Clark was ambivalent about Christmas at Saltwood. On the positive side, it meant the arrival of Maurice Bowra and John Sparrow, but it also brought out Clark’s inner puritan: ‘five days of guzzling and drinking, and guests sitting doing nothing but smoke and jaw. I loathe it.’ John Sparrow was an easy guest, ‘unlike Maurice who never opens a book’.16 Clark described Bowra one Christmas: ‘He settled down to his usual talking marathon…at least 16 hours at a stretch. As Irene [Worth] was in New York, Robin Ironside had to bear the brunt of it and played up marvellously. I must say that Maurice was really adorable – so warm hearted as well as clever.’17 John Sainsbury was fascinated watching the three old friends together: ‘John, Maurice and K were very intimate and spoke in a private language.’ Colin tells how they would get out The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and challenge each other to say who wrote what and when. They would occasionally insert statements from Clark’s books to see if anybody identified them: ‘ “The great religious art of the world is deeply involved with the female principle.” “Goodness, what nonsense! Who can have said that?” “Kenneth Clark…” ’18 The main risk of Christmas week, however, was the chance of the rows that were always too apt to break out whenever the Clark family were gathered in one place.
Although the Clarks wanted nothing to do with the county set – shades of Clark’s parents in Suffolk here – he was prepared to involve himself in local causes, particularly when church repairs were involved. The village cricket pitch was on the edge of the property, and he told the club’s secretary: ‘I value my connection with the Club and would be very glad to attend your next annual general meeting.’19 They lent the castle for local cancer charity evenings, and Clark gave his support to various Canterbury Cathedral appeals.20 He would lend his name to church fund-raising, offer to write to grant-giving bodies, give a lecture or occasionally send a small cheque. When the Saltwood parish church asked for money he agreed to pay for a new altar, using a local carpenter. He was very cautious about his good causes, and as taxation eroded his disposable income he confined his giving to artists and the preservation of buildings: the Anglo-Italian historian and grandee Harold Acton was shocked when Clark refused to support an appeal for the British Institute in Florence. Although princely in his generosity to artists, Clark was by nature very thrifty – as his staff would discover. He once described himself as ‘when alone mean and punctual as any old maid in a lodging house’.21 People certainly thought Clark was richer than he was, but when they visited Saltwood that was understandable – his money was all on the walls. Besides, he had a very expensive family, constantly in need of cash.
The Clark children had grown up with very distinctive personalities. Alan and Colin demonstrated sibling rivalry to an extraordinary degree, but both boys were rather frightened of their parents. Alan always maintained that Colin had a psychological need to be conned, and on occasion took advantage of Colin’s hopelessness with money himself. During the 1950s they were in their ‘cars and girls’ phase. Both had a weakness for expensive marques, and although Jane was the first to force their father into writing a cheque when they were in trouble, in general her mantra was: ‘Don’t give the boys any money, they will only spend it on cars.’22 Alan was frequently what his parents called rébarbatif, and made his views known in strong terms, whatever the subject. He enjoyed bringing his girlfriends to meet his famous parents at Saltwood – one of them, Pam Hart, remembered trying to cut a fresh salmon on the sideboard at Saltwood through the bone, to which Clark said, ‘That’s a bold stroke, my dear.’23 In one of his letters Berenson asked Clark about the children: ‘I want news of each member of your family, particularly of the “problem-child” Alan. He fascinates me.’24
Clark indeed had important news to give BB about Alan, who was now twenty-nine years of age: ‘My dear BB I wonder if you have heard that our Alan is getting married. The whole episode is characteristic of his oddity. [Alan had fallen in love with Jane Beuttler, a fourteen-year-old girl who lived near him in Rye.] After a time the parents became alarmed, & took her away to Malta (her father is a Colonel in the Army) where, in classic style, they destroyed Alan’s letters to their daughter, and hers to him. However, when she came back they were equally devoted to each other, and soon after her 16th birthday Alan came to us and said that he wanted us to meet someone whom he wanted to marry. The first we had heard of her, of course. Fortunately she turned out to be most attractive – charming to look at and with none of the silliness or self-consciousness of most young girls. So we spurred him on, and her parents consented, and the marriage takes place on the 31st of this month. It seems to me no more chancy than any other marriage. Alan is capable of great devotion, and will really try to look after his little shrimp.’25 The bride’s parents, after a long pause, had finally agreed to the wedding, realising, as her father put it to Clark, ‘You might as well try to stop Arab nationalism,’ a remark he much enjoyed.26 The reception took place at the Arts Council in St James’s Square. Clark became very fond of his daughter-in-law. He told Janet that Alan was ‘a strange mixture of childishness and maturity. Lots of brains, and lots of prejudice…little Jane is like a crisp little bird – a dipper or something of the sort. She has lots of sense and misses nothing.’27
