fairy stories

‘With one touch of his magic wand he could people my universe with elves.’ Arthur Rackham, an artist ghost of 6 Primrose Hill Studios, sets my mind alight. How is it, as children, our insides become our outsides, our thousand senses drip trails behind us like confetti? I remember staring at the pages of Aesop’s Fables and bearing that strange weight of the grotesque and the beautiful combined. Rackham’s pictures hurt with an unavoidable certainty, the world IS a fairytale, that knowledge a burden. Every breath an intake of icy inevitability. As children and perhaps as adults, fairytales are a confirmation of what we sense, a shadow just beyond what we may have heard or seen. Early this morning, an angel appeared to me in the kitchen. ‘Have a look at these’, said Pauline. Two tattered art books on JW Waterhouse and Arthur Rackham, previous dwellers of Primrose Hill Studios. A discovered looking-glass into liquid gold inspiration. How is it that all is one, the only Truth that we truly know? An artist’s spirit flies close and I capture it in my fist, a bright burning glow to lock in a treasure box. My mum once said, ‘lock it away in a treasure box in there’, pointing to my heart. I hear the ghosts outside, as the trees breathe and bees kiss lavender. They are there as the sun brushes my face, paintbrush strokes of inspiration. Rackham illustrated a 1907 version of Lewis Carroll’s ‘the Looking-Glass’, perhaps our closest guidebook. “In that direction,” the Cat said, waving its right paw round, “lives a Hatter: and in that direction,” waving the other paw, “lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.” “But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” The best people are mad. I imagine Rackham’s wife, Edyth Starkie, an artist in her own right, swaying through the flowers as she utters, ‘I rather like bad people but I can’t stand bad art’. As I turn the pages of Waterhouse’s biography, my eye catches a yellowed photo. Seven figures in wonderfully extravagant clothing, ‘a fancy dress party, c.1884-1888, Primrose Hill Studios’. Here in the garden, Waterhouse placed a boat that helped him picture his Lady of Shalott. ‘The gemmy bridle glitter’d free, Like to some branch of stars we see Hung in the golden Galaxy.’ A little girl’s fantasy, this beautiful lady with flowing red hair. Only today did I notice the candles ahead of her.