including letters written to his wife Marion and some other correspondence
Letters to Marion
17 January, 1940
Tuesday night
Dearest Mog,
I had your letter this morning. Do not worry about getting what you want from Peter Jones, at any rate up to £3, as I have that put by for the purpose and I will make up the rest to you before too long I hope.
The last few days have been wretched – bitterly cold -and it seems impossible to get warm. I am sure something has happened to the quality of the coke. It seems to give out no heat for hours and I have had to work in an overcoat. It slows me down but it does not stop me; the picture is started on the canvas now and I did a lot today. After trying four shops this morning I got some coalite, as I was out of coke until tomorrow, and was able to get the studio warm so I worked better.
I bet it’s rotten at Iwerne too. Mind you keep all the doors and windows shut and I hope you have plenty of coal.
I am very glad to hear about Julian. He does seem to have plenty of personality; and he is dead right about the red turban. I never liked it myself.
It’s a fine idea to try and save for him and if you do only put by a bob a week it will mount up. I wish I could do the same but I reach the end of each week and month by a miracle. I know I should give up smoking but I can’t help hanging on to it and the number of things I have given up would make a really long list. I do not care about them but I am a hopeless slave where tobacco is concerned. Yet just think of a fag costing nearly three farthings. It makes one feel almost criminal.
I saw the Griffins on Sunday and they both sent you their love. He says he is getting on with his book. My father has not been very well, he seems to have got old suddenly but is very cheerful and still believes in the Conservative Party, Chamberlain, Church and Churchill and the utter infallibility of the British Empire. As for me I believe in painting, energy and sensibility and such things and after that come to a dead stop, but they are enough. And I believe too in my fate which is to be at least a good painter and to make things all right for us – although we have been pitched into a stupid period, socially and financially that is, but apart from that things are as beautiful as they must always have been, for those who could see.
I saw Disher* recently. He assured me that he has now utterly given up women and he has shut himself up in Pomona Studios to write a history of the *melodrama. When that is done he is optimistic about having another go – if he is able.
* Discher is Maurice Wilson Disher (1893 -1969), author, playwright and theatre critic.
Looking forward to another letter form you soon. Lots of love to you Mog and to him as well.
Clifford
PS Send me a couple of photos please if they come out well.
PPS Wednesday morning. Just got your letter. Don’t worry about me. I feel very well, only cold but I will be all right. Will write soon.
27 January, 1940
Chelsea – Saturday
Dearest,
I had your last letter this morning. Send the bill on here when you have found out all about it. There is no money to pay it at the moment unless I let Peter Jones wait. I think that would be the best thing to do for the present. Something will come along sooner or later. Anyway, do not worry yourself with it. The duck was really perfect and I completely demolished it.
Last night was not particularly good, but it was horrible out with slush and wet. Perhaps next week will be better. I have done two oils this week. One of some soldiers for, I hope, a show at the Stafford Gallery which is intended to go to America – an exhibition of “This War as we see it.” I am also sending one of the Thames by moonlight and blackout. I found a nice frame which I had cut to fit and toned the right colour. It is just by me now and you know it is really beautiful – I cannot help saying it, and I know you will love it when you see it , hope soon. I am finding the real me, slowly but I believe I am finding it, and it is something quiet, subtle and I hope beautiful because that seems all that matters and all that ever will be worth trying to do. Actually that is wrong; one does not try at this stage. These things happen inevitably when they come from one’s feelings. I hope they see the point of these two. You would like the soldiers as well. I did it from a sketch I made in a pub in Shaftesbury whilst I was waiting for the coach last November. It sounds dull my description but the painting has got something about it that makes you think.
I hope there will be a good light next week so that I can get on with the big one.
Julian certainly seems to be getting on well and I hope you have not got a cold. I have been very lucky – not one so far. Maybe it’s the diet. When the large picture is done and if I can hook in the money I want to come and see you. Perhaps you will be in the new place by then and I will certainly make use of Fred to drive me from Dorchester and am sure he will not mind.
Lots of love to you and Julian. Write again soon.
Clifford
This is the Zass family, in a photograph taken in Spring 1901, in London, before Marion and her sister Pearl were born.
