Only now, for the first time, did Ida and Dorelia acknowledge that they could not contain Augustus. He was not proposing to leave them, simply to add to their number. He made no secret of it. ‘John is taking a studio in Montmartre, where he thinks of installing two women he has found in England,’ Wyndham Lewis confided to his mother; ‘and I think John will end by building a city, and being worshipped as sole man therein, – the deity of Masculinity.’74
It was Dorelia who resolved that she wanted no place in this city. Once Romilly was three or four months old, she would ‘buzz off’.75 Ida too would have liked to leave. Her predicament is set out poignantly in a letter she wrote from Ste-Honorine to the Rani:
‘Dearest, daily and many times a day I think I must leave Augustus. Isn’t it awful? I feel so stifled and oppressed. If I had the money I think I really should do it – but I can’t leave him and take his money – and I can’t keep the kids on what I have – and if I left the kids I should not find peace – you must not mind these confidences, angel. It is nothing much – I haven’t the money so I must stay, as many another woman does. It isn’t that Aug is different or unkind. He is the same as ever and rather more considerate in many ways. It’s the mental state – I don’t understand it and probably I should be equally slavish – No – I know I am freer alone. However one has lucid moments anywhere. Don’t think me miserable. All this is a sign of health. But it’s a pity one’s got to live with a man. I shall have to get back home sooner or later – not meaning 28 Wigmore Street and it doesn’t matter as long as I don’t arrive a lunatic. It’s awful to be lodged in a place where one can’t understand the language and where the jokes aren’t funny. Why did I ever go there? Because I did – because there lives a King I had to meet and love. And now I am bound hand and foot darling how will it end? By death or escape? And wouldn’t escape be as bad a bondage? Would one find one’s way… ’
At the end of September they all left Ste-Honorine and returned to the rue Dareau where the flowerbeds in their little garden had now been dug into mud-holes by the children. ‘I get fits of depression about every two hours – alternately intervals of malign joy,’ Augustus confessed to Alick. ‘Paris is a queen of cities but I think Smyrna would suit me better.’ Next moment he hankered after Italy – the Italians were surely the finest people in the world, and besides, he would be able to see in Italy ‘my darling Piero della Francesca’. Genoa might suit him, of course, or ‘Shall we go to Padua?’ he asked Alick. But even before his invitation had arrived, several new brainwaves were upon him: ‘I am inclined to take refuge in Bucharest at the nearest, to seek serenity in some Balkan insurrection, or danger in a Gypsy tent, or inevitable activity in Turkistan… I am horribly aware of the power of Fate to-night.’ This self-destructive urge quickly passed and, in a more hibernating mood, he suddenly inquired: ‘Perhaps I may depend on you for warmth this winter… I feel that once back in London I shall never leave it.’ By now Alick was thoroughly confused. What really was happening? Augustus was astonished at her question. Surely everything was perfectly clear. ‘As to my coming to London, is it not already definitely arranged?’ he demanded. ‘Haven’t I said jusqu’à l’automne a dozen times? And is not my word unimpeachable – am I not integrity itself?’
He did return to London that October, while Dorelia prepared to move off the following month. Only Ida was to stay on at the rue Dareau – with her pack of boys, and two quarrelling servants. Her bondage there was now tighter than ever for, to add to the complications, Clara had become pregnant.
And, since it was her turn, Ida herself was again pregnant.
6
‘HERE’S TO LOVE!’
‘It was more circumstances than anyone’s fault.’
Ida John to Alice Rothenstein (August 1905)
For the next six months, between October 1906 and the spring of the following year, Augustus, Ida and Dorelia tried for the last time to find a scheme of separate co-existing ways of life.
For Augustus the first taste of this new regime was indeed sweet. His depression lifted like clouds at evening, and exhilaration blazed through. The world was a grand mixed metaphor and he stood, in superb uncertainty, an extended simile at its centre. ‘I feel recurrent as the ocean waves,’ he noticed on arriving in London, ‘blue as the sky, ceaseless as the winds, multitudinous as a bee-hive, ardent as flames, cold as an exquisite hollow cave, generous and as pliant as a tree, aloof and pensive as an angel, tumultuous as the obscenest of demons...’76
But how long would this combination of feelings persist? Augustus himself was as confident as a boy. ‘I no longer suffer from the blues,’ he told Alick, ‘and my soul seems to have returned to its habitation. I think you are more adorable than ever.’ Though painting some of the ‘prehistoric sea-women’ that summer, he had been damnably lazy but, as he explained, ‘it is when I am not at work enough that I get bored’. The will to work throbbed through him. Seldom had he felt so vigorous.
