Eileen Gray. Jennifer Goff

      2.19 Kathleen Scott (née Bruce, later Lady Kennet) with her son Sir Peter Markham Scott; (Edith Agnes), by Graphic Photo Union, 1913, bromide print © National Portrait Gallery, London

Bruce in her letters to Haweis informed him that she had fallen into great poverty after Scott’s death.⁷³ Haweis empathised with her. Gray was not as understanding. For reasons known only to Bruce she gave Jessie Gavin and Gray – her two friends – pseudonyms in her autobiography. Eileen was Hermione and Jessie was Joselyn. Bruce thought Gray’s behaviour at the École Colarossi unconventional and unbecoming of a lady.⁷⁴ The friendship between Gray, Gavin and Bruce became strained when Bruce noticed an affection developing between Gray and Gavin, of which she disapproved. ‘I was never at ease with them, but it was many years before I discovered why’.⁷⁵ ‘One evening a tall, thin, shy, nice looking youth in corduroys and a Norfolk jacket came in. This was Joselyn [Jessie], wearing a wig and a slightly blackened moustache. “We’ll go to places and play chess where you can’t go without a man’”.⁷⁶ After certain hours is was considered highly improper for a lady to be unchaperoned by a gentleman in certain cafés. Gray seemingly recalled ‘with much amusement the time when she and Jessie entered a bar and the band struck up the Spanish national anthem because Jessie in her male attire looked so Spanish’.⁷⁷ This was unorthodox behaviour in Bruce’s eyes.

Bruce’s tentative relationship with Gray finally fell sour when Bruce’s cousin Henry, a musician for whom she had affection became enamoured with Gray. Henry Bruce was half Greek, half Scottish and often took Gray out all night. Gray described him as good-looking and well read.⁷⁸ Gray forgot nothing. Betrayal even in small doses remained with her for many years. Writing to Haweis many years later in 1958, Gray remarked about Kathleen Bruce that she was ‘a treacherous creature under an exterior of remarkably good fellowship’.⁷⁹ In a later letter she remarked; ‘Her (Bruce’s) life was a steady and gloriously calculated ascension. She did write her memoirs but I don’t remember the name of the book’.⁸⁰ Gray lied to Haweis, as she actually owned a copy of Bruce’s memoirs, Self Portrait of an Artist published in1949.⁸¹

Gray had lost touch with Gerald Kelly when he returned to London.⁸² Kelly stated that the reason the group of friends disbanded and lost contact was due to Haweis’s marriage to Loy. He wrote: ‘Stephen Haweis had a curious position among the students in Paris. He married a very beautiful woman but I never saw anything of him afterward’.⁸³ Kelly’s Irish connections were exceedingly strong and he exhibited regularly at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) between 1905 and 1969, at the Oireachtas Art Exhibition in 1932 and the Ulster Academy of Arts in 1948. Kelly’s first patron was the Irish art collector, dealer and critic Sir Hugh Lane. He was recommended to Lane by another Irish artist, Sarah Purser (1848-1943), resulting in Lane awarding Kelly his first twenty commissions. Kelly was knighted in 1945 and died in London in 1972. Gray followed Kelly’s successful and prestigious career, writing to Haweis ‘that certainly Kelly had the right temperament to be successful as an artist’.⁸⁴ By the 1960s she rarely visited London but wrote in a letter to Haweis dated 27 November 1961, ‘I didn’t get to see Kelly’s show at the RA or hear anything about it, I am rarely in London, but had I been, would certainly have gone’. Despite his success in England Gray felt that, ‘No one outside of England has ever heard of Kelly, yet he was of the same generation as Picasso, Léger, Miró, Rouault, Modigliani and their light shines all over the world’.⁸⁵

Haweis lamented the loss of his friendship with Paul Henry. In the late spring-early summer of 1900 Henry met Emily Grace Mitchell (1868-1953), who would become his wife in 1903. This relationship came between the two men, as Grace saw Haweis as an unfit associate who would lead Henry into sinful ways.⁸⁶ In December of 1900, due to lack of finances and the need to earn a living, Henry departed Paris for London. Years later, just as with Gray, Henry and Haweis resumed correspondence.

They also all separated from Crowley. If Gray was secretly engaged to Crowley there is the suggestion that she did it to render Stephen Haweis jealous. Gray and Haweis lost contact with Aleister Crowley after his marriage to Rose Kelly. Gerald Kelly fell out with Crowley due to the scandalous elopement with his sister.⁸⁷ Gray appears to have remained amicable with him, whereas Haweis seems quite resentful about Crowley. He describes in his letters how people fell under Crowley’s influence and how he had a lifelong regret at losing two particular friends due to a ‘quarrel promoted by that rascal Crowley’.⁸⁸ In another letter he refers to him as, ‘that leper Aleister Crowley’.⁸⁹ Despite losing her contact with Crowley, Gray remained interested in the occult, which had been advocated and practised by Crowley and their group during their time in Paris. In her letters to Haweis, Gray reveals that she has purchased two books by the American writer Max Freedom Long (1890-1971). Long had lived a long time in Hawaii as a teacher, and witnessed the native Hawaiians practising magic. He was taught a great deal by Kahunas (natives who have occult knowledge). Absorbed into the culture and thinking, from 1936 Long published a series of books on his teachings called the Huna. He also set up a foundation called the Huna Fellowship in 1945. Fascinated by his ideas Gray firstly purchased The Secret Science Behind Miracles in 1948, saying to Haweis how Long ‘discovered an unknown religion which strange to say, worked’.⁹⁰ Then in 1953 she bought The Secret Science at Work telling Haweis that ‘the book has been written for people who intend to learn seriously their theory and to practise it’.⁹¹