The father is Lewis Leon Zass, born December 1864 in Vilna, Vilnius, Lithuania. He died in 1948. His wife is Esther Zass, née Zaretska, born in Spring 1864, in Cherkassy, central Ukraine. She died in 1927. She is seen holding baby Florence, who was born in June 1900 and died just 8 years later. The four children in the foreground are, from left to right, Lena (aka Zena). Born November 1893, died March 1952. Stanley Solomon. Born January 1896. Died —-. Harry. Born August 1898, died —–. Sybil. Born January 1891, died March 1976.It is known that Leon and Esther both came to England as Jewish refugees fleeing the pogroms in the Russian Empire, some time in the early to mid 1880s. They met in each other in London and started a dressmaking business in the East End of London. They lived in Mrydle Street, Whitechapel. Subsequently, they moved to Chiselhurst Road in the London suburb of Richmond, Surrey.Clifford and Marion probably met for the first time at the Richmond School of Art in the early 1920s, or possibly a little later at the Putney School of Art. Editor
8 February, 1940
Chelsea – Thursday
Dearest Mog,
Thank you for your letter. I have written to the chemist and told him I will send a cheque this month, which I promise I will do. Please do not worry about me. I am very well indeed and the picture is coming fine – in spite of all my worries, but I just refuse to let them stop me.
Send your cheque as soon as it arrives as this is a difficult month. Electric light I had to pay and some more to keep the Sunlight* quiet.
* The Sunlight was a laundry service in Chelsea. Editor
My father is a little better. I think or at least hope that we are over the worst of the winter now. I will write you a good long letter over the weekend. Many thanks for the butter – although it has not arrived yet. Glad you got the parcel.
All my love to you both.
Clifford
PS Harry’s fur coat keeps me warm – too warm some nights.
14 February, 1940
Dearest Mog,
Your letter came this morning. I wish I could come to see you both again but until some money comes in I am stuck here, Everyone here is grumbling and saying they cannot pay their way and the only bright side of the position is that if that is the state of the majority it will be very difficult to ever proceed against them.
I was at Putney yesterday and mother asked me to thank you for your letter and to tell you how sorry she is not to be able to reply yet awhile. She is really exhausted these days and father is not getting any better. He sometimes cannot even feed himself properly and although he now gets up each day about lunch time and is able to get along to the sitting room his leg is liable to give way unexpectedly and he has fallen over several times. As you know, they are both terribly independent and I had a real struggle to get them to have a nurse in every morning; but it was impossible to do without. Another comes every afternoon to give him massage and electric treatment. Fortunately he does not have any pain but it is hard on them both and extremely worrying – it worries me a lot, and what with my other worries, the heating problem and continually dashing over to Putney I have found it hard to settle to anything for the last two or three weeks. I work at the picture, it is 36″x28″, when I get the time and when I feel I can, which with other things on my mind is not as often as I should like, however, it is coming well. I have had one fight with it and there will be several yet I think but it should look well in the end.
Since the beginning of September I have done 23 oils but most of them are only little panels, although the number includes one 20 x 16, three 18 x 14, two 15 x 9 and three 14 x 10 – but all too small and I am furious because I feel it in me to do twice as many and all bigger. But paint and canvas is the problem and it is better to paint little ones than not to paint at all. Of course, I did get some canvas and paint last December when I sold the pictures. The canvas is all used up now and there is not much paint left. This week I have started to halve the money I spend on cigarettes and will buy paint instead.
Steve came snooping in the other day and so admired the theatre painting that on hearing I was short of my favourite colour – viridian – he actually presented me with a 4/6 tube! I took it. I would take paint from anyone. Two days after he invited me in to see a painting he had just done of the King’s Cinema.
So do one’s chickens come home to roost, but it was a bad painting and I do not mind. He will be literal as long as he lives, all the same I was damned glad of the viridian. He is also growing a beard and looks shocking. Chelsea has him in its toils properly now.
The lucky man’s name in the Maudie affair is Percy Samuel. Yes, I think he is. I have said I will go but have just realized that it will almost be the end on the month and I will most likely not have the fare, so I may have to send a wire instead. Perhaps I should worry but to honest, I don’t.
