As for Clark, after the initial burst of relief at Jane’s death, he was utterly bereft. He wrote to Myfanwy Piper: ‘You are right – the habit of looking after Jane was not only “a labour of love” but had become a sort of addiction and I feel a desolate emptiness.’51 His lady friends rallied round: Morna Anderson, Irene Worth, Joan Drogheda and above all Mary Potter did all they could to console him and keep him busy. Those who knew Clark well saw that Jane was the love of his life and a part of his soul. Six months after her death he told Janet about a conversation with Jayne Wrightsman, ‘who hated Jane and never ceases to tell me so, which is tactless, [and] said to me yesterday “some part of you died with Jane” and added “you have lost all your sparkle”. Perhaps this is true.’52 To his daughter Colette and the rest of his family it is a profound truth that Clark never recovered from Jane’s death. In so many ways she had created him in the first half of their marriage, and in the second half she performed a ritual of protection and torment which he meekly accepted. She was ultimately the ringmaster of the curious performance with Clark and all the girlfriends. Jane had always been his excuse to disengage.
Clark busied himself as best he could, staying with old friends and finishing the second volume of his memoirs, The Other Half. John Russell mused over the title, which he felt ‘has a lingering ambiguity which I have been trying to identify. Conceivably, it is an amalgam of “how the other half lives”…and of the perfect bartender’s enquiry “The other half sir?” ’ Clark admitted that ‘I was much influenced by the thought of the barman’s enquiry.’53 The book, as he realised, could never be as amusing as the first volume – it needed to cover too many people who were still living, and he was beginning to lose his appetite for life.54 If the first volume was a work of art, he believed the second would be merely a record of events and people. In fact The Other Half is full of interest, as it covers several of the most important episodes of his life, including the war and the development of television.
Clark received the usual fan mail, and noted sardonically: ‘My statement in “The Other Half” that I did not like getting letters…seems to be the only thing that the average reader can remember in the book, and it impels him or her immediately to sit down and write me a letter.’55 The reviewers were respectful, if a little sceptical: ‘A tone of arch bemusement…each success appears under cover of a failure,’ wrote Peter Conrad in the TLS.56 The most penetrating review was by Christopher Booker, who saw Clark’s life as a magic pageant floating onwards – always being with the right people at the right time – Air Chief Marshal Newall keeping him informed about the Battle of Britain, Miss Joan Hunter Dunn happening to be in the canteen of the MoI – the actors remaining relentlessly famous, an eerie masque of waxwork animated tableaux so that ‘a feeling of terrible claustrophobia begins to mount’. Booker concluded that ‘what comes through is the self-portrait of a man, who by a steely effort of will, has subordinated everything in his life to the preservation of an almost flawless mask’.57
Clark concluded the second volume of his memoirs with a David Copperfield-like statement: ‘It now remains for me to see what I do with the rest of my life.’*7 For Janet Stone, the story from this point becomes one of tragic sadness. On the last day of 1976 Clark wrote to her: ‘the fact is that I am IN LOVE with you. I have loved you for many years, but a few weeks ago I fell in – like a child into a pond…It is an extraordinary experience to have at my age.’58 How much of this outpouring was brought on by loneliness and despair is an open question – for Clark freedom from Jane was an alarming prospect. His system of romantic attachments had always depended on safety in numbers, and now he felt dangerously exposed. Several women of course expected him to marry them. Elizabeth Kirwen-Taylor (living in nearby Hythe) was the most pressing, as he told Janet: ‘She lives in a world of fantasy except that she always wants money…I don’t know how to calm her down – she knows that I won’t marry her, but she wants to be part of the family – and the family don’t want her. It was sweet of you to say what you did about my marrying. Don’t worry. It may be that in the end solitude etc will lead me to marry but it would only be to someone who understood how much we love each other and whom you would like. But I hope it won’t have to happen for a long time. You are my love.’59
His son Colin observed that at this point ‘everything did catch up with him. “I can no longer go for a walk on my own,” he groaned. “I start thinking about all those ladies.” His compulsion for the ladies was combined with a strange detachment, and he didn’t seem to mind which one was there.’60 Clark discussed marriage with Mary Potter, but kind and adoring though she was, this was not for one minute a practical proposition – he would not have wanted to live in Aldeburgh any more than she would have wanted to leave it. As Reynolds’ health was slowly declining, Janet must have dreamed that Clark would wait and one day marry her. However, many of Clark’s friends have wondered whether this was ever really his intention, and in truth Janet appealed to him partly because she was married. Although Clark still enjoyed the relationship (and indeed his other romantic friendships), the system had been rendered insecure by Jane’s death. He needed to marry again in order to restore the equilibrium. But whom should he choose?
