She made many trips down to the firm’s laboratories in Bracknell, Berkshire, and was treated like a lord. Tom Rowney and Mr Chalk lunched at the Chantry, admired her paintings, looked at her individual researches into the behaviour of paint and exchanged their personal news with her. By the end of her fight, when she was on the frail side but no less forceful about her cause, the colourmen spared neither time, money nor effort in trying to please her.
She admitted, when her battle was more or less won, that she had wasted many creative years with this fight. Nor was this the only practical issue that she turned into a grand campaign with a moral imperative to defend. She was known in Steyning for her fervent battles over local issues – against the closing of the railway station, or to preserve the rights of way of a footpath. Her sense of injustice and moral outrage and her readiness for combat, were seldom dormant for long. She never intended the paint war to consume her time, money and energy in quite the way it did. The rage she channelled into it belonged more truthfully elsewhere. It was as if, having not got her way over certain fundamental issues of the heart, she was determined to have her way over this. Or, more painfully, having felt so betrayed by her love for a woman, self-love, which was work, must betray her too.
Gluck was a traditionalist. Her experience of paints made in the oldfashioned way led her to prefer them. The old masters ground their pigments by hand and used cold-pressed linseed oil, and that was how she defined quality. But she also selected evidence to substantiate her own theories. The problems she felt so strongly had to be universal. Those who loved her regretted the time she poured into her paint war and saw it as obsessive and a distraction from her work. ‘Darling Tim,’ Nesta wrote when Gluck was seventy-five:
When I suggest that some of your ‘ways’ could be improved it meant courage on my part – It would have been far easier to be a Yes-man. But it is only for you who else could it possibly be for – not me – not Edith!
It is to try and show you that your path could be made easier – but I suppose a Leo cannot change his spots!! You have had the same problems ever since I knew you. I must just look on with anguish because I love you.
Her friendship with the Maufes ‘one of my proudest friendships and your faith in me as an artist one of my greatest comforts in times of despair’ – was clouded by the campaign. ‘If you have solved the difficulties, does that mean you will now paint?’ Prudence wrote (20 January 1964), when Gluck lectured to the Royal Society of Arts on ‘The Dilemma of the Painter and Conservator in the Synthetic Age’. ‘I do so tremendously hope so … even you will not live for ever and “that one talent which is death to hide, lodged with me useless”? Lord how I wish I could paint like you.’
The long years of not painting afflicted Gluck with a sense of self-betrayal. But though her campaign wasted her talent, it was not in itself a waste. Her persistence led to an unequalled scrutiny of artists’ materials, a greater understanding of the properties of oil paints and a revision in ways of preparing canvases. As a conservationist, she challenged the paint manufacturers to account for their products at a time when there were few safeguards for consumers. The British Standards Institution formulated and published a standard for the naming and defining of pigments. And the colourmen provided her with paints which she felt to be free of the ‘suede effect’ – paints she was later to describe as ‘a joy to use’. At too great a cost to herself she got, more or less, what she said she wanted.
EIGHTEEN
LACUNA
Gluck was difficult to live with during her fallow years. Edith’s interest was in Art and the realm of the imagination, not campaigns about paint. And she, like Nora, before long was made to feel excluded by a triangle of relationship. For Gluck, if love had proved elusive, marriage was to become a trap.
Life at the Chantry House was companionable enough from when Nora left in 1946 until about 1954. Servants, prepared to tolerate Gluck’s demands and uncompetitive rates of pay, were found. Mrs Guy, employed as a laundrymaid in 1952, stayed twenty-five years and did whatever she was asked.
I was a bit scared of her at first. The greengrocer brought the fruit and vegetables up. I had to let her know as soon as he arrived. She came straight out and weighed everything. The grapes were two ounces under. Back they had to go and I had to take them. I said to my husband, I’m not working there. He said, that ‘show that sort of people get on. That’s how they got money, because they look after it. But she was a very good friend to me. When my first grandson, a mongol boy died, it was her that pulled me through. Her kindness.1
The house was run with military precision. Menus were planned, with the housekeeper Mrs Gurd, at the beginning of the week. Breakfast – China tea and toast – was taken to Gluck and Edith in their respective bedrooms. Edith then worked in her study on book reviews or her ‘With Prejudice’ page for The Lady. Gluck worked on her paint-war papers, and her various campaigns, with transient secretarial staff, in the Yeats Room. Lunch was at one, in the dining room – two courses and sometimes a bottle of wine – then coffee in the drawing room. The wines came with the compliments of J. Lyons & Co. Edith liked cooking, but was dissuaded by Gluck who regarded it as the servants’ domain though she made reference in her diaries to Edith’s ‘wonderful puddings’. In the afternoons Gluck went to her studio.
