Stokies in Fitzrovia: John Shelton & Arthur Berry

Extracts from the yearly chronicles and notes of the artist John Shelton (1923-1993)

1945: With Arthur Berry I meet Colquhoun and MacBryde and also Minton and Jankel Adler at 77 Bedford Gardens, Nottinghill… Berry and I frequent Fitzrovia in their company for the next few years. In their company meet Vaughan and Dylan Thomas, David Archer and others of the loose Soho Society. On the excuse (though it was true) we gate crash artists’ studios looking for help in finding a studio of our own. Meet Felix Topolski (Bayswater) this way and Graham Sutherland at Wimbledon.

Slade Index Card (1945-46, 1948-50)

We lived for a while, Arthur and me, in a hexagonal studio with large windows high up at the back of a dingy hotel. You had to go through the hotel entrance foyer and up the back stairs to get to it. Robert came to visit us one weekend. We were always glad to see him because it meant a night out up the West End drinking without any money problem. He was always glad to see us, thinking we always lived it up having a good time.

“You pair of rogues,” he used to say. “Crackin’ a good nut here aren’t you? Sod them poor buggers up North, you say!” Before he left he was looking through one of the large studio windows, seriously studying the view. We were very high up. The windows frames went almost down to the floor and if you let your eyes take in everything outside you got a feeling of suspension. There was a sheer drop down to the train track that lead to Gloucester Road Tube Station. It was like a canyon with terraces of tall buildings either side. I heard him mutter to himself, deep in thought, “this is bloody suicide row.”

The Beggar (1949), lithographic print; Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent.

Some few days after I felt ill. I was spitting up yellow stuff and hallucinating. I remember lying on a camp bed one night. We had hardly any possessions – easles, painting tables, an old arm chair and a couple of camp beds was the lot. Arthur was out drinking late with the Soho Boys. I was too sick to go. As the night wore on I fitfully dozed in a feverish state. Looking across the railtracked canyon to the rectangular lit yellow windows, a girl was undressing in one of them. I didn’t know whether I was asleep or awake, it was a mingling of both. The door opened a few inches quietly and I felt someone was watching me. The feeling passed and then I got up to continue a monotype drawing on the second hand marble-topped table. I worked on it for a while and then felt again the awful presence of someone watching me from behind. The short hairs on the back of my neck became electric. Mustering up enough courage I turned my head to see and in the darkness of the room I saw this head as though illuminated and suspended in mid-air. The horror of it was shocking. It was either in a state of melting or wet with its own substance that seemed to be dripping away. I woke up in the early hours wringing wet and cold. Arthur had not returned. Early morning sounds were coming in from the waking city outside. I must go home I thought. Dry bread and the remainder of a jar of marmalade I forced down me followed by a long drink of aqua. I had 2/6d old money in my pocket and the half return ticket which was out of date. I packed my large suitcase with enough of the trash and spare clothes I had and made for Euston Station and points north.

Between Euston Square and the station the case got so heavy I thought I would have to drag it so I gave a luggage tout my last half crown to carry the case to the train. Handing him my last half crown I noticed the surprised delight in his eyes which he averted from me thinking no doubt I was a foreigner or a naïve nut of some sort because his was a big tip. It would be a packet of fags and a night’s drinking for him. “The kid must be daft” and I thought of my old Uncle Tom, who, when it was too late to get any more drink, when all the bars were closed; even those (known by those who make it their business to know) which stay open after hours – Tom would empty his pockets on to the pavement – the money being of no further use that night. A beautiful man Tom – no thought for tomorrow – to hell with it if it’s anything like today. He was his own man. His conscience lay easy. Mine never did. Even now I was thinking I’ve given in to the big city. I’m running back home ‘cause I’m poorly. Sense seemed like cowardice at that time. It’s beaten you lad. Reach for your Mummy’s apron strings again – it’s laughing at you. So the self-criticism goes on – a trick of self-abuse to stir up action learnt first-hand off Robert. I wished I could be like Uncle Tom.

The Dart Thrower (1949) - Potteries Museum, Stoke-on-Trent. Later monotyped as 'Keggy Dart Thrower' ("keggy" = left-handed).

