Augustus John (158 page)
Authors: Michael Holroyd
Walker, Maynard: Edwin John to
571
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
96
,
110
,
288
,
292
,
293
Warlock, Peter (Philip Heseltine)
566
Warner, Sylvia Townsend
27
,
164
,
530
Watney, Simon:
English Post-Impressionism
336
Watts-Dunton, Theodore
283
Waugh, Alec:
The Loom of Youth
536
Waugh, Edna
see
Hall, Edna Clarke
Waugh, Evelyn
546
,
580
;
Vile Bodies
542
Waverley, Lady
501
Weekly Critical Review
295
West, Max
603
Western Daily Press
292
Westminster, Duke of
456
Westminster Gazette
93
Westminster School of Art, London
35
,
128
Westray, Grace
47
,
135
,
635
(n. 29)
Wheeler, Sir Charles: on AJ’s appearance
420
; on his work
596
; relied on by AJ
597–8
; at AJ’s funeral
599
Augustus John to
597
Wheeler, Mavis (
née
Mabel Wright,
formerly
Cole) affair with Horace de Vere Cole
524–5
; becomes AJ’s mistress
525–6
,
527–8
; and Tristan’s birth
525
; abducts Tristan from Fryern Court
527
; marries Mortimer Wheeler
526–7
; at Horace’s funeral
550
; Jonathan Cape has eye on
568
; makes AJ forget his age
581
; shoots lover
595
Augustus John to
508
,
513
,
535
,
547
Wheeler, Sir Mortimer: challenged to a duel by AJ
526–7
Whistler, James McNeill: ceases to exhibit at NEAC
92
; galvanizes Slade Life Class
56–7
; instructs Gwen John in Paris
71
,
72
,
88
,
161
; visited by AJ
73
; on his own painting
92
; lunches with AJ
133
; mentioned
37
,
66
,
257
,
292
,
328
,
495
,
563
White, John (AJ’s son in law)
537
White, Vivien (
née
John) (AJ’s and Dorelia’s second daughter): birth
412
; childhood
369
,
412
,
413
,
447
,
474
,
482
,
486
,
541
; schooling
412
,
536
; relationship with father
388
,
446
,
535
,
536
,
537
; at Fryern Court
498
,
500
,
501
; on Gwen John
553
; in Venice with AJ
512–13
; visits Jamaica with parents
513
,
514
; another ‘rich occurrence’ in France
522
; nurses in war
563
; at father’s deathbed
599
; helps author
xx
; mentioned
437
,
593
Augustus John to
557
Henry John to
542
Whitman, Walt
41
;
Leaves of Grass
37
Whitney, Mrs Harry Payne
488
Wigmore Street, London (n. 58)
65
,
66
,
74
,
105
Wilde, Constance
61
Wilde, Oscar: a character
45
; meets AJ
78
; describes Arthur Symons
295
; AJ mimics
500
; quoted
518
; mentioned
322
,
353
Wildenstein Gallery, Bond Street
558
,
571
Wilkinson, Louis: John Cowper Powys to
593–4
Williams, Emlyn: AJ to
563
Williamson, Henry
568
Wilson, George
61
Wilson, President Woodrow
441
Wilton, Andrew
279
Wimborne, Lady
360
Wimborne, Lord
386
Winars, Walter
423–4
Winchester, 16th Marquis of
595
Winstedt, Eric Otto (‘Old Mother’)
283
,
310
Wood, Abraham, King of the Gypsies
289
Wood, Christopher
342
,
446–7
,
484
Wood, Derwent
424
Wood, Matthew
289–90
Wood, T. Martin
292
Woodbury, Charles
494
Woolcombe, Rev Canon K. J.
548
,
685
(n. 154)
Woolf, Leonard
505–6
Woolf, Virginia (
née
Stephen): on Euphemia Lamb
205
,
248
; on Ottoline Morrell
262
,
264
; shocked by AJ’s 1929 exhibition
480
; and Dr Maurice Wright
505
; mentioned
268
,
286
,
327
,
331
,
347
Roger Fry to
349
Woolsey, Gamel
538
Wright, Alfred
27
Wright, Dr Maurice
505–6
Yates, Dora (‘Romani Rawnie’): at scattering of John Sampson’s ashes
549
; correspondence with AJ
xxvi
,
560–1
; author meets
xix
Augustus John to
561
,
569–70
,
580
,
582
,
595
Yeats, John Butler (‘Jack’)
61
,
245
Yeats, W. B.: ‘poet of the twilight’
121
; ‘won-derful man!’
