Augustus John

by Michael Holroyd

  104 Caitlin Thomas to the author, 16 September 1968. ‘It was merely a question of a brief dutiful performance for him to keep up his reputation as a Casanova ogre,’ Mrs Thomas hazarded. ‘…I may add that this lofty favour was not reserved for me alone, but one and all of his models, of whatever age and social category, suffered the identical treatment. I hope I have been able to add a drop of at least truthful spice, no doubt unprintable, to enliven your cleaned-up eminently respectable book, plodding in the heavy-going dark (God help you and your public).’

  105 Finishing Touches p. 114.

  106 Aquarius, ITV, 3 March 1972.

  107 In an interview with the author.

  108 Augustus to Vivien John, August 1938. In a letter to Dorelia (NLW MS 22778D fol. 138) he described Dylan and Caitlin as ‘living in frightful squalor and hideousness… The Dylans are impossible to stand for long.’

  109 Listener (5 October 1972), pp. 433–4.

  110 Dylan Thomas to Henry Treece, 1 September 1938. Dylan Thomas. The Collected Letters (ed. Paul Ferris 1985), p. 324.

  111 Finishing Touches p. 111.

  112 Museum Piece, or The Education of an Iconographer (1963), p. 95.

  113 John to Amaryllis Fleming, 27 November 1953.

  114 Amaryllis Fleming to the author, 25 July 1969.

  115 Ralph Partridge to Gerald Brenan, 22 July 1929. Best of Friends. The Brenan-Partridge Letters (ed. Xan Fielding 1986), p. 84.

  116 Vivien John ‘Memories of Carrington’ The Charleston Magazine (Spring/ Summer 1995), p. 35 col. 1.

  117 Augustus to Dorelia n.d. (August 1916). NLW MS 22777D fol. 130.

  118 These were John’s usual tactics. In a letter to Frances Hughes (29 March 1939), Dylan Thomas wrote that Augustus is ‘out and more or less about now, although Mavis’s wedding put him back a few beds. We saw the newsfilm of the departure from the registry office, and Augustus, blowing clouds of smoke, hopped in the first car before bride and groom could get in...’

  119 ‘I hope it will be their last visit,’ he wrote after Poppet and Bergne had gone to Fryern for the first time. But he made an exception of Wilhelm Pol, the Dutch painter who became Poppet’s third husband. ‘This time I favour the match,’ he told Caspar (1 March 1952). ‘…Poppet, a thorough bourgeoise, provided there is plenty to laugh at, reasonable access to food and drink, and of course the indispensable privileges of matrimony, will stay put.’ NLW MS 22775C fol. 5. To others he exclaimed, with an oblique slap at Edwin, Robin, Vivien and perhaps himself: ‘Thank God there is a painter in the family at last!’ In David Herbert’s autobiography, Second Son (1973), p. 61, Poppet is described as ‘extremely attractive, she had almost as many boy friends as her father had mistresses.’

  120 Augustus to Caspar John, 13 November 1956. NLW MS 22775C fol. 26.

  121 Augustus was pleased to accept compliments from others on behalf of Romilly John’s book. ‘It has been very well reviewed but badly advertised,’ he wrote to Charles Reilly (7 November 1932), ‘so do recommend it if you get a chance.’

  122 Romilly John to Augustus n.d. (1936). NLW MS 22782D fols. 106–7.

  123 Romilly John to Augustus n.d. (1936). NLW MS 22782D fol. 108.

  124 Augustus to Edwin John n.d. (1940). NLW MS 22312C fols. 19–20.

  125 Robin to the author, 13 January 1969. See also Horizon Volume VII No. 37 (January 1943), pp. 65–6: ‘Robin displayed also, or rather attempted to conceal, a remarkable talent for drawing; but in the course of his studies lost himself in abstraction, which he pushed finally to the point of invisibility. Thus his later efforts, hung on the walls of his studio, presented no clear image to the physical eye. Refinement carried to such a pitch ceases to amuse. Art, like life, perpetuates itself by contact.’

