Augustus John (139 page)

140
  Augustus to Gwen John, 18 November 1918. NLW MS 22305D fols. 122–4.

141
  Augustus to Gwen John, 23 June 1920. NLW MS 22305D fol. 133.

142
  
Chiaroscuro
pp. 254–5.

143
  Augustus to Gwen John, 18 November 1918. NLW MS 22305D fols. 122–4.

144
  Beatrice, Lady Glenavy
To-day We Will Only Gossip
(1964), p. 111.

145
  In a letter to Cynthia Asquith.

146
  Lady Cynthia Asquith,
Diaries 1915–18
(1968), p. 471.

147
  John to John Sampson n.d. (February 1919). NLW MS 21459E fol. 58.

148
  John to Frances Stevenson, 13 February 1919. NLW MS 21570E.

149
  John to Cynthia Asquith n.d.

150
  
Horizon
Volume VIII No. 48 (December 1943), p. 406.

151
  John to Cynthia Asquith, I February 1919.

152
  John to Cynthia Asquith n.d.

153
  His secondment for duty with the War Office was terminated on 22 September 1919; and then, without delay (on 23 September) he was struck off the strength of the Canadian War Records – though with two medals: the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

154
  John to Cynthia Asquith, 17 September 1919.

155
  
John to Ottoline Morrell, 14 March 1920.

156
  John to Eric Sutton, 6 April 1920. Written from the hospital, 12 Beaumont Street, London WI.

157
  John to Cynthia Asquith, April 1920.

CHAPTER IX: ARTIST OF THE PORTRAITS

1
  In Aldous Huxley’s
Point Counter Point,
for example, where he appears as the forty-seven-year-old John Bidlake ‘at the height of his powers and reputation as a painter; handsome, huge, exuberant, careless; a great laugher, a great worker, a great eater, drinker, and taker of virginities’. Professor Grover Smith, editor of
The Letters of Aldous Huxley,
writes (22 February 1970) that ‘it is said that John was indeed the prototype of the artist John Bidlake in
Point Counter Point.
Aldous nowhere wrote that this was the case; but he was extremely cautious and tactful where his literary models were concerned.’

John is said to be the prototype of characters in several novels – the artist in Margery Allingham’s
Death of a Ghost;
Struthers in D. H. Lawrence’s
Aaron’s Rod;
Tenby Jones, the ‘lion of Chelsea’, in Henry Williamson’s
The Golden Virgin
and
The Innocent Moon;
the sculptor Owen in Aleister Crowley’s
The Diary of a Drug Fiend
(Crowley noted this in his own copy of the novel); the musician Albert Sanger in Margaret Kennedy’s
The Constant Nymph
(though in part this may be based on Henry Lamb). Gulley Jimson in Joyce Cary’s
The Horse’s Mouth,
though popularly supposed to be based on Stanley Spencer, also contains some aspects of John – in particular the urge to paint large murals. Cary and John knew each other a little in Paris, when Cary was studying art there. Cary mentions John in his letters and diary of 1909–10; and in the autumn of 1956, writing to Ruari Maclean, he suggested John might do illustrations for the Rainbird edition of
The Horse’s Mouth.
Nothing came of this, though John admired the novel. Judy Johncock in Ronald Firbank’s
Caprice
(for which John designed a book jacket) also owed something to him.

Of Somerset Maugham’s
The Moon and Sixpence
John Quinn wrote (9 September 1919): ‘The description of the artist, red beard and all, and his words and manner and the first part of the book up to the time he leaves France, is obviously based upon a superficial study of Augustus John. The second part of the book, the Tahiti part, is obviously based upon the life of Gauguin.’

2
  See ‘Cat’s Whiskers: Philip Oakes talks to Kathleen Hale’
Sunday Times
(19 March 1972).

3
  Kathleen Hale
A Slender Reputation
(1994), pp. 85–90.

4
  Christopher Wood to his mother, September 1925.

5
  Vivien John ‘Memories of Carrington and the John Family’
The Charleston Magazine
(Spring/Summer 1995), p. 33·

6
  John to Ottoline Morrell, 29 September 1911.

7
  Romilly John
The Seventh Child
(1932), pp. 165–6.

8
  
Ibid.
p. 167.

