Beautiful Buttons and Camden Town Nights

Girl at a Window, Little Rachel 1907

We took a day trip to Cambridge during our Easter visit to the in-laws, and went to see a couple of exhibitions at the Fitzwilliam Museum. The first was a selection of paintings by Stanley Spencer, John Singer Sargent and Walter Sickert. The first two don’t really interest me much, but I find Sickert’s offhand glimpses of interior London lives more engaging. These paintings could be seen as a kind of post-impressionism. Sickert was much influenced by Degas, whom he went to Paris to meet. Like him, he painted scenes of the Parisian stage, although he characteristically chose to focus on more popular entertainments like the music hall and the circus rather than Degas’ more decorous back-stage ballet subjects. If Sickert’s late nineteenth century music hall paintings and Edwardian Camden Town interiors are in any way post-impressionist, then it is in a peculiarly English fashion. Rather than the warm colours of the French painters, we are in a world of dull and muted tones. Light comes in weakly through grimy windows and faces are lit by gaslight or the harsher glare of theatrical limelight. It’s an urban impressionism for an island with a predominantly overcast climate, the momentary effects of light merely serving to further illuminate the surrounding drabness. These paintings are certainly impressionist in the sense of capturing a moment of lived life, however. Hints of colour take on an exaggerated importance, life asserting itself amidst the dull drudgery of poverty. The sun catching the red hair of the young girl Rachel Siderman whom Sickert painted several times in 1907 seems to illuminate her inner world in these contemplative portraits. The painting in the exhibition was actually Little Rachel at the Mirror rather than the picture above, and seemed to capture a bellow of smoke from a train passing by outside Sickert’s Mornington Crescent house, in this area enmeshed by railway lines.

The ghost of Marie Lloyd sings

The Old Bedford, 1894-5

Up in the gallery

Noctes Ambrosianae, 1906

James Mason returns to this area in 1967 in his role as the guide in the film The London Nobody Knows, based on Geoffrey Fletcher’s book. After an introductory glide past construction sites and half or freshly built high-rise office blocks, which indicates the new London which was being erected upon the ruins of the old, we first encounter the urbane Mason as he descends the steps of the Bedford Theatre. He reminisces about how this used to be the favourite venue of probably the greatest music hall star, Marie Lloyd. ‘Now it’s just a mess’, he observes, glancing at the crumbling cupids and drooping plaster rosettes around him. We hear a ghostly echo of ‘The Boy I Love is up in the Gallery’ as the camera dwells on the pitiful ruins which remain. It’s not even a good shelter for pigeons and tramps, Mason adds, because ‘there’s a bloody great hole in the roof’. This was the theatre where Sickert came to sketch scenes which he later turned into his paintings of performers isolated on the stage or audiences up in the galleries stretching over the balconies to get a better view. Mason relates with a certain grim relish how one Belle Elmore also sang here, before later becoming the victim of Dr Crippen, whom she had the misfortune to marry. Sickert himself became posthumously mired in one of the more implausible tributaries of the ever-widening catchment of Jack the Ripper conspiracy theories when Patricia Cornwell put him forward as a new suspect. He plays a small role in Alan Moore’s panaroma of Victorian society which centres around the Ripper murders, From Hell, but Moore (who is not interested in identifying the murderer, anyway) clearly has no truck with such tenuous speculations. Sickert’s paintings of the Bedford are largely of the theatre as it existed before it suffered extensive fire damage and was opened again as The New Bedford in 1899. The atmosphere of the ruins through which Mason ruefully picks, occasionally casting aside a bit of debris with his umbrella, must have been largely the same, though. Like much of the Victorian London whose last traces this film lovingly lingers over, it’s now gone. The bright lights of the White Heat of modernity banished the shadowy interiors of Sickert’s London.

