Budleigh resident Nick
Speare as The Sailor in the 2018 ‘The Boyhood of Raleigh’ re-enactment by
Fairlynch Museum volunteers. Photo credit: Rob Coombe
Young Walter
as portrayed in Millais’ The Boyhood of Raleigh
As
Millais and every artist knows, hand and arm gestures play a key role in their
work, guiding the viewer to a certain conclusion. Young Walter’s gaze is internalised,
fixed on the world of his imagination, thousands of miles distant from what we
actually see in the painting. He seems to be looking through the sailor rather
than at him.
The Boyhood of
Raleigh, on show for the third time at Budleigh Salterton’s Fairlynch Museum,
on loan from Tate Britain
The
sailor’s words and above all that outstretched arm were the stimulus for that
imagination. Now, in turn, it takes ‘The Boyhood’s’ Victorian audience beyond
the horizon to inspire them – and particularly young boys – with thoughts of
creating an even greater British Empire.
‘The sailor’s arm points into the distance, taking the
eye out of the main frame and implying a world of romantic adventure beyond its
confines,’ comments Professor Linda Dryden in her book about the novelist Joseph
Conrad.
To
his right is Captain John Hewes, who had been sent with sailors and fishermen
by West Country investors in an attempt to claim abandoned assets of the
bankrupt Dorchester Company, especially the barrels of salt, an expensive
commodity.
To Conant’s left is the diminutive Captain Miles Standish - rudely named 'Captain Shrimp' by his enemies - and a troop of armed
marines who had been sent by Governor Bradford from the Plymouth Colony to
protect what it saw as its assets.
Conant’s arm, the palm of his
hand open in sign of friendship, keeps the viewer firmly within the frame and
focused on the smiling central figure. I notice that it’s his left hand that he
extends to Standish. Was he left-handed? Who knows.
His right hand firmly
clasps a book. Perhaps it’s a folder of legal documents which he has consulted.
As Gloucester historian Mary Ellen Lepionka explains, ‘According to accounts of
the 1625 confrontation, Hewes and his men barricaded themselves behind barrels
of salt in the flake yard and Standish threatened to open fire on them, when
Roger Conant and company “rushed from their huts” (modified wigwams with
chimneys instead of smoke hole) to explain that by English law everything in
Fishermen’s Field was still Dorchester Company property pending the outcome of
bankruptcy proceedings’.
The statue of Roger
Conant outside the Witch Museum, Salem, Massachusetts
Photo credit: Kate
Fox
Smiling
in contrast with the rather grim-faced statue of Roger Conant that is one of
Salem’s landmarks.
The
sketch marks a crucial point in time and hints at a few seconds of suspense.
Conant’s gesture is open and friendly, but Standish has not responded. He looks
nonplussed. His background is military and he is a man of action. Will he give
the order to the heavily armed soldiers behind him to open fire on the
fishermen and sailors? The latter’s gestures – clenched fists and pointing
fingers – are openly defiant and hostile.
An artist’s image of
Captain Miles Standish from The
Courtship of Miles Standish, an 1858
narrative poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The American artist N.C.
Wyeth was known for his illustrations of The Last of the Mohicans (1826) and Treasure Island
(1883).
How
will the situation be resolved? This moment could easily have been the start of
an early civil war between white settlers in America? By 1625, when the
incident took place, Captain Miles Standish, one of the most prominent in the
group of Plymouth Puritan separatists who had sailed on the Mayflower, had proved that he was capable of extreme violence.
Continued at https://conant400.blogspot.com/2020/06/33-kind-of-ruffling-course-in-world.html
Continued at https://conant400.blogspot.com/2020/06/33-kind-of-ruffling-course-in-world.html
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