including letters written to his wife Marion and some other correspondence
Letters to Marion
2 May, 1941
Dearest Mog,
Things have been nice and quiet lately. I am glad but I seem to have got out of the habit of sleeping – even when I get the chance. It’s really worse than raids. Hope you got my last letter and that I will have one from you soon.
I got all my drawings to Legers yesterday and I think the show will look good. There is only one painting. a 30″ x25″, and that’s practically a monochrome, however it fits in well with the drawings round it. There are thirty-one drawings. I wish I had done more paintings but I have found, for some time, that I have not got the energy to paint anything large. I’ll be all right when the war is over; in the mean time I must content myself with drawings and just small things. But it’s a pity because there is so much I want to do. About a year ago, before things got difficult, and I slept better, I was sure that I had found out how to paint, or, at least that I had settled on just the approach that suited me best. You may think it is wrong or selfish of me to worry about such things in these days when everyone should “strain every nerve for victory” and so on, but it’s the way I am made and nothing seems to alter it. And I am very tired of ugliness and stupidity, for that is how it strikes me, and feel that the expression of something lovely is far more important even if few want it and time destroys it in the end. After all, only ideas are real but they must be expressed in some tangible fashion.
Life is not really dull even in wartime London and I am always seeing interesting things. The trouble is I am to tired to react to them in the way I should. Maybe it’s the Spring, let’s forget it, it won’t last.
I should be able to get some leave about the 28th. I am going to ask for it next week. I spend some very good evenings with Bill. He plays the Grieg piano concerto to me; and Chopin. This does me more good than anything else.
I hope that you are both well and the others too. Lots of love to you and Julian. Don’t ever smack him, there’s never any need for it. Whenever I think of Peter’s ideas on bringing up children, I feel quite ill. There is enough violence in the world as it is.
Lots of love to you both,
Clifford
6 May, 1941
Dearest Mog,
Many thanks for your letter with the cheque. You are quite right about the cheque – you did not have one for April.
I wish you could come to the exhibition on Friday when it opens but if you do decide to come up for the day I would sooner you came next week when we can have all the time together. I will be stuck in the gallery till six and next week we could spend half an hour there quietly and then do lots more exciting things. I hope you can get Fanny to look after Julian for the day. I feel it would be better. My off days next week will be – Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. If you make up your mind to come let me know time and station and I will be there to meet you.
I will let the self-portrait go to the exhibition for I think it is as safe there as anywhere else but I have already told Lily that it belongs to you and can’t have a price put on it. The main thing is to be well represented in the exhibition, which will be an important one.
Do not worry about having to leave the pictures at Pearl’s – Stanley can collect them when he goes there. I am sure you must have had a job moving everything.
I have an idea that my show will go well, at least from the publicity angle, because I have a viewpoint that no one else has touched yet. The Star sent someone down to the depot to interview me this morning. If there is not a sudden spectacular development in the war or another big raid on London, I stand a chance of attracting some notice. It is, however, a chancy business nowadays.
I feel better that I did when I last wrote to you and I am eager to come and see you at the end of the month. Good news about the bid. It has cheered me up lots. I always think of you as especially adorable in the Spring because of that Spring when we were so very happy and which I have not forgotten, but even seem to remember more clearly as time passes.
Write soon. Lots of love to you and Julian,
Clifford
9 May, 1941
Thursday
Dearest Mog,
I have just cycled back to the studio and found your letter. Of course I would love you to come, and to see you; I was only not so sure about you bringing Julian as well. I am glad Fanny can take him for a day. Come next Thursday, I’ll be off duty. Tell me when and where you will arrive and I will be there to meet you. We can spend a little time at Legers and then come back to Chelsea and I will love you, because that’s all I want to do when I see you, if you want me.
The show opens tomorrow, I think I told you Friday in my last letter which you should have by now. If I told you the wrong day do forgive me. The rush of getting things ready, seeing people and fitting it all in with my “on” days has been too much, and although I could probably have got days off for it I wanted to keep them for coming to see you at the end of the month.
Yesterday, whilst we were hanging the pictures two people came in and bought one, a good start. It surprised me.
