In fact, no sooner had he come back to England than the possibility presented itself. The post of Director of the National Gallery was vacant, and Roger Fry heard on good authority that the choice “lies between Sir Charles Holroyd and myself”. It was the one post, since post he must have, that would have suited him. Again he was sanguine — he was even so bold as to think not only that he would be made Director but he would make a good Director. Sir Charles Holmes gives an amusing account of Roger Fry’s experiences when he offered himself as candidate for the office. “The Prime Minister, Mr Balfour,” he writes, “a professed lover of the arts, did absolutely nothing for them that I can remember, and through this critical year of 1905 left the National Gallery without a director. Claude Phillips was getting old and had made enemies, as active scholars in those days were bound to. Fry, in consequence, became the fancied candidate, and gave me an illuminating account of his interview in Whitehall. After explaining what he had done in the world of art to a high official, who appeared to understand and to care very little about the matter, he was finally asked, rather testily, ‘Yes, but isn’t there anyone whose name we know, who could tell us something about you?’ Fry was nonplussed. At last he timidly ventured, ‘Perhaps my father, Sir Edward Fry....’ ‘What!’ interrupted the other. ‘Are you a son of Sir Edward Fry? Why didn’t you say so at once? That will be all right.’ “ But in spite of Sir Edward Fry’s great distinction as a lawyer, the appointment was delayed. It was delayed until the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum had revised their original offer and had made one that allowed him to spend most of the year in England. His circumstances being what they were, he was forced to accept it. No sooner had he done so, and was on the point of sailing for America, than Campbell-Bannerman wired to say “that he was anxious I should be appointed to the National Gallery”. The compliment, Roger Fry said, was gratifying; but it had come too late. “So Holroyd’s appointment to the National Gallery followed in due course”, says Sir Charles Holmes, and Roger Fry left for America.
The incident created some little stir at the time. There were references to it in the newspapers. Roger Fry, it seems, was criticised for giving his services to America instead of waiting until his native land had decided whether or not it wanted him. In London the gossips ran about giving advice and proffering help. The post was still open; he had only to break with America and it would be given him. Helen Fry recorded some of these suggestions with caustic comments of her own in letters that reached her husband when he landed in New York. His friends in England were rueful even while they congratulated him. “I wish you were going to buy pictures for us here”, wrote Arthur Clutton-Brock. “We want someone to do it very badly indeed.” And McTaggart wrote: “I have been busily employed in addressing congratulations on your appointment — not to you, not to New York, but to myself — the one person, you will observe, in this universe who always scores. It is not well for people to differ from me. They always come to a bad end. I have always thought that the wicked will be damned by sending them to heaven and letting them be intensely bored there. Even so it is happening to you on this earth. Who. my ethereal Roger, is Pan-Britannic now:?
“But. sincerely, while I am awfully glad you have got a post which is worthy of you, I wish it was for England that you were collecting pictures. Still, it is America, and it’s not Germany.”
There is no doubt that Roger Fry too wished it was for England and not for America that he was to collect pictures. He would have liked to direct the National Gallery; he had no reason to feel sure that he would suit the Metropolitan Museum. And for a time the English post remained open and tentative offers were made to him. But he had given his word to the Americans and neither he nor his wife thought it possible to go back upon it.