But first there were some small practical matters to attend to. For while his soul had found its habitation, there was still no place to house his body. He required a new studio in London – a fine new studio to match his mood – and, while he was about it, should he not take another new studio in Paris? Then he would be free at last to paint. He wanted some place in Paris, ‘remote and alone – in some teeming street – where I can pounce on people as they pass, hob-nob with Apaches [gangsters] and maquereaux [pimps] and paint as I can. Then of course the studio in London – the new one – in your [Alick Schepeler’s] neighbourhood.’77 He had found nothing in Paris before leaving. He now took up the search in London trusting to ‘the Gods’ to guide him to ‘a studio I can live in and where you can come and sit without being spied on’. But the Gods, and estate agents, led him a complicated dance – to Paddington, Bermondsey and the East End: all without success. For the time being he still used his studio in the Chenil Gallery, which Knewstub offered to lease to him for a further year. But independence meant freedom from the Knewstubs, Orpens and Rothensteins, and so he refused it – while continuing to use it faute de mieux. For a short period he rented another studio in Manresa Road from the Australian painter George Coates. It seemed a splendid place – Holman Hunt had painted there – but Augustus did not stay long. Dora Coates noted that he had ‘a compelling stare when he looked at a woman that I much resented’. She also resented his treatment of the studio – soiled socks and odd clothes lay thick upon the floor amid the dust of weeks, and by the time he left it was as ‘dirty as a rag and bone shop’ and had to be scrubbed with carbolic soap. He found no other place so good as this, and by February 1907 was reduced to a ‘beastly lodging’ at 55 Paultons Square, owned by Madame Herminie Considerant, corset-maker.
The only virtue of such a place was that, being in Chelsea, it was near Alick. They saw a lot of each other that winter. Often their meetings ended rowdily. She is always striking him in the face with her ‘formidable fist’, he apologizing too late for being ‘so damnably careless’. Sitting to him, she discovered, like almost everything else, bored her excessively. Yet he had to paint her. His seriousness surprised her. ‘You have not come to-day – but, dear, come to-morrow – You know I am not stable – my moods follow, but they repeat themselves – alas – sometimes – I must paint you dear – to-day – probably you don’t quite like me – but do come to-morrow. Who knows? – You may find me less intolerable to-morrow… à demain, n’est-ce-pas chère, petite Ondine souriante. Soyons intimes – franches – connaissants – alors amants.’ By the end of the year, feeling ‘I want to wash myself in the Ocean’, Augustus returned to Paris.
It was desperate work this seeking for studios. Gwen was also looking for a new place – her flowers at the rue St-Placide were dying for lack of light. Besides, her room there was too square, and Tiger had taken against it. Like Gus she found the seeing of ‘horrible rooms’ very depressing. ‘Either the concierges were rude or their husbands lewd or there were single men among the locataires,�
� wrote her biographer Susan Chitty. Towards the end of the winter she found what she wanted, ‘the prettiest ever room’ on the fourth floor at 87 rue du Cherche-Midi, a wider street round the corner of rue St-Placide. Tiger was happy, sharpening her claws on the wicker chair, and so was Gwen. After almost three years, Rodin had asked her to model nude for him again.
At about the same time as Gwen was moving round on a horse and cart, Gus also struck lucky, finding a vast room off the boulevard St-Germain, in an old hôtel (town house) belonging to the famous Rohan family. ‘I have taken a studio – with a noble address. Cour de Rohan [3], Rue du Jardinet,’ he told Alick. By February 1907 the workmen were busy converting it – ‘my studio commences to be magnificent’ – and by March he had moved in – ‘I will be about doing things in it soon.’ But by March it was too late.