9
  Cecil Gray
Musical Chairs
(1948), p. 228. It was because of such behaviour that Gerald Summers addressed his ‘Lines to Augustus John’s Car’.

Thou miscreant, who, forgetful of thy freight,

Leapt from the level stretches of the road,

Scaled the steep bank and met thy certain fate,

O’erturned and spilled thy all too precious load…

Let yokels leave their furrows on hot heels,

With anxious arms to place thee on thy wheels.

10
  
The Collected Poems of Oliver St John Gogarty
(1951), p. 27.

11
  Romilly John
The Seventh Child
p. 167.

12
  Lucy Norton to the author n.d.

13
  Montgomery Hyde to the author, 17 November 1969.

14
  Poppet Pol to the author, 27 February 1970.

15
  Cecil Gray
Musical Chairs
pp. 228–9. Another description of this incident is given in Adrian Daintrey’s autobiography
I Must Say
(1983), p. 126.

16
  Romilly John
The Seventh Child p.
168.

17
  John to Quinn, 20 April 1917.

18
  Augustus to Dorelia n.d.

19
  Quoted in Anthony Sampson ‘Scholar Gypsy. The Quest for a Family Secret’ (unpublished), Chapter 2.

20
  
Ibid.
Chapter 8.

21
  John to Sampson, 30 December 1930 and n.d. (Liverpool University Library).

22
  ‘Scholar Gypsy. The Quest for a Family Secret’ Chapter 6.

23
  Sampson to John, 21 November 1918. NLW MS 22785D fols. 21–2.

24
  John to Sampson, 6 January 1919. NLW MS 21459E fol. 56, and 7 September 1919 (Liverpool University Library).

25
  Sampson to John, 26 August 1919. NLW MS 22785D fols. 27–8.

26
  John to Sampson, 14 July 1920, 25 January 1924. NLW MS 21459E fols. 61–3.

27
  John to Sampson, 29 January 1927. NLW MS 21459E fol. 64.

28
  Kathleen Hale
A Slender Reputation
p. 92.

29
  John to Conger Goodyear, 4 January 1928. See Conger Goodyear
Augustus John
(privately printed).

30
  John to Ada Nettleship n.d. (1928).

31
  John to William Rothenstein, 29 September 1921.

32
  Romilly John
The Seventh Child
p. 169. The portrait of Roy Campbell is in the collection of the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh.

33
  John’s essay on Firbank was written for Ifan Kyrle Fletcher’s
Ronald Firbank
(1930); see pp. 113–15. ‘In his life as in his books he left out the dull bits and concentrated on the irrelevant.’

34
  See John’s tribute to A. R. Orage in the
New English Weekly
(15 November 1934).

35
  T E. Lawrence to William Rothenstein, 25 April 1925.

36
  Philippe Jullian
DAnnunzio
(1971), p. 182.

37
  Originally called the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, it was begun in 1749 and intended as the grandest palazzo of them all, though stopping at ceiling level when the Venier family ran out of money. Along the entrance terrace are the heads of eight stone lions which gave the palazzo its name. In 1949 it was bought by another exaggerated figure devoted to the Pekinese dog, the American art collector Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979). The house still holds her art collection and is owned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

38
  
Horizon
Volume VIII No. 48 (December 1943), p. 413.

39
  John’s half-length portrait (privately owned) was probably painted first and left unfinished. The more famous and flamboyant picture (Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada), ‘originally full-length in pyjamas’, Sir Evan Charteris noted, ‘was cut in half by John himself. A laboratory examination showed a ‘single, bold brushstroke traversing the full width of the canvas which marked the new lower extremity’. In 1942 John painted a final portrait of Casati (National Museum of Wales, Cardiff), a less assured handling of a
less dominating figure, seated in a chair, a black cat on her lap, done in his El Greco manner.

