Snippets

As I ran my fingers lightly over the black paper image, slightly raised from the white, I felt my mother, a young woman, sitting so still and determined, her hair done up just so, her lips lightly pursed, the wisp of her eyelashes, the tip of her nose. I saw the faint pencil outline of her profile, a guide for where the snipped portrait would fit. I stroked the paper and I felt the years wash away as I imagined my mother, so very young, some years before I was born, and I felt the passage of time. I could see my daughters’ profiles, and my own, and I could sense the tenderness of my mom as she sat long ago for this silhouette she had made for my father.

In the second chapter of Molly Peacock’s book, The Paper Garden; Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72, the author writes about how Mrs. Delany learned to snip silhouettes while in Mademoiselle Pruelle’s school for girls in 1706. The young charges from privileged families learned, among other ladylike lessons, how to precisely snip paper into black on white images. Silhouettes. The girls practiced, some wearing mini-corsets and posture boards, all in proper dress for young girls at the turn of that long ago century. Mary Granville, who would become famous sixty years later,  would have been about six years old.

As I read about Mary’s early exercises in paper cutting, I recalled silhouettes, and the grade school images many of us sat for, the beam of a projector light upon us, our image against a white background, a project for Mother’s Day. How many of us carried these school projects home?

I also recalled, as I read this chapter, coming across a professional silhouette while going through family pictures not long ago. I rummaged around in my mind, then my boxes, and there it was, a silhouette of a beautiful young woman. My mother. The silhouette held the name Noel Wisdom. Noel Wisdom, I learned, was a well known silhouette artist in the first half of the century. On the back was stamped some information on how to obtain copies. In red print, it says:

MAIL THIS SILHOUETTE

TO NOEL WISDOM, KRESGE’S

10 S. State St., Chicago

With 50¢ for 3 Copies, or

$1.00 for 8 Copies

Kresge’s is no longer there, of course, but I wondered if Ma had copies made and who else went to have a silhouette made. I learned that Noel Wisdom served in the British military during WWI, making silhouettes of enemy fighter planes so that they could be recognized by soldiers. I also learned that after he made his fortune as a silhouettist, he traveled to Europe where he amassed a collection of chromolithographs, which he donated to the University of South Florida.

Books are wonderful, are they not, for the many things they give us in the reading them? The gift of the story, the gift of the words, the gift of knowledge – and the gift of finding a small snippet of paper held in abeyance for just the right moment in time.

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The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock

Bloomers. Late bloomers, to be exact. Late bloomers are not just flowers. Late bloomers are like the 72 year old English gentlewoman, Mary Granville Pendarves Delany, who, upon seeing a geranium petal fall, picked up a scissors and a piece of paper and invented the art of “flower mosaicks”. Mrs. Delany began snipping and pasting botanicals in 1782 and in so doing invented the art of floral collage. She went on to produce 985 individual pieces of paper upon which sit amazing botanicals and can be viewed at the British Museum. The intricate cut tissue pieces , placed with amazing accuracy and botanic interest, rest upon a black background. They appear more as paintings than collages. Her story is amazing and a challenge to all as we age, from any age forward, that we can keep growing and learning and developing ourselves.

. . . a meditation on late life creativity.” Molly Peacock

It was with delight that I plucked off of that ever-growing literary vine The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72 by Molly Peacock. I happened upon a few intriguing reviews of this book. Its pages called to me like the roses about to bloom in my own garden. The fact that Mrs. Delany was 72 when she began her life’s work and that she was a twice-widowed gentlewoman of the 18th century, living off of the kindness of gentry, drew me further into her life.

This book was written by Molly Peacock. Is there a better name for a poet and author? Peacock is a noted American/Canadian poet who first learned of Mrs. Delany several decades ago.

I am always in awe of how books, good books, come about. When and where the germ of a story is born and the path a writer often takes to reach its fruition boggles my mind. The research involved, the pouring over Delany’s letters, the sustained interest in such a biography is amazing to me; someone who nervously ponders 300 or so words about life as it is on a place called a cutoff. Peacock does not disappoint.

I’ve just opened The Paper Garden ; its pages still crisp and pristine, Mrs. Delany’s “mosaicks” appearing delicately throughout the book, with Ms. Peacock’s poetic prose hanging upon its pages. A few chapters into it, I will not read this book in one or two sittings. I will savor and enjoy it throughout the summer sitting under the arbor or on a park bench as the life of this amazing woman opens up and blooms.

I will learn more about her early marriage, at the age of 17. A forced union to the 60 year old Pendarves whose wealth is needed by the Granvilles.

I will read about the 20 some years after Pendarves’ death as Mrs. Delany, a young widow, maneuvers around the mores and dictates of the 18th century and befriends John Welsey, Lord Baltimore, George Fredric Handel – and Jonathan Swift, who introduces her to Dr. Patrick Delany, her second husband who encourages her gardening and botanical interests and seems, at first blush to this reader, to become a partner and friend.

I will learn of her loyalty to the Crown and her admiration and love for her sister and confidante and of how, out of grief, she comes to invent an art form and to produce a remarkable legacy, her “flower mosaicks”. I’m certain I will seek out Molly Peacock’s poetry and you will likely find me, on a summer’s eve, sitting upon the deck and reading aloud, for poetry, to me,  really must be read aloud.

Off I go now, hand spade and watering can, thoughts of my own flower petals, to plant and dig in the dirt. You might like to see Molly Peacock talking about The Paper Garden, Mary Delany, and trying to make her own mosaick by clicking here.

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