  126 George Popoff to John, 5 February 1935. NLW MS 22784D fol. 62.

  127 Robin John to the author, 13 January 1969.

  128 John to Villiers Bergne, 15 February 1945. NLW MS 22022C.

  129 Tom Burns The Use of Memory (1993), p. 17.

  130 Henry John to Augustus n.d. (May-June 1926). NLW MS 22782D fol. 39.

  131 Augustus to Gwen John, 18 November 1918. NLW MS 22305 fols. 122–4.

  132 Martin Cyril D’Arcy Laughter and the Love of Friends (ed. William S. Abell 1991), pp. 36–41.

  133 Henry John to Augustus, 11 March 1926, from 67 via San Niccolò da Tolentino, Rome.

  134 Henry John to Augustus n.d. (c. March 1926). NLW MS 22782D fol. 37.

  135 See Selina Hastings Evelyn Waugh. A Biography (1994) p. 225.

  136 Martin Cyril D’Arcy Laughter and the Love of Friends pp. 41–2.

  137 Henry John to Augustus n.d. (April–June 1924). NLW MS 22782D fols. 35–6.

  138 Henry John to Augustus n.d. (July 1926), from Chalet des Mélèzes. NLW MS 22782D fols. 43–4.

  139 Tom Burns to Gwen John, 6 November 1927. NLW MS 22305D fol. 15.

  140 Henry John to Augustus, 26 July 1926. NLW MS 22782D fol. 44.

  141 More successful was John’s portrait of Martin D’Arcy painted in 1939, which is at Campion Hall, Oxford. ‘Genuinely alive and as enigmatic as he really is,’ D’Arcy’s friend Father B. C. Gurrin called it, though ‘it doesn’t seem to me to be very much like me’, Father D’Arcy wrote.

  142 Henry John to Augustus n.d. (c. 1932). NLW MS 22782D fols. 50–4.

  143 James Strachey Barnes to John n.d. (c. 1935). NLW MS 22779E fols. 50–2.

  144 Robert McAlmon and Kay Boyle Being Geniuses Together (revised edn 1970), p. 26.

  145 John to Father D’Arcy n.d.

  146 Chiaroscuro p. 212.

  147 Julia Strachey’s diary, 3 November 1934. This version was given to me by Julia Strachey. But for a slightly different version, see Julia, A Portrait by Herself and Frances Partridge (1983), p. 143.

  148 Harold Acton Memoirs of an Aesthete (1948), p. 146.

  149 ‘The Private Diaries of Evelyn Waugh’ (ed. Michael Davie), Observer magazine (6 May 1973), p. 28.

  150 John to Michel Salaman, 4 September 1935. NLW MS 14928D fol. 111.

  151 Chiaroscuro p. 213.

  152 Daily Mail (24 June 1935).

  153 Tom Burns The Use of Memory p. 21.

  154 The Rev. Canon K. J. Woolcombe to the author, 24 December 1968.

  155 Father D’Arcy to John, 28 June 1935. NLW MS 22780E fol. 5.

  156 Augustus to Dorelia n.d.

  157 In an unrecorded BBC script.

  158 ‘I’m a miserable old crock now, unlikely to live to be undertaker to any more pals, but quite content to toddle about a shamelessly unkempt garden and enjoy the sound of my living waterfall and the ever changing view of Wild Boar Fell.’ Scott Macfie to John, 8 October 1932, from Shaws, Lunds, Sedburgh, Yorkshire.

  159 The words of this eulogium are given in Dora E. Yates My Gypsy Days (1953), pp. 119–20; also, in a slightly different form, in the Daily Mirror (23 November 1931).

  160 Dora Yates My Gypsy Days p. 120.

  161 Ibid. p. 121.

  162 Dora Yates to John, 22 November 1931, from Class Office Libraries, The University, Liverpool. NLW MS 22782D fols. 51–2.

  163 John to Dora Yates, 6 December 1936.

  164 Chiaroscuro pp. 89–90.

  165 Augustus to Gwen John, 23 June 1920. NLW MS 22305D fol. 133.

  166 See Cecily Langdale Gwen John (1987), p. 220. Letter written in 1919.

  167 Ibid.

  168 Gwen John to Augustus, 1 and 8 September 1924. NLW MS 22782D fols. 31–2.

  169 Dorelia to Gwen John, May 1927. NLW MS 22308C fol. 21.

  170 Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, 23 July 1927. NLW MS 21468D fols. 160–1.

