Ken Pople - Stanley Spencer (Text Only)

Intrigued to meet the brothers, Ottoline herself came with her husband the Liberal MP, Philip Morrell, by train in July for tea at Fernlea and a walk along the Thames with the family. Stanley had just finished his first oil self-portrait, in which he painted himself in a mirror tilted to see part of the ceiling. The effect is to emphasize the jaw and mouth. Did the Morrells, one wonders, sense that in the set of the face and the quest of the eyes, the owner was beginning to see visions denied to many? †

During the visit there was, according to Sydney, ‘keen discussion’ of Mozart’s music, and ‘much fun’ over the taking of group photographs, Ottoline being an enthusiastic photographer. The Morrells stunned the Spencers by airily hailing a local taxi for the return journey. A few weeks later Ottoline, having been offered the use of Lady Ripon’s box at Covent Garden, reciprocated by inviting the Spencers to a Mozart opera. Evening dress was required. Ma was no problem, and Pa had an aged dress suit. Ottoline arranged for Gilbert to be pinned into one of Philip’s, while Stanley disappeared into Edward Marsh’s, which he had lent for the purpose. The procession of the party into the opera-house was a spectacle long-remembered with hilarity by the participants.

Darsie Japp was another welcomed visitor. He had previously visited, and walked ‘twenty miles into Buckinghamshire’ with Stanley; the Thames at Cookham forms a boundary between Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. On their return to Fernlea they were given boiled eggs for tea by Ma, a simple fare which Japp enjoyed, for, he told Stanley, ‘I shall have plovers’ eggs tonight.’ 22In August Henry Lamb visited again. Will was there from Germany. Sydney captures in his diary for August the echoes of that last summer before the impact of war: ‘Yesterday Henry Lamb came down and spent some hours with us. We walked to Odney, then to Cliveden. … Suddenly we all concluded we wanted to bathe. So Gil fetched towels and Guy Lacey came with us. The water was delicious. Coming home, Lamb begged Will to play the Hammerklavier Sonata.’

Significant though music was to both Henry Lamb and Stanley, it was a mutual recognition of the importance of art which drew together in friendship this otherwise contrasting pair. For all his more worldly literacy, savoir-faire and sophistication, Lamb seems to have shared with Stanley those moments of self-doubt, even of despair, which all artists suffer. But whereas Lamb’s bouts of despondency would become prolonged, Stanley’s natural buoyancy would quickly lift him to the surface. Perhaps Lamb occasionally needed the help of such optimism from his new friend. Eight years older than Stanley, he was a son of Horace Lamb, a distinguished professor of mathematics, later knighted. He had almost completed the medical course intended for him when he suddenly abandoned it, married the notoriously sensual model Nina Forrest, his ‘Euphemia’ – it was said to be a forced marriage – and went to Paris to study art, particularly under Augustus John. There his marriage disintegrated. He returned to England in 1911 to help extricate John from a relationship with Ottoline Morrell which was becoming tiresome. A slim, pale man, according to Lady Ottoline he was as fascinating to women as he was attracted to them. But essentially he was a man of wide cultural, social, musical and artistic sensibilities. He and Stanley shared an honesty of purpose and a clarity of outlook which all their lives resented pretension. When they met it, their reactions differed. Where Stanley would rant or grumble in protest, Lamb would pick up his lance and charge. The jousting blow he delivered to Clive Bell over the Apple Gatherers affair was not mortal, but at least gave him the satisfaction of displaying his contempt. Neither he nor Stanley was greatly interested in material possession, nor in money save as the means to artistic freedom. But both remained in thrall, despite all obstacles, to the ‘divine fire’.

Artistically, Stanley’s prospects were encouraging. His work was increasingly recognized among connoisseurs, even if not always for the reasons he intended. Materially, it sold. By 1914 he told Gwen: ‘I have £52 in the bank and I think I shall take the money I have in the Post Office Savings bank and make a deposit account at the London County & Westminster Bank where I already have a current account. I think you get 4 per cent interest.’ 23He also asks Gwen’s advice on whether he should increase his contribution to the family housekeeping; he was paying his mother £1 a month, perhaps £10 a week now. Interesting projects were in the offing. In 1913 Jacques and Gwen Raverat had made moves to get Stanley and Eric Gill involved in illustrating and lettering a version of the four gospels. Gill, however, declined the project as too onerous, and the Raverats, it seems, were modifying it to discussions of an illustrated version of Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam , with drawings by Stanley, woodcuts by Gwen, layout by Jacques and lettering by Gill. Rupert Brooke was urging Edward Marsh to promote a theatrical venture with text by himself, scenery by Stanley, and Cathleen Nesbitt as the leading actress. 24Marsh had already in 1912 published the first of the anthologies of contemporary verse he called Georgian Poets. Stanley enjoyed the volume – ‘Marsh gave me a book of English poets. I like Rupert Brooke because he knows what teatime is’ 25– and suggested a companion series of ‘Georgian painters’ to include Gertler, Currie, Nash, the Spencers, Seabrooke, Roberts, Rosenberg, Nevinson, Wadsworth and Gaudier-Brzeska. In addition Stanley was diverting Jacques Raverat’s aborted four gospels project towards an associated scheme which was gradually to assume dominance for him in later life: the building of a long gallery – ‘chapel’ – in which the artists’ paintings would illustrate the Life of Christ in terms of their own developing experiences through life.

But all were to come to naught. The times were too troubled. Rupert Brooke, due with Jacques Raverat to join friends on a camping holiday at Helston in Cornwall, sends Stanley (‘Dear Cookham’) a letter which sums up the feelings of the perplexed young men:

I wish I knew about painting. I’ve left Raymond Buildings for months. I don’t know when I shall be back. I’m glad I was there when you came. I’m going sailing and walking with Jacques for ten days or so. At least I want to. But this damned war business. … If fighting starts I shall have to enlist or go as a correspondent, I don’t know. It will be Hell to be out of it; and Hell to be in it. I’m so depressed about the war that I can’t talk, think or write coherently. God be with you. 26

He never made his trip to Cornwall.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Centurion’s Servant

Here we part with the year 1913 which has had many joys for me and few sorrows. What has 1914 got locked up in its bosom for me and mine? We shall see in time.

Sydney Spencer, 31 December 1913 1

TUESDAY 4 AUGUST 1914 was Florence’s birthday. She had come to Cookham to enjoy a celebration party at Fernlea. During the afternoon, Herbert Henry Asquith, long-serving Prime Minister in the Liberal Government, announced in the House of Commons the delivery of an ultimatum to Germany demanding the withdrawal of her troops from Belgium, to whose neutrality Britain was committed. Florence had cause to remember that day:

On the afternoon of August 4th – my birthday – 1914 I was pacing the Causeway at Cookham with my brother Percy, gravely discussing with him the family scene, when he said: ‘Of course, I shall have to go.’ ‘Not you!’ I cried sharply. ‘A family of seven sons’, he replied, ‘could not stand aside, and if I went, perhaps the younger sons will not have to go.’ I listened dumb-stricken … 2