Augustus John (158 page)

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Authors: Michael Holroyd

Walker, Maynard: Edwin John to
571

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
96
,
110
,
288
,
292
,
293

Walpole, Hugh
171
,
505

Warlock, Peter (Philip Heseltine)
566

Warner, Sylvia Townsend
27
,
164
,
530

Warren, E. P.
293
,
353

Watney, Simon:
English Post-Impressionism
336

Watteau, Antoine
36
,
54

Watts, G. F.
91
,
173
,
334
,
338

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

Wright, Captain Peter
434
,
437

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

Yellow Book
36
,
93

Young, Mrs (landlady’s friend)
80
,
81

Yport, France
77

ABOUT
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.

REVIEWS

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

ABOUT MICHAEL HOLROYD

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.

BIOGRAPHIES BY MICHAEL HOLROYD

Bernard Shaw

Playwright, wit, socialist, polemicist, vegetarian and charmer, Bernard Shaw was a controversial literary figure, the scourge of Victorian values and middle-class pretensions.

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