Joseph Gray's Camouflage

by Mary Horlock

  Joe tried to sound buoyant but his enthusiams were scattering like seeds on the wind. He reasoned he’d try harder once he was out of uniform. Everyone had exciting plans. Freddie Beddington was off to work as a director at Wildenstein’s Gallery. Sayer was to return to the world of advertising and illustration. Johnny and Little Mary had set up their own interior design business. There seemed to be an endless round of retirement parties. Honours were bestowed, toasts made. Joe wondered when it would be his turn and reminisced with whoever was available. To his colleagues he seemed immensely confident and contented, but as he looked around he wondered if they too weren’t a bit scared. ‘The galleries have gone all ultra modern . . . What I want to set me up is a cracking one man show . . .’2 Joe heard this kind of talk all the time, and from men much younger than him. He was now fifty-four, which wasn’t really very old, but he suddenly felt ancient.

  In the autumn of 1944 he wrote to one of his younger colleagues: ‘Old Wyatt has gone and Sayer, Berry and I are just winding up. Berry will have to stay on to wind up his decoy sites but I understand otherwise RE8 will close officially about 17th Nov. I will then go into the pool or I hope on leave for five weeks or whatever it is and then get my “bowler hat”. I think there is a good hope of the latter owing to my age and other signs of senile decay!’3

  War hadn’t been easy but it had provided him with a steady routine, given him some of his best friends, and it had afforded him an escape from an otherwise precarious existence. Jack Sayer saw it only too well, that it wasn’t going to be easy, this adjusting to ‘the horrors of peace’ after what had been ‘a very good war’.4

  ‘I say! What a war!’ declared Joe.

  Yes, it had been. It really had been.

  THE CAMOUFLAGE BLOKE

  The camouflage bloke

  Is a bit of a joke;

  If he says he works hard he’s a liar.

  He counts all the files

  And puts ’em in piles

  And watches ’em daily grow higher.

  All the morning, I own,

  He answers the phone;

  And some of the callers grow surly

  When told, at midday,

  That the great Major Gray

  Isn’t in, though he swore he’d be early.

  His job, after two,

  Is dispensing Drambuies –

  That afternoon very soon goes if

  (In spite of the Colonel)

  he’s told the nocturnal

  And latest adventure of Joseph

  When the Drambuie sinks

  In the bottle, he thinks

  With longing of hill, dale and dewpond.

  So out comes the car –

  That man will go far,

  (But only because he’s well coupon’d.)

  He writes a report

  (Remarkably short)

  Of places he claims to have been to,

  But on his return

  One never can learn

  If a roof is saw-edged or a lean-to

  But the travelling claim!

  Ah, that’s not a game;

  He labours to make it grow higher. The

  camouflage bloke

  May be quite a joke

  But here without doubt he’s a liar!5

  Notes

  CAB = Cabinet Papers

  CD, TC, CDTC = Camouglage Development and Training Centre

  HO= Home Office

  IWM = Imperial War Museum

  PREM = Prime Minister’s Office Records

  TNA = The National Archives

  WO = War Office

  Jack Sayer, ‘The Camouflage Game’, refers to his unpublished, hand-written memoir, courtesy of Gillian Ward.

  To avoid repetition, the majority of quotes from Joseph’s letters to Mary are not noted. Unless stated otherwise, they form part of the Barclay family archive. Similarly, images reproduced form part of this archive, except where credited otherwise.

