Gluck by Diana Souhami (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📗

you had come to me and I know you could only do that in great intensity of feeling and leaving your body.

Separation, even for a week or fortnight, was endurable only through fantasy and fantasy had its edge of pain:

I feel like a balloon this morning so close to you in my spirit, though God knows I daren’t let myself think for one minute of such materialization as you suddenly coming into the room, or the feeling of you in my arms, or your naked body lifting against mine in the firelight, because then I ache suddenly with such force I don’t know what to do. Just now I am hugging your lovely spirit close to me and feeling you so terribly strongly I wonder if at this moment, which is 9 a.m. you are thinking very hard of me.11

Visitors to Gluck’s studios in Hampstead and Lamorna commented on how well she looked and how happy she seemed. A neighbour from her Chelsea days, Evelyn Haworth, who sixteen years previously had lived in the studio above hers in Tite Street, said how young and ‘spiritual’ she now seemed compared to her time with Craig. Gluck scrutinized her reflection in the glass and concluded that this was because of ‘lovely letters and telegrams and feeling surrounded by your love’. Nancy Greene and her husband Wilfrid, Lord Greene, Master of the Rolls, who were devoted friends of Gluck’s and great admirers of her work (Gluck was to paint his portrait in 1949) commented so often on her appearance that

I would have become embarrassed if I had not been lapping it up with a grin from ear to ear for ‘YouWe’. I have never cared a damn before whether I was good looking or not … but now I want to be for you – because it is an outward sign of us, and so as I say I glowed in this acknowledgement to the power of our combined magic.

Molly Mount Temple commented on how much better she liked Gluck’s hair, now cut with a hint of curls, and found her appearance a positive distraction:

At one period I was holding forth and she suddenly said, ‘Why are you such a good shape, I can’t take my eyes off you it’s most distracting and I haven’t heard a word you said …’

It was the ‘YouWe’ magic. ‘Now it is out,’ Gluck wrote of their reciprocal love. ‘And to the rest of the Universe I call “Beware – Beware!” We are not to be trifled with.’ And a week or so later, when she was again being flattered on her changed looks, ‘I know that our love has given me what everybody cannot help seeing like a lighthouse – because it is a warning too – Beware, Beware!

The ‘rest of the Universe’ was to steer clear of this dangerous force. Gluck’s world was hers alone. She had a perfect studio, admiring friends, was working well for her fourth solo exhibition and was in love – to all Eternity:

Oh darling – I do love you so deeply, so violently and yet so tenderly, it almost suffocates me at times … I think we are really very lucky – to have this tremendous mutual love, one of the rarest and most precious things in the world – perfectly balanced in our essential difference and likenesses.… What a tangle, what jungles we have had in our lives, and now, anyway to me, it all seems crystal clear and unmistakeable and real, without question, merely with a few roots to stumble over, a few brambles to cut away before reaching freedom and light.

EIGHT

ROOTS AND BRAMBLES

There were quite a few roots to stumble over and brambles to cut away. Operatic love has obstacles and this love had its share. At the beginning of 1937, while Gluck wrote her bulletins of passion and painted in her studio with the ‘YouWe’ picture propped always before her like a kind of altarpiece, Nesta was in St Moritz with Seymour. He was in his seventies and enduring bouts of illness. He was a retired playwright, had a considerable private fortune and gave generously to charities. To Gluck he was the Big Bad Wolf, her rival and opponent. She had seen his spy thriller Pigeon Post at the Garrick Theatre in 1918. In St Moritz the Obermers were staying at the Waldhaus. Gluck’s letters were delivered each day to the Carlton and Nesta collected them on her way to the skating rink.

In Plumpton, Nesta’s father was mortally ill and her mother voicing criticisms of what she sensed of the relationship between the two women – who feigned casual contact with each other of the sort that befits good friends separated by frequent travel. While Nesta was away, because of her father’s illness, Gluck phoned Mrs Sawyer regularly. On a typical day, when the post had yielded three letters and one card ‘my only post and what a feast!… I thought to find only one and then the whole pile was you – I nearly passed out with suppressed emotion and rushed to the studio and buried myself …’, Gluck mentioned, when asked, that she had received only a ‘quite ordinary cheerful card (God help me). So now you know. You haven’t corresponded except as I have just said.… In that statement your Mother seemed to find relief and all was well.… Goodnight again my darling love. I hold you to me.’

And a week later:

Your Mother asked if I had heard from you and I said in a casual way ‘Oyes, I had a letter yesterday.’ ‘Is Seymour any better,’ asked she. ‘I believe so,’ answered I. ‘I think he took a sleeping draught and felt better for a good night.’ Why does everyone rub King Mark under my nose?

Gluck’s mother too, though fulsome in her praise of Nesta – ‘I am as deeply and fully aware of her charm and sincerity as you are. She is outstanding and I know her real