by Jane Brown
362 Mary Bartlett, Inky Rags, 2010, tells the story of the bindery.
363 Imogen Holst (1907–84), quoted from Cox and Dobbs; also Cox, Chapter 4; Carpenter pp. 310–12.
364 Victor Bonham-Carter and W.B. Curry, Dartington Hall: The History of an Experiment, 1958.
365 A possible reason for some of Whitney’s bitterness was revealed by Diana Barnato Walker talking to Roland Perry in August 1999. She recalled Whitney being so upset that he had asked ‘for a second Scotch’ having heard that ‘Michael is a Russian spy’; see Perry pp. 231–2.
366 The author in conversation with William Elmhirst.
367 Bruce Bliven, at the end of Five Million Words Later, writes of the sale of the paper, of his heart attack and retirement to California, where he died in 1977; his papers are in Stanford University Library.
368 Gilbert Harrison (1915–2008), publisher and editor-in-chief for twenty years from 1953, had a successful reign; he was pro-Civil Rights, against the Vietnam War and indulgent of the paper’s losses; he raised the circulation to around a hundred thousand.
369 Gerald Barry, ‘The Opening Ceremony’ in Mary Banham and Bevis Hillier eds., A Tonic to the Nation, 1976, pp. 21–3.
370 Ibid., Audrey Russell, ‘A broadcasting marathon’, pp. 166–8; also 1951 South Bank Festival Guide, author’s collection.
371 Dorothy to Irene Champernowne, quoted in Young p. 211, from sight of Dr Anthony Stevens’s book on Withymead, prior to publication in 1986.
372 Her pencilled notes cover the programmes: Anthony Quayle is redeemed for his final humility, she finds Rosalind Atkinson’s Volumnia ‘holds the stage’ though saying nothing, the witches are poor – should not be indoors – the production too dark, but ‘the stage sinks for them’, DWE/Arts/S1, programmes 1935–67.
373 7th September had been her wedding day, Willard Straight’s lucky seven. The boy’s father Louis Dolivet/Ludovic Brecher had by this time been exposed as a Comintern agent and banned from America but he attended the funeral before returning to France where he was a successful film producer.
374 Beatrix Farrand was living quietly in Maine, though kept up her correspondence asking about the garden. Her last letter in early 1959 asked Leonard for photographs but by the time he sent them she had died, on 27th February 1959.
375 Her notes on her illness are from her 1955 diary.
376 Letter to Peter Cox, 5th July 1955.
377 Mrs Nancy Lancaster (1897–1994), a Virginian and niece of Nancy Astor, ‘spirited, glamorous, funny and self-willed’, was a partner in Colefax & Fowler of 39 Brook Street, and a renowned gardener; there is a biography by Robert Becker, 1996.
378 Dorothy from Harbour Island to Peter Cox, 31st January 1956.
379 Dorothy from Harbour Island to William Elmhirst, 17th February 1956.
380 Dorothy from Stratford-upon-Avon to Leonard, 10th September 1957, quoted in Young p. 252
381 Alan Bennett’s play An Englishman Abroad, 1983, was written from Coral Browne’s memory of Guy Burgess visiting the company; William Elmhirst in conversation with the author, 12th January 2012.
382 Dorothy to William Elmhirst in Scarborough, n.d. but autumn 1958.
383 Julian Huxley, Memories, 1970, Memories II, 1973.
384 Juliette Huxley, Epilogue pp. 236–7 prints this letter from Leonard dated November 1959.
385 Dorothy to William Elmhirst, n.d. but his birthday letter for February 1960, written from East Indies Farm, Canaan, Connecticut.
386 Ibid.
387 Dorothy from Pink Sands to Peter Cox, 22nd February 1960.
388 Dorothy from Pink Sands to Peter Cox, 21st March 1960.
389 Dorothy from Pink Sands to Peter Cox, 8th February 1961.
390 See Cox, 2005, especially Parts 2 and 3 (1973–83).
391 Ruth and Maurice Ash had a second daughter Marian born 1956, and Claire born 1957, and a son Anthony who died in infancy. Ruth restored Sharpham House and made her garden, she taught spinning and weaving, maintained her musical interests and had many friends; she developed motor neurone disease and died on 31st August 1986. See also Maurice Ash’s essay in John Snelling ed., Sharpham Miscellany, 1992.
392 President Kennedy and Michael had moved in the same circles for years; in 1957 the then Senator was a groomsman with Michael at the wedding of Nina Gore Auchincloss and Newton Steers, while Mrs Kennedy the bride’s stepsister, was matron of honour; a photograph is in Gore Vidal’s Palimpsest: A Memoir, 1995. Michael Straight later married Nina Steers; he also wrote Twigs for an Eagle’s Nest: Government and the Arts 1965–78, 1979. Michael died in 2004.
393 The memory retained from the age of five (1921) until his confessional After Long Silence, along with the name of the gardener’s boy, I think ‘Jimmy’.
394 Carter, Chapter 17 ‘Penitent Impenitent’ examines the operational misfortunes that beset British Intelligence during the 1960s, which perhaps protected Dorothy from any serious concern.
395 Rachel Harrison, Dorothy Elmhirst and the Visual Arts at Dartington Hall 1925–1945, 2002, thesis for the University of Plymouth, catalogues the collection.
396 DWE/Arts/2/A1 has the 1935–36 correspondence with Jim Ede, then nothing until 15th March 1964, ‘I think of you so often’ from Ede, followed by the ungracious (un-Dorothy like) lending of the Gaudier torso. Kettle’s Yard has correspondence with Leonard November/December 1968 agreeing to the casting of the Alabaster Boy, one bronze to be the gift of the Elmhirsts to the University of Cambridge, arranged a few days before Dorothy’s death; the bronze boy still resides at Kettle’s Yard.
397 Dorothy gave the Moore maquette to Peter and Bobbie Cox; her Picasso was sold in 1975, and many of the other works including the Alabaster Boy (original) and Wood’s Pony and Trap, Ploare, Brittany were sent for sale at Sotheby’s by the Dartington Hall Trust in November 2011.
398 Dorothy from Pink Sands to William Elmhirst, 16th February 1967 (her last visit). Beatrice Straight’s acting career moved from the stage to a long list of film and television credits, including an Oscar, and she played Rose Kennedy in Robert Kennedy and His Times, 1985; she died in Los Angeles in 2001.
399 Recording of her 1967 Founders’ Day address in the Dartington Hall Trust Archive.
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