Augustus John

by Michael Holroyd

Whatever the variations, it was the bursting effort to concentrate that impressed his subjects. The studio seemed to throb with energy as he worked. But somehow the moment of finishing never quite arrived and then, at the bell for tea, he would stop instantly, like a cricketer drawing stumps.

  These seemed the methods almost of an action painter rather than the Royal Academician he had recently become. Over a number of years his election as an Associate had been painfully imminent – so much so that it had become his habit to leave the country at the time elections took place. ‘Noticed with the greatest relief that I was not elected,’ he wrote from Dieppe to Cynthia Asquith in May 1920. Yet by this time his persistent non-election had in itself become considerable news, pulling the headlines from under the feet of those who had been chosen. ‘We learn’, announced The Times in 1920, ‘that Mr Augustus John has received no direct intimation of any decision of the Royal Academy to open its doors to him.’95 People looked to his election as a symbol of Burlington House being prepared to accept what were called ‘broader views and wider sympathies’. In a letter to his sister Gwen, he makes it clear that he had allowed his name to be put up, ‘but made sure they wouldn’t elect me by making certain uncomplimentary statements in the press. It has been an amusing history altogether.’96 Yet when the offer did come in April the following year, he decided to accept. Then he grew defensive. ‘To many’, he wrote, ‘it seemed to be not a triumph but a surrender. Had I not been a Slade student? Was I not a member of the New English Art Club? Did I not march in the front ranks of the insurgents? The answer to these questions is “yes”. But had I cultivated the Royal Academy in any way? Had I ever submitted a single work to the Selection Committee?… History answers “no”. Without even blowing my own trumpet the walls of Jericho had fallen!… I acknowledged and returned the compliment.’97

  But the fact was that John had taken pride in being outside the Royal Academy. ‘Never exhibited at R.A.’, he scrawled across the form when sending five pictures to the ‘Exhibition of Works by Certain Modern Artists of Welsh Birth or Extraction’. Old Edwin John would sometimes write to Gwen telling her how ‘very sorry’ he was that Gus had not become a Royal Academician. ‘He practically asked not to be elected.’98 Did his election as an Associate mean that Gus was moving in his father’s direction? In any event he had made his father a happy man.

  In December 1928 he was elected to full membership and the process of ‘self-sacrifice’, as he called it, was complete. But his passage with the RA was far rougher than his autobiographical writings allow. To start with his father wrote to congratulate him on achieving the crown of his career. Then Sean O’Casey wrote to commiserate with him on being ‘soiled’ by contact with the World, the Flesh and the Devil – ‘three excellent things,’ John retorted. ‘…I assure you that it won’t make the slightest difference to me… at any rate, it will be a useful disguise. Cézanne longed for official recognition and the Legion of Honour – and didn’t get either. Van Gogh dreamt of electric light, hot and cold water, w.c’s and general confort anglais. I have them all and remain unsatisfied.’99

  The chief use of Burlington House lay in providing a new market for his wares at a time when the New English Art Club had faded.*2 It was, as he explained to his old Slade friend Ursula Tyrwhitt, ‘the cheapest & probably the best place to show at’.100 But he hated sitters who were anxious to have their portraits shown at the Academy. ‘Kindly get it into your head that the R. Academy is not the important thing,’ he instructed one of them. ‘What is important is to do the picture.’101 T. E. Lawrence had the right attitude. ‘Damn the Academy, please, for me!’102 John’s view depended partly upon the President. In 1928 he was reasonably happy exhibiting pictures there; in 1938 he rebelled. It was in this year that Wyndham Lewis painted his portrait of T. S. Eliot. In the spring it was submitted to the Hanging Committee of the Royal Academy which, to Eliot’s relief and Lewis’s indignation, rejected it. On learning this, John at once issued a statement full of powerful negatives for the press:

  ‘I very much regret to make a sensation, but it cannot be helped. Nothing that Mr Wyndham Lewis paints is negligible or to be condemned lightly. I strongly disagree with this rejection. I think it is an inept act on the part of the Academy. The rejection of Mr Wyndham Lewis’s portrait by the Academy has determined my decision to resign from that body… I shall henceforth experience no longer the uncomfortable feeling of being in a false position as a member of an institution with whose general policy I am constantly in disagreement. I shall be happier and more honest in rejoining the ranks of those outside, where I naturally belong.’

