Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

[Sadler:] I asked Currie to give a lecture at the University of Leeds, and to tell us what was in the young painters’ minds today. He was diffident but accepted. He came to stay with me at 41 Headingley Lane on Monday March 16, 1914. He came unexpectedly for two nights instead of for one. Though he didn’t show it at first, he was in a very high state of tension. His lecture was a failure. He had forgotten his promise to bring slides, and borrowed twelve of mine not getting them accurately. His lecture only lasted 20 minutes. It was embarrassing. He had given us nothing but preface. We saved the situation by starting a discussion. After the lecture, he showed the pictures and drawings which I had got from him. Afterwards, he told me he had written a lot in the morning or afternoon before the lecture in my study, but had forgotten to bring the manuscript with him to the University. Under an appearance of calmness, he was really nearly out of his mind. That night, March 17, we had a very long and intimate talk in my study. He told me of his anguish. The girl, the fair one, was faithless to him. His life was a hell. But his love for her was intense. I never came in contact with such fiery, consuming love. He told me that he could hardly keep from suicide. The night before, he had nearly killed himself in our house. His parents were Irish Catholic peasants, who had settled in the Potteries. There Arnold Bennett had seen him and helped him. Currie had the passion and instinctive piety of the Irish Catholic peasant. Really, he was that. Afterwards, I heard how much our maids disliked him: he was overbearing in manner, very untidy and exacting. I never saw Currie again.

Comment

Comment

Currie murdered Dolly Henry and killed himself in October .

I and the toddler pillaged the great old mulberry in the garden to the east of Buckingham House, 41 Headingley Lane in 2021 and 2022, so I was delighted to discover (op. cit.) that the Sadlers probably did the same:

The gates of Buckingham House stood on the south side of Headingley Lane, near the crest of the hill. Recessed from the roadway and with high walls curving inward to terminate in massive stone pilasters, these gates must at one time have been suitably impressive, to serve as entrance to the solid and stately home of a prosperous citizen of Leeds.

When MES decided to take a lease of the well-sited, forthright, but rather grim mansion, it had lost a good deal of its original outward dignity. Instead of a lodge on the right of the road-entrance was a brand new Christian Science Church [Wetherspoon’s Golden Beam], built on the site of the lodge and occupying quite a space of what had been the house’s private ground. On the left, a sooty shrubbery masked a straggle of back-premises, only part of which were still in use. The principal southern terrace remained, a broad tableland of weedy gravel, from which flights of stone steps led down to a second terrace and thence to a tennis-lawn. But the falling grass banks had been neglected and the lawn left to grow mossy and soft, nor was there a vestige of a flower bed to lighten the monotony of dark grey stone and dingy shrubs.

Below the tennis-lawn the land still fell steeply, but no longer formed part of the property as now offered two large and untidy fields having been lopped off and let for grazing, until such time as the landlord thought fit to build over them. Similarly, on the west side of what used to be the estate, a further broad belt of land had already been ‘developed’, leaving to a Buckingham House tenant the residue of a decayed kitchen-garden, with breached walls and one habitable cottage, surrounded by villa-residences of a garish and suburban type.

Why did MES choose this crippled giant as his new home? For several reasons. He was determined to live within easy reach of the University, and not take semi-rural refuge in an outlying suburb of the city in which his duty lay. He wanted a house with ample wall-space for the display of his pictures, of which – although a costly few had been disposed of – a great number remained. He was attracted by the severe simplicity of the house’s exterior, by its complement of large high rooms lit by tall windows, by its truly admirable position on the crown of the hill, facing south-south-west and looking right over the Aire valley toward Armley and Pudsey…

They took possession about mid-November, and MES obtained the landlord’s consent to the disuse of what seemed to him an ostentatious address. Henceforward the house was known as 41 Headingley Lane. Chaos gradually subsided. Furniture was moved hither and thither; pictures were hung, taken down and hung again; my mother planned a south-facing garden to the east of the house, in the only high-walled enclave of the original estate left over after its general dismemberment. In a surprisingly short time life achieved a new rhythm – urgent and over-social for their liking, yet coherent and full of encouragement.

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Original

I asked Currie to give a lecture at the University of Leeds, and to tell us what was in the young painters’ minds today. He was diffident but accepted. He came to stay with me at 41 Headingley Lane on Monday March 16, 1914. MAS was away. He came unexpectedly for two nights instead of for one. Tho’ he didn’t show it at first, he was in a very high state of tension. His lecture was a failure. He had forgotten his promise to bring slides, and borrowed twelve of mine not getting them accurately. His lecture only lasted 20 minutes. It was embarrassing. He had given us nothing but preface. We saved the situation by starting a discussion. After the lecture, he showed the pictures and drawings which I had got from him. Afterwards, he told me he had written a lot in the m’g or aft. before the lecture in my study, but had forgotten to bring the MS with him to the University. Under an appearance of calmness, he was really nearly out of his mind.

That night, March 17, we had a very long and intimate talk in my study. He told me of his anguish. The girl, the fair one, was faithless to him. His life was a hell. But his love for her was intense. I never came in contact with such fiery, consuming love. He told me that he could hardly keep from suicide. The night before, he had nearly killed himself in our house.

His parents were Irish Catholic peasants, who had settled in the Potteries. There Arnold Bennett had seen him and helped him. Currie had the passion and instinctive piety of the Irish Catholic peasant. Really, he was that.

Afterwards, I heard how much our maids disliked him: he was overbearing in manner, very untidy and exacting. I never saw Currie again.

319 words.

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• Armley (7) ·
• Arnold Bennett (1) ·
• 📌Buckingham House, 41 Headingley Lane, Leeds (2) ·
• Coal (16) ·
• Depression (mood) (3) ·
• 📌Headingley (14) ·
• Ireland (24) ·
• Irish Catholics (10) ·
• John Currie (artist) (1) ·
• 📌Leeds (235) ·
• Michael Sadler (educationist) (4) ·
• Murder (38) ·
• 📌Pudsey (11) ·
• River Aire (25) ·
• Staffordshire Potteries (1) ·
• Staffordshire (2) ·
• Suicide (9) ·
• University of Leeds (8) ·
• World War I (1914-19) (21) ·

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