210
; AJ’s portraits of
208
,
242–5
,
509
,
510
; on AJ
1
,
242
,
245–6
,
355
,
517
; on Jack Nettleship
66
; on ‘artistic camps’ in England
334
; sculpted by AJ
592
; mentioned
280
,
299
,
516
Lady Gregory to
410
Young, Mrs (landlady’s friend)
80
,
81
Yport, France
77
AUGUSTUS JOHN
This 1997 revised and updated biography of the celebrated artist, using the mass of new material which has come to light since Holroyd’s two-volume first edition in the mid 1970s, reveals the complete story of John and his circle, from one of our great biographers.
John studied at the Slade with his sister Gwen before both of them went to Paris. He lived and worked at feverish speed and his drawings were astonishing for their fluid lyrical line, their vigour and spontaneity. His life became a complex tale of two cities, London and Paris, of two wives and many families. ‘The age of Augustus John was dawning,’ Virginia Woolf wrote of the year 1908, which saw many portraits of writers and artists and small glowing oil panels of figures in a landscape. His most striking work was done in the years before the First World War and when he died in 1961 his death was treated as a landmark signalling the end of a distant era.
A
UGUSTUS
J
OHN
“An entertaining, essentially comic story.. Holroyd tells it with great skill and elegance.”
Sunday Telegraph
“One of the most entertaining lives ever written... Very funny... thought-provoking.”
Mail On Sunday
“A wonderfully engrossing, entertaining and even moving book.”
Daily Telegraph
L
YTTON
S
TRACHEY
“Holroyd’s prose... is as elegant as ever. He is one of the few biographers who has retained a pronounced sense of humour.”
The Times
“Masterly: full of new insight.”
Sunday Express
“You will be won over by Strachey’s originality, independence and humanity; by his hatred of humbug and prudery; by his life-saving gift for comedy.”
Evening Standard
B
ERNARD
S
HAW
“A masterly exercise in biographical magic.”
Spectator
“This elegant volume gives the quintessence of Shaw...[it does] justice to a great Irishman.”
Irish Independent
“A man whose art rested as much upon the exercise of intelligence could not have chosen a more intelligent biographer.”
The Times
B
ASIL
S
TREET
B
LUES
A subtle, courageous book…
Sunday Telegraph
[Holroyd] has written an original, unforgettable book
Daily Telegraph
Tense, fraught, uneasy, but mining that unease to poignant effect, Basil Street Blues is an extraordinary piece of work
TLS
I have no hesitation in awarding
Basil Street Blues
the full five stars. In the genre of autobiography, it is right up there in my personal pantheon...[a] haunting and beautifully understated tragi-comedy.
Mail on Sunday
A B
OOK
OF
S
ECRETS
“A subtle paean to the art of biography. It is a biographical experiment, but a deeply humane and sensitive one. It glows with the energy of lives investigated, restored, reanimated and celebrated.”
Sunday Times
“Here, he has given us the distilled essence of biography and a fitting end to what he evokes as ‘the comedy of life’.”
Observer
“As is always the case with Holroyd, the reader comes away equally inspired, equally curious, and lavishly entertained by a story-teller of the first rank.”
Scotsman
“A small gem of humanity, curiosity and observation with a wonderful, rolling undercurrent of comedy”
Sunday Telegraph
“Scintillating... Holroyd’s book is a sly, inconclusive and utterly bewitching dance through the elusive narrative echoes that make up the biographer’s art”
Metro
M
OSAIC
“A lovely blend of mirth and melancholy… this memoir ranks with the finest records of the period”
Waterstones Books Quarterly
“An absolute tour de force of brilliant writing.”
Telegraph
“Holroyd is a marvellously sour wit and an observer who never misses a good detail, even in extremis.”
Sunday Times
“Mosaic is restless, interrogative, hungry for knowledge and resolution.”
Guardian
Besides the biographies of Augustus John, Bernard Shaw and Lytton Strachey, Michael Holroyd has written two volumes of memoirs,
Basil Street Blues
and
Mosaic
. He was president of the Royal Society of Literature from 2003–2008 and is the only non-fiction writer to have been awarded the British Literature Prize. He lives in London and Somerset with his wife, the novelist Margaret Drabble.
Playwright, wit, socialist, polemicist, vegetarian and charmer, Bernard Shaw was a controversial literary figure, the scourge of Victorian values and middle-class pretensions.