As the deadline drew near, Gluck became impossible. She drove ‘the boys’ to distraction. Publicity, she felt, was inadequate, the walls of the gallery and her frames were not going to match, the wrong picture was to be on the catalogue cover, some of her best pictures were not being given a showing, everything was under-insured, the exhibition was not running long enough, important decisions were being made without proper consultation with her, the invitation cards were too big for their envelopes. ‘Go to London with Nesta. Go to gallery and make mayhem,’ she noted on 26 March.
‘Dear Gluck,’ Andrew McIntosh Patrick wrote to her (9 April 1973),
time is getting short and we feel that the arrangements we have made with great care and professional judgement must not be confused at this stage. I would be much relieved to hear from you that you will leave it to us to look after our part of the arrangement – that is to handle promotion etc. – and you continue to paint your beautiful pictures. We have already talked about a second exhibition but quite honestly if we feel we do not have your confidence and consideration and if our way of working distresses you so frequently the whole matter becomes much too difficult.
With the fondest and most respectful greetings – and to Miss Heald …
They wanted her to feel happy and well-served, but not at the price of their own sanity. Nor did she risk sacrificing so valuable a relationship. She wrote screeds of critical memoranda which she had the good sense not to send.
A few weeks before the exhibition opened, Tony Carroll went down to Steyning and insisted on collecting ‘The Dying of the Light’. Fifty-two of the best of her pictures were included in the show – a display that encapsulated her life and work: the portrait of grandfather Hallé, done in an hour, the drawings of Craig in Lamorna, the Cornish skyscapes, raindrops on the window panes of her studio in Earls Court, her self-portrait with cigarette, braces and quizzical sidelong glance, the old pony-stable studio at Bolton House, Sybil Cookson’s daughter, the Cochran reviews, Constance’s flowers, the Meteor in widow’s weeds, Nesta’s profile merged with Gluck’s, the punt on the lake at the Mill House, the village hall at Plumpton, Edith doing her stint as a firewarden, the grand legal portraits, a bird flying into the sunset, a wave breaking on a deserted beach, the fish’s head.
Her brother booked her a suite of rooms for a month at the Westbury Hotel, opposite the gallery. Banished by ‘the boys’ during the setting up of the exhibition, she peered at their activities from her hotel window and phoned through her criticism to them. Nesta arrived two days before the private view and stayed in a room adjacent to hers. She had sent more than thirty invitation cards to her friends. Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother regretted not being able to see the show as she was off to Balmoral and would not be back until all was over. She said she well remembered Miss Gluck from when she called at Buckingham Palace in 1950 ‘to explain her anxieties about paint.’10 A ‘very private view’ was arranged by the gallery for Sir Louis and his family, the day before the exhibition opened. He was appreciative of the invitation and unequivocally delighted at this late splash for his sister. She made it clear to the gallery that there were to be no special prices for him.
The private view was on Monday 30 April with a champagne party in the evening. The red leather visitors’ book was out again. There were not many of her smart friends from the thirties – time had had its way – and no Queens, but still the showing was good. The Yorkes, the Simons, Salmons, Glucksteins and Neaves duly signed their names. And of course Nesta, delighted to see Gluck again in the swing. David Tonkinson, Gluck’s accountant, for whom the show generated a great deal of more or less unnecessary work, said he had never seen Gluck happier, in her suit, cravat and with walking cane, surrounded by people who admired her paintings. It was thought Edith would not be able to stand the strain of the party so after Nesta returned to Switzerland she came up with Miss Vye and both stayed a night at the Westbury. Prudence Maufe wrote that she and Edward were ‘too old for any parties now, though we do hope very much to make an effort to see the show as we both enormously believe in Gluck – indeed I think that she has real genius and will live.’11 In the event they put in an appearance: Prudence in a long black thirties dress, shuffling with a walking frame, Edward in a black cloak and having somehow lost an ear. Gluck was overwhelmed to see them there. ‘Sometimes God can be so kind,’ she said as they came through the door.
