Authors: Michael Holroyd
It was Sickert, the previous year, who had warned his fellow painters against the mistake of inverted snobbery: ‘you are reflecting whether it is not high time to throw Augustus John, who has clearly become compromising, overboard. Take my tip. Don’t!’
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But the war had dimmed John’s imaginative world. The future seemed to be with those who looked for a new art dominated by the functions of machinery rather than the organic forms of nature. Over the last half of his career, there was, as Herbert Read wrote, ‘little in his work to show that he has lived through one of the most momentous epochs in history’
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– a limitation that could also be fixed on Gwen John.
The war was initially seen as the enemy of all artists. They had come together in a profusion of groups and movements: collided: flown apart. Marinetti’s Futurists, Wyndham Lewis’s Vorticists, Roger Fry’s Omega Workshops: all were adjusting to a competitive age, to discord, to the conditions of war. In the histories of modern art, John has no place with these movements. But he did maintain contacts on the periphery. When
in the autumn of 1914 Wyndham Lewis’s Rebel Art Centre in 38 Great Ormond Street destroyed itself, another less well-publicized centre at 8 Ormonde Terrace replaced it. This was led by Bomberg, Epstein and William Roberts: and John was asked to be its first president. In their derelict house, leased by ‘a dear old humorist with a passion for vegetables’,
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*3
these artists took aggressive refuge from the war, teaching, and employing the rooms as studios. In a letter to the young Evan Morgan (Lord Tredegar), John (who refused the presidency) explained his views in a manner that defines his relation to almost all the new movements:
‘I confess I was always shy of the Ormonde Terrace schemes when approached before…
I do still think the idea is a very good one.
I only have my doubts of our carrying it to success when hindered by certain personalities – given a nucleus of serious and sensible persons or enough of such to
predominate
I would not refuse my name for any useful purpose. It was for this reason I was so keen to get Ginner and Gilman on the Committee. They are both able men especially the former and would not be likely to wreck or jeopardize our plans by childish frivolity or lack of savoir-faire. Given such conditions, I say, B[omberg] and the rest could take their chance… I am quite game to go on with the affair and do all I can. But I can’t go and identify myself publicly with a narrow group with which I have no natural connexion. You must see that I have arrived at greater responsibilities than the people we are dealing with. My own “interests” lie in
isolation
as complete as possible. I have never studied my interests but experience teaches me at least to avoid misunderstandings. I would be quite ready to waive my “interests” damn them! pour le bon motif, but I don’t want a fiasco… It’s impossible for a painter to be also a politician and an administrator. We ought to have [A. R.] Orage as dictator… I was loath to act as captain to a scratch crew and seeing nothing but rocks ahead.’
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This letter points to several developing strains in John: the superstitious fear of failure, of contagious ‘bad luck’, and an impatience with himself for succumbing to this; an apprehension of press and publicity; the film of ‘greater responsibilities’ that was clouding his natural vision; and some common sense. Only isolation could uphold this talent, he believed, but to isolation he was by temperament unsuited. The groups and movements he avoided had, as they exploded, flung their adherents into the forefront of the war where they found inspiration. John too had wanted to hurry to the front.
‘I have had the idea of going to France to sketch for a long while and I have hopes now of being able to do so,’ he had written on 26 April 1916 to Will Rothenstein.
‘But I am still in suspense. I have applied for a temporary commission which I think indispensable to move with any freedom in the British lines where the discipline is exceedingly severe… there’s enough material to occupy a dozen artists. Of course the proper time for war is the winter and I very much regret not having managed to go out last winter. I cannot say I have any personal influence with the powers that be… I have been advised at the same time to keep my business quite dark. You might suppose I could do something with Lloyd George but I fear that gentleman will never forgive me for painting a somewhat unconventional portrait of him...’
Another winter came and went, and John continued to keep his business dark, remaining sombrely at home. During 1917 he began to drift, not altogether gracefully, into the McEvoy world of ‘Duchesses’. One sitter who occupied him that year was Lady Cynthia Asquith, who had sat to McEvoy, Sargent and Tonks. Her diary entries give revealing glimpses of him in this new milieu.
