On 27 November, Hockney flew to Paris to meet his parents and his brother Paul and family, for whom he had arranged a trip to see his show, while McDermott travelled to London with the models to prepare for a meeting with John Cox. Flying from Heathrow, Kenneth had a small problem with security. “Comical when we checked thro (precaution against carrying bombs),” wrote Laura, “as Ken made a ‘Ping’ sound—had to go back—same again—thought it was his ‘hearing aid’—but he said ‘Don’t think I would carry guns. I’m a pacifist.’…Met by David. Went to Hotel and then on to exhibition at the ‘Louvre.’ We all enjoyed it & thought exhibits just wonderful … David very tired after travel from California and time change.”48 The following morning they went to David’s flat. “He, much refreshed, did drawing of me. Shirley called with ‘Sarah,’ little dog. We all went to the ‘Coffee Pot’ (lovely restaurant) for meal & dog sat on a stool covered with serviette at table. Other dogs too, but very well behaved. They certainly respect dogs in Paris!!! I hoped to do some shopping while Dad was sitting for portrait—But he kept falling asleep, so David could not go on … Later, walking back through Montmartre … a pavement artist wanted to draw Lisa—but she said, ‘Oh no! My Uncle is a famous artist!’ ”49
The following week, John Cox and all the Glyndebourne production team came to London to look at the completed work. “When I showed what I had done to the people at Glyndebourne,” Hockney recalls, “they were amazed that I had made models. They had expected me to do just a few drawings. What I didn’t know at the time was that some of the people thought what I was doing wouldn’t work at all, but they didn’t say so. I’m glad of that because I think if they had they would probably have put me off; I would have believed them, thinking they knew more about the theatre than I did.”50 What the doubters felt, but did not say, was that cross-hatching on such a massive scale was simply too mad an idea and would never work. As it happened, Hockney himself had doubts, and went down to Glyndebourne to test his idea. “We made lots of samples of cross-hatching in different sizes, and hung them up on the stage. I sat at the back of the theatre with binoculars, deciding what the scale should be. If it was done too small, it would look like a solid colour. If it was too big it would look like a chequerboard—and that would be ridiculous. So I made some calculations and came up with the exact size.”51
Having delivered the finished models to Glyndebourne, from where they would be taken to Harkers Studio in Bermondsey to be translated into full-size sets, Hockney took a much needed break. This also had a romantic element to it. For some months he had been feeling a growing affection for Gregory Evans, largely based on their mutual love of art, and Evans’s quick, dry wit, which made Hockney laugh, particularly in the way he would take things literally. They were once hiring a car, for example, and the girl at the car-hire desk asked Gregory if he also wanted to drive. “Oh, you mean it’s got two steering wheels?” he said.52
It was on their trip to see Intermezzo that Hockney realised how his feelings for Evans had deepened. “Gregory fell asleep on the train returning from Glyndebourne,” he later wrote, “and I thought he looked very sweet because he was wearing a suit, something he does not normally wear. In most pictures he is very casually dressed, but for Glyndebourne he borrowed a suit from Ossie Clark. I thought he looked very handsome and suddenly saw him in a slightly different way …”53 They went to Rome for a few days, where Hockney drew his new lover sitting among the ruins on the Palatine hill. “It was the first time I’d ever been to Italy,” Evans remembers, “so it was very exciting. We didn’t do that much, because we weren’t there for very long, and most of the time I ended up posing for him. He drew me a lot in those days, and he always seemed to capture something in me that I can relate to. He presented a side of me that I was unaware of, and the drawings gave me a bit of identity that I didn’t have before, that I hadn’t seen.”54
That Hockney was serious about Evans is clear from the fact that he invited him to join him in Bradford to celebrate the eightieth birthday of his mother’s oldest sister, Rebecca, known in the family as Aunt Rebe. “Busy all morning preparing a cold lunch,” wrote Laura in her diary. “At 2:30 p.m. David, Margaret & Gregory arrived. Had cup of tea and David suggested going to Harry Ramsdens for ‘Fish & Chips.’ Left my meal covered and all went to Guisely. Returned to Eastbrook for 4pm. Met old friends and had a happy birthday tea … Rebe was delighted—looked lovely in her black gown (1935) but ‘up to date.’ ”55