A newspaper strike, the day after the private view, delayed reviews. When they came they were full of praise. ‘Gluck is a remarkable personality and her paintings are remarkable too,’ wrote Marina Vaizey in a long and glowing article in the Financial Times.
At her best she is superb – exquisite flower paintings … small landscapes that are exquisitely stylised orchestrations of colour, kindly amusing little paintings of domestic scenes in the second world war, and above all else, portraits.… She combines a formidable sense of composition with a subtle use of colour to make paintings that are replete with vivid and living presences.… Based on observation of objective reality, linked to inner feeling, Gluck’s work combines the highest professional skill and an indelible emotional quality that makes her work outstanding.
Gluck’s fear of inadequate publicity proved groundless. There was a buzz of interest in her. Roy Strong, then Director of the National Portrait Gallery, came with two curators and bought the self-portrait she had painted in Plumpton when the YouWe love had failed. Virginia Ironside interviewed her for the Sunday Telegraph and Bevis Hillier for the Connoisseur. The Illustrated London News gave her a three-page splash and she got coverage in most of the daily papers. The Paris Herald Tribune called her a ‘transcendentally gifted painter’ who produced works of ‘beauty and magnificence’. More soberly, Architectural Design wrote of how naturally, unselfconsciously and purely her sense of form captured the spirit of modernity of the twenties, thirties and forties – the ‘Odeon style’ of the ‘Nifty Nats’, the atmosphere of utility furniture and army canteens of her wartime pieces.
Gluck rejuvenated. Each day when the gallery opened she came over from her hotel, sat with her paintings and talked to all who called. Within days most of the pictures were sold. Katherine Hepburn spent a long time looking at the show and was impressed to see Gluck there. Friends called in and took Gluck off to lunch. Val Spry, who as Val Pirie had arranged the flowers for the white group ‘Chromatic’ and subsequently married Constance’s widower, Shav, went to the exhibition, waited for Gluck and was warmly greeted by this now tiny, bent figure. ‘We’ve some wonderful memories, haven’t we,’ Gluck said to her of those far-off thirties days. Edith wrote each day – droll, self-deprecating letters from stiff, arthritic fingers:
May 20th, 1973
Dearest Grub
Why did we suddenly stop writing to one another? My guess is that you were too busy and I was too dull. Here’s wishing a good recovery to both of us. This is an arthritic day, so my writing is bad as ever – and I have only small beer chronicles to report. We have a sunny day here – too bright to be ideally Aprilish. I can get no gardening done but Mrs Guy and Mrs Gurd went out on their own accord this morning and trimmed and tied up the rose that was flapping on the flower room wall.
Miss Vye conducted me to the bank in my horrid pulpit affair [her walking frame]. She is feeding the fishes but will post this afterwards when she goes out with the dog.
I would have liked to celebrate your return by hanging out flags and letting off fireworks, but suppose I must restrain myself.
I wish you could be keeping your suite at the Westbury. It would certainly make the Steyning dullness easier to endure.
Love as always darling Grub
from your Grub
Prices for the pictures ranged from around £300 to £4000 for ‘The Dying of the Light’. ‘Bettina’ went for £1300, ‘The Three Nifty Nats’ for £1400, ‘Pleiades’ for £1000. Both Yvonne Mitchell and Patrick Gibson, Chairman of The Arts Council, wanted to buy ‘The Dying of the Light’, but Gluck would
not part with it. After the gallery took its 33.3 per cent commission and settled her share of expenses, she received a cheque for £10,747 and four pence. As ever, she did not think money a fair exchange for her pictures. She would have preferred them to be in public galleries or in her studio.
