Clark went out to America in November 1969 to help the promotion, but his most momentous visit was the following year.*1 The story is best told in his own words. When he arrived in Washington, J. Carter Brown, the young new director of the National Gallery, warned him, ‘For God’s sake don’t go in through the front door. You’ll be mobbed.’ He was quietly taken to a press conference. ‘After it was over I was led back…so that I might walk the whole length of the gallery upstairs. It was the most terrible experience of my life. All the galleries were crammed full of people who stood up and roared at me, waving their hands and stretching them out towards me. It is quite a long walk and about half way through I burst into tears at the sheer pressure of emotion. I thought “What do I feel like? I feel like some visitor to a plague-stricken country, who has been mistaken for a doctor.” ’13
On the platform he managed to control himself while ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ was played, and he then gave a speech which he judged important enough to print as an appendix to his memoirs: ‘ “Give all to love,” your great underrated poet [i.e. Ralph Waldo Emerson] said. It’s true of education as well as of life. And the first advice I would give to any young person is, when you fall in love with Roman baroque or the letters of Montaigne…give up everything to study that one, all-absorbing theme of the moment, because your mind is in a plastic condition.’14 It was Clark’s own version of Walter Pater’s exhortation ‘to burn always with a hard gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life’. After the speech he excused himself ‘and retired to the “gents” where I burst into tears. I sobbed and howled for a quarter of an hour. I suppose politicians quite enjoy this kind of experience, and don’t get it often enough. The Saints certainly enjoyed it, but saints are very tough eggs. To me it was utterly humiliating. It simply made me feel like a hoax.’15
What are we to make of this extraordinary passage? If the visit of King George V to the National Galley in March 1934 was the high point in the life of the young Kenneth Clark, this was surely the climactic moment of the second half of his life. But the older, more reflective man no longer had the assurance to carry it off. All his life Clark had preached the gospel of art to as many as would listen, yet now he was unable to bear the mass adulation he received in response. Did he really see himself as the hoaxer he claimed? More probably he saw himself as an unworthy messenger – he was only too aware that there were better men in the world: more virtuous, more scholarly, more useful; and above all there were the artists, writers and composers who produced the great works of art that he had attempted to describe. But he also knew that he had succeeded in bringing their achievements for the first time to a great many people.
Civilisation was now sold to broadcasting companies all over the world. Catherine Porteous remembers Clark saying that ‘the French and Italians were sniffy about it, because they were too jolly grand to be lectured about culture by a Briton’.16 The French were indeed the last to buy, and although Clark did a special recording of the whole series in their language, in the end French television had an actor dub the episodes. He had a particularly difficult time while promoting the series in Cologne, where he believed his German would be adequate to take part in a television discussion with two professors, who ‘talked such nonsense that I had great difficulty in keeping my temper’. They did not want to look back into history at all: ‘You must not refer to the past. German youth wishes to forget that it ever existed.’17 To make matters worse, ‘the head of the documentary department said he would resign if the Civilisation programmes were put on, because they were an insult to the intelligence of German youth’.18 Clark was very shaken by this, and later told the students of York University about it, as an example of how minds could become closed.
The international success of Civilisation made Clark realise the inadequacy of his contract with the BBC, through which he earned very little from the highly profitable foreign sales. He was particularly vexed when he discovered that, for the purposes of foreign rights, the BBC considered all of Europe one country, as were Australia and New Zealand: ‘Australia and New Zealand are not the same country. They are a thousand miles apart, with completely different television stations.’19 He wrote a measured but angry letter to David Attenborough, and another to Pat Outram, using Jane as a pretext: ‘It worries me that I said anything critical about the BBC. I had really made up my mind to never mention the subject again but unfortunately Jane feels rather strongly about it.’20 Clark told Janet Stone he was ‘in polite correspondence with the BBC about payment for my CBS programme in the US. They have offered £257-10-10 having sold it for £250,000.’21 There was little Attenborough could do, so Clark concluded the correspondence: ‘I do not feel very well disposed towards your contracts department or Television Enterprises, but towards everyone else in the BBC I feel as warmly as ever.’22 He would never work with the BBC on another series.