I found a seat and relaxed with exhaustion. I dosed off again. I saw the station names whizz by – Watford, Tring then Rugby Midland – getting nearer my destination. You could always tell when you were approaching Stoke-on-Trent by the change in the landscape and the air. The air became more acid sharp and the landscape started to sprout giant black Guinness bottles made of brick – the old pottery kilns. There seemed to be thousands of them in those days standing spasmodically on their own or in neat rows according to the opulence of the firm. Trying to hide behind tin chaples and coal tips or shooting up through the roofs of pot banks. This is the city where I was born. My mother worked at this time as a sorter at the Post Office in Stoke. The only woman sorter they used to say. The Post Office was part of the station building so it was easy not to proffer the out-of-date ticket and cause me and the rail company trouble with the ticket collector at the gate. I simply went through the Post Office loading entrance on the platform and asked if Mrs. Hancock was on duty. She wasn’t so I continued out through the sorting office into Station Road. Four hours ago I was in London – now I was in a different world. For me they were necessary to each other and I loved both.   John Hancock (1923-1993) was born in Ashford Street, Stoke-on-Trent and studied at the Burslem School of Art. He won a scholarship to the Slade School of Art, London during which he adopted the surname of Shelton. His oil paintings have sold via auctioneers such as Sotherby’s. The Potteries Museum have several of his paintings in their archives and plan to include three of his works in a 2012 exhibition.

John Shelton (Stoke-on-Trent; 1923-1993) – Witches, Gods and understanding mothers

“John Shelton lifted the lid off the dustbin and looked out. How’s that for an opening sentence for my autobiography? Should have left the lid on John. For self-identification.”

John Shelton (born Hancock) came from an artistic background, albeit one suppressed through circumstance. His mother Agnes Simcock won a scholarship to art school at the age of thirteen, learning to draw and paint through her teacher, Bill Henshaw. She left to teach at eighteen although this was cut short as she went into service to support the large family. Her paint box and brushes were thrown into the bin.

Agnes met John’s father, Robert, at White and Poppe munitions factory in Coventry. John noted their “Punch and Judy” relationship in a conversation which Agnes recounted years later -

“YOU HAVE NOT CLEANED THE BEDROOMS, AGNES” HE SHOUTED.
“I HAVE” SHE SAID.
“YOU HAVE NOT – I PUT A TAPER UNDER THE BED AND IT’S STILL THERE” SAID ROB.
“I KNOW” SAID AGNES, “I PUT IT BACK IN THE VERY SAME PLACE” (I HADN’T!).

For my mother the worst was always yet to come. A minglement of fear and hopeful faith was embrionic in the grown of her personality. She stored every incident of fate like a prize throughout the years, Her memory was the family log book of endless trivialities and great occasions alike. Referred to by my father as the ledger of the tyranny of tears.

My father had the gift of hindsight even before the event and the nervous sensitivity of a trapped greyhound before the race. He was always looking to win. A winner whose genius was a most astute realisation of his own condition in the multi relationships of people and ideas past, present and future. He had a most astounding sense of proportion in loving nature. Man, God and Nature were seen clearly in his perspective mind. Cultivating the creative spark and really fearing the unnatural.

Apart from school and university my finest education was earlier – through – and later, in the hellish rows, between these two wonderful real people on anything from economics, law, marriage, religion. Domestic slight ups and great downs were a special continuous event.

At the age of six, John was stricken with polio:

Mrs Stevens and her bosom companion, my mother, used to watch me go to infant school from the back bedroom attic nursery of the vicarage. They were always watching me I felt. Mrs Stevens said one day “if you walk with one leg on the pavement and one leg in the gutter you will be lame one day”. I was. Witch! At that time I felt they were witches. Both of them.

When I got so fed up of leg irons on my polio leg (I was different from other kids in the gang – I couldn’t run – I was a sitting target) – I cried and cried in the back yard – kicked my dud foot (with an ugly two inch raised boot) against the coal house door until it hurt and hurt more and more. I was breaking myself in – like taming a wild horse – I was breaking myself in to the fact, the truth. I was a cripple. I was lame. I knew it. I didn’t like it. Like hell I didn’t like it. I would never never get used to it. It would never take me over. I would not have it. Physically it was a fact. Mentally, no no no. But I had it and as I kicked and kicked at the pain of it I noticed the back bedroom curtain move and it was my mother watching me. She never said a word. She knew and she let me make some sort of agreement with it without interference or showing sympathy for the rest of my life. I hate lace curtains. Witches, Gods and understanding mothers hide and watch from behind them.