They shopped in Brighton, saw Greta Garbo in Ninotchka, Lilli Palmer in Oh My Papa and Grace Kelly in Cornish Seas. Despite Edith’s indifference to opera, they went to first nights of Alceste, Ariadne auf Naxos, Idomeneo and Macbeth at Glyndebourne. They spent motoring holidays in France, weekends in the Beach Hotel, Worthing, and summers in Cornwall. On Coronation Day, in June 1953, they listened all day to the ceremony on the wireless. They went sailing in Cowes and dined with J. B. Priestley, a work colleague of Edith’s from the twenties, who lived nearby. Edith went up to the annual party for The Lady, held at the Savoy, and stayed overnight in town. Gluck went into Brighton to search for suitable Valentine cards for Edith in the early Februaries of their life together, and on Gluck’s birthday Edith always put fresh-cut roses on her breakfast tray.
They cared for each other’s illnesses and frailties. Edith, who by 1953 was sixty-eight, suffered from bouts of low blood pressure, headaches and days of feeling peaky. Gluck had days of staying in bed because of arthritis, bronchitis and depression. Her friend, Hermia Priestley, attending one of her lectures on paint standards in the fifties, thought how rapidly she had aged.2 Her panache and flair were gone. She still got her hair cut at Truefitts in Bond Street, but it was a mannish haircut, rather than a daring style. She had a navy-blue nautical suit and brass buttons made at Cowes, but it was by no stretch Stiebel or Schiaparelli. She now bought her shirts and pyjamas at Marks & Spencer in Brighton.
Nesta wrote and floated through. She broke her nose surfing in Hawaii and had a new, aquiline one constructed. She and Gluck spent brief holidays together, on the Isle of Wight and in Cornwall, but these seemed to compound Gluck’s sense of domestic trap. They visited the Meteor in ‘The Priory’ and she recognized Nesta. Gluck no longer had the sustaining support of a relationship with either Nesta or her mother. Nesta had flown to her tropical island and the Meteor, in her madness, was beyond communication. She was being treated with Sodium Amytal and electroconvulsive therapy, but no treatment existed that could again balance her mind.
On the days she visited the Meteor, Gluck usually lunched with her brother at the Trocadero. Provided they avoided the topics of the Trust and her money, the meetings were amicable. A quiet word to him about her problematic car yielded a new one in 1954 – an MG Magnette. It seemed to Louis that she had settled down in a stable, if disappointingly unproductive way. Occasionally he visited Chantry but kept the meetings as neutral as possible:
L.H.G. and Doreen arrive 2.50 pm leave 5.10 pm. Entirely impersonal two hours. Everything ‘amiable’. Felt very sad after as not one sign of real affection or interest shown.3
She no longer dealt directly with him about her
finances. She had found, in Brighton, an accountant, David Tonkinson, who became her homme d’affaires. He was fond of her, respectful of her talent, tolerant of her long phone conversations at nine in the morning and diplomatic with her Trustees. He tried to dissuade her from buying hour upon hour of his time, he was a senior partner in a large firm, but it was worth it to her to be insulated from dealings she knew she could not herself conduct in any pleasant way. For financial affairs that should, in the 1950s, have cost her between twenty-five and forty pounds, she was paying up to £500 a year. By the 1970s she was paying thousands.