  171 Augustus to Gwen John, 29 December 1924. NLW MS 22305D fol. 136.

  172 Gwen John to Augustus, 22 March (1925). NLW MS 22782D fol. 33.

  173 Gwen John to Augustus n.d. (1925). NLW MS 22782D fol. 34.

  174 Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, 10 November 1925. NLW MS 21468D fols. 146–7. See also fols. 148–9.

  175 Susan Chitty Gwen John
(1981), p. 173.

  176 Obituary of Gwen Smith, The Times (1 February 1958).

  177 Alison Thomas Portraits of Women (1994), p. 128.

  178 Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, 23 July 1927. NLW MS 21468D fols. 160–1.

  179 Ibid.

  180 Susan Chitty Gwen John p. 179.

  181 Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, 15 September 1927. NLW MS 21468D fol. 164.

  182 Dorelia to Gwen John, 28 June 1928, 14 September 1928. NLW MS 22308C fols. 29–30.

  183 Dorelia to Gwen John, 11 January 1933. NLW MS 22308C fols. 47–8.

  184 Augustus to Gwen John, 16 April 1939. NLW MS 22305C fol. 147.

  185 Augustus to Gwen John, 21 June 1928. NLW MS 22305C fols. 144–5.

  186 Dorelia to Gwen John, 28 June 1928. NLW MS 22308C fol. 29.

  187 Augustus to Gwen John n.d. (October-November 1930). NLW MS 22395C fol. 146.

  188 Dorelia to Gwen John, 28 June 1928, 14 September 1928, 22 July 1929, 15 December 1930, n.d. (c. 1932). NLW MS 22308C fols. 29–46.

  189 Dorelia to Gwen John, 11 January 1933. NLW MS 22308C fol. 47.

  190 Dorelia to Gwen John, 30 May 1939. NLW MS 22308C fol. 55. See also letter of 15 June 1939, fol. 56.

  191 Chiaroscuro p. 256.

  CHAPTER XI: THINGS PAST

  1 John to Mrs W. M. Cazalet, September 1939.

  2 John to Herbert Barker, 4 February 1938.

  3 Augustus to Edwin John, 22 August 1944. NLW MS 22312C fol. 53.

  4 Daily Telegraph (5 May 1948).

  5 Listener (13 May 1948), p. 794.

  6 Augustus to Caspar John, 14 April 1961. NLW MS 22775C fol. 50.

  7 John to Conger Goodyear, 10 January 1948.

  8 John to Conger Goodyear, 8 August 1949.

  9 John to T. W. Earp, 6 June 1944.

  10 John to Mrs W. M. Cazalet, 10 May 1943.

  11 John to Kit Adeane n.d.

  12 ‘Augustus John’, unpublished monograph by Alan Moorehead.

  13 Tom Pocock Alan Moorehead (1990), pp. 181–2.

  14 Sunday Times (22 July 1973), p. 34.

  15 John to Mavis Wheeler n.d.

  16 Shaw to John, 26 February 1944. See Alan Moorehead Montgomery. A Biography (1967), pp. 187–90. See also Bernard Shaw Collected Letters Volume 4 1926–1950 (ed. Dan H. Laurence 1988), pp. 700–1.

  17 Augustus to Edwin John, 23 February 1944 and 22 August 1944. NLW MS 22312C fols. 51 and 53.

  18 Bernard Sham Collected Letters Volume 4 1926–50 (ed. Dan H. Laurence 1988) pp. 700–1.

  19 Augustus to Simon John, 15 April 1944.

  20 John to Bernard Shaw, 29 February 1944. British Library Add. MS 50539 fol. 38.

  21 Augustus to Simon John, 14 September 1944.

  22 The painting is reproduced in Alan Moorehead’s Montgomery. A Biography, and a drawing, which was exhibited in May 1944 at the Royal Academy, is reproduced in Nigel Hamilton’s Monty. Master of the Battlefield (1983). Montgomery, Hamilton wrote, ‘never saw this fine crayon sketch – perhaps the only portrait ever to capture the ascetic missionary behind the soldier’s mask’ (see facing p. 544). There is a conversation piece drawn by James Gunn showing John painting Montgomery in the presence of Bernard Shaw. See Brian Montgomery Monty. A Life in Photographs (1985), p. 102. John’s oil portrait belongs to Glasgow University.