40
  Of the two versions of this picture, one, which John presented to Casati, was bought by Lord Alington and passed into the collection of his daughter, the Hon. Mrs George Marten. The other, which is misdated April 1918, was first exhibited at the Alpine Club in London early in 1920. ‘It’s a most marvellous show,’ T. E. Lawrence wrote to John, adding the information that ‘the Birm[ingham] F[ine] A[rt] Gallery say it would be bad for the women of the town to hang [‘La Marchesa Casati’] there.’ The picture was acquired in 1934 by the Art Gallery of Ontario from Sir Evan Charteris, through Lord Duveen, for £1,500 (equivalent to £47,000 in 1996). In a letter (26 February 1934) to the gallery, Duveen wrote: ‘I consider it to be an outstanding masterpiece of our time. It is no exaggeration to say this will live forever, which is true of very few pictures of modern times. You have bought a masterpiece for practically nothing… Such painting of the head, for instance, I have never seen surpassed by any artist, and you can safely place it for comparison alongside the great Velasquez, Giorgione or even Titian! That is what I think about this picture.’ In 1987 it was voted the most popular painting in the gallery.

41
  This portrait is in the National Museum of Wales.

42
  John Pearson
The Life of Ian Fleming
(1966), p. 13.

43
  
Ibid.
p. 15.

44
  Fergus Fleming
Amaryllis Fleming
(1993), p. 20.

45
  Chiquita to the author n.d.

46
  Chiquita to the author n.d.

47
  Mrs Val Fleming to Seymour Leslie, 16 May 1923.

48
  Fergus Fleming
Amaryllis Fleming
p. 119.

49
  John to Viva King n.d.

50
  William Rothenstein
Since Fifty: Men and Memories
Volume III
1922–38
(1939), p. 19·

51
  John to William Rothenstein, 6 May 1929.

52
  The picture (73½
by 65 inches) now belongs to the Tate Gallery (4043) which also owns a charcoal study (4448).

53
  Mme Suggia ‘Sitting for Augustus John’
Weekly Dispatch
(8 April 1928).

54
  Suggia continued: ‘Directly I heard his footsteps hush and his tread lighten I strained all my powers to keep at just the correct attitude. In a picture painted like this, a portrait not only of a musician but of her instrument – more of the very spirit of the music itself – the sitter must to a great extent share in its creation. John himself is kind enough to call it “our” picture.’

55
  See Michael Holroyd
Lytton Strachey
(1994 edn), pp. 435–6.

56
  Gerald Moore
Am I too Loud?
(1962), pp. 108–9.

57
  
Burlington Magazine
CXX 909 (December 1978), p. 869.

58
  
Horizon
Volume VIII No. 36 (December 1942), p. 424. See also Michael Millgate
Thomas Hardy. A Biography
(1982), p. 552. There was a curious aftermath in which John reappeared, his identity merged with that of George Meredith, author of
Modern Love,
in a dream where Hardy found himself carrying a heavy child up a ladder to safety, while the John-Meredith chimera looked on unconcernedly. Hardy, who must have known John’s prowess as a father, had no children – though always wished to have had them. See
Times Literary Supplement
(16 June 1972), p. 688.

59
  In a letter to John, Florence Hardy wrote (8 February 1929): ‘He [Hardy] had the greatest respect and
liking
for you not only as an artist but as a man. I can think of few people he liked so much.’ NLW MS 22781D fols. 90–1. John last met Hardy at Dorchester ‘during a performance of “Tess”. He introduced me to the leading actress, a Miss Bugler… whom he greatly admired. He told me her husband, a respectable butcher at Bridport, “was
quite inadequate” and pointed out that her figure was perfect if only she could be persuaded to remove her clothes’. John to Christabel McLaren (later Lady Aberconway), 5 February 1928. British Library Add. MS 52556 fol. 72.

60
  See Cyril Clemens
My Chat with Thomas Hardy
(1944), Introduction by Carl J. Weber. The picture was formally presented by H. T. Riches to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, after J. M. Barrie had refused Sydney Cockerell’s petition to present it (‘I don’t think they ought to ask me to do these things.’ See Basil Dean
Seven Ages
[1970], pp. 212–13). See also
Friends of a Lifetime: Letters to Sydney Carlyle Cockerell
(ed. Viola Meynell), p. 310. The Fitzwilliam also has a drawing of Hardy by John.

61
  T E. Lawrence to his mother, 22 November 1923.
The Letters of T. E. Lawrence
(ed. Malcolm Brown 1988), p. 250.

62
  John to Hardy, 20 November 1923. Thomas Hardy Memorial Collection, Dorset County Museum, Dorchester.

63
  
Chiaroscuro
pp. 148–9.

64
  Andrew Boyle
Montagu Norman
(1967), pp. 218–20; see also p. 252.