CHAPTER VI. AMERICA
I
By the terms of his agreement with the trustees, his visits to America were to be short; he was to spend two or three months yearly in New York. What he saw of America therefore was very limited, and his impressions naturally were full of sharp contrasts, now favourable, now unfavourable, laid side by side but never summed up. He begins:.. wonderful as the first view of New York is it seems a fierce and cruel place, monstrous and inhuman, so that in spite of the voyage [which had been detestable] one scarcely wants to land”. When he landed he had no time to prowl about the streets with a sketch-book, as he liked to prowl about the streets of new towns, letting the character of the place sink in. He had at once to focus his attention upon the Museum, which was, he said, “in a state of chaos”. But as soon as he found his feet he began clearly to enjoy the stimulus and excitement of New York. He was asked out everywhere. For the moment at least he found that he was “quite the rage”. It was a new experience, and, in spite of the strain “of being on parade with fresh people constantly”, one that he enjoyed. He was sociable; he enjoyed talking — even after-dinner speaking amused him. And it was remarkable, after the apathy, the browbeating and the snubbing of the English, to find that New York “is wildly excited at what I’m doing and going to do....” His days filled themselves completely. “I get up at 8.0, down town to see pictures at 9.0, then to the Museum till 5.0, then calls, then dining out at a fresh house every night and then bed.” The dinner parties led to friendships: soon “the Americans” became separate individuals, with some of whom he formed lasting relationships. “Yes,” he wrote to Lowes Dickinson, “it’s mighty queer but I meet more and more nice people — Europeanised and sensitized and they are all very keen to help the new ideas at the Museum.... My two trials are the American artists who keep asking me to say that theirs is the greatest art the world has ever seen, and the Millionaires — the latter fortunately nearly all away just now. The in-between people are all right even when rich, and a few quite delightful. I’ve got as an assistant one of the most charming creatures I’ve ever met, a young and unsuccessful but quite good artist called Burroughes, a man who has never bothered about anything but just gone his own way — with no money and no reputation but with peace in his heart.” There was also a ruined French aristocrat, a Mons. de Beauvoir “who knows everything, has the most perfect taste and manners of the Ancien Régime. Instead of being my rival, and he was already installed as arbiter elegantiarum when I came, he has done all he can to befriend me and been in fact all that one doesn’t expect from a cher confrère.” This gentleman, unlike Roger Fry, was an anglophile, so much so “that he goes close to the subway exits parceque c’est la même odeur que celle du Tuppeny Tube”. “Like all other Europeanised people here we make signals of distress to one another in this weltering waste of the American people. It is strange what an invariable bond of sympathy this instinctive hatred of America as it exists to-day is — tho* many believe in the future. I suppose I do, as I’m investing so much in it....”
In spite of this instinctive hatred of the weltering waste, he felt that America offered him a great opportunity. He was sure that he could “do a lot for [Burroughes] and for the other young who here just as much as in England, perhaps more, are crushed by the regular commercial organisations — the Academies and societies. One of them, a young Jew, is really first-rate and quite unrecognised.”
To help the young and unrecognised in their fight against commercial organisations was as much his duty as his work at the Museum. And he hoped too that he could do much for the Museum. “I am allowed so far”, he continued to Lowes Dickinson, “to do what I want, and have bought heaps of pictures. I have got them at ridiculously low prices and quite fine things. Lotto, Goya, Guardi, Murrillo, Bugiardini and so on, and am getting ready a great gallery, a sort of Salon Carré, where all the real things will be seen in the hopes that it may throw a lurid light on the nameless horrors of modern art which fill the remainder.”
He worked very hard, and, so long as he could do what he wanted, he enjoyed his work very much. But as he foretold, it required “great tact to navigate one’s way”. And tact, a virtue that he never held in high esteem, if by tact was meant flattering
the susceptibilities of officials, was not always at his command. Difficulties soon arose about his tenure of office. He had stipulated that his visits were to be for three months yearly; he soon found that the trustees expected him to return in the spring. “It’s too disgusting. I think there’ll be a big flare-up and perhaps I shall get notice”, he wrote home. The difficulty was arranged; Morgan for the moment was in high good-humour and upheld him against the other trustees; and an agreement was come to. “It gives me power with the Director and Assistant Director to withdraw pictures — to restore them — to repaint galleries and it establishes the idea of serious as opposed to frivolous art”, he told his wife. His hopes were high. He had plenty of scope for his abundant energy; he had been able to buy more pictures than he had expected — more, he was sure, than he could have bought for the National Gallery in the course of many years. He did not regret that he had closed with the American offer, in spite of the fact that overtures were still made him from home.