‘Friday 27 April 1917
…
His appearance reduced Margot [Asquith]’s two-year-old girl to terrified tears. I like him but felt very shy with him… Mary [Herbert] and I both exhibited our faces, hoping he might want to paint us. He is doing a portrait of Margot and at one time asked her to sit for the “altogether”, saying she had such a perfect artist’s figure...
…Margot once asked John how many wives he really had (he is rather a mythical figure), saying she heard he was a most immoral man. He indignantly replied, “It’s monstrous – I’m a very moderate man. I’ve only got
one
wife!”
Tuesday 9 October 1917
…
He has a most delightful studio – huge, with an immense window, and full of interesting works. The cold was something excruciating… I felt myself becoming more and more discoloured. His appearance is magnificent, straight out of the Old Testament – flowing, well-kept beard, hair cut
en bloc
at about the top of the ear, fine, majestic features. He had on a sort of overall daubed with paint, buttoning up round his throat, which completed a brilliant picturesque appearance. He was “blind sober” and quite civil. I believe sometimes he is alarmingly surly. Unlike McEvoy,
he didn’t seem to want to converse at all while painting and I gratefully accepted the silence. He talked quite agreeably during the intervals he allowed me. He made – I think – a very promising beginning of me sitting in a chair in a severe pose: full face, but with eyes averted – a very sidelong glance. He said my expression “intrigued” him, and certainly I think he has given me a very evil one
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– a sort of
listening
look as though I was hearkening to bad advice.
Thursday 1 November 1917
Bicycled to John’s studio. John began a new version of me, in which I could see no sort of resemblance to myself. The [D. H.] Lawrences turned up. I thought it just possible John
might
add another to the half dozen or so people whose company Lawrence can tolerate for two hours. It was quite a success. John asked Lawrence to sit for him,
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and Lawrence admired the large designs in the studios, but maintained an ominous silence as regards my pictures. He charged John to depict ‘generations of Wemyss disagreeableness in my face, especially the mouth’, said disappointment was the key-note of my expression, and that what made him “wild” was that I was “a woman with a weapon she would never use”… He thought the painting of Bernard Shaw with closed eyes very true symbolism.’
‘Come quickly,
like Lord Jesus,’ John had urged her, ‘because I’ve got to go away before long.’ After eighteen months at the starting line he was still waiting his call to the front – or, better still, to several fronts with intervals in England during which he would work up the results of his sketching into pictures. ‘I very much want to do a great deal in the way of military drawings and paintings,’ he told the publisher Grant Richards,
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who had proposed a book of these drawings. The authorities, however, held out against granting permanent exemption from military service. Its rule was that artists must be called up, after which the War Office could then apply to the army for their artistic services. Because of his recurring exemption, John was unable to force his way into the army in order to get seconded out of it. He had become a bureaucratic paradox.
On 7 September 1917 he underwent another medical examination. ‘I was not taken on the 7th,’ he wrote to Campbell Dodgson. ‘On leaving, my leg (the worst one) “went out” so I had physical support for spiritual satisfaction.’
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He had already informed the War Office that he had no objection to his work being used for government publications, and had produced for a Ministry of Information book,
British Aims and Ideals
,
a hideous symbolical lithograph, ‘The Dawn’. In a letter to the writer, journalist and politician C. F. G. Masterman, Campbell Dodgson wrote:
‘I am of opinion that it might be the making of John to be brought into contact with reality and the hard facts of warfare, instead of doing things out of his own head as he does at present, except when he has a portrait to paint.’ Impressed by these arguments, and by John’s obvious eagerness, the War Office capitulated, finally inviting him to act as one of its official artists: and John refused.
The invitation had come only just too late. Through the good offices of P. G. Konody, the art critic of the
Observer,
John had volunteered to work for the Canadian War Memorials Fund, a scheme started by Lord Beaverbrook to assemble a picture collection that would give a record of Canada’s part in the war. The Canadian War Records Office now granted him, with full pay, allowances and an extra three hundred pounds (equivalent to £7,500 in 1996) in expenses, an honorary commission in the Overseas Military Forces of Canada, in return for which John agreed to paint a decorative picture of between thirty and forty feet in length. ‘I had almost forgotten about this project… I had given up hope of it,’ he explained to Campbell Dodgson. ‘…The Canadians would be, I imagine, far more generous than the British Government.’
