Mervyn Peake’s 1946 high-gothic fantasy trilogy is set in a crumbling castle-city. In the novel, published just after the second world war, he explores entrenchment against change – how stagnation can sustain a civilisation yet render it crippled.
The first character we meet is Rottcodd, the curator of the Hall of Bright Carvings in the attic of a remote wing of Gormenghast Castle. Every year, three carvings are selected to be preserved in the museum and the rejects burned. Rottcodd’s task – in which he has little interest – is to clean the winning entries as the dust piles up inches thick. Visitors are seen as an unwelcome disturbance in this lonely loft and Rottcodd can’t even recall what year it is.
We hear nothing of him until 400 pages later, at the novel’s end: he looks out over the castle at a gathering where he is the only uninvited denizen, having been forgotten. Rottcodd bookends a novel of murder, insurrection and revolt, showing that, in the end, nothing has changed.
That Peake uses a curator to give form to the unstoppable grind of tradition and authority is revealing. And, 70 years on, Rottcodd is still recognisable as the stereotypical curator who endures in the mind. The fact that this image remains potent is all the more reason we must continue striving to be everything he isn’t: accessible, open, interested and engaged.
Matthew Bellhouse Moran is the assistant curator (collections) at the Scottish Maritime Museum, North Ayrshire
The first character we meet is Rottcodd, the curator of the Hall of Bright Carvings in the attic of a remote wing of Gormenghast Castle. Every year, three carvings are selected to be preserved in the museum and the rejects burned. Rottcodd’s task – in which he has little interest – is to clean the winning entries as the dust piles up inches thick. Visitors are seen as an unwelcome disturbance in this lonely loft and Rottcodd can’t even recall what year it is.
We hear nothing of him until 400 pages later, at the novel’s end: he looks out over the castle at a gathering where he is the only uninvited denizen, having been forgotten. Rottcodd bookends a novel of murder, insurrection and revolt, showing that, in the end, nothing has changed.
That Peake uses a curator to give form to the unstoppable grind of tradition and authority is revealing. And, 70 years on, Rottcodd is still recognisable as the stereotypical curator who endures in the mind. The fact that this image remains potent is all the more reason we must continue striving to be everything he isn’t: accessible, open, interested and engaged.
Matthew Bellhouse Moran is the assistant curator (collections) at the Scottish Maritime Museum, North Ayrshire