If Fanny looking after Julian works, I wish you could get her to take him at least once a month. It would be perfect. I did not mean to discourage you from coming, you must understand that, it was the risk of having Julian to look after in case anything happened. As things are at present anything happening by day is most unlikely, it is at night that the raiders come, but they have been in the day, and one can never tell; but I want you to come with all my heart, and I only wish you could stay a few days, only I would hate not being with you at night if anything like a bad raid happened. I will hope for next Thursday to come quickly
It did not matter about the cheque not being endorsed. I feel better than I did last week but not really right somehow. I can’t get enough sleep – but you have got to be pretty bad for a doctor to give you a certificate now. They have got orders to tighten everything up, although I would have tried if I had not managed to recover a bit. I’ll try to swing an extra day at the end of the month.
All my love to you and Julian, and write soon and tell me what time you arrive next Thursday.
Clifford
Journal Entry
May 10, 1941
Out all last night. Bad raid. St Luke’s Hospital, Sydney Street. Boiler room hit. Escaping steam. Later to Berkeley Square. Several huge fires. Was so tired I went to sleep for a few minutes leaning against a wall.
The thing I remember best is how the streets looked as we drove back about 5.45am – such lovely colour: greys, pinks and delicate lavenders, with a huge pale red moon hanging low in the sky. It was only a quarter to three really but they have played about with the clock again.
Letters to Marion
15th May 1941*
*The date of this letter is a little uncertain. It appears to have been written on Thursday, 15th May 1941, which is a bit strange because Marion clearly came up to London to see Clifford on that date. It seems he wrote and posted it early in the morning before she paid him a surprise visit. Editor
Dearest Mog,
I had your letter this morning. I wish you could come here on Saturday, only I am on duty that day, but I will be with you the Saturday of next week. Do you know the best morning train that connects with a bus? I forget, but if you do not happen to know I will take a chance.
Writing again at the end of the week. I am so very glad that Julian is better and I hope you are yourself – and Lena* too.
Lots of love,
Clifford
* Lena is Lena Zass (1893 -1952), one of Marion’s sisters. Editor
17 May, 1941
Dearest Mog,
It was wonderful seeing you on Thursday and I am looking forward to next Saturday. I have not had time to find out about the train yet but I will get the earliest one I can in the morning. I will be able to stay until Friday, which will give us a good time together.
Lots of love to you and Julian,
Clifford
“Bombs On Chelsea” – Exhibition of War Drawings by Clifford Hall, May 10 – May 31 1941.
Front page of the Leger Gallery’s catalogue.
Bill wrote the following foreword which appears in the catalogue:
BOMBS ON CHELSEA – Exhibition of War Drawings by Clifford Hall
Clifford Hall has hitherto been known as a painter of ballet, circus, of French streets, and of landscape. Always extremely sensitive to the exciting beauty he saw and felt all around him, the war mad for new possibilities. Attached to a Chelsea stretcher party, called to “incidents” as they happened, he was not only profoundly shocked at the ghastliness and futility of the air war on civilians but also moved to ironic pity. But, as an artist, he was surprised and stirred at the strange loveliness which emerged from the grimness of the rubble heaps, temporary monuments of homes and churches.
Such drawings as comprise this Exhibition cannot be done at leisure, the “incident” remains but for a few minutes, and has, so to speak, to be seized on the spot. The stretcher bearers disappear, a hole excavated in the debris in the faint hope of finding someone buried underneath and still alive, is shovelled away by a “tidying up” gang, a wall tumbles, the “incident” is over. Soon the bombed place becomes as characterless as all the other heaps of rubble. To record the moment, only one method is possible: a rough sketch made against time – one that was often made on an old envelope or a cigarette packet – a few notes: the drawing finished with these aids and from memory. Such a method has an obvious advantage, the artist’s intense re-action to the emotion aroused by the scene witnessed, emerges on paper with the freshness of that first impact of grimness, tragedy, pity and beauty.
Their chief attraction is the arrested movement of humanity against the squalid background of smashed brick and mortar, odd pieces of furniture, bent girders, timber, a garment caught in the bare boughs of a tree… They are almost illustrations, almost they tell the story, the appeal to the imagination is overbearing. Hardly finished, they say all that there is to be said. They Are imbued with a vision of transient beauty, as every artist worthy of his mettle has seen beauty even in the most terrible moments of life. They are something more than a mere record of the effects of brutality and horror.
These drawings have, I think, a permanency which will be denied to works on a larger and more ambitious scale. They contain only the very essence of each “incident” depicted, nothing else has mattered. They are stark, austere, rich in suggestion, satisfying to the eye.
W.S. Meadmore
Clifford Hall, possibly at the Leger Gallery, showing one of his drawings – ‘Where They Lived’ – to a fellow ARP man.