Ashinaga and Tenaga

Also in the Fitzwilliam, there was an exhibition of Japanese Netsuke. These are tiny carvings which served the functional purpose of holding up the sashes from which pouches, boxes or personal items were suspended in traditional Japanese dress, which didn’t incorporate pockets. These grew from initially utilitarian designs into fantastic and beautifully carved items, works of art deriving from mere sartorially necessity. They were also a means of self-expression (and an indicator of prestige) within a dress code constrained by the dictates of the government bureaucracy (or Bakufu) of the Edo period, rather like a businessman or male newsreader wearing a colourful or extravagantly patterned tie. The contained explosion of the creative imagination which these objects embody gives the impression of an art which is almost surreptitious and furtive in its tiny scale. For those who sported them, it perhaps felt like a small act of rebellion against the overbearing strictures of a heavily formalised society; Something akin to wearing a brightly coloured badge on your school uniform.

Tenaga catches an octopus - comic business to ensue

Netsuke were generally carved from ivory, wood or antler and they embody a wide range of subjects, from animals and insects, through religious figures and noh masks, to mythical beasts, demons and gods. It’s lovely to see how funny and rambunctiously whimsical a lot of them are. One of my favourites was the twinned figures of Ashinaga, or long legs, and Tenaga, or long arms. These were two mythical characters, fishermen who lived by the shore, and combined their curious anatomical features to good, symbiotic effect. Ashinaga would wade out to sea with his long, spindly legs whilst Tenaga would ride on his back and reach down with his long arms to scoop up fish. They seemed to have regular problems with octopuses, though (ok, octopi, if you want to get picky), which, as Captain Beefheart observed (talking about squids, but the principle is the same) are fast and bulbous (even when not in a polyethylene bag). Such antics once more demonstrate the universal delight which people have always taken in simple and effective slapstick.

Giving a ride to a witch

Another of the netsuke on display depicted the warrior Omori Hikoshichi carrying what he believed to be a beautiful young woman across a river. On seeing her reflection in the water, however, he realises that he’s saddled himself in a rather literal sense with an evil witch. A strikingly similar scenario is played, but in reverse, in the 1967 Russian film Viy, which takes its story from a Ukrainian folk tale. Here, the feckless monk who is the film’s central character finds himself being ridden across the sky (with effects courtesy of Alexsandr Ptushko) by an ancient witch, only to find her transformed into a beautiful woman when he wakes from his trance upon landing. There is evidently a certain underlying universality which unites folk tales from widely differing cultures.

Drunken wasp

The observation of nature found in many of these netsuke is also astonishing. These are pieces which would rival the finest Victorian botanical illustrator or wildlife artist. Carvers seemed to take a particular interest in odd sea creatures such as turtles and octopuses (octopi!); natural enough for an island race surrounded by the ocean. Insects also seem a popular subject, their intricate form perhaps presenting a challenge to the artist. Or maybe just giving the opportunity to work to scale. The netsuke of a wasp eating a pear, which we can see is soft and overripe, is wonderful, and maybe plays to the Japanese love of evoking the atmosphere of a particular seasonal moment. These tiny carvings, whose details you have to lean close to take in, are a great example of how beauty can arise from the most mundanely utilitarian origins. The imagination really does take root and flower in some of the most unusual and unpromising places.

The London Nobody Knows...

…Because most of it has now disappeared. This film from 1967 captures the capital on the cusp of major transformation. It concentrates on the crumbling remains of the Victorian warrens around Camden and Spitalfields, through which we’re guided with unrufflable suavity by James Mason. But it begins with a montage, set to music of the requisite fabness, of the new high rise buildings springing up all over the city. But this film is no lament for the past. It is fascinated in the remnants which still exist, but well aware that many of the houses and areas into which it ventures are unfit for human habitation.

James Mason, in tweed suit, checkered flat cap, well polished brown brogues and a stick which doubles as a useful pointing device, finds himself in some quite rough environs. At the start he is in the Bedford Theatre in Camden, which looks like it might collapse around him in an avalanche of plaster at any minute. Mason’s is the perfect voice for Fletcher’s tart, sardonic and unsentimentally reflective words. Here he muses on the music hall era to which this space was witness. A stage upon which Marie Lloyd strutted her stuff, and boxes in which the painter Walter Sickert sat sketching the theatrical world for later paintings. There are precious few reminders of this central aspect of Victorian London culture left, which makes it all the more imperative that a place like Wilton’s Music Hall should be preserved whilst its still standing. The National Trust are apparently dithering over whether to fund this fascinating treasure of popular entertainment history, a hesitancy which I’m sure wouldn’t be at issue were this yet another stately home under consideration.

