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Don't Tell Sybil
From the "... a charming portrait of a humorous, insecure, flamboyant 'Surrealist to his fingertips,' ELT Mesens. Melly is a fantastic storyteller, the kind that whets your appetite for more until you've reached the final page and wish it didn't have to end." ... 226 pages, with a short bibliography.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
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About the author
George Melly
29 booksAlan George Heywood Melly was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer, and lecturer. From 1965 to 1973 he was a film and television critic for The Observer; he also lectured on art history, with an emphasis on surrealism.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 8, 2014
Fascinating memoir by the always interesting George Melly on his life with E.L.T. Mesens, a surrealist from Belgium, who ended up as a gallery owner as well as a poet and artist in 1950s London. In the50's, Melly became Mesens' assistant in his gallery, as well as being a jazz singer of some note. One of the eminent London-center eccentrics, Melly dishes out the information regarding Surrealism, as it was dying out as a social scene.
A very affectionate, yet pointed, portrait of Mesens and his world. The reader gets the flavor of those times, and this is especially cool, because there is not that much literature on surrealism during the 50's/60's and especially from the London scene at the time. Also, no surprise, this is a beautiful edition put out by Atlas Press. Do they ever fail? Never!
A very affectionate, yet pointed, portrait of Mesens and his world. The reader gets the flavor of those times, and this is especially cool, because there is not that much literature on surrealism during the 50's/60's and especially from the London scene at the time. Also, no surprise, this is a beautiful edition put out by Atlas Press. Do they ever fail? Never!
January 12, 2024
ELT Mesens is not exactly a household name and, before reading this book, the almost nothing I knew about him came from two other Melly memoirs - Rum, Bum and Concertina and Owning Up. In those Mesens played a supporting role but here he gets star billing. Well almost, as this is the story of a friendship, with Melly himself looming large in the narrative.
ELT Mesens was a Belgian surrealist poet, collagist, art dealer, friend of Magritte, gambler and dedicated drinker. He first came to London in 1936 and helped to organise the now legendary International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries. He was the leader of the surrealist movement in England and the director of the London Gallery in the late 1940s and early 50s where Melly was his devoted but somewhat erratic assistant. His increasingly irascible and unpredictable alcohol fuelled behaviour eventually alienated pretty much everyone he knew, except Melly, who stayed loyal despite no shortage of provocation. Mesens died in 1971 aged 67.
Surrealism was a surprisingly hierarchical and authoritarian movement. Andre Breton, the leader of surrealism, ex-communicated alleged heretics with the zeal of a medieval Pope, and Mesens exerted similar authority, though inevitably on a smaller scale, in London. Melly makes the interesting point that surrealism was not an artistic movement but a commitment to a way of life.
Melly once sang a song called Good Time George and he certainly lived up to the title. He clearly lived the life of Riley. Sex (of all known varieties), copious quantities of booze and trad jazz (still considered quite racy in England when Melly discovered it in the early 1940s). And that’s not to mention the endless parties with his extensive collection of famous friends.
Young Melly was not short of confidence. Barely out of his teens he became part of the surrealist group in London by pretty much inviting himself along to one of their Soho dinners. Swanning around London in a sailor suit (well, he was doing his National Service in the Navy) the old Stoic (in the sense that he went to Stowe School only, in every other respect he was conscientiously hedonistic) moved with ease among the surrealist bigwigs. A few years later he breezed up to the stage at a jazz concert and asked if he could sing a number with the band and, in no time at all, he was the singer with the Mick Mulligan Magnolia Jazz Band and becoming quite famous. Melly cheerfully acknowledges that his success owed more to his extravagant personality than his abilities as a vocalist. Sheer cheek might sum it up.
Melly enjoyed a ménage a trois with Mesens and his wife Sybil and, when this ended, Melly and Mesens had an affair with each other. ‘Don’t tell Sybil’ became a catchphrase for Edouard as he implored George not to pass on the details of their latest drinking or gambling exploits (not that the ever loyal Melly needed much persuading).
The great virtue of Mellys’ memoirs is their complete lack of virtue in the traditional moralistic sense. He is astonishingly and hilariously candid. He simply wouldn’t have understood that dreadful, and dreadfully ubiquitous, contemporary phrase “too much information”. For George Melly there was obviously no such thing as too much information - particularly when it came to the most embarrassingly intimate details of his life.
If you haven’t read Melly before, I would recommend starting with the brilliant Owning Up trilogy, published in one volume by Penguin, but this book casts light on a fascinating part of his life only briefly touched on in his other books and is full of outrageously funny stories and his usual anarchic good humour. His sheer ebullience and wonderfully wayward spirit shine from every page.
By the way, Mesens collages can be found online and are well worth a look.
ELT Mesens was a Belgian surrealist poet, collagist, art dealer, friend of Magritte, gambler and dedicated drinker. He first came to London in 1936 and helped to organise the now legendary International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries. He was the leader of the surrealist movement in England and the director of the London Gallery in the late 1940s and early 50s where Melly was his devoted but somewhat erratic assistant. His increasingly irascible and unpredictable alcohol fuelled behaviour eventually alienated pretty much everyone he knew, except Melly, who stayed loyal despite no shortage of provocation. Mesens died in 1971 aged 67.
Surrealism was a surprisingly hierarchical and authoritarian movement. Andre Breton, the leader of surrealism, ex-communicated alleged heretics with the zeal of a medieval Pope, and Mesens exerted similar authority, though inevitably on a smaller scale, in London. Melly makes the interesting point that surrealism was not an artistic movement but a commitment to a way of life.
Melly once sang a song called Good Time George and he certainly lived up to the title. He clearly lived the life of Riley. Sex (of all known varieties), copious quantities of booze and trad jazz (still considered quite racy in England when Melly discovered it in the early 1940s). And that’s not to mention the endless parties with his extensive collection of famous friends.
Young Melly was not short of confidence. Barely out of his teens he became part of the surrealist group in London by pretty much inviting himself along to one of their Soho dinners. Swanning around London in a sailor suit (well, he was doing his National Service in the Navy) the old Stoic (in the sense that he went to Stowe School only, in every other respect he was conscientiously hedonistic) moved with ease among the surrealist bigwigs. A few years later he breezed up to the stage at a jazz concert and asked if he could sing a number with the band and, in no time at all, he was the singer with the Mick Mulligan Magnolia Jazz Band and becoming quite famous. Melly cheerfully acknowledges that his success owed more to his extravagant personality than his abilities as a vocalist. Sheer cheek might sum it up.
Melly enjoyed a ménage a trois with Mesens and his wife Sybil and, when this ended, Melly and Mesens had an affair with each other. ‘Don’t tell Sybil’ became a catchphrase for Edouard as he implored George not to pass on the details of their latest drinking or gambling exploits (not that the ever loyal Melly needed much persuading).
The great virtue of Mellys’ memoirs is their complete lack of virtue in the traditional moralistic sense. He is astonishingly and hilariously candid. He simply wouldn’t have understood that dreadful, and dreadfully ubiquitous, contemporary phrase “too much information”. For George Melly there was obviously no such thing as too much information - particularly when it came to the most embarrassingly intimate details of his life.
If you haven’t read Melly before, I would recommend starting with the brilliant Owning Up trilogy, published in one volume by Penguin, but this book casts light on a fascinating part of his life only briefly touched on in his other books and is full of outrageously funny stories and his usual anarchic good humour. His sheer ebullience and wonderfully wayward spirit shine from every page.
By the way, Mesens collages can be found online and are well worth a look.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews