But the Post-Impressionist Exhibition interested him not merely as a critic but as a creator. It freed him from some obstacle that had stood in his way as a painter. Now, after long years of groping and fumbling, he was able at last to begin to paint as he wished. It came to him as a painter at the right psychological moment. Such moments of vision, when a new force breaks in, and the gropings of the past suddenly seem to have meaning, are probably familiar to most artists. But most artists leave them unexplained. It would need a critic endowed with his own interpretative genius to single out and sum up all the elements in that long process which at last seemed to bear fruit. Unfortunately, though he traced many such spiritual journeys, he never traced his own. And even such a critic would have to admit that the origin of these moments of vision lies too deep for analysis. A red poppy, a mother’s reproof, a Quaker upbringing, sorrows, loves, humiliations — they too have their part in moments of vision. But the moment had come. “I feel”, he wrote, “that I have an altogether new sense of confidence and determination which I shall stick to as long as it will last” (to D. S. MacColl, February 1912).
And he felt that confidence, that determination not only as a painter. All his doubts and difficulties, he said, seemed to have left him. He had found himself at last — he could deal with life, he could deal with people. It is easy to find reasons, whether they are the right or the sufficient reasons, for the change. There was the relief from the long strain of his wife’s illness — the relief that comes naturally and healthily when a struggle has ended and defeat has been faced. There was the new friendship with Vanessa Bell, who, as a painter belonging to the younger generation, had all the ardour of the young for the new movements and the new pictures and urged him away from the past and on to the future. There was her painting and her studio and the younger generation arguing with him and laughing at him, but accepting him as one of themselves. All this brought about a change that showed itself even in his face, so that a friend meeting him in the street exclaimed, “What’s happened to you? You look ten years younger.” He repeated that saying, and added that, strange as it was, at last, at the age of forty-four he found himself where most people find themselves twenty years earlier — at the beginning of life, not in the middle, and nowhere within sight of the end.
II
The exhibition shut, and the hubbub calmed down. But the excitement remained. It had left a trail behind it. He had made new friends as well as new enemies. He was being asked to dine, to lecture, to address this or that art society in the provinces or at the universities. Everybody was writing to him, either to express their views or to ask him to explain his own. His hall table — to recall some impressions of a visit to Durbins that did not fail — was littered with letters. They were still abusing him— “It is odd that people should think that because they don’t like a thing it was done specially to insult them, but such seems to be the usual reaction on such occasions”. But the letters could wait. Family life was in full swing. His sister Joan was not merely “keeping house” for him — she was creating a home, a safe and happy home, for the children who had long lacked one. A small boy was shooting arrows in the garden; a little girl was dabbling her brush in a jar of discoloured water. The house on the outskirts of Guildford, with its lofty rooms, was airy and spacious— “I hate Elizabethan rooms with their low ceilings in spite of their prettiness, and I love the interiors of the baroque palaces of Italy”. He had designed the house himself, and he was proud of its proportions and of its labour-saving devices. His work-room upstairs was crowded with tools of various kinds; it was littered, yet orderly. Sheaves of photographs lay flat on shelves. There were paintings and carvings, Italian cabinets and Chippendale chairs, blue Persian plates, delicately glazed, and rough yellow peasant pottery^ bought for farthings at fairs. Every sort of style and object seemed to be mixed, but harmoniously. It was a stored, but not a congested, house, a place to live in, not a museum. Certainly it was not luxurious— “It was characteristic of my purse that I could not afford to keep up a gentleman’s establishment, and of my taste that I could not endure to”. A pleasing freedom seemed to prevail. There was time — time to look at the garden, with the flowers nodding over the pool; time for a walk to see a view he liked, though the country was only Surrey. He half apologised for the country, spotted as it was with “gentlemanly residences”. “My own house is neighboured by houses of the most gentlemanly picturesqueness, houses from which tiny gables with window slits jut out at any unexpected angle.” The path he took over the downs avoided those gentlemanly residences, but his talk did not altogether avoid the inhabitants of those houses — their snobbery, their obtuseness, their complacency, and their complete indifference to any kind of art. That still amazed him. Yet his indignation dissolved in a kind of humorous pity. How much they missed — how little they allowed themselves to enjoy life. It was the English passion for morality, he supposed, and also the English climate. The light, he pointed out, was full of vapour. Nothing was clear. There was no structure in the hills, no meaning in the lines of the landscape; all was smug, pretty and small. Of course the English were incurably literary. They liked the associations of things, not things in themselves. They were wrapt in a cocoon of unreality. But again of course the young were all right — he had great hopes of the young. And the uneducated, whose taste had not been perverted by public schools and universities, had, he was convinced, an astonishing natural instinct — witness his housemaid, who had seen the point of Cézanne instantly. He was full of hope for the future, even for himself, late though it was, and much as he had groped and wandered and lost his way.