  1 Sayer, Camouflage Game, p. 15

  2 IWM Archive Pavitt Documents.2790

  3 J. Gray in a letter to Maj. D. Pavitt, 4 November 1944, IWM Archive Pavitt Documents.2790

  4 Sayer, Camouflage Game, p. 45

  5 Poem by Jack Sayer, Barclay Archive.

  is for You, sir, on whom will depend The success or the failure of all in the end

  I never wanted to be an artist but I did want to write about them. After I left university I printed out endless copies of my CV and marched up and down Bond Street, attempting to leaflet my way into the art world. My first job was in a contemporary gallery where the walls were pristine white and the staff wore blackest black. An artist had recently exhibited a cast of his head made out of his own blood. During a power cut it had leaked onto the gallery manager’s Gucci loafers. She was feeling most out of sorts, and I soon realised that wasn’t the only reason why. The couple who actually ran the gallery were in the midst of an acrimonious divorce and could never be in the same room at the same time, so I often sat on my own, in charge of a silent telephone. It could have been depressing had it not been for their incredible library, and I passed the time making notes on my favourite artists, creating my own personal index of appropriated expert knowledge.

  Six months later I was relieved to be accepted onto the Graduate Trainee Scheme at Christie’s. It gave a handful of recent graduates the chance to work their way around various departments in the hope that, by the end of the year, they would find themselves a permanent position. Although I worked incredibly hard I never fitted in there. I was lacking what Joe might’ve called ‘camouflage and push’.

  I spent my first months in Old Master Paintings, widely regarded as a baptism of fire. The specialists were either descended from aristocracy or spoke as if they were. (I remember a lot of shouting and slamming doors, hysterical assistants trotting about in kitten heels – ‘Have you spoken to the Marquess of Bute?’) Some of the commotion revolved around Charles Beddington. He was revered by his co-workers as having the best eye in the business. It would be a long time before I realised he was Freddie Beddington’s nephew, and all his art books had been bequeathed from his beloved uncle.

  The connections were still there to be made, I just had to look a little harder.

  I was offered a job in the Modern and Impressionist Paintings department. At the time it was considered very flashy, as were all the men who worked there. I still didn’t fit in – I couldn’t talk fast or feign confidence – but I could write. What I enjoyed most of all was sitting in the basement with the pictures, researching a painting’s history, confirming provenance and finding a context. Yes, I loved the storerooms, the making everything accurate.

  Does that sound familiar?

  I was soon penning the texts to be published in the catalogues. I had no talent for selling art, that was plain from the start. I’d listen to the senior specialists on the telephone, wooing their clients in various languages, and knew I’d never be like them. That doesn’t mean I looked down on what they did. I just didn’t think I’d be as convincing. Also, a strong part of me still felt that art shouldn’t have a price tag and be bought and sold like a commodity. To put all that effort into a creation and then wait for the highest bidder. It was my aunt Kitty who made me see things a little differently.

  Of Maureen’s four daughters, my mother, Patricia, is the oldest, then there’s Fiona, Catriona (who we only call Kitty) and Victoria. Kitty is a chef with her own catering company and lives and works in London. From time to time I’d sneak her into the sumptuous pre-sale events, and we’d weave our way around the invited guests and chuckle at the improbable canapés. These were prosperous times for the Impressionist department and I was still young and green, utterly dazzled by the glamour of it all. I remember very clearly Kitty standing in front of one of Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series, a sun-dappled view of the building’s façade, which was valued at $5.5 million. (It would sell for over double that amount.)

  She was laughing and shaking her head.

  ‘W
hat’s so funny?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s incredible.’ She turned to me. ‘An acutal Monet, and it has a price tag on it!’ She threw her hand up casually. ‘It’s just something you or I could buy.’

  I saw what she meant. We were talking about a ‘priceless’ artwork but there it was without any barrier to stop me leaning over and touching it, and there was the label I had just placed next to it, with its lot number and estimate price. Art can sell for a little or a lot, but the very act of selling (or being sold) levels the field.

  I suppose the only way to retain control is to refuse to sell your art, for any price at all.

