The Colour of Life — Key Ideas to Explore

The Paradox of Red and the Hidden Body

Meynell’s title essay redefines the colour of life not as the red of spilled blood but as the “modest colour of the unpublished blood.” She contrasts the visible red of violence with the implicit red of the living heart, calling the latter a secret to be hidden. This argument is built on a series of negations: the true colour is white but less white than milk, brown but less brown than earth, red but less red than sunset. The essay moves from abstract definition to concrete observation of Londoners’ faces, which lose their gold and white under the city’s injuries. Meynell’s prose here is structured as a chain of comparisons, each refining the elusive hue.

Theatrical Tempo and the Flight of Verse

In a later essay, Meynell turns to the stage, criticizing the “universal slowness” of contemporary drama. She argues that long pauses and trailing dialogue let life slip away, like fish from loose meshes. Verse, she insists, is a flight that requires a certain measure in the movement of the pinion. Her critique is specific: even when an actress speaks her lines as lines, she spoils the tempo by inordinate pronunciation. Meynell’s own prose here is brisk and metaphorical, contrasting the directness of a scene conceived simply with the illimitable tiresomeness of drawn-out speech.

Grass as a Brief Reconciliatory Force

The essay “Grass” observes how a suburban road suddenly blooms when a border of wayside grass is allowed to grow. Meynell notes that the grass attempts to reconcile yellow brick, purple slate, and stucco, but the vestry arrives with spades to tidy it away. She describes the grass as “gracious” and “lowly,” taking only what nobody wants, yet it cannot escape destruction. The essay’s structure mirrors the grass’s brief appearance: a moment of transformation, then a return to mediocrity. Meynell’s tone is wry as she notes the vestry’s punctuality in destruction, calling the spade a spade with deliberate plainness.

Movement Between Scenes: From London to Suburb

Throughout the collection, Meynell shifts between intimate observation and broader commentary. The opening essay moves from the abstract colour of life to the specific London boy on the Serpentine; the theatre essay jumps from general critique to a single actress’s pronunciation; the grass essay zooms from the suburban road to the vestry’s cart. These transitions are abrupt but purposeful, each scene serving as a case study for a larger point. Meynell’s recurring images—light, colour, tempo, and the tension between natural growth and human order—tie the essays together, even as the subjects vary widely.

Meynell’s essays reward a reader attentive to detail and rhythm. Her arguments often hinge on a single image—the boy’s flush, the grass’s green, the actress’s pause—that she expands into a meditation on visibility and value. Because the excerpts are incomplete, the full arc of the collection remains unclear, but the recurring concern with what is hidden or overlooked gives the work a cohesive texture. Readers may find it useful to track how Meynell’s own prose enacts the directness she praises.

That rainy afternoon, Meynell’s muted hues—the body’s gentle tint beneath red’s clamour—settled into me like London’s grey light. My gaze drifted to the shelf, landing on The works of Alexander Hamilton (vol. 1 of 7) — Background and Themes, a different kind of restraint, a constitutional patience. Vestry vigilance, statecraft’s quiet hush—both whisper that the loudest voices rarely tell the truest colour.