  This statement provoked an extraordinary response in the press in Britain, the United States and, breaking through the walls of art insularity, France. ‘Premier May be Questioned’, ran a headline in the Morning Post. ‘He has been meaning to [resign] for years,’ Dorelia wrote to his son Edwin. ‘There was a devil of a fuss.’103 With some bewilderment, it was reported that the Academy itself had received no notification of John’s resignation. In fact he had written a formal letter to the President, Sir William Llewellyn, three days beforehand, but neglected to post it. ‘After the crowning ineptitude of the rejection of Wyndham Lewis’s picture I feel it is impossible for me to remain [any] longer a member of the R.A.,’ he told Llewellyn. He had been searching round for an escape partly because he disliked Llewellyn. The Eliot portrait provided him with a perfect motive, and he wrote to Lewis to thank him: ‘I resign with gratitude to you for affording me so good a reason.’

  Lewis was delighted, suggesting that all sorts of politico-artistic activities should issue out of this rumpus, including the formation by the two of them of a new Salon des Refusés. But John demurred, delivering instead a neatly placed blow, just below the belt, when he let it be known that he had not seen the portrait of Eliot at the time of its rejection. ‘I wasn’t thinking of doing anybody a kindness and I don’t give a damn for that picture,’ he assured Laura Knight, ‘but I acted as a better R.A. than you and others who let the show go to pot from year to year. I know I haven’t done anything directly to affect the policy of the Institution. It seemed pretty hopeless to oppose the predominant junta of deadly conservatism which rules. If by my beastly action I shall have brought some fresh air into Burlington House I shall feel justified.’104

  Two years later, Llewellyn having left, he accepted re-election to become what Lewis described as ‘the most distinguished Royal Academician… of a sleeping-partner order’. In 1944 he almost woke up to find himself President. Once again the romance of honour attracted him, but common sense counselled refusal: once again he prevaricated. ‘I would of course like to do my best for the R.A.,’ he confided to Philip Connard, ‘and would be fully conscious of the honour of such a position but am only doubtful of my ability to cope with the duties, official and social, it would entail. Here’s the snag. Apart from this, as P.R.A. is only an extension of R.A. I would have no logical reason to refuse.’105 This snag was successful enough to stave off his election, and by seventeen votes to twenty-four he secured second place. ‘I was in grave danger of being elected PRA recently,’ he told Edwin, ‘but to my great relief [Alfred] Munnings quite rightly was preferred.’106

  During the 1920s, John had allowed himself to be overtaken by several major changes in the gallery world. Once the war was over, Knewstub, slightly bombed, emerged to dream again. From his upstairs room at the Chenil he gazed across Chelsea and saw in his mind a great art centre with himself at its summit.107 The idea was irresistible. Although he had no head for business, he was possessed of a genius for advertisement. He whispered into the ears of the wealthy; he wrote well-directed letters of indignation and enthusiasm; he interviewed himself in newspapers. News of his dreams travelled to Boston and Calcutta.108 Then, towards the end of 1923, vast notices began to spread themselves across the press.109 His arguments were simple. The galleries of London were closing. The old Grosvenor Gallery had long ago collapsed and its successor, the New Galler
y, been converted into a cinema. The Grafton Gallery, until recently the home of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, was now a dance hall. The Doré Gallery and Messrs Dowdeswell’s in Bond Street, the Dudley Gallery in the Egyptian Hall: all had disappeared. The Society of British Artists and the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours, in Suffolk Street and Pall Mall East respectively, were threatened with demolition. In such conditions living artists had almost nowhere to exhibit their pictures. ‘The root of the difficulty is obvious,’ Knewstub proclaimed, ‘as is the remedy.’ The difficulties were rates and rents; the remedy decentralization. ‘A new and commodious Art Institution, untrammelled by the impossible burden of West End expenses, has become an urgent need of the day.’ Chelsea, with its literary and artistic traditions, was ‘unquestionably the alternative’.