  Jack Sayer visited Joe and Mary from time to time after the war. ‘The Grays established themselves very comfortably in one of the small, old houses lining West Street in Marlow. There was a long and rather dishevelled garden at the back where Joe had a fair sized studio crammed with portfolios and canvases.’1

  Mary went back to teaching needlework, this time at Wycombe Abbey girls’ school, where she proved memorably eccentric, as all the best teachers are. And Joe finally knuckled down to his painting. It was an ideal setting, the new beginning they had talked of for so long. But having spent much of his early life painting to order, Joe now refused to take this path again. He would spend hours outside, sketching the countryside and painting on riverbanks. His initial reluctance to accept portrait commissions was understandable since he hadn’t painted seriously for nearly a decade. He reminded anyone and everyone that he needed time to get his eye in, a period of adjustment, before he committed to anything. But it became like a compulsion, this turning down of work. Much of the 1930s had seen him hustling for sales, trying desperately to find an audience for his art. Back then he would have readily turned his hand to any commission. He was a trier, whatever else. But now so much time had passed. It felt like a lifetime. Joe had spent too long out of step with things. When he visited the Tate he felt quite overwhelmed by what he saw. He stared and stared at a painting by Jack Yeats: ‘very exciting colour – but what happens to painting that depends almost entirely on colour and hasn’t a solid basis of form? The only permanent colours are the earth colours and these he never uses.’ Retreating to an earlier gallery, Joe sought solace in the Constables.

  The procrastinations multiplied as time passed. Joe was back at work, but quite what this work amounted to was difficult to grasp. When friends visited he continued to talk of the great things he would do, and there was a growing number of canvases gathering in his studio, eager for his attention. It looked and sounded promising.

  He kept in touch with his old friends from camouflage, too, and on regular trips into London he would go round the galleries and have lunch at the Arts Club. Wildenstein’s was a favourite haunt, where Freddie Beddington was creating a name for himself as a great promoter of young artists. ‘I went round to Wildenstein’s and was very pleased with the show, which is first class,’ Joe told Mary after one such visit.

  A most marvellous Manet a wonderful Daumier, and a glorious Fragonard. Freddie was the super Bond Street dealer – very good indeed – introduced me to the manager who knows what he’s talking about. I said I might let them see my stuff after I had worked a year.

  Freddie said he had just seen some of my etchings next door (Fine Arts Society) in their exhibition ‘Rembrandt and Modern Masters’. Freddie was nicely enthusiastic – but, of course what I am going to do in Marlow with P.F. will knock everything I have already done . . . All the same I have got the personal contact with everybody who counts in the art dealing business, and it is now only necessary to produce the stuff!

  Freddie remained a loyal friend. He went out of his way to help struggling artists in the years after the war, pushing them into the spotlight alongside works by more established painters. There were people who could have helped Joe if he’d asked. The well-known art critic Reginald Wilenski was practically his neighbour. They’d sit and talk for hours about Manet, Degas or Dutch still life.

  ‘Is he somebody, dear?’ Kitty Meade would ask, and he was.

  Talking about painting could be almost as time-consuming as the act itself. Joe would tell amusing stories and keep everyone up late into the night, he’d happily listen to people’s opinions, but still he wouldn’t sell them a picture. He’d make excuses, create a diversion. And he’d never part with a single canvas.

  Maureen reasoned that her father didn’t need to sell work because Mary had enough money to keep them. (‘Nancy wouldn’t have let him go on like that. She would have insisted that he get down to it and sell his work, but Mary allowed him to carry on in his own way.’) It was true Mary had a small income, but they lived frugally, renting out the larger part of their house and retaining only much smaller, rather cramped quarters for themselves. A bit more money would have been useful, and the fact was Joe had every intention of paying his way, he just didn’t intend on doing it through his art.

  Joe was convinced that the money, the real money, would come from steel wool. It was widely reported after the First World War how a Royal Commission – members of a ‘small and exclusive club’2 – would meet to remunerate those persons who had contributed significantly to the war effort. There was an award for the invention of a smoke-producing apparatus, the invention of an aircraft camera, and £2,000 (and an OBE) had gone to Norman Wilkinson for dazzle camouflage.