And so, deriding the village churchyard, its owls, its epitaphs and its ivy, and all those associations which appealed to the impure taste of the incurably literary, he led his way back to the house that the neighbours thought an eyesore, with its large rooms, its great windows, and the bands of red brick across the front. There were many things to be seen there: old Italian pictures, children’s drawings, carvings, pots and books — French books, in particular, tattered and coverless, which led to an attack upon English fiction. Why, he demanded, was there no English novelist who took his art seriously? Why were they all engrossed in childish problems of photographic representation? And then, before he went to busy himself in the kitchen, out came the picture that he had been painting that morning. He held it out with a strange mixture of anxiety and humility for inspection. Could he possibly mind what was thought of it? It was plain that he did mind. He gazed at his own work, intently, in silence, and then said how at last he was getting at something — something that he had never been able to get at before.
The tasks that fell upon him now that he had become “the father of British painting”, the leader of the rebels, increased daily. Anyone with a scheme on foot, or an idea that only needed money in order to achieve wonders, came to him for advice and help. He was busy that spring helping to start “a vast institution for keeping photographs of all manner of products of human activity, from temples to towel horses”. A hundred thousand pounds had to be collected. He was full of optimism and energy. Then, rather to his surprise, he was offered the Directorship not of the National Gallery, but of the Tate. Financially, the offer was not tempting; the salary was £350 rising to £500; it meant too that he would have to give up all his other work. He refused it. “I really think”, he wrote, “I can do more outside, so I must give up the idea of official life and tides and honours which I very willingly do, so long as I can manage to get along as regards money. I once wanted these things, but now I feel quite indifferent to them.”
The Post-Impressionist Exhibition had made it clear not only that his work lay outside, but that there was a great deal to be done, and that the young English artists looked to him to do it. The Directors of the Grafton Galleries had made him an offer that seemed to him of much greater importance than the Directorship of the Tate. They offered him the control of their galleries for the autumn months. This gave him an opportunity — t
hough the risk was great — that must be seized. He could use it to bring together, as he hoped, all the different schools of English painting, and to show them side by side with the French. If it succeeded, it might become an annual institution; it might unite groups; destroy coteries, and bring the English into touch with European art. Though “frantically busy” he put his views before the older artists and asked them to help him by lending their work. By this time he knew the difficulty of getting artists to combine. Had he not written years before, “the artist is intensely individualistic, and in proportion as he is an artist, he finds it difficult to combine with his kind for any ulterior purpose”? But perhaps he was not aware what a change had come over his reputation, since he proclaimed his faith in Cézanne, or how difficult it had become for the older artists to work with him, let alone under his direction. Some letters to Sir William Rothenstein show both what his aims were, and what difficulties he had to encounter.
The offer of the Grafton Gallery, he wrote to Sir William, means “a real acquisition of power for the younger and more vigorous artists. We can give them a chance they have never had before of being well seen, but if it is to succeed I must rely on the loyalty to the cause of those like yourself who have a more established name. I had hoped to make the scope very wide — to have a kind of general secession show and approached Steer and Tonks. They were unwilling to be seen with the younger men — said literally let them wait till they can get into the New English Art Club’. But I don’t want them to wait. Well, there remain John, Epstein and yourself. John has promised to send... I don’t like Exhibitions any more than you do, but until we have got back to a more perfect way of life altogether they remain the only possible medium of communication. I have to ask all these people who send to trust me to do their work justice — well from you I hoped that would not create a difficulty. I have no axe to grind except to make the show a success on the best lines but I am not, I think, narrow-minded where real art is concerned.” When he wrote that letter he was about to start on a holiday, the first he had had for many years, to Constantinople. From Constantinople he wrote again:
Hotel Bristol, Constantinople,
April 13, 1911
My dear Rothenstein,
I have just got your letter. I am sorry there should have been misunderstandings but I don’t think anything Î have said or written ought to have given rise to them. I did explain to you as fully as I could in the time that I hoped for your cooperation in a show of contemporary English art at the Grafton. I thought that you knew me well enough to know that such a show would be in general character sympathetic to you and that in particular your work would receive a hearty welcome....
Now let me try to explain at greater length what I hoped to do. Originally I thought that the Grafton might be used for a general secession exhibition of all non-academy art of any importance including members of the NEAC. I approached Steer and Tonks with this idea and found them unwilling to join. I then thought it might still be possible to make up an Exhibition from the works of younger artists together with yourself, John, Epstein, W. Sickert. Only I saw that with this we could not fill the Grafton so I conceived the idea of having the Exhibition divided 2 rooms to this English group and 2 rooms to the works of the younger Russian artists which I thought ought to be better known in England; I thought that this would be of great interest to English artists....
It is still an unfortunate necessity that artists sh. exhibit and be seen and discussed in order to live and paint, and my ambition is to give the younger and more progressive men more opportunity than heretofore. On the other hand, in order to do this I must make the exhibitions pay their way on the average.... The conditions make it inevitable that I sh. appeal to the various artists to trust me with large powers since I have the actual control and responsibility on behalf of the Grafton Galleries. Now you know me well enough to know that I am not unlikely to listen to advice from you and that I should give every consideration to any suggestions which you or John or McEvoy might make and I sh. be delighted if you would cooperate; at the same time I could hardly go to other groups of younger artists who are quite willing to trust me personally and say to them that their work must come before such a committee as you suggest for judgment, nor can I possibly get rid of my responsibility to the Grafton Galleries.. ».