  The New Chenil Galleries was an enlargement of the old Chenil on a Napoleonic scale. The adjoining premises were taken over and, with the aid of George Kennedy, the Bloomsbury architect, robust plans were planted for a ‘temple of the muses’. ‘Under three spacious new roofs’, explained Knewstub, ‘are to be large and small galleries for paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture; a musical society; a literary club or institution, a school of art, a large block of private studios, a first-class restaurant, a cafe or lounge, a library, and a hall that may be let for lectures, concerts, dancing, and other social gatherings.’110

  In a letter (30 January 1924) written for publication, John applauded Knewstub: ‘I consider you deserve great credit for showing the imagination to conceive and the business ability to bring to fruition so ambitious an undertaking.’ With the significant exception of The Economist,111 congratulations flowed in from every quarter. Knewstub was beside himself. He published a prospectus; he held meetings; he offered large quantities of shares for subscription; he invented several ‘honorary advisory councils’ on which John’s name was prominent; and he appointed directors including (besides himself) an editor of the Queen, the proprietor of a defunct rival gallery, an eminent conductor and a catering expert. On Saturday, 25 October the foundation stone was laid. After a few words from John Ireland representing music, John himself entered the ring amid cheers, smoking a cigarette and with marks of deep concentration on his brow. Baring his head, he spoke. Though inexperienced in laying stones, he had read that it was customary on these occasions to slay a man and lay his corpse in the foundation of the building, so that his spirit would guard the place from malevolent influences: he now appealed for volunteers whom (raising a mason’s mallet) he could offer an expeditious exit and any amount of posthumous glory. His large uneasy eyes contemplated a crowd that numbered the leonine belletrist Augustine Birrell, the Sitwell brothers in plain clothes, and James Pryde wearing a blue Count d’Orsay coat and soft travelling hat. No one coming forward, John (hoping this would ‘do the trick’) placed a George V half-crown on the lower stone and energetically applied the mortar, bespattering the noblemen and artist’s models in the front row. Suddenly a choir, conjured up by Knewstub, broke into a rendering of ‘Let us now praise famous men’, while John and the other famous men stiffened to attention. ‘In Paris’, commented the Manchester Guardian Weekly, ‘such a figure would be continuously before us on the revue stage and the comic press.’112

  A year later the building was ready. Much impressed by its ‘solidity and elegance’, John assured Will Rothenstein that ‘Knewstub with all his faults deserves considerable credit.’ Knewstub not only deserved it, he needed it. By the end of 1926 he was bankrupt, and had resigned his managing directorship – ‘taking a very necessary and long overdue rest and medical treatment’, was how he phrased it in a rather desperate letter to John. The fact was that financial humiliation had finally sent him mad. Searching for someone on whom to stick his own incompetence, he settled collectively for the Bloomsbury Group which, he revealed to John, was scheming to get control of ‘this enterprise of mine’. If it succeeded, ‘there would be a pitiable outlook both for you and for the Company’s liability to you.’ Such financial threats were familiar to John from the days when he had lost money in the original Chenil Gallery and the Chelsea Art School through Knewstub, who ‘was the curse of the place’, as he now told his American dealer Mitchell Kennerley.’113 Nevertheless, Knewstub had a final plan for making the New Chenil ‘one of the most vital Art interests in the world’. Since he had ‘spared no effort whatever and… involved myself substantially in debt’, why should not John and a few other well-known artists ‘get together’, sell their pictures and hand him the money: in short, hold ‘an Exhibition for my benefit’?114 When John declined, Knewstub suddenly realized it had been his disloyalty that, on top of the General Strike, was responsible for the debacle. ‘I’ve known John for twenty-five years,’ he said. ‘If you’d known him for half that time you’d realise what a feat it was.’ To long service, honour is due. But Knewstub’s complaint that John abandoned him in this year of need was a more complicated matter.