A few days after the finish of the show, and before returning to ‘the Steyning dullness’, Gluck slipped in her hotel room alone at night and broke her right wrist. She suffered the pain until morning, then was taken to hospital. The next day she went home with her arm in plaster. It was a symbolic return, for her painting days were done and her broken wrist and swollen hand were the literal expression of this finish. Trivialities she professed to abhor consumed her attention again. Something was wrong with the Aga and Miss Vye was off on holiday. Gluck and Edith packed to spend the month of July with Nesta, the travel arrangements all seen to by Louis. It was to be Edith’s last holiday. Nesta arranged for a physiotherapist to treat Gluck’s hand three times a week: ‘I am very upset to think that I shall perhaps be a nuisance over this but it is apparently crucial to my recovery for painting or even perhaps living’, Gluck forlornly told her (11 June 1973). She still had the same unwavering desire to create, but the blaze of glory was over, though the longing for a truth she could live and the desire to reach the haven of death with a prize in her hand stayed with her until the end.
TWENTY
THE DYING OF THE LIGHT
Romantic optimist that she was, Gluck hoped for new glory after the triumph of her 1973 show, as she hoped that after death would come redemption in the sky. The Fine Art Society directors were diplomatic about her future. They knew she was old, frail, inordinately ambitious and painted slowly. They also knew that hope about her work was her one antidote to depression. Realistically, a follow-up exhibition, though much discussed, was unlikely. She was nearing eighty, frail, arthritic, with a weak chest and troublesome heart. A number of unexhibited pictures, retained at the gallery, deserved a viewing, but there were not enough to match her comprehensive retrospective show. The mooted plan was for a new exhibition called ‘Summing Up’, based on a group of new paintings to do with the law. These would form the caucus backed up by existing pictures.
Gluck made a few visits to the Law Courts and took notes, but not much came from them. There were problems about organizing cars, arranging lunch, leaving Edith, and the exhaustion and disruption of it all. Her spirits plummeted when she realized how remote new achievement was. The 1973 exhibition was her swansong. It highlighted her talent, popularity and limitations – she had not and could not produce enough new good work to satisfy her public.
Her relationship with The Fine Art Society was though successfully reestablished. She called it her second home. Andrew McIntosh Patrick and Tony Carroll visited Chantry, were liked by Edith and Miss Vye, sent large bouquets of flowers on Gluck’s and Edith’s birthdays and gave Gluck the warmest of receptions when she visited them in town. Her pictures were included in subsequent mixed exhibitions: ‘Ernest Thesiger’ and ‘Mrs Sawyer’ in a Christmas show along with works by Whistler, Turner, Lady Butler, Augustus John and Henry Lamb, and, in the gallery’s centenary exhibition in 1976, Gluck’s early drawings of Craig, ‘Bettina’ and ‘Rage, rage.…’ She wrote the catalogue note to an exhibition of Dod and Ernest Procter’s work – her personal memories of them from her Lamorna days – and in 1976, an exhibition of Romaine Brooks’s work included the portrait of Gluck ‘Peter, a young English girl’. ‘Have terrific reception’, Gluck noted of her welcome to the party for this show. She sat beside her portrait, which intrigued visitors to the gallery.
Through The Fine Art Society, too, she met Keith Lichtenstein, an art collector and admirer of her work. He had bought many of the best of her paintings and invited her to see them in his home. ‘How happy I felt’, she wrote to him (4 April 1974),
when I saw my pictures looking so ‘right’ and at ease – I could not wish for a better home for them and it gives me a sense of peace to visualize them with you. How difficult it is to express such complicated emotions as are aroused by seeing, what is after all a part of one’s self, in new surroundings, being understood and liked for all the right reasons which you have so sincerely expressed.
To Steyning friends she confided her sorrow at having parted with her pictures and her anxiety that, as so many of them were under one roof, some catastrophe might overwhelm them all.
He became a good friend and she referred to him as her patron. He talked to her on the phone almost every day, encouraged her all he could, sent roses on her birthday and on a weekend when Nesta was staying at the Chantry, invited her, Gluck, Edith and Miss Vye to lunch. Gluck intended to paint his portrait, but somehow no time was found. He urged her to shape her notes on painting, paints and the Gluck frame into publishable form and introduced her to a prospective biographer, Susan Loppert.
