Augustus John
Page 102
‘Ardor McNeill, it is you I love – Gustavus.’ NLW MS 22776D fols. 29–30.
127 Ibid.
128 Augustus John to Dorelia McNeill n.d. (July 1904). NLW MS 22776D fols. 32–3.
129 Augustus John to Dorelia McNeill n.d. (July 1904). NLW MS 22776D fol. 34.
130 Dorelia McNeill to Gwen John, 1 August 1904. NLW MS 22308C fol. 11.
131 Gwen John to Dorelia McNeill n.d. (September 1904). NLW MS 22789D fol. 62.
132 Augustus John to Gwen John, 28 March 1904. NLW MS 22305D fols. 96–8.
133 Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt n.d. NLW MS 21468D fol. 15.
134 Augustus John to Gwen John, 28 March 1904; September 1904. NLW MS 22305 fols. 96–8, 106.
135 Augustus John to Gwen John, 29 August 1904. NLW MS 22305D fols. 104–5.
136 Augustus John to Gwen John, September 1904; 24 October 1904. NLW MS 22305D fols. 106, 109.
137 Gwen John to Auguste Rodin n.d. Musée Rodin, Paris. See Cecily Langdale Gwen John (1987), p. 28.
138 NLW MS 22393C fols. 4–5. See Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan Gwen John. Papers at the National Library of Wales p. 9. The passage has been translated from the French by Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan.
139 Winifred John to Gwen John n.d. (1903/4). NLW MS 22307C fols. 116–17.
140 Winifred John to Gwen John n.d. (1905). NLW MS 22307C fol. 118.
141 Winifred John to Gwen John, 10 July 1910. NLW MS 22307C fols. 119–23.
142 Auguste Rodin to Gwen John, 14 September 1907. Quoted in Cecile Langdale Gwen John p. 33.
143 Quoted in Susan Chitty Gwen John p. 70.
144 Ibid. p. 121.
145 Gwen John Memorial Exhibition, Catalogue, Matthieson Ltd, 1946, p. 4.
146 Gwen John to Michel Salaman, 17 January 1926. NLW MS 14930C.
147 Mary Taubman Gwen John p. 25.
148 Augustus John to Gwen John, 29 August 1904. NLW MS 22305D fols. 104–5.
149 Gwen John to Dorelia McNeill, August 1904. NLW MS 22155B fols. 1–2.
150 Augustus John to Gwen John n.d. (autumn 1903). NLW MS 22311D fol. 135.
151 Augustus John to Gwen John, September 1904. NLW MS 22305D fol. 106.
152 Ida John to Gwen John n.d. (summer 1904). NLW MS 22207C fol. 24.
153 Augustus John to Gwen John, 29 August 1904. NLW MS 22305D fols. 104–5.
154 Gwen John to Dorelia McNeill, August 1904. NLW MS 22155B fols. 1–2.
155 Augustus John to Gwen John, 29 August 1904. NLW MS 22305D fols. 104–5.
156 Ida John to Gwen John n.d. (summer 1904). NLW MS 22207C fol. 24.
157 Ida John to Gwen John, 21 September 1904. NLW MS 22207C fol. 28.
158 Ibid.
159 Ibid.
160 Ida John to Gwen John, 29 September 1904. NLW MS 22207C fols. 29–31.
161 Augustus John to Will Rothenstein n.d. (September 1904).
162 Ibid.
163 Entry for 26 February 1968 in The Diaries of Sylvia Townsend Warner (ed. Claire Harman) p. 318.
164 Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, 21 December 1910. NLW MS 21468D fol. 15.
CHAPTER IV: MEN MUST PLAY AND WOMEN WEEP
1 Ida John to Winifred John n.d. (October-November 1904). NLW MS 22311D fols. 143–6.
2 Ida John to Gwen John, 2 November 1904. NLW MS 22207C fols. 32–4.
3 Ida John to Margaret Hinton n.d. (spring 1905). NLW MS 22788C fol. IR.
4 Augustus John to Ottoline Morrell, 30 November 1908.
5 William Rothenstein to Gwen John, 30 May 1926. NLW MS 22311C fols. 1–2.
6 Gwen John to Dorelia McNeill n.d. (c. 1909). NLW MS 22115B fols. 7–8.
7 See Mary Lago Imperfect Encounter (1972), p. 207.
8 An article Rothenstein wrote about the Slade celebrated Augustus for many of those buccaneering qualities that fed the John legend. But Augustus objected to this. ‘Your all too picturesque treatment of me, leaves me in any posture but that of the penitent. Tho’ you have been good enough to clothe me in “Bravest green”, I find myself much more comfortable in my own less operatic habiliments and much more likely to face with fortitude and detachment the kind of music you bring to bear on me; – I have heard such strains before – but never! oh never! did I expect to find you in the position of band master – you my dear Will, whose flair and vision have been among the conditions which make life tolerable in this island… Differing with you, I think that the artist may not without shame join with his fellow men. His isolation indeed grows more complete as his art becomes more pure, nor is it the “ultimate usefulness” of the art which ever inspires him. His goal lies within himself – nor in his audacity is he deterred or terrified or bewildered for more than one sickly moment by the clamour and bustle and siren voices that come to him from without.’
