James Holland, 20th Century Artist

Birmingham before it was regenerated

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Holland was Head of Faculty, Visual Communication at Birmingham College of Art (then Polytechnic from 1971).  Of course all things change, and Birmingham Poly morphed into the University of Central England in 1992 and then into Birmingham City University in 2007.

Holland lived in digs with the artist Bill Gear with whom he had much in common - both had experienced Bergen-Belsen after the War, both had worked on the Festival of Britain and both now worked at the College of Art.

In this period, Holland produced a number of paintings in oil on board and on a large scale - many pictures were at least 3 feet wide - and in black interspersed with vivid colours not always associated with Birmingham and the Black Country.  A number of these will be shown on the website, but if looking for similarities with the area today, you will be challenged.  The picture below shows one of the many canal junctions in Birmingham, not at all the image the city would now like to project.

[Canal Junction, oil on board, unframed, available for purchase]

The University was invited to the private view of Holland's retrospective exhibition in London, and the representative that attended not only held Holland's old post, but had also been a student of his as well.  He said he had once had the temerity to draw a boat during class, and then spent a long time with Holland who explained exactly where he had gone wrong!

 

The Royal College of Art in the Twenties

The following text is drawn from the as yet unpublished memoires started by James Holland during his life.  It is part of a much longer chapter discussing the life changing experience of being a student at the Royal College of Art, but is edited down to show how my father and Henry Moore the sculptor came to know each other.  Their friendship and collaboration continued for many years, and included work on the Festival of Britain, but this sets out the first steps in their acquaintance.

There could hardly have been a more exciting time to be going to the Royal College of Art than in the Twenties.  This unique establishment was among the several results of the mid-19th century development of the international exhibition - indeed much of South Kensington, including the V&A Museum originated in this way.  In the Twenties its status was one of those compromises by which Whitehall solves so many of its problems - not quite a University itself, not exactly part of the University of London, it was administered directly by the Board of Education.  Among the palaces of South Kensington, its only outward evidence was an unassuming door in a mews at the back of the Imperial College of Science, which led to a range of large utilitarian studios, and a group of wood and iron huts, relics of an earlier exhibition behind the Natural History Museum.  In spite, or possibly because of these unpromising circumstances, the College had achieved a respectable record and gained a reputation particularly of its own.  During the period of its 19th century development and the following two decades a succession of worthy but now mostly forgotten principals had directed its courses, but in the early post-1918 years a much more adventurous appointment was made.

Will Rothenstein was known to have been a bright young man of the Nineties and after, a friend of Wilde and Frank Harris.  Whistler had been witty at his expense, Max Beerbohm had portrayed him more than once.  Shaw, Wells and Bennett had been his near-contemporaries and still remained his frequent companions.  There was scarcely a figure of note in the arts, in France and England, that he had not encountered.

He had been a dandy in his youthful days, as some contemporary drawings showed, but by the time of his appointment to the RCA he appeared as a tiny and slightly sinister figure of fascinating ugliness, attired in the soberest of clerical gray.  Beerbohm had illustrated this in a well-known series of caricatures, the confrontation of well-known characters by their youthful selves.  His utterances were delivered in a manner that invited, but did not always repay serious consideration.  This I should have discovered on my initial encounter with him, on the first morning of term, when he blinked up at my timorous and very unconfident figure drawing for some seconds, and then observed “You may deceive the critics but you will not deceive posterity” - a judgment which, being a rather immature student, bewildered and distressed me for many following months. 

As might be expected, Rothenstein persuaded a number of the better known younger artists to teach at the College.  In many cases they did not stay for long, probably finding Rothenstein’s requirements, if not his personality, not always acceptable.  Among these seems to have been Paul Nash, who during his short stay had considerable effect on two outstanding Design students, Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, probably doing something to counter-balance the notably gothic influence of Professor Tristram, so well-known for his recording and restoration of mediaeval wall painting.

An American sculptor, Cole, though now little remembered, had a whirlwind effect not only on the drawing of sculpture students, but on that of many young painters, and certainly was a considerable influence on the development of the young Henry Moore.  Never had the third dimension been so aggressively or colourfully attacked with every medium that would make a mark on paper. 

A very different but distinguished teacher was Randolph Schwabe, who later became Principal of the Slade School.  Like Alfred Stevens before him, his forte was life drawing, which he infused with all the ripeness and rotundity of the seventeenth century artists, Flemish and Italian.  A rather shy man, he would sit before a student’s board, and however angular and gawky the model, produce an elegant drawing of shoulder or haunch that might have been a study by Rubens, usually remarking as he moved on “you have got it rather better than I have”.

A memorable feature of the College week was the series of lectures on the history of European Art given on Friday afternoons in the V&A lecture theatre by Hubert Wellington, the College Registrar.  As a member of the Camden Town group - which had included Gilman, Ginner and Brennan - he had come under the influence of Sickert.  He succeeded in infusing his lectures with so much of his own charm, enthusiasm and sensitivity that no student would willingly have missed one of them.  History of Art is now a required and assessable part of many courses, and the profession of art historian has itself become a recognised career, and has expanded accordingly. 

The highly individual reign of Rothenstein was only one of the factors that made the Royal College in the mid-Twenties such an exciting institution and experience.  During the first years of the decade numbers of ex-servicemen, survivors of the 1914-1918 war, had returned to their local art schools on demobilisation, and as some acknowledgment of their services received comparatively substantial grants.  In due time, many of them came to the College.  Such students were older and in every sense more mature than those who came only from an academic background.  They were not to be pushed around by anybody, and set the standards for much of the student life of those years, not least in their ability to hold their liquor.  Particular features were A K Lawrence, to become a well-known R.A., Henry Moore, Vivien Pitchforth, Raymond Coxon, Gerry Cooper.