But the real difficulty he soon found was not with the Director nor with the trustees. It was with the President of the Metropolitan Museum, with Pierpont Morgan himself. Mr Morgan, according to his biographer. wished to be as great a power in the world of art as in the world of finance. And he saw little difference between them. He was ‘ a cheque-book collector.... He bought in batches.... He did not believe in giving the dealer a large profit. In the midst of a dicker he would turn his terrific eyes full upon his visitor and exclaim: I have heard enough. I’ll take this at the price you paid plus fifteen per cent. How much did you pay?”
“By such methods he was “set upon making the Metropolitan Museum the finest institution of its sort in the world”. And he was also set upon owning the finest private collection in the world. He expected Roger Fry to help him to achieve both these aims. Naturally, this led to much conflict between them. The great man’s vanity was prodigious and his ignorance was colossal. Sometimes he was ready to take advice; sometimes it infuriated him. And besides advice he required flattery. He liked to look upon himself “as a modern counterpart of a gorgeous Renaissance Prince” and needed support in that romantic conception. Both as Curator of the Paintings at the Museum and as private adviser Roger Fry had much to do with him, and the more he saw of him the more difficult he found it “to dance to his tune”. Helen Fry had several times to warn him that tact was necessary, and to encourage him to persevere when difficulties seemed insurmountable. “Helen”, he wrote, “never doubts that one can do things.” And for a time all went well.
The work at the Gallery was absorbing in itself, and it enabled him when he came home to drop his journalism and to write articles on less ephemeral subjects for the Burlington, the Independent and other magazines. His reputation as a critic was growing — he was becoming, Sir William Rothenstein wrote, “the only English critic with a European reputation”. But there was now a difference — he was no longer merely a critic; he was a critic with money to spend. It was one of his duties to buy pictures in Europe for the Metropolitan Museum; and as master of an American purse he was a very important person in the world of picture-dealers. That world he discovered was a very strange one. Sir William happened to be in his company when he was considering the purchase of a Renoir for the Metropolitan Museum. It was strange, he writes, that “the once shy and retiring Fry should be swimming in such dangerous waters”. On this occasion “A fashionably dressed and attractive-looking lady showed us over the collection. While Fry was occupied the lady joined me. What taste and knowledge Monsieur showed... perhaps Monsieur was married.... No doubt Monsieur found life expensive and so forth. I wondered at her interest in a stranger, before I realised that since Fry consulted me about various pictures, she thought my influence was of importance, and was hinting at a bribe!” Such hints and blandishments were of course given much more frequently and persuasively to the Curator himself... I have had some tremendous revelations of the way things are done and of how difficult it is to stand out against the system of secret commissions which honeycomb the whole business, Roger Fry told his mother. His stories of the sharks who haunt those dangerous waters, and of the baits and blandishments which they dangled in front of him, were many and amusing. One letter may be quoted to show how he dealt with one of these gentry in particular:
22 Willow Road, Hampstead, July 22 1905
Sir, —
You are entirely mistaken as to my position. I am the independent art critic of the Athenaeum and not a dealer nor am I in the habit of doing the kind of business which you suggest is best done after lunch. I could not under any circumstances have interested myself in the sale of your picture. The tone of your letter Is such that any further communications I may see fit to have with you will take place through my solicitors.