London that autumn saw the sight of John absorbed in
Jane Eyre
(‘what a wonderful work!’) and attired as a Canadian major. ‘Yes, I am told I look very beautiful in uniform,’ he wrote to a girl called Kitty. ‘I wish you could see me.’
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But others who did see him were dismayed. ‘I have lunched at the Café Royal with Major John in Khaki!’ exclaimed Arthur Symons in a letter to Quinn. ‘The uniform does not suit him… I never saw John more sombre and grave than to-day. He is brooding on I know not what.’
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The conscientious objector Lytton Strachey, who had observed him looking ‘decidedly colonial’ at the Alpine Club, took a more hostile view of this development. ‘Poor John,’ he lamented. ‘…Naturally he has become the darling of the upper classes, and made £5,000 out of his show. His appearance in Khaki is unfortunate – a dwindled creature, with clipped beard, pseudo-smart, and in fact altogether deplorable.’
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Strachey was one of those who ‘joined in’ a farewell party at Mallord Street. Early next morning, John’s military figure, greatcoated, with leather gloves, a cane, riding boots laced up to the knee, and spurs, picked its way between the prostrate bodies, and strode off to the war.
‘The dawn of peace breaks gloomily indeed.’
Augustus John to John Sampson (1919)
‘John is having a great time!’ William Orpen, now an official war artist, wrote excitedly from Amiens. ‘…in the army [he] is a fearful and wonderful person. I believe his return to “Corps” the other evening will never be forgotten – followed by a band of photographers. He’s going to stop for the duration.’
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He was billeted on the Somme front at Aubigny, a small village that had been designated a ‘bridgehead’. Though there were intermittent shelling and occasional air raids, one of which removed the roof of the hut where he lived, Aubigny was ‘a deadly hole’. Nevertheless he felt ‘overjoyed to be out here’.
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Over the last two years John’s letters had been weighed down with a despair that leaves ‘me speechless, doubting the reality of my own existence’.
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He complained of a ‘sort of paranoia or mental hail-storm from which I suffer continually’,
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and of curious states of mind when he was ‘not myself. ‘I like John,’ D. H. Lawrence wrote in November 1917, ‘ – but he is a drowned corpse.’
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Often he felt ‘horribly alone’,
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knowing that ‘there is no one I can be with for long.’
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In a letter to Cynthia Asquith he accused himself of owning ‘a truly mean and miserable nature. Obviously I am ill since I cannot stand
anybody.’
This meanness infected whatever he looked at until he could see ‘no good in anything’.
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While submerged in such moods he had a way of hopelessly shaking his head like an animal in a zoo. Observing him closely one evening at the Margaret Morris Theatre ‘with two very worn and chipped ladies’, Katherine Mansfield had written to Ottoline Morrell (August 1917):
‘I seemed to see his [John’s] mind, his haggard mind, like a strange forbidding country, full of lean sharp peaks and pools lit with a gloomy glow, and trees bent with the wind and vagrant muffled creatures tramping their vagrant way. Everything exhausted and finished – great black rings where the fires had been, and not a single fire even left to smoulder. And then he reminded me of that man [Svidrigailov] in
Crime and Punishment
who finds a little girl in his bed in that awful hotel the night before he shoots himself, in that appalling hotel. But I expect this is all rubbish, and he’s really a happy man and fond of his bottle and a goo-goo eye. But I don’t think so.’
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He was now in his fortieth year, and age had begun to inflict upon him its humiliations. ‘I am waiting for a magic elastic belt to prevent me from becoming an
absolute
wreck at 35!’ he had written to Ottoline. ‘It doesn’t sound very romantic does it?’ His deafness too partly accounted for his bravery during bombardments. ‘I’m stone deaf myself,’ he shouted into Dorothy Brett’s hearing aid, ‘besides having a weak knee and defective teeth and moral paralysis.’
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This last condition was aggravated by the war. ‘As for me I can only see imminent ruin ahead – personal I mean, perhaps even general,’ he had confided to Evan Morgan. Inevitably the war, with its regimentation and officiousness, subordinated the individual to the state. In such an atmosphere John was ‘neither fish, flesh, fowl nor good red herring’.
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His work too afforded him little certainty – painting for money, against time: an abuse of his skill. Something had to change. His translation into a Canadian major appeared to offer him a new life, a fresh stimulus for his painting. It had arrived barely in time.