The centre of student life was the Students Common Room, which consisted of two large wood and iron huts in Queens Gate, one being a kitchen and canteen, the other perhaps best described as a smoking room.  Far from elegant, in truth both dark and shabby, it was run at that time entirely by the students, the staff, from Principal down, it was understood, requiring specific invitation to be admitted.

The various well-established student groups had their own tables, and the fresher who inadvertently took his plate of spaghetti or sausages and mash to one of these was soon aware of his intrusion.  Three of these groups were particularly well defined.  At the largest table sat the most senior fine art students, including those who would sit for the Rome Travelling Scholarships.  Classical, or perhaps academic in outlook, they never the less included Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.  They favoured black, wide-brimmed hats, bought in Paris or Florence, and a restrained traditional bohemianism in dress, with the exception of Lionel Ellis, a painter who would have appeared over-dressed for the most outrageous Latin Quarter extravaganza.  The Common Room Chairman and other student officers would be found at this table, and the deafening banging of spoons and cups was the prelude to announcements being made from this rostrum.

Across the room, a smaller table was appropriated to perhaps the most dedicated group, the Fauves of the period.  This was headed by one of the most remarkable students that the College has produced.  Barnett Freedman was known as “Soc.” since his dialectic domination of his disciples as well as any student activities in which he decided to interest himself was felt to be somewhat Socratic. 

While the senior group, certainly those with their eyes on the Rome scholarships, were devoted to the Italian painters of the early Renaissance, with Piero della Francesca as perhaps the ideal, for the ascetics Rembrandt was the master, Cezanne not far behind.

The third definable group was in effect a threesome, consisting of Douglas Percy Bliss, already distinguished by his MA, Eric Ravilious, and Edward Bawden.  Awesomely scholarly and literate, it was from this group that several attempts were made to establish a worthy college magazine, or rather periodical.  I recall Mandrake and Gallimaufry as two of these, perhaps over-precious to survive and now difficult to find.

In the lifetime of most human institutions there can be a period when circumstances and personalities combine to produce, if not a Golden Age, at least a time of great euphoria, a time when all seem to accept the same standards and objectives, and differences are confined to minor issues.  The College, the Students Common Room formed indeed at this period a most happy and well-balanced community, the maturity and experiences of the senior students, who knew just how far to go and when to stop, compensating for the inevitable, but occasional, follies of the younger elements.  As the ex-service numbers decreased, the average student age fell, and with it went much of the feeling of community that had enhanced the earlier days, remarkable enough in a non-residential college with its students scattered through the bedsits of Kensington, Chelsea, Camden Town and Hampstead.

 

Mentioned in passing

I had to admit that the title for this post is probably in rather bad taste, however it is an apt description.  I was made aware today of the passing of Dorrit Dekk - a female graphic designer at a time when the sector was predominantly male by all accounts.  Her obituary in The Guardian is charmingly written, but for me the novelty was to read about her working contacts with my father.

She worked for the Central Office of Information and also on the Festival of Britain, contributing to the travelling land exhibition.  She sounds like she was a great character, and I am sorry I never got to meet her.

Her obituary can be found at http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jan/07/dorrit-dekk

 

Teaching in the Blitz

Soon after the heaving bombing of London, the Blitz, commenced I was offered the post of art master at a south east London grammar school.  The very successful headmaster had been killed in a raid, and the incumbent art master had wisely decided to move his young family to a less vulnerable area.  I was glad enough of the job, and I already knew something of the excellent reputation of this school.  Built on low and swampy ground on the borders of London and Kent, the school was strategically placed to get all the air raid alerts – and most of the raids – for the two areas.  My academic responsibilities consisted, during the early weeks, of escorting groups of boys to the sodden covered trenches in the school grounds the record number of such excursions in one school day being nine.  The boys seemed to be the least affected by the incessant day and night raids, and when they showed one snapshots of heaps of brick and slate and said with some pride “that’s our house sir”, it was difficult to know if commiseration or congratulations were expected.

Camping in a Hampstead flat, the early morning winter journey, often before the All Clear had sounded after a night of raids, could involve finding a way through streets deep in rubble and broken glass, with police, heavy rescue squads, firemen and bomb disposal crews still at work.  Nor was the evening return any more pleasurable, the warning sirens wailing before home was reached.  As daylight raids gave way to the nightly Blitz it was possible to concern myself more with my teaching activities.

My predecessor, an enthusiastic and eventually well-recognised art teacher, had set very ambitious standards throughout the school, backed by the unfortunate headmaster.  The staff included a group of bright young Cambridge graduates and the upper school reflected their lively and uninhibited influence, though the jejune frankness of the Sixth Form was hardly appreciated by some of the older masters, and I found it difficult to return the appropriate reply to the bulldog pipe-smoking sixth former who insisted “personally I can’t bear to look at anything earlier than Picasso.”

As the prolonged night blitz on London tapered off, life became more controlled at the school, only fire-watching duties making their demand when with the agreeable handicraft master I spent several nights a week on Parker Knoll cushions arranged on a study floor, sleeping more sweetly than I can remember having slept before or since.  The older schoolmasters then, if not today, were expected to acquire or cultivate a degree of mild eccentricity, and we were not without a few of these.  One had taken to heart the official plan to grow more food, and beside sowing the playing fields with buckwheat, had built a catwalk from his first floor flat to a neighbouring flat roof, down which his two or three hens teetered every morning until it was time to install them in the portable pen constructed on the carrier of his cycle, through the bars of which they peered as he rode down the High Street on his way to school.  It was the same master who woke us from our fire-watching slumbers at midnight to satisfy his urge to cycle at top speed down the considerable length of the lino-covered corridor that extended from end to end of the extensive school buildings.

