Tuesday, 3 February
Copy of letter to my father
Darling –
While I’ve got this still in my mind –
I’ve been thinking such a lot – I am really worried about you. You are the absolute centre of my future: without you I should be like a rudderless ship; all my inspiration would die. So it is absolutely essential that you keep well. And as I said the other night, you won’t keep well if you have to worry about the business.
Now the business is far more important than me – it even matters perhaps more than any of us. I can be of no practical use to it for at least five years, and even then I shall be very young and inexperienced to take up any sort of responsible position.
The only way out that I can see is for you to ensure the future of the business firm by taking a partner as soon as you can. You must have someone reliable, trustworthy and hardworking in the office. I am praying day and night that we may find the right man. I know it’s damn difficult – but don’t let W.S.B. do you down any more! If only you could find the right person to buy a share of your practice, and for you to leave your share to me in your will, then I shall not feel I am undertaking an impossible task as I do sometimes in moments of depression. And your health will benefit by easing your mind.
Sunday, 8 February
In bed with one of these blasted colds again – what a miracle and a blessing is the wireless. I think that with a good portable set, a library subscription, fountain pen and paper and ink, I should enjoy being bedridden. Through these mediums I could explore the world. I lay in the semi-darkness listening to some vaudeville in which The Three Ginx in harmony gave a delightful performance and Ann Penn contributed some very clever impersonations, particularly one of Gertrude Lawrence in the song she sang with Noël Coward in Private Lives.
Friday, 20 February
To and fro swings the pendulum: to have my hair cut or leave it long? On Tuesday Elsie Few put it to a vote in the studio, and most people seem to think it would improve my appearance rather than otherwise. ‘It would make you look so much more charming Jean,’ said Few. ‘Really we want the world to be as beautiful as possible – you owe it that. And think – you’ll have all the young men simply flat my dear.’ But Cargill objected. I respect Cargill’s opinion. ‘Don’t you have it done Pratt – it looks jolly nice as it is.’ And today Joyce Coates rather surprised me by saying, ‘Don’t you have your hair off Jean – I shan’t have any more to do with you if you do.’
And of course at home from Ethel: ‘Oh, you would be very foolish if you did it.’ ‘You’ll be no daughter of mine,’ says father magnificently.
Cheap – that is of what I am afraid, looking cheap. But if I were cheap I should be so now with it as it is. Outwardly it cannot make anything but a superficial difference: it is what I am that matters. So I shall have it done!20
Saturday, 28 February
God – what dream is this? We study the architecture of Rome, and the vaguest fantasy rises before me: a dream of the City Beautiful.
To build a perfect city: buy an area of lovely untouched English country somewhere in the South. Plan first two straight wide roads, one running from N to S, the other from E to W, and where they intersect is the centre of our city. On the corners should be erected the most important buildings, i.e. the police station, GPO, council offices, fire station, possibly a bank etc. Shops should range on either side of the two main roads, the front portions being built out with flat roofs that could be used by restaurants in fine weather. The residential area should be built at the back of these streets, and all designs would have to be essentially twentieth century. No faked Tudor houses or ugly Georgian facades.
Fireplaces for coal fires would only be allowed as a luxury. For all domestic and industrial purposes gas or electricity should be used, and each house could only have one chimney stack.
Everywhere there should be as much light and air and clean lines as possible. And all designs would have to be passed by a Committee of men selected for their knowledge in good construction, hygiene and, most important, their appreciation of real beauty and proportion such as the Greeks knew.
Garages and hotels should be built at the four entrances to the town. Large recreation grounds provided for the inhabitants, sports grounds for tennis, golf, cricket, rugger and all athletics. Public baths built to Roman ideals: open-air baths for the summer, covered in for the winter. A gymnasium, dance halls, skating rink. Everything should be provided for public amusement: one or two good theatres, cinemas – everything for a residential people, no industries or factories of any kind would be permitted. This should be a city where the more successful workers of London might live, driving in their cars or going by the specially prepared railways to London each day and back at night. So that London may eventually be left to its fogs and dirt and manufacture, salesmanship and business. A rather preposterous ideal, because I doubt whether London’s entertainments might ever be excelled. But might it not be possible, if the world’s finest financiers were gathered together and formed a syndicate or something. And then the world’s best engineers and greatest architects and artists to plan and design the Perfect City?
There is no reason why it should not be international: let its inhabitants be as cosmopolitan as is reasonable. Possibly England has the best climate in the world, for all our complaining. To promote world peace we may not stand aloof and exclude any other country, and this applies to every race.
No building should be commenced until the general layout of the city was arranged. And the building would be lovely – their proportions please the eye, their design satisfy the artistic judgment. No tramways either. Perhaps even the main roads built with subways for heavy traffic and special paths for pedestrians. And another thing from Rome: the main streets colonnaded so that shoppers were not inconvenienced by a shower of rain.
Tuesday, 3 March
The only thing of importance I have done today is to visit the Leicester Galleries and seen Epstein’s Genesis for myself.21 Admittedly at first sight I was shocked but not repulsed. The more I looked the more I marvelled. I am hardly in a position to pass any criticism on the technique of his work, but all the busts in that room possess the same characteristic – i.e. strength, a vitalising staggering power that overwhelms one, as if one had been plunged in cold water. And the work strikes me as being sincere – the manifestation of a magnificent mind. And it is not crude or gross, but rather a beautifying of a crude and gross subject. I could feel the pain of that expectant negress myself. Because his art is not conventional he is condemned. Epstein is setting a totally different standard. That is where we fail: unconsciously we compare his work with standard works (i.e. the Greeks). It is what we have been brought up to do. We learn in our youth what is supposed to be beautiful and what is ugly, so that by the time we have reached the age of discerning these things for ourselves we are already a little biased. Most of us find it so difficult when we meet with something totally different. Epstein sees further.
To watch those who came to see for themselves was distinctly amusing. Nearly all betrayed a look of shocked propriety, hastily suppressed. ‘We are broadminded of course, this is the twentieth century,’ they tell themselves. One woman murmured, ‘I haven’t seen anyone looking like that – funny sort of figure.’ She was the bulky sort of person who, without her clothes on, would look far funnier than Genesis.
Friday, 6 March
Conversation