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One of the many surprises surrounding Civilisation was the extraordinary success of the book of the series. As Clark told one correspondent: ‘I never intended it to become a book at all – it was simply the libretto of an intellectual soap-opera.’23 The scripts were in fact published in the highbrow BBC magazine The Listener each week as the episodes were broadcast. Clark felt that without music, such as ‘The Marseillaise’ and the prisoners’ chorus from Fidelio, the chapters would lose too much to be made into a book. Jane was also adamantly opposed, feeling that his conversational tone would not carry onto the page; but then she changed her mind. ‘Jane was much against the project but now sees that the resulting “book” would be a useful Christmas present for eg her tailor, and is in favour,’24 Clark told Janet. Another argument in favour of a book was to publish the ‘credo’, which continued to be in public demand – instead of sending out more printed copies of it, Clark could simply advise people to go and buy the book. Clark’s publisher John Murray joined forces with the BBC, and a contract was drawn up on 1 August 1969 which gave Clark 10 per cent on the first ten thousand UK sales, rising to 15 per cent after twenty-five thousand.25 In America the publisher was Harper & Row. There was much discussion over the cover. Clark wanted Raphael’s School of Athens, but Michael Gill was worried that this would make it look too much like an art book. Other suggestions were the front of Notre Dame, the Celtic Cross at Iona, or a medieval Paris tapestry. Gill finally agreed that the Raphael was probably the best image, but successfully argued that it be strengthened by showing only a detail.26
The book was published in December 1969, and signed copies were sent to John Betjeman, Janet Stone, Marie Rambert, Maurice Bowra, David Knowles, the King of Sweden, Lord Crawford, John Sparrow and Lord and Lady Drogheda among others. Over the next decade it was to sell one and a half million copies, mostly in America.27 ‘The commercial success of the book has saved me from bankruptcy,’ Clark admitted, ‘but otherwise I am sorry I ever did it.’28 He felt that the book did his reputation as an art historian no good. As he told Peter Quennell, ‘There must be something wrong with any best seller.’29
His greatest unhappiness, however, was over the French edition. Claudine Lounsbery, an intellectual French admirer married to a rich American, sponsored the French translation and offered it to Éditions Hermann, a Parisian art publisher owned by Pierre Berès. Clark saw the French edition as very much in the tradition of André Malraux’s books (which is probably what Berès hoped), with their ‘choses inattendues’. Lounsbery tried six translators before settling on André de Vilmorin. Clark wrote to Vilmorin to say that while his translation was more Classical and purer than the original, it had missed all his irony – ‘this sense of irony I believe I learned from a great French writer, now despised, Anatole France’.30 He was sharper to John Murray, calling the translation ‘dry and pedestrian’. Worse was to come; Clark was finding Berès generally difficult to deal with, but the final straw was the chosen cover, showing the two hands from Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam in opposite corners, printed in red and purple. Clark to
ld Berès he found it ‘extremely distasteful and distressing…in a popular (not to say vulgar) style’.31 Lounsbery ended up taking Berès to court, where she won her case and the edition was dropped.
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When Civilisation was first screened Clark was much in demand for interviews. The beautiful young Joan Bakewell was chosen to do a major television piece with him, which made him more than a little apprehensive, as he told Janet: ‘Film interview all day on Friday, with a fearfully highbrow young woman, whom I have often seen on TV and taken a great dislike to – I must conquer it – she says she wants an interview “in depth”!! I have none.’32 In the event the filming went well, and Bakewell was not as disapproving as he had feared. She ‘turned out to be a good deal simpler than she seemed and enthusiastic about Salters’.33 Under her gentle interrogation his manner became eager and flirtatious, and he cast a golden light on his childhood, which he claimed was ‘blissfully happy’.34 This came as a great surprise to his family, who had always been regaled with tales of how miserable he had been. However, he had already published an elegiac account of his early years in Suffolk, ‘The Other Side of the Alde’ (1963), as part of a tribute for his friend Benjamin Britten’s fiftieth birthday. He was already rewriting the story of his life.