Evans loved the trip to Yorkshire. “I felt incredibly at home there,” he recalls, “as it didn’t feel to me that different in spirit to Kansas, which is where my parents were raised. It was dark and full of Gothic gloom, which appealed to me.”56 The party took place at Eastbrook Hall, and later that night he had his first proper meeting with Kenneth Hockney. “David’s father was magical, and eccentric. I remember we came in late and he was up tinkering. He had this twinkle in his eye as he smiled, and he was excited and wanted to show me all his current projects. The first thing he wanted to show me was this old adding machine which he had converted over from the old system to the decimal system, using dayglo stickers. Then he showed me other things he was working on, like decorated postcards and the posters that he’d made for his anti-war marches. Then—this was what I thought was brilliant—he had a recording of a train which he had taken, and he had the recording machine under his chair in the kitchen near the fire, so he would take naps in his chair and relax listening to it. He was quite right. Nowadays people sell those recordings to help you sleep. He was avant-garde.”57
Gregory Evans brought new happiness into Hockney’s life at a time when he was under considerable stress, not just from the huge task of designing his first opera, but from the ongoing dramas surrounding Clark and Birtwell, McDermott’s heroin addiction, and the continuing fallout from Jack Hazan’s film. The last finally came to the attention of Hockney’s parents in late March, after a write-up in the Bradford Telegraph and Argus. “It was rather a shock,” Laura confided to her diary. “At first it did not hit me—I guess I am very naive—tho I’m not quite ignorant. I am very sorry David has allowed himself to be filmed in these private corners of his life, whatever he feels about it. Publicity can be very cruel. He is famous & well liked & well loved—but there are always those ready to see evil rather than good. Sometimes I feel choked. Sometimes I feel who really cares!! I mean in the world! Of course I care—he is my darling boy & he has been lonely & down & distressed—but he has stood alone!!”58
It was hard for Laura, who felt embarrassed by the publicity, and when she went to chapel on Sunday, she was convinced that everyone was staring at her, especially since the pastor, the Reverend Thewliss, gave his sermon on “The Prodigal Son.” “In my heart,” she wrote, “I was running to meet David—oh how I love him!”59 After the service, Mrs. Thewliss tried to reassure her by telling her that the film was not showing in any public cinemas, but only at certain “clubs” and that she should not worry. When Laura did finally see the film two months later, after it had opened in Bradford in a public cinema, she found it on her first viewing “a revelation—suppose I am a very slow learner & because my upbringing puritanical—but am eager to learn & to broaden my mind according to the times without lowering my standards and principles.” She went a second time with one of her sisters, writing afterwards, “If I had not known the people taking part, I don’t think I should have been interested—but I felt no qualms about David & saw nothing ‘awful.’ He I suppose lives a very different life to ours—but I can accept it & only pray that my boy keeps clean & good as he is always to us. I have learned to accept the world & our beliefs in a broader way & realize how much more our children have gained knowledge & understanding more than ever we did.” Kenneth held no such enlightened views when he delivered his verdict. “It was just ‘muck,’ ” he told her, adding that David should “get some different friends.”60
Hockney’s drawings of Evans in Rome were shown in Paris in April, at the Galerie Clau
de Bernard, in the Rue des Beaux Arts. Claude Bernard, a wealthy dealer who represented Francis Bacon in Paris, loved stars, and had seen at once that having Hockney in his stable would bring a lot of kudos to his gallery. His first show, David Hockney: Dessins et Gravures, consisted of thirty-one drawings and thirteen etchings, including many sketches of Yves-Marie Hervé and Gregory Evans, portraits of Kenneth and Laura Hockney, Man Ray and Douglas Cooper, several studies of Henry Geldzahler, including one of him nude, and a number of drawings of Celia Birtwell, which also included two nude and one semi-nude study. “I think the nudes were done in Philippe de Rothschild’s house outside Paris,” she recalls. “I posed nude for him there, which is something that my mother said you should never do.”61