9 Men and Memories Volume II p. 166.
10 Athenaeum (19 November 1904), p. 700.
11 ‘Sickert is certainly an amusing and curious character – amiable withal. But it offended me to hear him cast off his old master so lightly and perfunctorily the other day – after all, Whistler wasn’t a bad artist. Sickert probably never saw his real merits, but he is singularly inept at times, for instance having once and for all disposed of poor Whistler he goes on to discover Robert Fowler Esq! But anybody who has served on a Jury with him must know he is quite futile...’
12 Sir William Rothenstein Memorial Exhibition, Tate Gallery, 5 May–4 June 1950.
13 Gwen John to Dorelia McNeill n.d. (early 1905). NLW MS 22789D fol. 63.
14 Augustus John to John Sampson n.d. (end of 1904). NLW MS 21459E fol. 13.
15 Ida John to Dorelia McNeill n.d. NLW MS 22789D fols. 66–70.
16 Ida John to Dorelia McNeill n.d. (March/April 1905). NLW MS 22789D fols. 73–6.
17 Ibid.
18 Ida John to Dorelia McNeill n.d. (1905). NLW MS 22789D fols. 71–2.
19 Augustus John to Michel Salaman n.d. (1905). NLW MS 14928D fol. 73.
20 Augustus John to John Sampson n.d. (December 1904). NLW MS 21459E fol. 13.
21 Augustus John to Michel Salaman, 9 February 1905. NLW MS 14928D fol. 69.
22 Gwen John to Dorelia McNeill, May 1905. NLW MS 22155B fol. 3.
23 Dorelia disliked certificates, and the birth was never registered. In a letter that would make a biographer’s heart sink, Augustus advised her: ‘There is no need to register Pyramus at all – or anybody else – you may register him for nothing within 6 weeks but after that you pay so much to do so. But you are not bound to register him. Sampson told me this. He has not registered Honor. So you can write to the registrar and tell him you have decided not to.’
24 Augustus John to John Sampson n.d. (December 1904). NLW MS 21459E fol. 13.
25 Augustus John to Michel Salaman n.d. (summer 1905). NLW MS 14928D fols. 73–5.
26 Ida John to Dorelia McNeill n.d. (March/April 1905). NLW MS 22789D fols. 77–8.
27 A number of Augustus’s etchings of Ida call her Anne; for example, ‘Anne with a Feathered Hat’ (CD 59) and ‘Anne with a Lace Shawl’ (CD 46). Ida also began renaming her friends – the Rani, for example, who became Lady Polly. ‘Lady Polly is such a much more suitable name for you than Rani,’ she explained. ‘You are quite like lots of Lady Pollies in cheap novels… of course you will think it atrocious.’
28 Ida John to Augustus John n.d. (late summer 1905). NLW MS 22782D fols. 65–6.
29 Ida John to Augustus John n.d. (late summer 1905). NLW MS 22782D fols. 67–8.
30 Ida John to Ada Nettleship n.d. (late September 1905). NLW MS 22789B fols. 40–1.
31 Ida John to Ursula Nettleship, 6 December 1905. NLW MS 22788C fols. 12–16.
32 In an undated letter to the Rani. Ida John’s correspondence with both the Dowdalls is in the Liverpool City Libraries.
33 Augustus John to John Sampson n.d. (September/October 1905). NLW MS 21459E fol. 19.
34 Ida John to Margaret Sampson n.d. (July 1906). NLW MS 22798B fols. 77–8.
35 Letter to the author, 23 November 1968.
37 In an undated letter to Margaret Sampson.
38 Extract from an undated letter from Ida John to Augustus John.
39 In a letter to his mother, Wyndham Lewis primly reported John’s move ‘with his families’ to this new home. ‘He [John] has an apartment, garden and studio all together, parterre. The elder of his children, that I hadn’t seen for some time, are becoming excessively interesting personalities: but their conversation, although sparkling, is slightly disgusting to a person of pure mind… They call me a “smutty thing” and a “booby” because I insisted that a lion could climb up a beanstalk, nay, had done so, in my presence! – and one of the first wife’s children has contracted the indelicate habit of spitting at one of the second wife’s children while having his bath: – by the way, Miss MacNeill is producing another infant.’ The Letters of Wyndham Lewis (ed. W. K. Rose 1963), p. 31.
