In Memoriam: Alfred Fairbank
Frank Allan Thomson
The Studio publication of the Book of Kells first roused my passionate interest in calligraphy and palaeography, and in an encyclopaedia I soon discovered a Carolingian alphabet, which I used to try to imitate. Then some time in the 20S Edward Johnston's Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering happened to fall into my hands in Anna Simon's excellent German translation of 1919, but my efforts to create a running everyday hand with an edged pen were in vain. It was not until after World War II that I found a copy of Alfred Fairbank's Handwriting Manual of 1932, which I soon practically knew by heart. It was a revelation. Only thanks to his book did I discover the proper way of writing, and as soon as I heard about the Society for Italic Handwriting I joined it.
I am not sure whether the week-end course at Jordans which I attended, was the first he held but it must have been in the autumn of one of the first years of the 50s. The considerate diffidence and mild sense of humour with which Alfred conducted his teaching constituted a brilliant way of making even pupils of fairly advanced years like myself and my elbow- neighbour the late John Posthuma (of the Osmiroid Company) feel at ease. (I remember him saying: 'You can of course also make a capital D in one stroke - but I can't.")
Alfred started his first lesson with the rhetorical question: 'Which letter do you think I'm going to begin with?' The answer of course was a. He loved the triangular oval of the bowl of the cancellaresca a and always kept a smooth stone of that shape on his desk. He demonstrated it on the blackboard, and our first task was to try to copy it there - trembling, one by one.
Alfred soon discovered that I was familiar with his manual and used to ask me jocularly whether there was anything he had left out in his classroom instruction. He gave one the feeling that he himself only overcame a certain natural shyness by an absolute inner conviction. In the short space of that week-end, he made the individuality of each letter come alive and then created an organic unity of the alphabet. His formula that 'handwriting is a system of movements involving touch' was a stroke of genius, for it rightly concentrated attention on the action of the hand rather than on the shape produced, which then followed as a matter of course. I well remember discovering the kern of ascenders as the outcome of the proper rhythmical movement.
When I regretfully took my leave of him after the course he said ‘Write to me'. And that was the beginning of a lifelong friendship and the exchange of literally hundreds of letters. (He had a charming way, if he had not heard from one for some time, of dropping a couple of lines apropos of nothing.) Quickly and imperceptibly we passed to Christian names. We shared every palaeographic and calligraphic discovery we made, and every problem we met, with perfect sincerity and trust. And every time I came back to England from this far-flung outpost, a visit to Elsie and Alfred was a matter of course. My wife Julie and our two children were naturally drawn into this atmosphere of mutual affection.
I stayed with the Fairbanks several times, breakfasting on porridge with brown sugar out of a proper porringer, and striding along the water-front at Brighton with Alfred for our 'constitutional' - he was about twice as tall as I and long-legged at that, so it was not always easy, especially against a head wind and driving rain.
Then Alfred and I looked at scripts together for hours commenting on every significant detail. He had an extremely keen eye for the smallest revealing trait. He employed an expression about unsuccessful calligraphers, uttered with a little grunt and an amused smile: 'He doesn't understand' or: 'hasn't understood'. 'Understanding' was something in your blood, in your very being. He was, himself, a living, unerring criterion of what is good in writing. His skill was based on an inborn talent, an instinctive calligraphic sense. I have never seen a lighter grip of the pen, and he wrote the most controlled and consistent hand. It remained absolutely consistent over all the thirty years during which it fell into my letter-box from time to time. We were congenial not only in calligraphic pursuits but in practically every other respect as well, though there was one minor interest we did not share - the solving of crossword puzzles. This surely seemed completely futile to him, and his simple comment was:
'Nothing occurs to me'.
Research into Arrighi soon became a central interest of ours. We travelled together to various places to scrutinize MSS directly or indirectly connected with him - to Colchester to study the MS of Machiavelli's 'Clitia' (on which an essay of mine was included in his festschrift), to Paris to look at a number of MSS at the Bibliotheque
Nationale, among others one written out by Arrighi's associate, Genesius de la Barrera. And we pored together over the exquisite Cicero letter, discovered by Alfred in the British Library Collection, and penned by Arrighi, of which a .facsimile edition has been planned with a brilliant introduction from his hand, It is inexpressibly sad to think that, even if this enterprise finally comes off, he will never see it.
His happy and decisive influence on the teaching of handwriting in schools has been testified to by many, The hand now taught to children in the Swedish comprehensive school system, for which the exemplars have been made by Mrs Kerstin Anckers (who among other activities designs the Nobel Prize diplomas), bears a close resemblance to the one in his Beacon Writing Book One though with a slightly wider face (which seems to be a trait typical of women calligraphers), but entirely free from the quirks added by some imitators to create an illusion of originality.
Alfred was a genius not only of handwriting but also of steadfast and rewarding friendship, There seems to be something in the love of calligraphy that draws people to each other - often in a particularly unselfish way (though history has examples of the reverse of the coin, bitter jealousies, as well), In my own life there has been no friendship like the one with Alfred Fairbank, Real friends complete each other in an irreplaceable way. It was with infinite sadness that I heard his failing voice over the telephone the day in January this year when he was taken into a nursing home, and I realized that it was going to be for the last time.