including letters written to his wife Marion and some other correspondence
August 9, 1941
Arrived back yesterday after a week with Marion at East Meon. I enjoyed myself and felt strangely calm and happy.
Letter to Marion
9 August, 1941
Saturday
Dearest Mog,
I got back all right and how hard my mattress was and the pillow like a rock! I wish I could have stayed with you longer but I did enjoy myself. Try to come the week after next.
Don’t let Julian forget what I taught him.
Lots of love to you both.
Love to the rest. Will write next week,
Clifford
PS Can you make sure to keep today’s News Chronicle for me? It has some Daumier drawings in it and I could not buy one this morning. All sold.
Journal Entries
August 11, 1941
And now the reaction. Miserable. A rainy day and the studio roof is leaking in several places.
I have been trying to continue with the painting I started shortly before I went away – Jack Neave, with the café Chat Noir as background. Trying from my drawings to recall him from the past, and I cannot do it. I have only been able to fish up a pale ghost that I am afraid to touch for fear of losing what little I have.
August 13, 1941
Well I have spent the day with Jack Neave: not actually in person, I have simply gone on with my painting of him and maybe I have got something after all.
Letter to Marion
16 August, 1941
Saturday,
Dearest Mog,
Thanks so much for your letter. I did feel pretty miserable myself after I got back – a really bad reaction, I suppose because I had so much enjoyed being with you.
Thank you for sending the cutting from the News Chronicle. I have started working again. Still terribly difficult to get started after the vile nights I spend on duty for I am sleeping very badly again. However, I feel all right. Let me know soon if you are coming on Thursday and if you are going to bring Julian with you. Bill would be delighted if we all came to him for tea and I will get mother to come over to him as well. I will meet you at Waterloo. I do hope you can come.
Things are very quiet. I spend my time dreaming.
Lots of love to you both,
Clifford
PS Give my love to all the other.
Journal Entries
August 17, 1941
Croxley Green to see the Kersleys. Walk through the woods. Celia picked flowers. We were together for a few minutes.
August 19, 1941
Worked at the 36″x28″ of the Lyric ballet picture. A long way to go yet but I am beginning to get somewhere with it.
About 6 o’clock a knock at the door. Found a man who introduced himself as Colin Summerford*. He had got my address from Leger’s and had come in as he was passing to tell me how much he liked my war drawings. Said, flatteringly, they knocked most of the official ones flat.
*This gentleman was possibly the same Colin Summerford who worked as an editor for the publishers, Methuen & Co. Editor
We talked about the war, inevitably, and I discovered he felt like myself about it, only he thinks the present system is finished, even if we win. I don’t. We shall win and retain the present system, in essence, for a long time. And there will be another war if I live till 60 – maybe sooner.
All that was needed to complete this story is that he should have bought one of the drawings he so much admired. Yet I think he meant what he said.
August 22, 1941
Private View, Sickert Exhibition at the National Gallery*. A magnificent show. How it made me want to paint!
* This was a big retrospective exhibition organised by Lillian Browse at the National Gallery in 1941, just within the artist’s lifetime. Walter Richard Sickert, who died in January 1942, was too unwell to travel to London to see the show for himself. Editot
Marion brought Julian for the day. He was so good.
Three- page letter from Rupert Croft-Cooke. On active service. Dull. Is he thinking of the censor? He has said so little. So, think he must be.
Letters to Marion
22 August, 1941
Dearest Mog,
I hope you got back safely and that Julian went to sleep on the way. All the same I do think he was very good.
I hope you will be able to come again the week after next. Let me know a few days before.
I didn’t really see you at all yesterday so I am looking forward very much to you coming again.
Lots of love to you both,
Clifford
1 September, 1941
Monday
Dearest,
I got back quite safely – arrived at the depot just two minutes before one o’clock. I am so glad I came*. Let me know if you are coming ti see me Monday of next week Try to manage it.
*A 1941 pocket diary entry shows Clifford got the day off on Sunday, August 31st. Editor
All my love,
Clifford
Journal Entries
September 4, 1941
Croxley Green. Made a sketch of Celia. She looked more lovely than ever. A happy day.
September 6, 1941
Conduit Street. Sketch in oil of Emie. ‘You have a hole in your stocking.’ ‘Yes, my toe is too long.’
September 8, 1941
Marion came. A perfect day – only too short.
September 9, 1941
Shovelling broken bricks and debris. Clearing bombed houses in Uverdale Road.
September 10, 1941
I have at last made up my mind that my first 36″x28″ painting of the Lyric Ballet is the best after all. How like me.
Started self portrait, 21″ x 17″. Worked about two and a half hours. Then very tired and had to leave off. Tried to sleep. Couldn’t.
‘Lyric Theatre – King Wenceslas Ballet’, 1941, by Clifford Hall. Possibly the painting Clifford mentions he preferred on Sept 10th, 1941. No colour photograph currently available.
‘L’Après-midi d’un faune’ – 1938 portrait of Leo Kersley by Clifford Hall.