  On 22 October 1925 John had received a letter from Dudley Tooth explaining that his gallery in Bruton Street was no longer to be exclusively associated ‘with the academic works of deceased masters of the British School’, but intended to ‘deal in the best modern art of to-day’. The letter, asking John to let the gallery handle his future work, apparently went unanswered. Then, in 1926, John held a joint exhibition with his sister Gwen at Knewstub’s New Chenil Gallery. When Dudley Tooth wrote again, on 9 February 1928, Mrs Fleming, acting as go-between, gave him little chance of success. But by that time Knewstub had collapsed and John, who had tried unsuccessfully to find someone to take over the Chelsea art emporium, finally decided to invade the West End. At a meeting on 12 March 1928, Tooth proposed setting up an agency to deal with all John’s pictures (excluding portraits painted to private commission), and holding a one-man show to identify the gallery as John’s sole agents. To these proposals John agreed, his first exhibition at Tooth’s being held in April 1929. It was into this exhibition that Virginia Woolf dashed and ‘was so shocked that I came out again’, she told her sister Vanessa Bell (28 April 1929). ‘You can’t conceive – if I’m to be trusted – the vulgarity, banality, coarseness and commonplaceness of those works, all costing over £400 [equivalent to £10,800 in 1996] and sold in the first hour.’115 Though he could still rake in the money, the ‘age of Augustus John’ was well and truly over.

  All this postdated Knewstub’s period of utmost need. After 1927 his friendship with John ceased. When J. B. Manson appealed for a fund to assist him, he received from John a categorical reply: ‘I shall certainly not help Knewstub or any other crooked swine.’116 To many this smelt of ingratitude. But he believed that, in addition to making a hole in his own pocket, Knewstub had taken advantage of Gwen John’s financial innocence to cheat her of fifty pounds. Yet he did help Knewstub’s wife and at least one of her children ‘on the understanding that K[newstub] is to know nothing,’ he instructed Manson. ‘I gather that K’s family see nothing of him and don’t particularly want to.’117

  For years Knewstub had modelled himself on John, training his wife to resemble Dorelia; and now John had deserted him. He retired to Hastings, to the singing of the birds and of his kettle. ‘A well-fitted cellar of the best would certainly rejuvenate me,’ he suggested. But in vain. He fell back pitiably on tea. ‘Possibly’, he estimated, ‘the outstanding comfort I have is being able to make good hot tea very easily in the morning… It is an almost indispensable stimulant and restorative.’ He luxuriated in the ‘humiliation’ of National Assistance – which showed how far ‘on the downward path’ he had travelled. He threatened to ‘sell my few possessions’, even his ‘worn out lot of rubbish and rags’; he threatened to live to a hundred so that he might receive a royal telegram for his ‘dear ones the generations ahead’; he threatened, most embarrassingly, to start again: ‘I think I must somehow refit myself with Evening Dress,’ he calculated. Refitted thus, he proposed to write doggerel for charity, in particular
the Women’s Voluntary Service. Or else: ‘A lavatory attendant would not be too great an effort,’ he told one of his sisters, ‘and would allow me ample time for quiet meditation.’ But when the family, responding to this blitzkrieg, implored him to visit them, he shook his head. ‘I have had nearly half-a-gallon of my blood drawn from my arm by way of donation to the Blood Transfusion Service,’ he explained, refusing the invitation. ‘…I am by far and away the oldest in the whole of this South-East Area Service. The true “Blue Blood” is graded “O” – as mine is – and is the most suitable for a child, or even the most delicate of patients. So you will understand, my dear, that I cannot abandon my interests in this town – only a fortnight ago I was called upon for another pint… Courage as always, until the final peace comes to us.’

  So he lived on, an old man ‘making my own bed; blacking my own grate; washing my own shirt; darning my own socks; and doctoring myself. Upon his family, he took revenge for the bitterness of his life, smiling with self-pity, bragging of his modesty, rubbing his poverty into their faces like an enormous scab. Had he mentioned the time, he often wondered, Augustus John ‘said to me nearly forty years ago that in his opinion your tactfulness was the greatest of your many charms’? He would have liked to remind John of that now, face to face, here in Hastings.

  But John had escaped and was moving into new territories.

  5

  UNDISCOVERED COUNTRIES

  ‘I am employed mainly in accepting invitations & getting out of keeping them.’

  Augustus to Dorelia (27 April 1924)

  ‘Whenever I see a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape I am reminded of him,’ wrote the painter A. R. Thomson. Most years, ‘to refresh myself’, John would ease his way down to Provence, taking the wine ‘with great gusto’.118 One day he would suddenly announce that they were off, and everything was dropped. Cats, daughters, perhaps a son or governess – all filed into the train and by night meandered through the charging carriages, while John sat peacefully asleep in the corridor.