In 1955 Gluck chose to enter into a deal with the Fund which bound her and Edith more closely together than ‘Love to all Eternity’. Both of them by that time lived off investment income and modest earnings. The Chantry House needed substantial repairs and was costly to run. The Fund agreed to buy the house and North Cottage, one of two cottages that were part of the estate, thereby giving the two women welcome capital. The Fund then let the estate to them at a rent of ninety-seven pounds and five shillings a year. Edith and Gluck were responsible for rates and maintenance. By the terms of the lease if Gluck moved out or died, Edith could be given notice. It was a standard enough lease, drawn up by solicitors, and no doubt the clause was meant as a safeguard against Gluck accruing houses in which she did not live. But it meant that Edith was now dependent on Gluck for the roof over her head. She was seventy, Gluck was sixty. To the Trustees it must have seemed simply as if they were helping two women of advancing years. But that same year the relationship between Edith and Gluck took a turn for the worse.
On 26 November 1954 a Steyning couple, David and Anne Yorke, dined at the Chantry. Gluck described it in her diary as a delightful evening. They ate pheasants, there was a great storm, the electricity went out and Gluck lent the Yorkes a torch to find their way home. ‘E. and I very late to bed but feel grand and it was fun.’ The Yorkes had married in 1950 and had two small sons. They lived in a manor house, Gatewick, grander than the Chantry, and themselves felt restricted by small-town life. Anne Yorke was Edward Burne-Jones’s great-granddaughter, David Yorke was descended from Sir Philip Yorke, the Earl of Hardwicke, Chancellor of England in the eighteenth century. Their interests were cultural, their manner informal and friendly, their connections aristocratic and artistic of the kind the Meteor and Nesta liked. The next day they introduced Gluck to the painter Claude Harrison and she bought a painting by him of the seafront at Brighton. Meeting the Yorkes cheered her, they were her first true friends in Steyning. There was none of the reserve and implicit criticism toward her that came from Edith’s camp.
On Christmas Day Gluck went to Gatewick – where there were silver-gilt table decorations – and had a ‘lovely evening’. Edith dined with Nora. The Yorkes saw in the New Year at the Chantry and invited the two women to join them in Spring on a Greek cruise. They accepted. The sale of Chantry House went through in March 1955. Two months later Edith, Gluck, and David and Anne Yorke left for a holiday organized by Hellenic Tours. David Yorke found Gluck entertaining but tiresome. She had to keep out of the sun, was for ever trying to conjure porters that did not exist, wanted breakfast in bed at expensive rates and a cabin on a short channel crossing. More crucially on the holiday Gluck seemed to transfer, in a way that was like the shadow of an obsession, the repeating of a worn pattern, her needy, romantic feelings to Anne. After they returned she catalogued in her precise, lonely fashion the hours spent at Gatewick in ‘The Tower’ – Anne’s private living room, Anne’s visits to the studio, her phone calls, their trips together to London and Brighton. Such incidents became the emotional focus of Gluck’s life. And the more she saw and heard of Anne, and they were in contact virtually every day from 1955 until the early 1960s, the more beside herself with jealousy Edith became.
Gluck monitored the tensions, scenes, recriminations and turbulent emotions that seemed more appropriate to adolescence and the opera than to gentrified English country life:
Go to Gatewick. Ouzo and sugarbush and long playing Marlene. Dietrich. A. in housecoat. Leave 8 pm.
Terrible scene E. about A Y. Feel like death. Very bad night.
Go to Gatewick 5.30 to 7.30. E. furious when I return. Exhausted, frightened and unhappy. All the old accusations and troubles.
Frightful morning. Hammer and tongs till lunchtime. E. makes herself ill. Goes to bed temporarily. After dinner terrible and hope final scene with E. … Go down to Gatewick to see Stanley Spencer on TV. E. makes ghastly scene on my return at 10.40 pm.
A. asks us both to TV Stanley Spencer. E. refuses and is still working when I leave at 9.45 pm. Scene at 11–12 on return.
Meet A. with Charles [her son] unexpectedly at post office 3.50 pm. She comes back to see studio with Charles. As leave, see E. who looks angrily at A. and Charles. A. upset and I too. When I speak to E. about it later she makes terrible scene. Exhausted and miserable.
Were to go out to dinner and Renée [sic] Clair film but it was eventually abandoned. Furious, miserable and resentful at the waste of time and life by such wicked scenes.