Clark was surprised, exasperated and amused by Alan, who he realised had much of his own boisterous father in him. Colin on the other hand was a gentler character, although just as predatory as his brother with women. Where Alan would settle down to become a military historian and later a politician, Colin’s career in the film business was more fractured. Denis Forman, who gave him a job at Granada, described him thus: ‘Col had all the family charm – underrated by the family – but he was too rich. However, he worked beautifully for me. Col had a very sweet disposition, a little effeminate with no fire in his belly. He was not a good producer as he wasn’t tough enough. Col was afraid of K – he would duck a phone call or writing a letter.’28 Colin was in perpetual financial crisis, and would eventually pluck up the courage to approach his father, who would look very grave and listen carefully and then think for a while: ‘Yes, Col that is bad…that is very bad.’ And then he would go back to writing on his knee, but at this point Jane would intervene and come bursting in with, ‘Colin needs a cheque K.’ He hated writing cheques, but he could refuse Jane nothing.29 Colin had always been Jane’s favourite, and was protected as such, but he also had the capacity to destabilise her, as his father knew only too well: ‘Col called in on the way to France and that always ends in tears literally, for hours. He is such a dear, but his Mama is too fond of him, and grows hysterical from 12 hours before he is due to arrive.’30
Clark’s ambivalence about his younger son (and absence of parental support) emerged when Colin fell in love with and wanted to marry the rising ballet star Violette Verdy.31 Clark told Janet: ‘At first sight a typical well-brought up French girl, but on further acquaintance very intelligent and perceptive. I quite see why her friends in New York are furiously saying that she is too good for Col.’32 As the day neared, his premonitions got worse: ‘Oh dear I do pray that all goes well – I wouldn’t be in Violette’s shoes for all the tea in China.’33 The wedding took place at Saltwood parish church – where there was a scuffle between the two organists over the wedding march – followed by a grand reception at the castle. It was the first time the castle’s resources had been extended. ‘Everybody seemed happy,’ Clark commented, ‘but I was not.’34 His worst fears came to pass, and the marriage came to a rapid end. Colin was to marry twice again: the first time, for over a decade, to Faith Wright, the half-sister of his best friend Tim Rathbone;35 and the second to Helena Siu Kwan, who survived him.
Colin’s twin Colette had a successful career as a director of the Royal Opera House. She was the only one of the children that Clark loved unreservedly; his affection was reciprocated, but this carried an inevitable price with Jane. She and Colette could not get on with each other at all until 1967, when Colette gave birth out of wedl
ock to a son, Sam, by the painter Tony Fry. This was a brave choice at a time when illegitimacy still carried a social stigma, and the Clark parents, for all their liberalism, subscribed to such conventions. But after the initial shock they gave her their full support, as she told her godfather, Maurice Bowra: ‘The old Clarks behaved better than I have ever known them – totally understand all my feelings, believed I had made the right decisions. Mama even took the thought of telling the servants completely in her stride.’36
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The Clarks’ London apartment at B5 Albany was on the second floor, and consisted of four rooms: hall, sitting room with double doors to the bedroom, and a tiny lavatory with three Constable drawings in it.37 It was far from luxurious – the kitchen and bathroom were the same room. The bath had a hinged lid which came down to make a workspace for the cook, Joan Dawson, who would come in about once a week: ‘I started with the oldest gas stove you have ever seen,’ and sometimes ‘Sir Kenneth would be shaving at one end of the kitchen while I was scraping potatoes at the other end.’38 Mrs Dawson adored her boss: ‘He had the most charming manners imaginable. Jane was also charming but less reliable and her manners became more charming as she became drunker. He would very much enjoy talking to me about the art in the flat. When you watch Civilisation that was exactly what he was like.’
