A window in Topsham is the last work of the respected Exeter glass-painter Maurice Drake.
Maurice Drake (1875-1923) was a respected scholar and glass-painter of the early 20th century, who is well-known on the antiquarian circuit for his restorations and original work on ecclesiastical glass. He worked with his brother, Wilfred Drake, from the family business at the Three Gables, Cathedral Yard, Exeter, and co--wrote two standard works on glass-painting, A History Of English Glass-Painting (1912) and Saints And Their Emblems (1916). But it's little known that Maurice Drake was also a poet, a keen sailor, and a writer of maritime adventure novels. His last glass work, a window in the riverside house Furlong in Topsham, brings together many of these aspects of his life.
I'd been researching an article on Drake's novels, and ran into a reference to a window he made, in the last months of his life, for H Wilson Holman, then living at Furlong. Pursuing this, I asked the current owner of the house, Mr David Martin, who extremely kindly let me photograph it and lent me some related documents.
The window comprises a mix of architectural and floral decorative panels, with images of ships in the old Holman fleet, and a poem by Drake in the top three lights.
Transcription:
Here ere you came, we plied Old Omar's trade
With palm and needle on the daylong seams
The sails we made the Ocean winds have frayed
And we are nought but dreams.
Lighter than filmy clouds or that faint breath
Which stirs the petal on the moon-lit grass.
Our toil is done and now we rest in death.
Tout lasse, tout passe, tout casse.
Beneath our lisping planes the shavings flew;
Sweet smelling pine, like golden pennants gay.
Under our hands the graceful tall ships grew;
Where lie their keels today?
Rocks, winds and ocean, all have taken toll,
Leaving but painted shadows on this glass:
Over our handiwork, the tall seas roll,
Tout lasse, tout passe, tout casse.
But whilst Old Omar stitched he sang a strain,
And though his tents are dust, his song lives yet
Tis from dead earth the dead rose blooms again,
What is there to regret?
We worked, we rest; our heritage is Thine:
Give us a thought and pledge us in the glass
Living your own hour with laughter and with wine.
Tout lasse, tout passe, tout casse.
Maurice Drake
The poem, alluding to Omar Khayyám being reputedly born into a family of tentmakers, is an elegy to the past sailmakers, as well as the shipbuilders and ships of the old Holman fleet, in particular reference to Furlong being a sail loft converted to residential use. It's also a general comment on impermanence: "
I'm doing it in large panes of glass after the Dutch manner of the XVII century, and on actual glass of the period. Six cinque-cento frames, contain pictures of ships from the little photo you gave me of the old Holman fleet, and behind the frames trails of rambler roses sprawl all over the window, with butterflies of every conceivable English variety flopping about on 'em or perched on the picture frame. At the bottom of the right hand light is the memorial inscription "Messor ad Aratores". It's inconspicuous, but can be seen by them as likes to look for it. At the top are three verses, a copy of which I enclose. Sidney Dark, now editor of "John o' London's Weekly", being much intrigued with the them, proposes to reprint them in his paper, he says. Whether he will or not deponent knoweth not, but can certify he said so.
The window differs in some respects from Drake's description; I don't know if it has been restored, or he ended up doing it differently from the plan. At the time of the work, Drake must have been seriously ill. In both the above letter to Holman and a succeeding one dated 25th January 1923, he refers to unspecified recurring illness ("wake-ups of the old trouble"). While he makes light of it, and was in the process of having a new studio built early in 1923, the verses have an elegiac flavour, and he died of pneumonia only a few months after the window's completion. It's as much a memorial to himself as to the other craftsmen it remembers.
Monk I han't done yet. Can't get a good coloured picture of a capuchin, but am still searching for one. I think he can go into one of the tracery openings, hanging on a briar of the roses, with an inscription to the effect that he "broke his chain" on the date of his demise.
Not knowing the names of the ships in the Holman fleet, I am leaving a little blank space anigh each on which we can scratch the names with a diamond after the window is fixed. You can doubtless identify them from the photo, or get them identified.
- Maurice Drake, from letter to HW Holman, 22 Nov 1922 (original lent by David Martin)
Sincere thanks to David Martin for providing access to the window and documents, and for his permission to publish them online.
See Maurice Drake and WO2 for an account of Drake's novels.
- RG
Maurice Drake's last work
