Jennie had lived away from Holland for some time, and had few relatives there, so she had decided to stay in England, the country which had given her and her husband political asylum. She very soon became a frequent visitor to 33, Cheyne Place. My lovely Indian friend, Kumari, had enrolled as a VAD, and her brother, Indi, was trying to get into the RAF. Almost everyone was immediately involved in some kind of war-work – because for the past year, since Munich, they had all been associated with some organization connected with such an event.
It was difficult to concentrate on painting with so many political upheavals, but after October things seemed to settle down, and life, except when we were sent as reliefs to some hospital, was somewhat dull in contrast to that of those serving men and women who had already gone overseas. Social life was becoming rapidly less, but there were still dinners, lunches, and cocktail parties, and there were a great many weddings. I could see Elliot Hodgkin at work every day in his studio on the opposite side of the Royal Hospital Road. His concentration filled me with admiration. I was trying to paint a little boy who constantly tried to stick pins into poor Vicki. I disliked him so much that it was impossible to get anything but a very unpleasant aspect of him, which, of course, his mother did not appreciate. I was glad when she decided to evacuate from her Chelsea house and the sittings came to an end.
The Green Cat brought me many callers. He was visible from the road which he faced. One day, soon after I had moved into the place, a gentleman had called and asked Mrs Freeth if the owner would allow him to come in and look at the cat in the window. He had, she said, an unpronounceable name. The gentleman was elderly, came up, and apologizing for his intrusion pleaded his interest in the cat. He asked me if he might examine it, and where I had found it. I told him about Ah Lee in Peking and of my having wanted to possess the cat so much that I had exchanged my Leica camera for it. He asked me if I wanted to sell the figure. I said I would never part with it – it gave me so much pleasure. He congratulated me on my taste and said he shared my feelings for it. ‘I will give you my card,’ he said smiling, ‘in case you ever change your mind.’ He put the card on a table, and looked at several pieces of porcelain which I had brought back from China and Japan. He told me about them all, and recommended several books on Chinese art for me to read.
He was a fascinating person and I enjoyed talking to him enormously. After he had left I looked at the card on the table. The name was George Eumorfopoulos. Leon Underwood, who knew him well, was very amused when I told him this story.
One day in October another visitor rang the bell and asked to see the cat. This was Miss Ethel Walker, ARA, the painter, who lived farther along the river in Cheyne Walk. She knew me quite well, but she had never visited me before. When Mrs Freeth brought her to the studio she seemed astonished to find that the cat belonged to me. She admired it enormously, she said. But she did not admire my work. Unasked, she went round examining every canvas in the studio. She asked me where I had studied and if I wanted to be a portrait painter. ‘This is quite horrible,’ she said, looking at the portrait of the little boy. ‘You’d better come to my studio and I’ll teach you. You’d better come tomorrow morning.’
I was delighted, and being free the following morning I presented myself at her house on the Embankment, which had a lovely view of the river. Miss Walker painted in a room on the first floor. She seemed very old indeed and had two very old dogs, rough-haired terriers called David and The Angel. I had taken Vicki with me and this did not at all please her. ‘I don’t like those little German dogs,’ she said when I rang her bell, and her two dogs greeted us with a terrific protest. ‘And nor do they! What do you want?’
‘You told me to come,’ I said, disconcerted. ‘Yesterday in my studio you told me you would give me a lesson.’
‘Oh well,’ she said, as if she had completely forgotten it, ‘the model hasn’t turned up, but you can come up and see some of my work. Pick up that sausage creature or I won’t be responsible for my dogs!’
I followed her up the stairs to her painting room. It had huge bay windows and a magnificent view of the Thames. The room was full of canvases. She painted her sitters against the light, which seemed to me to be terribly difficult. But she had some kind of strange power of making the very air between her and her model scintillate. ‘I can tell you what is wrong with your work,’ she said abruptly. ‘You put in your backgrounds after you’ve painted part of the head – isn’t that so? What is the use of painting a head against nothing? Afterwards when you get the tone of the background in, you have to change all the tones of the face – isn’t that so?’ It was no use trying to tell her that I attempted to keep everything going at once. ‘If the model turns up tomorrow you can paint her here with me, and watch me at work,’ she said finally.
For the next few days I changed my shifts at the FAP so that I could go and work in her studio. The model was a lovely Eurasian but I found it difficult to paint her against the window with the Thames behind her.
‘Don’t come here in that ugly uniform,’ said Miss Walker, watching me put on the navy blue long coat and the squat round cap of the VAD. ‘It doesn’t suit you. You’d better get out of the Red Cross and work hard at your painting – you certainly need to.’
I did not see her again for some weeks and then one afternoon I was returning from a lunch party and I bumped into her on the Embankment. ‘What a pretty hat! What a very pretty hat!’ she exclaimed. ‘I should like to paint you in it. Who are you, my dear?’
‘But Miss Walker,’ I said, disconcerted again, ‘you know me very well. I live in Cheyne Place in the Royal Hospital Road – you know the big windows with the Green Cat in them.’