  23 Among John’s papers was a letter from Oscar Kokoschka thanking him for his attempts to help him escape from Prague.

  24 John to Leonard Russell, 31 September 1953. NLW MS 21570E.

  25 John to Dora Yates, 28 July 1936.

  26 Dora Yates to John, 25 November 1959. NLW MS 22787D fols. 102–3.

  27 Ibid.

  28 John to Dora Yates, 29 November 1956.

  29 Dora Yates to John, 22 August 1952. NLW MS 22787D fol. 78.

  30 John to Dora Yates, 13 October 1953.

  31 John to Dora Yates, 30 June 1960.

  32 John to Dora Yates, 13 March 1946.

  33 John to Mrs W. M. Cazalet, 16 June 1941 and 26 September 1941.

  34 Chips. The Diaries of Sir Henry Channon (ed. Robert Rhodes James 1967), p. 389.

  35 Nancy Cunard Grand Man (1954), p. 195.

  36 John to Mary Keene, 26 January 1948.

  37 Augustus to Vivien John n.d.

  38 John to Winifred Shute, 21 June 1942.

  39 John to Winifred Shute, 18 October 1940.

  40 John to Will and Alice Rothenstein, 15 June 1940.

  41 Kenneth Clark The Other Half. A Self-Portrait (1977), p. 1.

  42 Country Life (7 December 1940).

  43 Burlington Magazine (December 1940), p. 28.

  44 Augustus to Dorelia, 21 May 1942.

  45 ‘I am thoroughly in sympathy with your determination to remain a commoner in spite of antique conventions. May you win the battle!’ John to Anthony Wedgwood Benn, 16 March 1961.

  46 John to Sir Herbert Read, 18 January 1953. This letter is in the Collections Division of the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Some of the matters in which they diverged are given in a review Read wrote in the Burlington Magazine (December 1940, p. 28) where he criticized John’s tendency to idealize his types. ‘We must say “idealize” in preference to “romanticize” because one has only to compare such drawings with the superficially similar drawings of Picasso’s “blue” period to see that, while Picasso has a particular brand of romanticism (a Baudelairean romanticism), he never palliates the underlying drabness and horror. John’s gypsies are too coy, and they share this quality with his religious and allegorical figures… “Le dessin, c’est la probité de l’art” – Mr John quotes this saying of Ingres’ at the head of his catalogue, but it is a maxim with a double edge. In the sense that draughtsmanship is an index to the sensibility and skill of the artist, these drawings are a triumphant vindication; but the maxim might also mean that an artist’s drawings betray his limitations – the limitation of his interests no less than the degree of his skill. John is a typical studio artist, and there is little in his work to show that he has lived through one of the most momentous epochs of history. An artist creates his own epoch, it will perhaps be said, his own world of reality; and this is true enough. But surely that world, if it is to compete in interest with the external world, must be inhabited by figures somewhat more substantial than John’s appealing sylphs.’

  About John’s portraits, however, Read admitted ‘there is no denying his superb mastery of this form… the pencil already prepares us for that balance out of psychological insight and formal harmony which his brush secures with such instinctive facility.’

  47 ‘Did I tell you about August[us] John, whom I duly tackled or rather sounded, weeks ago? He said lots of publishers had been at him. One offered him £10,000 [equivalent to £308,000 in 1996] in advance for his memoirs. He said, “Oh, that’s not enough: I want £20,000.” They rose to £13,000.’ T. E. Lawrence to Jonathan Cape (September 1932). See Michael Howard Jonathan Cape, Publisher (1971), p. 151.

  48 John to Cecil Gray, ‘Wednesday 1933’. British Library Add. MS 57785 fol. 72.

  49 Alfred Mclntyre of Little, Brown and Company to Jonathan Cape, 27 June 1938. The contract with Little, Brown, dated 26 July 1938, gave John an advance on royalties of $5,000 and provided for delivery of the manuscript by 1 January 1940. The Jonathan Cape contract, dated 2 May 1938, allowed John an advance of £2,000 (equivalent to £57,000 in 1996). Both advances were payable on the day of publication, and both contracts lapsed in 1940.