Clark was more of a snob than he cared to realise; he needed somebody who would be as much at home at Wilton House as at the Warburg Institute – and preferably someone with an independent life of her own, who would leave him to work and pursue his friendships. He did indeed find a suitable candidate, and it was to Janet that he broke the news: ‘The trouble is that when I’m alone I get so depressed…and I love having someone about to talk to and look after…and fortunately there is such a person – the lady I stayed with in Normandy. She is an adorable character, and would understand my feelings for you. In fact I genuinely believe (this is often said in books and plays) that you would be friends. Of course I could never love her as I do you – that is a once for all love. But I am very fond of her, and she seems to suit me and I her…although she is a bit of a chatter box, I think they [his children] will like her…I have always told Nolwen that you are my love and she understands the situation.’61
In this Clark was under a grotesque misapprehension, not only about Janet’s feelings with regard to his remarriage, but also those of his new fiancée, Nolwen Rice, about his arrangement with Janet. Meanwhile he wrote cheerfully to Colin: ‘I am writing to tell you that I am going to re-marry…I have told only one or two close friends and you can imagine that one or two of them have taken a poor view of my decision. Tant pis. It has given me something to live for.’62
* * *
*1 He was outraged when he received an academic letter from a curator at the Ipswich Museum, dated 2 April 1976, which had a large printed legend requiring all correspondence to be addressed to the Director of Recreation and Amenities at the Civic Centre. He wrote a letter to The Times on 29 April 1976, not mentioning which museum was involved, but headed ‘Big Brother’ and lamenting ‘this kind of bureaucratic surveillance’ (Tate 8812/1/4/196).
*2 Letter to Janet Stone, 4 September 1975 (Bodleian Library). There were lighter moments: ‘[Jane] can’t bear me doing things without her…she thinks up the most incredibly bitter and cruel things to say. However, last night she had to laugh – she yelled at me “I heard all your conversation with your Lady friend” (on the telephone extension). It was an old lady of 85 who lives in Saltwood and had kindly rung up to ask after Jane.’ Letter to Janet Stone, 11 June 1974 (Bodleian Library).
*3 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, Scene ii.
*4 See Chapter 13 for Lord Duveen’s reappointment as a National Gallery Trustee. Philip Allott wrote from Trinity College, Cambridge, to point out twenty-six misprints in the book. Clark responded that this was ‘indeed disgraceful’, and added that he himself had discovered a lot more. Letter, 22 December 1974 (Tate 8812/1/4/34).
*5 Levin was quoting Oliver Goldsmith’s ‘The Deserted Village’. (Unidentified American newspaper article
by Levin about Civilisation, Tate 8812/1/4/89.)
*6 At his first AGM in 1965 Clark told the members: ‘Logan Pearsall Smith, a man of letters if ever there was one, used to say that there were only two perfect institutions in the world, the Great Western Railway and the London Library. The Great Western Railway has changed; the London Library has not’ (Tate 8812/1/4/236).
*7 Clark, The Other Half, p.243. Clark’s other great accolade in 1977 was to be presented with New York City’s Gold Medal, the highest honour the city could bestow (it had not been given to anyone in the arts for twenty years) – although he ruefully commented that free taxis would have been more useful.
37
Last Years and Nolwen
I am very well looked after, but that isn’t a substitute for vitality.
KENNETH CLARK to Janet Stone, 1 August 1979
Nolwen Rice had a colourful family background. She was the elder of two daughters of Count Frédéric de Janzé, a French aristocrat from an old Norman family, and his American wife Alice, who had been an alluring and scandalous figure at the heart of the Happy Valley set in Kenya.1 Nolwen’s parents separated when she was a child, and she was partly brought up at her father’s family’s beautiful seventeenth-century château at Parfondeval in Normandy, which she eventually inherited. She left her first husband, Lionel Armand-Delille, for an Englishman with an estate in Kent, and during this second marriage divided her life between Kent and France (as she would later continue to do with Clark). Her second husband, Edward Rice, died around the same time as Jane, and bereavement drew her and Clark together.