‘Oh yes,’ she said laughing, ‘but you always wear that hideous uniform. Naturally I didn’t recognize you in that delicious hat. Yes, you must sit for me-when will you come?’
We arranged the sittings, which went very well until Vicki chewed up the frivolous little hat.
Next day I went to the sitting without the hat. Miss Walker was furious. When I explained what Vicki had done she was very angry. ‘You must get another hat – exactly the same,’ she said. ‘It’s the hat which attracted me – it’s the hat which is the key-note of the painting. Get another one.’
I went to the shop where I had bought it, and told them what had happened. Had they another? The hat was a model, I was told, there was not another. Could they make me one? I got the answer we were all soon to get accustomed to. In war-time, madam? That would be difficult. But surely they could find one like it? They could not. They searched and telephoned in vain.
A few days later the shop found a hat which was almost the same – the flowers were white, not violet, but they would change them for me. The hat came – it was so like the former one that only an expert could have known the difference. Miss Walker said grudgingly that it wasn’t the same but it would do, and the sittings continued. Her comment on Vicki’s behaviour was that nothing else was to be expected from a German dog!
I bought the portrait when it was completed. I did not see myself in it, but I liked it as a painting. At this time I also bought a delightful little canvas of a nude by Lord Methuen, and a drawing by Augustus John. Ethel Walker gave me several drawings. Leon had given me some beautiful examples of his woodcuts and engravings, and I now bought a small painting of his Mexican period which I loved. I had earned a lot of money in India painting portraits of people who were very exacting in their demand for ten fingers and ten toes, every jewel in their jewel box and every decoration and medal imaginable. To be able to buy some other painters’ work was a tremendous pleasure and compensated somewhat for having had to do so much that was tedious and uncongenial.
First-aid lectures, gas lectures, nursing lectures filled up the weeks before Christmas, and these were interspersed with short shifts in hospitals getting experience and in endless practising of bandaging and splinting imaginary casualties. The practices went on – the being lowered into deep holes so that the re
scue squads could practise getting trapped people out. There were concerts in the ARP showing off local talent, and there were visitors to the FAP who came to be shown round. On the 24th Mrs Neville Chamberlain came to visit us. We had a great turn out of the Chelsea Red Cross personnel for her.
Sister-in-charge had inspected all our aprons – day and night staff – Dr Symes, Chelsea’s Medical Officer for Civil Defence, was there. Dr Graham Kerr received the visitor with Betty Compton, who was Commandant-in-charge. Betty was far too young and pretty to have such an onerous-sounding name. She looked most impressive in her red dress and apron in spite of her youth. She and Ruth Malcolm were delightful Commandants, invariably supporting and upholding their VADs in the inevitable ups-and-downs which attended our hospital debuts. Sister-in-charge at this inspection was a former King’s nurse.
Mrs Chamberlain asked a great many questions, and showed a great interest in everything. She asked the purpose of a small chain hanging from a fire-extinguisher and before anyone could stop her had caught hold of it. Unfortunately a shower of sand was released by the chain – and the result was a welcome break from the stiff atmosphere as her hat received most of it!
The autumn had been long and sunny, a continuation of the wonderful weather since the outbreak of war, but now it suddenly became bitterly cold. I found my cotton nurse’s dress a bit chilly, but our cloaks were lined with vermilion red which at least gave the impression of warmth. The Germans were massing behind the Siegfried Line, and this gave rise to many skits and sketches in the current revues and musicals.
Suddenly all our lovely silver balloons disappeared for a few days, which caused much speculation, but at the beginning of November they all reappeared. Alas, their bright silver had become a dirty green. They were still pretty, but nothing like as lovely as when they had been silver roach. They were not all easy to get up – and our one in Burton Court gave a lot of trouble as she floated vertically with great elephants’ ears sticking out.
Guy Fawkes day was quiet, no fireworks being allowed in the black-out. I felt sorry for the children – but some had packets of indoor sparklers to console them – and those who wanted bonfires had them in the afternoon before darkness fell. The stamping out of these before black-out by wardens added to their usual duties.
All visitors to my home at this period had to submit to acting as a casualty for practice, and we had several parties among the VADs for this purpose. In the Town Hall Control Room as telephonists we had constant practice not only in the receiving of warnings and taking messages, but also in the position of the places from which they were purported to have come.
Several friends from India were coming home to join up, others had returned there quickly fearing that they would otherwise be unable to do so. Life at this time resembled a transit camp – for the most unexpected people would appear and ask for a bed for a night while on their way to some destination or other, known or more often unknown. Hitler was making some ominous comments on Norway, Denmark, and Belgium. ‘Small nations,’ he announced, ‘have to adapt themselves to their larger neighbours at least in the economic spheres.’ This was followed by the usual Lebensraum talk. This had become a joke amongst us all – at the FAP, if we were crowded in the bandaging practices, we would ask each other for a little Lebensraum.
