Lost, Stolen or Shredded

by Rick Gekoski

  Whereas you imagine that the Kaufmann family, who commissioned Fallingwater, had to adapt to living in it – and what a pleasure to do so! – the Blackies had no such period of adjustment. Hill House was bespoke; it was made to fit them. Its architect initiated the project by spending many days living with the family, observing not merely what they thought they might want, but how they actually lived. He then designed the interiors first, and the external elevation of the building evolved as an organic consequence of what was to go on within. The placement and shape of the windows, for instance, which conventionally precedes a consideration of the inner spaces, are here a reflection of them, and what may have been lost in external symmetry is gained in internal coherence.

  The rooms are largely painted white, following the Mackintoshes’ paint scheme in the decorations of their own flat, which were so exacting and coordinated that one imagines the vegetables had to be interviewed before appearing at the table. The vogue for white rooms – William Morris used internal whites at Kelmscott Manor in the early 1870s, as did Oscar Wilde in refurbishing his home at 34 Tite Street in London in 1884 – was a distinct rebellion from the fusty browns and dark greens of the Victorian era, and became central to the modernist aesthetic.

  Like Wright, Mackintosh demanded total control of the furnishing and fittings of his architectural creations, but unlike Wright, he got it. (Mrs Kaufmann insisted on placing a hideous antique Spanish dining table and chairs by the natural rock outcropping that entered the living room as a fireplace at Fallingwater, which must have made Wright cringe. But, Mrs Kaufmann insisted, it was her house.)

  Hill House was the Blackies’ house, too, but they had perfect confidence in their architect, and were delighted by the choices he made after consultation with them. Thus, the publisher wanted his library directly off the entrance hall, so that he could meet business contacts without disturbing the ongoing life of the house. So, too, the children’s room had an alcove with a raised floor, ideal for playing games. (And, as children are noisy, Blackie had requested a master bedroom at the furthest distance from their rooms.) The owner was delighted by the results:

  To the larder, kitchen, laundry, etc. he gave minute attention to fit them for practical needs, and always pleasingly designed. With him the practical came first. The pleasing design followed of itself … Every detail, inside as well as outside, received his careful, I might say loving, attention … During the planning and building of Hill House I necessarily saw much of Mackintosh and could not but recognise, with wonder, the inexhaustible fertility in design and astonishing powers of work. Withal, he was a man of practical competency, satisfactory to deal with in every way, and of a most likeable nature.

  It sounds almost like a letter of reference, and who could imagine one better? Mackintosh was only thirty-seven, at the apex of his powers, recognised as one of the best architects in Europe, yet Hill House was to be the last of his large-scale commissions. Perhaps he was too modern, too insistent on control of ‘total design’ – which meant ‘leave all of it to me!’ – to gain much more work. In a lecture in 1893 he had insisted that architects and designers be given greater freedom and independence, but he didn’t realise how few potential patrons would allow such license. Rich people don’t much like being told what to do, particularly by someone whose taste is better than theirs.

  He was admired by a coterie in Scotland, but his real fame was garnered abroad. In 1900 he was one of the stars of the 8th Vienna Secession, and also showed at exhibitions in Moscow and Turin. In 1902 the leading German critic Hermann Muthesius described him as ‘among the first’ creative geniuses of modern architecture. While in Europe this genius was celebrated, at home his career was foundering. Sadly his designs for the new cathedral in Liverpool, submitted in 1902, were rejected in favour of the present unprepossessing design. Mackintosh’s would have been an astonishing building.

  In 1914 the depressed Mackintosh and Margaret, who had continued to collaborate in his projects, moved to Suffolk, and shortly thereafter to London, in the hope of finding new commissions. He couldn’t have chosen a worse time. The First World War was just starting, and building projects were severely curtailed. Though he did some brilliantly original work for a patron in Northampton, Mackintosh had to make his living as a fabric designer, at which he was (of course) extremely accomplished.

  But money was tight, and in 1923 the couple moved to Port-Vendres in the south of France, where life was easier, more agreeable and a lot cheaper. Mackintosh devoted himself to painting landscapes and botanical studies in watercolour and (as you might have supposed) was exceptionally gifted at it. Indeed, had he produced nothing but these watercolours, his place in twentieth-century art would have been assured. The best examples of these pictures are now worth half a million pounds, when they very occasionally come on the market. Many can be seen in the wonderful collection of Mackintosh material at the Hunterian Art Gallery in Glasgow. In 1927 the couple returned to England due to Mackintosh’s cancer. He was in and out of hospital over the next twelve months, and died at the age of sixty in December 1928.

  We are accustomed to asking: what poems might Keats, who died at twenty-five, have written in later life? What compositions could one have expected of a mature Mozart, dead at thirty-five? Their truncated lives are tragic enough, and leave us bereft of the sustained benefits of their genius. Yet what are we to say of poor Charles Rennie Mackintosh? The loss of his mature architectural work cannot be attributed to a premature demise; it is due to those who failed to acknowledge and to celebrate him. Culturally, it is our fault. We had in our midst one of the great geniuses of the twentieth century. We could be – we should be – looking at an architectural landscape with dozens of Mackintosh buildings in it. They are not there; we look and do not find them. They are lost.

