Brown Study

We are going to a murder mystery evening in Blackpool shortly, and as a consequence I didn't travel down to London today to watch the team playing at Leyton Orient, couldn't have got back for 7.30 pm - but missed a horror show by all accounts. So here I am in the jewel of the north, killing time before playing detective. To paraphrase from that well-known board game: it's the Saturday Blogger, in the Brown Study, with the Abstraction.

brown study (i)

By the way, that's not me in the image above (although it could be), and it's certainly not my brown study. It more resembles the room in which my ex-father-in-law used to write his lectures, or my own father used to compose his sermons, and even that is being hugely generous in comparison. I suspect it's really the library of some Edwardian gentleman, though I'm not sure about the feet up on the desk. 

But I should get to the point, which is, as you've realised, brown study, more specifically being in one, in a metaphorical rather than the literal sense with which I teased you above. The phrase, whose roots can be traced back at least as far as the 16th century, has rather gone out of fashion these days, ousted by the equally colourful notion of having the blues. 

However, although brown study did and does have connotations of a gloomy or melancholic state of mind, with Doctor Watson famously describing himself as "falling into a brown study" in 'The Adventure of the Cardboard Box' (as who wouldn't?), and Conrad writing in 'Thrift and the Child' "He sat solemnly dejected, in a brown study", there is another sense to being in a brown study that goes over and beyond what having the blues means. 

That additional depth to the phrase carries an implication not so much of depression or sadness, but of the mind being in contemplative or reflective mode to such a degree of intensity that the person ceases to be aware of anything going on around them.

We sometimes fall into these states of abstraction quite by accident (or so it sems), when our senses momentarily disconnect themselves from the treadmill of life. Such moments can even be quite long, as in periods of day-dreaming (reverie), or when we're functioning on automatic pilot, and we generally don't know we've been in this type of brown study until something happens to make us snap out of it.

But we are also capable of inducing such a meditative state if we so wish, by practising techniques that empty the mind of conscious thought and allow us to enter a still and trance-like state.

brown study (ii)

I sometimes use a mandala like the one above to help me lose myself into abstraction. Maybe you've tried something similar yourself at some point? 

As for poems on theme, I did have a look. There are a couple of quite famous brown study ones, but somehow they didn't appeal, so I've used some of my time this afternoon to conjure up the following rather edgy composition. I nearly titled it 'Take Three Girls' (being beastly to each other). See what you think. It comes with the usual caveat, that I will probably look to refine it at a later date.

  

Abstraction (Of Bitches)

Because Sienna has the knack

of getting out of it 

without the aid of grass or tabs

or wine, the naughty girls

think her haughty,

both envy and despise her,

mostly the latter actually,

referring to her behind her back

as snake eyes.

It doesn't help matters that she's

building quite the cool rep 

with her abstract style. Her art

hangs on gallery walls,

merits exhibitions, sells well.

Ginger painted her in secret,

'portrait of the artist as a young bitch'

as if there might be voodoo

in gouache laid on thick

with menace.

And Rose steals 

both paints and brushes

from the studio they share

but Sienna

with her thousand yard stare

doesn't give a fuck.

After all, she has her secrets too -

knows that 'abstract # 18'

represents Ginger giving birth

to a piglet and 'abstract # 31'

is about Rose being mangled

by a truck.

 

Thanks for reading. Murder mystery beckons.  S ;-)

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A Brown Study

I was having a bit of difficulty on this topic of ‘Brown Study’. I’d tried being very involved in my own thoughts and not paying attention to anything, or anyone, else. But that’s normal. I’d tried rooms and colours, corduroy trousers and the seasons. I was scrolling through the internet pages for an idea when I came across a poem by Edith Nesbit and read about the author.

 

illustration of Edith Nesbit by Julie Benbassat

This time the poem gave rise to the article. It has always been the other way round so it seems fair to start with it:

A Brown Study

Let them sing of their primrose and cowslip,
Their daffodil-gold-coloured hair,
Their bluebells, blue eyes, and white violets,
All the pale dreamy things they find fair;
Give me stir of brown leaves in the sunshine,
The whir of brown wings through the wheat,
The rush of brown hares through the clover,
And the light in brown eyes of my sweet!