The show was a triumph, a dazzling demonstration of technique that proved that when it came to draughtsmanship, there were few artists to touch Hockney. Among them all was one nude study of Evans, drawn in coloured crayon, which brings out a touching vulnerability in his character. “His coloured drawings were very hard to sit for,” Evans says, “because they could take two or three days. To begin with it is seductive, and you feel flattered. Then reality sets in, when you think about how many times your leg goes numb, or your arm goes, or you’re drifting off to sleep. I’ve never said no, not now, which is probably my own vanity. David can be overwhelming, because in the end it is the David Hockney show, and that’s the way things are.”62
At Glyndebourne, they were working overtime to turn Hockney’s vision into reality. “Unfortunately, David got all the measurements completely wrong,” George Christie remembers. “We were using imperial measurements at that time, and he was using metric, so it was a real nightmare to begin with, because nothing fitted properly and we had to translate everything.”63 When the first set was finally installed, Hockney came down to take a look. “When he saw the opening scene, he simply couldn’t believe that all the cross-hatching, when brought into the theatre in a magnified state compared with his small drawings, came out completely right. He was in absolute awe. He didn’t believe they would translate so perfectly and just stared at it absolutely enthralled and bemused that people could do this. It was a skill that he was completely unaware of, and as soon as he saw what was going on, he became fascinated and very involved in the whole process, and started painting some of the props himself.”64
Though Hockney took terrific pride in what he was doing, he also welcomed the input and experience of the other departments. “An example of this,” Christie recalls, “was when the wig department didn’t get a clear picture from him as to what he wanted so far as the wigs were concerned. So they then decided that they would do some multicoloured string wigs, where you take different-coloured strands of wool and knit them together so you get a kind of Neapolitan ice cream of a result. They did this using quite sturdy pieces of string, which, when all put together, formed the wig. David looked at this and he was absolutely in heaven. He adored this inventiveness.”65 John Cox concurs that the cohesion on this production was tremendous. “It is impossible to exaggerate the genius of David’s work in this, but of course I brought it to life, so it was a perfect convergence of talents and ideas. He was never dismissive of ideas. What David gave us in the model, and what we then adapted so that it would fit this stage, was of a very powerful integrity, but it did give room to move, and that was very important, and he was very keen on that. He was keen on the idea of collaboration, which nobody expected.”66 All through the month of June, Hockney worked onstage at Glyndebourne helping to put the finishing touches to the production. He was completely engaged in the process, even to the point where he put his camera down. “I did not take a great number of photographs,” he wrote, “partly because there was a lot of work in putting on the production, and also because in taking photographs you’d have to somehow isolate yourself from the production work: you can’t bother too much with the camera, your loyalty is to the theatre production.”67
The opening night of The Rake’s Progress, 21 June 1975, Midsummer Night, was a never-to-be-forgotten occasion. The master of ceremonies was Peter Langan, who devised an evening of eating and drinking that would meet the demands of any rake. It was agreed with the Christies, though it had never happened before, that Langan would be allowed to take over the whole of Glyndebourne’s front lawn, where he would set up long tables and chairs. “The first thing I remember about the incredible event of the opening night,” John Cox recalls, “was that we dress-rehearsed the dinner, because Peter didn’t want anything to go wrong … He arrived with some extraordinary food and a few tables and chairs and some assistants to whom he gave instructions, and they shared ideas and so on. It was very, very carefully planned.”