Now you see I really want you to join in this and I believe it would be not only to the advantage of English art that you should join but ultimately to the good of yr. position. Unless those who care for what is vital in art agree to co-operate loyally commercialism will always trample us under foot. Just now there seems to me an occasion for a real effort at such co-operation and it wd. be a great and lasting regret to me if we did not have you with us.
Yours very sincerely,
— Roger Fry
Sir William Rothenstein in his Memoirs has given the reasons which made it impossible for him to co-operate: “... I still felt the New English Art Club to be the body with which I had most sympathy. Further, remembering Carr’s and Hallé’s ways at the New Gallery, I did not feel inclined to work under Fry’s dictatorship....” Mr Steer and Professor Tonks also were “disinclined to move”. Indeed, since to Professor Tonks Roger Fry was the counterpart of Hider and Mussolini, there was nothing to be surprised at in that; and even if that comparison was still to be made, “it was not pleasant”, as his biographer says, to the Professor “to know that New English Art, after having been hors concours for so long as ‘the advanced thing’, was now relegated to the academic category”. Also “one has a suspicion that Tonks felt that there was something in Fry’s ideas”. That, too, must have been irksome. But it is unnecessary to enquire further into the various motives which made it impossible for the older artists to co-operate with Roger Fry. He was greatly disappointed, and also he was surprised — it is a proof perhaps of the credulity that was so often observed in him — that what seemed to him “a perfectly simple and sincere offer” should not be met in the spirit in which it was made. But though after this he drifted apart from many of the artists mentioned, there was no bitterness on his side at least. His attitude was summed up in the words “‘poor dear or “dear old which attached themselves regretfully, humorously, to certain distinguished names, so that it was a surprise, many years later, to find that Henry Tonks was still alive, and natural enough to suppose that since he was alive, he must be. perhaps the President of the Royal Academy, and certainly a baronet. But for Henry Tonks personally Roger Fry had nothing but affection: and Henry Tonks seeing Roger Fry mount a chair at a dinner in order to explain to Lord Lascelles “something about a triptych”, was charmed. “Fry”, he wrote, “is really a very charming man; I have seen more of him lately, and now speak to, and lecture him freely.”
But in 1911 difficulties were made; difficulties, however, though they might surprise, always roused in him a spirit of indomitable energy. “No rebuff”, as Sir Charles Holmes had noted, “could shake his determination to carry the matter through.” He was determined, in spite of the rebuffs, in spite of the drudgery — the above letter is only one instance of the labours he undertook — to carry the exhibition through, even if the older artists held aloof. He was convinced that here was a chance both for what was vital in art and for the younger artists. And his mind was teeming with plans for the second Post-Impressionist Exhibition during his holiday in Constantinople.
IV
It was the first holiday that he had taken for many years — if that can be called a holiday which includes the writing of long letters filled with minute details. He was seeing a new country for the first time in company with friends — the Clive Bells — who were to mean much to him; he was “filling up gaps” in his knowledge of Byzantine art, and there were all the aesthetic problems roused by the Post-Impressionist pictures and the practical problems roused by the forthcoming show to be discussed. All this went to the making of a perfect holiday. Unfortunately, at Broussa one of the party — Vanessa Bell — fell ill, and the emergency
brought out a side of Roger Fry, which though it could be guessed — did he not seem even at first sight a man with great experience behind him? — needed illness to bring it to the surface. He took control of the situation — it was difficult and complicated. There were few facilities for serious illness in a ramshackle Turkish inn; the proprietors were suspicious, the doctor unqualified and there were no nurses. But Roger Fry was in his element. He fetched and carried; ordered and conciliated; was absorbed but never flustered. All his curious medical lore came into use. He had a doctor’s interest in drugs and their properties. But unlike most doctors he was imaginative and adventurous. The human body and its oddities fascinated him. And his acute sympathy with suffering made him extraordinarily quick to anticipate and suggest. Bed, food and litter had all to be improvised from the most inappropriate materials — he had full scope for his ingenuity; he ventured into the kitchen, and returned triumphant with a new dish or two. Directly the immediate problem was solved he dismissed it; and turned instantly to the next thing on hand. It might be his painting — he had set up an easel in the courtyard where a tree or a fountain had suggested a subject. He was absorbed in that problem. But he was not absorbed to the extent of forgetting the presence of someone reading a book. What book was it? What sort of merit had it? A tentacle seemed to float out that attached itself to whatever was going on in his neighbourhood. He questioned; he pondered; at the same time he was washing in his sky with what seemed extraordinary dexterity. He was also noting the attitude of a peasant carrying a pot on her head, and taking stock, with a quick shrewd glance, of the English family who had arrived the night before and would have to be persuaded to renounce their rights to the shady corner of the garden where he had rigged up a tent for the invalid. They were the sort — he could tell that at a glance — who proved troublesome.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 435