Teaching art and design at this secondary level I found both challenging and rewarding, particularly if by making an unexpected approach I could persuade boys to look with newly opened eyes at what went on around them.  Is it a national failing that we don’t want to see the world in which we exist?  In trains running through the most romantic and beautiful scenery, in planes flying over the Alps or over an enchanting coastline it is apparently a sign of ill-breeding or naïveté to look out of the window.  Instead the worldly-wise and blasé traveller throws himself into his seat, opens his executive type briefcase, and is buried in business papers or a paperback until the end of the journey.  Give him a coffee table book of coloured photographs of mountains or sea and he is engrossed by it.  It seems that we have little confidence in our capacity to see our world for ourselves, and need to be told what to look at and when.  We depend on the news reel, the printed page and television to package the visible world for us and label as ‘fit for human consumption’.

As some sort of routine re-established itself and we re-adjusted to new circumstances, I found more and more demands for work reaching me from various sources.  A weekly cartoon for TRIBUNE, then under the editorship of Aneurin Bevan was one commitment, which involved a phone discussion to decide on a subject and how it might be treated, then producing the artwork for despatch by an early train.  The cartoons produced under these conditions were topical enough, but hardly marked a milestone in political cartooning, though occasionally a more than usually apt idea might spark some response from the readership.  The Ministry of Information was also commissioning with increasing frequency ideas and artwork for its Exhibitions and Displays Division, and eventually it made more sense to join that Division than to try to cope with its requests while engaged in full time teaching.

 

Student life in the 20s and 30s

This piece was written by Holland as one of a series of sections in a planned autobiography that never quite happened.  Here he reminisces about his life as a student in London.

STUDENT LIFE

In converting the Royal College into what was essentially a School of Painting, or certainly Fine Art, Rothenstein was diverting it from the original intention that it should be primarily a centre of design education, though he was perhaps not the first nor the only master to exert such pressure.  I have frequently quoted his warning to recalcitrant fine art students - “If you can’t do better than this, you will find yourself in the Design School” - and indeed a few students did from time to time find themselves so transferred, though whether this was to their eventual disadvantage was far from certain.  “Illustration” was his damning indictment of much painting, “Magazine illustration” the ultimate and unforgivable condemnation.  It was not done for the painting student to be concerned about his post-College future.  Something would turn up, a patron, a part-time teaching job, a successful exhibition.  Re-reading the memoirs of some of the outstanding writers who were at Oxford or Cambridge during the Twenties, Cyril Connolly, Anthony Powell, Evelyn Waugh, I have been aware that in our rather less hallowed environment, much the same moods and values prevailed.  Perhaps we had no Sligger Urquart, unless Rothenstein’s own manipulations qualified him for that role, no Hypocrites Club, though several of the senior students were able to frequent the Chelsea Arts Club.  But the euphoria, and the refusal to look to the morrow we seem to have had in common - though ours was not so exclusively a masculine society.

 

So powerful was this euphoria, it seems that many graduates found it unduly difficult to adjust to a less favoured way of life, while a few found it impossible to leave their cloisters, and were pointed out to visitors as mild eccentrics, who having come up, could never bring themselves to go down, and continued to haunt the scenes of their undergraduate days.

 

While none of my contemporaries would have wished to haunt for long the graceless buildings which housed the College, the influence of the College, both its teaching and its student life, has also been persistent, and for many years it was reasonably possible to detect the former RCA student among the practitioners and lecturers one encountered.  A guilty twinge can still assail the College-trained painter who reaches for a pigment not admitted to the recognised College palette - at least for my generation.

 

Ours was not an exclusively masculine society, and in numbers the women students were not far behind the men, possibly equalling them, though their distribution between the various Schools was less even, with, as might be expected, some concentration in Textiles and craft based design studies.  They came (and still do) from a wider spectrum of social backgrounds than did the men.  Bedales, Cheltenham and Roedean contributed their quota, while the public schoolboy was not so often encountered among the men.  Perhaps the restricted range of professional careers open to even the brightest girls at that time kept Art and Design in the possible list, while fewer public school boys would be encouraged to pursue a course that could lead to the penury of the vie de boheme.

 

The girls I remember in the fashions of the period, which were certainly “artistic”, and with renewed interest in the Twenties and Thirties can be seen from time to time in the fashion pages.  Loose, Liberty-style smocks, hand-woven and calf-length skirts, sandals and long skeins of hand painted wooden beads made up a refined peasant ensemble, while hair was plaited and wound into headphones, which almost certainly derived from the earlier Russian ballets rather than the spread of radio, and which, on sturdy red-cheeked Slavonic maidens could be entrancing, but was rather less so on the slimmer British girls.  For the more worldly, bobbed and shingled hair, the boyish chest and the brief skirt of the period was de rigeur.

 

As a co-educational college, we enjoyed a much more relaxed relationship between the sexes than did the universities at this time.  I do not remember that this lead to a great many problems.  A few of the most senior students, probably ex-servicemen, were married, but open living in sin or co-habitation was almost unknown.  On the other hand, as would be expected, many students paired off at various points in their college days, and how intimate these affairs might become was recognised as being their own business.  On my visits as a lecturer and assessor to students in Polytechnics and colleges I know how frequently they are not only married but are frequently parents before they are halfway through their courses - though the sequence is not invariable - with all the consequent responsibilities.

