Youth and Studies
When Jackie was sixteen years old, she graduated from high school and started her college studies. Through a grant from Essex County she could enter the Central School of Art & Design in London. Each student had a personal profile of studies. Jackie focused on life drawing, illustration, sculpture and calligraphy. Once a week she would spend a day in Regents Park Zoo to draw animals – of course, under college supervision.
Jackie, back row second from left, member of the tennis club
In the beginning she travelled each day from home by train via Bishops Stortford to London and back. However, because this proved very cumbersome and resulted in many late night home comings, she was happy to discover the Boltons. This was a hostel for girls and young women, run by the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary. Most inmates of the Boltons came from abroad, from Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, but also from as far as India, Latin America and West Africa. During her stay at the Boltons Jackie made many international friends.
At weekends Jackie would often return home to stay with her parents. And during the summer holidays she would join the family which, more often than not, met up with Jackie’s grandparents on her father’s side who owned a lovely house on the southern banks of the Blackwater river. There Jackie would often join her father who, like many in the Clackson clan, was keen sailor.
Jackie has recorded one of her adventures on the Blackwater estuary in Imp, her father’s small sailing boat. I let her speak in her own words.
Once upon a time . . .
“I must have been about sixteen when I decided to sail alone for the first time. I thought that if I sailed up the estuary as the tide came in, I could make it around Osea Island before the tide turned, uncovering the wide mud flats which would make it impossible later to sail so far.
Mainsail and jib fluttered in the steady breeze as I pushed Imp out into the water. No one was on shore as I set off. ‘I won’t tell them where I’m going,’ I thought, ‘in case I don’t get very far’.
The loneliness of being only me out there was overwhelming at first but with plenty to do I became absorbed in sailing. The wind was fresh and the long tacks across the estuary made Imp heel over so that I had to sit well out to keep her balanced. My hands were full with the tiller, mainsheet and jib. I didn’t feel lonely any more, felt part of the world around me, at one with the tremendous power of wind and wave, understood why it was that people came to love the sea and boats so much.
My little dinghy seemed to take on a personality of her own as she bucked up and down over the waves. I sang in time to the beating water. The wind dropped as I rounded Osea Island. I could see the sun shining on the Club House far on the other shore.
The sails hung limp. Then a shiver of wind came over the water – but not from the West as before. I looked again at the shore. The Club House had disappeared in shadow, shadow from a large cloud coming towards me from the South. The wind had changed and a squall was on its way.
I knew these squalls, they came in with a rush and to be caught in one unawares was not funny. I had to act fast. Jib down. No time to reef the mainsail. Already hard spots of rain were stinging into the water around and soaking through my shirt.
If I close hauled now, I wouldn’t be heavy enough to keep Imp upright — if I make for the other side I’ll be driven onto the mud on a falling tide. To run with it was the only thing but would I be able to control the mainsail?
I swung the tiller over as the wind hit us. Instantly Imp came alive with the force of the storm behind her. She leapt out of the water and rose over the waves with a strange humming sound I hadn’t heard before.
I crouched on the floor keeping balance, my hand sensitive to every movement of the rudder now … my heart was pounding with the sick fear of being helplessly alone in something I couldn’t stop.
‘Eyes on the mast never look back at a following sea’ … my father’s words ringing in my memory made sense now. My mind was on the sail. If only she doesn’t gybe! Once, twice, the boom lifted as if to hurl itself across. It was the one thing I dreaded. ‘Don’t gybe, don’t you gybe!’, I yelled at the little boat through the shrieking wind as we rushed along.
The squall blew past. We were left with a steady wind and I could breathe again. The only sounds now were the plaintive cry of a curlew and the lappity-lap of water against the clinker built hull.
The shingle felt firm when I stepped out on to the shore. It seemed as if I had been on a long long voyage.
‘Where did you go?’, they asked.
‘Oh … just around Osea!’, I replied casually as if it was something I did every day. It was hard to explain to them the years I had travelled in those few hours on my own with a boat and the sea.”
Studies
When Jackie was twenty years old, in 1957, she completed her studies at the Central School of Art & Design, acquiring the National Diploma in Design. It was signed by the Minister and Undersecretary of Education. Since her specialization lay in illustration, she worked for a firm based in Leicester Square, London, for one year. The firm produced commercial packaging material decorated with suitable designs. But the job did not really interest her. She felt she would be happier as an art teacher.
So from 1959 to 1961 she studied at London University Goldsmith’s College where she completed the Intermediate Examination in Art and Crafts, and eventually obtained the Art Teacher’s Certificate (ATC) which is equivalent to a BA in Education. That same autumn she started teaching art at St. Mary’s Catholic Girls School in Bishop Stortford.
However, meanwhile there had been another major development in her life.
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