Gold hair? Well, I never could love it,
Yet gold, I suppose, has its worth;
The head that I love is as dusky
As the breast of our mother, the earth;
With a gleam like the shine of wet seaweed,
Round pools that the tide has left clear,
And warm like the breast of a linnet,
And as brown, is the hair of my dear.

From the edge of the cliff we look downwards
On the shore, and the bay, and the town,
And brown is the short turf we lean on,
The fishing-boats' sails are all brown:
The sky may be blue--that's the background,--
But the picture itself, to be fair,
However it's shaded and varied,
Should be brown as the dress that you wear.

A lark bursts to sudden sweet singing--
That tuft of brown grass is his home--
And now, a brown speck, he is rising
Against the clear windy sky-dome;
And he sings--how I know? Love instructs me
To know all his notes, what they mean--
That it isn't the colour I care for,
But yourself, oh, my gipsy, my queen!

Ah! the lark knows my heart--I his language;
It's my heart he sings out to the skies;
It is you that I love, and what matter
The colour of hair or of eyes?
No doubt I should love you as dearly
Were your hair like an apricot's down,
And your eyes like the grey of the morning;
But I'm glad, all the same, that they're brown.

                                                            Edith Nesbit

If anyone had asked me about Edith Nesbit before reading about her then I might have remembered the name as the author of The Railway Children. Probably living in somewhere like Hampshire and writing poems like the above before she prepared dinner. How wrong can you be?

Sarah Watling in The Guardian writes that:
‘She was in person at once quite awe-inspiring and a bit of a nightmare, able to weather tragedy and yet a queen of melodrama, a self-supporting writer who opposed women’s suffrage. Vibrantly attractive and adored by her many proteges and readers, she was what they called in those days “advanced” – a committed socialist (she and her husband Hubert Bland were among the earliest members of the Fabian Society) who wore free-flowing clothes, gave charitably and wrote ferociously against poverty, and let her children play barefoot in the garden. Her home at Well Hall, in Eltham, was a lively hub for young writers, artists and Fabians; a place, HG Wells recalled, “to which one rushed down from town at the week-end to snatch one’s bed before anyone else got it”. She was generous with her time, her money and her husband.

Nesbit’s childhood was largely happy but nomadic. Her father, a distinguished chemist and teacher, died in 1862 when Edith was three, and from then the family moved around in reduced circumstances, taking regular trips abroad to cope with the ill health of an older sister, Mary, who died young. In 1880, the 21-year-old Edith married Bland, then a bank clerk. He was tall and athletic, powerful seeming. Nesbit herself was seven months pregnant when they married, a scandal at the time; their son, Paul, was born that summer. Two more children, Iris and Fabian, followed. Bland was never good with money; Nesbit supported the family by writing and by decorating greetings cards.

Edith Nesbit

The household was apparently always embroiled in “scenes”. Shortly after Iris’s birth, Nesbit discovered that Bland’s relationship with his previous fiancee was still going on (she had no idea about Edith). On his nights away from home, Nesbit’s friend, Alice Hoatson, kept her company. When a devastated Nesbit suffered a stillbirth, it was Hoatson who had to prise the dead baby from her arms; before long she had moved in permanently. They told people she had joined them because she was seriously ill; in fact she was heavily pregnant. Nesbit agreed to raise the child, a girl named Rosamund, as her own.

One way of understanding the menage a trois between Bland, Nesbit and Hoatson (who would have a second child with Bland, a son they pretended was Nesbit’s) is as a fruitful and long lasting collaboration between the two women. Nesbit was already an acclaimed poet by the time her children’s stories, often serialised in the Strand magazine, began to improve the family’s fortunes. The first Bastable book, ‘The Story of the Treasure Seekers’, appeared in 1899. The still-precarious family finances depended on Bland and Nesbit (they sometimes collaborated) churning out articles, stories and novels. Hoatson’s management of the home and children freed Nesbit to create. She generally set the tone. Her moods could plunge the whole household into gloom just as she enlivened everything when she was happy. Most agreed that Nesbit and Bland thrived on all the drama. But in 1900, the family came to grief when 15-year-old Fabian died after an operation to remove his adenoids and it seems that the adults were responsible.’

I think that gives some idea of the nature of Nesbit’s life, and how ironic that her married name was ‘Bland’.