 

I have tried to suggest something of the nature of student life no doubt seen through the rosy mists of Time.  This came not only from the life of the College and Common Room, but from the town itself in the Twenties.  Certainly it was a more varied environment and offered a wider choice of interests and entertainment than in the decaying centre of recent years.  Cinemas from the fleapits of Fulham to the gorgeous palaces of Leicester Square theaters, from variety at Waltham Green Empire to the Russian ballet at the Lyceum or Coliseum, Tchekov at the Q Theatre, Cochran Revues at the London Pavilion, and the long-running Beggars Opera at the Hammersmith Lyric.  Nor were these pleasures beyond the pockets of most students if they were prepared to queue for a short while for gallery or pit.

 

We were most impressed and delighted by the Diagheleff Russian Ballet seasons, with many great post-Nijinsky stars.  The programmes were generously compiled.  In one evening we might get a recent favourite, perhaps the Three Cornered Hat, followed by an innovation, sometimes a first performance, Reynard, Les Noces, le Pas d’Acier, and concluding with a well-established and Russian tailpiece such as the Polotsvian dances from Prince Igor.  Another Russian arrival was the Chauve Souris cabaret company under Nikita Balieff, which delighted the eye with its many brilliant numbers and the ear with the compeer’s manhandling of the English tongue.

 

Diagheleff and Balieff came from the East, from the West came the Negro Blackbirds company, making a comparable impact on the London scene.  The delightful Florence Mills headed the caste.  Never had dancing, such gusto and abandon been seen on-stage or to judge from the stories circulating at the time, off-stage, since the all black company was taken up in a big way by London society, then in its most party throwing mood.

 

In a quite different tradition, Nigel Playfair’s stylized version of the Beggars’ Opera at the Hammersmith Lyric repaid many visits.  Sets and costumes had been designed by Claud Lovat Fraser, and the ballad score arranged for a small group of period instruments, mostly played by several elderly ladies and related members of the same family, who were alleged to knit assiduously between numbers and during the very long run could have completed many garments.  This version was a charming charade, artificial and entertaining as a pantomime.  The stylized pannier dresses had their influence on contemporary fashion, Polly Peachum and Lucy Locket becoming popular pottery figures, and many a telephone was coyly concealed under the ladies ample pannier skirts.

 

Yet another tradition, the Celtic Twilight, was represented by Rutland Boughton’s opera The Immortal Hour, which also had its effect on the modes and style of the period.  These were the outstanding and well established shows; many others had only little less impact.

 

The later Shaw plays were making their first appearances at various theatres, the Astaires were in musical comedy, Tom Walls and Ralph Lynn were in the Aldwych farces, Chaliapine appeared in a Russian Opera season, Tchekov was to be seen by going to Kew, and all were accessible to the student, however modest his purse.  For the musical there were excellent Saturday Chamber concerts in the V&A Museum and the new Chenil Galleries, adjoining Chelsea Town Hall sent to the College free tickets to similar concerts conducted by a rising young conductor, Barbirolli.  The Proms at Queens Hall, under Sir Henry Woods’s baton, did not require the promenader to queue for hours or days, nor were they regarded as a jolly undergraduate rag.  Happy days when, outside the College, the impecunious student had a wide choice of Lyons, ABC and Express tea shops for a cheap meal, with the fish and chip saloons of Fulham and Chelsea or the coffee stall on every other corner to provide the late snack.

 

The usual tipple was “half and half” or mild and bitter, often drawn from the wood.  When in funds, one might be able to afford a Friday night lager, the cheapest drink available - at the Cafe Royal, to sit at its marble top tables, on the red plush banquettes and watch the notable and the notorious at other tables, Arnold Bennett, James Agate, Constant Lambert, Augustus John.  After ten or eleven o’clock it was legally necessary to eat, or at least purchase the Cafe’s uninviting ham sandwiches, however reluctantly, if drinking were to continue.

 

This then is a glimpse of the town in which the students of the Twenties and Thirties found themselves, altogether an easier, busier, more crowded place, with a bustling night life in the streets not only of the West End, but also of the inner suburbs.  The weekly climax was Saturday night, with the theatres, cinemas and dance halls crowded and seldom a table to be had at the Lyons Corner Houses in the Strand, Coventry Street and Oxford Street.  Street entertainers abounded, notably a team of “spoon bashers” with barrel organ support, alleged to have appeared on stage in Petrouchka, a troupe of sand dancers, and the crippled woman singer of Indian love lyrics who so impressed Anthony Powell that she recurs in the Dance to the Music of Time sequence of novels.

 

Reflections on the Paris Expo

Along with a number of colleagues from the Artists International Association, Holland was involved in the design and installation of the Peace Pavilion at the Paris Expo of 1937.  Key members were there including Holland, Boswell, Pearl Binder, Misha Black to name a few.  I wish I could remember the slightly scurrilous stories told to me by Boswell's widow and others of what went on outside the hard work of installing a pavilion!  The following piece was written by Holland in late 1986 or early 1987, reflecting on the Expo, contrasting it with other major events and failing to disguise Holland's love of Paris as he remembered it.  I do recall being driven by my mother through central Paris to get to and from the Gare du Lyons, and my father being mortified at the changes to road junctions, rights of way and one way streets in the period between 1937 and 1974!

There are photographs of Holland working on the Peace Pavilion which will accompany this article, when I can find them.