Langan stage-managed the evening and Hockney cast it, with a glamorous cross-section of friends from his past. His parents were not included, having attended the dress rehearsal on 19 June, which Laura described as having been “thrilling and lovely.” On the first night everyone gathered outside Odin’s, where a coach was awaiting them. There was champagne on the bus, which got everybody into high spirits, while Tony Rudenko, a friend of Wayne Sleep’s, handed out LSD to any takers, including the brewing heiress Henrietta Guinness. It was a perfect balmy June evening, and when the coach arrived and the guests spilled out onto the lawns, they were met with a fairy-tale scene. “Peter had made a table along the length of the Glyndebourne ha-ha,” George Lawson remembers, “and put silver candlesticks and cut flowers on it with a white linen tablecloth. It was a wonderful sight.”68
Fuelled on champagne, Hockney’s guests joined the rest of the audience in the auditorium for curtain-up, and the excitement was palpable. “The audience was gung-ho for it,” John Cox says, “and it wasn’t just David’s friends. We all had people down, who were determined to make the evening history, and that made a marvellous core of response. The whole thing had an incredible buzz and brio to it.”69 When they filed out of the theatre for the dinner interval, the bacchanalian scene included handsome Cuban waiters handing out more champagne and the tables now groaning with food. The cover of each menu had a Hockney drawing of Langan and his French wine merchant, together with the words “An Evening of Excess.” “The picnic was supposed to be for about thirty people,” recalls Hockney, “but Peter took 120 bottles of champagne and none went back. I did point out to him, ‘That’s four bottles each, Peter!’ The food was fantastic—enormous lobsters, best hams, marvellous smoked salmon—he knew where to get the good stuff. It was spectacular.”70
Not everybody managed to make the second half. Henrietta Guinness, for one, high on LSD, was found head down in a flower bed, and Peter Langan was later scooped out of the ha-ha. For those who did, it was a triumph. Spirits were high as the curtain came down at about nine thirty, the applause was long and loud, and Hockney was beside himself with excitement. “At the end,” George Lawson recalls, “David came up to me and said, ‘Well, George, what did you think of my opera?’ I replied, ‘Well, David the music is so wonderful,’ and I just shut my eyes. He loved that and I heard him going round saying, ‘Did you hear what George said?’ ”71 At that point the party was by no means over. There was still so much food and drink it was decided to invite the whole company to join the celebrations. Even the few stragglers left from the audience, who were quite bemused coming upon the scene, joined in and as the sun set everyone got stuck into the banquet as if they’d never seen such a spread in all their lives. It made Hockney the hero of the company for weeks after. “So we watched the sun setting,” he remembers, “and then the moon came up so bright that it cast shadows on the lawn. We were there till after midnight, when we took it all away, back on the bus, and there was more champagne on the bus, and even buckets for people to throw up in. Peter had just assumed quite rightly that people would be in that state. We got back to Odin’s about 3 a.m., where there were waiters with more champagne on trays.”72
Only one person missed this great event, and that was Mo McDermott, who was in a drying-out clinic. He w
asn’t forgotten, however—Hockney made sure that his name was on the drop curtain along with those of the composer, the librettists, the director and himself.
The reviews for The Rake’s Progress were mixed. William Mann, writing in The Times, thought it “more Hockney than Hogarth,” but considered his approach “even while stealing prime attention … well suited to the icy artificiality and mannered wit of the Auden–Kallman libretto and the emotional pendulum of Stravinsky’s music; and it makes an ideal background for John Cox’s scrupulously characterized and timed production.”73 The New Statesman’s critic, Bayan Northcott, found it “very good indeed. In his own butterfly way, David Hockney … slants the given rather than inventing from scratch. Almost every detail of his sets and costumes can be found somewhere in Hogarth’s engravings, a medium further evoked in the printer’s ink colours and ubiquitous cross-hatchings—even down to the wigs.” He ended his review with the words “Stravinsky would surely have approved.”74
Rodney Milne, however, writing in the Spectator, hated it, and began his review: “By the end of the evening I was so out of sympathy with the new production of The Rake’s Progress…that I asked my Aunt Jennifer, who came as my guest, to write the notice.”75 There followed a pastiche review by this imaginary aunt. “It was a lovely warm evening as we motored down, and we arrived in good time to walk round the gardens, which were looking simply gorgeous. It was Midsummer’s Night, of course, and one half expected to see fairies popping out of their little holes and gambolling around the shrubbery. I was terribly excited to see so many people from that picture about David Hockney … I recognized that nice-looking Peter Something-or-other, the co-star, wearing a white suit … there was Celia Birtwistle looking radiant (I’m told she absolutely loved the opera)…Then there was that New York art dealer with the beard, Henry Kissinger, I think … and Udo Keir, who is the new Warhol superstar … Just before we went in, we passed a pretty gel who seemed a bit under the weather. Someone thought she’d tripped over, but I expect she’d taken something that didn’t agree with her … Rodney says I must mention the opera. He thinks it’s a precious pastiche, as pointless as it is puerile, but he will get carried away with alliteration.”76
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