Gill Sans….

Extract

Writing of Eric Gill some years ago Graham Greene remarked that ‘Catholicism in England instead of producing revolutionaries, produces only eccentrics, and that Gill was a disturbing intruder among the eccentrics . . . That overpowering tradition of eccentricity simply absorbed him until even his most outrageous anticlerical utterances caused only a knowing smile on the face of the faithful.’ And we have seen quite a lot of those silly weary smiles yet again in the reception of Mr Speaight’s biography of Gill. Rarely can such a beautifully produced and expensive book have received such accolades for the biographer’s skill and such a confident dismissal of the subject. One sees the book being read with a nostalgic regret for the sunny days of such delightful chesterbelloc buffoonery with all the home-grunnit food, tunics and sandals, and placed on the shelf with a sad shrug, ‘Poor Gill’.

I do not want to be misunderstood, Gill was certainly eccentric in many respects, his views on monarchy and the indecency of husband and wife kneeling together in church, for example, and Mr Speaight has valuably stressed Gill’s Victorian formation which plays an important part in all this. He has also filled in many of the gaps in the Autobiography, particularly the incidents leading up to the removal from Ditchling, his documentation is wide and admirably integrated. Gill’s biography is perhaps an unenviable and delicate task, but I think the reception of the book and the confirmation of Gill’s place among the wayward cranks of English Catholicism owes something to the biographer’s interpretation of his subject, or rather the interpretation he fails to make.