James is also to be found treading the sleepers in the disused sidings behind The Round House. It is typical of this film that it is uninterested in the zeitgeist happenings for which the Roundhouse was famous at the time (I believe Jefferson Airplane played there), rather focussing on the relics of the Victorian railway era which can be unearthed by the keen eye. The Roundhouse is of course still there, having recently re-opened as a major concert venue, where its foundations were recently challenged by several nights of sonic assault by My Bloody Valentine. I went there a while ago to see a sound art installation by Brian Eno and Mimo Palladino which transformed the dank basement into a murkily primordial scene with reptilian creatures crawling out of the shadows and Eno’s generative music ebbing and flowing in intersecting fragments from various hidden speakers.

Moving to the East End, the film captures the Spitalfields area as it is divesting itself of the last traces of its Jewish immigrant character. The Yiddish theatre, in front of which the Salvation Army are playing, is clearly on the verge of closing down. Synagogue steps are the home to a temporary gathering of brawling tramps. The Jewish fresh food market seems to be doing a roaring market, however, and has the genuine air of serving a community (a reflexively overused word these days) with a final request for gefilte fish, which is something you don’t hear every day. James wanders down a couple of street markets, casting his eye over what’s on offer and nodding an occasional polite ‘good day’ to passersby who no doubt recognise him from somewhere or other. The street hawkers are showmen whose ready patter is probably turned up a notch for the cameras. The people here are far from the denizens of swinging London, some specimens of which we have seen in all their purple frippery and brightly buttoned Edwardiana. Some of the younger market traders have the fashionable haircuts of the era, but in general you get the feeling that this is what things were really like outside of a small coterie for whom everything was hip and happening. For everyone else it was Val Doonican. The streets around here are filthy, and when we are shown the debris-strewn back yard in which one of the Ripper victims met her end, we receive a sudden jolt as James tells us that some people around here still remember those times. Parts of this area really are still unchanged from Victorian era. These are the kind of slums which Gustave Dore depicted in his engravings of London published in 1872.


The film doesn’t shy away from showing the lowest depths of poverty and hardship. James takes tea in the Salvation Army hostel and talks with unpatronising ease to some of those down on their luck. But the point is made that beds here still cost a nominal sum per night, and not all can afford even that. The director turns the camera’s gaze on several tramps and seems fascinated by their ravaged faces, lingering to try to draw the humanity from the grime-filled lines. This is uncomfortable but somehow not exploitative viewing. It reaches an almost unbearable pitch when we hear an old man (maybe not so old) relate how he just somehow has never been able to make it, no matter how hard he’s tried. He stands in front of another row of dilapidated terraced housing, and suddenly he starts to sing a heartrending Yiddish song (and they sure knew how to rend hearts) in a surprisingly light and mellifluous voice. We continue hearing this as we see a new housing development and the fresh faces of childen playing in front of it. The effect is as socially didactic as the products of the documentary movement of the 30s and 40s such as Housing Problems and Diary for Timothy.

Geoffrey Fletcher’s books from the 60s showed a fascination for the small and often unobserved details of the cityscape, and the film follows up on some of these. There are the lamps, including a row of gas lamps lit by the last lamplighter in London (now long gone, I presume) and a fine specimen outside the Savoy. I didn’t spot this last time I walked in this area, although I did discover a passage which cuts right through the guts of the hotel, its art deco splendours currently completely covered with screened scaffolding. There are some splendid lavs, as well, including ones whose cisterns were once fishtanks (goldfish are temporarily provided to show how this worked). Elegant bogs seem to be a thing of the past in London now. Last time I walked past St Martins in the Fields, there was an aluminium wall against which you were apparently supposed to pee, with no enclosing walls. What a sign of social devolution! There’s still a classy subterranean Edwardian affair on the edge of Hampstead which I came across when we going to look at the restored Isokon Flats in Lawn Road (a classic piece of 30s modernism which had until recently been left to go to rack and ruin). Long gone are the days when underground lavs were proudly maintained by an attendant such as that played by Charles Hawtrey in Carry On Screaming (sample dialogue: Police Inspector – ‘I must warn you that I will be taking down anything you say’. Hawtrey, with cheeky smile – ‘alright then, trousers’.)

