Trumble

 

In September 2010, Angus Trumble shared some of his early school reports, with related background dramas social and emotional, real and imaginary, on his online blog ‘The Tumbrel Diaries’. He transcribed the words of the excellent Miss Cameron, his teacher at Grimwade House at the age of six: “Angus brings many books for us to read. He is most responsive to the rhythm of words and can join in the saying of many poems. He writes down many stories for our enjoyment. His drawings and paintings are especially interesting, being both colourful and imaginative. He has some excellent ideas for creative work and he gets much pleasure from the things he makes.” Miss Cameron was one of his most perceptive teachers. It could be a review of ‘The Tumbrel Diaries’, that splendid set of essays on all manner of interests in Angus’ life, all of it free, that now serves as a highly original, if forever incomplete, autobiography. Since news of his death was broadcast after the second weekend of October, I have been browsing these Diaries again, in order to deal with the loss and grief. Although I am friends with certain members of the Trumble family, my relationship with Angus was tangential, perhaps half a dozen passing conversations at most in the old days, before I stumbled (the only verb that suffices) across the Diaries during one of my daily surfs. I will miss our online banter and his exemplary generosity of spirit. He described, celebrated is a better word, wondered at, a world that I, like so many, connected with immediately: the world of Melbourne and beyond, the arts, art history, history in general, and in particularity. His particularity, one that spoke with wit, good humour, deepening knowledge, original insight, and all things considered, a disarming humility. He spoke entertainingly and informatively on whatever took his fancy, a very wide subject matter indeed. But it was how he spoke as much as what he spoke of, that clutched the attention. Where did that brilliant prose style come from? The Diaries index sprawls with family names, royal names, artists’ names, yet is thin on literary names. This leads me to believe that Angus’ prose style developed very early, urbane and readily accessible; a style he simply further perfected over time. I marvel with all the delight of a fan at his enthusiasm, and how he engenders that enthusiasm in others. Then also, his love of “the rhythm of words” resulted in poetry. One of my favourites are his haiku sequences written during Hurricane Irene in August 2011 (“No power, no gas./ Water’s off. With my flashlight/ Though, I read Miss Pym.”) proof that natural disasters do concentrate the mind. These little poems demonstrate why art is more accurate, more real, than the news: it puts you there and makes you feel it, albeit using the same black humour that informs the anagrammatic title of ‘The Tumbrel Diaries’ themselves. And typical Angus is to drop a name in without explanation, in this case a very literary one, Barbara Pym. He kept scattering clues.