The arrival of Nolwen came as a great surprise to Clark’s children, whose response Colin summarised: ‘my Father got married again, rather too quickly we felt, to a lady none of us knew’.2 In fact Nolwen and Clark had known each other for some time as neighbours, and there are records of the Rices coming over to lunch a number of times before Jane died. Nolwen told Roy Strong that the courtship took place after Jane’s death, over six teas. One day Clark turned to her and said, ‘You and I should be joined.’3
What was she like? Nolwen is one of those people about whom there can be no agreement. There is nobody in Kenneth Clark’s story about whom the author received such strong and partisan opinions, both for and against. She was beloved by several literary and artistic men, including the historian James Pope-Hennessy and the artist James Reeve. Roy Strong described coming under her spell one night at dinner: ‘she’s enchanting, lively, with huge beautiful eyes’.4 There was to be no love lost, however, between her and the Clark children. To Alan she was predatory, grasping and false, while to Colette she was ‘one hell of an operator’. A relation by marriage described her as ‘manipulative and mischievous, more than a match for Edward Rice – there was never a dull moment’.5 One of her Kent neighbours commented: ‘She was extrovert and amusing – she showed K off like a trophy. She was skilful and had K in her power.’ Nolwen was a great talker – some thought too much so – and Henry Moore, for one, felt she overwhelmed Clark.6 She certainly looked after him well, and there is no doubt that it was a great comfort for him to find companionship; but Nolwen wanted control over his life, and given Clark’s arrangements, this led to some bruising encounters. Consequently his last years began to take on the character of a power struggle: Nolwen wresting him from his girlfriends and from a family deeply suspicious of her; Janet Stone attempting to hold on to her relationship with him; Alan trying to maintain stewardship of the Garden House; Leonard Lindley trying to retain control of the kitchen; and Meryle Secrest attempting to piece together Clark’s past from an ever more alarmed subject. At the centre of all this was an increasingly enfeebled Clark, with Nolwen his protector and gaoler.
Clark enjoyed telling people that Nolwen was marrying down. He was, like everybody else, rather dazzled by the charm of Parfondeval. Britain in the late 1970s was a miserable, strike-bound place, the Garden House increasingly suburban – you could hear the traffic – and the pleasures of Normandy made a delightful escape. As Clark told Mary Potter: ‘The house itself is perfectly charming. It is red brick, 1620, perfectly preserved and all the rooms panelled with 17th or 18th century boiseries. An excess of furniture, as in an old French engraving. As it has belonged to my hostess’s family for 400 years, the furniture has the look of having grown up with the place.’7 Three months later he reported: ‘Celly, with her gift for telling uncomfortable truths, says that I am not marrying Nolwen but Parfondeval. Not quite true – but then I ask whether I should have married her if she lived in an ugly house in Passy, I see there is something in it.’8 There was a small estate around the château that Nolwen farmed, but it gave no impression of great wealth.