40 Augustus John to Michel Salaman n.d. (summer 1905). NLW MS 14928D fols. 73–5.
41 Bruce Arnold Orpen. Mirror to an Age (1981), pp. 192–3.
42 Campbell Dodgson (1867–1948) had entered the Print Room of the British Museum in 1893, and in 1912 he succeeded Sir Sidney Colvin as Keeper of Prints and Drawings. He became particularly well known as an expert on early German art and a collector of nineteenth-century prints and drawings. His catalogue of Augustus’s etchings appeared in 1920. He married in 1913 the artist Frances Catharine Spooner, daughter of Canon W. A. Spooner, of Spoonerism fame.
43 The Chenil exhibition catalogue lists eighty-two etchings, the number of prints varying but never exceeding twenty-four. A significant quantity of these plates, Dodgson noted, mostly nudes, were etched ‘somewhat hurriedly and in several cases without genuine inspiration’, in order to be ready for the show. About fifteen were produced in the early months of this year, sometimes more than one plate being etched on the same day. It seems possible, too, that several numbers were added to the exhibition after the catalogue was printed: about seven are dated precisely (thought possibly without accuracy) as having been done in the last week of May; while three excellent portraits of Stephen Grainger which Augustus appears to have completed that spring are not listed. Among those shown, some of the portraits, and a few of the groups in a landscape setting, are striking. Many of the numbers in the exhibition were a frank act of homage to Rembrandt, one of them being a translation on to copper of a Rembrandt pen-and-ink drawing.
44 Augustus’s claim that Evans became a sanitary engineer seems to have been a metaphorical way of expressing his disappointment (‘I held him in the highest regard and perhaps on insufficient grounds considered him immensely gifted’). Evans was briefly employed in the food industry and in about 1911 emigrated to British Columbia and lived on a ranch. After the First World War (in which he was wounded), he went on painting but did not show his work, little of which apears to have survived his death in 1958.
45 Augustus John to Ulick O’Connor. See the Spectator (10 November 1961).
46 The Letters of Wyndham Lewis (ed. W. K. Rose 1963), p. 39, where this letter is wrongly guessed as c. 1908.
47 Augustus John to Alick Schepeler n.d. (1907).
48 Now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, No. 4119.
49 Evening Standard and St James’s Gazette (19 June 1908).
50 For example, he wrote to the poet Arthur Symons: ‘Perhaps you may not have seen or heard of the sculptured figures on a new building in the Strand by a man called Jacob Epstein, which are in imminent danger of being pulled down or mutilated at the instigation of the “National Vigilance Society” of sexual maniacs, supported by tradesmen in the vicinity – and the police. These decorations seem to me to be the only decent attempt at monumental sculpture of which the streets of London can boast. A few of the nude male figures however have been provided by the artist with the indispensable apparatus of generation, without any attempt having been made to disguise, conceal, or minimise the features in question. This flagrant indelicacy has naturally infuriated our susceptible citizens to such an extent that without the most sturdy exertions of the intelligent lovers of Art and truth, the figures will be demolished.
‘…If you would view the works, or those which are visible, for the hoardings are not yet all down, I feel sure you will share some of my feelings and will do something in defence of Epstein and Art itself – Yrs Augustus E. John.’
To Dorelia, Augustus wrote: ‘Epstein wrote to me in despair, his figures are being threatened by the police! It is a monstrous thing… I sent him a fiver on account of Rom[illy]’s portrait and have written to a few people. On comparing his figures… with the squalid horde that pullulate beneath, leering and vituperative, one is in no doubt which merit condemnation, sequestration and dismemberment...’
51 But he was always a good subject for anecdotes. ‘I don’t believe in the modern ideal of living in a cow-shed and puddling clay with somebody else’s wife concealed in a soap-box, like our friend Epstein,’ Augustus wrote to Alick Schepeler (summer 1906). A few days later he amended this to an explanatory passage: ‘The soap-box or packing-can is well known in Bohemia as a substitute for a bed – and if turned over might very well be used to conceal somebody else’s wife, provided she were not too fat – I was wrong however to provide Epstein with this piece of furniture. I forgot that he used to keep somebody else’s wife in his dustbin – I hear recently that he has married her – so it’s all right.’ Epstein and Margaret Dunlop (known as ‘Peggy’) were not married until 13 November 1913 at the Chelsea Register Office.