  50 M. S. Wilde of the British and International Press.

  51 Jonathan Cape to Alfred Mclntyre, 24 January 1940.

  52 Jonathan Cape to Alfred Mclntyre, 15 August 1940.

  53 February, Vol. III, No. 14, 1941, pp. 97–103; April, Vol III, No. 16, 1941, pp. 242–52; June, Vol. III, No. 18, 1941, pp. 394–402; August, Vol. IV, No. 20, 1941, pp. 121–30; October, Vol. IV, No. 22, 1941, pp. 285–92; February, Vol. V, No. 26, 1942, pp. 125–37; August, Vol. VI, No. 32, 1942, pp. 128–40; December, Vol. VI, No. 36, 1942, pp. 421–35; January, Vo
l. VII, No. 37, 1943, PP·59–66; August, Vol. VIII, No. 44, 1943, pp. 136–43; December, Vol. VIII, No. 48, 1943, pp. 405–19; August, Vol. X, No. 56, 1944, 128–46; April, Vol. XI, No. 64, 1945, pp. 242–61; December, Vol. XII, No. 72, 1945, pp. 417–30; January, Vol. XIII, No.73, 1948, pp. 49–61; October, Vol. XIV, No. 82, 1946, pp. 224–31; June, Vol. XVII, No. 102, 1948, pp. 430–41; April, Vol. XIX, No. 112, 1949, pp. 292–303.

  54 John to T. W. Earp, 20 March 1947.

  55 Introduction by Daniel George to Finishing Touches, p. 9.

  56 Ibid. p. II.

  57 John to Daniel George, 19 October 1950.

  58 John to Clare Crossley, 9 May 1952.

  59 ‘Augustus John’ by Sir Desmond MacCarthy, Sunday Times, 2 March 1952; ‘Memories of a Great Artist’ by Sacheverell Sitwell, Spectator, 7 March 1953, p. 302; ‘Augustus John’s Self-Portrait’ by Henry Williamson, John O’ London, March 1952, pp. 296–7. See also ‘Self-Portrait’ by Harold Nicolson, Observer, 2 March 1952; ‘Augustus John: A Self-Portrait’ by Denys Sutton, Daily Telegraph, 8 March 1952; The Times, 5 March 1952; ‘Painting with a Pen’, Times Literary Supplement, 21 March 1952. The book was also well received in the United States where it was published by Pellegrini and Cudahy. See, for example, ‘Magic-Lantern Show’ by Joseph Wood Krutch, Nation, pp. 277–8. See also Quentin Bell in the New Statesman (20 November 1964), p. 797.

  60 Listener (20 March 1952), p. 476.

  61 Harlech Television, 18 July 1968.

  62 Julian Maclaren-Ross ‘Sfumato’ The Funny Bone (1956), pp. 25–9.

  63 John to Daniel George, 11 August 1954.

  64 ‘The piece called “The Girl with Flaming Hair” – a young woman picked up in Tottenham Court Road – might very reasonably be allowed a place in Villiers de L’Isle-Adam’s “Contes Cruels”,’ wrote Anthony Powell in the Daily Telegraph (3 December 1964). For some of John’s correspondence with Daniel George over Finishing Touches see Catalogue 158 (1981), Rendells Inc., Newton, Massachusetts.

  The first impression of Chiaroscuro, costing 30 shillings (£1.50), was 10,000 copies. It was published on 3 March 1952, the unsold stock being converted on 25 April 1955 to a cheap edition costing 15 shillings (75 pence) which went out of print on 4 November 1968. An edition published by the Readers Union early in 1954 of 31,792 copies was produced independently of Jonathan Cape. Finishing Touches was published on 12 November 1964 and cost 25 shillings (£1.25). The first impression ordered was for 3,000 copies, and a second impression of 750 copies was printed on 8 June 1965. The two volumes were amalgamated in 1975 and brought out by Cape under the title Autobiography in an edition of 2,000 copies costing £6.50.