I have the artistic skills of an ant yet I’m drawn to novels that are connected to the world of art. Mr Mac and Me was especially delightful because it features one of my favourite artists — the Scottish architect and designer Charles Rennie Macintosh.
In Mr Mac and Me, Macintosh and his wife Margaret take up residence in the small Suffolk coastal village of Walberswick. The strange habits of this tall and taciturn man soon attract the curiosity of the local inhabitants. What are they to make of a man who regularly strides along the shoreline at dusk, stopping periodically to view the horizon through binoculars?
Their curiosity turns to suspicion when war with Germany is declared. As regiments of soldiers begin descending on the village and local people are told to be on their guard against invaders, Mac’s behaviour is viewed with increasing alarm in Walberswick. The locals begin to fear there could be a spy in their midst.
Mr Mac and Me recounts these events through the eyes of the publican’s twelve-year-old son Thomas Maggs. He yearns for adventure and a life at sea, despite his father’s derision at the idea that a boy with a twisted foot will ever become a sailor. But the magnetism of the sea and boats will not be denied and Tom is at his happiest when drawing boats moored along the river bank.
At the heart of this novel is a friendship that begins when the artist sees Tom’s drawings and recognises his natural talent. With encouragement from Mr Mac and his artist wife Margaret, Tom begins to hone his skills and branch out to drawing people.
The Macintosh’s residence becomes a second home for the boy, a place where he feels safe from the beatings of his alcoholic father. It’s also a place of wonder and astonishment:
The walls have been repainted white, the air is thick with the clean new smell of it, and all around are hung Mac’s flowers. Each one on its own grained page of Whatman, the colour bursting from the pencilled lines. I start at the beginning, by the door, and stare at the ragged pink and purple of the larkspur. Next is hung the borage, two blazing blue flowers, and two unpainted buds to show what might have been….and I stare at a petunia and see the face of bird in it. A comical bird with a yellow beard and two beaky eyes and I laugh because I’m sure I’ve conjured it, but when I shake myself
and look again, it’s there…. I go closer. I look at everything again for what else is hidden….
Tom Maggs is a wonderful narrator. He roams the countryside freely, gathering information by watching and listening intently to conversations in the pub or in the village. But his age and inexperience means he doesn’t fully understand what he sees and hears, nor does he fully appreciate the repercussions his actions will have for the Macintoshes.
The coming of age element makes this an enjoyable read though it’s the insight into Charles Rennie and Margaret’s lives and art that really held my attention.
When the couple arrived in Suffolk they were at a low ebb in their lives. His commissions are drying up so he has to rely on paltry sales of botanical illustrations and his wife’s inheritance. His artistic ego had also taken a huge bashing — though he was the architect of the Glasgow School of Art, he’d never been credited for his designs. “Not a mention of me in that whole damn building. Not in the heating ducts, or the double-hinged doors, not in the sculpture studio or the boardroom with its hanging lights – you know it is the first building in Glasgow to have electricity?,” he fumes to his wife.
Mr Mac and Me is is full of descriptions of his working method, particularly his meticulous attention to detail — he spends hour after hour examining the formation of a flower head so he can render it accurately — and her wall panels created from gesso. Inevitably I had to break away from the text and go in search of images of all these works. And then on a recent holiday in Scotland I had an opportunity to see some of them in real life. My photo skills don’t do them justice sadly but here’s one example to whet your appetite.
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