  Joe hoped that, now the war was over, he would receive some form of recognition for his endeavours. Watching Cecil Schofield get rich on contract work with various ministries had built his hopes up, and all his old colleagues now encouraged and supported him. If he put in a claim for steel wool, he was sure to win a financial award as well as official acknowledgement. There was no longer any need for the cloak-and-dagger secrecy. He wanted everyone to know the part he’d played: how he had argued the case for camouflage, and how he had created a new kind of covering material when Britain had most needed it.

  Camouflage had obsessed Joe for a long time – and it never really went away. He began compiling a dossier of information, recording the facts and figures that might otherwise have been sealed in files or lost to obscurity. He wrote to all his old contacts, asking them to verify the sequence of events, the dates and other details. The file slowly expanded over the course of five long years – almost as long as the war itself – as Joe rewrote old notes and sourced new photographs. He gathered together memorandums, past correspondence, drawings and plans. He annotated an old version of Camouflage and Air Defence. He made detailed lists of persons of influence to act as referees – from publishers, industrialists and engineers. Most wrote back quickly, several wrote twice.

  Eugene Mollo, Arthur Sayer, Frederick Beddington, Francis Wyatt, Peregrine and Johnny Churchill, Norman Wilkinson, Michael Farrar Bell – they all supported him. They praised Joe for his extraordinary commitment to the cause of camouflage. Freddie Beddington talked of Joe’s ‘enthusiasm, imagination and years of effort’ and confirmed that ‘had steel wool material not been available in large and ever larger quantities, covers and schemes carried out . . . could not possibly have been executed.’3 Joe’s old brigadier hailed the development of steel wool as an ‘outstanding achievement’, and Peregrine Churchill went so far as to say that Joe’s pre-war research meant structural camouflage was applied in time to meet the threat of German air attack. There were reams of documents on the production and distribution of steel wool, and case studies to show how effectively it had been applied.

  How quickly life was shaped around ‘the claim’, ‘the claim’, ‘the claim’. Just as Joe amassed canvases, so he piled letter upon letter, references, certificates, reports on production. Everything was copied in triplicate and filed in various places. He and Mary talked of it in hushed tones but with growing excitement. It genuinely worried her brother. James Meade offered to buy a few paintings to make life just a little bit easier, but Joe put him off with his usual excuses, assuring him the steel wool money would come through soon enough. James’s young daughter Charlo
tte would visit in the school holidays. Joe and Mary taught her how you didn’t need money to have fun, but there was always hope that money would come.4

  Cecil Schofield had vanished from Joe’s life, but he still retained the patent for steel wool, which became a thorny issue. He eventually wrote a lengthy statement, saying Joe was the ‘true inventor’: ‘I am glad to feel that I and my late firm made a very vital contribution to the war effort in the great camouflage constructional engineering business we created, but that was concerned with the use of “Steel Wool” camouflage material, rather than its origin . . .’5

  Joe submitted all these papers along with the first draft of Camouflage and Air Defence, a freshly authored ‘Note on Research’, and a brief history of RESB outlining the role and responsibilities of civil camouflage officers from 1939 onwards.

  By now everyone was talking about it. They acknowledged what he had done and they wanted him to be rewarded. Was it wrong to feel excited? There was always a risk.

  In July 1953 the Ministry of Supply wrote offering Joe £2,000. It was exactly the same figure that had been awarded to Norman Wilkinson several decades earlier. The wording of the letter was succinct and business-like. There were no congratulations. There would be no press announcement.

  Everyone felt the aftershock. James and Margaret Meade were bitterly disappointed on Joe’s behalf. They felt he deserved far more, and that he had been wronged. After that, there was always the feeling Joe had been done out of his invention.

  Even Joe, the eternal optimist, struggled to find a silver lining.

  His vast dossier, his ‘claim’, now resides in the Imperial War Museum. He put it in a box and tried to forget it, just as other camoufleurs were busy trying to remember. Geoffrey Barkas, Jasper Maskelyne, Jack Sayer and Julian Trevelyan wrote up their experiences. They were ready to lift the lid on camouflage and record their endeavours for posterity.