Derek Jarman: A Biography

8. Metroland Student

8 Metroland Student In one of the interviews that formed the basis for his first volume of autobiography, Jarman claimed not to remember much about King’s, saying only that it ‘seemed rather grey and colourless’. Yet his three years there were crucial to his development. Grey it may have been, but within the rabbit warren of rooms that led off its underground corridors, or above ground in its grand chapel and hall, firm foundations were laid for the future. Founded in 1829 to remedy the lack of theology on offer from a secular University of London, King’s was decidedly unbohemian in outlook. The majority of students were either sombrely gowned theologians and lawyers, or more hearty medics and engineers. They were predominantly male, predominantly conservative. There was, of course, debate about the issues of the day – CND, Biafra, the Congo, South Africa, the Berlin Wall, the Cuban crisis; but there was more consistent concern for the welfare of ‘Reggie’, the college mascot, a plaster lion painted in the college colours who occupied a sacred plinth in the Great Hall. It was an environment in which, as late as 1963, King’s News, the college newspaper, could without a flicker of irony run the following editorial: TROUSERS FOR WOMEN? Whether a person dresses to defy convention, or as a guard against the harsh winter, it should not be necessary to remind them that a moderate standard of dress exists at King’s – and trousers are out for women. Besides this manifestation which has recently become prevalent, one also gets the occasional abhorrent character who makes a bizarre attempt to shock or defy convention by his manner of dress. This must not be confused with ‘Individual Style’, which has taste, imagination and colour. It is not just a matter of keeping the status of King’s, or to keep the College ‘twee’, but a moderate standard of dress helps to preserve the atmosphere of an academic institution.1 It is a vanished world that retained strong links with even earlier times. At the college’s southernmost limit is a wide terrace overlooking the Thames, in those days still a working river plied by barges and lined with busy warehouses. To the north stood sootcovered St-Mary’s-le-Strand, while along Fleet Street and in the alleys off it, antediluvian shops served the surrounding newspapers and legal firms in Lincoln’s Inn. The area smelled of hot metal and printer’s ink. On occasion, visibility was reduced to zero by the last of London’s pea-souper fogs. Dickens would not have felt entirely out of place. Jarman was powerfully affected by it. If many of the Arcadian elements in his ‘private’ landscape were supplied by the Isle of Purbeck and the Dorset coast, London’s grimy Victorian heart now supplied an urban counterpoint. Unlike the more usual and possibly more demanding Honours, which required specialisation in a single subject, Jarman’s choice of degree, the soon to be discontinued BA General, consisted of three separate courses; in his case, English, history and the history of art. History attracted him largely because of his experiences in Pakistan, where his brush with the Raj had so impressed and disturbed him that he wanted to look in more detail at the processes by which countries grow to what passes for maturity. He was fascinated by what the present owes the past and hoped to carry this fascination 70 Derek Jarman into the future. The same holds true of English. His study of old and middle English, of mediaeval and Elizabethan texts, would provide him with a multifaceted literary compass with which to navigate the coming years. Piers Plowman, Chaucer, Donne, Marlowe, Shakespeare all profoundly influenced his thought and in many cases fed directly into subsequent projects.2 As Andrew Davis would later remark: ‘I’m sure your years at London Univ have given you more ballast and sharpened up your THOUGHT; so many . . . artists get lost in mere sensations . . . the best always seem to be able to go beyond their immediate perceptions.’3 The third aspect of his studies was the one most obviously allied to his field of interest: the history of art. It was a subject not directly on offer at King’s, and its weekly lectures, attended by students from a number of University of London colleges, were held at Birkbeck. They were given principally by Nikolaus...