Gluck wanted her life in print, as she wanted her pictures in public galleries and her immortality assured. But she was too egotistical and authoritative for co-authorship. If anyone was doing the writing, she felt it should be she. For eight months in 1975 Susan Loppert drove to Steyning once a week to interview her. The meetings were amicable, if emotionally unrevealing. Problems arose over the drawing up of an agreement. They disagreed over the time needed to complete the book and over the division of anticipated profits. But the most serious stumbling block was the question of Gluck’s editorial control. She wanted a clause stipulating that the manuscript be submitted to her for approval which would not be ‘unreasonably withheld’. Susan Loppert feared such a clause might mean the right to bowdlerize whatever she wrote. Both negotiated through agents, but the differences proved irreconcilable and the project foundered.
Such continuing interest in her and her work shored up Gluck’s spirits while homelife got ever more dismal. Edith had a series of bad falls and needed constant care. As with the Meteor’s illness, Gluck again coped badly with a medical problem:
Feel might go mad or have coronary.… Bad day as usual. Try to get some work done but very nearly impossible. Feel very ill and desperate.
E. difficult beyond words ending with bad crash in bathroom which overthrew the mangle.
E. in serious condition. A total collapse. Dr Frank visits.
My birthday starts with terrible depression. E. has v. bad fall in her bedroom just before lunch. Is shaken all day.
E. behaves horribly all day.
After Miss Vye left to rest, E made to get up and lift clock off mantelpiece. Nerves gave way and I went to studio till teatime.
E. has several falls. Very wilful. Very bad night – stormy weather.
E. unmanageable. Monstrous.1
Gluck was unable to accept that Edith, who was embarrassed by her own frailty, could not overcome it. She was angry with her for it. She watched her every move and reprimanded her constantly – for trying to put a log on the fire, for not wearing her shawl, for spilling her tea. No doubt she watched because she cared, but it cannot always have felt like that to Edith. When Tony Carroll visited Chantry, on a bad day for Edith, alone with him she said of her painting by Stanley Spencer, ‘Apple Tree in Snow’, ‘Do you think if I sold that I’d have enough to get out?’ Gluck was unable to accept that time can wipe away a distinguished career and make a very clever woman very helpless. Nor would she leave the running of the house to those whom she had employed to do the work: Miss Vye, Mrs Gurd, Mrs Guy, Mr Lovett. As ever, she became consumed with all the material domestic matters she professed to hate.
Gluck’s brother arranged for the installation of central heating and of a chairlift up the stairs. A neighbour, Clare Griffin, came to work as a personal assistant, advising Gluck, listening to her, chauffeuring her, helping in the house, going to the bank to get her money – Gluck insisted on single pound notes, which she then put in drawers and forgot about. Gluck wanted to complete another rose picture and start the new law pictures, but she spent little time in her studio.
And Edith was fadi
ng. She became incontinent. Gluck, at her wits’ end, responded without mercy. The doctor, seeing how badly they were managing, suggested Edith go into a nursing home. She heard of the plan and felt betrayed. Her confusion was intermittent, her problems those of mobility and motor control. Before leaving Chantry, her home for more than forty years, she systematically destroyed all the records of her life – her letters, diaries, writings. She tore up or burned basketful after basketful of papers. But the letters from Yeats she saved. On the red Charles Jourdan shoebox, containing Gluck’s love letters to Nesta written in the 1930s, she left a note ‘All lies’.
Nesta, eternally crystal, strong and uncomplaining, offered the promise of a kind of haven from such facts of life. ‘It is not believable that Edith should have been so afflicted,’ she wrote to Gluck in 1975.
You have been plunged most cruelly into Hell. When you can you must come to me and stay as long as you can. Any time. Suddenly – if you see an opening. There will always be room.… Darling Tim … I want you to feel you are not alone and if there’s anything I can do, please, please tell me.… This letter is full of more than words.
Gluck agreed to the nursing home, but the decision filled her with ambivalence and guilt. As ever, the sacrifice was to the merciless and demanding god of Art: ‘I do not know how her condition can be treated here safely …’ she wrote to Nesta.
If she came back … I could never leave the house without fears and certainly it would finish any possibility of painting or creating any more … I was only just beginning to come back to some sort of feeling out of a suicidal numbness …
Gluck Page 27
