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

The dog, Zar, in his short life became uncertain as to quite where home was. Perhaps Gluck was uncertain too, despite her claims to feeling settled. Those who knew her in her later years say she had little rapport with animals – that she was sharp with dogs and they disliked it.1 Zar was boarded out for a good deal of the time. And Nesta seemed uncertain as to quite whose job it was to look after Gluck, if looking after was what was needed. An arrangement had been made, to mollify Seymour, whereby Gluck spent alternate weekends away from the Mill House with Nesta’s mother, who lived in the nearby village of Uekfield but this became problematic and. before long Nesta was writing to the Meteor with another proposal:

Dearest Meteor

… I’ve been thinking hard about you and Gluck and the summer. As you know, she has been spending alternate weekends with me and with my mother. My mother is rather a society-fly-about really … She is the kind who took up Gluck like so many have done and now Gluck has made herself at home and lays down the law a little (you know!) she does not take into account the workings of genius, but is getting a little restive. Nothing is wrong yet, but I, knowing my mother, can see it coming! I have said nothing to Gluck about it naturally.

Now. She has often bemoaned the fact that your life and her life are so utterly apart … and suddenly last night I thought what a marvellous idea it would be if you got a house in the country and let her come down every other weekend to you …

… If you did this you would have to find the house on your own and when it was all ready say casually, ‘I’m trying this for a month come down some weekend!’ I know that really she would far rather be with you than anyone. My mother’s is only a pied a terre.… The country which Gluck says is very paintable is Rye and round that part of Sussex. Or where there are very large fat trees! If you think anything of the idea tell me and I will keep my eyes open …2

What the Meteor thought of the idea is not on record. But it came to nothing and on the face of it more houses and seeing more of mother, were not what was needed.

However unsettled her sporting life, Gluck was having fun. She spent a good deal of time trundling back and forth between Hampstead and Plumpton in her 1935 Hillman, registration BUL 700, to which she was devoted. It kept going wrong but the Meteor, for the most part, footed the repair bills. The summer of 1938 was spent holidaying, mainly with Nesta, in Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. ‘It’s rather fun to mess about like this before I start work again in earnest,’ Gluck wrote to the Meteor (23 August 1938). She stayed for a week with Nesta’s friends the Hollendens at their South Devon home, Matt’s Point. (Lord Hollenden had bought Gluck’s picture of the chestnut branches, ‘Adolescence’, at her 1937 exhibition.)

It is one of the most spectacular places I have ever seen. The house is halfway down a cliff.… And then there are hundreds of steps and paths down to the sea and swimming pools in the rocks and beaches and caves – the whole headland belongs to them so it’s peaceful and untroubled and quite lovely.… It’s just possible I may do some work here …

And a couple of months were spent at the ‘Letter Studio’ with a host of house guests. Work remained a possibility.

A gruff word from Ernest Dawbarn of The Fine Art Society, in October 1938, went unanswered: ‘I hardly feel that what we have left from the exhibition does justice to you, and thought, perhaps, by this time you might have been able to let us have one or two new pictures.’ The only picture she recorded working on between the end of her 1937 exhibition and the outbreak of war was a commissioned portrait of Peter Giffard in January 1939. He was seventeen and she did a profile of his knobbly Adam’s apple, chin and nose with his hair like a thick thatch.

The Giffards lived in Chillington Hall, Wolverhampton, inherited through the direct male line, for nine centuries, from Walter Giffard. He, so the legend ran, came to England when William the Conqueror invaded – riding alongside him as it was his hereditary right to hold William’s stirrup when he mounted or dismounted his horse. His reward for this, and presumably other services of conquest, was Chillington and all its lands. Some years ago Gluck’s picture, still at the Hall and in its original stepped frame, was affected by a form of mould which made the hair colour fade.

Gluck took three weeks over the portrait then hastily packed for six weeks in the snows of Lenzerheide with the Obermers. This time she took up skiing as well as skating. She had seven lessons before breaking her thumb, which ended her sortie into winter sports.

After skating, skiing and riding came sailing – for a while. She bought a boat and a 3/6d how-to-do-it book from Lillywhites, put the boat on her car roof and drove it down to the lake at Plumpton:

August 9th, 1939

Mother darling

… The day before yesterday having practised different rope knots and read my book I felt I must go a stage further, so rang up a friend of Nesta’s, a retired Colonel cracked about sailing who came across in his old clothes. It was blowing and pouring and we spent a happy messy wet afternoon crouched in the boat on the lake. He was very sweet – a bad limp and a big tummy and was like a boy about it all – from 3.30 to 5 pm he sat crouched and could hardly stand up when he got to