Paris Expo 1937

1987 will be the 50^thanniversary of the Paris World Expo, probably the most elegant and ingenious exhibition since the Great Exhibition of 1851, and unlikely in the present world, ever to be matched and never exceeded for style and creativity.  It fell between the Spanish Civil War and the outbreak of World War II, yet nearly all the belligerent powers participated; the Popular Front government in France fostered it.  Paris was the cultural centre of the world and Paris, not France, was the presiding influence.  Unlike the Festival of Britain in 1951, its manifestations were not widely scattered through the country; it was not the Festival of France.  Regions such as Brittany, Auvergne, Provence installed their own pavilions displaying local cultures and offering regional dishes, but these did not appear to be linked organisationally.  This was Paris playing host to the world, and in spite of tensions and feuds very near ignition point, the world came to the party.

Expo 37 introduced an entirely new attitude to the international exhibition.  From 1851, when the schedule of such events was drawn up for the next century, the pattern and format had been much the same (though curiously the progenitor Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 had been exceptional and untypical).  The British Empire Exhibition of 1924, better known as Wembley, was the near-perfect specimen.  A large area of relatively undeveloped land but within easy reach of a capital or major provincial city was selected and cleared.  A central concourse was laid down to lead to a dominating central structure or arena where major spectacles could be presented.  Symmetrically arranged on either side of the concourse would be the great pavilions or palaces of Industry, the Arts, Agriculture, Science.  Beyond these the guest participants would erect their characteristic pavilions in the forms of pagodas, chateaux, temples, as appropriate.  Restaurants and cafés would cater for the visitors while lighter entertainment would be focused on a Fairway, where concessions of every type would be leased to the world’s showmen and souvenirs, mostly knick-knackery would be on sale.  The visitor took away a total impression of imperial stability, unlimited natural resources and the wonders of modern science.

Why and how Paris Expo aimed at and achieved such a different character is probably complex, linked with the Popular Front in France and the increasing threat to the growth of European civilisation from Central and Eastern Europe.  It is probable that France had been long scheduled to host a world scale exhibition in 1937 – the point is not critical.  More interesting is how Paris broke the pompous Imperial formula.

The first and perhaps the most important difference was that the Expo was not conceived as an entity, sited peripherally and self-contained.  Instead the City of Paris, already with generous open spaces, became the site, integrating existing features with newly projected structures.

The exhibition aligned itself on two axes, a main concourse from the Trocadero site (Chaillot?) down to the river and then ascending by the Champs de Mars to the Eiffel Tower, an incomparable ready-made vertical feature.  The major nations built their pretentious pavilions on either side; halfway down, surmounting a perpendicular tower apparently of dark pottery, a Nazi eagle, wings outstretched, glowered at the Soviet Pavilion.  This had a plinth of metallic grey on which a gigantic Soviet youth and maiden together thrust a hammer and a sickle toward the German fowl.  Those as the most blatant examples of old fashioned jingoism were unique and as such probably stimulated more ribaldry than awe.

The other axis was the river itself, its long curves in contrast to the Challiot-Eiffel axis.  Here less nationalistic pavilions sheltered between the trees, threw balconies over the riverside, and where there were erected a number of light towers of glass and masts which carried the Festival mood up to the eastern bounds of the city.

The exhibition literally was interwoven with the streets, the buildings and the river itself.  What had largely gone was the imperial gesture – the pompous massive palace of this or that.  Lightness, elegance and charm replaced the grand manner.  I cannot begin to tell you what an exhilarating, breath-taking town Paris was in 1937, with interplay of art and design on every hand.  It was, in fact, the swansong of the European culture of the inter-war years.

Youtube link.

 

The Telephone and Miss Ditcher

Sadly I have no sketches or other illustrations to go with this story, written by Holland, nor can I accurately date it either.  My gut reaction is that this refers to some time in the mid-Thirties, but it could also be the late Forties.  The outburst of temper discribed is highly out of character, so Miss Ditcher must have been one of a kind!

The Telephone and Miss Ditcher

“I want you Miss Ditcher, where are you?”  Miss Ditcher had her existence in that miniature and dusty Bohemia that used to lie behind Tottenham Court Road and south of Euston Road.  How exactly her life first became entangled with mine, I cannot now remember, except that I occupied a studio flat in this region.  How the disentangling was achieved eventually I have also forgotten – I suppose it happened naturally enough when eventually I fled the district.  Sooner or later everybody fled.

Miss Ditcher ‘did’ for me.  There is no more precise word.  She didn’t clean, and she certainly didn’t look after me, so she must have ‘done’ for me.  Ours was no hard and fast contract, with every minute accounted for and no unpaid overtime.  She would arrive vaguely early on Monday morning and would still be shuffling around at five or six o’clock.  Left to her own devices she would then say, “Well, I’ll be thinking about going, sir”.  Half an hour later she would potter in, “Well, I’ll be making a move, sir”.  Sometimes she went shortly after this, but often she still had several cards to play.  “Well I’ll be going now”, “I’ll be saying goodnight, sir”, and other curtain speeches.  She was paid for two hours’ work each Monday morning.

With the general appearance of an amiable and weak minded witch, Miss Ditcher was far from being the most terrifying of the beldams of the quarter.  Nothing like the incredibly named Fanny for instance, an odorous, old bundle of black rags employed only in scrubbing front steps and stone passages.  Even the most conscientious wallowers in the lower depths and explorers of human degeneracy shrank from the thought of Fanny being let loose on their tableware or bedding.

Miss Ditcher was a little shrunken woman, with a mild, silly, cheerful, dirty face.  She had very few teeth, and the long gaps between these hollowed her face and gave her speech the thickened sibilants employed by music hall knockabouts.  Her ragged grey hair hung half down her cheeks and she favoured black but I remember the startling interpolation of wrinkled, flesh coloured stockings.  This was Miss Ditcher as I saw her most mornings of the week, when she let herself in and announced “S’only me, sir”.  She was probably not much more than 50 years old.

