the picture regretted by none and noticed by few’.10 John Ellis Roosevelt said, ‘We learned from Mrs Chipman and from reading through Hawys’ (sic) papers that he, Hawys, (sic) had come to the conclusion that his father was an S.O.B and a crook, with psychological and sexual problems to boot and that Hawys’ (sic) brother Lionel (Mrs Chipman’s father) was at best a dam (sic) fool’.11 In the last year of his life Chipman went through her father’s memorabilia and wrote to Stephen apologising to him for ‘my disbelief of you in the past’. Astonished and horrified at her father and grandfather’s behaviour she confessed to Stephen ‘so far I have wronged you’.12
Similarly Gray’s situation with her family became strained due to her sister Ethel’s marriage to Henry Tufnel Campbell. This man had an overwhelming influence on her mother. In her letters Gray describes equally complicated family stories. ‘My brother who was left all my grandfather’s money, as I told you he [Gray’s grandfather] was angry with my mother and left her nothing, which provoked feuds (my mother entirely under the influence of my brother-in-law who grabbed and ruled) in Ireland’.13 Gray’s grandfather Jeremiah Lonsdale Pounden died in 1887, leaving his estate to James Mclaren Stuart Gray, twentieth Lord Gray – who had become Lord Gray upon the death of his mother on 24 December 1918. However, on 6 May 1919 The Irish Times reported:
The death occurred at Brighton, after a short illness, of the right Hon. James McLaren Stuart Gray, Baron Gray. He succeeded his mother, Eveleen Baroness Gray, on her death in December 24 1918 and became the twentieth holder of the title. His sister, the Hon Ethel Eveleen, wife of Henry T Campbell Esq of 7 Collingwood Gardens, London SW and Brownswood Co Wexford, succeeds him to the title.14
Gray describes quite an uncomfortable situation amongst family members after this. ‘The shadow of that horrible atmosphere is still there as it seems to be with you it is undeniable that those are the years that mark one for life. My sister was very popular at school, she was a great flirt and took things easily, and then married and escaped. I escaped too, to Paris’. Gray remained close with her sister Thora (1875-1966) and Thora’s husband Eric Clough Taylor (1883-1947). In her later years, like Haweis, contact with her family was with her niece Prunella Clough (1919-1999). This she shares with Haweis, and in one letter affectionately sends Haweis ‘poems written by my brother-in-law (Clough Taylor) before he died as I think you might like them’.15
2.6 Thora and Eileen Gray, Palermo, 1895-1897, black and white photograph © NMI
For Gray the Slade School had been the initiation into the avant-garde, the world of the déclassé and cosmopolitan artists. However, the school did nothing to encourage individuality, particularly in a woman. In Haweis’s memoirs Gray is listed as amongst his circle of friends from the 1900s. Haweis arrived in Paris in 1899 befriending Irish artist Paul Henry and Scottish artist Francis Cadell when they all enrolled in the Académie Julian. In his memoirs he says that he was there between 1899 and 1900. He then returned to England sometime in 1900, but was back in Paris at the École Colarossi in 1902 where he was attending night drawing classes and where he met his future wife Mina Loy (1882-1966).16 Gray and Haweis attended the École at the same time.
In Paul Henry’s autobiography An Irish Portrait, 1951, he provides much insight into the city of Paris at that time and what the Académie Julian was like for Gray when she enrolled in 1903.17 ‘Paris in those years was filled with students from all over the globe, all filled with a high resolve to learn as much as they could and to seize every opportunity to perfect themselves in their particular arts’.18 Henry describes in detail the Académie, which was in stark contrast to the Slade. ‘The Académie Julian was not in any sense of the word a teaching institution. It was not a school with regular classes and teachers, it granted no degree, and there were no prizes. As long as you paid up, behaved properly and did not steal the easels, you were free’.
2.7 Eileen Gray, 1902, black and white photograph © NMI
Haweis’s circle was described as a blend of dabblers in black magic, spinsters and elderly ladies.19 Descriptions of Haweis also vary. Loy described him as preferring the female sex to his own and added that his lady friends were not an attractive lot. According to Loy he served as a token of masculinity in their lives. Many found Haweis irritating because he attempted to ingratiate himself with those with a more luxurious standard of living, and he was known for charming women with a monthly allowance.20 Haweis’s memoirs and letters reveal a man who had an equal number of male as well as female friends. He compensated for his lack of stature by an eccentric personality and dress. He is described as having ‘flashing black eyes, olive skin, and glossy dark hair, hanging down like a curtain about his head, gave him the appearance of a young Italian who had stepped from a picture by Raphael’.21 Haweis wanted to stand out. Paul Henry wrote of him, ‘we had to find other ways of showing to the world that we were not as other men’. He continued; ‘Stephen Haweis was just down from Cambridge and he was one of the most colourful persons in the quarter, his small neat figure was dressed in brown corduroy, he wore a black beret and his long hair was cut straight across his forehead like a Florentine page; collarless he looped around his neck or throat a long string of amber beads. Sometimes in place of the beads he wore a jade green live snake which often caused much commotion in the studio when it wandered among the easels’.22 Haweis at times flaunted his eccentricities possibly because he had to live up to the reputation of his father. Henry says that ‘Haweis, like his father, was something of an oddity, but I liked him in spite of his eccentricities which I cannot describe as poses because they were the natural expression of a very vivid personality’.23
Gray also was strikingly attractive. In her autobiography Kathleen Bruce gives a description of Gray during this period, as lovable but remote in personality.
2.8 Self Portrait of an Artist, by Kathleen Bruce, 1949, detail showing Bruce inside the front cover of the book © NMI
She was fair, with wide set pale blue eyes, tall and of grand proportion, well born and quaintly and beautifully dressed. But for a rather vague look and an absent minded manner, she would have been wonderful. I thought she was wonderful, when, one night she told me that she lived her whole life in terror because there was madness in her family. I thought her not only wonderful to look at, but also the most romantic figure I had ever seen.24
Gray’s appearance also caught Haweis’s attention. He describes many female painters, sculptors and society women in his memoirs. He considered Gray one of the beauties of those Paris days.
There