Her tales of fantasy or magic influenced J. K. Rowling, C.S Lewis, Michael Moorcock, and Jacqueline Wilson, who has written her own sequel to “5 Children and It.” Noel Coward wrote to Noel Streatfeild, one of her biographers, of Edith’s “unparalleled talent for evoking the hot summer days in the English countryside.”

some of Edith Nesbit's many titles

After Hubert’s death in 1917 she met and married Tommy Tucker, a marine engineer, who had been friends with both of them and who had helped Edith overcome some financial problems. They found two wooden bungalows in New Romney, Kent where she died in May 1924.

Apologies for going more than a bit off topic but I found her story fascinating and I hope you do as well.

Terry Q.

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Brown Study - Daydreaming

I hadn’t heard of ‘brown study’. When I looked it up and did a bit of online research, I quickly realised that I do it all the time. Deep in thought, away with the fairies, that’s me and seemingly more so at the moment. There is a lot going on to fill my head with worry and make me stressful. Of course, things will improve, but I’ve got to get through the here and now. I drift off into my thoughts, trying to reason things out or work out what to do. There is rarely a solution.

This morning I was enjoying the stroll in the cool air to a group I attend. I was wondering if I would have better staying at home because I was feeling upset and close to tears, but the short walk would do me good and I love to catch up with my friends there. I stopped to cross a road, turned to check for traffic and jumped out of my skin to see one of my friends next to me. She’d been saying my name. I hadn’t heard her. I was away in my own little world of oblivion. We walked the rest of the way together, chatting about the mild weather after I’d explained that I was fine, just lost in a daydream.

I’m struggling to concentrate when reading. I’m near to the end of what is a re-read of a good book and I keep losing it, literally. The paragraphs give way to me overthinking something, so I go over it again then often nod off. It isn’t a boring book, well, some might disagree, but I love the story and it is a real rediscovery now, as a mature adult. I think I was about eighteen when it was mandatory reading and, I confess, some of the content was lost on me. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, thank you, Robert Tressell.

My personal brown study isn’t always about what I might be fretting over at the moment. Sometimes I travel way back, reliving nice happenings, or being angry with myself over doing things I now consider stupid – we make mistakes, learn from them and move on – I don’t need to beat myself up fifty years later. Most of what haunts me from the past are things and events that I had absolutely no control over and remain in residence in a brain cell.

I found this poem meaningful. It’s written by C. Vergara, published on Poetry Soup.

Deep thoughts, without blinking
In a trance, deep thinking

Voices of yesteryear, instilling neurotic fear
Deeper and deeper, across my hemisphere.

Deep thoughts, within my soul
Bringing my running to a slow crawl

Trying to avoid it, but can’t control it
Like a ‘who done it’, I can’t outrun it

Deep thoughts, take over my mind
They begin to grind what’s left behind.

It’s a sign, rectifying
My essence in time.

                              C. Vergara 9/6/2010

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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A Brown Study Of Brown

A ‘Brown Study’ is a mood when one is involved in deep thought and not paying attention to anything else. I am very familiar with this, particularly when lost in the midst of creative endeavours or researching something of particular interest. Writing this article caught me in this frame of mind as I researched all things brown.

Ancient Cave Paintings of Hands at Cueva de Las Manos in Santa Cruz Province, Patagonia, Argentina ©R M Nunes/Adobe Stock

Etymology
The English word ‘brown’ has been in use for nearly a millennia. The word is derived from Middle English ‘broun’, Old English/French/Old High German ‘brun’, Norse ‘brún’ and/or Proto-Germanic ‘brunaz’ all meaning that earthy colour that falls between the yellow and red spectrum.

The Colour
Brown is one of the first colours that humans used to create imagery as evidenced in cave paintings with pigments made from clay or hematite (a heavy and relatively hard oxide mineral that produces reds, oranges, yellows and browns). Some of the brown pigments found in cave paintings were made from a clay pigment called ‘umber’ dating back to 40,000 BC. Raw umber, a dark brown clay mined in Umbria, Italy (also found in other parts of the world) produces the colour brown with a greenish grey tint whilst burnt umber (roasted umber) creates a warmer hue. The use of umber as under-painting became popular among painters in the Renaissance. It continues to be popular with artists today.

Mia, Burnt Umber Underpainting and Final Portrait, Oil on Canvas,© 2021 Julia Swarbrick

Artists use an array of different shades of brown that can be created in a variety of ways such as mixing red, yellow and blue together or adding a splash of black to orange paint. In the printing industry and those using image programmes on a computer there are two colour systems, CMYK and RGB. Using the CMYK colour system brown is created by mixing red, black and yellow.