52 The Diary of Virginia Woolf Volume II 1920–1924 (ed. Anne Olivier Bell 1978), p. 54.
53 Bernard Leach Beyond East and West (1978), pp. 31–2.
54 Nina Hamnett Laughing Torso. Reminiscences (1932), pp. 26–7.
55 Letter to Alick Schepeler n.d. (c. autumn 1906).
56 Chiaroscuro p. 68.
57 Letter to Alick Schepeler n.d.
58 Chiaroscuro p. 26.
59 For example: ‘An English fool, whom I had observed eyeing me in Rouen Cathedral to-day, rushed up to me outside, and started addressing me with extreme nervousness in lamentable French. He asked me if I were a Russian. I said “Mais non monsieur”. He then began excusing himself so painfully that I invited him to speak English. He was thunderstruck and asked if I were a socialist. “No, are you?” “Er, no, I’m a Christian – first of all etc.” He explained he was so struck by my appearance, the ass! He was a pitiable sight. His deplorable condition when I left him made me almost feel Christlike. Indeed I was about to make him the repository of the newest Beatitude. “Blessed are the ridiculous, for they shall entertain the Lord,” when he oscillated confusedly and disappeared in a pink mist.’ John to Alick Schepeler n.d.
60 At the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, there is ‘Study of an Undine’ (PD 155), dated 1907, and ‘Portrait of Alexandra’, 1906 (PD 154–1961). At the Manchester City Art Gallery there is ‘Study for Undine’ (1182) and ‘Miss Schepeler’. ‘Alick Schepeler’, a black-pencil portrait on grey paper owned by Mrs H. Alexander, is reproduced as pl. 18 in Augustus John: Fifty-two drawings. A full-length drawing (5 ? × 13 inches) described as ‘A lady with left hand raised to her cheek’ – a very deliberately enigmatic pose – is probably a study for the burnt oil painting ‘La Seraphita’. It was owned by Mrs Charles Hunter and later bought by Vita Sackville-West, who left it to her son Benedict Nicolson. ‘I have a certain tenderness for this drawing,’ Augustus wrote on 9 June 1938. ‘It is of Miss Alick Schepeler.’
61 Horizon Volume V No. 26 (February 1942), p. 125.
62 Anne Stuart Lewis, his mother. See The Letters of Wyndham Lewis p. 12.
63 A large charcoal drawing he did of these gypsies, ‘Wandering Sinnte’, is now in the Manchester City Art Gallery. Though the figures are unrelated psychologically, they have a compositional unity and a community of feeling that makes it one of the best of Augustus’s groups.
64 Letter from Ida John to M
argaret Sampson n.d.
65 Letter from Ida John to Alice Rothenstein n.d.
66 Dorelia McNeill to Gwen John n.d. (June/July 1906). NLW MS 22308C fol. 12.
67 ‘The poet astonished the beach by appearing in a Rugby blazer and a cholera belt,’ Augustus reported to Alick Schepeler. ‘…He came back full of the beauties of sea-bathing – that is to say: he had been viewing the girls frolicking in the water from a prominent position on the beach. He assures me there were at least 10 exquisite young creatures with fat legs, and insists on my accompanying him tomorrow… He wants me to go to Munich in January for the Carnival – he assures me I will dance with the Crown Princess.’
Lewis’s more laconic description of this long vacation was: ‘I wrote verse, when not asleep in the sun.’ See Rude Assignment p. 120.
68 Susan Chitty Gwen John p. 88.
69 Frederick V. Grunfeld Rodin. A Biography (1987), pp. 479, 481.
70 Susan Chitty Gwen John p. 82.
71 Ibid. p. 83.
72 Quoted in Frederick V. Grunfeld Rodin. A Biography p. 482.
73 Letter to Alick Schepeler n.d.
74 The Letters of Wyndham Lewis p. 31.
75 Dorelia to the author, July 1969.
76 To Alick Schepeler.
77 Letter to Alick Schepeler n.d.
78 Ida John to Augustus John, 10 November 1906. NLW MS 22782D fols. 86–7.
79 Letter from Ida John to the Rani, December 1906.
80 ‘Clara is enceinte and will have to leave end of January,’ Ida had written to Augustus. ‘It is so disappointing. She is such a good nurse. Félice is going to snort over needles and thread and be a dressmaker – I bravely gave her notice and had to bear a scene of tearful reproach – but within the week she found a genteel place as mender to a school… Poor old Clara is cheerful over her affair but she would much rather not have it, and says had she been in Paris when she found out she would have gone and had it destroyed.’ NLW MS 22782D fols. 90–1.