  A number of commissions for private houses were given to the benign and wholly agreeable Edwin Lutyens – certainly a less original architect than Mackintosh – because the English are old-school, and when they build their own houses, they like them in the mock-Tudorish mode of the Arts and Crafts movement. Mullioned windows, some nice beams, sloping tiled roofs, big chimneys sort of thing. Nothing too modern; better to dream of the past, to lust after it. It is no coincidence that Edward Hudson, the founder of Country Life magazine in 1897, had several houses designed by Lutyens. I can’t imagine he would have contemplated one by poor Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

  Hardly anyone did, though they might have. The world as we experience and make it, is a configuration of random unlikelinesses, of almost inexpressible contingency. That it is as it is is a miracle of probability beyond imaging, for at every millisecond it could be other than it is, replete with new persons, objects, projects. It’s no wonder people find the alternative universes hypothesis so compelling. Late Mozart symphonies? Byron’s Memoirs? Houses by Charles Rennie Mackintosh? In our dreams, and garden sheds.

  Afterword

  Works of art and literature engage us in profound and unexpected ways, and when those works are torn from us – for it can feel like an act of violence – we are affected in complex and unexpected fashion. Why is that? It has, perhaps, something to do with what art is, and why we value it. Art is not essential to culture; it is culture. Civilisation begins when tribes of apes pause from scratching themselves and hitting each other with sticks and begin to tell and to transmit stories, and to make images. It is a long way, in terms of human development, from eating a pig to drawing a picture of one. Art makes us human. It is how we escape from nature, transcend it and make it ours.

  And if art is how we define ourselves as human, it is also how many humans define themselves as individuals. Our taste in the arts, the particular choices and discriminations over which one spends so much time, passion and energy are central to our sense of who we are, and how we wish others to see us.

  Something so highly valued carries special attachments, resonates with weighty archetypes. It’s no wonder the loss of works of art and literature touches
us so deeply, and awakens primordial fears. It is a natural and sympathetic human reflex to dread loss, and to grieve over the ravages of time. How could it not be? We lose our loved ones, our fortunes, our youth, our happiness, our lives. Losing is the opposite of having. Loss is bad. We must hold on to what we have.

  It is the most understandable, conservative and unrealistic of all human impulses. Yet the experience of loss is central not merely to any human life but to the great cycles of nature, in which the conjoined processes of loss and renewal give us the seasons, the flowers, the sustenance of field and orchard. To be without loss is to be without change, and it is almost impossible to imagine the ennui of a world fixed in place, immutable. To encounter a concept that dull, you have to look at the idea of Heaven, and shiver with apprehension lest you end up there, stuck for ever on that cloud, in a state from which mutability is exiled.

  Ultimately the loss of one thing betokens the loss of all. The loss of a great work of art reminds us of the evanescence of objects, and the empty silences to come. We talk of the ‘eternal’ verities and the ‘immortal’ Shakespeare as if to shield us from such knowledge, as Keats seems to do in suggesting that his Grecian Urn will speak to the coming generations, as if for ever. Shelley knew better: not merely has Ozymandias, King of Kings, fallen, but the statue of him has toppled as well:

  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.

  Art, like life, is inevitably lost. What remains are the forces of obliteration. Every work of art carries the certainty of its loss as an essential aspect of its nature, which makes its place in our world fragile and contingent. Shelley puts this baldly: ‘Nought may endure but Mutability.’ We have the gift of life, and of art, for a time, and no more. An Epicurean philosopher or an Omar Khayyam would counsel us to delight in them while we may.

  So when we hear the words of Amin Maalouf’s Astagh-firullah, in the novel Leo the African, we should draw strength and consolation from their implacable wisdom:

  Too often, at funerals, I hear men and women believers cursing death. But death is a gift from the Most High, and one cannot curse that which comes from Him. Does the word ‘gift’ seem incongruous to you? It is nevertheless the absolute truth … Yes my brothers, let us thank God for having made us this gift of death, so that life is to have meaning; silence, that speech is to have meaning; illness, that health is to have meaning; war, that peace is to have meaning. Let us give thanks to Him for having given us weariness and pain, so that rest and joy are to have meaning. That is, let us celebrate loss, so that presence is to have meaning.

  Acknowledgements

  A version of Chapter 4 was previously published in Granta. Bits and pieces from my online blog ‘Finger on the Page’ in the Guardian will have found their way into a few chapters of this text. Chapters 1, 3, 4, 7, 10–13 and 15 were originally produced, in much shorter and rather different form, for two series of Lost, Stolen or Shredded that were aired on BBC Radio 4. The original broadcasts may be heard on my web site: www.gekoski.com. I am deeply grateful to the following, who have read all or some sections of the text with great friendliness: Gretchen Albrecht, Anna Francesca Camilleri, Erika Congreve, Nicholas Garnham, Anna Gekoski, Dame Jenny Gibbs, Ruth Greenberg, Peter Grogan, Mary Kisler, Andrew McGeachin, Robin Muller, John Murray, Stephen Roe, Tom Rosenthal, Jamie Ross, Peter Selley, Rob Shepherd, Anthony Thwaite and (as ever) Sam Varnedoe.