Having acquired this handmaiden, I very soon discovered the limits to her domestic accomplishments.  For washing-up, she substituted a lengthy, gas-consuming simmering process that added strange, unlovely, indelible glazes to the crockery.  Her washing reduced everything to a stiff, speckled grey.  She could dust, sweep and scrub floors – no more.  And with the realisation of her limitations, came the further realisation that I couldn’t get rid of her, for she lived on the few shillings I could give her.  Nobody else was going to be crazy enough to share her services.  Friends came and admired; they said “You’ve got a wonderful character there”, but no requests for her services for free afternoons or mornings were forthcoming.  And in the same way that I found I couldn’t sack her, I found it hard to refuse when she said, “If you’re going out this afternoon, sir, do you mind if I sit by your fire until you come back?”  I knew where she lived, in a tiny, leaky roofed attic with neither heating nor artificial lighting, at the top of a handsome terrace house nearby.

I felt she might be useful by being in the flat to take telephone messages in my absence.  I told her as much – she had never used a telephone in her life and she took the proposal as an elderly bed-ridden aunt might agree that it would be fun if her young nephew taught her sailing.  No need to spoil the lad’s enjoyment by disagreeing!  To my little demonstration and lecture on the instrument she was an appreciative listener.  Finally I forced her to dial TIM and listen to the time signal. 

“Can you hear anything?” I asked. 

“Yes, I think there’s someone talking.” 

“What are they saying?” 

“Oh, I couldn’t tell you THAT, sir”.

Slowly we progressed.  There came the day when I could go out, leaving the ‘phone on a window shelf.  Miss Ditcher, tensed as a watching cat, crouched by the fire on the opposite side of the room gazing at the instrument as at a box from which Russell’s Viper must presently emerge to strike.  But I knew that if the ‘phone rang, Miss Ditcher would no longer dare leave it to ring unanswered, or shout “He’s out!”  at the untouched instrument.  I knew, but it was worth checking.  In the middle of the afternoon, I went into a call box and dialled the number.  The ‘phone rang for a long time.  I pictured the old thing pacing up and down, wringing her hands and praying that it would suddenly stop, but I hung on.  Suddenly a clatter and a loud, despairing scream –

“This is Mr Holland’s flat, this is Mr Holland’s flat, this is Mr Holland’ flat”. 

“Yes, yes, I know”, I tried to shout into the barrage, “I know!  This IS Mr Holland.” 

We both kept on for some time, I found myself getting tense.  At length she gave a groan and I slipped in quickly, “Listen, Miss Ditcher, this IS Mr Holland, ME, Mr Holland speaking!”  But she was back again, “No, he’s not in, Mr Holland’s not in, he’s not in” – then the click of the receiver and silence.  I rang again, but the ‘phone was not lifted.  She had told the telephone that was enough for one day.

We had that one out on my return.  I still believed that reason and patience could accomplish almost anything.  I pointed out, very simply, that people rang me up to ask me to do WORK for them.  For the work I received money and with the money I paid Miss Ditcher.  How could I continue to pay Miss Ditcher if I had no money – BECAUSE I had done no work – BECAUSE nobody had been able to leave a message while I was out?  Easy wasn’t it?  I think she saw the point.  “If anybody rings for God’s sake, get a name and number so that I can ring them myself,” I told her.

The next time I was out I tried again.  Again we wrestled at the tops of our voices, but after a little while, something got through.  “Ah,” she said, “that IS you Mr Holland.”  She was delighted – she told me all about it on my return.

After my next excursion, she positively fluttered.  “Somebody rang for you; it sounded like a young lady”.  “Did you get a number?” I asked.  She had written it down, there it was – 4375.  “What exchange?” I asked, then explained, then entreated – she hadn’t heard anything about the exchange – I had said get the number and she had got it.  As a late thought, she said the young lady had said it was important, urgent.  4375 was a collection of numerals that meant nothing at all to me.  I prefixed them with every exchange in the London area.  I tried saying to myself Elmbridge 4375, Silverthorn 4375, Grangewood 4375; not a bell range anywhere for me.  At intervals Miss Ditcher sidled up – she was genuinely distressed at the situation, even if its subtleties were beyond her.  “She’s sure to ring up again if it isn’t too late” was one of her comforts.  At such moments I surprised myself.  I never thought I could be so abusive to a poor old woman.

I never found out about that call.  I tried the number on a few of the larger, more central exchanges.  I spoke to quantity surveyor’s clerks, outside inspectorates for brewing machinery suppliers, wholesale edible oil importers and several apparently elderly ladies of leisure, but I didn’t get a clue.  I never again pinned much hope to Miss Ditcher.  The role was too big for her and I was also slightly sorry for some of the things I had called her.  For her part, she didn’t give up altogether.  Often on my return from an hour or two’s absence she would tell me that the ‘phone had rung three times – a wrong number each time, or somebody had rung up but wouldn’t give name or number.  I always thanked her and she always pointed out how much she appreciated being able to sit in front of my fire and help me at the same time in my business.

Only once again did our relations threaten to become tense.  That was the evening she told me that a man had kept ringing up – he said he was going away, had to speak to me that evening.  He wanted me to ring him back – a Mr Brown it was.  “Did you get his number?” I asked.  “Yes,” said Miss Ditcher, “He spoke rather loud but I think I got it right.”  She produced and unfolded a grubby corner of paper.  On it was written in pencil stub BEERBAREL 2679.

