Frank Martin
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NATIONAL LIFE STORIES ARTISTS’ LIVES Frank Martin Interviewed by Melanie Roberts C466/58 This transcript is copyright of the British Library Board. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB 020 7412 7404 [email protected] This transcript is accessible via the British Library’s Archival Sound Recordings website. Visit http://sounds.bl.uk for further information about the interview. © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk IMPORTANT Access to this interview and transcript is for private research only. Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB 020 7412 7404 [email protected] Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original recording, not replace it. Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators ( [email protected] ) © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk The British Library National Life Stories Interview Summary Sheet Title Page Ref no: C466/58/01-07 Digitised from cassette originals Collection title: Artists’ Lives Interviewee’s surname: Martin Title: Interviewee’s forename: Frank Sex: Male Occupation: Dates: 1914 – 2004 Dates of recording: 1997.08.11-13 Location of interview: Interviewee’s home Name of interviewer: Melanie Roberts Type of recorder: Marantz CP430 and two lapel mics Recording format: TDK C60 Cassettes F numbers of playback cassettes: F5904-F5910 Total no. of digitised tracks : 14 Mono or stereo: Stereo Additional material at the British Library : Copyright/Clearance: Full clearance. © The British Library Interviewer’s comments: © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Frank Martin C466/58/01 F5904A Page 1 F5904 Side A [The interview with Frank Martin on 11th of August 1997 at East Portlemouth in south Devon. Melanie Roberts interviewing.] Now tell me exactly your date of birth and where you were born. Yes. I was born at 2 o’clock in the morning, two days after Christmas, 1914, December the 27th 1914. And... [PAUSE] A rather significant date, with the war. With the war. Now the war of course impinged on my early years very much indeed. War had not long started, and I was at Portsmouth, that’s the naval base in southern Hampshire which was then seething with energy and ready for war. My immediate family, my father, his brothers and sisters, were all involved in the naval thing, and my grandfather was a great commander then, he was one of the first promoted commanders from the lower deck. Gosh. The second in fact. And of course he reigned supreme at Portsmouth and was in fact second in command of the Royal Duke, one of the greatest battleships of now preparing or even at sea at that moment, as I was born, conducting the war. Of course all the family around were involved with it, but the only memory I have of the war was at the age of about three I was picked up by my mother and the Venetian blinds of the bedroom were opened for me to see a Zeppelin passing over Portsmouth with the searchlights on it. Extraordinary sight, and that remained with me I must say all my life, that memory of the Zeppelin, and the bursting shells and things like that around us. And I can tell you more later of the Second World War of course, the last war, similar sort of experiences in a way, but let’s go back to my birth. I was born at, I remember the house number, 66 Cardiff Road, North End of Portsmouth, and I was the first of three born from that family, although my mother and father had both been married before, both their spouses had died, and they each had a child, so there were three already then. And two other sisters born later. But I didn’t see much of them actually, I didn’t know them very well, and by the time I was aware my sister had been farmed out to an uncle at Torquay to be a maid within his hotel, and my brother had been sent to Australia then with the groups of people, the young people they were sending out there at that time. So, © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Frank Martin C466/58/01 F5904A Page 2 Portsmouth then, I suppose by the time I was four years old, the war had just about finished, but nevertheless the energy and the things that went on around it carried on for many many years. I didn’t see much of my father, he was either away at the war or he had commissions to the Mediterranean mainly for two and two-and-a-half years at a time, and he had seemed to only come back for a few months and then he was off again. So a strange life, early life. We stopped at that address until I moved off, but nevertheless came my schooling. The elementary school I went to was literally at the end of the road. A very interesting elementary school, but with very unusual teaching methods. For instance, my first class I went to I remember very clearly, I was certainly dyslexic, not known as dyslexic then but in fact it was certainly something of that nature, but I was left-handed and made to write with my right hand, to the extent that they even tied my hand behind my back, strangely but nevertheless they did, or I got a rap across the knuckles if I was found with a pen in my left hand. I do remember in that particular class that we did some modelling with sort of Plasticine, so my first modelling lessons were with that class. Then as I moved through the school, the various forms, three to four to five, was then taught by a very good man indeed, a man named, I remember his name and I met him later, Ethelbert Harvey. He was a great teacher, he obviously understood my talents, he obviously felt too that I was unacademic, and art reigned supreme within whatever I got from him. But he was always urging me with the art, and the whole classroom walls were bedecked in my works, and also scripts, I remember I did a great deal of script, and he took with him some of that script, the sonnets of some sort I remember, done on parchment paper, and these were hung around the walls and went in annually for various prizes, what they call the Hobbies Prizes at Portsmouth Town Hall, and I seemed to win the prizes. Later in, much much later in life I did find him again and we started to communicate, and although in his latter eighties he did arrive there one day with his wife at my home at Hayling Island then, and said that he still had the sonnets on the wall, which was very interesting. But anyway, art at elementary school was my only training; I didn’t go to secondary school of any sort, and I joined art school when I was between 13 and 14, evening classes, and then later on to the major classes, which were then, what did they have, a drawing and modelling examination was all they had, the institutions had then. And I passed very well indeed after what was it, two years I think in modelling. They didn’t really have a sculpture department as such, we did a little bit of everything, but I seemed to emphasise, whatever I did was around the three dimensions rather than, although we did painting, painting and drawing, drawing a lot, a great deal of course. And so we went on with that course until I was 17. Modelling was...and then carving, I seemed to be one of the first to have carved in that particular department, and I had a mentor , a man who was working on the Ancient Monuments Department of the Office of Works, who was a friend, a friend of the family, and © The British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Frank Martin C466/58/01 F5904A Page 3 he was urging me to get in his service, and that was the restoration of ancient houses, ancient castles, at some time. And following that, he did give me some training in carving, and I carved a great deal in wood and stone, and did lettering, did an enormous amount of lettering. When I was about 17, 17½, he took me into his works, which was in fact to supervise the restoration of the Norman castle at the head of Portsmouth Harbour at Porchester, where we...we grouted the walls and made the whole thing safe, and the keep, a 200-foot high keep there, which previously, way back in the centuries, Neapolitan[sic] Wars, had houses French sailors, French army people, prisoners, and one could find around the walls then all the names cut into the walls of the dungeons. And later we made a sea wall around that, and as we dug the foundations for that wall I remember we were always turning up skeletons, obviously the French prisoners were thrown over the wall and onto the foreshore. I stopped with him for no more than about six months, and they understood that I was appropriate material to train as a supervisor for further monumental restoration work.