  Without my friend and literary agent Peter Straus, Peter Carson and Andrew Franklin this book would not have happened. Sadly, Peter Carson died some months before this book was published. He was a man of remarkable and acute reading, a percipient and encouraging editor, always lively and amusing company. One of the great pleasures of having joined Profile was that I could be edited by a person of such quality, and I will miss him very much. I am also most grateful to Penny Daniel and Cecily Gayford, who have seen the manuscript through the press so efficiently. My research assistant, Elinor Brown, cannot be praised too highly, so I won’t even try. My wife, Belinda Kitchin, makes all of this possible, and I am a lot more than grateful to her.

  Illustration Credits

  The space left by the missing Mona Lisa © Mary Evans Picture Library

  Urewera Mural ©Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, on loan from the Department of Conservation Te Papa Atawhai

  Winston Churchill in front of Graham Sutherland’s portrait © Popperfoto/Getty Images

  James Joyce as a boy © The Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.

  Mark David Hofmann with manuscripts © Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

  Jock Murray in front of the fireplace where Byron’s Memoirs were burnt ©Tim Mercer, John Murray Collection

  Philip Larkin and Monica Jones at the funeral of Sir John Betjeman ©Getty Images

  Kafka with his pet dog © Getty Images

  George Peabody Library, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore © Greg Pease/Getty Images

  Recreation of front cover of the Great Omar © Shepherds Bookbinding Ltd

  Nazi officer oversees the loading of looted Jewish artwork in Paris © o.Ang./Bundesarchiv

  The Getty Museum recreation of the villa at Herculaneum © UIG/Getty Images

  A tank stands next to the Iraq Museum © Gleb Garanich/Reuters

  A bronze plaque which decorated the palace of the Benin Obas © UIG/Getty Images

  Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s design for Liverpool Catherdral © The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, 2013

  While every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders of illustrations, the author and publishers would be grateful for information about any illustrations where they have been unable to trace them, and would be glad to make amendments in further editions.

  Index

  Figures in italics indicate captions.

  A

  Achebe, Chinua 227-228, 229

  Adams, John Quincy 77

  Adler, Guido

  death 186–7

  decides not to flee from Austria 185–6

  as the first musicologist 185

  his library 184, 186–87, 188, 189

  Mahler’s gift 182–94, 186, 189–90, 191–2

  ‘precious relic’ from Liszt 184

  retirement from University of Vienna 185

  victimised as a Jew 185–6

  ‘The Scope, Method and Goals of Musicology’ 185

  Adler, Melanie 186–88

  Adler, Tom 189–93

  Admiralty 46, 47

  Aeschylus 207, 208

  Africa

  African art 232–3

  Arab slave traders 226, 227

  Conrad’s views 228, 229, 231

  ‘dark continent’ 230, 231, 242

  ‘friends’ of Africa 230

  in the public imagination 231

  Saharan vs sub-Saharan 225, 234

  stripped of its cultural and artistic heritage 239

  thriving set of urban cultures in sub-Saharan Africa 241

  treated as a single entity 225–6

  Al Qaeda 32, 214

  Alexander the Great 201–2

  Alexandria 201–2, 207

  library 201, 202, 203, 206–7

  siege of (48 BC) 203

  Althorp, Northamptonshire 17

  Alvarez, Al 153

  American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts 83, 84–5

  American League 59

  Amis, Kingsley 113, 131

  Amis, Martin 115

  Amundsen, Roald 172

  anarchism 11–12

  Anderson Gallery, University at Buffalo 146

  Andrews, Mr: his copy of the Mona Lisa 1, 2, 4, 7

  Anne, St 9

  anti-Semitism 186, 190

  Antiquarian Book Fair (New York, 1984) 77

  Apollinaire, Guillaume 11, 12, 13, 32–3

  archives

  catalogued 14
8

  Coffey’s attitude 154–6

  contents of 147–48

  electronic 158–60

  few saleable 157–8

  journals and incoming correspondence 147

  manuscript material 151

  role of 148

  sale of letters 153–4

  tracing literary works through their stages 148–9

  Argosy Bookshop, New York 80, 81, 83

  Aristotle 202, 205

  Arnold, Matthew 75

  Art Institute of Chicago, The 216

  art theft

  art held to ransom 193

  artworks sold into the art trade at a bargain price 193

  difficult to dispose of great art 193–4

  FBI estimates 192–3

  insurance companies 193

  reasons for rise in 193

  the world’s third largest criminal industry 192

  Arts and Crafts movement 257

  Arts Council of New Zealand 35

  Ashante empire 240

  Ashante people 240, 241

  Assyrians 207

  Athenians 207

  Athens 210

  Auckland, New Zealand 29

  Auckland Art Gallery 30, 31, 35

  Auden, W. H. 146

  Austen, Jane 90

  Australian Aboriginals 223

  B

  Babylonians 209

  Bacon, Francis 43, 46

  Bamiyan, Buddhas of 33