 

The Three James's

This piece was written by Holland, and introduces the Three James's - in their day a cartooning force to be reckoned with.

Students and art historians researching cultural and political movements of the Thirties must encounter evidence of anti-war and anti-fascist activities as the Artists International Association and Left Review and so may find references to the Three James’s.  Neither an acrobatic trio nor a musical group, they were three young artists who had decided, in that ominous decade, to devote what skills and time they had to supporting graphically and in unequivocal terms the broad front of the Left.  Impatient of the mild posture of artists who were prepared only to be represented by typical gallery pieces to demonstrate their condemnation of war and reaction, they felt that desperate situations demanded unmistakeable exposure.  The pen and the brush needed to b a great deal more outspoken if they were to have any effect.

These were not the only artists or creative workers to be active in this situation; their special contribution was that they were near enough in age, and that they shared conviction, skill and opportunities which while not identical, were close enough to align them on the same targets.  They were artists by training and intention, graphic designers by occupation, illustrators and cartoonists by conviction.

Young artists, illustrators and designers, looking toward a newer broader public turned to print making techniques, particularly lithography.  So James Boswell and James Holland joined the evening lithography class at the Central School of Art in Southampton Row, which was tutored by James Fitton, an outstandingly gifted draughtsman and painter from Oldham.  There they met Pearl Binder, Lynton Lamb and others who found this medium responsive and not unnecessarily precious.  So enthusiastically did they exploit these qualities, working on stone rather than plates, that newcomers had few opportunities to get their work put through the press by those excellent printers, the Devenish père et fils.

The evening classes became an available outlet for their anti-war and anti-fascist sentiments.  As a consequence, Boswell, Fitton and Holland were asked to produce a pamphlet “It’s up to us”, providing visual impact for statistics and quotations emphasizing the dangers of the blindness of the government of the day to what was happening overseas and at home.  This was a very successful effort and is still a most effective piece of visual propaganda, though very few copies can be in existence[1].  It lead to “the Three James’s” being in growing demand for many other assignments.

The Three James’s backgrounds were widely different.  Fitton was a few years the oldest.  The son of a Lancashire trade union leader, he had met at his Oldham home many of the stalwarts of the first Labour government, and his origins were Labour rather than Socialist.  Very much a Lancashire lad, he was intensely ambitious and in pursuit of fame more than fortune, he came to London where his outstanding graphic skills found him a place in advertising.  Intelligent rather than intellectual, Fitton was never swept away by political theorising from the extreme Left.  The conservatism of the British working class was an attitude he well understood.

Boswell’s background could hardly have been more different.  The son of a New Zealand schoolmaster he had been brought up in a small town in the North Island and received his education and art training in Auckland.  Strong and solidly built, a rugger player and powerful swimmer, he found London had its disappointments and frustrations and the English often effete, and he cast himself in the role of the wild colonial boy.  He was a man of bold gestures and disliked finessing in any form.

James Holland’s background had more in common with that of Fitton.  Born in Kent, his father was employed by the Admiralty in Chatham dockyard and elsewhere, and he grew up in the Medway towns and a London suburb.  He won scholarships to the Royal College of Art and in his second year there met Boswell.

In recalling the late Thirties, it is difficult today to be entirely objective and to dismiss hindsight.  So much political naivety, so much disinterested idealism was in evidence, sometimes to be diverted and disillusioned before it could be converted into effective action.

The two developments in the increasing campaign against fascism and war brought their lithographs and drawings into a widening audience.  The Artists International Association was founded and the monthly Left Review was published.  In the early days of the AIA, their work when exhibited was perhaps noticed as being more professionally competent than the politically motivated but less technically assured efforts of many of the earlier members, but as the Association expanded, became less doctrinaire in pursuit of a united front among artists, so their contributions took on an aggressive posture.  Boswell was the most committed of the three and became and active though not uncritical Party member.  Fitton and Holland with more direct experience of working class life and ideals remained what would not be considered left wing Labour, with some belief in the effectiveness of a broad front of Left inclined organisations.  They were of course extremely naive in the light of what we have since come to know of the alignments of that inter-war period.  Many illusions have since been exposed, many causes betrayed, but no post-war criticism is acceptable that does not understand the threat that lay over Europe, that grew more menacing week by week and beyond the capacity and courage of the West to resist.

Left Review was a regular outlet for their cartoons and illustrations and a recent critic and historian has suggested that it was the Three James’s contributions that readers turned to most appreciatively, thought whether this was true of the dedicated Marxists is doubtful.  A frequent criticism from this quarter was that too often they portrayed the working classes as downtrodden, victims of an inhuman system, hopeless and too down-and-out to resist exploitation.  From a political, an Agitprop angle this was true, but where to find evidence of proletarian militancy?  Boswell, the most politically committed, took this criticism seriously and many of the lithographs he produced at this period included heroic lorry drivers as vast and square as their own vehicles, defying the forces of reaction, marching against Fascism with miners and dockers.  But he did not forget the less heroic aspects of working class life in the back streets of Kentish Town, the cafes and amusement arcades of the North London inner and decaying suburbs.  Having taken a job in a design studio in the City, he found a new field for satire in City tycoons and their Tatler-featured horsey women became his prey.

The role of the cartoonist, the graphical artist, is a curious one.  It is almost entirely critically destructive, whether mildly and well-tempered or bitterly and savagely.  If crisis and tension are the atmosphere in which the political cartoon flourishes or can be effective, then much of its function can disappear when as a result such tensions conflict.