My birthday. E. puts roses on my tray. Look lovely – a nice card too. Go to Gatewick at 2.15 pm to 3.25 to get birthday presents from Anne and David. Electric torch, socks, a nice card and cast iron Napoleon door stop [Gluck was later to drop it on her right big toe]. Miserable scenes E. Champagne.
Edith’s 72 birthday. Calm until teatime when makes minor scene. Usual subject.
Terrible scene. E. gets letter from A. One of the worst days I have ever lived through.
Another terrible scene. E. writes to A. and gives me letter to take with me when I go at 1 pm. Go with A. to ‘The King and I’. Home at 6 pm. E. calm and evening peaceful.
David writes letter to E. I give it to her. Terrible scene after she reads it. I get her to burn her copies of letters.
E. goes out handing me a note and stays out to lunch. I cannot settle to anything. I am nervous wreck.
I am desperately unhappy at silly wicked atmosphere. Entirely unjustified cruelty.
I go to Gatewick and then Brighton. Give dinner to A. & D. and Claude at Penny Farthing. Very pleasant. Drive A. there and back. Terrifying scene by E. on my return. She stands at corner by church watching.
E. makes scene on usual theme of breaking up. When I come in at 5.15 all in darkness and no tea.
Terrific scenes. A. sends letter as result of hearing E. scream abuse over telephone. Another horrible day.
Go to Milestones to lunch with E. A. & D. there. A. does not greet at all and goes out without looking. E. put out. I telephone on return and E. makes scene.
… feel unbearably miserable … very uncertain about everything … increasingly depressed about life and work. No one understands that I must be in a vacuum if I am to find my way.4
Misery can be a protracted affair. Such were her jottings virtually every day for about six years. Gluck saw herself as the victim of Edith’s jealousy, but she made no modification to her own behaviour which was the catalyst to all the storms. Anne Yorke was entrenched in family life which Gluck in no way threatened – there was room for her within its orbit. From her husband’s point of view, his wife was providing stimulating company to an elderly, talented eccentric, who, he thought, should never have buried herself in Steyning in such dreary and provincial company. But Gluck’s feelings for, and behaviour toward Anne Yorke, marginalised Edith and made her into the cuckold. As the painful years rolled on, round and round in a groove of provocation and recrimination, they damaged beyond repair their chances of a decent life together. Tension bound them together as it wore them out. Trust went, and so did ease.
Nor was there any clear way out, if that was what either of them truly wanted, as both, on occasion, said they did. Edith was stuck in what had been her home, dominated economically and emotionally by Gluck. While they battled, Gluck was having a new studio built in the Chantry grounds. As at Bolton House, this too had all the north light in the huge working area, a sleeping galle
ry, kitchen, bathroom and workroom, its own walled garden with fountains playing, its own entrance. The whole estate now belonged more to Gluck than to Edith. Gluck moved her paints and easels in on 13 May 1958. The same day her brother phoned to say the Meteor was dying. She died four days later.
Probably Edith felt totally bound to Gluck. Beyond that fact she did not, in her seventies, have enough capital to buy another house. Nora, retired from The Lady in 1953, quickly went physically and mentally downhill, and was cared for in a nursing home. She died in 1961. Their brother Harry died in 1956. Edith often spent weekends with an old friend (to whom Gluck could not be rude enough), Diana Wood, an architect living in London. They holidayed in Venice, France, Italy, Ireland. She came back rested and well but the old troubles soon resurfaced.
Edith’s friends and relatives were horrified at what they saw happening to their civilized, whimsical, clever friend. Most of them resisted visiting the house when Gluck was there. Helen Beauclerck, alone after Edmund Dulac’s death in 1953, stayed from time to time at the Chantry, witnessed the scenes and made no attempt to be civil to Gluck. No doubt buried within the relationship was some paradox of love and truth, but to all appearances things seemed rather shocking. Few of Gluck’s friends knew what was going on. Many from the halcyon days of the thirties, she no longer saw, or were no longer alive. She heard of Constance’s death on the television in 1960. ‘Distracted and very shocked and unhappy about Constance … terrible depression … Constance’s funeral early afternoon. Feel desperately sad.’ Nesta, who was not afraid to confront Gluck, reprimanded her when she stayed for a week in August 1958 about the laceration of Edith’s feelings:
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