You must not worry about the miserable little postal orders I send you. Of course I will go on sending them as long as the class keeps going. And it is not getting smaller so far. I only wish I could send more but I know the difference even a little can make when one is hard up. This morning I found two pennies in my overcoat pocket and got a hell of a thrill.
I am so glad Julian is well; you said something about a snapshot in your letter but I could not find it in there. Did you forget to put it in the envelope? Try to send it next time.
No, Brian* is not at Putney. He was only there for one night. He is with the regiment now and I hope he is enjoying himself. He rather naively told me that although he had the money, I was the eldest and so it was up to me persuade Mother and Father to do this and that. I don’t think he meant it, only he does take himself so seriously.
* Brian is Brian Hall, Clifford’s younger brother.
Griffin has a wonderful story about Jack Bilbo*, told by a girl whom Jack asked back one night to see his – yes, just what you are thinking, only he said his pictures. After a few opening moves which he got away with he sat the girl on the bed and going to the cupboard produced a bottle of wine and two glasses. He poured the wine and placed it on a little table within easy reach of the bed. Then he made the next move which, however, was more than the girl bargained for, or maybe she just didn’t feel like it at that moment. So she told Jack so – very definitively. Poor Bilbo collapsed almost at once and then getting up, he very slowly and carefully poured the wine back into the bottle. “Well” said he with a sob, “we shan’t be needing that now, and after all it’s an expensive wine!”
Isn’t it just like him? I think it is perfect.
* Jack Bilbo, real name, Hugo Baruch (1907 -1967) was a German-Jewish self-taught painter and sculptor, and gallerist. Soon after Hitler came to power in 1933 and the Nazis confiscated his parent’s theatrical supplies business in Berlin, he fled. Initially to France and thence to Spain. Subsequently, he came to England in around 1936. Despite being Jewish, soon after the outbreak of WW2 he was arrested for being a German National and placed as an ‘enemy alien’ in the Onchan Interment Camp on the Isle of Man. However, he was released some six months later and went on to found the Modern Art Gallery (1941–48) in London as a platform ‘against Hitlerism’. Many other German and Austrian born Jews were held in confinement by the British authorities for a considerably longer time during the war. Editor
I haven’t seen Leo for weeks but I saw Ted the other night who told me he had been in bed with flu. Bill* told me he had heard from you. His beard really does suit him.
Write soon. Lots of love,
Clifford
* Bill is W. S. Meadmore, author of a number of biographies about such disparate characters as Buffalo Bill (1952) and Lucien Pissaro (1962), described by George Melly, who rented a room in his house, 7 Margaretta Terrace, off Oakley Street, in the late forties and early fifties, as ‘author and civil servant, expert on the history of the circus, chain smoker, and kind-hearted ogre’ (George Melly, Owning Up, Weidenfeld, London 1965). A characteristic letter of Bill’s is quoted in Melly’s very amusing account of him. Editor
Late Winter,1940 (around February early March, precise date unknown)
Saturday
Dearest,
I had your last letter this afternoon. The other one reached me, the one with the chemist’s bill. I replied to that the other day and I expect you have it by now. I wrote it from Putney.
I am terribly sorry you are having such a rotten time and I do feel for you. Things are getting rather tough here and if I could not work, which I can better than ever, I hardly know what I would do. Everyone is clamouring for money and as far as making any goes it is very bad just now. I will pay the chemist when the Leicester pay me – so far they have not done so and it would be a mistake to ask them; but it is sure to come this month.
I always did say the county was horrid* and when this wretched war is over I promise you you need never go to it again. The can is in part working order now, one throws a bucket of water down it each time.
* Clifford had a peculiar aversion to the county of Dorset in southwest England. Editor
I still have no water in the tap as the whole plumbing of the building is in a state of chaos, or chassis, and you know how long it takes Garlechs to get a job done.
I did not see anything about the Government buying war pictures and |I can hardly believe it but if it is true, they may buy something when the Stafford Gallery show of war pictures happens in the early spring.
Yesterday I had a wonderful time with the ballet painting and I have been at it again today. It is coming very well. I saw Bill last night. He, like everyone else, is suffering from burst pipes.