To revert to the mid Thirties, certain writers and artists had founded an outlet for their work, including re-appraisals of existing standards, in Left Review, edited by Edgell Rickword.  Many of the contents of Left Review, not least its cartoons, now appear naive; the capitalist still wore a top hat and watch chain and smoked a fat cigar, and Colonel Blimp typified the Establishment.  But the re-alignment of total war involved the whole community and issues were no longer demonstrable in such simple terms of black and white.  In the circumstances graphic comment needed to be more subtle, less explicit.

If Left Review had any sort of successor in the graphic field it was perhaps Lilliput which appeared in the happy and prolific period after the War until its premature demise with its stable companions Picture Post and Leader magazines.

 

 

---

[1] Tate Galleries Archive has one

Romford Cottage

Over a long life, Holland owned and rented many different properties.  His sometimes unconventional ways of dealing with property transactions are referred to in John Mortimer's autobiography - it was news to me that he ever owned property in Kentish Town, but it is there in "Clinging to the Wreckage"!  After a number of years of saying that he didn't want to own property again, Holland fell in love with a rather ramshackle cottage in the wilds of Kent near Tunbridge Wells.

He bought the cottage from a friend's mother, with a certain level of wheeling and dealing to ensure that she was able to enjoy the fruits of the sale and not the owners of the rest home to which she retired.  Mrs Stephens and Miss Godfrey, her compagnon, were believed to haunt the cottage for a number of years after their deaths.

Romford Cottage was a built on a long established small plot ceded from the Abervenny Estate in the 1700s, but the cottage my father bought was built in around 1850, after the first building had been destroyed, and was thrown up as a temporary structure of two "two up two down" cottages with facilities out back and a plot of land to each side.  The temporary nature was demonstrated admirably by complete absence of foundations, floor boards laid on bare earth, single bond brickwork downstairs and wattle and daub walls upstairs faced with Kentish weather board.  The rafters were split tree trunks with bark still in place, and heat was provided by small hearth fires in all four front rooms.

Holland had the back offices removed and a one storey studio built on, moved the bathroom upstairs, rewired and decorated the cottage and that was about it.  While intended initially as a weekend cottage, by early 1964 Holland had made the decision that rather than keeping flats in London and Birmingham, the family would move to Kent and he shared digs during the week in Birmingham and then in Leicester, where the work was.  When he finally retired, the cottage became home full time until his death in 1996.

There are a number of sketches and prints of the Cottage among Holland's work.  This sketch from 1975 or 76 was done in the garden looking to the side of the building that had an interesting oriol window.

 

The history of the cottage also fascinated Holland, particularly when he finally obtained the full set of deeds to the property including the original sale of the parcel of land from the Abervenny Estate, which implied a duty of an annual ground rent which never seemed to be rescinded.  This drawing, which was a Christmas card one year, shows Holland's view of what it must have looked like shortly after construction.

 

School days remembered

This extract was one of a number of similar pieces that Holland wrote about his time at the Mathematical School in Rochester - I will meld the best bits into one coherent whole when I can.  The illustration is related only by being a memory of familiar scenes from his childhood.

SCHOOL DAYS IN ROCHESTER

In 1920, I went to the local grammar school in Rochester.  Actually it favoured mathematical subjects rather than grammatical as was reflected in its name - the Sir Joseph Williamson’s Mathematical School, Rochester.  From the school windows you looked down towards the Medway a matter of a few hundred yards away.  We could see all that was happening on the river - the shipping, the river landscape, barges (hundreds of them), ships, coasters, cement works, small quaysides etc.  It was an interesting and lively landscape.

I joined the school half way up as it were, in the fifth form at the beginning of the school year, with another chap about my age, but a much more sophisticated person than I.  He was a wonderful character.  His name was Andy Webber.  He and I were about 15.  He had a rather curious background.  He had gone to the dockyard school to be apprenticed in the dockyard, but then decided he wanted to teach in elementary schools, and since he was rather a bright boy, his application to transfer was received with some sympathy. Having been an apprentice and knocked around with a more worldly bunch of chaps, Andy was very much a man about town.  He knew all the current stories that lads of 15 are not expected to know much about, at first hand any rate.  He was a snappy dresser and when he went home to Gillingham, he forgot all about school, donned his hat, lit a cigarette, and went off to the pub to survey the local girls. 

The most remarkable thing about him was that he had become a very good conjurer.  He had all the necessary equipment, full tails, all the conjurer’s patter and the saucy talk while he did the tricks, which were surprisingly sophisticated.  After a term or so there was a house concert, where he turned the whole thing round from an amateur exercise into a professional show.  He and I, although we had absolutely nothing in common in our upbringing, got on well together and I think of him now with considerable affection and interest.

At the Mathematical School there was an art master who came in one day a week only, as he was headmaster of the Art College.  If you were anything special, you were put in his care.  His name was George Ward and he was a very gentle and kindly man, who took great interest in me and what I was doing.  I was beginning to make drawings of the river front at Rochester, shipping and so on, which I was doing in line and wash and drawing with ink.  He sent a number of my sketches to an annual exhibition which is held by the Royal Drawing Society in London.  Apparently they made quite a sensation and I was awarded the President’s prize - the President’s Star - which was presented to me in London by HRH Princess Louise.  It made quite a sensation in the school and the local paper.  People, certainly members of staff at the school, started realising I had something of a flare for artwork.  I was given lots of work to do for school posters for Gilbert and Sullivan performances and such like.  The Headmaster, who was the least sympathetic man in the school as far as I was concerned, said at morning assembly “There is only one boy allowed to grow his hair long, and that is Holland, because he is an artist”.

Having passed the necessary general examinations, I went to the local Art School, which was just a short distance away from the Mathematical School.