*
As soon as Augustus had returned to London, Dorelia made her move. Ida sublet the studio at rue Dareau, and the two women set off to find a logement for Dorelia. By the beginning of November they had found what she wanted at 48 rue du Château. ‘It has 2 rooms and a kitchen and an alcove – one of the rooms is a good size,’ Ida told Gus.
‘It is in a lovely disreputable looking building – very light and airy, the view is a few lilac trees, some washing hanging up and a railway – very pleasant – and to our taste… The logement is 300frs a year. It is rather dear in comparison with ours, but we couldn’t find anything better or cheaper, and there will be room to store all your things in it… Dodo and I had an amusing interview with the landlord and his wife of the logement last night at 9. We had to go down to his apartment near the Madeleine – a real French drawing-room with real French people – Very suspicious and anxious about their rent and Dodo’s future behaviour – D. was mute and smiling. I did my best to reassure them that she was très sage and her man (they asked me at once if she was married or not and didn’t mind a bit her not being) was “solvent”. We said she was a model (she’s going to sit again) and the wife wanted to know if the artists came to her or she went to the artists! The husband kept squashing the wife all the time though he called her in for her opinion of us. He was small and concise and sensible, and she was big and sweet and stupid.’78
Dorelia moved in with Pyramus and Romilly immediately. But Augustus was not wholly pleased. It had all happened so fast and while he was away. He signed the agreement, since women were not allowed to make agreements for such large sums, but he did not want Dorelia disappearing. She had started modelling again – though there was no mention of Leonard since her return to Paris. She also had a woman to mind the children during the afternoons. ‘I think she is enjoying herself a bit in leaving the babies,’ Ida told Gus. He did not know what to think. After all, it was not impossible that he had exaggerated Alick Schepeler’s importance. There was certainly nothing exclusive about it. Besides, it was easy to exaggerate the significance of what he called his ‘physical limitations’. At Matching Green when Ida had been suicidal over Dorelia, Augustus had explained his behaviour in a letter to the Rani – and in essence nothing had changed now that Dorelia was angry over Alick.
‘One [i.e. Ida] must grow accustomed to the recurrence of these perhaps congenital weaknesses – which you must remember have not appeared with Dorelia’s arrival only but date in my experience from the first moment of meeting Ida – which are indeed included in her system as a mark of mortality in one otherwise divinely rational. Don’t please ever think of me as a playful eccentric who thinks it necessary to épater les bourgeois; things take place quite naturally and inevitably – one cannot however arrest the invisible hand – with all the best intentions – to attempt that is pure folly.’
But Dorelia was less tractable than Ida – and she had entered less deeply into the web. She saw no folly in his attempting to ‘arrest the invisible hand’ – everyone had to do that. She doubted his best intentions; she doubted his motives in writing to her now. Augustus was quick to protest. ‘My beloved Relia, I don’t write to you without loving you or wanting to write. Believe this and don’t suspect me of constant humbuggery. Who the Devil do you think I’m in love with? If you think I’m a mere liar, out goes the sun. I’ve been thinking strongly sometimes of clearing back over the Channel to get at you, you won’t believe how strongly or how often.’
And it was true: she didn’t. But at Christmas he arrived and Ida gave a great party in the rue Dareau, ‘immodestly’ hanging up a big bunch of mistletoe in the middle of the room. Gwen John turned up and Wyndham Lewis and Dorelia with her children, and Ida’s boys wrote a Christmas letter to Grandpa John in Tenby. They ate ‘dinde aux marrons’, plum pudding and ‘wonderful little cakes’; and they drank quantities of ‘punch au kirsch’. For the six children, instead of a plodding white-bearded Father Christmas, they had ‘le petit noël’ who, though he descended the chimney, had ‘a delicacy of his own entirely French’.79 It was a happy time. ‘The shops are full of dolls dolls dolls – it is so French and ridiculous and painted, and yet it doesn’t lie heavy on the chest like English “good cheer”,’ Ida wrote to the Rani (December 1906). ‘One can look at it through the window quite pleasantly instead of having to mix in or be a misanthrope as at home. Perhaps because one is foreign. It is delightful to be foreign – unless one is in the country of one’s birth – when it becomes gênant [inconvenient].’