Clark made most of the arrangements, and Mrs Dawson still has the menu book with the names of the guests, and what they ate: Cecil Beaton with Francis Watson, director of the Wallace Collection (pheasant pâté, grilled sole parsley butter, salad fennel and butter, lemon sorbet), Duncan Grant (prawn Sicilian, kidneys Lorraine, strawberry sorbet), and the Duchess of Westminster (eggs Mimosa, escalope with cream beans, peas, new potatoes, green salad, raspberry sorbet). She recalls: ‘Lady Clark would bring the principal guest into the kitchen to say thank you. Sometimes they were absolutely charming, like Sir Ralph Richardson, who concealed a £20 tip. Others, like the American Ambassador, Walter Annenberg, looked bored beyond belief and were astonished to be taken into such a lowly kitchen merely to meet the cook. Sidney Nolan once sent a painting of a cyclamen as a thank-you after lunch and Sir Kenneth said, “I think this belongs to both of us,” and put it up in the kitchen.’39
Gill Ross came to work for Clark at Albany in 1960. ‘There was an advertisement in the personal column of The Times that Sir Kenneth Clark was looking for a PA. No salary was mentioned but there were 120 replies. K was by nature very tight with money. I worked on Landscape Into Art and only really got paid by the TV company when it was turned into a programme, as I was the researcher. K said, “When I put letters on that bed, I don’t want you to answer them.” They were all begging letters, of which there were dozens. Jane was always interfering, and she did exactly what suited Jane.’40 Clark was forgiving when things went wrong: ‘I once lost the manuscript for a lecture (K always wrote by hand), and he was very kind about it, but he had to rewrite the whole thing.’41
When not lunching at home Clark would go out to a restaurant, at which he would choose his guests’ food: Wheeler’s in Jermyn Street, Overton’s in St James’s, the Brompton Grill in Knightsbridge or the Ivy near Covent Garden. Dover sole was his preferred main course, and he never chose expensive wine. Henry Moore’s daughter Mary recalled: ‘Henry and K would meet every week if they were in London at the Café Royal Grill Room, where they always had a corner table. Afterwards they might view a saleroom, and once bought a Kuba mask after lunch.’42 In the evenings when in London Clark occasionally went to a music hall, a hangover from childhood, and was known to go to the Victoria Palace to watch the Crazy Gang. He rarely enjoyed official dinners or dinner parties, but usually accepted invitations to foreign embassies, despite the attendant risks – Jane fell off every embassy chair in London, occasions known to the family as her ‘tumbling’.
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Jane, meanwhile, was bored, lonely and spoilt. She had no female friends, and her admirers had moved on; she presents an increasingly sad picture. Apart from the garden at Saltwood she had few interests beyond her husband’s work, of which she was both proud and censorious. She worshipped and tormented him in equal measure. Both Clarks were hypochondriacs, and consequently many of their letters concern health. In 1952 Jane became very ill with one of her unspecified problems, and spent a long time recovering at a convent nursing home. Clark always knew that for him, ‘action is the healthiest drug, and I dread the various forms of melancholia which accompany inaction’. Although he was only fifty-three, he told Janet in March 1957: ‘The trouble is that I know I have jumped down from one ledge to another – for growing old is a series of jumps – how I wish I had known you two ledges higher.’43 Jane was only too aware that she had many rivals, but how far did she know that her aggression was driving her husband away? No doubt her behaviour was aggravated by his affairs, but she behaved in a similar fashion towards her children. Clark poured out his troubles to Janet: ‘Family affairs still rather uneasy owing to J’s appetite for tragic scenes, which has been stirred up lately and so is prepared to seek nourishment anywhere.’44 He had both work and girlfriends for consolation, but Jane had nothing except alcohol; it was an unhappy reminder of his father’s fate.
The presence of the children usually made Jane even worse: ‘In fact it was the first time for years that all five of us have been together for a few days without some sort of flaming row blowing up – always started by Jane, who seems to feel a psychological hunger for such manifestations.’45 Only when she had a few drinks inside her did Jane calm down and become sweet; she would carry her ‘cough medicine’ in her handbag. Colin makes the point that ‘My father never failed to support my mother, never. He was always worried about her, when he was away filming he rang her, wrote to her every day. He was completely obsessed with keeping her in as good a shape as he possibly could’46 – although he was not above giving her a drink so as to be able to get on with his work. He liked a strong whisky himself in the evening, and realised that to take Jane off alcohol would mean abstention for them both.
