Londonopolis by Martin Latham

Author:Martin Latham
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849942829
Publisher: Pavilion Books
Published: 2014-11-02T16:00:00+00:00

GIBBONS IN DEPTFORD

A similar feeling overcame the courtier and diarist John Evelyn in 1671 when he discovered the woodcarver Gibbons in Deptford. Today Deptford is a friendly, roistering place by the lower Thames, despite the traffic belting through it. It is worth getting off at the Docklands Light Railway station and pottering in the truly ‘London’ street market, where you can buy satsumas and old flares, celeriac and an alarm clock. Deptford is full of small businesses: wedding stationery, personalized chocolates, a vinyl record shop, a 1948-established radio shop. Marlowe was stabbed and killed there, and when I was in Sainsbury’s a boy ran in to escape an attacker with a knife.

Back to January 1671, and a wet and stormy winter in semi-rural Deptford. John Evelyn, with his long-nosed poetic face and shoulder-length black wig, was walking in the damp fields near his house when he happened to glance in the window of a shabby, isolated cottage. Inside was a broad-shouldered man with a big, sensuous face, carving wood with a chisel. Knocking on the door, Evelyn saw carving of a delicacy and intricacy that eclipsed anything he had seen on his travels in Europe. He chatted to Gibbons, a charming young Englishman who had been brought up in Rotterdam, where his father was a draper. He spoke with a Dutch accent.

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