Inevitably, Janet Stone was devastated to hear of the forthcoming marriage, and the recriminations began. Clark wrote to her with extra-ordinary hypocrisy: ‘It is terrible to think that my decision has made you so unhappy. I knew how much we love one another, but I thought you had quite enough in your life – dear children, grandchildren, and a sweet husband, who is also a great artist – to fill your time and your mind. Reynolds is no longer very fit, and surely looking after him must occupy your mind. Do please, my darling, try to think of this.’9 Janet found the situation incomprehensible, as she wrote to a friend: Clark had so constantly told her she was the only one, and he cannot marry again, for that reason. She added that the day before he announced the marriage, Clark had rung three times from Normandy to hear her voice and to arrange a meeting.10 John Sparrow wrote to Clark offering to intervene, shrewdly realising that the story might not be over: ‘I hope that your apprehensions of recriminations on the part of Janet will prove groundless. You can rely on me, if the need arises, to persuade her to accept philosophically the changed – or not wholly or fundamentally changed? – position.’11
Janet buried her feelings and wrote a letter of congratulation to Nolwen, to which she received a courteous response. It was not long before they met, and in a letter to Morna Anderson Clark described Janet’s sorely mistaken assessment: ‘It has been something of an anxiety to introduce Nolwen to so many of my old friends, but as far as I can assess their responses, it has gone quite well. My favourite comment is poor Janet Stone’s “She is like a small grey mouse, scurrying about – but then I like small things.” The word “things” is particularly well chosen.’12 Sadly, Janet would soon discover that this mouse could roar. Nor was Janet the only girlfriend to be curious about Nolwen: Jayne Wrightsman rang Colette from the confidentiality of the beach hut at the Palm Beach house so that Charles should not overhear, asking ‘what on earth this was all about’.13 Of all Clark’s girlfriends the one who was most accepting and welcoming was Mary Potter. She established a warm relationship with Nolwen, who therefore had no qualms about Clark’s annual visits to Aldeburgh.
The wedding was a private ceremony attended only by family, and a few very close friends such as the Droghedas and Jock Murray, at noon on 24 November 1977 at St Etheldreda’s Catholic church in Ely Place, London. Clark’s best man was the bachelor man-about-town Burnet Pavitt, with whom he had been friends since Covent Garden days. Pavitt later told James Lees-Milne that at the altar the priest handed him a silver plate with the ring. As Pavitt fumbled to pick it up, Clark could not help himself, and began a lecture on the ring: ‘Have you ever seen a more beautiful object? It is Coptic.’ The priest admitted he hadn’t, and invited them to admire his Puginesque chasuble: ‘K duly admired. All the while the bride was waiting with outstretched finger.’14 The reception was a buffet lunch at Albany, organised by Clark’s cook Joan Dawson, who remembers: ‘At the reception he sat on the sofa between two ladies, and Catherine Porteous whispered to me, “They are two of the disappointed ones.” To my surprise Lord Clark didn’t want coffee, “No, Mrs Dawson, it is about time that they all left. I have just got married and would like to be alone with my wife.” ’15
The early part of the marriage was something of an idyll. A routine was established between Kent and Normandy, as farmin
g the estate meant that Nolwen needed to be at Parfondeval for longish periods. Life at the château was agreeable; Clark enjoyed local walks, and continued to write to Janet: ‘Life here is very pleasant, much of it spent in the kitchen. No cook or gardener, hefty woman to make beds, N cooks very well and light-heartedly, while I act as an inefficient scullion…The house is perfection, and the farm buildings and the valley really beautiful.’16 He told Janet that during the summer ‘I rise late and do a little writing, and take long walks in the very pretty countryside, and talk or sing to myself. I sing old music hall songs – chiefly George Robey – which are the ones I remember the best.’17 It soon became evident, however, that Nolwen’s health was not good, as Clark told Colette: ‘This I had not expected; Nolwen is always ill; an unexpected turn of events.’ Her ailment was explained as brucellosis – a farmers’ affliction – and as Clark wryly pointed out, it generally struck before church on Sunday.18
Back in England, Clark enjoyed introducing Nolwen to places that he loved. But life at Saltwood was more complicated. Nolwen didn’t have enough to do, and wanted to adjust the routine. This caused resentment and hurt to Lindley, who was resistant to change: ‘Lady Clark thought she understood him, but she didn’t. If I had been able to care for him, he would still be alive and I don’t care who knows it.’19 Lindley believed that Nolwen made Clark feel like a child, and infantilised him. Relations between Nolwen in the Garden House and Alan at the castle rapidly sank to freezing point. One of the main bones of contention between Nolwen and the Clark children was the contents of the Garden House. Although these would be left (apart from specific bequests) to Colette, Alan was possessive about everything at Saltwood, and there was a palpable tension on the subject.*1 Certainly a great deal of important art ended up with Nolwen, either in France or in her London flat. Clark had every right to give his new wife whatever he wanted, but as far as his children were concerned it was not without persuasion on her part.*2 Fortunately for Nolwen, Colette – the main loser – was the least acquisitive of the children, and accepted the situation with dignified restraint.
Kenneth Clark Page 52