Clark was certainly gallant towards Jane when she fell off chairs in public, and various medical excuses would be offered. Many were surprised and impressed by his patience, but she had invested her life in his greatness, and she would use whatever hold she could over him. Jane was unpredictable – John Mallet wrote of the ‘total worship (nauseating to outsiders like ourselves) he gets from his wife’,47 but the next minute she would be encouraging a young museum official to disagree with her husband: ‘That’s right, don’t let him get away with it.’48 She had a tendency to show off – Alan Pryce-Jones recalled once meeting her in the forecourt of Albany when she was about to go to Sweden, and offering her a friend to look up: ‘Oh,’ said Jane, ‘do give us a letter. We should love to meet some ordinary people. We never see anybody in Sweden but the King.’*3 Clark continued to nurse tender feelings towards her, and quoted Thomas Browne: ‘Then I think of my poor Jane “as for this world I count it not as an inn, but as a hospital, and a place not to live but to die in”.’49
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Outside the family, the dominating figure in Clark’s life during the 1950s and 60s was Janet Stone. The letters they exchanged are like no others that he wrote; they have the candour and freshness of new love, but through them we also follow his marital torments and professional anxieties. For Clark they were a safety valve through which he let off steam – or as Janet herself put it, ‘I was his sink.’ She allowed him to be himself, and he would confess to her: ‘Your dear letter found me in the depths of gloom – you mustn’t think I am anything but a weak, selfish, fraud. I spend my life breaking promises and letting people down – often out of sheer inertia.’50 The letters are also the first time that he wrote substantially about himself, a first draft at autobiography.
Did Clark love Janet? No doubt he believed it when he wrote that he did, although he was never blind to her eccentricities: ‘Janet is really a bit of a goose,’ he would tell his secretary Catherine Porteous. She was amus
ing, original, and something of a lion-hunter, who enjoyed having artistic giants like Benjamin Britten and Iris Murdoch to stay at Litton Cheney. Her letters to him are charming accounts of her daily happenings, often written in the form of a diary with interspersions of ‘darling, O MY DARLING I do love you so’. Clark would flatter Janet, a little smugly, by comparing her letters to those of the celebrated seventeenth-century correspondent Lady Dorothy Temple, but a chilling aspect of the story is that he did not always bother to read them – Catherine Porteous found a large box of them unopened at Albany after his death.51
This did not deter Clark from writing: ‘I think a lot of our feelings for one another – what Henry James would have called our predicament. There is no doubt at all what has happened, the only question is, what will happen – and then I agree with you that nothing can take away a profound sympathy which we felt (I think) from the first moment.’52 What Janet probably never understood until it was too late was Clark’s ‘system’ of keeping several lady friends going at once – the fulfilment of Golly. Crucially, it provided the safety in numbers which was so important for both his protection and that of Jane. The relationship with Janet worked in precisely the manner that had evolved: letters and a monthly meeting in London. It is questionable whether Clark ever had any real intention of changing this routine, as time would reveal.
Clark would ask Janet to write to Albany, where Jane was less likely to intercept letters.*4 Telephone calls were also monitored: ‘There is so much I can’t say that in the end I say nothing. For years all telephone calls at Hampstead were listened in to (it isn’t so easy at Salters where we have a different system) so that I got into the way of being very cagey to everyone.’53 When in 1956 Clark went for the first time to stay (alone) with Janet and Reynolds Stone in Dorset, he was enchanted by their old rectory and the life it sustained: ‘It was as the Italians say “quattro passi nelle nuvole”*5…I had a feeling I thought never to experience again. First love plus happy childhood.’54 He recognised at Litton Cheney the same civilised values of lives dedicated to art that he found with the Pipers at Fawley Bottom. Reynolds Stone was the supreme wood engraver of his generation, and the house was a temple to all the things he and Janet held dear – printing presses, poetry, art, music and a romantic wild garden. Did Reynolds mind the liaison between Janet and Clark? He was a loveable, intensely shy man, wrapped up in his obsessions, and he was pleased for her that she had found such a brilliant admirer.55
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