Christmas was quiet and many families were united with their children again, for in the absence of any air raids thousands had returned to their homes. There were parties and celebrations in the Civil Defence, in the FAP, in the wardens’ posts, the AFS – and Christmas trees in many of them. The King broadcast from Sandringham. He spoke first to the children who were separated from their parents. I always admired the King’s determination to overcome his trouble with public speaking – because my own father had suffered from exactly the same disability, and I knew what he must be enduring. His last words were typical of the man, as distinct from the King, and in the simplicity and sincerity of their delivery left no doubt of their speaker’s own faith. ‘I would like to say to you: “I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the Unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be better to you than light, and safer than a known way.’” I can still hear the voice of King George as he quoted those words. They carried more weight for me than many long sermons from the pulpit.
Chapter Five
IT WAS AN uneasy spring with the ever-widening field of tension growing in intensity on all fronts. Chelsea presented a strange face to those who had known it in its normal aspect. The shelters which had now materialized, the sad look of mourning caused by the black-out, the uniformed citizens, the balloons, sand-bags, trenches, the barbed wire, and perhaps most of all the lovely gardens of the Royal Hospital, which like all other gardens had, by Government order, been dug in allotments for the growing of vegetables. I used to stand in Royal Avenue with its sand-bags and its wardens’ post and wonder what Charles II and Nell Gwynne would have thought of it now. The thousands of Anderson shelters, already considered, like the gas-masks, as obsolete by the public, were hidden under vegetation in many gardens now. Some of them had made splendid marrow beds the previous autumn, and now were sown with radishes, carrots, and lettuces. Others grew rambler roses over them. The wardens’ posts had their own cultivated plots and very fine some of them were. Kathleen and I considered what we could grow on the roof of No 33, and were coaxing lettuce and mustard and cress seeds. During the summer we had sown some splendid tomatoes in window-boxes, and were planning to extend them this coming summer. Food was already becoming a major problem, and every small item helped. We were all hunting out ancient bicycles and attaching large baskets to them and using them as our only means of transport.
Although German behaviour in the torpedoing of Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Dutch vessels threw a shadow of events to follow, of neutrality repudiated, no one was prepared for the shock which April 9th brought with its news that at 5 a.m. strong mechanized units had crossed the Schleswig-Holstein frontier near Flensburg, and occupied the whole of Denmark within a few hours without any organized resistance. Simultaneously German troops were landed from warships and transports at Copenhagen, Nyborg, Cjedser, and other places. By 8 a.m. Copenhagen, lovely peaceful Hans Andersen city where I had often painted and sketched near the statue of the little mermaid, was in German hands. Norway rejected Germany’s ultimatum, determined to resist, and early on April 9th German troops landed at Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim, and Narvik. The King and his Government left for Hamar, and Oslo was occupied the same afternoon. The Germans immediately took over the radio station.
I went round to Asta Lange as soon as we heard this. She was in a fury of shocked anger. The BBC was broadcasting to all Danish and Norwegian ships to put in at British ports where they would receive every assistance and comfort. We listened to this, and Peer Gynt sensed his mistress’s distress and was miserable too. What could one say to a friend whose country had been so ruthlessly invaded and looked as if it were doomed to follow in the wake of Poland, Finland, and Denmark? Supposing it were England, what would Asta have said to console me? But Asta, like her fellow-countrymen, was tough and brave. ‘We shall fight,’ she said. ‘They won’t find us as easy as the Danes.’
They didn’t. The Norwegians were fighting magnificently and putting every possible obstacle in the path of the invaders, who were pushing in more troops to crush the intrepid little country. British troops were rushed to Norway on the 15th.
In May the phoney war, as we called the long, unnaturally calm interval when it appeared to the public that nothing was happening in spite of our being at war, came to an abrupt end, and the country was shaken to its foundations by the revolt, climax of a growing anger, of the Tory Party against its own leader, Neville Chamberlain. Excitement was intense. There was no other topic of discussion anywhere – the unprecedented overthrow of a leader by his own party was shattering to the British idea of loy
alty. But the revolt voiced the general public’s dissatisfaction with the policy of inaction in the growing face of danger.
On May 13th a new Prime Minister paid his respects to the Commons, one who had a different idea of war from Chamberlain’s bloodless one. During the phoney war we had been left in doubt and confusion as to Britain’s policy. The new leader left us in no possible doubt. Winston Churchill knew absolutely which path Britain was to take. ‘I have nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears, and sweat,’ he told us. This sounded more like the accepted idea of war – more like the doctor from the Spanish war who had lectured to us. ‘You ask what is our policy? I will say it is to wage war by sea, land, and air with all our might.’
There were those who were horrified at this blunt statement, but these were not only the still-faithful Chamberlain followers, although he had many sympathizers, they were also the Fascists and the Communist elements. I myself had several pacifist friends amongst the painters I knew, and it was understandable that to an artist the idea of war was doubly repugnant. To most of us, sickened and outraged, and at the same time apprehensive where this relentless march of the Nazi armies would end, this new definite statement of positive action against them came as a welcome relief to a long period of unbearable suspense. ‘You ask what is our aim?’ asked the new leader Churchill. ‘I’ll answer it in one word, VICTORY.’
So assured and confident was the voice of the man who had taken over leadership of the country that a great wave of elation swept over us all.
A Chelsea Concerto Page 5