Peter Owen)
*Peake, Mervyn (1950) 'Notes towards a Projected Autobiography', in Maeve Gilmore (ed.), Peake's Progress: Selected Writings and Drawings of Mervyn Peake (London: Allen Lane, 1978)