I wish I could come and see you, and also help you with the move but I simply have not got the fare. I am sorry the new place has disadvantages but still it could not be worse than Iwerne Minster, I wish I could send you some extra money. The class sometimes makes ten bob profit; sometimes if it’s a bad night like several recently, snow or pelting rain, it is only four bob but on the whole it averages eight an evening. Little enough and I have to work to earn it but it is a bit of a help in paying Mrs Smith for the washing and getting a little paint now and again. I feel if I can only keep the way I feel now, keep it I mean for when times are easier, I will be able to paint so well I’ll surprise you yet – because I will keep it if it’s the last thing I do, and it is the only hope I have of eventually getting somewhere for your sake as well as mine. Luckily, I feel so strong and well and that means a hell of a lot.
I hope you have not got a cold and how are the chilblains? I have lost mine since I gave up sitting in that terribly cold Lyric Theatre making the forty or so studies for my picture. There was no heating there at all, so it’s no wonder I got ’em.
Try not to worry Mog, I am quite sure everything will come right although it certainly is bad just now.
Knight* wrote me some weeks back saying he wanted to come and see me but I simply have not got the time when I am working. I was very miserable this week whilst I was at Putney. I spent hours looking out of the window at the ice on the river** but now I have started on the picture again I feel quite different.
* Knight may be the gentleman called S.A.Knight, who Clifford painted a portrait of in around 1930. Editor
* The winter of 1939-40 in Britain was the severest of the 20th century and the River Thames did, indeed, freeze over in places for the first time since 1895 in January of 1940. However, as meteorological information was considered potentially helpful to the enemy, details of this extreme weather event were kept out of the press for the most part, making it difficult now to ascertain how long the ice on the Thames persisted. Clifford’s letter suggests it was there for a good number of weeks.Ice Breaking on the Thames, January 1940 Editor
I am afraid this letter is all “I” from beginning to end and you must please forgive me for it.
How is the coal supply? Mine turned up yesterday instead of Wednesday but I suppose I was lucky to get it.
Some time ago I was looking through Bill’s Illustrated London News volumes of the Crimean War period. I was looking for Guy’s pictures. The leading article for November 11th (!) 1854 was called “Why we are fighting and what we are fighting for.” Alter a few names and it might have been a speech by Churchill. No advance at all.
I am glad Julian is well. Lots of love to you dearest Mog and to him too.
Clifford
By the middle of March, Marion and Julian, along with her sister Pearl and her husband, Peter, and their two children, had moved to Barnes Hill, Milton Abbas, Blandford, Dorset, while Clifford continued to live at his studio in London. Editor
15 March, 1940
Friday
Dearest Mog,
I arrived here about 8.30 last night and found everything nice and clean after Mrs Smith’s visit last Saturday. Nothing of interest has happened since I left. Only Steve has got himself a brown velvet suit but it will take more than that to make him paint.
I did so enjoy being with you and I hope somehow you will be able to go to East Meon and that I will see you there. Or that it will not be too long before I am able to come to Milton Abbas again. And I think Julian is really sweet and I am very fond of him.
I find I left my mirror. Do not bother to send it on as I have another one I can manage with quite well.
No news yet about the National Gallery. I am going over to Putney tomorrow and I will see Stanley and Harry one evening next week.
Give my love to Pearl and tell her I hope I was not too much trouble.
Lots of love to you and Julian and write to me soon.
Clifford
PS I sent off the stuff for your finger first thing this morning. I do hope it gets better soon.
Clifford Hall with his parents, Clifford Henry and Isobella Hall, and his first wife, Marion Hall neé Zass.
While it seems likely that this photograph was taken at the time of Clifford and Marion’s wedding on April 25th, 1933, the building in the background appears to be a church rather than Fulham Registry Office where the wedding took place. Clifford’s parents were both quite devout Christians and therefore may well have been disappointed at a registry office wedding, although there is no evidence at all that they opposed the marriage. Some of Marion’s family definitely converted to Christianity, but it’s not clear if Marion herself ever did. However, Clifford and Marion’s son, Julian, was brought up as a Christian. Editor