Jimi was my granddad on my mum’s side and a bit of a knockabout bloke in his younger days by all accounts.
I have been able to get a pretty good insight into Compo’s story, albeit with some large gaps, from my memories of the stories Jimi told us after he’d had too many sherries at Christmas.. I also got some details I've gathered off notes Jimi had made at the time.
The bits about Compo I could find were really just side-bars to hundreds of yarns Jimi had about “Friedy” Friedenson.
Friedy was one of the original Leeds Savages and one of the attic aboders. While Friedy wasn’t famous, he was pretty notorious for his exporting of 'live statutory' shows to the USA. You may or may not know this but at that time, laws on pornography and public nudity were extreme.
There was a loophole Friedy discovered ,,, if a nude model on stage represented a classic story and didn’t move, she or he could be described as holding an artistic pose and that was quite alright.
So Friedy gathered a bunch of male and female models in New York to pose still and totally nude behind some rather naff but clothed actors performing on stage. The huge audiences couldn’t give a toss about the acting but they were stunned and enthralled by the erotic and pornographic exhibition of flesh in near-still life framed behind the on-stage action. Great titillation for the men and women of the constrained 1800's.
That in a round about way leads me to Compo who, as Jimi wrote it, could “stay” in place for great “lengths” of time. (the emphasis is mine)…….
New York was not where Jimi said he first bumped into Compo though. The first time he met Friedy with Compo was in the Victorian gold fields in South Eastern Australia. Gold Rush frenzy. Every man and his son went down to Victoria to pan and dig their fortunes in what was one of the world’s biggest millionaire making opportunities.
My granddad Jimi went down and was working a stinking hot claim right next to Friedy and Compo’s claim, out Ballarat way. Bloody backbreaking work it turns out and you were always in danger of having your head blown off or your swag pinched. It was handy to have some one looking out for your security. Compo was a muscle bound piece of work with a nasty attitude who looked out for Friedy. Jimi took daily pains to make friends with Friedy hoping to share in Compo’s protection.
One of Jimi’s notes we found tells how Compo got that name. Jimi wrote, “He might have been as hard as nails and built like a brick but the bugger wouldn’t work in an iron lung. He groaned every time he straightened up and was ill disposed to any digging or panning, always whimpering about a cut or some other ailment and looking to get sympathy from Friedy”. The other blokes around started to joke that he should claim workers compensation off Friedy for all his injuries, The name Compo sort of stuck with him from then on.
There are some broad hints in Jimi’s scribblings that Compo and Friedy had a very close relationship but I can’t infer anything further than that, as, well I just can’t. But I can tell you Jimi made frequent notes of Friedy and Compo’s overly friendly touching and public embracing that re-alligned Jimi’s sensitivities.
However Friedy was a soft spoken, posh English school lad and, well, while Jimi talked about others he had met, he says no more about that side of these two.
Next point where I can get any purchase on Compo’s history is years later when both Compo and Friedy were back in Leeds with the other Savages. Evidence exists of Compo being at least one meeting in Barwick-on-Elmet and the meeting where there was a huge kerfuffle around the resignation of Eddie Bogg. In a letter Jimi got from Friedy it seems Compo was the target, if not the cause of the trouble. Friedy lamented the demise of the rule of the Savages. He wrote saying “after some discussion and drinks over cigars, the group then in attendance started to ask what could be done to improve the reach and range of the Savages. Every time the masterful Bogg offered his view on the world, a by now much frailer Compo was noticed, non too surreptitiously, to cast disapproving looks and occasionally offer a pffft in retort to one or another overly emotive point Bogg had made”.
“Finally Bogg could take no more wanton disrespect and yelled at me, pointing at Compo…. Friedy, if you don’t take your farting, flea bitten mutt out of here I’m resigning!!”
Jimi concludes all the other Savages must have quite liked the old dog Compo, and subsequent letters from Friedy indicate that Compo endured as an honorary Savage long after Bogg’s departure.
Post script.
This is all a lie of course. Compo probably got his name from composite, the stuff artists used to make shapes with, rough models of future works, it was often formed over wire to support it. In all honesty, all memories of who Compo was are lost, he/she could have been a mongrel dog, a cat or a hanger-on around the more accomplished Savage artists.
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