The RGB system mixes red and green. Both of these systems were developed during the early
twentieth-century.

When identifying different variants of brown, many have been named after something i.e. coffee, chocolate, peanut, walnut, sand, fawn, saddle brown and wood. Wood brown can be defined further into types such as ash, chestnut, mahogany and hazel. All this identification is advantageous as visual imagery comes to mind when the word is spoken. One can conjure up an idea of what shade of brown something actually is without necessarily seeing it, thus improving communication between folk. Humans seem to be obsessed with description and labelling which brings us around to people named Brown.

The Surname
The practice of using surnames in England began after 1066 eventually spreading throughout Britain and beyond. It is believed that people were originally nicknamed ‘Brown’ because of the colour of their hair, eyes and/or complexion that eventually developed into a nickname or surname. In Scotland, Brown as a surname is very common. In this neck of the woods the origins could also be derived from the Gaelic ‘brehon’, meaning judge.

There are many famous people named Brown including fictional characters like Mr Henry Brown in Paddington, Emmett Brown in Back to the Future and the cartoon character Charlie Brown.

Wikipedia lists well over three hundred people of notoriety with this surname. Included in this list are several James Browns with possibly the most famous being the American singer, songwriter and dancer James Brown (1933-2006) who had hits like I Feel Good and Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag (this musical titbit is for you Steve R.).

Other lesser known James Browns in contemporary circles, who were top in their professions at the time include James Campbell Brown (1843-1910) a British chemist, Dundee architect James Maclellan Brown (c.1886-1967) and James Brown (1832-1904) a Scottish poet/essayist who signed his works J.B. Selkirk (James Brown of Selkirk).

Selection From The Last Epistle to Tammus by JB Selkirk

And as a final fun fact, ‘Brown Cow’ is not just a brown-coloured bovine that gives milk, but a previously used playful name for a beer barrel in Selkirk’s homeland.

All Things Brown

Brown study, study of brown.
Run around in a dressing gown.
Brown like a bear - brown, brown, brown,
grr, grr, grrring in a run around town.
In and out of town through woods,
the forest, nature’s neighbourhood
filled with brown dirt, plants, and trees,
chestnut, hazel - fawns and fleas.
All things brown, all things good,
like them, love them as one should.
Brown, brown, brown and just like that
my bare bear foot stepped in scat.

Thank you for reading.
Kate

J

Sources
Ancestry, 2024. Meaning of the first name Brown. https://www.ancestry.co.uk/first-name-meaning/brown?srsltid=AfmBOorbWn5AS7LM5WLIQzwW3Tqq10Pn9gVceCOkyD78j0uW-KTvU_o8 Accessed 20 October.
Britannica, 2024. Brown. https://www.britannica.com/science/brown-color Accessed 20 October.
Cambridge Dictionary, 2024. Brown Study.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/brown-study Accessed 20 October.
Canva, 2024. Everything about the color brown. https://www.canva.com/colors/color-meanings/brown/ Accessed 24 October.
Hansen, T.A., 2017. Natural Earth Paint through the Ages: The Prehistoric Era-. https://www.naturalearthpaint.eu/en/blogs/blog/natural-earth-paint-through-the-ages-the-prehistor/ Accessed 25 October 2024.
Harrington, J., 2020. How now brown cow. https://www.anchornews.org/2020/01/23/how-now-brown-cow/ Accessed 31, 2024.
Nova Colour, 2022. Understanding the Color Brown and its Shades. https://novacolorpaint.com/blogs/nova-color/color-brown-and-its-shades Accessed 27 October 2024.
Oleson, J., 2024. 128 Shades of Brown: Color Names, Hex, RGB, CMYK Codes. https://www.color-meanings.com/shades-of-brown-color-names-html-hex-rgb-codes/ Accessed 20 October.
Selkirk, J.B., 1905. Poems. R & R Clark Ltd. Edinburgh. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Poems_%28IA_poemsselkirk00selkiala%29.pdf Accessed 25 October 2024.
Wikimedia, 2024. Poems by J.B. Selkirk.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Poems_%28IA_poemsselkirk00selkiala%29.pdf Accessed 25 October.
Wikipedia, 2024. List of people with surname Brown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_surname_Brown Accessed 31 October.

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