The holiday was delightful, but it solved no problems: it was simply a holiday. After all was over, Augustus returned to finish his portrait of Alick Schepeler; and Dorelia went back to her logement. Gradually she was growing more independent. Her sister Jessie came for a few weeks to help with the children; she began dressmaking; got one of Tiger’s kittens from Gwen John; went on modelling. ‘Dodo has just been to déjeuner, washed herself (1st time in 3 days) and gone off to sit at “Trinity Lodge”,’ Ida wrote to Gus. ‘I’m afraid she’s forgotten to take her prayer book. She says for her last pose she didn’t have to wash – it was such a comfort. But for Trinity Lodge the outside of the platter must be clean.’ Soon Dorelia had established her own routine of life. ‘Dodo has only been once to déjeuner since she left,’ Ida sadly observed. ‘She is quite 20 minutes away.’
By March 1907 it seemed as if Dorelia had achieved her independence.
*
‘I am alone again – and alone – and alone.’ From Augustus, with his agreement, Ida was content to live apart – ‘it is so easy to love at a distance,’ she reminded him. And from a distance she still worshipped him. ‘I say Mackay is 2nd rate,’ she had written to the Rani in Liverpool.
‘…I have always known it, but the other day it flashed on me. So is Sampson. There is no harm in being 2nd rate any more than being a postman. It is just a creation… Augustus has not that quality – he is essentially 1st rate… As to a woman, I know only one first and that is Gwen John. You and I, dear, are puddings – with plums in perhaps – and good suet – but puddings. Well perhaps you are a butterfly or an ice cream – yes, that is more suitable – but we are scarcely human… This sounds tragic, but I have been living with exhausting emotions lately and am – queer – Yours in a garden Ida.’
In all aspects of her life, it seemed to her, she had failed. She had failed as an artist – even as a musician; she had failed as a friend – she seldom saw her friends now; that she had failed with Gus was obvious; and, what was perhaps as painful, her relationship with Dorelia had failed – they were still friendly, but that sweet intimacy had gone. She had failed too – was in the very process of failing – as a mother. Her sister Ethel came to stay and they ‘did nothing but alternately scratch out each others eyes and “die of laughing”’. She was reading Balzac’s Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes and told Gus she would love to have a book about the Empress of China ‘or, above all, a biography’. He was still her ‘Darling G’ or ‘Dear Oggie’, and she felt a sudden pang over him: ‘Oh dear, do take care of yourself, cheer up...’
If Augustus that winter stood at the top of a great mixed metaphor
, Ida seemed to be sinking into a huge bowl of cough mixture, dill water, cod-liver oil, milk of magnesia. The eldest children were getting to an age when they wanted more attention but she had no more to give them. Their future seemed bleak with such a mother. David, she told Margaret Sampson, was ‘such a queer twisted many-sided kid. Horrid an[d] lovely – plucky and cowardly – cruel and kind – thoughtful and stupid, many times a day. He needs a firm wise hand to guide him, instead of a bad tempered lump like me.’ She had begun to arrange their education, sending David and Caspar to the École Maternelle of the Communal School – ‘there are about 300 all under 6’, she told Gus, ‘and they do nothing but shriek little ditties with their earless voices, and march about in double file’. But both boys were so unhappy there she had to remove them: another failure.
She was imprisoned during the children’s pleasure, for so long as the mind could tell, the eye could see. ‘Life here is so curious – not interesting as you might imagine,’ she wrote to the Rani.
‘I crave for a time when the children are grown up and I can ride about on the tops of omnibuses as of yore in a luxury of vague observation. Never now do I have time for any luxury, and at times I feel a stubborn head on me – wooden – resentful – slowly being petrified. And another extraordinary thing that has happened to me is that my spirit – my lady, my light and help – has gone – not tragically – just in the order of things – and now I am not sure if I am making an entrance into the world – or an exit from it!… As a matter of plain fact I believe my raison d’être has ended, and I am no more the inspired one I was. It seems so strange to write all this quite calmly. Tell me what you can make of it when you have time. My life has been so mysterious. I long for someone to talk to. I can’t write now – another strange symptom!’
Augustus John Page 35
