Today's post is the first of a number dedicated to the Three Jameses, and describes in Holland's own words, how Holland and Boswell met while both at the Royal College of Art. The illustrating photograph was very kindly supplied by my godmother, Sal Shuel, who was herself the daughter of Jim Boswell and the god daughter of Holland.
SECOND YEAR OF ART COLLEGE
The first year of university and college is usually interesting enough, new influences, new friendships, new values. The student returns after the first long vacation, to a now familiar scene from which some familiar faces will be missing, and there will be an influx of newcomers to be looked over with the critical eyes of a year’s experience.
In my second year there was, among the new men, a stockily built and raw-boned New Zealander who made it apparent that he had not arrived in any mood of colonial humility, rather as an aggressive Gaul, or perhaps Scot, in an effete Rome. James Boswell, like his namesake and distant kinsman, to whom he bore a facial resemblance, came from a Lowland Scots family, which like many others had settled in New Zealand. We took an instant dislike to each other, a dislike that in a matter of weeks changed to considerable enjoyment of each other’s company, perhaps chiefly because our backgrounds and experiences had been so different. In spite of his assumed role of the wild colonial boy, he brought with him more knowledge and a greater understanding of European culture, with a wider background of reading in both English and French, than all but the rarest native student, and it was possible to understand something of the intensity of the urge to get to Europe that had persuaded his most tolerant mother to leave Auckland with him and his sister to set up a home in a Kensington flat.
They had arrived during the vacation, in the dust and heat of a London summer, and Boswell, a powerful swimmer, had soon discovered the YMCA baths in Tottenham Court Road, and there fortunately met up with a group of lively men of his own age, who though diverse in occupation, shared a studio flat in Kennington. One of them was George Coulouris, so well-known for many years both here and in the States as an actor of character, and then the most extrovert of Greek Lancastrians. A pianist and journalist, a student of French as well as two or three, more conventionally employed at least during working hours, made up this explosively argumentative group. Mrs Boswell was happy to feed her son’s many friends at whatever hour they might unexpectedly turn up. What was more, she was prepared to endure with every appearance of mild enjoyment, their endless flights of intellect.
Boswell thus started his college life with a wider range of London contacts and interests than did most students, and the College never became for him the focal point that it was for his contemporaries. His painting was frankly theatrical and lacked the controlled drawing that might have made its flamboyance more tolerable. Rubens, the young Cezanne and the brushwork of Vlaminck might have been the recipe.
In his company and that of his companions I became more aware that beyond the Yellow Book and the Georgian poets, beyond Mansfield and de la Mare there were the Symbolists, there was Baudelaire and les Fleurs de Mal, there was Eliot and the Waste Land, there was Lyndham Lewis and The Enemy. I came to know pubs other than those around South Kensington, the Fitzroy, the Plough near the British Museum and the notorious haunt of Harold Munroe, the Swiss pub and the York Minster in Soho, not that I was a copious drinker, my limits in entertainment then being soon reached and exceeded.
During my second year I became secretary of the Students Sketch Club which existed only to stage competitions and an annual exhibition in the V&A of work produced outside the College supervision in the summer vacation. Awards were offered in various categories and distinguished or at least compliant Academicians and others were invited to judge these categories. Being all for progress and the young idea and with the support of my contemporaries, a number of the judges who had served for many years were dropped and I approached artists who had not been connected with this feature of the College. Among these were Wilson Sheer, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, all of whom agreed to act and brought a less predictable aspect to the occasion. In addition we invited the Minister of Works, Sir Philip Sassoon, more significantly known as a gilded leader of London Society to open the show and he rose to the occasion by buying a selection of work that I doubt ever found its way into his collection.
During my final and post-diploma year I was offered a share in a small exhibition at the Warren Gallery in Conduit Street. Opened by Dorothy Warren, a lively young girl about town that later was to become notorious for exhibiting the D H Lawrence drawings and watercolours that were seized by the Police on the orders of the Home Secretary Johnson Hicks, while Dorothy Warren’s prosecution on obscenity charges was to follow. I produced enough work to make up my share although I have never ceased blushing when I recall its immaturity and effrontery. An unexpected outcome was that the participants were invited to visit a Mr Jack Beddington at Shell Corner Kingsway to discuss perhaps doing some work in the company. I believe I was the only one to respond.
I emphasize that it was emphatically not done to flirt with commerce and industry and so risk prostituting one’s talents in the market place, however I needed money to pay my bills and so went to meet the tempter. Entering his office confirmed my worst suspicions. This suave, elegant, frock-coated figure, almost Sir Jasper of the melodramas, had clearly not invited me for anything that could be to my advantage. However, having introduced me to his father and brother, who happened to be in the office and were obviously in the same conspiracy, he suggested that I should do a drawing suitable for reproduction, for the then generous fee of fifteen guineas. This I did and posted the result to him. By return came a cheque and an enthusiastic letter proposing I undertook a series of press advertisements. Wealth untold! My scruples were forgotten. Perhaps I did bring a fresh eye to a skill that had become very conventional; certainly now looking at the one or two pulls that have survived more than fifty years; I am impressed by their ingenuity.
James Holland, James Boswell and Betty Boswell, photograph courtesy of Sal Shuel.