Yours faithfully,
R. E. Fry
But if his possession of an American purse had its dangers and brought about tremendous revelations, America was giving him the greatest opportunity that he had yet had. There was far more enthusiasm for art in America, he found, than in England, and the interest that was taken in his work at the Museum astonished him. Complaints indeed ‘ were made that he was too active; that he had cleaned a Rubens too thoroughly, and that he had paid too much for a Renoir. But his reputation was very high. He gave a series of lectures that were “quite a huge success”; and he found that “any number of people” were ready to pay him twenty guineas for an opinion. His popularity as a social figure waned of course; he found, rather to his relief, when he returned, that he had been “moved out of the lion’s cage into the smaller carnivora”. But he went out a good deal and American society continued to puzzle him. The contrasts were so violent. “I meet pretty often men of the finest culture and the frankest openness and genuineness” — men like Mark Twain for example, whom he sat next at dinner and found “a really fine generous and liberal minded gentleman, altogether one of the fine men”— “but”, he continued, “the contrasts are amazing.... I sometimes wonder whether this society isn’t drifting back to sheer barbarism.... The trouble is that no one really knows anything or has any true standard. They are as credulous as they are suspicious and are wanting in any intellectual ballast so that fashion and passing emotions drift them any whither” (to Sir E. Fry, March 1906). The Quaker in him, if his hatred of pretence and ostentation is to be attributed to that ancestral presence, was shocked. “The injustices I hear of are almost incredible, but that I have good authority. Everyone feels that this state of things can’t last and that the good people must come forward again.” And then again he met many of “the good people” — Europeanised Americans as he called them, William James, whom he admired greatly; “the wonderful and eccentric Mrs Gardner who has made the most remarkable collection of modern times and is altogether a woman of extraordinary force of character”; and Russell Loines, with whom he paddled in a canoe in New Jersey. These were people who would have been remarkable anywhere. On the other hand, America itself even in the Fall when “the trees are all one solid mass of colour, golden brown, deep claret, and most wonderful of all a pale rosy mauve like the colour of some chrysanthemums”, did not attract him greatly. It was too like England and not enough like itself. “One expects a new continent to be more original”, he complained. He vacillated from warm admiration to bewilderment and denunciation.
But general reflections upon America were always being interrupted by doubts as to his own position. That was becoming more and more precarious. It was partly his own fault — he could not conceal his opinions. “The one criticism of myself that comes back to me in roundabout ways is that I have not yet learned not to say what I think”, he wrote home. “But I’m not in a hurry to mend it.” He said what he thought, even when it was the opposite of what the President thought. And the President was omnipotent. To Roger Fry’s amazement, no one dared withstand him. Therefore, “one never knows what turn things at the Museum may take”. But the best account of this peculiar relationship is given in a description that Roger Fry wro
te many years later of a journey that he made with Pierpont Morgan in 1907. There was an exhibition at Perugia, and Morgan summoned his adviser to consider possible purchases for the Museum.
I was asleep at the Grand Hotel at Perugia one morning in May 1907 when a knock at the door woke me and the Cameriera entered with a card. The Count Torelli urgently requested a short interview. I sent word I would he down soon, dressed and went into an empty room on the ground floor where the Count, young, dandified and weakly sympathetic, greeted me with anxious effusiveness. What did he want? I knew the answer beforehand, — family heirlooms to be offered to Pierpont Morgan still sleeping upstairs in the arms of the elderly and well preserved Mrs Douglas. What were they? Chinese pictures rather recently imported and an immense eighteenth-century carpet spread all over the floor. The poor Count had rushed from Rome to Perugia to catch some of the golden shower and there they were displayed. Would I do what I could? The family fortunes depended on his success. He would be eternally even perhaps practically grateful if only I would intercede successfully with il Morgan. I could hold out very little hope but said I would see what could be done.
Before I could get away from him there jumped out from a dark corner of the room a little Levantine or Maltese gibbering in broken English and broken Italian. He had in his hands a large I7th-century crucifix which he handed me with feverish gestures. It was not a remarkable work of art and [I] was beginning the usual process of getting out when he whipped out a stiletto from the shaft of the cross. This was the clou of the piece and I knew my Morgan well enough to guess how likely he was to be taken by it. “Shows what the fellows did in those days! Stick a man while he was praying! Yes very interesting.” For a crude historical imagination was the only flaw in his otherwise perfect insensibility.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 432