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Among the many couples who had settled down on Sunday evenings to watch Civilisation were the Prime Minister and his wife. Legend has it that Mary Wilson rose from the sofa at the end of one episode and declared, ‘Harold, that man must go to the House of Lords.’ True or not, Wilson wrote to Clark in May 1969: ‘I think you have something important to say and I should like you to have the opportunity of this particular forum in which to say it…I should like you to know that there is nothing political in this recommendation. Where you take your place in the House of Lords is a matter entirely for you.’*2 Clark later told an interviewer: ‘My father always said nobody with a peerage had ever written to him except to ask for money. But Harold Wilson wrote to me one of his wheedling letters – he wrote very good wheedling letters – and I thought it would be high hat not to accept.’35 In fact Clark did have doubts, as he told Michael Gill: ‘I suppose I didn’t like the idea of being finally and unmistakably branded as a member of the Establishment.’36 He was suffering from the peculiarly English perception that he did not belong to the establishment, and did not want to, when it was obvious to everybody that he was already at the heart of it. On the other hand, he also told his old friend Lord Crawford, ‘I think the institution [the House of Lords] is a good one, and it would have been arrogant to refuse.’ He stated his intention of sitting on the politically neutral cross benches, ‘as I wouldn’t be myself to sit with the Tories and I would frequently disagree with Labour’.37
Clark required two sponsors to introduce him to the House, and chose Lords Goodman and Crawford – the former instead of Rab Butler, who was unable to attend. His introduction was set for 12 November 1969. Lord Goodman wrote reassuring him that ‘the only thing one needs to learn is how not to trip up in one’s skirt in going upstairs. The rest of the ritual a small and mentally deficient child could master in a very few minutes.’38 Clark chose the title Lord Clark of Saltwood, but the press immediately dubbed him ‘Lord Clark of Civilisation’ – a joke at first, but it seemed so natural and right that the moniker stuck. (His detractors, with Douglas Cooper at the forefront, altered this to ‘Lord Clark of Trivialisation’, which the satirical magazine Private Eye adopted.)
Friends wrote to congratulate him on his new honour. Owen Morshead looked back: ‘How long ago it seems, and is, since Berenson’s high-roofed Rolls brought you to Windsor – according me precedence, I suppose, over almost every one of those who are writing to you this morning.’39 In fact he was surpassed in this by both John Sparrow and Maurice Bowra, the latter writing: ‘Our Age has many faults, but it is much less philistine than the Edwardian, and in this you have played an enormous part.’40 Clark’s main motivation for accepting the peerage was that he would be able to stand up for the arts, and indeed his maiden speech in the House of Lords was about museum charges: ‘This is not a financial proposition at all. It is a moral–social proposition: People must pay for their enjoyments. But in that case, as has already been said, why not charge for admission to parks, which are also kept up by public money? The answer is that too many people enjoy them to make this a politically acceptable proposal.’41
In the years that immediately followed Civilisation Clark was overwhelmed with offers of degrees and other honours. American organisations in particular queued up to present him with their medals and awards, all citing – as did, for instance, the Fairmont Art Association of Philadelphia – Civilisation and its contribution to the public understanding of art (he refused this offer, like many others, as graciously as he could). Academies as far away as Honolulu were eager to bestow their honours on him, and rather than hurt their feelings he would usually accept, as long as this did not involve travel. One honour that gave him enormous pleasure was his invitation to become a member of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1974 (and in 1980 a member of the Académie des Arts et des Lettres).*3 Clark had always been strongly, if not uncritically, Francophile, and he certainly felt the superiority in many respects of French intellectual and artistic life. His old school and his Oxford college both honoured him, the former with the Ad Portas ceremony,*4 the latter with an Honorary Fellowship. At Winchester he spoke in praise of his old headmaster, Monty Rendall, whom he believed alone of his teachers ‘would not have been completely shocked by the thought of this occasion’.42
