Augustus John (132 page)

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.

36
  Undated letter from Ida John to the Rani.

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 Margaret 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.

81
  Ada Nettleship to Ursula and Ethel Nettleship n.d. (10 March 1907). NLW MS 22799D fols. 36–7.

82
  
Finishing Touches
p. 45.

83
  Letter from Augustus John to the Rani, March 1907.

84
  
Finishing Touches
p. 46.

85
  Letter from Augustus John to Margaret Sampson, March 1907.

86
  
The Letters of Wyndham Lewis
p. 36.

87
  Five years later Augustus abruptly gave Mrs Nettleship notice that he was coming to fetch Ida’s urn ‘but not the half-ton of lead with which it appears to be ballasted’. NLW MS 22775C fol. 89. Early in April 1912 Henry Lamb came across Augustus on the platform of Waterloo station. He said ‘he was travelling 1st because he had an urn with him,’ Lamb wrote to Lady Ottoline Morrell (6 April 1912). ‘…At Poole we found each other & went to a pub… then we came back to the station & got our luggage on board. J. flabbergasted me when they bumped a dull looking wooden box beside the coachman by suddenly announcing that it contained Ida’s ashes.’ See Keith Clements
Henry Lamb. The Artist and his Friends
(1985), p. 54.

88
  See
Men and Memories
Volume II p. 90.

89
  Letter from Augustus John to William Rothenstein, 20 March 1907.

90
  Letter from Augustus John to the Rani, March 1907.

91
  
The Letters of Wyndham Lewis
p. 36.

92
  Information from ‘Augustus John’, an unpublished typescript by Alan Moorehead, whose source was Henry Lamb.

93
  Unpublished diaries of Arthur Symons: ‘Gwen and Doulia’
(sic).

CHAPTER V: BUFFETED BY FATE

1
  Ada Nettleship to Ursula Nettleship, 15 March 1907. Written from the Hotel Regina. NLW MS 22799D fols. 46–8.

2
  John to Alice Rothenstein.

3
  John to Chaloner Dowdall.

4
  John to Trevor Haddon, 4 February 1907. NLW MS 21570. See also letter of 12 July 1907: ‘I wonder if it has occurred to you to think of replacing Knewstub as manager of the shop; as a shareholder I should be in favour of that step, tho’ no doubt it would be difficult to find a suitable man.’