In Ireland, Jessie Lightfoot, hailing from a farming family in Cornwall, received an experience far beyond her expectations. She had been employed as a domestic aide and caretaker by the pro-unionist Bacon family from County Kildare, amid the escalating tension prior to World War I.
She was not only grappling with a nation growing increasingly antagonistic towards her employers, but she was also tasked with protecting her wards from the volatile and dangerous temper of “Eddy” Bacon, their tyrannical father. His harsh and oppressive discipline, speficically aimed at his son, Francis Bacon, who later became a significant painter in the latter half of the 20th century, was relentless and gruesome.
French author, Maylis Besserie, utilises the nanny’s perspective to narrate the saga of Francis Bacon. Jessie Lightfoot was an enduring presence throughout Bacon’s adolescence and nascent career, supporting him until her passing in 1951. In her earlier two novels regarding Ireland, ‘Yell, Sam, If You Still Can’ (2022) and ‘Scattered Love’ (2023), Besserie mostly examined the end phases of Samuel Beckett and WB Yeats’ lives. However, her third instalment in the trilogy is distinctively marked by beginnings.
The suffering, severe disfigurements, and intense unease represented in Bacon’s art owe a lot to his traumatic upbringing. At sixteen, Bacon made his departure from Ireland, vowing never to return. Within the novel, his nanny notes how Bacon made no “pilgrimage to the places of his childhood” since the memories of that time were constantly with him.
Elsewhere, the academic community studying Joyce has been embroiled in controversy over allegations of sexual harassment. ‘The Material’ by Camille Bordas presents an exceptionally perceptive, occasionally humorous, examination of campus comedians. Chidi Ebere has been awarded the best debut over 50 prize, and Neil Stewart’s ‘Test Kitchen’ chronicles an exhilarating and disorderly single evening of service.
In Bacon’s home at 7 Cromwell Place, Lightfoot often elects to nap on the kitchen table throughout the day. Possessing an occasional penchant for kleptomania and the operation of illegal betting establishments, he resorts to these measures particularly when the economic situation at the Bacon homestead is less than ideal. There is a consistent backdrop of revelry, alcoholic indulgence, doomed romances and professional setbacks which are vividly interpreted through the astute observation of the nanny. She is a character who disavows celebrity status but recognises true excellence.
‘Besserie’s trilogy, culminating impressively in ‘Francis Bacon’s Nanny’, is a deep exploration into the tumultuous creativity seen in the sphere of Irish artistic intellect.’