Going south of the river to Southwark, the buildings are still incredibly dirty, particularly given what an affluent area this has now become. A clue as to why may be found when we get a glimpse of the Bankside power station (now home to the Tate Modern) which was still in operation then (indeed, it only closed in 1982). The river is still a working waterway too, filled with barges and tugboats and larger ships beyond Tower Bridge in the pool of London. There’s a scene in Alfie, when he’s earning a few quid taking tourist snaps by Tower Bridge, where you see all the ships docked downriver and realise just how busy the docklands was. There’s a brief comedy sketch at this point, which James introduces rather wearily (perhaps Geoffrey Fletcher didn’t approve). This features an egg breaking factory, where two lab-coated fellows earnestly experiment with different ways to break eggs: hammers, steamrollers, explosives. It strongly reminded me of some of the wackier moments of Vision On (actually that accounts for pretty much all the moments in that freewheeling bastion of creative anarchy) and I found it highly amusing, although I could see how others might find it merely idiotic.


This is a treasury of images for those fascinated by London’s history. It was an inspiration (along with Patrick Keiller’s London, with its similarly sardonic narration) for their album and the accompanying film Finisterre. Indeed, the two films were shown as a double bill on the South Bank. The dvd release comes coupled with a rather enchanting piece of 60s nonsense, Les Bicyclettes de Belsize, a mini musical which unpromisingly centres around a theme song which was a hit for Englebert Humperdink. But don’t let that put you off, he doesn’t sing it here. The opening scenes panning across the rooftops of Hampstead are magical, and summon up the atmosphere of this area perfectly. I’ve always loved walking around Hampstead and Highgate. They have the feel of self-contained villages and yet are on the edge of the sprawl of London. The views over the cityscape are breathtaking and there is the feel of pausing on the brink, as if you have almost reached the goal of your journey and are surveying the world into which you are about to descend.


The film is a light and frothy fairy tale with a watered down hippy theme, as interpreted by theatrical types. The main character cycles around on his mini-chopper bicycle (a Raleigh RSW16 apparently, bike-spotters) berating squares for being so uncool as to, like, wait at busstops and go to work to earn bread, man. Why can’t they all be childlike and free, with their gauzy neckerchiefs flowing free in the slipstream, as they nearly kill themselves through reckless cycling in heavy traffic. Incidentally, the picture of our hero being passed by the 268 comes from an excellent site on buses in films, which I urge you to look at.

When our hapless hero, now with a rather sweet little girl in tow, crashes through an advertising hoarding, he instantly falls in love with the woman whose face rises in giant profile above him (Judy Huxtable, who later became Judy Cook after she married Peter). With a certain inevitability, they meet, she is swept away by the trendy Bailey-alike for whom she models, and he pedals his heart out to find her on Parliament Hill Fields. A love song ensues. It’s all charmingly whimsical, and I have a real soft spot for whimsical charm. The director, Douglas Hickox, went on to make Theatre of Blood, a tale of thespian revenge starring Vincent Price which, with its Bankside settings and meths-swilling cadre of feral tramps seems to draw some inspiration from The London Nobody Knows. It was recently adapted for the stage and performed at the National Theater with Jim Broadbent taking on Vincent Price’s mantle. Apparently the soundtrack of Les Bicyclettes will be released on cd by Chapter One records, coupled with, for no apparently good reason, Bernard Herrmann’s score for Twisted Nerve, an undistinguished psychothriller from 1968. A bit random, as they say.