By 1970 Clark had been awarded eleven honorary degrees; but of all his academic accolades, he was most surprised and delighted to be offered the chancellorship of York University. It was the Vice-Chancellor, Eric James, Lord James of Rusholme, who proposed the position to Clark in 1969.43 As the first Vice-Chancellor of the new university, James had established a collegiate system and vigorously promoted individual excellence and meritocracy. He was a socialist who believed in elites, as did Clark, who wrote: ‘I am delighted about the Chancellorship of York, partly because I like York, and partly because I have a great liking for the Vice-Chancellor; but also because New Universities seem to me our best hope.’44 He compared York University under Eric James to Urbino under Federigo da Montefeltro, calling it ‘the most perfect small educational unit in England’.45 Rab Butler offered Clark some characteristic wisdom: ‘I am Chancellor of two universities and I will give you a piece of advice: go as seldom as possible and never speak to a university society.’ Clark reported this to Eric James, adding, ‘I do not hold with the first, but I see there is a grain of wisdom in the second.’46 As Chancellor Clark went up to York at least once a year to bestow degrees and give an inspiring speech on a humanist subject such as ‘The Individual’ or ‘The Conduct of Life’. One of the pleasures of the chancellorship was the bestowal of honorary degrees, and over time he honoured the American journalist Walter Lippmann, Julien Cain (Administrateur-Générale of the Bibliothèque Nationale),47 Lord Crawford, Sidney Nolan and David Knowles. However, the chancellorship was not to prove the quiet sinecure that he might have wished. Student unrest had spilled over into the new decade, and there were several dramas – one in May 1974, when students went on strike after cheating had been alleged, and another in February 1976 which involved the knocking down of the front door and occupation of the Senate House after a dispute over exam results. Despite these situations, which were well handled by Eric James, Clark enjoyed his role at York, standing down only after a decade in the post.
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Civilisation had two broader side-effects. First, the number of museum visitors began to rise, a turning point after which museums and galleries became vehicles of mass culture rather than high culture. One of Clark’s successors as director of the National Gallery, Charles Saumarez Smith, has observed, ‘suddenly you had huge numbers of people looking at paintings…if you look at visitor numbers at the National Gallery they were under a
million, but from that point [Civilisation] onwards there was a self-perpetuating increase’.48
The second effect was the change in television itself: the realisation that big series were more successful if they were ‘authored’. Civilisation firmly established this new genre, and it was the BBC which immediately capitalised on the lessons learned. David Attenborough recalls ‘a visit from the head of science programmes…absolutely outraged by the success. Aubrey Singer, head of that side of the BBC’s factual output, thumped on my door and came in and said I ought to be ashamed of myself, I am a man of science and you have given this great opportunity to arts. What are you playing at? That was fine by me, and there and then we agreed to do The Ascent of Man [with Jacob Bronowski] – then followed that with a history of America [with Alistair Cooke]. I could see as a broadcaster that the thing that was crying out for it was natural history…so I resigned, and one of the reasons for resigning was in order to be able to do a successor – which was actually a series called Life on Earth.’49
These superb series established the BBC once and for all as the greatest maker of documentary series in the world. But curiously, although they (and John Kenneth Galbraith on Economics) were all brilliant and popular, none has quite achieved the cult status of Civilisation, apart from Attenborough’s. I have myself been constantly made aware by museum curators, teachers, academics and others of how their lives were changed by watching the series, and how it gave them their first proximate idea of the history of art. It is also a truism that while the series has gone up and down in critical favour, the panjandrums at the BBC have been searching ever since for ‘the new Civilisation’.
Clark himself wanted to get back to his work: ‘by now I am anxious only to be left alone in order to write a few more books’.50 He had plenty of new projects to interest him – two new television series and an increasingly public role as a conservationist. In fact, as he told Jock Murray, ‘I have developed a sort of “Civi sickness” just as people working in the goldmines in Australia get fly sickness.’51
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